This article shows the philosophical kinship between Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft on the subject of love. Though the two major 18th century thinkers are not traditionally brought into conversation with each other, Wollstonecraft and Smith share deep moral concerns about the emerging commercial society. As the new middle class continues to grow along with commerce, vanity becomes an ever more common vice among its members. But a vain person is preoccupied with appearance, status, and flattery—things that get in the (...) way of what Smith and Wollstonecraft regard as the deep human connection they variously describe as love, sympathy, and esteem. Commercial society encourages inequality, Smith argues, and Wollstonecraft points out that this inequality is particularly obvious in the relationships between men and women. Men are vain about their wealth, power and status; women about their appearance. Added to this is the fact that most middle class women are both uneducated and encouraged by the conduct literature of their day to be sentimental and irrational. The combined economic and moral considerations of Wollstonecraft and Smith show that there is very little room for love in commercial society as they conceived it. (shrink)

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

Living in the digital world, we have little choice but to share our personal data with big tech companies. These companies use our data to direct our attention so that they can make money from advertising. In a so-called surveillance society, we stand in an asymmetrical power relationship to these companies (and sometimes governments) and have little to no control over what happens to our data. Our dependence on these asymmetrical relationships is increasing as “big tech” uses the information it (...) gathers about us to cater to our personal habits and desires. (shrink)

"Simone Weil's bibliography": p. [181]-194. Includes index. Introduction / George Abbott White -- The jagged edge / Michele Murray -- Simone Weil's mind / Robert Coles -- The life and death of Simone Weil / J.M. Cameron -- Simone Weil, last things / Michele Murray -- Simone Weil's Iliad / Michael K. Ferber -- Notes on Simone Weil's Iliad / Joseph H. Summers -- Patriotism and The need for roots / Conor Cruise O'Brien -- Marxism-Leninism and the language of Politics (...) magazine / Staughton Lynd -- Simone Weil's work experiences / George Abbott White. (shrink)

The persistent interpretation problem for quantum mechanics may indicate an unwillingness to consider unpalatable assumptions that could open the way toward progress. With this in mind, I focus on the work of David Bohm, whose earlier work has been more influential than that of his later. As I’ll discuss, I believe two assumptions play a strong role in explaining the disparity: 1) that theories in physics must be grounded in mathematical structure and 2) that consciousness must supervene on material processes. (...) I’ll argue that the first assumption appears to lead us toward Everett’s many worlds interpretation, which suggests a red flag. I’ll also argue that the second assumption is suspect due to the persistent explanatory gap for consciousness. Later, I explore ways that Bohm’s later work holds some promise in providing a better fit with our world, both phenomenologically and empirically. Also, I’ll address the possible problem of realism. (shrink)

touch 27 Thirrdly, the straining of the eye 28 The occasions which suggest distance have in their own nature no relation to it 29 A difficult case proposed by Dr. Barrow as repugnant to all the known theories 30 This case contradicts a ...

Shawn Loht's ground-breaking Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience (2017) offers a detailed account of film experience as rooted in Martin Heidegger's existential structure of Dasein. Adapting Being and Time for a phenomenology of cinematic experience, Loht accurately describes how various existential structures of Dasein are “fostered” by the projected world of film: in Loht's account, being-in-the-world is extended in the film experience. Loht's project offers fertile ground for developing the phenomenological basis of film experience. Yet, (...) Loht anchors this account of film experience primarily in Heidegger's early philosophy; this leaves his adaptation not without challenges. First, if the structure of film experience is mapped too closely onto the notion of Dasein projecting itself into the filmworld, this theory presents the risk of taking the early Heidegger's “hands-on” approach too literally. Moreover, in its concern for Dasein's extensions into the world of film, Phenomenology of Film says little about the distinctly mediated character of filmworlds; this leaves ambiguous where the film experience effectively takes place. (shrink)

It has been argued that livestock farming is necessary to feed a growing population, that it enables efficient use of land and biomass that would otherwise be lost from the food system, that it produces manure that is necessary for crop cultivation, and helps improve the sustainability of cropping systems by inclusion of perennial forage crops in otherwise low-diversity crop rotations. In this paper, we analyze these arguments in favor of livestock farming. Through argumentation analysis based on scientific data, we (...) show that the arguments are either invalid or that their validity is limited to certain circumstances. Without taking into consideration any other potential arguments for livestock farming, or arguments against it, we conclude that the arguments analyzed here cannot in isolation provide justification for more than a small proportion of today’s livestock farming. (shrink)

Au-delà d’une bataille écologique tenace pour l’abandon du projet d’aéroport, le bocage de Notre-Dame des Landes a constitué un terrain d’expérimentation pour transformer l’occupation militante en droit pérenne d’usage des terres. Les « zadistes » se sont battus pour devenir agriculteurs et exploiter collectivement la terre au service d’une agriculture « écolo et non Monsanto ». Ils ont parié sur le fait de mener une bataille sur le droit face à l’administration et, en échange de fiches de projets, ont obtenu (...) des baux ruraux individuels de neuf ans, comme les paysans résistants et les paysans cumulards, qui exploitaient les terres avant la préemption. Le rêve éveillé est devenu réalité, même si l’un des principes de base initiaux, « la terre en commun », a subi des altérations. (shrink)

A collection of essays by an international team of scholars, _Archival Afterlives_ explores the posthumous fortunes of scientific and medical archives in early modern Britain. It demonstrates the sustaining importance of archival institutions in the growth of the “New Sciences.”.

L’homme occidental est hanté par le deuil d’une origine qu’il ne cesse de vouloir comprendre à travers les mythes, les fables et les religions qui en constituent le récit. Si chaque peuple a son identité, sa manière de vivre, de penser et de sentir, l’homme est-il pour autant prisonnier de sa culture, identifié à ses valeurs, aliéné à ses représentations, assigné à ses croyances? Si toutes les cultures se valent sont-elles pour autant égales?Aujourd’hui, le débat sur l’identité traduit un malaise (...) dans la culture. Il s’agit de distinguer entre le pluralisme nécessaire à toute vie démocratique et un multiculturalisme qui peut en être la limite. L’effacement des repères symboliques, le décloisonnement des cultures, le brassage des populations ont favorisé l’émergence d’une identité cosmopolite, clanique. L’homme cosmopolite est un homme sans qualité, de toutes les mémoires mais d’aucune histoire, semblable aux autres mais ne ressemblant à personne. A l’inverse, et dans le même temps, les communautarismes revendiquent une identité inaltérable qui fait du Même l’organisateur du lien social, tandis que les fondamentalismes font des Ecritures le nouveau livre de sciences naturelles et de Dieu l’immense marché mondial des fanatismes. Une identité qui prétend à l’immuabilité ne menace pas seulement le corps social mais porte atteinte à l’idée même d’humanité. (shrink)

Le territoire (les territoires), objet politique s’il en est, a surgi dans la campagne des présidentielles comme enjeu électoral. Cette Mineure s’est fixée pour tâche de « refroidir » le débat, de regarder en dessous des idéologies charriées par le mot, de décomposer la polysémie territoriale. L’auteure a voulu ici proposer un point de vue sur les controverses qui agitent les milieux scientifiques autour des formes et des dynamiques territoriales. Par là-même, ces disputations confrontent l’action publique aux agirs spatiaux, en (...) mêlant objectivités et subjectivités. En cela, le territoire est prise de position politique. (shrink)

This paper begins from one of the most commonly found questions in phenomenology, “What is Phenomenlogy?”, to argue that phenomenology is a trans-disciplinary approach to engaging with the products of human culture. This approach is characterized by paying particular attention to the distinction between facticity and transcendence within “lived experience” so as to help us better articulate and evaluate the promises that animate every human institution. Such a task necessarily requires inter-disciplinary input and helps us engage in our lives—in our (...) shared cultural life—differently. (shrink)

This selection of George Berkeley's most important philosophical works contains--Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision; Principles of Human Knowledge; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous; Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained; De Motu (in translation); Philosophical Correspondence between Berkeley and Samuel Johnson, 1729-30; and Philosophical Commentaries.

Automated technologies and robots make decisions that cannot always be fully controlled or predicted. In addition to that, they cannot respond to punishment and blame in the ways humans do. Therefore, when automated cars harm or kill people, for example, this gives rise to concerns about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps. According to Sven Nyholm, however, automated cars do not pose a challenge on human responsibility, as long as humans can control them and update them. He argues that the agency exercised in (...) automated cars should be understood in terms of human–robot collaborations. This brief note focuses on the problem that arises when there are multiple people involved, but there is no obvious shared collaboration among them. Building on John Danaher’s discussion of command responsibility, it is argued that, although Nyholm might be right that autonomous cars cannot be regarded as acting on their own, independently of any human beings, worries about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps are still justified, because it often remains unclear how to allocate or distribute responsibility satisfactorily among the key humans involved after they have been successfully identified. (shrink)

Although much of the growing literature on organizational identity implicitly recognizes the normative nature of identity, the ethical implications of organizational identity work and talk have not yet been explored in depth. Working from a meta-ethical perspective, we claim that the dynamic, processual, and temporal activities recently associated with organizational identity always have an ethical dimension, whether "good" or "bad." In order to describe the ethical dimensions of organizational identity, we introduce the balance theory of practical wisdom as a theoretical (...) framework, and connect this theory to existing organizational identity concepts. We present an empirical case focused on an international paint company to illustrate the relevance of this theory for empirical organizational identity research. Our intention is to expand existing theory by bringing an aspect of organizational identity that has been tangentially acknowledged to the forefront, and by identifying it as a fruitful avenue for future theory development as well as empirical research. (shrink)