The reality of global warming from the buildup of fossil fuel carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is no longer in doubt. In retrospect, it was inevitable that the explosive growth of human carbon dioxide emissions, driven by population growth, industrialization and, most of all, by fossil fuel energy use, made it inevitable that human-induced warming would overwhelm climate change from all the other factors at some point. And we are at that point. I believe we can solve the climate/energy problem, (...) but it will not be easy. This problem will not solve itself through the invisible hand of the market. Relevant costs and values are not being captured. Particularly serious is that we are investing in the wrong infrastructures for a sustainable energy world. Exponential growth cannot be sustained indefinitely on a finite planet. We could, and I believe should, try to maintain 2 to 3 percent per year world GDP growth to the end of the century as carbon dioxide emissions are held constant, decreased, and eventually phased out by mid-century. This paper discusses some ideas that could work if we get serious. Colleagues and I propose as a goal that by mid-century renewable energy sources should supply roughly a third of the world's power; clean, safe and sustainable nukes another third; and coal gasification with CCS the final third. At the same time, we need to implement everything we have in our alternate energy arsenal immediately. (shrink)

Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. _Songs of Experience _is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its (...) sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis—qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful—_Songs of Experience _explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history. As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience—epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical—Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures. (shrink)

In this analytically oriented work, Peterson articulates and defends five moral principles for addressing ethical issues related to new and existing technologies: the cost-benefit principle, the precautionary principle, the sustainability principle, the autonomy principle, and the fairness principle.

He then argues that (1), (2) and (3) constitute an inconsistent triad as follows (1991, p. 15): Suppose (1) that Oscar knows a priori that he is thinking that water is wet. Then by (2), Oscar can simply deduce E, using premisses that are knowable a priori, including the premiss that he is thinking that water is wet. Since Oscar can deduce E from premisses that are knowable a priori, Oscar can know E itself a priori. But this contradicts (3), (...) the assumption that E cannot be known a priori. Hence (1), (2), and (3) are inconsistent. McKinsey’s conclusion is that ‘anti-individualism is inconsistent with privileged access’ (ibid.). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a _prima facie_ tension between our commonsense conception of ourselves as thinkers and the connectionist programme for modelling cognitive processes. The language of thought hypothesis plays a pivotal role. The connectionist paradigm is opposed to the language of thought; and there is an argument for the language of thought that draws on features of the commonsense scheme of thoughts, concepts, and inference. Most of the paper (Sections 3-7) is taken up with the (...) argument for the language of thought hypothesis. The argument for an opposition between connectionism and the language of thought comes towards the end (Section 8), along with some discussion of the potential eliminativist consequences (Sections 9 and. (shrink)

Force Fields collects the recent essays of Martin Jay, an intellectual historian and cultural critic internationally known for his extensive work on the history of Western Marxism and the intellectual migration from Germany to America.

A close investigation of Wittgenstein’s MS 104, which contains the so-called Prototractatus, has shown that the manuscript originally contained an additional folio that was later cut out and is now missing. The content of this missing folio could be partly reconstructed by a faint inverse imprint that it has left behind on page 2. The paper discusses the consequences of this discovery for the interpretation of the beginning and early formation of the Prototractatus, including the introduction and role of the (...) numbering system. The paper also provides a transcription of the deepest visible textual layers of the first conception of the picture theory. (shrink)

In these essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, the eminent philosopher relates the "I-Thou" dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature, and art. Buber thus responds to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enables the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward "authentic existence.".

The text of Martin Heidegger's 1930-1931 lecture course on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit contains some of Heidegger's most crucial statements about temporality, ontological difference and dialectic, and being and time in Hegel.

Martin Empson draws on a Marxist understanding of history to grapple with the contradictory potential of our relationship with our environment. In so doing he shows that human action is key, both to the destruction of nature and to the possibility of a sustainable solution to the ecological crises of the 21st century.

Externalism about some mental property, M, is the thesis that whether a person (or other physical being) has M depends, not only on conditions inside the person.

This critical interpretation shows Derridian thought to be permeated by a semiology that reduces all meaning to the signification of signs thus challenging the philosophy of deconstruction at its roots.

In these essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, the eminent philosopher relates the "I-Thou" dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature, and art. Buber thus responds to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enables the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward "authentic existence.".

Because of his preoccupation with the formal aspects of music and literature, Theodor W. Adorno is often regarded as the most aesthetically oriented thinker of the Frankfurt School theorists. It is Adorno’s perceived commitment to aestheticism—the study of art for art’s sake and the study of art as a source of sensuous pleasure, rather than as a vehicle for culturally constructed morality or meaning—that many scholars have criticized as hostile to genuine, concrete, substantive political, social, and ethical engagement with the (...) arts. _Adorno and Ethics_—the first issue of _New German Critique_ to be published by Duke University Press—takes issue with Adorno’s critics. These essays reconsider Adorno’s unique brand of aestheticism, revealing a “politics of aestheticism” and exploring the political and ethical dimensions of his writings. One contributor links the ethical turn taken in Adorno criticism with related developments in American poetry and poetics. Another examines Adorno’s aphorism “Gold Assay” for the ways in which it anticipates one of his seminal works, _The Jargon of Authenticity_. Focusing on Auschwitz and the testimony of its survivors, one contributor explores the impact of the Holocaust on modern philosophy and reason, a relationship that he argues Adorno never specified. Another contributor considers the figure of the animal in the writings of Kant, Adorno, and Lévinas, exploring what it might mean to live, as Adorno suggests, as “a good animal.” _Contributors_. J. M. Bernstein, Detlev Claussen, Samir Gandesha, Alexander García Düttmann, Christina Gerhardt, Martin Jay, Robert Kaufman, Michael Marder, Gerhard Richter. (shrink)

La morale n'est pas seulement affaire de raison. Elle engage aussi l'imagination. Tout ce qui compte moralement dans une situation ne se donne pas d'emblee, au premier coup d'oeil. Pour percevoir ce qui importe, il faut changer de perspective, recadrer la situation ou la comparer avec des alternatives contrefactuelles. L'imagination nous permet ainsi de voir les choses autrement et d'elargir notre perception morale. Elle enrichit notre connaissance, comme le montre encore le recours aux experiences de pensee. Quels sont les mecanismes (...) psychologiques a l'oeuvre? Comment en tenir compte dans nos deliberations? Martin Gibert propose de repenser le role de l'imagination en morale a la lumiere des recherches les plus recentes en ethique et en psychologie. (shrink)

Change and anger are in the air. “We are the 99%,” “black lives matter,” and “love is love” have become part of the lexicon. Previously unquestioned institutions (police, military, the NSA) are under scrutiny. Heat waves, floods, and earthquakes seem to be increasing. Could there be a silver lining? William Martin turns to the Tao Te Ching and finds that while Taoism is known for its quiet, enigmatic wisdom, the Tao can also have the cleansing force of a rushing (...) river. Martin elucidates these revolutionary messages condemning power seeking and greed. He emphasizes that humans have a “Te” that can help them heal the planet; shows how Taoism’s “simplicity” can be subversive and its flexibility a potent force; and reassures us that “When injustice is the rule, justice lies in wait.” Provocative and stirring, Martin’s Tao flows within and through those who ride the waves of anger and frustration, “and gently guides [them] to true freedom.”. (shrink)

This essay begins with some observations concerning the interaction between nature and art. Relying on these reflections, in the second part experience of landscape will be interpreted as a model for the human stance within the natural as well as the historical world. In the third part some consequences for an ethics and politics of saving the conditions for individual as well as social well-being will be drawn.

Le concept de modernité et des notions qui lui sont apparentées - sécularisation, laïcité, libéralisme, séparation de l'Église et de l'État, discours sur les droits et libertés - souffrent d'une imprécision définitionnelle à la source de nombreuses incompréhensions. La distinction entre deux paradigmes historiques de référence, soit une modernité américaine attachée à son héritage judéo-chrétien et une modernité française fermée à la transcendance et historiquement hostile à l'Église, offre une grille d'analyse susceptible de clarifier les débats transatlantiques et la posture (...) philosophique des uns et des autres. Ces deux modèles rivaux résultent de lectures fondatrices antagoniques des droits de l'homme et de la laïcité. Partisans des deux modernités s'opposent, souvent avec âpreté, dans l'ensemble des diverses cultures nationales de la Civilisation occidentale. Discréditée par les grands totalitarismes athées et les hécatombes du XXe siècle, la modernité comprise comme auto-nomie ne saura se relever qu'en se réconciliant avec ses sources originelles chrétiennes. Garant de la dignité de la personne humaine, l'imago Dei - l'anthropologie biblique - constitue le fondement ultime et le cadre interprétatif nécessaire aux droits fondamentaux de la personne. (shrink)

In a letter to M. Coray, Thomas Jefferson distinguished two distinct notions of political authority. The first was that of ancient Greece, which was characterized by “slavery” and the subjection of the population. Jefferson’s characterization was astute insofar as Aristotle regarded some groups as privileged to rule “by nature,” while all other hereditary groups were fit only to be ruled. The second type, referring to governments of “the present age,” rejected that standard in favor of equality and the promotion of (...) the people’s “happiness.” Unexpectedly, the dichotomy between hereditary privilege systems and egalitarian service to the people maps onto the contrast between “feudal” and “bureaucratic” systems in late imperial Chinese theory. In other words, this insight into the nature of authority was known to theorists both in China and in the “West,” suggesting that it captures something fundamental about the nature of “authority.” This essay probes the dichotomy in two ways, theoretical and historical. In theory, “feudal” systems, east and west, seem to be informed by a substance metaphor, and so both Aristotle and his early modern followers conflated authority with social status, and imagined the latter as a hereditary, noble substance such as gold. In this model, social groups are necessarily ranked, with gold being nobler, for instance, than brass. Because authority inheres in the person as a substance, authority is personalistic. In other words, there is no clear, external standard for checking abuses of power. Classical Chinese bureaucratic theory imagined authority as a tally. In that case, an officer’s performance had to match the office’s public charge. Because the assignment of office is merit-based, tally systems tend to be more egalitarian. Moreover, they naturally provide an external standard for checking abuse, namely, the officer’s effect on the people’s “happiness.” Historically, these two paradigms clashed in England and Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when translations of Chinese texts became available. Using translingual analysis, this essay traces the transformation of authority from a substance model to a tally model in the thinking of several Enlightenment writers, culminating in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. (shrink)