The Gilded Buddha: the Traditional Art of the Newar Metal Casters in Nepal by Alex R. Furger. Librum, 2017. 328pp., 551 illus. Hb. CHF/EUR 85. ISBN-13: 9783906897066.

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Among Plato's later dialogues, the _Parmenides_ is one of the most significant. Not only a document of profound philosophical importance in its own right, it also contributes to the understanding of Platonic dialogues that followed it, and it exhibits the foundations of the physics and ontology that Aristotle offered in his _Physics_ and _Metaphysics _VII. In this book, R.E. Allen provides a superb translation of the _Parmenides_ along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, logical (...) and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the _Parmenides_ is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities. Allen's original translation of and commentary on the _Parmenides_ were published in 1983 to great acclaim and have now been revised by the author. (shrink)

This distinction has sometimes been read as purely epistemic, resting not on things, but on our knowledge of them: there is one world, not two, though it may be apprehended in two ways. But this view is patently at odds with the text. Knowledge and opinion are δυνάμεις, "faculties," to be distinguished and defined by their objects, no less than by the state of mind they produce, and Plato clearly states that the fallibility and unclearness of opinion is rooted in (...) the relative unreality of opinables. (shrink)

Through consideration of another practical case, this chapter opens the way to a generalization of the method of argument outlined previously. Multilateral cases raise the question of how the interests of all parties can be resolved into a determinate moral conclusion, which brings the discussion to a standpoint that has affinities with classical utilitarianism. Like the principle of universalizability, the form of the utilitarian principle espoused is purely logical. In both cases, the moral substance comes from fleshing out the parties’ (...) actual inclinations and interests. The chapter embarks on a short survey of the challenges faced by a utilitarian system of this kind, before considering the concept of happiness, act‐utilitarianism, and rule‐utilitarianism. (shrink)

Max Hallman has put forward an interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy according to which Nietzsche is a prototypical deep ecologist. In reply, I dispute Hallman’s main interpretive claim as well as its ethical and exegetical corollaries. I hold that Nietzsche is not a “biospheric egalitarian,” but rather an aristocratically individualistic “high humanist.” A consistently naturalistic transcendentalist, Nietzsche does submit a critique of modernity’s Christian-inflected anthropocentrism (pace Hallman), and yet—in his later work—he endorses exploitation in the quest for nobility (contra Hallman). I (...) conclude thatecophilosophers need to exercise hermeneutical caution in any attempt to appropriate Nietzsche for environmentally ethical designs, lest they illegitimately ventriloquize their own moral voices into an authoritative but alien mouthpiece. (shrink)

If educators are to educate they must be accorded some level of trust. Anthony Giddens claims that because trust is not easily created, it is now being replaced with ‘confidence’ because this latter disposition is much easier to give and is more convenient. It is argued in this paper that this shift from trust to confidence stifles education because emphasis is placed solely upon qualifications and competence, and is neglectful of disclosing one’s motives and desires—which are considered to be essential (...) elements for relationships and communities which depend upon trust. Therefore, educators ought to seek to become more trustworthy by going beyond evidence-based practices and codes of ethics, towards articulating a developed personal philosophy of education outlining the ultimate end-purposes to which they aspire. Through such a philosophy, educators identify their ultimate desires and commitments and this self-disclosure can make trust-giving more likely. Demonstrated evidence of achievements and qualifications encourage confidence and this has some value. In addition to these artefacts of evidence, it is argued here that educators must also articulate what they actually desire. This can be understood as John Dewey’s virtue of ‘genuine interest’ which he characterises as being wholehearted, persistent and impartial. For educators, this is often represented in our personal philosophy of education and because it is personal, it is also existential in the sense that it pertains to giving sense, meaning and purpose to all of our activities and way of life for which we are individually responsible and passionately committed to as professionals. As a consequence of being existential, our philosophy and our commitment to it has an intellectual and moral aspect and because it reaches to the very depths of our raison d’être, it pertains to our passion as described by Søren Kierkegaard. This paper shall draw upon Dewey’s notion of wholeheartedness and Kierkegaard’s notion of purity of heart, to make the case that if educators embrace these in their practices, we may become more trustworthy. (shrink)

We generalize two well-known model-theoretic characterization theorems from propositional modal logic to first-order modal logic. We first study FML-definable frames and give a version of the Goldblatt–Thomason theorem for this logic. The advantage of this result, compared with the original Goldblatt–Thomason theorem, is that it does not need the condition of ultrafilter reflection and uses only closure under bounded morphic images, generated subframes and disjoint unions. We then investigate Lindström type theorems for first-order modal logic. We show that FML has (...) the maximal expressive power among the logics extending FML which satisfy compactness, bisimulation invariance and the Tarski union property. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nietzsche’s perspectivism can fruitfully be understood as a claim that all our representations are perspectival and absolute representations are impossible. But that treatment leaves unclear another key aspect of Nietzschean perspectivism—the idea that our representations are perspectival because they are ultimately rooted in some way in our values. I motivate this latter aspect of Nietzsche’s account through an argument that relies on the contrast between Bernard Williams’s rejection of “external reasons statements” in the case of practical reasoning, and his (...) reliance on an “absolute conception of the world” in theoretical reasoning. Nietzsche holds, by contrast, that theoretical reasoning, too, can offer only “internal,” and hence perspectival, reasons. (shrink)

How do we explain violence? What is so significant of modern forms of violence that it has produced such large-scale destruction in its wake? This volume builds on the political philosophy of Wittgenstein, his notions of peace and violence, to explore how violence in any form is contained within culturally or ideologically formed institutions. Drawing on Wittgenstein's work on language, it explores the link between language and violence, everydayness, culture. It examines everyday instances of micro-violence which we sometimes forget to (...) recall. This book puts forth the claim that any theory of violence will have to touch upon the many myriad - both micro and macro -- political, social and cultural interactions that make up the human condition. The author further comments on the unseen ways in which violence has been instrumentalized in modern history's many stages to create a spectacle of power so as to reinforce authority. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, political philosophy, linguistics and modern history. (shrink)

We present an account of processing capacity in the ACT-R theory. At the symbolic level, the number of chunks in the current goal provides a measure of relational complexity. At the subsymbolic level, limits on spreading activation, measured by the attentional parameter W, provide a theory of processing capacity, which has been applied to performance, learning, and individual differences data.