The decay and the restoration of civilization.--Civilization and ethics.

In this comment to Kehrer (2014) the relevance of atheistic argumentation in the domain of ethics as an important part of religion is sketched.

Contemporary scholarship tends to view Albert Camus as a modern, but he himself was conscious of the past and called the transition from Hellenism to Christianity “the true and only turning point in history.” For Camus, modernity was not fully comprehensible without an examination of the aspirations that were first articulated in antiquity and that later received their clearest expression in Christianity. These aspirations amounted to a fundamental reorientation of human life in politics, religion, science, and philosophy. Understanding the (...) nature and achievement of that reorientation became the central task of _Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism_. Primarily known through its inclusion in a French omnibus edition, it_ _has remained one of Camus’ least-read works, yet it marks his first attempt to understand the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity as he charted the movement from the Gospels through Gnosticism and Plotinus to what he calls Augustine’s “second revelation” of the Christian faith. Ronald Srigley’s translation of this seminal document helps illuminate these aspects of Camus’ work. His freestanding English edition exposes readers to an important part of Camus’ thought that is often overlooked by those concerned primarily with the book’s literary value and supersedes the extant McBride translation by retaining a greater degree of literalness. Srigley has fully annotated _Christian Metaphysics_ to include nearly all of Camus’ original citations and has tracked down many poorly identified sources. When Camus cites an ancient primary source, whether in French translation or in the original language, Srigley substitutes a standard English translation in the interest of making his edition accessible to a wider range of readers. His introduction places the text in the context of Camus’ better-known later work, explicating its relationship to those mature writings and exploring how its themes were reworked in subsequent books. Arguing that Camus was one of the great critics of modernity through his attempt to disentangle the Greeks from the Christians, Srigley clearly demonstrates the place of _Christian Metaphysics_ in Camus’ oeuvre. As the only stand-alone English version of this important work—and a long-overdue critical edition—his fluent translation is an essential benchmark in our understanding of Camus and his place in modern thought. (shrink)

By building on work by Kit Fine, we develop a sound and complete truthmaker semantics for Lou Goble’s conflict tolerant deontic logic BDL.

We develop an exact truthmaker semantics for permission and obligation. The idea is that with every singular act, we associate a sphere of permissions and a sphere of requirements: the acts that are rendered permissible and the acts that are rendered required by the act. We propose the following clauses for permissions and obligations: -/- - a singular act is an exact truthmaker of Pφ iff every exact truthmaker of φ is in the sphere of permissibility of the act, and (...) -/- - a singular act is an exact truthmaker of Oφ iff some exact truthmaker of φ is in the sphere of requirements of the act. -/- We show that this semantics is hyperintensional, and that it can deal with some of the so-called paradoxes of deontic logic in a natural way. Finally, we give a sound and complete axiomatization of the semantics. (shrink)

The first completely geometric approach to relativity theory, based on the space-time geometries of Loedel and Brehme.

In this paper we describe a framework for the construction of entities that can serve as interpretations of arbitrary contiguous chunks of text. An important part of the paper is devoted to describing stacking cells, or the proposed meanings for bracket-structures.

A Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Szent-Györgyi concerns himself with the underlying forces and conditions that have prevented the realization of the higher possibilities of the American Dream, and, by extension, of all mankind. He addresses himself especially to the youth of the world in his attempt to show how man, the more he progresses technologically, seems the more to regress psychologically and socially, until he resembles his primate ancestors in a state of high schizophrenia. The fundamental question asked by this (...) book is: Why is it that most of the scientific research that is done to elevate human life serves in the end to destroy it? That this phenomenon exists is unarguable. How to alter it is the problem the author tackles. He finds the possibility, indeed the instrument of our survival, in our youth. Dr. Szent-Györgyi calls upon youth the world over to organize and exercise their power to create a new world. He implores them not to waste their energies in petulance and frustration-the world is ripe for the radical changes needed for man's survival, and for youth to fritter away their opportunity would be to compound the tragedy and seal the fate of mankind. Born into the fourth generation of a noted family of scientists in Hungary, Albert Szent-Györgyi decided at an early age to devote his life to biological research. As a medical student he required international recognition for his studies in microscopic anatomy. The First World War, which he spent in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army, caused a break in his career. After the war he left his devastated country to work for ten years in various countries, notably Germany, Holland, England and the United States. He then returned to his native Hungary to help rebuild science there. In 1937, he won the Nobel Prize for his studies on metabolism and for the discovery of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). He soon found himself in conflict with the growing movement of Nazism, was arrested, escaped, and was hunted for years by the secret service of Hitler. After World War II, disappointed by Soviet colonialism and the terrorist methods of Stalin, he left Hungary and found refuge at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. (shrink)

Il testo riproduce il discorso pronunciato da Schweitzer, nell’aprile 1957, dai microfoni di Radio Oslo. Prendendo l’avvio dai test americani e so­vie­tici con bombe all’idrogeno dei primi anni ’50, Schweitzer ricostruisce bre­ve­mente la storia delle scoperte e degli impieghi dell’energia atomica e il­lustra gli effetti della radioattività esterna e interna sul corpo umano e ani­male, compresi i presumibili effetti teratogeni sulle generazioni future. L’in­tento dell’appello è richiamare l’opinione pubblica alla sua re­spon­sa­bi­lità e alla sua forza: soltanto un’opinione pubblica correttamente informata (...) e fortemente determinata è in grado di ottenere dai governi la messa al ban­do degli ordigni nucleari.The text reproduces the Schweitzer’s speech in April 1957 from Radio Oslo. Beginning from American and Soviet tests with hydrogen bombs in 1954-1955, Schweitzer reconstructs briefly the history of discoveries and u­ses atomic energy’s and shows effects of external and internal ra­dio­ac­ti­vity on human and animal body, included presumable teratogenic effects on future generations. The speech’s purpose is to call public opinion to her res­ponsibility and her power: only a public opinion correctly informed and stron­gly determined can obtain from governments the nuclear device’s ex­clu­sion. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

1. ptie. Les schémas de structure -- 2.ptie. Les schémas de genèse.

We describe a method of forcing against weak theories of arithmetic and its applications in propositional proof complexity.