First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Examines the development of the philosophy, culture, and civilization of ancient China and discusses the history of Taoism and Confucianism.

This book is a literary-historical study of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides' great Code of Jewish law, organized around five characteristics repeatedly emphasized by Maimonides himself: codificatory form, scope, classification, language and style, philosophy and law. The analysis attempts to correlate his own self-perception, his own characterization and evaluation of his work, with the actual product--an objective assessment of the constructs, categories, and conclusions of his work, shaken free of struts and preconceptions.

"This work deals wth three main topics: a. Maimonidean studies, b. aspects of medieval rabbinic literature, and c. intellectual history of the Jews in southern France (Provence) during the Middle Ages."--Back cover.

A collection of critical studies on Maimonidean thought for students of medieval Jewish thinking. It contains contributions from: Gerald J. Blidstein, Ben-Gurion University; Jacob Levinger, Tel-Aviv University; Aviezer Ravitzky, Moshe Idel and Shlomo Pines, all from the Hebrew University, Israel.

critical edition and annotated translation of one of the classics of Jewish biblical interpretation. The collection will be indispensable to all students of Jewish history and culture.

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the (...) Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Introduction: Platonic dramatology -- The political and philosophical problems. Using pre-Socratic philosophy to support political reform: the Athenian stranger ; Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' critique of Socrates and Plato's critique of Parmenides ; Becoming Socrates ; Socrates interrogates his contemporaries about the noble and good -- Paradigms of philosophy. Socrates' positive teaching ; Timaeus-Critias: completing or challenging Socratic political philosophy? ; Socratic practice -- The trial and death of Socrates. The limits of human intelligence ; The Eleatic challenge ; The trial (...) and death of Socrates -- Conclusion: Why Plato made Socrates his hero. (shrink)

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:China and Contemporary Millenarianism—Something New under the SunBenjamin I. SchwartzOne of the most obvious remarks one can make about contemporary China is that China has no reason to be excited about contemporary Western millenarianism. If by "millenarianism" one refers to an apocalyptic transformation of the entire human condition based on the Christian calendar, then there is no reason for Chinese, Jews, and Moslems, who have their own historic visions, (...) to find any significance in the history of the last millennium. At the end of the first millennium or the beginning of the second, China was at a high point in its civilization. To the extent that apocalyptic tendencies could be found in either its high or its popular culture, these tendencies were the focus of Buddhism or religious Daoism. They were not tied to specific calendars, and in an Indian spirit they spoke in terms of "kalpas," which might last for hundreds of millions of years—or might occur next week.In addition, it should be noted—as has been pointed out by Professor Landes and others—that the notion that there was an all-consuming preoccupation with an impending apocalypse in the year A.D. 1000 is highly debatable. Among the more scholarly members of the clergy in medieval times there were already modes of thinking that, under the influence of Islamic and Jewish philosophers, were pointing in the direction of a non-apocalyptic scholastic philosophy.In all cultures down through the ages, an apocalyptic vision of deliverance has promised relief from the vast burden of human suffering and despair—a vision that would be recognized as such even by those who sought no apocalyptic solutions and who continued to believe that our this-worldly life still promised compensatory satisfactions, limited as these might be. They would not accept the Theravada/ Hinayana Buddhist belief that even what we call our individual pleasures are a function of our individual sufferings. According to that belief, our love of our children or our wives is poisoned by our acute awareness of the transient nature of their existence. Release from the world of samsara can be attained only by escaping the world of individuated samsara into the ineffable world of Nirvana.Turning to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, we find that the author, who represents an amalgam of Greek and Hebrew wisdom, is not an apocalyptist and still hopes that we will garner certain satisfactions from our lives as individuals in this mundane existence. Yet his disappointment, suffering, and exasperation over human vanities and duplicities often correspond to the catalogue of sufferings in the Theravada scriptures. But, like the Theravada Buddhists, he believes that in this world of ignorance (avidya) there is also "nothing new under the sun." In the endless generations of individual human lives, every mode of human ignorance and suffering has certainly existed in the endless cycle of samsara. It is nevertheless true that in the total attention on every aspect of human life from the techno-economic side, [End Page 193] we find a totally new way of neutralizing the age-old causes of human suffering. Gautama Buddha regarded our ordinary individual pleasures as poisoned by suffering, by the realization that individual pleasures soon fade away. Yet Prozac seems to continue to work without producing anxiety. Here, indeed, we have something new under the sun!In fact, the new technological-economic millenarianism does indeed represent something different from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century technological and economic transformations that seemed to offer the possibility of a steady amelioration of the human condition. Nineteenth-century technological and economic meliorism could be related to older forms of what might be called "materialistic" improvement. Yet nineteenth-century materialistic progressivism continued to be linked to other ethical concerns not only by Christian beliefs but also by many of the secular ideologies of nineteenth-century Europe. There were entire ideologies of socialism, liberalism, anarchism, romanticism, nationalism, et cetera, which continued to be deeply distressed by the non-"materialistic," ethical consequences of techno-economic progress. Techno-economic progress has not, after all, prevented the Holocaust, the Gulag, and the horrors of two world wars. On the contrary, it has raised... (shrink)

Many people are worried about the harmful effects of climate change but nevertheless enjoy some activities that contribute to the emission of greenhouse gas (driving, flying, eating meat, etc.), the main cause of climate change. How should such people make choices between engaging in and refraining from enjoyable greenhouse-gas-emitting activities? In this chapter, we look at the answer provided by decision theory. Some scholars think that the right answer is given by interactive decision theory, or game theory; and moreover think (...) that since private climate decisions are instances of the prisoner’s dilemma, one rationally should engage in these activities provided that one enjoys them. Others think that the right answer is given by expected utility theory, the best-known version of individual decision theory under risk and uncertainty. In this chapter, we review these different answers, with a special focus on the latter answer and the debate it has generated. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States, and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we shall suggest new avenues (...) for approaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect. (shrink)

This article presents a response to Richard Rorty's paper "Is Philosophy Relevant to Business Ethics?" The author questions Rorty's views on the depreciation of the role of philosophy in applied ethics, and outlines four reasons why philosophy retains its relevance. The author addresses the role of moral reasoning in the development of the moral imagination. The author also concludes that humans have the means necessary to make moral progress and are capable of moral reasoning, and need only to develop a (...) strong moral imagination. (shrink)

The introduction of novel diagnostic techniques in clinical domains such as genomics and radiology has led to a rich ethical debate on how to handle unsolicited findings that result from these innovations. Yet while unsolicited findings arise in both genomics and radiology, most of the relevant literature to date has tended to focus on only one of these domains. In this article, we synthesize and critically assess similarities and differences between “scanning the body” and “sequencing the genome” from an ethical (...) perspective. After briefly describing the novel diagnostic contexts leading to unsolicited findings, we synthesize and reflect on six core ethical issues that relate to both specialties: terminology; benefits and risks; autonomy; disclosure of unsolicited findings to children; uncertainty; and filters and routine screening. We identify ethical rationales that pertain to both fields and may contribute to more ethically sound policies. Considerations of preserving public trust and ensuring that people perceive healthcare policies as fair also support the need for a combined debate. (shrink)

This groundbreaking volume casts light on the long shadow of naturalistic monism in modern thought and culture. When monism's philosophical proposition - the unity of all matter and thought in a single, universal substance - fused with scientific empiricism and Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, it led to the formation of a powerful worldview articulated in the work of figures such as Ernst Haeckel. The compelling essays collected here, written by leading international scholars, investigate the articulation of monism in science, (...) philosophy, and religion and its impact on a range of social movements, from socialism and early feminism to imperialism and eugenics. The result is a broad and comprehensive chronological, disciplinary, and geographic map of a century of monism, as well as a bellwether for innovative new directions in the interdisciplinary study of science, religion, philosophy, and culture. (shrink)

Human nature is enigmatic. Are we cruel, selfish creatures or good merciful Samaritans? This book takes you on a journey into the complexities of human mind and kind, from altruism, sharing, and large-scale cooperation, to cheating, distrust, and warfare. What are the building blocks of morality and sociality? Featuring contributions from leading researchers, such as Christophe Boesch, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Azar Gat, Dennis Krebs, Ara Norenzayan, and Frans B. M. de Waal, this fascinating interdisciplinary reader draws on evolutionary (...) and comparative perspectives, and is essential reading for any students interested in the unique characteristics that define humanity and society. (shrink)