G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God’s purpose. At the beginning of this masterwork, Hegel writes: “What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the (...) highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.” In his introduction to this Bison Book edition, Frederick C. Beiser notes the complex and controversial history of Hegel’s text. He makes a case that this English-language translation by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson is still the most reliable one. (shrink)

This paper uses the debate about whether capital punishment deters homicide as a case study for examining the claim, made by many feminists and others, that the traditional ideal of objectivity in seeking knowledge is misguided. According to this ideal, knowledge seekers should strive to gather and assess evidence independently of any influences exerted by either their individual and societal circumstances or their moral values. This paper argues that, although the traditional ideal rests on some valid precepts, it is neverthelesss (...) untenable. the author goes on to propose an alternative epistemological ideal – one that retains these valid precepts but also recognizes an important and legitimate role for people's circumstances and moral values in their efforts to find knowledge. (shrink)

Die Aussprüche des Konfuzius sind einer der zentralen Texte der chinesischen Kultur. Dennoch ist die Geschichte ihrer Entstehung und Überlieferung weitgehend unerforscht und der heute gelesene Text samt seinem Verständnis kritiklos von der chinesischen Tradition übernommen worden. Dieses Buch unternimmt es, diese Versäumnisse nachzuholen: Durch die Analyse der Aussprüche und anderer früher Texte entsteht ein differenziertes Bild ihrer Entstehung aus mündlich überlieferten Sprüchen und Anekdoten über ein sich schnell verfestigendes Textkorpus bis hin zum Buch im heutigen Sinne. Anhand historischer Quellen (...) und der heute noch in grosser Zahl und Vielfalt greifbaren Textzeugnisse zeichnet der Autor die zahlreichen Wege nach, welche die Aussprüche in ihren verschiedenen Versionen zu uns genommen haben. Darüber hinaus beleuchtet er die geistesgeschichtlichen, politischen und kulturellen Zusammenhänge, welche die Gestalt und das Verständnis des Textes beeinflussten. Zuletzt zeichnet die Arbeit ein Bild von den Entstellungen, denen der Text und sein Verständnis im Laufe der Geschichte unterworfen waren und zeigt den Weg auf, diese zu überwinden und zu einer kritischen und streng wissenschaftlichen Lektüre zu gelangen. Was dabei an den Aussprüchen sichtbar wird, ist auch beispielhaft für die Problematik anderer konfuzianischer Klassiker und der altchinesischen Literatur überhaupt. (shrink)

Abstract:This article is contextualised by the ideological implications surrounding the notion of landscape, including the relationship between its genre in painting and the development of European capitalism. It proposes the idea of the landscape fragment derived from the background scenery of early Italian painting, which stands in counterpoint to assumptions about the genre. These early landscape spaces are pertinent because they are not considered ‘landscape’ as such and are not constructed by entrenched Cartesian dualisms. I argue it is possible to (...) re-evaluate restrictive assumptions about perspective and landscape, in order to raise questions of translatability and difference so as to replace the dominating norms habitually associated with these terms. (shrink)

"Evidentialism" is the view that a person's epistemic justification for a doxastic attitude is determined entirely by his or her evidence for the content of that attitude. This paper has two goals. The first is to argue that values and circumstances properly influence epistemic justification, and that evidentialism is therefore untenable, even as an epistemic ideal. The second is to outline a nonevidentialist theory of epistemic justification that avoids the common objection that nonevidentialist theories fail to preserve important distinctions between (...) epistemic justification, on the one hand, and moral and prudential justification, on the other hand. (shrink)