_Ian Buruma explores the life and death of Baruch Spinoza, the Enlightenment thinker whose belief in freedom of thought and speech resonates in our own time_ Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677) was a radical free thinker who led a life guided by strong moral principles despite his disbelief in an all-seeing God. Seen by many—Christians as well as Jews—as Satan’s disciple during his lifetime, Spinoza has been regarded as a secular saint since his death. Many contradictory beliefs have been attached (...) to his name: rationalism or metaphysics, atheism or pantheism, liberalism or despotism, Jewishness or anti-Semitism. However, there is no question that he viewed freedom of thought and speech as essential to an open and free society. In this insightful account, the award-winning author Ian Buruma stresses the importance of the time and place that shaped Spinoza, beginning with the Sephardim of Amsterdam and followed by the politics of the Dutch Republic. Though Spinoza rejected the basic assumptions of his family’s faith, and was consequently expelled from his Sephardic community, Buruma argues that Spinoza did indeed lead a Jewish life: a _modern_ Jewish life. To Heine, Hess, Marx, Freud, and no doubt many others today, Spinoza exemplified how to be Jewish without believing in Judaism. His defense of universal freedom is as important for our own time as it was in his. (shrink)

Vanaf het moment dat Ian Buruma als dertienjarige over de veroordeling van de beruchte SS-functionaris Adolf Eichmann las, heeft het kwaad als fenomeen hem niet meer losgelaten. Hoewel het geweld van de Holocaust het ijkpunt is geworden voor ons hedendaagse begrip van het kwade, ziet Buruma dat er nog veel ontbreekt aan onze opvatting van het kwaad. Hij duikt opnieuw in Hannah Arendts analyse van het proces-Eichmann en komt zo via haar ideëen over de banaliteit van het kwaad (...) en over het totalitarisme uit bij het onbarmhartige kwaad zoals we dat in onze tijd aantreffen in vluchtelingencrises, vreemdelingenhaat en complottheorieëen. 'Politieke tegenstanders zijn niet langer mensen met een ander standpunt, of met andere belangen, maar immorele schurken die men het liefst uit de weg zou willen ruimen. Als bange mensen overtuigd zijn dat ze te kampen hebben met boze machten, dan is het hek van de dam, want dan is alles geoorloofd om zich daartegen te verweren.'"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

One of Ian Hacking's earliest publications, this book showcases his early ideas on the central concepts and questions surrounding statistical reasoning. He explores the basic principles of statistical reasoning and tests them, both at a philosophical level and in terms of their practical consequences for statisticians. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Jan-Willem Romeijn, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, Hacking's influential and original work has been revived for (...) a new generation of readers. (shrink)

Historical records show that there was no real concept of probability in Europe before the mid-seventeenth century, although the use of dice and other randomizing objects was commonplace. Ian Hacking presents a philosophical critique of early ideas about probability, induction, and statistical inference and the growth of this new family of ideas in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Hacking invokes a wide intellectual framework involving the growth of science, economics, and the theology of the period. He argues that the (...) transformations that made it possible for probability concepts to emerge have constrained all subsequent development of probability theory and determine the space within which philosophical debate on the subject is still conducted. First published in 1975, this edition includes an introduction that contextualizes his book in light of developing philosophical trends. Ian Hacking is the winner of the Holberg International Memorial Prize 2009. (shrink)

Many people find themselves dissatisfied with recent linguistic philosophy, and yet know that language has always mattered deeply to philosophy and must in some sense continue to do so. Ian Hacking considers here some dozen case studies in the history of philosophy to show the different ways in which language has been important, and the consequences for the development of the subject. There are chapters on, among others, Hobbes, Berkeley, Russell, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Feyerabend and Davidson. Dr Hacking ends by (...) speculating about the directions in which philosophy and the study of language seem likely to go. The book will provide students with a stimulating, broad survey of problems in the theory of meaning and the development of philosophy, particularly in this century. The topics treated in the philosophy of language are among the central, current concerns of philosophers, and the historical framework makes it possible to introduce concretely and intelligibly all the main theoretical issues. (shrink)

Humanity has sat at the center of philosophical thinking for too long. The recent advent of environmental philosophy and posthuman studies has widened our scope of inquiry to include ecosystems, animals, and artificial intelligence. Yet the vast majority of the stuff in our universe, and even in our lives, remains beyond serious philosophical concern. In _Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing_, Ian Bogost develops an object-oriented ontology that puts things at the center of being—a philosophy in (...) which nothing exists any more or less than anything else, in which humans are elements but not the sole or even primary elements of philosophical interest. And unlike experimental phenomenology or the philosophy of technology, Bogost’s alien phenomenology takes for granted that _all_ beings interact with and perceive one another. This experience, however, withdraws from human comprehension and becomes accessible only through a speculative philosophy based on metaphor. Providing a new approach for understanding the experience of things _as_ things, Bogost also calls on philosophers to rethink their craft. Drawing on his own background as a videogame designer, Bogost encourages professional thinkers to become makers as well, engineers who construct things as much as they think and write about them. (shrink)

In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart's answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement. Only then will you become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart's Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an (...) imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Heidegger had a lifelong fascination with Eckhart, referring to him as "the old master of letters and life." Drawing on archival material and Heidegger's marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart's writings, Moore argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger's philosophy. This book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji's essay "Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart," which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger's classes in 1938. (shrink)

Introductions to the theory of knowledge are plentiful, but none introduce students to the most recent debates that exercise contemporary philosophers. Ian Evans and Nicholas D. Smith aim to change that. Their book guides the reader through the standard theories of knowledge while simultaneously using these as a springboard to introduce current debates. Each chapter concludes with a “Current Trends” section pointing the reader to the best literature dominating current philosophical discussion. These include: the puzzle of reasonable disagreement; the so-called (...) “problem of easy knowledge”; the intellectual virtues; and new theories in the philosophy of language relating to knowledge. Chapters include discussions of skepticism, the truth condition, belief and acceptance, justification, internalism versus externalism, epistemic evaluation, and epistemic contextualism. Evans and Smith do not merely offer a review of existing theories and debates; they also offer a novel theory that takes seriously the claim that knowledge is not unique to humans. Surveying current scientific literature in animal ethology, they discover surprising sophistication and diversity in non-human cognition. In their final analysis the authors provide a unified account of knowledge that manages to respect and explain this diversity. They argue that animals know when they make appropriate use of the cognitive processes available to animals of that kind, in environments within which those processes are veridically well-adapted. _Knowledge_ is a lively and accessible volume, ideal for undergraduate and post-graduate students. It is also set to spark debate among scholars for its novel approaches to traditional topics and its thoroughgoing commitment to naturalism. (shrink)

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals, Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the importance (...) of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

We suggest that there is a need for those who seek to explore issues associated with the implementation of citizenship education in England to clarify its specific nature. This can be done, at least in part, through a process of comparison. To that end we review some of the connections and disjunctions between 'character education' and 'citizenship education'. We argue, drawing from US and UK literature but focusing our attention on contexts and issues in England, that there are indeed some (...) broad areas of overlap between these two fields. Citizens should be of 'good' character and the educational initiatives that we consider both emerge from a concern about current trends in society. However, we suggest that the overlaps with citizenship education principally apply when character education is drawn very broadly. When we examine a particular approach to character education that is often US-based, and titled as 'citizenship', we note many contrasts with citizenship education as formulated in the National Curriculum for England. We suggest that citizenship educators in England need to interpret claims about the similarity between these two fields with caution, or meanings that apply to both character education and citizenship education will be distorted. (shrink)

Infinity is an intriguing topic, with connections to religion, philosophy, metaphysics, logic, and physics as well as mathematics. Its history goes back to ancient times, with especially important contributions from Euclid, Aristotle, Eudoxus, and Archimedes. The infinitely large is intimately related to the infinitely small. Cosmologists consider sweeping questions about whether space and time are infinite. Philosophers and mathematicians ranging from Zeno to Russell have posed numerous paradoxes about infinity and infinitesimals. Many vital areas of mathematics rest upon some version (...) of infinity. The most obvious, and the first context in which major new techniques depended on formulating infinite processes, is calculus. But there are many others, for example Fourier analysis and fractals.In this Very Short Introduction, Ian Stewart discusses infinity in mathematics while also drawing in the various other aspects of infinity and explaining some of the major problems and insights arising from this concept. He argues that working with infinity is not just an abstract, intellectual exercise but that it is instead a concept with important practical everyday applications, and considers how mathematicians use infinity and infinitesimals to answer questions or supply techniques that do not appear to involve the infinite.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

This paper maintains that at the heart of the post-Reformation debates over the extra Calvinisticum lies the question of what it means to name God’s presence in the world – that is, to say where God is. Because the Lutheran position insists that there can be no proper identification of God’s presence in the world that does not take its bearings from talk about Jesus’ presence, it serves as a means of preventing Christian God-talk from becoming detached from the flesh-and-blood (...) realities of human existence. In this way, the denial of the extra Calvinisticum is a corollary of a theology of the cross – that is, the principle that talk about God is normed by the concrete reality of Jesus. At the same time, the Lutheran genus maiestaticum is rejected as making just the sort of move to which Luther himself objected in the doctrine of transubstantiation: a metaphysical explanation of Jesus’ presence in the world rather than a simple appeal to miracle. (shrink)

In this Symposium on the Ethics and Epistemology of Big Data, we present four perspectives on the ways in which the rapid growth in size of research databanks—i.e. their shift into the realm of “big data”—has changed their moral, socio-political, and epistemic status. While there is clearly something different about “big data” databanks, we encourage readers to place the arguments presented in this Symposium in the context of longstanding debates about the ethics, politics, and epistemology of biobank, database, genetic, and (...) epidemiological research. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupré’s criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely, that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and Walsh’s proposal (...) is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism. (shrink)

Life can be non-ideal in many ways. One of the central ways is in its necessarily embodied, and hence vulnerable, nature. This vulnerability includes our susceptibility to injury and disease, other types of bodily failure, and death. In this chapter, we will describe the moral and epistemic mistreatment common to the experiences of illnesses. We use the term ‘illness’ here to denote serious and life-changing irreversible conditions, which may be chronic or acute. What we say may be applicable, at least (...) in part, to mental illness as well, but there are important differences. (shrink)

We explore two special challenges indigenous peoples pose to the idea of sovereigns as trustees for humanity. The first challenge is rooted in a colonial history during which a trusteeship model of sovereignty served as an enabler of paternalistic colonial policies. The challenge is to show that the trusteeship model is not irreparably colonial in nature. The second challenge, which emerges from the first, is to specify the scope and nature of indigenous peoples’ sovereignty within the trusteeship model. Whereas the (...) interaction between states and foreign nationals is the locus of cosmopolitan law, the relationship between states and indigenous peoples is distinctive. In the ordinary cosmopolitan case, foreign nationals do not purport to possess legal authority. Indigenous peoples often do make such a claim, pitting their claim to authority against the state’s. We discuss how international law has attempted to come to grips with indigenous sovereignty by requiring states to include indigenous peoples in decision-making processes that affect their historical lands and rights. A crucial fault line in the jurisprudence, however, separates a duty to consult indigenous peoples from a duty to acquire their free, prior and informed consent. The latter but not the former recognizes that indigenous peoples possess a veto over state projects on their lands, in effect recognizing in them a limited co-legislative power. We focus on recent jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and consider whether either the duty to consult or FPIC are enough to dispel the shadow of the trusteeship model’s colonial past. We suggest that they are a move in the right direction, and that implicitly they represent international law’s recognition that states are no longer the sole bearers of sovereignty at international law. In limited circumstances, international law recognizes indigenous peoples as sovereign actors. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This narrative synthesis based on a literature review undertaken for the project ?Creating Citizenship Communities? (funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation) includes discussion, principally, about what research evidence tells us about young people?s definitions of community, of types of engagement by different groups of young people, actions by schools and what they might do in the future to promote engagement. Community is seen as a highly significant and contested area. Young people are viewed negatively by adults but are in (...) some contexts already positively engaged in communities. There seem to be gaps in the literature about what young people understand about community. There is, broadly, some consensus about how to promote engagement. (shrink)

Ian Fraser assesses the human qualities of the three saints who are celebrated for their contribution to Christianity in Britain. He also examines some contemporary issues related to their struggle to live faith fully.

French philosopher Michel de Certeau wrote about seventeenth-century mysticism, religion and pluralism, architecture, everyday life, and the history of anthropology. But because critics of his works have tended to fragment it into hermetic compartments, dealing only with what is relevant to their own fields, the expansiveness of his ouevre has suffered damaging distortions in the secondary literature. This special issue of _South Atlantic Quarterly_ provides the first comprehensive view of his complete work, with contributors evaluating his weaknesses as well as (...) his strengths. With articles that engage directly—as well as theoretically—with de Certeau, this collection corrects a long-standing imbalance in the criticism by covering works from two periods about which little is known in anglophone circles: his early books on religious history and his midlife histories of mysticism and possession. It also includes critiques from queer theory and feminist theory, as well as comparative readings that assess de Certeau alongside his famous contemporary, Michel Foucault. With articles by an international array of scholars who address both the secular and the religious thinker, this special issue is the most definitive study to date of this important twentieth-century thinker. _Contributors. _Jeremy Ahearne, Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, Ian Buchanan, Philippe Carrard, Claire Colebrook, Tom Conley, Verena Andermatt Conley, Catherine Driscoll, Carla Freccero, John Frow, Richard Terdiman, Timothy Tomasik, Marie-Claire Vallois, Graham Ward. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to a reappraisal of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It has four aims. The first is to reassess his already well-known work from the 1960s and 1970s in light of contemporary developments in the history and philosophy of science. The second is to explore themes in his neglected later work, including recently published and previously unavailable writings. The third is to assess the contributions that Feyerabend can make to contemporary debate, on topics such as perspectivism, realism, (...) and political philosophy of science. The fourth and final aim is to reconsider FeyerabendÕs place within the history of philosophy of science in the light of new scholarship. (shrink)

The Dreyfus account of seven stages of learning is considered in the context of the Dreyfus account of five stages of skill development. The two new stages, Mastery and Practical Wisdom, make more explicit certain themes implicit in the five‐stage account. In this way Dreyfus encourages a more reflexive approach. The themes now more explicit are, in part, derived from Aristotle on phronesis, but are also influenced by Heidegger and Foucault on cultural dimensions of meaning and value. The paper considers (...) whether Dreyfus’ revised account tends towards a relativism of different worlds of meaning, disclosed through personal commitment. A more reflexive account of phronesis, it is suggested, needs to clarify the potentiality of phronesis for co‐ordination as it promotes patterns of unity in difference and difference in unity. (shrink)

This article charts the development of the modern astronomical observational system. I am interested most acutely in the digitization of this system in general, and in the introduction of adaptive optics in particular. I argue that these features have been critical in establishing the modern observatory as a factory for scientific data, rather than as a center of calculation in its own right. Throughout, the theoretical focus is on the nature of technological evolution in the observational system, understood as inextricably (...) bound up with both the system-internal drive to surpass the limits imposed upon the distributed cognition of the researcher and the boundary at which empirical objects resolve themselves into technical objects. In short, this article explores the historically constituted character of expert astronomical perception, arguing that it is impossible to understand without constant reference to its material substrate. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 81-83.