The description for this book, Desert, will be forthcoming.

Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings (...) of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy. (shrink)

Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters, elevating their tastes, or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary aim is to articulate a conception of the good that is worthy of promotion (...) by the state. The first part of the book analyses attempts to ground the neutrality thesis in the value of autonomy, respect for autonomy, the dangers of a non-neutral state, and scepticism about the good. The second part defends an objective conception of the good which remains sensitive to some of the considerations that make subjectivism attractive. (shrink)

abstractThis paper addresses the relation between morality and private thought. It is widely agreed that government and society have no business trying to control our thoughts—that, as long as we d...

With theories of political obligation based on consent now generally discredited because most people have not actually consented, certain theorists attempt to rescue consent by proposing mechanisms through which individuals could consent to government. Various mechanisms are examined, including ‘consent-or-leave’ and Michael Walzer's proposal that citizens who refuse to consent be allowed a lesser status, analogous to that of ‘resident aliens at home’. All these mechanisms confront insuperable difficulties concerning essential public goods. Because resident aliens at home will continue to (...) receive public goods, the alternatives are that they be allowed to receive them cost-free or that they incur obligations, even though they explicitly refused to consent. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This paper is a critical discussion of the recent tendency to moralize various aspects of life that were previously viewed as private and discretionary. The paper takes as its starting point six recently unearthed moral prohibitions, and it examines the prospects for defending each as an extension of some familiar moral requirement. Its conclusion is not only that none of the extended prohibitions are defensible, but also that each impedes morality's function by limiting the ability of those whose lives it (...) governs to pursue their own aims as they see fit. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a framework that supports both free will and anomalous mind-matter interaction (psychokinesis). I begin by considering the argument by the physicist Sean Carroll that the laws of physics as we understand them rule out psychokinesis (and other modes of psi). I find Carroll’s claims problematic, in part due to what I believe are misunderstandings of arguments borrowed from David Hume. I proceed to consider a more dispositional notion of causality (in contrast to one characterized by (...) universal and necessary laws) which I argue is more hospitable to both psychokinesis and free will. I then incorporate recent work from the philosophy of mind and science to arrive at a framework that supports both real volition and psychokinesis, which I argue are intimately linked. This approach is fundamentally dispositional, but grounded in an ontologically prior field of awareness and potentiality. I also consider that the regularities (or causal natures) we observe in our physical world are ultimately supported by what we might term teleological “intentions” within a nonlocal, mind-like quantum ground. (shrink)

Since Dewey’s career and public ser­vices were even more extensive and varied than his writings, a knowledge of them is necessary for any adequate interpretation of his ideas and publi­cations. This big and important biog­raphy traces the events of Dewey’s ninety-two years and provides the chronology on which future scholar­ship must build. By studying original source materials in Burlington and Charlotte, Vermont; Oil City, Pennsylvania; the University of Vermont; the Johns Hopkins Uni­versity; the University of Michigan; the University of Minnesota; (...) the Univer­sity of Chicago; Columbia University; by combing newspapers, correspon­dence collections, institutional records, and particularly by establishing personal contact and communication with family members and colleagues, Pro­fessor Dykhuizen has been able to develop a comprehensive, minutely accurate, definitive portrait of John Dewey. Without point of view or thesis, the book systematically exam­ines the life and mind of the man often called the philosopher of American democracy. (shrink)

Defences of racial anti-realism typically proceed by establishing that nothing possesses the descriptive characteristics associated with the term ‘race’. This leaves them vulnerable to the externalist challenge that the descriptive meaning of ‘race’ is subject to revision based on discoveries about the nature of its referent. That referent is, according to constructionist realists, the groups we call races (the R-groups). Anti-realists and constructionist realists agree that the R-groups are constructed as real social groups by being viewed and treated as though (...) they were relatively homogenous groups, differing in significant, inherent, heritable ways. Only, anti-realists insist they are not races, but racialized groups. I seek to harness their agreement about the socially constructed nature of the R-groups to break the impasse between anti-realists and constructionist realists and settle their dispute in the anti-realist position's favour. On the account of their social construction agreed by both sides, R-groups exhibit empty concept dependency: they depend for their existence on people's utilizing a concept with no referent. Race cannot be both the concept which captures the R-groups’ nature and the empty concept on whose utilization their existence depends. When we are forced to choose, I argue, the latter is the only justifiable option. (shrink)

Child assent is recommended in addition to parental consent when enrolling children in clinical research; however, appreciation and relevance ascribed to these concepts vary in different contexts, and information on attitudes towards storage of biological samples for future research is limited, especially in developing countries. We assessed caregivers’ understanding and appreciation of consent and assent procedures, and their attitudes towards use of stored blood samples for future research prior to enrolling a child in clinical research. A total of 17 in-depth (...) interviews were conducted with primary caregivers of children at enrolment or on the immediate follow-up date. All caregivers recalled significant amount information from the study information sheet and were able to appropriately link such information to the consent process. While all participants confirmed information received prior to blood sampling as adequate, a few noted that the purpose was not sufficiently well communicated. Caregivers felt children were cognitively vulnerable, and prone to decisions that were not necessarily in their best interest. Nearly all caregivers felt it was their right and responsibility to overrule objections from their ward’s regarding enrolment into specific study or receipt of a therapeutic procedure. There were no objections or concerns regarding use of stored biological samples for future research purposes. There is thus, a need to improve understanding of caregivers on the information provided during the informed consent process. Context-specific studies on the age of assent in specific populations are needed. (shrink)

I. Metaphysical phenomena -- II. Physical phenomena.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare (...) and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

_African-American Philosophers_ brings into conversation seventeen of the foremost thinkers of color to discuss issues such as Black existentialism, racism, Black women philosophers within the academy, affirmative action and the conceptual parameters of African-American philosophy.

As there cannot be said to be a beaten path in philosophy, and as "Introductions" to the subject differ widely from one another, it is proper that I should give an indication of the scope of the present volume.

Dr. Gamow has written a view of physics which does not teach basic facts exclusively or dwell completely on biographical data, but rather, Dr. Gamow does both, for each chapter presents one or two great physicts and then discusses the nature and content of their work.

Outstanding text by one of the 20th century's foremost physicists dramatically explains how the central laws of physical science evolved, from Pythagoras' discovery of frequency ratios in the 6th century BC to today's research on elementary particles. Includes fascinating biographical data about Galileo, Newton, Huygens, Einstein and others. 136 illustrations.

An introduction to Kant's critical philosophy by George Tapley Whitney. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1914 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

This paper examines Laura Valentini’s attempt to explain political obligations through her account of social norms, her ‘Agency-Respect View’ (ARV). A great strength of ARV is preserving the ‘content-independence’ of political obligations. However, ARV does not mesh well with the moral phenomenology of political obligations. ARV is able to generate moral requirements that are strikingly weak. Accounting for the far stronger moral force of requirements to obey the law requires appealing to law-independent considerations. Valentini’s account of these factors suggests greater (...) explanatory force of an alternative view she dismisses, to which she refers as the ‘deflationary view.’ In addition, among alternative theories that Valentini rejects is one based on the principle of fair play. I respond to Valentini’s criticisms, thereby demonstrating the continuing applicability of fair play. (shrink)

This book offers a new and compelling account of distributive justice and its relation to choice. Unlike luck egalitarians, who treat unchosen differences in people's circumstances as sources of unjust inequality to be overcome, Sher views such differences as pervasive and unavoidable features of the human situation. Appealing to an original account of what makes us moral equals, he argues that our interest in successfully negotiating life's ever-shifting contingencies is more basic than our interest in achieving any more specific goals. (...) He argues, also, that the state's obligation to promote this interest supports a principled version of the view that what matters about resources, opportunity, and other secondary goods is only that each person have enough. The book opens up a variety of new questions, and offers a distinctive new perspective for scholars of political theory and political philosophy, and for those interested in distributive justice and luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

As the pagan classical world was subsumed into Christianity sexually hyperactive gods and goddesses transmuted into saints, their former statues that glorified the perfection of their bodies smashed into pieces and reimagined as austere two-dimensional icons to be worshipped by the new faithful. That dualistic and polemic narrative, where the soul’s purpose was to annihilate the body, survives today in the distinction between software and hardware, algorithms and robots, the former as the “ghosts” that animate the empty vessels, the “machines”. (...) But how does this narrative impact our cultural and social fantasies in the twenty-first century as we accelerate toward coexisting, uniting, or merging with intelligent artifacts? How does “humanness” blur when it is claimed by no-biological human-like entities too, or when humans augment their perception, consciousness and physical power through genetic engineering, drugs, or software and mechanical prostheses? Suppose we are destined to remake ourselves in the image of our ancient gods. Will it be through the embodiment of technologies in the physical reality, or through the complete disembodiment of our minds inside virtual worlds? (shrink)

Scholars who doubt the existence of general political obligations typically criticize and reject theories of obligation on the basis of individual moral principles, for example, consent, fairness, or a natural duty of justice. A stronger position can result from combining different principles in a single theory. This chapter develops a multi-principle theory of political obligation, on the basis of the principle of fairness, a natural duty of justice, and what I call the ‘common good’ principle. The three principles interact in (...) three main ways: ‘cumulation’, combining the separate state services that different principles cover; ‘mutual support’, combining the force of different principles in regard to the same state services; and simple overlap. The result is a theory that can satisfy the main criteria of a theory of political obligation. (shrink)

This text presents a number of reasons for the reinstatement of a traditional terminist logic, contributing to the ongoing debate concerning the proper connections between formal logic, natural language, artificial reasoning, and mathematics.