Why would a country strongly influenced by Buddhism's reverence for life allow legalized, widely used abortion? Equally puzzling to many Westerners is the Japanese practice of mizuko rites, in which the parents of aborted fetuses pray for the well-being of these rejected "lives." In this provocative investigation, William LaFleur examines abortion as a window on the culture and ethics of Japan. At the same time he contributes to the Western debate on abortion, exploring how the Japanese resolve their conflicting (...) emotions privately and avoid the pro-life/pro-choice politics that sharply divide Americans on the issue. (shrink)

A reprint of the Schocken Books edition of 1961.

The paper describes the author's experience in using the history of science in teaching physics to science teachers. lt was found that history becomes more useful to teachers when explicitly combined with 'investigative' experimentation, which, in turn. can benefit from various uses of the history of science.

The rest is commentary.--Faith and knowledge.--The dynamics of emancipation.

Understanding Mental Disorders aims to help current and future psychiatrists, and those who work with them, to think critically about the ethical, conceptual, and methodological questions that are raised by the theory and practice of psychiatry. It considers questions that concern the mind’s relationship to the brain, the origins of our norms for thinking and behavior, and the place of psychiatry in medicine, and in society more generally. With a focus on the current debates around psychiatry’s diagnostic categories, the authors (...) ask where these categories come from, if psychiatry should be looking to find new categories that are based more immediately on observations of the brain, and whether psychiatrists need to employ any diagnostic categories at all. (shrink)

X: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought offers an original account of the African American as an object of discourse, knowledge, and general social practice, conceiving the focus of such a concern -- with W.E.B. Du Bois -- as forms of social and historical problems on an epochal scale, above all the global-level "problem of the color line," as the mark of both historical limit and possibility.

This paper discusses a way of introducing a scientific controversy, which emphasizes objective aspects of such issues as multiple theoretical interpretation of phenomena, choosing a theory, insistence on the chosen theory, and others. The goal is to give students a better insight into the workings of science and provide guidelines for building theories in their own research.

This essay offers an examination of Agamben's statement that there is an important ambiguity in Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta as to whether actuality or potentiality is primary. I argue that this ambiguity is significant because it exposes the ontological dimension of Agamben's paradox of sovereignty.

In _“Beyond This Narrow Now”_ Nahum Dimitri Chandler shows that the premises of W. E. B. Du Bois's thinking at the turn of the twentieth century stand as fundamental references for the whole itinerary of his thought. Opening with a distinct approach to the legacy of Du Bois, Chandler proceeds through a series of close readings of Du Bois's early essays, previously unpublished or seldom studied, with discrete annotations of _The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches_ of 1903, (...) elucidating and elaborating basic epistemological terms of his thought. With theoretical attention to how the African American stands as an example of possibility for Du Bois and renders problematic traditional ontological thought, Chandler also proposes that Du Bois's most well-known phrase—“the problem of the color line”—sustains more conceptual depth than has yet been understood, with pertinence for our accounts of modern systems of enslavement and imperial colonialism and the incipient moments of modern capitalization. Chandler's work exemplifies a more profound engagement with Du Bois, demonstrating that he must be re-read, appreciated, and studied anew as a philosophical writer and thinker contemporary to our time. (shrink)

Discussing theories at length, including their origin, development, and replacement by other theories, can help students in understanding of both objective and subjective aspects of the scientific process. Presenting theories in the form of- models helps in this undertaking, and the history of science provides a number of suitable models. The paper describes specific examples that have been used in in-service courses for science teachers.

In this volume, scholars draw deeply on negative theology in order to consider some of the oldest questions in the philosophy of religion that stand as persistent challenges to inquiry, comprehension, and expression. The chapters engage different philosophical methodologies, cross disciplinary boundaries, and draw on varied cultural traditions in the effort to demonstrate that apophaticism can be a positive resource for contemporary philosophy of religion.

Brown offers close textual analysis of Hegel’s theory of modality. It situates Hegel within historical and contemporary debates about metaphysics, bringing him into dialogue with Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Heidegger, and Agamben. It is of benefit to anyone interested in the history of possibility.

This book presents detailed discussions from leading intercultural philosophers, arguing for and against the priority of immanence in Chinese thought and the validity of Western interpretations that attempt to import conceptions of transcendence. The authors pay close attention to contemporary debates generated from critical analysis of transcendence and immanence, including discussions of apophasis, critical theory, post-secular conceptions of society, phenomenological approaches to transcendence, possible-world models, and questions of practice and application. This book aims to explore alternative conceptions of transcendence that (...) either call the tradition in the West into question, or discover from within Western metaphysics a thoroughly dialectical way of thinking about immanence and transcendence. (shrink)

Gli A. esaminano le risposte che l'anonimo magister artium fornisce alle domande iniziali poste da Porfirio nell'Isagoge, relativamente, in special modo, alla questione degli universali. Ne risulta uno studio dottrinale che fa luce sui punti seguenti: l'anonimo pone un universale in rebus, sottoscrivendo la coeva posizione realista; l'universale reale non è affatto confinato in uno spazio-tempo determinato; all'interno del Compendium è posto in luce il concetto di virtus, a cui si lega una peculiarità nel pensare l'universale in re, cioè da (...) una parte viene pensato come ontologicamente immanente, dall'altra come separato per il rapporto con le molteplici realtà corporee; la dottrina dell'universale sembra portare un'impronta avicenniana , in quanto per il magister l'universale può essere considerato per naturam o per essentiam; altra distinzione cruciale è quella instaurata fra esse essentiae e esse actuale o esse existentiae. Sulla base del ms. Barcelona, ACA, Ripoll 109 gli A. presentano l'edizione dei punti relativi agli universali , accompagnati da note esplicative sui luoghi isagogici e sulle fonti del testo. Gli A. forniscono i dettagli relativi alla loro edizione alle pp. 293-6. (shrink)

What does a Utilitarian mean by happiness when he says that it is the good? Specifically, pleasure. But how many different kinds of experiences are included under this term? It appears that as the word was used by Bentham, and indeed by almost all other hedonists, it had so wide an extension that it included all experiences not properly termed "unhappiness." Partly, however, because of the identification of happiness with pleasure and the absence of pain, and partly because of a (...) failure to emphasize by frequent explanation the difference between the meanings of terms as used by hedonists and the same terms in common usage, there has existed at all times a disposition to assume that hedonists intended a narrower meaning than they actually did. Even in hedonistic writings there has been a tendency to make a distinction between the usages accorded "pleasure" and "happiness," the former as used more frequently to refer to pleasures of the moment, and the latter to a long continued state of felicific feeling; or a distinction is made between "pleasure" as used when referring to happiness which has an immediately obvious physiological origin and "happiness" to felicific feeling of all types. Nevertheless, the terms are not used consistently in this way, and on the whole it would be better to think of "pleasure" and "happiness" as interchangeable in the writings of Jeremy Bentham and many others. (shrink)

Every man experiences dreams and imaginations, the nature of which is admittedly subjective. It is perfectly possible for me to propose that this same lack of objectivity may characterize all experience. I may conceive that I am a god making the world for my own amusement, being real beyond the reality of this my dream. But this imagined god-head is merely the dream of an idle moment, for I cannot seriously suppose that were I to dream I would dream in (...) exactly this way. Had I the making of this world, it would be a braver, better world than it is. Braver? Better? On second thought, I am not so sure. I would want it to be a better world, but could I make it a better world? Could I spin from my imagination the grandeur and beauty of the universe of stars, the wealth and complexity of the invisibly minute, the beauties of nature, the truths of mathematics, the harmonies of music, the world of meaning everywhere? Could I? I doubt it. For I fail to understand even trivial things: I find myself failing even in unimportant projects. And if I fail in these, the least parts of my universe, could I so ably create the whole? There are, thus, two ways in which this doctrine fails to do more than amuse me for the moment. Did I create this dream, I would aim higher and achieve less. (shrink)

Bu makalede Spinoza’nın dil eleştirisinin ve çözümlemesinin tartışılması amaçlanmaktadır. Bilindiği gibi, Spinoza, İbranice hakkında yarım kalmış bir dilbilgisi kitabı kaleme almış olsa da, bugün dil felsefesi diye adlandırılan alanda bir yapıt vermiş değildir. Bununla birlikte, dil konusunun, anlama yetisinin düzeltilmesinin önemli ayaklarından biri olması ölçüsünde, Spinoza açısından, felsefi uslamlama için bir propedötik işlevi gördüğü söylenebilir. Hatta Spinoza’ya göre, kendisinden önce gelen bazı filozofların doğanın ortak düzenini ve zorunlu nedenselliğini kavrayamamış olmasının nedeni, tam da fikirlerin ve şeylerin bağlantı ve düzenlerini izlemek (...) yerine, doğayı açıklamak için dilsel kategorilere başvurmalarıdır. İşte bu yüzden, felsefenin ilk adımlarından biri dilin bedensel-imgelemsel doğasının aydınlatılması olmalıdır. Böylelikle dilin felsefi amaçlar doğrultusunda, yani upuygun fikirlerin iletilmesi için kullanmasına zemin hazırlanacaktır. Bu yazıda, Spinoza’nın geliştirdiği dil kuramının, dil olgusunun psikolojik-bilişsel açıdan çözümlemesi kadar, kendine-gönderimli kavramsal bir dilin geometrik düzende kurulmasını da içerdiği ileri sürülecektir. (shrink)

In what follows, I draw on things I have found in Japanese discussions of bioethics in order to clarify some aspects of the ethics of biotechnological enhancement. In doing so it will, I hope, become evident that what we might call a “religious” component is in Japan somewhat differently construed than in the contexts with which we are more likely to be familiar in North America. And in the end an attempt will be made here to show that the materials (...) considered give us all – not just the Japanese – reasons for going forward with biological enhancement technologies only on condition that extreme caution be exercised. The fast-moving, oncoming traffic in this domain ought to be forced, these materials suggest, to come up to a caution-demanding signal – not a green light but one that is unambiguously amber. Caution and perhaps even a full stop appear to be in order. (shrink)

Les nombreux débats conflictuels entourant l’application du principe de grève de masse au sein du Parti social-démocrate allemand témoignent de la lente agonie des idéaux marxistes au sein de ce parti de masse. La fragile victoire des idéaux prônés par la faction radicale du Parti contre ceux des réformistes, entre 1900 et 1906, connaît un retour de balancier sans appel après la première révolution russe. De 1906 à 1910, la logique légalo-parlementaire allait progressivement devenir la seule voie légitime aux yeux (...) des dirigeants du Parti. Ce changement de tactique et de stratégie visant à conquérir le pouvoir, sera grandement contesté par plusieurs militants influents du Parti. Le conflit intellectuel entre Rosa Luxemburg et Karl Kautsky, qui éclata publiquement en 1910 alors que les mouvements contestataires en Allemagne étaient très forts, nous permet de comprendre, par l’analyse du discours de ces penseurs marxistes, les raisons qui conduisirent le SPD à ne pas appliquer la grève de masse. Ceci, alors qu’une motion favorable à ce principe avait été votée en 1905 lors du Congrès d’Iéna. Du point de vue pseudo-sérendipien qui était le sien, Luxemburg croyait fermement que la temporalité était favorable à l’application de la grève de masse. L’interprétation temporelle et électoraliste de Kautsky l’amènera plutôt à critiquer les effets pseudo-sérendipiens, non contrôlés par le SPD, entourant ce type d’action politique. (shrink)

On a trop souvent classé l’œuvre d’Ernest Renan dans le strict domaine de la linguistique ou dans l’histoire des religions, sans voir qu’elle reposait sur un fondement épistémologique original : l’acclimatation en France d’une lecture de la Critique de la faculté de juger de Kant. L’article étudie comment Renan élabore dans ses textes sur le langage publiés entre 1848 et 1855 une théorie de la connaissance qui se réalise au moyen d’une réflexion sur le langage. Le langage va donc opérer (...) comme un outil réflexif autour duquel s’ordonne le reste de son œuvre. (shrink)