The two fine books under review represent in different but complementary ways very successful efforts to revise and reprint what can be considered modern "classic" writings on Zen Buddhist thought, with a strong emphasis on the Rinzai sect, that were produced either by an eminent Japanese scholar or an American working in collaboration with a Japanese researcher and were initially circulated in the West through the 1960s. These writings had a remarkably influential impact on the course of Zen studies at (...) the time, but in the intervening years have largely fallen into disuse or a decline in reputation. However, they are richly deserving of the current editorial exercises leading to a recovery and rehabilitation so... (shrink)

IntroductionIn recent years, there has been something of an explosion of news stories about various college and university campuses across North America experiencing heightened levels of political advocacy and political unrest. Visible examples include the “canceling” of invited speakers who have been deemed offensive by select student groups1 or petitions calling for the removal of instructors who have been accused of using harmful language.2 While these examples shed light on some of the more intense political debates circulating in higher educational (...) institutions, they are also newsworthy stories precisely because they suggest strong divisiveness in worldviews in action—the contradiction between different…. (shrink)

It is commonly held that there is no place for the 'now’ in physics, and also that the passing of time is something subjective, having to do with the way reality is experienced but not with the way reality is. Indeed, the majority of modern theoretical physicists and philosophers of physics contend that the passing of time is incompatible with modern physical theory, and excluded in a fundamental description of physical reality. This book provides a forceful rebuttal of such claims. (...) In successive chapters the author explains the historical precedents of the modern opposition to time flow, giving careful expositions of matters relevant to becoming in classical physics, the special and general theories of relativity, and quantum theory, without presupposing prior expertise in these subjects. Analysing the arguments of thinkers ranging from Aristotle, Russell, and Bergson to the proponents of quantum gravity, he contends that the passage of time, understood as a local becoming of events out of those in their past at varying rates, is not only compatible with the theories of modern physics, but implicit in them. (shrink)

Ethical Studies is one of the most enlightening works of moral philosophy in English. This article surveys the principal structural theme running throughout it, but will concentrate on its more explicit development at the beginning and end of the book, Essays II and VI, and the “Concluding Remarks.” Essay II formulates the formal requirements of morality in terms of self-realization, and the remaining Essays survey possible contents, the valuable elements of which are brought together, with further materials, in Essays VI (...) and VII. But Bradley finds that morality involves a contradiction, and so, in order to resolve that contradiction, it issues into something more than morality, namely, religion. However, this article will show that Bradley’s resolution of this contradiction is not satisfactory and that, once morality is conceived as an ἐνέργεια and not a γένεσις, an activity and not a process, this contradiction vanishes. Yet morality does, nevertheless, on Bradley’s own principles, find its completion in religion when so conceived; and such an argument was developed in detail in the great work of one of Bradley’s pupils, A. E. Taylor’s Faith of a Moralist, Vol. I. (shrink)

"This is an excellent textbook on Neoplatonism which gives the reader a very concise and lucid overview of the basic doctrines and leading thinkers of the last great philosophy to emerge before the Christianization of the Roman Empire. I’ve no doubt that my students next semester will benefit from the analyses contained in the book. The contents of the chapters are very informative and adequately place developments in their socio-cultural context." --Michael B. Simmons, Auburn University at Montgomery.

Evaluation of the influence of Hayden White on the theory of history is made difficult by his preference for the essay form, valued for its experimental character, and by the need to find comparable data. A quantitative study of citations of his work in English and foreign-language journals, 1973–1993, reveals that although historians were prominent among early readers of Metahistory, few historical journals reviewed White's two subsequent collections of essays and few historians-except in Germany-cited them. Those historians who did tended (...) still to cite Metahistory and often the parts of it devoted specifically to nineteenth-century historians.Literary critics, on the other hand, were relatively late to discover White, but during the "narrative turn" of the 1970s and 1980s his work was important for students of the novel and the theater. Recognition of it was especially marked in Spanish-speaking countries and in Germany.As a result, salient themes of White's later work-the ideological and political import of narrativization, the "historical sublime," and writing in the "middle voice"-have largely gone unremarked by historians and philosophers. Both these groups have tended to be irritated by White's bracketing of questions of historical epistemology; some have accused him of effacing the line between fiction and history, while White's numerous literary readers have generally applauded his tendencies in this direction. White however has consistently maintained that there is a difference, although not the one conventionally postulated. His exploration of writing in the "middle voice" brings his work full circle, in that it promises a "modernist" realism appropriate for representing the "sublime" events of our century. (shrink)

The reappearance of the question of moral judgments by historians makes a reappraisal of the issues timely. Almost all that has been written on the subject addresses only the propriety of moral judgments in the written texts historians produce. However, historians have to make moral choices when selecting a subject upon which to write; and they make a tacit moral commitment to write and teach honestly. Historians usually dislike making explicit moral evaluations, and have little or no training in how (...) to do so. They can argue it’s not their job; they are only finders of fact. Historians holding a determinist view of actions do not think it appropriate to blame people for doing what they couldn’t help doing; for those believing there is an overall pattern to history, individual morality is beside the point. Finally, since earlier cultures had values different from ours, it seems unjust to hold them to contemporary standards. This essay modifies or rejects these arguments. Some historians have manifested ambivalence, acknowledging it is difficult or impossible to avoid making moral evaluations . Ordinary-language philosophers, noting that historiography has no specialized vocabulary, see it as saturated by the values inherent in everyday speech and thought. I argue that the historicist argument about the inevitably time-bound limitation of all values is exaggerated. Historians who believe in the religious grounding of values obviously disagree with it; but even on a secular level, morals are often confused with mores. If historians inevitably make moral evaluations, they should examine what philosophical ethicists—virtue ethicists, deontologists, and consequentialists—have said about how to make them; and even if they find no satisfactory grounding for their own moral attitudes, it is a brute fact that they have them. I end with an argument for “strong evaluations”—neither treating them as a troublesome residue in historiography nor, having despaired of finding a solid philosophical ground for moral evaluations, concluding that they are merely matters of taste. I believe historians should embrace the role of moral commentators, but that they should be aware that their evaluations are, like all historical judgments, subject to the criticisms of their colleagues and readers. Historians run little risk of being censorious and self-righteous; the far greater danger is acquiescing in or contributing to moral confusion and timidity. (shrink)

In Minkowski spacetime, because of the relativity of simultaneity to the inertial frame chosen, there is no unique world-at-an-instant. Thus the classical view that there is a unique set of events existing now in a three dimensional space cannot be sustained. The two solutions most often advanced are that the four-dimensional structure of events and processes is alone real, and that becoming present is not an objective part of reality; and that present existence is not an absolute notion, but is (...) relative to inertial frame; the world-at-an-instant is a three dimensional, but relative, reality. According to a third view, advanced by Robb, Capek and Stein, what is present at a given spacetime point is, strictly speaking, constituted by that point alone. I argue here against the first of these views that the four-dimensional universe cannot be said to exist now, already, or indeed at any time at all; so that talk of its existence or reality as if that precludes the existence or reality of the present is a non sequitur. The second view assumes that in relativistic physics time lapse is measured by the time co-ordinate function; against this I maintain that it is in fact measured by the proper time, as I argue by reference to the Twin Paradox. The third view, although formally correct, is tarnished by its unrealistic assumption of point-events. This makes it susceptible to paradox, and also sets it at variance with our normal intuitions of the present. I argue that a defensible concept of the present is nonetheless obtainable when account is taken of the non-instantaneity of events, including that of conscious awareness, as that region of spacetime comprised between the forward lightcone of the beginning of a small interval of proper time t and the backward lightcone of the end of that interval. This gives a serviceable notion of what is present to a given event of short duration, as well as saving our intuition of the “reality” or robustness of present events. (shrink)

This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz's sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum. The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz's Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite division of matter entails (...) perfect points, whether matter and space can be regarded as true wholes, whether motion is truly continuous, and the nature of body and substance. Comprising the second section is Pacidius Philalethi, Leibniz's brilliant dialogue of late 1676 on the problem of the continuity of motion. In the selections of the final section, from his Hanover writings of 1677-1686, Leibniz abandons his earlier transcreationism and atomism in favor of the theory of corporeal substance, where the reality of body and motion is founded in substantial form or force.Leibniz's texts (one in French, the rest in Latin) are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a valuable glossary detailing important terms and their translations. (shrink)

The development of Louis Mink's philosophy of history is traced beginning with his classic essay "The Autonomy of Historical Understanding" and culminating in "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument". Mink's thoughts on history during this period were marked by an everdeepening interest in the textuality and intertextuality of historical accounts, in the modes of representation which historians adopt and use to produce their "reality effects," and in the effort to mediate between what he was to call the New Rhetorical Relativism (...) and the claim that histories are in some sense true. Mink's response to Hempel's "The Function of General Laws in History," the beginning of Mink's consideration of narrative in "The Autonomy of Historical Understanding" and later in "History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension," his association with Hayden White, his critique of a paper by Arno Mayer, and the beginning of Mink's final thoughts in "History and Narrative" and "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument" are considered in elaborating the development of Mink's philosophy of history. (shrink)

In contrast with some recent theories of infinitesimals as non-Archimedean entities, Leibniz’s mature interpretation was fully in accord with the Archimedean Axiom: infinitesimals are fictions, whose treatment as entities incomparably smaller than finite quantities is justifiable wholly in terms of variable finite quantities that can be taken as small as desired, i.e. syncategorematically. In this paper I explain this syncategorematic interpretation, and how Leibniz used it to justify the calculus. I then compare it with the approach of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis, (...) as propounded by John Bell. I find some salient differences, especially with regard to higher-order infinitesimals. I illustrate these differences by a consideration of how each approach might be applied to propositions of Newton’s Principia concerning the derivation of force laws for bodies orbiting in a circle and an ellipse. “If the Leibnizian calculus needs a rehabilitation because of too severe treatment by historians in the past half century, as Robinson suggests (1966, 250), I feel that the legitimate grounds for such a rehabilitation are to be found in the Leibnizian theory itself.”—(Bos 1974–1975, 82–83). (shrink)

In this interview, C. P. Goodman invites British Polanyi scholar Richard T. Allen to reflect on his interest in Polanyi’s philosophical ideas and share what he believes is valuable in his thought.

In this paper I offer a fresh interpretation of Leibniz’s theory of space, in which I explain the connection of his relational theory to both his mathematical theory of analysis situs and his theory of substance. I argue that the elements of his mature theory are not bare bodies (as on a standard relationalist view) nor bare points (as on an absolutist view), but situations. Regarded as an accident of an individual body, a situation is the complex of its angles (...) and distances to other co-existing bodies, founded in the representation or state of the substance or substances contained in the body. The complex of all such mutually compatible situations of co-existing bodies constitutes an order of situations, or instantaneous space. Because these relations of situation change from one instant to another, space is an accidental whole that is continuously changing and becoming something different, and therefore a phenomenon. As Leibniz explains to Clarke, it can be represented mathematically by supposing some set of existents hypothetically (and counterfactually) to remain in a fixed mutual relation of situation, and gauging all subsequent situations in terms of transformations with respect to this initial set. Space conceived in terms of such allowable transformations is the subject of Analysis Situs. Finally, insofar as space is conceived in abstraction from any bodies that might individuate the situations, it encompasses all possible relations of situation. This abstract space, the order of all possible situations, is an abstract entity, and therefore ideal. (shrink)

Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from (...) a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical. (shrink)

Thêsauroi, or treasure-houses, are small, temple-like structures, found typically in the sanctuaries of Delphi and Olympia. They were built by Greek city-states to house the dedications of their citizens. But a thêsauros is not just a storeroom: it is also a frame for costly votives, a way of diverting elite display in the interest of the city. When placed on view in a treasure-house, the individual dedication is re-contextualized: although it still reflects well on its dedicant, it also glorifies the (...) polis. Thêsauroi effectively nationalize votives—and, with them, a dedicant's privileged relationship to the gods. The sculptural program of the Siphnian treasury exemplifies these issues. (shrink)

This paper consists in a study of Leibniz’s argument for the infinite plurality of substances, versions of which recur throughout his mature corpus. It goes roughly as follows: since every body is actually divided into further bodies, it is therefore not a unity but an infinite aggregate; the reality of an aggregate, however, reduces to the reality of the unities it presupposes; the reality of body, therefore, entails an actual infinity of constituent unities everywhere in it. I argue that this (...) depends on a generalized notion of aggregation, according to which a thing may be an aggregate of its constituents if every one of its actual parts presupposes such constituents, but is not composed from them. One of the premises of this argument is the reality of bodies. If this premise is denied, Leibniz’s argument for the infinitude of substances, and even of their plurality, cannot go through. (shrink)

It is well known that Leibniz advocated the actual infinite, but that he did not admit infinite collections or infinite numbers. But his assimilation of this account to the scholastic notion of the syncategorematic infinite has given rise to controversy. A common interpretation is that in mathematics Leibniz’s syncategorematic infinite is identical with the Aristotelian potential infinite, so that it applies only to ideal entities, and is therefore distinct from the actual infinite that applies to the actual world. Against this, (...) I argue in this paper that Leibniz’s actual infinite, understood syncategorematically, applies to any entities that are actually infinite in multitude, whether numbers, actual parts of matter, or monads. It signifies that there are more of them than can be assigned a number, but that there is no infinite number or collection of them, which notion involves a contradiction. Similarly, to say that a magnitude is actually infinitely small in the syncategorematic sense is to say that no matter how small a magnitude one takes, there is a smaller, but there are no actual infinitesimals. In geometry one may calculate with expressions apparently denoting such entities, on the understanding that they are fictions, standing for variable magnitudes that can be made arbitrarily small, so as to produce demonstrations that there is no error in the resulting expressions. (shrink)

This paper argues that ecofeminism can consolidate its tradition of elucidating the interconnections between different oppressions by expanding upon its philosophy of the body. By looking at the ways in which particular bodies become 'marked', and so devalued, ecofeminism can point towards various unexpected and creative coalitions. Here I concentrate especially upon two intertwined sets of markings, namely those related to aesthetic discourses and those related to discourses of Western reason. I argue that both of these ultimately revolve around notions (...) of control of the body as being constitutive of Western ideas of human identity. Moreover, I want to affirm that those ideas which encourage us to devalue certain bodies stem from discourses related to nature and animality. Through considering how ecofeminism might re-think embodiment, I argue for an alternative conception which stresses the inherent vulnerability and agency of human embodiment. (shrink)

Debates over postmodernism, analyses of knowledge and power, and the recurring issue of Heidegger's Nazism have all deepened questions about the relation between philosophy and the social roles of intellectuals. Against such postmodernist rejections of philosophical theory as mounted by Rorty and Lyotard, Richard Peterson argues that precisely reflection on rationality, in appropriate social terms, is needed to confront urgent political issues about intellectuals. After presenting a conception of intellectual mediation set within the modern division of labor, he offers (...) an account of postmodern politics within which postmodern arguments against critical reflection are themselves treated socially and politically. Engaging thinkers as diverse as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Habermas, Foucault, and Bahktin, Peterson argues that a democratic conception and practice of philosophy is inseparable from democracy generally. His arguments about modern philosophy are tied to claims about the relation between liberalism and epistemology, and these in turn inform an account of impasses confronting contemporary politics. Historical arguments about the connections between postmodernist thought and practice are illustrated by discussions of the postmodernist dimensions of recent politics. (shrink)

Debates over postmodernism, analyses of knowledge and power, and the recurring issue of Heidegger's Nazism have all deepened questions about the relation between philosophy and the social roles of intellectuals. Against such postmodernist rejections of philosophical theory as mounted by Rorty and Lyotard, Richard Peterson argues that precisely reflection on rationality, in appropriate social terms, is needed to confront urgent political issues about intellectuals. After presenting a conception of intellectual mediation set within the modern division of labor, he offers (...) an account of postmodern politics within which postmodern arguments against critical reflection are themselves treated socially and politically. Engaging thinkers as diverse as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Habermas, Foucault, and Bahktin, Peterson argues that a democratic conception and practice of philosophy is inseparable from democracy generally. His arguments about modern philosophy are tied to claims about the relation between liberalism and epistemology, and these in turn inform an account of impasses confronting contemporary politics. Historical arguments about the connections between postmodernist thought and practice are illustrated by discussions of the postmodernist dimensions of recent politics. (shrink)

In the transition to Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (SR), certain concepts that had previously been thought to be univocal or absolute properties of systems turn out not to be. For instance, mass bifurcates into (i) the relativistically invariant proper mass m0, and (ii) the mass relative to an inertial frame in which it is moving at a speed v = βc, its relative mass m, whose quantity is a factor γ = (1 – β2) -1/2 times the proper mass, (...) m = γm0. (shrink)

Revenge is universal in human cultures, and is essentially personal and retributive. Its moral status is contested, as is its rationality. Revenge is traditionally associated with pleasure, but this association is not accounted for in contemporary philosophical treatments of revenge. Here I supply a theory of normal narcissistic functioning that can explain this association. Normal narcissism is an adaptive form of inter-psychic processing which has to do with the regulation of a coherent set of meta-representations of the agent. It can (...) be given a general account by integrating views drawn from clinical traditions, empirical psychology, and contemporary cognitive neuroscience. I explore the neural correlates of normal narcissism, its characteristic accompanying emotions and pleasures/displeasures, and its fundamental dynamics. It is proposed that this allostatic regulatory system plays a prominent role in retributive behavior, including revenge. Revenge is understood as a form of narcissistic repair, and a variety of puzzles concerning revenge are solved from this point of view. (shrink)

This article responds to a common criticism of Aristotelian naturalism known as the Pollyanna Problem, the objection that Aristotelian naturalism, when combined with recent empirical research, generates morally unacceptable conclusions. In developing a reply to this objection, I draw upon the conception of human nature developed by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, and build up an account of ethical naturalism that provides a satisfying response to the Pollyanna Problem while also preserving what is most attractive about Aristotelian naturalism.

Russell’s most important source for his book on Leibniz was C. I. Gerhardt’s seven-volume Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Russell heavily annotated his copy of this important edition of Leibniz’s works. The present paper records all Russell’s marginalia, with the exception of passages marked merely by vertical lines in the margin, and provides explanatory commentary.

In preparation for his lectures on Leibniz delivered in Cambridge in Lent Term 1899, Russell started in the summer of 1898 to keep notes on writings by and about Leibniz in a large notebook of the type he commonly used for notetaking at this time. This article prints, with annotation, all the material on Leibniz in that notebook.

The American philosophical Association was founded in 1900 to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers and to facilitate the professional work and teaching of philosophers. Having grown from a few hundred members to over 10,000, the APA is one of the largest philosophical societies in the world and the only American philosophical society not devoted to a particular school or philosophical approach. In 1999, in anticipation of its centennial, the APA authorized philosopher Richard T. Hull to begin collecting (...) and publishing the presidential addresses delivered over the course of the twentieth century. The first five volumes, covering the years 1901 to 1950, have now been published and are available exclusively from Prometheus Books. Besides the presidential addresses, each volume contains biographies and photographs of the APA presidents, a list of their birthplaces, a chronology of the APA, a list of presidents per decade, a list of universities and colleges closely associated with each president, and name and subject indices. A total of eleven volumes are planned to complete the collection, the final volume being devoted to historical essays in 20th-century American philosophy. This unique record of the development and leadership of American philosophy during its flowering in the twentieth century will complement the libraries of both professional philosophers and interested nonprofessionals. (shrink)

Ariès's Centuries of Childhood initially was largely ignored by scholars and scholarly journals who could not locate the book within traditional disciplines. But the influence of the book grew steadily, and it has played a formative role in the history of the family and the histoire des mentalités. Ariès had three theses: that childhood was invented in the seventeenth century; that the invention of childhood arose from the dual impulses of parents to coddle their children and, along with schoolmasters, to (...) pay greater attention to forming the children's characters through education; and that the concept of childhood led to an intense and pri~,atized mode of parent-child relations. The first thesis is the most dubious, but in the light of new research none of them seems likely to endure. A new interpretative framework will be required. Nonetheless, Ariès's work will endure in the history of historiography because he established the history of childhood as a field. (shrink)

Normal narcissistic functioning has to do with the regulation of a coherent set of metarepresentations of the acting agent. That set of meta-representations has its own interior architecture and dynamics. Normal narcissistic functioning is an adaptive form of interpsychic processing which can be given a general account by integrating views of it drawn from the clinical traditions of psychoanalysis, empirical psychology, and contemporary cognitive and neurosciences. This is not to be confused with any form of organized psychopathology, though pathological forms (...) of narcissism are relevant to understanding normal narcissism. Neural correlates of normal narcissism, as also the characteristic emotions and pleasures/displeasures that accompany its operations, are also explored. It is proposed that this allostatic regulatory system plays a prominent role in a wide range of human behaviors. It also closes the gap between social norms governing such behaviors and the minds of the agents performing them. This integrative interpretation of the scientific material is offered as an exercise in “philosophy in cognitive science” and belongs to the tradition of naturalistic philosophical accounts of the human mind. (shrink)

This volume contains all of the presidential addresses given before the American Society for Value Inquiry since its first meeting in 1970. Contributions are by Richard Brandt*, Virgil Aldrich*, John W. Davis*, the late Robert S. Hartman*, James B. Wilbur*, the late William H. Werkmeister, Robert E. Carter, the late William T. Blackstone, Gene James, Eva Hauel Cadwallader, Richard T. Hull, Norman Bowie*, Stephen White*, Burton Leiser+, Abraham Edel, Sidney Axinn, Robert Ginsberg, Patricia Werhane, Lisa M. Newton, Thomas (...) Magnell, Sander Lee, John M. Abbarno, Ruth Miller Lucier, and Tom Regan*. Autobiographical sketches* by all of the living contributors and one recently deceased, biographical statements of the remainder, together with photographic portraits of all the contributors*, make this volume a unique record of value inquiry during the past quarter century. __. (shrink)

In line with the British Psychological Society's recent recommendations for teaching the history of psychology, this comprehensive undergraduate textbook emphasizes the philosophical, cultural and social elements that influenced psychology's development. The authors demonstrate that psychology is both a human (e.g. psychoanalytic or phenomenological) and natural (e.g. cognitive) science, exploring broad social-historical and philosophical themes such as the role of diverse cultures and women in psychology and the complex relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in the development of psychological knowledge. The result (...) is a fresh and balanced perspective on what has traditionally been viewed as the collected achievements of a few 'great men'. With a variety of learning features, including case studies, study questions, thought experiments and a glossary, this new textbook encourages students to critically engage with chapter material and analyze themes and topics within a social, historical and philosophical framework. (shrink)

The rule that a patient should give a free, fully-informed consent to any therapeutic intervention is traditionally thought to express merely a right of the patient against the physician, and a duty of the physician towards the patient. On this view, the patient may waive that right with impugnity, a fact sometimes expressed in the notion of a right not to know. This paper argues that the rule also expresses a duty of the patient towards the physician and a right (...) of the physician against the patient. The argument turns, first, on the truism that a physician has no obligation to commit a battery, or unauthorized touching, and, second, on the thesis that a patient necessarily cannot consent to something that is unknown to him. The conclusion is drawn that a patient is not free to receive treatment voluntarily without knowledgeably authorizing it. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

HellmanGeoffrey* * and ShapiroStewart.** ** Varieties of Continua—From Regions to Points and Back. Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-19-871274-9. Pp. x + 208.