In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late AntiquityMichael F. WagnerDominic J. O'Meara. Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 249. Cloth, $55.00.Porphyry tells of Plotinus's failed petition to emperor Gallienus to (re)establish a "city of philosophers" conformed to Plato's laws, named Platonopolis (Vit. Plo.12). O'Meara here articulates primary themes and developments in philosophical political thought in the classical Neoplatonic period, from Plotinus's (...) day in the mid-third century into the sixth century. Concurrently, he addresses head on "the conventional view that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity had no political philosophy" (3). This view exemplifies the more general perspective that the Neoplatonists were simply disinterested in this-worldly affairs in lieu of "an immaterial world... our true 'homeland,' where we can at last attain the good we desire" (3). Consequently, O'Meara provides both a unique study of an important [End Page 205] topic and a compelling case for a more complete, balanced understanding of Neoplatonic other-worldly-ness. O'Meara's study covers key figures from four main groups of (neo)Platonists: Plotinus and his students; the schools in Syria and Asia Minor inspired by Iamblichus; the Athenian school (Plutarch, Proclus, Damascius et al.); and the Alexandrian school (Hyapatia, Philoponus, Olympiodorus et al.). He organizes his investigation (chapters) into three Parts.The pivotal concept in O'Meara's two-pronged endeavor is divinization - "assimilation and unification, as far as possible, to god" (31, Proclus) - a concept whose meaning for classical Neoplatonists ranges from "becoming a god" to "imitating some form of divine life, in one way or another" (31). Part I focuses on the Neoplatonists' shared association of a human soul's divinization with virtue-osity [my jargon], beginning with Plotinus's distinction between political virtue(s) and purification—or purificatory virtue(s). O'Meara emphasizes the relevance of the resulting "scale of virtues" to a life of continued activity—for example explicating Plotinus's denial that a "purified" soul is somehow exempt from the rightness-of-acting expected of the politically virtuous soul: rather, "reaching higher principles and different measures he will act [directly, immediately] according to these" (43, En. I,2,7).Another organizing theme as O'Meara's investigations proceed beyond Plotinus is the significance of the increasing complexities of particular Neoplatonic metaphysical systems, and so also of their moral systems - e.g. their "scales of virtue." Part I also articulates related attempts (beginning with Porphyry and Iamblichus) to articulate programs of moral and philosophical study - i.e. a related "scale of sciences." Of special note here are proposals by some Neoplatonists to divide the "practical sciences" associated on this scale with political virtuousness into legislative science(s) and judicial science (56). Implicit in the Neoplatonic scale(s) of virtue(s) was the thesis that as one progresses towards divinization "lower" virtue-osity is not transcended in the sense of lost or dismissed but rather it is included or incorporated into a higher form. Arguably, "lower" sciences are likewise not merely aids or stepping-stones towards something "higher," but genuine topoi of study and knowledge in their own right.Part II is the true heart of O'Meara's outstanding scholarly and philosophical inquiry. Here is where he fulfills his intent to discern a substantive tradition of political philosophy and to articulate its key themes and concepts. Though he associates this part of his investigation with Plato's conceit of the philosopher's return to the cave, he immediately parses this "descent" as a "divinization of political life through philosophy" (71). He articulates various Neoplatonists' approaches to questions inspired by Plato's cave allegory—e.g. Is the philosopher socially obligated to "return"? Could s/he then still be happy? (His investigation here does seem to overlook Neoplatonic conceptions of choice, volition, or will as these might pertain to such questions.) O'Meara recognizes, however, that the more fundamental link between Neoplatonic metaphysics and Neoplatonic ethical-political thought derives from Plotinus's conception "of fecundity, of an [overflowing] abundance" (74) in his highest One, and so in a soul assimilated to It. In Proclus's formulation: "that which... (shrink)

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Original essays by leading scholars on Plotinus' philosophy of nature.

This paper compares Plotinus’s neoplatonic conception and account of time with Bergson’s and Husserl’s phenomenologic conceptions and accounts of it. I argue that despite fundamental differences owing to their respective approaches, their conceptions and accounts are remarkably comparable, especially in considering time to play a fundamental role in the organic unity of our physical environment—in what I characterize also as the continuously and intrinsically connected sequentiality of its events, processes, and constituents—in Plotinus’s case, of our physical environment as such; in (...) Bergson’s and Husserl’s case, as it manifests itself to us in experience and our reflective awareness of that experience. (shrink)

This paper compares Plotinus’s neoplatonic conception and account of time with Bergson’s and Husserl’s phenomenologic conceptions and accounts of it. I argue that despite fundamental differences owing to their respective approaches, their conceptions and accounts are remarkably comparable, especially in considering time to play a fundamental role in the organic unity of our physical environment—in what I characterize also as the continuously and intrinsically connected sequentiality of its events, processes, and constituents—in Plotinus’s case, of our physical environment as such; in (...) Bergson’s and Husserl’s case, as it manifests itself to us in experience and our reflective awareness of that experience. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was born in the village of Röcken, in Prussian Saxony, the son and grandson of Lutheran ministers. He studied theology and classical philosophy at the University of Bonn, but in 1865 he gave up theology and went to Leipzig. Then he discovered the composer Richard Wagner and the philosophers Schopenhauer and F. A. Lange (author of History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Significance, 1866). He won a prize for an essay on Diogenes Laertius, the (...) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers, and was appointed associate professor of classical philology at Basel, when he was only twenty-four. He became a full professor the following year. His principle writings between then and 1879, when illness made him resign from the university, were The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and Human, All Too Human (1878). After his resignation his principal writings were Daybreak (1881), The Gay Science (1882), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Parts 1 and 2 published 1883, Part 3 published 1884, Part 4 issued privately 1885, published 1892), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), The Wagner Case (1888) and Twilight of the Idols (1888). Nietzsche became insane in January 1889, and vegetated until his death in 1900. His madness was probably tertiary syphilis, which he may have contracted while ministering to sick soldiers in 1870 as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war. (shrink)

Falk Wagner was the leading Hegelian in late 20th century German Protestant theology. Wagner who had studied philosophy with Theodor W. Adorno and Wolfgang Cramer in Frankfurt am Main and Systematic Theology with Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Mainz taught Systematic Theology at the Universities of Munich and, since 1988, Vienna. He published several influential books. In his lectures and seminars he frequently handed out short theory papers to his students which should serve as the basis for (...) debate. The five texts presented here for the first time deal with the problems of individual in society and of the modern history of theology, with the doctrine of God, with the significance of the Bible for the systematic theology and finally with the concept of „Subjektivität“ in G. W. F. Hegel’s philosophy. These texts are an essential source for the development of Wagner’s thought when teaching at the university of Munich until 1988. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Early Species Concepts—Linnaeus Biological Species Concepts Phylogenetic Species Concepts Species Concepts and Speciation Conclusions Postscript: Counterpoint References.

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

Michael F. Duggan ABSTRACT: This article examines the basis for testing historical claims and proffers the observation that the historical method is akin to the scientific method in that it utilizes critical elimination rather than justification. Building on the critical rationalism of Karl Popper – and specifically the deductive component of the scientific method called ….

This article examines overpopulation as a basis for historical interpretation. Drawing on the ideas of T.R. Malthus, Elizabeth Kolbert, John Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Edward O. Wilson, I make the case that the only concept of ‘progress’ that accurately describes the human enterprise is the uncontrolled growth of population. I explain why a Malthusian/Gaia interpretation is not a historicist or eschatological narrative, like Hegelian idealism, Marxism, fundamentalist religion, or ‘end of history’ neoliberalism. My article also includes a discussion of the (...) ideas and prescriptions of contemporary commentators like physicist, Adam Frank, and the philosophers, John Gray, and Roy Scranton. What makes my article distinctive is bringing together ideas of population theory through a lens of sociobiology and post-humanist philosophy. Through this interpretive synthesis, I form a basis for recasting history as the record of the growing imbalance of our species in light of the unprecedented crises of the environment that are its byproduct. I conclude with the idea that regardless of whether the world is dying or simply going through a fundamental chaotic transformation, the role of the critical-rational historian remains the same: to tell the truth as best as she or he can know it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological processes are higher-order biological processes, albeit ones that exhibit emergent properties. Although consciousness, experience, and (...) representation are emergent properties of higher-order biological organisms, the capacity for hierarchical regulation is a property of all living systems. Thus, while the capacity for consciousness transforms the process of hierarchical regulation, consciousness is not an autonomous center of control. Instead, consciousness functions as a system for coordinating novel representations of the most pressing demands placed on the organism at any given time.... (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

All species continuously evolve to adapt to changing environments. The genetic variation that fosters such adaptation is caused by a plethora of mechanisms, including meiotic recombination that generates novel allelic combinations in the progeny of two parental lineages. However, a considerable number of eukaryotic species, including many fungi, do not have an apparent sexual cycle and are consequently thought to be limited in their evolutionary potential. As such organisms are expected to have reduced capability to eliminate deleterious mutations, they are (...) often considered as evolutionary dead ends. However, inspired by recent reports we argue that such organisms can be as persistent as organisms with conventional sexual cycles through the use of other mechanisms, such as genomic rearrangements, to foster adaptation. (shrink)

What are the relations among wisdom, virtue, and expertise? Wisdom can be defined broadly as knowledge about how to live well. At the least, the task of living well requires some conception of what it means for a life to be _good_ as well as the knowledge and skill needed to actualize the good in one’s spheres of life. While this idea is easy to assert, it is difficult to examine empirically. This is because the scientific study of wisdom immediately (...) runs up against the challenge of the fact/value dichotomy. While psychological science seeks to study “what is”, the “wisdom” of any given decision, act or person is something that can only be assessed against some conception of the good. Thus, the study of wisdom calls on us to seek ways to bridge the fact/value dichotomy. In this paper, we pursue this goal. We suggest that the study of wisdom requires the integration of at least two forms of inquiry: psychological-empirical analyses of the development of knowledge and skills, and philosophical-conceptual inquiries into what it means to live a good life. In elaborating this approach, we first differentiate the concepts of _wisdom_, _wise decision-making_, and _wisdom-supporting skills_. Then we describe conceptual and _empirical_ tools for assessing the development of wisdom-supporting skills as well as an _evaluative_ framework for assessing the “wisdom” of any given act of decision-making. To illustrate these ideas, we report the results of a study demonstrating how the capacity for wise decision-making can be cultivated through participation in a program devoted to fostering the development of wisdom-supported skills. (shrink)