This paper explores an apparent tension between two widely held views about logic: that logic is normative and that there are multiple equally legitimate logics. The tension is this. If logic is normative, it tells us something about how we ought to reason. If, as the pluralist would have it, there are several correct logics, those logics make incompatible recommendations as to how we ought to reason. But then which of these logics should we look to for normative guidance? I (...) argue that inasmuch as pluralism draws its motivation from its ability to defuse logical disputes—that is, disputes between advocates of rival logics—it is unable to provide an answer: pluralism collapses into monism with respect to either the strongest or the weakest admissible logic. (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza is one of the most controversial and enigmatic thinkers in the history of philosophy. His greatest work, Ethics (1677), developed a comprehensive philosophical system and argued that God and Nature are identical. His scandalous Theological-Political Treatise (1670) provoked outrage during his lifetime due to its biblical criticism, anticlericalism, and defense of the freedom to philosophize. Together, these works earned Spinoza a reputation as a singularly radical thinker. -/- In this book, Steinberg and Viljanen offer a concise (...) and up-to-date account of Spinoza’s thought and its philosophical legacy. They explore the full range of Spinoza’s ideas, from politics and theology to ontology and epistemology. Drawing broadly on Spinoza’s impressive oeuvre, they have crafted a lucid introduction for readers unfamiliar with this important philosopher, as well as a nuanced and enlightening study for more experienced readers. (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.

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.

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

Joseph Heath (2014) argues that the contribution of competitive markets to Pareto-efficiency generates moral constraints that apply to business managers. Heath argues that ethical behavior on the part of management consists in avoiding profit-seeking strategies which, under conditions of perfect competition, would decrease Pareto-efficiency. I argue that because (1) such conditions do not obtain; and (2) the most efficient result – under imperfect conditions – is not achieved by satisfying the largest possible set of the remaining conditions; it is (3) (...) impossible to draw any substantive ethical guidelines from Heath’s approach. (shrink)

Spinoza's Political Psychology advances a novel, comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's political writings, exploring how his analysis of psychology informs his arguments for democracy and toleration. Justin Steinberg shows how Spinoza's political method resembles the Renaissance civic humanism in its view of governance as an adaptive craft that requires psychological attunement. He examines the ways that Spinoza deploys this realist method in the service of empowerment, suggesting that the state can affectively reorient and thereby liberate its citizens, but only if (...) it attends to their actual motivational and epistemic capacities. His book will interest a range of readers in Spinoza studies and the history of political thought, as well as readers working in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

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.

In _Annotations_ Nahum Dimitri Chandler offers a philosophical interpretation of W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1897 American Negro Academy address, “The Conservation of Races.” Chandler approaches Du Bois as a generative and original philosophical thinker-writer on the status and historical implication of matters of human difference, both the fact of and the very idea thereof. Chandler proposes both a close reading of Du Bois’s engagement of the concept of so-called race and a deep meditation on Du Bois’s conceptualization of (...) historicity in general. He elaborates on the way Du Bois’s thought in this address can give an account of the organization of the historicity that yields the emergence of something like the African American, at once with its own internal dimensions and yet also as an originary articulation of forces and possibilities that have world historical implications. Chandler refigures Du Bois’s thought as a vital theoretical resource for rethinking our concepts of differences among humans and, so too, our understanding of modern historicity itself. (shrink)

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)

The philosophy of the blues From B.B. King to Billie Holiday, Blues music not only sounds good, but has an almost universal appeal in its reflection of the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Its ability to powerfully touch on a range of social and emotional issues is philosophically inspiring, and here, a diverse range of thinkers and musicians offer illuminating essays that make important connections between the human condition and the Blues that will appeal to music lovers and philosophers (...) alike. (shrink)

kerekh 1. Av-Hanaḳah -- kerekh 2. Haskamah mi-daʻat-Ṭeḥol -- kerekh 3. Ṭerefah-Milah -- kerekh 4. Mimun ha-refuʼah-Sodiyut refuʼit -- kerekh 5. Sikun ʻatsmi-Ḳaṭan -- kerekh 6. Reʼot-Torat ha-musar.

This book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work. Benjamin, the critic and philosopher of history, was also the practitioner, the authors contend, and it is in the practice of historical writing that the materialist aspect of his thought is most evident. Some of the essays analyze Benjamin's writings in cultural history and the philosophy of history. Others connect his historical and theoretical practices to issues in contemporary feminism (...) and post-colonial studies, and to cultural contexts including the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. In different ways, the authors all find in Benjamin's specific notion of historical materialism a dialectic between textual and cultural analysis which can reinvigorate the relation between literary and historical studies. (shrink)

In The Afterlife of Moses, Steinberg addresses the story of Moses and the Exodus as a foundational myth of politics, of the formation not of a nation but of a political community grounded in universal law. Motivated in part by this recent period of reactionary insurgency in the US, Europe, and Israel, this work of intellectual history articulates the way in which a critique of myths of origin as a principle of democratic government, affect, and citizenship has equal relevance (...) in these places and equal fragility. (shrink)

What is good political judgment? Is it a science subject to strict standards of logic and inference, or is it more like an art, the product of intuition, feeling, or even chance? Peter J. Steinberger shows how the seemingly contradictory claims of inference and intuition are reconciled in the concept of political judgment. Resting his argument on the larger notion of judgment itself, Steinberger develops an original model of how political judgments are made and how we justify calling some of (...) them "good." His systematic analysis of such thinkers as Machiavelli, Kant, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Oakeshott introduces an original notion of judgment as "intelligent performance," incorporating both intuition and rational reconstruction. Steinberger's conclusion—that a coherent political society must also be a judgmental one—flies in the face of much contemporary thinking. (shrink)

In this paper, I maintain—contrary to those commentators who regard him as a principled republican—that at the core of Spinoza’s political theory is an instrumental, rather than an intrinsic, defense of democratic procedures. Specifically, Spinoza embraces democratic decision procedures primarily because they tend to result in better decisions, defined relative to a procedure-independent standard of correctness or goodness. In contemporary terms, Spinoza embraces an epistemic defense of democracy. I examine Spinoza’s defense of collective governance, showing not only how it differs (...) from other accounts of his time but also how it might contribute to current debates about the epistemic standing of popular governing bodies. In the opening section I defend the thesis that has been contested in recent years that Spinoza was, in fact, a consistent democrat. The second section focuses on procedural (i.e., intrinsic) defenses of democracy, paying particular attention to the republican version of proceduralism that was prominent in Spinoza’s time. And in the final section I present my case for reading Spinoza as an epistemic democrat, comparing his epistemic defense with contemporary versions. What we find are not only striking anticipations of contemporary arguments, but also largely neglected lines of argumentation that reveal both the potential epistemic advantages and disadvantages of democracy. (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)

Designed to include all of the texts from Presocratics through Machiavelli likely to be read in an undergraduate course on classical political thought, this anthology has at its core generous selections from Plato and Aristotle. Building on this core is a sufficiently diverse and substantial selection of texts from other writers--including Thucydides and the Sophists--to allow for inquiry into the variety of Classical Greek approaches to politics, as well as into Roman, Medieval and Renaissance developments of the classical tradition. Preeminent (...) translations and the editor’s own thoughtful introductions further distinguish this unique anthology. (shrink)

In this essay I consider what grounds Spinoza’s defense of the freedom to philosophize, considering why Spinoza doesn’t think that we should attempt to snuff out irrationality and dissolution with the law’s iron fist. In the first section I show that Spinoza eschews skeptical, pluralistic, and rights-based arguments for toleration. I then delineate the prudential, anticlerical roots of Spinoza’s defense, before turning in the final section to consider just how far and when toleration contributes to the guiding norms of governance: (...) peace and empowerment. Once we see how the defense of toleration is anchored in these norms, we form a clearer picture of Spinoza as a liberal perfectionist for whom the bounds of political toleration depends on pragmatic and circumstance-specific assessments of what conduces to the flourishing of the state. This will help to illuminate what is distinctive—and, perhaps, distinctively commendable—about Spinoza’s form of liberalism. (shrink)