Religion is more than a matter of worshipping a deity or spirit. For many people, religion pervades every part of their lives and is not separated off into some purely private and personal realm. Religion is integral to many people's relationship with the wider world, an aspect of their dwelling among other beings - both human and other-than-human - and something manifested in the everyday world of eating food, having sex and fearing strangers. Food, Sex and Strangers offers alternative ways (...) of thinking about what religion involves and how we might better understand it. Drawing on studies of contemporary religions, especially among indigenous peoples, the book argues that religion serves to maintain and enhance human relationships in and with the larger-than-human world. Fundamentally, religion can be better understood through the ways we negotiate our lives than in affirmations of belief - and it is best seen when people engage in intimate acts with themselves and others. (shrink)

Though they worked in very different disciplines, Max Weber and Thomas Mann were engaged from early in their careers in a remarkably similar enterprise converging on questions of personal identity and national self-understanding, and built upon conceptions drawn from a common intellectual and national heritage. Harvey Goldman's ambitious new book is about a part of that enterprise, the foundation of their understanding of the relation of self and work as set out in Weber's essays on religion and Mann's pre-World (...) War I writings. Weber and Mann sought to revitalize a set of ideas of character and action—calling and personality—to guide their own lives and intellectual creation, as well as politics and the life of the nation. In their hands these ideas also became explanatory tools for understanding the crisis of their class and of Germany. By organizing the interpretation of Weber and Mann around the conceptual nexus of calling and personality, the author reveals a number of issues and problems that have been overlooked, providing an altogether new approach to Weber's famous explanation of the capitalist spirit and recovering a vital modern debate around the idea and meaning of the person. In the convergence of so many themes in their writings, Weber and Mann exemplify the self-understanding of their age and cast a special light on problems of self, identity, and social life. This work contains fascinating material for students of intellectual history and modern political theory. Anyone concerned generally with twentieth-century European history, politics, philosophy, and literature will welcome this rich, vigorously written book. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the deepest roots of Homo sapiens’ propensity towards excessive consumption lie in the emptiness of human awareness, itself possibly rooted in brain plasticity. I attempt to demonstrate how this insight emerged and appeared repeatedly throughout the history of philosophy and religious thought and how industrialized capitalism and consumer culture led to the current domination and envelopment of our lives by the “commodity canopy.” In the final section of the paper, I envision one way that (...) contemporary humanity might use the history of insights about empty, restless awareness and brain plasticity to develop cultures that focus more on doing than having, more on events than on objects. (shrink)

In what is portrayed as Buddha's first sermon, the Dhamma‐cakka‐ppavatana Sutta (DCPS), the Buddha highlighted four key aspects or dimensions of existence to which one needs to become attuned so as to become deeply spiritually transformed and end dukkha. Though the DCPS emphasizes dukkha, this is in fact only one of three related characteristics or “marks” of the five khandhas. These “three marks” of all conditioned phenomena are that they are impermanent, painful, and non‐Self. Buddhism emphasizes that change and impermanence (...) are fundamental features of everything. The Four True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled and statements which point to these realities, such as “This is dukkha,” form the structural framework for all higher teachings of early Buddhism. (shrink)

This article argues that the quantitative and quasi-experimental approach to evaluating public participation exercises is deficient in at least two respects. First, casting participants in instrumental terms excludes that participants have an experience and that this may be dramatic and emotional. If people are to be invited, even obliged, to participate, then this experience should be considered in event evaluation. Second, current evaluation frameworks tend not to be sensitive to what actually happened in terms of the actions of participants and (...) how these influenced the proceedings and outcome, thus ignoring that such events are fora where positions, values, decisions, and so forth are constructed and constrained rather than simply reported. This article considers the possible contribution of dramaturgical, discourse and conversation analytic, and ethnographic and phenomenological approaches to evaluating participation exercises and illustrates their potential with data gathered during the U.K. “GM Nation?” public debate. (shrink)

This paper discusses basic critical realism within the context of economic anthropology and develops an approach to studying material relations between people. A diachronic form of analysis, following the work of Bhaskar and Archer, is described as a practical means of analysing property rights. This new approach emphasises epistemic relativism and ontological realism in order to compare disparate forms of human interaction across cultures. The aim of doing this is to develop a philosophical framework that allows for the comparison of (...) economic practices without resorting to judgemental relativism. The implications are significant for institutional economics and anthropology alike, particularly for researchers examining multiple overlapping practices such as market and gift exchange. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’s Moral Theory by John MarshallMartin HarveyJohn Marshall. Descartes’s Moral Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 177. Cloth, $35.00.In this concise, well-wrought and provocative work, John Marshall sets two primary goals for himself: 1) to show that Descartes, contrary to the received view, does provide us with the foundational elements of a full fledged ethical theory, and 2) to prove, again contrary to standard interpreters, (...) that Descartes’s early theory of morals, as sketched in the Discourse, is at one with the later theory propounded in The Passions of the Soul and numerous correspondences with Princess Elizabeth.The book is divided into three parts. The first section includes a thorough discussion of Descartes’s self-described morale par provision which provides the philosophical inquirer with practical guidance while the theoretical foundations of his or her belief system are shorn by radical doubt. These four maxims—to follow the customs of one’s country, practice one’s faith and rely on the opinions of the wise, to act resolutely in the face of uncertainty, to master one’s passions and to live the life, at least in Descartes’s case, of a philosopher—should not, Marshall argues, be viewed as ‘provisional’ in a pejorative sense (16–19). Instead, Marshall claims that Descartes takes them to be derivable from his four rules of method (14; 32–33). Therefore, the morale par provision is not some sort of “convenient” compromise but actually forms the second order core of a viable ethical theory (16). The second part, Descartes’s “Final Morality” is devoted to exploring Descartes’s conception of virtue and his notion of the good life (57). Succinctly, the good life for Descartes is happiness which, according to Marshall, in a very weakly Neo-Stoic sense is taken to consist in virtue and wisdom. Formally defined, Cartesian virtue is “the disposition always to judge as well as we can what is the best plan of action and to adhere strictly to that plan” (63). In turn, in a letter to Elizabeth, we are informed that behaving virtuously requires one to display strength and firmness of will, to judge well, and to possess well ordered desires—evidence which Marshall takes to show a close correspondence with the maxims of the earlier morale par provision. (74–5). Contra commentators such as Geroult, an apparent conceptual continuum between the early and later theories thereby obtains. (See Martial Geroult, Descartes’s Philosophy Interpreted according to the Order of Reasons, translated by Roger Ariew [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985], Chapters 19–20.)Unfortunately, and as Marshall readily admits, Descartes provides us with little substantive guidance concerning his axiology and theory of right action. Thus, the third, and more “speculative” part of the work seeks to correct this deficit by delving into a proposed Cartesian metaethics (115). Marshall begins by fleshing out Descartes’s [End Page 677] concept of the Summum Bonum, i.e., virtue. Cartesian virtue is a second-order good which instructs us to strive after and promote various intrinsically valuable first-order goods such as joy, knowledge, friendship, free will, the love of God, etc. (118). As such, Descartes seems to provide us with a fairly straightforward teleological conception of ethics. Nonetheless, when we turn to moral theory proper, Marshall wants to claim that Descartes exhibits certain proto-Kantian leanings, entailed by his concept of generosite as discussed at length in The Passions. The genereux, i.e., those who display generosite, are individuals who, Marshall argues, always act with “respect” towards others and thus treat their fellows both benevolently and justly (152). The basis for this respect is to be found, and this is somewhat of a stretch, albeit an interesting one, in our mutual capacity for free and rational willing (156). From here, of course, it would be a rather short step to Kant. More work needs to be done, however, to square this seemingly non-consequentialist conception of right action with Descartes’s teleological axiology.Regardless, Marshall has accomplished his first task—the normative theory outlined in The Passions, although rudimentary, certainly deserves to be viewed as ethical, not simply prudential, in... (shrink)

I make three points. First, processors and depletable resources should not be regarded as alternative means of processing information: they are both necessary. Second, comparing a processor account with a rational allocation mechanism to a depletable-resources account without one is not a fair comparison. Third, depletable resources can act as signals as well as fuels.

This article examines the history of the National Council of Churches, Singapore. In particular it considers the ways in which the role and nature of ecumenical engagement in Singapore transformed as the impetus for ecclesial unity, social and political engagement shifted from a project and concern of foreign missionaries to that of Singaporean church leaders. Further, it examines the ecclesial, social and political implications as ecumenical activity becomes grounded in a non-western setting.

Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebrón) was perhaps the greatest Neo-Platonist in the medieval Arabic philosophic tradition, and the greatest medieval Hebrew poet. In the following discussion, the author studies a short poem (Ahabtikha: "I Have Loved You") from Ibn Gabirol's classic philosophy work Fons Vitae, and he tries to clarify some of the poem's enigmas. The poem does relate to the teachings of the Fons Vitae, but does so in a nonphilosophic manner, making no use of philosophic terminology or argument.

Souvenir du passé, variation sur le présent, imagination de l'avenir : la littérature s'est toujours nourrie de ces ressorts immémoriaux de l'art du récit. Mais qu'en est-il de la littérature contemporaine? Comment agence-t-elle la mémoire et l'espérance, le " déjà plus " et le " pas encore ", le maintenant et l'autrefois? Quels sont les rythmes et les durées, les passés et les futurs qui fondent la singularité de la littérature du présent, de notre présent? Ce cahier de recherche, qui (...) rassemble les interventions de douze jeunes chercheurs, interroge la manière dont les littératures québécoise et française disent notre contemporanéité et son imaginaire du temps. (shrink)

Phylogenetic trees based on gene sequence data contain information about the evolutionary processes responsible for their genesis. Methods have now been developed which help to reveal those processes. The methods are based on simple models of evolutionary change but, when applied across individuals in a population, rather than across species in a higher‐level taxon, they can reveal the past history of population change. Examples from salamanders and viruses are used to illustrate how the past history of changes in speciation rate (...) and the origin of epidemics can be inferred in the absence of fossil material or historical documentation. (shrink)

The first full-length critical introduction in English to Nietzsche's lifelong obsession with Wagner, and why it matters for understanding Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole.