A Comparative Study of Social and Political Implications of Concepts of Justice and Dharma The similarity between social and political ideas of Plato and ...

Revisiting the Political Thought of Ancient India: Pre-Kautilyan Arthashastra Tradition rediscovers the political ideas of the original and celebrated schools of thought in ancient India--early Arthashastra and Pre-Kautilyan traditions. This book throws light on hitherto not very well-known aspects of political ideas in ancient India, which flourished during the 5th and 4th centuries before Christ. Kautilya's Arthashastra is a major text on ancient Indian political thought, wherein he cited views of a number of Arthashastra teachers who had written on political (...) science. Unfortunately, their writings are not available today; only their views are found scattered in different texts. This book brings together these views to prepare a coherent account of their political ideas and reconstructs the pre-Kautilyan Arthashastra tradition with the help of available sources. (shrink)

This volume brings together essays that discuss and contextualise Gandhi's ideas on pluralism, religious identity, non-violence, satyagraha, and modernity. It interrogates the epistemic foundations of Gandhian thinking and weltanschauung, identifies diverse strands within his arguments, and gives it new meaning in contemporary society. This book focuses on Gandhi's engagements with religious, political, and social conflicts; his reflections on faith and modernity; and his argumentative dialogues with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and B. R. Ambedkar. It provides critical insights into Gandhi's philosophy and (...) suggests ways of engaging with his ethical and moral ideas in contemporary intellectual and political discourse. Comparing and contrasting Gandhian thought and strategies with contemporary issues and conceptions of religious freedom, conflict resolution, and liberalism, the volume reformulates and reconstitutes his intellectual and political legacy. This book points to new and possible future directions of research on Gandhian concepts and will be useful for scholars in the fields of political science, Gandhian studies, sociology, and philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers since Descartes have felt themselves compelled to make a choice between mind and body. Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mind , first published in 1986, argues that there is no genuine epistemological problem of mind, and that the widespread philosophical scepticism with regard to our knowledge of other minds is without foundation. Ashok Vohra applies Wittgenstein’s method to show that the problem has arisen through a tendency to over-philosophise our simple experiences. Vohra presents a positive account of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of (...) mind, arguing that to consider his philosophy entirely destructive is misleading. He shows that knowledge of mind is gained through a large complex of intersubjectively identifiable factors such as the linguistic and non-linguistic past, present and future behaviour of the person concerned. He thus justifies the belief, on which psychology and psychoanalysis are based, that mind is not a mystery to which only the owner has privileged access. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the philosophical approach to faith after deconstruction as manifested in the work of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy. By taking the saturated phenomenon as its focus, the analysis seeks to demonstrate that whilst Marion’s thinking proves to be an innovative re-imagining of the possibilities of phenomenology, its problematic recourse to a supplementary hermeneutic means that saturation can never be adequately applied to faith without simultaneously compromising the excessive intuition upon which it relies. The article then (...) explores whether Nancy’s suggestion that saturation be re-framed as faith can offer a viable alternative approach. Whilst the post-phenomenological modality within which Nancy operates means it may be problematic to retain the term ‘saturation’ in the exact sense Marion gives it, it is argued that Nancy’s version of saturated faith allows us to approach the binary divide between philosophy and theology from a different direction, resulting in a vision of faith that cuts across theism and atheism, destabilising them from within. Although Nancy’s thought in this area certainly does nothing to respond to persistent questions surrounding the place of institutionalized religion within secular modernity, it nevertheless serves as a powerful tool for thinking the possibilities of faith in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In this article I explore how a philosophical conception of love may be used to draw debate on the death of God beyond the binary opposition between theology and philosophy through a comparative study of the work of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy. Although Marion’s reading of love—in both its theological and phenomenological guises—proposes an innovative phrasing of a non-metaphysical notion of divinity, I argue that it is ultimately unable to maintain its coherence in nominal discourse due to Marion’s insistence (...) on keeping love and being separate. In contrast, through his unique thinking on ontology, Nancy’s philosophy allows us to reposition love at the heart of being, from whence it may serve as a means of disrupting the very principle governing the atheist and theist world-views. Far from dismantling Marion’s core proposition, I conclude that the two thinkers may in fact be more closely aligned than previous scholarship has acknowledged, coming together in the need to affirm an experience of the impossible that takes place in the present rather than in any eschatological fulfillment to come. At this intersection between two nominally very different thinkers, love forms an ontological limit-point for thought that poses a challenge to both theology and philosophy alike as they continue to grapple with the question of religion in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Steven Pinker presents four ideals of Enlightenment in his popular book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. He argues his case brilliantly and convincingly through cogent arguments in a language comprehensible to the reader of the present century. Moreover, whether it is reason or science or humanism or progress, he defends his position powerfully. He justifies his views by citing 75 graphs on the upswing improvement made by humanity in terms of prosperity, longevity, education, equality of (...) men and women, health, political freedom and medical breakthroughs. Though Pinker makes an excellent case for the positive contributions of Enlightenment; however he ignores the negative aspects that are responsible for causing a great schism between the white race and others who are black and brown. The paper highlights some of these negative comments made by such Enlightenment thinkers as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Chambers, Down and Down and others. Through their literary and scientific writings, these scholars and researchers downgraded the black and brown races, thus causing a rift that led to slavery, colonialism and apartheid. The paper reveals these negative aspects ignored by Pinker in his otherwise well-researched book on Enlightenment. Since Pinker presents a one-sided case by including only the positive contributions of Enlightenment, I recommend that he should write a sequel to his present work outlining the negative aspects responsible for numerous political, social and environmental problems facing humanity today. By using dialectical logic in place of logic of contraries, he might be able to synthesize both the positive and negative aspects of Enlightenment. He can then argue that humanity might be propelled to make progress more efficiently at a faster pace toward humanism and world peace. (shrink)

It is shown that the well-known disparity in classical electrodynamics between the power losses calculated from the radiation reaction and that from Larmor’s formula, is succinctly understood when a proper distinction is made between quantities expressed in terms of a “real time” and those expressed in terms of a retarded time. It is explicitly shown that an accelerated charge, taken to be a sphere of vanishingly small radius \, experiences at any time a self-force proportional to the acceleration it had (...) at a time \ earlier, while the rate of work done on the charge is obtained by a scalar product of the self-force with the instantaneous value of its velocity. Now if the retarded value of acceleration is expressed in terms of the present values of acceleration, then we get the rate of work done according to the radiation reaction equation, however if we instead express the present value of velocity in terms of its time-retarded value, then we get back the familiar Larmor’s radiation formula. From this simple relation between the two we show that they differ because Larmor’s formula, in contrast with the radiation reaction, is written not in terms of the real-time values of quantities specifying the charge motion but is instead expressed in terms of the time-retarded values. Moreover, it is explicitly shown that the difference in the two formulas for radiative power loss exactly matches the difference in the temporal rate of the change of energy in the self-fields between the retarded and real times. From this it becomes obvious that the ad hoc introduction of an acceleration-dependent energy term, usually referred to in the prevalent literature as Schott-term, in order to make the two formulas comply with each other, is redundant. (shrink)

K. Satchidananda Murty (1924-2011) was a vociferous writer and an iconoclast. This volume is a collection of his unpublished writings It presents Murty's unpublished keynote addresses, papers presented in seminars, and lectures which show his reflections and arguments in contrast to contemporary philosophers with regard to recent developments in philosophy. The writings reveal Murty's rejection of established theories by well-known eastern and western philosophers, as well as his arguments in their support, and present a new interpretation of their contention in (...) the contemporary idiom. Murty critically evaluates the contemporary arguments of Malcolm, James Ross, Alvin Plantinga, Charles Hawthorne, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anthony Flew, E.H. Madden, and P.H. Hare. An important contribution, the book assesses K. Satchidananda Murty's contribution to philosophy during sixty-one years of his engagement with active writing and teaching. It will be of great interest to scholars, teachers, and students of Indian philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Vedāntic philosophy, Advaita Vedānta, comparative philosophy, religious studies, and South Asian studies. (shrink)

In the energy–momentum density expressions for a relativistic perfect fluid with a bulk motion, one comes across a couple of pressure-dependent terms, which though well known, are to an extent, lacking in their conceptual basis and the ensuing physical interpretation. In the expression for the energy density, the rest mass density along with the kinetic energy density of the fluid constituents due to their random motion, which contributes to the pressure as well, are already included. However, in a fluid with (...) a bulk motion, there are, in addition, a couple of explicit, pressure-dependent terms in the energy–momentum density, whose presence to an extent, is shrouded in mystery, especially from a physical perspective. We show here that one such pressure-dependent term appearing in the energy density, represents the work done by the fluid pressure against the Lorentz contraction during transition from the rest frame of the fluid to another frame in which the fluid has a bulk motion. This applies equally to the electromagnetic energy density of electrically charged systems in motion and explains in a natural manner an apparently paradoxical result that the field energy of a charged capacitor system decreases with an increase in the system velocity. The momentum density includes another pressure-dependent term, that represents an energy flow across the system, due to the opposite signs of work being done by pressure on two opposite sides of the moving fluid. From Maxwell’s stress tensor we demonstrate that in the expression for electromagnetic momentum of an electric charged particle, it is the presence of a similar pressure term, arising from electrical self-repulsion forces in the charged sphere, that yields a natural solution for the notorious, more than a century old but thought by many as still unresolved, 4/3 problem in the electromagnetic mass. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the implications of Jean-Luc Nancy’s reading of the subject for educational philosophy by connecting his re-interpretation of Descartes to his later thinking on what he names the ontological singular plural. Nancy’s re-imagining of the Cogito coalesces around the figure of the mouth through which the subject enunciates itself within the world. Reading this extension of the ego through the mouth as an enunciation of ontological singular plurality exposes a speaking subject that communicates via a sharing (...) of its own being with other singular subjects. The article concludes that Nancy’s singular plural holds potential for affirming a substance-less subjectivity that can nevertheless serve as a locus of meaning in the classroom. (shrink)

The meanings in which the word "word" can be taken, the interpretations that the relevant meanings would necessitate of the "word-equals-world" thesis, and the extent to which Bhartṛhari can be said to be aware of or receptive to these interpretations are considered. The observation that more than one interpretation would have been acceptable to Bhartṛhari naturally leads to a discussion of his notion of truth, his perspectivism, and his understanding of the nature of philosophizing as an activity in which language (...) plays a basic role and epistemology and ontology are interdependent. The difference of Bhartṛhari's thinking from that of the Vedāntins of Śaṅkara's tradition is identified, and a brief comment on the history of vivarta and pariṇāma as philosophical terms is offered. (shrink)

Professor k. Satchidananda Murty, one of modern India’s leading philosophers, passed away in his native village of Sangamjagarlamudi in Andhra Pradesh in 2011, after a stellar career during which he advanced knowledge rather than opinion. The Indian Philosophical community, and especially Ashok Vohra, is to be congratulated for producing a dynamic engagement with philosophy. I had known Murty for more than twenty years. I interacted with him several times. When I once asked him where he stood philosophically, he was (...) candid enough to say that he ‘Oscillates between Sankar and Ramanuja’. The essays in this book amply demonstrate that he was a man of many parts but as the allusion to his mystical experiences in his book The Realm of Between reveals, he was also more than the sum of his parts; that while willing to transcend the limits of reason when required. Thus ‘revelation and reason’ characterize not just the title of one of his famous books but in a sense, his life, and this fact renders this collection uniquely relevant for our times. I therefore enthusiastically recommend this book not only to all those interested in the philosophy of Professor Murty, or in Indian Philosophy, or in philosophy in general but to all those interested in contemporary philosophy in the broadest sense. (shrink)

The thesis of the paper is that the root cause of clash or reconciliation among civilizations is housed in the drama of consciousness! Two models of consciousness that highlight this drama are put forward here. First is Jean Gebser’s view, which asserts that the history of human civilization is nothing more than the manifestations of the development of consciousness. This development has taken place through five distinct stages: the archaic, magical, mythic, mental and integrative. Clash in civilizations is due to (...) the fixation on the first four stages whereas reconciliation is possible through the use of the integrative stage. The second is the Tantric Yoga view of consciousness in terms of the seven chakras or wheels of consciousness. These chakras are spread out in the body like seven colors of the rainbow—starting with the base of the spine to the genitals, the belly button, the heart, the throat, the forehead and ending in the crown of the head. Clash in civilizations is due to the fixation on the first three levels (chakras) of consciousness whereas reconciliation is possible through the use of the upper fourwheels of consciousness (chakras), which are focused at developing universal consciousness. Since religion and civilization are intimately connected and several of the prominent civilizational clashes have been due to the religious differences, religious consciousness will be taken as the paradigm of this paper.How can humanity move from clash towards reconciliation? Such a possibility is suggested by both Gebser and Tantric Yoga whose theories point towards the development of an integrative universal consciousness: an encompassing consciousness that will transcend as well as incorporate all limited religious consciousness perspectives in its fold! The views of Vivekananda, a scholar-monk of India, on “one religion/one spirituality” are of particular interest in this context. They indicate an approach, which might lead to a possible future solution thus paving a path towards one-world-spiritual-peaceful order! (shrink)

In this article, I examine the presence of Spinoza within Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity project. Although the debt Nancy owes to other philosophers such as Derrida and Heidegger has been recognized, less well known is his reliance on a Spinozist frame of reference throughout his writings on Christianity. Analyzing Nancy’s reading of key moments within the deconstruction of Christianity—the doctrines of creation ex nihilo and the incarnation—I explore how the coupling of transcendence and immanence in a Heideggerian ontological mode (...) can be enlightened by Spinoza’s philosophy. What takes shape is a profoundly embodied and affective relationality that I argue is the central resource Nancy wishes to expose at the heart of both Christianity and the secular West. (shrink)

InWorkers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India, Rohini Hensman maintains that globalisation has afforded workers new opportunities for confronting capitalist exploitation. Using India as a point of departure, Hensman highlights globalisation as paradoxical, challenging anti-globalisers and the globalisation-as-imperialism thesis, to argue that capital’s toilers are now becoming its gravediggers. This analysis also explains why the World Trade Organization is so appealing to Hensman: a quintessence of capitalism’s contradictions. Hensman argues for both transnational solidarity and independent trade unions, embodied in (...) the ‘employees’ unions’ of India, as well as in favour of thewto’s ‘social clause’ amendment, in which the global exploiter is transformed into an arbiter of workers’ rights. The review maintains that the terms of Hensman’s twin position are impossible to reconcile. It evinces an underlying contradiction between opportunistic statism and a conception of revolutionary strategy predicated on action ‘from below’. (shrink)

With its promise of personal improvement, physical well-being and spiritual enrichment, yoga is enjoying a resurgence in popularity at the turn of the third millennium. To unravel the mystery of the discipline, its philosophies and relevance in contemporary life, the original text of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali must be explored. This book offers the first accessible translation and commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. An introductory section examines the multidimensional aspects of yoga as philosophy, psychology, science, and religion, as well (...) as exploring popular versions of yoga in the West. The core of the book offers a new translation of the entire text of the Yoga Sutras, in a language that is clear and comprehensible to students. Commentaries are presented to highlight the meaning of various statements and key themes are outlined via sectional summaries. A full glossary of key words and names is also provided. Concluding chapters look at yoga in contemporary life, revealing the popularity of yoga in the 21st century through Star Wars, and exploring yoga's connection to health and science, contrasting yoga's holistic view of healing with that of the limited view of present day medical science. Sample physical, breathing and meditation exercises are provided. An Introduction to Yoga Philosophy offers a comprehensive introduction to the Yoga Sutras text of Patanjali to all students and interested readers of Indian philosophy and religion, world religions, east-west psychology, and mysticism. (shrink)

The paper investigates the structure and functioning of the science and technology (S&T) system in India as it has evolved in the post-independence period (1947 onwards). The networks of entities involved in S&T actions, the paper argues, can be categorised, in terms of adopted approaches to agenda and priority setting and accounting for actions, into two streams. The origins and expansion of the two streams are traced. One, the ‘Elite’ stream (high profile and visibility linked to big industry), adopting what (...) the paper has generically termed the ‘Nehruvian’ model of development, is shown to have emerged as a dominant network. The other socially powerful ‘Subaltern’ stream (less visible, closer to ground realities and linked to village and cottage industry), adopting the ‘Gandhian’ model of development, still remains dispersed and outside the consideration of high-level decision-making bodies. The paper stresses the importance of moving the support and attention from the dominant stream to efforts that attempt a synthesis between the dominant and the subaltern. (shrink)

The question of capitalism’s relationship to issues of race, racism and processes of racialisation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debates. This special issue of Historical Materialism on ‘Race and Capital’ seeks to intervene in these debates. In this Introduction, we situate the special issue within this wider political, historical and theoretical context. We begin by reconstructing some of the key tensions and fault lines within contemporary discussions of race and racism, particularly in relation to the Marxist tradition. Against those (...) who claim a primarily oppositional relationship between the Marxist tradition and anti-racist thinking, we chart a historical account of key moments in which Marxist movements and thinkers have attempted to articulate distinctively historical-materialist accounts of race and racism. We then situate the key themes of the special issue – and the various articles that compose the issue – against this background. (shrink)

This book presents a critical and comprehensive biography of Radhakrishnan. The authors explain how Radhakrishnan, who had a British knighthood and an Oxford Professorship, and who did not participate in India’s struggle for freedom, became important in the political life of Independent India. They show how this philosophy professor and vice chancellor often expressed radical views, developed rapport with national leaders, and became President of Indian under Nehru without losing the goodwill and regard of either the British intellectuals or the (...) colonial government of India. It is the thought of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan that is most often presented in the West as “Hinduism.” Through an analysis of his autobiographical sketches, writings of those who knew him and worked with him, and documents, the authors come to grips with Radhakrishnan’s complex personality which, in spite of his greatness and varied achievements, is all too human. (shrink)

Visual analogy is believed to be important in human problem solving. Yet, there are few computational models of visual analogy. In this paper, we present a preliminary computational model of visual analogy in problem solving. The model is instantiated in a computer program, called Galatea, which uses a language for representing and transferring visual information called Privlan. We describe how the computational model can account for a small slice of a cognitive-historical analysis of Maxwell’s reasoning about electromagnetism.

The law of informed consent to medical treatment has recently been extensively overhauled in England. The 2015 Montgomery judgment has done away with the long-held position that the information to be disclosed by doctors when obtaining valid consent from patients should be determined on the basis of what a reasonable body of medical opinion agree ought to be disclosed in the circumstances. The UK Supreme Court concluded that the information that is material to a patient’s decision should instead be judged (...) by reference to a new two-limbed test founded on the notions of the ‘reasonable person’ and the ‘particular patient’. The rationale outlined in Montgomery for this new test of materiality, and academic comment on the ruling’s significance, has focused on the central ethical importance that the law now accords to respect for patient autonomy in the process of obtaining consent from patients. In this paper, we dispute the claim that the new test of materiality articulated in Montgomery equates with respect for autonomy being given primacy in re-shaping the development of the law in this area. We also defend this position, arguing that our revised interpretation of Montgomery’s significance does not equate with a failure by the courts to give due legal consideration to what is owed to patients as autonomous decision-makers in the consent process. Instead, Montgomery correctly implies that doctors are ethically obliged to attend to a number of relevant ethical considerations in framing decisions about consent to treatment, which include subtle interpretations of the values of autonomy and well-being. Doctors should give appropriate consideration to how these values are fleshed out and balanced in context in order to specify precisely what information ought to be disclosed to a patient as a requirement of obtaining consent, and as a core component of shared decision-making within medical encounters more generally. (shrink)

Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger encapsulates the complexities of identity formation in a milieu effected by neo-capitalism. The novel, for many, is about a new identity made available to the hitherto marginalized in the form of opportunities unveiled by market forces. It is also perceived as a registration of the frustration and anger of the deprived that has become conscious of the new possibilities. Understandably, interpreting the novel on these lines leads to the identification of the protagonist Balram as (...) a champion of the marginalized, settling scores with the oppressive system. However, there are far subtler notes in the protagonist’s attitude to these sweeping changes than the simple and one dimensional approach of an achiever who is able to break the “rooster coop” and revel at the reversal of fortune. Neither is it a representative voice of the suppressed class turning the table on its oppressor by using the opportunities offered by the global market. The “notes” of the voices that emerge as Balram, the boy from darkness, moves up the ladder to become Ashok Sharma, the entrepreneur hiding in light, not only lack symphony but also create a distinct dissonance. Clearly, the discord in the changing notes is brought about by the forces that changed the world he lives in-a neo-capitalist world. The whole process of Balram turning into Ashok Sharma is a neocapitalist coup. (shrink)

Pandit Gopinath Kaviraj of Varanasi, India was a well-known interpreter of the Hindu Tantric traditions, who also practiced kundalini yoga according to his own understanding of four sequential paths. This study attempts to reconstruct the stages of Kaviraj's system of Tantric yoga by analyzing and integrating innumerable partial discussions scattered throughout his writings, in an effort to reveal the hidden structure of transformations. Primary research materials include collections of Kaviraj's essays on the Hindu Tantric traditions written in Bengali and Hindi, (...) and his philosophical notebook, Svasambedana . ;The concepts of formal and material ontologies, developed for linguistic theory by Ashok Kumar Gangadeen, are adopted in analyzing the category structure of Kaviraj's four paths. A synchronic methodology is used to present Kaviraj's interpretations of the Kashmir Saiva, S akta Tantric and Sahajiy a Vaisnava traditions in relation to known Tantric concepts and practices, found in the classical texts and secondary literature on these traditions. Categories that belong to the material ontologies of the various Tantric sects are examined for trans-sectarian thematic unity and for explicating the processual patterns that constitute the formal ontology which Kaviraj sees as underlying his own four paths. This formal ontology is based on the principle of increments of consciousness by which kundalini/ develops. ;Each of Kaviraj's Tantric paths incorporates orthodox Hindu forms of spiritual realization, but utilizes different means to them, as well as moves beyond them to uniquely Tantric forms of integral realization. Technical terms are discussed from the relevant traditional Hindu perspective and then from their revalorization in relation to uniquely Tantric forms of yogic realization. ;Kaviraj's systemic perspective on the architectonics of his four Tantric paths is also reconstructed and systematized from various schemata found in Svasambedana. Analyses are concerned both with structural replication and with understanding the series of paths as a single continuum based on laws of dialectical synthesis. Finally, there is a discussion of Kaviraj's supreme integral yoga , his own advanced practice for universal integral Self-realization, as taught by his guru and other adepts of the Jnanaganj asram of Tibet. An inquiry is made into its kala-structure, and it is suggested to be an innovative fifth path which utilizes the structure of the other four paths for the bestowal of universal grace. (shrink)

ʻAyn al-Quḍāh al-Hamadhānī, ʻAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad, -1131. ; Ontology -- Islam. ; Knowledge, Theory of (Islam). ; Sufis -- Iran -- Biography. ; Muslim philosophers -- Iran -- Biography.

On the life and works of Maṇḍanamiśra, philosopher of Saṅkarācārya tradition.

ch. 1. Istorii︠a︡ sot︠s︡iologicheskikh ucheniĭ -- ch. 2. Nauchnai︠a︡ teorii︠a︡ obshchestva.

A version of nonstandard analysis, Internal Set Theory, has been used to provide a resolution of Zeno's paradoxes of motion. This resolution is inadequate because the application of Internal Set Theory to the paradoxes requires a model of the world that is not in accordance with either experience or intuition. A model of standard mathematics in which the ordinary real numbers are defined in terms of rational intervals does provide a formalism for understanding the paradoxes. This model suggests that in (...) discussing motion, only intervals, rather than instants, of time are meaningful. The approach presented here reconciles resolutions of the paradoxes based on considering a finite number of acts with those based on analysis of the full infinite set Zeno seems to require. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the classical and quantum mechanics of performing an infinite number of acts in a finite time. (shrink)

in a recent article entitled “Hume on the Passions,” Stephen Buckle opens with the claim that Hume’s theory of the passions has largely been neglected. “Apart from a couple of famous sections in the Treatise concerning the sources of action,” he writes, “the subject matter has rarely excited interest.”1 His analysis of why the subject of the passions in Hume has been uninspiring points to the fact that readers have largely misunderstood the point of Hume’s theory. They usually regard the (...) account as yet another mechanistic analysis of the passions in the vein of seventeenth-century science, alongside the offerings of Malebranche, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Buckle is right to point out that there is a.. (shrink)