“Metapolitics” is an ambiguous term. Recent philosophers have claimed the concept for neo-conservative, even right-wing agendas, while others have employed it to signal radical discontent with politics altogether. Beginning with Peter Viereck’s characterization of Nazi ideology as “Meta-Politics,” this essay works its way back from an “irrational,” “volkish,” and supposedly “conservative” concept to another use of “Metapolitics” as found in Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen that was rooted in a liberal tradition of the Enlightenment—especially in August Schlözer and Saul Ascher. (...) Both, Buber and Cohen, linked “metapolitical politics” to prophetic and theopolitical sensibilities. As such, the prophetic motif of turning loomed large at the center of their respective philosophies of nationalism. But it was a theme that also connected a wide range of thinkers, including Hans Kohn and Leo Baeck, and which emerged as a Leitmotiv of cultural and spiritual Zionism as well as of the modern Renaissance of Jewish culture. Drawing on Moritz Lazarus, the essay argues that the recurring trope of turning helped establish a paradoxical nationalism founded not upon self-empowerment and political othering but on self-criticism. Concluding with a brief excursion on Abraham Joshua Heschel’s prophetic politics in the Civil Rights Movement, the essay gestures towards the possibility of nationalism as collective introspection and self-reformation. (shrink)

Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption culminates in an aesthetic configuration of simultaneous presences: world, man, God, creation, revelation, and redemption are viewed in a metahistorical side-by-side, connected by the “factualizing power of the And.” But the idea of simultaneity, which is central to Rosenzweig’s configurative thinking, belongs to the historical imagination as much as it belongs to the theological “breaking through the shackles of time.” Rosenzweig’s “and” belongs to both a tradition of cosmic-aesthetic historicism and the philosophical reconstitution of time (...) as a simultaneous perception. In the co-presence of all historical moments, history’s hidden Gestalt, which only a people that is at once old and young can envision, connects the “and” of history with what Hegel considered history’s end—its ultimate self-recognition. Eternity, then, means neither flight from, nor resistance to, history’s naked fact, but the recognition of history’s Gestalt as an image that “does not tolerate epochs.”. (shrink)

It is tempting to invoke organismal selection as perpetually optimizing the function of any given gene. However, natural selection can drive genic functional change without improvement of biochemical activity, even to the extinction of gene activity. Detrimental mutations can creep in owing to linkage with other selectively favored loci. Selection can promote functional degradation, irrespective of genetic drift, when adaptation occurs by loss of gene function. Even stabilizing selection on a trait can lead to divergence of the underlying molecular constituents. (...) Selfish genetic elements can also proliferate independent of any functional benefits to the host genome. Here we review the logic and evidence for these diverse processes acting in genome evolution. This collection of distinct evolutionary phenomena – while operating through easily understandable mechanisms – all contribute to the seemingly counterintuitive notion that maintenance or improvement of a gene's biochemical function sometimes do not determine its evolutionary fate. (shrink)

Recent research has filled many gaps about Caenorhabditis natural history, simultaneously exposing how much remains to be discovered. This awareness now provides means of connecting ecological and evolutionary theory with diverse biological patterns within and among species in terms of adaptation, sexual selection, breeding systems, speciation, and other phenomena. Moreover, the heralded laboratory tractability of C. elegans, and Caenorhabditis species generally, provides a powerful case study for experimental hypothesis testing about evolutionary and ecological processes to levels of detail unparalleled by (...) most study systems. Here, I synthesize pertinent theory with what we know and suspect about Caenorhabditis natural history for salient features of biodiversity, phenotypes, population dynamics, and interactions within and between species. I identify topics of pressing concern to advance Caenorhabditis biology and to study general evolutionary processes, including the key opportunities to tackle problems in dispersal dynamics, competition, and the dimensionality of niche space. (shrink)

CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing can and has altered human genomes, bringing bioethical debates about this capability to the forefront of philosophical and policy considerations. Here, I consider the underexplored implications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives for heritable human genome editing. Modification gene drives applied to heritable human genome editing would introduce a novel form of involuntary eugenic practice that I term guerrilla eugenics. Once introduced into a genome, stealth genetic editing by a gene drive genetic element would occur each subsequent generation irrespective (...) of whether reproductive partners consent to it and irrespective of whether the genetic change confers any benefit. By overriding the ability to ‘opt in’ to genome editing, gene drives compromise the autonomy of carrier individuals and their reproductive partners to choose to use or avoid genome editing and impose additional burdens on those who hope to ‘opt out’ of further genome editing. High incidence of an initially rare gene drive in small human communities could occur within 200 years, with evolutionary fixation globally in a timeframe that is thousands of times sooner than achievable by non-drive germline editing. Following any introduction of heritable gene drives into human genomes, practices intended for surveillance or reversal also create fundamental ethical problems. Current policy guidelines do not comment explicitly on gene drives in humans. These considerations motivate an explicit moratorium as being warranted on gene drive development in heritable human genome editing. (shrink)

Das angebliche Bilderverbot, das im Zweiten Gebot des Dekalogs enthalten sein soll, ist eigentlich ein Idolatrieverbot. Das heißt, dass das jüdische Gesetz nicht Bilder an sich, sondern Idole verbietet. Gewiss: Manche Bilder werden als Idole verehrt. Es gibt aber auch Bilder, die keine idolatrische Bedeutung haben, und umgekehrt Idole, die keinen bildlichen Charakter aufweisen. Die Untersuchung dieser komplexen Zusammenhänge ist das Hauptziel des vorliegenden Sammelbandes. Von unterschiedlichen theoretischen Standpunkten ausgehend, eröffnen die hier versammelten Aufsätze neue Perspektiven auf das Verhältnis zwischen (...) Bild und Idol. Mit Beiträgen von Beniamino Fortis, Asher D. Biemann, Ellen Rinner, Mario C. Schmidt, Lars Tittmar, Johannes Bennke und Agata Bielik-Robson. (shrink)

Ḳitsur Ḥovat ha-levavot me-Rabenu Asher mi-Lunil -- Ḳitsur Ḥovat ha-levavot mi-sefer Tsedah la-derekh -- Ḳitsur Ḥovat ha-levavot ʻAśarah hilulim -- Ḳitsur Ḥovat ha-levavot Margaliyot ṭovot.

In recent times there have been increasing efforts at reinterpreting core CSR theories such as stakeholder theory with new perspectives as well as applying them to different contexts away from its Western masculinist connotations. This work seeks to add to these efforts by exploring the impacts that the African philosophical worldview of Afro-communitarianism has on small business stakeholder relationships. Specifically it discusses the kinds of relationships that owner/managers of small businesses, in adherence to Afro-communitarianism, maintain with their families, employees, local (...) communities and competitors- all key stakeholders. The contention is that such ethics demand more extensive ethical responsibilities from owner/managers of small businesses than owner/managers motivated by traditional stakeholder theory with its Western masculinist undertones. It is hoped that this effort will add significant perspectives to stakeholder theory as well as having implications for both small and large business practice. (shrink)

Extreme conditions like savantism, autism or synaesthesia, which have a neurological 2AH, UK basis, challenge the idea that other minds are similar to our own. In this paper we report a single case study of a man in whom all three of these conditions co-occur. We suggest, on the basis of this single case, that when savantism and synaesthesia co- occur, it is worthwhile testing for an undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). This is because savantism has an established association with (...) ASC, and the combination of ASC with synaesthesia may increase the likelihood of savantism. The implications of these conditions for philosophy of mind are introduced. (shrink)

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the ethical value of literature. However, how exactly does literature contribute to our ethical understanding? In Literature, Ethics, and the Emotions, Kenneth Asher argues that literary scholars should locate this question in the long and various history of moral philosophy. On the basis of his own reading of this history, Asher contends for the centrality of emotions in our ethical lives and shows how literature - novels, poetry, and drama - (...) can each contribute to crucial emotional understanding. Individual chapters on T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and George Bernard Shaw give detailed analyses of how this contribution takes shape even in modernist authors who try to reconfigure the very nature of the self. (shrink)

Philosophy Lab: An Experiential Approach to Conceptual Analysis gives students the skills and strategies needed to do philosophical work in the Analytic tradition. They are presented with a step-by-step method for performing a preliminary conceptual analysis and practice examples to apply the method to standard philosophical problems. Students are introduced to the work of great thinkers including Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Wittgenstein, and Ryle. These works are complemented by contemporary empirical findings concerning perception, desire, emotion, moral intuition, and other basic elements (...) of explicit intentional cognition. Each chapter features primary source material, commentary, and activity instructions. The activities are designed to allow students to experience each mode of cognition in relative isolation, and then to see how they combine and interrelate in more complex contexts. Finally, students use the template model of conceptual analysis to explore the material. They identify and isolate the concept to be analyzed, determine whether it is simple or complex, and if complex, identify the constituent parts of the concept. Specific topics covered include causal power, sex and marriage, compassion, ambition, justice, and death. Through presentation and modeling the book not only enables student to do conceptual analysis with precision, it helps them understand and interpret philosophical issues. Philosophy Lab is a comprehensive, carefully designed text for first courses in philosophy. It may be used with first-year undergraduate students, advanced high-school students, or adult learners. Asher Walden holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion from Drew University. Dr. Walden is currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. (shrink)

Jay Asher’s novel Thirteen Reasons Why and its Netflix adaptation have enjoyed widespread popularity. While they draw needed attention to issues like bullying and teen estrangement, they may have an unintended effect: they mislead about the etiology of suicide and even glamorize it to a degree. The medical literature has shown that suicide is almost always the result of psychiatric disorder, not provocative stress, in much the same way an asthmatic crisis is primarily the result of an underlying medical (...) condition, not an allergic stimulus. Both the novel and Netflix series ignore this premise and even belittle the idea. Thus, while the story has artistic merits, it also has the potential to be destructive if accessed by young readers and viewers seeking guidance. Approximately ten percent of teens suffer from depression, and suicide recently surpassed homicide as the second-leading cause of death among persons ages ten to twenty-four in the United States. A more balanced view addressing these misconceptions is provided for teens, parents, and mental health professionals. (shrink)

Antes de qualquer coisa, o leitor do presente artigo encontrará uma grande preocupação de David Asher em transmitir o pensamento filosófico de Schopenhauer para o leitor britânico da época (1871), isso fica claro, pois esse empreendimento por vezes levou o autor a fazer citações ultra extensas de Schopenhauer (das quais ele mesmo traduzia da língua alemã para o inglês). Nessas longas citações/traduções que o autor faz do filósofo, tratei de copiá-las da tradução brasileira de Jair Barboza d’O mundo como (...) vontade e como representação. Sempre especifico essas cópias em notas, por isso, meu trabalho foi de fazer uma tradução parcial: traduzir o próprio Asher e não o texto de Schopenhauer traduzido por ele. Outro ponto muitíssimo importante a ser levado em consideração é que o presente texto foi comprovadamente lido pelo próprio Charles Darwin, tal como devidamente mostro na nota de rodapé número 16. (shrink)

La célébration du cinquantième anniversaire de la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et de l’ouverture des camps donne depuis quelques années l’occasion de revisiter une histoire juive douloureuse et loin d’être dépassionnée. De nombreux déportés, l’âge venu, écrivent leurs témoignages, toujours poignants, et qui éclairent les faits avec la brutalité que donne l’expérience personnelle. Quelques-uns de ces témoignages retiennent particulièrement l’attention par ce qu’ils nous font comprendre de...

Georges Zainaty. BIBLIOGRAPHIE Ahlwardt : Die Handschriften - Verzeichnisse Der Koniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Sechszehnter Band. Verzeichniss der arabischen Handschriften Vierter Band VIII Buch, Die Philosophie. Berlin A. Asher ...

Résumé Black Sea Files, d’Ursula Biemann, et Corridor X, d’Angela Melitopoulos, sont des vidéos projetées sur double écran qui explorent la construction d’infrastructures : le pipeline BTC (Bakou-Tbilissi-Ceyhan) et le corridor paneuropéen de transport allant de Salzbourg et Budapest à Sofia et Thessalonique. Chacune se confronte au caractère abstrait des espaces produits par les processus de planification capitaliste contemporains ; mais chacune se détourne dans le même temps vers « une myriade de trajectoires humains qui se déroulent au niveau (...) du sol ». Elles y découvrent la production d’un milieu existentiel vécu et façonné par ses habitants, un espace vital ouvert aux devenirs les plus inattendus, et en même temps intérieurement contradictoire de par sa multiplicité même. C’est ce que Lefebvre appelait « l’espace différentiel ». Mais entre l’époque de Lefebvre et la nôtre, il y a eu une floraison d’enquêtes féministes et d’historiographies postcoloniales, qui ont prêté une attention particulière aux interactions entre la positionnalité des sujets et les savoirs situés (y compris les savoirs d’expression). Ces réflexions induisent un nouveau traitement du récit, une démultiplication de sa texture gestuelle et narrative, qui élargit la production de l’espace à travers le montage vidéographique lui-même. La recherche artistique donne forme à une géographie différentielle, c’est-à-dire à un mode de connaissance (de reconnaissance, d’auto-connaissance) qui permet aux sujets d’inscrire dans la trame gestuelle du récit leur propre positionnalité, tout en exposant ses déterminations socioéconomiques au flux du temps intersubjectif et à la fluctuation électronique de l’image vidéo. (shrink)

Résumé Black Sea Files, d’Ursula Biemann, et Corridor X, d’Angela Melitopoulos, sont des vidéos projetées sur double écran qui explorent la construction d’infrastructures : le pipeline BTC (Bakou-Tbilissi-Ceyhan) et le corridor paneuropéen de transport allant de Salzbourg et Budapest à Sofia et Thessalonique. Chacune se confronte au caractère abstrait des espaces produits par les processus de planification capitaliste contemporains ; mais chacune se détourne dans le même temps vers « une myriade de trajectoires humains qui se déroulent au niveau (...) du sol ». Elles y découvrent la production d’un milieu existentiel vécu et façonné par ses habitants, un espace vital ouvert aux devenirs les plus inattendus, et en même temps intérieurement contradictoire de par sa multiplicité même. C’est ce que Lefebvre appelait « l’espace différentiel ». Mais entre l’époque de Lefebvre et la nôtre, il y a eu une floraison d’enquêtes féministes et d’historiographies postcoloniales, qui ont prêté une attention particulière aux interactions entre la positionnalité des sujets et les savoirs situés (y compris les savoirs d’expression). Ces réflexions induisent un nouveau traitement du récit, une démultiplication de sa texture gestuelle et narrative, qui élargit la production de l’espace à travers le montage vidéographique lui-même. La recherche artistique donne forme à une géographie différentielle, c’est-à-dire à un mode de connaissance (de reconnaissance, d’auto-connaissance) qui permet aux sujets d’inscrire dans la trame gestuelle du récit leur propre positionnalité, tout en exposant ses déterminations socioéconomiques au flux du temps intersubjectif et à la fluctuation électronique de l’image vidéo. (shrink)

The idea that an adequate semantics of ordinary language calls for some theory of events has sparked considerable debate among linguists and philosophers. On the one hand, so many linguistic phenomena appear to be explained if (and, according to some authors, only if) we make room for logical forms in which reference to or quantification over events is explicitly featured. Examples include nominalization, adverbial modification, tense and aspect, plurals, and singular causal statements. On the other hand, a number of deep (...) philosophical questions arise as soon as we take events into consideration. Are events entities of a kind? What are their identity and individuation criteria? How does semantic theorizing depend on such metaphysical issues? The aim of this book is to address such issues in some depth, with emphasis precisely on the interplay between linguistic applications and philosophical implications. Contributors: N. Asher, P. M. Bertinetto, J. Brandl, D. Delfitto, R. Eckardt, J. Higginbotham, A. Lenci, T. Parsons, A. ter Meulen, H. Verkuyl. A comprehensive introductory essay (pp. 3-47) is included. (shrink)

In accordance with an old suggestion of Asher Peres (1962), we consider the electromagnetic field as fundamental and the metric as a subsidiary field. In following up this thought, we formulate Maxwell’s theory in a diffeomorphism invariant and metric-independent way. The electromagnetic field is then given in terms of the excitation $H = ({\cal H}, {\cal D})$ and the field strength F = (E,B). Additionally, a local and linear “spacetime relation” is assumed between H and F, namely H ~ (...) κ F, with the constitutive tensor κ. The propagation is studied of electromagnetic wave fronts (surfaces of discontinuity) with a method of Hadamard. We find a generalized Fresnel equation that is quartic in the wave covector of the wave front. We discuss under which conditions the waves propagate along the light cone. Thereby we derive the metric of spacetime, up to a conformal factor, by purely electromagnetic methods. (shrink)

Books reviewed:Victor H. Matthews, Bernard M. Levinson and Tikva Frymer‐Kensky, Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near EastNeil Asher Silberman and David B. Small, The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the PresentErich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish TraditionBrenda Deen Schildgen, Power and Prejudice: The Reception of the Gospel of MarkDavid C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean CommunityAllan D. Fitzgerald, (...) Augustine Through the Ages: An EncyclopediaLionel R. Wickham, Hilary of Poitiers: Conflicts of Conscience and Law in the Fourth‐Century ChurchAidan Nichols, The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar's AestheticsAidan Nichols, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Balthasar's DramaticsPaul Avis, God and the Creative Imagination: Metaphor, Symbol and Myth in Religion and TheologyGarrett Green, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious ImaginationL. William Countryman, The Poetic Imagination: An Anglican Spiritual TraditionRaphael Gallagher and Seán Cannon, Seán O'Riordan, A Theologian of Development: Selected EssaysJames Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter EyesPeter Byrne, The Moral Interpretation of ReligionBrian Davies, Philosophy of Religion: A Guide to the SubjectGrace M. Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of ReligionKeith E. Yandell, Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary IntroductionLouis Dupré, Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection: Excursions in the Phenomenology and Philosophy of ReligionMichael E. Allsopp, Ethics and the Catechism of the Catholic ChurchCharles E. Curran, The Catholic Moral Tradition Today: A SynthesisBernard Hoose, Christian Ethics: An IntroductionPaul Goodliff, Care in a Confused Climate: Pastoral Care and Postmodern CultureSouzy Dracopoulou, Ethics and Values in Health Care ManagementMichael Parker, Ethics and Community in the Health Care ProfessionsHans Küng and Walter Jens, A Dignified Dying: A Plea for Personal ResponsibilityRobin Gill, Euthanasia and the ChurchesGerald Dworkin, R. G. Frey and Sissela Bok, Euthanasia and Physician‐Assisted SuicideCaroline Dunn, Ethical Issues in Mental IllnessDavid Smith, Life and Morality: Contemporary Medico‐Moral IssuesGilbert C. Meilaender, Body, Soul and BioethicsDavid E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer, Spirit of the EnvironmentJ. Milburn Thompson, Justice and Peace: A Christian PrimerMaura M. Ryan and Todd David Whitmore, The Challenge of Global Stewardship: Roman Catholic ResponsesCelia Deane‐Drummond, Theology and Biotechnology: Implications for a New ScienceJohn O'Neill, The Market: Ethics, Knowledge and PoliticsErika Rummel, The Humanist–Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and the ReformationInger Ekrem, Minna Skafte Jensen and Egil Kraggerud, Reformation and Latin Literature in Northern EuropeM. C. Questier, Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George BirkheadJeffrey von Arx, Varieties of UltramontanismFrank J. Coppa, Controversial Concordats: The Vatican's Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini and HitlerA. J. Hoover, God, Britain and Hitler in World War II: The View of the British Clergy, 1939–;1945Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War according to the Archives of the VaticanPeter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural ScienceMichael P. Hornsby‐Smith, Catholics in England, 1950–2000: Historical and Sociological PerspectivesCarol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920Robert E. Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842–1934Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880Harriet A. Harris, Fundamentalism and EvangelicalsJeffrey Richards, Scott Wilson and Linda Woodhead,Diana: The Making of a Media Saint. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a corpus-based investigation and a semantic analysis of the Italian word "altro" ‘other’, focusing on two values of "altro" identified in the previous literature: difference (D-interpretation) and increment along a scale (M-interpretation). In syntax-based studies, focused on cardinal noun phrases, the two values have been related to distinct syntactic positions occupied by "altro" within the NP’s extended projection (Cinque 2015, Kayne 2021): a lower position, associated with the D-interpretation (altro N = ‘other kind of N’), and a (...) higher position, associated with the M-interpretation (altri n N = ‘n more tokens of N’). Conversely, discourse-based studies assume that the two values are due to a lexical ambiguity of "altro", with the D-interpretation being triggered by a discourse relation of contrast and the M-interpretation by an additive relation (Gianollo and Mauri 2020). We examine the distribution of the two values in the CORIS corpus of contemporary Italian (Rossini Favretti et al. 2002) and consider the question of whether they are equally basic interpretations or one of them is derivable from the other. The analysis we propose relies on the idea that the semantic core of "altro" is the relation of non-identity. The D-interpretation and M-interpretation result from the interaction between this semantic core and features of the larger discourse context, with additive and contrastive features playing a major role. Non-identity is introduced in the semantic representation of the sentence irrespective of the syntactic position of "altro", while discourse context—including lexical properties of the noun—determines at what ontological level (whether type or token) non-identity is evaluated. The analysis is cast in the framework of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT; Asher and Lascarides 2003), which allows a modular representation of the separate contributions of "altro" and discourse structure. (shrink)

Books reviewed:Kenneth J. Howell, God's Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern ScienceRichard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient WorldJ. Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John Sarah Coakley, Re‐thinking Gregory of Nyssa Andrew Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle AgesTerryl N. Kinder, Cistercian Europe: Architecture of ContemplationM. G. Snape, English Episcopal Acta, 24: Durham 1153–1195Gillian (...) R. Knight, The Correspondence between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux: a Semantic and Structural AnalysisRichard Rex, The LollardsKathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England, 1350–1500Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellectual GenesisAnne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the ReformationMarjo Kaartinen, Religious Life and English Culture in the ReformationAnne Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic CommunityCharles Libois SJ, Monumenta Proximi‐Orientis. V. Égypte Charles Libois SJ, Monumenta Proximi‐Orientis. VI. Égypte Michael Davies, Graceful Reading: Theology and Narrative in the Works of John BunyanDavid Womersley, Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’. The Historian and his Reputation, 1776–1815Anthony C. Thiselton, A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of ReligionDavid Naugle, Worldview: The History of a ConceptRobert Kane, Free Will Tamar Szabo Gendler and James Hawthorne, Conceivability and PossibilitySimon Critchley, On Humour Gerard J. Pendrick, Antiphon the Sophist: The FragmentsA. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to LifeVictor Nuovo, John Locke: Writings on ReligionTerry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of IdealismBrian Shanley, The Thomist TraditionGianni Vattimo, Nietzsche: An IntroductionAmy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of LovePeter V. Zima, Deconstruction and Critical TheoryL. Gormally, Culture of Life – Culture of DeathMark E. Graham, Joseph Fuchs on Natural Law Norman M. Ford, The Prenatal Person. Ethics from Conception to BirthOnora O'Neill, Autonomy and Trust in BioethicsEllen Frankel Paul, Fred D.Miller Jr. and Jeffrey Paul, Should Differences in Income and Wealth Matter? (shrink)

Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum . After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by his (...) speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below. (shrink)

I want to take issue with the assertion by Flanagan and Polger that there are no good theories as to `why did evolution result in creatures who were more than just informationally sensitive'; that is, why evolution has apparently not produced zombies. I've proposed a theory which I'd like to think is good: that consciousness is for kinds of plausible reasoning not available to mechanistic systems -- that there have been evolutionary advantages in an organism being able to act out (...) choices between alternatives left open to it by the universal laws, choices which require consciousness of inconclusive and incommensurable reasons that the choices can resolve, and which are unique efficacious events rather than just the expression of the universal laws. This idea is developed and defended in Hodgson , 1994a, 1994b, 1995, 1996a, 1996b). No one has yet told me why it is no good. (shrink)

Biography and academic life of Abdoldjavad Falaturi, 1926-, was a German scholar of Iranian origin. He studied Islam (theology, shariah) in Iran, up to the highest possible level, before going to Germany where he studied philosophy.

Critics, once so busy with Manilius, have left him alone since Housman's edition was completed a quarter of a century ago. Perhaps I shall seem rash to break the silence by challenging a few of his verdicts. I do so in no spirit of iconoclasm, but rather believing that Housman wrote for readers who will occasionally call him wrong—at their peril, and on their knees.

Ovid begins his overtly programmatic Amores 2.1 with the claim that Cupid, who had previously interfered with the poet's attempt to write an epic , has once again ordered him to reject epic subjects and to compose a book of decadent love-elegies instead. Faced with this new task, the poet dutifully proceeds to warn that his elegiac verses are not suitable for the prudish but hopes that they will be read by lovers. Among the prospective readers are young men who, (...) like Ovid himself, have been shot by Cupid's arrow. (shrink)

Historical studies suggest that all ideas, including the philosophical, scientific, and religious, are relative to the culture in which they are formulated. After clarifying the concept of relativism, and exploring the epistemological reasons why knowledge is relative, Kaufman argues that these admissions are not fatal to the achievement of valid knowledge in philosophy and theology.--D. D. O.