Et si la domination n'etait pas la ou on la croit? Et si la facon dont nous nous representons aujourd'hui l'identite, l'humain, les genres, la nature, mais aussi la democratie, le rapport a l'etranger, le contenu meme du savoir, la finalite du droit, si tout cela ne relevait pas en realite d'un savoir objectif mais d'une - ideologie - qui projette de changer l'ordre social et politique mais surtout l'humain? C'est le propre de toute epoque que de trouver dans un (...) ordre d'idees le principe du pouvoir et de la coherence, sauf que cette ideologie se presente comme l'anti-pouvoir, le facteur d'une liberte jamais imaginee. Ce court ouvrage s'efforce d'en construire le modele et de prendre la mesure de l'ampleur de l'agenda du post-modernisme, cette pensee nee en France dans les annees 1970, redecouverte aux etats-Unis et devenue, depuis, la - langue commune - de toutes les elites du monde democratique, a travers ses multiples visages: multiculturalisme, post colonialisme, queer theory, altermondialisme, mondialisme, etc. Dans la perspective de la sociologie de la connaissance, Shmuel Trigano tente d'identifier les centres de pouvoir et l'ordre nouveau qu'installe cette ideologie pour comprendre le contexte de son developpement, notamment la decomposition de l'etat-nation europeen des suites de l'unification europeenne, grosse, selon lui d'une forme de pouvoir de type imperial. Un livre de savoir mais aussi un livre engage qui alerte face a la derniere nee des utopies politiques.". (shrink)

Is it only yesterday's humanism, whether religious or secular in origin, that is dying - and is it really dying? - or is it more profoundly the very paradigm of humanity? At least it is worth asking the question. Do we not hear on every side today that everything is ‘constructed’ and ‘formated’? No inherited moral standard now seems acceptable, nor any reference to any sort of human nature or naturality. The only idea that henceforth finds acceptance is that of (...) the infinite plasticity of the human, leaving individuals free to shape themselves as they wish beyond any commonly received standard, since only defiance of the norm seems to be the source and proof of freedom. (shrink)

This book is the result of several decades of teaching experience in data structures and algorithms. It is self-contained but does assume some prior knowledge of data structures, and a grasp of basic programming and mathematics tools. Basic Concepts in Algorithms focuses on more advanced paradigms and methods combining basic programming constructs as building blocks and their usefulness in the derivation of algorithms. Its coverage includes the algorithms' design process and an analysis of their performance. It is primarily intended as (...) a textbook for the teaching of Algorithms for second-year undergraduate students in study fields related to computers and programming. Klein reproduces his oral teaching style in writing, with one topic leading to another, related one. Most of the classical and some more advanced subjects in the theory of algorithms are covered, though not in a comprehensive manner. The topics include Divide and Conquer, Dynamic Programming, Graph algorithms, probabilistic algorithms, data compression, numerical algorithms and intractability. Each chapter comes with its own set of exercises, and solutions to most of them are appended. (shrink)

When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue that there are important instances in which this dominant third party perspective (...) (TPP) is empirically false and normatively misguided. Much before our positive ?responsibility to protect? potential victims from mass atrocities, we violate our negative duty not to harm these victims. Employing work by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar, I argue that this harm currently comes about as our elected governments either buy, or allow our corporations to buy, the world's most precious resources from brutal dictators and warlords, who dominate some of the states that are at the heart of intervention discussions. In these cases, democracies' most immediate duty is not intervention but rather humanitarian disintervention: boycotting severely oppressive regimes, and in particular stopping to recognizing these regimes ? whether dictators or civil warriors ? as possessing legitimate authority to sell their peoples' resources. I begin with a brief survey of the intervention literature, followed by the foundations for the disintervention alternative. I then elaborate the conceptual and practical advantages of disintervention, concluding with thoughts on the reasons for TPP's lasting dominance. (shrink)

Our bodies have a story to tell. The Embodied Path weaves inspiring and ordinary body stories together with discussion questions, writing prompts, and breath and body practices to help anyone interested in creating more capacity for compassion for themselves and others by doing the internal work to contend with trauma and privilege.

Physics underlies all complexity, including our own existence: how is this possible? How can our own lives emerge from interactions of electrons, protons, and neutrons? This book considers the interaction of physical and non-physical causation in complex systems such as living beings, and in particular in the human brain, relating this to the emergence of higher levels of complexity with real causal powers. In particular it explores the idea of top-down causation, which is the key effect allowing the emergence of (...) true complexity and also enables the causal efficacy of non-physical entities, including the value of money, social conventions, and ethical choices. (shrink)

Philosophizing the indefensible asks what distinctive contributions political philosophers might make when reflecting on blatant moral failures in public policy - the kinds of failures that philosophers usually dismiss as theoretically un-interesting, even if practically important. This book argues that political philosophers can and should craft "strategic" arguments for public policy reforms, showing how morally urgent reforms can be grounded, for the sake of discussion, even in problematic premises associated with their opponents. The book starts by developing the general contours (...) of this approach - defending its general moral value in a democratic society, and examining how far one might go in strategically deploying dubious or even repugnant premises in debating public affairs. The book then applies strategic theorizing to a set of diverse policy issues. These range from the abortion debate and financial regulation in the United States, through controversies surrounding the participation of Arab parties in Israel's political process, to global issues, such as commercial ties with oil-rich dictatorships, and the bearing of such ties on global climate change. (shrink)

Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical thought of philosophers and moral psychologists is (...) also pervaded by rationalization. Moreover, although rationalization has some benefits, overall it would be epistemically better if the moral and philosophical reasoning of people, including professional academics, were not as heavily influenced by rationalization as it likely is. We discuss the significance of our arguments for cognitive management and epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with Noam Chomsky's influence on historical linguistics, one might also ask about the influence of historical linguistics on Chomskyan thought. It outlines the tension between Chomskyan generative grammar and historical linguistics and argues how both have been beneficial to each other. Generative grammar and historical linguistics can benefit from each other's insights. The chapter explains how there is a great deal of influence of Chomskyan, generative linguistics on historical linguistics, in particular syntax, and also shows how (...) Third Factor Principles shape language change. Chomsky's current focus on labeling as a Third Factor effect necessitated by the interfaces and unconnected to Merge makes it possible to see syntactic change in another way, namely as a resolution to labeling problems. Apart from labeling, there are other Third Factor Principles, such as the one to avoid indeterminacy in a derivation. (shrink)

In Davidson's philosophy, one finds a wide variety of rich, provocative, and influential arguments concerning the nature of the mind—that mental states emerge only in the context of interpretation, that belief is "in its nature" veridical, that mental events are physical events, and so on. Most, if not all, of Davidson's conclusions about the mind have their source in discussions about the project of "radical interpretation." They rely upon arguments concerning the conditions on the successful interpretation of a speaker by (...) an interpreter who knows nothing initially about the speaker's language or mental states. But what is the relevance of this activity of radical interpretation? Why should the conditions on succeeding at it illuminate anything about the nature of the mind in general? In this paper, I explore these issues. In particular, I will argue that Davidson's confidence in the relevance of radical interpretation for understanding the mind ultimately depends upon a prior and quite substantive view of the mind. Moreover, it is a view of the mind for which Davidson provides little support. Indeed, the little support Davidson does provide appears to depend itself on the very relevance of radical interpretation. (shrink)

This book shows how modern political, economic and moral theory, including our ideas of liberty and individualism, are trapped in 17th century notions of intuitive reasoning and not informed by modern scientific understanding. Brian Ellis starts with a re-appraisal of the founding of the United Nations and the political and economic policies of the post-war reconstruction period. He then shows how this period, despite its many faults, embodied a philosophy more closely embedded in scientific realism than dominant theories of (...) either left or right today. He goes on to develop this philosophy, meticulously, demolishing theories of Rawls, Nozick and others along the way. The result is a philosophy that investigates how a society actually works, supports evidence-based economics and can better enable human beings to flourish. It is a philosophy that can also accommodate the historical differences between societies and their different, but parallel, development strategies over time. (shrink)

This book centers on a relatively neglected theme in the scholarly literature on Hannah Arendt's political thought: her support for a new form of government in which citizen councils would replace contemporary representative democracy and allow citizens to participate directly in decision-making in the public sphere. The main argument of the book is that the council system, or more broadly the vision of participatory democracy was far more important to Arendt than is commonly understood. Seeking to demonstrate the close links (...) between the council system Arendt advocated and other major themes in her work, the book focuses particularly on her critique of the nation-state and her call for a new international order in which human dignity and “the right to have rights” will be guaranteed; her conception of “the political” and the conditions that can make this experience possible; the relationship between philosophy and politics; and the challenge of political judgement in the modern world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I Tattoo Myself, Therefore I Will Commit Murder The Mark of Cain Tatau: First Signifier Name Beyond Face Truth Itself, Unread Tattoo Devotion.

Note biografiche -- Opere filosofiche theologiche e varie -- Le questioni I-V del De "conscientia" in relazione alle fonti.

This second book in the 'Middle Way Philosophy' series develops five general principles that are distinctive to the universal Middle Way as a practical response to absolutization. These begin with the consistent acknowledgement of human uncertainty (scepticism), and follow through with openness to alternative possibilities (provisionality), the importance of judging things as a matter of degree (incrementality), the clear rejection of polarised absolute claims (agnosticism) and the cultivation of cognitive and emotional states that will help us resolve conflict (integration).

The thinkers presented in these lectures by Bergman represent a radical departure from objectivism and subjectivism.

In recent years, feminist scholarship on emotional labor has proliferated. I identify a related but distinct form of care labor, hermeneutic labor. Hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of: understanding and coherently expressing one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and movitations; discerning those of others; and inventing solutions for relational issues arising from interpersonal tensions. I argue that hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriachal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men. I also suggest that some of (...) the gendered burdens of emotional labor that feminist scholars point out would better be described as hermeneutic labor. Drawing on feminist philosophy as well as findings from social psychology and sociology, I argue that the exploitation of women’s hermeneutic labor is a pervasive element of what Sandra Bartky calls the ‘micropolitics’ of intimate relationships. The widespread expectation that women are relationship maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women’s dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne’s sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview. (shrink)

The "German Socrates," Moses Mendelssohn was the most influential Jewish thinker of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A Berlin celebrity and a major figure in the Enlightenment, revered by Immanuel Kant, Mendelssohn suffered the indignities common to Jews of his time while formulating the philosophical foundations of a modern Judaism suited for a new age. His most influential books included the groundbreaking Jerusalem and a translation of the Bible into German that paved the way for generations of Jews to master (...) the language of the larger culture.Feiner's book is the first that offers a full, human portrait of this fascinating man--uncommonly modest, acutely aware of his task as an intellectual pioneer, shrewd, traditionally Jewish, yet thoroughly conversant with the world around him--providing a vivid sense of Mendelssohn's daily life as well as of his philosophical endeavors. Feiner, a leading scholar of Jewish intellectual history, examines Mendelssohn as father and husband, as a friend, as a tireless advocate for his people, and as an equally indefatigable spokesman for the paramount importance of intellectual independence. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This searching examination of the life and philosophy of the twentieth-century Indian intellectual Jarava Lal Mehta details, among other things, his engagement with the oeuvres of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jacques Derrida. It shows how Mehta’s sense of cross-cultural philosophy and religious thought were affected by these engagements, and maps the two key contributions Mehta made to the sum of human ideas. First, Mehta outlined what the author dubs a ‘postcolonial hermeneutics’ that uses the ‘ethnotrope’ of the pilgrim to (...) challenge the philosophical hermeneutic emphasis on supplementation and augmentation. For Mehta, the hermeneutic encounter ruptures, rather than supplements, the self. Secondly, Mehta extended this concept of hermeneutics to interrogate the Hindu tradition, arriving at the concept of the ‘negative messianic’. In contrast to Derrida's emphasis on the 'one to come', Mehta shows how the Hindu bhakti model represents the very opposite, that is, the 'withdrawn other,' identifying thereby the ethical pitfalls of deconstructivism's emphasis on the messianic tradition. This is the only full-length study in English of this high-profile Hindu philosopher. (shrink)

Written by philosophers, cosmologists, and physicists, this collection of essays deals with causality, which is a core issue for both science and philosophy. Readers will learn about different types of causality in complex systems and about new perspectives on this issue based on physical and cosmological considerations. In addition, the book includes essays pertaining to the problem of causality in ancient Greek philosophy, and to the problem of God's relation to the causal structures of nature viewed in the light of (...) contemporary physics and cosmology. [Subject: Philosophy, Cosmology, Physics, Religious Studies]. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to the special issue on Women in Philosophy: Past, Present and Future. Over the past decade, there has been increased attention given to the underrepresentation of women in academic philosophy, as well as the lack of diversity in philosophy more broadly. While there has been some progress in the demographics of philosophy, as evidenced by recent surveys and empirical studies, women are still significantly outnumbered by men and disparities persist. This special issue aims to address (...) the ongoing problem of inclusion in philosophy by exploring the contribution of women in the field. The contributors have been given freedom to write on topics they consider important, with the hope of stimulating further discussion and generating new ideas for addressing this issue. (shrink)

Timeless lessons are retold here with reverence and charm. The values that we all want our children to absorb - faith, kindness, forgiveness, charity - are made clear through traditional, biblical stories coupled with examples, and charming illustrations by Tova Katz. Shmuel Blitz, the author of five other successful children's books, goes back to the greatest source of all - the Torah and the Prophets. Do your children and grandchildren (and yourself) a favor and get them this fine new (...) book. (shrink)

Discussions of sexual ethics often focus on the wrong of treating another as a mere object instead of as a person worthy of respect. On this view, the task of sexual ethics becomes putting the other’s subjectivity above their status as erotic object so as to avoid the harms of objectification. Ward and Anderson argue that such a view disregards the crucial, moral role that erotic objecthood plays in sexual encounters. Important moral features of intimacy are disclosed through the experience (...) of being an erotic object for another, as well as in perceiving another as an erotic object. Drawing on phenomenology, especially the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Ward and Anderson argue that erotic encounters are shaped by the human condition of ambiguity, where being an object for others is intertwined with bodily agency. Because sexual agency is complex in this way, theories of sexual ethics and responsibility must widen their focus beyond transparent communication and authoritative expressions of will. (shrink)

Political honors are ubiquitous in public life, whether in the form of public monuments, street names, or national holidays. Yet such honors have received scant attention from normative political theorists. Tackling this gap, I begin by criticizing a desert-based approach to political honors. I then argue that morally appropriate honors are best understood as marking and reinforcing the moral commitments of the collective in whose name they are being awarded. I show how this thesis clarifies and organizes core intuitions regarding (...) a variety of honors, from those commemorating slave-owning founders of the United States to the Nobel Peace Prize. (shrink)

"Ilana and Ari Goldreich set out on an unforettable quest through time ... and learn ... Jewish values in order to save the world from deadly peril" -- p. 4 of cover.

This book puts forward a theory of absolutization, bringing together a multi-disciplinary understanding of this central flaw in human judgement, and what we can do about it. This approach, drawing on Buddhist thought and practice, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, embodied meaning and systems theory, offers a rigorous introduction to absolutization as the central problem addressed in Middle Way Philosophy, which is a synthetic approach developed by the author over more than twenty years in a series of books. It challenges disciplinary boundaries (...) as well as offering a substantial framework for practical application. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization of political judgement has been a source of much scholarly investigation and debate in recent decades. Underlying the debate is the assumption that at least in her early writings, Arendt had an actor’s theory of judgement. In this article I challenge this common assumption. As I attempt to demonstrate, it relies on a misunderstanding, not only of Arendt’s conception of judgement, but also of her conception of agents in the public realm. Once we discard the assumption of (...) an actor’s theory of judgement, I argue, some important issues in Arendt’s theory of judgement are resolved, enabling us to perceive it as a unified, rather than self-contradictory, theory of judgement. (shrink)

Combines phenomenology with the "enactivist" approach to consciousness theory and recent emotion research to explore the way self-motivated action plans shape selective attention, exploration, and ultimately the mind's interpretation of reality - in philosophy, psychology, cultural awareness, and our personal lives.

The Jungian concept of archetypes is of immense value for critically distinguishing what is potentially of universal practical value in religious and other cultural traditions, and separating this from the dogmatic elements. However, Jung encumbered the concept of archetypes with debatable constructions like the 'collective unconscious' that are unnecessary for understanding their practical function. This book puts forward a far-reaching new theory of archetypes that is functional without being reductive. At the centre of this is the idea that archetypes are (...) adaptations to help us maintain inspiration over time. Humans are such distractable beings that they need constant reminders to maintain integration with their most sustainable intentions: reminders using the profound power of symbol linked to embodied experience. This multi-disciplinary book weaves together religious studies, ethical philosophy, the psychology of bias, the neuroscience of brain lateralisation, the linguistics of embodied meaning, the feedback loops of systems theory, with a lifetime's experience of Buddhist practice and appreciation of symbolism in the arts: all with the aim of producing a fresh understanding of the role of archetypes in religion and beyond, that can also be directly applied in practice. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1910 Edition.

The poet and author Judah Leib Gordon (1830–92) was one of the key figures who promoted the Haskalah (The Jewish Enlightenment) among the large Jewish population in Eastern Europe in the second hal...

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) wrote Jerusalem with his back to the wall. His Jewish identity and liberal outlook were challenged in the public sphere of the German Enlightenment, and this was his last opportunity to write a book that would perpetuate the essence of his faith and his values as the first modern Jewish humanist. The work, which moves between apologetics for his faith and political and religious philosophy was primarily a daring essay that categorically denied the rule of religion and (...) advocated tolerance and freedom of thought. Neither the state nor the church had the right to govern a person’s conscience; and, no less far-reaching and pioneering: these values are consistent with Judaism. In the summer of 1783, seven years after the resounding voice of protest against tyranny and in favor of liberty and equality was heard in the American Declaration of Independence, less than six years before the French Revolution, but only two years and two months before his death, the man who was called the “German Socrates,” a highly prominent figure in the Enlightenment, published one of the fundamental documents in Jewish modernity. (shrink)