Unreal City: a zany cartoon megalopolis where towers are built of cotton candy, facts scatter like pixie dust, and the truth is whatever you feel it to be. And it's no fantasy. It's where we live. We dwell in Unreal City. We believe in un-being. With saber-like wit, poet and professor Anthony Esolen leads readers on a tour through the ruins of their own Western world--through king-size bookstores, manicured college campuses, strobe-lit choir lofts, mechanized farms, divorce courts, drag-queen (...) libraries, and beyond. This hilarious guide to a culture gone mad with sex and self-care minces no words and spares no egos. We the people of Unreal City are no better, and certainly no smarter, than our fathers. But fear not. Sex and the Unreal City insists there's no need to settle down in the ninth circle of unreality. Esolen lights a torch and heads up the well-trod path back to our cleaner, kinder, truer homeland: earth. Along the way, the author sings the songs of masters somehow long forgotten--Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, the evangelists--and asks us to chant along. Readers of essayists like George Weigel, George Rutler, Malcom Muggeridge, and Walker Percy will enjoy this rollicking, intelligent book."--Amazon. (shrink)

There is no doubt that the model presented here is incomplete. Many important categories, particularly negation and the adverbials, have been entirely ignored, and the treatment of Tense and the affixes is certainly inadequate. It also remains to be seen how the many constructions that have been ignored here are to be accommodated within the framework that has been outlined. However, the fact that a standard categorial lexicon, plus the four rule schemata, seems to come close to exhaustively specifying the (...) main clause constructions of English, and also seems to explain a number of major constraints on transformations, encourages us to compare the theory with certain alternatives, and to examine its broader implications. (shrink)

This book examines the notion of honor with an eye to dissecting its intellectual demise and with the aim of making a case for honor’s rehabilitation. Western intellectuals acknowledge honor’s influence, but they lament its authority. For Western democratic societies to embrace honor, it must be compatible with social ideals like liberty, equality, and fraternity. Cunningham details a conception of honor that can do justice to these ideals. This vision revolves around three elements—character , relationships , and activities and accomplishment (...) . Taken together, these elements articulate a shared aspiration for excellence. We can turn the tables on traditional ills of honor—serious problems of gender, race, and class—by forging a vision of honor that rejects lives predicated on power and oppression. (shrink)

Spanning 2,500 years of thought, this superb volume provides essential coverage of the most influential philosophers of the Western world, including Socrates, ...

The following paper seeks to show, through a close reading of lines 604-612 from the second book of the Aeneid, that Virgil develops an understanding of truth opposed to the dominant understanding of truth of the philosophical tradition. Whereas philosophy (as exemplified in the “cave analogy” of Plato’s Republic)regards truth as a power over deception, Virgil comes to understand truth instead as the effect of a deception that cannot be “disillusioned,” and that in turn summons us towards an obedience to (...) a power that deceives us. This way of understanding the truth, I further suggest, stands in a close relation to literature, and suggests a way to think of the possibilities of literature outside the perspective of philosophy. (shrink)

Taking its departure from The Differend’s analysis of Auschwitz as a sign for the evental character of history, I argue that the looming ecological disaster we now face reveals both the continuing relevance and limits of Lyotard’s thought. While the form of political agency of the catastrophe to come involves a differend, this differend cannot be attached to a proper name, however problematic its mode of signification. This, however, suggests the even greater relevance of Lyotard’s treatment, in the conclusion of (...) The Differend, of capitalism in terms of temporal contradiction, as well as his theorization of oikos and ecology in subsequent works, where he distinguishes between the economic and the ecological. This distinction, I conclude, is rendered problematic by the catastrophe to come, as indeed is any attempt to draw an absolute distinction between “philosophical politics” and mere technocratic management or even to exclude speculation from the heart of philosophy. (shrink)

Until late in the nineteenth century, madder was the most popular natural red dye. Holland was the largest and best-known supplier. As early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the province of Zeeland and adjoining parts of the provinces of South Holland and Brabant developed into important producers. In the course of the seventeenth century these areas even succeeded in acquiring a monopoly position. Early in the nineteenth century, however, this position came under attack because France had gone over to (...) industrial production methods from around 1800, whereas Holland continued to produce with craft technologies. After 1820, as a result, a period of stagnation and decay set in. The fate of the Dutch madder industry would have been completely sealed if the production capacity of the French factories had been sufficiently large to satisfy the great increase in demand. Consequently, in Holland, after 1845, a process of revival based upon the French manufacturing methods began slowly and hesitatingly. This process started too late and was not persevered with sufficiently to regain lost markets. The Dutch producers remained strongly attached to their own out-dated, craft methods of production. (shrink)

This research work examines Heidegger's (1889-1976) contention that phenomenology can inspire, illuminate, motivate, reinforce and guide (human) individual's actions. It achieves this by adapting Heidegger's phenomenological approach to analyze and interpret representative everyday factical experiences of nepotism, selfishness and mass mentality in the (Nigerian) society. Doing this helps to ascertain whether these experiences have any phenomenological link with inauthenticity. Also, it provides a close reading and interpretation of Heidegger's treatment of authentic existence, and explores the possibility of complimenting it with (...) the phenomenology of Commensality, as a mode of care and a way to authenticity. In this manner, it strategically explores possible ways of inspiring individual Daseins to authenticity, and with it engendering a positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. Presenting and elaborating the phenomenology of Commensality, the work highlights the relationship and the differences between the phenomenology of Commensality and the ontical or sociological understanding of commensality as obtained in African traditional societies. Phenomenology of Commensality argues for the 'renaissance' of Commensality, concretely expressed as Onyenkeanyi, and not just for its 'revival'. The research work further develops the phenomenology of education for Commensality, discussing the possible content and focus of its curriculum, while differentiating it from ethics. The proper implementation of phenomenology of education for Commensality could inspire and illuminate individual Daseins to authenticity, and thereby becomes an improvement strategy for the positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. As a phenomenology, it is appropriate that the people and places analyzed take on a definite character, which is why the Nigerian society is used. However, it is expected that the implications of the findings presented here will be general and accurate enough to allow application to any number of similar situations. (shrink)

The inquiry into the nature of truth plays an important role in Fichte's thought, especially following his departure from Jena, and indeed in the WL-1804-ii the doctrine of truth emerges as the centerpiece of the WL. The following paper argues that the conception of truth evolves significantly after the WL-1804-ii, and that, in such texts as the Erlanger Metaphysik, the Spekulation zu Koppenhagen, and the 1812 WL, Fichte, building on the account of the hiatus in the WL-1804-ii while moving away (...) from its notion of absolute truth, seeks to understand truth in terms of freedom, or indeed, as what »yields to freedom«, wherein freedom, through the negativity of the concept, produces an emptiness, a clearing, that is »fulfilled« with truth. Anticipating the phenomenological account of truth yet without abandoning a strong sense of normativity, Fichte’s alethology remains a compelling alternative to contemporary positions. (shrink)

Are there truly fundamental entities in nature? Or are the things that we regard as fundamental in our theories – for example space, time or the masses of elementary particles – merely awaiting a derivation from a new, yet to be discovered theory based on elements that are more fundamental? This was the central question posed in the 2018 FQXi essay competition, which drew more than 200 entries from professional physicists, philosophers, and other scholars. This volume presents enhanced versions of (...) the fifteen award-winning essays, giving a spectrum of views and insights on this fascinating topic. From a prescription for “when to stop digging” to the case for strong emergence, the reader will find here a plethora of stimulating and challenging ideas - presented in a largely non-technical manner - on which to sharpen their understanding of the language of physics and even the nature of reality. (shrink)

In early 1927, Pascual Jordan published his version of what came to be known as the Dirac-Jordan statistical transformation theory. Later that year and partly in response to Jordan, John von Neumann published the modern Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics. Central to both formalisms are expressions for conditional probabilities of finding some value for one quantity given the value of another. Beyond that Jordan and von Neumann had very different views about the appropriate formulation of problems in the new (...) theory. For Jordan, unable to let go of the analogy to classical mechanics, the solution of such problems required the identification of sets of canonically conjugate variables, i.e., p’s and q’s. Jordan ran into serious difficulties when he tried to extend his approach from quantities with fully continuous spectra to those with wholly or partly discrete spectra. For von Neumann, not constrained by the analogy to classical physics and aware of the daunting mathematical difficulties facing the approach of Jordan ), the solution of a problem in the new quantum mechanics required only the identification of a maximal set of commuting operators with simultaneous eigenstates. He had no need for p’s and q’s. Related to their disagreement about the appropriate general formalism for the new theory, Jordan and von Neumann stated the characteristic new rules for probabilities in quantum mechanics somewhat differently. Jordan was the first to state those rules in full generality, von Neumann rephrased them and then sought to derive them from more basic considerations. In this paper we reconstruct the central arguments of these 1927 papers by Jordan and von Neumann and of a paper on Jordan’s approach by Hilbert, von Neumann, and Nordheim. We highlight those elements in these papers that bring out the gradual loosening of the ties between the new quantum formalism and classical mechanics. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been subject to numerous different interpretations but accounts are still beset with significant problems as to their adequacy, such as their contentious application or the lack of genuine explanatory role for the concept. The constant failure to provide a compelling conceptual analysis and satisfactory definition leaves the concept open to an eliminativist move whereby we can question whether we need the concept at all. I highlight problems with various kinds of approach and explain why a (...) satisfactory account of vulnerability is unlikely ever to be offered if we wish the concept to play a genuinely explanatory role in bioethical contexts. I outline why an eliminativist position should be taken with regard to this concept in light of these concerns but mitigate some of the severity of this position by arguing that we can still make sense of retaining our widespread use of the term by viewing it as nothing more than a useful pragmatic linguistic device that acts as a marker to draw attention to certain kinds of issue. These issues will be entirely governed by other, better understood ethical concepts and theories. (shrink)

With the aid of computers, it is becoming possible to clarify some longstanding disputes over Biblical authorship. Using statistical analysis of linguistic usage, Kenny reexamines the authorship of Revelation, the relationship between Luke and the Acts, and the complex problem of the Pauline corpus. He also comments on the general merits of the stylometric approach to textual analysis.

This chapter discusses the scientific study of the mind. Many people believe that the human mind is amenable to scientific enquiry in very much the same way as the human body is. Some believe that science is fundamentally deterministic, and that in principle there could be a deterministic science of the operation of the mind side by side with a deterministic science of the body. Not only the operation, but the origin, of the mind, many people believe, is something which (...) science will shortly be able to explain. The theory of evolution by natural selection can account for the capacities of our minds no less than for the structure of our bodies. The chapter investigates the credentials of these various forms of scientific optimism. (shrink)

The acknowledged masterpiece of Unamuno expresses the anguish of modern man as he is caught up in the struggle between the dictates of reason and the demands of his own heart.

The nutrition transition concept developed by Popkin has gained wide currency within the nutritional sciences literature as a way of understanding population wide changes to diet and energy balance and their related health outcomes in society. It offers a useful template of different nutritional patterns societies progress through, but it has not provided a comprehensive understanding of the why and how of dietary change. Building on insights from the literature on food regimes in the social sciences, this paper argues the (...) concept of dietary regimes can augment the nutrition transition model and can serve as a bridge between social and health sciences around nutrition and dietary change. The political economy analysis of the dietary regime approach provides insights into the historical degradation of food and the diffusion of nutrient-poor products throughout food environments today. It also engages analysis of the key actors shaping food environments and diets in the industrial era. The dietary regime approach can provide fruitful directions with respect to concrete policy options to address the major issue of population wide weight gain that the nutrition transition model has sought to confront in recent iterations. (shrink)

The PBR theorem gives insight into how quantum mechanics describes a physical system. This paper explores PBRs’ general result and shows that it does not disallow the ensemble interpretation of quantum mechanics and maintains, as it must, the fundamentally statistical character of quantum mechanics. This is illustrated by drawing an analogy with an ideal gas. An ensemble interpretation of the Schrödinger cat experiment that does not violate the PBR conclusion is also given. The ramifications, limits, and weaknesses of the PBR (...) assumptions, especially in light of lessons learned from Bell’s theorem, are elucidated. It is shown that, if valid, PBRs’ conclusion specifies what type of ensemble interpretations are possible. The PBR conclusion would require a more direct correspondence between the quantum state ) and the reality it describes than might otherwise be expected. A simple terminology is introduced to clarify this greater correspondence. (shrink)