Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 2 Seiten: 903-932.

Urbicius' Epitedeuma is a short pamphlet offering military advice during the reign of the emperor Anastasius (491–518). Although it is included in some of the manuscripts of Maurice's Strategikon, it was not printed by Dennis and Gamillscheg in their recent edition. The only modern text we know of was published by Mihăescu in his 1970 edition of Maurice's Strategikon, along with a Romanian translation. The next most recent text of Urbicius is in Scheffer's 1664 edition. Furthermore, the most easily accessible (...) English discussion of Urbicius, in PLRE 2, contains several errors. Here we present an introduction to, a text and English translation of, and commentary on, this neglected work. (shrink)

This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

Daniel Greco (forthcoming) argues that there cannot be epistemic dilemmas. I argue that he is wrong. I then look in detail at a would-be epistemic dilemma and argue that no non-dilemmic approach to it can be made to work. Along the way, there is discussion of octopuses, lobsters, and other ‘inscrutable cognizers’; the relationship between evaluative and prescriptive norms; a failed attempt to steal a Brueghel; epistemic and moral blame and residue; an unbearable guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to (...) women; excuses; stupid games involving hats; radical permissivism; how I’ll never be able to afford to buy a house in Hampstead; and many other exciting topics. (shrink)

Confucianism has been historically intertwined with authoritarianism in general and monarchy in specific. Various contemporary attempts to reconcile Confucianism with democracy have yielded controversial results mostly due to the theoretical tension between the authoritarian character of the former and the liberal one of the latter. This article seeks to develop an alternative route to Confucian democracy by drawing from Huang Zongxi’s 黃宗羲 Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince. In this well-known work, Huang argues for a form of (...) limited government that is built upon laws, political protection of academic freedom, good institutional designs, and separation of governmental powers. While these features seem to qualify Huang only as a defective liberal, this article argues that they are in much coherence with the insights of republicanism concerning good governance. This article will argue that the republican themes embodied in Waiting for the Dawn can justify and support a particular form of Confucian republican democracy. (shrink)

The conventional interpretation of Thomas Aquinas's concept of "moral science" casts it as a knowledge of moral rules that are the outcome of a deductive method of theoretical reason. However, there is a practical moral science that is possessed by ordinary people who are capable of a moral wisdom that is not derived from philosophy. The doctrine concerning this moral science is found in the texts of Aquinas as he takes up and strengthens the philosophy of Aristotle. This book examines (...) how moral science, then, is not a theoretical set of conclusions imposed on the will, but it is rather the grasping of a whole set of human ends that are intellectually apprehended by a compositive method. (Series: Philosophy: Science and Research / Philosophie: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Vol. 42). (shrink)

Este livro procura apresentar um diálogo entre Lima Vaz e dois filósofos contemporâneos, Alasdair MacIntyre e Charles Taylor. Nesta obra, o diálogo entre esses autores acontece na tentativa de interpretar a intersubjetividade ética na sociedade contemporânea a partir das categorias de reconhecimento ético e virtudes.

A major obstacle to the political revival of Confucianism has been its tension with the rule of law. Systemic features of Confucianism such as social hierarchy (and the corresponding social inequal...

As the principle of natural selection is generalized to explain (adaptive) patterns of human behavior, it becomes less clear what the selective environment empirically refers to. While the environment and individual are relatively separable in the non-human biological context, they are highly entangled in the context of moral, social, and institutional evolution. This chapter brings attention to the problem of generalizing the selective environment, and argues that it is ontologically disunified and definable only through its explanatory function. What unifies the (...) selective environment is that it explains adaptation in a non-agential way, by screening off various forms of agency, whether divine, organismic, or human. This explanatory function of the selective environment helps avoid some sources of confusion when the theory of natural selection is applied to humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that humility is a dependent virtue: a virtue that depends on another virtue for its value. I consider three views about this relation: Specific Dependence, Unspecific Dependence, and Fittingness. I argue that, since humility cannot uniquely depend on another virtue, and since this uniqueness is desirable, we should reject Specific and Unspecific Dependence. I defend a Fittingness view, according to which the humble person possesses some objectively good quality fitting for humility. I show beyond Slote’s original characterization (...) of the dependence relation that, even if humility’s value depends on having objectively good qualities, humility itself can be one such quality. So, humility can depend on itself. I call this view Bootstrapped Fittingness. (shrink)

Recasts Plutarch's Lives as a work of political philosophy emerging from the imperial encounter of Greece and Rome.

O trabalho apresenta os resultados de um estudo realizado em torno do tema da qualidade nas políticas educacionais para a educação básica. Destaca o significado do termo em documentos exarados pelo MEC nesta primeira década de século e o compara com os resultados educacionais alcançados por um conjunto de municípios catarinenses no tocante às suas metas de qualidade. Realça que o cenário desafiador que se impõe aos municípios pesquisados traduz-se tanto no encargo pelo alcance das metas nacionais do IDEB, diretamente (...) implicado na melhoria do desempenho dos estudantes na Prova Brasil, quanto na devida atenção a outros referenciais orientadores das ações voltadas à construção da qualidade social da educação, dentre eles projeto político-pedagógico e as diferenças sociais. Conclui apontando a necessidade de acompanhamento atendo das condições que consubstanciariam a qualidade social almejada, em um contexto de crescente tendência ao uso de informações majoritariamente quantitativas na formulação de políticas educacionais. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Shakespeare’s Troilus and CressidaW. R. EltonIn Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida there occurs a particular pattern of parallels with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics regarding ethical-legal questions surrounding an action: issues of the role of the voluntary or the involuntary, of volition and choice, of choice and virtue, and of virtue and habitual action. 1Aristotle’s EN was familiar to Elizabethan higher education and was reprinted in translation in (...) numerous editions, with commentaries, in the sixteenth century. 2 Twice Shakespeare alludes to Aristotle by name: first, recalling his ethics, in Taming of the Shrew (I.i.32)—cf. I.i.18–20 on [End Page 331]Virtue and that part of philosophy... that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev’d,and second, in Troilus (II.ii.166–67) on Aristotle and “moral philosophy.” 3Opening EN, III, Aristotle distinguishes those actions that are “voluntary” from those that are “involuntary,” remarking the necessity to determine their limits. Such a course, he adds, is “useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments” (1109 b 32–34). What Aristotle examines, in effect, is the procedure of determining culpability for an act. 4Under what circumstances and to what extent is one responsible for his action? In addition to the voluntary and the involuntary, there are such act-related dualisms as volition and choice, choice and virtue, and virtue and habitual practice. Such ethical-legal issues are appropriate to a play whose war-plot turns on an abductor’s culpability for an action and the subsequent issue of prescriptive possession—the Grecian claim to Helen against her Trojan possessors. 5The VoluntaryIn Troilus Aristotle’s voluntary-involuntary distinctions seem exemplified. 6 A passage (I.iii.354–56), previously glossed by the present writer, suggests a [End Page 332] parallel EN instance of the voluntary. 7 Aristotle defines the voluntary as “that of which the moving principle is in the agent himself “ (1111 a 23–24). In Troilus Nestor, recalling the agent’s responsibility for acts, explains:Limbes are in his instruments, In no lesse working, then are Swords and Bowes Directiue by the Limbes(I.iii.368–70).These lines occur in Troilus, Folio (1623), and are omitted, along with other relatively specialized lines, from Quarto (1609): 8 according to Aristotle, “the movement of the limbs instrumental to the action originates in the agent himself, and when this is so it is in a man’s own power to act or not to act.” 9 Where EN has “limbs... are the instruments,” F Troilus has “Limbes are in his instruments” (cf. Walker ed., I.iii.354).Limbs are instruments of the agent’s responsibility, as are the swords and bows employed by those limbs. Such a passage in Troilus on the responsibility and voluntariness of acts could have been recognizable to an academic (especially legal) audience and, as rehearsed by the ancient Nestor, might have drawn reminiscent response.The InvoluntaryIf Nestor (I.iii.354–56) had been voice of the voluntary, the combat-withdrawn Achilles is arbitrator of the involuntary. Responding to Thersites’ “I serve here voluntary,” Achilles adjudicates, “Your last service was sufferance, ‘twas not voluntary. No man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress” (II.i.94–97). Mocking Thersites’s “service,” including being beaten, Achilles argues this could not be “voluntary.” His “no man is beaten voluntary” echoes Aristotle’s own familiar terms, denying that a man can be wronged or injured voluntarily. In his commentary on EN John Case [End Page 333] gives the assurance that “No one voluntarily suffers injury..., no one voluntarily and maliciously harms himself: therefore no one willingly suffers injury.” 10In such instances as those above, Troilus (II.i.94–97) recalls basic legal procedure, including determination of the degree of responsibility for an action. What is the minimum requirement of the law before a man can be held accountable? “Those things... are thought involuntary,” says Aristotle, “which take place under compulsion... and that is compulsory of which the moving principle is outside, being a principle... (shrink)

The following article evaluates two common arguments for preterist interpretations of Mark 13:24-27, collectively dubbed the ‘time-text’ argument. These two arguments support symbolic and/or historicised interpretations. Our thesis is that the first argument is unsound and the second commits the informal fallacy of false dilemma. Owing to these problems, the arguments and preterist interpretations should be rejected in favour of more plausible futurist interpretations.

This volume is a philosophical introduction and exploration of the nature and value of personal relationships. It is an ideal text for introductory philosophy, ethics, or applied ethics courses.

In this article we discuss two divergent accounts of non-human animals as analog models of human biomedical phenomena. Using a classical account of analogical reasoning, toxicologists and teratologists claim that if the model and subject modeled are substantially similar, then test results in non-human animals are likely applicable to humans. However, the same toxicologists report that different species often react very differently to the same chemical stimuli. The best way to understand their findings is to abandon the classical view of (...) analogical - i.e., linear - reasoning, and replace it with a version informed by chaos theory. We briefly outline the current understanding of chaos, and trace its implications for toxicology and teratology. (shrink)

Este artigo busca desenvolver a ideia de pop’filosofia, noção presente em Deleuze, como base para uma pop’educação. Buscaremos ferramentas de leitura presentes em Deleuze, Espinosa, Nietzsche, Paulo Freire e Manoel de Barros para com elas tematizarmos as relações de ensino e aprendizado a partir do cinema.

Discutimos a concepção de alteridade presente na V meditação cartesiana de Husserl através da perspectiva ricoeuriana, bem como, a proposta de Ricoeur que coloca a alteridade no centro da ipseidade. Ricoeur, ao pensar sobre a alteridade, acompanha com atenção o desenvolver do pensamento de Husserl e pretende compreender os caminhos que levam do eu ao outro através do mundo em que estamos inseridos enquanto comunidade. A afirmação ricoeuriana da subjetividade pressupõe permanentemente a relação eu-outro-mundo. Portanto, para o filósofo francês, perseguir (...) a compreensão husserliana de alteridade contribui, não somente para confrontar o seu próprio pensamento, como para aprofundar a sua concepção relacional da condição humana. (shrink)

In this article, I will argue that the argument for fatalism based on the relativity of simultaneity fails. The original proponents of the argument called the thesis in terms of ‘determinism’, but Levin refers to it as ‘relativistic fatalism’. Relativistic fatalism is a view supported by the alleged dependence of the property of being future on an arbitrary choice of some coordinate system. First I will try to explain the classic argument, attributed to it a dialectic that justified to call (...) it in the same terms as Levin did. Subsequently, I will refuse the relativistic fatalism using many strategies to deal with it. (shrink)

This paper suggests an answer to a rarely approached question on the model known as the Moving Spotlight Theory. Its advantage lies in that it adds to the debate a clear view of the kind of nature that might correspond to the ‘moving spotlight’ responsible for the passage of time. More specifically, our theory indicates clearly what kind of thing about which the model’s spotlight can tell us. The paper’s main goal is not the defense of the moving spotlight as (...) a theory itself, but an approach for understanding the metaphor at the core of this theory. To achieve our purpose, we bring to the main thesis and promote the union of two components: a) the present is the awareness of our mental states and b) the flow of our awareness or our mental states should correspond to the passage of time and to the spotlight itself. We hope to indicate what is required to correspond to the “spotlight” in an illuminating way and address anticipated difficulties. (shrink)

Many assume that whenever government is entitled to make a law, it is entitled to enforce that law coercively. I argue that the justification of legal authority and the justification of governmental coercion come apart. Both in ideal theory and in actual human societies, governments are sometimes entitled to make laws that they are not entitled to enforce coercively.

The utterance “I am humble” is thought to be paradoxical because a speaker implies that they know they are virtuous or reveals an aim to impress others – a decidedly non-humble aim. Such worries lead to the seemingly absurd conclusion that a humble person cannot properly assert that they are humble. In this paper, I reconstruct and evaluate three purported paradoxes of humility concerning its self-attribution, knowledge and belief about our own virtue, and humility's value. I argue that humility is (...) not genuinely paradoxical and that these puzzles do not have meaningful implications for its conceptual analyses. I instead offer error theoretical explanations of humility's apparent paradoxicality. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1918, Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West has been the object of academic controversy and opprobrium. In their efforts to dispose of it, scholars have resorted to a variety of tactics: bitter invective, icy scorn, urbane mockery, or simply pretending that the book is not there. Yet generations of readers have refused to be warned off, finding in Spengler a prophetic voice and a source of profound intellectual excitement. H. Stuart Hughes's Oswald Spengler offers a (...) judicious and objective reading of Spengler's works that admirably fills the gap between hypercritical invective and naive enthusiasm. This pioneering volume makes clear why Spengler's pessimistic reading of the fate of European civilization continues to resonate with contemporary anxieties. Despite the author's self-imposed intellectual and social isolation, Spengler's work was as Hughes demonstrates, a part of the enormous effort of intellectual reevaluation that has characterized the early twentieth century. Viewing Spengler in the broadest possible perspective, the author places his thought in its cultural relationship to that of such predecessors as Giambattista Vico, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Nikolai Danilevsky and contemporaries including Benedetto Croce, Henri Bergson, and Vilfredo Pareto. A chapter of Hughes's book is devoted to Spengler's influence on later cyclical thinkers such as Arnold Toynbee and Pitirim Sorokin. Another chapter clarifies the essentially antagonistic relationship between his thought and Nazi ideology. Throughout, Hughes is carefully attuned to the complex and often bewildering shifts of Spengler's ideas and manner, providing a unified picture of the sober historian; the lofty seer; the cool, detached observer; and the impassioned participant. In his introduction to this new edition, Hughes comments on the timeliness of Spengler's message with respect to technology and environmental issues and draws some unexpected and fascinating parallels between Spengler's thought and that of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Oswald Spengler offers an illuminating view of the achievements and limitations of one of the most influential and representative figures of the twentieth century. It will be of concern to intellectual historians, philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists. (shrink)