As considerações de Merleau-Ponty sobre a historicidade são significativas, tanto como um relato fenomenológico, quanto como um relato existencial de nossa situação histórica. Naturalmente, estes aspectos de seu trabalho não se excluem mutuamente, mas se entrelaçam. E cada aspecto contribui para o sentido da crise da historicidade humana. Primeiro consideraremos a crise fenomenológica da historicidade – ou seja, consideraremos a crise da historicidade fenomenologicamente. Esta é a tentativa de revelar as condições da possibilidade da história a partir da história ou (...) da estrutura de nossa situação histórica – onde a posição de Merleau-Ponty se afasta da fenomenologia husserliana. Em seguida, consideraremos a crise existencial de historicidade – ou seja, consideraremos a crise de historicidade existencialmente. Esta é a tentativa de compreender o imperativo de que as coisas são importantes para nós historicamente. Finalmente, vamos indicar brevemente a importância destes aspectos de nossa historicidade como um entrelaçamento crítico. Este entrelaçamento crítico revela a intrusão mútua do “como” e do “porquê” de nossa historicidade, que Merleau-Ponty descreve no final de sua carreira como uma existência chiasmática dentro da carne do mundo. O cruzamento crítico como interrogatório de nosso ser histórico fornece o “quem”, “o quê”, “quando” e “onde” de nossa historicidade. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty, in Humanism and Terror, addresses the spectrum of problems related to revolutionary action. His essay, Eye and Mind, is best known as a contribution to aesthetics. A common structure exists in these apparently disparate works. We must reject the illusion of subjective clairvoyance as a standard of revolutionary praxis; but also we must reject any idealised light of reason that illuminates all—that promises a history without shadows. The revolutionary nature of an act must be established as such through praxis. (...) The creative praxes of the political revolutionary or the revolutionary artist are recognised ex post facto; yet each involves the creation of its own new aesthetic wherein the value of that praxis is to be understood spontaneously and all at once. (shrink)

While Merleau-Ponty’s political positions evolved over the course of his career, they are grounded in and guided by a remarkably consistent account of historicity. Praxis requires authentic historical engagement; and Merleau-Ponty was critical of inauthentic a-historical approaches throughout his career. I chart a trajectory of Merleau-Ponty’s position from The War Has Taken Place (1945), through some of the newly published material from the mid to late 1940’s Michel Dalissier’s monumental two volume collection of inédits, and the Introduction to Signs (1960). (...) This results in two surprising and admittedly controversial observations that contradict dominant narratives. I argue that: (1) Merleau-Ponty’s account of historicity precludes the claim that he abandoned Marxism altogether with the writing of Adventures of the Dialectic (1955); and (2) Merleau-Ponty’s account of historicity reveals the dominant Western narrative about the war in Ukraine to be inauthentic. (shrink)

This book originally appeared in 1998 and recently has been reissued in paperback form. It appears in the Arguments of the Philosophers series at Routledge.

At a time when some are questioning the relevancy of business education in general, others are now asking whether MBA programs should be blamed for society’s declining trust in business and the numerous corporate ethical failures of recent decades. Whether the full blame lies with business schools or not, MBA instructors are actively seeking more effective ways to help students adopt more practical and ethical managerial paradigms. Because trust theory is simple and robust and outlines the basic mental processes that (...) drive economic exchange while simultaneously prioritizing ethical behavior, in this article, we argue that it is distinctively suited to operationalize stakeholder theory in the classroom, providing MBA students with both a principled and a practical foundation or thematic platform for their MBA coursework and subsequent careers. We also discuss potential challenges and limitations and provide recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Karl Schmitz‐Moormann argues that the doctrines of God and Creation, usually explicated in Roman Catholic theology by using the analogy of being, must rather be conceived in light of evolution and an analogy of becoming. God the Trinity, characterized by unity, information, and freedom, provides the image toward which the creation tends in its evolutionary processes. Informed by Teilhard and others, the author hereby provides more of a new research program for theology's engagement with natural science than a fully developed (...) theology. (shrink)

Summary The optical quality and properties of over 200 telescopes residing in museums and private collections have been measured and tested with the goal of obtaining new information about the early development of the achromatic lens (1757–1770). Quantitative measurements of the chromatic and spherical aberration of telescope objective lenses were made and are discussed within the context of John and Peter Dollond's description of their efforts to overcome these two optical defects inherent in any single lens. Their work was chronicled (...) in the Philosophical Transactions of 1758 and 1765. An important finding of this investigation is that a particular form of the achromatic lens that has been suggested as being a rare and early form by some investigators, and presumably introduced by Chester Moor Hall, was in fact found to be numerous and present in most museums and many private collections. It is shown that the colour correction of an early eighteenth-century doublet telescope objective is very sensitive to the ratio of the flint to crown glass focal lengths, as well as the variations of the indices of refraction with colour. This sensitivity would preclude any simple recipe for constructing an achromatic lens. The third order theory of spherical aberration of Nevil Maskelyne is reexamined, in which he pointed out that John Dollond developed a theoretical formula equivalent to what today is called geometric third order spherical aberration theory. (shrink)

My purpose is to present a thesis concerning the nature of philosophical argument. I shall present it by way of examining a number of philosophical disputes. Whether all philosophical disputes resemble the ones I examine is an empirical question. However, I suspect they do. My thesis concerns the nature of the process involved in the adopting or abandoning of ‘basic assumptions’ or ‘presuppositions’..

The dispute between determinists and libertarians often fails to distinguish two issues: Is a man responsible for his behavior?; and Is man to be considered an integral part of the natural order, or something transcendently related to it? I wish to argue both that man is responsible and that there is nothing about him which transcends the natural causal order.

The dispute between determinists and libertarians often fails to distinguish two issues: Is a man responsible for his behavior?; and Is man to be considered an integral part of the natural order, or something transcendently related to it? I wish to argue both that man is responsible and that there is nothing about him which transcends the natural causal order.

This book explains the role of simple biological model systems in the growth of molecular biology. Essentially the whole history of molecular biology is presented here, tracing the work in bacteriophages in E. coli, the role of other prokaryotic systems, and also the protozoan and algal models—Paramecium and Chlamydomonas, primarily—and the move into eukaryotes with the fungal systems Neurospora, Aspergillus and yeast. Each model was selected for its appropriateness for asking a given class of questions, and each spawned its own (...) community of investigators. Some individuals made the transition to a new model over time, and remnant communities of investigators continue to pursue questions in all these models, as the cutting edge of molecular biological research flowed onward from model to model, and onward into higher organisms and, ultimately, mouse and man. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption that the universe in general, and life in particular, is 'getting more complex with time'. This book brings together a wide range of experts in science, philosophy and theology and unveils their joint effort in exploring this idea. They confront essential problems behind the theory of complexity and the role of life within it: what is complexity? When does it increase, and why? Is the universe evolving towards states of ever greater complexity and diversity? If (...) so, what is the source of this universal enrichment? This book addresses those difficult questions, and offers a unique cross-disciplinary perspective on some of the most profound issues at the heart of science and philosophy. Readers will gain insights in complexity that reach deep into key areas of physics, biology, complexity science, philosophy and religion. (shrink)

In the atavistic model of cancer progression, tumor cell dedifferentiation is interpreted as a reversion to phylogenetically earlier capabilities. The more recently evolved capabilities are compromised first during cancer progression. This suggests a therapeutic strategy for targeting cancer: design challenges to cancer that can only be met by the recently evolved capabilities no longer functional in cancer cells. We describe several examples of this target‐the‐weakness strategy. Our most detailed example involves the immune system. The absence of adaptive immunity in immunosuppressed (...) tumor environments is an irreversible weakness of cancer that can be exploited by creating a challenge that only the presence of adaptive immunity can meet. This leaves tumor cells more vulnerable than healthy tissue to pathogenic attack. Such a target‐the‐weakness therapeutic strategy has broad applications, and contrasts with current therapies that target the main strength of cancer: cell proliferation. (shrink)

Philosophers and artists consider the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for understanding art and aesthetic experience. This collection of essays brings together diverse but interrelated perspectives on art and perception based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although Merleau-Ponty focused almost exclusively on painting in his writings on aesthetics, this collection also considers poetry, literary works, theater, and relationships between art and science. In addition to philosophers, the contributors include a painter, a photographer, a musicologist, and an architect. This widened (...) scope offers important philosophical benefits, testing and providing evidence for the empirical applicability of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic writings. The central argument is that for Merleau-Ponty the account of perception is also an account of art and vice versa. In the philosopher’s writings, art and perception thus intertwine necessarily rather than contingently such that they can only be distinguished by abstraction. As a result, his account of perception and his account of art are organic, interdependent, and dynamic. The contributors examine various aspects of this intertwining across different artistic media, each ingeniously revealing an original perspective on this intertwining. (shrink)

An English language translation accompanies the original Greek text of Aristotle's book about the nature of the state, constitutions, revolutions, democracy, and oligarchy.