All these extracts are linked by his general epistemology, especially his distinction between two types of knowledge: ‘paradisiac’ or Type 1, which is that of everyday awareness and the current methods, concepts and presuppositions of the sciences of nature and humanity, plus mathematics and philosophy, and accumulates in ‘plus knowledge’ and resolves problems in standard ways; and ‘Luciferican’ or Type 2, which opens up the ‘mysteries’ of new realms of reality which do not fit the current methods, concepts and presuppositions, (...) and so results in ‘minus’ knowledge, the awareness that there are things which at the moment we cannot understand. For these ‘mysteries’ new methods, concepts and presuppositions are required, which ‘abyssal’ categories can supply, ones below those we normally employ and may be aware of. It is part of man’s role in the cosmos to reveal such mysteries.. (shrink)

These manifestos for the future of world thought offer a uniquely global outlook by incorporating forceful examples from both western and non-western regions and placing important movements of western and non-western societies into a theoretical dialogue.

The Hermotimus is Lucian’s longest piece of writing, surpassing even the two books of the True Tales, and at the same time his most successful effort to recreate the style and atmosphere of a Platonic dialogue, filled with a new—and for Lucian uncharacteristically serious—content, namely a sustained attack on “dogmatic” philosophical schools (the “haireseis” of its subtitle) and, inversely, a ringing endorsement of the tenets of Pyrrhonian Scepticism.... (review at BMCR).

'you'll find another man to harvest, Glycerion: let this one go' The Greek satirist Lucian was a brilliantly entertaining writer who invented the comic dialogue as a vehicle for satiric comment. His influence was immense, not only in the Greek world, but on later European writers such as Rabelais and Swift. His dialogues puncture the pretensions of pompous philosophers and describe the daily lives of Greek courtesans; they are peopled by politicians, historians and ordinary citizens, as well as by (...) gods and mythic figures. This selection provides a cross-section of Lucian's styles and satirical targets, from serious polemic to lighter squibs and character portrayals. It includes How to Write History and his most famous piece, A True History, a fabulous tale of space travel and a monstrous whale which prefigures the fantasies of Jules Verne. This lively new translation is both accurate and idiomatic, and the introduction highlights Lucian's importance in his own and later times. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Objectivity is one of the oldest of problems in philosophy. Plato, Aristotle and others strived to provide a definitive solution. One of Husserl’s strategies was to introduce a distinction between “sciences of matters of fact” and “eidetic sciences” where the transition from the first science to the second science is possible via intentional sifting which is not to say that something becomes objective because one intends it. For Husserl intentional sifting is cognitive, hence phenomenology should begin by describing “the essence (...) of thinking” in order to later become a genuine science of consciousness. But inside the phenomenological movement there are profound disagreements with respect to the ontology of cognition and intentionality. Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty opted for emotional descriptions of thinking. With few exceptions, contemporary phenomenology has become the praise of emotional experience. In this paper I take the opposite path and make the case for cognitive-intentional character of consciousness I consider one of the most important problems of contemporary philosophy and psychology. I follow the assumption that the only way to generate objective propositions is to assume, against current views, that Husserl was not an idealist and that we can speak about cognition without reducing to emotion and yet without committing to dualism. (shrink)

In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties,” Simone Weil poses the hypothetical predicament of a person who is intent on solving highly complex mathematical problems but is flogged every time the answer he arrives at is an even number. The person will oscillate between his genuine desire for the truth and the painful cries of his body. “[I]nevitably,” Weil writes, “he will make many mistakes—even if he happens to be very intelligent, very brave and deeply attached to the truth.” (...) She then asks: “What should he do?” Weil’s answer may surprise many readers, even though she claims it is “simple.” If possible, “he must run away” from those who wield the whip. It would have been best, she avers, had he avoided these associations in the first place. Elsewhere in her writings, Weil openly endorses the argument for the lesser evil, justifying active, potentially violent, resistance instead of a pacifist ethic of refusal. This essay analyses the tension between Weil’s ethic of “running away” and her acceptance of the lesser evil. (shrink)

This article briefly compares and contrasts Kantian and Marxist thinking, trying to show how the second derived from the first.

This collection uses economic analysis to study some of the most pressing issues in corporate law. The last decade has brought certain corporate transactions and arrangements to the forefront of public attention and public debate. At the same time, a new mode of corporate law analysis has been developed - one that uses the tools of economics to identify the consequences and desirable features of corporate law rules. By bringing together work at the frontier of this method of analysis, the (...) volume provides a good picture of the power, current state, and future direction of the economic analysis of corporate law. Written by some of the most prominent contributors to the field, many of the chapters focus directly on the corporate control transactions that have recently attracted the most interest and controversy - corporate takeovers, buy-outs, recapitalizations, and reorganizations. (shrink)

Concerns regarding the possibility of a phenomenological science of consciousness emerged almost from its inception. Naturalism was quick to attack phenomenology. Philosophers such as Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others have too argued that a phenomenological science of consciousness can succeed if repositioning classical phenomenology from an existentialist perspective. One way to close this debate is to revisit several key classical phenomenological concepts. In this paper I depart from the premise that it is possible to have a phenomenological science of consciousness (...) but in order to do that we must distinguish between the problem of objectivity and the problem of consciousness keeping in mind that the two are intimately related. I will be discussing some of the differences between universally valid and experimental statements and make some remarks with respect to the phenomenological origins of consciousness without getting in too many details. The present purpose is to tackle some of these epistemological and ontological aspects pertaining to science and consciousness without making strong claims. (shrink)

The divisions that mark my subject are three. The first is that point where the world begins--where it appears from out of the mystery of non-being. The second lies somewhere between its progeny and its future--the times between beginnings and ends where we, the beneficiaries of our being-here, come together to sing a celebration of the wonder that it happened at all, and then intone the fear of its ending. The third division is a speculation on ends--our own and the (...) ending of the world. I use these divisions to locate a something that comes from nothing onto a historical tradition that imposes a value on the progression of that something, and so requires a judgment on all that has passed. I first discuss these through religious attempts to invest life and history with purpose--for they form the major explanatory traditions of Western culture and are a thematic source of much of its greatest art. I continue with an art-critical approach where themes of process and purpose are located in artworks through their stylistic histories and ambitions. I indicate how present art, when open to reconstitute such themes, could change the nature of today's efforts to give art polemical purposes, and so provide new reasons for its making. I conclude with some stories, unevenly biographical, partly fictional, which I offer as parables for the developed themes and their transformations. This last aim is to elucidate a view of art as providing specific symbols for a cosmology of beginning, living, and ending. (shrink)

Relatively recent literature on supposition theory seems to use different modern logical tools of interpretation that can be generally described as formalizations. Since the act of formalizing may be understood as a process of changing its object in the sense of making it more formal, an assessment of this kind of approaches is necessary. Accordingly, our main goal in this paper is to analyze the formality of Peter of Spain’s theory of supposition and to evaluate its interpretation as a quantification (...) theory. Our main thesis is that although Peter’s theory presents certain weak notions of formality, the formality presupposed by the quantificational interpretation is nowhere to be found in his considerations. (shrink)

Although David Mitrany’s international thought is not usually associated with the concept of the international anarchy, I argue that his analysis actually compares two forms of anarchical order. The first form is the order associated with the relations between states, while the second is his functional alternative to this order. The functional approach is anarchical in the sense that it remains an order without an orderer. In first analysing the dynamics and failings of the inter-state order, and then suggesting pragmatic (...) process-orientated solutions to those failings, I argue that Mitrany follows a similar approach to his classical realist contemporaries. (shrink)

As Roger Ariew shows, one of the most fascinating challenges for the authors trying to create a Cartesian complete course on philosophy was coming up with a Cartesian Logic based on the existing texts of the master. Were the few simple rules from the Discourse on Method the "logic" of Descartes? Were the Rules for the Direction of the Mind "logic"? How can we even have a logic without syllogism? When looking at the authors studied by Ariew one finds that (...) the best that they could come up was adding some Cartesian elements on what remains basically a traditional Aristotelian Logic. It seems that there was no Cartesian Logic after all.I want to show here that Cartesian Logic is something else, not exactly... (shrink)

Sandu Frunza, Filosofie şi Iudaism (Philosophy and Judaism) Ed. Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2006.

"Previously unpublished images from glass-plate negatives taken by Walter Schneider capture the years of transition from agrarian to industrial society in America and beyond.

A look at what Kierkegaard learned from his study of Socrates, and why this connection between Socrates and Kierkegaard is still relevant in the world today.

The widespread opinion among conceptual historians is that political concepts are always contested in their actual usage. Religious concepts in modernity are also not only contested; they are constructed on an ontological contradiction. They imply that the object to which they refer exists, and at the same time that it does not. I demonstrate this idea using four religious concepts: _religion, God,_ the _beyond,_ and _spirit._ I conclude with discussion on the reality status of religious concepts in modern historiography and (...) religious studies. (shrink)