This essay traces the complex constellation of ideas that informs Anders's turn to the generalizing expression ‘the human’ in his postwar work. It mobilizes the properties of radioactive material and digital data, which are both curiously imperceptible to our senses, to discuss Anders’s insistence on the universalizing pronoun `we' and assess its significance in the contemporary world. To do so, it aligns Anders's work with current debates about the Anthropocene and critiques of the use of the term ‘the human’ in (...) postcolonial settings. (shrink)

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet Günther Anders (1902–1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of “Résistance heute” (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders’s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, “Resistance Today” is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna’s Resistance Prize (other notable (...) recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Brücke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders’s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize. (shrink)

In the Anglo-American cultural sphere, the growing awareness of global warming and ecocide has coincided with the proliferation of a much discussed, post-apocalyptic imaginary that transports us to uninhabitable planetary futures. These “fictions,” as E. Ann Kaplan notes in a discussion of their mobilising potential, act as “memories for the future” which make us “identify with future selves struggling to survive.” This article turns to Günther Anders’s notion of “apocalypse-blindness” (1956) and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to set out an alternative (...) way of understanding the powerfully sentimental force such images of doom convey. While seemingly turning our gaze to the future and onto the devastating impact of consumerist lifestyles, I argue that this doom-ridden imaginary also entails a sentimentalisation of our own “inability to feel” and be sufficiently affected by the reality we know ourselves to be contributing to. As such, it bears witness to the trauma of “not being able to adequately feel” what one already knows. By revisiting The Road, a text that occupies a central role in discussions of the potentials and cathartic pitfalls of post-apocalyptic fiction, I suggest that its political potential lies in this confrontation with the limits of feeling. And the politics it opens onto does not hinge on images on ruin, but on a yearning for a socially sanctioned right to feel and express the fear representations only seem able to convey in an inadequate, anaesthetic manner. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh’s mobilisation of Wittgensteinian language games makes an important contribution to exposing the social dimension of machine use. This commentary asks to what extent this social dimension of meaning and the wider imaginary that forms around technological objects on account of the transparency of language is also part of a technological “confidence trick”. It suggests that philosophical anthropology, especially the perspectives developed by Günther Anders and Helmut Plessner, can offer additional resources to trace and critique the wider ownership structures (...) and social relations of power that Mark Coecklebergh’s work productively exposes. It argues that language games alone cannot fully account for the hidden social relations that are habitually presented to us as abilities of “smart”, “intelligent” machines. Here a language that defamiliarizes machines, tries to make them visible by using exaggerated, pessimistic and object-oriented perspectives can perhaps help to make these power-relationships more comprehensible, “obvious” and thereby resistible and open to debate. (shrink)

Bringing together both established and emerging scholars from critical and cultural theory, literature, philosophy, and theology, this book examines the intersection of economics and religion.

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991. The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. (...) The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homomyny of many of the central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being that are denoted by a single concept. Shields here investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case studies, he examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and (...) and oneness, life, goodness, and being. This first full-length study of a central aspect of Aristotle's thought will interest philosophers working in a number of areas. (shrink)

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homonymy of many central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being common to a single general concept. His preoccupation with homonymy influences his approach to almost every subject that he considers, and it clearly structures the philosophical methodology that he employs both when criticizing others and when advancing his own positive theories. Where there is homonymy there is multiplicity: Aristotle aims to find the order within this multiplicity, (...) and believes that doing so is crucial to scientific inquiry and philosophical progress.Christopher Shields investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case-studies, Shields examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and oneness, life, goodness, and being. Shields's aim is not only to give a fuller understanding of Aristotle's methodology and to illuminate his specific doctrines in a variety of areas, but to show that this methodology remains fruitful today. (shrink)

We argue that the economic evaluation of health care (cost–benefit analysis) should respect individual preferences and should incorporate distributional considerations. Relying on individual preferences does not imply subjective welfarism. We propose a particular non-welfarist approach, based on the concept of equivalent income, and show how it helps to define distributional weights. We illustrate the feasibility of our approach with empirical results from a pilot survey.

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle reflects the lively international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian (...) themes to contemporary problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this Handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity, one witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of these enterprises exhausts the field. On the contrary, one of the most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and complementary activities offer one another. The volume, prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle's life and works by the editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively, looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle's treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long afterlife of Aristotle's philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West. (shrink)

A thorough and closely argued examination of a central issue in philosophical logic, an issue which is shown to have profound implications for the philosophy of language and much of metaphysics.

In this re-titled and substantially revised update of his _Classical Philosophy_, Christopher Shields expands his coverage to include the Hellenistic era, and now offers an introduction to more than 1,000 years of ancient philosophy. From Thales and other Pre-Socratics through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and on to Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism, _Ancient Philosophy_ traces the important connections between these periods and individuals without losing sight of the novelties and dynamics unique to each. The coverage of Plato and Aristotle also (...) has been expanded. It now includes, for example, updated coverage of Plato's allegories of the cave and the divided line and the metaphor of the sun as well as features of Plato's epistemology. Shields also adds new discussion on Aristotle's theory of virtue and his approach to the Socratic problem of _akrasia_, or weakness of will. In terms of its structure, _Ancient Philosophy_ is presented so that each philosophical position receives: a brief introduction, a sympathetic review of its principal motivations and primary supporting arguments, and a short assessment, inviting readers to evaluate its plausibility. The result is a book that brings the ancient arguments to life, making the introduction truly contemporary. It will serve as both a first stop and a well visited resource for any student of the subject. _Ancient Philosophy_ offers a vivid picture of the ideas that flourished at philosophy's long birth and considers their relevance, both to the historical development of the Western philosophical tradition, and to philosophy today. (shrink)

The concept of identity has been seen to lead to paradox: we cannot truly and usefully say that a thing is the same either as itself or as something else. This book is a full examination of this paradox in philosophical logic, and of its implications for the philosophy of mathematics, the philosphy of mind, and relativism about identity. The author's account involves detailed discussion of the views of Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, and Hintikka.

Commentators on Schopenhauer’s philosophy have been at odds with one another concerning the signification of the “nothing” with which he closed the first volume of The World as Will and Representation in 1818, and how this relates to Schopenhauer’s proposition that the will is Kant’s thing-in-itself. This chapter contends that Schopenhauer’s works contain two conceptions of soteriological nothing: an early conception that is ontological and contrasted with the vanity of phenomenal life, and a later conception in which nothing is employed (...) as an apophatic denial of our epistemological categories. Schopenhauer sought to conceal the way in which his use and understanding of these concepts had changed by 1860 by appending a handwritten note to the close of the first volume that cited Isaak Jacob Schmidt’s translation of the Diamond-Sūtra, an explanation of the Buddhist concept of prajñāpāramitā. Examination of Schmidt’s treatise throws some light on the development of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and soteriology between 1818 and 1860. (shrink)

The concept of identity has been seen to lead to paradox: we cannot truly and usefully say that a thing is the same either as itself or as something else. This book is a full examination of this paradox in philosophical logic, and of its implications for the philosophy of mathematics, the philosphy of mind, and relativism about identity. The author's account involves detailed discussion of the views of Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, and Hintikka.

In this article, we defend the view that problematic epistemological extremism, which presents puzzles for many learners new to philosophy, is a result of earlier learning at the K–12 level. Confirming this hunch serves as a way of locating the problem and suggesting that recent learning interventions proposed by Christopher Edelman (2021) and Galen Barry (2022) are on the right track. Further, we offer that this extremism is plausibly described as what Miranda Fricker (2007) calls an epistemic injustice. This (...) suggests that disrupting the problem is a boon for learners, the discipline, and good citizenship. In our discussion we introduce work by Derek Muller suggesting that it is important to address the misconceptions involved in epistemological extremism (and its precursors) lest we simply reinforce these problematic misconceptions for the worse—inhibiting student learning, reproducing challenges to good citizenship, and leading to a discounting of many ways of knowing. (shrink)

Philosophers have met with many problems in discussing the interconnected concepts being, identity, and truth, and have advanced many theories to deal with them. Williams argues that most of these problems and theories result from an inadequate appreciation of the ways in which the words "be," "same," and "true" work. By means of linguistic analysis he shows that being and truth are not properties, and identity is not a relation. He is thus able to demystify a number of metaphysical issues (...) concerning the meaning of the word "I," the relation between the mental and the physical, objects of thought, times and places, and the nature of reality. Williams presents his views clearly, with a minimum of technicality, and with rich and apt examples, so that they will be accessible to readers not versed in symbolic logic. (shrink)

Children and adolescents with an intellectual disability and autistic traits often attend special needs schools where they are surrounded by peers with diverse characteristics. Given the role that peers can play in social development, we examined whether autistic traits development in students with ID and high levels of such characteristics are influenced by the level of autistic traits among the schoolmates they like most. Furthermore, we investigated the degree to which this peer influence susceptibility depends on students’ gender. A longitudinal (...) design, with data collection points at the beginning and the end of a school year, was used. Staff reported on 330 students with high levels of autistic traits who attended 142 classrooms in 16 Swiss special needs schools. Results showed that students’ future individual level of autistic traits was not predicted by the autistic traits level of preferred peers, controlling for individual autistic traits at T1, level of general functioning, gender, and age. However, the peer effect was significantly moderated by students’ gender, indicating that girls but not boys were susceptible to peer influence. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for understanding autistic traits development and directions of support for children and adolescents in their peer context. (shrink)

This chapter defends the view that Arthur Schopenhauer and Siddhattha Gotama were unquestionably pessimistic philosophers, insofar as they converged in locating the source of life’s suffering within the person rather than the external world. However, in the process of outlining the significant continuities between their respective phenomenological analyses of life’s suffering, this chapter detects an important divergence between them. This stems from their contrasting metaphysical positions and ultimately impacts upon their respective interpretations of the significance of life’s suffering, as well (...) as their proposed solutions to it. (shrink)

Classical Philosophy is a comprehensive examination of early philosophy from the presocratics through to Aristotle. The aim of the book is to provide an explanation and analysis of the ideas that flourished at this time and considers their relevance both to the historical development of philosophy and to contemporary philosophy today. From these ideas we can see the roots of arguments in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy. The book is arranged in four parts by thinker and covers: The Presocratics (...) Socrates Plato Aristotle Christopher Shields' style is inviting, refreshing and ideal for anyone coming to the subject for the first time. He provides a balanced account of the central topics and ideas that emerged from the period and includes helpful further reading and chapter overviews. (shrink)

Aristotle argues that the soul and body are non-identical substances; the soul is an immaterial particular form, while the body is a diachronic material continuant. Despite their immateriality, Aristotle argues that souls are not separable from bodies, and so implicitly rejects any version of Cartesian dualism. But because of his commitment to immaterialism, Aristotle's position cannot be assimilated to any contemporary materialist theory in the philosophy of mind. We need not, however, regard him as inconsistent in rejecting both Cartesian dualism (...) and materialism: Aristotle rightly recognizes that the soul can be a substantial immaterial particular form which supervenes on the body. Aristotle is, then, a supervenient dualist, who holds that there are nomological relations between physical and psychic states, but who denies that psychic states are token identical with material states. ;But Aristotle notoriously does not regard the supervenience of the soul as sufficient for the supervenience of each of its capacities. He provides an interesting but unsuccessful a priori argument for the claim that nous, or mind, is a capacity of the soul which does not supervene on any bodily state. Thus, he concludes that nous can survive the destruction of the body; but post mortem survival of nous need not be regarded as sufficient for a commitment to post mortem personal identity in Aristotle. (shrink)

In response to a growing perception that America's youth lack the necessary values to grow and develop into adulthood in a socially healthy manner, character education has emerged as a rapidly growing proactive approach that serves to develop good character among young people. The authors examine several of the virtues thought to underlie good character from Character Counts!, a popular character education program, and emphasize the cultural complexities involved when promoting character education in a pluralistic society. 2012 APA, all rights (...) reserved). (shrink)

This article draws on hermeneutics and interactivism to challenge the prevailing dichotomization of culture/self and fact/value by proposing a theoretical perspective that culture provides a moral framework in which people are embedded and that cultural values and assumptions are distributed across different levels of knowing. I then address the problems of relativism raised by the claim that cultures are different moral topographies, and consider how hermeneutic dialogue is a way of working towards "truth without certainty." I conclude by suggesting that (...) mindfulness and contemplative practices offer tangible ways of fostering the openness required for hermeneutic dialogue and cultural learning. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Nicht zuletzt der Krieg in der Ukraine zeigt die herausragende Bedeutung des Weltraumes für unsere Gesellschaft sowie die militärische Operationsführung im Allgemeinen. Bereits in 2019 wurde durch die NATO dieser Bedeutung Rechnung getragen, in dem der Weltraum als fünfte Dimension neben Luft, Land, See und Cyber anerkannt wurde. Die für den Weltraum notwendige Infrastruktur wird gemeinhin als kritisch betrachtet und fällt damit auch unter die Abschreckungssystematik der NATO. Der Beitrag diskutiert die Abschreckungspolitik der NATO im Kontext Weltraum entlang der zwei (...) vorherrschenden Paradigmen – deterrence by punishment und deterrence by denial. In der Folge wird diskutiert, inwieweit die Förderung einer tragfähigen Responsive Space-Mentalität und deren Umsetzung in anwendbare Strategien von wesentlicher Bedeutung für die Übertragung auf eine kollektive Abschreckungsstrategie der NATO sein wird. Reaktionsfähige Weltraumkapazitäten werden es allen Mitgliedstaaten ermöglichen, zu den kollektiven Verteidigungsanstrengungen des Bündnisses beizutragen und den Grundsatz der deterrence by denial zu stärken. (shrink)

Suggests that acknowledging that social inquiry may be indelibly linked to ethical reflection raises difficult questions . There seem to be a few fundamental metatheoretical options available, each presuming some ontology of human existence and colored by at least a few basic moral or spiritual commitments. The options are briefly sketched, and their virtues and blind spots highlighted. The options include mainstream social science, "descriptivisms," liberal individualism, existential freedom, and contemporary hermeneutics. It is suggested that a hermeneutic view of social (...) theory as practice offers an alternative to both explanatory and constructionist accounts. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This special double issue was borne out of a desire to bring together examples of current approaches to cultural theorizing in the field of psychology. These articles represent different ontological and epistemological positions from which one can consider the integration of culture and psychology. We see the first three articles as attempting to deepen our understanding of culture with conceptual framing and philosophical grounding that articulate the relationship of the cultural and the personal. These articles are committed to moving beyond (...) subject-object dualism towards a non-dualistic ontology. A second set of articles honors the existing work in the scientific tradition while proposing to bridge it with the interpretive approaches, creating metatheories as a result, and calling for methodological pluralism. One theme common to these articles is that bringing culture into psychology requires not only a broadening of theoretical perspectives, but also a greater inclusiveness in our epistemological and methodological commitments. Though we have tried to be inclusive, this present collection of articles is far from comprehensive in terms of the range of possible theoretical perspectives on culture. We invite future authors to turn the critical cultural lens on the theoretical efforts featured in this special issue, and to present other approaches that are not represented here. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Fifteen leading philosophers explore a set of themes from the pioneering work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin in the history of philosophy. They discuss knowledge, rhetoric, freedom and practical reason, virtue and the good life, ethics and politics in Plato and Aristotle and beyond.

Contract-based approaches have been a focus of attention in business ethics. As one of the grand traditions in political philosophy, contractarianism is founded on the notion that we will never resolve deep moral disagreement. Classical philosophers like Hobbes and Locke, or recent ones like Rawls and Gaus, seek to solve ethical conflicts on the level of social rules and procedures. Recent authors in business ethics have sought to utilize contract-based approaches for their field and to apply it to concrete business (...) dilemmas. However, the application of contractarianism to management contexts can cause difficulties. Our article discusses this conceptual problem of contractarian business ethics and presents the idea of order ethics as an alternative. Order ethics, as we argue, can make a difference by conceptually bridging the gap between contractarianism and business ethics. (shrink)

Since the origins of the notion of emergence in attempts to recover the content of vitalistic anti-reductionism without its questionable metaphysics, emergence has been treated in terms of logical properties. This approach was doomed to failure, because logical properties are either sui generis or they are constructions from other logical properties. If the former, they do not explain on their own and are inevitably somewhat arbitrary (the problem with the related concept of supervenience, Collier, 1988a), but if the latter, reducibility (...) is assured because logical constructs are reducible, by definition, to their logical components. A satisfactory account of emergence must recognise that it is a dynamical, not a logical property of property of natural systems, and that its basis is dynamical rather than logical composition. Collier (1988a) introduced the concept of cohesion as the closure of the causal relations among the dynamical parts of a dynamical particular that determine its resistance to external and internal fluctuations that might disrupt its integrity. Cohesion is an equivalence relation that partitions a set of dynamical particulars into unified and distinct entities, providing the identity conditions for such particulars. Cohesion blocks reduction of dynamical particulars, and is necessary for dynamical emergence. We will give reasons for thinking that cohesion might be sufficient for emergence as well. (shrink)

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, (...) and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.