The issue of Holocaust tourism might be a quite sensitive, but nevertheless very important topic in the domain of the Holocaust remembrance. As tourism is often associated with leisure activities, it is quite challenging to put tourism into darker contexts of history and death. Also, different people coming to the Holocaust-related places with different motives make the issue of designing educational tours even more complex. This paper will try to expose questions related to dark tourism, Holocaust tourism, auratic memorial places, (...) and to discuss ethical approaches to the Holocaust memory in the beginning of the 21st century. The text argues for the tourist experience as a memorable and educational tool with an active transformational potential, which will turn the visitor into a witness who further contributes to survival of the legacy of the Holocaust in the future. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with an idea that has emerged from recent relativist proposals, and, in particular, from Lasersohn, according to which the correct semantics for taste predicates must use contents that are functions of a judge parameter rather than implicit arguments lexically associated with such predicates. I argue that the relativist account and the contextualist implicit argument-account are, from the viewpoint of semantics, not much more than notational variants of one another. In other words, given any sentence (...) containing a taste predicate, and given any assignment of values to the relevant parameters, the two accounts predict the same truth value and are, in that sense, equivalent. I also look at possible reasons for preferring one account over the other. The phenomenon of "faultless disagreement" is often believed to be one such reason. I argue, against Kölbel and Lasersohn, that disagreement is never faultless: either the two parties genuinely disagree, hence if the one is right then the other is wrong, or the two parties are both right, but their apparent disagreement boils down to a misunderstanding. What is more, even if there were faultless disagreement, I argue that relativism would fail to account for it. The upshot of my paper, then, is to show that there is not much disagreement between a contextualist account that models the judge parameter as an implicit argument to the taste predicate, and a relativist account that models it as a parameter of the circumstances of evaluation. The choice between the two accounts, at least when talking about taste, is thus, to a large extent, a matter of taste. (shrink)

Education, Self-consciousness and Social Action reconstructs the Hegelian concept of education, Bildung, and shows that this concept could serve as a powerful alternative to current psychologist notions of learning. Taking a Hegelian perspective, Stojanov claims that Bildung should be interpreted as growth of mindedness and that such a growth has two central and interrelated components, including the development of self-consciousness toward conceptual self-articulation and the formation of one's capacity for intelligent social action. The interrelation between the two central components of (...) education implies that learning is transformed into education only when it involves the self-consciousness and the identity of the learner. Since both are grounded in the ethical beliefs and values of the individual, transforming learning into education therefore requires that education also address students' everyday ethical assumptions, as well as their articulation and conceptualization. This claim has a number of implications for educational policy and pedagogy; one being that learning and teaching in schools are educative only if they have ethical significance for both students and teachers. Another implication is that the point of departure for educative teaching becomes the actual, everyday ethical beliefs and experiences of the students, rather than fixed curricular contents. Students' encountering with sciences and arts should aim at the conceptual articulation of those beliefs and experiences - an articulation which makes individual's rational autonomy and self-determination possible. Education, Self-consciousness and Social Action will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in the philosophy of education. It should also be essential reading for anyone engaged in the study of Hegel's work. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the proposal put forward by Mark Richard in When Truth Gives Out (2008) concerning disputes over issues such as who is rich, what is cool, and other issues of similar ilk. Richard holds that the parties in the dispute can truly disagree on whether a given person is rich, but can be both right, if we assume that they have different standards of wealth. Disputes over what is cool are, according to Richard, trickier, (...) since they can give rise to cases of faultless disagreement in which the two parties disagree, and neither party is wrong, but neither party is right either! My fi rst goal in this paper will be to showthat the distinction between the two types of disagreement, as drawn by Richard, is not well motivated. I will also argue that if he were right about the stronger case (disagreement in which both parties are right), his own account would fail to capture it. He can capture either the idea that they truly disagree, or the idea that they are both right; but he cannot both have his cake and eat it, too.My second goal will be to bring to the foreground some constructive aspects of Richard’s proposal, and in particular the idea that such disagreements involve concepts whose application is not fully determined and whose usage is open to accommodation and negotiation (to use Lewis’s terms, as used by Richard). If we accept that on some occasions, whether a concept applies to a given instance or doesn’t is not yet settled, then arguably there are cases in which neither party is wrong—at least at the time of the dispute. I argue that their disagreement can be genuine only to the extent that it will eventually be settled whether the concept isto apply to a given instance or not, hence the way in which the concept gets shaped up and extended through its future uses makes it possible to determine, retrospectively, which of the two parties got it right. If this is correct, then the putative cases of faultless disagreement really turn upon the openness of the future: what makes them “faultless” is, simply, that there isn’t any matter of fact yet whether the one or the other party is right. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are good motivations for a relativist account of the domain-sensitivity of quantifier phrases. I will frame the problem as a puzzle involving what looks like a logically valid inference, yet one whose premises are true while the conclusion is false. After discussing some existing accounts, literalist and contextualist, I will present and argue for an account that may be said to be relativist in the following sense: (i) a domain of quantification is required (...) for determining truth value, but is idle in determining semantic content, and (ii) the same sentence, as used on one and the same occasion, may receive different truth values relative to different domains. (shrink)

Prevela: Dragana Jagušić Uredila: Dijana Grubor -/- Naslov izvornika: Epictetus, The Discourses as reported by Arrian, The Manual and Fragments, translated by W.A. Oldfather, Harvard University Press, Vol.1, 1925., Vol.2, 1928. -/- .

The nature of moral judgments, and, more specifically, the question of how they relate, on the one hand, to objective reality and, on the other, to subjective experience, are issues that have been central to metaethics from its very beginnings. While these complex and challenging issues have been debated by analytic philosophers for over a century, it is only relatively recently that more interdisciplinary and empirically-oriented approaches to such issues have begun to see light. The present chapter aims to make (...) a contribution of that kind. We will present the results of an empirical – specifically, corpus linguistic – study that offers evidence that moral predicates exhibit hallmarks of subjectivity at the linguistic level, but also, that they differ significantly from paradigmatically subjective predicates. (shrink)

The Stoics thought that knowledge depends on a special kind of appearances which they called ‘apprehensive’, which are by definition true. Interestingly, Sextus Empiricus reports in M 7.247 that they held that there are appearances that are true but that are not apprehensive because they are true merely by chance and thus cannot constitute knowledge. I believe that this suggests that the Stoics were aware of what is in modern literature known as the problem of epistemic luck. Unfortunately, Sextus’ report (...) leaves out a lot of important details, which makes it difficult to understand exactly which appearances the Stoics thought are true by chance, and why. I argue that the true non-apprehensive appearances in question here are imaginations, representational states which are not immediately caused by external objects through perception, but produced solely by the mind. I propose an explanation why the Stoics, who defined chance in terms of hidden causes, would have thought that imaginations can only be true by chance. The explanation stems from their view that the essential characteristic of imagination is that it leaves the actual cause of its representational content hidden from the subject. (shrink)

This paper concerns the ways in which one can/cannot combine extensive quantities. Given a particular theory of extensive measurement, there can be no alternative ways of combining extensive quantities, where 'alternative' means that one combining operation can be used instead of another causing only a change in the number assigned to the quantity. As a consequence, rectangular concatenation cannot be an alternative combining operation for length as was suggested by Ellis and agreed by Krantz, Luce, Suppes, and Tversky. I argue (...) as well that a theory which imposes such restrictions on the combining operation is more desirable than less stringent rival theories. (shrink)

This thesis concerns alternative concatenating operations in extensive measurements and the degree to which concatenating operations are matter of convention. My arguments are directed against Ellis' claim that what prevents us from choosing alternative ways of combining extensive quantities is only convenience and simplicity and that the choice is not based on empirical reasons. ;My first argument is that, given certain relational theories of measurement, there can be no more than one concatenating operation per quantity; because combining operations are the (...) only conclusive distinguishing characteristic among distinct extensive measurements and thus the only thing that can serve as an indicator for the identity of a quantity. Rectangular and collinear concatenation, for example, cannot both be used as a way of combining lengths. However, rectangular concatenation could be used to measure some other extensive quantity since it fulfills the necessary conditions for adequate numerical assignment. ;For those that adopt theories of measurement which can support the claim that dinches measure length, I demonstrate, in the second argument, that rectangular concatenation would be a bad alternative and thus no alternative at all. Implementation of rectangular concatenation requires a new science; a science compatible with dinches violates present invariance principles and a new set must be provided, if possible. It is not clear that there is a set of invariance principles compatible with dinches which also gives basis for a science that explains the phenomena as well as the old one. Moreover, new invariance principles would be unintuitive and would require that certain fundamental concepts change their meaning. For these reasons the choice between them is guided by a number of empirical reasons and is not only a matter of convention. (shrink)

The prevalence of dementia is increasing worldwide but there is still no hope of a cure. Huge resources go into biomedical research, whose reductive ‘enactment’ has severe consequences for women, who are predominantly affected by dementia. To challenge such tragic enactment, this article considers ‘multiple ontologies’ of the most common type of dementia – Alzheimer’s disease – in the popular fictional film adaptations Still Alice and A Song for Martin. Using a post-humanist account of feminist visual studies of technoscience, this (...) comparative film analysis reveals how gender supersedes AD oversteering the hierarchical dualisms between health and pathology, human and nonhuman, and biomedical and artistic modes of knowing about Alzheimer’s. The author argues that these films stress the potential of the arts, as a multisensorial post-humanist embodied state of becoming with AD, to challenge hierarchical dualisms and innovatively contribute to dementia care. (shrink)

This paper examines the ‘deep-end’ of the international justice process—the incarceration of persons convicted in specially constituted international criminal tribunals and courts for gross violations of human rights, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes with a focus on language rights of such prisoners who are commonly serving sentences in foreign prisons. The punishment phase of the international justice process and its effects are not easily quantifiable and have been largely hidden from view. Although international criminal law asserts that equal (...) treatment before the law requires that there be no significant disparity in punishment regimes from one sentence-enforcing country to another, comparative penology shows that there are considerable differences in the conditions of confinement and the nature of correctional services in the prison systems of different countries. This has a direct impact on post-sentence procedural and rehabilitation rights of which language rights from a key part. In this specific context, and drawing from existing literature, the paper therefore examines the extent to which enforcement practice conforms to the ideal of equal treatment espoused by the tribunals. (shrink)

In recent years we have seen a newfound engagement with Jürgen Habermas's work in philosophy of education, focusing on his conception of argumentative dialogue, or discourse, as the origin of both truth-related epistemic judgments and justifications of moral norms that claim rightness rather than truth. In this article, Krassimir Stojanov first reconstructs the way in which Habermas determines the relation between truth and rightness, and he then shows that moral rightness functions as a “truth-analogue” since moral norms, like true facts, (...) transcend the actual and local practices of their justification. In the case of moral rightness, this transcendence occurs as an infinite process of inclusion of the perspectives and interests of all potentially concerned persons — also (and foremost) the perspectives and interests of those who are strange to each other in their respective values, worldviews, and interests. With this account of “truth-analogue” moral rightness, Habermas conceptualizes a kind of processual and “difference-sensible” universalism, which is very different from the substantialist universalism of some traditional conceptions of education, or Bildung. In the final section, Stojanov shows why including children in their otherness as children in the discursive process of production of moral knowledge, and thus treating them with a kind of epistemic respect, is a constitutive condition for that process. The demand for the discursive inclusion of children follows from the discourse ethics approach, but it requires an enlargement and some corrections of that approach. (shrink)

Aesthetic judgments are often expressed by means of predicates that, unlike ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’, are not primarily aesthetic, or even evaluative, such as ‘intense’ and ‘harrowing’. This paper aims to explain how such adjectives can convey a value-judgment, and one, moreover, whose positive or negative valence depends on the context.

Transformation of the philosophy of science during the last three decades is largely based on the philosophers? insights in the experimental side of science. Central issues in this new field, such as classification of basic elements and types of experimentation, are still developing. Subject of this work will be one of these types, Steinle?s?exploratory experimentation?, and its place in taxonomy of experimentation. After presenting an array of historical cases of experimentation, I analyze Elliott?s systematization of EE subtypes. I will claim (...) that it does not represent development of Steinle?s ideas, although it can be used to improve taxonomy of experimentation in general. Special attention will be dedicated to the development of this taxonomy and understanding forms of experimentation not focused on theory testing - specifically EE. Preobrazaj filozofije nauke tokom poslednje tri decenije dobrim delom zasniva se na uvidu filozofa u eksperimentalnu stranu nauke. Centralne stvari u ovom polju, kao sto su klasifikacija osnovnih elemenata i vrsta eksperimentisanja, jos uvek su u povoju. Predmet rada bice jedna ova vrsta, Stajnleovo?istrazivacko eksperimentisanje?, i njeno mesto u taksonomiji eksperimentisanja. Nakon predstavljanja niza istorijskih slucajeva eksperimentisanja, analiziracu Eliotovu sistematizaciju podvrsta IE. Tvrdicu da ona ne predstavlja razvoj Stajnleovih shvatanja, ali da se moze iskoristiti za unapredjenje opste taksonomije eksperimentisanja. Posebna paznja bice obracena na isprepletanost razvoja taksnomije eksperimentisanja i razumevanja oblika eksperimentisanja koja nemaju za cilj testiranje teorije - specificno IE. (shrink)

In this essay Krassimir Stojanov attempts first to reconstruct the “heart” of Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics, namely the so-called “principle of universalization” of ethical norms. This principle grounds Habermas's proceduralist account of social justice via equal access of all concerned to the practices of deliberative validation of norms. Stojanov claims with regard to this account that it could only be implemented if the social actors are involved in a process of education as discursive initiation. After using R. S. Peters's educational (...) theory to distinguish discursive initiation from a traditionalist understanding of educative initiation, he discusses some central social prerequisites for the development of discursive skills in growing individuals; to identify these prerequisites, he draws on Axel Honneth's conception of the intersubjective origins of individuals' development of rational autonomy. In the final part of the essay, Stojanov briefly explores some implications of his elaborated account of discursive initiation and its social preconditions for schooling and pedagogy. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that we should make a clear conceptual distinction between mononational and multinational states. Yet the number of empirical examples they refer to is rather limited. France or Germany are usually seen as mononational, whereas Belgium, Canada, Spain and the UK are considered multinational. How should we classify other cases? Here we can distinguish between (at least) two approaches in the literature: statistical (i.e., whether significant national minorities live within a larger state and, especially, whether they claim (...) self-government) and subjective (i.e., when citizens feel allegiance to sub-state national identities). Neither of them, however, helps us to resolve the problem. Is Italy multinational (because it contains a German-speaking minority)? Is Germany really mononational (in spite of the official recognition of the Danes and the Sorbs in some Länder)? On the other hand, is Switzerland the “most multinational country” (Kymlicka)? Let us assume that there is no definite answer to this dilemma and that it is all a matter of degree. There are probably few (if any) clearly mononational states and few (if any) clearly multinational states. Should we abandon this distinction in favour of other concepts like “plurinationalism” (Keating), “nations-within-nations” (Miller), “postnational state” (Abizadeh, Habermas), or “post-sovereign state” (MacCormick)? The article discusses these issues and, in conclusion, addresses the problem of stability and shared identity “plural” societies. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of types and accounts of experimentation in sustainability science still lacks philosophical reflection. The present paper introduces this burgeoning topic to the philosophy of science by identifying key notions and dynamics in sustainability experimentation, by discussing taxonomies of sustainability experimentation and by focusing on barriers to the transfer of evidence. It integrates three topics: the philosophy of experimentation; the sustainability science literature on experimentation; and discussions on values in science coming from the general philosophy of science, the (...) social sciences, and sustainability science. The aim is to improve understanding of how sustainability experimentation has evolved, from a broader picture of the history and philosophy of science, with a specific focus on understanding evidence production and how evidence traveling in and from sustainability experiments can be improved, particularly in the context of complex and pervasive normative commitments of the research. By engaging in these topics, this research is one of the first philosophical accounts of sustainability experimentation, contributing both to the knowledge on specific philosophies of science and to the further development of an evidence-based sustainability science through a better understanding of the barriers to more relevant and usable knowledge. (shrink)

The paper’s main purpose is to show that the new recognition paradigm could have a great impact on the philosophy of education. The author demonstrates that impact by a comparative analysis of both Axel Honneth’s theory of intersubjectively founded self-realisation and Robert Brandom’s concept of socially mediated propositional articulation. The focus of the analysis is the question of the social prerequisites and intersubjective mechanisms of the development of propositional thinking as a core dimension of subjectivity. On the ground of the (...) analytic work carried out by the paper some basic features of development-supportive pedagogical interactions can be formulated. (shrink)

According to Diogenes Laertius, the concept of ‘appearance’ played a central role in Stoic philosophy. As staunch corporealists, the Stoics believed that appearances are physical structures in our corporeal soul which provide the foundation for all our thoughts. One of the crucial features of appearance is that it is a representational mental state that has the ability to provide us with accurate awareness of the world through causal interaction between our senses and external objects, and thus supply the means for (...) acquiring knowledge about the reality. However, the Stoics recognized that we can also be aware and think of objects that are real but are not presently affecting our senses, as well as objects that are altogether fictional and thus incapable of ever interacting with our senses. Because of this, it was important for them to distinguish between representational mental states which are and those which are not caused by external objects at the moment in which they are formed. Chrysippus was one of the Stoics who paid special attention to this distinction; in a key text, Aet. 4.12, he is reported as reserving the name ‘appearance’ only for the former states, while for the latter he used a different term, ‘imagination’. (shrink)

The concept of respect plays a central role in several recent attempts to re-actualise the programme of a critical social theory. In Axel Honneth's most prominent version of that concept, respect is closely tied to the sphere of law, and it is limited to the recognition of a Kantian-type moral autonomy of the individual. So interpreted, the concept of respect can only have a very limited application in the field of education, where concern for the particular desires, intentions and beliefs (...) of mostly immature persons is at stake.However, more than forty years ago R. S. Peters did develop an extended concept of respect as a central component in education. This concept focuses exactly on those desires, intentions and beliefs, instead of on the very demanding capability of practical reasoning orientated towards the Kantian Categorical Imperative. My task in this paper is to explore the potential of Peters' concept of respect for the identification and description of educational pathologies and ultimately for the founding of a critical theory of education. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to propose an account of the notion of semantic content. I will try to show that my account has some advantages over the existing accounts, and that, at the same time, it captures the most valuable insights behind both parties involved in the contextualism-minimalism debate. The proposed account of semantic content differs from the more traditional ones in that it puts more burden on the parameters of the point of evaluation, leaving very little in (...) the content itself. In particular, even in the case of indexical and demonstrative pronouns, the semantic content is, I suggest, stable across contexts, and does not include the reference of the pronoun. In a nutshell, the semantic content associated with (an utterance of) a sentence that contains one or more pronouns is a function that asks not only for a world and a time of evaluation, but also one or more individuals, before it can return a truth value. (shrink)

Since Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, the view that there are contingent apriori truths has been surprisingly widespread. In this paper, I argue against that view. My first point is that in general, occurrences of predicates “a priori” and “contingent” are implicitly relativized to some circumstance, involving an agent, a time, a location. My second point is that apriority and necessity coineide when relativized to the same circumstance. That is to say, what is known apriori (by an agent in a (...) circumstance) cannot fail to be the case (in the same circumstance), hence it is necessary. (shrink)

Die Kategorie der Bildungsgerechtigkeit erlebt derzeit eine Hochkonjunktur in der bildungspolitischen Diskussion wie auch in der empirischen Bildungsforschung. Dabei wird sie – insbesondere im deutschsprachigen Raum – in Nachfolge der PISA-Studien fast ausschließlich als Bezeichnung für eine angestrebte Überwindung der Herkunftsabhängigkeit von Bildungsbiographien verwendet. Diese Abhängigkeit, die im Fokus dieser Studien seit 1999 steht, wird von ihnen in allen OECD-Ländern festgestellt, wobei sie in Deutschland besonders stark ausgeprägt zu sein scheint.

The paper attempts to describe mechanisms of personal identity development during the radical break with traditions which is typical for the age of reflexive modernity. Here identity development is no longer possible on the base of identification with irreflexive, traditionally given symbols of a local culture. Post-traditional identity does not refer to the past, but to the future, which has optional as well as contingent character.Post-traditional identity is formed through participation in a kind of intersubjectivity which has a reflexive and (...) universal structure. I explain this model of inter subjectivity by means of a comparative analysis of two opposite concepts of interpersonal communication, respectively of the relationship between land We-namely those of Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

This paper attempts to develop an alternative to both classical liberal claims about individual autonomy and communitarian claims about cultural embeddement of the individual. It shows a way to develop a new model of subjectivity through an interpretation at the level of a deeply located, coherent self. This self is the core of personal identity as a pluralisticly structured, decentralized, internalization of Ego - Alter Ego relationships. This concept is clarified by a critical interpretation and reformulation of Jeremy Waldron’s concept (...) of cosmopolitan identities. (shrink)

This paper investigates practice, frameworks and philosophy in the field of ecological management, a novel integrative approach to closing the gap between ecological and economic theoretical models and ecological and economic behavior. First, I will present the current status in this emerging field and discuss management in relation to various sub-disciplines, including agroecology, circular economy, industrial ecology, and urban sustainability. This provides a basis to analyze the theoretical frameworks found in profitable, ecologically-based businesses and identify key general features that characterize (...) this approach, notably the relationships between: an enterprise’s diversity and its economic resiliency; zero waste policies and societal and environmental impacts; and affordances of the local environment and business’ long-term economic viability. Finally, the philosophical issues looming behind are discussed, notably problems regarding interdisciplinarity and the relation of ethical frameworks with management. Through use of the model-centered philosophy of science to disentangle some of these conceptual problems, I argue that ecological management has a unique place in sustainable development as an independent exploratory tool for constructing and testing economic and ethical models in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

One of the most important and, at the same time, most controversial issues in metasemantics is the question of what semantics is, and what distinguishes semantic elements (features, properties, phenomena, mechanisms, processes, or whatever) from the rest. The issue is tightly linked with the debate over the semantics-pragmatics distinction, which has been vibrant for a decade or two, but seems to be reaching an impasse. I suggest that this impasse may be due to the failure to recognize a distinct realm (...) that should not be subsumed either under semantics or pragmatics, but may be labeled "prepragmatics". My ultimate goal is to put forward and defend a novel picture of our language architecture, according to which: semantic content is strictly poorer than the lexically encoded content (and therefore does not involve any contextually determined material - not even the reference of demonstratives); pragmatic mechanisms require being able to reason about one's beliefs and intentions and do not affect truth-conditions or truth-value; and, finally, there is a distinct prepragmatic level, which takes into account various kinds of contextual information and makes it possible to evaluate a sentence (as used on a particular occasion) for a truth value. I shall take as a case study, one of the "stumbling stones" in the semantics-pragmatics literature: the case of demonstrative reference. The upshot will be to show that if there is indeed room for a family of linguistic phenomena that are neither semantic nor yet fully pragmatic, the resolution of demonstrative reference is a candidate par excellence to belong there. (shrink)

Cicero’s De divinatione portrays the Stoics as unanimous in advocating both natural and technical divination. I argue that, contrary to this, the earlier leaders of the school like Chrysippus had reasons to consider natural divination to be significantly epistemically inferior to its technical counterpart. The much more favorable treatment of natural divination in De divinatione is likely the result of changes introduced later, probably by Posidonius.

In this paper, the authors present a presuppositional account for a class of evaluative terms that encode both a descriptive and an evaluative component: slurs and thick terms. The authors discuss several issues related to the hybrid nature of these terms, such as their projective behavior, the ways in which one may reject their evaluative content, and the ways in which evaluative content is entailed or implicated (as the case may be) by the use of such terms.

In various philosophical, religious and mystical traditions, beauty is often related to intellectual upliftment and spiritual ascent, which suggests that besides its common aesthetic value it may also acquire an epistemic, metaphysical and spiritual meaning or value. I will examine in detail three accounts in which beauty, at times inseparable from desire and love, mediates between physical, intellectual and spiritual levels of existence. Since beauty, in all three accounts, takes on a mediatory role or function,1 I will name these mediations (...) as follows: ancient Greek Eros-mediation or Beauty-mediation (Plato: ca. 429-347 BCE), late medieval Italian Beauty and Love-mediation (Dante Alighieri: 1265-1321) and pre-modern Indian Beauty and Love-mediation (Rūpa Gosvāmi: 1470/90-1564 CE).2 In the first section, I will analyse the stages of Eros or Beauty mediation in Plato; in the second section, I will turn to Dante’s Beauty and Love-mediation and compare it with Plato’s account. In the third section, I will analyse Rūpa’s account of Beauty and Love-mediation in comparison with both Plato and Dante. I will argue that there are certain patterns of mediation mutually shared if not between all three accounts, then at least between two of them. While Plato’s account clearly influenced Dante and was well integrated into Dante’s account, there is no mention or evidence of a pre-modern Bengali theologian influenced by ancient Greek and medieval Italian philosophy and mysticism. However, a strong convergence of elements of Beauty-mediations in Plato and Dante, as well as Beauty and Love-mediations in Dante and Rūpa Gosvāmi, confirms the universality of certain features of Beauty and Love-mediation and speaks in support of an all-inclusive account of them.3 -/- 1 By Beauty-mediation I mean an aesthetic, intellectual or spiritual reconciliation between opposites, such as human and divine, mortal and immortal, particular and universal, sexual and sacred and so on. 2 Rūpa Gosvāmi was an Indian theologian. More information about him is provided in section 3. 3 I am here applying transitivity: if Plato’s account (A) shares elements with Dante’s account (B) and if Dante’s account (B) shares those same elements with Rūpa’s account (C), then Plato’s (A) and Rūpa’s (C) accounts share some elements as well. Obviously, all accounts have some different elements not mutually shared, but I will not deal with them here. (shrink)