This chapter contains sections titled: The Golden Age of the Coffeehouses The Coffeehouses that Roasted Revolution Coffeehouses or Coffee Shops? The Third Place Where Did the Discussion Go? Brewing Social Change.

Habermas claims that an inclusive public sphere is the only deliberative forum for generating public opinion that satisfies the epistemic and normative conditions underlying legitimate decision-making. He adds that digital technologies and other mass media need not undermine – but can extend – rational deliberation when properly instituted. This paper draws from social epistemology and technology studies to demonstrate the epistemic and normative limitations of this extension. We argue that current online communication structures fall short of satisfying the required epistemic (...) and normative conditions. Furthermore, the extent to which Internet-based communications contribute to legitimate democratic opinion and will formation depends on the design of the technologies in question. (shrink)

This ambitious work reclassifies and restructures the history of ideas and the philosophy of culture through a wide-ranging and novel use of the idea of the organon. It does so by radically revising standard interpretations and theories of all branches of philosophy, and by providing an intellectual and philosophical foundation for the new organon of the cultural sciences. The seeded idea that saw its growth in the form of this book is the unshakable conviction that the only way by which (...) a new apparatus of philosophy, an organon, could be created is by harking back to the vast sources of imagination, inspiration and mimesis. This study is based on the notion that metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the world in its entirety and with human being's existence and thought, should provide the foundation for the organon of cultural sciences, based on symbolic forms. Given that the colossal amount of information and knowledge of philosophy, arts, humanities, logic, mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences cannot be comprised, analyzed and comprehended per se, it is the organon's objective to extract the main principles, ideas, postulates, theorems and theories of the cultural sciences, and, subsequently, to shape and restructure them as symbolic forms. Since all these principles are grounded on Becoming - which is not a stable or fixed entity such as Being, substance or thing - the symbolic forms preserve and change, elevate and further the organon of the cultural sciences, via a critical-dialectical process. (shrink)

This chapter explores the interrelations between Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem's thought. It argues that despite the overt differences between Adorno's materialist social philosophy and Scholem's scholarship of Jewish mysticism, both intellectuals were motivated by similar concerns and interests. Following a brief historical contextualization of the intellectual exchange between Adorno and Scholem, the chapter focuses on three main thematic intersections between their thought and writings: The concept of myth and the dialectical entanglement of myth and reason; the heretical element (...) in its relation to natural and social life, and to the critique of normativity; and the theological dimension in their work, and the role of negativity, metaphysics, and materialism within it. (shrink)

Since the Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series (KSMS) was first published in 1997, it has served as the authoritative book series in the field. Starting from 2011 the Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series will intensify the peer-review process with a new editorial and advisory board. KSMS is published on behalf of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen. KSMS publishes outstanding monographs in all fields of Kierkegaard research. This includes Ph.D. dissertations, Habilitation theses, conference proceedings and single author works (...) by senior scholars. The goal of KSMS is to advance Kierkegaard studies by encouraging top-level scholarship in the field. The editorial and advisory boards are deeply committed to creating a genuinely international forum for publication which integrates the many different traditions of Kierkegaard studies and brings them into a constructive and fruitful dialogue. To this end the series publishes monographs in English and German. Potential authors should consult the Submission guidelines. All submissions will be blindly refereed by established scholars in the field. Only high-quality manuscripts will be accepted for publication. Potential authors should be prepared to make changes to their texts based on the comments received by the referees. (shrink)

This book seeks to read the political thought of classic thinkers of the liberal tradition in the context of their metaphysical and theological writings. Sokolowski demonstrates that the political measures offered by political theorists to remedy the state of unrest and instability are intrinsically connected to their metaphysical conception of order, the self, and the interaction between the two.

Recently, some contradictory statements have been made concerning whether or not the Buddha taught free will. Here, a comparative method is used to examine what exactly is meant by free will, and to determine to what extent this meaning is applicable to early Buddhist thought as recorded in the Pāli Nikāyas. The comparative method reveals parallels between contemporary criticisms of Cartesian philosophy and Buddhist criticisms of Brahmanical and Jain doctrines. Although in Cartesian terms Buddhism promotes no recognizable theory of free (...) will, it does promote a primitive theory of compatibilism which shares some keyfeatures with Daniel Dennett's position on this issue. It is argued that the implicit Buddhist stance on freedom of the will allows the existence of choice and responsibility without calling upon an ultimate controlling agency that transcends the causal nexus of mind and body. (shrink)

The global economic crisis makes closer collaboration between economics and other social sciences even more urgent. One major cause of divergence has been the attitudes of the parties towards the ‘market’. Yet, the market economy, in all its diversity, is one of the immutable facts of modern life. Understanding the causes of its survival will improve the dialogue. Another interesting puzzle is the lack of credible alternatives to it despite the depth of the crisis. The experience of the economists in (...) constructing models of society based on the behaviour of individuals composing it can be valuable for other social sciences. We apply the framework developed by ‘institutional economics’ to gain insights into the relations between Islam, capitalism and democracy. The article finishes with some observations on Turkey and draws lessons for other Muslim societies. (shrink)

Recently, some contradictory statements have been made concerning whether or not the Buddha taught free will. Here, a comparative method is used to examine what exactly is meant by free will, and to determine to what extent this meaning is applicable to early Buddhist thought as recorded in the Pāli Nikāyas. The comparative method reveals parallels between contemporary criticisms of Cartesian philosophy and Buddhist criticisms of Brahmanical and Jain doctrines. Although in Cartesian terms Buddhism promotes no recognizable theory of free (...) will, it does promote a primitive theory of compatibilism which shares some keyfeatures with Daniel Dennett's position on this issue. It is argued that the implicit Buddhist stance on freedom of the will allows the existence of choice and responsibility without calling upon an ultimate controlling agency that transcends the causal nexus of mind and body. (shrink)

The global economic crisis makes closer collaboration between economics and other social sciences even more urgent. One major cause of divergence has been the attitudes of the parties towards the ‘market’. Yet, the market economy, in all its diversity, is one of the immutable facts of modern life. Understanding the causes of its survival will improve the dialogue. Another interesting puzzle is the lack of credible alternatives to it despite the depth of the crisis. The experience of the economists in (...) constructing models of society based on the behaviour of individuals composing it can be valuable for other social sciences. We apply the framework developed by ‘institutional economics’ to gain insights into the relations between Islam, capitalism and democracy. The article finishes with some observations on Turkey and draws lessons for other Muslim societies. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the treatment of nature and technology in the writings of two prominent early Zionist thinkers, A. D. Gordon and Theodor Herzl. At the heart of Herzl’s vision, we find technocrats applying industrial systems to dominate the naked nature that Gordon is committed to preserve. Gordon, in contrast, describes Jewish national revival as triggered by farmers utilizing Eretz Israel’s natural world to extract Jews from industrial society, underwriting Herzl’s Zionist vision. Expanding the analysis to the domains of nature (...) and technology reveals the two thinkers’ creeds to be rival Zionist ideologies in which nature and technology serve as catalysts for competing visions of national revival. (shrink)

The Buddhist concept of skillful means , as introduced inMahāyāna sūtras, exposes a new awareness of the gap between text and meaning. Although the term is sometimes taken to point to the Buddha's pedagogical skills, this interpretation ignores the provocative use of the term in Mahāyāna texts. Treating skillful means as a universal Buddhist concept also fails to explain why and for what purpose it first became predominant in the Mahāyāna. Looking at the use of skillful means in the Lotus (...) Sūtra and in the Skill in Means Sūtra reveals a hermeneutic device aimed at criticizing an existing corpus of Buddhist literature. As such, skillful means is used to demonstrate that the old doctrine and the life of the Buddha contained fictitious features and were nothing but skillful means. This indicates a growing awareness of a gap between literal expressions and their hidden meaning that can only arise after some kind of religious corpus has been established. (shrink)

The Buddhist concept of skillful means, as introduced in Mahay ana sutras, exposes a new awareness of the gap between text and meaning. Although the term is sometimes taken to point to the Buddha's pedagogical skills, this interpretation ignores the provocative use of the term in Mahayana texts. Treating skillful means as a universal Buddhist concept also fails to explain why and for what purpose it first became predominant in the Mahayana. Looking at the use of skillful means in the (...) Lotus Sutra and in the Skill in Means Sutra reveals a hermeneutic device aimed at criticizing an existing corpus of Buddhist literature. As such, skillful means is used to demonstrate that the old doctrine and the life of the Buddha contained fictitious features and were nothing but skillful means. This indicates a growing awareness of a gap between literal expressions and their hidden meaning that can only arise after some kind of religious corpus has been established. (shrink)

We construct a model [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] which lies between [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] for a Cohen real [Formula: see text] and does not have the form [Formula: see text] for any set [Formula: see text]. This is loosely based on the unwritten work done in a Bristol workshop about Woodin’s HOD Conjecture in 2011. The construction given here allows for a finer analysis of the needed assumptions on the ground models, thus taking (...) us one step closer to understanding models of [Formula: see text], and the HOD Conjecture and its relatives. This model also provides a positive answer to a question of Grigorieff about intermediate models of [Formula: see text], and we use it to show the failure of Kinna–Wagner Principles in [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

ArgumentIn this article I describe the establishment and early development of an institution that is unique to the history of Chinese medicine – the Imperial Pharmacy. Established in 1076 during the great reforms of the Song dynasty, the Imperial Pharmacy was a remarkable institution that played different political, social, economic, and medical roles over the years of its existence. Initially it was an economic institution designed to curb the power of plutocrats who were manipulating medicinal drug markets in their favor. (...) A few decades later, I claim, the Imperial Pharmacy became a public-health-oriented institution focusing on selling readymade prescriptions in addition to simples. Various records, including local gazetteers and local maps, indicate that the Imperial Pharmacy expanded about a century after it was established to include dozens of branches throughout the empire. The Pharmacy's impact on the practices of physicians during these years is somewhat vague. It seems, however, to have posed an unwelcome addition to the medical scene, since it enabled uninitiated practitioners who relied on the Pharmacy's formulary to fit patients' symptoms to their own prescriptions and dispense medications with relative ease. (shrink)

This book is an annotated translation of Xu Shuwei’s collection of 90 medical case records – Ninety Discussions of Cold Damage Disorders – which was the first such collection in China. The translation reveals patterns of social as well as medical history. This book provides the readers with a distinctive first hand perspective on twelfth-century medical practice, including medical aspects, such as nosology, diagnosis, treatment, and doctrinal reasoning supporting them. It also presents the social aspect of medical practice, detailing the (...) various participants in the medical encounter, their role, the power relations within the encounter, and the location where the encounter occurred. Reading the translation of Xu’s cases allows the readers high-resolution snapshots of medicine and medical practice as reflected from the case records documented by this leading twelfth-century physician. The detailed introduction to the translation contextualizes Xu’s life and medical practice in the broader changes of this transformative era. (shrink)

With less than 0# two generic extensions ofL are identified: one in which ${\aleph_1}$ , and the other ${\aleph_2}$ , is almost precipitous. This improves the consistency strength upper bound of almost precipitousness obtained in Gitik M, Magidor M (On partialy wellfounded generic ultrapowers, in Pillars of Computer Science, 2010), and answers some questions raised there. Also, main results of Gitik (On normal precipitous ideals, 2010), are generalized—assumptions on precipitousness are replaced by those on ∞-semi precipitousness. As an application it (...) is shown that if δ is a Woodin cardinal and there is an ${f:\omega_1 \to \omega_1}$ with ${\|f\|=\omega_2}$ , then after ${Col(\aleph_2,\delta)}$ there is a normal precipitous ideal over ${\aleph_1}$ . The existence of a pseudo-precipitous ideal over a successor cardinal is shown to give an inner model with a strong cardinal. (shrink)

Herman Levin Goldschmidt delineates and critiques four types of “dialogism,” four ways of derailing dialogical discourse and praxis. In the following, I examine two of them: “Pan-dialogism” is the glossing over the effect of power differentials such as gender, class, and race as relevant factors in the constitution of dialogue. “Pluralogic” is the evading of true dialogue, which is intense and exclusive, by conducting simultaneously multiple superficial conversations. Pluralogic enables to escape the internal turmoil and conscience’s call for critiquing that (...) are part and parcel of true dialogue. To examine the two dialogisms, I use Martin Buber’s thought, which Goldschmidt sees himself as continuing, as a case in point as well as a resource to further unpack Goldschmidt’s thought. In the course of the paper, I criticize what I call “Human Resource Office Morality,” the celebration of mere diversity at the expense of true contradiction. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate some properties of forcing which can be considered “nice” in the context of singularizing regular cardinals to have an uncountable cofinality. We show that such forcing which changes cofinality of a regular cardinal, cannot be too nice and must cause some “damage” to the structure of cardinals and stationary sets. As a consequence there is no analogue to the Prikry forcing, in terms of “nice” properties, when changing cofinalities to be uncountable.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a physical activity intervention program designed to enhance levels of engagement in PA. Despite robust evidence supporting the beneficial effects of PA on overall health, only about 22% of individuals engage in the recommended minimum amount of PA. Recent surveys suggested that most individuals express intentions to be physically active, though the psychological state of amotivation dismissed these struggles. In the current study, we pilot-tested a new intervention program, (...) aimed at enhancing engagement in PA among sedentary individuals. The intervention was based on two behavioral change and motivational psychological frameworks: Self-Determination Theory and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. During a 14-week intervention program, 94 sedentary Israeli college students were randomly assigned into one of three groups: SDT and ACT-based intervention, traditional intervention, and a non-treatment group. Prior to and following the intervention, participants completed the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-3 to examine motivation to exercise and the International Physical Activity Measurement IPAQ to evaluate their training frequency. Results showed that the SDT and ACT-based intervention group exhibited a significant increase in motivation to exercise between time 1 and time 2, while the other two groups showed insignificant differences in motivation to exercise. Furthermore, neither of the groups showed significant differences in their training frequency per week. However, those in the SDT and ACT-based groups reported an increase in activity intensity from time 1 to time 2 compared to the two other groups. Further, exercise psychology consultants and scholars can use the intervention protocol and utilize these findings to improve PA behaviors and promote health in the general population. Limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed in detail. (shrink)

J. L. Krivine developed a new method based on realizability to construct models of set theory where the axiom of choice fails. We attempt to recreate his results in classical settings, i.e., symmetric extensions. We also provide a new condition for preserving well ordered, and other particular type of choice, in the general settings of symmetric extensions.

This Great Debates volume grew out of exchanges that followed the 2012 publication of a Festschrift volume for Crispin Wright, just over a decade ago (Coliva 2012). As often happens in Philosophy, the process of trying to clarify and iron out apparently local points of disagreement between us has unearthed deeper divergences concerning larger issues in the philosophy of language and mind, in epistemology, and in the theory of action. Such is our profession.

This paper corrects a pervasive mistake in readings of Buber’s iconic trope, “I-Thou” (Ich-Du; hereafter, I-You). The mistake lies in considering it synonymous to the principal concept of his dialogical thought, “relation” (Beziehung). A detailed reading of relevant passages in Buber’s I and Thou (hereafter, IAT) reveals their difference: While both “relation” and “I-You” refer to the same reality—to the dialogic moment—they do so with a different focus and scope: “Relation” refers to the dialogic moment in its bilateral entirety. However, (...) “primary word I-You” (hereafter, PWIY)—the phrase in which the I-You trope in fact appears in IAT—focuses on the active share of only one of the two interlocutors in the dialogic moment. While PWIY does refer to the dialogical moment (which is indeed bilateral), it denotes only a partial aspect of the dialogical moment. It focuses exclusively on my active turning toward you and defocuses your concurrent turning toward me (which, no doubt, is present as well). This mistake, I show, is due to interpreters’ enthusiastic endorsement of Buber’s later phrase, the “I-You relation,” which is indeed synonymous with “relation.” It is then easy to read back the “I-You relation” into the earlier, more focused concept of PWIY. Furthermore, this enthusiasm has blinded readers from realizing that, following IAT, Buber in fact abandoned the I-You trope and used it only reluctantly, mainly when addressing his interpreters who used it themselves, or when discussing IAT where it indeed appeared. (shrink)

My paper sets out to demonstrate that Weber's ideal-typical theory of concept formation, subject to certain modifications, is compatible with the principles of philosophical hermeneutics and is therefore a valuable strategy of concept formation for interpretive historical inquiry. The essay begins with a brief recapitulation of the philosophical-hermeneutic approach to the human sciences. I then chart out the affinities as well as the discrepancies between philosophical hermeneutics and Weber's theory of the ideal type. Against this backdrop, I proceed to offer (...) a number of correctives and additions to Weber's theory so as to tighten its fit with philosophical hermeneutics. First, I argue that the ideal type's proper logic of concept formation is a logic of significance rather than a logic of commonality. Second, I claim that the relationship between the various empirical cases to which a given ideal type is (or can be) applied is a Wittgensteinian relationship of family resemblance. Finally, I present two main kinds of epistemological functions that ideal types can fulfill within the framework of historical inquiry: argumentative and orientational-clarificatory. (shrink)

In the mid-1890s, the left-leaning Christian socialist Friedrich Naumann was the first German public figure to develop national socialism as a systematic world view. Under the influence of Max Weber, Naumann abandoned his Christian-ethical conception of social reform in favour of a national existentialism that overrides any ethical imperative; and he abandoned the pre-modern, Christian foundations of his productivism in favour of modern and nationalist foundations. The outcome was a national socialism underpinned by the synthesis of national existentialism and national (...) productivism; a form of socialism driven by a concern for national order rather than by a vision of social justice or emancipation. This interpretation makes it difficult to maintain a clear demarcation of Naumann's national socialism from its right-wing counterparts and to retain Naumann's image as a progressive reformer. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the existence of a national socialism in Germany long before the founding of the Nazi movement, and not just in the dark recesses of racial antisemitism but at the very heart of German bourgeois society. The article focuses on two major cases of pre-Nazi national socialism: left-leaning bourgeois reformist Friedrich Naumann; and the ideology supporting Germany's war effort from 1914 to 1918, a phenomenon also known as the 'ideas of 1914'. National socialism in both these cases rested (...) at its core on a national existentialism: a conviction that Germany is facing a struggle for its very existence as a nation, and that all domestic socioeconomic forces must be systematically regimented andmobilized in the service of the nation's purportedly 'existential' struggles. National socialism emerges from this article. (shrink)

Miqdādī Iṣfahānī, ʻAlī - Correspondence ; Islamic ethics ; Sufi poetry, Persian.

ABSTRACT W. E. B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking scholarship on race and racial prejudice was inseparable from his lifelong struggle for racial justice, Black liberation, and against social and political oppression. Both in his theoretical and in his historical-political work, Du Bois substantially and critically engaged with the “Jewish question”: with Jewish life, history, and politics, with the experiential perspective of an oppressed minority, and with the fight against prejudice and racial hatred. Throughout in life, and in particular in later years, (...) Du Bois was influenced by Karl Marx’s critical analysis of social and economic life; Marx’s own discussion of the “Jewish question,” concerning the difference between political equality and human emancipation, proved substantial to his argument on civil rights and racial justice. In this article, I argue that Du Bois did not only draw from the Jewish experience and from Marx’s work on the “Jewish question” in his work on African American history and politics, but also that he, in fact, reconsidered the “Jewish question” from an African American perspective, offering his own reading and understanding of the “Jewish question,” thus applying his concept of double consciousness for rethinking it as a question of racial identity and racial consciousness, and as relevant and applicable to Black liberation and the fight against racism. (shrink)

Slovenian philosopher bad boy Slavoj Žižek is one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. He publishes at a breakneck speed and lectures around the world. He has an unmistakable speaking style and set of mannerisms that have made him ripe material for internet humor and meme culture. YouTube clips of his talks, interviews, and media appearances often have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of views. How did an intellectual from a remote Eastern European country come (...) to such notoriety? In this book, sociologist Eliran Bar-El plumbs the "phenomenon called 'Žižek;'" its origin, emergence, and development over the years. He begins with Žižek's early years as a thinker and political figure in Slovenian civil society. There, Žižek became a philosopher, immersed himself in Marxist debates both within academia as well as in activist circles, and even ran for office. Bar-El then turns to Žižek's emergence in the English-speaking world as an intellectual celebrity in the 1990s and the development and perfection of his unique performative style and rhetorical arsenal (Žižek's language of "Hegelacanese"). Post 9/11, Žižek goes global, becoming a well-known op-ed writer and TV commentator on pop culture and large-scale global events such as the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring of 2011. Things took a turn when Žižek was almost entirely estranged from the normal workings of academia and increasingly became the target of other of other thinkers-Noam Chomsky, notably-who singled him out as an example of intellectual imposture, as well as others outraged by the non-politically correct views he professes. Ultimately, Bar-El shows how Žižek harnessed the power of the digital era in his own self-fashioning as an intellectual, remaking and capitalizing on the shifting intellectual landscape and what Bar-El calls our "knowledge societies." Throughout the book, Bar-El shows how Žižek has navigated different audiences and publics, developing a hybrid language capable of speaking to specialists and laypeople alike, using globally traumatic events as the subject of his often irreverent analyses, combining high and low registers, and flaunting his own lack of expertise and specialization and his "outsider" status as a way to form a substantial extra-academic public and to engage with current events. (shrink)

This paper argues that functionalist metasemantic views, such as Conceptual Role Semantics and Interpretivism, face a Euthyphro challenge. The challenge, put roughly, is this: functionalist metasemantic views reverse the order of explanation. According to such views, representational mental states have the contents that they do partly because they play certain roles in our mental lives. According to an intuitive picture of the roles that representational mental states play in our mental lives, however, these states play the roles they do partly (...) because they have the contents that they do. Since explanations—even partial ones—are asymmetric (call this principle ‘the Euthyphro Principle’), we can’t accept both this intuitive picture and a functionalist metasemantics. Hence, we should reject all versions of the latter. This paper can be seen as an attempt to better articulate an intuition that has been suggested in various forms in the literature. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it shows that functionalist metasemantic views imply certain ‘partly because’ claims. Second, it argues for the Euthyphro Principle. Third, it defends the intuitive picture of representational mental states and shows that it implies ‘partly because’ claims that conflict with those made by functionalist metasemantic views. Finally, it considers ways of relaxing the intuitive picture and finds them all wanting. (shrink)