Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Bedeutung der Juden im Mittelalter.--John Spencer's Erklärung der biblischen Gesetze in ihrer Beziehung zu Maimonides.--Max Webers Soziologie des antiken Judentums.--Zu Gabirols allegorischer Deutung der Erzählung vom Paradies.--Das Problem der Willensfreiheit bei Ḥasdai Crescas und den islamschen Aristotelikern.--Religion und Wissenschaft im mittelalterlichen und im modernen Denken.--Zur Kritik der Offenbarungsreligion in der islamischen und jüdischen Philosophie.--[Le-ḥeḳer ha-meḳorot shel Sefer ha-ʻiḳarim].--Die Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums.--Die religiösen Motive in der Philosophie des Maimonides.--Das Problem der Kontingenz in der (...) Philosophie des Maimonides.--Die Normierung des Glaubensinhalts im Judentum.--Hermann Cohens Ethik. (shrink)

Edible insects are a potentially less burdensome source of proteins on the environment than livestock for a majority of rural consumers. Hence, edible insects are a timely idea to address the challenges of the supply side to sustainably meet an increasing demand for food. The objective of this paper is twofold. The first is to identify and compare rural-households’ intentions to consume insect-based foods among households drawn from two regions in Kenya—one where consumption of insects is common and the other (...) where the practice is uncommon. The second is to explore consumers’ trust in sources of information regarding quality and appropriateness of food items. The study employed an extended theory of planned behaviour and involved 432 participants. Results indicate that rural households have positive intentions to consume insect-based foods and those intentions are higher for individuals who are more familiar with the practice. Results also show that information sources from industry are more trusted than those from the media. Further, the study revealed that control variables such as perceived availability of insect-based foods and their level of fit with the culinary practices have a higher influence on consumption intentions than general attitudes. In addition, age of the respondent, gender, household size and level of formal education, significantly influence the consumption intentions. The study discusses the implications of these findings in the development of sustainable agri-food systems. (shrink)

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick Ferré. These essays, informed by the insights of Ferré and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick FerrZ. These essays, informed by the insights of FerrZ and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

This latest volume of BACAP Proceedings contains some innovative research by international scholars on Plato, Aristotle, and Sophocles. It covers such themes as Plato on the philosopher ruler, and Aristotle on essence and necessity in science. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Background: Neurotypical young adults show task-based modulation and stability of their eye movements across tasks. This study aimed to determine whether persons with aphasia (PWA) modulate their eye movements and show stability across tasks similarly to control participants. Methods: Forty-eight PWA and age-matched control participants completed four eye-tracking tasks: scene search, scene memorization, text-reading, and pseudo-reading. Results: Main effects of task emerged for mean fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and standard deviations of each, demonstrating task-based modulation of eye movements. Group by (...) task interactions indicated that PWA produced shorter fixations relative to controls. This effect was most pronounced for scene memorization and for individuals who recently suffered a stroke. PWA produced longer fixations, shorter saccades, and less variable eye movements in reading tasks compared to controls. Three-way interactions of group, aphasia subtype, and task also emerged. Text-reading and scene memorization were particularly effective at distinguishing aphasia subtype. Persons with anomic aphasia showed a reduction in reading saccade amplitudes relative to their respective control group and other PWA. Persons with conduction/Wernicke’s aphasia produced shorter scene memorization fixations relative to controls or PWA of other subtypes, suggesting a memorization specific effect. Positive correlations across most tasks emerged for fixation duration and did not significantly differ between controls and PWA. Conclusions: PWA generally produced shorter fixations and smaller saccades relative to controls particularly in scene memorization and text-reading respectively. The effect was most pronounced recently after a stroke. Selectively in reading tasks, PWA produced longer fixations and shorter saccades relative to controls, consistent with reading difficulty. PWA showed task-based modulation of eye movements, though the pattern of results was somewhat abnormal relative to controls. All subtypes of PWA also demonstrated task-based modulation of eye movements. However, persons with anomic aphasia showed reduced modulation of saccade amplitude and smaller reading saccades, possibly to improve reading comprehension. Controls and PWA generally produced stabile fixation durations across tasks and did not differ in their relationship across tasks. Overall, these results suggest there is potential to differentiate among PWA with varying subtypes and from controls using eye movement measures of task-based modulation, especially reading and scene memorization tasks. (shrink)

This article sets out to demonstrate the role of the ‘one-legged devil’, also called General Kassam. Kassam was one of the pioneer generals of the Mau Mau, a guerrilla movement that operated from the central Kenya forests as they participated in the war of liberation from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. Was Kassam a one-legged general from the word go? Methodologically speaking, the article is partially based on interviews conducted with the general before his death at the age (...) of 89 in 2011. Being an insider, Kassam helped to give an in-depth understanding of the Mau Mau war of independence by relating the role of the Kavirondo people of western Kenya in Mau Mau historiography. Were they enticed by the colonial government to abandon the idea of the armed struggle as a way of writing off colonialism? Or did the Kavirondo embrace the theology of non-violence and eventually left the central Kenya group to battle it alone? Or were the people of western Kenya dissuaded to take part in the struggle by the Christian ‘gospel of love’ that abhorred violence, leading to abandoning their colleagues from central Kenya at the last minute? Theoretically speaking, the article is largely informed by John Walton’s theory of reluctant rebels. Walton argues that rebels are always incited by the leading elites in a society that undergoes war or civil war at any given time in history.Contribution: The article contributes to growing knowledge by discussing the Mau-Mau Movement in Kenya’s quest for freedom, from the 1950s to early 1960s, to demonstrate the religious role of armed conflicts in Africa. In this case, General Kassam, a baptised Anglican Christian, whose loyalty to the ancestral pantheons drove him to the quasi-religious war of independence, is the key subject in this article. In this war of independence in Kenya, a seeming conflict between African religion and Christian religion appears as a key emerging issue. The article is relevant to the HTS Journal and the world of scholarship because it is a theo-anthropocentric piece of work which deals with God, creation, and inevitable human conflicts – all of which have answers before God. (shrink)

One of the most enduring contributions of the Middle Ages to the history of Western intolerance is the myth that Jews practice the ritual murder of Christian children. From the twelfth century to the twentieth and from eastern Europe to North America Christians have accused Jews of conducting sanguinary rituals. These have included charges of sacrificing Christian children and collecting their blood for ritual purposes, as well as the commonly associated accusation of desecrating the body of Christ in the form (...) of the host sanctified in the mass. Not surprisingly the recent flowering of scholarly interest in the history of anti-Semitism and Christian-Jewish relations has yielded numerous studies of these charges in both medieval and modern times. (shrink)

Many of us today are all too willing to accept a humanist and scientific account of the universe which considers human existence as a fleeting accident. The triumph of John Hick’s gripping work is his exposure of the radical insufficiency of this view. Drawing on mystical and religious traditions ancient and modern, and spiritual thinkers as diverse as Julian of Norwich and Mahatma Ghandi, he has produced a tightly argued and thoroughly readable case for a bigger, more complete, (...) picture of reality in which a fifth, spiritual dimension, plays a central role. ‘Essential reading for anyone concerned with spirituality in the modern world’ Professor Keith Ward, University of Oxford Erudite, provocative and deeply moving, Hick’s persuasive narrative will prompt all curious readers to re-examine their own spiritual horizons.‘This stimulating book opens up many fundamental issues that must concern everyone. It deserves to be widely read. ‘ Expository Times ‘Learned, lucid and engaging, easy to read and easy to applaud for its sheer clarity of style and its breadth of interest, even when one disagrees with it!’ Anvil. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:354 BOOK REVIEWS (continuously) revisable character, he falls back on an account of theology as rhetoric so as to make the best of a bad job. For persuasion is what we use when we know demonstration is hopeless. As a result, Professor Cunningham's study, which could most usefully have "placed" a variety of theologies of past, present, and, prospectively, future on the spectrum of (onto-) logic, poetic, and rhetoric, (...) concludes instead that theology must regard itself as rhetorical or perish! This inevitably narrows the several services theologies of different kinds can perform for the Church. Imagine how biblical studies would be reduced were the exegete only to treat his text as paraenesis, and never as history or as a symbolic world. Nonetheless, on the way from its (as I find) unsatisfactory startingpoint and to its depressing conclusion, Faithful Persuasion has worthwhile points to make about a number of authors (of various periods) and topics, though it might have made them more persuasively (its author's key term) had the intended audience (middle-brow or academic?) been more clearly viewed in advance. AIDAN NICHOLS, O.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860-1914. By THOMAS FRANKLIN O'MEARA, O.P. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x + 260. $35.95 (cloth). " In 1925, Baden's Kultusminister, a Protestant, began an address to the Gorresgesellschaft in Heidelberg by describing this era: ' Brave men like Hertling, Schell, Julius Bachem, and Carl Muth, shook the German Catholic world in order to lead it out of its fortress, to lead it again into the midst of the life and activity of the entire people, even when this seemed at first strange and uncomfortable ' " (pp. 159f.). Even to many theologians, the era in question-the last four decades of the nineteenth century through the outbreak of the "Great War"is comparatively unknown. There has been, of course, renewed interest in prominent theological figures like John Henry Newman, but his German-speaking contemporaries are for the most part strangers to the English-speaking world. And this is the first reason why this book is important: it describes a forgotten world of a century or so ago, yet one whose theological problematic was strikingly similar to our own. The " contours " of this period, deftly described in the first part of this book, were both varied and complex. Politically speaking, during the nineteenth century, " Germany " changed from an assortment of BOOK REVIEWS 355 geographically contiguous minor and medium-sized states to an Empire dominated by Prussia. Such a political re.arrangement had ecclesiastical implications: Roman Catholics, who previously had been the majority in places like Bavaria found themselves a persecuted minority during the Kulturkampf under Bismarck. And like many other victims of persecution, Roman Catholics adopted a "fortress mentality"fearful of Berlin, which was influenced by both the Lutheran Reformation and the Enlightenment, and mesmerized by Rome, which was coming under the increasing influence of neoscholasticism in doctrine and ultramontanism in discipline. German Catholic theologians found themselves in a quandary: what direction should they take? Many, like Joseph Kleutgen, took refuge in Rome; a few, like Joseph Schnitzer, found the appeal of Berlin more attractive; still others, however, tried to steer an independent course in dialogue with the culture of their day. The second and major part of this book focuses on five such theologians: Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Alois Schmid, Paul Schanz, Herman Schell, and Carl Braig. Scheeben (1835-88), "the best known and the most read in the first half of the twentieth century " (p. 53), pursued an independent route in seeking a " transcendent synthesis " incorporating both patristic and idealist thought; indeed, his lengthy Mysteries of Christ"ianity continued to enjoy a certain popularity up till the time of Vatican II, though more as a resource for spiritual reading than as a work of systematic theology. Like Newman, Scheeben's thought was sui generis, "and inspired the most divergent evaluations " (p. 65) ; unlike Newman, Scheeben has few disciples today. In contrast to Scheeben, the other four theologians attempted to emerge from the " fortress " of Roman Catholic defensiveness and to engage the historical and philosophical currents of their age. The... (shrink)

"A Handbook of Traditional Living" consists of two texts originally published by the Italian cultural organization Raido, translated here for the first time: "The World of Tradition," a comprehensive summary of the principle ideas of Julius Evola; and "The Front of Tradition," a more practical guide for living as a traditionalist.

The second volume of A Handbook of Traditional Living continues the project of the first: to resurrect perennial values for a Traditionalist lifestyle in an anti-Traditional world, and to provide concrete and desperately needed advice for those who wish to break free of the spell of a deadening and desert-like modernity. Deeply inspired by Julius Evola, René Guénon, and the Traditionalism of which they were foremost exponents, A Handbook of Traditional Living: Style and Ascesis confronts the fundamental questions of (...) family, friendship, work, genders and marriage, religion and spirituality, and what it means to be a militant of the Tradition in today's increasingly confused and fragmented society. The result is a treasure trove of wisdom, concisely providing the practical and theoretical bedrock for the Traditionalist worldview and ethic in one's day-to-day life, thereby giving new breath to a lifestyle, vision and philosophy that has too long been lacking from our world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 107-124 [Access article in PDF] Shakespeare and Political Philosophy John D. Cox Though Shakespeare has been praised as one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, he has no standing in the history of Western philosophy, being at best a footnote to the derivative neo-Platonists and skeptics of the late Renaissance. He died in 1616, more than twenty years before Descartes's Discourse on (...) Method heralded the autonomous rationalism of the Enlightenment, and Shakespeare did not achieve a reputation as a deep thinker until the nineteenth century, as a consequence of admiration for his characters. People seemed to think that a reflective and witty prince who could say to his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" must be the product of a keenly philosophical intelligence—never mind that Hamlet is referring to the "antique Roman" philosophy he so admires in Horatio, i.e., Stoicism, which by 1599 was little more than an oft-repeated set of moral and social platitudes. 1 To assert that there are more things in heaven and earth than late Renaissance Stoicism is not to assert very much.But other ways of thinking about Shakespeare philosophically are more promising than character analysis. He was indeed a thoughtful playwright, and though he had no university education, he was a voracious and incisive reader, so the influences on his plays and poems include many writers who have some standing in the history of philosophy. More complex than discerning historical philosophical influences on Shakespeare is what might be called the hermeneutical approach, i.e., the interpretation of the plays and poems with particular philosophers and philosophies in mind, regardless of their possible historical influence in the sixteenth century. To survey the range of philosophical influences and hermeneutical approaches is impossible [End Page 107] in a single essay, but a manageable example of Shakespeare's thinking is his political philosophy, where both ways of understanding him can be discerned. The most influential interpreter of Shakespeare's history plays for the second half of the twentieth century, for example, was E. M. W. Tillyard, who purported to excavate the neo-Platonic assumptions of Shakespeare's political culture: order, degree, hierarchy, and obedience. 2 Though questions were increasingly raised concerning Tillyard's assumptions and documentation, the decisive challenge to his authority was issued in the 1980s by New Historicists and Cultural Materialists, whose allegiance was more or less explicitly Marxist, and who therefore interpreted Shakespeare in light of a particular nineteenth-century philosophy. 3 A clearer example of the difference between history and hermeneutics in understanding Shakespeare is hard to imagine.The clarity of the difference, however, does not mean that the two approaches are mutually exclusive. Tillyard construed Shakespeare's emphasis on hierarchical order as an advocacy of divine-right monarchy, and much in the plays of Shakespeare supports this construal. Despite his sympathetic portraits of particular characters, including commoners, remarks in his plays about commoners taken together ("the people") are always slighting and mistrustful—often indeed scornful—and the proportion of upper-class to lower-class characters reflects their perceived social importance, for the former invariably outnumber the latter, even in the comedies, whereas the aristocracy were a tiny fraction of the total population in Shakespeare's England. Shakespeare's portrayal of pre-imperial Rome, in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, shows little understanding of, and less sympathy with, republican alternatives to one-person rule. Shakespeare was not responsive to Calvin's spirited defense of the "poor common people" against rapacious kings (even, or especially, under godly magistrates), and Shakespeare's plays offer no support to the nascent republicanism of those who took arms against the king of England in the mid-seventeenth century, largely inspired by Calvinism. 4 Shakespeare, in short, was no Milton.This is not to say, however, that he was an uncritically idealizing royalist, as we can see from his first venture into writing about English history: his four early plays on the civil unrest of the fifteenth century. Three of these plays... (shrink)

Julius Caesar's "Bellum Ciuile" writes Caesar-articulates a particular construction of its subject: Caesar. The essay shows how writing in the civil war wins and loses the war, and how the writing of the Civil War exploits this throughout its course. The initial suppression of Caesar's letter to the senate in 49 BCE creates a lack which the rest of the text is to supply, and a structure of injustice inflicted on Caesar by villainous manipulation of communiqués. The narrative presents (...) Caesar's withheld claims over and again, in an ever-lengthening set of dramatized formulations and vindications, both in the form of his own behaviour and in its contrast with his enemies'. The many and various roles of writing in the civil war are examined, from orders and despatches to the propagandist war of words, and it is shown how the conflict is moralized through polarity between the letters sent by the two sides. Caesar presents himself as the last proconsular conqueror of the republic, playing the patriotic general from Gaul to Alexandria, where the "Bellum Ciuile" gives out-in time for this the first writer and mythographer of the Roman Empire to hide his hero's overthrow of the political order. It is argued that Caesar runs Bellum Gallicum and "Bellum Ciuile" together to make a seamless continuum, as a vital strategy for occluding, denying, and displacing civil war from the triumphant procession across a welcoming Roman world he offers in the "Bellum Ciuile". (shrink)

In this essay, we explore a fresh avenue into mind-body dualism by considering a seemingly distant question posed by Frege: "Why is it absurd to suppose that Julius Caesar is a number?". The essay falls into three main parts. In the first, through an exploration of Frege’s Julius Caesar problem, we attempt to expose two maxims applicable to the mind-body problem. In the second part, we draw on those maxims in arguing that “full blown dualism” is preferable to (...) more modest, property-theoretic, versions. Finally, in the third part we close by suggesting that full blown dualism need not be spooky, resurrecting a broadly Lockean, rather than Cartesian, metaphysical picture. (shrink)

In his seminal work Moral Notions , Julius Kovesi presents a novel account of concept formation. At the heart of this account is a distinction between what he terms the material element and the formal element of concepts. This paper elucidates his distinction in detail and contrasts it with other distinctions such as form-matter, universal-particular, genus-difference, necessary-sufficient, and open texture-closed texture. We situate Kovesi’s distinction within his general philosophical method, outlining his views on concept formation in general and explain (...) how his theory of concept formation is applied in moral philosophy. (shrink)

"Let us call whoever invented the zip "Julius"." With this stipulation, Gareth Evans introduced "Julius" into the language as one of a category of terms that seem to lie somewhere between definite descriptions (such as "whoever invented the zip") and proper names (such as "John", or "Julius" as usually used) (Evans 1982: 31). He dubbed these terms "descriptive names"1, and used them as a foil against which to test several theories of reference: Frege's, Russell's, and his (...) own. I want to look at some tensions in the first two chapters of The Varieties of Reference, tensions in Evans' account of singular terms that become apparent his account of descriptive names in particular. Specifically, I will concentrate on his claim that although descriptive names are referring expressions, they are not Russellian terms (i. e., terms which cannot contribute to the expression of a thought when they lack a referent). A recurring theme in this paper, and perhaps its sole point of interest for those not directly concerned with how to account for singular terms, is an attempt to place the blame for Evans' difficulties with an aspect of his thinking and method which I have referred to as "anti-realism". This might be confusing, as the aspect I am criticising is often of a vague and general sort, more akin to the ancient idea that "man is the measure of all things" than to any of the technical modern positions for which the term "anti-realism" is now normally used. But to refer to this aspect as "Protagorean" would suggest that I am accusing Evans of having been some kind of relativist, which I have no wish to do. Furthermore, there are times when the aspect does take a form which has more similarities to than differences from conventional notions of anti-realism. (shrink)

SummaryJohn Tyndall, Irish-born natural philosopher, completed his PhD at the University of Marburg in 1850 while starting his first substantial period of research into the phenomenon of diamagnetism. This paper provides a detailed analysis and evaluation of his contribution to the understanding of magnetism and of the impact of this work on establishing his own career and reputation; it was instrumental in his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1852 and as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the (...) Royal Institution in 1853. Tyndall's interactions and relationships with Michael Faraday, William Thomson, Julius Plücker and others are explored, alongside his contributions to experimental practice and to emerging theory. Tyndall's approach, challenging Faraday's developing field theory with a model of diamagnetic polarity and the effect of magnetic forces acting in couples, was based on his belief in the importance of underlying molecular structure, an idea which suffused his later work, for example in relation to the study of glaciers and to the interaction of substances with radiant heat. (shrink)