While working on various medieval philosophers, I have noticed an affinity between their remarks on the reasonableness of accepting propositions that are not matters of proof and strict deduction and St. John Henry Newman’s remarks that we accept unconditionally and rightly everyday ordinary propositions without calibrating them to demonstrable arguments. In particular, Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta and Blessed John Duns Scotus both claim there is a sense in which assent to everyday propositions is tantamount to knowledge, even though (...) there is no adequate argumentation or demonstrative reasoning compelling us to assent to such propositions. Newman’s distinction between notional and real apprehension of propositions, notional and real assents, and his insistence on the existence of real assents to propositions that are not necessarily proved, or in some cases provable, seem, at first glance, a case parallel to that of the medieval philosophers we have mentioned. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the reception of Avicenna’s well-known “flying man” thought experiment in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin philosophy. The central claim is that the argumentative role of the thought experiment changed radically in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The earlier authors—Dominicus Gundissalinus, William of Auvergne, Peter of Spain, and John of la Rochelle—understood it as an ontological proof for the existence and/or the nature of the soul. By contrast, Matthew of Aquasparta and Vital du Four used (...) the flying man as an argument for the soul’s ability to be directly aware of itself. A detailed analysis of the views of these authors shows interesting philosophical differences between them and reveals how one of the crucial premises of the original thought experiment—namely that the flying man is unaware of his body—loses its importance due to the changes in the argumentative role that is assigned to it. The most radical example of a new way of understanding bodily self-awareness is Peter Olivi’s so-called ‘man before the creation.’. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the reception of Avicenna’s well-known “flying man” thought experiment in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin philosophy. The central claim is that the argumentative role of the thought experiment changed radically in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The earlier authors—Dominicus Gundissalinus, William of Auvergne, Peter of Spain, and John of la Rochelle—understood it as an ontological proof for the existence and/or the nature of the soul. By contrast, Matthew of Aquasparta and Vital du Four used (...) the flying man as an argument for the soul’s ability to be directly aware of itself. A detailed analysis of the views of these authors shows interesting philosophical differences between them and reveals how one of the crucial premises of the original thought experiment—namely that the flying man is unaware of his body—loses its importance due to the changes in the argumentative role that is assigned to it. The most radical example of a new way of understanding bodily self-awareness is Peter Olivi’s so-called ‘man before the creation.’. (shrink)

Reflection on natural law reaches a highpoint during the Middle Ages. Not only do Christian thinkers work out the first systematic accounts of natural law and articulate the framework for subsequent reflection, the Jewish and Islamic traditions also develop their own canonical statements on the moral authority of reason vis-à-vis divine law. In the view of some, they thereby articulate their own theories of natural law. These various traditions of medieval reflection on natural law, and their interrelation, merit further study, (...) particularly since they touch upon many current philosophical concerns. They grapple with the problem of ethical and religious pluralism. They consider whether universally valid standards of action and social life are accessible to those who rely on reason rather than divine law. In so doing, they develop sophisticated accounts of many central issues in metaethics, action theory, jurisprudence, and the philosophy of religion. However, do they reach a consensus about natural law, or do they end up defending incommensurable ethical frameworks? Do they confirm the value of arguments based on natural law or do they cast doubt on it? This collection brings together contributions from various expert scholars to explore these issues and the pluralism that exists within medieval reflection on natural law. It is the first one to study the relation between the natural law theories of these various traditions of medieval philosophy: Jewish, Islamic, Byzantine, and Latin. Each of the first four essays surveys the 'natural law theory' of one of the religious traditions of medieval philosophy-Jewish, Islamic, Byzantine, and Latin-and its relation to the others. The next four essays explore some of the alternative accounts of natural law that arise within the Latin tradition. They range over St. Bonaventure, Peter of Tarentaise, Matthew of Aquasparta, John Duns Scotus, and Marsilius of Padua. (shrink)

The question of intellectual intuition in medieval philosophy is generally associated with names like John Duns Scotus and William Ockham whose majorcontributions to the development of the theory of intuition are well established. Nevertheless the way they approached this philosophical question is strongly related to the Franciscan tradition to which they both belonged so that an extensive comprehension of their theories of intuition requires the inquiry of their sources. As this paper means to show, Matthew of Aquasparta is (...) one of John Duns Scotus’s most important sources in this matter and his treatment of both thequestions of direct intellectual knowledge of the material individual and of the self-knowledge of the soul are important in order to understand the role of theintelligible species and the immediate character of intuitive cognition. While for Matthew of Aquasparta there is no contradiction between the implication of thespecies in intuitive cognition and its immediacy, John Duns Scotus and William Ockham both find a contradiction between these aspects of knowledge andtherefore they both reject the presence of the species in intuitive cognition which is immediate. This paper will show the background of Matthew’s theory and theway he demonstrated that the presence of a species does not always qualify as mediation in knowledge and does not as such hinder the intuitive cognition. (shrink)

Recently attention has been paid to the epistemic requirements for proper assertion. The most popular account has been the knowledge account, that we can only properly assert what we know. Others have criticized the knowledge account and argued that the norm of assertion is truth, belief, or assertion of what it is reasonable to believe.

The article discusses the philosophical and theological currents that made their appearance at the university of Paris in the thirteenth century and prepared the rise of the philosophy and theology of John Duns Scotus. The principal rival orientations were newly the introduced Aristotelianism, as represented by Roland of Cremona, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and his Dominican pupils, Siger of Brabant, and Boethius of Dacia, and the traditional and conservative Augustinianism, which found its defenders above all within the Franciscan order, (...) where two schools of thought can be distinguished before Scotus: the older school culminating in St Bonaventure, and the second school, with Matthew of Aquasparta, William of La Mare, William of Ware, Peter Olivi and others. The heterodox tendencies within the thirteenth century Aristotelianism lead to an official condemnation in 1277 by Church and university authorities of 219 of its tenets regarded as erroneous, yet this fact did not stop further continuance and development of this current. After this condemnation there appeared syncretistic solutions by Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome; also mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysian inspiration (Eckhart) made its appearance. Against this background the origin and rise of the doctrine of John Duns Scotus can be explained as one more attempt to steer a middle course between the rival extremes of Aristotelianism and Augustinian Platonism and to include in a comprehensive synthesis the most valuable elements present in both currents. This attempt prepared the way for the new philosophy of the fourteenth century, although at the same time became the target of criticism by its representatives. (shrink)

I outline the early Heidegger's views on mood and emotion, and then relate his central claims to some recent finding in neuropsychology. These findings complement Heidegger in a number of important ways. More specifically, I suggest that, in order to make sense of certain neurological conditions that traditional assumptions concerning the mind are constitutionally incapable of accommodating, something very like Heidegger's account of mood and emotion needs to be adopted as an interpretive framework. I conclude by supporting Heidegger's insistence that (...) the sciences constitute a derivative means of disclosing the world and our place within it, as opposed to an ontologically and epistemologically privileged domain of inquiry. (shrink)

Technical results about the time dependence of eigenvectors of reduced density operators are considered, and the relevance of these results is discussed for modal interpretations of quantum mechanics which take the corresponding eigenprojections to represent definite properties. Continuous eigenvectors can be found if degeneracies are avoided. We show that, in finite dimensions, the space of degenerate operators has co-dimension 3 in the space of all reduced operators, suggesting that continuous eigenvectors almost surely exist. In any dimension, even when degeneracies are (...) hit, we find conditions under which a theorem due to Rellich can provide continuous eigenvectors. We use this result to formulate an extended version of the modal interpretation. We also discuss eigenvector instability which we argue poses a serious problem for the modal interpretation, even in our extended version. Many examples are given to illustrate the mathematics. (shrink)

This paper argues, in response to Huw Price, that deflationism has the resources to account for the normativity of truth. The discussion centers on a principle of hyper-objective assertibility, that one is incorrect to assert that p if not-p. If this principle doesn't state a fact about truth, it neednt be explained by deflationists. If it does,, it can be explained.

The (im)moral character of art works often affects how we respond to them. But should it affect our evaluation of them as art? The article surveys the contemporary debate whilst outlining further lines of argument and enquiry. The main arguments in favour of aestheticism, the claim that there is no internal relation between artistic value and moral character, are considered. Nonetheless the connection between art's instructional aspirations and artistic value, as well as the ways in which works solicit responses from (...) us, underwrite the claim that a work's moral character can be directly relevant to a work's value as art. Various competing accounts of how the relationship goes, ethicism, moderate moralism and immoralism, are considered. The article goes on to elaborate novel considerations in favour of a suitably qualified cognitive immoralism and suggests avenues of further enquiry with respect to the moral character of art works. (shrink)

In this paper I critique the concept of social groups deployed by Iris Marion Young in her well-known theory of the five faces of oppression. I contend that Young’s approach to conceptualizing social groups creates arbitrary and inconsistent categories, essentializes certain groups, and fails to take seriously the complexity of pluralism. I propose that Margaret Gilbert’s work in social metaphysics provides a more philosophically robust account of social groups that serves as a helpful corrective to Young’s approach. Gilbert’s account of (...) “we”-ness, as well as her theory of the nature of individuals and collectivities, provides a helpful vantage point for critiquing Young’s project and its emphasis on the social process of differentiation in the formation of social groups. (shrink)

Abstract I provide an account of the nature of seemings that explains why they are necessary for justification. The account grows out of a picture of cognition that explains what is required for epistemic agency. According to this account, epistemic agency requires (1) possessing the epistemic aims of forming true beliefs and avoiding errors, and (2) having some means of forming beliefs in order to satisfy those aims. I then argue that seeming are motives for belief characterized by their role (...) of providing us with doxastic instructions guided by our epistemic aims. Understanding the nature of seemings allows us to underwrite recent epistemological work by Michael Huemer, and shows why he was right to claim that seemings are the source of all justification. I then look at some objections both to my arguments regarding the connection between seemings and justification, and to Huemer’s related “Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism”. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9830-2 Authors Matthew Skene, Syracuse University, 8330 E. Quincy Ave., I-307, Denver, CO 80237, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

It is proposed that the physical structure of an observer in quantum mechanics is constituted by a pattern of elementary localized switching events. A key preliminary step in giving mathematical expression to this proposal is the introduction of an equivalence relation on sequences of spacetime sets which relates a sequence to any other sequence to which it can be deformed without change of causal arrangement. This allows an individual observer to be associated with a finite structure. The identification of suitable (...) switching events in the human brain is discussed. A definition is given for the sets of sequences of quantum states which such an observer could occupy. Finally, by providing an a priori probability for such sets, the definitions are incorporated into a complete mathematical framework for a many-worlds interpretation. At a less ambitious level, the paper can be read as an exploration of some of the technical and conceptual difficulties involved in constructing such a framework. (shrink)

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." --Genesis 1:24-26 In this crucial passage from the Old Testament, God grants mankind power over animals. But with this privilege comes the grave responsibility to respect life, to treat animals with (...) simple dignity and compassion. Somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong. In Dominion , we witness the annual convention of Safari Club International, an organization whose wealthier members will pay up to $20,000 to hunt an elephant, a lion or another animal, either abroad or in American "safari ranches," where the animals are fenced in pens. We attend the annual International Whaling Commission conference, where the skewed politics of the whaling industry come to light, and the focus is on developing more lethal, but not more merciful, methods of harvesting "living marine resources." And we visit a gargantuan American "factory farm," where animals are treated as mere product and raised in conditions of mass confinement, bred for passivity and bulk, inseminated and fed with machines, kept in tightly confined stalls for the entirety of their lives, and slaughtered in a way that maximizes profits and minimizes decency. Throughout Dominion , Scully counters the hypocritical arguments that attempt to excuse animal abuse: from those who argue that the Bible's message permits mankind to use animals as it pleases, to the hunter's argument that through hunting animal populations are controlled, to the popular and "scientifically proven" notions that animals cannot feel pain, experience no emotions, and are not conscious of their own lives. The result is eye opening, painful and infuriating, insightful and rewarding. Dominion is a plea for human benevolence and mercy, a scathing attack on those who would dismiss animal activists as mere sentimentalists, and a demand for reform from the government down to the individual. Matthew Scully has created a groundbreaking work, a book of lasting power and importance for all of us. (shrink)

There is a tension between the “growing block” account of time (closed past, open future) and the possibility of backwards time travel. If Tim the time traveler can someday travel backwards through time, then he has (in a certain sense) already been. He might discover this fact before (in another sense) he goes. Hence a dilemma: it seems that either Tim’s future is determined in an odd way or cases of (temporary) ontic indeterminate identity are possible. Either Tim cannot avoid (...) heading for the past or he is only indeterminately that guy who appeared in the past with many of Tim’s memories. Determinacy in the past implies a degree of determinism in the future; indeterminism about the future seeps back to the past. (shrink)

Many philosophers have equated the denial of foundationalism with a call for coherentist approaches to epistemology. I think such equations are spurious, and to show why this is so I contrast the views of a paradigmatic coherentist with an antifoundationalist alternative. This article examines the coherentism of Laurence BonJour with an eye toward the way in which BonJour's views fail to fully adopt the insights of their Sellarsian roots. In particular, I argue that BonJour's view endorses the philosophy of mind (...) that Wilfrid Sellars criticized in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" - which itself may be no sin , but is a problem given BonJour's express sympathies with Sellars and EPM. I begin by contrasting the approaches taken by BonJour in The Structure of Empirical Knowledge and by Sellars in EPM, arguing that one could deny foundationalism without, thereby, becoming a coherentist. (shrink)

The least infringement principle has been widely endorsed by public health scholars. According to this principle, public health policies may infringe upon “general moral considerations” in order to achieve a public health goal, but if two policies provide the same public health benefit, then policymakers should choose the one that infringes least upon “general moral considerations.” General moral considerations can encompass a wide variety of goals, including fair distribution of burdens and benefits, protection of privacy and confidentiality, and respect for (...) autonomy.In this article, we argue that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's 2006 HIV screening recommendations may violate the least infringement principle. This is a concern because, although not legally binding, the Recommendations appear to have already influenced state laws and will likely continue to do so as legislative proposals continue to be passed. At a minimum, therefore, the Recommendations have important implications for HIV screening within the United States. (shrink)

This Dictionary provides a wide range of coverage on a topic that has played a significant role in human society, from the early theoreticians and thinkers who proposed republican, democratic, and authoritarian innovations; to those who sought equality of classes, races, and genders; to those who insisted on hierarchy under a supreme leader, or god; and to those who had more practical economic, social, and ethical plans. This historical dictionary covers the most vital information on the persons, plans, and attempts (...) associated with utopianism that have been seen since ancient times. An introductory essay, chronology, 600 dictionary entries, an extensive bibliography, and an appendix listing the names and locations of utopian communities worldwide enable the reader to explore the Western mind's desire to improve the world and the lives of the people within it as utopianism has persisted over the centuries. (shrink)

In examining Randy Cohen, an ethical advice giver for The New York Times Magazine, this article traces out special concerns of “applied philosophers” including: dissemination of ideas through a media, disparity of public understanding of philosophical (particularly ethical) issues and the contributions to these issues by specific people, and, of course, money. It skips the question of whether or not what Cohen does is philosophy in favor of examining how whatever he does is like the philosophy that philosophers often claim (...) to be doing. Cohen, then, is a doppelganger for philosophers, particularly those working in applied philosophy, that needs to be considered. The way he wades through a big-business format to discuss individual concerns may provide a model (even if it is of what not to do) for philosophers looking to actually affect change with their ethical pronouncements. (shrink)

The point of view endorsed in John Lachs’s Stoic Pragmatism is easy to state, yet profound in its application. If pragmatists can be accused of sometimes under-appreciating the irremediable, and stoics of sometimes being fatalist in a manner that shuts out real possibilities, the two orientations may need each other. His perspective combines a pragmatic commitment to amelioratory achievement and a stoic recognition of unbridgeable limits. As the book conveys, the marriage of stoicism and prag...

Instances of nudity in Westworld can be put into three categories: Nudity as a beautiful art form, nudity as a sign of (male) dominance, and nudity as a sign of humanity or more to the point, nudity as a sign of becoming human. All the hosts presented as nudes in Westworld are idealized. The hosts are always more idealized in their form than either the human guests or the human directors of the park. Kenneth Clark makes a key distinction between (...) being naked, “being without clothes”, and the nude as a form of art. He imagines that the idealized beauty of the nude is analogous to the architecture of a building: It is a “balance between an ideal scheme and functional necessities”. The idealization of the human body and the createdness of the hosts come together in the main human theme of both the park's creators and its visitors: Control. (shrink)

It is possible to argue that the first world is presently living through a period of radical global reaction against the social democratic consensus of the twentieth century. In this context, the use of Slavoj Zizek's Lacnaian theory of ideology to critique the traditions of thought which inform this reaction becomes a vital task. In this paper, I use Zizek's Lacanian theory of ideology to critically analyse de Maistre's remarkable work: particularly his 'Considerations on France'. Zizek's emphasis on the role (...) of the Real in ideology, it is argued, allows us unique purchase on de Maistre's ideological position. It allows us to show, furthermore, how reactionary conservatism does not 'conserve' the symbolic Other of the discourse of the master, since it is animated by fear and trembling that the symbolic can no longer hold in conditions of secularisation. In this context, the proximity of de Maistre with de Sade emerges as something that goes beyond superficially similar celebrations of the role of violence in human affairs. What is minimally at stake in reactionary thought per se, this paper argues, is the attempt to reground lost authority in the unmediated Real, a procedure in which the laying down of the law verges into the need to divide and sacifice others for the Jouissance of the Other. In this way, Lacan's comment that right-wing intelectuals are knaves who, if pushed, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve power is vindicated and also elaborated. For De Maistre, the paper shows, was nothing if not a
collosally royal knave
. (shrink)

The debate over whether the just war theory begins with a "presumption against violence" has raged among Christian ethicists for more than thirty years. One camp argues that the theory begins with a presumption against violence that can be overridden in exceptional circumstances. The other camp claims that the just war tradition instead begins with a presumption against injustice. A careful analysis of the debate, however, reveals that the term "presumption against violence" has been used in three different ways, and (...) that clarifying these usages can show the common ground in the debate and move it toward a resolution. (shrink)

The cognitive hierarchy model is an approach to decision making in multi-agent interactions motivated by laboratory studies of people. It bases decisions on empirical assumptions about agents’ likely play and agents’ limited abilities to second-guess their opponents. It is attractive as a model of human reasoning in economic settings, and has proved successful in designing agents that perform effectively in interactions not only with similar strategies but also with sophisticated agents, with simpler computer programs, and with people. In this paper, (...) we explore the qualitative structure of iterating best response solutions in two repeated games, one without messages and the other including communication in the form of non-binding promises and threats. Once the model anticipates interacting with sufficiently sophisticated agents with a sufficiently high probability, reasoning leads to policies that disclose intentions truthfully, and expect credibility from the agents they interact with, even as those policies act aggressively to discover and exploit other agents’ weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. Non-binding communication improves overall agent performance in our experiments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 603-604 [Access article in PDF] Irving Singer. George Santayana, Literary Philosopher. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 217. Cloth, $25.00. In a prefatory comment, Irving Singer affirms that George Santayana, Literary Philosopher is "an introduction to the part of Santayana's philosophy that has meant the most to me" (xii). The locus of this personal interest, he goes on (...) to say, is in the "humanistic relevance" of Santayana's work. Singer's fruitful reflections on Santayana's literary genius, as well as the great philosopher's depth of critical insight with regard to aesthetics, literature, and love, all testify to this humanistic interest.Singer's examinations of Santayana's critical and fictional works are as accessible as they are interesting, a characteristic which alone recommends the book for readers interested in gaining an introductory understanding. Equally important however is the fact that Singer's reflections lend themselves to a much larger academic audience as well. Santayana's work is revealed, correctly, to be not only relevant to the philosophical community, but to contain contributional elements that are of interest to criticism in both literature and art.This does not mean that Singer avoids criticizing Santayana's philosophy. To the contrary, he levels a key criticism that begs response. Singer believes Santayana is incapable of accounting for interpersonal love. According to Singer, Santayana's deficiency in this regard is due to his belief that "[other] individuals are merely the vehicle [End Page 603] to some cherished ideal" (124). More specifically, Singer holds that Santayana's account of the realization of interpersonal love is restricted by an unnecessary dualism: the gratification of material desires (like Freud), and the distanced contemplation of an ideal (like Plato).This familiar dualism might be referred to as the "desire-renunciation" formula Santayana employs throughout his work in an attempt to pay equal respect to the material ground, and the contrasting ideal groundlessness of all things. For Santayana, the oscillation between desire and renunciation is so obviously reflected in individual aspirations, and in the general course of every human life that, for the philosopher, the task is not to attempt to justify one or the other, but to reconcile them. For Singer however, Santayana ultimately fails in this attempt: "...[Santayana's] attempt to unify Platonism and naturalism fails as philosophy..." (x). He charges that the structure of Santayana's philosophy "fails to show us how people can overcome the split between matter and spirit." Thus, Singer's divergence from Santayana derives from an overall rejection of the philosophical soundness of his work (favoring its humanistic appeal), and from his feeling that Santayana's philosophy never achieves the reconciliation it sets out as its goal. But these charges are unjust, and they seem to arise from an insufficient account of Santayana's doctrine of essence as it relates to his understanding of love.For Singer, "persons" rather than essences (or ideals) are the irreducible themes of human interest: "...loving is not the same as desiring. We desire things or persons for what they can give us, for satisfactions we hope they will provide. In loving anyone, however, we take an interest in that person, as a person and not just as a vehicle to something else" (91). But the implicit charge of this claim, namely, that Santayana's preference for essences as the irreducible themes of human interest results in the view that humans are incapable of loving persons-qua-persons (but only qua-essences), is simply wrong; and, importantly, reflective of a misunderstanding of Santayana's doctrine of essence.Santayana is consistent in his affirmation that in youth, when the demand to act is acute, it is sane to cry and to beat one's fists against the world, while with time and experience, such heated displays become tragic and even unbecoming. The same is true for Santayana with respect to love. It is wisdom reflective of the love of all things to laugh (ironically) at what was in youth an irremediable demand for the love of particular... (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to explore some of the ethical contours of CHRD. In order to do so, it will introduce the theoretical bases which inform a critical understanding of ethics and of the ways in which morality can be leveraged to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others. The discussion that follows will comprise three subsections Firstly, the section “What is morality and ethics?” draws on the work of Williams and MacIntyre to outline a distinction (...) between these related concepts. Secondly, “What is a human resource?” outlines the implicit morality of standard approaches to HRD and explores their limitations. Finally, “What is a human?: Toward an Ethics of CHRD” moves beyond the limitations of standard approaches to HRD and outlines some of the positive bases for ethics of CHRD. (shrink)

Quantum theory is highly successful in explaining properties of classes of systems: e.g. chemistry --- molecular binding energies optics --- frequency-dependent susceptibilities superconductivity --- energy gaps nuclear magnetic resonance --- chemical shifts particle physics --- scattering cross-sections cosmology --- helium abundance but many questions arise: What does quantum theory tell us about the nature of reality? Is quantum theory universally valid? Can quantum theory describe individual events? Can quantum theory be applied consistently at the macroscopic level? Is an algorithmic treatment (...) of measurement theory possible? Is it possible to provide an interpretation of quantum theory which is compatible with special relativity/ general relativity/ quantum field theory/ this week's theory of everything? (shrink)

Using astronomy software, this article provides a systematic re-examination of the astronomical references in Ovid's Fasti and reviews the previous authority on the question, Ideler (1825). The review finds that most (three out of four) of the more than fifty astronomical references in the poem are accurate and reflects on the negative reception of Ovid's handling of astronomy in light of these findings.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, conflict in the former USSR has been a key concern in international security. This book fills a gap in the literature on violent conflict, evaluating a region that contains all the modern ingredients for instability and aggression. Bringing together leading experts on war and security, the book addresses current debates in international relations about power, interests, globalisation and the politics of identity as major drivers of contemporary war. Incidents such as the 2008 Russo-Georgian (...) conflict, the wars in Chechnya, and Russia's struggles over national identity and resources with former communist states are all thoroughly examined. With new issues like energy security, terrorism and transnational crime, and older tensions between East and West threatening to deepen once more, this is an important contribution to the international security literature. (shrink)

The rise of populism and nationalism in the West have raised concerns about the fragility of liberal political values, chief among them tolerance. But what alternative social resources exist for cultivating the interpersonal relationships and mutual goodwill necessary for sustainable peace? And how might the lived practices of religious communities carry potential to reinterpret or re-circuit these interpersonal tensions and transform the relationship with the cultural "other" (Fremde) from "foe" (Feind) to "friend" (Freund)? This volume contributes a unique analysis of (...) this shifting discourse by viewing the contemporary socio-political upheaval through the lens of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology, with a focus on the themes of friendship, interpersonal subjectivity, and sociability as a path beyond mere tolerance. Each of the essays of the volume is written by an internationally recognized scholar in the field, and the volume examines Schleiermacher's novel reflections across multiple social contexts, including North America, Great Britain, western Europe, and South Africa. As these essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary religious communities and political discourse. (shrink)

This collection of essays offers multifaceted explorations of animal encounters in a range of philosophical, cultural, literary, and historical contexts. Exploring Animal Encounters encourages us to think about the richness and complexity of animal lives and human-animal relations, foregrounding the intricate roles nonhuman creatures play in the always already more-than-human sphere of ethics and politics. In this way, the essays in this volume can be understood as a contribution to alternative imaginings of interspecies coexistence in a time in which the (...) issue of human relations with earth and earth others has come to the fore with unprecedented force and severity. (shrink)