This article considers Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope in terms of its significance for debates in contemporary humanist thought. It is argued that Bloch achieves a commendable balance between, on the one hand, the maintenance of Utopian ideals, and, on the other hand, ethical vigilance towards the vulnerable position of the human individual. Bloch’s Utopian hermeneutics offers a corrective to the limitations and shortcomings of anti-totalitarian humanism. The potential for a constructive dialogue between an interpretation of Bloch’s work and (...) anti-totalitarian authors is explored. Bloch’s phenomenology of death indicates the extent to which his philosophy remains attentive to the existential experiences of the individual human being. The emotion which characterises the individual subject’s realisation of his / her mortality is characteristically one of melancholy over the incomplete work of life. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 309-311.

Based on two of Ernst von Salomon’s literary documents on the Rural People’s Movement ["Landvolkbewegung"], this paper will trace the thinking of national revolutionary intellectuals and charismatic Landvolk leaders. Their clear rejection of National Socialism is just as evident as their retreat into a specific form of inner emigration.

This edition illustrates Gottfried Salomon-Delatour's lifelong engagement with his former teacher Ernst Troeltsch. Salomon-Delatour's memorial-lecture from 1963 given at the University of Heidelberg is a rare and lengthy document, in which a sociologist tries to understand the idea of history from a methodological point of view. The text offers an intelligent and lucid defense of Troeltsch's concept of historicism in the age of scepticism after WorldWar II. The document forms part of the Gottfried Salomon-Delatour papers at (...) the University Archive in Bielefeld. This is the first publication of material from this collection. (shrink)

Maimon (1753-1800) macht im Kontext seiner Kritik des kantischen Ding-an-sich-Begriffs als erster der nachkantischen Philosophen Ernst mit dem idealistischen Standpunkt. Aber Maimons einschlagige Schriften sind ausserst dunkel. Mit sehr genauen Textanalysen gelingt es Engstler, mehr Licht in dieses Dunkel zu bringen.

This collection of revised and new essays argues that biology is an autonomous science rather than a branch of the physical sciences. Ernst Mayr, widely considered the most eminent evolutionary biologist of the 20th century, offers insights on the history of evolutionary thought, critiques the conditions of philosophy to the science of biology, and comments on several of the major developments in evolutionary theory. Notably, Mayr explains that Darwin's theory of evolution is actually five separate theories, each with its (...) own history, trajectory and impact. Ernst Mayr, commonly referred to as the "Darwin of the 20th century" and listed as one of the top 100 scientists of all-time, is Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. What Makes Biology Unique is the 25th book he has written during his long and prolific career. His recent books include This is Biology: The Science of the Living World (Belknap Press, 1997) and What Evolution Is (Basic Books, 2002). (shrink)

Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia, here presented for the first time in English translation, is one of the great historic books from the beginning of the twentieth-century. A peculiar amalgam of biblical, Marxist, and Expressionist turns, drawing on both Hegel and Schopenhauer for the groundwork of its metaphysics of music, but consistently interpreting the cultural legacy in the light of a certain Marxism, The Spirit of Utopia is a unique attempt to rethink the history of Western civilizations as a process (...) of revolutionary disruptions and to reread the artworks, religions, and philosophies of this tradition as incentives to continue disrupting. The first part concerns a mode of 'self-encounter' which presents itself in the history of music from Mozart through Mahler as an encounter with the problem of a community to come. The second part is entitled 'Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse'. (shrink)

In this introduction to the new edition of Durkheim and Mauss's Primitive Classification, I flesh out Durkheim and Mauss’s account of the acquisition of the concept of class, and I argue that their account steers a middle course between traditional strands of rationalism and empiricism.

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 2 Seiten: 273-288.

Hartmut Vollmer and Barbara Wright argue that women Expressionist poets have been largely neglected and forgotten. The article seeks to make a modest contribution towards remedying this scholarly lacuna by examining Hedwig Caspari’s poetry, while focusing on the relationship between Poet and God as reflected in her poetry. Caspari was a German-Jewish poet who lived and worked in Berlin. During her lifetime, she published two books—a play entitled Salomos Abfall and a volume of poetry entitled Elohim. Like her play, most (...) of her poetry deals with biblical themes. Caspari’s multifaceted relationship with God informs her poetry from the earliest to the latest poems. This article wishes to expose Caspari’s unique fe/male voice, showing her stance as a “prophet,” “lover,” and “Psalmist”, and attempts to explain why as a modernist poet she decided to write spiritual poetry. (shrink)

(2008). In Praise of Top-Down Decision Making in Managerial Hierarchies. World Futures: Vol. 64, Postformal Thought and Hierarchical Complexity, pp. 513-523.

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain. We start by examining (...) the various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “bodycentric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more "mindcentric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate— dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors— needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain (at least in part) why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes. (shrink)

In the present article, we consider the question of the primary elements in Plato’s Timaeus, the components of the whole universe reduced, by an extraordinarily elegant construction, to two right triangles. But how does he reconcile such a model with the infinite diversity of the universe? A large part of this study is devoted to Cornford’s explanation in his commentary of the Timaeus and its shortcomings, in order to finally propose a revised one, which we think to be entirely consistent (...) with Plato’s text. This analysis is an essential step for the understanding of the connection between the sensible world and the mathematical principles that underlies Timaeus’ cosmological account. (shrink)

In our racially unjust societies, what should white people do? In this paper, I survey answers to this question that recent work in ethics, social epistemology, and philosophy of race suggests.

In this paper, we study the so-called ‘Mathematical part’ of Plato’s Theaetetus. Its subject concerns the incommensurability of certain magnitudes, in modern terms the question of the rationality or irrationality of the square roots of integers. As the most ancient text on the subject, and on Greek mathematics and mathematicians as well, its historical importance is enormous. Its interpretation presents a certain degree of difficulty because of the intertwined fields that play a role in it : philosophy, history and mathematics. (...) But conversely, correctly understood, it provides clues on both the question of the origins of the irrationals in Greek mathematics and some points concerning Plato’s thought. Taking into account the historical context and the philosophical background generally forgotten in mathematical analyses, we get a new interpretation of this text which, far from being a tribute to some mathematicians, is a radical criticism of their ways of thinking. And the mathematical lesson, far from being a tribute to some future mathematical achievements, ends on an aporia, in accordance with the whole dialogue. (shrink)

Introduction -- Matter, form of cognition, form of sensibility, form of understanding, time and space -- Sensibility, imagination, understanding, pure a priori concepts of the understanding or categories, schemata, answering the question Quid Juris, answering the question Quid Facti, doubts about the latter -- Ideas of the understanding, ideas of reason, etc. -- Subject and predicate. the determinable and the determination -- Thing, possible, necessary, ground, consequence, etc. -- Identity, difference, opposition, reality, logical, and transcendental negation -- Magnitude, alteration, change, (...) etc. -- Truth, subjective, objective, logical, metaphysical -- On the I, materialism, idealism, dualism, etc. -- Short overview of the whole work -- My ontology -- On symbolic cognition and philosophical language. (shrink)

Extraits de la Source de vie de Salomon ibn-Gebirol.--Ibn-Gebirol, ses écrits et sa philosophie.--Des principaux philosophes arabes et de leurs doctrines.--Esquisse historique de la philosophie chez les Juìfs.--Appendice.--Texte hébreu des extraits de la Source de vie (2 p.l., 36 numb. l. at end).

History is familiar with great scientific traditions which have been substantial, effective, cumulative and progressive.* At the level of great eras of civilization, extensive and not episodic phenomena, very ancient Chinese science, Greek science and Arab science are objects of investigation for historical erudition, but also for the scientific historian and the philosopher of sciences. Many of the elements of these systems were the source of “modern science”, as it is called, or are integral parts ol’ this system of knowledge (...) and practice which has been constructed over a little more than three centuries. Diachronically, the “scientific revolution” of the classical age in Europe does not signify a total break with what preceded it: Chinese astronomy, Arab algebra and the hospital organization of the Islamic world were used, even if the ideology of scientists when they wrote their own history, particularly from the 19th century onward, tends to make of modern science a purely European phenomenon. (shrink)

Se presenta la obra de Vicente Raga Rosaleny sobre el escepticismo de Montaigne. Con el fin de resaltar la importancia de esta investigación, para el público hispanohablante, se hace una breve relación de los apartados acerca de Montaigne en algunas historias de la filosofía al uso, los cuales se caracterizan por su exigüidad y la reiteración de lugares comunes, sin ningún espíritu crítico; y, también, se muestra la suerte de los Ensayos en español, los cuales han estado signados por la (...) censura. Es en este escenario: de ausencias, lugares comunes y de tenue recepción y censura, que se debe valorar y acoger con la mayor fruición esta publicación. (shrink)

An 'Essay on man' is an original synthesis of contemporary knowledge, a unique interpretation of the intellectual crisis of our time, and a brilliant vindication of manís ability to resolve human problems by the courageous use of his mind.

Ernst Cassirer occupies a unique space in Twentieth-century philosophy. A great liberal humanist, his multi-faceted work spans the history of philosophy, the philosophy of science, intellectual history, aesthetics, epistemology, the study of language and myth, and more. Cassirer's thought also anticipates the renewed interest in the origins of analytic and continental philosophy in the Twentieth Century and the divergent paths taken by the 'logicist' and existential traditions, epitomised by his now legendary debate in 1929 with the philosopher Martin Heidegger, (...) over the question "What is the Human Being?" The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is Cassirer's most important work. It was first published in German in 1923, the third and final volume appearing in 1929. In it Cassirer presents a radical new philosophical worldview - at once rich, creative and controversial - of human beings as fundamentally "symbolic animals," placing signs and systems of expression between themselves and the world. This major new translation of all three volumes, the first for over fifty years, brings Cassirer's magnum opus to a new generation of students and scholars. Taken together, the three volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms are a vital treatise on human beings as symbolic animals and a monumental expression of neo-Kantian thought. Correcting important errors in previous English editions, this translation reflects the contributions of significant advances in Cassirer scholarship over the last twenty to thirty years. Each volume includes a new introduction and translator's notes by S. G. Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and a thorough index. (shrink)

El trabajo desea mostrar la especial relación que se entabla entre el pensamiento de heidegger y la metafísica. En tal sentido se propone la tentativa de dotar de un nuevo fundamento a la metafísica a través de la analítica existenciaria emprendida en El Ser en el Tiempo. Siguiendo esta misma obra señala cómo un análisis original del tiempo aunado a la revisión crítica (de-construcción) de la Historia de la Metafísica -tarea te será asumida ulteriormente- concluyen 1 un "abandono" del pensamiento (...) fundacional y por tanto en una "renuncia" a la metafísica. Ella empero no ha de ser rechazada sino más bien plenamente asumida ·y sobrepasada- comprendiéndola dentro del pensamiento que medita la Historia del ser como auténtico nihilismo, es decir como la "época" necesaria en la que el Ser en proceso de su desocultación se dispensa tanto retirada. (shrink)