The rift which has long divided the philosophical world into opposed schools-the "Continental" school owing its origins to the phenomenology of Husserl and the "analytic" school derived from Frege-is finally closing.

Following a brief summation of the phenomenological method, the paper considers three metaethical positions adopted by phenomenologists and the implications of those positions for a normative ethics. The metaethical positions combine epistemological and ontological viewpoints. They are non-intellectualism and strong value realism as represented by the axiological views of phenomenologists such as Scheler, Meinong, Reinach, Stein, Hartmann, von Hildebrand, and Steinbock; non-intellectualism and anti-realism as represented by the freedom-centered phenomenologies of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty; and weak intellectualism and weak value (...) realism as represented by Husserl and Drummond. The paper argues that only the third metaethical view can support a normative ethics that is consistent with the essential features of the phenomenological method, that allows for freedom in an agent’s choosing from a multiplicity of first-order goods, including vocational goods, practical identities, and life plans, available in the agent’s factical circumstances, and that provides norms governing the correctness of our actions and our obligations to others. The normative dimension is introduced, first, by the requirement that the fulfillment of first-order evaluations and choices be truthful, that is, that the evaluations be appropriate and the actions right. Second, transcendental considerations revealed in the phenomenological analysis of intentional experience disclose a notion of second-order goods of agency that universally bind agents in their exercise of freedom and their dealings with others. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the issues that motivate representationalist accounts, and it describes the different versions of representationalism as responses to these issues. It argues that the representationalist views do not adequately respond to the epistemological problems that motivate them and that they engender some ontological problems. The chapter presents an alternative ‘presentationalist’ account that preserves the straightforward sense of the mind's openness to the world. While representationalism and presentationalism agree that the relation between mental events or states is direct but (...) mediated, they radically differ in their views of the nature of the mediation involved in the mind's intentional directedness to the world. This difference and the preferability of the presentationalist account are explored. (shrink)

The key to understanding self-identity is identifying the transcendental structures that make a temporally extended, continuous, and unified experiential life possible. Self-identity is rooted in the formal, temporalizing structure of intentional experience that underlies psychological continuity. Personal identity, by contrast, is rooted in the content of the particular flow of experience, in particular and primarily, in the convictions adopted passively or actively in reflection by a self-identical subject in the light of her social and traditional inheritances. Secondarily, a person’s identity (...) is rooted in others’ characterizations of that person in the light of the social conventions and constructs of the cultures and traditions that have shaped the personal identity of the ones who make the attributions. Personal identity, on this view, is fundamentally rooted in beliefs, traits—especially character traits—sentiments, and moods, that is, in the subject’s convictions about the true, the good, and the right—and in the commitments to the pursuit of (apparently) worthwhile goods and to the practical identities rooted in those convictions. (shrink)

I discuss controversial claims about the status of non-human animals as moral beings in relation to philosophical claims to the contrary. I address questions about the ontology of animals rather than ethical approaches as to how humans need to treat other animals through notions of, for example, animal rights. I explore the evolutionary origins of behavior that can be considered vices or virtues and suggest that Thomas Aquinas is closer to Darwin's view on nonhuman animals than we might suppose. An (...) appreciation of the complexity of the emotional lives of social animals and their cooperative behaviors in light of the work of animal ethologists such as Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff suggests that social animals can be considered moral in their own terms. I discuss the charge of anthropomorphism, drawing on the work of archaeologist Steven Mithen, and consider arguments for the evolution of conscience in the work of anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Only the biological basis for the development of conscience and religion has evolved in nonhuman animals, and this should not be confused with sophisticated moral systems of analysis or particular religious beliefs found in the human community. (shrink)

This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on key terms and ...

This book is the first volume on the evolution of wisdom. Using a combination of ethnographic and ethological studies, it shows how key moral attributes of compassion, justice and wisdom are woven into relationships with animals.

Perplexed was I when invited to contribute a paper addressing the “landscape of Husserlian phenomenology.” I had no idea of the intended import of the landscape-metaphor. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the paper was to be part of a collection titled “Horizons of Phenomenology.” “Horizons” I get; it’s a technical term for Husserl, who distinguishes between inner and outer horizons. So, were I to talk about horizons, I would talk about phenomenology’s inner horizons, that is, about (...) the possibilities for further explication of the implications of various, already articulated phenomenological approaches and positions. And I would talk too about phenomenology’s outer horizons, that is, about new areas indicated for phenomenological reflection by already existing analyses, including and especially those areas that bring phenomenology into contact with other philosophical approaches and other disciplines. So, “horizons” I could have dealt with. But “landscape”? (shrink)

Britain's abandonment of the Gold Standard in 1931 raised new economic policy problems both for Britain and for the countries of the Empire, who had to decide whether to follow sterling off gold and, if so, whether to peg their currencies to sterling. By exploiting archival material, the author casts fresh light on the debates and financial diplomacy of the period, and provides a fuller understanding of several key issues: the formation of the sterling area, the World Economic Conference of (...) 1933, and American concerns about the price and course of sterling. (shrink)

This article marks a decisive step towards the recovery of the French woman writer, journalist, and aviation pioneer Louise Faure-Favier, who today is virtually forgotten. The article begins by sit...

Originally published in 1926, this volume charts the achievements of Edward Thring, arguably the most original and striking figure in the schoolmaster world of England in the nineteenth century. Abroad, he was the only English schoolmaster of his generation widely known by name. The principles upon which he relied were that every boy should be taught, and the less able the boy, the more able should be the teacher who was set to deal with him; that no class should exceed (...) twenty-five boys; that each boy should have privacy in the dormitories and that trust between boys and masters was paramount. These were revolutionary principles in educational terms at the time but they have endured to form the cornerstones of British boarding-schools which are still recognized today. (shrink)

When a young boy playing in a wooded area, I tripped over exposed roots extending from the trunk of a tree. I threw my arms out in front of me to break my fall and disturbed a nest of bees. As I lay on the ground, I was repeatedly stung by bees until I could regain my feet and run away. Frightened and in a great deal of pain - that is what I remember most vividly - I walked home. (...) My mother took me to the doctor, who undoubtedly gave me some sort of treatment and medication, but this has been lost to memory. The part of the visit to the doctor's office that I remember is his removing any stingers remaining in me; this too I remember for its pain. The doctor counted more than seventy stings. Although the exact number escapes memory, I believe it was seventy-one. In brief, the descriptive details of the day's experiences elude memory, but the affective dimension - the pain and fear - does not. (shrink)

We can look at paintings, listen to music, dance, play instruments, and watch movies, on our own almost anytime, anywhere. That is, we have effortless, on-demand access to an abundance of private aesthetic experiences. Why, then, do we seek out aesthetic experiences together? Indeed, it is not controversial to claim that listening to music, dancing, and watching films are activities that we do together more so than we do on our own. While the significance of interpersonal aesthetic experiences, and what (...) explains that significance, is not uncharted territory, I claim that more precision regarding the kinds of relations and interactions that modulate and enable different kinds of interpersonal aesthetic experiences is warranted than is offered in extant literature. As such, an enactive approach that not only foregrounds embodiment and intersubjectivity in cognition, but duly explains how variations in them cause variations in cognition, is paramount to my explanation. Here, then, I marshal three ‘varieties’ of interpersonal aesthetic experience that I term aggregative, synchronised, and shared aesthetic experiences. In doing so, I explain what makes them particularly worthwhile, while introducing terminological and explanatory clarity to the literature as a unifying base from which future research can unfold. (shrink)

This paper explores the emergence of the distinctions between the transcendental and the psychological and, correlatively, between phenomenology and psychology that emerge in The Idea of Phenomenology. It is argued that this first attempt to draw these distinctions reveals that the conception of transcendental phenomenology remains infected by elements of the earlier conception of descriptive psychology and that only later does Husserl move to a more adequate—but perhaps not yet fully purified—conception of the transcendental.

Philosophers contributing new ideas are commonly caught within a received philosophical vocabulary and will often coin new, technical terms. Husserl understood himself as advancing a new theory of intentionality, and he fashioned the new vocabulary of `noesis' and `noema'. But Husserl's own statements regarding the noema are ambiguous. Hence, it is no surprise that controversy has ensued. The articles in this book elucidate and clarify the notion of the noema; the book includes articles which phenomenologically describe and analyze the noemata (...) of various experiences as well as articles which undertake the `metaphenomenological' explication of the doctrine of the noema. These two enterprises cannot be isolated from one another. Any analysis of the noema of a particular type of experience will necessarily illustrate, at least by instantiating the general notion of noema. And any metaphenomenological account of the noema itself will guide particular researches into the noemata of particular experiences. (shrink)

Engaging with phenomenology, moral philosophy, politics and psychology, and authored by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the ethical and social significance of a variety of human emotions.

A legal trade in antiquities existed in Egypt until 1983. A recent publication on the antiquities trade provides the opportunity to scrutinize the process by which the Egyptian Service des Antiquités attempted to control the trade through the issuing of licenses to dealers. This offers a corrective view of Egyptology as something that is as much a bureaucratic process as an academic discipline.

Finding a way to come to terms with the disvalues in the evolutionary world is a particular challenge in the light of Neo‐Darwinian theories. In this article I trace the shift in Christopher Southgate's work from a focus on theodicy to a theologian of glory. I am critical of his rejection of the tradition of the Fall, his incorporation of disvalues into the work of divine Glory, and the specific theological weight given to scientific content. I offer a critique of (...) Holmes Rolston III's approach to the valuation of nature that I believe has influenced Southgate's theology. Constructively, I offer an alternative that seeks to recover an understanding of the origin of evil and the Adamic event that draws on the work of Paul Ricoeur. I also draw on the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold for an alternative philosophical approach to evolution which opens up a space for a recovery of the concepts of creaturely Sophia and shadow Sophia in the work of Sergius Bulgakov. (shrink)

Darwin thought that the moral sense was among the most challenging aspects of human life to account for through evolutionary explanations. This article seeks to probe the question about human uniqueness primarily from a theological perspective by focusing in depth on one distinctive moral sentiment, gratitude, particularly in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. It uses that example as a case study about how to consider the validity of arguments for human uniqueness within the broader compass of the cultural evolution of (...) sociality and morality within the human sciences, including evolutionary anthropology. Further questions about the evolution of religion surface in this discussion since gratitude, from a theological perspective, necessarily includes gratitude to God as a fundamental aspect of religious faith and practice. (shrink)

The notion of community—a many that is one—is troubled in two respects: (1) On a theoretical level, given that there are many kinds of communities, what, despite their differences, do they share as communities? (2) On a practical level, communities in fact often manifest little unity riven, as they are, by factions and conflicts. After exploring the ways in which empathy as supplemented and complemented by affective dimensions of experience contributes to both the unity and disunity of communities, I shall (...) focus on what I take to be an extreme instance of a disunified community, namely, the political community in which the disunity is institutionalized in political parties, governing administrations, and opposition movements. The focus on the disunified community, I suggest, points to a difference between those communities unified by a shared understanding of the ends and activities pursued in collective action and those communities more weakly unified by conflicting “thick” understandings of a shared “thin” understanding of the ends and activities proper to the political community. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as the founding figure of phenomenology, exerted an enormous influence on the course of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy. This volume collects and translates essays written by important German-speaking commentators on Husserl, ranging from his contemporaries to scholars of today, to make available in English some of the best commentary on Husserl and the phenomenological project. The essays focus on three problematics within phenomenology: the nature and method of phenomenology; intentionality, with its attendant issues of temporality (...) and subjectivity; and intersubjectivity and culture. Several essays also deal with Martin Heidegger's phenomenology, although in a manner that reveals not only Heidegger's differences with Husserl but also his reliance on and indebtedness to Husserl's phenomenology. Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl's thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl--most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics--are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations. The volume includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Patočka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker. (shrink)

Philo Judaeus - The Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy in its development and completion - Vol. 2 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1888. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes (...) to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

A common feature of much recent work done in a variety of disciplines is the foregrounding of embodiment. Thinking in terms of a situated body however, brings up a complex problem which has often been overlooked: the re-importation of a kind of metaphysics of the body or a covert idealism, which stubbornly persists in many such discussions. This is seen in treatments ofthe body as a mediation or as a site for inscription of socio-cultural codings. We will briefly show how (...) even such an influential account ofritualization practices, that of Catherine Bell, shows traces of these problems. The corrective strategy to such conceptions is a properly situational ontology as suggested by Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and Tim Ingolds critical work on environments. (shrink)

The desire to maintain current beliefs can lead individuals to evaluate contrary evidence more critically than consistent evidence. We test whether priming individuals’ scientific reasoning...