This chapter contains sections titled: Preparing the Boat to Sail Casting Off Some Existentialist Reflections Cruising The Social Dimensions of Sailing “Hard a' Lee” or Coming About Sailing Close‐Hauled Noticing the “Presence of the Absence” (Heavy Sailing Ahead) The Broad Reach Practical Wisdom Capsizing Human Experience Returning to the Pier Pleasure, Elegance, and Truth Final Tasks.

Many prescriptions offered in the literature for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations raise ethical concerns, yet creativity researchers rarely discuss ethics. We identify four categories of behavior proffered as a means for fostering creativity that raise serious ethical issues: (1) breaking rules and standard operating procedures; (2) challenging authority and avoiding tradition; (3) creating conflict, competition and stress; and (4) taking risks. We discuss each category, briefly identifying research supporting these prescriptions for fostering creativity and then we delve into (...) ethical issues associated with engaging in the prescribed behavior. These four rubrics illustrate ethical issues that need to be incorporated into the creativity and innovation literature. Recommendations for how organizations can respond to the ethical issues are offered based on practices of exemplary organizations and theories of organizational ethics. A research agenda for empirically investigating the ethical impact these four categories of behavior have on organizations concludes the article. (shrink)

Nourishing the Inner Life of Clinicians and Humanitarians: The Ethical Turn in Psychoanalysis, demonstrates the demanding, clinical and humanitarian work that psychotherapists often undertake with fragile and devastated people, those degraded by violence and discrimination. In spite of this, Donna M. Orange argues that there is more to human nature than a relentlessly negative view. Drawing on psychoanalytic and philosophical resources, as well as stories from history and literature, she explores ethical narratives that ground hope in (...) class='Hi'>human goodness and shows how these voices, personal to each analyst, can become sources of courage, warning and support, of prophetic challenge and humility which can inform and guide their work. Over the course of a lifetime, the sources change, with new ones emerging into importance, others receding into the background. Donna Orange uses examples from ancient Rome, from twentieth century Europe, from South Africa, and from nineteenth century Russia. She shows how not only can their words and examples, like those of our personal mentors, inspire and warn us; but they also show us the daily discipline of spiritual self-care, although these examples rely heavily on the discipline of spiritual reading, other practitioners will find inspiration in music, visual arts, or elsewhere and replenish the resources regularly. Nourishing the Inner Life of Clinicians and Humanitarians will help psychoanalysts to develop a language with which to converse about ethics and the responsibility of the therapist/analyst. This is an exceptional contribution highly suitable for practitioners and students of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Donna M. Orange teaches, consults, and offers study groups for psychoanalysts and gestalt therapists. She seeks to integrate contemporary psychoanalysis with radically relational ethics. Recent books are _Thinking for Clinicians: Philosophical Resources for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Humanistic Psychotherapies _, and _The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice_, both from Routledge. (shrink)

Often a division of concepts can help us better understand unknown or seldom charted philosophical terrain: historically, the distinctions and differences between idealism and materialism have proven helpful, but with Quentin Meillassoux‟s concept of correlationism, the divisions between realism and anti realismwhich once seemed clean-cut are now harder to understand. Graham Harman has gone a step further than Meillassoux‟s initial definition of correlationism, by which “we mean the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between (...) thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other,”2claiming in lectures that those who have pledged fidelity to the realism banner after Meillassoux aren‟t realist enough.Instead, says Harman, we should demand that any philosophy which claims to be realist must grant that no entity is more real than any other, whether they be atoms, quarks, institutions, regimes, human beings, bonobos, dreams or distant galaxies. A robust realism must maintain therefore that the universe is composed of objects of all shapes, sizes and types. It is here that I wish to stage something of an intervention; it seems to me that we could rather create a new division to help us understand the contemporary situation facing philosophy based on how various philosophies view objects. I propose that we contrast those philosophies which see objects only working through exterior means with those which grant some level of autonomy to objects; in other words, we should compare those philosophies which grant only an outer life to objects withthose which also grant them an inner life. A robust realism must not only count objects as means of our causal ends , or billiard balls in an extended chain of causation . Rather, a full-blown realism must look to the inner lives of objectsto understand the cosmos and not simply satisfy itself with studying their effects.By making this distinction, we can see more clearly the relevance of a number offigures who have yet to be regarded with any seriousness by the emerging speculative realism movement, creating another metaphysical option besidesweak and strong correlationism, eliminative materialism or idealism, speculative materialism and object-oriented philosophy, as well as better understand thefuture of speculative metaphysics. (shrink)

With its roots in clinical and educational psychology, school psychology is an ever-changing field that encompasses a diversity of topics. The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology synthesizes the most vital and relevant literature in all of these areas, producing a state-of-the-art, authoritative resource for practitioners, researchers, and parents.Comprising chapters authored by the leading figures in school psychology, The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology focuses on the significant issues, new developments, and scientific findings that continue to change the practical landscape. The (...) handbook's focuses include:allegiance to the reciprocal relationship between science and practice to promote problem-solving and enrichment modelsservice delivery designed to improve competencies of all studentsthe relationship between general cognitive ability and important life outcomesthe development of viable and enduring educational, family, and community systems to support studentsincreasing student diversity and the necessity of increased sensitivity to the influences of social, cultural, political, and legislative variables of schoolingoutlining tenable reasons why, since the end of World War II, children from kindergarten through the secondary grades have generally not been the recipients of a superior or efficient educational systemall relevant legislation, including the No Child Left Behind Act, and the ongoing question of who or what is responsible for the inadequate academic preparation of inner-city childrenbuilding a cumulative knowledge base to better facilitate students' academic, social, and personal competencies including the promotion of positive mental health and subjective well-beingThe scholarship compiled here is a must-read for practitioners, students, and faculty, and an ideal resource for parents seeking a scientific approach to the efficacy of school psychology practices. In both breadth and depth, this handbook promises to serve as the benchmark reference work for years to come. (shrink)

We are born of the nothingness incomprehensible to each of us individuals and find death in the midst of the limitlessness. I have absolutely no idea why I am living here and now. I don’t know why the world is the way it is. I have been thrust into existence and am coldly surrounded by the limitless space. When humans cannot fully grasp the foundations of existence, we become encumbered by the feeling known as “fear.” I was a young boy (...) when I acquired that fear of death. (....) -/- The place where young people encounter “death” is in manga. In the last issue of Devilman, the creature was the very image of death, a disembodied torso. In the background angels are dancing on the sea. Also, in the final episode of Joe of Tomorrow, death lies in a ring. (shrink)

This contribution proposes to reflect on a different way of considering the link be-tween temporality and nature, between aiôn and physis, in dialogue with the words and works of the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone. The basic idea is the following: we will not be able to essentially determine our cognitive and experien-tial relationship with nature, until we are able to know, experience and represent the time inscribed in being itself. The philosophical tradition has developed its conception of temporality mainly along (...) two lines: a “cosmic” line, of a physical, objective temporality, and a “phenomenological” one, of a temporality as an in-ternal articulation of human consciousness. Through the archaeological and conceptual excavation carried out by Penone, we will ask ourselves what it does mean to take care of the “subjective time of things”. (shrink)

In joining a discussion of the subject, object, method, and other specifications of culturology, one should first define one's view of the correlation between culture and history, culturological and historical knowledge, the purposiveness of history as a social movement, and its certainty as a science. From the point of view of positivist philosophy and the social science based on it, history a priori lacks any teleology, goal-orientation, or inner meaning and is simply the sum of the collective life (...) of people. I would even risk defining the historical process as a dynamics of people's realization of the collective forms of their life activity and an accumulation of justified models of the corresponding social experience. In that case, historical knowledge can be defined as a special way of describing and systematizing the most socially significant processes and results of people's realization of their sociality, that is, technologies of collective existence. I draw attention to the fact that what we are talking about, first of all, is the way we-the interested people-have chosen to describe past events we had systematized in some way or another on some suitable basis. In itself, history is not a living entity and cannot have any independent goals, meanings, intentions, or other manifestations of free will, which are characteristic of a freely acting human individual. (shrink)

While the concept of Bildung has acquired international currency in educational and philosophical studies, its moral implications have been obscured by existing educational accounts. I present the moral implications inherent in the term through specific reference to the early works of Wilhelm von Humboldt. In contrast to previous scholarships, where Humboldt’s theory of Bildung has been deployed for drawing on the account of the true end of the human being and the inner process of interaction between the self (...) and the world, I draw on Bildung as a moral conception of promoting a good life for others. To illustrate this conception, I (a) demonstrate the basic structure of Humboldt’s theory of Bildung by examining its four core components, (b) reconstruct Humboldt’s notion of virtue balanced state of various faculties as a moral ideal (c) consider Humboldt’s philosophical historiography to illustrate how Bildung can be mediated at individual and collective levels, and (d) present the concrete forms of the obligation to promote the good lives of others in his anthropological writings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 47-54 [Access article in PDF] Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research*(A Recommended Manuscript) Adopted on 16 October 2001Revised on 20 August 2002 Ethics Committee of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, Shanghai 201203 Human embryonic stem cell (ES) research is a great project in the frontier of biomedical science for the twenty-first century. Be- cause (...) the research involves the use of human embryos, it triggers serious debate on ethical issues. Opponents consider the embryo to be an early form of human life that should be respected and not destroyed. However, the majority of scientists support embryonic stem cell research, believing that it offers good prospects for the treatment of diseases that have remained incurable until now and so will benefit humankind. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai seriously discussed the ethical debate initiated by embryonic stem cell research. We concluded that we should support the scientists of our country in actively carrying out human embryonic stem cell research for the noble cause of "medicine being a beneficent art." For the healthy and orderly development of human embryonic stem cell research in our country, we put forward the following recommended Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a reference for leaders, administrative departments, and related scientists. Preface Article 1. Human embryonic stem cells are the primitive cells that play the main role in the growth and development of a human body. These [End Page 47] primitive cells have the potential for infinite proliferation, self-renewal, and multi-directional differentiation. If scientists can discover the mechanism of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, it will be possible to induce differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to form various types of human cells for clinical cell therapy. If human embryonic stem cell research can be integrated with modern biomedical engineering techniques, it also will be possible to make repair and replacement of human tissues and organs a reality. Article 2. There are two ways to classify human embryonic stem cells. One way is to classify them according to their potential for differentiation. There could be three kinds of stem cells: totipotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and unipotent stem cells.A totipotent stem cell has the potential to develop into a whole individual. It can differentiate into the more than 200 cell types in the whole body, construct any tissue or organ of the body, and finally develop into a whole individual. The fertilized egg and the cleavage cells at the very early stage of embryonic development are totipotent stem cells.A pluripotent stem cell has the potential to differentiate into many cell types derived from the three embryonic layers. However, it has lost the capacity to develop into a complete organism.A unipotent stem cell is derived from the further differentiation of the pluripotent stem cell. It can differentiate only into one cell type such as a hematopoietic stem cell, neural stem cell, and others.The other way is to classify human stem cells according to their source. There could be two kinds of human stem cells: embryonic stem cells and tissue stem cells (also called adult stem cells). The former involves experimentation with embryos, which has serious ethical implications. Ethical issues associated with the latter are mainly expressed in the various opinions regarding the allocation of health resources. Article 3. Human embryonic stem cells are the group of cells called the blastocyst inner cell mass during the early stage of embryonic development. They are the main source of totipotent stem cells, and hence the focal and hot point in stem cell research. Studies on the clinical application of embryonic stem cells probably will involve use of the somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT) technique, which destroys the early human embryo. At present, the ethical and moral debate is very serious in human embryonic stem cell research regarding whether the research will develop... (shrink)

Pierre Hadot famously claimed that, between Antiquity and German Idealism, Western philosophy had lost its practical role of guiding the life of the practitioner. Scholars who challenged this view focused on two medieval models. This article argues that the overlooked work Colliget principiorum iuris naturalis, divini et humani philosophice doctrinalium by Heymericus de Campo postulates a third model. On the basis of St. Paul’s teaching about the “inner man,” Heymericus reconsiders the Aristotelian doctrines of abstraction and of being (...) as such in relation to the Neoplatonic model of intellectual progression and interior conversion. In a realist conceptual framework, he holds that only metaphysics reflects the true nature of the human being inasmuch as it presupposes a way of life that assumes both the interaction with and withdrawal from the sensible world. However, Heymericus’ theory is neither limited to nor conditioned by Christian principles, but by Peripatetic philosophy. (shrink)

Free will can be understood as a novel form of action control that evolved to meet the escalating demands of human social life, including moral action and pursuit of enlightened self-interest in a cultural context. That understanding is conducive to scientific research, which is reviewed here in support of four hypotheses. First, laypersons tend to believe in free will. Second, that belief has behavioral consequences, including increases in socially and culturally desirable acts. Third, laypersons can reliably distinguish free (...) actions from less free ones. Fourth, actions judged as free emerge from a distinctive set of inner processes, all of which share a common psychological and physiological signature. These inner processes include self-control, rational choice, planning, and initiative. (shrink)

A key to happiness lies in each person’s ability to know himself or herself. The consequences of going through life without self-knowledge are frequently self-obsession, false priorities, and unwarranted fears. This book explains the enlightening process of self-discovery and shows how it leads to self-sufficiency. The author offers guidance with inspiring true-life stories and practical advice that readers can apply to their own lives. Here is instruction on techniques for engaging in periods of solitude, with emphasis on making (...) such times enjoyable and spiritually enriching experiences. The author also discusses the relationships between solitude and human emotions, solitude and intelligence, methods of effective communication with others, and ways to create a state of mind that is based on self-sufficiency. Making solitude a source of spiritual enrichment entails creating a balance between the normal need for human relationships and the awareness of one’s self as an independent being. That balance invariably produces a sense of happiness and personal fulfillment. (shrink)

That the problem of the way of life has become a current issue should be linked primarily to two circumstances: the fact that socialist society has attained maturity, and the development of the modern revolution in science and technology. Viewing the category of people's way of life as an objective system of their human daily life activity makes it possible, in the first place, by pursuing the objective logic of the functioning of the entity, to picture (...) the individual and the social group in all the diversity of their life manifestations, i.e., in truly rounded form. Secondly, it makes it possible to significantly enrich theoretical judgments by means of concrete analysis of the actual conditions and forms of people's social conduct. A person's way of life may be defined most succinctly as the system of concrete conditions and forms of his ties to society. (shrink)

The poet’s words: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp” are not merely a command of what ought to be , they are a description of what is. Man has always been stretching himself beyond his own measure. He has a sense of the Infinite: Eternity has been set in his heart: he has not been content to look only on the things seen, his gaze has ever been towards the Unseen. Whatever stage of development he may have reached, he (...) seeks for, and strives after, what is above and beyond himself and his world. In science he tries to get behind the phenomenal reality as his senses apprehend it, to the noumenal , mind. In philosophy he endeavours to bring the multiplicity of his experience, outer and inner, into a unity that will evidence itself to his reason as coherent, and not contradictory. In morality he is not content with the customs and standards of the society of which he is a member; but conscious of their inadequacy, he conceives and aspires to realize an ideal adequate to his nature; his ought to be is always challenging his is . The impulse or motive of progress in all spheres of human interest and activity is “the best is yet to be.”. (shrink)

For the most of us, work is an entirely non-discretionary activity, an inescapable and irreducible fact of existence. According to E. F. Schumacher one of the darkest aspects of contemporary work life is the existence of an appalling number of men and women condemned to work which has no connection with their inner lives, no meaning for them whatever. Work for too many people is perceived as down-time, something that has to be done, but seldom adding to who (...) they are. And yet recent surveys indicate that 74% of the work force would chose to work even if they were not financially required to do so. Why?This paper contends that people want to work because they are intuitively aware that work, be it bad or good, helps to shape them. It gives them a sense of direction and allows them the opportunity for personal creativity and fulfillment. Work is the axis of human self-making. Work molds the person and work is the mark of a person. Satisfaction with life seems to be related to satisfaction with our work and the quality of our lives seems dependent on the quality of work that we do. (shrink)

First published in 1930, this book endeavours to trace and express the relations between economic and human values, between wealth and life. Hobson studies everything from the role of production processes and consumption in the determination of human welfare; to the changing attitudes of economic science towards ethical considerations; as well as the tendency of organised society to exercise a control of economic processes in the interests of equity, humanity, and social order. Part I of the book (...) deals with an attempt to provide an intelligible and consistent meaning for human value and welfare. Part II sketches the emergence of an economic science and its formal relations to ethics. Part III discusses the ethical significance of certain basic factors in the modern economic system, especially property and market processes. Part IV is addressed to the notion of industrial peace and progress in the light of modern humanism, with especial regard to the new problems emerging in a world becoming conscious of its widening unity. (shrink)

This book aims to enrich our understanding of the role the environment plays in processes of life and cognition, from the perspective of enactive cognitive science. Miguel A. Sepúlveda-Pedro offers an unprecedented interpretation of the central claims of the enactive approach to cognition, supported by contemporary works of ecological psychology and phenomenology. The enactive approach conceives cognition as sense-making, a phenomenon emerging from the organizational nature of the living body that evolves in human beings through sensorimotor, intercorporeal, and (...) linguistic interactions with the environment. From this standpoint, Sepúlveda-Pedro suggests incorporating three new theses into the theoretical body of the enactive approach: sense-making and cognition fundamentally consist of processes of norm development; the environment, cognitive agents actually interact with, is an active ecological field enacted in their historical past; and sense-making occurs in a domain consisting of multiple normative dimensions that the author names enactive place. (shrink)

Sixteen American college students spent a month in India with His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa. Together, they discussed topics ranging from food justice to gender identities to sustainable compassion. The Karmapa's teachings in this book are the product of those meetings. For those who wish to take up its challenge, this book can serve as a guide to being a friend to this planet and to all of us who share it. The Karmapa describes how to see the world as (...) a global community, in which people are linked by their shared concerns for humanity--and their wish to bring about real change. While acknowledging the magnitude of this undertaking, the Karmapa shows us how to go about it, using the inner resources we have already. (shrink)

That "The Classics of Western Spirituality" should regard the man Dante hailed as "beyond the human in contemplation," and St. Bonaventure believed to be the medieval rival of the greatest patristic contemplative worthy of a special volume is not surprising. Richard of St. Victor’s masterful analysis of the ascent of the mind to God in contemplative prayer and meditation, emphasizing the individual’s relationship to other individuals as the paradigm of how the Three Divine Persons are related in their (...) class='Hi'>inner life of love, is at the same time of psychological interest for anyone attempting to identify and classify the various mystical states medieval philosophers felt were necessary to characterize their spiritual growth. Since the bulk of the present translation is devoted to Richard’s two major attempts to systematize the discipline needed to attain contemplation, known more generally as Benjamin Minor and Benjamin Major, one might wonder why the work is being reviewed in the present journal. But while the major interest of this volume will undoubtedly be for those interested in ascetic theology, for the influence of Richard on subsequent writers from St. Bonaventure to St. Teresa of Avila is profound, nevertheless the relatively short third portion of the work is of sufficient philosophical importance to merit at least a brief note, namely bk. 3 of The Trinity. One would hardly expect a work of this sort to come from the pen of a mystic, for what Richard sets out to do is nothing short of a purely rational or metaphysical analysis of the "Athanasian Creed," which was recited almost daily by the Canons of the Abbey of St. Victor during the twelfth century. Because the inner nature and life of the Trinity, unlike creation or the salvation history of God’s intervention in the affairs of man, is a necessary consequence of what medieval thinkers believed God to be, rather than what he chose to do, Richard was convinced that with sufficient ingenuity one could theorize fruitfully as to why God must possess the various attributes we believe him to have and which are set forth in the aforesaid "creed," which stresses both the unity of God, the divine nature and all the divine attributes, while continually reminding its confessor of the trinity of "persons." In the Anselmian tradition of "faith seeking understanding" Richard seeks "necessary reasons" why God should not only be one but three. Most medieval thinkers have considered the trinitarian character of the divine nature to be the most profound of all the mysteries of the Christian faith. While reason may at best refute objections to a trinity of persons in one divine nature, it can hardly be expected to provide positive support for the doctrine. Richard, on the contrary, believed that St. Anselm had found the key to the "divine processions" in the fact that God is perfect love, with all that this implies. It is obvious the experience of "love" as an interpersonal sharing of the deepest kind, something St. Paul enjoined upon the Christians of the "Church of Corinth," is a far cry from what Sartre seemed to have reached in writing L'etre et néant or what that term connotes to our age, but it is not unknown to contemporary psychologists. Duns Scotus described the "perfect lover" in a Richardian sense as "Perfecte diligens vult dilectum condiligi!" It is especially in bk. 3 of The Trinity that Richard argues that a personal nature that is "summum bonum" must contain more than one person, and need contain no more than three. For the philosopher of religion interested in Richard’s metaphysical analysis of the Godhead, it would be profitable to preface the reading of Zinn’s fine translation of bk. 3 with the selections from bk. 1.—A.B.W. (shrink)

This article offers a reading of Eriugena’s thought that is inspired by Heidegger’s claim according to which being is constituted in a dialectical interplay of revelation and concealment. Beginning with an analysis of how “causality as concealing revelation” works on the level of God’s inner-Trinitarian life, the piece moves on to a consideration of the way in which the human soul reveals itself in successive stages of exteriorization that culminate in the creation of the body, its “image.” (...) The body, however, conceals as much as it reveals true human nature. Moreover, it is shown that for Eriugena all of reality, as theophany, possesses this character of concealing its fundamental truth. These insights lead Eriugena to a recognition of radical human finitude, as genuine wisdom requires an acknowledgement of our fundamental ignorance. (shrink)

The Inner Touch presents the archaeology of a single sense: the sense of being sentient. Aristotle was perhaps the first to define this faculty when in his treatise On the Soul he identified a sensory power, irreducible to the five senses, by which animals perceive that they are perceiving: the simple "sense," as he wrote, "that we are seeing and hearing." After him, thinkers returned, time and again, to define and redefine this curious sensation. The classical Greek and Roman (...) philosophers as well as the medieval Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin thinkers who followed them all investigated a power they called "the common sense," which one ancient author likened to "a kind of inner touch, by which we are able to grasp ourselves." Their many findings were not lost with the waning of the Middle Ages. From Montaigne and Francis Bacon to Locke, Leibniz, and Rousseau, from nineteenth-century psychiatry and neurology to Proust and Walter Benjamin, the writers and thinkers of the modern period have turned knowingly and unknowing to the terms of older traditions in exploring the perception that every sensitive being possesses of its life.The Inner Touch reconstructs and reconsiders the history of this perception. In twenty-five concise chapters that move freely among ancient, medieval, and modern cultures, Daniel Heller-Roazen investigates a set of exemplary phenomena that have played central roles in philosophical, literary, psychological, and medical accounts of the nature of animal existence. Here sensation and self-sensation, sleeping and waking, aesthetics and anesthetics, perception and apperception, animal nature and human nature, consciousness and unconsciousness, all acquire a new meaning.The Inner Touch proposes an original, elegant, and far-reaching philosophical inquiry into a problem that has never been more pressing: what it means to feel that one is alive.Winner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies. (shrink)

This is an 18,500 word bibliography of philosophical scholarship on Beauty which was published online in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The entry includes an Introduction of 800 words, 21 x 400-word sub-themes and 168 annotated references. INTRODUCTION Philosophical interest in beauty began with the earliest recorded philosophers. Beauty was deemed to be an essential ingredient in a good life and so what it was, where it was to be found and how it was to be included in a (...) class='Hi'>life were prime considerations. The way beauty has been conceived has been influenced by an author’s other philosophical commitments, metaphysical, epistemological and ethical and such commitments reflect the historical and cultural position of the author. For example, beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth to which we respond with love and adoration; beauty is a harmony of the soul which we achieve through cultivating feeling in a rational and tempered way; beauty is an idea raised in us by certain objective features of the world; beauty is a sentiment which can nonetheless be cultivated to be appropriate to its object; beauty is the object of a judgment by which we exercise the social, comparative and inter-subjective elements of cognition and so on. Such views on beauty not only reveal underlying philosophical commitments but also reflect positive contributions to understanding the nature of value and the relation of mind and world. One way to distinguish between beauty theories is according to the conception of the human being that they assume or imply, for example, where they fall on the continuum from determinism to free will, ungrounded notions of compatibilism notwithstanding. For example, theories at the latter end might carve out a sense of genuine innovation and creativity in human endeavours while at the other end of the spectrum authors may conceive of beauty as an environmental trigger for consumption, procreation or preservation in the interests of the individual. Treating beauty experiences as in some respect intentional, characterises beauty theory prior to the twentieth century and since, mainly in historically inspired writing on beauty. On the other hand, treating beauty as affect or sensation has always had its representatives and is most visible today in evolutionary inspired accounts of beauty (though not all evolutionary accounts fit this classification). Beauty theory falls under some combination of metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, aesthetics and psychology. While in the twentieth century beauty was more likely to be conceived as an evaluative concept for art, recent philosophical interest in beauty can again be seen to exercise arguments pertaining to metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, philosophy of meaning and language in addition to philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reconquest Colonialism and Andalusī Narrative Practice in the Conde LucanorDavid A Wacks (bio)In the tenth century, when Cordova was the richest and most populous city in Europe, and the Umayyad Caliphate was setting the standard for cultural florescence in the Islamic world, a group of Christian nobles in the rocky precincts of northernmost Spain sought to expand their territorial holdings southward, into al-Andalus. Their aim was to unseat Islamic (...) political power on the Iberian Peninsula, and they sought to authorize this project by discrediting Muslim leaders as the usurpers of lands to which the Christians were rightful heirs. In their view, Christian conquests of al-Andalus were the recuperation of lands that, in the eyes of God himself, belonged to them.Spanish culture as we know it today is the product of this medieval frontier society, in which Christians and Muslims—during a span of some 700 years—continuously negotiated a political border that was culturally quite porous. By the middle of the thirteenth century, Christian rulers had gained control of the large majority of the Iberian Peninsula, including the populous and important cities of Cordova and Seville in the south. The Christians who populated these newly conquered lands found themselves in close contact with a sizeable population of Andalusī Muslims (and Jews and Christians) who had remained. The conquering Christians were great consumers of Andalusī culture in general, especially arts and sciences, and even literature. At the same time, they viewed Islam, the dominant religion of al-Andalus, as a purely illegitimate basis for political power and social organization. If the official narrative of Reconquest argues for tidy cultural purity and conformity, the reality on the ground is, in contrast, a messy and emergent pluralism, one that resonates with early modern and modern colonial experiences.1While medievalists have been slower to embrace postcolonial theoretical approaches than their colleagues working on modern and contemporary texts, they have begun to adapt the ideas of thinkers such as Fanon, Memmi, Bhabha, Spivak, and others to medieval European perceptions of and experience in the East.2 However, it is curious [End Page 87] that Hispanists (with what may be the sole exception of David Hanlon) have completely avoided reading the Christian conquest of al-Andalus as a colonial project. Despite the substantial differences between medieval and modern colonialisms as regards political reality, public discourse, and the construction of subjectivity, one may safely argue that the Christian conquests of al-Andalus were a colonial endeavor, one of several studied by historians of medieval Europe.3 The case of medieval Christian Iberian colonialism was distinct from other medieval colonialisms (such as French and English crusading in the Middle East) in that it contributed fundamentally to the formation of a Spanish national identity, and served as a domestic proving ground for the conquest of Spanish territories in the Americas.Don Juan Manuel, author of the Conde Lucanor (1340) [CL],4 was the most powerful nobleman of his time. He held extensive lands in Murcia, which retained a far higher proportion of its preconquest Muslim population than did neighboring Castile and Leon [O’Callaghan, History 459]. While his military and political career depended on eradicating Islam from the Iberian Peninsula, he earned his literary renown—in part—by imitating and incorporating Andalusī narrative tradition and history into his own writings. In Juan Manuel’s adaptation of the frametale genre, the CL, this dissonance between the religious and political agendas of the Reconquest manifests in narrative. If the CL shows us the ideology of the Reconquest, it also offers the reader a reflection of the more complicated and nuanced reality of daily life and human behavior characteristic of Reconquest-era Castile-Leon [Linehan, “At the Spanish Frontier” 53]. In it, Juan Manuel distills the political realities, religious discourse, and cultural interaction of the time into the first original frametale in any European vernacular.5Juan Manuel’s religious agenda and frontier political philosophy come across quite clearly in the 50 exemplos of the CL. The idea of the Christian nobleman’s duty to wage war against Islam permeates the work, most starkly in these words of the Count’s advisor Patronio: “... Dios vos poblo... (shrink)

Today, there are different understandings of the first article on the content of the Christian faith, for which an analysis from a theological perspective is necessary. This research sought to reveal the meaning of the first article on the content of the Christian faith in recent theological works that have been produced, through the use of a hermeneutic exercise, conducting a bibliometric and categorical analysis and using NVivo software to analyse the qualitative data. We concluded that the recent theological literature (...) addresses the meaning of the first article of the Christian faith based on the existence, concept and definition of God and his attributes, as well as his power, behaviour, creation, revelation and reign. Although there is little extant material compared to other topics or areas of knowledge that can be explored using these tools, this fact is explained because, normally, theologians are not interested in publishing in high-impact journals. The way of approaching God in contemporary literature can be enriched by taking into account specific contexts, such as poverty, discrimination, suffering, violence, human trafficking, immigration and political realities, in such a way that it is not only a metaphysical reflection of God but also a historical and immanent and even an interreligious research that broadens the concept of the Christian God and answers questions that contemporary society asks in daily life. (shrink)

Humankind is concerned with scientific enquiry because humans want to understand the milieu in which they find themselves. They want to engineer and reliably control or cooperatively modulate as much of the environment as possible to sustain, enrich, and propagate their lives. Following this path, the goal of science is to gain a reliable description of all natural phenomena so as to allow accurate prediction (within appropriate limits) of nature’s behavior as a function of an ever-changing environment. As such, science (...) is incapable of providing us with absolute truth. Rather, it provides relative knowledge, internally self-consistent knowledge, about the relationships between different phenomena and between different things. The goal of engineering, on the other hand, is to build on this fundamental understanding to generate new materials, devices, structures, attitudes, moralities, philosophies, and so on, for producing tangible order, harnessing the latent potential in nature’s phenomena and expanding human capabilities in an ever-changing environment. In this context, medicine is to human biology as engineering is to physical science. As each of us rides the “river of life,” the great consciousness adventure, we perceive events occurring around us, but more often than not, we do not perceive the total information content inherent in those events nor the true reality of those events. The latter point is so because what we take as the reality of an observation is actually a convolution between (1) what our sensory system actually senses and (2) our mindset or belief structure that filters and/or selectively amplifies segments of the basic gathered data stream. Further, only what we call the five physical senses are well-developed and integrated in our overall sensory system, so only a portion of the total available data becomes our basic internal data stream. We are thus always making personal observations through the distorting and spectrally-limited lens of our mindsets, and we have no way at present to perform a deconvolution and perceive the pure information inherent in our basic input data stream. By using designed instruments to access information patterns in nature, we gain a more objective perspective of these events. However, we must always remember that these instruments were designed on the basis of the logic of our average cognitive development and therefore probably also have only a limited access to the total information spectrum for these events occurring in nature. In particular, these instruments only respond to positive energies. Over the course of the past four to five centuries, we have learned how to conduct true scientific investigations, first under the rubric of classical mechanics and, more recently, quantum mechanics. Let us now look a little more deeply to see what this means. (shrink)

This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to (...) sailing and the profound lessons it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Teaching Aesthetics and Aesthetic Teaching:Toward a Deweyan PerspectiveDavid A. Granger (bio)The educational writings of John Dewey continue to be invoked by scholars in education on a regular basis and in relation to a wide variety of issues, from social learning theory and situated cognition to constructivism and whole-language literacy instruction. More recently, this scholarship has begun to expand to include books and essays that look to tie Dewey's aesthetics (...) to his work in education in a substantive way. Notably, this is not something that Dewey attempted himself, since his major work in aesthetics, Art as Experience, was not published until he was seventy-five, and he seemingly had neither the time nor means at that point in his life to develop this link to his satisfaction. In addition, many educators are only familiar with Dewey's more explicitly educational writings, most of which came earlier in his career and tend to speak more of the merits of science than of art. As a result, scholars in education have only recently begun to examine the possible significance of Dewey's aesthetics for the practices of teaching and learning.1It is still the case, however, that writers on Dewey have traditionally focused their critical energies on his expansive claims for "the method of science" as a vehicle for solving numerous educational and social problems, and as the only authentic means of learning about our everyday world. Such critical attention is not, I believe, without warrant; though Dewey's use of "science" was a very loose and liberal one, he was a staunch critic of the positivistic model of science often presumed by these writers. Nonetheless, this critical focus has unfortunately led many writers to dismiss or marginalize the Dewey who, for instance, proclaims in "Art in Education—and Education in Art" that theModern preoccupation with science and with industry based on science has been disastrous; our education has followed the model that [End Page 45] they have set. It has been concerned with intellectual analysis and formularized information.... It is disastrous because it has fixed attention upon competition for control and possession of a fixed environment rather than upon what art can do to create an environment.... It is disastrous because civilization built upon these principles cannot supply the demand of the soul for joy, or freshness of experience; only attention through art to the vivid but transient values of things can effect such refreshment.2As Dewey sees it, science and other forms of knowledge are properly "handmaidens" to art, intellectual tools for enhancing the overall quality and value of human life and activity.3 This means that they are largely subordinate to the direct qualitative meaning of experience. They are, Dewey says, transformed in aesthetic experience in that they are "merged with non-intellectual elements to form an experience worth while as an experience."4 Art objects may well be the most potent and ready source of such enhanced, aesthetic experience, being intentionally created to refine and intensify in certain ways the experience of the perceiver. But they are not, to Dewey's way of thinking, the sole or even principal medium of the aesthetic. Art, he tells us, is best seen more liberally as "a quality that permeates an experience," whereby, in any number of life contexts, the meanings of objects and events become "the matter of a clarified, coherent, and intensified or 'impassioned' experience" (AE, 329, 295). If all of this can be taken to mean that art or the aesthetic, and not science, is paradigmatic of optimal human experience, then current efforts to integrate Dewey's aesthetics with his thinking about education are an important endeavor and one that should bear considerable fruit. Then, too, much of the popular literature in art and aesthetic education, which situates art and the aesthetic squarely within the cognitive domain of experience, is significantly at odds with Dewey's radically holistic and vigorously anti-elitist aesthetics.5Accordingly, this article will explore the idea of aesthetic education—conceived in its broadest sense—using a mainly Deweyan lens. Moreover, it will do so by examining everyday classroom practices as they are informed by the general... (shrink)

For philosophers familiar with the traditional interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir as a literary writer and philosophical follower of Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s 1926-27 student diary is a revelation. Inviting an exploration of Beauvoir’s early philosophy foreclosed by the traditional interpretation, the student diary reveals Beauvoir’s early dedication to becoming a philosopher and her early formulation of philosophical problems and positions usually attributed to Sartre’s influence, such as the central problem of “the opposition of self and other,” years before she first (...) met Sartre in 1929.… Reading the student diary within a larger historical context, we discover that it reflects Beauvoir’s experience as one of the first generation of French women to gain full access to the academic world of philosophy, an experience that problematizes her identity as a woman. The diary shows Beauvoir struggling to accommodate herself to the male world of philosophy while striving to make philosophy her own. For Beauvoir this means following Henri Bergson in rejecting a philosophy that engages only the abstract intelligence. Defining her own unique literary philosophical methodology, Beauvoir vows to create a philosophy that is able, like literature, to encompass emotion as well as reason. This creative process begins in her diary where Beauvoir describes the concrete realities of her own lived experience. Searching for a sense of self in the “nothingness of everything human,” Beauvoir grapples with the existential problem of despair and the temptations of bad faith. Celebrating her newly found freedom and academic achievements, Beauvoir still struggles with the masochistic asceticism of her Catholic upbringing and longs for love, fearing a solitary future bereft of the comforts of woman’s traditional role. Beauvoir’s student diary thus allows us to trace the development of her early philosophy within the context of her life, while providing as well an intimate view of an academic world in transformation…. When the diary opens, with an entry dated August 6, 1926 Beauvoir is grappling with a central problem of her early life and philosophy, the conflicting moral obligations to self and others. Recounting a pilgrimage to Lourdes with an aunt, Beauvoir recalls feeling “ashamed” when faced with the physical suffering of the invalids: “[O]nly a life which was a complete gift of oneself, a total self-abnegation seemed possible to me.” But then, anticipating her critique of self-abnegation in The Second Sex, Beauvoir rejects it, describing the “absolute gift” as “moral suicide.” She vows, instead, to achieve an “equilibrium” between the duty to self and the duty to others. In the August 12, 1926 diary entry, Beauvoir frames the problem in metaphysical terms, referring to one part of herself “made to be given away,” and another “made to be kept and cultivated.” Later, in the November 5, 1926 entry, Beauvoir returns to the problem, writing that she split her “existence into two parts”: one part “for myself” and the other part “for others,” that is “the bonds that unite me with all beings.” Beauvoir’s 1926 description of existence “for myself” and “for others” lays the ground for her later philosophical work on the problem of the Other, as in her 1943 metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay, where the main female protagonist struggles to reclaim an existence for herself instead of existing solely for others, and in The Second Sex (1949) where Beauvoir argues that women are forced to assume themselves not as they exist for themselves but solely as they exist for men, thus as the absolute Other. During the course of the 1926 diary, Beauvoir’s efforts to reconcile these two “parts” of her existence are complicated by various influences, including her reading of Henri Bergson, the leading French philosopher of the early twentieth century. Beauvoir quotes at length in her 1926 diary from Bergson’s Essay on the immediate data of consciousness, which she describes, on August 16, as “a great intellectual rapture.” This diary entry may surprise those who remember the reference to Bergson in Beauvoir’s Memoirs: “I would not have been at all pleased if someone had prophesized that I would become a kind of Bergson; I didn’t want to speak with that abstract voice which, whenever I heard it, failed to move me” (MJFR 288). In this case as in so many others, Beauvoir’s diaries present a very different picture. In the August 16 diary entry, Beauvoir is critical of Bergson’s “impersonal” philosophical voice. But she lauds his methodological “appeal to intuition," which brings philosophy in contact with the « palpable reality » of life, as more characteristic of literature than philosophy. Beauvoir quotes Bergson’s celebration of the « bold novelist » able to tear aside « the cleverly woven web of our conventional self, » and reveal the « fundamental absurdity » of impressions underneath. « Nobody has better than he … defined the art of the modern novelist » Beauvoir writes, suggesting Bergson’s influence on Beauvoir’s developing literary philosophical method. Beauvoir writes, in the August 16 entry, that she is “thrilled” by Bergson’s “analysis of the two aspects of the self,” the authentic inner self and the external social self. For Bergson, unlike Beauvoir who is concerned with serving others as well as the self, our responsibility is wholly to the self and its freedom, which we discover only by breaking through the superficial “crust” of the social self. If his ethic of individual freedom complicated Beauvoir’s search for an ethical “equilibrium,” Bergson’s methodological turn to intuition and rejection of philosophy’s sole reliance on reason might have appealed to a young women trying to enter the male world of philosophy and make it her own…. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers (...) to those texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)

_The purpose _of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation works by Ukrainian scholar Taras Zakydalsky on the philosophy of Hryhorii Skovoroda. Taras Zakydalsky is a representative of the Ukrainian diaspora, philosopher, and member of Canadian NTSh (Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada). _Theoretical basis._ We consider the uniqueness of H. Skovoroda’s philosophy, which stimulates not only intellectually but also spiritually enlightens the reader. The reasons for the complex perception and interpretation of Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophy are highlighted. We have verified (...) the main methods of its interpretation given in the works by Dmytro Chyzhevskyi. The influence of philosophical thought of thinkers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Aristotle, Epicurus, the Church Fathers, and Tertullian has been studied. We have comprehended H. Skovoroda’s interpretation of the Bible as a two-layer existence, the symbolic world that makes the foundation of his philosophy. The peculiarity of the thinker’s division of the heart into "internal" and "external" is analyzed. Hryhorii Skovoroda’s position on the Good and the evil is stated. The Good is identified with God, and the evil – with the real world, the man can choose between the two. Much attention is paid to the understanding of man as a microcosm – rational thinking, and thought is the fundamental cause of human activity, which generates all existence. Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophy of metaphysics as the existence of three worlds is highlighted: the first is the macrocosm (the whole surrounding world), the second is the microcosm (the man), and the third is the symbolic world (the Bible). "Monodualism" as a characteristic feature of H. Skovoroda’s work is analyzed. We have highlighted H. Skovoroda’s attitude to the transcendence of God, which is not separated from the world but is present in it directly. The understanding of faith as a forced act of self-love is analyzed because by loving ourselves we love God. The criteria for true and false faith have been clarified. The significance of H. Skovoroda’s aphorism that _what is necessary is useful, and not useful is unnecessary_ is considered. Examples of ethical principles in H. Skovoroda’s philosophy are considered. Peculiarities of the concept HAPPINESS are revealed. This concept is a universal means of existence of the Good, its source is gratitude to God. _Originality_ of the article is in the systematic presentation of the philosophy of the heart by Hryhorii Skovoroda and the analysis of the integrity of the "inner man", the true meaning of life as interpreted by Taras Zakydalsky. _Conclusions_ summarize the "anthropological pragmatism" of the philosopher, whose main idea is to apply practical skills for the benefit of society. (shrink)

The figure of Martin Buber emerges very clearly from this little book as that of a modern Hebrew prophet in revolt “against the complacent satisfaction of the sciences, against the triumph of relativism in the social, scientific and humanistic disciplines”, turning for inspiration to the mediaeval mystics of the West and to Hasidism, and preaching a way of life rather than a systematic body of doctrine. As such, he is more a philosophical anthropologist than a philosopher; he is preoccupied (...) with the central problem of the redemption of creation and of man, in relation to God Who is present and reveals Himself in them. His key-concept seems to be that of “meeting,” the intimate encounter, implying love, understanding and surrender, in which creation and man are not just used, treated as object, but reached in their intimate being as subject by subject. Fully to adopt such an attitude implies an inner conversion, but not a withdrawal, in any mystic isolation, from life; it leads to sanctifying self and creation through communion and community in the stream of life, and allows God to enter the world as an active force and, in Buber’s language, to fulfil Himself in otherness. Not that God needs man, but rather that He desires that redemption be achieved with man’s co-operation. In describing the dialogue between God and man, Buber makes use of some Christian teaching, but he remains essentially a Hebrew prophet bearing witness to the mystery of the Holy, striving to further that human community in which the Holy may be realized, and God made once more efficaciously present to the world. One could hardly ask for a clearer portrait of Buber, nor a more succinct presentation of his leading ideas, than those given us by Mr. Cohen; and the reader who wishes to know more about this remarkable man, whom Reinhold Niebuhr has called “perhaps the greatest living Jewish philosopher,” will be helped by the biographical notes and selected bibliography at the end of the book. (shrink)

This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to (...) sailing and the profound lessons it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike. (shrink)

In her paper Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche’s Stoicism, Martha Nussbaum argues that Nietzsche’s philosophical project can be seen in part as an attempt to ‘bring about a revival of Stoic values of self-command and self-transformation’. She argues that, to his detriment, Nietzsche’s ‘Sovereign Individual’ epitomises a kind of stoic ideal of inner strength and self-sufficiency that ‘goes beyond Stoicism’ in its valorisation of radical self emancipation from the contingencies of life and from our own human vulnerability. Nussbaum (...) thus urges us to question whether the picture of strength in Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual is really a picture of human strength at which we would be willing to, or at which we ought to, aim. In this paper I take up Nussbaum’s challenge, arguing that Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual is both less stoical and provides us with a far more attractive picture of personhood than Nussbaum suggests. (shrink)

There is a dire need today to create spaces in which people can make meaning of their existence in the world, abiding by cultural frameworks and practices that acknowledge and validate a meaningful existence for all. People are not just isolated individuals but are connected in diverse ways with other persons within our natural and social environment which is part of the whole universe. The African philosophy of uBuntu or humaneness is re-emerging for its timely relevance and potential as indispensable (...) in our quest for global citizenship, peace, and mutual understanding in securing sustainable human development in the broader ecosystem. Comparative educationists have the challenge to devise theoretical frameworks, epistemological and pedagogical constructs as well as pragmatic, useful and effective ways of promoting the virtues of compassion and recognition of our common humanity in eliminating the ills of domination and control that are guided by greed, hatred, jealousy, and intolerance. Comparative Education for Global Citizenship, Peace and Shared Living through Ubuntu paves the way for a better understanding of the critical importance of the collective search and endeavor towards achieving the virtues of nonviolence, peace, shared values of living together, global citizenship, improved quality of life for all and a better appreciation of the positive implications of interdependence. (shrink)

George Santayana (1863–1952) believed that a philosophy of orthodox common sense exists beneath all major systems of philosophy and religion. This philosophy is a form of naturalism. It begins with the assumption that we are animals generated by and sustained for a time within a vast impersonal physical cosmos that is the sole source of power. Although rational argumentation cannot justify this assumption, our actions repeatedly confirm it, and we could not live without it. Another central feature of Santayana’s philosophy (...) of naturalism is that we are conscious as well as active animals. The inner light of awareness, or what he calls “spirit,” arises by the activities of the physical body but is itself powerless. Our experience of the world is rendered in the morally charged signs of human cognition, and these may be aesthetically appreciated for their own sake in imagination, granting us the possibility of contemplative respite from the exigencies of life. Santayana’s philosophy is atheistic and holds out no religious hope of redemption. Still, it is celebratory of the life of consciousness and offers a path toward naturalistic spirituality. (shrink)

Think of a secret that you're keeping from others. It shouldn't take long; behavioral scientist Michael Slepian finds that on average, we are keeping as many as thirteen secrets at any given time. His research involving more than 50,000 participants from around the globe shows that the most common secrets include: lies we've told, addiction or mental health challenges, a hidden relationship, financial struggles, and more. Our secrets can weigh heavily upon us. Yet the burden of secrecy, Slepian argues, rarely (...) stems from the work it takes to keep a secret hidden. Rather, secrets are something we must "carry" because we do so alone, without the support of others. Whether we are motivated to protect our reputation, a relationship, or a loved one's feelings, or are pursuing some personal or professional goal, one thing is clear: holding back some part of our inner world is often lonely and isolating. But it doesn't have to be. Filled with fresh insight into one of the most universal-yet least understood-aspects of human behavior, The Secret Life of Secrets sheds a fascinating new light on questions like: At what age do children develop the cognitive capacity for secrecy? Do all secrets come with the same mental load? How can we reconcile our secrets with the human desire to relate, connect, and be known? When should we confess our secrets? Who makes for the ideal confidant? And can certain types of secrets actually enhance our well-being? (shrink)

A textbook of formal logic which uses a semantical method to present logic to the student as an integral part of life and philosophy--in this case, moderate realism. The authors greatly enrich the traditional treatment of signs, terms, propositions, syllogisms and inductive arguments with discussions of recent developments in logic.--J. J. C.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 135-137 [Access article in PDF] The 2002 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Alice Keefe University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point "Religious Responses to Violence" was the theme for the program at the SBCS Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, on November 22-23, 2002. Speaking from Christian and Jewish perspectives, the presenters in Session I were Harold Kasimow, Professor Emeritus of Grinnell College; Elaine MacInnes, O.L.M.; Sarah (...) Pinnock of Trinity University; and Rebekah Miles from the Perkins School of Theology. Responding from a Buddhist perspective was Virginia Strauss of the Boston Research Center. Session II offered reflections on Buddhist responses to violence from Gene Reeves of the International Buddhist Congregation; Christopher Ives of Stonehill College; and John Makransky, professor of Religious Studies at Boston College and a Buddhist teacher, with a Christian response from Theodore Walker of Perkins School of Theology, noted for his work in Black theology.Opening Session I, Harold Kasimow explored Jewish responses to violence, which he finds similar in many ways to responses to violence in Mahayana Buddhism. Both traditions unequivocally condemn violence. Basic to Jewish reflection on violence is the great commandment that one shall love one's neighbor as oneself, along with the principle that all humans are created in the image of God; therefore, as Rabbi Akiva taught, whoever sheds blood diminishes God's presence in the world. But like Mahayana Buddhism, the Jewish tradition admits to rare cases where violence may be legitimately used in a spirit of compassion when the lives of others are at stake. On this point, Kasimow, himself a Holocaust survivor, cited Abraham Heschel, who said that "indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself." Heschel dreamed of a world rid of evil by human effort, and he suggested that interfaith dialogue serves as a step toward this goal as it works against the evil of demonizing the "other."Sarah Pinnock, who has written on the religious journeys of Holocaust survivors, explored the themes of memory, solidarity, hope, and mystical faith as compelling Christian modes of survival and resistance in the face of evil. Logic cannot solve the problem of evil, but through memory, suffering is not forgotten; through solidarity, we identify and join with the victimized in resistance to evil; and through hope, we find the energy for resistance. Mystical faith discovers divine transcendence in all things, while abandoning egotistical demands that God be the world's puppet master; [End Page 135] in mystical faith, Christians do not look for divine intervention, but for human beings to act for God against evil.Rebekah Miles, a Christian ethicist, offered a lucid outline of three distinct Christian approaches to violence: (1) absolute pacificism, which rejects the use of violence for any reason; (2) the "crusade" perspective, which justifies war when it can be construed as a conflict between good and evil and which calls for the total eradication of evil in the form of the enemy; and (3) the "just war" perspective, which stipulates precise criteria for instances when the use of violence may be justified and places restraints on any exercise of violence. In addition to this helpful overview, she engaged arguments (put forth by Rosemary Ruether, SharonWelch, and ReginaSchwartz) that there is something inherent in the nature of Western monotheism that serves to legitimate and encourage violence, and argued for divine transcendence as undergirding the effective power of the prophetic critique against all forms of idolatry and tyranny.The final Christian presenter was Elaine MacInnes, O.L.M., a Catholic nun and Zen master who is noted for her activist work in prison ministry in the Philippines and in Canada. She reminded us that even as violence brings suffering, it is at the same time a mystery in that it carries a redeeming potential to rid us of all that is false. It is the cultivation of silence that allows the sacred inner life to do its work.Responding from a Buddhist perspective, Virginia Strauss returned to the problem of the human desire for retributory justice and looked to Buddhism... (shrink)

What is happiness? Does life have a meaning? If so, is that meaning available in an ordinary life? The philosopher Zena Hitz confronted these questions head-on when she spent several years living in a Christian religious community. Religious life -- the communal life chosen by monks, nuns, friars, and hermits -- has been a part of global Christianity since earliest times, but many of us struggle to understand what could drive a person to renounce wealth, sex, (...) children, and ambition to live a life of prayer and sacrifice. Hitz's lively and accessible book explores questions about faith, sacrifice, asceticism and happiness through philosophy, stories, and examples from religious life. Drawing on personal experience as well as film, literature, history, biography, and theology, it demystifies an important element of contemporary culture, and provides a picture of human flourishing and happiness which challenges and enriches modern-day life. (shrink)

On the ethics of extending human life: healthy people have a right to carry on livingHumanity has long demonstrated a paradoxical ambivalence concerning the extension of a healthy human lifespan. Modest health extension has been universally sought, whereas extreme health extension has been regarded as a snare and delusion—a dream beyond all others at first blush, but actually something we are better off without. The prevailing pace of biotechnological progress is bringing ever closer the day when humanity (...) will be able to act on the latter view by rejecting a clear and present opportunity for much longer healthy lives. Indeed, some biogerontologists contend that that day has already arrived, to the extent that our hesitation in embarking on a vigorous “war on ageing” is already delaying the point at which a cure for ageing will be developed. Here I consider whether our present caution concerning the wisdom of truly curing ageing is likely to survive the increased scrutiny that it will receive in coming years as a result of these technical advances. I conclude that it will not, because of its irreconcilability with values that are more deeply held by the large majority of humanity than any values that argue against the quest for a cure. I further conclude that all the major current reasons given for not curing ageing are mere crutches to help us cope with the immutability of ageing that we have been brought up to accept. Our failure to set aside such irrationality is already shortening potential longevity—quite probably of those already alive today—to a staggering degree. Once we realise this, our determination to consign human ageing to history will be second …. (shrink)

This volume reveals the wisdom we can learn from sailing, a sport that pits human skills against the elements, tests the mettle and is a rich source of valuable lessons in life. Unravels the philosophical mysteries behind one of the oldest organized human activities Features contributions from philosophers and academics as well as from sailors themselves Enriches appreciation of the sport by probing its meaning and value Brings to life the many applications of philosophy to (...) sailing and the profound lessons it can teach us A thought-provoking read for sailors and philosophers alike. (shrink)

In response to Timaeus’ invocation of the gods at Timaeus 27c1-d4, Proclus discusses, in his commentary on the text, the value of prayer. Heralding the fact that prayer marks the soul’s epistrophe or return to its causative principle, Proclus proceeds to exonerate those who invoke and pray to the gods, arguing that prayer enacts the emergence of human freedom in the determined world. He argues that since the gods are not only our superior causes but also the ones who (...) have wisely granted self-motion to human souls, we possess the freedom to acknowledge the role of providence or to remain, as Proclus describes, entrapped in the realm of Fate. In other words, human beings must decide (boulesis) to become what they are in the simple act of revering the gods, i.e. reverting to or knowing their divine cause. To pray is not to ask for things to be otherwise, but to pray is to fulfill providence freely, to become self-moved and self-knowing, therein becoming like and returning to our divine origins. Proclus concludes that this is the peculiar form of prayer for the philosopher as the philosophical life is dependent upon our will and the decisive commitment to articulating and communing with the highest metaphysical principles. Accordingly, for Proclus, Timaeus, in illustrating the order and providential nature of things in his “likely story,” frees himself from the trappings of fate, praying decisively and silently throughout his entire endeavor. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ernst Cassirer, Historian of the WillDavid A. Wisner‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper, which must form a Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ‘tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and a Resolution which must compleate the real Philosopher. 1In order to possess the world of culture we must incessantly reconquer it by historical recollection. But recollection does not mean merely the act of reproduction. It is (...) a new intellectual synthesis—a constructive act.... History is not knowledge of external facts or events; it is a form... an organon of our self-knowledge, an indispensable instrument for building up our human universe. 2Ernst Cassirer is probably best known to historians of ideas for his work on the problem of knowledge, which began with a neo-Kantian historical analysis of epistemological questions and culminated in the philosophy of symbolic forms. As he himself always admitted, even in his last public writings, this focus on epistemology was the foundation of his philosophical interests. Yet by the last two decades of his life he had in true Socratic fashion endowed his investigations with heightened emphasis. “That self-knowledge is the highest aim of philosophical inquiry,” he wrote in the opening lines of An Essay on Man, “appears to be generally acknowledged.” 3 Cassirer perceived, however, [End Page 145] that the need for such an effort to be made had reached monumentally critical proportions: the early twentieth century had engendered grave historical and philosophical crises which threatened to reverse the progress of modern thought. Paradoxically, modern philosophy had many tools for attaining “knowledge of human nature” and yet stood farther from its goal than ever before. What Cassirer called “anthropological philosophy,” concerned as it was “with the whole destiny of man,” still required special consideration, in both its theoretical and its historical dimensions. 4 It was essentially to these twin domains that Cassirer would devote himself in his later years.The transformation of Cassirer’s philosophical perspectives thus had two facets. In order to outline his program Cassirer had first to consider a broader range of human activities than thought alone, from which he concluded that human culture consisted of a hierarchy of symbolic forms beginning with myth and culminating in science. However, he also felt compelled to elucidate the historical process by which these symbolic forms could progressively manifest themselves, and more specifically the individual human effort which was required for true self-knowledge. This he did principally in his historical works of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and with particularly profound results: from a historian of knowledge Cassirer became a historian of the will; from an epistemologist he became an ethical thinker; from an academic he became an exemplar of self-conscious moral action, a paragon of human autonomy and freedom. Indeed, in this endeavor he proved to be more thoroughly and fundamentally a Kantian than ever his theory of knowledge would reveal.I would go so far as to suggest that Cassirer’s history of the will was an integral part of his mature constructive philosophy. On the surface this history can be restated in the following terms. First, Cassirer insists on a fundamental opposition between the rationalism and intellectualism of ancient Greek philosophy and the voluntarism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, both of which represent in Cassirer’s view manifestations of a struggle in Western thought continuing well into the twentieth century. Second, he suggests that the historical task of Western philosophy since the first mature articulation of Latin Christian theology by Saint Augustine has been to liberate the individual human will from any and all forms of subservience. Such views are most forcefully expressed in The Myth of the State, Cassirer’s last book, but they actually constitute an essential and coherent element in all of Cassirer’s later work on the history of ideas and culture. Indeed, Cassirer’s history of the will provides us with a particularly keen and nuanced account of this essential Western legacy, while at the same time reading into it in Kantian manner a moral for the life of the individual human being. [End Page 146]In making such claims I am situating myself among... (shrink)

This paper is an inspired address by the author to engage in a momentous battle for character and human values in life and worklife. The keynote of the author's exposition on values-centred manage ment is the concept of dharma. Here the Indian ideal of dharma is compared to and contrasted with the Western notion of integrity. While integrity is based on the human virtues of wholeness, goodness and having the courage and self-discipline to live by the (...) class='Hi'>inner truth, dharma gives a radically different orientation to any human endeavour by upholding the notions of spirit, rightness, and fearlessness. There is also a distinction between individual dharma and organizational dharma, which the author defines as the organization's inner law. In the concluding part of the paper, the author crystallizes the wisdom contained in the Bhagavad Gita and asserts that hidden away in our inner nature is the law, the writ of our life that enables us to transcend the purposelessness of pomp, power, property and pedigree towards a more meaningful human existence. (shrink)

Conventional ethics of how humans should eat often ignore that human life is itself a form of organic activity. Using Henri Bergson’s notions of intellect and intuition, this chapter brings a wider perspective of the human organism to the ethical question of how humans appropriate life for nutriment. The intellect’s tendency to instrumentalize living things as though they were inert seems to subtend the moral failures evident in practices such as industrial animal agriculture. Using the case (...) study of Temple Grandin’s sympathetic cattle technologies, this chapter moves beyond animal welfare concerns to ground food ethics on the phenomenal character of food that is obscured by human activities of fabrication. (shrink)

Dupré argues that at the center of the cultural crisis of our time is an objectivist attitude, an attitude which results in thinking of human existence using models appropriate to objects with the result that transcendence is lost and man is thought of as a thing to be manipulated. However, a mere retreat into subjectivity is not the answer to this crisis. What is needed is reflection on the subject itself in order to give it a content of its (...) own, and Dupré suggests that a key to this kind of reflection is given in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. It is within the temporality and historicity of the being of man that man discovers his transcending of objectivist states and an openness to the divine, understood as other than an ultimate object separated from the self and opposed to it. Dupré’s brief and provocative book is primarily a series of reflections on the inner life of human existence, guided by critical reflection on the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in which he believes the inner transcendence of the self to have been articulated. It is the passive open character of man to which Dupré invites our particular attention, not the objectifying manipulating character, which is reflected prominently in our technological age. (shrink)

In the twenty-first century, the debate about life on other worlds is quickly changing from the realm of speculation to the domain of hard science. Within a few years, as a consequence of the rapid discovery by astronomers of planets around other stars, astronomers very likely will have discovered clear evidence of life beyond the Earth. Such a discovery of extraterrestrial life will change everything. Knowing the answer as to whether humanity has company in the universe will (...) trigger one of the greatest intellectual revolutions in history, not the least of which will be a challenge for at least some terrestrial religions. Which religions will handle the discovery of extraterrestrial life with ease and which will struggle to assimilate this new knowledge about our place in the universe? Some religions as currently practiced appear to only be viable on Earth. Other religions could be practiced on distant worlds but nevertheless identify both Earth as a place and humankind as a species of singular spiritual religious importance, while some religions could be practiced equally well anywhere in the universe by any sentient beings. Weintraub guides readers on an invigorating tour of the world's most widely practiced religions. It reveals what, if anything, each religion has to say about the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers (...) to those texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)