Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Systematicity theory—developed and articulated by Paul Hoyningen-Huene—and scientific realism constitute separate encompassing and empirical accounts of the nature of science. Standard scientific realism asserts the axiological thesis that science seeks truth and the epistemological thesis that we can justifiably believe our successful theories at least approximate that aim. By contrast, questions pertaining to truth are left “outside” systematicity theory’s “intended scope” ; the scientific realism debate is “simply not” its “focus”. However, given the continued centrality of that debate in (...) the general philosophy of science literature, and given that scientific realists also endeavor to provide an encompassing empirical account of science, I suggest that these two contemporary accounts have much to offer one another. Overlap for launching a discussion of their relations can be found in Nicholas Rescher’s work. Following through on a hint from Rescher, I embrace a non-epistemic, purely axiological scientific realism—what I have called, Socratic scientific realism. And, bracketing the realist’s epistemological thesis, I put forward the axiological tenet of scientific realism as a needed supplement to systematicity theory. There are two broad components to doing this. First, I seek to make clear that axiological realism and systematicity theory accord with one another. Toward that end, after addressing Hoyningen-Huene’s concerns about axiological analysis, I articulate a refined axiological realist meta-hypothesis: it is, in short, that the end toward which scientific inquiry is directed is an increase in a specific subclass of true claims. I then identify a key feature of scientific inquiry, not generally flagged explicitly, that I take to stand as shared terrain for the two empirical meta-hypotheses. And I argue that this feature can be informatively accounted for by my axiological meta-hypothesis. The second broad component goes beyond mere compatibility between the two positions: I argue that, in want of a systematic account of science, we are prompted to find an end toward which scientific inquiry is directed that is deeper than what systematicity theory offers. Specifically, I argue that my refined axiological realist meta-hypothesis is required to both explain and justify key dimensions of systematicity in science. To the quick question, what is it that the scientific enterprise is systematically doing? My quick answer is that it is systematically seeking to increase a particular subclass of true claims. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Waiting for Godot in New Orleans A tragicomedy in two acts, a project in three partsPaul Chan Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing of “stage” (2007) (Page 2) Click for larger view View full resolutionOrganizing map of New Orleans 1 (2007) (Page 14) Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing of bicycle for Pozzo (2007) (Page 28) Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing of shopping cart for (...) Lucky (2007) (Page 40) Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing of tree (2007) (Page 54) Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing of disaster tour bus for boy (2007) (Page 68) Click for larger view View full resolutionStreet sign on St. Claude (2007) (Page 81) Click for larger view View full resolutionStreet sign in Lower Ninth Ward (2007) (Page 93) Click for larger view View full resolutionStreet sign in Gentilly (2007) (Page 107) Click for larger view View full resolutionFlyer (2007) (Page 124) Click for larger view View full resolutionDancing before the 1st Lower Ninth Ward Performance (2007) (Page 138) Click for larger view View full resolutionJ. Kyle Manzay and Wendell Pierce in Act I (2007) (Page 150) Click for larger view View full resolutionDrawing of entire project as a musical score (2007) (Page 165)ImagesPaul Chan lives and works in New York. His recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007); Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong (2006); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2005); and ICA Boston (2005). Group exhibitions include The 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; New Work / New Acquisitions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Eighth Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France (2005); Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2004). Chan is also well known for his political interventions—in 2002 he broke US sanctions and federal law to visit Baghdad, and in 2004 he garnered police attention for The People’s Guide to the Republican National Convention, a free map distributed throughout New York to help protesters to get in or out of the way of the RNC. Most recently Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in New Orleans.Artist statementWaiting for Godot in New Orleans A tragicomedy in two acts, a project in three partsby Samuel BeckettEstragon Vladimir Lucky Pozzo a boy City of New Orleans in 2007ACT IEight months research. Four months teaching and street organizing. Five free site-specific performances.ACT IIA country road. A tree. Evening.Copyright © 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In this article, I reply to the preceding articles by Naomi Oreskes, Chrysostomos Mantzavinos, Brad Wray, Sarah Green, Alexander Bird, and Timothy Lyons. These articles contain a number of objections and suggestions concerning systematicity theory, as developed in my book ystematicity: The Nature of Science.

Part 1. FOUNDERS AND FIRSTCOMERS1: David Zimmerman: 'Protests Butter no Parsnips': Lord Beveridge and the Rescue of Refugee Academics from Europe, 1933-19382: William Lanouette: A Narrow Margin of Hope: Leo Szilard in the Founding Days of CARA3: Paul Weindling: From Refugee Assistance to Freedom of Learning: the Strategic Vision of A. V. Hill, 1933-19644: Gustav Born: Refugee Scientists in a New Environment5: Georgina Ferry: Max Perutz and the SPSLPART 2. TESS - THE LINCHPIN6: Paul Broda: Esther Simpson: A (...) Correspondence7: Lewis Elton: Eva and EstherPART 3. ASSOCIATES AND ALLIES8: Gerald Kreft: 'Dedicated to Represent the True Spirit of the German Nation in the World': Philipp Schwartz, Founder of the Notgemeinschaft9: Tibor Frank: Organized Rescue Operations in Europe and the United States, 1933-194510: Susan Cohen: In Defence of Academic Women Refugees: The British Federation of University Women11: Stina Lyon: Karl Mannheim and Viola Klein: Refugee Sociologists in Search of Social Democratic PracticePART 4. REVERSING THE GAZE12: Christian Fleck: Austrian Refugee Social Scientists13: Antoon de Baets: Plutarch's Thesis: The Contribution of Refugee Historians to Historical Writing, 1945-201014: Marina Yu Sorokina: Within Two Tyrannies: The Soviet Academic Refugees of the Second World War15: Antonín Kostlán and Soña Strbáñová: Czech Scholars in Exile, 1948-198916: Shula Marks: 'Bending the rules': South African Refugees in the UK, 1960-198017: Alan Phillips: Refugee Academics from Chile: WUS-SPSL CollaborationLucia Muñoz: Postscript. (shrink)

An outdated geography supplies the bond among the thirty‐one articles in Sur les traces des Cassini. In the seventeenth century, when the Italians Gian Domenico Cassini and his nephew Giacomo Filippo Maraldi were born in Perinaldo, north of Genoa, their birthplace belonged to the County of Nice. Hence the rationale of building a set of papers on astronomy in the south of France around Cassini I and his family, which for four generations ran the Royal Observatory in Paris.Over half the (...) articles concern the Cassinis, mostly Cassini I and his great‐great‐grandson and namesake Cassini IV. There was also a Cassini V, Henri de Cassini, who countered the family genius and stamina by preferring botany and dying early, of the same outbreak of cholera that took the life of Sadi Carnot, without having created Cassini VI. He had already entered the Academy of Sciences with a push from his father. “I dare to beg of you [Cassini IV wrote to his fellow academician A. M. Ampère] to consider whether this unique situation in the history of letters, [a family's] devotion to the sciences for five successive generations and 170 years, ought not add some weight to the scientific credentials of my son.” It is hard to refuse the children of important alumni.The portion of Traces dealing more directly with astronomy in the south of France gets off to a distant start. Pytheas of Marseilles, who lived about 350 b.c., sailed to the Orkneys and the Baltic and earned himself the reputation of a liar back home for his stories of midnight suns and frozen lakes. He measured the latitude of Marseilles, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and the size of the earth. Ptolemy praised him. Strabo did not: “Pytheas lied about everything and covered it up with his knowledge of astronomy and numbers.”No traces worth following up were laid down for just under two thousand years. Then, in 1580, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc first saw the light of day. He lived in Italy for four years as a very young man, deepening his knowledge of astronomy and human nature and meeting the main future actors in the Galileo affair: Galileo himself, Bellarmine, and Matteo Barberini . At his center in Aix‐la‐Provence, Peiresc made many useful astronomical observations, some in collaboration with Pierre Gassendi. He died in harness, worrying about the change of the obliquity since the days of Pytheas.There follow articles on Provençal astronomers who determined longitude and latitude at sea, on neglected observers in Languedoc who assisted the cause of the Enlightenment, and on modern observatories in the south of France. The political circumstances after the defeat of 1870–1871 favored decentralization of astronomy away from the Paris Observatory. In Italy, too, recent political events—the unification of 1870—made a restructuring of astronomical institutions desirable and possible. But whereas France had too few observatories, Italy had too many. Georges Rayet and Pietro Tacchini, both astrophysicists, compared the circumstances in their countries and made mutually reinforcing proposals to their colleagues and governments. Their respective proposals, most of which were enacted, called for reassigning some Italian observatories to meteorological work, building new observatories in Besançon, Bordeaux, and Lyon, and refurbishing older ones at Marseilles and Toulouse. Once again, as in the days of Cassini I, Italy made a decisive contribution to the practice of astronomy in France.Sur les traces des Cassini mixes slight and weighty work, admits antiquarian and broader approaches, offers new documentation, displays pertinent illustrations, and does it all at a high level of scholarship. Since, because of its title, the book's primary audience probably will be people interested in the Cassinis, its fullest articles about them may usefully be mentioned here: Anna Cassini on Cassini's brief return to Italy, 1694–1696; Claude Teillet on the provincial life and poetry of Cassini IV; Christiane Demeulenaere‐Douyère on the Cassinis and the Académie des Sciences; Fabrizio Bonoli and Alessandro Braccesi on Cassini I's astronomical work in Bologna, with full bibliography; and Monique Pelletier on the Cassini map of France, on which she has written a book . Pytheas and Peiresc are the subjects of collaborative articles by Simone Arzano and Yvon Georgelin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fear and Loathing in Academe:Gonzo Scholarship and the War Against TourismDaniel StempelIWhen I retired in 1985 I chose as my mantra an academic version of a famous general's farewell to his troops: "Old scholars never die—they just fade away into the stacks." Now that I am an octogenarian, I have faded away into total invisibility, but, like Tithonus, I am not inaudible. I hope my voice will be strident (...) enough to disturb the utopian dreams of a new generation, although I doubt that it will wake them from their dogmatic slumbers. My decision to return to the wars of intellect was occasioned by a chance discovery as I haunted the periodical stacks. I noted the name of an old friend in the title of an article and was surprised to find him pilloried as both a "liberal white Protestant" and a "white supremacist," terms which do not, in my experience, necessarily go together.The article, "Pacific Scholarship, Literary Criticism, and Touristic Desire: The Specter of A. Grove Day," written by Paul Lyons, a member of the University of Hawai'i English department's Cultural Studies group, uses bell, book, and candle of the new postcolonial faith in a rite of exorcism to dispel the evil influences of commercial tourism.1 As every exorcist knows, the rite demands that a demon must be called by his name and Lyons has chosen to demonize a deceased member of the English department. Grove Day came to Hawaii in 1944 and retired in 1969. He served as chairman from 1948 to 1953 and taught the course in Literature of the Pacific until his retirement in 1969. He began as a freelance writer long before he decided to enter graduate school at [End Page 95] Stanford and continued to publish more than fifty books on Hawaii and the Pacific. In 1979 he received the State Award for Literature. He died in 1994 in a plunge from an upper floor of a retirement home. Paul Lyons, by his own admission, came to Hawaii in 1990 knowing nothing of its history and culture but soon became a self-appointed authority on Hawaii, its colonial past and present, and its postcolonial future, eagerly embracing the ideas disseminated by the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the university.His article begins with a pretentious elaboration of the method he plans to use to raze the Potemkin village of tourism. Invoking the authority of Hegel on appearance and reality in a passage he has found cited by Žižek, he follows Dean MacCannell, who has adapted Erving Goffman's distinction between dramatic front and back: the entertaining scene presented to the tourist public contrasts with the backstage machinery of the stagehands who put it all together to deceive gullible visitors.2 He combines this with a quotation he has found in a book by William V. Spanos, the founder and former editor of Boundary 2, taken from a journalist's view of the Vietnam War, complaining that they had all been "deeply backgrounded." These are enlisted in the service of MacCannell's quest for "authenticity" as the touchstone of all encounters with other cultures, including the tourist experience.Had Lyons, instead of accepting MacCannell's interpretation of Goffman's early work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), taken a closer look at this witty and ironic study of social behavior in a small community in the Shetland Islands, he would have found that Goffman makes no judgment on the comparative authenticity of either front or back. He utilizes what may be called the J. Alfred Prufrock theory of interaction between individuals and the groups in which they find themselves: "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet...." MacCannell, in contrast, sees the tourist as a Tennysonian Ulysses in pursuit of a horizon of authenticity that recedes into infinity, "whose margin fades / Forever and forever as I move."Of course, the front/back and foreground/background binary oppositions and the insistence on authenticity are commonplaces rooted in the ubiquitous literary and philosophical tradition of "All the world's a stage" and require no... (shrink)

Proponents of the extended mind have suggested that phenomenal transparency may be important to the way we evaluate putative cases of cognitive extension. In particular, it has been suggested that in order for a bio-external resource to count as part of the machinery of the mind, it must qualify as a form of transparent equipment or transparent technology. The present paper challenges this claim. It also challenges the idea that phenomenological properties can be used to settle disputes regarding the constitutional (...) status of bio-external resources in episodes of extended cognizing. Rather than regard phenomenal transparency as a criterion for cognitive extension, we suggest that transparency is a feature of situations that support the ascription of certain cognitive/mental dispositional properties to both ourselves and others. By directing attention to the forces and factors that motivate disposition ascriptions, we arrive at a clearer picture of the role of transparency in arguments for extended cognition and the extended mind. As it turns out, transparency is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognitive extension, but this does not mean that it is entirely irrelevant to our understanding of the circumstances in which episodes of extended cognizing are apt to arise. (shrink)

Examples of extended cognition typically involve the use of technologically low-grade bio-external resources (e.g., the use of pen and paper to solve long multiplication problems). The present paper describes a putative case of extended cognizing based around a technologically advanced mixed reality device, namely, the Microsoft HoloLens. The case is evaluated from the standpoint of a mechanistic perspective. In particular, it is suggested that a combination of organismic (e.g., the human individual) and extra-organismic (e.g., the HoloLens) resources form part of (...) a common mechanism that realizes a bona fide cognitive routine. In addition to demonstrating how the theoretical resources of neo-mechanical philosophy might be used to evaluate extended cognitive systems, the present paper illustrates one of the ways in which mixed reality devices, virtual objects (i.e., holograms), and online (Internet-accessible) computational routines might be incorporated into human cognitive processes. This, it is suggested, speaks to the recent interest in mixed/virtual reality technologies across a number of disciplines. It also introduces us to issues that cross-cut disparate fields of philosophical research, such as the philosophy of science and the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

This entry provides a substantive overview of research and debates concerning creativity in philosophy and related fields. Topics covered include definitions of creativity, whether creativity can be learned, whether it can be explained, attempts to explain creativity in cognitive science, and whether computer programs or AI systems can be creative.

Paul Sheehy will endorse a holist or realist thesis about groups: interrelational holism.

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic responsibility. Although Pollock’s (...) evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

Für Natorp selbst stand seine Arbeit an Plato in unmittelbarem Zusammenhang mit der Arbeit an seiner eigenen Philosophie; sosehr sein großes Buch sich als Hinführung zu Plato verstand, sosehr bildet die Ausarbeitung von Platos Ideenlehre auch einen originären Teil der Philosophie Paul Natorps. Die Sonderausgabe dieses Standardwerkes zur Philosophie Platons bietet den Text nach der zweiten Auflage von 1921.

In this book, Ramsey addresses the moral problems of medicine, life and death and not merely to those who share his faith.

This volume brings together Paul Williams's previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara. In addition, there is a much longer version of the paper 'Identifying the Object of Negation', and nearly half the book consists of a wholly new essay, 'The Absence of Self and the Removal of Pain', subtitled 'How Santideva Destroyed the Bodhisattva Path'. This book will be of interest to those concerned with (...) the history and interpretation of Indian and Tibetan philosophy. (shrink)

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

Focusing on the logistics of perception, this title introduces the author's understanding of 'picnolepsy' - the epileptic state of consciousness produced by speed, or rather, the consciousness invented by the subject through its very absence: the gaps, glitches, and speed bumps lacing through and defining it.

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)

Jean-Paul Sartre's famous autobiography of his first ten years has been widely compared to Rousseau's Confessions. Written when he was fifty-nine years old, The Words is a masterpiece of self-analysis. Sartre the philosopher, novelist and playwright brings to his own childhood the same rigor of honesty and insight he applied so brilliantly to other authors. Born into a gentle, book-loving family and raised by a widowed mother and doting grandparents, he had a childhood which might be described as one (...) long love affair with the printed word. The Words explores and evaluates the whole use of books and language in human experience. (shrink)

Spells, Images, and Mandalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. By Koichi Shinohara. The Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Pp. xxii + 324. $55.

Die mittelassyrischen Personen- und Rationlisten aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad/Dūr-Katlimmu. By Saqer Salah. Berichte der Ausgrabung Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad/Dūr- Katlimmu, vol. 18. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. lxxiv + 454, plates. €118.

The objective of the article is double. On the one hand, it is aimed at examining the reworking of the Prisca Theologia, by Marsilio Ficino, Florentine neoplatonic of the XV century. That is: a wisdom whose origins date back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Persia of Zoroaster. A millenary tradition that contained within it the doctrines of a true pia philosophia. On the other hand, to analyze the reception of hermeticism in the thought of Ficino and his (...) attempt to generate a concord between christianity and paganism. We consider also that in this attempt, Ficino elaborates along his works three images of Hermes Trismegisto which are condensed in his main purpose, to prove the manifest harmony between the doctrines of the ancient pagan theologians and Christian Theology. (shrink)

The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and Social Formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. By Peter Magee. Cambridge World Archaeology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 309, illus. $99.

Assyrien und Urarṭu I: Der Achte Feldzug Sargons II. im Jahre 714 v. Chr. By Walter Mayer. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 395/1. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013. Pp. xv + 189. €64. Assyrien und Urarṭu II: Die assyrisch-urartäischen Bilinguen. By Walter Mayer. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 395/2. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013. Pp. xv + 156. €58.

Paul Zec; Multicultural Education: what kind of relativism is possible?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 77–86, https.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 479 Saint Thomas au XXe siecle: Actes du colloque du Centenaire de la "Revue thomiste." Paris: Saint-Paul, 1994. Pp. 475 (paper). In March of 1993 the Revue thomiste marked its centenary by sponsoring a three-day colloquium at the lnstitut Catholique of Toulouse on "St. Thomas in the 20th century." The commemoration resumed the following month with a conference at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), site of (...) the journal's foundation. This volume assembles the papers presented at the Toulouse colloquium and a selection of those read in Fribourg. All of the contributions are in French. The volume opens with a letter (dated 11 March 1993) that His Holiness John-Paul II addressed to the Prior Provincial of the Toulouse Dominicans, under whose aegis the Revue thomiste is now published. The Pope pays tribute to the "lucid discernment" that has guided this journal in a "critical and constructive reflection on the major problems of our epoch, assuring it a place of choice in Catholic intellectual life" (p. 7). Next follows an editorial introduction by Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., who examines the pertinence of the Revue's motto vetera novis augere. Acknowledging that the Thomistic revival of this century has largely proven to be unsuccessful, to judge by the extent of its cultural impact, he concludes nevertheless that this failure may pave the way for an eventual renewal, on condition that the past achievements and deficiencies of Thomism come to be adequately understood. The present volume thus aims to assess the efforts of Francophone philosophers and theologians to advance the thought of Thomas Aquinas; it thereby provides us with a valuable status quaestionis, enabling Aquinas's contemporary disciples to measure better the challenge that lies before them. The first of the volume's three sections is devoted to historical studies on the Revue thomiste's role in the formation of contemporary Neo-Thomism and its contribution to some of the important theological controversies in the first half of this century. Francesco Baretta narrates the vicissitudes of the journal's inception and first years (1893-1905). Not until the establishment in 1907 of the Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques by members of the Dominican order's Paris province (the reasons that motivated the foundation of a rival journal are taken up by Andre Duval in a paper wholly devoted to this topic [pp. 96108 ]) did the Revue thomi~te come to be closely affiliated with the Toulouse province. Prior to this time it enjoyed the active collaboration of the order's three French provinces: Lyon, Paris, and Toulouse. Inspired by the recently promulgated Aeterni Patris (1879), the founders of the Revue thomiste sought to implement the encyclical's recommendation that the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas be brought into fruitful dialogue with modern science. Yet in so doing the Revue thomiste encountered serious obstacles, both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, the journal's chief collaborators were unable to recognize the originality of the hypothetico-deductive method and thus persisted 480 BOOK REVIEWS in thematizing modem science according to the epistemological categories of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Practically, they were unable (some exceptions aside) to enlist the support of contributors competent in both experimental science and scholastic thought. Thomism's engagement with modernity is taken up anew by Henry Donneaud, who charts the Revue thomiste's role in the nascent modernist crisis. During this period (1900-1908) the journal's rapprochement with the physical sciences attenuated, giving way to a preoccupation with modernism and its attendant controversies: the evolution of Catholic dogmas, the nature and role of apologetics, etc. Far from presenting a united front in the face of these theological developments, the principal collaborators of the Revue thomiste diverged in the fundamental orientation of their responses. Gradually, two very different Thomisms emerged: one, markedly conservative, refused any compromise with the new trends, condemning them in toto by appeal to a literalist, a-historical reading of the master; the other, progressive, sought to confront the modernists on their own terrain by drawing on the resources of a Thomistic doctrine open to amendment. After a period of internal strife the latter orientation became the more dominant of the two. The very... (shrink)

Paul Herrick covers the fundamentals of logic with clear and thorough explanations and numerous everyday examples, whilst providing opportunities to move beyond the basics. The second edition contains new chapters on informal logic and critical thinking.

Over the past two decades, Philip Pettit has consistently argued for an understanding of “republican” liberty in terms of nondomination. Yet in his major published studies, he has almost nothing to say about markets, nor about the economy more generally. I contend that this is a seriously problematic omission, insofar as markets represent a major problem for republican views of freedom. In short: if freedom requires the absence of the mere possibility of arbitrary interference (as Pettit maintains), then the widespread (...) existence of markets indicates that on a republican view the vast majority of people in the world today exist in the dominated position of slaves. As a result, Pettit cannot adopt the “complacency” towards market transactions that he officially avows. But in turn, we ought to be highly skpetical that the republican account of freedom is a viable one. (shrink)

The Theaetetus is one of the most widely studied of any of the Platonic dialogues because its dominant theme concerns the significant philosophical question, what is knowledge? In this book Paul Stern provides a full-length treatment of its political character in relationship to this dominant theme. He argues that this approach sheds significant light on the distinctiveness of the Socratic way of life, with respect to both its initial justification and its ultimate character. More specifically, he argues that Socrates' (...) revolutionary decision to subject political life to philosophic reflection, the decision that leads directly to his trial and execution, is based on his awareness of the elusiveness of comprehensive knowledge and the implications of that elusiveness for the validity of philosophic inquiry. This view of Socrates' rationale has important consequences for our understanding of political philosophy and of the validity of the life of reason itself. (shrink)

Dans cet essai inédit regroupant trois textes issus d'une conférence donnée en 1967 (sous le titre "Sens et fonction d'une communauté ecclésiale"), Paul Ricoeur s'intéresse en philosophe à l'idée d'Eglise. Il s'interroge d'abord sur la société, son obsession technique, son incapacité à produire du sens et sur la manière dont cette "communauté" pourrait être un contrepoint d'utopie en son sein. Il cherche ensuite un langage capable d'intégrer en même temps les critiques externes de la religion (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud), et, (...) d'une manière interne à la foi, une "déconstruction" des pseudo-rationalisations qui masquent la vivacité des textes bibliques, déconstruction inspirée par la "démythologisation" du théologien Rudolf Bultmann. Il propose ainsi une parole porteuse de sens pour l'ensemble de la société. Jamais publiés jusqu'ici, ces textes de Paul Ricoeur offrent une réflexion philosophique rare sur le rôle d'une communauté confessante au coeur d'une société désenchantée et qui reste d'une troublante actualité. (shrink)