Emotion theorists have long held that a fundamental characteristic of an emotion is how its constituent processes change and interact over time. Assessing these temporal dynamics of emotion in the brain is critical for understanding the neural representation of emotions as well as advancing theories of emotional processing. We review the neuroimaging research on three temporal dynamic features of emotion: time of onset, duration, and resurgence and show how assessing these temporal dynamics in the brain have led to improved understanding (...) of the structure and function of emotional processes such as revealing which appraisals come first, how emotional processing endures both explicitly and implicitly, and that the resurgence of emotional processing may consist of either single or multiple processes. (shrink)

Lindquist et al. provide a compelling summary of the brain bases of the onset of emotion. Their conclusions, however, are constrained by typical fMRI techniques that do not assess a key ingredient in emotional experience – timing. We discuss the importance of timing in theories of emotion as well as the implications of neural temporal dynamics for psychological constructionism.

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a large portion of the world into quarantine, leading to an extensive period of stress making it necessary to explore regulatory techniques that are effective at stimulating long-lasting positive emotion. Previous research has demonstrated that anticipating positive events produces increases in positive emotion during discrete stressors. We hypothesized that state and trait positive anticipation during the COVID-19 pandemic would be associated with increased positive emotions. We assessed how often participants thought about a future (...) positive/negative/neutral event, activity, or goal through a daily reconstruction method that represented a “day in the life” of people in the United States during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of multi-level modeling and mediational analyses demonstrated that higher optimism, one form of trait positive anticipation, was related to higher state positive anticipation, which was in turn related to higher positive emotions during the current episode, which persisted to the next episode. In addition, both optimism and state positive anticipation were related to adaptive responses to the pandemic. These findings suggest that anticipation of future emotional experiences and hopefulness for the future can be a powerful predictor of positive emotions during global pandemics and perhaps other similar chronic stressors. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have identified two powerful ways to regulate emotional responses to a stressor: experiencing incidental positive emotions and using cognitive reappraisal to reframe the stressor. Several cognitive and motivational theories of positive emotion support the formulation that incidental positive emotions may facilitate cognitive reappraisal. To test the separate and interacting effects of positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal, we first adapted an established picture-based reappraisal paradigm by interspersing blocks of positive emotion inducing and neutral pictures. Across two pre-registered studies, reappraisal (...) effectively decreased self-reported negative emotions and increased self-reported positive emotions; however, experiencing incidental positive emotions did not facilitate reappraisal success. In another preregistered study, we employed a more powerful positive emotion induction via virtual reality, used a social stress anticipation task, and... (shrink)

"Permanent Things reminds us that some of the century's most imaginative minds - G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and Evelyn Waugh - were profoundly at odds with the secularist spirit of the age, seeing progressive enlightenment as ushering in, not a millennium of perfect freedom, but a Waste Land whose inhabitants - Waugh's "vile bodies," Eliot's "hollow men," Lewis's "men without chests" - can find refuge from their boredom and anomie only in (...) the ceaseless acquisition of things or in the consoling illusions of pseudo religions - "distracted from distraction by distraction," as Eliot memorably put it." "How does one explain the desolation of a world which, though richly endowed with material comforts, is mentally and spiritually impoverished? The essayists here are united, as were their subjects, by a need to try to answer this question. Modern man's poverty of spirit, visible alike in so much of his art and architecture, his literature and philosophy and political science, reflects his loss of any good reasons for living - his loss of the Permanent Things." "The Christian writers whose work is eloquently interpreted in this book repay our attention for at least two reasons. First is their ability to sharpen our awareness of what, by any previous civilized standards, must be called the abnormal condition of modern man. For all the writers treated in this book, it was never enough to simply capture the spiritual aridity of modern life. It was also necessary to speak of a moral order that may yet be restored by the expressive power and beauty of the written word."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Culture, Not Politics We live in a politicized time. Culture wars and increasingly partisan conflicts have reduced public discourse to shouting matches between ideologues. But rather than merely bemoaning the vulgarity and sloganeering of this era, says acclaimed author and editor Gregory Wolfe, we should seek to enrich the language of civil discourse. And the best way to do that, Wolfe believes, is to draw nourishment from the deepest sources of culture: art and religious faith. Wolfe has been called “one (...) of the most incisive and persuasive voices of our generation,” and this penetrating and wide-ranging book makes a powerful case for the importance of beauty and imagination to cultural renewal. He begins by tracing his own journey from a young culture warrior bent on attacking the modern world to a career devoted to nurturing the creation of culture through contemporary literature and art that renew the Western tradition. Along the way, Wolfe finds in Renaissance Christian humanists like Erasmus and Thomas More—and their belief that imagination and the arts are needed to offset the danger of ideological abstractions— a “distant mirror” in which to see our own times. Beauty Will Save the World offers a revealing introduction to the artists and thinkers who are the Christian humanists of the modern era, from well-known figures like Evelyn Waugh and Wendell Berry to lesser-known authors like Shusaku Endo, Andrew Lytle, and Geoffrey Hill. A section on visual artists Mary McCleary, Fred Folsom, and Makoto Fujimura (accompanied by reproductions of their works) demonstrates that there are artists who can reimagine the Western tradition in strikingly contemporary terms. Finally, Wolfe pays tribute to the conservative thinkers who served as his mentors: Russell Kirk, Gerhart Niemeyer, Marion Montgomery, and Malcolm Muggeridge— all of whom rejected rigid ideology and embraced culture and tradition. At a time when our public discourse has come to be dominated by warring factions with little regard for truth, Wolfe's affirmation of beauty as a redemptive force is both refreshing and encouraging. (shrink)

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. (...) Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and (...) presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. -/- Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world. (shrink)

This book explores Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism in its historical context, showing that his position is best understood against the background of encounters between neo-Kantianism and the life sciences in the nineteenth century. Analyzing most of Nietzsche's writings from the late 1860s onwards, Christian J. Emden reconstructs Nietzsche's naturalism and argues for a new understanding of his account of nature and normativity. Emden proposes historical reasons why Nietzsche came to adopt the position he did; his genealogy of values and his (...) account of a will to power are as much influenced by Kantian thought as they are by nineteenth-century debates on teleology, biological functions, and theories of evolution. This rich and wide-ranging study will be of interest to scholars and students of Nietzsche, the history of modern philosophy, intellectual history, and history of science. (shrink)

Spacetime as we know and love it is lost in most approaches to quantum gravity. For many of these approaches, as inchoate and incomplete as they may be, one of the main challenges is to relate what they take to be the fundamental non-spatiotemporal structure of the world back to the classical spacetime of GR. The present essay investigates how spacetime is lost and how it may be regained in one major approach to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity.

Research in the organizational sciences has tended to portray prosocial behavior as an unqualified positive outcome that should be encouraged in organizations. However, only recently, have researchers begun to acknowledge prosocial behaviors that help maintain an organization’s positive image in ways that violate ethical norms. Recent scandals, including Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and Penn State’s child sex abuse scandal, point to the need for research on the individual factors and situational conditions that shape the emergence of these unethical pro-organizational behaviors. Drawing (...) on trait activation theory, we argue that the “dark” trait of Machiavellianism should make individuals more willing to engage in UPB. Further, we argue that this willingness will be augmented when Machiavellians hold bottom-line-mentality climate perceptions, or the perception that ethical standards matter less than organizational performance. Using data from 170 U.S. employees, results suggested that Machiavellians are more willing to engage in UPB, but that BLMCPs may not affect their motivation to engage in UPB. We discuss the study’s theoretical and practical implications, as well as avenues for research. (shrink)

Information theory presupposes the notion of an epistemic agent, such as a scientist or an idealized human. Despite that, information theory is increasingly invoked by physicists concerned with fundamental physics, physics at very high energies, or generally with the physics of situations in which even idealized epistemic agents cannot exist. In this paper, I shall try to determine the extent to which the application of information theory in those contexts is legitimate. I will illustrate my considerations using the case of (...) black hole thermodynamics and Bekenstein's celebrated argument for his formula for the entropy of black holes. This example is particularly pertinent to the theme of the present collection because it is widely accepted as `empirical data' in notoriously empirically deprived quantum gravity, even though the laws of black hole thermodynamics have so far evaded direct empirical confirmation. (shrink)

In ‘Normative Uncertainty as a Voting Problem’, William MacAskill argues that positive credence in ordinal-structured or intertheoretically incomparable normative theories does not prevent an agent from rationally accounting for her normative uncertainties in practical deliberation. Rather, such an agent can aggregate the theories in which she has positive credence by methods borrowed from voting theory—specifically, MacAskill suggests, by a kind of weighted Borda count. The appeal to voting methods opens up a promising new avenue for theories of rational choice under (...) normative uncertainty. The Borda rule, however, is open to at least two serious objections. First, it seems implicitly to ‘cardinalize’ ordinal theories, and so does not fully face up to the problem of merely ordinal theories. Second, the Borda rule faces a problem of option individuation. MacAskill attempts to solve this problem by invoking a measure on the set of practical options. But it is unclear that there is any natural way of defining such a measure that will not make the output of the Borda rule implausibly sensitive to irrelevant empirical features of decision-situations. After developing these objections, I suggest an alternative: the McKelvey uncovered set, a Condorcet method that selects all and only the maximal options under a strong pairwise defeat relation. This decision rule has several advantages over Borda and mostly avoids the force of MacAskill’s objection to Condorcet methods in general. (shrink)

Unlike the relativity theory it seeks to replace, causal set theory has been interpreted to leave space for a substantive, though perhaps ‘localized’, form of ‘becoming’. The possibility of fundamental becoming is nourished by the fact that the analogue of Stein’s theorem from special relativity does not hold in causal set theory. Despite this, we find that in many ways, the debate concerning becoming parallels the well-rehearsed lines it follows in the domain of relativity. We present, however, some new twists (...) and challenges. In particular, we show that a novel and exotic notion of becoming is compatible with causal sets. In contrast to the ‘localized’ becoming considered compatible with the dynamics of causal set theory by its advocates, our novel kind of becoming, while not answering to the typical A-theoretic demands, is ‘global’ and objective. (shrink)

Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict -- perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. To that (...) end, I develop two simple models for comparing "longtermist" and "neartermist" interventions, incorporating the idea that it is harder to make a predictable difference to the further future. These models yield mixed conclusions: if we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don't mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these "Pascalian" probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism. (shrink)

Direct inferences identify certain probabilistic credences or confirmation-function-likelihoods with values of objective chances or relative frequencies. The best known version of a direct inference principle is David Lewis’s Principal Principle. Certain kinds of statements undermine direct inferences. Lewis calls such statements inadmissible. We show that on any Bayesian account of direct inference several kinds of intuitively innocent statements turn out to be inadmissible. This may pose a significant challenge to Bayesian accounts of direct inference. We suggest some ways in which (...) these challenges may be addressed. (shrink)

Is it merely a matter of taste or convention to consider something right or wrong? Or can we find good reasons for our values and judgements that are independent of culture and tradition? The problem is as old as philosophy itself; and after more than two millennia of scholarly debate, there seems no end to the controversy. But Christian Illies suggests that powerful new forms of transcendental argument (a philosophical tool known since antiquity) may offer a long-sought cornerstone for (...) morality. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate how phenomenologists have analysed the relation between man and animal with respect to death. The common tendency of most phenomenologists is to grant man a specific mode of being and to attribute a parallel but deficient mode to the animal. In this way, phenomenology fails to accomplish a positive phenomenological description of the animal’s mode of being or of animality as such. I turn to Heidegger’s decisive analysis of human/animal death since Heidegger would constantly hold (...) on to the idea that the animal, in contrast to man, has no explicit relation to death and is therefore not capable of death as death. This leads to his very provocative claim that only man “dies” whereas the animal just “perishes.” Hence, the problem of the man/animal-relation becomes a very distinct problem in relation to death since death concerns the very way in which a certain form of being relates to the world. I aim to shed light on the genesis of the problem in order to put the question of the animal’s death in a proper perspective. I argue that it is precisely death where phenomenology loses its firm grip on the differentiation between man and animal and hence it is this distinction that has to be put back into question. (shrink)

Drawing on Connell's notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of men's headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals may (...) maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening men's material and emotional ties to their families. (shrink)

The present volume collects essays on the philosophical foundations of quantum theories of gravity, such as loop quantum gravity and string theory. Central for philosophical concerns is quantum gravity's suggestion that space and time, or spacetime, may not exist fundamentally, but instead be a derivative entity emerging from non-spatiotemporal degrees of freedom. In the spirit of naturalised metaphysics, contributions to this volume consider the philosophical implications of this suggestion. In turn, philosophical methods and insights are brought to bear on the (...) foundations of quantum gravity itself. For instance, the idea of functionalism, borrowed from the philosophy of mind and discussed by several essays, exemplifies this mutual interaction the collection seeks to foster. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 182-204, March 2022.

Scholars have debated the role that altruistic considerations play—and should play—in recruitment and decision-making processes for clinical trials. Little empirical data are available to support their various perspectives. We analyzed 140 audiotaped pediatric informed consent sessions, of which 95 (68%) included at least one discussion of how participation in a cancer clinical trial might benefit: 1) the pursuit of scientific knowledge generally; 2) other children with cancer specifically; and 3) “the future” and other vaguely defined recipients. Clinicians initiated most (80%) (...) of these discussions of altruism. The enrollment rate of children in the clinical trial was high (83%) overall, but not higher among children whose parents were involved in an altruism-oriented discussion. These findings suggest that: (1) clinicians invoke a spectrum of altruistic considerations rather than a single monothematic notion of altruism, and (2) the effect of altruistic considerations on subsequent enrollment decisions is marginal. While further research on this topic is warranted, bioethical debate should strive to reflect the diversity of altruistic discourse in clinical research encounters and to place this discourse in the context of other, including nonaltruistic, considerations. (shrink)

Does the need to find a quantum theory of gravity imply that the gravitational field must be quantized? Physicists working in quantum gravity routinely assume an affirmative answer, often without being aware of the metaphysical commitments that tend to underlie this assumption. The ambition of this article is to probe these commitments and to analyze some recently adduced arguments pertinent to the issue of quantization. While there exist good reasons to quantize gravity, as this analysis will show, alternative approaches to (...) gravity challenge the received wisdom. These renegade approaches do not regard gravity as a fundamental force, but rather as effective, i.e. as merely supervening on fundamental physics. I will urge that these alternative accounts at least prove the tenability of an opposition to quantization. (shrink)

Cette étude formule l'hypothèse critique d'une opération de remythologisation par une réactualisation théologico-politique de la tragédie chez Heidegger. Cette opération ne saurait simplement coïncider avec une revalorisation " irrationnelle " du mythe, car elle procède d'abord d'une mise en question, non moins problématique, de la dualité supposée entre muthos et logos pour culminer dans ce qu'une note des années 1950 appellera la " mytho-logie de l'événement ". La réélaboration de la notion de mythe s'accomplit à partir du poème de Hölderlin (...) qui doit préfigurer les dieux de l'" autre commencement " post-judéo-chrétien, selon le projet spéculatif d'une " religion " censée relier le peuple à ses dieux nouveaux via l'être comme événement. L'hypothèse d'une remythologisation théologico-politique doit ainsi permettre d'éclairer non seulement le rôle matriciel de Hölderlin pour la pensée de l'être, mais aussi le surinvestissement illusoire du national-socialisme censé donner lieu au " peuple de Hölderlin ". Pour interroger cette réactualisation théologico-politique du mythe, l'étude se concentre sur les cours que Heidegger consacra à Hölderlin, tout en sollicitant l'intégralité du corpus des années 1933-1945, c'est-à-dire les cours fribourgeois, les traités inédits rédigés dans le sillage des Contributions (Beiträge) et les Cahiers noirs (Schwarze Hefte). (shrink)

Christian Lotz shows in this book that Husserl's Phenomenology and its key concept--subjectivity--is based on a concrete anthropological structure, such as self-affection and the bodily experience of the other. The analysis of the sensual sphere and the lived Body forces Husserl to an ongoing correction of his strong methodological assumptions. Subjectivity turns out to be an ambivalent phenomenon, as the subject is unable to fully present itself to itself, and therefore is forced to allow for a fundamental non-transparency in (...) itself. (shrink)

This essay considers and evaluates recent results and arguments from classical chaotic systems theory and non-relativistic quantum mechanics that pertain to the question of whether our world is deterministic or indeterministic. While the classical results are inconclusive, quantum mechanics is often assumed to establish indeterminism insofar as the measurement process involves an ineliminable stochastic element, even though the dynamics between two measurements is considered fully deterministic. While this latter claim concerning the Schrödinger evolution must be qualified, the former fully depends (...) on a resolution of the measurement problem. Two alleged proofs that nature is indeterministic, relying, in turn, on Gleason's theorem and Conway and Kochen's recent 'free will theorem', are shown to be wanting qua proofs of indeterminism. We are thus left with the conclusion that the determinism question remains open. (shrink)

How should you decide what to do when you're uncertain about basic normative principles (e.g., Kantianism vs. utilitarianism)? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order" norm: e.g., "comply with the first-order norm you regard as most probable" or "maximize expected choiceworthiness". But what if you're uncertain about second-order norms too -- must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, it seems that any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty is doomed to a vicious regress. In this paper, I aim (...) to rescue second-order norms from this threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the suggestion some philosophers have entertained that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on agents regardless of their beliefs or evidence concerning that norm. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order (e.g., moral) norms, thus closing off any question of what an agent should do in light of her normative beliefs. Rather, it is more plausible to ascribe external force to a single, second-order rational norm: the enkratic principle, correctly formulated. This modest form of externalism, I argue, is both intrinsically well-motivated and sufficient to head off the threat of regress. (shrink)

Dans l’entretien avec M. Boss du 8 juillet 1965, Heidegger glose l’une des définitions aristotéliciennes de l’âme : « Chez Aristote, la psyché (Psyche) est l’entéléchie du corps vivant (Leib) ou du sôma. Dans son livre De anima, il dit (412a) : la psyché est le mode de l’être d’un vivant (Die Psyche ist die Weise des Seins eines Lebendigen) ». Et Heidegger ajoute : « L’entéléchie de l’homme est le logos ». Or dans le christianisme, dans la scolastique latine, (...) poursuit Heidegger dans son entre... (shrink)

This contribution discusses the problem of translating Heidegger. Heidegger’s „reiterative destruction“, the core of his phenomenological method in the 20s, is operating as an over-interpretative translation of a traditional text to reveal what is unwritten and unsaid in it. What does it mean, therefore, to translate Heidegger, i.e. to translate a translation? In the second part we briefly present a survey of French translations from Heidegger’s works in the last twenty years and discuss the problematic editorial situation in France.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte gehört zweifellos zu den dunklen Autoren der rechtsphilosophischen Tradition, der, von wenigen Ausnahmen abgesehen, in den letzten Jahren und Jahrzehnten keine nennenswerte rechtsphilosophische Bearbeitung erfahren hat. Wie Cesa ganz zu Recht anmerkt, birgt die mangelnde wissenschaftliche Behandlung dieses hermetischen Systemdenkers über Staat und Recht die immanente Gefahr seiner Banalisierung und daran anschließend seiner Polemisierung bis hin zum politischen Missbrauch durch den Zeitgeist mit sich, der bekanntlich nur der Herren eigner Geist ist. Der geradezu notwendiger Zugang zum ebensolchen (...) Missverstehen der politisch-philosophischen Lehre Fichtes besteht in der Missachtung der metaphysischen Dimension seines Denkens über Staat und Recht. Diese Dimension stellt unbezweifelbar große Anforderungen an den Fichte Studierenden, aber es muss auch gelten, dass eine fundamentalphilosophische Konzeption nicht schon deshalb falsch wird, weil kaum jemand bereit scheint, sich ihr angemessen zu nähern. (shrink)

The Asatir is a collection of Samaritan midrashim on parts of the Torah, which reached its final form in the tenth or eleventh century. It embellishes the pericope of the Tower of Babel with a number of surprising details: The Tower of Babel was built on a mountain and had a beacon attached to its top; the mount with the tower and the valley of Shinar are compared to Mt. Gerizim and the valley of Shechem. It is argued that these (...) embellishments were introduced in order to read the story of the Tower as a blueprint for historical events surrounding the Church of Mary Theotokos, which was built by the Emperor Zenon on Mt. Gerizim and partly destroyed by the Samaritans in their revolts against Byzantium in the sixth century. The exegetical technique of reading contemporaneous history into the biblical text is discussed from a broader comparative perspective. (shrink)

Dogen Kigen (1200-1253) tritt uns in seinem Werk in vielfaltigen Aspekten entgegen: als Praktiker buddhistischer Lebensform und Experte fur Meditationstechniken, als Lehrer, um den sich Anhanger sammelten, als gebildeter Scholastiker, der sich bestens in buddhistischer Dogmatik auskannte, als Theoretiker, der diese Lehren und die mit ihnen verbundene Begrifflichkeit kritisch hinterfragte und auf seine Situation hin adaptierte, sowie als Neuerer, der traditionelle Konzepte auf eigenwillige Art interpretierte, und schliesslich als Dichter, der seine philosophischen Erkenntnisse auch in poetische Formen zu fassen wusste. (...) Um diese verschiedenen Facetten des Wirkens einzufangen, wird Dogens Werk aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven und unter Einbeziehung verschiedener philosophischer Methoden betrachtet. Zusatzlich sind zwei seiner beruhmtesten Texte, Genjokoan und Bussho, in deutscher Neuubersetzung wiedergegeben. (shrink)

_Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism_ fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were "marginal" or primitive and situating them instead--both ideologically and institutionally--within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of modern historical narratives--that depict (...) Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism--he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential _Guhyasamaja Tantra_ underscore the text's overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight--issues shared by all Indic religions--and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these "radical" communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism. (shrink)

This book explores Friedrich Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Surveying Nietzsche's entire intellectual career from his years as a student in Bonn and Leipzig during the 1860s to his genealogical project of the 1880s, Christian Emden contributes to a historically informed discussion of Nietzsche's response to the political predicaments of modernity, and sheds new light on the intellectual and political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment (...) gave way to the demands of the modern nation state. This is a distinguished addition to the series of Ideas in Context, and a major reassessment of a philosopher and aphorist whose stature among post-enlightenment European thinkers is now almost unrivalled. (shrink)

Aging is an integral part of human existence. The problem of aging addresses the most fundamental coordinates of our lives but also the ones of the phenomenological method: time, embodiment, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and even the social norms that grow into the very notion of aging as such. In my article, I delineate a phenomenological analysis of aging and show how such an analysis connects with the debate concerning personal identity: I claim that aging is not merely a physical process, (...) but is far more significantly also a spiritual one as the process of aging consists in our awareness of and conscious relation to our aging. This spiritual process takes place on an individual and on a social level, whereas the latter is the more primordial layer of this experience. This complicates the question of personal identity since it will raise the question in two ways, namely who I am for myself and who I am for the others, and in a further step how the latter experience shapes the former. However, we can state that aging is neither only physical nor only spiritual. It concerns my bodily processes as it concerns the complex reflexive structure that relates my former self with my present and even future self. (shrink)

The 2015 Nepal earthquake and subsequent avalanche at Mount Everest Base Camp is the deadliest mountaineering disaster to date. This study is novel in exploring the lived experiences of survivors and the role of mental toughness in their psychological responses to the disaster. Design: Phenomenological study. Method: Ten mountaineers, who were on expeditions during the earthquake, participated in phenomenological interviews. Data were analysed inductively and thematically, while strategies to enhance trustworthiness were also employed. Results: Seven dimensions emerged from the data, (...) which captured climbers' psychological responses to the disaster, ranging from the moments the earthquake hit to reflections on the disaster after returning home. Contrasting emotional responses were described, and suggested to depend on experience and mental toughness. Negative emotional and behavioural responses were reported in the aftermath. Some climbers reported post-traumatic stress, but also a strong desire to return to Mount Everest and continue mountaineering. Conclusions: These findings provide detailed insights into the lived experiences of climbers who survived the 2015 Nepal earthquake and Base Camp avalanche. Findings also shed light on the role of mental toughness in coping with and responding to a major natural disaster. (shrink)

Although general relativity is a predictively successful theory, it treats matter as classical rather than as quantum. For this reason, it will have to be replaced by a more fundamental quantum theory of gravity. Attempts to formulate a quantum theory of gravity suggest that such a theory may have radical consequences for the nature, and indeed the fate, of spacetime. The present article articulates what this problem of spacetime is and traces it three approaches to quantum gravity taking general relativity (...) as their vantage point: semi-classical gravity, causal set theory, and loop quantum gravity. (shrink)