This article explores Gerardus van der Leeuw’s view of phenomenology of religion. The phenomenological method he defended is basically a hermeneutical approach in which an observer relates personally and even existentially to the “phenomena” (s)he studies in order to determine their essence (Wesensschau). In his anthropology (that reflects on the basic structure of human beings) a similar way of relating to the world is discussed: the “primitive mentality” that is characterized by the “need to participate” (besoin de participation). Both phenomenology (...) and mentalité primitive imply a critique of modern scholarship. This fundamental criticism of the prevailing (historical) approach in the humanities including religious studies explains the growing distance between van der Leeuw and the majority of scholars of religion in the decades after his death in 1950. (shrink)

Ariès traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret.

According to international scientific medical consensus, death is a biological, unidirectional, ontological state of an organism, the event that separates the process of dying from the process of disintegration. Death is not merely a social contrivance or a normative concept; it is a scientific reality. Using this paradigm, the international consensus is that, regardless of context, death is operationally defined as “the permanent loss of the capacity for consciousness and all brainstem function. This may result from permanent cessation of circulation (...) or catastrophic brain injury. In the context of death determination, ‘permanent’ refers to loss of function that cannot resume spontaneously and will not be restored through intervention.” The word “permanent” replaces “irreversible” (used in the United States’ 1980 Uniform Declaration of Death Act) in this new definition, arguably invented to allow donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) while still complying with the dead donor rule. I will show that this invention fails, for at least four reasons. (shrink)

This remarkable book--the fruit of almost two decades of study--traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Aries shows how, (...) from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the Common Era, death was too common to be frightening; each life was quietly subordinated to the community, which paid its respects and then moved on. Aries identifies the first major shift in attitude with the turn of the eleventh century when a sense of individuality began to rise and with it, profound consequences: death no longer meant merely the weakening of community, but rather the destruction of self. Hence the growing fear of the afterlife, new conceptions of the Last Judgment, and the first attempts (by Masses and other rituals) to guarantee a better life in the next world. In the 1500s attention shifted from the demise of the self to that of the loved one (as family supplants community), and by the nineteenth century death comes to be viewed as simply a staging post toward reunion in the hereafter. Finally, Aries shows why death has become such an unendurable truth in our own century--how it has been nearly banished from our daily lives--and points out what may be done to "re-tame" this secret terror. The richness of Aries's source material and investigative work is breathtaking. While exploring everything from churches, religious rituals, and graveyards (with their often macabre headstones and monuments), to wills and testaments, love letters, literature, paintings, diaries, town plans, crime and sanitation reports, and grave robbing complaints, Aries ranges across Europe to Russia on the one hand and to England and America on the other. As he sorts out the tangled mysteries of our accumulated terrors and beliefs, we come to understand the history--indeed the pathology--of our intellectual and psychological tensions in the face of death. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 42-44.

This paper studies the language of contractility in Burke's Enquiry, showing it to be closely related to types of heterodox medicine including the work of his father-in-law Christopher Nugent. Extensive connections are located between these medical ideas and questions of social and professional identity, including their visual aspects in contemporary portraiture. This essay finally examines the crucial significance of contractility as the discursive template upon which Burke's aesthetic ideas were modelled, and, accordingly, offers a new genealogy and a new definition (...) of the concept of the sublime as a radical ideal of extreme oppositions with important literary, epistemological and political implications. (shrink)

In the words of the author,` this book represents an attempt to raise anew the banner of human values sanctified in the Book of Books and it is a call to rally ...

Resumo. Hannah Arendt. Educação inicial. Agostinho de Hipona. Este artigo faz parte de uma investigação em andamento, na qual exploramos a leitura de arendtiana do Agostinho de Hipona, partindo da obra inicial, El concepto de amor en San Agustín (2001). Consideramos que a investigação da dissertação doutoral, obra tão pouco explorada pelos seus mais relevantes interpretes, pode brindarmos novas chaves de leitura da teoria política de Hannah Arendt, tornando mais complexo nossa abordagem na sua leitura heterodoxa da tradição do pensamento (...) filosófico. Segundo nossa hipótese é a tese doutoral de 1929, onde a dimensão política do problema num sentido amplo começa a emergir, a partir da questão do que é especificamente humano, sempre sujeito à constante tensão entre um “não mais” e um “ainda não” (Arendt, 2001: 311; Agustín, 2005: XI, 21,27). Somente em posteriores trabalhos a leitura da fonte agostiniana –focada cada vez mais nas Confesiones (2005) y na Ciudad de Dios (1958) fica articulada explicitamente com a elaboração da trama mais conhecida da fenomenologia da ação política; na qual numerosos e importantes interpretes tenham situado o giro embora da política da aluna do Heidegger e Jaspers (Young Bruehl, 2006; Canovan, 2002; Benhabib, 2000; Forti, 2001). Embora essas autoras reconheçam a formação inicial e sua influencia sobre a filósofa Arendt, em geral, todas elas acentuam a ruptura com todo o seu escopo de formação universitária em filosofia e teologia. (shrink)

Short (“seed”) or extended base pairing between microRNAs (miRNAs) and their target RNAs enables post‐transcriptional silencing in many organisms. These interactions allow the computational prediction of potential targets. In model organisms, predicted targets are frequently validated experimentally; hence meaningful miRNA‐regulated processes are reported. However, in non‐models, these reports mostly rely on computational prediction alone. Many times, further bioinformatic analyses such as Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment are based on these in silico projections. Here such approaches are reviewed, their caveats are highlighted (...) and the ease of picking false targets from predicted lists is demonstrated. Discoveries that shed new light on how miRNAs evolved to regulate targets in various phyletic groups are discussed, in addition to the pitfalls of target identification in non‐model organisms. The goal is to prevent the misuse of bioinformatic tools, as they cannot bypass the biological understanding of miRNA–target regulation. (shrink)

Constructions of Intersubjectivity shows that the meaning of grammatical constructions often has more to do with the human cognitive capacity for taking other peoples' points of view than with describing the world. Treating pragmatics, semantics, and syntax in parallel and integrating insights from linguistics, psychology, and animal communication, Arie Verhagen develops a new understanding of linguistic communication. In doing so he shows the continuity between language and animal communication and reveals the nature of human linguistic specialization. Professor Verhagen uses Dutch (...) and English data from a wide variety of sources and considers the contributions of grammar to the coherence of discourse. He argues that important problems in semantics and syntax may be resolved if language is understood as an instrument for exerting influence and coordinating different perspectives. The grammatical phenomena he discusses include negative expressions, the let alone construction, complementation constructions, and discourse connectives.This powerfully argued and original explanation of the nature and operation of communication will interest a wide range of scholars and advanced students in linguistics, cognitive science, and human evolution. (shrink)

IntroductionIn addition to being a source of valuable nutrients, meat consumption has several negative consequences; for the environment, for animal welfare, and for human health. To persuade people to lower their meat consumption, it is assumed that the personal relevance of the topic of lowering meat consumption is important as it determines how people perceive the quality of the arguments.MethodIn an experimental exploratory field study, participants recruited from the general Italian population were randomized to one of the four conditions with (...) a text with pictures on the environmental, animal welfare, or health consequences of meat consumption, or a text on mustard. The dependent variables were self-reported consumption of red meat and processed meat after 2 weeks. Personal relevance was assessed in the pre-test with self-reported meat consumption and intention.ResultsThe interaction between pre-test meat consumption and condition was significant: In participants who scored high on pre-test meat consumption, the self-reported red meat consumption after 2 weeks in the health argument condition was significantly lower compared to the control condition and the environmental argument condition. The effects of pre-test intention as a moderator were less certain.DiscussionThe persuasive effects of the different arguments made a difference only in people who ate a relatively high level of meat in pre-test, and the type of arguments made a difference. Although the present outcomes are caused by the specific formulations of the arguments in this study, the results do show that it is relevant to choose the arguments carefully to ensure effectiveness. (shrink)

Inleiding tot enkele belangrijke figuren uit de geschiedenis van de westerse wijsgerige ethiek.

A classic example of the arbitrary relation between the way a word sounds and its meaning is that microorganism is a very long word that refers to a very small entity, whereas whale is a very short word that refers to something very big. This example, originally presented in Hockett's list of language's design features, has been often cited over the years, not only by those discussing the arbitrary nature of language, but also by researchers of sound symbolism. While the (...) two groups disagreed regarding the role of arbitrariness and sound symbolism in language, they both agreed there is a nonsound symbolic relation between word length and entity size in this case. This paper shows that the length of the words whale and microorganism in fact reflects a sound symbolic pattern. An analysis of >600 languages from >100 language families shows that languages use longer words to denote the concept small than they do to denote the concept big. The paper thus shows how explicit judgments might differ from implicit cognitive association and the problem of relying on these in sound symbolism research. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

Trabajando sobre el género de ¿Historias de los Profetas¿ (Qis.as. al-Anbiya-¿) en el proceso de elaboración de mi tesis sobre Abraham en la literatura islámica, el profesor J. Sadan me envió un manuscrito que había localizado en la British Library relacionado con este género. Posteriormente encontré versiones similares de la misma composición, lo que me animó a profundizar mi investigación sobre sus orígenes. La obra está próxima a la literatura de predicación (wa¿z.), que se ocupa principalmente de la educación moral, (...) pero también incluye historias. Me planteé la posibilidad de que éste formarse un género que hubiera surgido como una ayuda, un material auxiliar concebido para entender la tradición oral y los estudios religiosos para, posteriormente, convertirse en un género independiente, más cercano a la Parénesis o al Specula Regis (Espejos de príncipes). Describiré el manuscrito para intentar alcanzar una conclusión sobre ciertas cuestiones: ¿es éste un género literario diferente?, ¿se trata de un género educativo o solamente es una versión simplificada de historias para ilustrar a niños o principiantes de la lengua árabe?, ¿buscaría el autor un nombre original para su compilación, haciendo referencia al reducido tamaño de la colección y descartando el de Qis.as. al-Anbiya-¿ por ser conocido? (shrink)

This essay seeks to examine the history of the intellectual comradeship between J.L. Talmon and the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). The scholarly dialog between the two began in 1947, continued until Talmon's death in 1980, and is well documented in their private correspondence. I argue that there were two levels to this dialog: First, both Berlin and Talmon took part in the Totalitarianism discourse, which was colored by Popperian terminology, and thus I claim that (...) their ideas should be examined as part of the Cold-War political discourse. The second level stemmed from their similar East-European origin, their mutual Jewish identity, and their attitude towards the Zionist movement. At times the two levels of discourse conjoined commensurably, but in other cases the juxtaposition of the two created conceptual tensions. Examining Berlin and Talmon's thought from this dual perspective, I argue, can shed new light on the inner conflicts and conceptual tensions that each of them had to face. In particular, I claim that both thinkers tried to integrate their Anglophile liberal heritage with their support of National movements in general, and the Jewish National movement in particular. Nevertheless, the different approaches of Talmon and Berlin present two concepts of liberal Nationalism: While Talmon assumed that Zionism solved the Jewish individual's dilemmas by making Jews members of a commune attached to soil; Berlin sought to preserve the individual in an inviolable sphere and thus was more ambivalent in his attitude towards the state of Israel. In conclusion, I offer to see Talmon as a classic Zionist liberal and Berlin as a supporter of what I call “Diaspora Zionism”, an approach, which would later provide the grounds for Berlin's celebrated pluralism. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to give a comprehensive and readable account of the first World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. The Parliament was organised in the context of the Columbian World Exhibition and attracted 150,000 people, according to one of the lenghty reports. Various aspects are addressed: the objectives of the organisers, the character of the various reports of this mega-event, the participation of women, the relationship between the Christian organisers and the representatives of the (...) East, the various – opposing – claims about the superiority of specific forms of religion and culture, the tendency to spiritualize religion, and the role of the emerging field of religious studies versus the ‘interfaith’ character of the Parliament. The participants were convinced of the ultimate meaning of ‘religion’ as a force against indulging in consumerism and materialism. (shrink)

[1] Seder rishon. Yesode halikhot ha-Shulḥan ʻarukh ha-hamishi. Sefer rishon - ha-kolel: Petiḥah maḳifah le-khol shemonat sidre halikhot ha-Shulḥan ʻarukh ha-ḥamishi ... Ḥeleḳ 1. Torat ha-hanhagut derekh erets u-musar ... Ḥeleḳ 2. Meḳorot halikhot ha-Shulḥan ʻarukh ha-ḥamishi ... Ḥeleḳ 3. Ḥashivut limud halikhot ha-Shulḥan ʻarukh ha-ḥamishi ... Nispaḥim -- 2. Seder sheni. Halikhot adam le-ḥavero.

Some people claim that evolution is "just a theory". Do you know what a scientific theory really is? Just a theory is an overview of the modern concepts of science. A clear understanding of the nature of science will enable you to distinguish science from pseudoscience (which illegitimately wraps itself in the mantle of science), and real social issues in science from the caricatures portrayed in postmodernist critiques. Prof. Ben-Ari's style is light (even humorous) and easy to read, bringing the (...) latest concepts of science to the general reader. Of particular interest is his analysis of the terminology of science (fact, law, proof, theory) in relation to the colloquial meaning of these terms. Between chapters are biographical vignettes of scientists — both familiar and unfamiliar — showing their common commitment to the enterprise of science, together with a diversity of backgrounds and personalities. This accessible, informative, and comprehensive work will give lay readers a good grasp of real science. (shrink)

We investigate the connection between ▵1 3-stability for random and Cohen forcing notions and the measurability and categoricity of the ▵1 3-sets. We show that Shelah's model for ▵1 3-measurability and categoricity satisfies ▵1 3-random-stability while it does not satisfy ▵1 3-Cohen-stability. This gives an example of measure-category asymmetry. We also present a result concerning finite support iterations of Suslin forcing.

Bringing together philosophical, political, and psychoanalytical perspectives, in analysing both the concept and the phenomenon of evil, the contributors to..

ArgumentFollowing World War II, as macroeconomics and econometrics became a necessary tool for policy-making, economists worldwide rose in influence. Those economists in peripheral and new countries were especially important as they could wield the instruments essential in forming states. Israel was no exception. In Israel this process was associated with the establishment of the economics department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Falk Project, led by Don Patinkin and the community of economists that he nurtured. This article poses (...) three questions regarding Patinkin's influence and his role in the process of state formation. First, how did he affect economic policy discourse in Israel; second, what role did Patinkin and his students play in the process of state formation; and finally, what was the effect of Patinkin and his students on Israeli government policies? I argue that Patinkin had a specific and irreducible influence on the localization of pro-market ideas and policies in Israel, and that he and his students contributed to the consolidation of the state autonomy and capacity. Furthermore, I argue that they contributed to a more strict implementation of the recession policy in the mid-1960s. (shrink)

After falling from a roof, an older man lost neurological function below his face. In two days, the patient regained consciousness, but it was unclear whether he could communicate his preferences, whether due to injuries or difficulties with language. His family believed he could communicate with them, and that he was capable of making treatment decisions. The staff did not think to contact the hospital’s largely inactive ethics consultation service for assistance, and instead looked to the patient’s living will for (...) guidance, even though the patient was not terminally ill, and his lack of capacity had not been determined. (shrink)

From 22-25 May, 1999, the University of Groningen hosted an international conference on 'The Book of Nature. Continuity and change in European and American attitudes towards the natural world'. From Antiquity down to our own time, theologians, philosophers and scientists have often compared nature to a book, which might, under the right circumstances, be read and interpreted in order to come closer to the 'Author' of nature, God. The 'reading' of this book was not regarded as mere idle curiosity, but (...) it was seen as leading to a deeper understanding of God's wisdom and power, and it culturally legitimated and promoted a positive attitude towards nature and its study. A selection of the papers which were delivered at the conference has been edited in two volumes. The first deals with the perception of the Book of Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages; the second volume is devoted to the history of the concept in early modern and modern history. (shrink)