Bu çalışmada “tabiat” kavramının sözlük ve terim anlamı analiz edilmiş ve ona ilişkin bazı Meşşâî İslam filozoflarının görüşlerine yer verilmiştir. “Tabiat” sözcüğünü karşılamak üzere Türkçede kullanılan “tabiat” ve “doğa” sözcükleri arasında bir karşılaştırma yapılmıştır. “Tabiat”ın Meşşâî İslam filozofları tarafından isim olarak kullanıldığı varlık alanı hakkında bilgi verilmiş ve İbn Sina ile İbn Rüşd arasında cereyan eden tabiatın ispatının gerekip gerekmeyeceği tartışmasına değinilmiştir. Cisimlerde görülen hareket ve sükunun kaynağı olması bakımından “tabiat”ın nelere delalet ettiği hususunda İbn Sina’nın görüşleri Aristo ile mukayeseli (...) olarak sunulmuştur. Daha sonra bir terim olarak “tabiat”ın filozoflar tarafından yapılan tanımı ortaya konulmuştur. İslam felsefesinde önemli bir yere sahip olan “tabiat” kavramına Meşşâî İslam filozoflarının yükledikleri anlam ve onu kullanma biçimleri, Aristo’dan farklıdır. Özellikle her türlü oluş ve hareketin kaynağını açıklamak amacıyla kullandıkları “tabiat” kavramı etimolojik açıdan tüm nedenleri Allah’a ulaştırmaya imkan sağlamaktadır. Ayrıca kavramın, “tabiat – tabiat ötesi” ayrımına dayanak teşkil ettiği de bilinmektedir. Makalenin amacı, “tabiat” kavramının günümüzde yeni teorilerle ilişkili olarak kullanılma imkanlarını belirginleştirmektir. (shrink)

Producing emotional tears is a universal and uniquely human behavior. Until recently, tears have received little serious attention from scientists. Here, we summarize recent theoretical developments and research findings. The evolutionary approach offers a solid ground for the analysis of the functions of tears. This is especially the case for infant crying, which we address in the first part of this contribution. We further elaborate on the antecedents and functions of emotional tears in adults. The main hypothesis that emerges from (...) this overview is that crying evolved as an emotional expression that signals distress and promotes prosocial behaviors in conspecifics. Further, shedding tears may influence the mood of the crier and his/her outlook on life primarily as a consequence of fulfillment of the proposed signaling function of tears. We also describe how cultural phenomena such as ritual weeping nicely fit within this framework, as they often aim to support a request for help to a powerful person or deity and promote social bonding. (shrink)

The recent literature on ad hominem argument contends that the speaker’s character is sometimes relevant to evaluating what she says. This effort to redeem ad hominems requires an analysis of character that explains why and how character is relevant. I argue that virtue epistemology supplies this analysis. Three sorts of ad hominems that attack the speaker’s intellectual character are legitimate. They attack a speaker’s: (1) possession of reliabilist vices; or (2) possession of responsibilist vices; or (3) failure to perform intellectually (...) virtuous acts. Legitimate ad hominems conclude that we should not believe what a speaker says solely on her say-so. (shrink)

This chapter deals with one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, ad hominem: circumstantial. The circumstantial variety of the ad hominem argument is distinct from the direct form in that instead of directly attacking the character of the arguer, one draws attention to an inconsistency in the personal circumstances of the proponent (his/her commitments) and the content of his/her argument/position as a way to question his/her sincerity or credibility. As with all the ad hominem argument forms, the ad hominem: (...) circumstantial has both fallacious and legitimate uses. Fallacious uses of the ad hominem argument type are pernicious, in part, because of how difficult it can be to respond to them in an effective way. One of the main issues with ad hominem arguments is telling which are fallacious and which are not. (shrink)

Rhet. Her. 1.2 quoad eius fieri poterit contains the surprising reading quoad eius. Earlier scholarship has debated the authenticity of this reading and its relationship to quod eius. A survey of the sources shows that quod eius appears in a number of inscriptions as well as in the transmitted text of nine passages within surviving Latin literature. So that phrase must be authentic; it appears to have arisen as a limiting formula in the language of the law. In two other (...) passages, quoad eius appears in inferior manuscripts that lack authority, while the reading transmitted by authoritative textual sources is quod eius. Rhet. Her. 1.2 is the only passage in which quoad eius is the transmitted reading. This phrase is also linguistically problematic. Hence it is very likely to be corrupt. It probably arose as a conflation of quod eius with quoad, both of which are attested in similar contexts. On balance, it seems more likely that the original reading in this passage was quoad. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that ad hominem arguments are not always fallacious. More explicitly, in certain cases of practical reasoning, the circumstances of a person are relevant to whether or not the conclusion should be accepted. This occurs, I suggest, when a person gives advice to others or prescribes certain courses of action but fails to follow her own advice or act in accordance with her own prescriptions. This is not an instance of a fallacious tu quoque provided that (...) such circumstantial ad hominem arguments are construed as rebuttals to appeals (administrative) authority (of expertise), or so I argue. (shrink)

Connolly, Noel Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium defines the church as a 'community of missionary disciples'. We have to be missionary to be called disciples. He dreams of 'a missionary option' that will transform everything. For Francis, mission is clearly essential to the church. He is continuing a movement that began with Ad Gentes, the missionary document of Vatican II. The fathers at the council insisted, 'The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission (...) of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father'. This was reiterated by Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi: 'Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize'; and by John Paul II in Redemptoris Missio: 'the Church is missionary by her very nature'. (shrink)

A Brilliant Introduction To The Essence Of Living Hinduism The Thirteen Principal Upanisads, Sanskrit Texts In The Religious Traditions Of The Vedas, Lie At The Heart Of Hinduism. Devoted To Understanding The Inner Meaning Of The Religion, They Explicate Its Crucial Doctrines Rebirth, The Law Of Karma, The Means Of Conquering Death And Of Achieving Detachment, Equilibrium And Spiritual Bliss. They Emphasize The Perennial Search For True Knowledge Especially That Of The Connection Between The Self And The Transcendental Absolute. In (...) This Translation, Marked By Empathy And Erudition, Valerie Roebuck Approaches The Upanisads As Belonging To The Tradition Of 'Sruti', Literature Which Is Heard, As Distinct From 'Smriti', Which Is Remembered. Seeking To Reveal The Intent Of The Authors, She Attempts To Represent What, In Fact, Constitutes The Original Text. Care Is Taken To Exclude Later Accretions Of Commentaries. The Invocations Included Underline The Traditional Recitation Of These Texts, And The Literary Devices Repetitions, Dialogue And Word Combat, Riddles, Paradoxes And Word Play Used By The Sages To Express Their Teachings. This Accurate And Exceptional Rendering, While Making Accessible To The Modern Reader Something Of The Beauty And Variety Of The Original Language, Reaffirms The Place Of The Upanishads As One Of The Most Profound Works Of World Literature. This Authentic And Nuanced Rendering Makes Accessible To The Modern Reader Something Of The Beauty And Variety Of These Ancient And Rich Texts Of Hinduism. The Upanisads Belong To The Tradition Of Literature That Is Heard Rather Than Remembered , And In Her Translation Roebuck Seeks To Reveal The Intent Of The Authors And Arrive At 'The Original' Text. (shrink)

Kavram mantığı üzerine bina edilen klasik mantık bilimi, daha çok ad kavramlar ve bu kavramlardan bileşen önermeler üzerinden yürütülmüştür. Bu, İslâm mantık tarihinde öncekilerin mantık geleneğinde böyle olmakla birlikte sonrakilerin mantık geleneğinde çok daha belirgindir. Mantık biliminin, bu eğilimle yürütüldüğü ve yüzyılları içeren tarihinde fiil kavramlar, hem kavram hem de yargı bağlamlarıyla kimi belirsizlikleri beraberinde sürükleye gelmiştir. Her ne kadar mantık bilimi, kurulduğu andan itibaren psiko-sosyal temelli dillerin belirleyiciliğinden mümkün oldukça kendisini yalıtıp bilimlere evrensel dil sunma iddiasında bulunmuş ve bu (...) doğrultuda onun evrensel kurallarını oluşturmaya çalışmış olsa da psiko-sosyal temelli dil yapılarının, mantık biliminin işini zaman zaman zorlaştırdığı göze çarpmaktadır. Farklı dillerde farklı yapılarda ifade edilen belirsiz adlar, belirli fiil ve belirsiz fiiller mantıkçıların işini epey güçleştirmiştir. Onlar bize göre dillerden kaynaklı bu güçlüğün üstesinden gelmek için fiiller yerine en az tartışma barındıran belirli adlar üzerinden mantık bilimini işleme yolunu tercih etmişlerdir. Fakat öyle olsa bile bu, kanaatimizce problemi çözüme kavuşturmak yerine ötelemiş, özellikle fillerin kavram ve yargı mantığı bakımından neliği sorunu büyük oranda cevapsız kalmıştır. Çalışmamız, mantık biliminin, dillerin psiko-sosyal temelli yapılarına sırtını dönmekten kaynaklı problemlerinden biri olarak belirsiz ad ve filleri soruşturmaya açmaktadır. (shrink)

The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery between the 12th–14th century attest the recognition of invalidity by the Papacy. They acknowledge the existence of a physical or mental infirmity and allow the supplicant to adapt his or her missions of cleric or Christian according to his or her abilities. These documents lie at the boundary between the institutional word and practical sources. Supplicant’s solicitations bring about an intense and complex epistolary production, whose main actors are the (...) disabled individuals and the curial and ecclesiastical personnel. They reveal the specific legislation of the institution and lead to a definition of infirmity by the Papal Chancery, one that categorizes invalid bodies according to their physical or mental condition. Curia’s replies to solicitations, based on a case law system, constitute further evidence of the recognition of the disabled person’s condition. The supplications and letters thus constitute an excellent laboratory of analysis to study medieval disability in its relation to the Papacy as an institution. (shrink)

In relevance-theoretic pragmatics thelower-levelorfirst-order explicatureis a propositional form resulting from a series of inferential developments of the logical form. It amounts to the message the speaker communicates explicitly. Thehigher-levelorsecond-order explicatureis a description of the speech act that the speaker performs, her affective attitude towards what she says or her epistemic stance to the communicated information. Information about the speaker’s affective attitude or epistemic stance need not solely be represented in the latter, though. It could be included as beliefs in the (...) mental files of pragmatically adjusted conceptual representations featuring in lower-level explicatures. Those beliefs would originate as lexical pragmatic processes operate and their representation would be triggered by elements like evaluative morphemes, expressive expletives, insulting terms and evidential participles. Although they may be true or false in their own right, such beliefs would not affect the truth-conditional content of the expressed proposition. (shrink)

Although most work in contemporary Anglophone philosophical action theory understands Elizabeth Anscombe’s monograph on Intention as the work that inaugurates the field, action theory often operates by setting out to understand intentional action by investigating the psychological antecedents of intention action. Now, Anscombe has no quarrel with moral psychology. Intention is a work of moral psychology, but it is a kind of moral psychology in which we attend to the act of deliberately making something the case in order to understand (...) having a mind to make something the case. The more usual approach takes things the other way around. Anscombe attempted to ward off such approaches in Intention. If the arguments of §19 are any good, for example, they ought to tell against the mind-first approach in contemporary Anglophone ethics and action theory. If the arguments of §20 work, then they ought to dispel any sense that Anscombe is prone to behaviorism. Together, the arguments in §§19 and 20 are meant to clear the ground necessary for work on practical knowledge. In this essay, I give a reading of these difficult, crucial sections of Anscombe’s monograph in order to explore her arguments. (shrink)

Since its enactment in AD 313, the Edict of Milan, an edict that freed Christianity from empire-wide persecution, Constantine’s declaration has received a significant amount of attention within Christendom. Most of the discussion has centered on Constantine’s conversion, the precursor to the actual edict, with many suggesting that Constantine was acting more as a politician than a Christian. While this line of inquiry is legitimate, perhaps a better approach to the question may be more helpful to present-day Christians. That is, (...) while it is logical to deduce that every prudent politician will ignore the largest religious movement in his/her time at his/her own peril, Christians of every age will be better served if they critically evaluate their reception of each and every major policy that is clearly aimed at their benefit. With this background, this paper will attempt to critically examine the reception of Constantine’s edict by the Church in the years immediately following its enactment. Two early exhibits will be brought to bear here: the Donatist controversy and the Arian controversy. In so doing, the thesis that while Christians had every reason to celebrate the enactment of the edict, down the road, an uncritical adoption of the emperor’s policies and favors towards the church opened a door for an unhealthy marriage between earthly powers and the church that proved detrimental in the ensuing years, will be defended. As such, the Church’s reception of the Edict of Milan continues to be a lesson to Christians of every age in their relationship with the political leadership of their time. (shrink)

There have been more studies, critical books, and learned articles produced over the years about Jane Austen than of any other English literary "great" with the exception of William Shakespeare. The flow of these studies greatly increased in the latter part of this century. Her novels, juvenilia and surviving letters have been intensively researched. Added to this, there is an ever growing interest in her life, times, the importance to her writing of a sense of place, and in her familial (...) and social relationships. To study her work within this wider context, the student needs to refer to the source texts, some written by members of her family after her death, printed in small printings and now both scarce and valuable. (shrink)

The Classic of Way and her power: a Miscellany? is a study of the profound and influential philosophical writing from early China, traditionally attributed to Lao-zi, the first Daoist thinker. This study provides a translation of the work, but concentrates on analysis. It offers an interpretation of why the traditional work appears to lack order, suggesting that it began as a set of twenty-five philosophical poems by Lao-zi, tightly arranged according to an unusual and unmarked principle of order, and then (...) was added to by later figures in the Daoist tradition who obscured the original order by inserting their passages here and there in the extant text according to a quite different principle of order. Some of these later contributions are in keeping with Lao-zi's thought and style, while others are at odds in form and content with his poems and their profound insights. This study also offers a commentary by the author, a philosopher, who seeks especially to bring out Lao-zi's unique insights and to distinguish them from the thoughts being expressed by others in the remainder of the traditional work. (shrink)

The cento of Proba has recently enjoyed a remarkable upsurge of scholarly interest. A welcome translation was provided in 1981, and an article of five years later, scrutinizing the evidence for its date and authorship, has aroused much controversy. In two recent contributions vindicating the traditional date new or more precise suggestions have been made about the poem's historical context. In between these, yet another article has argued, without confirming or refuting the revised dating and attribution, that in various ways (...) the work reflects the interest of the aristocratic ladies of the Anician family. And now there is a second article by Danuta Shanzer, repeating many of her early points and adding some interesting new ones. All this sudden attention is not unmerited, for as Herzog observed long ago the work is not of the comic or trivializing kind that Ausonius envisaged in his comments on the genre and does not degrade Vergil but rather, at least in the often quoted words of its prefatory poem, ‘improves’ him. (shrink)

Lady Mary Shepherd argued for distinctive accounts of causation, perception, and knowledge of an external world and God. However, her work, engaging with Berkeley and Hume but written after Kant, does not fit the standard periodisation of early modern philosophy presupposed by many philosophy courses, textbooks, and conferences. This paper argues that Shepherd should be added to the canon as a Scottish philosopher. The practical reason for doing so is that it would give Shepherd a disciplinary home, opening up additional (...) possibilities for research and teaching. The philosophical reason is that her views share certain features characteristic of canonical Scottish philosophers. (shrink)

The widows of the Pastoral Epistles have been a puzzle for interpreters for generations. In the “Widows’ Tale” different categories of women are given a whole set of instructions, including how they shall be organized and with whom to live. In this article, I will highlight the interpretative potential of the very last verse of the paragraph, where “a believing woman who has widows” is mentioned. In some important manuscripts, scribes have added “believing man” in v. 16, while others have (...) left out the woman altogether. What can these disagreements and changes tell? I will argue that not enough scholarly attention has been directed to this verse. There is huge potential for a new understanding of the whole paragraph hidden here. Attention to alternative housing arrangements and manuscript variations will be employed as interpretative tools. I will use the disagreement among scribes to rethink variety and difference, and to reimagine ekklēsia within intersectional early Christian households. (shrink)

In a.d. 25, Aulus Cremutius Cordus, a Senator and a historian, was charged with ‘maiestas’. He committed suicide, and immediately his books, the ostensible source of the charge against him, were officially burnt. Some years later, Seneca referred in detail to these events in a philosophical study he had composed for Marcia, the daughter of Cremutius Cordus. Seneca wrote the work to console Marcia on the death of her son Metilius. In the Ad Marciam, Seneca notes in passing that the (...) worksof Cremutius Cordus have been re-published. (shrink)

En este artículo, nos preguntamos si es pertinente un análisis del personaje de Medea de Eurípides, y más concretamente, de su filicidio, a la luz de la doctrina aristotélica de la acción. Resulta dudoso, y quizás equívoco, hablar de "responsabilidad" (en sentido aristotélico) en el caso de la heroína, ya que sus motivaciones, como las de todo héroe trágico, tienen un doble signo: enfrentado a una ἀνάγκη superior, también desea lo que está forzado a hacer. Además, Medea no es una (...) mujer común: es un personaje ontológicamente complejo que participa, más de lo que frecuentemente se ha enfatizado, del plano divino. In this article we wonder if it is pertinent to analyse the character of Euripides' Medea and, more precisely, her filicide, in the light of Aristotle's doctrine of action. With regard to the heroine, it is doubtful and perhaps confusing to talk about "responsibility" (in Aristotelian terms) because her motivations, as all tragic heroes', are two-sided: faced to a superior ἀνάγκη he wants what he is forced to do as well. In addition, Medea is not an ordinary woman: she is an ontologically complex character that has a share in the divine level, a share which is more crucial than what has usually been emphasized. (shrink)

At the beginning of his message for World Mission Sunday 2019 Pope Francis wrote: For the month of October 2019, I have asked that the whole Church revive her missionary awareness and commitment as we commemorate the centenary of the Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud of Pope Benedict XV. Its farsighted and prophetic vision of the apostolate has made me realize once again the importance of renewing the Church's missionary commitment and giving fresh evangelical impulse to her work of preaching and (...) bringing to the world the salvation of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again. (shrink)

Bonaventure’s De reductione artium ad theologiam is a classic of medieval literature that every student of medieval philosophy or theology is likely to have read during his or her career. Given the scholarly attention the work has attracted, one might, therefore, be tempted to consider that there remains little to add to its interpretation. Yet, as Joshua C. Benson has shown in a series of articles, this is clearly a fallacy. In his inquiries concerning the literary genre of the De (...) reductione, Benson has put forward strong arguments suggesting that the text in question formed part of Bonaventure’s principium, that is, his inception ceremony as a master of theology.1While it is true that the principia express... (shrink)

What the nineteenth century knew of attamen or at tamen it did not learn from dictionaries. The two last revisions of Forcellini, Corradini's and De-Vit's, provided eight examples between them, of which three were false. Klotz added one, Georges two, Smith two: one of these five was false, and two more lie under much suspicion. Freund gave no instance whatsoever. In preparing his first volume, which appeared in 1834, he turned, like a good compiler, to the first volume of Hand's (...) Tursellinus, published in 1829. What he found there, on p. 450, was ‘de at tamen uide in tamen’; so he sat down quickly and wrote ‘attamen adv., s. tamen’. But Hand's Tursellinus, which never reached tamen, had proceeded no further than multum when Freund in 1840 produced the last volume of his dictionary; so he did not redeem his promise, and when you got there the cupboard was bare. This perfidy was faithfully imitated by the English and American dictionaries of Andrews, White and Riddle, Lewis and Short. To all intents and purposes one was left to depend on one's own reading and on the observations of Madvig at Cic. de fin. pp. 286 and 425 and opusc. I p. 491. (shrink)

Traditional just war theory maintains that the two types of rules that govern justice in times of war, jus ad bellum (justice of war) and jus in bello (justice in war), are logically independent of one another. Call this the independence thesis. According to this thesis, a war that satisfies the ad bellum rules does not guarantee that the in bello rules will be satisfied; and a war that violates the ad bellum rules does not guarantee that the in bello (...) rules will be violated. A controversial implication of this is that it’s possible for soldiers to undergo acts that are instrumental in bringing about victory in an unjust war and yet do nothing morally wrong. Some authors – call them purists – claim that this cannot be correct. Participating in an unjust war is by itself morally wrong. Yitzhak Benbaji has given what is to my mind the strongest defense of the independence thesis. In this paper I critically examine Benbaji’s argument and conclude that it is not persuasive. My argument against Benbaji incorporates the concept of honor in the military. I seek to show, in part, that if the recent literature is correct concerning both the nature of honor and the importance of instilling it in soldiers, then Benbaji hasn’t given the purist a compelling reason to give up her view. (shrink)

In mid-February 45b.c.e., in a tragedy that was to plunge the orator into seemingly irreparable despair, Cicero's beloved daughter Tullia died. She had given birth nearly a month before and at first seemed to be doing well. Soon, however, her health gave out and Cicero took her to his Tusculan villa to recover. In the end, there was little that could be done. After her funeral, Cicero stayed for about three weeks with Atticus in Rome, but the constant stream of (...) visitors offering condolences became too much to bear, and on the sixth of March the heartbroken father retired to a villa he owned on the coast at Astura, some 45 miles south of Rome. Three days later he dispatched the following anguished epistle (Att. 12.15):Apud Appuleium, quoniam in perpetuum non placet, in dies ut excuser videbis. in hac solitudine careo omnium colloquio, cumque mane me in silvam abstrusi densam et asperam, non exeo inde ante vesperum. secundum te nihil est mihi amicius solitudine. in ea mihi omnis sermo est cum litteris. eum tamen interpellat fletus; cui repugno quoad possum, sed adhuc pares non sumus. Bruto, ut suades, rescribam. eas litteras cras habebis. cum erit cui des, dabis. (shrink)

I examine some of the evidence for collaboration between Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy on the writing of the Sketch of Human Progress, but also uncover the ways in which the publication and reception of that text worked to exclude a woman who was a philosopher in her own right from a work she clearly contributed to. I show that at least one passage that was added in the 1795 edition makes the work philosophically more interesting.

dimension is actually “the typical.”[i] There would seem to be little typical about a world of comatose women, a barely sane, largely delusional male nurse, a woman bullfighter, and a rape that leads to a “rebirth” in a number of senses. But comatose women, the central figures in Almodóvar’s Talk to Her, are, oddly, very familiar in that mythological genre closest to us: fairy tales. Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are comatose women who endure, “non-consensually” we must say, a (...) male kiss, male sexual attention. (Siegfried’s awakening kiss of Brunnhilde in the extraordinary third act of Siegfried should also be mentioned.)[ii] Someone apparently must manifest some act of faith, must believe that these corpse-like women are not dead, and believe it strongly enough to kiss them. Then there is a kind of inversion of these fairy tales in Kleist’s story and Roehmer’s film, “Die Marquise von O.” Here the kiss is actually a rape, but the rapist again emerges as some sort of Prince Charming after all (he had originally saved the Marquise from rape by a group of Russian soldiers), and there are echoes of that somewhat disturbing notion of reconciliation as well in the Almodóvar film. (Alicia, after all, does awaken.) In the Kleist story, a woman must place an ad in a newspaper asking her unknown rapist (she was drugged and asleep) and the father of her unborn child to come forward. He does eventually and the story ends with their marriage and with one of the most enigmatic lines in all of literature, as enigmatic, I think, as our complex reactions to Benigno’s act: the Marquise says that she would not have thought her new husband a devil if he had not first appeared as an angel, as if one person can be both devil and angel, that, to the extent that one can be an angel, to that extent he also can be a devil. (shrink)

Until very recently, feminist criticism has not had a theoretical basis; it has been an empirical orphan in the theoretical storm. In 1975, I was persuaded that no theoretical manifesto could adequately account for the varied methodologies and ideologies which called themselves feminist reading or writing.1 By the next year, Annette Kolodny had added her observation that feminist literary criticism appeared "more like a set of interchangeable strategies than any coherent school or shared goal orientation."2 Since then, the expressed goals (...) have not been notably unified. Black critics protest the "massive silence" of feminist criticism about black and Third-World women writers and call for a black feminist aesthetic that would deal with both racial and sexual politics. Marxist feminists wish to focus on class along with gender as a crucial determinant of literary production. Literary historians want to uncover a lost tradition. Critics trained in deconstructionist methodologies with to "synthesize a literary criticism that is both textual and feminist." Freudian and Lacanian critics want to theorize about women's relationship to language and signification.· 1. See my "Literary Criticism," Signs 1 : 435-60.· 2. Annette Kolodny, "Literary Criticism," Signs 2 : 420.Elaine Showalter is professor of English at Rutgers University. The author of A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing, she is currently completing The English Malady, a study of madness, literature, and society in England. (shrink)

This chapter demonstrates how the assumptions made so far in the book imply that there is a single neutral level for existence. That is, there is a single level of wellbeing such that adding a person at that level is neither better nor worse than not adding her. It explains how this conclusion conflicts strongly with an intuition shared by many people: the ‘neutrality intuition’ that adding a person to the world’s population is generally ethically neutral. It uses examples such (...) as the mere addition paradox. It outlines various ways in which the conflict with intuition might be circumvented. (shrink)

This essay introduces two Korean women Confucian philosophers: Im Yun- jidang and Gang Jeongildang who lived in the latter period of the Joseon dynasty. Im Yunjidang was the first Confucian woman to explicitly claim women possessed an equal capacity to become sages as men. Gang Jeong- ildang made it clear that she was inspired by and sought to develop the thought of Im and added her own unique insights and new perspectives. Though they and their writings differ in many ways, (...) these two women philosophers created a lineage of female sages, marking a turning point in the history of Confucian philosophy. This paper aims to provide the his- torical background that shaped their thought and to introduce some of their writings in the hope of inspiring readers to study further the lives and philosophies of these two remarkable women and to take up and extend the insights they have left behind. (shrink)

In this paper it is shown is that although poisoning the well has generally been treated as a species of ad hominem fallacy, when you try to analyze the fallacy using ad hominem schemes, even by supplementing with related schemes like argument from position to know, the analysis ultimately fails. The main argument of the paper is taken up with proving this negative claim by applying these schemes to examples of arguments associated with the fallacy of poisoning the well. Although (...) there is a positive finding in this quest, in that poisoning the well is shown to be based on and associated with these forms of argument in interesting ways, the paper in the end is led to the conclusion that the fallacy is irreducibly dialectical. Poisoning the well is thus analyzed as a tactic to silence an opponent violating her right to put forward arguments on an issue both parties have agreed to discuss at the confrontation stage of a critical discussion. It is concluded that it is a special form of strategic attack used by one party in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion to improperly shut down the capability of the other party for putting forward arguments of the kind needed to properly move the discussion forward. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'poisoning the well' (PTW). There are some forms of ad hominem varieties that are usually a response to an interlocutor's claims. Unlike them, PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre‐emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense, or in defense of her point of view. This has (...) the insidious effect of creating a conceptual framework according to which the audience – and maybe even the interlocutor herself – will interpret her claims as 'fulfilling' and 'confirming' the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap. Most of the time Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability is still quite a useful tool and one that can help us gain a firmer understanding of PTW. (shrink)

Despite her busy life as a social activist, Jane Addams still managed to write ten books and over a hundred articles.2 These often had their origins in the many lectures she gave as the primary spokesperson for the Hull House settlement and indefatigable public speaker for social reform. When she organized these lectures for publication, often adding new material or rearranging old content, her prefaces and introductions allowed her to explain to the reader her intentions in doing so and to (...) focus their attention on the issues she thought were most important. By isolating them from their texts and reading them in chronological order, her basic commitments and methodology stand out more clearly. From first to last.. (shrink)

In her keynote address to the Kristeva Circle 2014, Julia Kristeva argued that European Humanism dating from the French Revolution paradoxically paved the way for “those who use God for political ends” by promoting a completely and solely secular path to the political. As an unintended result of this movement this path has led, in the late 20 th and early 21 st centuries, to the development of a new form of nihilism that masks itself as revolutionary but in fact (...) is the opposite, in Kristeva’s view. Kristeva analyzed the culture of religious fundamentalism as “adolescent” in the sense that the adolescent, in contrast to the child, is a believer rather than a questioner. Although the psychoanalytic consideration of religious fundamentalism added a new dimension to attempts to explain the increase of this phenomenon in the late 20 th and 21 st centuries, Kristeva’s subsequent linkage of fundamentalism to the revolts in French suburbs in 2005 and beyond fell short of an insightful critique by neglecting the historical context of France’s colonial history. (shrink)

In her work on virtue ethics Rosalind Hursthouse has formulated an Aristotelian criterion of rightness that understands rightness in terms of what the virtuous person would do. It is argued here that this kind of criterion does not allow enough room for the category of the supererogatory and that right and wrong should rather be understood in terms of the characteristic behavior of decent persons. Furthermore, it is suggested that this kind of approach has the added advantage of allowing one (...) to make sense of the centrality of negative precepts in commonsense morality. (shrink)

Her bir insan önce kendi dünyasında varoluştadır. Kendi dünyasında varoluşta olan insanın özsel ideası, onu dünya içinde zenginleşmiş ve parlayan bir merak Ben’i olarak yaşamaya ve yaşanmaya açar. Bu durum, ikinci bir dünya var eder; tüm insanlık adına gösteren ve her şeyi kendi dünyasından gösteren bir dünyadır. Bu iki dünya birbirini tamamlar. İkinci dünyanın varlık bulabilmesi birinci dünyanın varoluş serüvenine bağlıdır.

In her Greek and Roman Sundials , Sharon Gibbs discusses with success the identification of the archaeological finds of ancient sundials with the description of the types given briefly by Vitruvius . There is, however, an important piece of evidence from another ancient literary source which, though it does not alter her conclusions, ought to be added and clarified.

Müslümanlar Kur’ân’ı anlamak adına her asırda tefsirle iştigal etmişlerdir. Şüphesiz bu konuda onların en mühim modeli Hz. Peygamber ve onun ashabı olmuştur. Yakından incelendiğinde Hz. Peygamber’in, Kur’ân’ı sadece sözel olarak açıklamadığı görülmektedir. İyi bir eğitimci olan Hz. Peygamber Kur’ân’ı tefsir ederken çeşitli öğretim yöntemlerini kullanmıştır. Bunların içerisinde soru-cevap, temsili anlatım, beden dili, yaparak-yaşayarak öğretme, olayı ayetle ilişkilendirme gibi yöntemler bulunmaktadır. Sahabe ve tabiin dönemi âlimleri bu fiilî yöntemleri sonraki kuşaklara nazaran daha aktif kullanmışlardır. Hatta İbn Mes’ud bir nevi empati yapmak (...) için Kur’ân’da ismi geçen bazı bölgelere seyahat etmiştir. Günümüzde Kur’ân’ı anlamaya yönelik bir ilginin olduğu dikkatlerden kaçmamaktadır. Bu bakımdan gerek Kur’ân’ın tefsir edilmesinde gerekse tefsirin muhataba aktarılmasında fiilî tefsir yöntemlerinden haberdar olmak önem arz etmektedir. İşte bu makalede fiilî tefsir yöntemleri örnekler eşliğinde ele alınmaktadır. (shrink)

Şüphesiz düşünce dünyasına adım atma cesaretini gösteren insanı meşgul eden sorulardan biri de kendisinin nasıl bir varlık olduğudur. Varlığını keşfetme sürecinde felsefe, antropoloji, psikoloji ve biyoloji gibi bilimlerin insana ilişkin ortaya koymuş oldukları anlayışlar yol gösterici olsa da insanın özünü keşfetme noktasında yetersiz gelebilir. Zira gelişen ve değişen bir varlık olarak insan yaşadığı toplum, kültür ve tarihsel arka planından tecrit edilerek bir tanıma hapsedilmesi varlığının keşfedilmesi yönündeki en büyük engeldir. Benzer bir düşünceden hareketle Heidegger insanın özünü animal rationale olarak belirleyen (...) metafiziksel anlayışı insanın aslına ulaşamadığı gerekçesiyle eleştirmektedir. Hatta Heidegger’e göre bu anlayışla insan özünü kavrayamadığı gibi kendi özünden de uzaklaşmıştır. Modern öznenin temellerini atan bu anlayış insanın her şeyi nesneleştirmesi ve kendisini yeryüzünün efendisi gibi görmesine neden olmuştur. Oysa gerçekte insanın göz kamaştıran gücünün sınırsız genişlemesine aracılık eden teknoloji Heidegger’e göre büyük bir tehlikedir. Çünkü insan kendisini her şeye hâkim olarak tecrübe ettikçe teknolojinin egemenliği altına girdiğini fark etmeksizin özünden uzaklaşıp kaynağa dönüşmektedir. Buradan hareketle Heidegger Hölderlin’in “Ama tehlikenin olduğu yerde, kurtarıcı da büyür” dizesi ile teknolojinin en büyük tehlikenin kaynağı düşünme ve şiirin ise kurtarıcı olduğunu ifade eder. Ancak teknolojinin tehlike olarak mı kalacağı yoksa yerini kurtarıcıya mı bırakacağı insanın teknoloji ile kuracağı ilişkiye bağlıdır. (shrink)

In her book Specifications Grading, Linda B. Nilson advocates for a grading regimen she claims will save faculty time, increase student motivation, and improve the quality and rigor of student work. If she is right, there is a strong case for many faculty to adopt some version of the system she recommends. In this paper, we argue that she is mostly right and recommend that faculty move away from traditional grading. We begin by rehearsing the central features of specifications grading (...) and providing two examples of how to implement it in philosophy classes. In light of the examples, we argue that specifications grading fulfills two of Nilson’s central desiderata but not the third. Since specifications grading generates two benefits that when combined increase student learning, without adding or increasing burdens, we conclude that student learning increases when courses are revised to include aspects of specifications grading. (shrink)

Tarihte Aydınlanma adıyla bilinen dönemden bu yana metafizik, “bilimsel” olanın karşısına konumlandırılmıştır. Kabaca söyleyecek olursak Aydınlanma düşüncesi, bir zamanlar dünyayı açıklama ve onu anlamlandırmanın yegane yolu olan metafiziği hurafe ve safsata olarak görme, buna karşılık deneyime ve olgulara itibar etme eğilimindedir. Biz bu çalışmada, metafiziğe mesafeli olmak konusunda birleşen ve felsefelerinde genel olarak deneyimden ve olgulardan yana tavır takındığını söyleyebileceğimiz iki filozof olan Ludwig Wittgenstein ve William James’i karşılaştırdık. Herhangi iki şey arasında kıyaslama yapabilmek, ortak unsurların asgari düzeyde varlığını gerektirir. (...) Biz bahsi geçen iki düşünürü onların “doğruluk” anlayışları ve buna paralel olarak metafiziği değerlendirme biçimleri bağlamında ele aldık. Wittgenstein’a göre dünya hakkında öznellikten arınmış objektif bilgiye erişmek mümkündür. Ona göre psikoloji, epistemolojiden kesin olarak ayrılmalıdır. Doğruluğun süzgeci dildeki mantıksal form, nesneleri de olgulardır. Bu koşulları yerine getirmeyen tümceler anlamdan yoksundur. Metafiziğin kendisine konu edindiği nesneler, üzerine konuşulamayanlardır. Onlar “gösterilebilir” fakat dile getirilemezler. Oysa James için durum farklıdır. Ona göre olgular kendi başlarına doğru veya yanlış olamazlar. Doğruluk James’e göre zihnin deneyim süreçleriyle şekillenmektedir ve esnek bir yapıdadır. Mevcut inanç stokumuz ile uyumlu olan ve pratik olarak bir fark yaratabilen her türden düşünce doğruluk vasfını yerine getirmeye hak kazanacaktır. James’e göre psikoloji, doğrulanma süreçlerinden ve doğrunun kendisinden bağımsız değildir. (shrink)

Considering everything from Nike ads, emaciated models, and surgically altered breasts to the culture wars and the O.J. Simpson trial, Susan Bordo deciphers the hidden life of cultural images and the impact they have on our lives. She builds on the provocative themes introduced in her acclaimed work _Unbearable Weight_—which explores the social and political underpinnings of women's obsession with bodily image—to offer a singularly readable and perceptive interpretation of our image-saturated culture. As it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between (...) appearance and reality, she argues, we need to rehabilitate the notion that not all versions of reality are equally trustworthy. Bordo writes with deep compassion, unnerving honesty, and bracing intelligence. Looking to the body and bodily practices as a concrete arena where cultural fantasies and anxieties are played out, she examines the mystique and the reality of empowerment through cosmetic surgery. Her brilliant discussion of sexual harassment reflects on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy as well as the film _Disclosure_. She suggests that sexuality, although one of the mediums of harassment, is not its essence, and she calls for the recasting of harassers as bullies rather than sex fiends. Bordo also challenges the continuing marginalization of feminist thought, in particular the failure to read feminist work as cultural criticism. Finally, in a powerful and moving essay called "Missing Kitchens"—written in collaboration with her two sisters—Bordo explores notions of bodies, place, and space through a recreation of the topographies of her childhood. Throughout these essays, Bordo avoids dogma and easy caricature. Consistently, and on many levels, she demonstrates the profound relationship between our lives and our theories, our feelings and our thoughts. (shrink)

In her final fragmentary novel Sanditon, Jane Austen develops a theme that pervades her work from her juvenilia onward: illness, and in particular, illness imagined, invented, or self-inflicted. While the “invention of odd complaints” is characteristically a token of folly or weakness throughout her writing, in this last work imagined illness is also both a symbol and a cause of how selves and societies degenerate. In the shifting world of Sanditon, hypochondria is the lubricant for a society bent on turning (...) health into a commodity. As a result, people’s rationality and their moral character come under attack. Catherine Belling’s recent subtle study, A Condition of Doubt: The Meanings of Hypochondria, unveils hypochondria’s discursive and cultural character. Running sharply against the tenor of Austen’s treatment, however, she argues in defense of the rationality of hypochondriacs; the notion that the condition may involve morally significant defects is not entertained; any connection to the commercialization of health care is muted. Here, I contrast Austen’s morally and epistemically negative rendering of her hypochondriacal characters in Sanditon with Belling’s efforts to create a sympathetic understanding of people with hypochondria. I will argue that, despite time gaps and genre differences, joint consideration of these texts can help bioethicists better appreciate how medicine can intensify, pathologize, and exploit anxieties about illness and death, thus adding to the challenges of living well in the face of mortality and morbidity. (shrink)

Game theory is central to modern understandings of how people deal with problems of coordination and cooperation. Yet, ironically, it cannot give a straightforward explanation of some of the simplest forms of human coordination and cooperation--most famously, that people can use the apparently arbitrary features of "focal points" to solve coordination problems, and that people sometimes cooperate in "prisoner's dilemmas." Addressing a wide readership of economists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers, Michael Bacharach here proposes a revision of game theory that resolves (...) these long-standing problems. In the classical tradition of game theory, Bacharach models human beings as rational actors, but he revises the standard definition of rationality to incorporate two major new ideas. He enlarges the model of a game so that it includes the ways agents describe to themselves their decision problems. And he allows the possibility that people reason as members of groups, each taking herself to have reason to perform her component of the combination of actions that best achieves the group's common goal. Bacharach shows that certain tendencies for individuals to engage in team reasoning are consistent with recent findings in social psychology and evolutionary biology. As the culmination of Bacharach's long-standing program of pathbreaking work on the foundations of game theory, this book has been eagerly awaited. Following Bacharach's premature death, Natalie Gold and Robert Sugden edited the unfinished work and added two substantial chapters that allow the book to be read as a coherent whole. (shrink)

Sosyal değişim her toplumsal yapıda aynı biçimde gerçekleşmemektedir. Bu bağlamda her toplum modernleşme sürecini kendine özgü dinamiklerle tecrübe etmektedir. Bu dinamikler, modernleşme sürecine dâhil olmak isteyen ülkeler için ya üstten ya dışarıdan bir müdahale ile başlamıştır. Devletin modernleşme girişimlerine bağlı olarak ise bireysel ve toplumsal yapıda pek çok farklılaşma baş göstermiştir. Zira devleti idare eden güçlerin kısa vadede birçok kez değişmesi ile asrîleşme yolundaki toplum, yeni bir düşünce yapısı ve buna uygun modernleşme adımları ile karşı karşıya kalmıştır. Ancak bu farklılaşma (...) her zaman devletin öngördüğü ve düzenlediği şekilde gerçekleşmemiştir. Bu anlamda toplum değişim hususunda farklı tepkiler ortaya koyarak kabullenme ya da direnç gösterme yoluna gitmiştir. Değişimin, halk nezdinde başarılı bir şekilde meşrulaştırılamaması buna rağmen çeşitli yaptırımlarla işe koşulması ise yeni normların halk arasında içselleştirilememesine sebep olmuştur. Toplum tarafından içselleştirilemeyen modernleşme hareketleri ise yüzeysel ve biçimsel olarak uygulanmaya çalışılmıştır. Ancak zaman içerisinde enformasyon olanaklarının gelişmesi ve devlet içerisindeki kademelerin hem siyasal hem de sosyal düzlemde birbirleriyle yakınlaşması neticesinde modernleşme kendi motivasyonunu içsel süreçlerden almaya başlamıştır. Böylece günümüze gelirken doğu-batı arasında ancak kendine özgü motifleri de sahiplenen eklektik bir kültür ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu çizgide yetişen bireyler de kendi modernleşme tecrübesini yaşarken toplumun kalıplarını da uygulayagelmiştir. Toplumda oluşan bu kalıplar bireylerin duygulanım ve mahcubiyet eşiklerini değiştirmiştir. Böylece insan uygarlaşırken dışarıdan başlayan kontrol duygusu öze doğru inmiştir. Bu alt yapıdan hareketle çalışmamızın amacı, Norbert Elias’ın uygarlık kuramı kapsamında, Türk modernleşmesinin beraberinde getirdiği değişimin sosyal ve bireysel anlamda tekil insanın duygulanım eşiğini nasıl değiştirdiğini kılık kıyafet üzerinden okumaktır. Çalışmanın ilerlemesi için literatür taramasını tercih edilmiştir. Araştırma, konu olarak kılık kıyafet, zamansal olaraksa II. Mahmud döneminden (1785-1839) erken Cumhuriyet devrine kadar olan süreç ile sınırlandırılmıştır. Böylece çalışma, 200 yıl öncesine dayanan Türk modernleşme serüvenine kadar geriye giderek bugüne dair çıkarımlar yapmıştır. Çalışma üç ana bölüme ayrılarak ele alınmıştır. Bu bölümler ortaya koyulurken konular sık sık “din” teması ile ilişkilendirilmiştir. (shrink)