Arthur I. Miller is a master at capturing the intersection of creativity and intelligence. He did it with Einstein and Picasso, and now he does it with Pauli and Jung. Their shared obsession with the number 137 provides a window into their genius. --Walter Isaacson.

Craig Nelson, the author of this unflaggingly engrossing book, comes from an impressive background in publishing, having been vice president and executive editor of Harper and Row, Hyperion, and Random House. In this respect, he reminds me of the better known Walter Isaacson, who was managing editor of Time magazine before turning his attention to writing biographies of Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Ben Franklin, and, most recently, a collective biography of the pioneers of the digital revolution. Although I (...) reach this conclusion on the basis of having read only one book by each, I would say that Isaacson’s oeuvre is more scholarly, Nelson’s more journalistic. A review in the New York Times of Nelson’s bestseller Rocket Men informs would-be readers that while the book “lacks the shapeliness and authority of some earlier lunar histories,…it ends up making an engaging contribution.” Comparing The Age of Radiance to the many similar histories of radioactivity and the making of the bomb that I .. (shrink)

This original and accessible text is more than an introduction to comparative philosophy in the East and West. It is also a guide to 'philosophizing' as a thinking process. In addition to outlining the presuppositions of different traditions, it discusses their methods and techniques for reasoning in what the author calls four dimensions of 'philosophical space': object, subject, the situational and the aspective/perspective dimension.

In part lit will be analysed the genesis of the term "lifeworld" in context of E. Husserl’s philosophy. In the Crisis of European Science Husserl shows that the Doxa has a special significance compared to Episteme. This corresponds with Hussser's thesis that the world of science requires always the lifeworld. The lifeworld is the result of the anonymous cons- titution of the transcentental ego. This constitution should be demonstrated in Husserl’s "ontology of lifeworld".In part II it will be demonstrated the (...) constitution of the lifeworld not in terms of the transcendental philosophy but in terms of the existencial philosophy. It appears that for the genesis of the lifeworld the experience of the confidence Has a constituent function, primary the confidence of the child in its mother. In this relationship the child improves the confidence. If this relationship will be broken so this has negative consequences for the following life.In Kafka’s story "Der Bau" will be demonstrated the situation in which the confidence is broken. The story shows that the lifeworld is the result of the individual experience. (shrink)

Recent discoveries have revealed that there is intellectual bias in the field of climate science; the present paper makes the case that this moral and intellectual rot has also affected the field of economics.

A grabs B and uses him as a body shield. That is, A hides behind B , and from that vantage point, shoots at C. According to libertarian theory, may B shoot at C, or, is it proper that C pull the trigger at B? In the view of Rothbard , the former is correct: B is entitled to gun down C. In my view, this is incorrect. Rather, it would be lawful to C to properly kill B. . Jakobsson (...) supports the Rothbardian position. The present paper is at an attempt of mine to refute Jakobsson, and, thus, also, Rothbard , once again. (shrink)

Revision of the author's thesis (Bonn, 1924).

Helmut Fleischer has distinguished three different approaches to history in the development of Marx's thinking: the "anthropological" , the "pragmatological" , and the "nomological" . However, these represent a less continuous and coherent development than Fleischer claims. The 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse can be instanced as a fourth view, more focused than the others on historiography, and at variance with what Marx says elsewhere. The sequence and overlapping of these four views call into question both the interpretation of Marx's (...) development as smoothly continuous and the interpretation of his development as "ruptured" into "early" and "late.". (shrink)

The relationship between politics and economic knowledge is contested. One general view claims that economics should be devoid of politics because of its corrupting effects, while another view posits the converse – that politics can be distorted by the impact of economic knowledge. Both views hold that the solution is to remove the influence of the one on the other. I construe these two broad views as variations on the same contamination thesis, the idea that politics and economics are separate (...) domains and so should not contaminate one another. I suggest that this thesis is a version of the political/non-political distinction required by the ubiquitous ideal of a self-governing community, and that it therefore exhibits the limitations intrinsic to this ideal. The remedial possibilities of Michel Foucault's investigations into governmentality are then briefly explored. (shrink)

Part play, part breviary, this book of conversations on "transcendence" is interspersed with brief excerpts from a wide variety of works on mysticism, philosophy, and the psychology of religion.

Das jüdische Eherecht ist eines der religiösen Rechtsfelder, die Rabbiner in ihrer Praxis am meisten beschäftigen. Im Staat Israel ist das jüdische Familienrecht bis heute für die Regelung von Eheschließung und Scheidung zwischen Juden relevant. Das Buch führt in das Jüdische Recht insgesamt und in seine Entwicklung in den verschiedenen Strömungen des Judentums ein. Es folgt ein Überblick über Brautwerbung, Verlobung, Details der Eheschließung wie Zeugenregeln und Festsetzung des Trautermins sowie Eheverbote. Dabei werden die Themen Jüdischer Status, Mischehe und Übertritt (...) zum Judentum ebenso behandelt wie die Entwicklung von der Polygamie zur Monogamie und die Leviratsehe. Welche besonderen Regeln gelten für Angehörige der Priesterkaste? Was beinhaltet der Ehevertrag, die Ketubba? Warum wird bei der Trauung ein Glas zerbrochen, was hat es mit dem Ehering auf sich und mit den Segensprüchen während der Eheschließung? Welche ehelichen Pflichten bestehen nach erfolgter Eheschließung, und können gleichgeschlechtliche Paare heiraten? Auch die Auflösung der Ehe durch Scheidung wird eingehend behandelt, Abfassung und Wortlaut des Scheidebriefes sowie die rechtlichen Folgen einer Scheidung werden erläutert. Das Buch richtet sich insbesondere an Rabbiner in der Gemeindepraxis, an Experten des kanonischen und kirchlichen Rechts und an Juristen, die sich mit vergleichendem Familienrecht beschäftigen. Auch Theologen und Judaisten lesen das Buch mit Gewinn. (shrink)