In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour (...) codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform. (shrink)

The main publicity poster for Olivier Nakache’s and Eric Toledano’s recent film Intouchables (The Intouchables [2011]) features two men side-by-side, grinning ear-to-ear. The image is oddly difficult to interpret. For French cinema initiates, the contrast should be striking. Seated to the left is François Cluzet, long one of the France’s more versatile leading actors; huddled over him on the right is Omar Sy, a French-born comedian of Senegalese and Mauritanian descent who, prior to playing this role, was largely unknown to (...) the French public. Those unfamiliar with the actors will note, at the very least, their different attire; Cluzet’s patterned ascot and Sy’s green hooded sweatshirt signal clear class .. (shrink)

The power of technology to transform religions, science, and political institutions has often been presented as nothing short of revolutionary. Does technology have a similarly transformative influence on societies’ morality? Scholars have not rigorously investigated the role of technology in moral revolutions, even though existing research on technomoral change suggests that this role may be considerable. In this paper, we explore what the role of technology in moral revolutions, understood as processes of radical group-level moral change, amounts to. We do (...) so by investigating four historical episodes of radical moral change in which technology plays a noteworthy role. Our case-studies illustrate the plurality of mechanisms involved in technomoral revolutions, but also suggest general patterns of technomoral change, such as technology’s capacity to stabilize and destabilize moral systems, and to make morally salient phenomena visible or invisible. We find several leads to expand and refine conceptual tools for analysing moral change, specifically by crystallizing the notions of ‘technomoral niche construction’ and ‘moral payoff mechanisms’. Coming to terms with the role of technology in radical moral change, we argue, enriches our understanding of moral revolutions, and alerts us to the depths of which technology can change our societies in wanted and unwanted ways. (shrink)

. Grant Ramsey and Michael Deem argue that appreciating the role that empathy plays in posttransgression guilt leads to a more promising account of the emotion’s evolutionary origins. But because their proposal fails to adequately distinguish guilt from shame, we cannot say which of the two emotions we are actually getting an evolutionary account of. Moreover, a closer look at the details suggests both that empathy may be more relevant for our understanding of shame’s evolutionary origins than guilt’s, and (...) that guilt is unlikely to be an adaptation. (shrink)

This book is a commentary on volume four of Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer had not completed this volume at the time of his death. The texts related to Cassirer’s preliminary work on it have been assembled and translated recently by John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene. Bayer’s book is a commentary on these texts, and since it is meant only as a commentary, as Verene notes in his introduction, “Bayer does not propose to solve problems that (...) may lie within Cassirer’s metaphysics. Her method of commentary takes the reader progressively through Cassirer’s claims, and she reminds the reader how each point stands in relation to the general themes of Cassirer’s position”. So although the book offers a general and helpful summary of the foundational features of Cassirer’s philosophy, it does not offer a deeper or clearer understanding of it. (shrink)

This paper begins with an examination of Amelie Rorty’s claim that although “emotions cannot be rational in the narrow sense of being logically derived from accepted premises, they can be deemed rational... as ‘appropriately formed to serve our thriving.’” This is the background against which (i) I develop a notion of ‘emotional holism’ based on the aetiology of emotion in infantile phantasy; and (ii) introduce a dark corollary about the likelihood that our emotions do not, on the whole, match the (...) myths we use to describe them to ourselves. The paper has five sections: (1) The Rationality of Kinds of Emotion and the Argument Against the Rationality of Particular Emotions; (2) Alternative Views of the Rationality of Emotions; (3) Is EmotionaI Behavior RationaI?; (4) Do Particular Emotions Generally Serve Our Thriving?; and (5) Are There Emotions Not Worth Having?: EmotionaI Holism and Manipulating One’s Emotional Repertoire. (shrink)

This paper begins with an examination of Amelie Rorty’s claim that although “emotions cannot be rational in the narrow sense of being logically derived from accepted premises, they can be deemed rational... as ‘appropriately formed to serve our thriving.’” This is the background against which (i) I develop a notion of ‘emotional holism’ based on the aetiology of emotion in infantile phantasy; and (ii) introduce a dark corollary about the likelihood that our emotions do not, on the whole, match the (...) myths we use to describe them to ourselves. The paper has five sections: (1) The Rationality of Kinds of Emotion and the Argument Against the Rationality of Particular Emotions; (2) Alternative Views of the Rationality of Emotions; (3) Is EmotionaI Behavior RationaI?; (4) Do Particular Emotions Generally Serve Our Thriving?; and (5) Are There Emotions Not Worth Having?: EmotionaI Holism and Manipulating One’s Emotional Repertoire. (shrink)

The opinion of Mr. Justice Francis of the English High Court which denied the parents of Charlie Gard, who had been born with an extremely rare mutation of a genetic disease, the right to take their child to the United States for a proposed experimental treatment occasioned world wide attention including that of the Pope, President Trump, and the US Congress. The case raise anew a debate as old as the foundation of Western medicine on who should decide and (...) on what standard when there is a conflict between a family and the treating physicians over a possible treatment. This paper will explore the different approaches of the British and American courts on the issue and the various proposals from that of John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice to a processed-based approach for resolving such disputes. As carefully crafted as the opinion of Mr Justice Nicholas Francis in the Gard case proved to be, it left commentators unsatisfied. A widespread criticism, captured in an article by Michael Dougherty in The National Review was for the state to ‘get out of the way of the parents trying to act in the best interests of the child’.1 Although he conceded the parents could be adding to the suffering of the child by taking Charlie to America for an experimental therapy and agreed that such a choice ‘may be the wrong decision,’ in Dougherty’s view, it should still be ‘their decision’. Dougherty’s stand was the popular response to the question of ‘Who should decide?’ It fails, however, to propose any rationale for the decision. It provided no norms, no standards and no guidelines for the parents. Their motive could equally well be indifference to the suffering of the child as concern for his well-being. Furthermore, even good, loving parents may make …. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to study and analyse the Charlie Hebdo attacks from a methodological and an ethical perspective, concentrating generally, though in some cases indirectly, on the consequences of our actions and the motives behind them. The analysis examines the issues of liberties, freedoms and responsibilities in general and further applies these values to the phenomenon of terrorism in contemporary society. The primary goal of this study is to use the Thomas Aquinas doctrine of double effect (...) and Michael Ignatieff’s lesser evil theory to appraise specific acts of terrorism. The article suggests that certain freedoms should be limited in democratic societies and thus ensure safety. (shrink)

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive (...) cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist’ response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. (shrink)

Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and summarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a short and condensed method, in order to present a network of d...

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I offer new arguments for an unorthodox reading of J. L. Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, one on which Mackie does not think all substantive moral claims are false, but allows that a proper subset of them are true. Further, those that are true should be understood in terms of a “hybrid theory”. The proposed reading is one on which Mackie is a conceptual pruner, arguing that we should prune away error-ridden moral claims but hold onto those already free (...) of error. This reading is very different from the standard ones found in the literature. I build on recent work by Moberger and argue that this reading is better corroborated by close attention to the way in which Mackie argues at length that terms like “good” and “ought” are systematically context-sensitive, as well as by considerable additional textual evidence. This reading, however, faces an important challenge—to explain in what sense, if any, morality retains its “normativity” on the proposed reading. I argue that this challenge can be met, at least given some of Mackie’s further assumptions about the nature of rationality. (shrink)

Introduction: Western Marxism in Educational Philosophy and Theory -- Ideology and Schooling -- Marxism and Education: Will the Doctrine Bear the Weight? -- Education and Cultural Disadvantage -- Illich and Anarchism -- Knowledge and Ideology in the Marxist Philosophy of Education -- Liberal Education and Social Change -- The Continuing Conflicts Between Capitalism and Democracy: Ramifications for Schooling -- Luce Irigaray: Women becoming subjects for a divine economy -- The Nature and Limits of Critical Theory in Education -- Class Dismissed? (...) Historical materialism and the politics of 'difference' -- A Brief Commentary on the Hegelian-Marxist Origins of Gramsci's 'Philosophy of Praxis' -- Hope, political imagination, and agency in Marxism and beyond: Explicating the transformative worldview and ethico-ontoepistemology -- Knowledge socialism: the rise of peer production - collegiality, collaboration, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a na.

Die philosophische Frage nach der Identität einer Person ist nicht wohlbestimmt. Es handelt sich keineswegs, wie der Gebrauch des Begriffes im Alltag oder auch in der Philosophie nahe legt, um ein einheitliches Phänomen. Vielmehr muss die Identität einer Person als Zusammenspiel von folgenden Fragen analysiert werden: Was macht die Ganzheit einer Person aus? Was muss der Fall sein, damit eine Person gestern mit der Person von heute "identisch" ist? Was verstehen wir unter Identität im Sinne von Selbstverstehen und Selbstbewusstsein? Es (...) wird gezeigt, wie sich die beiden "Identitäten" menschlicher Personen - Persistenz und Persönlichkeit -in unserem alltäglichen Verständnis miteinander verschränken. (shrink)

Life’s meaning is a deeply important yet perplexing topic. It is often unclear what people are talking about when they talk about life having “meaning”. This paper attempts to clarify things by articulating a schema for understanding claims about meaning. It defends a theory according to which X means Y iff Y is a correct interpretation of X—i.e., if Y is a correct answer to an interpretive question, Z. I argue that this (perhaps surprising) claim has impressive explanatory power. Applying (...) this schema to life explains the many ways in which people seem to think and talk about life’s meaning, and common claims in the philosophical literature. It also makes sense of empirical findings from psychological research on perceived meaning in life. (shrink)

The next pandemic will erupt, not from the jungle, but from the disease factories of hospitals, refugee camps and cities. Wendy Orent, How Plagues Really Work,.

This essay analyzes Derrida’s questioning of the relationship between “Theory and Practice” in his recently published seminar of 1976–1977 of this same title. It traces Derrida’s reading of this relationship in Marx and Marxism, beginning with various interpretations of the famous line from Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach,” “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; what is important is to transform it.” The essay tries to argue that Derrida’s reading of theory and practice in Marx should be used in (...) the end to reread Derrida himself and so rethink the relationship between theory and practice in deconstruction and, especially, in pedagogy. After tracking the places where Derrida’s seminar, first presented in Paris to help prepare students for the 1977 agrégation exam in philosophy on the theme of “Theory and Practice,” repeated, overlapped with, or anticipated many prior and subsequent treatments of similar themes in Derrida’s published works, the essay concludes that no seminar—and Derrida’s seminars are exemplary in this regard—can be restricted to the time in which they are given but are always, like Derrida’s “specters of Marx,” non-contemporaneous with themselves, in a word, “out of joint.”. (shrink)

Marx developed a sophisticated theory of labour under capitalism’s expanding reproduction but wrote little specifically on immaterial labour. This paper reflects on how to build from Marx’s writings a more comprehensive theory of immaterial labour. Integral to this theorisation is bringing in young Marx’s writings on alienation and human nature, and praxis read as the ‘point of knowledge is to change the world’. Integrating the young and mature work into a single perspective that highlights the actively causal dimension of human (...) creativity and knowledge for the making of history critically adds to and thereby transforms the naturalism and structural determinism of orthodox readings of Marx’s Marxism. We relate this theorisation specifically to the project of liberating academic labour from the shackles of its neoliberal containment by making ‘knowledge socialism’. (shrink)

Belief fragments and mental files are based on the same idea: that information in people’s minds is compartmentalized rather than lumped all together. Philosophers mostly use the two notions differently, though the exact relationship between fragments and files has yet to be examined in detail. This chapter has three main goals. The first is to argue that fragments and files, properly understood, play distinct yet complementary explanatory roles; the second is to defend a model of belief that includes them both; (...) and the third is to raise and address a shared dilemma that confronts them: that they threaten to be either explanatorily lightweight or empirically refuted. This chapter contends that it is better to embrace the horn of this dilemma that opens up files and fragments to empirical refutation or confirmation, by adopting a psychofunctionalist approach. (shrink)

Rortys Konzeption der Menschenrechte basiert auf seiner Ablehnung eines universalistischen Rationalitätskonzepts. Vielmehr bildet für ihn das Gefühl aller Menschen, dass Grausamkeiten und Leid überwinden werden sollten, die Basis seiner sentimantalistischen Konzeption von Menschenrechten. Dabei werden jedoch insbesondere institutionelle und interkulturelle Aspekte der Menschenrechte und die unhinterfragten Aporien des Liberalismus zu wenig beachtet.

Leading one's life as a person is an essential feature of our human existence which is constitutively characterized by finiteness, sociality and vulnerability. Within the framework of a pragmatistic anthropology central features of our being persons (i.e. personal identity, self-consciousness, freedom, autonomy and responsibility) are made explicit in this study. The such unfolded conception is anthropological in the sense of being restricted to the human life-form. The explication is pragmatistic in a double sense: Firstly, action is taken as a complex (...) and not reducible basic feature; secondly, the study is committed to the pragmatistic model of justification. Leading one's life as a human person, this is the study's central thesis, is realized in constellations of recognition (intersubjective or institutionally framed). These can be made explicit as basic grammar of our evaluative Praxis within an ascriptivist framework. (shrink)

This paper presents Anthony Steinbock's broad theory of moral emotions and specifically the distinction he draws between the temporal orientation and the temporal meaning of emotions. The latter distinction is used in order to provide phenomenological descriptions of, and distinctions between, patience and impatience. The paper takes leading clues from Steinbock’s work in an effort to “do” phenomenology in a way that clarifies these specific natural attitude intentionalities.

Een veelgehoorde kritiek op islamitische scholen is dat kinderen er worden geïndoctrineerd en dat dit in strijd is met het doel van onderwijs in een democratische samenleving. Dit artikel onderzoekt de principiële vraag of ouders ervoor zouden kunnen kiezen om hun kind naar een school te sturen waar hij of zij geïndoctrineerd wordt, bijvoorbeeld omdat zij denken dat het kind op een religieuze school minder kans loopt te worden gestigmatiseerd. Daarnaast wordt bekeken of het waarschijnlijk is dat kinderen op islamitische (...) scholen in Nederland daadwerkelijk geïndoctrineerd worden. (shrink)

This article discusses the use of orthodox rational choice theory in the context of moral contractarianism. The article’s goals are threefold. First, the article clarifies the nature of moral contractarianism and corrects a fundamental misconception. Second, it responds to criticism that follows from this misconception. It shows that the criticism either misconstrues the nature of moral contractarianism or does not apply. Third, the article clarifies the limited role that formalization can play in the context of moral contractarianism. At best, such (...) formalization complements and, at worst, distracts from the true nature of the theory and, more generally, from the central role that the context of choice plays for the justification of moral principles in contractarian moral theory. (shrink)

Internationale vergelijkingen vormen een waardvolle bron van inzicht bij het analyseren van maatschappelijke problemen en het beoordelen van beleidsmatige antwoorden op die problemen. Vergelijkend onderzoek levert vaak interessante of nuttige informatie op doordat er verschillen én overeenkomsten worden geconstrueerd, bijvoorbeeld: hoe ‘leefbaar’ is Toronto vergeleken met Berlijn? Zelfs wanneer de definities verschillen en de gebruikte meeteenheden enigszins onnauwkeurig kunnen zijn – bijvoorbeeld “leefbaar voor wie en ten opzichte van wat?” – zijn vergelijkingen leerrijk en aanleiding voor verdere reflectie. Maar internationale (...) vergelijkingen kunnen op verschillende manieren ook problematisch zijn. (shrink)

The advantages of adopting a realist semantics within linguistics are seen as: first, such semantics can allow for meaningful disagreements between speakers; and second, such semantics minimizes indeterminacy. These two advantages are translated into comparable advantages for such semantics if used in law. Three different versions of realist semantics are distinguished within recent legal theory. Only one of these is deemed capable of delivering the advantages of a truly realist semantics. Although a broad applicability of realist semantics is defended—to cover (...) terms referring to functional and moral as well as natural kinds—a limited role for realist semantics within legal interpretation is defended. Such semantics may provide the first word in legal interpretation; it never provides the last word. The application of realist semantics to law itself is finally assayed. The desirability of legal theory about law being objective is defended. (shrink)

One of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century's linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in - the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the (...) articulation of human relationships and dialogue. The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement - and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God. Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion. (shrink)

Weakness of the will remains a perplexing issue. Though philosophers have made substantial progress in homing in on what counts as a weak will, there is little agreement on whether weakness of the will is irrational, and if so, why. In this paper, we take an empirical approach towards the rationality of weakness of the will. After introducing the philosophical debate, we present the results of an empirical study that reveals that people take a “dual sensitivity”, as we shall put (...) it, towards assessing the rationality of weak-willed behavior. Put succinctly, intending X against your value judgements is assessed irrational; yet, in the same situation, intending X is assessed significantly less irrational if you judge X as something you ought to do. After discussing this result, we turn to the question of whether there is a plausible theory of rationality than can account for the dual sensitivity of the rationality assessments. We show that a success-based account can make sense of the dual sensitivity our empirical results reveal. (shrink)

Student employability is a key aspect of any university degree. The relationship between high student learning outcomes and high employability is a problem that needs to be addressed and improved by colleges and universities. Students with high employability can find good jobs after graduation and perform well in the workplace. Employability is associated with the success of university education, thus giving the university a good reputation. This study explores the development of employability, alongside teaching and student learning abilities to examine (...) how these variables affect student employability. The study collected 442 responses to a questionnaire to investigate the relationship between pedagogy for employability, problem-based learning, absorptive capacity, and student employability based on a structural model. The SEM results show that pedagogy for employability and problem-based learning positively correlate to absorptive capacity; pedagogy for employability and absorptive capacity positively correlate to student employability. We then analyzed a case study teaching intervention strategy with 221 students from the school of management and discuss the differential results of all variables. Results showed that the test group was superior to the control group in each variable performance, indicating that the intervention strategy proved effective. Based on these findings, this study proposes suggestions for future research. (shrink)

First, this article introduces the person and work of Jacques Ellul and highlights important aspects of his writing on surveillance, power, and violence. It shows that Ellul’s critique of surveillance predates the work of other critics of surveillance such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Giorgio Agamben. This provides a conceptual sociological frame for the more philosophical, theological, and ethical work provided in the conclusion. Second, this essay engages Ellul’s reading of Ecclesiastes, as provisionally demonstrated here, to uncover the wisdom (...) of this curious scriptural text that can help individuals and groups to think and live well in surveillant environments. (shrink)

In the first ever commentary on the Groundwork, one of Kant’s earliest critics, Gottlob August Tittel, argues that the categorical imperative is not a new principle of morality, but merely a new formula. This objection has been unjustly neglected in the secondary literature, despite the fact that Kant explicitly responds to it in a footnote in the second Critique. In this paper I seek to offer a thorough explanation of both Tittel’s ‘new formula’ objection and Kant’s response to it, as (...) well as illustrate its significance. I argue that the objection is in fact the third step in a line of argument that Tittel presents in his commentary, and that the objection is best understood within this context. I analyze Kant’s response in the second Critique footnote line-by-line so as to show that Kant both clarifies that it was never his aim to offer a new principle, but only ‘establish’ the principle that common human reason already implicitly employs. Furthermore, I show that Kant uses the opportunity to clarify the sense in which the categorical imperative is a ‘formula [Formel]’, namely as a representation of a complicated and abstract principle, like the moral law, in a way that is easier to understand and apply. I conclude by illustrating the fourth step in Tittel’s line of argument, which makes the overall significance of the ‘new formula’ objection clear: for Tittel, the problem is not that Kant seems to be offering merely a new formula, but that the categorical imperative lacks a foundation. (shrink)

In this paper, conceptions of the failure of the human species in the philosophy of history that can be found in the thought of Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno will be presented. Before that, some aspects of Hegel’s metaphysics have to be recapitulated as background, even if Hegel’s conception of the philosophy of history cannot be inserted into the constellation spanned here. Finally, it will be discussed how the failure of the human species can be philosophically thematized beyond framings in a (...) philosophy of history. (shrink)

The model of world order has changed dramatically in the postwar era from the bipolarity between the US and Soviet Russia that characterized the Cold War, to a period of unipolarity after the fall...

This essay seeks to establish the sense in which Derrida’s stated indifference to questions of legitimate descent can function as an ethical or political principle, as he argues in “Marx and Sons.” We track Derrida’s response to accusations of a lack of fealty in texts such as “Marx and Sons,” “Biodegradables: Seven Diary Fragments,” and “Limited Inc a b c … ” alongside his problematization of a certain sense of inheritance or heritage. We argue that Derrida reveals the necessity of (...) troubling established legitimate inheritances as an ethical and political first principle. As such, we argue that Derrida’s reading of Marx is not just one faithful reading among others, but an indifference to the paradigm of fealty in inheritance. (shrink)

The majority of theologians, philosophers, and religious leaders have, during the past five decades, either argued or taken it for granted that the primary aim of interreligious dialogue is mutual understanding and that the purpose of realizing this aim is mitigation of alienation, hatred, and violence between the religions and cooperation on worthwhile projects. On the contrary, the author of this paper argues that the primary aim of interreligious dialogue should be to create a bond of friendship between the various (...) religions of the world. In his attempt to establish the validity of this proposition, the author, first, advances a concept of "collective subject" as a condition for the possibility of friendship primarily because friendship is viewed as a relation between two human subjects; second, he introduces a general concept of friendship whose main elements are good will, mutual affection, and social service; and, third, he argues that religions can, qua collective subjects, establish a bond of friendship between them. (shrink)

Levinas’s notion of fraternity and his conception of an ideal human society recover themes from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century social and political thought. In this paper I show how Levinas’s thinking can be illuminated by examining the conceptions of community that we find in Martin Buber’s dialogical thinking and in Franz Rosenzweig’s concept of redemption and redemptive community in The Star of Redemption.

This article discusses the pros and cons of the creation of a separate Ukrainian standard of the Russian language. Owing to the centralist and elitist history of the Russian standard language, the high variant of Russian that is used in Ukraine does not significantly differ from that of Russia, if at all. Low varieties, by contrast, are quite heterogeneous. The standardization of “Ukrainian Russian” would thus be very problematic at all stages: the selection of norms and their codification, the implementation (...) and elaboration of the new norms. All these steps would not only require considerable funding; in the long run, it would also undermine the status of Ukrainian as Ukraine’s sole state language. (shrink)

Die Kulturgeschichte kennt eine Vielzahl an unterschiedlichen Variationen des Spiels. In einer bestimmten Hinsicht erweist sich die Form des Spiels als ein konstitutives Phänomen von Kultur. Unter der Voraussetzung, dass es sich bei Religion um ein kulturelles System handelt, kann zudem erwartet werden, dass auch sie den Impuls des Spielerischen in sich aufnimmt. Vor diesem Hintergrund zielen die Beiträge dieses Bandes darauf ab, einzelne Verflechtungen zwischen Spiel und Kultur aus theologischen und philosophischen Perspektiven zu untersuchen. Dabei geht es sowohl darum, (...) theoriegeschichtliche Hintergründe des Zusammenhangs sichtbar zu machen, als auch darum, die Verhältnisse zwischen Spiel, Religion und Ethik systematisch zu untersuchen."-- Back cover. (shrink)