In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 565-566 [Access article in PDF] Kai Hammermeister. The German Aesthetic Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 259. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $22.00. This history of German (or more accurately, Germanic) aesthetics surveys the tradition stretching from Alexander Baumgarten to Theodor Adorno. The author has divided his survey into three thematic parts. In the first, "The Age of Paradigms," (...) Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Kant, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel establish the principal approaches to aesthetics and the philosophy of art that will structure the tradition. In the second part, "Challenging the Paradigms," Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche raise critical problems with the positions of their forebears. In the final part, "Renewing the Paradigms," Cassirer, Lukács, Heidegger, Gadamer, Marcuse, and Adorno revive elements of the classical tradition for twentieth-century purposes. As one might expect, covering fifteen complex figures in a relatively short book makes for a survey primarily of the surfaces of their thought. Even so, the exercise may be useful for those with no knowledge of German aesthetics who would like a quick introduction.From the outset the author establishes a plan to consider each philosopher's work in terms of his ontological treatment of art, the epistemic role he attributes to art and beauty, and the practical functions he assigns art. In the early chapters the author dutifully addresses these matters at the end of each chapter, but from Hegel on, the author's commitment to this structure seems to wane. It becomes more difficult to discern these assessments of each philosopher as the book progresses. It is an odd feature of the book that its [End Page 565] author announces these "principles of comparison" so explicitly in the introduction, but does not consistently apply them.There is also inconsistency in the author's choices regarding whose theories to directly criticize. In some cases (with Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Cassirer, for example), Hammermeister offers quite global criticisms of the philosophers' views, while in other cases (with Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Heidegger, and Gadamer) he provides very little criticism. The book does not advance a philosophical position from which to understand why some figures in this tradition, but not others, warrant sharp criticisms that on occasion (with Kierkegaard, for example) amount to blanket dismissals.The second part of the book, "Challenging the Paradigms," stands in an uncertain relationship to the first part, "The Age of Paradigms." Hammermeister advertises Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche as thinkers intent on dismantling the aesthetic-theoretical systems of their predecessors, and there is no doubt much truth in this assertion. Yet these chapters offer little in the way of explicit elaboration of precisely which views of which prior thinkers each of these rebels seeks to undermine. Schopenhauer, for example, is presented as a champion of Kantian aesthetic disinterestedness, while his delirious antipathy for Hegel is hardly discussed. Kierkegaard's famous disagreements with Hegel receive little attention, either.The third part, "Renewing the Paradigms," advances one of the author's principal claims in the book: that twentieth-century German(ic) philosophers recapitulate the sequence of positions in the classical Kant-Schiller-Schelling-Hegel development. Cassirer revives Kant; Lukács and other neo-Marxist thinkers revive Schiller; Heidegger is far more indebted to Schelling than he acknowledges. To some extent the author's proposal is a useful heuristic, especially regarding Cassirer and Lukács. With Heidegger problems begin to arise. Hammermeister argues that Heidegger shares with Schelling a view of art as a "truth-event," but this, of course, would be a view that Heidegger also shares with Hegel. When Hammermeister notes (189) that for Heidegger truth can happen in practices other than art, this strengthens a comparison to Hegel (despite the profound differences between Heidegger and Hegel), rather than to Schelling (for whom art alone is the organon of truth, at least in the System of Transcendental Idealism that Hammermeister treats as the most Schellingian of Schelling's texts).As with the author's other overarching structures for the book, the paradigm-renewal claim also loses momentum halfway through. Hammermeister appropriately presents... (shrink)

Concept of cognition in Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy; a study.

Art and Authority explores the sources, nature, and limits of artistic freedom. K. E. Gover draws upon real-world cases and controversies in contemporary visual art to offer a better understanding of artistic authorship and authority. Each chapter focuses on a case of dispute over the rights of an artist with respect to his or her artwork.

K. E. Boxer explores moral responsibility, and whether it is compatible with causal determinism. She suggests that to answer this question we must focus on responsibility in the sense of liability, and that an incompatibilist view may only be preserved on an understanding of the moral desert of punishment that many find morally problematic.

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

There is no issue more central to the abortion debate than the controversial issue of whether the fetus is a moral person. Abortion-rights opponents almost universally claim that abortion is murder and should be legally prohibited because the fetus is a moral person at the moment of conception. Abortion-rights proponents almost universally deny the crucial assumption that the fetus is a person; on their view, whatever moral disvalue abortion involves does not rise to the level of murder and hence does (...) not rise to the level of something that should be legally prohibited.In this essay, I argue that, under dualist assumptions about the nature of mind, the fetus is not a person until brain activity has begun.i First, I argue it is a necessary condition for a thing to be a moral person that it is a self. Second, I argue it is a necessary condition for a fetus to be a self, under dualist assumptions, that there has been some electrical activity in the brain. I conclude that a dualist can take the position that abortion ought to be legally permitted at least until the beginning of brain activity in the fetus. (shrink)

The aim of this inquiry is to determine whether printmaking is best understood ontologically as analogous to a work-performance relation. Are prints the visual analogue of symphonies? My motivation for pursuing the comparison of printmaking to music is twofold. First, because relatively little has been written on the ontology of fine art prints, our use of an already developed body of scholarship will help us to gain some traction on the question. Second, within the existing literature on the ontology of (...) prints, there seems to be a persistent confusion about the difference between what makes a print an artwork, and what makes it a genuine or authentic artwork, signed or in some other way ratified by a given artist. I conclude by suggesting that prints are indeed ontologically unusual insofar as they occupy an intermediate position between pure multiples, of which there can be an unlimited number of tokens, and singular artworks that consist of one physical object. (shrink)

Over one hundred genes have been isolated from the human genome and shown to be causally related to specific human genetic diseases. Studies with gene‐specific probes have demonstrated that the mutations resulting in a particular phenotype are highly heterogeneous as a group, ranging from alterations in transcription or RNA processing in the nucleus, through to errors in mRNA translation in the cytoplasm. Even where the gene‐specific probe is not available, defects have been localized to chromosomal regions by family studies. Recently (...) developed methods for moving along the chromosome from a linked marker to the mutation are resulting in rapid advances in the understanding of many monogenic disorders. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 89 MODERNIST HERESIES K.yE. Garay Arts & Science/Research Collections / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4m2 [email protected] Damon Franke. Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924. Columbus : Ohio State U. P., 2008. Pp. xx, 258. isbn 978-0-8142-1074-1 (hb). us$47.95. The editor of the Russell journal summed up Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924z with his usual brevity during a (...) recent conversation : “The Wrst part is about Russell and the rest of it isn’t.” In fact the Wrst two chapters are only somewhat concerned with Russell, since he Wgures as part of the Heretical Cambridge scene with which Damon Franke opens this study, but, September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 90 Reviews after a Xeeting appearance of both Russells, Bertie and Dora, in the opening pages of Chapter 3, Bertie is not heard from again. Franke, who teaches English at the University of Southern Mississippi, has set himself an ambitious task, the scope of which is not fully captured in this book’s title. The selection of no fewer than ten subject headings in the cataloguing data for this studyz—zheadings ranging from “Modernism (Literature)” through “English Literature”, “Religion and Literature”, “Heresies, Christian”, and “Paganism in Literature”z—zprovides the wary reader withsome forewarning of its breadth. The author’s focus is on nothing less than the emergence and development of modernism in England, using the rise and demise of what Franke terms “heresy” as his barometer. Nor does the ascribed date range, 1883– 1924, prove much more accurate; in one of the most persuasive segments of the book, the After Words, Franke extends his examination, Wrst into the 1930s and then as far as 1949, the year that Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourz was published. Selecting as his starting point the 1883 blasphemy trial of G.yW. Foote, the editor of The Freethinker, at which the right to attack “even the fundamentals of religion” was enshrined in English law, providing that “the decencies of controversy” are observed (p. 10), Franke argues that this decision made possible “intellectual and literary forms of heresy which questioned the principles of religion ” (ibid.). His use of the term “heresy” for his wide ranging survey of philosophical and linguistic as well as literary opinion, provoked pause in this reader. The Oxford English Dictionary, the Wrst edition of which appeared the year after Foote’s heresy trial, provides a primary deWnition of heresy as follows: Theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the “catholic” or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. It is only through an extended deWnition of heresy that the door opens to allow Franke’s highly variable use of the term: “Opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative ” (OED Online, 2008). As will be demonstrated, aspects of thought which the less adventurous might prefer to call agnosticism, paganism or even atheism, are subsumed into the wide-ranging scope of this provocative study. The Cambridge Heretics, the group of which Russell was an Honorary Member, provides Franke with both his heretical cornerstone and his book’s opening chapters. In a skilfully contextualized examination, Franke documents the group’s Michaelmas 1909 genesis in the shadow, or perhaps in the intellectual light, of the Chawner ATairz—zthe Master of Emmanuel’s public expression of his personal loss of religious faith. Its Wrst chairman was C.yM. Picciotto, but it was its Wrst secretary, C.yK. Ogden, a newly arrived Magdalene College under- September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 91 graduate, who was to prove the group’s guiding genius. Franke argues convincingly that the group, which included Bernard Shaw, J.yM. Keynes, I.yA. Richards and G.yE. Moore, as well as Russell, in its membership roster, has suTered puzzling scholarly neglect, particularly when compared with the Apostles, its... (shrink)