Using data from interviews, student work, and classroom observations in a “History of Race” course at a private predominantly White high school, this article examines the racialized tensions that led the teacher (first author) to create an unofficial affinity group for students of color that met outside of class. The authors argue that the teacher's attempt to implement a curriculum that was culturally affirming for students of color by de-centering Whiteness led to White students’ resistance that necessitated the creation (...) of an unofficial “safe space” outside of the classroom for the students of color. The need for such a group demonstrates the difficulties inherent in presenting a more honest account of the role of race and racism in the United States that challenges narratives of historical progress. The article concludes that while students of color ideally should have access to culturally affirming knowledge inside social studies classrooms, this experience demonstrates why that kind of knowledge can only be engaged effectively within learning spaces that challenge the norms of conventional social studies education. (shrink)

The Berlin Group was an equal partner with the Vienna Circle as a school of scientific philosophy, albeit one that pursued an itinerary of its own. But while the latter presented its defining projects in readily discernible terms and became immediately popular, the Berlin Group, whose project was at least as sig-nificant as that of its Austrian counterpart, remained largely unrecognized. The task of this chapter is to distinguish the Berliners’ work from that of the Vienna Circle and to bring (...) to light its impact in the history of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

In this short note we provide an example of a semi-linear group G which does not admit a semi-linear affine embedding; in other words, there is no semi-linear isomorphism between topological groups f:G→G′Mm, such that the group topology on G′ coincides with the subspace topology induced by Mm.

This contribution addresses major distinctions between the notions of determinism, causation, and prediction, as they are typically used in the sciences. Formally, this can be elegantly achieved by two ingredients: (i) the distinction of ontic and epistemic states of a system, and (ii) temporal symmetry breakings based on the mathematical concept of the affine time group. Key aspects of the theory of deterministically chaotic systems together with historical quotations from Laplace, Maxwell, and Poincare provide significant illustrations. An important point of (...) various discussions in consciousness studies (notably about 'mental causation' and 'free agency'), the alleged 'causal closure of the physical', will be analysed on the basis of the affine time group and the breakdown of its symmetries. (shrink)

The role of antibody-antigen affinity and concentrations in adaptive antibody response is analyzed in a framework of probabilistic inventory model for antibody production. Our results indicate significant differences in optimal behaviours of low, moderate and high affinity groups and offer important implications. Interestingly, the involved approach is also of relevance in other production systems. Directions for its applications in industries and information sciences are also presented.

To investigate cultural lifestyle preferences in different cultural contexts, a forced-choice questionnaire was constructed, based on Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgement, an almost forgotten statistical method of 1927, which is a useful tool for assessing groups. This study's questionnaire items targeted job and living conditions in the spectrum from traditional to globalised lifestyles. Subjects were indigenous representatives at the UNO in Geneva, and students in Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa and Germany. The preferences ascertained reflect attitudes on a scale ranging (...) from very traditional to very globalised lifestyles. Although being an uncommon assessment tool, Thurstone's Comparative Judgement indicates to yield highly valid outcomes, as the results of the African university students, though from three different countries, resembled each other, but were complementary to the results of the indigenous representatives, which, in turn, mirrored the Berlin controls' profiles, according to expectations. Findings are discussed in light of the Symbolic Self-Completion Theory. (shrink)

The history of the Nicaraguan Revolution has received considerable analytical attention. Typically, the successful overthrow of the Somoza regime in the late 1970s is associated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist/socialist inspired vanguard group. While the role Christians played in the revolution is often acknowledged as a significant one, in part because many Sandinista cadres were Christian revolutionaries, little attention has been paid to the degree to which Sandinismo, as a unique perspective on socialism, shares elective affinities (...) with liberation theology, a prophetic expression of Christianity. This manuscript sets out to explore the relationship between liberation theology and Sandinismo-as-socialism. It starts by considering the perspective of Christian revolutionaries on this relationship. It then identifies the electives affinities between the aforementioned cultural frameworks, and it evaluates the Nicaraguan Revolution in light of these elective affinities. The latter evaluation includes exploring the connection between Saint Paul and what it means to be a Sandinista revolutionary. (shrink)

We present the basic concepts of space and time, the Galilean and pseudo-Euclidean geometry. We use an elementary geometric framework of affine spaces and groups of affine transformations to illustrate the natural relationship between classical mechanics and theory of relativity, which is quite often hidden, despite its fundamental importance. We have emphasized a passage from the group of Galilean motions to the group of Poincaré transformations of a plane. In particular, a 1-parametric family of natural deformations of the Poincaré (...) group is described. We also visualized the underlying groups of Galilean, Euclidean, and pseudo-Euclidean rotations within the special linear group. (shrink)

The medicalization of mental health remains a point of contention for bioethicists, especially as it concerns the epistemic capabilities of those diagnosed with an illness or disorder. Gosselin (2019) argues that biomedicalization commits epistemic injustices against these persons and consequently entraps them in a “cycle of vulnerability”; in response, she proposes principles of justice to defend them from such affronts. This paper builds off of her work and responds particularly to the demand for a “sociocentric view of the self as (...) essentially relational.” I present a theory of interdependent agency and affiliation that I contend conceptually bolsters her normative principles. I explain how an expanded use of relational epistemologies, united with a non-ideal theory of mental health, can enrich our hermeneutical resources with respect to those with mental illnesses/disorders. My account introduces normative considerations premised on interdependency, most notably from care theory. Concepts such as vulnerability, relational autonomy, attentiveness, and responsiveness ground a relationally-situated approach that (1) improves the epistemic positionalities of patients, (2) informs more suitable dynamics of care/treatment, and (3) unites groups of mutually interested actors against harm and injustice. I thus use a framework of care to promote affiliations of similarly disadvantaged persons under shared causes and initiatives. I refer to these assemblages as “caring affinity networks.”. (shrink)

There is currently much interest in bringing together the tradition of categorial grammar, and especially the Lambek calculus, with the recent paradigm of linear logic to which it has strong ties. One active research area is designing non-commutative versions of linear logic (Abrusci, 1995; Retoré, 1993) which can be sensitive to word order while retaining the hypothetical reasoning capabilities of standard (commutative) linear logic (Dalrymple et al., 1995). Some connections between the Lambek calculus and computations in groups have long (...) been known (van Benthem, 1986) but no serious attempt has been made to base a theory of linguistic processing solely on group structure. This paper presents such a model, and demonstrates the connection between linguistic processing and the classical algebraic notions of non-commutative free group, conjugacy, and group presentations. A grammar in this model, or G-grammar is a collection of lexical expressions which are products of logical forms, phonological forms, and inverses of those. Phrasal descriptions are obtained by forming products of lexical expressions and by cancelling contiguous elements which are inverses of each other. A G-grammar provides a symmetrical specification of the relation between a logical form and a phonological string that is neutral between parsing and generation modes. We show how the G-grammar can be oriented for each of the modes by reformulating the lexical expressions as rewriting rules adapted to parsing or generation, which then have strong decidability properties (inherent reversibility). We give examples showing the value of conjugacy for handling long-distance movement and quantifier scoping both in parsing and generation. The paper argues that by moving from the free monoid over a vocabulary V (standard in formal language theory) to the free group over V, deep affinities between linguistic phenomena and classical algebra come to the surface, and that the consequences of tapping the mathematical connections thus established can be considerable. (shrink)

This article presents a conceptual approach to feminist history that focuses on the strategies activists use in different temporal and spatial locations. The argument builds on recent insights within feminist theory and historiography that reveal an intimate relationship between historiography and epistemology in knowledge politics. This article, however, probes the limitations of this relationship by focusing on how current historiographical methods exclude or dilute the actions and events of history through representation and citation. By examining the work of Jamaican theatre (...) collective Sistren, and Bristol agit-prop group Sistershow, the article presents two ways to rethink temporality that makes those histories resistant to representation. This article argues for a more careful historiography that can do justice to the action of different historical temporalities. In the process, it opens emergent spaces and temporal challenges for feminist knowledge politics. (shrink)

This article studies the differences between traditional financial intermediaries (commercial banks, savings banks and cooperative banks) and ethical banks based on property rights, in which the owner decides the ideology, principles, standards and objectives of the organisation. In ethical banking, affinity centres on positive social and ethical values. The article consequendy focuses on an index proposed both to differentiate ethical banks from other types of banks, and also to pinpoint the differences between the various ethical banks themselves.This is the (...) Radical Affinity Index (RAI), which groups banks together in terms of their stance on ethical commitment, concentrating on ethical ideology and principles (information transparency, placement of assets, guarantees and participation) and using a sample of 114 European banks. The evidence shows that transparency of information and placement of assets are factors that differentiate ethical banks from other financial intermediaries.Guarantees and participation are characteristics specific to ethical banks; these variables, however, do not offer clear evidence to our analysis. (shrink)

In this review paper, we discuss how gravity and spin can be obtained as the realization of the local Conformal-Affine group of symmetry transformations. In particular, we show how gravitation is a gauge theory which can be obtained starting from some local invariance as the Poincaré local symmetry. We review previous results where the inhomogeneous connection coefficients, transforming under the Lorentz group, give rise to gravitational gauge potentials which can be used to define covariant derivatives accommodating minimal couplings of matter, (...) gauge fields (and then spin connections). After we show, in a self-contained approach, how the tetrads and the Lorentz group can be used to induce the spacetime metric and then the Invariance Induced Gravity can be directly obtained both in holonomic and anholonomic pictures. Besides, we show how tensor valued connection forms act as auxiliary dynamical fields associated with the dilation, special conformal and deformation (shear) degrees of freedom, inherent to the bundle manifold. As a result, this allows to determine the bundle curvature of the theory and then to construct boundary topological invariants which give rise to a prototype (source free) gravitational Lagrangian. Finally, the Bianchi identities, the covariant field equations and the gauge currents are obtained determining completely the dynamics. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with extensions of geometric stability theory to some nonelementary classes. We prove the following theorem:Theorem. Let [Formula: see text] be a large homogeneous model of a stable diagram D. Let p, q ∈ SD(A), where p is quasiminimal and q unbounded. Let [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Suppose that there exists an integer n < ω such that [Formula: see text] for any independent a1, …, an∈ P and finite subset C ⊆ Q, but (...) [Formula: see text] for some independent a1, …, an, an+1∈ P and some finite subset C ⊆ Q.Then [Formula: see text] interprets a group G which acts on the geometry P′ obtained from P. Furthermore, either [Formula: see text] interprets a non-classical group, or n = 1,2,3 and•If n = 1 then G is abelian and acts regularly on P′.•If n = 2 the action of G on P′ is isomorphic to the affine action of K ⋊ K* on the algebraically closed field K.•If n = 3 the action of G on P′ is isomorphic to the action of PGL2(K) on the projective line ℙ1(K) of the algebraically closed field K.We prove a similar result for excellent classes. (shrink)

Lascar described E KP as a composition of E L and the topological closure of E L (Casanovas et al. in J Math Log 1(2):305–319). We generalize this result to some other pairs of equivalence relations. Motivated by an attempt to construct a new example of a non-G-compact theory, we consider the following example. Assume G is a group definable in a structure M. We define a structure M′ consisting of M and X as two sorts, where X is an (...) affine copy of G and in M′ we have the structure of M and the action of G on X. We prove that the Lascar group of M′ is a semi-direct product of the Lascar group of M and G/G L . We discuss the relationship between G-compactness of M and M′. This example may yield new examples of non-G-compact theories. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to establish connections between the pragmatist philosophical tradition and the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I argue that among these connections is the affinity between John Dewey’s account of the development of group morality as articulated in his early work and Wittgenstein’s admittedly vague concept, ‘form of life.’ I argue that this affinity is evident in that both are dependent on inter-subjective experience. Moreover, both Dewey’s account of the development of group morality and (...) Wittgenstein’s concept of form of life suggests an intimate relationship between the individual and the community. I argue further that both Dewey’s account of group morality and Wittgenstein’s form of life concept hold that there is a significant influence of inherited norms, conventions, traditions, etc., on the development of the individual and her conduct in a variety of social interactions. I go on to raise and address potential and anticipated criticisms. In this section I take what I consider to be the most penetrating of the potential criticisms of the arguments presented in this paper: that Dewey and Wittgenstein direct their analyses at different issues (the former directs his analysis toward group moral development and social issues, while the latter directs his toward linguistic activity and its grounding social context), that Dewey focuses much of his attention on moral agency, whereas Wittgenstein is more concerned with what might be called epistemological issues, and finally that my treatment of the form of life concept is incomplete in that I spend a roughly proportionate amount of time discussing related concepts: language games, meaning as use, and, to a lesser extent, rule- following. I respond to these criticisms in turn by arguing that a careful reading of these aspects of each philosopher’s work circumvents such criticisms. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the growing literature on connections between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and the Pragmatist tradition. The subject matter might also be a contribution to the history of philosophy and possibly have implications for epistemology. There is also the hope that in establishing commonalities between the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey one can provide an interpretation of some of the more vague concepts in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, prompting further discussion on these concepts. Finally, this research might pave the way for further research into connections among different aspects of Dewey’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophies. This paper is a first step toward a study of a much larger scope and should not be taken as conclusive. (shrink)

A new theory of spacetime is proposed in which translations are considered as a part of the de Sitter gauge group. The theory is built along the general principles of classical gauge field theories, which are outlined. Applications of gauge principles to linear and affine connections are also given in order to make the presentation self-sufficient. A de Sitter invariant Lagrangian is constructed, which yields approximately Einstein's vacuum equations when it is subjected to variation with respect to gauge potentials and (...) the result expressed in a specific gauge class. As a difference from the usual use of de Sitter groups, the radius of its translations must be small in the present approach, which probably has the meaning of an elementary subatomic length. The solution of the equations describing flat spacetime is not the trivial zero-curvature connection of the conventional approach. (shrink)

In order to avoid trivializing moral issues concerning mentoring, a specialized “strong” concept of a Mentor is proposed that is based on the original model in Homer’s Odyssey. It is argued that mentorship embodies a highly personal and bonding relationship that comes as a free gift and is based on an affinity of some sort. It is further argued that morally such a relationship may be especially appropriate in a racial setting.

The Neuroethics Affinity Group of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities met for the third time in October 2007 to review progress in the field of neuroethics and consider high-impact priorities for the future. Closely aligned with ASBH's own goals of recruiting junior scholars to bioethics and mentoring them to successful careers, the Neuroethics Affinity Group placed a call for new ideas to be presented at the Group meeting, specifically by junior attendees. One group responded with the (...) idea to probe a new direction for neuroethics focused on the neuroscience of gender differences. In the spirit of full disclosure, two of the authors are a student and fellow of the program I formerly directed at Stanford University. The third is junior faculty there. The intellectual ownership of the ideas in the report below, however, are entirely theirs. Like lit torches in a juggling act, there are many directions this project can go. The report is a snapshot of these authors' first iteration of the concept of women's neuroethics. Many thanks are extended to participants of the ASBH Neuroethics Affinity Group meeting whose enthusiasm and feedback was immensely helpful in shaping the concept and moving it ahead. - Judy Illes, Editor AJOB-Neuroscience. (shrink)

This paper examines within the theoretical framework of intertextuality the mobilization of glocalization as an international marketing strategy in Nike’s and Adidas’s 2008 advertising campaigns in China. Intertextuality is seen as a form of mediation through which the glocalization strategy conducted within the domain of global marking is taken up in the domain of advertising communication. The paper also assumes the interrelations of intertextual performance to value orientations and group affiliations. By analyzing intertextuality in relation to affinity groups, (...) it aims to resolve to some extent the conundrum of Nike’s more successful than Adidas in the sportswear market of China in a social-semiotic perspective. Two print ads constituting a representative example of the corpus were selected for a qualitative analysis. The comparative analysis of intertextuality reveals the contrasting methods of glocalization applied by Nike and Adidas in their 2008 advertising campaigns, thus offering an explanation for Nike’s triumph in competition with Adidas in China. (shrink)

Sociology once debated ‘the social’ and did so with a public readership. Even as late as the Second World War, sociologists commanded a wide public on questions about the nature of society, altruism and the direction of social evolution. As a result of several waves of professionalization, however, these issues have vanished from academic sociology and from the public writings of sociologists. From the 1960s onwards sociologists instead wrote for the public by supporting social movements. Discussion within sociology became constrained (...) both by ‘professional’ expectations and political taboos. Yet the original motivating concerns of sociology and its public, such as the compatibility of socialism and Darwinism, the nature of society, and the process of social evolution, did not cease to be of public interest. With sociologists showing little interest in satisfying the demand, it was met by non-sociologists, with the result that sociology lost both its intellectual public, as distinct from affinity groups, and its claim on these topics. (shrink)

In accordance with standards published by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), ethics consultants are expected to provide recommendations that align with scholarly literature, professional society statements, law, and policy. However, there are no studies to date that characterize the specific references that ethics consultants and educators use to inform their work. To address this gap, a convenience sample of clinical ethics consultants and educators was surveyed online through two major listservs for clinical ethics, the ASBH Clinical Ethics (...) Consultation Affinity Group (CECAG) and the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD). Ninety-five ethics consultants and/or educators with diverse educational background, credentials, and experience provided responses. In total, 451 references, 315 of which were unique, were reported. These references were broken into 6 categories after analysis: bioethics literature (divided into articles and books), professional society documents (divided into professional society statements and codes of ethics), federal/state/uniform/case law, hospital/health system policies, official religious teachings, and other. We found extensive variation and minimal overlap in the references respondents used for ethics consultation and education, even when referring to the same topics. Future research directions should include conducting more systematic efforts to characterize the references used by ethics consultants across the US; determining whether demographic characteristics of consultants influence the references used; and ascertaining whether the variation in references used reflects genuine disagreements in consultants’ and educators’ bioethical analysis or recommendations. (shrink)

The concept of revolution marks the ultimate horizon of modern politics. It is instantiated by sites of both hope and horror. Within progressive thought, “revolution” often perpetuates entrenched philosophical problems: a teleological philosophy of history, economic reductionism, and normative paternalism. At a time of resurgent uprisings, how can revolution be reconceptualized to grasp the dynamics of social transformation and disentangle revolutionary practice from authoritarian usurpation? Eva von Redecker reconsiders critical theory’s understanding of radical change in order to offer a bold (...) new account of how revolution occurs. She argues that revolutions are not singular events but extended processes: beginning from the interstices of society, they succeed by gradually rearticulating social structures toward a new paradigm. Developing a theoretical account of social transformation, Praxis and Revolution incorporates a wide range of insights, from the Frankfurt School to queer theory and intersectionality. Its revised materialism furnishes prefigurative politics with their social conditions and performative critique with its collective force. Von Redecker revisits the French Revolution to show how change arises from struggle in everyday social practice. She illustrates the argument through rich literary examples—a ménage à trois inside a prison, a radical knitting circle, a queer affinity group, and petitioners pleading with the executioner—that forge a feminist, open-ended model of revolution. Praxis and Revolution urges readers not only to understand revolutions differently but also to situate them elsewhere: in collective contexts that aim to storm manifold Bastilles—but from within. (shrink)

Residential racial and class segregation produce or exacerbate distributive injustice and political exclusion. Integration as the dispersal of a concentrated minority among the majority, however, often has its own harmful consequences. An alternative ideal of differentiated solidarity combines positive affinity grouping with non‐discrimination and regional government that encourages attention to shared problems and inequality.

Despite their purported demographic and institutional decline, White evangelical voters were instrumental in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and even more so in his 2020 loss. The story of Trump’s electoral successes among Christian voters in the last two elections is in large part the story of religious nationalism—and White Christian nationalism in particular—because Trump personifies the convergence of nationalism-infused forms of messianism and apocalypticism intrinsic to White evangelicalism, which culminate in QAnon cultic ideology. However, these same ethnoreligious/nationalist (...) patterns and logics extend much further back than Trump’s insurgent candidacy. This chapter traces the recurring, resurgent patterns of “zombie nationalism” among White evangelical Christians in the United States over the last half century that emerged in response to periods of significant societal change and certain recurring sociopolitical issues. In particular, alongside established elective affinities around ethnicity (whiteness) and religion (Christianity), this chapter makes the case for incorporating gender and sexual politics as key factors in the articulation and legitimation of religious nationalism in the United States. White Christian nationalism tends to reemerge as a salient political force during periods of rapid social change and diversification, driven by racialized religious grievances symptomatic of Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, or the paradoxical internalization and reprojection of a person’s or group’s perceived endangerment, victimhood, and/or suffering, in order to gain power. Drawing on examples of marriage equality and reproductive rights, this chapter demonstrates how an understanding of sexual politics is key to both apprehending and breaking the cyclical reanimation of White Christian nationalism. Escaping the nihilistic impulses driving these cycles will require White evangelicals to develop new hermeneutical tools capable of transforming the exclusionary patterns of racism, ethnocentrism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy that fuel the engine of ressentiment animating zombie nationalism. (shrink)

On vise à saisir les dynamiques de petits groupes sociaux et de réseaux personnels, de leur formation initiale à leur délitement. Pour cela, depuis 2011, je mène des enquêtes ethnographiques dans trois résidences universitaires en France, aux États-Unis et au Canada. J’effectue ainsi une analyse sur deux niveaux : celui de plusieurs groupes suivis conjointement sur chacun de ces terrains, et celui des relations et des réseaux qui émergent et évoluent. J’articule la représentation graphique des réseaux personnels à des données (...) qualitatives sur ces groupes et ces réseaux. La représentation des liens et des réseaux permet de compléter l’étude des relations affinitaires et de leurs degrés d’intensité. Elle donne aussi à voir l’évolution des réseaux personnels au cours de l’année universitaire. Les descriptions ethnographiques, quant à elles, révèlent la réflexivité des acteurs sur leurs réseaux personnels, et sur leurs évolutions. Cette analyse permet dès lors d’identifier quatre étapes dans le processus de formation et transformation de petits groupes sociaux. Ces quatre temporalités se retrouvent dans l’ensemble des groupes suivis conjointement, malgré la pluralité de leurs compositions. Nous pouvons alors nous demander si dans tout groupe social de ce type se retrouveraient ces quatre temps. En ce sens, cette recherche contribue à compléter les travaux sur les réseaux personnels et les temporalités de leurs évolutions, en apportant une démarche ethnographique et microsociologique. (shrink)

The central thesis of my article is that people live a life worthy of a human being only as self-ruling members of some autarchic (or self-governing) communities. On the one hand, nobody is born as a self-ruling individual, and on the other hand, everybody can become such a person by observing progressively the non-aggression principle and, ipso facto, by behaving as a moral being. A self-ruling person has no interest in controlling her neighbors, but in mastering his own impulses, needs, (...) wishes, desires, behaviors, etc. Inasmuch as he is an imperfect being who lives in an imperfect world, he needs to share certain interests, beliefs, values, customs and other characteristics with other people, i.e. to be involved in some communities. Depending on the following four criteria – the regulatory principle, the essential resources, the specific feedback and the fundamental values –, the countless and manifold human communities can be grouped in three categories: (1) affinity communities, (2) economic communities, and (3) civic communities. In other words, every community or human behavior has an affinity, an economic, and a civic dimension. If a civic community is merely a state shaped society, it can be called a political community. All communities are intrinsically variable. Throughout time, they ceaselessly change their composition, values, interpersonal processes and relations, territory, etc. Interestingly enough, the variability is unanimously recognized and accepted in affinity and communities economic, but is denied or abusively interpreted in the case of state shaped societies. If we confuse two types of order − cosmos and taxis – and two types of rule – nomos and thesis –, as well as we exaggerate the importance of certain type of community we bring some social maladies, namely the traditionalism, the commercialism and the civism, (with the worst form of it – the politicality). Whatever the communities they are involved in, all persons relate (implicitly or explicitly) to the libertarian non-aggression principle, living their life in strict accordance with the logical implications of the position they adopt. People who respect the non-aggression axiom necessarily manifest self-control, consideration for the life and property of the others, commitment to offer value for value, love of freedom and a high level of individual responsibility. By contrast, people who violate this axiom – the villains and the statists – invariably strive to control their neighbors, behave as parasites or predators, prefer forced exchanges, reject the personal responsibility (at most accepting the idea of social responsibility), and apply double moral standards. The first category of people generates a libertarian civic discourse as a spontaneous order, and the second creates a political/ statist civic discourse as a result of the human design and will to power. As a spontaneous order, the libertarian civic discourse implies free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression, free reproduction of ideas and the power of one. Every communication performance in the frame of the libertarian civic discourse is important and has relevant results. All participants to the libertarian civic discourse are automatically members of some self-governing communities (at least members of the general libertarian community). The most important thing for these communities is to be connected to a communicational infrastructure which would make possible free involvement, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. Inasmuch as today democracy means the tyranny of majority and participatory democracy the tyranny of majority plus the power of vested (and illegitimate) interests, only the emergence of self-governing communities by libertarian discourse offers us a little hope. It’s high time to fall in love (again) with liberty and to embrace the non-aggression principle. We don’t have to create a perfect world, but we can strive to develop our human nature. (shrink)

Among the national scientific groups, it was the Prague Linguistic Circle that had the most decisive affinity to the work of the Moscow-Tartu school. This paper examines the work of one of the most tireless contemporary Czech interpreters of the Lutman school, Vladimir Macura (1945-1999), whose work on Czech literary and historical texts are outstanding examples of the reverberation of Lotmanian semiotics of culture in the Czech Republic. This is particularly the case in Macura's reevaluations of the texts (...) of the Czech National Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in two books, Znamení zrodu (Signs of Birth) (1995) and Český sen (The Czech Dream) (1998). In these works Macura looked at this critical period in Czech national history as a multi-layered semiotic text in both the verbal and visual spheres. The present paper is an attempt at an exploration of Macura's treatment in this manner of the following: the Czech language, the city of Prague, the question of Czech national self-identification in general and as part of a larger category, the world of the Slavs. An important aspect of this project is an examination of Macura's exploration of the value functions of symbolic animals and plants in Czech Revival culture, and its relation to the axiology of Czech (Slavic) cultural identity. The paper is dedicated to Macura's memory. (shrink)

Among the national scientific groups, it was the Prague Linguistic Circle that had the most decisive affinity to the work of the Moscow-Tartu school. This paper examines the work of one of the most tireless contemporary Czech interpreters of the Lutman school, Vladimir Macura (1945-1999), whose work on Czech literary and historical texts are outstanding examples of the reverberation of Lotmanian semiotics of culture in the Czech Republic. This is particularly the case in Macura's reevaluations of the texts (...) of the Czech National Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in two books, Znamení zrodu (Signs of Birth) (1995) and Český sen (The Czech Dream) (1998). In these works Macura looked at this critical period in Czech national history as a multi-layered semiotic text in both the verbal and visual spheres. The present paper is an attempt at an exploration of Macura's treatment in this manner of the following: the Czech language, the city of Prague, the question of Czech national self-identification in general and as part of a larger category, the world of the Slavs. An important aspect of this project is an examination of Macura's exploration of the value functions of symbolic animals and plants in Czech Revival culture, and its relation to the axiology of Czech (Slavic) cultural identity. The paper is dedicated to Macura's memory. (shrink)

The question of the affinity between Wittgenstein's philosophy and pragmatism is one that has been often discussed, usually by philosophers sympathetic to a broadly affirmative answer. Pragmatism came into being in 1867 in a reading group in Cambridge Massachusetts, the members of which included Peirce and James. Putnam observes that though the later Wittgenstein may not have been a pragmatist “in the strict sense”, he “shares a central, perhaps the central emphasis with pragmatism: the emphasis on the primacy of (...) practice”. Though Wittgenstein might have resisted the idea that he gave “primacy” to any concept, there is clearly a sense in which Putnam is right. Wittgenstein also admits a class of propositions he calls “grammatical propositions” or “norms of description”. James's most significant influence over Wittgenstein lies in the philosophy of psychology. James's method in psychology is empiricist and introspectionist, and he is a master of the description of mental life. (shrink)

The fundamental Hennigian principle, grouping solely on synapomorphy, is seldom used in modern phylogenetics. In the submitted paper, we apply this principle in reanalyzing five datasets comprising 197 complete plastid genomes (plastomes). We focused on the latter because plastome-based DNA sequence data gained dramatic popularity in molecular systematics during the last decade. We show that pattern-cladistic analyses based on complete plastid genome sequences can successfully resolve affinities between plant taxa, simultaneously simplifying both the genomic and analytical frameworks of phylogenetic studies. (...) We developed “Matrix to Newick” (M2N), a program to represent the standard molecular alignment of plastid genomes in the form of trees or relationships directly. Thus, massive plastome-based DNA sequence data can be successfully represented in a relational form rather than as a standard molecular alignment. Application of methods of median supertree construction (the Average Consensus method has been used as an example in this study) or Maximum Parsimony analysis to relational representations of plastome sequence data may help systematist to avoid the complicated assumption-based frameworks of Maximum Likelihood or Bayesian phylogenetics that are most used today in massive plastid sequence data analyses. We also found that significant amounts of pure genomic information that typically accommodate the majority of current plastid phylogenomic studies can be effectively dropped by systematists if they focus on the pattern-cladistics or relational analyses of plastome-based molecular data. The proposed pattern-cladistic approach is a powerful and straightforward heuristic alternative to modern plastome-based phylogenetics. (shrink)

In recent years two groups of taxonomists have attempted to influence the general goals and methods of biological classification. The first group, which emerged in the late 1950’s, has been called variously neo-Adansonian, numerical, computer and phenetic taxonomy. The founders of this school, Robert R. Sokal and P.H.A. Sneath, termed their unified approach to systematics “neo-Adansonian” because of the affinities which they saw between their views and those of the 18th century botanist, Michel Adanson (1727-1806). Today little mention is (...) made of Adanson. His ideas turned out not to be as prescient as Sokal and Sneath had at first thought. Besides, he had served his purpose as a patron saint ([79], p. 23). Sokal and Sneath also termed their approach “numerical” because they believed that taxonomists should make greater use of available mathematical techniques. Not only should taxonomic characters be coded quantitatively but also estimates of affinity should be made on the basis of explicitly stated clustering procedures. (shrink)

The ability to memorize changes in the environment is present at all biological levels, from social groups and individuals, down to single cells. Trans‐generational memory is embedded subcellularly through genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. Evidence that cells process and remember features of the immediate environment using protein sensors is reviewed. It is argued that this mnemonic ability is encapsulated within the protein conformational space and lasts throughout its lifetime, which can overlap with the lifespan of the organism. Means to determine (...) diachronic changes in protein activity are presented. (shrink)

Deconstruction both by its friends and enemies has come to be associated with a set of cliches that completely misunderstands its ethical aspiration. It is particularly within the field of law that we can see the ethical force of deconstruction, and also illuminate its concrete and practical importance. In The Philosophy of the Limit Drucilla Cornell examines the relationship of deconstruction to questions of ethics, justice and legal interpretation. She argues that renaming deconstruction "the philosophy of the limit" will allow (...) us to be more precise about what deconstruction actually is philosophically and hence to articulate more clearly its significance for law. Cornell explores the ethical and juridical significance of the so-called postmodern rebellion against metaphysics. A shared ethical rebellion links philosophers as different as Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Emmanuel Levinas. Together they present a new ethical configuration, new in its difference from both the critical social theory of J$u$urgen Habermas and the analytic jurisprudence of Nagel and Rawls. A key aspect of this newness is the centrality given to the relationship between questions of ethics and sexual difference. Cornell argues that the appeal of Lacan's analysis to feminists is that it helps to explain the profound hold the gender hierarchy has over Western culture, including its theories of political transformation. Under a Lacanian analysis the law of gender identity will be replicated in the laws of an existing legal system. This means that we cannot hope to sustain legal reforms unless the gender hierarchy is challenged. Cornell examines Derrida's position on the significance of the gender hierarchy in philosophy and explores its ethical and political importance. Derrida's intervention against legal positivism has important implications for the legal reforms necessary to protect marginalized groups. His emphasis on the limit, she argues, is crucial to thosewhose well-being and very lives may depend on legal transformation, women and homosexuals, for example. In an important contribution to legal philosophy, Cornell explores the affinities of Derrida's writings with recent liberal analytic jurisprudence. She also explores the differences. Comparing Rawls's and Derrida's accounts of justice, she argues that Derrida gives greater attention to the necessary utopian moment in his insistence on maintaining the divide between law, established norms, and justice. Cornell's focus on the importance of the limit and the centrality of the gender hierarchy allows her to offer a view of jurisprudence different from both critical social theory and analytic jurisprudence. As we watch the long-fought-for civil rights of women systematically overturned, we have reason to think about how the connections she makes shed light on an underlying truth of our social, political, and legal reality. (shrink)

Ornaments are the most common and ubiquitous art form of the Late Pleistocene. This fact suggests a common, fundamental function somewhat different to other kinds of Paleolithic art. While the capacity for artistic expression could be considerably older than the record of preserved art would suggest, beads signal a novel development in the efficiency and flexibility of visual communication technology. The Upper Paleolithic was a period of considerable regional differentiation in material culture, yet there is remarkable consistency in the dominant (...) shapes and sizes of Paleolithic beads over more than 25,000 years and across vast areas, even though they were made from diverse materials and, in the case of mollusc shells, diverse taxonomic families. Cultural and linguistic continuity cannot explain the meta-pattern. The evidence indicates that widespread adoption of beads of redundant form was not only about local and subregional communication of personal identity or group affinity, but also an expansion in the geographic scale of social networks. The conformity of the beads grew spontaneously and in a self-organizing manner from individuals’ interest in tapping into the network as a means for spreading social and environmental risk. (shrink)

Carey's book on conceptual change and the accompanying argument that children's biology initially is organized in terms of naïve psychology has sparked a great detail of research and debate. This body of research on children's biology has, however, been almost exclusively been based on urban, majority culture children in the US or in other industrialized nations. The development of folkbiological knowledge may depend on cultural and experiential background. If this is the case, then urban majority culture children may prove to (...) be the exception rather than the rule, because plants and animals do not play a significant role in their everyday life. Urban majority culture children, rural majority culture children, and rural Native American children were given a property projection task based on Carey's original paradigm. Each group produced a unique profile of development. Only urban children showed evidence for early anthropocentrism, suggesting that the co-mingling of psychology and biology may be a product of an impoverished experience with nature. In comparison to urban majority culture children even the youngest rural children generalized in terms of biological affinity. In addition, all ages of Native American children and the older rural majority culture children gave clear evidence of ecological reasoning. These results show that both culture and expertise play a role in the development of folkbiological thought. (shrink)

The essays that Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo collect in this volume locate multiple affinities between the philosophies of Nietzsche and Levinas. Both philosophers question the nature of subjectivity and the meaning of responsibility after the "death of God." While Nietzsche poses the dilemmas of a self without a ground and of ethics at a time of cultural upheaval and demystification, Levinas wrestles with subjectivity and the sheer possibility of ethics after the Shoah. Both argue that goodness exists independently of (...) calculative reason—for Nietzsche, goodness arises in a creative act moving beyond reaction and ressentiment; Levinas argues that goodness occurs in a spontaneous response to another person. In a world at once without God and haunted by multiple divinities, Nietzsche and Levinas reject transcendental foundations for politics and work toward an alternative vision encompassing a positive sense of creation, a complex fraternity or friendship, and rival notions of responsibility. Stauffer and Bergo group arguments around the following debates, which are far from settled: What is the reevaluation of ethics (and life) that Nietzsche and Levinas propose, and what does this imply for politics and sociality? What is a human subject—and what are substance, permanence, causality, and identity, whether social or ethical—in the wake of the demise of God as the highest being and the foundation of what is stable in existence? Finally, how can a "God" still inhabit philosophy, and what sort of name is this in the thought of Nietzsche and Levinas? (shrink)

This essay surveys a number of prominent, recurring, and new directions in the growing scholarly discourse on the theme “Heidegger and Judaism” arranged under three headings. The first, the contrastive framing, encompasses cases in which the relationship between Heidegger and Judaism is perceived as antithetical. The second, the conjunctive framing, encompasses views claiming the existence of affinities and parallels between Heidegger and Judaism, grouped under three subheadings: “Heidegger and biblical thinking,” “Heidegger and Kabbalah,” and “Heidegger and the Jewish nation.” The (...) third, historical perspectives, uses the approach of intellectual history to explore visions of Judaism that are developed as part of engagements with Heidegger’s philosophy. (shrink)

Originally published in 2004 in the Common Knowledge symposium “Talking Peace with Gods,” this article elaborates the nature and consequences of the perspectivist cosmologies of Amerindian societies. Contemporary Western cosmologies regard humans as ex-animals who became differentiated from other nonhuman species through the acquisition of advanced cognitive capacities. Amerindian cultures, by contrast, regard animals as ex-humans who became differentiated from both modern humans and other animal species via a series of physical adaptations. Underneath these physical differences, both humans and nonhumans (...) retain a shared human soul; what is more, each species perceives its own kind as human and all other kinds—including humans—as animals. Viveiros de Castro distinguishes this “perspectivism” from relativism: whereas Western relativism assumes multiple valid cultural models, Amerindian perspectivism holds that human and nonhuman species possess a common values system and cultural framework. While this commonality is ordinarily obscured by biologically grounded, perceptual differences, the gap in perspective may be bridged by shamans, whose gift of adopting nonhuman subjectivities enables them to see other species as they see themselves—namely, as humans partaking in human culture. Perspectivism influences both the practices that Amerindian peoples adopt toward nonhuman species and their attitudes toward other human groups, especially in the context of warfare. The Amerindian warrior’s capacity to overcome an enemy ultimately depends on a shaman-like entry into the subjectivity of another: rather than denying the personhood of his enemy, the Amerindian warrior must acknowledge the affinity between them. (shrink)

Chagnon’s analysis of a well-known axe fight in the Yanomamö village of Mishimishiböwei-teri (Chagnon and Bugos 1979) is among the earliest empirical tests of kin selection theory for explaining cooperation in humans. Kin selection theory describes how cooperation can be organized around genetic kinship and is a fundamental tool for understanding cooperation within family groups. Previous analysis on groups of cooperative Lamaleran whale hunters suggests that the role of genetic kinship as a principle for organizing cooperative human (...) class='Hi'>groups could be less important in certain cases than previously thought (Alvard Human Nature 14:129–163, 2003b). Evidence that supports a strong role for genetic kinship—groups are found to be more related than expected by chance—may be spurious because of the correlation between social structure and genetic kinship. Reanalysis of Chagnon’s data using matrix regression techniques, however, confirms that genetic kinship was the primary organizing principle in the axe fight; affinal relations were also important, whereas lineage identity explained nothing. (shrink)

Electronegativity, described by Linus Pauling described as “The power of an atom in a molecule to attract electrons to itself” (Pauling in The nature of the chemical bond, 3rd edn, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, p 88, 1960), is used to predict bond polarity. There are dozens of methods for empirically quantifying electronegativity including: the original thermochemical technique (Pauling in J Am Chem Soc 54:3570–3582, 1932), numerical averaging of the ionisation potential and electron affinity (Mulliken in J Chem Phys 2:782–784, (...) 1934), effective nuclear charge and covalent radius analysis (Sanderson in J Chem Phys 23:2467, 1955) and the averaged successive ionisation energies of an element’s valence electrons (Martynov and Batsanov in Zhurnal Neorganicheskoi Khimii 5:3171–3175, 1980), etc. Indeed, there are such strong correlations between numerous atomic parameters—physical and chemical—that the term “electronegativity” integrates them into a single dimensionless number between 0.78 and 4.00 that can be used to predict/describe/model much of an element’s physical character and chemical behaviour. The design of the common and popular medium form of the periodic table is in large part determined by four quantum numbers and four associated rules. However, adding electronegativity completes the construction so that it displays the multi-parameter periodic law operating in two dimensions, down the groups and across the periods, with minimal ambiguity. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Ethics as First Philosophy brings together original essays by an outstanding group of international scholars that discuss the work of Emmanuel Levinas. The book explores the significance of Levinas' work for philsophy, psychology and religion. Ethics as First Philosophy comprises an excellent collection of work on this major contemporary thinker. The book presents Levinas philosophy from a wide and well-balanced variety of perspectives. The contributions range from thematic discussions of Levinas central concepts to explorations of his affinities and differences with (...) other key writers such as Kant, Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Blanchot and Derrida. Some of the authors focus on the religious and philosophical issues presented by Levinas while others analyze the role of Levinas within phenomenology in or within recent French philosophy. (shrink)

Agamben’s notion of the ‘paradigm’ has far-reaching implications for educational thinking, curriculum design and pedagogical conduct. In his approach, examples—or paradigms—deeply engage our powers of analogy, enabling us to discern previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of classification. In this way we come to envision novel groupings, new patterns of connection—that nonetheless do not simply reassemble those singular objects into yet another rigidly fixed set or class. Agamben sees this sort of ‘paradigmatic understanding’ as our (...) richest source of intelligibility. For Agamben the paradigm is ultimately about learning to see again, starting not with already perfectly known and categorized objects (or ideas), but rather with a fresh experience of one individual object and the analogical relations it may have to others, and to novel groupings that may arise. The paradigm is a method, a way in which educators might respond to a wide range of educational challenges. For a paradigmatic relation suspends while exposing, deactivates while revealing, complicates while clarifying. But articulating the enigmatic paradigmatic relation between example and class is far more than a method. It is epistemological (a way of knowing and conception of knowledge), ethical (a fostering of freedom from presupposed categories and reified principles) and ontological (a type of being that exposes the potential of knowing and communicating—their intelligibility and communicability). In these qualities, paradigms exhibit to educators a free, a new use of singularities. (shrink)

The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth‐century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights (in agreement with Harrison) the (...) physico‐theology of the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUMAN NATURE AND POLITICS: A MIMETIC READING OF CRISIS AND CONFLICT IN THE WORK OF NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI 1 Harald Wydra Universität Regensberg Perhaps more than any other political philosopher2, Machiavelli's writings have given rise to extremely controversial and emotionally charged interpretations.3 Ifone were to pinpoint the guiding lines ofdispute in Machiavelli scholarship, one could argue that his "foes" are convinced of his amorality and the tyrannical bias, while his (...) "friends" stress the liberal and republican basis ofhis teaching. This debate between good and the evil in Machiavelli's teaching has accompanied the conflict on the tyrannical and the republican character of his work ever since.4 While the essence of his prescriptions continues to be contested, most interpreters concur on Machiavelli 's realism or political pragmatism defined in The Prince 25 as effectual 1 I am grateful to Anthony J. Parel, Arpad Szakolczai, and AdolfTrägler for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 2Perhaps with the exception of Marx who shares with Machiavelli the heritage of an inflationary and contentious scholarship. Despite this resemblance, there are fundamental differences when it comes to declare oneself a follower of Machiavelli or follower of Marx. See Aron (256-259). 3In his extensive overview, Berlin estimates the totality of the bibliography at more than 3,000 titles. Needless to say that is has considerably increased since then. The recent wave of new translations into English (Mansfield and Tarcov, or Codevilla) and several new approaches provide for the richness of debate. This debate sometimes acquires a heated intensity, such as in the exchange on Strauss's Machiavelli between Mansfield and Pocock in Political Theory, 3:4 (1975), 372-405. 4See for a recent update the introduction to a new translation ofthe Discourses in Mansfield and Tarcov. Harald Wydra37 truth (verità ejfetuale). In this stress on factual reality as opposed to imagination many have seen the sources of Machiavelli's advocacy of technicity, rationality and reason of state. Such a viewpoint is supported by Machiavelli's pure and emotionless style ofwriting. Machiavelli's effectual truth is essentially about the mastery over conflict and contingency in politics. Yet, there are hardly systematic studies on the status and role ofpolitical conflict and its consequences for political order in Machiavelli's work.5 Most classical studies include analysis of conflict (Pocock; Lefort; Sasso), but they do so by sticking to the natural textual division ofhis major works. This article sets out to elaborate some guidelines ofa Machiavellian theory ofconflict by linking it to René Girard's theory of mimetic conflict. It aims to achieve two things: first, to analyze the nature of political conflict in Machiavelli's work. Second, to reexamine some widespread assumption on the autonomy of politics. The Affinity of Machiavelli and Girard: Crisis and Conflict Methodologically, a reading ofMachiavelli through Girard has a status different from that of orthodox comparisons oftwo thinkers.6 This can be illustrated by considering Raymond Aron's comparison between Machiavelli and Marx. On the one hand, Machiavelli's political philosophy is marked by a stress on cyclical repetition and permanent instability. His realism maintains that the more things change the more they remain the same. On the other hand, Marx's economic philosophy of history envisages long-term progress and as such reflects upon change by its confidence in Providence. Yet, essentially both works are concerned with the contingent modalities of collective conflict over time. While for Machiavelli the struggle for power unfolds between political groups such as nobles and the people, Marx suggests the social and economic roots ofconflicts in social formations. Against this background, a reading of Machiavelli through Girard diverges from conventional comparisons. Machiavelli's work emanates from his experience as a practitioner ofpolitics who aims to be the counsellor of Princes. A trained historian and literary critic, Girard analyzes fundamental 5To my knowledge, by far the most balanced and detailed treatment is given by Sasso. For a thematic treatment of civil discord, see also Bock. 60ne can mention Raymond Aron's two fine essays "La comparaison de Machiavel et Pareto" (Aron 86-109) and "Machiavel et Marx" published in Italian in the first edition of Machiavelli's Principe (1975) and again in... (shrink)

The organizational climate is the work environment conceived by emotions and motivation of an organization and, an optimal way of increasing participation is with working groups in the dependencies to improve: objectives, processes, conflicts, leadership. Thus the objective was to determine the characterization of variables. The method incorporates the quantitative approach, non -experimental design, descriptive level, applied and transversal type, analysis and deductive methods. The results show, there is a high organizational climate level, due to the contribution of three (...) dimensions or aspects that are: economic conditions, management values and organizational policies. (shrink)

Discussions about perspectivism in the current philosophical literature often focus on questions concerning perspectival modeling or the compatibility between perspectivism and realism. In this paper, I propose to extend the debate on perspectivism by taking into account the social dimension of scientific perspectives. Scientific perspectives are always adopted and advocated for by individual scientists and groups of scientists with different epistemic affinities. I describe an example of a current and ongoing controversy in the field of epigenetics in order to (...) illustrate that diverging scientific perspectives on open scientific questions are often not fully explained by empirical underdetermination or diverging theoretical approaches alone. Opposing perspectives frequently arise from differences in systems of practice and the scientific socializations of the involved scientists, including differences in training, experimental skills, and epistemic priorities. The paper ends with a discussion of the important epistemic function of perspectives in scientific discovery. Ultimately, perspectivism is described as a valid philosophical position that explains how scientific knowledge is generated in situations of empirical underdetermination and why trust in science can be justified even in the absence of a community consensus. (shrink)

This paper gives a critical evaluation of the philosophical presuppositions and implications of two current schools in the sociology of knowledge: the Strong Programme of Bloor and Barnes; and the Constructivism of Latour and Knorr-Cetina. Bloor's arguments for his externalist symmetry thesis (i.e., scientific beliefs must always be explained by social factors) are found to be incoherent or inconclusive. At best, they suggest a Weak Programme of the sociology of science: when theoretical preferences in a scientific community, SC, are first (...) internally explained by appealing to the evidence, e, and the standards or values, V, accepted in SC, then a sociologist may sometimes step in to explain why e and V were accepted in SC. Latour's story about the social construction of facts in scientific laboratories is found to be misleading or incredible. The idea that scientific reality is an artifact turns out to have some interesting affinities with classical pragmatism, instrumentalism, phenomenology, and internal realism. However, the constructivist account of theoretical entities in terms of negotiation and social consensus is less plausible than the alternative realist story which explains consensus by the preexistence of mind-independent real entities. The author concludes that critical scientific realism, developed with the concept of truthlikeness, is compatible with the thesis that scientific beliefs or knowledge claims may be relative to various types of cognitive and practical interests. However, the realist denies, with good reasons, the stronger type of relativism which takes reality and truth to be relative to persons, groups, or social interests. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of Thomas Aquinas’s and Godfrey of Fontaines’s moral philosophies. In this study, I conduct a detailed analysis of two Aristotelian commitments concerning the character virtues, namely, The Plurality of the Character Virtues and The Connection of the Character Virtues. Both Aquinas and Godfrey think that there are many distinct character virtues, however, one cannot possess these character virtues in separation from each other. In Chapter I, it is established that Aquinas believes in the plurality of (...) the character virtues not because of a specific account of the human soul, but because he is committed to a plurality in what he calls “the notion of goodness.” In Chapter II, it is argued that Aquinas’s account of virtuous action requires that there be a likeness between a person and their actions in terms of the notion of goodness explored in Chapter I. Chapters III through V lay out my account of how to reconstruct both Aquinas’s and Godfrey’s arguments for The Connection of the Character Virtues. The focus here lies on finding an interpretation that provides a valid argument for the connection of the character virtues. I argue that we ought to focus on a dependence between prudence and the character virtues. A central problem for this analysis is how to account for prudence as a unified virtue. On this issue, Godfrey provides an explicit argument that conceives of prudence as unified because prudence strikes a balance between the character virtues. Chapter VI investigates whether different groups, such as men and women, possess different types of character virtues. Godfrey offers a novel argument for the impossibility of male- and female-specific virtues. Finally, Chapter VII explores the question of how we should understand Godfrey’s account of prudence itself. I show that his discussion emphasizes the variable nature of ethics and that he endorses a view that has certain affinities with ethical particularism. (shrink)