Distinguished historian of Judaism Jacob Neusner here ventures for the first time into constructive theology. Taking the everyday life of contemporary Judaism as his beginning, Neusner asks when in the life of the living faith of the Torah does Israel, the holy community, meet God? Where does the meeting take place? What is the medium of the encounter? In his attempt to answer these questions, Neusner sets forth the character and the form of the Torah as sung theology. Israel, (...) the holy community, meets God in the synagogue, while at prayer, and in the yeshiva, when studying the Torah—at the moment in each setting when the Torah is received. In both circumstances people do not read but sing out its words. With the written part of the Torah sung in the synagogue, and the oral part declaimed in centers of sacred learning, music provides the medium for Judaism's theological voice. Neusner identifies a reciprocal exchange between the holy community Israel and God: Israel sings to God when the Torah is studied, and God sings to Israel when the Torah is declaimed. Through the metaphor of music, Neusner offers an account of how he believes those faithful to the Torah meet God in the Torah, and how they should listen to the melody of God's self-revelation. The result is an original theological reflection that will interest all students of Judaism. (shrink)

This article examines how deduction preserves certainty and how much certainty it can preserve according to Descartes’s Rules for the Direction of the Mind. I argue that the certainty of a deduction is a matter of four conditions for Descartes. First, certainty depends on whether the conjunction of simple propositions is composed with necessity or contingency. Second, a deduction approaches the certainty of an intuition depending on how many “acts of conceiving” it requires and—third—the complexity or difficulty of the acts (...) of thinking, which is determined by the content of the thoughts and on external factors. Fourth, certainty depends on the intellectual aptitude of the person using the deduction. A deduction lacks certainty when it relies on memory such that it is not apprehended with immediacy. However, the mental capacity and speed of a mind can be increased by training the special mental faculties of perspicacity and discernment. Increasing one’s intellectual aptitude allows for more steps of a deduction to be inferred in fewer acts of conceiving, thereby helping preserve the certainty of a deduction. (shrink)

Alva Noë’s version of the enactive conception in _Action in Perception_ is an important contribution to the study of visual perception. First, I argue, however, that it is unclear (at best) whether, as the enactivists claim, work on change blindness supports the denial of the existence of detailed visual representations. Second, I elaborate on what Noë calls the ‘puzzle of perceptual presence’. Thirdly, I question the enactivist account of perceptual constancy. Finally, I draw attention to the tensions between enactivism and (...) two trends in cognitive neuroscience: the two-visual systems model of human vision and the theory of internal forward models of action. (shrink)

Taking its point of departure in an anachronic exhibition, Soulèvements (2016/18), this book is a theoretical exploration of how the notion of contemporaneity understood as the coming together of different times in the same historical present relates to the end of a certain history of art. Critical of hitherto dominant chronological, ahistorical, and/or culturally restricted notions of the contemporary, Lund's overall aim is to make an argument for the contemporary contemporary, as the point of departure for any anachronic relationship with (...) time today, and as the inescapable point of departure for any possible historical imagination. (shrink)

This naturally calls to mind Plato's plan of education in which the highest pursuit, philosophy, is also to be the last in line. With Plato, as with Maimonides, we read that the direct search for wisdom is to be preceded by a certain training of all the natural faculties of man: the body, the emotions, and the intellect.

The central aims of this paper are to show how linguistic corpora have been used and can be used in philosophy and to argue that linguistic corpora and corpus analysis should be added to the philosopher’s toolkit of ways to address philosophical questions. A linguistic corpus is a curated collection of texts representing language use that can be queried to answer research questions. Among many other uses, linguistic corpora can help answer questions about the meaning of words and the structure (...) of discourse. Through a discussion of examples, the paper shows that there are many philosophical questions that can be addressed by using a linguistic corpus. However, linguistic corpora need not (and often cannot) replace traditional philosophical methods. Lastly, it argues that the special properties of linguistic corpora, including their independence and the current ease and cheapness of access, make them an indispensable resource for philosophers. (shrink)

"Jacob Bronowski truly educated an enormous number of members of that diffuse population usually referred to, with a hint of condescension, as "educated laymen" through his widely shared television series on the concepts of science and through such... books as The Identity of Man and The Ascent of Man. This volume extends the process to a further level of insight, and it may be more than suggestive that its final essay is entitled "The Fulfillment of Man." Bronowski... felt that (...) if human beings are taken seriously, they can be led to respond to serious and difficult subjects that relate to the deepest aspects of nature, both beyond and within themselves. A Sense of the Future... is a collection of essays that can be read independently as self-contained, delimited presentations;... the book is more than the sum of these individual essays--it is a unified whole in which Bronowski's most abiding concerns are interrelated, juxtaposed, and tested for consistency in various intellectual contexts. The major unifying theme of the work is the intensely creative and human nature of the scientific enterprise--its kinship, at the highest levels of individual achievement, with comparable manifestations of the artistic imagination, and its ethical imperatives, evolved within the community of scientists over the centuries, which both embody and forge the values of civilized life at large. Still, the book's diversity of topics is as striking as the unity of its aim. Among the subjects within the realm of Bronowski's mind that are presented here are the limitations of formal logic and experimental methods, the epistemology of science, the distinctive nature of human language and the human mind, and the bases of biological and cultural evolution. Bronowski also contrasts the findings of science as the "here and now" of man's understanding with the ongoing activity of science as the open-ended search for truth, and he undertakes to demonstrate that the factual, individual 'is' and the ethical, societal 'ought' can be derived each from the other"--From jacket. (shrink)

This article reframes our understanding of French structural anthropology by considering the work of André Leroi-Gourhan alongside that of Claude Lévi-Strauss. These two anthropologists worked at opposite poles of the discipline, Lévi-Strauss studying cultural objects, like myths and kinship relations; Leroi-Gourhan looking at material artifacts, such as stone tools, bones, arrowheads, and cave paintings. In spite of their difference in focus, these thinkers shared a similar approach to the interpretation of their sources: Each individual object was meaningful only as part (...) of a larger whole. For Lévi-Strauss, structuralism was designed to unlock features of the human mind; for Leroi-Gourhan, to uncover the material processes that underlay human life. Again, in spite of their difference in orientation, both structuralisms produced similar theories of human society. Whether ‘primitive’ or ‘advanced’, all societies functioned the same way: Their institutions worked harmoniously, beyond the intentions of any individual actors, to preserve the stability of the group. This eliminated the basis for thinking one society was superior to another. Finally, the article argues that both Lévi-Strauss and Leroi-Gourhan believed that structural anthropology could found a ‘new humanism’, and thereby rescue modernity from moral degeneration. This ‘new humanism’ could not only produce a universal description of human nature, but also help rethink French colonialism, broker new geopolitical alliances, and prevent the erasure of world cultures. Structural anthropology thus imagined a tight relationship between its social-scientific work and its political-moral mission. (shrink)

Modèle d'une société en mal de cohésion, ou modelé par elle et ses normes, le corps construit l'identité, et rend possible l'aliénation. Apprêté, mis en scène, observé ou transformé, il donne son étoffe au héros, ses rouages au pantin, ses prothèses à l'homme en mal de puissance. À moins que, habité en conscience, il ne devienne la source vive où l'homme peut puiser sa joie. Les 27 et 28 mars 2017, dans l'amphithéâtre de l'École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Bourges, s'est (...) tenu un colloque de philosophie sur le thème "Ce que peut un corps". Enseignants de philosophie, de sociologie, plasticien, maître d'arts martiaux se sont succédé pour faire état des états du corps."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

What is the antidote to romantic love that all too often exhausts itself over night? This work suggests love can be a reflection of our spiritual being. It states that by the time we are living together something beyond passion is required something intentional and conscious is needed.

On aborde ici la question du statut du corps et des figurations du corps politique dans la Révolution française. Il s’agirait de savoir si les révolutions démocratiques des temps modernes amorcent un processus de désincorporation du social oů, ŕ partir du régicide se défait l’hypostase du Corpus Mysticum – ou si l’on assiste ŕ une mouvement inverse de réincorporation, ŕ un simple transfert de souveraineté du corps déchu du monarque au Corps régénéré du peuple ou de la Nation. On examinera (...) ainsi, ŕ travers l’analyse des figurations du corps, la question du régicide ŕ la Terreur et les fondaments du discours et de la politique des Jacobins. (shrink)

In this study, I clarify and defend the critique of the ‘sages’ and ‘robbers’ that is found in the _Zhuangzi_. As detailed in Chapter 8 of the _Zhuangzi_, both the (non-Daoist) ‘sages’ and ‘robbers’ are equally responsible for society’s ills. This is because both the ‘sages’ and ‘robbers’ are perceptually alienated from nature. This perceptual alienation involves the inability to perceive nature as fundamentally indeterminate (_wu_, 無). The Daoist alternative to the ‘sages’ and ‘robbers’ is to cultivate awareness of our (...) interdependence with nature. This study calls this process an ‘attunement to nature’ or, as Chapter 8 describes it, to not depart from ‘the actuality of their endowed circumstances’ (其性命之情) and to ‘see oneself when you see others/things’ (自見而見彼). Attunement involves an awareness of how nature primordially forms an indeterminate continuum (_wu_). (shrink)

Religion scheint auf den ersten Blick eine besondere Anfälligkeit für Dogmatismus zu besitzen. Religiöse Überzeugungen sind häufig tief im Leben der Menschen verankert und religiöse Hingabe scheint in Spannung zu jedem Zweifel an dem Inhalt der jeweiligen Religion zu stehen. Auf der Basis von Ernst Cassirers Überlegungen kann im Gegensatz zu diesem Anschein eine Konzeption von Religion entwickelt werden, wonach sich diese gerade durch eine kritische Reflexion auf die eigenen Inhalte auszeichnet und im Gegensatz zu Aberglauben, Irrglaube und Wahnglaube, zu (...) immer größerer Entfaltung von Freiheit führt. (shrink)

Hauser, H. La response de Jean Bodin à M. de Malestroit.--Levron, J. Jean Bodin et sa famille.--Kamp, M. E. Die Staatswirtschaftslehre Jean Bodins.--Mesnard, P. La pensée religieuse de Bodin.--Bezold, F. von, Jean Bodin als Occultist und seine Démonomanie.--Bezold, F. von. Jean Bodins Colloquium Heptaplomeres und der Altheismus des 16.--Feist, E. Weltbild und Staatsidee bei Jean Bodin.--Mayer, J. P. Jefferson as reader of Bodin.

Mathematician, poet, philosopher, life scientist, playwright, teacher, Jacob Bronowski could readily be referred to as a Renaissance Man. But in the historical context that would do him a disservice: he is, par excellence, a Twentieth Century Man, who has traced the arts and sciences of earlier centuries and especially those of his own time to their common root in the uniquely human imagination.Bronowski is the author of such widely read books as The Ascent of Man and Science and Human (...) Values. In 1977, The MIT Press published A Sense of the Future: Essays in Natural Philosophy. In those essays, the emphasis is on scientific questions, but in a number of them the notion of "art as a mode of knowledge" is invoked to make the science clearer and its human dimension more vivid. The Visionary Eye serves as a companion volume: here the emphasis is on the arts and humanities, but "science as a mode of imagination" comes into play to extend the reach of the visionary eye.The Visionary Eye contains eleven essays: "The Nature of Art," "The Imaginative Mind in Art," "The Imaginative Mind in Science," "The Shape of Things," "Architecture as a Science and Architecture as an Art," and Art as a Mode of Knowledge, Bronowski's A. W. Mellon Lectures given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The essays discuss examples taken from across the spectrum of the arts, past and present -- music, poetry, painting and sculpture, architecture, industrial design, and engineering artifacts -- in the coherent context of Bronowski's view of the human creative process. (shrink)