Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher of the later Renaissance whose writings encompassed the ongoing traditions, intentions, and achievements of his times and transmitted them into early modernity. Taking up the medieval practice of the art of memory and of formal logic, he focused on the creativity of the human mind. Bruno … Continue reading Giordano Bruno →.

In Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism Paul Richard Blum shows that Aristotle’s thought remained the touchstone of modern philosophy; for it was the philosophy taught at universities. The concept of philosophy at Jesuit schools forms the first part of this book. Their impact on the sciences and mathematics in combination with Renaissance ideas of nature is the topic of the second part. The transformation of Aristotelian metaphysics and theology under the influence of the Renaissance is the third area of (...) this book. Surprising continuity from the late Middle Ages into modernity and the radical difference of subject centered modern philosophy from ‘teachable’ school philosophy are innovative in these studies. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally published in 1980, gives an account of "altruistic emotions" and friendship that brings out their moral value. Blum argues that moral theories centered on rationality, universal principle, obligation, and impersonality cannot capture this moral importance. This was one of the first books in contemporary moral philosophy to emphasize the moral significance of emotions, to deal with friendship as a moral phenomenon, and to challenge the rationalism of standard interpretations of Kant, although Blum’s "sentimentalism" (...) owes more to Schopenhauer than to Hume. It was a forerunner to care ethics, and feminist ethics more generally; to virtue ethics; and to subsequent influential interpretations of Kant that attempted to room for altruistic emotion and friendship, and other forms of particularism and partialism. In addition, the work has been widely influential in religious studies, political theory, bioethics, and feminist ethics. (shrink)

Isidor von Sevilla sammelte in seinen Etymologien um 600 vorhandenes Wissen aus historischen und zeitgenössischen Quellen. Rund 300 Wörter aus dem Arbeitsbereich Textil werden mit Kurzkommentaren erläutert. Ca. 1050 findet sich dieses Wissen überarbeitet im Summarium Heinrici 1. Am Beispiel des Komplexes "Kleidung" liefert der Band neben den Quellen und hervorragenden Übersetzungen zum ersten Mal auch ausführlicheKommentare und Überblicksdarstellungen, die eine Fülle von Informationen bringen. Dazu gehören u. a. neue Erkenntnisse über Herstellung der griechischen, bombycina genannten, Seide oder die Beschreibung (...) der Vielzahl der Purpurfarben von Gelb und Himmelblau bis zum exklusiven Schwarz. (shrink)

Prisons & Punishment focuses on cross-national perspectives about penal theories and empirical studies. It brings together African, European and North American social philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, legal practitioners, prisoners and abolitionist activists. The contributors reflect on carceral society, most notably in the United States, and on the re-conceptualisation of punishment.

Alex Blum ABSTRACT: We show that Kripke’s argument for the necessity of identity statements relating objects a and b by their rigid designators demands an additional significant premise. Download PDF.

Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issues of rationality, universality, impartiality, and principle. By contrast Laurence Blum is concerned with the psychology of moral agency. The essays in this collection examine the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgment, perception, and group identifications, and explore how all these psychic capacities contribute to a morally good life. Blum takes up the challenge of Iris Murdoch to articulate a vision of moral excellence that provides a worthy aspiration for human beings. (...) Drawing on accounts of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust Blum argues that impartial principle can mislead us about the variety of forms of moral excellence. (shrink)

Moulages are contact media – images made by contagion in the most literal sense: their production relies on a process in which the object to be reproduced is touched by the reproducing material. In the case of dermatological moulages, the plaster touches the infected skin of the sick and, once dried, serves as the negative form for the waxen image of a disease. Focussing on the collection of the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, the article situates the production of dermatological moulages (...) within the visual culture of 19th-century medicine and raises the question how an ancient technique of image production could become such a prevalent tool for the documentation of skin diseases during a period usually associated with the rise of scientific medicine and a reconsideration of theories of contagion in medical aetiology. (shrink)

This paper re-evaluates the formative year of quantum mechanics—from Heisenberg’s first paper on matrix mechanics to Schrödinger’s equivalence proof—by focusing on the role of radiation in the emerging theory. We argue that the radiation problem played a key role in early quantum mechanics, a role that has not been taken into account in the standard histories. Radiation was perceived by the main protagonists of matrix and wave mechanics as a central lacuna in these emerging theories and continued to contribute to (...) the theoretical development and conceptual clarification of quantum mechanics. Studying the interplay between quantum mechanics and radiation, the paper provides an account of (a) how quantum mechanics was able to connect to its empirical basis in spectroscopy and (b) how Schrödinger’s equivalence proof emerged from his explorative calculations on the emission of radiation. (shrink)

Inhalt: Descartes und das scholastische Argumentieren - Scholastik und Humanismus im Bildungsprogramm der Jesuiten - Nikolaus Cusanus - Marsilio Ficino - Giordano Bruno - Studienordnung und Philosophiebegriff: die Ratio studiorum SJ - Der ...

Taking a cue from one of the most (in)famous postmodern thinkers, Friedrich Nietzsche, the essays in this book put forth “experiments” in thought rather than arguments for fixed conclusions. Blum brings John Howard Yoder to the same table with Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, and provides a provocative glimpse of what the resulting conversation might look like. As Anne Lamott and others have recently insisted, faith is not the opposite of doubt, but of certainty. Blum’s essays explore (...) some of our commonly held ways of talking about knowledge, meaning, commitment, and action. He suggests that some postmodern theoretical work, often dismissed or assumed to be anti-Christian, is well worth bringing into contemporary Anabaptist-Mennonite conversations about discipleship and corporate life. Part of the Polyglossia series, this book is intended for conversation among academics, ministers, and laypersons regarding knowledge, beliefs, and practices of the Christian faith. (shrink)

We suggest that the classical version of the consequence argument contending that freedom and determinism are incompatible subtly misstates the core intuition, which is that if a true conditional and a true antecedent are jointly beyond our control, then so is the consequent. We show however that the improved version no less than the classical implies fatalism.Interestingly, the reasoning, that yields fatalism, undermines a direct argument for the soundness of the improved version. But if fatalism is sound, then trivially, so (...) is the new version. We shall however argue that the new version cannot be sound. A weaker version is proved sound but its domain of application excludes the most intuitive paradigm cases.We share van Inwagen's thought that his “‘N’is a very interesting operator” and debate some of its features. Our results, if sound, suggest that the consequence argument in terms of ensurable and non‐ensurable truth may not be the right way to approach issues of determinism and freedom. (shrink)

It is contended that unless everything is necessarily what it is, the essence of an object cannot be a property of the object which the object could not have failed to have. But if everything is necessarily what it is, then no identity statement is contingent.

Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork, this article examines mothers raising kids with invisible, social/emotional/behavioral disabilities to refine feminist theories of mother-blame. The mother-valor/mother-blame binary holds mothers responsible for families and future citizens, maintaining this “natural” care at the center of normative femininity. The author explores how mothers raising such burdensome children understand their experiences and makes three arguments: Fewer mothers are blamed for causing their child's troubles in an era of “brain-blame,” but more are blamed as proximate causes if (...) they do not make unrelenting efforts, paralleling “concerted cultivation,” to resolve them; such mothers often exceed concerted cultivation, as they seize authority, as vigilantes, within educational and medical systems in the midst of turf wars, cost containment, and a resulting proliferation of medication treatments; and this maternal speedup holds mothers accountable for feminizing ties to sons, for policing gender boundaries while policing their own feminine care. In sum, mothers raising invisibly disabled kids may represent the model of maternal valor for an era of public stinginess and extensive medicalization. (shrink)

Alex Blum ABSTRACT: We show, that given two fundamental theses of Kripke, no statement of the form ‘‘a=b’ is necessarily true’, is true, if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are distinct rigid designators. Download PDF.

Observers have noted a decline (in the US) in attributions of genetically-based inferiority (e.g. in intelligence) to Blacks, and a rise in attributions of culturally-based inferiority. Is this "culturalism" merely warmed-over racism ("cultural racism") or a genuinely distinct way of thinking about racial groups? The question raises a larger one about the relative place of biology and culture in racist thought. I develop a typology of culturalisms as applied to race: (1) inherentist or essentialist culturalism (inferiorizing cultural characteristics wrongly but (...) intelligibly regarded as inhering in the nature of racial groups). This view has an historical pedigree in the work of J.G. von Herder, and the tradition of "national racism." (2) non-inherentist culturalism (groups regarded as possessing changeable, malleable inferiorizing cultural characteristics). (3) colonalist culturalism (colonial subjects regarded as uncivilized but capable of becoming civilized under European tutelage). (4) neo-racism (cultures of former colonial subjects in or potentially immigrating to European countries are regarded in an inherentist manner and incompatible with but not inferior to European cultures). Non-inherentist culturalism (#2) can be put to either a racist or an anti-racist use. (shrink)

In this essay I describe how my involvement in the political struggles of an immigrant domestic workers' collective inspired me to hang out not only with the workers, but also with the writings of María Lugones and Hannah Arendt. The essay invites the reader to engage in a playful rereading of Arendt's notion of the worldlessness of laboring in the private realm by putting her into dialogue with Lugones's notion of the hangout that defies the public–private split Arendt adamantly insists (...) on in all her writings. By following the complex physical, mental, and emotional itineraries of immigrant domestic workers to, from, and in-between a number of places and spaces, I demonstrate how their stories blur the line between public and private, and therefore also between the unfreedom of the body and the presumed escape into the political public. I describe the women's experiences as the living promise of a world that allows for an embodied fluid movement between labor, work, and the freedom “inherent in action” (Arendt 193, 153). (shrink)

The concept of action-research has been developed during the last decade, mainly at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and at the Commission for Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress—centers founded by the late Kurt Lewin whose original and creative mind has made many contributions to social-psychological and sociological research. I owe my acquaintance with this new approach to the Research Center, particularly to Ronald Lippitt and Alvin Zander. Yet most of the following observations (...) are based on my research experience during the last four years. The responsibility for what I am saying is, therefore, completely my own. (shrink)

For the Introduction of a Conceptual Perspective in Mathematics: Dedekind, Noether, van der Waerden. „She [Noether] then appeared as the creator of a new direction in algebra and became the leader, the most consistent and brilliant representative, of a particular mathematical doctrine – of all that is characterized by the term ‚Begriffliche Mathematik‘.“2 The aim of this paper is to illuminate this “new direction”, which can be characterized as a conceptual [begriffliche] perspective in mathematics, and to comprehend its roots and (...) trace its establishment. Field, ring, ideal, the core concepts of this new direction in mathematical images of knowledge, were conceptualized by Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) within the scope of his number theory research and associated with an understanding of a formation of concepts as a “free creation of the human spirit”3. They thus stand for an abstract perspective of mathematics in their entirety, described as ‘modern algebra’ in the 1920s and 1930s, leading to an understanding of mathematics as structural sciences. The establishment of this approach to mathematics, which is based on “general mathematical concepts” [allgemein‐mathematische Begriffe]4, was the success of a cultural movement whose most important protagonists included Emmy Noether (1882–1935) and her pupil Bartel L. van der Waerden (1903–1996). With the use of the term ‘conceptual’, a perspective is taken in the analysis which allows for developing connections between the thinking of Dedekind, the “working and conceptual methods” [Arbeits‐ und Auffassungsmethoden]5 of Noether as well as the methodological approach, represented through the thought space of the Noether School as presented under the term “conceptual world” [Begriffswelt]6 in the Moderne Algebra of van der Waerden. This essay thus makes a contribution to the history of the introduction of a structural perspective in mathematics, a perspective that is inseparable from the mathematical impact of Noether, her reception of the work of Dedekind and the creative strength of the Noether School. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the meaning of Du Bois’s concept of “abolition democracy” and on the ideology of the abstract rights-bearing subject. In Abolition Democracy, Angela Y. Davis calls for the abolition of oppressive institutions, such as U.S. prisons, in order to engender abolition democracy. She also questions how subjects appear before the law, which justifies and normalizes inhumane practices, such as the death penalty. In conclusion, the paper explores ideas on how to conceptualize thinking “beyond” the prison industrial complex (...) not only in North America but globally. (shrink)

Using Habermas’s latest major work Between Facts and Norms (1996), this paper contrasts his explicit views on jurisprudence in the Occident with implied statements about the native Other. I wish to show that there’s an embedded agonistic (combative) — if not imperial — theme, not only in his theory of communicative competence, but also in his larger project of critical theory.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy Jill Kraye and M. W. F. Stone, editors. Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xii + 270. Cloth, $75.00 Early-modern philosophy begins in the seventeenth century. This book, based on a colloquium at the Warburg Institute, London in 1997, strives at extending the limits of (...) this period into the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus "the long-standing exclusion of the Renaissance from the standard philosophical curriculum" (xii) should come to an end by acknowledging its being an integral part of early modern philosophy and its relevance for an understanding of modern thought. The distinctive element of the Renaissance was, according to the editors, humanism, understood as the revival of ancient sources from the fourteenth century on, and its impact on the shaping of modern thought by these sources.One can identify the following types of argument offered in the twelve contributions to this book: (1) Renaissance humanists mediated classical sources into the seventeenth and following centuries either by translating Greek texts into Latin (Lohr on Aristotle commentaries) or by offering new interpretations that were to become standard (Hankins on Ficino and Galileo, and Mercer on the German Platonists). (2) Ancient modes of thought, mediated through the Renaissance, shaped modern philosophy (Stone on Aristotelian and Reformed ethics, Levi on Stoicism in Justus Lipsius, Kraye on Marcus Aurelius editions, and Osler on Gassendi and Aristotle). (3) Humanist literary forms and mentalities survived in modern thought (Bianchi on dialogue, Vickers on rhetoric in Bacon, and James on 'grandeur' and scientific argument).Two papers do not fit into this scheme: in "The Theology of Lorenzo Valla," the only paper dealing directly with a Renaissance humanist, Monfasani wants to prove that "Valla was no theologian." Monfasani does this on the basis of a very narrow concept of dogmatic correctness, blaming Valla continuously for being banal, to the effect that the paper does not contribute to the topic of the book. One could well connect Valla's theological issues (free will, summum bonum, trinity, etc.) with his provocative stirring up of philosophy in general and show his influence on Protestant theology and on modern ethics.The other paper is by J. R. Milton, which is enlightening because it summarizes the prejudices against humanism in modern philosophy ("'Delicate learning,' erudition and the enterprise of philosophy"). He endorses "one of the most familiar narratives in European philosophy" (161), namely that Descartes's breakthrough was due to his total rupture [End Page 121] with the philosophical tradition, especially with contemporary humanist and scholastic thought. Thus Descartes's triumph was that of the myth of the irrelevance of history to philosophy as evident in Galileo, Locke, and even Hume. If antecedents are acknowledged, e.g., in Berkeley, then accepting that they "provide us either with an irreplaceable source of wisdom or with equally irreplaceable models for imitation, or indeed both" (167), still fails to recognize that the history of a philosophical problem is a part of that problem rather than just some general "wisdom" or a model for imitation. Of course, Milton repeats the myth of Bacon's anti-humanism, masterly refuted in this very book by Brian Vickers, and Milton believes that Valla "enthroned" "custom and example" and therefore for him "it would be difficult if not impossible to state Hempel's Raven Paradox" (169). One might wonder whether the conclusion: "All ravens are black --all non-black things are non-ravens," is the paramount of modern philosophy. But a thorough reader of Valla's logic might discover similarities to pragmatism, which are fostered by his deep criticism of language with the tools of Renaissance humanism. However, Descartes's indebtedness to Renaissance method and rhetoric is handbook knowledge today.The audience for this collection of samples are specialists either in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century philosophy, or in Renaissance thought, or even philosophers in the narrow sense of the disciplines. The latter are difficult to convince of the usefulness of historic studies or "erudite activity" (Milton... (shrink)