The article introduces a previously unknown Arabic source detailing the preparations for a battle between local Muslim rulers, likely vassals of the Samanids (204–395/819–1005), against the ruler of Ghaznī and his allies, the Hindushahs, near Ghaznī in the mid-fourth/tenth century. By closely reading, translating, and analyzing this manuscript fragment, I aim to shed light on the political realities of the Indian frontier of the Islamic world before the establishment of the Ghaznavid state (366–583/977–1186). The fragment provides evidence of the clashes (...) among different actors, both Muslim and non-Muslim, in the region that makes up present-day eastern Afghanistan during the pre-Ghaznavid period, especially the fourth/tenth century. Moreover, it highlights the significance of the river valleys of Bāmiyān and Ghūrwand, along with the upper Hilmand’s course, as a frontier region where the Samanids and their vassals sought to expand the influence of Islam and Samanid suzerainty by pushing southward. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy is characterized by the diverse and extensive presence of science in it. Science is its object, variously understood - as a field of cognition, as a cultural, social or anthropic phenomenon, as a scientific knowledge, including knowledge co-shaping philosophical concepts. The project's monographs explore the essential aspects of this presence - in various currents, schools and areas of contemporary philosophy.--Publisher's website.

Legal and political theorist, common lawyer and parliamentary leader, historian and polyglot, John Selden was a formidable figure in Renaissance England, whose real importance and influence are now being recognized once again. John Selden and the Western Political Tradition highlights his important role in the development of such early modern political ideas as modern natural law and natural rights, national identity and tradition, the political integration of church and state, and the effect of Jewish ideas on Western political thought. Selden's (...) political ideas are analysed in the context of his contemporaries Grotius, Hobbes and Filmer. The book demonstrates how these ideas informed and influenced more familiar works of later thinkers like Burke. (shrink)

Author: Czerniak Stanisław Title: CAN WE RIGHTLY SPEAK ABOUT “KAZIMIERZ HOFFMAN’S PHILOSOPHY”? (SOME REMARKS CONCERNING THE PUBLICATION POZNAWANIE KAZIMIERZA HOFFMANA) (Filozofia Kazimierza Hoffmana? Refleksje na marginesie książki Poznawanie Kazimierza Hoffmana) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.15, number: 2011/4, pages: 1038-1046 Keywords: KAZIMIERZ HOFFMAN, IDEA OF DIVINE, EXISTENCE, POETRY Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article shows the philosophical background of Kazimierz Hoffman’s poetry. The author points to Hoffman’s idea of the (...) Divine, which creates all possible objects in the world and incessantly sustains their existence, treating it as the crucial point of his philosophical stance. Another question is devoted to a possible relationship between Hoffman’s philosophical views and the traditions of the philosophy of life and phenomenology. Worth examining are also some similarities between Hoffman’s concept of donation and the ethical standpoint of E. Lévinas. In conclusion to those considerations one could claim that in Hoffman’s poetry we experience an interesting kind of mysticism uniting the contemplation of the absolute order with the aesthetic, perfectionist attempts to write the “ideal poem” and to connect the metaphysical insight with the experimental form. In the article the author quotes extensively the most important hermeneutic conclusions contained in the book Poznawanie Kazimierza Hoffmana (“The Understanding of Kazimierz Hoffman”). (shrink)

This article aims to reconstruct Max Scheler’s conception of three types of knowledge, outlined in his late work Philosophical Perspectives (1928). Scheler distinguished three kinds of knowledge: empirical, used to exercise control over nature, eidetic (essential) and metaphysical. The author reviews the epistemological criteria that underlie this distinction, and its functionalistic assumptions. In the article’s polemic part he accuses Scheler of a) crypto-dualism in his theory of knowledge, which draws insufficient distinctions between metaphysical and eidetic knowledge; b) totally omitting the (...) status of the humanities in his classification of knowledge types; c) consistently developing a philosophy of knowledge without resort to the research tools offered by the philosophy of science, which takes such analyses out of their social and historical context (i.e. how knowledge is created in today’s scientific communities). (shrink)

The essay reconstructs the main aspects of Gernot Böhme’s philosophy of technolo-gy. In polemical reference to Max Horkheimer’s and Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory, Böhme asks about the rationality criteria of technology. He does not view his philosophy of technology as part of the philosophy of science but places it on the boundary between philosophical anthropology and social philosophy. Böhme reflects on the ethically negative, neutral and positive effects of the technification process both on the identity of contemporary humans and the (...) changes taking place in social integration patterns. He also discusses the cultural sources of resistance to “invasive technification” not only in Western culture but also that of the Far East. The author closes his reflections with a set of questions about what he considers to be open issues in the Boehme’s philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The article consists of the following thematic threads: a) an overview of three interpretations of the term “ideology” in subject literature; b) a reconstruction of Max Horkheimer's ideology conception, presented in the first half of the 1930s in writings published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung [Social Research Journal]; c) an attempt to answer the question to what degree this conception was paradigmatic for the early Frankfurt School (here, for comparative purposes, the author cites writings by Leo Löwenthal and Paul Landsberg, (...) which were also published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung). (shrink)

The author distinguishes three main interpretations of the concept, as well as the developmental trends in philosophical anthropology, and reflects on their relationship with critical social philosophy. Consequently, he follows up with an explication of the main assumptions of Arnold Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology and seeks to find out how they influenced the categorical particularity of his critique of postmodern society, labeled as “the crisis of institutions.” The author provides more detailed reflection in references to Gehlen’s Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter, (...) and its analysis of the so-called new subjectivism. The article ends with a critical conclusion, in which the author makes note of certain ideological incongruities in Gehlen’s philosophical standpoint. (shrink)

The existence of shoulder abduction (SA) and finger extension (FE) movement capacity shortly after stroke onset is an important prognostic factor, indicating favorable functional outcome for the hemiparetic upper limb. Here we asked whether variation in lesion topography affects these two movements in a similar or a distinct way, and whether lesion impact is similar or distinct for left and right hemisphere damage. SA and FE movements were examined in 77 chronic post-stroke patients using relevant items of the Fugl-Meyer test. (...) Lesion effects were analyzed separately for left and right hemispheric damage (LHD, RHD) patient groups using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. In the LHD group, SA and FE were affected only by damage to the cortico-spinal tract in its passage through the corona radiata. In contrast, following RHD, these two movements were affected not only by cortico-spinal tract damage but also by damage to white matter association tracts, the putamen and the insular cortex. In both groups, voxel clusters have been found where damage affected SA and also FE, along with voxels where damage affected only one of the two movements. The capacity to execute SA and FE movements following stroke is affected significantly by damage to shared and distinct voxels in the cortico-spinal tract in LHD patients and by damage to shared and distinct voxels in a larger array of cortical and subcortical regions in RHD patients. (shrink)

The author goes out from Helmuth Plessner’s book Die Grenzen der Gemeinschaft to show how the basic categories of Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, especially the eccentric position conception, apply to his critique of community-oriented societies like communism and fascism. Plessner saw the alternative to a community-based society in a model where social bonds took place by association, and in which the anthropological a priori enjoyed the optimum conditions for self-expression. This social model also allows the full establishment of social roles in (...) the anthropological sense, something that is annihilated by community-type societies. The author also addresses the different ways in which the “social role” category is interpreted by Plessner and Ralf Dahrendorf, and concludes with a few concrete and methodologically grounded objections to Plessner’s theory. (shrink)

This comparative study of Max Scheler’s and Bernhard Waldenfels’ conceptions shows how they differ in their philosophical assumptions. Whereas Scheler’s strove to define the essence of suffering, which he saw in the objective situation of being a victim, Waldenfels emphasized the intentional aspect of suffering and its connections to activity. In this context Waldenfels introduced the distinction between suffering as a) that what happens to us, and b) that what we subjectively feel as “brutally” imposed upon us, ignoring all eidetic (...) questions related to suffering as well as the metaphysical threads which Scheler addressed. The author runs a detailed and critical analysis of Scheler’s position, to which he voices multiple objections, and concludes that it coincides conceptually with the axiological conception of tragedy he propounded in his work On the Tragic. In the section on Waldenfels the author reviews the polemical arguments against his views voiced by several contemporary German philosophers. (shrink)

Below I ask whether the theoretical assumptions of the sociology of knowledge imply a subjectivistic and relativistic approach to cognition theory—a matter that has already been discussed in Polish subject literature (among others by Adam Schaff). Does the “social conditioning of cognition” conception propounded by the sociology of knowledge deny the existence of objective truth and adequate knowledge? Karl Mannheim himself called the sociology of knowledge an anti-relativist position. The critics of his anti-relativist argumentation say it is full of ambiguities (...) and contradictions. I will attempt to take a closer look at this problem, and, at the same time, at the relation between Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge project and such measures of the adequacy of knowledge as the coherence and general consensus criterion. The main question I will try to answer is whether the Mannheimian sociology of knowledge project is a form of epistemological relativism (in the specific meaning of the term I use here), and if not, in what sense and to what degree it can be considered a position convergent with the relative truth conception. (shrink)

The author reviews the main elements of Richard Münch’s academic capitalism theory. By introducing categories like “audit university” or “entrepreneurial university,” the German sociologist critically sets today’s academic management model against the earlier, modern-era conception of academic work as an “exchange of gifts.” In the sociological and psychological sense, he sees the latter’s roots in traditional social lore, for instance the potlatch ceremonies celebrated by some North-American Indian tribes and described by Marcel Mauss. Münch shows the similarities between the old, (...) “gift exchanging” model and the contemporary one with its focus on the psycho-social fundamentals of scientific praxis, and from this gradually derives the academic capitalism conception. He concludes with the critical claim that science possesses its own, inalienable axiological autonomy and anthropological dimension, which degenerate as capitalism proceeds to “colonise” science by means of state authority and money (here Münch mentions Jürgen Habermas and his philosophical argumentation).The author also offers a somewhat broader view of Münch’s analyses in the context of his own reflections on the problem. (shrink)

The essay aims to reconstruct Gernot Böhme’s “end of the Baconian age” concept in the context of the main theses of the “finalization in science” idea which he developed in the 1970s and 80s. Böhme has since retreated from some parts of his theorem, arguing their invalidity in light of the “twilight” of the Baconian era in science begun by Francis Bacon’s methodological and philosophical program. Böhme polemizes with Bacon’s claim that the evolution of empirical science automatically enhances civilizational progress, (...) and lists some contemporary negative sides of scientific progress which he criticizes from the position of philosophy of science by suggesting its cognitive “alternatives”. (shrink)

The author defines moralisation as cultural processes marked by a rise in moralistic argumentation to a degree which raises questions and doubts of a philosophical and sociological nature. This is developed on in detail in the sections “The moralisation of the world and suffering,” “The moralisation of everyday life and history,” “The moralisation of knowledge” and “The moralisation of human nature.” The closing section of the article, “Moralisation and morality,” focuses on the relation between the described moralistic approach and the (...) changes broadly-understood moral awareness is undergoing in the contemporary world. (shrink)

This comparative paper analyses in detail the contexts in which the “contingency” category was used by the philosophers mentioned in its title. While Odo Marquard and Richard Rorty situated contingency within the antifundamentalist discourse, especially in the sphere of philosophical anthropology, epistemology and ethics, Jürgen Habermas drew his conception of the contingency of human birth from the “human nature”— related discourse against modern-day genetic engineering. Marquard’s and Rorty’s theories differ in their philosophical assumptions. Among others, the author shows that none (...) of the mentioned thinkers accepted the radically relativistic consequences of the debate around the “contingency” conception. In his analyses, he also makes frequent use of Marquard’s distinction between “arbitrarily accidental” and “fatefully accidental.”. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to answer two quite separate questions in a single interpretational narrative: a) about the philosophical content of Gernot Böhme’s expressis verbis—and, at times, “between the lines”—reference to the legacy of critical theory, and b) Böhme’s use of interesting mediatory devices to combine three different philosophical discourses: the philosophy of science, ethics and aesthetics. The three are in fact related—after all, Horkheimer ran comparisons between “traditional” and “critical” theory, Adorno is the father of the original (...) aesthetical theory, and Habermas laid the ground for what we call “discursive ethics”—but this is a matter for separate and broader treatment. In this perforce shorter paper I will only attempt some initial reflections on the subject. (shrink)

The growing literature on how people learn to make decisions based on experience focuses on two types of paradigms. In one paradigm, people are faced with a choice, and must retrospectively consult past experience of similar choices to decide what to do. In the other paradigm, people are faced with a choice, and then have the opportunity prospectively to gather new experiences that might help them make that choice. The current paper examines the joint impact of both retrospective and prospective (...) experiences. Two experiments reveal strong interactions. In Study 1, repeated experience with new samples appears to reduce sensitivity to the average outcome in the samples and enhances underweighting of rare events. Study 2 shows that repeated experience with pre-choice samples can reverse the impact of the new information. The results suggest that prospectively gathering new samples can have two, potentially contrasting, influences on choice: the first focuses on the sample’s face value and selects the option with the higher value in the new sample; by contrast, the second treats the new sample as a cue to recall similar prior experiences, which in turn drive choice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possibility that part of the descriptive value of prospect theory reflects the fact that it summarizes the joint impact of similar “face-or-cue” processes. (shrink)

The impact of stroke on motor functioning is analyzed at different levels. ‘Impairment’ denotes the loss of basic characteristics of voluntary movement. ‘Activity limitation’ denotes the loss of normal capacity for independent execution of daily activities. Recovery from impairment is accomplished by ‘restitution’ and recovery from activity limitation is accomplished by the combined effect of ‘restitution’ and ‘compensation.’ We aimed to unravel the long-term effects of variation in lesion topography on motor impairment of the hemiparetic lower limb (HLL), and gait (...) capacity as a measure of related activity limitation. Gait was assessed by the 3 m walk test (3MWT) in 67 first-event chronic stroke patients, at their homes. Enduring impairment of the HLL was assessed by the Fugl–Meyer Lower Extremity (FMA-LE) test. The impact of variation in lesion topography on HLL impairment and on walking was analyzed separately for left and right hemispheric damage (LHD, RHD) by voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM). In the LHD group, HLL impairment tended to be affected by damage to the posterior limb of the internal capsule (PLIC). Walking capacity tended to be affected by a larger array of structures: PLIC and corona radiata, external capsule and caudate nucleus. In the RHD group, both HLL impairment and walking capacity were sensitive to damage in a much larger number of brain voxels. HLL impairment was affected by damage to the corona radiata, superior longitudinal fasciculus and insula. Walking was affected by damage to the same areas, plus the internal and external capsules, putamen, thalamus and parts of the perisylvian cortex. In both groups, voxel clusters have been found where damage affected FMA-LE and also 3MWT, along with voxels where damage affected only one of the measures (mainly 3MWT). In stroke, enduring ‘activity limitation’ is affected by damage to a much larger array of brain structures and voxels within specific structures, compared to enduring ‘impairment.’ Differences between the effects of left and right hemisphere damage are likely to reflect variation in motor-network organization and post-stroke re-organization related to hemispheric dominance. Further studies with larger sample size are required for the validation of these results. (shrink)

Ancient Jewish law took a strict approach to medical relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Sages forbade Jews to provide non-Jews with medical services: to treat them, circumcise them, or deliver their babies, in order to refrain from helping pagan-idolatrous society. Such law created particularly severe social conflicts in cases of mixed societies based on joint systems. The current paper focuses on the attitude of Moses ben Maimon, a medieval Sephardic Jewish Rabbi towards providing medical service to gentiles. Following the classical (...) rabbis R. Moshe ben Maimon in his halakhic tome Mishne Torah, objected to treating non-Jews. His rigid attitude found expression in several aspects of helping and giving medical treatment to non-Jews. Despite the classical rabbinical restrictions on medical relationships between Jews and non-Jews, and his own rigid halakhic verdicts, Maimonides treated gentiles. According to one understanding, Maimonides cured Muslims for a wage, which is permitted. However, it seems that the main factor that may have facilitated Maimonides halakhic position is the identification of Islam as a non-idolatrous faith. Interestingly not only on medical issues did the Maimonides act differently than his halakhic rulings in Mishne Torah, rather in other areas as well. (shrink)

The present experiment investigated the relations of narcissism with social value orientation under façade conditions of testing communal or agentic traits. The results indicated that narcissism predicted less willingness to share resources with others and more competitive orientation in a façade communal condition compared to the remaining two conditions: control and agentic. The results confirm narcissistic disregard for communal domain and are consistent with the extended agency model of narcissism and the “success as a drawback” effect.