In teaching a class on what is arguably the most "sensational" area of anthropological study, i.e., the practices, beliefs, and behaviors that have been essentialized as magic, witchcraft, and religion by western theorists, one is faced with the problem of legitimizing something that many of our students view as unbelievable. Teaching a course in this area at a small, liberal arts college in Maine, I had to come to terms with just these sorts of problems, i.e., how do we get (...) people to enter into, posit and understand other ways of seeing and being that are radically different from their own? This paper discusses the structure (emic/etic) that I use to expose my students to problems of framing and understanding various ethnographic works through performing them, interpreting them, and debating them in class. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Review the Istvan Kiraly V.'s book: Death and History.

Interview with Constantine Sigov, dedicated to the history of the "European Dictionary of Philosophies": from the emergence of an idea in the early 90's in France until the accomplishment of the Ukrainian edition in 2019.

Die Untersuchung stellt die Psychologie und Psychiatrie des jungen Kant vor, die im Rahmen seiner Auseinandersetzung mit dem schwedischen Gelehrten, Mystiker und Geisterseher Emanuel von Swedenborg entstanden ist. Hieraus ging Kants Wahnkritik hervor, in der er die drei Aspekte der Schizophrenie die Projektion, die Ich-Spaltung sowie die Paranoia analysiert. Constantin Rauer zeigt, dass und wie Kant seine fruhe Wahnkritik in die spatere Vernunftkritik ubertragen hat, und wie sich durch diese Anwendung der Psychologie auf die Logik das vollzog, was spater Kants (...) kritische Wende genannt wurde. Damit vollzieht der Autor erstmals Kants Revolution der Denkungsart und mit dieser die Genese seiner Kritik der reinen Vernunft systematisch nach. So fuhrt seine Untersuchung zu einem neuen Kant-Verstandnis, indem sie zeigt, dass Kants Vernunftkritik auch als eine Anti-Wahnkritik zu verstehen ist. Mit seiner Kritik des Wahns aber zielt Kant auf die verborgene Irrationalitat der Moderne: auf den erkenntnistheoretischen Wahn des Empirismus, den ethischen Wahn des Sozialdarwinismus sowie den religiosen Wahn im Kulturrelativismus. "Die Arbeit ist klar und uberzeugend aufgebaut. Uberdies ist sie sehr gut lesbar geschrieben: klar, zupackend, argumentativ, immer wieder von erhellenden Bildern durchsetzt; und die Verbindung einer wohldurchdachten Interpretation und Argumentation mit einer neuartigen These fuhrt zu einem philosophisch geradezu spannenden Text.... Hier findet eine hochentwickelte internationale Kantforschung einen grundlegend neuen Blick." ". (shrink)

History casts a spell on our minds more powerful than science or religion. It does not root us in the past at all. It rather flatters us with the belief in our ability to recreate the world in our image. It is a form of self-assertion that brooks no opposition or dissent and shelters us from the experience of time. So argues Constantin Fasolt in _The Limits of History_, an ambitious and pathbreaking study that conquers history's power by carrying the (...) fight into the center of its domain. Fasolt considers the work of Hermann Conring and Bartolus of Sassoferrato, two antipodes in early modern battles over the principles of European thought and action that ended with the triumph of historical consciousness. Proceeding according to the rules of normal historical analysis—gathering evidence, putting it in context, and analyzing its meaning—Fasolt uncovers limits that no kind of history can cross. He concludes that history is a ritual designed to maintain the modern faith in the autonomy of states and individuals. God wants it, the old crusaders would have said. The truth, Fasolt insists, only begins where that illusion ends. With its probing look at the ideological underpinnings of historical practice, _The Limits of History_ demonstrates that history presupposes highly political assumptions about free will, responsibility, and the relationship between the past and the present. A work of both intellectual history and historiography, it will prove invaluable to students of historical method, philosophy, political theory, and early modern European culture. (shrink)

In a unique collection of essays and poems written in English, French, German and Russian (with a seasoning of Greek and Japanese), Constantine Shapiro explores fascinating universal questions and connections. Why, he asks, do so many people feel unhappy? Why do so many go to the doctor? Why is there so much criminality? Why is there international unrest? What is a healthy soul? In his investigation of these and other "Big Questions," the author examines such disparate areas as Japanese (...) kanji ideograms and personal character, spiritual ontology and science, Zeus and Christianity, objectivity and subjectivity in time and space, the nature of experience, and the flow of consciousness. The modern reader will find much to ponder in this second, expanded edition of Selected Writings. Also included are facsimiles of the typescript of Two Mathematical Problems and the Japanese translation of Transzendentale Musiklehre. (shrink)

The anthology contains twenty-two essays and is divided into two parts. The essays are, in the main, critical responses to aspects of what has come to be known in action theory as the ‘Standard View’ – the view that traces back to Donald Davidson's contribution to twentieth-century philosophy of action. The view under criticism treats actions as bodily movements caused in a non-deviant way by belief–desire pairs, construes these belief–desire pairs as the primary reasons for the actions that they cause, (...) and embraces event-causality.The issue of how we should conceive of action is taken up in several essays. For example: in Essay 1, Fred Dretske challenges the view that actions are external events that are the effect of the reasons for which the action is done. In Essay 16, Helen Steward, proposes that, instead of treating the availability of a reason-giving explanation as essential to action, we should construe action as ‘an exercise of the power of bodily control by an animal’. In Essay 21, Jonathan Dancy argues for a deflationary approach to actions, which forgoes treating actions ‘as individuals, with identity conditions’.Other authors – for example, Stephen Everson, Rowland Stout and Maria Alvarez – focus on the issue of what reasons for action are. Are they psychological states, or propositions, or states of affairs? Also under review is how to distinguish different kinds of reason: normative and explanatory reasons, and even explanatory and motivating reasons. (shrink)

Deleuze and Philosophy provides an exploration of the continuing philosophical relevance of Gilles Deleuze. This collection of essays uses Deleuze to move between thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Husserl, Hume, Locke, Kant, Foucault, Badiou and Agamben. As such the reader is left with a comprehensive understanding not just of the philosophy of Deleuze but how he can be situated within a much broader philosophical trajectory. Constantin Boundas has gathered together recent scholarship on Deleuze's philosophy by an acclaimed line-up of international (...) contributors, all of whom seek to provide new and previously unexplored theoretical terrains that will be of interest to both the Deleuze specialist and student alike. Three of the essays are by key French Deleuzians whose work is not widely available in translation. This enticing collection is essential reading for anyone interested not just in Deleuze but in the history of philosophical ideas. Contributors include: Zsuzsa Baross, Veronique Bergen, Ronald Bogue, Bruce Baugh, Rosi Braidotti, Claire Colebrook, Bela Egyed, Philippe Mengue, Dorothea Olkowski, Davide Panagia, Daniel W. Smith, Jeremie Valentin, Arnaud Villani. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDavis argues that the familiar periodization dividing European history into medieval and modern phases disguises a claim to power as a historical fact. It justifies slavery and subjugation by projecting them onto the “feudal” Middle Ages and non‐European present, while hiding forms of slavery and subjugation practiced by “secular” modernity. Periodization thus furnishes one of the most durable conceptual foundations for the usurpation of liberty and the abuse of power.In part I, devoted to “feudalism,” Davis traces the legal, political, and (...) colonial struggles behind the development of the concept of “feudal law” in early modern France and England and unravels just how that concept hides colonial oppression while justifying European sovereignty. In part II, devoted to “secularization,” she demonstrates the failure of twentieth‐century critics of “secularization” like Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, and Reinhart Koselleck to break out of the limits imposed by the medieval/modern periodization. Part II concludes with a look at conceptual alternatives in the writings of Amitav Ghosh and the Venerable Bede.Three limitations of this book are worth mentioning. It traces the political history hidden by the concept of “feudalism,” but does not trace the political history hidden by the concept of “religion.” It offers no answer to the question of how to break the link between scholarship and politics without ending up in a logical impasse or reinforcing the link. It does not address the possibility that answering this question may require breaking with the terms of professional historical inquiry. Perhaps the question could be answered in terms like those that led Wittgenstein to characterize his Philosophical Investigations as remarks on the natural history of human beings. (shrink)

This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose (...) that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation,irrespectiveof the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger’s phenomenology, I argue that it is acore characteristicof the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into aspecific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible. (shrink)

COnstantien Sandis speaks to Nassim Taleb about inductive knowledge,black swans, Hume, Popper, and Wittgenstein.

Modern societies are characterized by a division of epistemic labor between laypeople and epistemic authorities. Authorities are often far more competent than laypeople and can thus, ideally, inform their beliefs. But how should laypeople rationally respond to an authority’s beliefs if they already have beliefs and reasons of their own concerning some subject matter? According to the standard view, the beliefs of epistemic authorities are just further, albeit weighty, pieces of evidence. In contrast, the Preemption View claims that, when one (...) discovers what an authority believes, it is not permissible to rely on any of one’s own reasons concerning the subject matter. The original version of this view, as proposed by Linda Zagzebski, has recently been severely criticized for recommending blind trust and for abandoning even minimal standards for critical thinking. In our paper, we defend a new version of the Preemption View—Defeatist Preemptionism—in a way that differs radically from Zagzebski’s. We argue that our view can be derived from certain widely accepted general epistemic principles. In particular, we claim that preemption can be identified as a special case of source sensitive defeat. Moreover, we argue that Defeatist Preemptionism does not lead to the undesirable consequences that critics ascribe to the Preemption View. The paper thus articulates the foundations and refinements of the Preemption View, such that it adequately captures the phenomenon of epistemic authority and the rational requirements related to it. (shrink)

This volume presents the concepts of schizoanalysis and ecosophy as Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze understood them, in interviews and analyses by their contemporaries and followers. This accessible yet authoritative introduction is written by distinguished specialists, combining testimonies from some of Guattari's colleagues at the La Borde psychiatric clinic where he practiced, with expository essays on his main ideas, schizoanalysis and ecosophy, as well as his relations with Lacan. The last section of the book deals with the subsequent creative application (...) of those ideas by his philosophical and psychoanalytic followers situated within the contemporary moment. This collection also provides the crucial historical context of France at the time Guattari was developing his concepts, including the role of the Maoists and the significance of the political situation in Algeria. (shrink)

Part one. Brahms and Bruckner : a radical historical, art-theoretical, and artistic contrast. Aspects and issues ; Art and personality ; The conflict ; Art-theoretical controversies ; On historical classification ; Parallelisms and antitheses ; The relation to historicism ; "Heirs" of Beethoven ; Parallelisms and antitheses once more ; Richard Wagner -- Part two. The unknown Brahms. Brahms : an autonomous composer? ; "Young Kreisler" ; Schumann's essay "Neue Bahnen" : a new interpretation ; Schumann and Brahms : Brahms' (...) Schumann variations (op. 9) and Schumann's Davidsbèundlertèanze ; The piano variations op. 23 : a monument to Robert Schumann ; "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini" : on the "Mass quotation" in the Adagio of the Piano concerto op. 15 ; A special kind of father-son relationship -- Part three. The unknown Bruckner. Bruckner : "the most absolute of absolute musicians"? ; Bruckner and the program symphony ; On Bruckner exegesis : the "tone symbol of the cross" (Liszt) ; The program of the "Romantic" symphony ; The program of the Eighth symphony : musical semantics and historical contexts. (shrink)

The book is designed as an introduction to the basic questions of musical semantics and represents the quintessence of fifty years of the author's researches into music from Beethoven to Nono.

Darstellung des Inhalts -- Kommentar zum griechischen Text.

Le projet de Jean Piaget ne se réduit pas à son œuvre épistémologique. Il prend sa source, dès l'adolescence, dans une volonté de réconcilier la science et la foi. C'est de cette source-là, morale et humaniste, que lui vient son intérêt pour l'éducation. Sa pensée éducative se fonde sur la ferme conviction que la morale est une logique de l'action comme la logique est une morale de la pensée. Il s'ensuit qu'éducation morale et éducation intellectuelle doivent être menées de front, (...) et donc, qu'il faut éduquer la personne entière. Mais l'éducation est ambiguë par essence, selon qu'elle enferme l'enfant dans son égocentrisme intellectuel et la morale conventionnelle ou, au contraire, qu'elle stimule, par une pédagogie appropriée, sa marche vers une plus grande rationalité et une éthique personnelle. Dans de nombreux textes, Piaget explique comment l'école peut aider l'élève, citoyen de demain, à construire sa liberté intérieure, liberté de jugement autant que liberté de conscience. Humaniser l'humanité par l'éducation grâce à l'école, tel est le sens de son engagement - pendant trois décennies - à la tête du Bureau international d'éducation et à l'Unesco. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze: The Intensive Reduction brings together eighteen essays written by an internationally acclaimed team of scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of the work of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most important and influential European thinkers of the twentieth century. Each essay addresses a central issue in Deleuzeʹs philosophy (and that of his regular co-author, Félix Guattari) that remains to this day controversial and unsettled. Since Deleuzeʹs death in 1994, the technical aspects of his philosophy have been largely neglected. (...) These essays address that gap in the existing scholarship by focusing on his contribution to philosophy. Each contributor advances the discussion of a contested point in the philosophy of Deleuze to shed new light on as yet poorly-understood problems and to stimulate new and vigorous exchanges regarding his relationship to philosophy, schizoanlysis, his aesthetic, ethical and political thought. (shrink)

Due to Gӧdel’s incompleteness results, the categoricity of a sufficiently rich mathematical theory and the semantic completeness of its underlying logic are two mutually exclusive ideals. For first- and second-order logics we obtain one of them with the cost of losing the other. In addition, in both these logics the rules of deduction for their quantifiers are non-categorical. In this paper I examine two recent arguments –Warren (2020), Murzi and Topey (2021)– for the idea that the natural deduction rules for (...) the first-order universal quantifier are categorical, i.e., they uniquely determine its semantic intended meaning. Both of them make use of McGee’s open-endedness requirement and the second one uses in addition Garson’s (2013) local models for defining the validity of these rules. I argue that the success of both these arguments is relative to their semantic or infinitary assumptions, which could be easily discharged if the introduction rule for the universal quantifier is taken to be an infinitary rule, i.e. non-compact. Consequently, I reconsider the use of the ω-rule and I show that the addition of the ω-rule to the standard formalizations of first-order logic is categorical. In addition, I argue that the open-endedness requirement does not make the first-order Peano Arithmetic categorical and I advance an argument for its categoricity based on the inferential conservativity requirement. (shrink)

Vann McGee has recently argued that Belnap’s criteria constrain the formal rules of classical natural deduction to uniquely determine the semantic values of the propositional logical connectives and quantifiers if the rules are taken to be open-ended, i.e., if they are truth-preserving within any mathematically possible extension of the original language. The main assumption of his argument is that for any class of models there is a mathematically possible language in which there is a sentence true in just those models. (...) I show that this assumption does not hold for the class of models of classical propositional logic. In particular, I show that the existence of non-normal models for negation undermines McGee’s argument. (shrink)