From the materialist stance that I find compelling, the metaproblem of consciousness -- explaining why the problem of consciousness seems hard -- is hardly distinct from the 'easy' problem of explaining how the underlying physical/computational system works, and how it gives rise to perceptions of its own functioning. I discuss several confusions that might plausibly arise in that process, and propose that these confusions could create apparent gaps, ontological and epistemic, in materialist accounts of consciousness, thereby making the hard problem (...) hard. Inversely, resolving these confusions may help solve the hard problem. (shrink)

Under 336/5 Diodorus records: Of such a Common Peace prompted by Persia Xenophon gives no hint. After recording the failure of the Theban attempt to summon a Congress at Thebes to swear a peace on the basis of the terms negotiated by Pelopidas at Susa, he goes on to record negotiations where by certain allies of Sparta made peace with Thebes, but his account contains no mention of either Persia or Athens. To his narrative the Archidamus of Isocrates seems to (...) fit. The imagined scene of the speech is the last meeting of the Peloponnesian League; Corinth, Phlius, and Epidaurus are seeking Sparta's permission for them to make peace with Thebes, the very situation that Xenophon speaks of, and, at first sight, it seems that only those cities are involved. There is thus a serious conflict in the evidence, and for over half a century scholars have been unable to agree as to which account to choose. Most have declared in favour of Diodorus, primarily on the ground that his source is more trustworthy than Xenophon, but some remain sceptical and the subject has recently been re-examined by Ryder, who has concluded that, where Xenophon is so full and precise, there is no justification for preferring the brief notice of Diodorus. A resolution of this question would be of great assistance to understanding the 360's, and it is the purpose of this article to advance considerations in support of Diodorus. (shrink)

The reader of Demosthenes can hardly avoid the impression that there was something sadly awry with the Athenian naval system in the two decades prior to Chaeronea. The war in the north Aegean was essentially a naval war, and Demosthenes frequently enough blamedAthen's failure on her lack of preparation. ‘Why do you think, Athenians,… that all our expeditionary forces are too late for the critical moments?…In the business of the war and the preparation for it everything is in disorder, unreformed, (...) undefined. So it is that some news arrives, we appoint trierarchs, we give them the opportunity legally to get others to act in their stead, we consider provision of money, then it is decided that the metics and those “living out” should go on the ships, then again you yourselves, then to allow substitutes, and during these delays^the cause for which we would have been sailing is lost before we have sailed] For we spend the time for action on preparations, but the critical moments for action do not last as long as our dilatoriness and cautious procedures’ . This was spoken in 351 and it is much the same a decade later. (shrink)

Epaminondas the soldier has been much admired. His two great battles rank as masterpieces of the military art. Epaminondas himself perhaps regarded them as his greatest achievements, to judge by his last words as reported by Diodorus . He had been carried from the battlefield of Mantinea with a spear stuck in his chest. The doctors declared that when the spear was removed he would die. After hearing that his own shield was safe and that the Boeotians had won, he (...) ordered that the spear be removed. One of his friends said to him ‘But you die without a son.’ He answered ‘I do, by God, but I leave two daughters, my victory of Leuctra and my victory of Mantinea’, and then he died. Nor were his ‘daughters’ unadmired. By remarkable chance the future Philip II of Macedon was hostage at Thebes at the very time of Epaminondas' pre-eminence and did not fail to learn, as Chaeronea was to show. (shrink)

It is notorious that Xenophon omitted all notice of the foundation of the Second Athenian Confederacy, and alluded to Athens' alliances in the 370s so sparingly that if the Hellenica was the only evidence for the period it would hardly be possible to infer the existence of the Confederacy. All that could be said would be that the raid of Sphodrias so embittered the Athenians that they joined with the Thebans in resisting Sparta, rinding in the course of the war (...) the allies who mysteriously appeared in the account of the Peace of 372/1 and who probably included the Corcyraeans. By contrast, Diodorus was explicit, and the best modern account of the foundation, that of Accame, is rightly attentive./. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that in the eighth century B.c. there was a ‘population explosion’ in Greece which moved the Greeks to send out colonies. A. J. Graham in the Cambridge Ancient History iii, 3 is typical: ‘The basic active cause of the colonizing movement was overpopulation’; ‘at the very time when the Archaic colonising movement began, in the second half of the eighth century, there was a marked increase in population in Greece’ . The presumed connection between overpopulation and (...) colonisation is not immediately obvious. The evidence for the population explosion is found in the increased number of burials in Attica and the Argolid, but Athens sent out no colony before the very end of the seventh century and Argos probably none at all, certainly none in this period. So special explanations have to be formulated for Athens' and Argos' lack of colonies while their postulated ‘population explosion’ is presumed for Greece as a whole and called in to explain the burst of colonising in the eighth century. The hypothesis is not used for seventh-century colonisation when the number of burials declines. (shrink)

In the course of Demosthenes' lifetime, indeed within a mere decade, the whole balance of power in the Greek world was destroyed. By 338 the city states were completely overshadowed by the national state of Macedon, and it is the concern of all students of Demosthenes to analyse this dramatic change. The task is not easy. The evidence is most unsatisfactory. None of the great historians of the age has survived in other than a few precious fragments, and in the (...) absence of Ephorus, Anaximenes, Theopompus, and the Atthidographers the pale reflections of some of them in Book XVI of Diodorus are poor consolation. It is on the Athenian orators that we have to rely, the very men most concerned in the politics of Athens, in the act of glossing over and denying their own share in the disaster and of misrepresenting that of their opponents. Memories were no longer then than they are today. In 343 both Demosthenes and Aeschines in discussing the events of a mere three years past denied all responsibility for the making of the Peace of Philocrates; one, at least, was lying, confidently. The formal documents were, generally speaking, merely heard, and only in part at that, and the orators were well practised in exploiting such material. If Aeschines and Demosthenes could lie so freely within three years of the events, what they had to say at a longer interval must be much more suspect. (shrink)

Exploring the economic, cultural and political role of slavery in different societies, this volume includes selections from historians, economists and contemporaries - from those enslaved as well as from free members of slave owning societies.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 207-222 [Access article in PDF] Burke Contra Kierkegaard:Kenneth Burke's Dialectic via Reading Søren Kierkegaard G. L. Ercolini Isaac—to his children Lived to tell the tale— Moral—with a Mastiff Manners may prevail. —Emily Dickinson Kenneth Burke employs the term dialectic throughout his works and yet, despite its profuse recurrence, the term remains ambiguous. Much secondary scholarship has focused on Burke and dialectics, and still the (...) term in Burke remains—if not already complicated—cloudy. 1 Part of the difficulty regarding this term stems from Burke's own ambiguity; another part from critics' tendency to rely on Burke's own use and definitions for clarification of this concept. The arguments have been helpful and illuminating, yet Burke's dialectic can be further clarified by going beyond what Burke means by the term by focusing on how he deploys dialectical criticism in his own work. 2 This article focuses on Burke's appropriation of the existential thinker Søren Kierkegaard as a particularly clear and remarkable instance of the operation of Burke's dialectic in his criticism. I maintain that although Burke's reading of Kierkegaard is arguably a misreading, his strategic appropriation of Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) not only serves as a clear deployment of the dialectic, but also functions as a foil against which Burke defines his own critical method. Burke's reading of Kierkegaard emphasizes the function of resolution in Burke's critical project.The current literature, although quite informative, does not put Burke's dialectic in sharp focus. Rueckert argues that Burkean dialectics "is really a branch of what Burke was to later call logology, the study of words, of language, of symbol systems" (1994, 14). Heath claims that dialectic "is an analytical tool to help us diagnose perspectives so that we can [End Page 207] examine whether they make sense and consider their implications for social relations" (1986, 162). Crusius contends that, "dialectic for Burke is the study of verbal universes, the disinterested pursuit of a vocabulary's implications" (1986, 24). While Brummett and Crusius show similarity between Hegel's and Burke's dialectic, Heath and Wess distinguish Burke's dialectic from Hegelian idealism and teleological history respectively. 3 Most of the arguments concerning Burke and dialectic focus on "The Dialectic of Constitutions" in A Grammar of Motives (1969), while A Rhetoric of Motives (1962), where Burke identifies humankind as homo dialecticus, is hardly engaged with regard to this concept. 4 Burke's working through Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives demonstrates Burke's dialectical criticism—thus providing an operational account of Burke's dialectic—and allows for his revelation of the three motives in the realm of rhetoric: the Order, the Secret, and the Kill. 5 And yet, despite this centrality of Fear and Trembling, surprisingly little has been said about Burke's Kierkegaard beyond passing mention. 6Despite editorial advice to the opposite regarding an article that would later become a part of the book, Burke evidently regarded his reading of Kierkegaard as important. Joseph Bennett, editor of Hudson Review, responded as follows to Burke's 1948 submission of the article entitled "Imagery of Killing": "I would like to request that you eliminate Kierkegaard from the article in question, confining it simply to literary exegesis and excluding the philosopher theologian." 7 Although he complied for the article, Burke retained his reading of Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives. Despite the lack of attention given to it, Burke's engagement with Kierkegaard clearly demonstrates how Burke views ethical criticism as that which resolves opposition, negation, and paradox to a higher order. Burke contra Kierkegaard The section entitled "Order" in A Rhetoric of Motives contains a detailed, twenty-three-page discussion of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. In this discussion, Burke primarily attacks Kierkegaard for encouraging what Burke enigmatically and elliptically identifies as the "cult of the Kill."Burke's portrayal of Kierkegaard is hardly flattering: at the crescendo of his analysis in A Rhetoric of Motives he claims that thinking such as Kierkegaard... (shrink)

The title of this presentation may suggest that the subject is homocystinuria. It is not. Rather, the subject is how our epistemology influences our concept of disease, which in turn determines our ability to help patients.

“Who are you? Tu quis es?” The interrogator was the German philosopher and pedagogue Eduard Spranger. The subject was Carl Schmitt. The place: Berlin. The time: summer of 1945. The question was “precipitous,” as Schmitt acknowledged in Ex Captivitate Salus, the book he completed following his release from Nuremberg in 1947. “Who are you?” Who, but one of the most highly acclaimed and esteemed jurists and political thinkers of the Weimar Republic, whose writings captured the attention of Georg Lukács, Karl (...) Korsch, Felix Gilbert, Leo Strauss, Ferdinand Toennies, and whose concepts significantly influenced Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, Karl Mannheim and many other intellectuals and writers on the Left and the Right? (shrink)

Title: Föderalismus und Europäische Gemeinschaften Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung von Umwelt und Gesundheit, Kultur und BildungPublisher: Duncker & HumblotISBN: 3428078934Author: Detlef Merton Title: Die Deutschen Länder im Prozess der Europäischen Einigung: Eine Analyse der Europapolitik Unter Intergrationspolitischen GesichtpunktenPublisher: Duncker & HumblotISBN: 3428072790Author: Doris Fuhrmann-MittlmeierTitle: Föderalismus und Integrationsgewalt: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Spanien, Italien, und Belgien als Dezentralisierte Saaten in der EG, Schriften zun Europäischen Recht, vol. 7Publisher: Duncker & HumblotISBN: 3428071131Author: Hermann-Josef BlankeTitle: Europa der Regionen: Aktuelle Dokumente zur Rolle und Zukunft der (...) Deutschen Länder im Europäischen IntegrationsprozessPublisher: Duncker & HumblotISBN: 3428074777Author: Joachim Bauer. (shrink)