Many Buddhist rulers attained the cultic status of divinity as buddhas or celestial bodhisattvas and were expected to exercise their power in accord with Buddhist principles. The bodhisatta is depicted as perfecting both the virtues of kingship and the virtues of renunciation, thus preparing the way for his supreme enlightenment in which the two strands of sovereignty and renunciation “receive their final synthesis and fulfilment”. Politics was realistically seen as an unavoidable exercise of power that can and ought to be (...) used to promote righteousness, while the philosophical interpretation of Buddhist doctrines reflects the pragmatic nature of Buddhist ethics, which, unlike the deontological and absolutist ethical traditions, allows for the expression of multiple and variant attitudes towards the state and the role of religion in shaping and being shaped by social and political conditions. (shrink)

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

Durch die Veröffentlichung des vorliegenden Bandes wird ein Desideratum der Briefliteratur verwirklicht, auf welches bereits S. Lampros im Jahr 1915 hingewiesen hat. Es handelt sich um ein alphabetisches Verzeichnis der Anfänge aller in griechischer Sprache geschriebener Briefe aus dem Zeitraum von etwa 300 n.Chr. bis ca. 1500, das über 15.000 Briefexordia von etwa 260 spätgriechischen und byzantinischen Briefschreibern umfaßt und sich auf die jeweils neuesten Editionen von Briefsammlungen stützt, wobei an die 890 Eintragungen von unedierten Briefen stammen. Treffliche Emendationen werden (...) bei den aufgenommenen Exordia berücksichtigt sowie auch wichtige Handschriftenvarianten, die evtl. die Autorenhand wiederzugeben beanspruchen. Briefanfänge, die ein Zitat darstellen, werden durch Kursivschrift gekennzeichnet, darunter auch viele, die nicht von den Herausgebern selbst, sondern erst vom Autor des vorliegenden Bandes erkannt worden sind. Bei welchem Wort das zu aufnehmende Exordium unterbrochen werden muss, ist eine delikate Sache, die im Verzeichnis in der Weise geregelt wird, dass der Eintrag nach Möglichkeit eine Sinneinheit bildet, weswegen auch die aufgenommenen Exordia von unterschiedlicher Länge sind. Urkundenschreiben werden in der Regel nicht berücksichtigt, in Fällen jedoch, in welchen sie sich von Briefen nicht einwandfrei unterscheiden lassen, sind sie in das Verzeichnis aufgenommen worden. (shrink)

Die hiermit herausgegebene Briefsammlung des Bischofs von Athen Michael Choniates ist unter zweierlei Aspekten besonders wichtig: Einerseits wegen der Information, die uns über die Zustände im byzantinischen Reich im allgemeinen und in Athen und Umgebung bzw. auf einigen Inseln der Ägäis insbesondere sowie über die Gesellschaft jener Zeit (Ende des 12. – Anfang des 13. Jahrhunderts) bietet, andererseits wegen der Briefe selbst, die nicht nur die starke Orientierung der zeitgenössischen Gelehrten auf die Literatur des alten Hellas verraten, sondern auch unter (...) den anmutigsten und stilistisch interessantesten, die je in byzantinischer Zeit abgefaßt wurden, zählen. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This paper inquires into the inability ofsubjects in English to topicalise. Treatingtopicalisation as a specific case of d-linking,it asks: why don’t subjects topicalise inEnglish? And why cannot they be d-linkedthrough further movement? It concludes thatthe property of [aboutness] of subjects is anunderspecified instance of a more compositederivative effect realised as [topic]. Giventhe ability of objects in English to be readilyd-linked through extraction in CP, theanalysis takes a detailed look at the structuraldifferences between subjects and objects. Itconcludes that d-linking of an (...) argument iscontingent upon the derivational memory ofits prior inclusion within vP that has yielded itsdenotational set-membership. Treating EPPas an A’-operation that embeds one instance ofthe subject-chain into discourse, the inabilityof subjects to topicalise is explained as an “online”denotational dependency on discourse,which lacks the systemic memory of thesubject’s embedding. In turn, their immobilityis treated as a modular dependency betweenthe two subject copies, mediated through Texcluding the one instance of the chain. (shrink)

History doesn't have to mean only an effort to know the past. It can be instead, according to Kierkegaard, a willful and personal choice regarding the creation of the future. Kierkegaard offers us an amazing new approach to the problem of what is history and who makes it."--Publishers website.

Cardinal Bessarion (1408–1472), in the second chapter of the first book of his influential work In calumniatorem Platonis, attempted to reply to Georgios Trapezuntios’ (1396–1474) criticism against Plato in the Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis. Bessarion investigates why the Athenian philosopher maintained, in several dialogues, that the sacred truths should not be communicated to the general public and argued in favor of the value of oral transmission of knowledge, largely based on his theory about the cognitive processes. Recently, Fr. (...) Bessarion Kouotsis has argued that Cardinal Bessarion’s reasoning draws primarily on the “Disciplina Arcani”, i.e., the rule of secrecy, which was an established practice of the Early Christian Church, aimed at protecting and preserving the core elements of the religion from outsiders. While I find Kouotsis’ approach interesting and thought-provoking—for instance, the idea that Bessarion’s argumentation was likely influenced by Eastern Christian views on the rule of secrecy—I intend, first of all, to discuss why Bessarion did not explicitly mention it. Moreover, I would like to argue that Bessarion’s good knowledge of the long Platonic tradition and Eastern mysticism, encompassing both pagan and Christian elements, should also be considered a significant source. Furthermore, I would like to question Kouotsis’ implicit argument that Bessarion’s views were dominated by his training in Orthodox theology and discuss the possibility that Pletho’s (1355–1454) teaching was the obvious influence for Bessarion’s defense of secrecy. After all, we should bear in mind that Anastos has already pointed out Pletho’s reverence for the rule of secrecy. Finally, I would like to support that Bessarion, in the specific text, focused predominantly on the epistemological and cognitive aspects of oral teaching, resorting to the rule of secrecy only to enhance his views. (shrink)

The object of this thesis is the examination of the concept of political representation in the corpus of Hobbes, Locke, Hegel and Marx. Through the method of textualreconstruction I foreground the concept’s salience in their writings. Political representation constitutes a unitary political society as the basis of representative government by entrusting to a separate part of the political community the exercise of the legislative and executive functions on behalf of the political society. Hobbes’s author-actor model grounded the concept of political (...) representation by introducing the act of the transfer of will to a representative by authorisation. Thereby he established the problematic relationship of permanently alienated, absolute, representative power acting in the name of the political community. Locke conceptualised political representation in a way that restored to political society the power to determine the legitimacy of its representative government in case the latter transgressed the norm of acting for the public good of society. Hegel, in turn, assigned to political representation the crucial function of integrating civil society into the power system of the state thus securing the identity of subjective and objective freedom in the rational state, though political representation bestows only formal freedom to civil society’s involvement in the affairs of the state. For Marx, the relationship of political representation makes the representative polity appear as a democratically governed political society within which individual freedom and the public good are secured. This is vitiated by the rift between political society/state and civil society. Marx censures liberal and republican theory for ignoring the primacy of civil/bourgeois society over the representative political society. As a consequence,he argues,the representative polity is not a form of self-government but other-determined and neither freedom nor the public good are realised. Instead, under the regime of private property, money assumes the authorial function of organising social exchange and human relations, shaping the representative polity after its own image, and thus it renders democracy as popular sovereignty a lie. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article revisits the history of the ‘Eastern Question’ and its impact in late Victorian England through the lens of the British scholar Arthur J. Evans. Evans is best known for his archaeological discoveries in the island of Crete in the beginning of the twentieth century. His journalistic and archaeological ventures in the Balkans in the 1870s and 1880s have received scant attention. The article recovers Evans’ activities which straddled humanitarianism, political activism, archaeology, anthropology/ethnography and journalism. Although Evans was (...) not a systematic thinker on international affairs, his writings typified the liberal internationalist ambivalences on the ‘plight’ of eastern christians in southeastern Europe and the Balkans. The article argues that his thought fused two interrelated temporal frames: the deep anthropological and archaeological time of ancient civilizations and the modern framework of nationalist politics. These different horizons guided his understanding of the world of international affairs and underpinned the key role he played in debates on the Bosnian and Albanian questions. (shrink)

Summary During the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, Greek populations coexisted with several other cultures, which were very often more multitudinous. Those ‘Hellenes’, however, came together in big Panhellenic and smaller, local festivals to honour their gods and celebrate their common Hellenic culture. As a result, numerous new festivals and contests were founded after the third century BC, gradually forming a large festival network. Even though this festival network has repeatedly been at the centre of scholarly attention – and still is (...) – the rhetoric of athletic inscriptions, i.e. how athletic Panhellenism is demonstrated and what it is prompted by still remains largely unexplored. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how the accumulation of citizenships by athletes contributes to Panhellenic self-representation, by showing another way that this association with Hellenic culture was communicated and negotiated in the public discourse. The portrayal of citizenships by an array of ethnic names along with the name of the honoree, presented the athlete as a larger-than-city figure and an essential part of that Hellenic community. One of the other aims of this paper is to suggest two factors in the development of these conventions of athletic representation, whose significance has not been understood in full: the athletic synod and the formation of Panhellenion. It is a central tenet of this paper that the study of citizenship in athletic inscriptions cannot only help us reveal more ways that Hellenicity was projected, but also better understand how all these different textual images helped shape views about what Hellas was. (shrink)

Cardinal Bessarion (1408–1472), in the second chapter of the first book of his influential work In calumniatorem Platonis, attempted to reply to Georgios Trapezuntios’ (1396–1474) criticism against Plato in the Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis. Bessarion investigates why the Athenian philosopher maintained, in several dialogues, that the sacred truths should not be communicated to the general public and argued in favor of the value of oral transmission of knowledge, largely based on his theory about the cognitive processes. Recently, Fr. (...) Bessarion Kouotsis has argued that Cardinal Bessarion’s reasoning draws primarily on the “Disciplina Arcani”, i.e., the rule of secrecy, which was an established practice of the Early Christian Church, aimed at protecting and preserving the core elements of the religion from outsiders. While I find Kouotsis’ approach interesting and thought-provoking—for instance, the idea that Bessarion’s argumentation was likely influenced by Eastern Christian views on the rule of secrecy—I intend, first of all, to discuss why Bessarion did not explicitly mention it. Moreover, I would like to argue that Bessarion’s good knowledge of the long Platonic tradition and Eastern mysticism, encompassing both pagan and Christian elements, should also be considered a significant source. Furthermore, I would like to question Kouotsis’ implicit argument that Bessarion’s views were dominated by his training in Orthodox theology and discuss the possibility that Pletho’s (1355–1454) teaching was the obvious influence for Bessarion’s defense of secrecy. After all, we should bear in mind that Anastos has already pointed out Pletho’s reverence for the rule of secrecy. Finally, I would like to support that Bessarion, in the specific text, focused predominantly on the epistemological and cognitive aspects of oral teaching, resorting to the rule of secrecy only to enhance his views. (shrink)

The paper offers the study of two late antique epigrams from Rhodes that belonged to public monuments dedicated by a certain Anastasios. Both monuments display traditional mythological themes in text and decoration: the first inscription was part of a relief panel or a statue which depicted Heracles and his labours, while the second, it is argued, accompanied a relief figure of mythical Maron as an old Silenus, being part of a public fountain. The author discusses Anastasios' religion and tries to (...) place these monuments within the history of Christian mythological classicism. (shrink)

This paper presents Niketas Stethatos’ use of the definition of philosophy as “knowledge of human and divine things”. The definition, of Stoic origin, was elaborated by the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria together with five other definitions, and was adopted by the Church Fathers. The first part discusses aspects of the definition’s history in ancient, Patristic, and Byzantine literature until the eleventh century, which indicates Stethatos’ uniqueness. The second part presents the definition in his works, with emphasis on its relation to (...) the φυσικὴ θεωρία. Also the extraordinary often and multifaceted appearance of this definition in Stethatos’ works in his controversy with Michael Psellos is investigated. Stethatos, through his elaborated and systematic reference to the definition, propagates the mystical experience as authentic philosophy against the rise of secular philosophy and its tendency to become autonomous. (shrink)

At the present historical moment, the modernization of the Greek nation is at the forefront of discussion in the Greek public sphere. In the shadow of this discussion, the official public sphere has also been grappling with a very low national birth rate - approximately 100,000 per population of 11 million. This statistical phenomenon is coupled with a high frequency of abortion, between 150,000 and 200,000 in 2001, and is referred to in the media and policy discussions as `the demografiko', (...) Greece's `No. 1 or No. 2 national problem'. This article examines popular Greek perceptions of the problem of the national birth rate and the contestation between meanings of nationhood that the resulting discourses both illuminate and, as the author shows, sometimes incite. The focus is on what women living in Athens say about the demografiko. These are voices not currently being heard in the public sphere. The author argues that the demografiko's articulation of `Greece' is a window through which one witnesses the racially and religiously inflected politics of late modernity, just as they are also being played out at the site of gender and reproduction elsewhere in Europe and Asia. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to profile high school students’ achievement as a function of their demographic characteristics, parent attributes, and school behaviors. Students were nested within schools in the Saudi Arabia Kingdom. Out of a large sample of 500k, participants involved 3 random samples of 2,000 students measured during the years 2016, 2017, and 2018. Randomization was conducted at the student level to ensure that all school units will be represented and at their respective frequency. Students were (...) nested within 50 high schools. We adopted the multilevel latent profile analysis protocol put forth by Schmiege et al. and Mäkikangas et al. that account for nested data and tested latent class structure invariance over time. Results pointed to the presence of a 4-profile solution based on BIC, the Bayes factor, and several information criteria put forth by Masyn. Latent profile separation was mostly guided by parents’ education and the number of student absences. Two models tested whether the proportions of level 1 profiles to level 2 units are variable and whether level 2 profiles vary as a function of level 1 profiles. Results pointed to the presence of significant variability due to schools. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage se propose de confronter les problématiques relatives à la falsafa et à la religion islamique dans leur approche du corps. Le corps a toujours été marginalisé au profit de la notion de l'âme. Pendant que les penseurs ont été intéressés par l'étude de l'âme, le corps a toujours été leur point de départ. Son statut éthique et ontologique doit être réexaminé en refusant de se limiter aux dualismes classiques corps/âme ou matérialisme/spiritualisme qui masquent par leur dimension formelle ou (...) réductrice l'enjeu politique et existentiel de la question ainsi que ses implications théoriques et pratiques. Deux grandes perspectives apparaissent dans le développement de la falsafa lorsqu'elle problématise la question du corps. La première porte sur le fondement psychologique du lien existant entre l'âme et le corps et ses conséquences quant à la détermination de leur valeur réciproque. La deuxième est métaphysique et s'inscrit dans une visée eschatologique impliquant une conception de l'au-delà et du jugement dernier. Comment penser le corps d'un point de vue philosophique pour qu'il ne soit pas incompatible avec l'islam? Pour répondre à cette question, nous étudions les textes fondateurs de la falsafa spécialement ceux de Al-F r b, Ibn S n, Al-Ghaz l et Mull Sadr tout en les comparant aux textes coraniques. Georgio Rahal enseigne l'islamologie, l'histoire médiévale de l'islam, l'arabe littéraire et la philosophie arabe à l'Institut Catholique de Toulouse. (shrink)

Accelerated COVID-19 vaccine development represents an important accomplishment and a milestone in the history of vaccine evolution. However, the vaccine’s scarcity made its equitable global allocation and distribution ambiguous. Despite the initial pledges from wealthy countries for fairness and inclusivity towards the poorer ones, the policies followed diverged significantly. Wealthy countries have vastly superior access to vaccines in a reality likened to an ethical disaster. This paper calls for the need for fair global vaccine allocation and distribution and examines the (...) barriers that were met along the way, originating from different points, such as the nationalistic approach on the matter that most wealthy countries have adopted or the inability of poor countries to purchase or manufacture vaccines. Further, a suggestion regarding the ethical principles and values that ought to guide global vaccine allocation and distribution is provided with a higher priority given to helping the worst-off, saving the most lives, protecting people in high risk, such as frontline healthcare professionals, and minimising social gaps, along with an ethical theoretical background for each prioritisation. It is not too late for wealthy countries to realise that vaccine inequity prolongs pandemics, so that they change their policies in favour of the global common good that will not only provide immediate universal benefits but will also serve as a guide for future pandemic crises. (shrink)

_The Blackwell Companion to Aristotle_ provides in-depth studies of the main themes of Aristotle's thought, from art to zoology. The most comprehensive single volume survey of the life and work of Aristotle Comprised of 40 newly commissioned essays from leading experts Coves the full range of Aristotle's work, from his 'theoretical' inquiries into metaphysics, physics, psychology, and biology, to the practical and productive "sciences" such as ethics, politics, rhetoric, and art.

The purpose of the present study was to predict and explain the academic cheating behaviors of elementary school students with learning disabilities by applying the cusp catastrophe model. Participants were 32 students with identified LD from state governmental agencies although all both them and the typical students participated in the experimental manipulation. Academic cheating was assessed using an empirical paradigm where true achievement was subtracted from achievement in a test without proper invigilation. Data analysis supported the proposed cusp catastrophe models, (...) where mastery-related motives acted as asymmetry and performance goals as bifurcation variables respectively. These findings were confirmed with application of the interactive goal hypothesis, where the interactive approach and avoidance performance goal term functioned as a splitting factor in the relationship between adaptive motivation and performance. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to the dossier on “the present and the future of doing philosophy with children”, which itself drew inspiration from a conference on the same topic that was held in University College Dublin on the 24th of June 2022. While the conference aimed at building a case for the importance of engaging pre-college students in philosophical thinking, it also aspired to function as a forum where the participants can critically reflect on the practice of doing philosophy (...) with children. The participants were asked to reflect on 1) the ways in which philosophy prepares children to engage with an increasingly complex world; 2) the future challenges of the P4wC movement; 3) the ways in which and the extent to which P4wC practice contributes to the decolonization of childhood discourses; 4) the ways in which and the extent to which the philosophy with children initiative addresses issues of epistemic injustice and educational and social inequalities. Building on the discussions that took place during and after the conference, the authors in this dossier interrogate the hierarchical opposition between child and adult, and cast a critical gaze on adultist assumptions that prevent Philosophy for/with Children initiatives from achieving their full potential. (shrink)

Heidegger’s reading of Plato is variable and multifaceted, giving way to different and, at times, opposing interpretations of Plato’s work. To give an example that is relevant to the following pape...

The purpose of the present studies was to evaluate and predict academic cheating with regard to a national examination in a Middle East country. In Study 1, 4,024 students took part and potential cheaters were classified as those having discrepant scores in multiple administrations that exceeded 1 SD in absolute terms. A latent class mixture analysis suggested two pathways for potential cheating: (a) The first path involved students—most male—who changed city or region of examination during test taking, and (b) the (...) second path described students—most male—who did not change city, region, or center of administration. Study 2 profiled cheaters using a sample of examinees who were actually caught cheating. Participants were 545 students, 253 of whom were caught cheating between 2002 and 2012. Both samples were selected from a pool of 319,219 testees using random sampling procedures. Results indicated that a 4-class solution best fitted the data as in Study 1. Furthermore, a predictive model was tested with an independent cross-validation sample of 112 examinees (56 cheaters, 56 noncheaters). Results indicated that the model classified correctly 78.57 of the new cheating cases (sensitivity) and 94.64% of noncheaters (specificity). (shrink)

Phenomenology, broadly construed, is the study of the meaningful structure of human experience. It is a philosophical tradition that begins with Edmund Husserl, develops with thinkers like Martin H...

Georgios Mantzarides; Globalization and Universality: Chimera and Truth, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 J.