Rehmann provides a comprehensive Gramscian socio-analysis of Max Weber's political and intellectual position in the ideological network of his time. He deciphers Weber as an organic intellectual who constructs a new bourgeois hegemony in the transition to 'Fordism'.

I joined Trevelyan College (Trevs), Durham University in 2011 as a mature student under former professor and principle of the college Martyn Evans. It was to be the beginning of a transformative journey culminating in my doctoral thesis: Balanced Wonder: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Role of Wonder in Human Flourishing. -/- In 2020 Trevs kindly asked me to contribute to the Alumni Magazine Hippocampus and in particular to the ‘Where Are They Now’ section. -/- “You Haven’t Done Anything” is (...) my contribution and it highlights in a humorous fashion some of the things I have achieved since I left Trevs. -/- Sections: -/- Standing still is rarely a good strategy in life -/- If One Lives Wisely Sometimes Less is More and Infinately More Valuable. (shrink)

Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice is a collection of essays of the moral and political philosophy of Jan Narveson. The essays in this collection share a consistent theme running through much of Narveson's moral and political philosophy, namely that politics and morals stem from the interests of individual people, and have no antecedent authority over us. The essays in this collection, in various ways and as applied to various aspects of the scene, argue that the ultimate and true point (...) of politics and morals is to enable us to make our lives better, according to our varied senses of what that might mean. (shrink)

Research on the relation between sound and meaning in language has reported substantial evidence for implicit associations between articulatory–acoustic characteristics of phonemes and emotions. In the present study, we specifically tested the relation between the acoustic properties of a text and its emotional tone as perceived by readers. To this end, we asked participants to assess the emotional tone of single stanzas extracted from a large variety of poems. The selected stanzas had either an extremely high, a neutral, or an (...) extremely low average formant dispersion. To assess the average formant dispersion per stanza, all words were phonetically transcribed and the distance between the first and second formant per vowel was calculated. Building on a long tradition of research on associations between sound frequency on the one hand and non‐acoustic concepts such as size, strength, or happiness on the other hand, we hypothesized that stanzas with an extremely high average formant dispersion would be rated lower on items referring to Potency (dominance) and higher on items referring to Activity (arousal) and Evaluation (emotional valence). The results confirmed our hypotheses for the dimensions of Potency and Evaluation, but not for the dimension of Activity. We conclude that, at least in poetic language, extreme values of acoustic features of vowels are a significant predictor for the emotional tone of a text. (shrink)

Studie over het denken van de Franse filosoof (geb. 1906) met name over de innerlijke samenhang van zijn werk rond het thema van de verantwoordelijkheid van de "ik" voor "de ander".

Modern Chinese history told from a Buddhist perspective restores the vibrant, creative role of religion in postimperial China. It shows how urban Buddhist elites jockeyed for cultural dominance in the early Republican era, how Buddhist intellectuals reckoned with science, and how Buddhist media contributed to modern print cultures. It recognizes the political importance of sacred Buddhist relics and the complex processes through which Buddhists participated in and experienced religious suppression under Communist rule. Today, urban and rural communities alike engage with (...) Buddhist practices to renegotiate class, gender, and kinship relations in post-Mao China. Using fresh archival and primary sources, along with extensive ethnographic research, this volume vividly portrays these events and more, recasting Buddhism as a critical factor in China's twentieth-century development. Each chapter connects a moment in Buddhist history to a significant theme in Chinese history, creating new narratives of Buddhism's involvement in the emergence of urban modernity, the practice of international diplomacy, the mobilization for total war, and other transformations of state, society, and culture. Working across an extraordinary thematic range, the book reincorporates Buddhism into the formative processes and distinctive character of Chinese history. (shrink)

Section 1 One of the big problems facing us is the need to plan for the betterment and improvement of society. In any status quo there are many unsatisfactory moments and experience shows that with changing conditions, even those elements of our communal structure that work well will often get out of step and become a problem. We need then to introduce devices both to alleviate present troubles and, if possible, to anticipate future ones. On the whole, it might appear (...) to the untutored eye that the matter is relatively simple. For instance, if we keep increasing prices of commodities without increasing incomes, and especially if we allow inflation to proceed unfettered as well, the situation will certainly deteriorate. What we need to. (shrink)

In a famous passage in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant calls the “spirit” an animating or enlivening principle in the mind. Rather than a positive affirmation building on a protobiological background, this definition marks an aesthetic notion of life. As a first step, the “Gemüt” shows itself to be an ambivalent concept between transcendental philosophy and anthropology. This ambivalence then reoccurs in the notion of life in an aesthetical regard: Life in this sense is the one hand (...) bound to the empirical notion of the powers of life – and thereby to the pre-critical works – but is now turned into something surpassing. Life in aesthetical terms is negatively bound to life in an empirical sense. So is spirit, too: It rather works as a negatively defined principle opening up the given. Life, Gemüt, and spirit make up a relational constellation that provides the grounds for the work of aesthetic ideas. By means of aesthetic ideas, spirit opens up the cognitive and thereby enlivens the Gemüt. This principle, which is spirit, can then be understood as following Kant’s logic of the infinite judgment, because the aesthetic is the opening of the rational to its indeterminate other. (shrink)

Finland is internationally known as one of the leading centers of twentieth century analytic philosophy. This volume offers for the first time an overall survey of the Finnish analytic school. The rise of this trend is illustrated by original articles of Edward Westermarck, Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Jaakko Hintikka. Contributions of Finnish philosophers are then systematically discussed in the fields of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, ethics and social philosophy. Metaphilosophical reflections on (...) the nature of philosophy are highlighted by the Finnish dialogue between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory. (shrink)

This text portrays two exceptional personalities who, under different circumstances, remained faithful to the true calls of their selves. The main heroes depict how to brave difficulties and be ready to sacrifice comfort for human dignity and integrity.