Recently it has become clear that trafficking of integrins to late endosomes is key to the regulation of integrin expression and function during cell migration. Here we discuss the molecular machinery that dictates whether integrins are sorted to recycling endosomes or are targeted to late endosomes and lysosomes. Integrins and other receptors that are sorted to late endosomes are not necessarily degraded and, under certain circumstances, can be spared destruction and returned to the cell surface to drive (...) cell migration and invasion. We will discuss how the exchange of adhesion receptors and other key regulators of cell migration between late endosomes/lysosomes and the plasma membrane can promote dynamic turnover of adhesions during cell migration. (shrink)

Endosomes shuttle select cargoes between cellular compartments and, in doing so, maintain intracellular homeostasis and enable interactions with the extracellular space. Directionality of endosomal transport critically impinges on cargo fate, as retrograde (microtubule minus‐end directed) traffic delivers vesicle contents to the lysosome for proteolysis, while the opposing anterograde (plus‐end directed) movement promotes recycling and secretion. Intriguingly, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is emerging as a key player in spatiotemporal control of late endosome and lysosome transport, through the establishment of (...) physical contacts with these organelles. Earlier studies have described how minus‐end‐directed motor proteins become discharged from vesicles engaged at such contact sites. Now, Raiborg et al. implicate ER‐mediated interactions, induced by protrudin, in loading plus‐end‐directed motor kinesin‐1 onto endosomes, thereby stimulating their transport toward the cell's periphery. In this review, we recast the prevailing concepts on bidirectional late endosome transport and discuss the emerging paradigm of inter‐compartmental regulation from the ER‐endosome interface viewpoint. (shrink)

Endosomes, which comprise a diverse population of membrane vesicles and tubules, sort proteins and lipids to various cellular destinations. The organization and functions of these pleiomorphic cellular organelles have been extensively studied. Matsuo et al.1 now provide new exciting evidence on the role of lysobiphosphatidic acid (LBPA), a resident phospholipid of internal vesicles of the late endosome, in the control of membrane invagination and endosome biogenesis. In vivo, LBPA functions are controlled by the adaptor protein Alix and (...) depend on pH gradients along the endosomal compartments. BioEssays 26:604–607, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

At the turn of the 17th century, in Romanian philosophy the nobility of spirit is seen as a certain but intermediate value, to be cherished while man waits for his divine reward, which is everlasting life, as presented in Divanul [The Divan] by Dimitrie Cantemir. Two hundred and fifty years later, man is regarded as having evolved from the animal forms of life in Mihai Ralea’s systematic presentation Explicarea omului [An Explanation of Man], and the sole meaning of nobility is (...) the revolutionary one, the heroic one, that is the ethical one. From a totally different point of view, during the interwar period, Constantin Micu Stavilă developed a general theory of man and society thus compellingly arguing against the claims of all ideologists of the natural genesis of human spirituality. In this theory the nobility of spirit was said to come from work and creation. By presenting these examples, my intention is to rediscover this spiritual, moral and socio-cultural ideal in order to find its place, role and profile in designing a new view of human nature, for a more decent human world. (shrink)

The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed a form of Marxist theory known as Critical Theory, which became influential in the study of class, politics, culture and ideology. The work of more recent members, and in (...) particular Habermas, has received wide attention throughout Europe and North America. Tom Bottomore's study takes a new and controversial look at the contributions of the Frankfurt School to modern sociology, examining several issues not previously discussed elsewhere. He discusses the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and considers the relationship of the later Frankfurt School to the radical movements of the 1960s and the present time. His critical analysis makes the school's writers accessible, through an assessment of their work and an exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to other forms of sociological thought, especially positivism and structuralism. (shrink)

Child analysis has occupied a special place in the history of psychoanalysis because of the challenges it poses to practitioners and the clashes it has provoked among its advocates. Since the early days in Vienna under Sigmund Freud child psychoanalysts have tried to comprehend and make comprehensible to others the psychosomatic troubles of childhood and to adapt clinical and therapeutic approaches to all the stages of development of the baby, the child, the adolescent and the young adult. Claudine and Pierre (...) Geissmann trace the history and development of child analysis over the last century and assess the contributions made by pioneers of the discipline, whose efforts to expand its theoretical foundations led to conflict between schools of thought, most notably to the rift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Now taught and practised widely in Europe, the USA and South America, child and adolescent psychoanalysis is unique in the insight it gives into the psychological aspects of child development, and in the therapeutic benefits it can bring both to the child and its family. (shrink)

In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals set an ethical imperative: end extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. Microfranchising can contribute to this critical effort by offering nonprofit organizations and businesses an opportunity to rapidly scale entrepreneurship within Base of the Pyramid markets. However, while abundant literature exists on traditional franchising, we know little about how to leverage microfranchising in resource-scarce contexts to alleviate poverty. To address this gap, we report a longitudinal case study of a microfranchise network aimed (...) at providing timely access to quality, affordable agricultural input, and services for millions of small-scale farmers in Bangladesh. Anchored in the BOP and microfranchise literature and drawing on innovation theory as an analytical lens, we provide a detailed account of how CARE—a global humanitarian and development non-governmental organization—developed and managed the network. We found that context played a strong role and that adaptability therefore was key to successfully recruiting and engaging BOP entrepreneurs and other business partners in the network. Moreover, as members joined the network with past ties and established practices, managing these path dependencies had important implications for network performance. Network sustainability in terms of financial and social impact was also a key theme that required careful consideration throughout network development. We combine these empirical findings with extant literature to discuss contributions to the theory and practice of microfranchising and innovation networking in the BOP context. (shrink)

This twelfth volume of Correspondence contains authoritative and fully annotated texts of all known letters sent both to and from Bentham between July 1824 and June 1828. The 301 letters, most of which have never before been published, have been collected from archives, public and private, in Britain, the United States of America, Switzerland, France, Japan, and elsewhere, as well as from the major collections of Bentham Papers at University College London Library and the British Library.In mid-1824 Bentham was still (...) preoccupied with the Greek struggle for independence against Turkey, though his active involvement waned as he became disenchanted with the behaviour of the deputies sent to London by the Greek National Assembly. His international reputation was reflected in his continuing contact with Simón Bolívar and Bernardino Rivadavia in South America, and with John Quincy Adams, John Neal, Henry Wheaton, and others in the United States, and his forging of new contacts in Guatemala, India, and Egypt. In the autumn of 1825 he visited France, where he stayed with Jean Baptiste Say and La Fayette, and was fêted by the French liberals.Bentham made considerable progress drafting material for his pannomion, or complete code of laws, and in particular for his Constitutional and Procedure Codes, while John Stuart Mill edited the massive Rationale of Judicial Evidence. Bentham became increasingly active in the cause of law reform, and exchanged a series of letters on the subject with Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, and Henry Brougham. He maintained his friendships with John and Sarah Austin, George and Harriet Grote, James and John Stuart Mill, John Bowring, Joseph Hume, Francis Burdett, Francis Place, and Joseph Parkes, re-established contact with the third Marquis of Lansdowne, son of his old friend the first Marquis, and made new acquaintances in James Humphreys, Sutton Sharpe, and Albany Fonblanque. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher and reformer, was at the height of his fame and influence in the 1820s. The 301 letters in this volume, many of which are previously unpublished, contain correspondence with international leaders such as Simn Bolvar, the 'Liberator', and Bernardino Rivadavia of Buenos Aires, British statesmen such as Robert Peel and Henry Brougham, and leading intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill and Sarah Austin.

Abnormalities in the ability of cells to properly degrade proteins have been identified in many neurodegenerative diseases. Recent work has implicated synaptojanin 1 (SynJ1) in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, although the role of this polyphosphoinositide phosphatase in protein degradation has not been thoroughly described. Here, we dissected in vivo the role of SynJ1 in endolysosomal trafficking in zebrafish cone photoreceptors using a SynJ1‐deficient zebrafish mutant, nrca14. We found that loss of SynJ1 leads to specific accumulation of late endosomes (...) and autophagosomes early in photoreceptor development. An analysis of autophagic flux revealed that autophagosomes accumulate because of a defect in maturation. In addition we found an increase in vesicles that are highly enriched for PI(3)P, but negative for an early endosome marker in nrca14 cones. A mutational analysis of SynJ1 enzymatic domains found that activity of the 5'phosphatase, but not the Sac1 domain, is required to rescue both aberrant late endosomes and autophagosomes. Finally, modulating activity of the PI(4,5)P2 regulator, Arf6, rescued the disrupted trafficking pathways in nrca14 cones. Our study describes a specific role for SynJ1 in autophagosomal and endosomal trafficking and provides evidence that PI(4,5)P2 participates in autophagy in a neuronal cell type. -/- . (shrink)

Lysosomes are the site of degradation of obsolete intracellular material during autophagy and of extracellular macromolecules following endocytosis and phagocytosis. The membrane of lysosomes and late endosomes is enriched in highly glycosylated transmembrane proteins of largely unknown function. Significant progress has been made in recent years towards elucidating the pathways by which these lysosomal membrane proteins are delivered to late endosomes and lysosomes. While some lysosomal membrane proteins follow the constitutive secretory pathway and reach lysosomes indirectly via the (...) cell surface and endocytosis, others exit the trans‐Golgi network in clathrin‐coated vesicles for direct delivery to endosomes and lysosomes. Sorting from the Golgi or the plasma membrane into the endosomal system is mediated by signals encoded by the short cytosolic domain of these proteins. This review will discuss the role of lysosomal membrane proteins in the biogenesis of the late endosomal and lysosomal membranes, with particular emphasis on the structural features and molecular mechanisms underlying the intracellular trafficking of these proteins. (shrink)

Molecules are transferred to lysosomes, the major, acid pH, digestive compartment in eukaryotic cells, by a complex series of pathways that converge at a late endosome/prelysosomal compartment. Here, we discuss the relationship between this compartment and the lysosome. We propose that lysosomes are maintained within cells by a repeated series of kiss and run, transient fusion and fission processes with the late endosome/prelysosome compartment. Directionality to these processes may be conferred by pH gradients and retrieval mechanisms. (...) The future challenge in testing this and any other proposed hypothesis for lysosomal biogenesis will be the establishment of molecular mechanisms. (shrink)

Drugs targeting a single TK/RTK in the treatment of solid cancers has not had the same success seen in blood cancers. This is, in part, due to acquired resistance in solid cancers arising from a range of mechanisms including the upregulation of compensatory RTK signalling. Rather than attempting to inhibit individual compensatory RTK—requiring knowledge of which RTKs are upregulated in any given tumour—strategies to universally inhibit signalling from multiple RTKs may represent an effective alternative. Endosomal trafficking of RTKs is a (...) common conduit that can regulate signalling from multiple RTKs simultaneously. As such, we posit that targeting endosomal trafficking—in particular, aberrant post‐translational modifications in cancers that contribute to dysregulated endosomal trafficking—could inhibit oncogenic signalling driven by multiple RTKs and pave the way for the development of a novel class of inhibitors that shift the trafficking of RTKs to inhibit tumour growth. (shrink)

This essay asks after the lateness that affectively structures Fanon's phenomenology of racialized temporality in Black Skin,White Masks. I broach this through the concepts of possibility, “affective ankylosis”, and by taking seriously the dismembered past that haunts Fanon's text. The colonization of the past involves a bifurcation of time and of memory. To the “burning past,” wherein colonized experience is stuck and to which we remain sensitive, is contrasted the colonial construction of white, western time as progressive and futural—a construction (...) that relies on the very indifference, ankylosis, and closure of this time to the multiple, lived temporalities of colonized others. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore some of the temporal structures of racialized experience – what I call racialized time. I draw on the Martiniquan philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, in particular his book ‘Black Skin, White Masks,’ in order to ask how racism can be understood as a social pathology which, when internalized or ‘epidermalized,’ may result in aberrations of affect, embodiment and agency that are temporally lived. In this regard, I analyze the racialized experience of coming ‘too late’ (...) to a world predetermined in advance and the distorted relation to possibility – the limitation of playfulness and imaginative variability – that defines this sense of lateness. I argue that the racialization of the past plays a structuring role in such experience. Racialization is not limited to the present, but also colonizes and reconfigures the past, splitting it into a duality of times: one open and civilizational, the other closed, anachronistic and racialized. To understand this colonial construction of the past, I draw on the work of Latin American thinker Aníbal Quijano. (shrink)

In Late Works of Mou Zongsan , this influential Chinese philosopher speaks on the future of Chinese culture, the achievements of Confucianism, the place of Buddhism and Daoism in Chinese philosophy, and the possibility of partnership between Chinese and Western thought.

Frederick C. Beiser presents the first book to be written on two of the most important idealist philosophers in Germany after Hegel: Adolf Trendelenburg and Rudolf Lotze. Beiser addresses every aspect of their philosophy-- logic, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics--and traces their intellectual development from their youth until their death.

Part of the Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy series, this survey of late modern philosophy focuses on the key texts and philosophers of the period whose beliefs changed the course of western thought.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 273-274 [Access article in PDF] Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, and William R. Newman, editors. Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. viii + 610. Cloth, $186.00. The nineteen papers of this weighty (handsomely produced, but expensive) volume are mostly devoted to the views of one thinker or group of persons on "corpuscularism" (see 17ff.), (...) in either physics or mathematics, with few synthetic or diachronic studies. Only a quarter of the volume is devoted to the medieval period: Danielle Jacquart on minima in the Salerno school of medicine (twelfth century); the late George Molland on Roger Bacon's and Grosseteste's "corpuscular tendencies"; Charles Lohr on Ramon Lull; John Murdoch on minima naturalia in the medieval and Renaissance periods; and the greater part of William Newman's study of corpuscularian conceptions in "Aristotelian alchemy" from Geber to Sennert. The early-modern part includes studies on mostly expected figures: Francesco Patrici, Giordano Bruno, the Northumberland circle, Francis Bacon, David Gorlaeus (a little-known Dutch theology student; 1591-1612, sic), Daniel Sennert, Honoré Fabri, Galileo, Gassendi, Charleton, Boyle, Locke, and Homberg. Alan Gabbey more generally distinguishes different patterns of explanations in mechanical philosophy.As far as I can judge, the authors are knowledgeable and competent, and the studies make important contributions. But just because this is a high-quality volume produced with the ambition of making a step toward rewriting the history of a major chapter in the history of science, its two significant and principled deficiencies must be pointed out.The volume follows the intention of "show[ing] the debt of early-modern matter theory to previous traditions and thereby [explaining] its bewildering heterogeneity" (back cover). Now, the study of the corpuscular traditions in the pre-modern period is certainly an important desideratum (although this volume again attends chiefly to the early modern corpuscularians). But the motivation and perspective here announced—the medieval period [End Page 273] is to be studied because early modern science is indebted to it—are astoundingly Whiggish. Worse: the study of the entire Arabic-Islamic tradition is dismissed, on the grounds that "Islamic atomism does not seem to have been of any influence upon Christian fourteenth-century atomism" (8): this is not only Whiggism, but also frank and explicit euro- and Christian-centrism, which in the beginning of the twenty-first century is simply stunning. The method amusingly consists in affirming the consequent: presupposing that "Islamic atomism" did not influence the West and early-modern science, no scholar was asked to examine whether or not this was indeed the case, with the congenial result that the volume seemingly confirms the initial presupposition. Q.E.D. Similarly and no less regrettably, the fact that (ps.-) Geber's Summa Perfectionis is not, as Lasswitz had thought, the translation of an Arabic work is here used as grounds on which to dismiss altogether his claim concerning the importance of the Arabic input (13, but see also 293). This way, incomprehension between civilizations is reinforced instead of being reduced, and I believe we did not need September 11 to know this.The thusly dismissed Mu'tazilite school of Islamic theology had important repercussions in Judaism, so that referring to it as "Islamic atomism" is misleading (see notably Hagai Ben-Shammai, "Studies in Karaite Atomism," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 [1985]: 243-93). The volume's forty-page cumulative bibliography, for which the editors are to be congratulated, reflects the volume's parochial viewpoint: H. A. Wolfson's important The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), with some 150 pages on atomism, is not included; nor is the (English version of the) landmark study by the late S. Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997; the original 1936 German version is mentioned). Wolfson's study, incidentally, shows that the editors' presupposition (8) that the Kalâm tradition could have influenced the West only via the Latin translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is unwarranted, for Isaac... (shrink)

Intercellular communication is an essential process in all multicellular organisms. During this process, molecules secreted by one cell will bind to a receptor on the cognate cell leading to the subsequent uptake of the receptor‐ligand complex. Once inside, the cell then determines the fate of the receptor‐ligand complex and any other proteins that were endocytosed together. Approximately 80% of endocytosed material is recycled back to the plasma membrane either directly or indirectly via the Golgi apparatus and the remaining 20% is (...) delivered to the lysosome for degradation. Although most pathways have been identified, we still lack understanding on how specificity in sorting of recycling cargos into different pathways is achieved, and how the cell reaches high accuracy of these processes in the absence of clear sorting signals in the bulk of the client proteins. In this review, we will summarize our current understanding of the mechanism behind recycling cargo sorting and propose a model of differential affinities between cargo and cargo receptors/adaptors with regards to iterative sorting in endosomes. (shrink)

The paper addresses three late Hegelian philosophers from northern Europe: Norwegian M.J. Monrad (1816–97), Swede J.J. Borelius (1823–1909) and Finn Th. Rein (1838–1919). The focus is on their views on the crisis of Hegelian speculative philosophy. The popularity of G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy in Germany declined rapidly since the 1840s. The decline was influenced by e.g. new scientific discoveries. Hegelianism maintained a strong position in northern Europe (especially in Norway and in Finland) several decades longer than in Germany. Rein, Monrad (...) and Borelius, all professors of philosophy, endorsed Hegel’s philosophy and agreed that it has to be reformed in order to meet the new challenges. They disagreed with each other, however, about the extent of this reform. They had conflicting interpretations of Hegel’s method too. (shrink)

Research programs regularly compete to achieve the same goal, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA or the construction of a TEA laser. The more the competing programs share information, the faster the goal is likely to be reached, to society’s benefit. But the “priority rule”-the scientific norm according to which the first program to reach the goal in question must receive all the credit for the achievement-provides a powerful disincentive for programs to share information. How, then, is (...) the clash between social and individual interest resolved in scientific practice? This chapter investigates what Robert Merton called science’s “communist” norm, which mandates universal sharing of knowledge, and uses mathematical models of discovery to argue that a communist regime may be on the whole advantageous and fair to all parties, and so might be implemented by a social contract that all scientists would be willing to sign. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Very Late, In Spring SAPPHO (Translated by Allen Tice) Already the moon has gone down, The Pleiades also flown low, And midnight. The hours move on, Yet I go to bed with no one... arion 28.2 fall 2020...

The stereotype of slave-run latifundia being turned into serf-worked estates is no longer credible as a model of the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, but Chris Wickham’s anomalous characterisation of the Roman Empire as ‘feudal’ is scarcely a viable alternative to that. If a fully-articulated feudal economy only emerged in the later middle ages, what do we make of the preceding centuries? By postulating a ‘general dominance of tenant production’ throughout the period covered by his book, Wickham fails (...) to offer any basis for a closer characterisation of the post-Roman rural labour-force and exaggerates the degree of control that peasants enjoyed in the late Empire and post-Roman world. A substantial part of the rural labour-force of the sixth to eighth centuries comprised groups who, like Rosamond Faith’s inland-workers in Anglo-Saxon England, were more proletarian than peasant-like. The paper suggests the likely ways in which that situation reflected Roman traditions of direct management and the subordination of labour, and outlines what a Marxist theory of the so-called colonate might look like. After discussing Wickham’s handling of the colonate and slavery, and looking briefly at the nature of estates and the fate of the Roman aristocracy, I conclude by criticising the way Wickham uses the category of ‘mode of production’. (shrink)

This book provides the English-speaking world with a comprehensive account of the still largely unknown work of Schelling's philosophy of mythology and revelation. Its achievement, however, is not archival but philosophical, elucidating the relation between Schelling and onto-theology. It explains how Schelling dealt with the problem of nihilism and onto-theology well before Nietzsche and Heidegger, arguing that Schelling surpasses onto-theology or the philosophy of presence a century prior to Heidegger. Overall, the author provocatively suggests that Heidegger is perhaps Schelling's genuine (...) heir and by comprehensively interpreting Schelling's multifaceted late lectures he analyzes issues as diverse as the Ancient relation between thinking and Being, the Medieval debate between voluntarism and intellectualism, the overcoming of modern subjectivism and German Idealism as well as many themes in contemporary philosophy. The presentation is systematic rather than thematic, following Schelling's ages of the world through the Past, Present and Future. The results are daring, departing from the half-century long canonical reading of the late Schelling since Walter Schulz. This book is valuable for Schelling-scholars, historians of philosophy and theologians alike. (shrink)

In this paper the author introduces two questions for discussion in Descartes, namely: 1. How to understand the “liberty of indifference” in the thought of Descartes; 2. How to understand the conception of the indivisibility of the soul (or spirit). The first one is a classical topic, already studied, among others, by Martial Guéroult and Lívio Teixeira. It concerns the moral conception of Descartes and the related question about the existence of a “permanent moral” in the thought of Descartes, compared (...) to his “provisory moral”. The second question has more contemporary ramifications, since it is about the relation between body and spirit, or mind, which is central in the philosophical reflections of the XXIst Century. The paper doesn’t try to solve these questions, of course, but intends to point some lines of research taking these issues as starting points. This paper also constitutes a tribute to Professor Franklin Leopoldo e Silva (USP). (shrink)

David Lewis championed a counterfactual account of causation, but counterfactual accounts have a notoriously difficult time handling cases of late preemption. These are cases in which we still count one event as the cause of another although the effect does not depend on the cause in the way taken to be necessary by the account. Lewis recognized these cases, but they have been shown to be problematic even for his final analysis of causation, the Influence Account. In this paper, (...) I show how these cases led to and remain a problem for Lewis’s Influence Account, and I give a new counterfactual account available to a Lewisian that can handle late preemption cases. What is crucial to my account is that a cause not merely has counterfactual influence over its effects, but that the cause has influence of the right kind. I conclude by arguing that even if problems remain with this account, they will not be problems of late preemption, and the problems stemming from other kinds of cases will be no worse for my account than for other counterfactual accounts. (shrink)

The present article discusses the concept of synderesis in the late medieval universities of Erfurt and Leipzig and the later developments in Wittenberg. The comparison between Bartholomaeus Arnoldi of Usingen in Erfurt and Johannes Peyligk in Leipzig shows that school traditions played an important role in the exposition of synderesis by the late medieval scholastic natural philosophers. However, Jodocus Trutfetter's example warns against overemphasizing the importance of the school traditions and reminds us of the manifold history of medieval (...) discussions on synderesis, which were more or less familiar to many authors of this period. Finally, the diverse references to synderesis in the texts of Martin Luther, Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch and Philip Melanchthon reveal no uniform relationship with late medieval discussions but rather indicate various ways of adopting scholastic ideas and transforming them in the context of humanist and reformation thinking. (shrink)

DMet 10: Prime matter is the origin of all quantities. Hence it is the origin of every dimension of continuous quantity whatever. ...

Today the economic diagram is employed universally in teaching and research by professional economists. Yet the history of its construction shows that much that has been regarded as distinctive of twentieth-century visual culture was prefigured in the nineteenth. This paper will place the construction of the first economic diagrams by Alfred Marshall in the context both of contemporary visual technologies developed in other moral sciences, and of his wider theory of industrial production. The paper will argue that an understanding of (...) the background to the historical graphs, constructed by the Cambridge political economist from the late 1860s onwards, will necessitate a revision of the narrative of modern visual reasoning, as recently advanced by Lev Manovich. (shrink)

Resumo Procuramos demonstrar, a partir de uma relação entre a noção adorniana de estilo tardio e obras tardias de Deleuze - sobretudo L’épuisé, que trata da obra igualmente tardia de Beckett para a televisão - que há no pensamento deleuziano uma importante reflexão sobre a morte. Procuramos salientar a presença desta ideia e diferenciar a morte da noção de negativo, criticada pelo autor. Uma vez traçada a natureza desta reflexão, pretendemos questionar sua relevância no estudo da obra de Beckett.In this (...) article, we sought to demonstrate that there is in Deleuze’s philosophy an original reflection on death, which cannot be exhausted by an idea of negativity so common inside the Hegelian tradition. To achieve this objective a relation will be draw between Adornian notion of late style and Deleuze's late works - especially L'épuisé, We seek to highlight the presence of this idea of death and to differentiate it from the notion of negative so criticized by Deleuze. Once drawn the nature of this reflection, we intend to question its preponderance in Beckett's late works for television. (shrink)

Addressing Merleau-Ponty's work Phenomenology of Perception, in dialogue with The Visible and the Invisible, his lectures at the Collège de France, and his reading of Proust, this book argues that at play in his thought is a philosophy of “ontological lateness”. This describes the manner in which philosophical reflection is fated to lag behind its objects; therefore an absolute grasp on being remains beyond its reach. Merleau-Ponty articulates this philosophy against the backdrop of what he calls “cruel thought”, a style (...) of reflecting that seeks resolution by limiting, circumscribing, and arresting its object. By contrast, the philosophy of ontological lateness seeks no such finality-no apocalypsis or unveiling-but is characterized by its ability to accept the veiling of being and its own constitutive lack of punctuality. To this extent, his thinking inaugurates a new relation to the becoming of sense that overcomes cruel thought. Merleau-Ponty's work gives voice to a wisdom of dispossession that allows for the withdrawal of being. Never before has anyone engaged with the theme of Merleau-Ponty's own understanding of philosophy in such a sustained way as Whitmoyer does in this volume. (shrink)

This chapter provides a brief account of atheistic philosophy of relgion in the second half of the twentieth century.

Immanuel Kant spent many of his younger years working on what are generally considered his masterpieces: the three _Critiques_. But his work did not stop there: in later life he began to reconsider subjects such as anthropology, and topics including colonialism, race and peace. In _Late Kant_, Peter Fenves becomes one of the first to thoroughly explore Kant's later writings and give them the detailed scholarly attention they deserve. In his opening chapters, Fenves examines in detail the various essays in (...) which Kant invents, formulates and complicates the thesis of 'radical evil' - a thesis which serves as the point of departure for all his later writings. _Late Kant_ then turns towards the counter-thesis of 'radical mean-ness', which states that human beings exist on earth for the sake of another species or race of human beings. The consequences of this startling thesis are that human beings cannot claim possession of the earth, but must rather prepare the earth for its rightful owners. _Late Kant _is the first book to develop the 'geo-ethics' of Kant's thought, and the idea that human beings must be prepared to concede their space for another kind of human. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the later works of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

Abstract An anonymous manuscript from the fourteenth or early fifteenth century, recently discovered, apparently transmitted Thierry of Chartres's philosophical theology to Nicholas of Cusa around 1440. Yet the author of the treatise is not endorsing Thierry's views, as both Cusanus and modern readers have assumed, but in fact is writing in order to refute them. Curiously the author never mentions Thierry's best known triad of unitas, aequalitas and conexio . But a careful comparison of the structure of the author's argument (...) to Thierry's extant works shows that the author was nevertheless quite familiar with the Breton master's writings. The reatise's author offers an incisive critique of Thierry's theory of “four modes of being“ and rejects two of the modes in particular. From this new perspective, the manuscript can be valued as the first known evidence of Thierry of Chartres's late medieval reception. (shrink)

Altruism (a costly action that benefits others) and reciprocity (the repayment of acts in kind) differ in that the former expresses preferences about the outcome of a social interaction, whereas the latter requires, in addition, ascribing intentions to others. Interestingly, an individual’s behavior and neurophysiological activity under outcome- versus intention-based interactions has not been compared directly using different endowments in the same subject and during the same session. Here, we used a mixed version of the Dictator and the Investment games, (...) together with electroencephalography, to uncover a subject’s behavior and brain activity when challenged with endowments of different sizes in contexts that call for an altruistic (outcome-based) versus a reciprocal (intention-based) response. We found that subjects displayed positive or negative reciprocity (reciprocal responses greater or smaller than that for altruism, respectively) depending on the amount of trust they received. Furthermore, a subject’s late frontal negativity differed between conditions, predicting responses to trust in intentions-based trials. Finally, brain regions related with mentalizing and cognitive control were the cortical sources of this activity. Thus, our work disentangles the behavioral components present in the repayment of trust, and sheds light on the neural activity underlying the integration of outcomes and perceived intentions in human economic interactions. (shrink)

‘To translate’ means quite literally ‘to carry across, to bring across,’ that is, ‘to remove from one place to another.’ The questions I want to address in this essay are: To what extent have we been successful in, first, understanding the Chinese philosophical narrative and, then, in ‘carrying it across’ into the western academy? To what extent have we been able to grow and ‘appreciate’ our own philosophical parameters by engaging with this antique tradition? The self-conscious strategy of translation, then, (...) must be to go beyond word-for-word translation and attempt to enable students of Chinese philosophy to read the seminal texts by providing them with a means of developing their own sophisticated understanding of a set of critical Chinese philosophical terms. The premise is that there is no real alternative but to cultivate a nuanced familiarity with the key Chinese vocabulary itself. It is in this effort to take Chinese philosophy on its own terms, then, that we must begin from the interpretive context by taking into account the tradition’s own indigenous presuppositions and its own evolving self-understanding. We must be aware of the ambient, persistent assumptions that have given the Chinese philosophical narrative its unique identity over time. (shrink)

This chapter deals with medieval logic from the time when it first had full resources for systematic creative contributions onward. It focuses on the era when the ancient heritage was available and medieval logic was able to add something substantial to it, even to surpass it in some respects. The chapter explains that characterization such as this cannot be adequately expressed with years or by conventional period denominations; however, it is hoped that the grounds for drawing boundaries will become clearer (...) during the course of the story. (shrink)

Aristotle divided arguments that persuade into the rhetorical (which happen to persuade), the dialectical (which are strong so ought to persuade to some degree) and the demonstrative (which must persuade if rightly understood). Dialectical arguments were long neglected, partly because Aristotle did not write a book about them. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth century late scholastic authors such as Medina, Cano and Soto developed a sound theory of probable arguments, those that have logical and not merely psychological force (...) but fall short of demonstration. Informed by late medieval treatments of the law of evidence and problems in moral theology and aleatory contracts, they considered the reasons that could render legal, moral, theological, commercial and historical arguments strong though not demonstrative. At the same time, demonstrative arguments became better understood as Galileo and other figures of the Scientific Revolution used mathematical proof in arguments in physics. Galileo moved both dialectical and demonstrative arguments into mathematical territory. (shrink)

Introduction Conatus is a specific concept within Descartes’s physics. In particular, it assumes a crucial importance in the purely mechanistic description of the nature of light – an issue that Des- cartes considered one of the most crucial challenges, and major achievements, of his natural phil- osophy. According to Descartes’s cosmology, the universe – understood as a material continuum in which there is no vacuum – is composed of a number of separate yet interconnected vortices. Each of these vortices consists (...) in a set of bands rotating around their centres. The bands are com- posed of corpuscles of the three elements, each distinguished on the basis of their different shapes and sizes. The small globules of the second element, although impeded by the other parts of heaven, strive to move away from the centre of the vortex around which they revolve, thus exerting a certain force against the surrounding bodies. This striving or conatus, though a mere force rather than a genuine motion, is transmitted instan- taneously and along straight lines from body to body. According to Descartes, then, the nature of light consists in this striving alone. This account must be understood as strictly connected to the fundamental laws that regulate the Cartesian world. It is particularly important to recall that for Descartes the centrifugal force exerted by a rotating body is understood to be a consequence of the intrinsic rectilinearity of every motion. As the second of the three Laws of Nature set forth in Book II of the Principles of Philosophy establishes, “all motion is in itself rectilinear; and hence any body moving in a circle tends to move away from the centre of the circle which it describes as proved by the fact that a stone rotating in a sling tends to move centrifugally along the tangent of each point described by a circle.1 Similarly, each of the globules of the second element “strives to recede with a great force from the centre of the vortex in which it rotates; it is in fact prevented by the other globules placed all around, not differently than a stone in a sling”. Within this framework, as I show later, conatus occurs when a body’s intrinsic tendency to rectilinear motion is impeded by an external constraint. As Stephen Gaukroger notes, the use of the term conatus in the Principles – like “vis” and “ action ” – shows that Descartes “cannot avoid dynamic terminology”, despite his declared intent “to construe motion in a purely kinematic way”. Indeed, Gaukroger observes that the notions of force action and striving are systematically employed in the Principles – appearing 290, 59 and 8 times, respectively. Also noteworthy, conatus was – together with the more familiar concepts of actio and vis – a significant element of the conceptual apparatus of Scholastic natural philosophy. As will be seen later – and this is the first goal of this paper – here the concept of conatus had a very specific function. Indeed, it was a central part of the Aristotelian- Scholastic account of gravitation. Conatus was used to refer to the striving of a body to move towards its natural place – especially in cases where its natural motion was hindered or impeded by an external mover. This specific use of the concept of conatus can be found in texts on natural philosophy from the end of the sixteenth through the late seventeenth century. Notably, it occurs in some of the late -Scho- lastic texts which held special significance for Descartes’s thought. Therefore, Descartes introduces conatus in a context in which this concept already had a very specific meaning, and one of which he was very probably aware. The possible relations between these two apparently very different con- cepts have therefore to be scrutinized. I thereby propose to undertake a comparison between the Scho- lastic and the Cartesian conceptions of conatus. I hope to show that certain traits of the former are indeed echoed by the latter, although adapted to the much changed physical paradigm of Cartesian physics. In fact, Descartes’s conatus, though sharing some important similarities with the old one, underwent significant transformations in terms of both its meaning and its application. However, I hope to show that these concepts are both used to describe the behaviour of bodies in relation to their intrinsic motive tendency, and in particular when this tendency is impeded or prevented. Such a reconstruction offers two main areas of interest. On an immediate level, it furthers the general efforts of scholars over the past decades to reconstruct the full extent of the relations between Descartes’s thought and Scholastic philosophy. However, there is another significant reason for taking an interest in the ties between the Scholastic and the Cartesian conceptions of conatus. Indeed, the Cartesian conatus must be seen as crucial to a proper understanding of the broader, diverse conceptualization that this idea enjoyed in the thought of many of the most important philosophers of the early modern period, namely Spinoza, Hobbes and Leibniz. In particular, Spinoza, were directly influenced by Descartes in their unique formulations of conatus. Thus a reconstruction of the context in which Descartes formulated his conatus and of its relations to a pre-existing Scholastic conception will enable us to better reconstruct the history of this idea in the early modern period. The paper is structured as follows: in the first part, I provide a thorough review of the Scho- lastic employment of the concept conatus – both its meaning and the extent of its usage. I then show that it occurs in some of the most prominent Cartesian sources. Finally, I shall provide an account of Descartes’s theory of circular motion and conatus with the specific aim of empha- sizing the elements of both continuity and discontinuity that justify the claim that Descartes’s con- ception of conatus is reminiscent of the Scholastic one. (shrink)