This article contains four criticisms against Jacques Rancière's philosophy of education, insofar as his philosophy is written in his work The Ignorant Schoolmaster. In the first criticism, Rancière's presupposition of equality of intelligence would be framed as a truth claim and to the extent that it can be treated as such, Rancière's argument contains a number of defects. The second criticism underscores the distinction between inequality of intelligence and inequality of knowledge Rancière confuses. The third criticism concerns the contradiction between (...) what Rancière has written and what he practiced and also the weakness of the defense provided by his supporters on this point. Fourth, Rancière's redefinition of “emancipation” as verification of the equality of intelligence turns out to strip away the very idea of emancipation of what makes it meaningful for many people. Abstrak: Tulisan ini berisi empat kritik terhadap filsafat pendidikan Jacques Rancière sebagaimana tertuang dalam karyanya The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Dalam kritik pertama, pengandaian kesetaraan akal budi Rancière akan dikemas sebagai klaim kebenaran dan sejauh itu dapat diperlakukan sebagai klaim kebenaran, argumen Rancière mengandung sejumlah kecacatan. Kritik kedua menggarisbawahi perbedaan antara ketidaksetaraan akal budi dan ketidaksetaraan pengetahuan yang dirancukan Rancière. Kritik ketiga berkaitan dengan adanya kontradiksi antara apa yang Rancière tuliskan dan apa yang ia praktikkan serta kelemahan pendukung Rancière dalam membela butir ini. Keempat, pendefinisian ulang Rancière atas “emansipasi” sebagai verifikasi atas kesetaraan akal budi justru melucuti ide emansipasi dari apa yang membuatnya bagi banyak orang berarti. (shrink)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

Although it has been shown that immersive virtual reality can be used to induce illusions of ownership over a virtual body , information on whether this changes implicit interpersonal attitudes is meager. Here we demonstrate that embodiment of light-skinned participants in a dark-skinned VB significantly reduced implicit racial bias against dark-skinned people, in contrast to embodiment in light-skinned, purple-skinned or with no VB. 60 females participated in this between-groups experiment, with a VB substituting their own, with full-body visuomotor synchrony, reflected (...) also in a virtual mirror. A racial Implicit Association Test was administered at least three days prior to the experiment, and immediately after the IVR exposure. The change from pre- to post-experience IAT scores suggests that the dark-skinned embodied condition decreased implicit racial bias more than the other conditions. Thus, embodiment may change negative interpersonal attitudes and thus represent a powerful tool for exploring such fundamental psychological and societal phenomena. (shrink)

In this paper we study the termination behavior of Russell’s description elimination rewrite system. We discuss certain claims made by Kripke (2005) in his paper concerning the possible nontermination of elimination of descriptions.

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. The analysis by Claudia Card of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card's definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies (...) born with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card's terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize. (shrink)

This article is the editors’ introduction to the transcript of a lecture that Harold Garfinkel delivered to a seminar in 1993. Garfinkel extensively discusses the relevance of Aron Gurwitsch’s phenomenological treatment of Gestalt theory for ethnomethodology. Garfinkel uses the term “misreading” to signal a respecification of Gurwitsch’s phenomenological investigations, and particularly his conceptions of contextures, functional significations, and phenomenal fields, so that they become compatible with detailed observations and descriptions of social actions and interactions performed in situ. Garfinkel begins with (...) Gurwitsch’s demonstrations with line drawings and other abstract examples, and suggests how they can be used to suggest original procedures for investigating the vicissitudes of embodied practical actions in the lifeworld. This introduction to the lecture aims to provide some background on the scope of Gurwitsch’s phenomenological critique and elaboration of Gestalt theory and Garfinkel’s “misreading” of it in terms of his own conceptions of indexicality and accountability, and ethnomethodological investigations of the production of social order. (shrink)

Levonorgestrel is widely used as emergency contraception, yet much confusion surrounds its use. Consensus statements and reviews typically attribute its efficacy to prefertilization mechanisms of action, such as suppression of ovulation and interference with cervical mucus or sperm function, yet studies do not rule out a postovulatory MOA. To yield greater clarity, the authors review recent scientific studies examining the MOAs of LNG-EC. They conclude that LNG-EC exerts minimal effects on cervical mucus and sperm function and that suppression of ovulation (...) is not the dominant MOA accounting for the contraceptive efficacy of LNG-EC. Luteal deficiencies and endometrial changes reported in the literature strongly suggest a postovulatory MOA when LNG-EC is given during the critical preovulatory period. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.4 : 677–716. (shrink)

This article defends the counterintuitive conclusion that public assignments of credibility – including statements, by hearers, of ‘that’s right’, ‘she is credible’, or ‘I believe you’ – can actually constitute a pernicious form of epistemic wrong. Sometimes referred to colloquially as ‘lip service’, the wrong occurs when, owing to ethically poisonous epistemic failures, hearers outwardly validate testifiers’ credibility despite not fully or duly believing them. To explain this wrong, I introduce a distinction between performed and internal credibility assignments (PCA and (...) ICA) and describe an epistemic dysfunction in which they misalign. I focus on cases in which misaligned PCA of ‘credible’ falsely – although sometimes non-deliberately – signal to testifiers and bystanders that testifiers have been believed; Republican hearers’ positive reception of Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 testimony serves as a central case. Although some misaligned PCA are not wrongful, when epistemic and ethical failures including forms of identity prejudice and pernicious ignorance lead PCA of ‘credible’ to misalign, the PCA wrong testifiers in their capacities as knowers. These epistemic wrongs are particularly pernicious because the PCA conceal that testimony has not been efficacious, inflicting and exacerbating distinct harms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hobbes on the Grand Tour: Paris, Venice, or London?Linda Levy PeckHobbes scholars have long been frustrated by how little contemporary evidence exists for the period when, after graduating from University in 1608, Hobbes was appointed by Lord Cavendish as tutor to his son Sir William Cavendish. Based on a license to travel granted in February 1610 1 and a parenthetical date in a late seventeenth-century source, 2 scholars from (...) George Croom Robertson (1886) to John Stoye (1952 and 2nd ed. 1989), Miriam Reik (1977), Noel Malcolm (1981), Arnold A. Rogow (1986), Richard Tuck (1989 and 1993), and Johann Sommerville (1992) have asserted that Hobbes and Cavendish left on the Grand Tour in 1610. Scholars have claimed that the trip to France, Italy, and perhaps Germany lasted anywhere from three to five years, and they have speculated as to where Hobbes and Cavendish went and whom they met. Robertson wroteThe first journey, which lay through France, Germany, and Italy, was begun in the year when France and Europe were thrown into consternation by the deed by Ravaillac; and so readily does the fanatic’s name slip from his pen even half a century later, that we may well suppose the future apostle of the inviolability of the sovereign to have been moved by what he may have heard or seen of the tragic event and its consequences at the time. 3 [End Page 177]Arnold A. Rogow in Thomas Hobbes, Radical in the Service of Reaction, expands on Robertson’s point by suggesting thatthe tour of 1610, close in time to the murder of Henry IV, if not overlapping it, may have been decisive in convincing Hobbes of the dangers to society and civil peace of religious fanaticism. Guy Fawkes and his coconspirators in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and François Ravaillac were all fanatical Catholics, and Hobbes, although he wrote nothing about these conspiracies at the time, may have decided when still a young man that the single most important condition for domestic order and stability was the total and absolute submission of religion to political authority. 4While noting that the first forty years were the “dark years” in Hobbes life, Miriam Reik agrees on the date of the trip: “In 1610, the Baron sent his son for that indispensable part of a seventeenth century nobleman’s education, the Grand Tour; Hobbes went along as an escort the journey receives scant notice in his writing.” 5 Stoye commented that “Perplexed biographers can only state that Hobbes accompanied Cavendish on a journey to France and Italy, commencing in the year 1610.” 6Noel Malcolm tried to establish a chronology for the Grand Tour in his article “Hobbes, Sandys and the Virginia Company,” 7 demonstrating that Cavendish was back in England for the Parliament of 1614 to which he was elected although he was soon back in Venice on a second trip. 8 Later, in his De Dominus (1984), 9 Malcolm suggested in a footnote that the account book of the first Earl of Devonshire (Chatsworth, Hardwick Ms. 29), supported only one trip between 1614 and 1615 but he provided no detailed evidence. In his edition of Thomas Hobbes: The Correspondence (1994) Malcolm remains cautious and does not address the issue. Richard Tuck, however, is more confident: he writes that “And when Lord Cavendish sent his son off on what would later be called ‘the Grand Tour’ between 1610 and 1615, Hobbes accompanied him as a tutor.” 10 Tuck argues that Hobbes and Cavendish met Paolo Sarpi and other Venetian controversialists at the height of the Venetian interdict controversy between 1610 and 1615. [End Page 178]Between 1610 and 1615 Hobbes accompanied Cavendish as his tutor... on a tour of Europe in which Venice seems to have been a particularly important stopping-place. (Noel Malcolm (1981, pp. 319–20) claims that Cavendish sat in the 1614 Parliament, and that therefore the tour must have been interrupted; but it is probable that Cavendish’s cousin (also called William), later the Earl of New-castle, was elected for both East Retford and the county of Derbyshire, and that he was the only William Cavendish in the 1614 Parliament... (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between action research and policy and the kind of confidence teachers, policy makers and other potential users may have in such research. Many published teacher action research accounts are criticised on the grounds that they do not fully meet the conventional standards for reporting social scientific research, and by implication are held to be less trustworthy. Action research is nevertheless often seen by some academics and policy makers as a potential method for developing theory, disseminating (...) good practice, or raising standards. Through a discussion of three major approaches to action research—seen variously as professional learning, practical philosophy and critical social science—it is argued that judgements about confidence depend upon understanding the various kinds of knowledge claim that can be made by action researchers, and appropriate judgements concerning the strength of evidence or reasons. (shrink)

Ethical concerns regarding agricultural practices can be found to co-evolve with technological developments. This paper aims to create an understanding of ethics that is helpful in debating technological innovation by studying such a co-evolution process in detail: the development and adoption of the milking robot. Over the last decade an increasing number of milking robots, or automatic milking systems (AMS), has been adopted, especially in the Netherlands and a few other Western European countries. The appraisal of this new technology in (...) ethical terms has appeared to be a complicated matter. Compared to using a conventional milking parlor, the use of an AMS entails in several respects a different practice of dairy farming, the ethical implications and evaluation of which are not self-evident but are themselves part of a dynamic process. It has become clear that with its use, the entire practice of dairy farming has been reorganized around this new device. With a robot, cows must voluntarily present themselves to be milked, whereby an ethical norm of (individual) freedom for cows can be seen to emerge together with this new technology. But adopting a robot also implies changes in what is considered to be a good farmer and an appropriate relation between farmer and cow. Through interviews, attending “farmers’ network” meetings in the Netherlands, and studying professional literature and dedicated dairy farming web forums, this paper traces the way that ethical concerns are a dynamic part of this process of rearranging a variety of elements of the practice of dairy farming. (shrink)

It is important to recognize that the problem dealt with by Plato in the central part of the Sophist is one which arises from the use of certain Greek phrases, and has no necessary or direct connexion with metaphysics. We tend to obscure this fact if we use English terms such as ‘Being’, ‘Reality’, ‘Existence’, etc., in discussing the dialogue, and indeed make it almost impossible to understand what Plato is trying to do. It is the way in which die (...) Greek terms ỗν and μή ỗν and other such terms are used by the ‘sophists’ which gives rise to the problem. (shrink)

This paper presents a view of action research as a valuable way in which teachers can pose fertile questions and engage in inquiry with transformative possibilities. This counters claims of its being at best a sterile method of teacher research and at worst a perilous trap for teachers.Chris Higgins has argued that AR has lost its original intention of empowering teachers and sealing the theory practice divide. He claims that it has degenerated into a method devoid of thought. In its (...) social science versions, it is harmful to the teacher–student relationship and teachers have been mislead into an impoverished idea of professional development. The impossible challenge for action research is to recover its original intention; impossible because the landscape of educational policy militates against it. The authors challenge Higgin's deep pessimism, his versions of AR and his negative account of the intellectual capacity of teachers. We argue that AR does empower teachers, integrates theory and practice and is alive and well, even though conditions in schools are not optimum. This argument is exemplified with numerous illustrations of actual AR projects, which evidence teachers’ participatory and collaborative work, in which they engage in positive change. There is scope for teachers wishing to develop ‘customised’ AR projects of their own in current conditions which have transformative potential in changing the practice of the individual teacher. This in turn supports building and participating in a ‘community of practice’, which strengthens the communal endeavour to contribute to good teaching and good education. (shrink)

A plethora of ethical issues in livestock agriculture has emerged to public attention in recent decades, of which environmental and animal welfare concerns are but two, albeit prominent, themes. For livestock agriculture to be considered sustainable, somehow these interconnected themes need to be addressed. Ethical debate on these issues has been extensive, but mostly started from and focused on single issues. The views of farmers in these debates have been largely absent, or merely figured as interests, instead of being considered (...) morally worthwhile themselves. In this paper the relevance for ethical debates of the ways farmers discuss and engage with moral concerns is explored. The variety of norms that figure in contemporary farming practices is sketched in its multifarious complexity, illustrated by ethnographic fieldwork, and systematized in terms of “orders of worth.” Reviewing the practical arguments and commitments of farmers within this framework reveals that farming practices are subject to mixed motives, in which an amalgam of types of concerns play a role. Recognition of the peculiarly entangled nature of the ethics of farming practices could counter the tendency in policy making, technological innovation, and ethical thought to compartmentalize our moral landscape. Understanding farming practice as the integration of a mosaic of concerns in the light of a variety of moral experiences would foster public appreciation of positions of farmers in debates on improving the sustainability and societal acceptability of livestock agriculture. (shrink)

The influence of movement skill on action representations and identification of agency was investigated. Point-light displays were created of highly skilled gestures of thirteen orchestral conductors in visual, auditory, and audiovisual versions and compared to two control conditions . In subsequent experimental sessions, participants indicated whether displays presented them or other conductors, whether the soundtrack contained their or others’ musical interpretations, and rated the quality and emotional content of the gestures. Self-recognition was more accurate in conditions presenting highly skilled conducting (...) movements as compared to other displays. Participants judged the quality of their own movements to be better than those of others, independently of whether or not they recognized movement agency. Emotional content was perceived accurately across conditions both for own and others’ actions. These results point to the influence of dynamical characteristics of motor skill, rather than merely type of movement or emotional content, on action representations and self-other identification. (shrink)

This article argues for a transregional historical approach to explain the career of political secularism, i.e. the ideas and practices that inform the modern state’s relationship to and administration of religion, in the 20th century. More specifically, it asks in how far we can understand secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transregional patterns that evolved within and beyond these regions. The argument is based on (...) three brief case studies on Atatürk’s Turkey as a contested source of inspiration for state secularity and religious reform, regional women’s networks to foster secularism and social change in the 1930s, and secularism as a strategy of postcolonial state-building and territorial integration. Conceptually, the article suggests to use global intellectual history as a means to combine research on connectivity with historical comparison. (shrink)

To what extent was the evolution of secularism in twentieth-century South and Southeast Asia a result of transnational exchange? Six argues that networks of non-state actors played a bigger role than previously understood.

Das Werk "Metaphysicae systema methodicum" des Steinfurter Gymnasialprofessors Clemens Timpler (1563/64-1618) war, als es 1604 erstmals erschien, das erste Lehrbuch der Metaphysik aus protestantischer Feder und schon damit vor allem in Form und Stil, aber auch dem Inhalt nach wegweisend für die gesamte deutsche Schulphilosophie. Fest verwurzelt in der Tradition des Aristoteles und seiner thomistischen Auslegung und in stetem Bezug auf Suarez' seinerzeit gerade erschienene "Disputationes metaphysicae", entwickelt Timpler eine Lehre von erstaunlicher Eigenständigkeit, die akademisch umfassend rezipiert und intensiv (...) diskutiert wurde. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass sie auch Wolff nicht unbekannt gewesen sein wird, insbesondere wenn man etwa Timplers Bestimmungen der Philosophie und der Metaphysik, der Modalitäten und der Willensfreiheit betrachtet. The Metaphysicae systema methodicum by the Steinfurt professor Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1618) was, when it first appeared in 1604, the first textbook of metaphysics by a Protestant author, and was thus already a groundbreaking work of German academic philosophy, primarily in form and style but also in content. Firmly rooted in the tradition of Aristotle and the thomistic interpretation of his works, and making constant reference to Suarez’s recently-published Disputationes metaphysicae, Timpler developed a theory of astonishing originality, which was widely absorbed and intensively discussed in academic circles. It follows that the work would not have been unknown to Wolff, especially in view of Timpler’s designations of philosophy and metaphysics, modalities and freedom of will. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:God, the Absolute Wise Man, and the Study of ReligionClemens CavallinThe Absolute Wise ManIn the beginning of the Summa contra gentiles [SCG], Thomas Aquinas remarks that, according to the Philosopher (that is, Aristotle), the wise man orders "things rightly and governs them well."1 To do this, the wise man needs to pay attention to the proper goal of his activity, that is, the good toward which he is to (...) order things. This means that there can be wise politicians, carpenters, and philologists; but Aquinas has primarily in mind "the absolute wise man" (simpliciter sapiens), who queries both the origin of the universe and its end: God.Moreover, not only does the absolute wise man contemplate the nature of God, the ultimate source and truth of the universe, but as even the highest theoretical wisdom (in the Aristotelean sense of sophia) has a practical, ordering dimension, it is also proper for such a person to teach truth and oppose falsehood—in other words, to be a teacher.2Toward the end of the first chapter of SCG, "The Office of the Wise [End Page 1207] Man," Aquinas returns to his introductory quote from Proverbs 8:7: "My mouth shall meditate truth, and my lips shall hate impiety." Aquinas interprets impiety (impietas) as "falsehood against the divine truth," and its opposite, piety (pietas), he writes, is another word for religion.3 The absolute wise person is, therefore, in the business of ordering religion toward its proper goal, God as the origin and end of the universe. As a result, besides the mistaken views of heretics, the Christian wise man, according to Aquinas, has to oppose the errors of Jews, gentiles, and Muslims, that is, all non-Christian religions. In refuting the latter two, he has to use natural reason, as they accept neither the Old nor the New Testament.4 And this philosophical task is the fundamental errand of SCG.Moreover, the quest for and ordering of knowledge in relation to ultimate wisdom brings with it a joyous union of "man to God in friendship," as God, the creator, made everything in wisdom, as ordered to himself, the Supreme Being and Truth.5 To pursue wisdom thus divinizes man.However, my goal in this article is not primarily to deepen our understanding of the Thomist spirituality of higher wisdom, but to probe the possibility of a Catholic "religious studies" endeavor inspired by Aquinas's approach in SCG I. My main question is, therefore, whether the office of the wise man is compatible with (or at least complementary to) the idea and practice of religious studies. Or if a Catholic approach to religious studies must do without absolute wisdom and settle for a lower-level goal such as ordering the relations between the diverse religious traditions of global society with the goal of harmonious coexistence? In that case, the spirituality of the scholar turns from divinization to humanization, but in what way would such studies be Catholic?A Catholic "religious studies" is here understood as different from theology of religions, and more generally from dogmatic theology.6 Theology of religions is concerned with questions such as the possible salvific role of non-Christian religions, with how to understand the principle of extra ecclesiam nulla salus ("no salvation outside the Church") and [End Page 1208] the trichotomy of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism.7 The main concern of religious studies is not such evaluations, but rather the details of the history of religions and the contemporary diversity and changes of religion and spirituality. The theoretical thrust of religious studies aims at understanding the natural inclination for religion and its manifold manifestations (beliefs, rituals, and myths). It is also distinct from natural theology (for example as found in SCG), as the latter deals with the possibility and scope of rational knowledge of the divine.Moreover, religious studies as a field differs from that of Catholic studies, which has Catholicism itself as the object of study and which combines perspectives from religious studies and theology, often with the aim of cultivating the Catholic identity of a college or university.8Moreover, the interreligious-dialogue active component of interre-ligious studies is more limited... (shrink)

Next SectionBy discussing a novel paradigm, it is shown that the likeliness of an operator to trigger an intervention effect in a wh-in-situ question is determined by the logical properties of that operator (contra Beck 1996a, 2006, for instance). A new empirical generalization accounting for the differences between operators in their ability to cause intervention and improving on existing analyses is suggested. This generalization is fully predictive and allows one to not have to list in the lexicon whether an intervener (...) is problematic or not. It is implemented as a formal condition on wh-questions in a version of Hamblin 1973's/Karttunen 1977's question semantics that makes crucial use of Chierchia 2006's domain alternatives. (shrink)

Foucaults Werk hat nicht nur die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften entscheidend beeinflusst. Das Handbuch gibt einen systematischen Überblick über Foucaults Leben und Werk. Es stellt die Kontexte dar, aus denen heraus seine Werke entstanden sind und erklärt Grundbegriffe des Foucault‘schen Denkens wie Archiv, Biopolitik, Diskurs, Dispositiv, Genealogie, Körper und Macht. Mit einem umfangreichen Kapitel zur Rezeption in den verschiedenen Disziplinen. Für die 2. Auflage wurde das Handbuch durchgesehen und aktualisiert sowie um neue Artikel zu Foucaults journalistischen und medizingeschichtlichen Arbeiten sowie zu (...) seinen Vorlesungen über das Wahrsprechen und zur Ödipus-Thematik erweitert. Außerdem setzt sich ein Beitrag ausführlich mit dem 2018 posthum erschienenen vierten Band der Geschichte der Sexualität auseinander. (shrink)

When the Church of Sweden ceased to be a state church in the year 2000, the parameters for a change in the relation between academic theology and religious studies ( religionsvetenskap ) at the state universities in Sweden was in place. My article, which is intended as a contribution to the sometimes unnecessarily agonistic discussion following the sharp critique levelled by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (Högskoleverket) in 2008, focuses on two basic oppositions underlying the present discourse, namely (...) the tension between the expectation of economic utility and the ideal of a free search for knowledge; and that between, on the one hand, confessional neutrality and, on the other hand, the education of priests and pastors. As a conclusion, I suggest a way forward in three points: 1. The education of priests for the Church of Sweden must change as a result of the abandonment of the state church system. 2. At the same time, the state system should nurture a more positive attitude toward theological reflections developed at nongovernmental university colleges. 3. Thirdly, the interrelationship between secular religious studies at state universities and the tradition specific theologies developed at private university colleges could be essential for the balancing of the demand of economic utility and the principle of academic freedom as it concerns religious studies. (shrink)

The lack of academic religious studies in India has several causes: the choice of the secular University of London as model for the first universities in India in 1857, the secular constitution, the secularist approach of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the explosive relation between major faith traditions. However, with the waning of the Indian secularist framework and the continued power and influence of Hindutva ideology, there is a need to discuss different models for religious studies (...) in India. In this article, the point of departure is Banaras Hindu University, one of the few universities in India that has religious studies, but also a faculty of Hindu theology. The focus is on the history of BHU and the recommendations of several educational commission from the 1930s to the 60s, with a note on recent attempts at BHU of renewing value education. The aim is to highlight one alternative for developing religious studies in India, whose primary goal is the formation of good citizens enabled by a set of universal human values instantiated in local traditions. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] the best tradition of Max Weber’s theses on the Protestant ethic and its role in the evolution of modern capitalism Edward Schneier’s book is a daring and inspiring attempt to assess another form of religion’s impact on society. The focus here is on Islam, or, more precisely on the broad range of Islamic political thought and (...) ideals and their impact on democracy in not less than the Islamic world as a whole. Concerned by the heated debates on Islam, violence, and authoritarianism triggered by the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the troubled history of the Middle East since the invasion in Iraq in 2003, and the Arab Spring in 2011, Schneier starts with the question what the resources of ‘Islamic... (shrink)

In modern work on the Parmenides it is commonly supposed that in the First Part of the dialogue Plato's main concern is criticism of his own doctrine of Forms, or of some formulations of that doctrine, and that the criticisms have some sort of validity and are in some degree ‘damaging’ to the doctrine. It is thus often assumed that Plato's purpose is to make the reader ask himself, ‘Where is Plato wrong? Where is his doctrine of Forms, or his (...) statement of it, inadequate?’ This is no doubt due partly to the fact that no reply is offered to the criticisms, and partly to the fact that they are put into the mouth of Parmenides, for whom Plato had a very great respect. Nevertheless, Plato can hardly have had a greater respect for Parmenides than he had for Socrates; and therefore on general grounds it is at least as likely that he intends us to ask ourselves the question, ‘Where is Parmenides wrong, or inadequate?’ It is, of course, obvious that Socrates is represented as a young man, who, in his enthusiasm for a new doctrine which he has invented himself, has not thought out all the difficulties involved in it or prepared replies to all the possible criticisms. Yet again, on general principles it is not likely that Plato would have written a dialogue primarily to represent Parmenides' position as substantially more satisfactory than that of Socrates. It is therefore of the first importance not merely to have clearly in our minds the nature and purpose of the doctrine of Forms, but also to examine carefully the basis of the criticisms which Parmenides is made to bring against Socrates, and the methods by which Parmenides conducts his arguments. (shrink)

Oxford Scholarly Classics brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design, they will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

Frigg and Reiss (2009) argue that philosophical problems in simulation bear enough resemblance to recognized issues in the philosophy of modeling that they only pose challenges analogous to those found in standard analytic models used to represent natural systems. They suggest that there are no new philosophical problems in computer simulation modeling beyond those found in traditional mathematical modeling. Winsberg (2009) has countered that there appear to be genuinely new epistemological problems in simulation modeling because the knowledge obtained from them (...) is ‘downward, motley, and autonomous.’ Here I draw out some specific ways that these epistemological problems are manifest in complex ecological simulation, especially in agent-based models. These models contain novel features that were impossible to anticipate prior to the computer revolution, and continue to present difficulties and challenges of both a practical and philosophical nature (Humphreys 2002). (shrink)

The new series of 'Studies on Ethics and Science' complements the Yearbook for Ethics and Science edited since 1995 by the Institute for Science and Ethics in Bonn and published by de Gruyter. The monographs and collected volumes in the series cover the same subjects as the Yearbook, namely outstanding and innovative contributions to the investigation of ethical questions connected with modern science and its development. Particular interest is directed towards ethical questions in medicine and the biological sciences.

The Lectiones Teubnerianae represent a series of annual lectures on current themes concerning ancient Greece and its reception nowadays. Zintzen demonstrates, on the one hand, how the renaissance view of Mankind originated in Roman antiquity and, on the other hand, that it provides new insights, inspiring right up to the present day.

By looking back to the early days of network building within the Internet, Clemens Apprich looks at how those pioneer projects have shaped new forms of media and social practices, and critically engages with current discourses about the weal and woe of the Internet.

In this essay I discuss the ways in which not recognizing that the death of organisms plays a part in our food producing systems, distances us from life’s ecological processes and explore how this plays a role in devaluing the sources of our food. I argue that modern society’s deep separation from our agricultural systems play a part in our current ecological illiteracy.