One scene from Wim Wenders’ film “Alice in the cities” provokes us to think again about childhood. It’s a fresh polaroid snapshot, where we can see the faces of an adult (Phillip Winter) and a child (Alice) blending and mixing. Starting from this image, this paper makes its way through the movie’s plot, reflecting on the power of freedom that arises from an encounter with children and childhood. First, we examine the relationship between Winter and his job as a photo-journalist, (...) discussing the character of his existential anguish and his supposed indisposition to becoming, which seems to be clear in the way that he reads his own photographs. In a second moment of the film, we understand Alice’s arrival on the scene as something capable of dispersing the circumstances that are constraining him by hurling him into the unpredictable. This event is crystallized in one poetic gesture: the girl confronts the adult with her own face by drawing a self-portrait. Facialization and deterritorialization are twoconcepts that we weave into our discussion, working off the philosophical thinking of Georges Didi-Huberman, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Finally, we propose that worry as a value, characteristic of children and travelers, can produce an opening that offers an escape into a freedom of release–or, so to speak, a defacialized freedom. (shrink)

"Blurb & Contents" This collection of the finest recent articles from Physics Today is a fascinating chronicle of the people and events shaping modern science and society. Includes profiles, personal memoirs, and histories of important institutions and organizations. Among the more than 60 contributors are such distinguished figures as Murray Gell-Mann, Robert Hofstadter, Irving Langmuir, Abraham Pais, Norman Ramsey, Emilio Segre, and Victor Weisskopf.

This book was first published in 1985. The journal is concerned with the study of philosophy in all its branches: logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, social and political philosophy and the philosophies of religion, science, history, language, mind and education. The journal is not committed to any particular school or method and contributors are expected to avoid needless technicality. There is a section on new books which includes reviews, book notes and a list of books received.

The original contributions to this Royal Institute of Philosophy collection are centrally concerned with ethics, but from a wide variety of perspectives. The essays, written by authors of great distinction, range from the analytic and theoretical to the applied, touching such topical and hotly-debated issues as what constitutes morality in political life, the relation between education and ethical standards, and whether morality can indeed be defined. The volume will provide stimulating reading for scholars and students alike.

As far as consideration of man as phenomenon, as appearance, as an empirical self, is concerned, Kant appears to be a thoroughgoing psychological hedonist.

This book is the fruit of well over thirty years' reflection on moral philj osophy. A complete appreciation of it requires reference to The Language of Morals , Freedom and Reason and many of Hare's extensive shorter writings. To some, it will appear to represent a radical, if gradual, reversal of his early views. His early position was thought by some to be one similar, in certain respects, to that of certain existentialist thinkers: that the most fundamental moral attitudes must (...) be the outcome of sheer choice, or commitment. Whereas in the latest book Hare argues that to think fully rationally about moral questions requires us to be Utilitarians. (shrink)

What impulses lead us to ask philosophical questions and pursue philosophical enquiry? In a series of stimulating essays fourteen distinguished thinkers examine philosophy and their own engagement with it. Titles such as 'How philosophers (who lose their faith) redefine their subject', 'Philosophical plumbing', 'Putting into order what we already know' and 'Is philosophy a 'theory of everything'?' indicate the range of topics and the lively and provocative ways in which they are tackled.

In his recent article 1 Stewart Sutherland rightly and trenchantly criticizes some accounts of hope which ignore, or radically misrepresent, how it is conceived in religious contexts. The most surprising, to me, is Chesterton's, that hope is ‘the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate’. Surprising, not so much for its content as for its source. However, this particular example could be of one who would risk giving scandal for the sake of wit; what he (...) could have had in mind is that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’ . Sutherland also makes clear the unhelpfulness of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ analysts' account of the concept; not least because it is given without reference to the religious concept, and often is irrelevant to the notion of hope ‘in its proper conceptual surroundings’. (shrink)

A. Phillips Griffiths; VIII—On Belief, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 167–186, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

This volume offers a lively and accessible guide to some of the major issues current in French philosophy today and to some of the figures who are or have been influential in shaping its development. The collection is unusual and interesting in bringing together a range of contributors from both Britain and France, and is intended not only for professional philosophers but also for those with a more general interest in the French intellectual scene.

A. J. Ayer, who died in 1989, was acknowledged as one of Britain's most distinguished philosophers. In this memorial collection of essays leading Western philosophers reflect on Ayer's place in the history of philosophy and explore aspects of his thought and teaching. The volume also includes a posthumous essay by Ayer himself: 'A defence of empiricism'. These essays are undoubtedly a fitting tribute to a major figure, but the collection is not simply retrospective; rather it looks forward to present and (...) future developments in philosophical thought that Ayer's work has stimulated. (shrink)

First published in 1975, this is a book of general intellectual interest about the role of the university in contemporary society and that of university teachers in relation to their subjects, their students, and their wider political commitments. Alan Montefiore offers preliminary analyses of the family of concepts most often invoked in discussions of these problems, taking the central dispute to be between those who hold a 'liberal' view of the university and those who regard this notion as illusory, dishonest (...) or undesirable. Six academics, representing, discuss issues of substantive conflict in light of Montefiore's initial distinctions. The volume is of particular interest to students of political and social philosophy, and political and educational theory. It is also intended for a wider readership among those who care about the political status of the universities and recognize the importance and difficulty of the problems involved in this. (shrink)

Wittgenstein always thought that he had not been understood, and indeed that it was very unlikely that many people ever would understand him. Russell not only failed to understand Wittgenstein's later work; according to Wittgenstein himself, Russell profoundly failed to understand even the Tractatus . Professor Anscombe says even she did not understand him, and that to attempt to give an account of what he says is only to express one's own ordinariness or mediocrity or lack of complexity. Certainly, most (...) people acquainted with the Tractatus , when that work was Wittgenstein's only published book, gave it what now seems a quite crass positivistic interpretation. Wittgenstein's own preface to the Tractatus , despite its last sentence, does not help. He does tell us that the whole sense of the work is that what can be said can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must consign to silence: but this does not make it clear that what we cannot talk about is all that is really important. Even when one has realised all this, however, one is aware mostly of one's failure to understand; and that if one did get any distance in understanding the last sixth of the Tractatus , the process would be extremely difficult, and the results quite astonishing. (shrink)

The deployment of the Albanian admirative as well as the evidential particles kinse ‘allegedly’ and gjoja ‘supposedly’ in Kosovar electronic news sources to render either dubitative or neutral reports — depending on both the source and the timing — contributed to the project of an independent Kosovo. The usages can be divided into three periods: 1994–1997, 1998–1999, and post-1999. During the first period, usage was exclusively dubitative and deployed for Serbian news sources. During the second period, which corresponded to the (...) intensification of the armed uprising, usage shifted to neutrality, and during the third period, after the NATO bombing campaign, it returned somewhat to dubitativity, this time aimed at UN and NATO sources. The discussion demonstrates how pragmatics and grammatical categories contribute to the construction of political narratives and argues that a socially informed linguistic analysis is crucial to understanding how politics is performed in the world. (shrink)

Wittgenstein always thought that he had not been understood, and indeed that it was very unlikely that many people ever would understand him. Russell not only failed to understand Wittgenstein's later work; according to Wittgenstein himself, Russell profoundly failed to understand even the Tractatus. Professor Anscombe says even she did not understand him, and that to attempt to give an account of what he says is only to express one's own ordinariness or mediocrity or lack of complexity. Certainly, most people (...) acquainted with the Tractatus, when that work was Wittgenstein's only published book, gave it what now seems a quite crass positivistic interpretation. Wittgenstein's own preface to the Tractatus, despite its last sentence, does not help. He does tell us that the whole sense of the work is that what can be said can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must consign to silence: but this does not make it clear that what we cannot talk about is all that is really important. Even when one has realised all this, however, one is aware mostly of one's failure to understand; and that if one did get any distance in understanding the last sixth of the Tractatus, the process would be extremely difficult, and the results quite astonishing. (shrink)