Since Descartes, the quest for the foundation in epistemology has suffered a series of setbacks. The consequence of the opposition against an epistemic foundation is epistemic skepticism. The irony of the skeptic position is that scepticism in all its hues is self-refuting. Although the establishment of a foundation is essential for coherent epistemology, the quest for epistemic foundation has suffered some oppositions because most attempts at establishing foundational epistemology have focused on intentional signs or products – beliefs, concepts, propositions, etc. (...) In this essay, I argue that in order to establish foundational epistemology, cognitional and intentionality analysis should take priority over conceptual analysis. Hence, instead of focusing on intentional signs or products, attention should be paid to intentional acts – experiencing, understanding and judging – of the knowing subject. In other words, I argue that paying adequate attention to human cognitional structure is vital in the defense of epistemic foundation and that the foundation is found in the structure of human knowing rather than in the products of human knowing. Focusing on cognitional analysis will help to account for both epistemic foundation and epistemic pluralism. The shift from conceptual to cognitional and intentionality analysis has implications for the articulation of the African perspective on knowledge since the human cognitional structure is the same, but contextual differences arise because of one's epistemic environment. Following the example of Bernard Lonergan, I argue that self-knowledge or self-affirmation of the knower, as he terms it, is the paradigmatic case for the establishment of epistemic foundation. (shrink)

Cet article s’interroge sur les raisons pour lesquelles Kafka a pu écrire Le Terrier dans la période berlinoise de son existence, ce qui amène à réfléchir sur la possibilité d’une lecture allégorique de Kafka. Si le récit est une allégorie de la littérature, comme cela a été souvent proposé, comment entendre les relations entre le dedans et le dehors, entre l’œuvre d’une vie et l’existence sociale? Et comment cette excavation reprend-elle, pour la déconstruire, l’élévation de la tour de Babel? L’une (...) des hypothèses suivie ici est que cette construction figure le travail de la fiction, de l’imaginaire, et que le sifflement qui vient en interrompre la clôture donne à comprendre l’impossibilité d’en finir avec le dehors, l’existence d’une altérité qui défait la perfection du travail de l’imaginaire. Et si cette méditation de rongeur solitaire intervient à un moment où Kafka décide de vivre avec Dora dans une chambre de Berlin, ce ne peut être par hasard. (shrink)

Die jüngsten Arbeiten zur wieder verstärkt rezipierten philosophischen Anthropologie haben deren umstrittensten Vertreter, den Philosophen und Soziologen Arnold Gehlen, meist stiefmütterlich behandelt. Auch Untersuchungen zum Einfluss politisch belasteter Autoren auf das intellektuelle Leben der Nachkriegszeit mieden ihn weitgehend. Diese Arbeit schließt eine doppelte Lücke, indem sie - vor allem mit Blick auf überraschend aktuelle handlungstheoretische Einsichten - die analytische Kraft seiner beiden Hauptwerke "Der Mensch" und "Urmensch und Spätkultur" rekonstruiert, ohne deren ideologische Dimensionen zu verschweigen. Daran anschließend wird erstmals die (...) enorme, aber oft verdeckte Wirkung nachgezeichnet, die das so kontroverse Denken Gehlens auf bedeutende Sozialwissenschaftler nach 1945 hatte, unter anderem auf Jürgen Habermas und Niklas Luhmann. (shrink)

In this contribution we examine the various amoral types of reasoning that have long predominated in the history of tolerance. In doing this we also hope to show that these amoral notions of tolerance are always far removed from, and in conflict with, the idea of freedom of religion as a moral and political right. In conclusion we show that when the liberal notion of freedom as a personal and moral right predominates, then the notion of tolerance loses some of (...) its meaning. (shrink)

Key ethical issues arise in association with the conduct of stem cell research by research institutions in the United States. These ethical issues, summarized in detail, receive no adequate translation into federal laws or regulations, also described in this article. U.S. Federal policy takes a passive approach to these ethical issues, translating them simply into limitations on taxpayer funding, and foregoes scientific and ethical leadership while protecting intellectual property interests through a laissez faire approach to stem cell patents and licenses. (...) Those patents and licenses, far from being scientifically and ethically neutral in effect, virtually prohibit commercially sponsored research that could otherwise be a realistic alternative to the federal funding gap. The lack of federal funding and related data-sharing principles, combined with the effect of U.S. patent policy, the lack of key agency guidance, and the proliferation of divergent state laws arising from the lack of Federal leadership, significantly impede ethical stem cell research in the United States, without coherently supporting any consensus ethical vision. Research institutions must themselves implement steps, described in the article, to integrate addressing ethical review with the many legal compliance issues U.S. federal and state laws create. (shrink)

The mechanical aspect of momentum, basically its role as a tangent vector of the trajectory of the particle, is related to properties of the momentum found in the contexts of Hamilton's optico-mechanical analogy, de Broglie's matter waves, and quantum mechanics. These properties are treated in a systematic way by considering an approximation of the particle mechanical action of the particle by a step function. A special method of discretizing partial differential equations is shown to be required. Using this method, a (...) discrete dynamics is developed. It is shown that particle dynamics can be regarded as the limit case of the discrete dynamics as the step functions tend to the continuous ones. The equation of motion of a free particle in an arbitrary reference system is deduced in two ways: (i) in continuous dynamics by making use of the invariance of action within changes of reference systems, and (ii) by taking the mentioned limit in discrete dynamics of an equation which expresses that the mechanical and wave-theoretical aspects of the momentum are interrelated in specific way. (shrink)

A wealthy eccentric bought a house in a neighborhood I know.  The house was surrounded by a beautiful display of grass, plants, and flowers, and it was shaded by a huge old avocado tree. But the grass required cutting, the flowers needed tending, and the man wanted more sun. So he cut the whole lot down and covered the yard with asphalt. After all it was his property and he was not fond of plants. (Hill 1983: 98).

Over the last two decades, the various attempts to “radicalize” Levinas have resulted in two interesting and often separated debates: one the one hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and colonialism and racism, and on the other hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and Judaism. Whether scholars interested in issues of colonialism disregard Levinas's Judaism or use his "subaltern" identity to challenge European hegemony, they do not take seriously the Jewish content of (...) Levinas's thought. In this essay, I challenge the prevailing postcolonial orinetation of the Levinas-colonialism conversation, approaching Levinas's phenomenology from an anticolonial perspective. I will use Frantz Fanon’s dualistic understanding of the colonial world to evaluate the adequacy of Levinas’s phenomenology in describing the ontological structure of the colony and the historical experience of the colonized within it. Levinas’s incomplete understanding of the Holocaust as colonialism contributes to his failure to recognize the dividing line of colonial ontology, the zone of nonbeing, the non-human status of the colonized, and ultimately contributes to the insufficiency of his phenomenology to describe the colony. Because my purpose is not to reject Levinas’s thought in general but to encourage a new approach to his work, in the conclusion I will gesture toward the need for an anticolonial reading of Levinas’s project for Jewish education. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag wollen wir zeigen, wieso die Fachdidaktik Philosophie und Ethik (neue) Ansätze entwickeln muss, um dem Anspruch auf (philosophische) Bildung von Menschen mit sonderpädagogischem Förderbedarf gerecht zu werden. Dafür zeigen wir anhand von Schüler_innen mit eingeschränkten Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten auf, wie Philosophieren mit ihnen dennoch möglich ist. Gleichzeitig wenden wir uns im Beitrag dem Haupteinwand zu, der darin besteht, dass Philosophieren mit dieser Schüler_innengruppe nicht möglich sei. Wir erklären unter welchen Umständen dieser Einwand nicht aufrecht erhalten werden sollte, sondern vielmehr (...) eine moralische Pflicht besteht, Menschen mit Behinderung philosophische Bildungsprozesse zu ermöglichen. (shrink)

Une série particulière de communications présentées, sous forme d’exposés ou de posters, dans le cadre du Colloque qui s’est tenu à Argos en 2011 (La Monnaie dans le Péloponnèse) complète ici la publication des Actes proprement dits (sous le double label BCH Suppléments 57 et Obolos 10). L’essentiel, en cela homogène, porte sur des trouvailles monétaires sporadiques réalisées en fouilles, à l’exception du signalement de deux collections particulières, l’une conservée au Musée de Nauplie, l’autre constituant la partie péloponnésienne d’une riche (...) collection acquise par la Fondation du monde hellénique. Il est opportun, à cette occasion, de souligner combien sont plus valables pour le travail scientifique les informations livrées par une trouvaille réalisée au cours de fouilles officielles que celles tirées abusivement des « trésors » reconstitués à partir de lots repérés dans le commerce des Antiquités. (shrink)

This study primarily aims at bringing together the various observations that resulted from the preparation of the model of the site of the agora at Argos. Since an identification of the different monuments is closely dependent on Pausanias' account, we first present the larger complexes corresponding to the sections of his Description. To assist in identifying the site of the sanctuary of Apollo Lykeios on the terrace north of the nymphaeum and the orchestra, a summary is given of what we (...) know about the terrace; in the appendix a reevaluation is made of the evidence from the inscription for the location of the sanctuary. To make it easier to follow the different evidence relating to the site, plans of the agora are included for the three periods: the 5th c. BC, 2nd c. AD and Late Empire. An attempt is also made to show how the plan of the buildings that formed the Classical agora conformed to a coordinated, ambitious design, whose broad axes it is possible to recover. Since all the known buildings are contained. within this area, it is possible to go back in time and to understand the conception of those who planned the public spaces of Argos when they redesigned the city after 460 BC. (shrink)