Modern, Stevie The appearance of Ayn Rand's 'lost' novel Ideal, 80 years after it was written, gives us cause to examine the life and works of the humanist author, playwright and philosopher.

Modern, Stevie In a dark uniform, she walks swiftly through the tram carriage, her movements machine-like and efficient. Wordlessly, she punches passengers' tickets and passes money from the coin-changer strapped to her hip. The passengers pay small attention, their gazes vaguely forward. They do not see the face of evil, the anonymous official who stands above them returning their ticket stub. The tram clatters on through Berlin's streets.

Modern, Stevie March 15, 2016: A 19 year-old American tourist is arrested in Jerusalem. Police authorities had found him asleep in a prohibited cave area, deep under the Muslim quarter of the Old City. A search finds his backpack loaded with rubble dug with a pickaxe, at a site where myth tells of lost religious treasure. The tourist claims no memory of his actions. Israeli media reports the story as a possible case of 'Jerusalem Syndrome' - a religiously themed psychosis. (...) The syndrome affects nearly 100 people each year out of millions of tourists who visit Jerusalem. (shrink)

Modern, Stevie In the movie Exodus set in 1947, Paul Newman plays a Jewish 'people smuggler' Ari Ben Canaan in an amusing early scene where he disguises himself as a British soldier. Ben Canaan fools a commanding officer into signing off on the transport of recent holocaust survivors out of detention in Cyprus, making the officer believe the survivors would be shipped back to Germany.

Modern, Stevie At its annual general meeting in May this year, the Council of Australian Humanist Societies voted in support of volunteer ethics teachers entering public schools and teaching ethics programs to students as a secular alternative in religious education. The motion was put to the meeting by the NSW Society with the support of the Humanist Society of Victoria. The motion was opposed by the Queensland, Western Australian and South Australian Societies. Here is why the motion is a grave (...) mistake, and why Western Australia moved its own motion against it. (shrink)

Modern, Stevie The September 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero opened in May this year, nearly 13 years from the date when 2,983 people were murdered by Islamist hijackers. It is 20 years from Al Qaida's first attempt to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.

On a tendance à voir une sorte de hiatus entre la communication politique moderne et les différents aspects du rituel qui ont jusqu'ici prévalu dans les sociétés traditionnelles. Cet article montre que l'apparition de ces nouvelles formes de communication politique n'implique pas mécaniquement la disparition de pratique liées à toute une conception de la vie publique ; loin qu'il y ait réellement antinomie entre le travail rituel et l'utilisation des médias, ceux-ci favorisent l'émergence de nouvelles formes qui combinent les (...) referents anciens et les procédures modernes. La recherche présentée ici résulte d'une enquête sur la vie politique locale dans un département français (l'Yonne) et sur les pratiques symboliques d'hommes politiques d'envergure nationale, tel le président Mitterrand. L'auteur analyse d'un point de vue anthropologique les rituels de consensus et les rituels d'affrontement pratiqués dans notre société. Si les rites d'affrontement sont profondément transformés dans leur forme et leur contenu, les rites consensuels perdurent, et trouvent dans les médias un prolongement, une chambre d'écho. Par ailleurs, de nouveaux rites surgissent qui combinent tradition, dimension religieuse et stratégie de communication. (shrink)

La « spiritualité moderne » commence à se dessiner comme une réalité nouvelle et distincte, au moins en partie, de la « religiosité classique ». Cet article examine les études récentes en psychologie de la religion qui permettent de trouver des convergences et des divergences entre spiritualité moderne et religiosité classique, non seulement au niveau des représentations que les gens se font de ces deux réalités et de l’importance qu’ils y attribuent, mais aussi au niveau des besoins et (...) structures cognitifs, besoins affectifs et relationnels, valeurs, traits de personnalité et styles d’identité qui leur sont associés. Dans la discussion, ces constatations sont ré-examinées à la lumière des théories psychologiques du religieux. (shrink)

Ujedinjenje velikih teorija fizike − teorije relativnosti, kvantne mehanike i fizike svemira i čestica − ostaje snom fizike i filozofije znanosti i na početku 21. stoljeća. Sve se one u pogledu konačnih zakona svemira slažu da je početak bio, te da su konačni zakoni oni koji su već vladali u početku evolucije svemira. Početak svemira podrazumijeva njegovo stvaranje i nužno upućuje na Stvoritelja−religijskog Boga, na uspostavljanje mosta između moderne kozmologije i religije. U tome se podudaraju klasične kozmologije s modernim (...) kozmološkim modelima astročestične teorijske fizike, odnosno mišljenja vodećih modernih kozmologa: Einsteina, Weinberga, Penrosea, Hawkinga i drugih. Naglašavamo da su i veliki svjetski kongresi iz povijesti znanosti u 21. stoljeću naročito reafirmirali komplementarni odnos znanosti i religije kao pravog puta za univerzalnim horizontom svijeta u 21. stoljeću. Situaciju odnosa znanosti i religije, Einstein je izvrsno opisao slikom: »Znanost bez religije je kljasta, a religija bez znanosti slijepa« . Stvaranje svijeta u Knjizi postanka , napose u Prvome izvještaju o stvaranju jest Božje stvaranje: Bog stvara riječju ili djelovanjem − trenutačno i u stvarnome vremenu − u fazama stvaranja što se mjere u danima. Knjigu postanka rese svi moderni početni kozmološki uvjeti i parametri: postanak, početak i kraj svemira, vrijeme i prostor, struktura i evolucija svemira, uloga i značenje života u svemiru. Ovakva teološka kozmologija, sa svim živim bićima u njoj i njihovom hijerarhijom s čovjekom kao kraljem, koliko god u znanstvenome pogledu bila jednostavnom i kratkom pričom, može biti uzorom modernim kozmološkim modelima jer svemir što ga je stvorio Bog jest svemir tvari i života. Mogli bismo reći da kozmološke modele i simulacije, kao i velike pokuse u fizici visokih energija, izvodimo da bismo dokučili kako je Bog stvarao. S druge strane, u suvremenoj fizici, pogotovo u modernoj kozmologiji, pojam Boga se često »efektivno« iskorištava u definiranju pojedinih problema ili u interpretacijama računa, što ne valja promatrati kao osiromašenje teološke ili vjerske uzvišenosti toga pojma kakvu nalazimo u Newtona, Petrića, Boškovića, Kanta ili P. Daviesa.U članku se pregledno osvrćemo na principe i tzv. »velike uspjehe« što su nastali na mostu povezivanja suvremene kozmologije i religije: »sudjelujući« svemir i princip antropičnosti, te izazovni teorijski proboji u kozmologiji naših dana u sektoru M–teorije koji govore i o suparničkim scenarijima stanja svemira prije−velikog praska. Upitat ćemo se da li suvremena upućenost fizike i religije proizlazi možda iz karakteristične »eksperimentalne nemoći« moderne kozmologije koja trpi teški tehnički problem: iznalaženje golemih energija za eksperimentalna opažanja čestica kakve fizika Big Banga zahtijeva? To su, primjerice, energije oko 1019 GeV koje odgovaraju trenu od 10−43 sekunde nakon Velikog praska. U članku se, na kraju, na Kantovu tragu, promišlja jesu li suvremeni teorijski proboji što se čine u kvantoj kozmologiji na Planckovoj skali relevantni i za Kantovu kozmološku skalu − onu do koje se dolazi jednostavnim proširenjem kategorija do neuvjetovanog, što sintezu odvodi do stupnja što nadilazi svako moguće iskustvo.Uniting the great theories of physics – i.e. the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and astroparticle physics – continues to remain a dream of both physics and the philosophy of science even at the beginning of the 21st century. In respect of the ultimate laws of the universe they all agree that there was a beginning and that the ultimate laws are those that have already ruled at the beginning of the evolution of the universe. The beginning of the universe implies its creation and necessarily points to a Creator – a religious God, to building a bridge between modern cosmology and religion. In regard to the above classical cosmologies correspond to the modern cosmological models of astroparticle theoretical physics, i.e. the reflections of the leading modern cosmologists: Einstein, Weinberg, Penrose, Hawking and others. The author highlights that even great international symposia on the history of science keep on reaffirming the complementary relation between science and religion as the true and only path to a universal horizon of the world in the 21st century. Einstein describes the state of affairs of the relation between science and religion exceptionally well with the following words: »Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind« . The creation of the world described in Genesis, particularly in The Beginning, is God’s creation: God creates by the agency of words or actions – immediately and in real time – in the phases of creation measured in days. Genesis is adorned by all the modern initial cosmological conditions and parameters: creation, the beginning and end of the universe, time and space, the structure and evolution of the universe, the role and meaning of life in the universe. Irrespective of the extent to which, scientifically speaking, it is a simple and short narrative, this theological cosmology – including all the living creatures in it and their hierarchy with man as king – can indeed serve as a role model to the modern cosmological models, since the universe created by God is a universe of matter and life. We can say that we design cosmological models and conduct simulations and great experiments in the high energy physics in order to reach and understand the way in which God created. On the other hand, however, in contemporary physics in general and in modern cosmology in particular, the concept of God is frequently »effectively« used either in defining certain problems or in interpreting scientific calculations, which must not be viewed as the impoverishment of the theological or religious eminence of the concept as can be found in Newton, Petrić, Bošković, Kant or Davies.This paper also surveys the principles and the so-called »great successes« achieved on the bridge that connects contemporary cosmology and religion: ‘participatory’ universe and the anthropic principle, as well as the challenging theoretical advances in today’s cosmology in the field of M−theory which also discuss rival ideas of the pre-big bang scenarios. The author also poses the following question: does the contemporary crossroad of physics and religion perhaps issue from modern cosmology’s peculiar »experimental helplessness« taking shape in a grave technical problem, i.e. finding immense energies for experimental particle observations required by the physics of the Big Bang? These energies are, for example, approximate to 1019 GeV , which corresponds to 10−43 of a second after the Big Bang. A thinking in the paper was finally concluded, on the Kant’s trail, whether the contemporary theoretical advances achieved in quantum cosmology at Planck’s scale are also relevant for Kant’s cosmological scale – the one arrived at by a simple expansion of the categories to the unconditioned, which brings synthesis to a point that surpasses all possible experience. (shrink)

This paper discusses Tugendhat's project of a "modern ethics" (moderne Moral) in contrast to "traditional ethics" (traditionelle Moral). We argue that this distinction is not as clear cut as Tugendhat would like it to be, and that Tugendhat's modern ethics shares important features with traditional ethics.

Au XVIIème siècle, c’est la découverte du principe d’inertie, un concept purement physique, qui permit de débloquer la théorisation du mouvement, en panne depuis Aristote. La plupart des philosophes et historiens des sciences caractérisent le tournant de la « science moderne » par sa mathématisation, arguant, comme Koyré, que le principe d’inertie découlerait de cette dernière, ou bien, comme Duhem, qu’il était déjà contenu dans l’impetus médiéval, ou encore, comme, Husserl et Kojève, en s’abstenant d’en parler. Et pourtant, la (...) mathématisation de la physique était en marche depuis l’époque hellénistique. L’originalité de Galilée est d’avoir mathématisé non pas la nature, mais, via le principe d’inertie, le temps. (shrink)

Das Zeitbewusstsein der Moderne und ihr Bedürfnis nach Selbstvergewisserung -- Hegels Begriff der Moderne -- Drei Perspektiven, Linkshegelianer, Rechtshegelianer und Nietzsche -- Eintritt in die Postmoderne -- Die Verschlingung von Mythos und Aufklärung -- Die metaphysikkritische Unterwanderung des okzidentalen Rationalismus -- Überbietung der temporalisierten Ursprungsphilosophie -- Zwischen Erotismus und allgemeiner Ökonomie -- Vernunftkritische Entlarvung der Humanwissenschaften -- Aporien einer Machttheorie -- Ein anderer Ausweg aus der Subjektphilosophie -- Der normative Gehalt der Moderne.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 419-420 [Access article in PDF] Martin Mulsow. Moderne aus dem Untergrund: Radikale Frühaufklärung in Deutschland, 1680-1720. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002. Pp. x + 514. Paper, € 58.00.This is a marvelous, detailed, textured study of a large number of minor works and minor figures that developed and transmitted many of the elements of modern philosophy in early modern Germany. Many (...) of the texts were written in Latin, and only some were published. One should not teach the philosophy of the Enlightenment from Hazard or Cassirer without attention to these figures, whom they did not know. Now we know where our heroes like Lessing, Hume, and Kant got many of their fundamental ideas.Martin Mulsow ends this book with ten theses. The first holds that most of the authors discussed were radicalized in a multi-layered process, not simply from the reading of Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, or Toland. For example, one could take the role of an opponent in an academic disputation, and bit by bit begin to believe one's unorthodox role. Or one could be provoked by ultra-orthodox opponents to explore the opposite of what they believed. Some authors evolved into and out of radical positions over the course of their lives.Further theses contend that small, trusted circles of friends were often the enabling condition in which unorthodox views were first expressed and then hammered out. Irony, satire, humor, paradox, and ambivalence played key roles. It is often difficult to tell whether some of these texts were serious or intended as jokes, and perhaps the authors did not always know themselves. Some radical ideas were spread simply by curious erudites who assembled collections and bibliographies of radical manuscripts and texts without believing them.Mulsow shows how people wrote on controversial topics in coded scholarly language. Spinozism was discussed under the rubrics of Platonism and Stoicism; the sovereignty of the people was considered in terms of the lex regia; and Biblical criticism became code for the physicians' rejection of the materiality of the soul. Thus philosophical discourse can be found where one might least expect it in legal, philological, historical, and scientific debates. The numerous case studies that the author assembles amount to philosophical microhistory.Substantial chapters deal with various aspects of the intellectual stew that emerged from the bubbling pot of Jews and Socinians and other Christian sects that were semi-tolerated in the Netherlands. Unlike any construction of moderate and radical positions as opposed and at odds, Mulsow shows how they were often intertwined. The destruction of Christian Platonism, the paradoxical development of Enlightenment ideas out of anti-humanism, and the uses of so-called eclecticism in philosophy made possible the assembly of modern philosophical positions.In yet another paradox, many of these writers belong to what has been called the "conservative Enlightenment," intending only to temporize and draw the teeth of the political and philosophical radicals, and yet their writings systematized and transmitted the ideas of the radicals, opening the way to further radicality. It is a perennial weakness of the skeptics and proto-liberals like Gundling that they defended freedom of thought and libertas philosophandi even where it would undermine the ideas and institutions in which they believed.Most of the philosophically radical positions began as critiques of theological positions, and this is one reason why it is ever more apparent that one cannot understand the rise of modern philosophy without a close acquaintance with early modern theology. None of the early modern philosophers we are trying to understand was ignorant of the many levels of theological debate. There are numerous connections to later times: for example, a seventeenth-century debate over political theology anticipated Carl Schmitt's twentieth-century rediscovery of this topos.Mulsow places the Enlightened ideas of Locke and Newton in the context of their basis in the theology of anti-Trinitarian Socinians and Arians such as Samuel Crell. This was as important to many who radicalized it as the Spinozism credited with spawning the radical... (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag befasst sich mit der Sinnsuche und -differenzierung des Boxens als einem Element der normativen Ordnung des modernen Sports. Auf der Basis einer gesellschaftstheoretischen Analyse wird das moderne Boxen vom traditionellen Duellwesen unterschieden, um die spezifische Modernität des Boxens herauszuarbeiten. Die Modernität des modernen Boxens liegt in der politischen Vermitteltheit seiner sozialen Verhältnisse, die durch eine triadische Konstellation des Vergleichs gleicher Leistungen charakterisiert sind. Demgegenüber gilt das Duell als Ausdruck einer Gesellschaftsformation, die im Medium der Ehre an (...) soziale Ungleichheit gebunden ist. Die Selbstunterscheidung vom klassischen Duell wird in der Quasi-Verfassung des modernen Boxens, den Queensberry Rules, konstitutionalisiert. Die Queensberry Rules spannen den kategorialen Raum des modernen Boxens auf, innerhalb dessen die Genese des Boxens normativ vermittelt ist. (shrink)

Introduction.--Deux conceptions de la beauté.--Du style et du style moderne.--Éléments nouveaux de beauté. Beautés nouvelles.--La métamorphose des instincts.--Comment nous vivons aujourd'hui.--La vie et l'art éternels dans la vie actuelle.

Der glänzende Siegeszug der spekulativen Dialektik Hegels kann darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass seine Behandlung der modernen Tragödie auf eine völlig neue und eigenständige Dimension verweist. Hegel hat seine systematische Philosophie entwickelt, um die durch die klassische Tragödie aufgeworfene Problematik zu überwinden. Jedoch ist seine nachtragische Philosophie nicht in der Lage, die moderne Tragödie zu begreifen. Dies ist nicht darauf zurückzuführen, dass das vernünftige Selbstbewusstsein in einem aporetischen Widerspruch befangen ist, da dieser Widerspruch, der in der klassischen Tragödie ausgedrückt ist, durch (...) Hegels spekulative Dialektik "aufgehoben" wird. Vielmehr liegt der Grund darin, dass das, was durch diese systematisierende Dialektik nicht immanent wird, keine adäquate Form findet. (shrink)

Die Proklamation der "Postmoderne" hatte mindestens ein Verdienst. Sie hat bekannt gemacht, daß die moderne Gesellschaft das Vertrauen in die Richtigkeit ihrer eige nen Selbstbeschreibungen verloren hat. Auch sie sind jeweils anders möglich. Auch sie sind kontingent gewor den. Wie in der risikoreichen Welt des New Yorker U-Bahn-Netzes drängen sich jetzt die, die darüber reden wollen, an dafür bestimmten Plätzen unter heller Be leuchtung und bei laufenden Fernsehkameras zusammen. Es scheint ums intellektuelle Überleben zu gehen. Aber offenbar nur darum. (...) Und währenddessen geschieht, was geschieht, und die Gesellschaft evoluiert im Ausgang von dem, was erreicht ist, in eine unbekannte Zukunft. Vielleicht hatte das Stichwort der Postmoderne nur eine andere, variantenreichere Beschreibung der Moder ne versprechen wollen, die ihre eigene Einheit nur noch negativ vorstellen kann als Unmöglichkeit eines meta recit. Aber das ließe dann möglicherweise zu viel zu angesichts zahlreicher aktueller Dringlichkeiten, die auf fallen. Wir mögen gern konzedieren, daß es keine ver bindliche Repräsentation der Gesellschaft in der Gesell schaft gibt. Aber das wäre dann nicht das Ende, sondern der Beginn einer Reflexion der Form von Selbstbeob achtungen und Selbstbeschreibungen eines Systems, die im System selbst vorgeschlagen und durchgesetzt werden 7 müssen in einem Prozeß, der seinerseits wieder beob achtet und beschrieben wird. (shrink)

Henri Lelevel’s La philosophie moderne par demandes et réponses is a very interesting as well as pretty neglected attempt to disseminate the new philosophy among a larger audience, including the non specialists. Either the style of presentation or the oversimplification of the topics discussed is clearly intended to reach people interested to a smattering of philosophy. More than the comparisons between the traditional and the new philosophy and the compendia, this work vouches for the great interest toward the new (...) philosophy. In this particular case the model is the philosophy of Malebranche, whose interpretation of Descartes thought is preferred by Lelevel, worried by the excessive twist given toward empiricism in P.-S. Régis rendering of Cartesian philosophical system. Lelevel’s logic is directed to eliminate the confusion between sense data and knowledge, echoing also Malebranche’s notion of éténdue idéale, one of the major contribution to the reconsideration of Descartes’ thought. This paper aims to sketch the mains topics discussed in the four sections of Lelevel’s work, with some cross-references to Malebranche’s writings. (shrink)

Alain Joxe entend quant à lui partir du champ stratégique (vs juridique, psychologique, politique, social, religieux), d’où sa proposition d’un examen d’« identités stratégiques » (identités préconstituées des forces en présence projetées dans un temps long d’avant le combat) pourvues elles-mêmes de « modules génétiques » de leurs représentations (par exemple Gilgamesh) et où comptent les échelles d’organisation de la protection (la fixation des échelles étant un moyen de donner un lieu aux mutations importantes qui rapprochent de la barbarisation). Il (...) s’interroge sur le fait que nous soyons ou non aujourd’hui à un moment de « rupture systémique ». Les États-Unis depuis la chute du mur constituent un nouvel empire dans la mesure où, pour la première fois, il peut apparaître comme « unique ». Sous Bill Clinton, cet empire d’abord économique n’était pas stratégiquement fondé sur l’existence de « barbares » dans un « ailleurs » quelconque et était donc dépourvu de limes, ce qui est en train de changer avec George W. Bush par la redéfinition d’un ennemi déterminé et présent. Le nouveau militarisme américain relève d’une régression vers une nouvelle territorialisation liée à la perte initiale de l’ennemi, d’où une contradiction du point de vue des échelles entre la conquête du monde par le capital et le maintien d’une présence militaire délimitée, sans pour autant que n’émerge une représentation claire de la sécurité des États-Unis ni une pensée claire de ce que peut être dans ce cas la fonction de protection de l’État. L’horizon est celui de la reconstitution d’une périphérie barbare dans un monde pourtant dépourvu de limes (cf. paradigme de la guerre de banlieue, la création d’un ennemi étant nécessaire pour réaffirmer le rôle protecteur de l’État). La logique de la nouvelle guerre asymétrique du fort au faible fait que la force des uns est tellement supérieure qu’elle les rend incapables de penser les éléments nouveaux et différents d’une situation. Voulant maîtriser toutes les échelles, l’hyperpuissance court le risque d’arriver ainsi à toutes les échelles de barbarie. (shrink)