« Qui voit ? » C’est à partir de cette question cartésienne, devenue aussi la sienne, et des transformations qu’il lui fait subir, que le privilège de la peinture chez Merleau-Ponty est à comprendre. Du même coup, et a contrario, on saisit pourquoi la musique, comme le regrette Raymond Court, n’a pas donné à penser à Merleau-Ponty, qui, dit-on, écoutait Mozart au moment où la mort l’a frappé. Or, comme la peinture n’existe qu’à prendre corps dans les œuvres des (...) peintres, il y a encore lieu de se demander quels ont été « les peintres » de Merleau-Ponty. Et que lui ont-ils fait voir ?« Who sees ? » It is on the basis of this Cartesian question, which Maurice Merleau-Ponty made his own, that we can understand the sort of « privilege » painting seems to deserve within his thought. At the same time, we can grasp why, when drawing up his ontology of the Flesh, he did not pay attention to music, despite his fondness of it. This lacuna was reproached by Raymond Court, who insisted on the intimate relationship between music and the flesh . But once we acknowledge the main reasons he had to give painting priority, we may ask what he was looking for when he considered some of the modern painters as for instance Cézanne or Paul Klee. And what indeed did they make him see ? (shrink)

Its first paradigms are in the writings of Marx and Freud. In this book Raymond Geuss sets out these fundamental claims and asks whether they can be made good.

Philosophers-professionals and the armchair variety-are given to defending comprehensive world views. Raymond Geuss, one of the most celebrated thinkers of our time, dispenses with this ambition for intellectual unity. Ranging across the history of art and ideas, Geuss argues for flexibility, doubt, and the accommodation of unresolved complexity.

A collection of paradoxes, dialogues, problems, and essays discusses aspects of philosophy, including the natures of reality, truth, existence, and death.

Ask a question and it is reasonable to expect an answer or a confession of ignorance. But a philosopher may defy expectations. Confronted by a standard question arising from a normal way of viewing the world, a philosopher may reply that the question is misguided, that to continue asking it is, at the extreme, to get trapped in a delusive hall of mirrors. According to Raymond Geuss, this attempt to bypass or undercut conventional ways of thinking, to escape from (...) the hall of mirrors, represents philosophy at its best and most characteristic. To illustrate, Geuss explores the ideas of twelve philosophers who broke dramatically with prevailing wisdom, from Socrates and Plato in the ancient world to Wittgenstein and Adorno in our own. The result is a striking account of some of the most innovative and important philosophers in Western history and an indirect manifesto for how to pursue philosophy today. Geuss cautions that philosophers' attempts to break from convention do not necessarily make the world a better place. Montaigne's ideas may have been benign, but the fate of the views developed by, for instance, Augustine, Hobbes, and Nietzsche has been more varied. But in the act of provoking people to think differently, philosophers make clear that we are not fated to live within the often stifling systems of thought that we inherit. We can change the subject. A work of exceptional range, power, and originality, Changing the Subject manifests the precise virtues of philosophy that it identifies and defends. (shrink)

Outside Ethics brings together some of the most important and provocative works by one of the most creative philosophers writing today. Seeking to expand the scope of contemporary moral and political philosophy, Raymond Geuss here presents essays bound by a shared skepticism about a particular way of thinking about what is important in human life--a way of thinking that, in his view, is characteristic of contemporary Western societies and isolates three broad categories of things as important: subjective individual preferences, (...) knowledge, and restrictions on actions that affect other people. He sets these categories in a wider context and explores various human phenomena--including poetry, art, religion, and certain kinds of history and social criticism--that do not fit easily into these categories. As its title suggests, this book seeks a place outside conventional ethics.Following a brief introduction, Geuss sets out his main concerns with a focus on ethics and politics. He then expands these themes by discussing freedom, virtue, the good life, and happiness. Next he examines Theodor Adorno's views on the relation between suffering and knowledge, the nature of religion, and the role of history in giving us critical distances from existing identities. From here he moves to aesthetic concerns. The volume closes by looking at what it is for a human life to have "gaps"--to be incomplete, radically unsatisfactory, or a failure. (shrink)

Outside Ethics brings together some of the most important and provocative works by one of the most creative philosophers writing today. Seeking to expand the scope of contemporary moral and political philosophy, Raymond Geuss here presents essays bound by a shared skepticism about a particular way of thinking about what is important in human life--a way of thinking that, in his view, is characteristic of contemporary Western societies and isolates three broad categories of things as important: subjective individual preferences, (...) knowledge, and restrictions on actions that affect other people. He sets these categories in a wider context and explores various human phenomena--including poetry, art, religion, and certain kinds of history and social criticism--that do not fit easily into these categories. As its title suggests, this book seeks a place outside conventional ethics. Following a brief introduction, Geuss sets out his main concerns with a focus on ethics and politics. He then expands these themes by discussing freedom, virtue, the good life, and happiness. Next he examines Theodor Adorno's views on the relation between suffering and knowledge, the nature of religion, and the role of history in giving us critical distances from existing identities. From here he moves to aesthetic concerns. The volume closes by looking at what it is for a human life to have "gaps"--to be incomplete, radically unsatisfactory, or a failure. (shrink)

Considerable research on helpers-at-the-nest demonstrates the positive effects of firstborn daughters on a mother’s reproductive success and the survival of her children compared with women who have firstborn sons. This research is largely restricted to agricultural settings. In the present study we ask: “Does ‘daughter first’ improve mothers’ reproductive success in a hunting and gathering context?” Through an analysis of 84 postreproductive women in this population we find that the sex of the first- or second-born child has no effect on (...) a mother’s fertility or the survival of her offspring. We conclude that specific environmental and economic factors underlay the helpers-at-the-nest phenomenon. (shrink)

There is a well-entrenched schism on the frequency, intensity, and evolutionary significance of warfare among hunter-gatherers compared with large-scale societies. To simplify, Rousseauians argue that warfare among prehistoric and contemporary hunter-gatherers was nearly absent and, if present, was a late cultural invention. In contrast, so-called Hobbesians argue that violence was relatively common but variable among hunter-gatherers. To defend their views, Rousseauians resort to a variety of tactics to diminish the apparent frequency and intensity of hunter-gatherer warfare. These tactics include redefining (...) war, censoring ethnographic accounts of warfare in comparative analyses, misconstruing archaeological evidence, and claiming that outside contact inflates the intensity of warfare among hunter-gatherers. These tactics are subject to critical analysis and are mostly found to be wanting. Furthermore, Hobbesians with empirical data have already established that the frequency and intensity of hunter-gatherer warfare is greater compared with large-scale societies even though horticultural societies engage in warfare more intensively than hunter-gatherers. In the end I argue that although war is a primitive trait we may share with chimpanzees and/or our last common ancestor, the ability of hunter-gatherer bands to live peaceably with their neighbors, even though war may occur, is a derived trait that fundamentally distinguishes us socially and politically from chimpanzee societies. It is a point often lost in these debates. (shrink)

A critical account of "Humanism" and some of its extreme forms and manifestations; reflection on some of the important challenges these raise in relation to higher education in the 21st century.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The temptation to use prospective observational studies (POS) instead of conducting difficult trials (RCTs) has always existed, but with the advent of powerful computers and large databases, it can become almost irresistible. We examine the potential consequences, were this to occur, by comparing two hypothetical studies of a new treatment: one RCT, and one POS. The POS inevitably submits more patients to inferior research methodology. In RCTs, patients are clearly informed of the research context, and 1:1 randomized allocation between experimental (...) and validated treatment balances risks for each patient. In POS, for each patient, the risks of receiving inferior treatment are impossible to estimate. The research context and the uncertainty are down-played, and patients and clinicians are at risk of becoming passive research subjects in studies performed from an outsider’s view, which potentially has extraneous objectives, and is conducted without their explicit, autonomous, and voluntary involvement and consent. (shrink)

Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare (...) and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

This book examines and clarifies the nature, meaning, significance, richness and vitality of the sacred, and several key theories of the sacred, in the context of science and religion, and philosophical ontology.

Peter French has argued that conglomerate collectivities such as business corporations are moral persons and that aggregate collectivities such as lynch mobs are not. Two arguments are advanced to show that French's claim is flawed. First, the distinction between aggregates and conglomerates is, at best, a distinction of degree, not kind. Moreover, some aggregates show evidence of moral personhood. Second, French's criterion for distinguishing aggregates and conglomerates is based on inadequate grounds. Application of the criterion to specific cases requires an (...) additional judgment of a pragmatic nature which undermines any attempt to demonstrate French's thesis that actual conglomerates are moral persons and aggregates are not. Thus, French's theory is seriously lacking both empirical basis and empirical relevance. (shrink)

Treating mathematical science as a distinct cultural entity subject to environmental factors which influence its evolution, the author examines the creation and development of its major concepts since early times.

The core entities of computer science include formal languages, spec-ifications, models, programs, implementations, semantic theories, type inference systems, abstract and physical machines. While there are conceptual questions concerning their nature, and in particular ontological ones (Turner 2018), our main focus here will be on the relationships between them. These relationships have an extensional aspect that articulates the propositional connection between the two entities, and an intentional one that fixes the direction of governance. An analysis of these two aspects will drive (...) our investigation; an investigation that will touch upon some of the central concerns of the philosophy of computer science (Turner 2017). (shrink)

The logic of partial terms (LPT) is a variety of negative free logic in which functions, as well as predicates, are strict. A companion paper focused on nonconstructive LPTwith definite descriptions, called LPD, and laid the foundation for tableaux systems by defining the concept of an LPDmodel system and establishing Hintikka's Lemma, from which the strong completeness of the corresponding tableaux system readily follows. The present paper utilizes the tableaux system in establishing an Extended Joint Consistency Theorem for LPDthat incorporates (...) the Robinson Joint Consistency Theorem and the Craig-Lyndon Interpolation Lemma. The method of proof is similar to that originally used in establishing the Extended Joint Consistency Theorem for positive free logic. Proof of the Craig-Lyndon Interpolation Lemma for formulas possibly having free variables is readily had in LPTand its intuitionistic counterpart. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the theory of definitions in LPD. (shrink)

The author offers a modification and extension of existing organizational transformation approaches by drawing on values-oriented and stakeholder management paradigms currently popular in literature. Many of the current values-based change paradigms offer vague guidance as to how to actually create, implement and sustain a strategically and operationally excellent organization as an extension of a stakeholder-based cultural mindset. Sharing the belief that organizations should be operationally and strategically sound in addition to being stakeholder centred, the suggestions presented represent an attempt to (...) combine the altruism of stakeholder-based management with practical organizational transformation theory to suggest steps for transformation. The approach suggested here, which places a primary emphasis on the organization's moral standing from the individual employee's perspective, is also supported by existing literature on the need for values congruence between organizations and individuals. Thus, the paper's central premise is that organizational transformation, commonly called OT, should begin with a cultural transformation, aimed at raising the level of moral reasoning of the firm as a necessary precursor to a subsequent operational and strategic transformation. (shrink)

The article discusses the failure of the current positivistic and materialist business ethics paradigms to adequately deal with the enormity of the contemporary business ethics crisis. Citing behavioural research into the linkage between beliefs, values and behaviour, the author suggests spiritual renewal as a solution based on the ‘fallenness’ of mankind and the reality of human evil. The concept of faith, obedience and the resulting ‘kingdom consciousness’ (May and Whittington 2003) is explored as a basis for spiritual renewal leading to (...) behavioural change. The process of renewal is depicted as a synergistic, mutually supportive relationship between faith and action. (shrink)