The author presents Gernot Böhme’s median mode of being theory, which attempts to find an anthropological middle ground between the rational and the irrational, the spiritual and the corporeal and the active and passive in human experience. Böhme’s reflections on the median mode of being are normative in character and linked to the concept of “sovereign man,” which he strongly defends and whose main characteristics Hoffmann outlines in the first part of the essay. Among others, Hoffmann argues against Böhme’s excessive (...) emphasis on the controlling/restrictive functions of awareness at the cost of those functions which serve to protect and stimulate life, his non-distinction between the distance to a cognized object and its intellectual instrumentalisation, and his rather one-sided tendency to seek the sources of European rationalism in the Socra-tean tradition. (shrink)

The field of modern logic is too extensive to be worked through by open cast mining. To open it up, we need to sink shafts and construct adits. This is the method of most text books: a systematic exposition of a number of main topics, supplemented by exercises to teach skill in the appurtenant techniques, lays a secure foundation for subsequent dis cussion of selected questions. Compared with this, the present treatment is more like a network of exploratory drillings to (...) show that it would be worthwhile to start mining operations, or to work the existing shafts and adits, as the case may be. Within this metaphor we may also describe the inherent weakness of this conception: once a cavity is pierced, the duct's capacity will in general not be sufficient to carry away the discovered riches. But whether we are concerned with a new or an already worked mine - at any rate, the experience should stimulate us into either reviving an existing system of shafts or even, in particularly fortunate cases, designing a new ap proach. (shrink)

In order to explore the nature and possible reality of consciousness, a universe was created in the laboratory according to Procedure 347:B of the Unified Universe Creation Manual. This universe was allowed to evolve without further intervention through the stage in which biological-type life formed, and additionally beyond that point to life forms of complexity such that consciousness was deemed a possibility by the researchers. The behaviour of these possibly conscious beings was noted, both externally and internally. Before the universe (...) was sacrificed, a random sample of the beings was removed and autopsied according to Provision 472-B of the Consciousness Inspection Handbook, version 5472. Both the behavioural and physical data are consistent with the existence of a primitive form of consciousness. (shrink)

Se presenta una experiencia musical desarrollada con una muestra total de ciento noventa participantes entre los dos y los tres años de edad. El objetivo consiste en facilitar la discriminación de dos parámetros musicales: duración e intensidad, mediante varias sesiones musicales desarrolladas con metodología constructivista y conexionista. Se adapta el Test de aptitudes musicales de Seashore para la etapa de infantil. La incorporación de estas metodologías ha resultado muy positiva, observando evolución en la identificación de los estímulos proporcionados. Se contempló (...) la procedencia familiar y la asistencia a actividades musicales pudiendo resultar condicionantes por la exposición a la escucha musical. (shrink)

he following is an essay by Emmanuel Levinas, newly translated by Mendel Kranz, concerning Jewish culture and education, Hebrew studies, and Zionism. The essay was first published in 1954 in the United States by The Alliance Review, a small journal affiliated with the Alliance israélite universelle, and has since been almost entirely forgotten. In 2011–2012, it was republished in French by Denis Poizat based on the original draft found in the Alliance archives. Preceding Levinas’s essay is a preface by (...) Kranz that situates it at the intersection of Levinas’s postwar project for Judaism, his relation to Zionism, and the colonial backdrop of the ENIO—three issues that are rarely considered together in Levinas scholarship. Poizat also provides some commentary on the question of education and the similarities between this and other essays by Levinas. (shrink)