Annie Besant is primarily remembered as the international president of the Theosophical Society. One of the most important aspects of her career were the years that she was a professional atheist, which has given her a place in history as a pioneer feminist. _The Origins of Theosophy _contains thirteen of Besant’s pamphlets, originally published from 1883-1890. This book is ideal for students of theology.

"Even those professionally concerned with the problems of development find it distressingly easy to start thinking in terms of graphs and statistics and to stop thinking in terms of people--the hundreds of millions of men, women and children daily beset by poverty, hunger and illiteracy. For Denis Goulet, people remain people, and a primary challenge to those who work for world development must be "to restore the links between economic science and moral philosophy. For the development problem resurrects, in (...) a new mode, the most ancient ethical questions: what is the good life, what is the just society?" These are the issues Denis Goulet confronts in A New World Order, a provocative and controversial approach to the questions most developmentalists fail to ask or despair of answering. Commenting on both the book and its author, Paulo Freire notes: "Goulet is a sensitive and intellectually challenging man who has to be taken seriously. He does not view the Third World as a mere object about which one could become expert without simultaneously assuming that world and being assumed by it. Goulet is a restless man who never ceases to look at life with a permanent sense of astonishment, whose ethical preoccupations are born of communion with the silent regions of the world, with 'the wretched of the earth.'" In A New Moral Order Goulet attempts to speak for those "silent regions of the world," and to give voice, not only to their experience of life as harsh and dehumanizing, but to give voice as well to their vision of what life might be in a truly just global society." - Publisher. (shrink)

This chapter attempts at gathering statistics about the philosophical “population” of Antiquity. This is a risky undertaking, for many reasons that will be enumerated later on. Yet these charts and graphs may provide precious information about the historical and social impact of ancient philosophy, and of the “ways of life” promoted by the various schools. These are a few facts drawn from the database of the The Dictionary of Ancient philosophers (DPhA). This raw data should also be placed in close (...) relation with literary testimonies of different periods. A closer examination of the entries, together with many corrections derived from the articles that are still to be written, will probably modify our information here and there. This provisional inquiry may serve to confirm or qualify the intuitive views we have about ancient philosophers. (shrink)

A literary tour de force that analyzes and refutes the hypothesis that Jesus was a Cynic Was Jesus really a Cynic? This book examines the arguments submitted by some New Testament scholars who believe that Jesus and his disciples were influenced by the ethics and social behaviors of Cynic preachers in Galilee. In examining the "Cynic Jesus hypothesis," Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé offers a reliable, accessible, and fully documented summary of Cynicism and its ideas, from Diogenes to the Imperial Period, and (...) she investigates the extent and nature of contact between Cynics and Jewish people, especially in the first century BCE and CE. While recognizing similarities between the ideas and morals of ancient Cynicism and those evident in early Christian movements, Goulet-Cazé identifies more significant, fundamental differences between them in terms of culture, theology, and worldview. (shrink)

Aucun manuel de philosophie ni aucune encyclopédie ne nous avait procuré jusqu'ici un dictionnaire exhaustif des philosophes de l'Antiquité. Exhaustivité dans la liste des auteurs, connus ou pas, mais aussi dans la présentation des sources, puisque Richard Goulet et son équipe mobilisent textes littéraires grecs, documents iconographiques, papyrologiques, épigraphiques, sources arméniennes, géorgiennes, hébraïques, syriaques et arabes. Des présocratiques aux néoplatoniciens du VIe siècle, d'Athènes à Byzance, de Rome à Alexandrie, ce chef-d'œuvre d'érudition offre un regard vraiment universel sur les (...) auteurs et les systèmes de pensée qui continuent d'irradier jusqu'à nous. Ce nouveau volume, particulièrement important, contient entre autres les notices Parménide, Philon d'Alexandrie, Philostrate, Photios, Platon... et analyse la survie de leurs œuvres philosophiques dans la littérature du christianisme ou de l'Islam. Un travail colossal et internationalement reconnu, qui honore la tradition scientifique française. (shrink)

English summary: Marie-Odile Goulet-Caze examines the thesis of some Theologians following Q, that Jesus and his disciples where highly influence by cynic preachers in Galilee. Translated into German by Lena Seehausen. German description: Mit seiner Kritik an der Zivilisation, seiner Infragestellung von sozialen Hierarchien, seiner Verachtung von Reichtumern und seiner radikalen Askese bot der Kynismus dem fruhen Christentum der ersten Jahrhunderte diverse Beruhrungspunkte. Unter den Exegeten und Theologen des Neuen Testaments findet man sogar jene, namlich die Anhanger und Befurworter (...) der Cynic hypothesis, die glauben, dass Jesus selbst und seine Wegbegleiter Kyniker in Galilaa hatten kennen konnen, und dass sie folglich ganz entscheidend von der Moral und dem Verhalten dieser Wanderprediger hatten beeinflusst werden konnen. Ein kynischer Charakter der ursprunglichen Lehre Jesu sei besonders in der sogenannten Quelle "Q" der synoptischen Evangelien ersichtlich, sofern man sie im Lichte der griechischen, ja sogar kynischen, Chrien und durch das Raster der Moral des Diogenes liest. Das vorliegende Werk pruft die Gultigkeit der These. In den darauffolgenden Jahrhunderten ubernahmen die Christen, hin- und hergerissen zwischen der Bewunderung fur die Askese der ersten Kyniker und ihrer Abneigung gegenuber der Schamlosigkeit und dem Atheismus der Hunde ihrer Epoche, vielfaltige und manchmal gegensatzliche Haltungen; mal appellierten sie an das Beispiel der Kyniker, mal beschimpften und verleumdeten sie diese von eitlem Ruhm besessenen Menschen, die in ihren Augen die Affirmation eines menschlichen Willen reprasentierten, der im Gegensatz zur religiosen Unterwerfung des christlichen Glaubens stand. Die Herausforderung dieser Studie besteht darin, die Verbindungen zwischen Kynismus und Christentum zu untersuchen, ohne die Texte zu forcieren und ohne sich irgendeiner Ideologie zu unterwerfen. (shrink)

Alors que l’éducation apparaît comme un thème principal de la pensée néoplatonicienne, et qu’elle a fait l’objet de nombreux articles scientifiques et chapitres de livres, il n’existe que très peu de monographies sur cette question (on songe par exemple à l’ouvrage d’E. Watts, 2006, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, University of California Press, qui a déjà une quinzaine d’années). La contribution de Jean-Michel Charrue, parce qu’elle place l’éducation, même disséminée d...

La méfiance à l'égard de l'écriture traverse l'histoire de la philosophie grecque. Comment éviter que l'usage de l'écrit ne mette à mal le partage des savoirs essentiel à toute pratique philosophique? À travers une étude des pratiques orales et écrites d'élaboration et de transmission des savoirs philosophiques dans l'Antiquité, cet ouvrage révèle une philosophie qui, pour être mieux partagée, préfère prendre naissance et se développer dans le corps même de ceux qui la pratiquent, dans la matérialité des livres et des (...) lettres qu'ils lisent, écrivent et s'échangent avec générosité, dans des pratiques savantes amicales et des activités conviviales"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

David Annis is professor of philosophy at Ball State University. In this essay, Annis offers an alternative to the foundationalist-coherent controversy: "contextualism." This theory rejects both the idea of intrinsically basic beliefs in the foundational sense and the thesis that coherence is sufficient for justification. he argues that justification is relative to the varying norms of social practices.

Siopis has always engaged in a critical and controversial way with the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in South Africa. For politically sensitive artists whose work has involved confronting the injustices of apartheid, the current post-apartheid situation has forced a reassessment of their practice and the terms on which they might engage with the fundamental changes which are now affecting all of South African society. Where mythologies of race and ethnicity have been strategically foregrounded in the art of any engaged (...) artist, to the exclusion of many other concerns, the demise of apartheid offers the possibility of exploring other dimensions of lived experience in South Africa. For feminists, this is potentially a very positive moment when questions of gender – so long subordinated to the structural issue of ‘race’ under apartheid – can now be explored. Penny Siopis’ work has long been concerned with the lived and historical relations between black and white women in South Africa. The discussion focuses on the ambivalent and dependent relationships formed between white middle-class women and black domestic labour during apartheid. Siopis’ work engages with how the appropriation of black women's time, lives, labour and bodies has shaped her ‘own’ history. (shrink)

In rehabilitation, there is a growing interest in ethics. That said, few meta-ethical reflections have been conducted to date. Therefore, a review and critical analysis of the use of the concept of “ethical issue” is warranted. To this end, a systematic and critical review of the literature discussing ethical issues in rehabilitation was conducted. This review, based on the method developed by McCullough and colleagues, identified and analyzed 80 articles. Several characteristics and gaps in the conceptualization of the ethical issue (...) concept were noted. Three main findings emerge from the study: 1) the corpus of texts studied is dominated by descriptive ethics; 2) ethical conceptualisation is marginal, in that ethical concepts are generally stated without being defined; and 3) the corpus is characterized by the use of amalgams and by the multiplication of imprecise ethical concepts that are often used as synonyms while referring to distinct phenomena. These conceptual gaps create conceptual confusion and imprecision that can undermine ethics research, teaching and clinical ethics, and discredit the discipline of ethics. (shrink)

Le cynisme, en raison peut-etre de son mepris pour la speculation theorique et de la rarete des textes de contenu doctrinal qui en a resulte, reste le parent pauvre de la philosophie antique. Le present ouvrage fut l'un des premiers a lui etre exclusivement consacre. Pour rendre compte d'un passage doxographique, transmis par Diogene Laerce, sur l'ascese selon Diogene le Cynique, il tente de retrouver, a travers l'analyse d'un riche corpus d'anecdotes et de dits diogeniens, l'inspiration fondamentale qui oriente tout (...) le projet philosophique du cynisme ancien. C'est dans le concept d'ascese, c'est-a-dire d'un entrainement capable d'assurer le bonheur de l'homme en proie aux vicissitudes de l'existence, que s'exprime cette inspiration initiale. La comparaison du projet cynique avec le socratisme et le stoicisme revele l'originalite de la demarche proposee par Diogene. Au terme, cette elucidation de la conception cynique de l'ascese autorise une interpretation nouvelle du passage doxographique laertien et une verification de son authenticite. La voie diogenienne, raccourci vers la vertu, a ete empruntee jusqu'a la fin de l'antiquite par maints adeptes, comme l'atteste le Repertoire, publie en appendice, de tous les Cyniques qu'un inventaire minutieux a permis de decouvrir. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Al Mele (2003) suggests that the Simple View of intentional action is “fiction” because it is “wholly unconstrained” by a widely shared (folk) concept of intentional action. The Simple View (Adams, 1986, McCann, 1986) states that an action is intentional only if intended. As evidence that the Simple View is not in accord with the folk notion of intentional action, Mele appeals to recent surveys of folk judgments by Joshua Knobe (2003, 2004a, 2004b). Knobe’s surveys appear (...) to show that the folk judge unintended but known side effects of actions to be performed intentionally. In this paper we will reject Mele’s suggestion that the Simple View is “fiction.” We will also discuss the relationship between surveys and philosophical theories, and the abilities of surveys to access folk core concepts. We will argue that considerations of both fail to support Mele’s suggestion. (shrink)

MATERIEL LITTERAIRE. LES TRAITES EXEGETIQUES DE PHILON D'ALEXANDRIE (1ER S. AP.J.C.) : LES TRAITS CONSERVES APPARTENANT A LA SERIE DES ALLEGORIES DES LOIS SACREES (GENESE I-XVII), AINSI QUE LES DEVELOPPEMENTS ALLEGORIQUES DE L'EXPOSITION DES LOIS ET DES QUESTIONS-REPONSES SUR LA GENESE ET SUR L'EXODE. POINT DE DEPART. LES TESTIMONIA PHILONIENS SUR L'EXISTENCE D'ALLEGORISTES JUIFS RADICAUX. OBJECTIFS. RETROUVER LES VESTIGES D'UN COMMENTAIRE ALLEGORIQUE DU PENTATEUQUE D'ORIGINE JUDEO-ALEXANDRINE UTILISE PAR PHILON DANS L'ELABORATION DE SA PROPRE ALLEGORIE. METHODE. ANALYSER SELON L'ORDRE DES VERSETS (...) BIBLIQUES (ET NON CELUI DES TRAITES DE PHILON) LES EXEGESES MULTIPLES PROPOSEES A DIFFERENTS ENDROITS DE L'OEUVRE AFIN DE DECELER LES INCOHERENCES ET METTRE EN LUMIERE DES CONTINUITES THEMATIQUES DANS L'ALLEGORIE. RESULTATS. DECOUVERTE D'UNE SOURCE LITTERAIRE HOMOGENE: UN COMMENTAIRE CURSIF DE L'ECRITURE APPLIQUANT UNE METHODE ALLEGORIQUE RIGOUREUSE AFIN DE DEGAGER, PAR DELA LA DENONCIATION DE L'ABSURDITE OU DE L'INCONVENANCE DU SENS LITTERAL, LA PHILOSOPHIE CACHEE DE MOISE, SOURCE DE LA PENSEE DES GRECS. UNE NOUVELLE IMAGE DE PHILON: MALGRE TOUT LE MATERIEL EXEGETIQUE QU'IL EMPRUNTE A SA SOURCE, IL RESTE UN JUIF PIEUX HOSTILE A L'ALLEGORIE RADICALE ET A LA DEMYTHOLOGISATION DU JUDAISME QU'ELLE ENTENDAIT METTRE EN OEUVRE. (shrink)

From psychotherapist and TikTok personality Dr. Annie Zimmerman comes a toolkit to transform yourself and your relationships, with advice on how to heal past trauma, build sustainable connections, and take ownership of your mental health. Every day, psychotherapist Dr. Annie Zimmerman meets clients in her private London practice who are struggling with their lives. They're committed to achieving personal growth, making changes--but they're struck at the question stage. They ask: Why can't I sleep? Why do I keep going (...) back to a bad relationship? Why did I lose my temper? What is wrong with me? Here's the answer: nothing is wrong with them. It's just that they're asking themselves the wrong questions. In Your Pocket Therapist, Dr. Zimmerman helps readers delve into their past to identify old, unhelpful patterns and teach them how to unlock the present. The book combines practical tools with anecdotes gleaned from the therapy room, distilling complex psychological concepts with her signature warmth and empathy. Her belief--galvanized by her hundreds of thousands of followers--is that if we learn to understand the roots of our suffering, we can bring about meaningful--and permanent--change in our lives. It comes down to learning how to ask the right questions. A brilliant, necessary toolkit for those who want to break free from past patterns and embrace a life of abundant self-awareness and connection, Your Pocket Therapist is an absolute must-read in the field of psychology. (shrink)

Si le cynisme a toujours eu mauvaise presse sur la scene philosophique, c'est en partie a cause des traits scandaleux que l'Antiquite, s'appuyant sur la Politeia et les tragedies de Diogene, lui a pretes. Mais ces traits se retrouvent dans la Politeia de Zenon et chez des Stoiciens aussi importants que Cleanthe et Chrysippe. Comment expliquer que des philosophes dont la reputation de serieux est bien connue aient pu accepter et meme louer des principes aussi scandaleux que l'anthrophagie, la liberte (...) sexuelle totale, l'indifference a la sepulture, l'egalite hommes/femmes, la negation du sacre, la remise en cause de la cite et de ses lois? Un Appendice sur Apollodore de Seleucie (IIe s. av. J.-C.), entend rendre justice a ce philosophe au role meconnu. (Franz Steiner 2003). (shrink)

Education implies that a student learns when the teacher teaches : if there is not learning, it would be absurd to think that teaching has occured. However, in the case of distance learning, it is sometimes difficult to ensure the participation of the student, particularly when there is a time gap between teaching and learning. Under these circumstances, using certain narrative or stylistic devices prone to solicit the reader may bring the latter to actively take part in the course she (...) is reading). The dialogue is one of the literary devices that improves the reader’s cognitive activity, because she then identifies either with the respondant or with a silent witness. Epistolarity has a similar effect because it evokes a dialogue. This paper studies the literary devices used in Epicure’s letters along with recent research on distance learning, to highlight their didactical purposes. (shrink)

Eusebius of Cesarea, in his Praeparatio Evangelica, quotes a large piece of Plotinus’ writing to which Porphyry, in his edition of the Enneads, gave the title “On the Immortality of Soul”. Surprisingly, the piece quoted by Eusebius is absent from the Porphyrian edition. Some reasons for this absence have been adduced: some scholars think that the text quoted by Eusebius might be a trace of the edition of Plotinus’s writings made by Eustochius; others think that it might come from the (...) copies Amelius carried to Apameia. This paper will try to show that the opinion that the text quoted by Eusebius come from an edition other than that of Porphyry is hardly defendable, and that the absence of such piece from Porphyry’s edition can be explained by an accident on the direct tradition of the Enneads. (shrink)

Twenty-first-century biology rejects genetic determinism, yet an exaggerated view of the power of genes in the making of bodies and minds remains a problem. What accounts for such tenacity? This article reports an exploratory study suggesting that the common reliance on Mendelian examples and concepts at the start of teaching in basic genetics is an eliminable source of support for determinism. Undergraduate students who attended a standard ‘Mendelian approach’ university course in introductory genetics on average showed no change in their (...) determinist views about genes. By contrast, students who attended an alternative course which, inspired by the work of a critic of early Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon, replaced an emphasis on Mendel’s peas with an emphasis on developmental contexts and their role in bringing about phenotypic variability, were less determinist about genes by the end of teaching. Improvements in both the new Weldonian curriculum and the study design are in view for the future. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the perception of actual and ideal ethical climate type among 95 nurses working in the internal medicine wards of one central hospital in the state of Israel. We also examined whether nurses’ demographic characteristics influence that perception and if a relationship between perceptions of an actual and an ideal ethical climate type influences nurses’ job satisfaction. A questionnaire composed of three subquestionnaires was administered and the responses analyzed using multiple linear regressions, analysis of variance and (...) Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results demonstrated that demographic characteristics (such as: gender, job tenure and level of education) partially influence the perception of an ideal ethical climate. Incongruence in perceptions of ‘caring’ and ‘independence’ climate types indicated a decline in nurses’ job satisfaction, while perception of actual ‘caring’ and ‘service’ climates positively influenced all aspects of job satisfaction. We recommend constructing training programs emphasizing the ethics of nursing practice and also to help lead nurses to clarify an ethical framework and guide nursing staff in dealing with ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

This book aims to spur critical thought on the various dimensions and impacts of "responsibility" for organizations, including companies, institutions, and governments, while considering international differences and similarities, as well as global challenges. It analyzes to what extent responsibility is becoming a crucial issue for all kinds of organizations, examining both the intensifying pressures of international competition and the growing crisis of confidence towards some management concepts and practices. As more and more socio-economic and political systems are suspected of serving (...) selfish interests instead of the public good, more accountable and integrated processes are appropriate in order to deal with the present and future stakes of our society. Further, with the development of digital technology and the use of data mining, new questions regarding responsibility require examination. This edited collection is a culmination of the international scientific conference "Responsible Organizations in the Global Context", co-organized by the CIED of Georgetown University (United States) and the Larequoi Research Center of the University of Versailles St-Quentin (France) in June 2017 in Washington DC. It will contribute to research and actions in the areas of social responsibility, business ethics, organizational excellence, sustainability, and cross-cultural management. (shrink)

Abstract The aim of this article is to make use of recent research on `political eros ' in order to clarify the connection that Plato establishes between eros and tyranny in Republic IX, specifically by elucidating the intertextuality between Plato's work and the various historical accounts of Alcibiades. An examination of the lexicon used in these accounts will allow us to resolve certain interpretive difficulties that, to my knowledge, no other commentator has elucidated: why does Socrates blame eros for the (...) decline from democracy into tyranny? What does he mean by ` eros ' here, and what link existed between eros and tyranny in the minds of his contemporaries? And finally, who are the mysterious `tyrant-makers' ( turannopoioí , 572e5-6) who, according to Socrates, introduce a destructive eros in the soul of the future tyrant? After a careful examination of the passage from book IX on the genesis of the tyrannical man (focused on the last stage of the metamorphosis, which is concerned with éros túrannos , 572d-573b), I will offer answers to these questions by turning to the writings of Thucydides, Aristophanes and Plutarch while examining the portrait of Alcibiades that Plato paints in the Alcibiades I and Symposium. (shrink)

Friendship was an important topic for classical philosophers; the analysis, Value, And duties of friendship all received considerable attention. But friendship has been a relatively dormant topic among more recent philosophers. This paper (a) presents an analysis of friendship and explains its core elements, (b) discusses several different models for explaining the value of friendship, And (c) argues that there are special duties of friendship and that these aren't based solely on utilitarian considerations.

Policies and position statements regarding decision-making for extremely premature babies exist in many countries and are often directive, focusing on parental choice and expected outcomes. These recommendations often state survival and handicap as reasons for optional intervention. The fact that such outcome statistics would not justify such approaches in other populations suggests that some other powerful factors are at work. The value of neonatal intensive care has been scrutinized far more than intensive care for older patients and suggests that neonatal (...) care is held to a higher standard of justification. The relative value placed on the life of newborns, in particular the preterm, is less than expected by any objective medical data or any prevailing moral frameworks about the value of individual lives. Why do we feel less obligated to treat the premature baby? Do we put newborns in a special and lesser moral category? We explore this question from a legal and ethical perspective and offer several hypotheses pertaining to personhood, reproductive choices, “precious children,” and probable evolutionary and anthropological factors. (shrink)

Papers from a conference held August 2010.

Réunit 19 études publiées entre 1977 et 2001 concernant le corpus des vies de philosophes. Celles-ci, dépassant le simple compte rendu biographique, dévoilent dans la vie du philosophe la réalisation d'un idéal philosophique, soulèvent des questions d'ordre historique, prosopographique ou chronologique.

This paper presents an overview of the process of entanglement at the 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference (IPNC) at University of California at Irvine held on August 18, 2022. Representing collective work from the US, Canada, UK and Germany, our panel entitled ‘What can critical posthuman philosophies do for nursing?’ examined critical posthumanism and its operations and potential in nursing. Critical posthumanism offers an antifascist, feminist, material, affective, and ecologically entangled approach to nursing and healthcare. Rather than focusing on (...) the arguments of each of the three distinct but interrelated panel presentation pieces, this paper instead focuses on process and performance (per/formance) and performativity as relational, connected and situated, with connections to nursing philosophy. Building upon critical feminist and new materialist philosophies, we describe intra‐activity and performativity as ways to dehierarchise knowledge making practices within traditional academic conference spaces. Creating critical cartographies of thinking and being are actions of possibility for building more just and equitable futures for nursing, nurses, and those they accompany—including all humans, nonhumans, and more than human matter. (shrink)

Care as a concept has long been central to the nursing discipline, and care ethics have consequently found their place in nursing ethics discussions. This paper briefly revisits how care and care ethics have been theorized and applied in the discipline of nursing, with an emphasis on Tronto’s political view of care. Adding to the works of other nurse scholars, we consider that Tronto’s care ethics is useful to understand caring practices in a sociopolitical context. We also contend that this (...) vision can be used specifically to politicize nurses, by encouraging them to think critically about the context in which they work and how they can participate to change the status quo, notably by prompting the democratization of care in institutional settings. We illustrate this by demonstrating how moral distress that can occur with aggressive or futile treatments in the intensive care unit can be reduced if nurses are systematically included in the decision-making process. By showing some ways in which nursing political actions can begin to change the status quo as it pertains to futile treatments at the end of life, we can help empower nurses to strive to be included in political spaces and voice their concerns to have their professional needs met. (shrink)