In this broad historical and critical overview based on a lifetime of scholarship, James Alfred Martin, Jr., examines the development of the concepts of beauty and holiness as employed in theories of aesthetics and of religion. The injunction in the Book of Psalms to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" addressed a tradition that has comprehended holiness primarily in terms of ethical righteousness--a conception that has strongly influenced Western understandings of religion. As the author points (...) out, however, the Greek forbears of Western thought, as well as many Eastern traditions, were and are more broadly concerned with the pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness as ideals of human excellence, that is, with the "holiness of beauty." In this work Martin describes a philosophical stance that should prove to be most productive for the dialogue between aesthetics and religion. Beginning with the treatment of beauty and holiness in Hebrew, Greek, and classical Christian thought, the author traces the emergence of modern theories of aesthetics and religion in the Enlightenment. He then outlines the role of aesthetics in the theories of religion proposed by Otto, Eliade, van der Leeuw, and Tillich, in the cultural anthropology of Geertz, and in the thought of Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. In a global context Martin explores the relation of aesthetic theory to religious thought in the traditions of India, China, and Japan and concludes with reflections on the viability of modern aesthetic and religious theory in the light of contemporary cultural and methodological pluralism. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION ET empiricism become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated with ...

This article argues the following thesis: The distinctive characteristics of Philipp Melanchthon's Explicatio Proverbiorum Salomonis and the differences between the several editions or versions of it can only partly be explained by the origins of the book in Melanchthon's teaching activities during the ferment at German universities in the course of the sixteenth century Reformation. Both the peculiarities of the commentary itself and the way several differing versions of it were tolerated alongside one another only become explicable when a theological (...) consideration is brought into the equation. On the one hand this resides in the view of Holy Scripture shared by Melanchthon and Martin Luther, and on the other hand in the humanist notion of context that Melanchthon's exegetical work had in common with that of John Calvin. (shrink)

At a time where the relevance of the social sciences is under threat, this innovative book offers a speculative experimentation on the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences to rethink what 'relevance' is, and to cultivate a new ethos of knowledge-making for an eventful world. Engaging a diverse a range of thinkers including Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and Isabelle Stengers, as well as the American pragmatists John Dewey and William James, Martin Savransky challenges longstanding assumptions (...) in the social sciences and argues that relevance is an event that is part and parcel of the immanent and situated processes by which things come to matter. He develops new conceptual tools for cultivating an empiricist ethos of inquiry that is attuned to the question of how things come to matter- an ethics that turns social inquiry into a veritable adventure. The result is an original and rigorous book that infuses knowledge-practices in the social sciences with new sensibilities, creative possibilities, and novel habits of thinking, knowing, and feeling. (shrink)

El editor reúne a distintos miembros de la Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association para escribir sobre conceptos, tales como la moralidad, la educación moral, la ética, los medios de comunicación, la muerte o el futuro. Algunos de estos autores son: Cyril Bibby, Raymond Firth, Margaret Knight, Lord Francis Williams, Antony Flew, Peter Henderson, James Hemming, Morris Ginsberg, Lord Ritchie-Calder, Lord Boyd Orr, Kathleen Nott, Brigid Brophy, Cristopher Longuet-Higgins, Kingsley Martin, P. Sargant Florence, Theodore Besterman, F.A.E. Crew, (...) H.J. Eysenck o Sir Karl Popper. (shrink)

Throughout more than forty years of distinguished teaching and scholarship, James W. Felt has been respected for the clarity and economy of his prose and for his distinctive approach to philosophy. The seventeen essays collected in __Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy__ reflect Felt's encounters with fundamental philosophical problems in the spirit of traditional metaphysics but updated with modern concerns. Among the main themes of the volume are: the enrichment of Thomistic philosophy through engagement with modern philosophers, Whitehead and Bergson, in (...) particular; considerations of metaphysical method and its effect on philosophic conclusions; the development of a nuanced epistemological realism; and the relation of possibility to actuality and of time to experience. "__Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy__ does indeed lie off the beaten path. To deal straightforwardly today with God, the self, freedom, and the meaning of human life is not only unfashionable: it is considered terminally naive. James Felt, however, is not naive. His clear, careful thought breathes new life into old problems, providing fresh insights where traditional approaches have failed." --_Pete A. Y. Gunter, University of North Texas__"_ _"___Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy_ _is equivalently James Felt's intellectual autobiography. In a series of essays written over a period of forty years and now republished with introductory self-critical comments, Felt records his journey from a youthful enthusiasm for the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead to his conversion to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and, in recent years, his efforts to come up with a creative synthesis of the major insights of both Aquinas and Whitehead. One does not have to agree with all his conclusions, but everyone should admire the dispassionate way in which he analyzes and critiques both systems for their relative strengths and weaknesses." --_Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Xavier University_ "Felt makes no concessions to the current unfashionable status of classical metaphysics. With justified confidence in the foundational importance of the discipline, and in dialog with some of its most famous practitioners, he explores and advances many of its perennial themes in essays exemplary in their clarity of reasoning and expression." --_Jorge Nobo, Washburn University_ "__Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy_ _is a sound, insightful, mature, and philosophically rich work. One hears a distinctive voice in all of the essays of the collection, the voice of a teacher anxious to share ideas that have animated his own philosophical development. This is rare, and something to be celebrated when it is found." --_Brian Martine, University of Alabama, Huntsville_. (shrink)

In chapters three and four of Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism, Nancy Bauer attempts to divide the ontological explanations from Sartre and Hegel on the master/slave dialectic. She suggests that Sartre’s ontology of the master/slave dialectic results in an explanation of the in-itself, the for-itself, and being-for-others as essentially immobile, pessimistic and rooted in a misogynistic perception that one must be master over the Other in order to obtain radical freedom. Bauer believes De Beauvoir to reappropriate the Hegelian view (...) over the Sartrean view, leading to a more optimistic account in support of a more egalitarian feministic approach to the issues of self-consciousness. (shrink)

A clear and compelling introduction to social phenomenology, this volume examines the experiential features of the basic things comprising our life-world.

This article argues that Proverbs 18:4 contains an exceptionally rich use of water as metaphors in sapiential literature. At the same time, the verse illustrates the multivalent applicability of a single proverb. Israel’s natural environment is shortly described as pictured in the biblical texts, suggesting the interplay of water and dry land in the ancient Near East. Water and dryness have ambivalent functions, as both are necessary and both can be dangerous. In order to understand Proverbs 18:4, a short overview (...) of water in ancient Near Eastern texts is generally given and the significance of the multivalent application of representative proverbs is illustrated. Coming to Proverbs 18:4, an interpretation is offered showing a potential of various differing understandings of the water metaphor concentrated in a single proverb. Although such a proverb now exists in a written literary context, it can be used in various contexts, and each time be applied differently in its own right, but with equal validity. Contribution: It is argued that the multifarious use of water as a literary motif in Proverbs entails that both its explicit and its implied use can function literally, metaphorically and even as metaphtonemy, with variegated valid meanings whether in individual proverbs by themselves or as part of larger literary contexts. (shrink)

Planctomycetes, Verrucomicrobia and Chlamydia are prokaryotic phyla, sometimes grouped together as the PVC superphylum of eubacteria. Some PVC species possess interesting attributes, in particular, internal membranes that superficially resemble eukaryotic endomembranes. Some biologists now claim that PVC bacteria are nucleus‐bearing prokaryotes and are considered evolutionary intermediates in the transition from prokaryote to eukaryote. PVC prokaryotes do not possess a nucleus and are not intermediates in the prokaryote‐to‐eukaryote transition. Here we summarise the evidence that shows why all of the PVC traits (...) that are currently cited as evidence for aspiring eukaryoticity are either analogous (the result of convergent evolution), not homologous, to eukaryotic traits; or else they are the result of horizontal gene transfers. (shrink)

There are ethical guidelines that form the foundation of the traditional doctor–patient relationship in medicine. Health care providers are under special obligations to their patients. These include obligations to disclose information, to propose alternative treatments that allow patients to make decisions based on their own values, and to have special concern for patients’ best interests. Furthermore, patients know that these obligations exist and so come to their physicians with a significant level of trust. In this sense, therapeutic medicine significantly differs (...) from straightforward business practices such as the buying and selling of houses, cars, cell phones, etc. However, we argue that this relationship differs when medicine is used for enhancement rather than therapy. When patients seek enhancements they are not as vulnerable as when they are ill. And in an enhancement setting, physicians have little role outside of medical risks to discuss motivation and alternatives. Therefore, we conclude that a more reasonable alternative may be for doctors and patients to use ethical norms associated more with straightforward business practices, specifically sales. We believe that full disclosure of this different set of norms will benefit both physicians and patients. (shrink)

Over the past decade, a number of accounting and financial reporting frauds have led to lost stock wealth, destroyed public trust, and a worldwide recession that called for necessary reform. Regulatory responses and systemic reforms quickly followed, and we show that, while necessary, these reforms are insufficient. The purpose of this paper is to forward virtuous professionalism as a necessary path toward restoring financial reporting systems. We take the position of external observer and analyze the accounting profession over time to (...) assess what has transpired within our financial reporting systems. Our analysis reveals that the combined influence of commercialism and regulatory response has led to a systemic decline in accounting’s professional ideals and, as a result, an erosion of public trust. We then propose virtuous professionalism as a necessary process for restoring financial reporting systems based on sociological, professional, and philosophical theories. We argue that virtuous professionalism is necessary for restoring the public servant identity of the accounting professional. We conclude that efforts to restore financial reporting systems should begin with reforms that restore professional identity shaped by virtues. (shrink)

Explores the nonviolent philosophy and environmental activism of India’s Sunderlal Bahuguna.

Far from being unwelcome or impossible in a mathematical setting, indeterminacy in various forms can be seen as playing an important role in driving mathematical research forward by providing “sources of newness” in the sense of Hutter and Farías :434–449, 2017). I argue here that mathematical coincidences, phenomena recently under discussion in the philosophy of mathematics, are usefully seen as inducers of indeterminacy and as put to work in guiding mathematical research. I suggest that to call a pair of mathematical (...) facts a coincidence is roughly to suggest that the investigation of connections between these facts isn’t worthwhile. To say of this pair, “That’s no coincidence!” is to suggest just the opposite. I further argue that this perspective on mathematical coincidence, which pays special attention to what mathematical coincidences do, may provide us with a better view of what mathematical coincidences are than extant accounts. I close by reflecting on how understanding mathematical coincidences as generating indeterminacy accords with a conception of mathematical research as ultimately aiming to reduce indeterminacy and complexity to triviality as proposed in Rota Indiscrete thoughts, Birkhäuser, 1997). (shrink)

An essential resource for students of Wittgenstein, this collection contains faithful, in some cases expanded and corrected, versions of many important pieces never before available in a single volume, including Notes for the 'Philosophical Lecture', published here for the first time. Fifteen selections, with bi-lingual versions of those originally written in German, span the development of Wittgenstein's thought, his range of interests, and his methods of philosophical investigation. Short introductions, an index, and an updated version of Georg Henrik von Wright's (...) The Wittgenstein Papers situate the selections within the broader context of the Wittgenstein corpus and the history of its publication. (shrink)

Globalization is a part of modern life. Sharing a common set of professional nursing values is critical in this global environment. The purpose of this research was to examine the professional values of nursing students from two distinct cultural perspectives. Nurse educators in Taiwan partnered with nurse educators in the United States to compare professional values of their respective graduating nursing students. The American Nurses Association Code of Ethics served as the philosophical framework for this examination. The convenience sample comprised (...) 94 Taiwanese students and 168 US students. Both groups reported high scores on an overall measure of values. They did differ substantially on the relative importance of individual items related to advocacy, competence, education, self-evaluation, professional advancement, and professional associations. Global implications for the collaborative practice of nurses from different cultures working together can be improved by first recognizing and then attending to these differences in value priorities. (shrink)