In this account of his mature thinking, Peter Marshall develops a dynamic and organic philosophy for the coming millennium which he calls liberation ecology. Liberation ecology is holistic in viewing the world as a harmonious whole and all beings and things as interwoven threads in nature's web. It is intuitive in recognizing intuition as the main source of knowledge and the imagination as the great organ of morality. It is ecological in seeing human beings as fellow voyagers with other (...) species in the magnificent odyssey of evolution. Above all, it is libertarian in seeking to release humanity, society and nature from their existing burdens so that they can unfurl and realize together their full potential. Exploring our strengths and possibilities, this book presents the ideas and values needed to ride the winds of change at this crucial stage in our development and in the history of the world. It provides a new philosophy for a new era, an uplifting and inspired vision which combines ancient wisdom and modern insights, reason and feeling, science and poetry, myth and the marvellous. It offers a guide for the future on how to rive in the most fulfilling way and how to create a genuinely free and sustainable society in harmony with nature. (shrink)

Although universally recognised as one of the greatest of modern philosophers, Wittgenstein's work in aesthetics has been unjustly neglected. This is the first book exclusively devoted to Wittgenstein's aesthetics, exploring the themes developed by Wittgenstein in his own writing on aesthetics as well as the implications of Wittgenstein's wider philosophical views for understanding central issues in aesthetics. Drawing together original contributions from leading international scholars, this book will be an important addition to studies of Wittgenstein's thought, but its discussion of (...) issues in literature, music and performing art, and criticism will also be of interest to many students of literary and cultural studies. Exploring three key themes - the capacity of the arts to illuminate our lives; the nature of the particular responses involved in understanding and appreciating works of art; the role of theory and principle in artistic and critical practice - the contributors address issues raised by contemporary philosophers of art, and seek to make connections between Wittgenstein's work and that of other significant philosophies of art in the Western tradition. Displaying the best practice of modern philosophical writing - clarity, cogency, respect for but not blind obedience to common sense, argument illustrated with detailed examples, rejection of speculation and pretension - this book demonstrates how philosophy can make a valuable contribution to understanding the arts. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 729-731.

Chapter One INTRODUCTION The Question of Freedom Freedom - personal, political, religious or economic - is a pervasive ideal in our societies. ...

Over 20 years ago the Programme Director of Greenpeace UK identified the primary challenge facing the modern environmental movement as that of moving beyond the “struggle for proof” to generating effective environmental action. There is a mass of widely-accepted evidence to support environmentalist claims, but effective environmental action is rare, both at governmental and at grass-roots levels. Arguably, the malaise is less a political one than an ontological one. We “know” that environmental problems are “real”, but we fail to grasp (...) them as happening here, to us. It is as if they unfolded in a “media-only reality” (Rose, 1993). This ontological malaise can be understood along Heideggerian lines as a form of world-alienation. Alienation is often understood, following Marx, as estrangement from our true human nature, consequent on interpreting ourselves as mere resources. On Heidegger’s view, however, self and world are inextricably linked. Conscious beings are not trapped inside their own heads, never to bridge the gap to the world outside. Rather, consciousness just is the intentional reaching out to things. Heidegger’s view of the self-world relation implies a modified concept of alienation. Our alienated condition stems as much from interpreting the world around us as a mere resource as it does from interpreting ourselves as mere resources. We may understand the natural systems on which our lives depend in far more detail than our grandparents did; but where those systems are understood as brute agglomerations of objects the resulting knowledge is alienated and alienating. Our very “theory of the real” serves to make the earth unreal for us. This, I argue, is the true import of Heidegger’s concern with the world “conceived and grasped as picture”. It also illuminates his remark in the 1966 Der Spiegel interview: “It is no longer upon an Earth that man lives today.”. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that moral philosophers need to incorporate into their teaching and writing a number of empirical findings on ethical practices. Principal among these is clearer guidelines on speaking out against wrongdoing, as well as the development of codes of ethics that have been proven to work. The adoption of the critical thinking and the analytical methodology of other disciplines is also suggested. Several benefits will result. The most noticeable will be a strengthening of ethical practices and (...) behavior in the institutions and organizations with which we live and work. A second benefit will be the education and employment of a body of people—graduates in moral philosophy—with the skills and knowledge to bring about, and further strengthen, this enhanced ethical environment. A third benefit will be the matching of the claims of philosophical thought with actual reality. (shrink)

Examining a variety of texts ranging from the Ancient Near East to the nineteenth century, this book deals with the inevitable presence of both fact and fiction ...

Peter Spirtes, Richard Scheines and Clark Glymour. Simulated Studies of the Reliability of Computer-Aided Model Specification Using the TETRAD, EQS and LISREL Programs.

The global financial crisis of 2008 brought the risk involved in the international banking business to everybody’s attention. It made clear that risk, despite the claims of banks, cannot be hedged away. The risk inherent in the banking business has been realised. It was realised to a larger extent and in different dimensions than assumed by risk management, quantitatively and qualitatively, and it had more severe effects than imagined before. This paper takes this event as an opportunity to reconsider the (...) term ‘risk’ itself from an unusual perspective. Aspects from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, his considerations of the event, the im-possible or the horizon are used to interrogate the term ‘risk’ and to propose a ‘risk to come’. (shrink)

I recently read through the most recent 24 issues of Environmental Health Perspectives—the National Institutes of Health journal of, among other issues, scientific research into how environmental contaminants impact animal and human health. It is a catalog of horrors from a public health perspective. Fish and frogs with their sex scrambled; deformed frogs with altered hormone levels in their blood; a nearly threefold increase in birth defects among Minnesota farm children exposed to pesticides; 2,4-D exposure reducing hormone levels in men; (...) insignificant levels of four environmental chemicals adding up to a significant dose; a third study reconfirming a 50% sperm decline in U.S. men, 1934–1996; phthalates elevated in the blood of Puerto Rican girls developing breasts before they are 8; some 6,000 chemicals declared candidates for study as hormone disrupters ; children living near incinerators having delayed sexual development; hypospadias linked to organochlorine levels in the blood of mink, otter, and polar bears; and “No living organism may be considered DDT-free.” Nothing definitive, but it all suggests that things are tending in a direction that is perfectly awful. (shrink)