The “official” history of connexive logic was written in 2012 by Storrs McCall who argued that connexive logic was founded by ancient logicians like Aristotle, Chrysippus, and Boethius; that it was further developed by medieval logicians like Abelard, Kilwardby, and Paul of Venice; and that it was rediscovered in the 19th and twentieth century by Lewis Carroll, Hugh MacColl, Frank P. Ramsey, and Everett J. Nelson. From 1960 onwards, connexive logic was finally transformed into non-classical calculi which partly (...) concur with systems of relevance logic and paraconsistent logic. In this paper it will be argued that McCall’s historical analysis is fundamentally mistaken since it doesn’t take into account two versions of connexivism. While “humble” connexivism maintains that connexive properties only apply to “normal” antecedents, “hardcore” connexivism insists that they also hold for “abnormal” propositions. It is shown that the overwhelming majority of the forerunners of connexive logic were only “humble” connexivists. Their ideas concerning connexive implication don’t give rise, however, to anything like a non-classical logic. (shrink)

An official misrepresentation of the law occurs when an official, acting as an agent of the state, represents what is legal or not in an erroneous or misleading way. Should reliance on such misrepresentations excuse one from criminal responsibility? American courts presently recognize two official misrepresentation defenses: Entrapment by Estoppel and Public Authority. However, there is disagreement about what constitutes these defenses and what their limits are. Part of the confusion surrounds why these defenses are justified at (...) all, especially given the general principle ignorantia juris non excusat. We propose an answer to this justification question: these defenses are justified because official misrepresentations preclude knowledge of the illegality of the acts in question. It is not simply that someone on the receiving end did not know; they could not know. We develop this account, linking it to due process and fairness, and then use it to clarify Entrapment by Estoppel and Public Authority and argue both should be subject to important restrictions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 139-169.

The Lukács Circle in Szeged, a spontaneous, unofficial organization of young Hungarian scholars and philosophy teachers, characteristically represented Georg Lukács' influence on young Hungarian intelligentsia in the period of late socialism. In this paper, the author recalls and critically analyses the intellectual milieu and motives that led a considerable part of young Hungarian intelligentsia of that time to make a cult of Lukács' philosophy. The key to the analysis is the ambiguous character of the political feelings and philosophical orientation of (...) many young people in the period of late socialism and the paradoxical non-bourgeois bourgeois character of Lukács' philosophy. Lukács' young followers were dissatisfied with the political conditions of real socialism and with official Marxism. However, they considered themselves Marxists and were convinced by the anti-capitalist, romantic idea of democratic socialism. In the eyes of his young followers, Lukács was a genuine philosopher whose teaching was interwoven by his wide-ranging bourgeois middle-class education, promising both a real philosophical alternative to official Marxism and a high-level philosophical foundation for a non-capitalist but democratic future human history. The author argues that Lukács' philosophy did not satisfy these expectations. In his political philosophy, the philosopher could not move away from the mythological idea concerning the leading role of the communist party and therefore could not elaborate a genuine philosophical foundation for the idea of democratic socialism. Despite the superiority of his philosophy, his methodology and approach to the history of philosophy failed to provide a real philosophical alternative to the Bolshevik tradition of Marxism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical Bioethics at NIH:History and A New VisionJohn C. Fletcher (bio)On July 3, 1995, Dr. John I. Gallin, Director of the Magnuson Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), convened a one-day "Conference on the Future of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Intramural Program." Conferees included NIH officials and a panel of consultants from bioethics programs around the nation.1 The subject was the (...) future of NIH's intramural bioethics program and specifically a vision of a new multi-component program, presented by Dr. Gallin, the first speaker. Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of NIH, was there to assure his support for Dr. Gallin's vision. This author, honored to be second speaker, was invited to sketch a brief history of bioethics at NIH. The present article reviews some of this history and then reports on Dr. Gallin's proposal, points of consensus among speakers and conferees, and the search for a Chief of the Clinical Bioethics Program.History of Bioethics at NIHIt is often said that NIH is a well-kept secret as the nation's leading biomedical research facility. Also, few people know that NIH has a long history in bioethics. Some key events in that history are shown in Figure 1, beginning with two that occurred prior to the birth of bioethics. NIH made an early policy response to protect human subjects of research and to find acceptable limits for scientific freedom. The Clinical Center (CC), a 550-bed research hospital, opened in 1953. A subcommittee of the Medical Board, the Clinical Research Committee (CRC), was formed for prior group review of all studies with normal volunteers. The traditional practice was for researchers themselves to decide when studies would begin, which subjects to recruit, and whether informed consent would be sought. The CRC intervention bit into this tradition. In addition, patient studies that posed significant risks or departed widely from medical practice were reviewed by referral from the Clinical Directors of the various Institutes. Was this CRC an early institutional review [End Page 355] board (IRB)? As a guest researcher, I was permitted to observe the CRCs meetings between 1966 and 1969. It functioned much like an IRB but had no community or non-scientist members. Other IRB-like review groups undoubtedly existed prior to the CRC. Robert Levine (personal communication, September 7, 1995) recalls that Beth Israel Hospital in Boston had one in 1938. Historical research is clearly needed on the earliest forms of research review.Table 1. Bioethics at NIHEventYearClinical Research Committee1953Surgeon-General's PPO #1291966NIGMS funds Hastings Genetics Group1973OPRR's Mission1974NLM's grant to KennedyInstitute for Bibliography of Bioethics1974Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee1974STEP Series Bioethics Speakers1975Pre-IRBs at the CC1975-76Assistant for Bioethics to Director, CC1977RAC-Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee1983Lipsett Proposal (ICD)1983Liaison Group, CC1983Bioethics Program, CC1985Durable Power of Attorney for Researchwith Incapacitated Subjects1985-86NLM funds National Reference Centerfor Bioethics Literature1985National Institute for Nursing Research1986Bioethics Post-Doctoral Fellows Program1989ELSI Program1989Bioethicists on CC-IRBs1989CC-Ethics Committee1990Office of Human Subjects Research1992 [End Page 356]Between 1963 and 1967, the media exposed instances of ethically troubling research, and Beecher (1966) and Pappworth (1967) published sharp criticisms of the weak state of research ethics. In 1966, Surgeon-General William Stewart and NIH Director James Shannon issued a policy requiring local group review of all research involving human subjects before making an application for NIH peer review (Surgeon General 1966). The policy was the first in any nation to mandate ethics committees for clinical research. However, it did not apply to the NIH intramural program until Congress passed the National Research Act in 1974 (Public Law 93-348; 202, 88 Stat. 342, 1974). This lag permitted NIH intramural investigators the luxury of feeling above the norms imposed on ordinary mortals and guaranteed more resistance to the inevitable change to come. Resistance to change marked the intramural program from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Non-Knaves: A Response to Gauthier Annette C. Baier Gauthier's splendidly dialectical paper1 first sets out Hume's official Treatise account ofhow each personhas a self-interested motive to curb her natural but socially troublesome self-interest, by agreeing to the adoption ofthe artifices ofprivate property rights, transfer by consent, and promise (provided others are also agreeing to adopt them), andhow the sympathy-dependent moral sentiment approves (...) of such a redirection of"the interested passion." Enlightened self-interest gives us the natural obligation tojustice; the fact that it is morally approved turns it into a moral obligation. Self-hatred for any breaches of the moral obligation may come in to bolster the self-interested motivation, and this will be helped along by the extra artifices employed by educators and politicians. So far so good. But now enters the sensible knave, who queries the initial assumption that each will in fact gain more by strict conformity to the rules of the Humean social artifices than by occasional carefully calculated and undetected breaches of them. If the knave is right, then the Treatise story ofhow reasonable self-interested people can get themselves to conscientiously respect property rights (including rights ofbarter), and to keep promises, is in trouble. Only by an erroneous calculation of their interest could they end with the motivation which Hume attributes to them, and finds to be morally approvable.Gauthier argues that there are indications even in the Treatise that Hume is aware ofthe flawed nature ofhis official account, since he attributes "sophistry" to some attempted justifications of honest behaviour, and attributes "feigned acts" of impossible willing to some conscientious promise-keepers. Gauthier finds Hume to have, in the Treatise, a second, less official story ofwhat it takes to be motivated to be just—that it takes error, and letting oneself be taken in by feignings and sophistry. In the Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofMorals this submerged account surfaces in the sensible knave's challenge and Hume's admission that his own answer will not be satisfactory to the knave. The charms of official Humeanjustice, Gauthierconcludes, are spurious, sincethe "anatomy" of the account of the rational motivation to be just is known to be unsound. "The sensible knave's message is thathuman society... lacks any moral foundation." Volume XVIII Number 2 429 ANNETTE C. BAIER This is a sombre tale. One of its unwelcome implications is that Hume himself, really believing that the knave is right, but unwilling tobe seen tohave the bad grace to "dehver a theory, however true which... leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious," is simply trying to "sink" the knave's truth in oblivion by creating a smoke-screen of insincere rhetoric about the greater delights of consciousness of integrity over the knave's satisfaction in his ill-gotten gains. So there really are two sombre tales—one, attributed to Hume, about justice, and one about Hume's dupUcity (or is it mere cynical frivolity?): Gauthier crafts both stories beautifully, directing our attention to bits ofHume's text injust the right order for his dramatic purposes. But is he giving us truth or fiction? I completely agree with Gauthier's version of Hume's official Treatise story, that the moral obligation to justice supervenes on the "natural obligation" for which Hume believes the natural motivation to be collectively redirected self- (or family) interest.2 1 agree that there are one or two passages, especially in the Treatise section, "Of the obUgation of promises," that seem to jar with this account, and which much somehow be explained. I agree that Hume believes that his reply to the knave is, from the knave's point ofview, unsatisfactory. Now for some disagreements. First, about Hume's reply to the knave.3From the viewpointofthevirtuous dues-payingmemberof"the party of humankind," Hume's is a perfectly satisfactory reply. It will be plain truth, for a person with the other Humean virtues (including equity, which is listed as a natural virtue),4 that justice will bring as great or greater good than would judicious injustice. Even if it would be "simply preposterous" to believe that the social order is dangerously threatened by any... (shrink)

This paper is a critical and comparative legal historical study, which offers a global vision of the U.S. Legal System, according to the religious factor impact and its complex dimensions (e.g. religious liberty, Church-State relations, welfare state & solidarity). The principal goal is the deconstruction of the fake official History, elaborated after the Second World War (e.g. inferences, impostures, fallacies). At the same time, it shows the social development (and the kind of commitment in each period), and how (...) it happens the consolidation of the system thanks to the regulation. In this way, it is possible to pay attention to the American experimental evolution (not lineal or exceptional –as many U.S.hand-books pretend): from colonial Blue Laws (or Sunday regulation), up to the current regulation on freedom of religion and non-discrimination. Also, this paper offers a systematic set of diverse legal sources (e.g. Executive orders & rules, Legislative statutes, Judicial cases & resolutions). Another goal of this paper is the evaluation of the allegedly paradoxical policies and regulations in this field, during the last two Administrations (Clinton and W. Bush); both of them, from extreme views (linked at the end), they used incorrectly the religious factor, and they confused the institutions. The result seems to be a landed in the Postmodernity (less realistic and more speech based). (shrink)

Tax law is a technical area of law which does not seem to be culturally specific. It is thus seen as easily transferable between different societies and cultures. However, tax law is also based on definitions and notions which are not universal. So, is tax law universal or particular? Is it indeed easily transferable between different societies? And in what ways does tax law reflect ethnic or cultural rather than economic differences? This Article seeks to answer these questions by analyzing (...) one specific example — the history of income tax legislation in Mandatory Palestine. This history reveals the dual nature of income taxation. On the one hand, the Income Tax Ordinance which was enacted by the British in Palestine in 1941 was based on a one-size-fits-all colonial model, and the lawyers involved in its enactment, in Palestine and in the Colonial Office in London, made relatively little effort to adapt it to local conditions. On the other hand, other actors — the officials, politicians and businessmen involved in the initial debate about the imposition of income taxation in Palestine in the 1930s, and the administrators involved in the application of the specific rules of the Ordinance after it was enacted in the 1940s — were aware of the need to adapt the law to the specific conditions of Palestine. Thus, while on a formal level the Ordinance seems to represent a process in which the tax law of Palestine converged with that of other British colonies, once we expand our framework and examine not just law in the books, but also law in action, and actors such as politicians and administrators, we discover that particular local conditions were an important factor in the enactment and application of the Palestine Income Tax Ordinance. The study of the process of transplantation, the Article concludes, should therefore focus not only on the formal norms being transplanted, but also on the role of the different non-legal actors involved in the process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Rights, China, and Cross-Cultural Inquiry:Philosophy, History, and Power PoliticsRandall PeerenboomStephen Angle's Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) is a wonderful book that combines philosophically sophisticated discussions of controversial human-rights issues with a detailed intellectual history of the evolution of human-rights discourse in China over the last several hundred years. I will use Angle's book as a platform for consideration (...) of a number of issues regarding the role of philosophy, history, and power politics in relation to human rights in China and elsewhere.Angle focuses his discussion on two claims: first, that countries have different concepts of human rights, and second, that we ought not demand that countries comply with human-rights concepts different from their own.1 These two claims (or something similar) are central to China's official position on rights and to humanrights debates more generally, including the debate about values in Asia.2Angle's response, in short, is that there are distinctive concepts of human rights in China, and that "there have been both continuities and changes in the ways that rights have been conceptualized over the course of China's rich and distinctive rights discourse" (p. 250). However, the only way a community can unilaterally declare its values and practices immune from the scrutiny of others is through "parochialism," which, according to Angle, cuts off that community from making legitimate demands on others. Rather, he suggests, we "should seek an accommodation of differences with one another in the spirit of toleration, and on that basis engage one another on as many levels as possible" (pp. 250-251).One of the many great strengths of this book is that Angle grounds his responses in an interesting and insightful discussion of contemporary philosophers, assessing along the way the contributions and limits of MacIntrye, Rawls, Dworkin, Raz, Walzer, and especially Brandom, among others, to this cross-cultural inquiry of human rights. It might seem, given this list of luminaries, Angle's own training in Western analytic philosophy, and his position in the philosophy department of an American university, that Western philosophy is driving the debate and dictating the fundamental terms and parameters of the inquiry.3 This, of course, is precisely one of the complaints of non-Westerners such as Liu Huaqiu, who argue that they are being measured by Western standards, that rights are concepts grounded in historically contingent modern Western philosophical traditions, and that the rights movement is biased in favor of secular liberalism, which is at odds with and may preclude states based on religious worldviews and communitarian or collectivist [End Page 283] points of view that do not privilege autonomy, choice, and individual interests to the extent that liberals do.Angle's response is twofold. First, he argues, sensibly enough, that we cannot and need not set aside or escape our traditions and value systems. Cross-cultural inquiry must begin from somewhere. But we must remain open-minded and willing to continue the conversation, at least for a considerable while and in most cases indefinitely, even if in some cases we simultaneously must rely on coercion and repression.4 As discussed below, Angle endorses a limited moral pluralism that tolerates some differences while not providing an excuse for appeasing dictators or turning a blind eye to genocide and other atrocities.Second, Angle is not out simply to measure China by the standards of contemporary Western philosophers. Rather, he wants to show that China has its own distinctive discourse on rights, and that this discourse is multifaceted and constantly evolving. According to Angle, "Chinese rights discourse should be seen as an ongoing creative achievement, rather than a reaction to or misunderstanding of Western ideas and institutions" (p. 2).5 He shows this by providing a detailed intellectual history of Chinese rights discourse, another great strength of the book. His primary focus is on several prominent Neo-Confucians and pre-1949 debates, although he also considers some contemporary debates.6 Angle is clearly successful at demonstrating that Chinese thinkers have advanced a number of different views and that rights discourse over the last century and a half has been... (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende contribuir a la recuperación de la memoria histórica de los activismos de la disidencia sexual y de género en Andalucía. Para ello, por un lado, he elaborado un relato histórico de las referenciadas luchas desde que comienzan a articularse en los setenta hasta nuestros días. Por otro, he analizado algunos ejes que han sido compartidos en los activismos explorados en los distintos períodos históricos. Para abordar los objetivos marcados, he implementado una metodología cualitativa que combina diversas técnicas (...) de investigación como las entrevistas, la observación participante o la búsqueda de información en archivos. (shrink)

Val Plumwood argued for a reworking of our concept of wilderness in ways that would both recognize indigenous influence and expand the official "fake" history to include perspective from the Others'side. Borrowing from Plumwood's logic of colonization, I explore how the official history of wilderness in the United States of America is similar to Tasmania's "fake" history. I offer a philosophical analysis of Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in the case of Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823) (...) where the "wilderness" finds its first legal articulation. I argue that although multiple erasures of the Other as found in Marshall's concept of wilderness are serious problems, they do not support wilderness scepticism. Rather, in order to reshape the concept of wilderness in a new non-colonizing way, its antecedents must be clearly understood. Only then can we escape the precedents of control and find an ethical basis to repair the nature/culture split ending the war on the Other. (shrink)

This article focuses on the earlier encounters and uses of electricity, its technology, and its infrastructure to understand how electricity formed a contested terrain of politics among the city’s varying actors, such as state officials, financial investors, and consumers, in late Ottoman Istanbul, roughly between the 1870s and early 1920s. I contend that people used electricity as a political tool in their everyday lives even before they could access it physically. Electricity skepticism during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909) (...) increased Istanbul residents’ inclination for an electrified future; the longer the sultan’s prohibitions lasted, the more they fueled this inclination, causing problems about the use of electricity. In contrast to the previous regime’s skepticism about electricity use, the Committee of Union and Progress (1909–18) administrators considered electricity a public service that a larger population could use rather than a source of energy for a small, privileged elite. The first urban-scale power plant was completed in 1914. However, the inability to import technical equipment and raw materials due to political and financial troubles caused by World War I (1914–18) and the Occupation Period (1918–23) hampered electricity production and consumption, causing serious problems in electricity use on public and private scales. Amid the wave of challenges, the city inhabitants witnessed numerous unpleasant encounters with electricity use; some perished in tram accidents, while others became criminals. At a time when much of society viewed electricity as a vital element for progress and economic growth, the prevalence of crowded trams, tram accidents, blackouts, and instances of electricity theft within the Ottoman capital called into question the notion of electricity as a technological promise and public good. Consequently, the initial enthusiasm for electricity’s transformative potential waned due to tensions between expectations and daily realities, resulting in a cautious approach toward technological modernity. (shrink)

A non-epistemological history of historical epistemology Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9501-5 Authors W. R. Albury, School of Humanities, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played (...) by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. (shrink)

Depuis 2011-2012, les milieux de migrants russes en France se mobilisent politiquement. On peut observer, d’une part, une mobilisation liée aux mouvements de protestation en Russie à la suite des élections jugées « truquées » et, d’autre part, une mobilisation encouragée par la politique de l’État russe envers « ses » émigrés. L’histoire, le passé, jouent un rôle primordial dans ces mobilisations. Du côté des autorités russes, les concepts et moments clés de l’histoire nationale sont mobilisés pour une construction consensuelle (...) qui est par la suite « imposée » aux migrants, perçus comme les messagers de la parole des autorités russes dans les pays d’accueil. Cependant, cette reconstruction historique par l’État russe se confronte à des contradictions qui sont à la fois internes au projet de l’État russe et relatives aux temporalités subjectives des migrants. Ces dernières fournissent autant de contrepoints et de formes de contestation, explicite ou non, au récit historique unifié que s’efforcent de bâtir les autorités russes. Ces temporalités subjectives se traduisent par des identifications : avec les années 1990 qui, dans le discours politique sur l’histoire russe, sont perçues comme des « années noires » ; avec une « classe sociale » qui appartient au passé ; et enfin, avec des segments spécifiques de l’histoire et de l’espace russes, loin des conceptions totalisantes forgées par le projet extraterritorial des autorités. (shrink)

Abstract We examine the construction of electromagnetism in its current form, and in an alternative form, from a point of view that combines a minimal realism with strict rational demands. We begin by discussing the requests of reason when constructing a theory and next, we follow the historical development as presented in the record of original publications, the underlying epistemology (often explained by the authors) and the mathematical constructions. The historical construction develops along socio-political disputes (mainly, the reunification of Germany (...) and the second industrial revolution), epistemic disputes (at least two demarcations of science in conflict) and several theories of electromagnetism. Such disputes resulted in the militant adoption of the ether by some, a position that expanded in parallel with the expansion of Prussia. This way of thinking was facilitated by the earlier adoption of a standpoint that required, as a condition for understanding, the use of physical hypothesis in the form of analogies; an attitude that is antithetic to Newton's “hypotheses non fingo”. While the material ether was finally abandoned, the epistemology survived in the form of “substantialism” and a metaphysical ether: the space. The militants of the ether attributed certainties regarding the ether to Faraday and Maxwell, when they only expressed doubts and curiosity. Thus, the official story is not the real history. This was achieved by the operation of detaching Maxwell's electromagnetism from its construction and introducing a new game of formulae and interpretations. Large and important parts of Maxwell work are today not known, as for example, the rules for the transformation of the electromagnetic potentials between moving systems. When experiments showed that all the theories based in the material ether were incorrect, a new interpretation was offered: Special Relativity (SR). At the end of the transformation period a pragmatic view of science, well adapted to the industrial society, had emerged, as well as a new protagonist: the theoretical physicist. The rival theory of delayed action at distance initiated under the influence of Gauss was forgotten in the midst of the intellectual warfare. The theory is indistinguishable in formulae from Maxwell's and its earlier versions are the departing point of Maxwell for the construction of his equations. We show in a mathematical appendix that such (relational) theory can incorporate Lorentz' contributions as well as Maxwell's transformations and C. Neumann's action, without resource to the ether. Demarcation criteria was further changed at the end of the period making room for habits and intuitions. When these intuited criteria are examined by critical reason (seeking for the fundaments) they can be sharpened with the use of the Non Arbitrariness Principle, which throws light over the arbitrariness in the construction of SR. Under a fully rational view SR is not acceptable, it requires to adopt a less demanding epistemology that detaches the concept from the conception, such as Einstein's own view in this respect, inherited from Hertz. In conclusion: we have shown in this relevant exercise how the reality we accept depends on earlier, irrational, decisions that are not offered for examination but rather are inherited from the culture. (shrink)

The rise of the sitar from a limited accompaniment instrument used in the regional courts of Northern India to an internationally recognized cultural icon underscores its importance both as an instrument and a cultural symbol—the sitar mirrors India’s social complexity. This story encapsulates the social, political and economic trauma resulting from the dismantling of Mughal empire to the partition of Pakistan, reflecting contesting social narratives and Hindu/Muslim cultural heritages through the distinctive musical styles modern India. A musical instrument and material (...) object of contested origins, the sitar extends from wood, gourd, wire, and ivory into complex social and cultural networks. I argue that the sitar, as object, cannot be reduced to either an empirical or phenomenological entity; it is a space of potentiality, the actualization of a virtual object. I examine the sitar as both byproduct and narrative, demonstrating how it defies attempts to limit its constantly rupturing borders with imposed cognitive frames, and how materiality and philosophical systems can inform ethnographic practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Harold Tarrant. Plato's First Interpreters. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 263. Cloth, $55.00. This is Tarrant's third book on the ancient Platonist tradition, following his Scepticism or Platonism? (1985) and Thrasyllan Platonism (1993). In those earlier volumes his focus was on the first centuries bc and ad. Here his scope is (...) much wider. Stating that "Platonic interpretation is today at a crossroads," he has written a book that explores "ancient attempts to wrestle with this corpus," with the ultimate objective "to encourage a fresh, almost primitive reading of Plato himself" (vii).He begins engagingly by confronting the ancients with questions any modern reader of Plato must ask: What kind of text is this? Are there doctrines here? Where do I look for Plato's doctrines? The second part of his book is a historical survey, taking us from Plato, the early Academy and Aristotle, through the Hellenistic and early Roman Imperial period, and concluding with the principal Neoplatonist interpreters. In the third and longest part, he focuses on the interpretation of specific dialogues, giving most space to the Gorgias and Theaetetus, but also dealing in particular detail with the Meno, Parmenides, and Philebus. Something is said about every dialogue, but Tarrant writes only briefly about such major works as the Republic and Timaeus. He explains his selectivity (not very convincingly) as due to his wish to "discuss issues of meta-interpretation, with emphasis on the period before Plotinus" (198).Taking his book as a whole, one realizes that few strands of modern interpretation were not prefigured to quite a large extent in antiquity. The two most obvious exceptions are the chronological and developmental approach (Early, Middle, and Late), at present under strong attack from some quarters, and the theological, numerological, and allegorical readings practiced by Neoplatonists. Plato's ancient interpreters were doctrinal unitarians, but they implicitly anticipated our tendency to distinguish "Socratic dialogues," which some of them called "gymnastic" and "inquisitive," from such "canonical" works as the Phaedo,Republic, Symposium, and Timaeus, to which they applied the labels "dogmatic" and "expository." And they recognized that both types of characteristics could be found in the same dialogue, as in the Meno and Theaetetus. Plato himself, they proposed, spoke primarily through the voices of Socrates, Timaeus, and the Eleatic and Athenian strangers; but other characters, such as Pausanias in the Symposium, or Protagoras in the dialogue of that name, utter thoughts with some philosophical value. In explaining difficult passages of one dialogue, they would typically refer to passages from other parts of the corpus. An especially intriguing instance is the strategy of the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus, who reads the Meno into the dialogue on which he is officially commenting.Ancient scholars, just like ourselves, asked questions about the unifying themes of complex dialogues. Hence the sub-titles given to certain works: "On the soul" for the Phaedo, and "On justice" for the Republic, etc. For Olympiodorus (whose commentary on the Gorgias Tarrant has recently co-edited [Leiden, 1998]), earlier interpreters have seriously erred by giving too limited an account of that dialogue's scope. It is not, he says, simply about rhetoric, nor about justice and injustice; nor is its theme the divine demiurge (as some Neoplatonists had strangely proposed, on the basis of the concluding myth). Rather, the subject of the Gorgias is "the ethical principles that lead to constitutional well-being" (125). [End Page 121] However, Olympiodorus's eminently "sensible" reading (as Tarrant calls it) is deeply embedded in the Neoplatonic contrast between the "purificatory virtues" of the Phaedo and the "constitutional virtues" of Republic4.Strong or weak scepticism, esotericism, unwritten doctrines, spurious versus genuine, a canon of central dialogues, dramatic considerations, and the philosophical importance or non-importance of the dialogues' prologues—all of these are interpretive approaches that Tarrant surveys in this immensely learned book, and all of them continue to resonate for us. Modern scholars, who emphasize the literary and philosophical unity of each dialogue, are walking... (shrink)

Morality has always been a pressing issue in video game scholarship, but became more contentious after “realistic” violence in games became possible. However, few studies concern themselves with how players experience moral dilemmas in games, choosing instead to focus on the way games affect postplay behavior. In my thesis I discuss the moral choices players encounter in the Metal Gear series of games; then, I analyze and compare the responses of players with and without martial career experiences. My argument is (...) that the moral choices players encounter during gameplay affect them differently, particularly if they have life experiences related to medical trauma, law enforcement, fire fighting, or military career fields, and that the behavior of those players will be observably different from players without the same experiences. In chapter one I present my personal history with Metal Gear, before moving on to the literature review in chapter two, which focuses on scholarship about the Metal Gear series of games and video game research as a whole, particularly studies concerned with how violent content affects players. In chapters three and four, I analyze Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004) and Metal Gear Solid V (2014/2015) in order to gain insight into the moral dilemmas posed by each game. In chapter five I report the results of a survey about player responses towards the game dilemmas given by martial and non-martial groups to identify observable patterns of behavior in how they act and react towards each scenario. -/- This is a preprint version of the official paper until an update is produced. The current official version is available at the West Chester Digital Commons in the external link section below. (shrink)

Among the Muslims the most common sect is Ḥanafī. It is mentioned in the Ḥanafī sect that there are a line of students who transfer the principles of the sect from generation to generation. In order for the Islamic conquests that started simultaneously in the Eastern and Western lands to be permanent, people were sent to teach Islamic morality, worship and fiqh that encompass daily life. From the 2nd century (A.H.) the sectarianization process that started in the centers such as (...) Kufa, Medina and Damascus has naturally spread to the geography of the West. Many jurists who were educated in the madrasas in the East transferred this education to the newly conquered lands in the West, thus contributing to the fact that sectarianization began in the East and West at the same time. During this period, the views of many mujtahids, including Abū Ḥanīfa and his students, began to enter this geography again through his students. In this article, the most important person who introduced the Ḥanafī sect in the Andalusian region and transferred Abu Ḥanifa's ijtihads, ʿAbdallāh Ibn Farrūkh's life, his scientific personality, his contributions to the spread of the sect and the reasons for the Ḥanafī sect to find supporters in the region will be followed by a short course and the history of the sect will be tried to uncover in the history of Andalusia.Summary: Among the Muslims the most common sect is Ḥanafī. It is not a coincidence that the Ḥanafī sect spread more than other sects and found supporters. Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) is the most senior among the imams of four leading sects. He experienced about commercial and everyday life, had loyal students. This is because he discussed with his students before deciding on a ruling.Islamic conquests in the east and west started at the same time. Experts teaching Islamic morality were sent to conquered places. In this way, both morality and Islamic law, which encompasses worship and daily life, were also taught. Since the implementation of justice was considered as the main duty of the state, legal affairs were dynamic and systematically organized. For this purpose, both in the Medina and the newly conquered lands, various issues such as, management, use, distribution, non-muslim marriage, trade and so on emerged. These issues were carried out with the "kadi" establishment, which is like today's ministry of justice.In the Hijri 2nd century, Fiqh schools produced practical solutions to matters of process and worship in centers such as, Iraq, Medina and Damascus. These schools completed the sectarianization process after a century. Many Islamic jurists who took madrasah education in the east taught these training in the west. They pioneered the development of this sectarianization process both in the east and the west at the same time.The Islamic jurisprudence solved the problems that emerged with the conquest process that began in Andalusia, primarily through the independent jurisprudence, kadi and muftis in the region. After 710 A.C., the Ḥanafī sect reached Andalusia. After the death of Abū Ḥanīfa, Abu Yusuf became the chief justice. Later, the views of Abū Ḥanīfa gained importance. Abu Yusuf appointed the judges who knew the Ḥanafī sect. Abū Ḥanīfa's students, like a gold mine, embraced the views of their teachers. These jurisprudences were adopted by the supporters. Imam Muhammad was the first to write the case law of Abū Ḥanīfa. The views and thoughts of Abū Ḥanīfa, which were published by Imam Muhammad, spread throughout Iraq, Damascus, Iran and Khorasan. Later these thoughts reached North Africa that was under the control of Aghlabid (A.C. 800-909).In the same era, ʿAbdallāh b. Farrūkh passed to the way 6500 km to learn western sciences. The purpose of Farrūkh is to write the views of his teacher, Abū Ḥanīfa. In this way, he returned to Andalusia by writing ten thousand subjects. Beginning from 767 A.C., Ḥanafī sect gradually began to form in this region. He served as a judge voluntarily, although he did not serve as the official judge. Therefore, it contributed greatly to the spread of this sect in the west. The Mālikī sect, which due to from the animosity of Umayyad (A.C. 661-750) and Abbasids (A.C. 750-1258), came to the forefront. Abdullah b. Ferrûh was not as famous as the other disciples of Abū Ḥanīfa.Although Ḥanafīism spread in the west, it was in the foreground in the eastern geographies. Scholars such as Qadi Ayyad (d. 544/1149), Ibn Farḥūn (d. 799/1397), Muhammad Abū Zahra (d. 1974) and Hintātī state that this sect was effective for a short time in the west. On the other hand, Maqdisī (d. 380/999) states that Ḥanafī existed in Andalusia until the second half of the third century A.C. and was at least as widespread as Mālikīism. Orientalist Lévi Provençal (d. 1956) says that Ḥanafī sect did not reach to Andalusia. However, it can be understood from the above statements that this view is not real. In addition, according to the student hierarchy described in the article, it is understood that the Ḥanafī sect maintained its existence in this region for a while. In Andalusia, the views of the sect from the 8th to the 13th centuries known, recognized and followed by experts and the public. Because this sect was not official, its books were not in demand. For this reason, the basic works belonging to the sect were not reproduced.It is not true that the Ḥanafī sect never came to Andalusia or did not stay for a long time. ʿAbdallāh b. Farrūkh, who studied at Abū Ḥanīfa for 5 years, introduced Ḥanafī sect in Andalusia. Then his students continued this teaching. In this study, the life, mastery and students of ʿAbdallāh b. Farrūkh, who made important contributions for the first time in teaching Ḥanafīsm's to Andalusia, have been brought together. This information is summarized in terms of Ḥanafīsm's entry into Andalusia, the reasons for acceptance in social life and the duration of the sect in the region. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the semantic content of cultural diplomacy. The relevance of addressing this topic is determined by the specifics of the current stage of development of international relations, when cultural diplomacy finds itself in a situation of sharply narrowed opportunities amid the intensification of counterproductive strategies of “cancel culture.” The purpose of the work is to trace the features of the disclosure of values and meanings of the period of recent sociocultural turbulence. The objectives of the (...) study are 1) to clarify the nature of the attitude of representatives of creative professions to the political and ideological realities of the time; 2) highlight the difference between the dichotomies “political / non-political” and “official / unofficial”; 3) establish the significance of each part of these dichotomies in solving the problems of cultural diplomacy; 4) to trace theoretical and practical approaches to the components of these dichotomies on the part of representatives of artistic culture in the light of the paradigm of meaning-making as a key value of culture; 5) determine the possibilities and boundaries of interaction between representatives of creative professions and the political context of their activities. The research methodology is based on an integrated approach based on data from cultural history, cultural anthropology, and political psychology within the framework of the theory of intercultural communication. The key method used is categorical analysis, as well as discourse analysis, which allows us to trace blocks of value preferences, taking into account the characteristics of current historical and cultural processes. The novelty of the study lies in identifying the possibilities and boundaries for the development of cultural contacts in an era of current turbulence (primarily political), when, against the backdrop of the intensification of “cancel culture,” the possibilities for such interactions are reduced. (shrink)

My paper reflects on the debate about reasons for action and action explanations between Wittgensteinian teleological approaches and causalist theories inspired by Davidson. After a brief discussion of similarities and differences in the philosophy of language, I sketch the prehistory and history of the controversy. I show that the conflict between Wittgenstein and Davidson revolves neither around revisionism nor around naturalism. Even in the philosophy of mind and action, Davidson is not as remote from Wittgenstein and his followers as (...) is commonly assumed: there are numerous points of contact of both a biographical and a substantive kind. The real conflict concerns the difference between Davidson’s official subjectivist approach to reasons for action, according to which they are mental states of believing and desiring (or their onsets) on the one hand, and an objectivist approach, according to which reasons for action are what is believed or desired, non-mental facts or states of affairs. (shrink)

Among the most pressing philosophical questions occupying those interested in the ethics of the family is why should parents, as opposed to charity workers or state officials, raise children. In their recent Family Values, Brighouse and Swift have further articulated and strengthen their own justification of the parent-child relationship by appealing to its crucial role in enabling the child’s proper development and in allowing parents to play a valuable fiduciary role in the lives of children. In this paper, I argue (...) that the set of interests Brighouse and Swift identify as necessary for the justification of the family fails to account for the different stages and the different cultural settings that mark the parent-child relationship. In particular, I ague that their justification of the family fails to satisfy the following two desiderata: (i) that the justification for the parent-child relationship should ideally track the good-making feature(s) of the relationship that extend across its entire history, and (ii) such justification should ideally explain what is valuable about the parent-child relationship in both liberal and non-liberal family contexts. In light of my critique, I sketch an alternative account of family values, one that appeals directly to the special mode of caring we see in the parent-child relationship, a form of caring that is certainly present in non-liberal societies and that typically extends across a lifetime. (shrink)

The year 1968 is universally considered a watershed in history, as the world was experiencing an accelerated growth of anti-establishment protests that would have long-lasting impacts on the cultural, social, and political spheres of human life. On September 26, amid social and political unrest across the globe, 62 physicists gathered in Geneva to found the European Physical Society. Among these were the official representatives of the national physical societies of 18 countries in both Eastern and Western Europe, who (...) signed the constitution in spite of the political divides of the Cold War. According to the main proponent of the society, Italian physicist Gilberto Bernardini, the success of the initiative was the realization of a dream: the institutional formation of a single community of European physicists, a representation of a culturally unified Europe that he described as a “single highly civilized nation.” The analysis of as yet unexplored archival materials of Bernardini and other protagonists in the establishment of the society has enabled an investigation of the historical development of science diplomacy in two interconnected ways: first, by elucidating how the actors involved, especially those in Western Europe, interpreted their role as diplomats amid particularly turbulent reconfigurations of international political relations; second, by interpreting the attempt to institutionalize transnational scientific networks with the establishment of a non-governmental organization as a tool to influence world political affairs. It will first be shown that the political ideal of a culturally unified Europe was deeply intertwined with the socio-professional interests of a specific community, mostly involved with CERN. I will argue that, in the process of establishing the society, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armed forces led many of the Western physicists involved in this process to reframe the role of the European Physical Society as a tool to diffuse liberal-democratic values and to support political dissidents in Eastern Europe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scepticism in the Sixth Century? Damascius’ Doubts and Solutions Concerning First PrinciplesSara RappeThe Doubts and Solutions Concerning First Principles, an aporetic work of the sixth century Neoplatonist Damascius, is distinguished above all by its dialectical subtlety. Although the Doubts and Solutions belongs to the commentary tradition on Plato’s Parmenides, its structure and method make it in many ways unique among such exegetical works. The treatise positions itself, at least (...) in part, as a response to Proclus’ metaphysical system. Thus the first principles alluded to in its title refer to a metaphysical structure consisting of five central elements, the Ineffable, the One, and the Noetic Triad, which Damascius both adumbrates in opposition to Proclus1 as well as subjects to his own, internal critique. In this article, I will be asking whether or not Damascius’ critique of Neoplatonic metaphysics is informed or inspired by ancient Scepticism. No doubt this question catches the reader off guard: if the last exponent of ancient Scepticism is Sextus Empiricus, how could this sixth-century Neoplatonist Scholarch, the last officially appointed Platonic Successor, revert to a tradition that seemingly disappears for well over three centuries?2 In what [End Page 337] follows, I suggest that a plausible historical context for such a reversion can be found in contemporaneous Neoplatonic allusions to Sceptical readings of Plato. I then analyze the Sceptical techniques deployed by Damascius in his critique of Neoplatonist metaphysics, focusing especially on his attacks on Neoplatonic theories of intellect and causation. I conclude by speculating on some ideological factors that shaped Damascius’ Sceptical affiliations, suggesting that here it is possible to see an initial volley in what was to become a centuries-long skirmish between reason and revelation.1. the neoplatonists read the sceptics?R. T. Wallis has suggested that Plotinus borrows from the Sceptics’ arsenal in voicing his own objections against Stoic or Stoicizing epistemology and theology. The seemingly radical stance that Plotinus takes against Stoic notions of divine rationality, virtue, and providence is anticipated by the Sceptics’ refusal to grant that an omniscient mind could stand in need of rational deliberation or exercise virtues that imply the presence of corresponding vices, etc. Not only is it the case that Plotinus makes a detailed use of specific Sceptical arguments in his own polemics against the Stoics, he seems to have been the first philosopher to have grasped the implications of Sceptical challenges to Stoic theology, and to have circumvented Sceptical dilemmas by means of his highly original formulations of nondiscursive thinking and negative theology.That this Platonist might side with Sceptics against dogmatic philosophy would hardly be surprising to the modern student of Plato, but it is also true that historically, this has been an uneasy alliance. In fact, it is just this question, the alliance between Platonists and the Sceptics, that gets rehearsed in the sixth century. Olympiodorus devotes Chapter 10 of his Prolegomena to the Study of Platonic Philosophy to the refutation of an ephectic, or nondogmatic Plato3: “Plato also superseded the philosophy of the New Academy since that school gave precedence to akatalepsia (nonapprehension), while Plato demonstrated that there do exist cognitions grounded in genuine knowledge. Nevertheless, some assert, assimilating Plato to the ephectics and to the Academicians, that he too maintained the doctrine of akatalepsia.” These remarks are curious, for we have no indication that a Sceptical reading of Plato was current or even conceivable at this time. In fact, as the context makes clear, the Sceptics are represented in this passage as a prior philosophical school; chapters 7 through 10 present a concise history of philosophy that is remarkably free from any notions of philosophical currency attributable to any of the views that fall [End Page 338] under its purvue: “there has been no shortage of philosophical haireseis [schools] both before and after Plato, yet he surpassed all of them by his teaching, his thought, and in every possible way”4 (Prolegomena, 7.1).Olympiodorus performs the exegete’s role throughout his refutation of a non-dogmatic Plato, turning first to the grammatical item, Plato’s use of what Olympiodorus terms the “hestitating” adverbs, such as “probably,” “perhaps,” and “as I imagine.” Nevertheless Olympiodorus manages... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS THERE A PRUSSIAN HUME? or How Far Is It from Könisberg to Edinburgh! Lewis White Beck has recently argued that Hume, in spite of his empiricist commitment, implicitly recognized the limitations of that position when he incorporated in his thinking ideas that are essentially Kantian and incompatible with his official empiricism. Beck is not, of course, the first so to argue; Robert Paul Wolff made a 2 (...) similar claim some years ago in a well-known paper. Wolff's case has, however, been challenged, and it is the aim of the present paper to challenge Beck's somev.'hat different case. 4 Beck argues that Hume has two causal principles: (1)Every event has a cause (2)Same cause, same effect the second of which he claims Hume defends, and the first of which he claims Hume does not defend. He then turns to the case of perception, where we observe an object once intermittently and once continuously. The result is a gappy series of impressions in the first case, and a non-gappy one in the second. The existence of the gap falsifies principles (1) and (2). In order to save principle (2), Beck argues, Hume relies on principle (1). The latter enables Hume to "feign" unobserved events to fill the gap. But (1) is also falsified by the empirical data, that is, the existence of the gap. So this appeal to (1) is illegitimate. At least it is illegitimate if the only support we are permitted to use is observational data. And that is all that the official Hume, committed to empiricism, is permitted to use. However, Hume does use (1), contrary to what his official position allows. This suggests that he recognizes, what Kant explicitly argued, that there are non-empirical reasons justifying the acceptance of (1). And it is here that we see the Prussian aspects of the Scots sceptic. Beck's case depends upon three points: (a)He must separate principles (1) and (2). (b)He must argue that gappy series of impressions are filled by appealing to (1). (c)He must argue that gappy series of impressions falsify (1), rendering its use to fill those gaps illegitimately. In what follows it is argued that the distance from Königsberg to Edinburgh cannot thus be bridged. Specifically, it is argued, first, that (a) is false, or, more specifically that for Hume (2) entails (1) ; second, that, when (1) and (2) are so understood, then (b) is partially correct; and third, that, when (1) and (2) are taken as Hume takes them, then (c) is incorrect: the gaps do not falsify (1), its use remains legitimate. Let us begin with principle (2), the "same cause, same effect" principle. This principle is Rule 4 of Hume's rules by which to judge of causes and effects. He states it as The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises hut from the same cause. (T173) Rules 1-3 give the analysis of the causal relation insofar as it is an ob8 jective relation among things. Rule 4 then makes a claim about events and causes. Rule 4 is followed by four rules which are the best statement of Mill's Methods of eliminative induction prior to Herschell's Preliminary Discourse. When one of these methods is used, the data eliminate all possible hypotheses but one, and the conclusion is that this uneliminated hypothesis must be true, correctly describing the relevant causal relation. Hume carefully points out that we draw this conclusion not from the data alone, but 3. also from the "same cause, same effect" principle. Thus, when Hume states Rule 5, the method of agreement, he writes There is another principle, which hangs upon this [i.e., upon Rule 4, "same cause, same effect"], viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them. For as_ like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance, wherein we discover the resemblance. (T174, italics added) We can bring out the logic of the situation if we translate this into the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Utopia and Modernity in China: Contradictions in Transition ed. by David Margolies and Qing CaoArtur BlaimDavid Margolies and Qing Cao, eds. Utopia and Modernity in China: Contradictions in Transition. London: Pluto Press, 2022. 176 pp. Paperback, £19.99, ISBN 978 0 7453 4739 4In recent years, numerous publications have appeared focusing on the until now little known non-Western utopias and utopianism.1 Utopia and Modernity in China is a most (...) welcome addition, offering a highly informative survey of Chinese utopias and utopianism combined with an insightful discussion of their formative role in the making of modern China. The book consists of seven chapters introducing different aspects of the opposition of utopia and modernity as exemplified by various cultural productions and their impact on the social and political life of the country. Its publication has acquired a special relevance today not only due to China’s increasingly major role in the contemporary world, but also in connection with its official support of the [End Page 143] Russian invasion of Ukraine, contradicting its repeatedly declared adherence to the principles of international law and the ideals of national sovereignty, noninterference, and harmony in international affairs.Although the term utopia appeared in Chinese discourse only at the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of a radically better society has always existed in China, assuming different forms and shapes. The contributors to the volume trace the functioning of the broadly conceived phenomenon of utopian thinking in various domains of Chinese cultural, social, and political life, paying special attention to literary and cinematic works. The declared aims of the book are not only cognitive but also pragmatic as the editors believe that recent Chinese history involving “fundamental conflict of values,” the country’s experiences with economic systems that fail to supply the needs of the population, and the emergence of a society based on inequality, can be seen as highly relevant in the Western context also, to the extent that—as the editors convincingly argue—it “can provide English-language readers with a perspective useful for making sense of their own condition” (2).The editors see the opposition of utopia and modernity as less significant in the Western context than in China, where modernity became essential for preserving the integrity of the state torn by the conflict between the traditional values of nonconfrontation and continuity and the urgent need for significant change. Unlike in the West, where the dominant view of modernity was largely influenced by the Platonic model of the society in which the class of rulers was protected by the military class controlling the rest of the population, the Confucian model of social relations prevalent in China was based—at least in theory—on the principle of harmony rather than force. Other factors defining the Chinese variety of utopianism were Taoism, emphasizing the importance of nature and “The Way,” and Buddhism, advocating the limitation of needs and control of desires. The editors see this as “the reverse of the West’s view: for China, utopia (in the aspect of harmony) is the expectation, the desired normal, while modernity is the disrupter” (4) which is responsible for the predominance of the nostalgic utopia looking backwards to the idealized harmony of the past. The revolutions taking place in China in the twentieth century led to the decline of traditional ideals and brought with them experiments with the implementation of various Western ideologies, ranging from liberalism and democracy to socialism and communism. As a result, there are three main tendencies in the value system of contemporary China: orthodox communism, market-based liberalism, and [End Page 144] values derived from traditional Chinese culture. Nevertheless, the state continues to be generally seen in Confucian terms as an extension of the family based on moral authority rather than as “necessary evil.”The first chapter, “The Lure of Utopia: Reinterpreting Liang Qichao’s Xinmin Shuo, 1902–1906,” proposes a new perspective on the ideas of Liang Qichao, a highly influential early twentieth-century political activist, journalist, and intellectual, by focusing on the ways in which he advanced a utopian vision of the West as a radical alternative to the traditional Chinese social views. Liang... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS THERE A PRUSSIAN HUME? or How Far Is It from Könisberg to Edinburgh! Lewis White Beck has recently argued that Hume, in spite of his empiricist commitment, implicitly recognized the limitations of that position when he incorporated in his thinking ideas that are essentially Kantian and incompatible with his official empiricism. Beck is not, of course, the first so to argue; Robert Paul Wolff made a 2 (...) similar claim some years ago in a well-known paper. Wolff's case has, however, been challenged, and it is the aim of the present paper to challenge Beck's somev.'hat different case. 4 Beck argues that Hume has two causal principles: (1)Every event has a cause (2)Same cause, same effect the second of which he claims Hume defends, and the first of which he claims Hume does not defend. He then turns to the case of perception, where we observe an object once intermittently and once continuously. The result is a gappy series of impressions in the first case, and a non-gappy one in the second. The existence of the gap falsifies principles (1) and (2). In order to save principle (2), Beck argues, Hume relies on principle (1). The latter enables Hume to "feign" unobserved events to fill the gap. But (1) is also falsified by the empirical data, that is, the existence of the gap. So this appeal to (1) is illegitimate. At least it is illegitimate if the only support we are permitted to use is observational data. And that is all that the official Hume, committed to empiricism, is permitted to use. However, Hume does use (1), contrary to what his official position allows. This suggests that he recognizes, what Kant explicitly argued, that there are non-empirical reasons justifying the acceptance of (1). And it is here that we see the Prussian aspects of the Scots sceptic. Beck's case depends upon three points: (a)He must separate principles (1) and (2). (b)He must argue that gappy series of impressions are filled by appealing to (1). (c)He must argue that gappy series of impressions falsify (1), rendering its use to fill those gaps illegitimately. In what follows it is argued that the distance from Königsberg to Edinburgh cannot thus be bridged. Specifically, it is argued, first, that (a) is false, or, more specifically that for Hume (2) entails (1) ; second, that, when (1) and (2) are so understood, then (b) is partially correct; and third, that, when (1) and (2) are taken as Hume takes them, then (c) is incorrect: the gaps do not falsify (1), its use remains legitimate. Let us begin with principle (2), the "same cause, same effect" principle. This principle is Rule 4 of Hume's rules by which to judge of causes and effects. He states it as The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises hut from the same cause. (T173) Rules 1-3 give the analysis of the causal relation insofar as it is an ob8 jective relation among things. Rule 4 then makes a claim about events and causes. Rule 4 is followed by four rules which are the best statement of Mill's Methods of eliminative induction prior to Herschell's Preliminary Discourse. When one of these methods is used, the data eliminate all possible hypotheses but one, and the conclusion is that this uneliminated hypothesis must be true, correctly describing the relevant causal relation. Hume carefully points out that we draw this conclusion not from the data alone, but 3. also from the "same cause, same effect" principle. Thus, when Hume states Rule 5, the method of agreement, he writes There is another principle, which hangs upon this [i.e., upon Rule 4, "same cause, same effect"], viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them. For as_ like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance, wherein we discover the resemblance. (T174, italics added) We can bring out the logic of the situation if we translate this into the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:171. JACOBITISM AND DAVID HUME: THE IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH FOILED It has often been said, and with some truth, that one of the weaknesses of the Jacobite movement was its lack of a systematic ideology or of a truly firstrate mind to expound its doctrines. There are of course those who would claim that in an earlier period Charles Leslie or Francis Atterbury easily fulfilled the necessary conditions as expositors, (...) and that this tradition was continued in the years immediately before the '45 by Carte and Chevalier Ramsay. Yet there were weaknesses in Jacobite doctrine, some of which will be noted below. It is less often realised that, qua logical cogency, the arguments of the Whigs and other opponents of Jacobitism were, to say the least, in no better case. In a word, anti-Jacobite ideology completely failed in the task of devastating the Stuarts and their followers. This failure is apparent when we consider the writings of David Hume, who addressed himself on many occasions, either explicitly or implicitly, to the question of Jacobitism. One of Hume's aims was to give the Revolution settlement and the Hanoverian succession the respectable intellectual basis it did not possess from official Whig ideology. In this aim Hume unquestionably failed, his arguments being either internally inconsistent or lacking in the intellectual rigour necessary to topple his targets. Following the method attributed to Karl Popper by Brian Magee, it will be instructive at this point to consider the anti-Jacobite case, not at its weakest, but at its strongest. In a word, it is proposed to consider in detail the political writings on the issue of Jacobitism of a man widely acknowledged to be the greatest British thinker of the eighteenth century and one of the finest philosophers of the ages. If the 172. most powerful mind in British philosophy was unable to contrive a theory or theories that could unseat Jacobitism as an ideology, this tends to indicate that the intellectual supports of the' doctrine were nothing like so feeble as Whig apologists claimed, and that historians have been rather too quick to claim that eighteenth-century Jacobitism depended on a defunct or discredited belief-system. First, however, two comments are necessary. Neither Jacobitism itself nor Hume's own writings possess the coherence the scholar might ideally wish for. Hume's critique has to be extracted from books and essays written over a thirty-year period, and none of these is a work of political theory per se. Moreover, these works address differing audiences and assume quite different things about the knowledge and philosophical acumen of their readers. This is quite apart from the fact that on some important issues Hume changed his mind over the years. At this level assessing Hume's meaning is often as difficult as the notorious problem of pinning down the 'real' Marx. As for Jacobitism, its ideology is difficult to articulate, since it was composed of many heterogeneous strands. The ideology of English Jacobites was a 'partial' view of the world. It embraced the pre-1688 Tory notions of hereditary and indefeasible right, passive obedience and non-resistance. It took in the 'Country' critique of corruption and its nostalgia for a lost 'golden age'. The ideology of Scottish Jacobitism came nearer to being a Weltanschauung. Apart from its role as an ideology of nationalism, stressing the importance of a unique Scottish culture, it depended on a providential and mystical view of the world. Basically, there were three types of ideological Jacobitism. The first type, whose major 173. tenets had been exhaustively debated during the period 1688-1720, concerned the notions of divine, indefeasible right, passive obedience and nonresistance. This doctrine, particularly associated with pro-Stuart polemicists like Charles Leslie and Francis Atterbury, was still very much alive in Jacobite circles by 1745, though the debate between Whig and Tory on its implications had to some extent given way to the debate between exponents of Court and Country positions. The second type was Jacobitism as an ideology of Scottish nationalism. This was particularly associated with the mystics of NorthEastern Scotland like Chevalier Ramsay, and was a powerful influence in the '45 rebellion. The third type was Jacobitism as... (shrink)

The implementation of Project Tiger in India, 1973-1974, was justly hailed as a triumph of international environmental advocacy. It occurred as a growing number of conservation-oriented biologists were beginning to argue forcefully for scientifically managed conservation of species and ecosystems -- the same scientists who would, by the mid-1980s, call themselves conservation biologists. Although India accepted international funds to implement Project Tiger, it strictly limited research posts to Government of India Foresters, against the protests of Indian and US biologists who (...) hoped to conduct the scientific studies that would lead to better management and thus more effective conservation of the tiger. The foresters were not trained to conduct research, and in fact did not produce any of significance for the first 15 years of Project Tiger's existence. The failure of biologists to gain access to India's tigers in the 1970s was caused by many factors, but not least among them was a history of disdain among conservation-oriented biologists for government officials managing reserves, and the local politics of conservation. Project Tiger, then, serves as a case study for the discussion of the intersection of conservation biology with non-scientific concerns, including nationalism and the desire of the Indian government to more completely control its land. (shrink)

My paper reflects on the debate about reasons for action and action explanations between Wittgensteinian teleological approaches and causalist theories inspired by Davidson. After a brief discussion of similarities and differences in the philosophy of language, I sketch the prehistory and history of the controversy. I show that the conflict between Wittgenstein and Davidson revolves neither around revisionism nor around naturalism. Even in the philosophy of mind and action, Davidson is not as remote from Wittgenstein and his followers as (...) is commonly assumed: there are numerous points of contact of both a biographical and a substantive kind. The real conflict concerns the difference between Davidson’s official subjectivist approach to reasons for action, according to which they are mental states of believing and desiring on the one hand, and an objectivist approach, according to which reasons for action are what is believed or desired, non-mental facts or states of affairs. (shrink)

Despite growing public concerns around socio-scientific problems and the significance of these problems to everyday life, there is a dearth of sociological literature addressing the production and diffusion of the natural sciences in Australia. In particular, critical analyses of scientific knowledge production and diffusion relative to the actions of the state, the market and civil society are largely absent. This thesis sets out to mitigate this situation by contributing a critical historiography of scientific knowledge production and diffusion as it relates (...) to Australia since white settlement. It is anticipated that this work will open up the topic for further academic research and rational debate. This thesis explores the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge through the lens of social dynamics that have emerged in Australia between the 1770s and the 2010s. The research relies primarily on the theoretical work of Max Weber in order to identify and analyse the conception of rationality and its application to social action that is present in the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia. In particular, the relationships between the state, the market and civil society are analysed using secondary data drawn from published histories, official documents and the formal policies and practices of the state and the market during this period. A tripartite analytical model has been created specifically for this thesis and is utilised to trace scientific knowledge production and diffusion through the transformative social processes associated with instrumentalism, bureaucratisation, developmentalism, environmentalism, postmodernism and neoliberalism. Rationality is applied in three ways: as non-instrumental science produced to further human understandings of the natural world and to promote the development of civil society; as pre-instrumental science produced by the state to in order to develop markets and for other instrumental purposes such as national defense strategies; and as instrumental scientific knowledge produced by the participants in the market expressly to enhance their own position in the market. The research reveals that instrumental rationality has been an enduring concept in the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia. Moreover, this thesis finds that a strong tension is often present between non-instrumental notions of scientific knowledge and those practices that are predominantly instrumental. Through each of the periods studied the state and the market have been close confederates, often working together to realize instrumental outcomes through the knowledge produced by natural science. In particular, administrative and economic ends are seen to be primary; ends associated with more normative intentions, such as the nurturing of civil society, have been regularly overlooked in favour of strictly instrumental aspirations. This continuing instrumentality has altered the relationships between the state, the market and civil society during each period studied. On the current trajectory, the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia may yet begin to compromise the sovereignty of that nation state and the authority of its citizenry. (shrink)

European constitutional traditions share a commitment to freedom of conscience and religion, but differ on their interpretation of whether such freedoms do or do not require a clear cut separation of state and church. Weiler has advocated that the writing of a Constitution for the European Union is a very apt moment to reconsider the conceptualization of freedom of conscience and religion. On constitutional and historical grounds, he has advocated that a reference to Christian values should be made in the (...) preamble of the European fundamental law, and that this will be the alternative most respectful to the pluralistic national solutions, ranging from republican non-confessionality to the establishment of an official church. But contrary to what Weiler argues, the drafting of the constitution of the European Union is not bound by the present shape of European constitutional traditions; moreover, it is hard to conclude that the present common constitutional traditions require an explicit reference to Christianity to be included in the text. Furthermore, the claim that the individual and collective identities of Europeans are unavoidably shaped by Christian values is only tenable if we uphold a rather simplistic relation between history, memory, and identity. Finally, once one moves from law and history to practical reasoning, one finds that there are good substantive reasons why our collective identity should not contain reference to Christian values. (shrink)

The Nazis' use and misuse of Nietzsche is well known. The Superman, the "will to power," Nietzsche's equation of bourgeois democracy and decadence, and his denigration of reason were staples of Nazi propaganda. Communists also used and misused Nietzsche, but that fact is largely unknown because Soviet propagandists invoked reason and labeled Nietzsche the "philosopher of fascism," even while covertly appropriating his ideas. In this pioneering book, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal excavates the trail of long-obscured Nietzschean ideas that took root in (...) late Imperial Russia, intertwining with other elements in the culture to become a vital ingredient of Bolshevism and Stalinism. Nietzsche made a difference. He furnished intellectual ammunition for a prolonged conflict about culture, society, and politics that began around the turn of the century. His first Russian admirers were poets, philosophers, and political activists. They responded to the changes transforming their society by espousing new values and seeking a new faith by which to live and work. This response resulted in new aesthetic and political amalgams, such as Symbolism, Futurism, Nietzschean Christianity, and Nietzschean Marxism. The ensuing debates between and among their partisans reverberated throughout the wider culture and therefore also into Bolshevism, becoming the subject of an uninterrupted polemic between Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks, and among Bolsheviks, that continued into the 1930s. In Stalin's time, unacknowledged Nietzschean ideas were used to mobilize the masses for the great tasks of the first Five-Year Plan and the Cultural Revolution, which was intended to eradicate "bourgeois" values and attitudes from Soviet life and to construct a distinctly Socialist culture. Nietzsche's belief that people need illusions to shield them from reality underlay Socialist Realism, the official Soviet aesthetic from 1934 on. In the aftermath of de-Stalinization, the government cast Nietzsche as the personification of "bourgeois" nihilism and "bourgeois" individualism. Soviet intellectuals wishing to reappropriate their lost cultural heritage discovered the Nietzsche-influenced intellectuals of late Imperial Russia and reopened discussion on the issues they had posed. More than an exercise in historical rediscovery, _New Myth, New World_ offers a new interpretation of modern Russian history. By uncovering the buried influence of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet culture and politics, Rosenthal opens new avenues for understanding Soviet ideology and its influence on the twentieth century. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, philosophy had come into being in the VIth century with Thales, just as a mere, disinterested pursuit of truth, a curiosity for great problems which were substantially identical with those which Aristotle himself and his school were now raising. This abstract reading is very similar to that which views Greek poets as inspired by "eternal beauty" or by "art's for art sake" and which is nowadays completely discredited and given up by scholars of the history of (...) literature. Against this view the present text pro-poses a new reading of the "archaic" presocratic scientists: in fact, it is about those "sages" who lived on the bound-aries of the Greek-speaking world before the concentration of such people in Periclean Athens. They were closely linked to their native towns where they held high office; here there oral teaching and the public reading of their texts were followed closely by their fellow citizens. Thus the picture of the "cosmic republic" arises: to the "cosmic monarchy" of Homer and Hesiod a different mythical world succeeds. Here the earth, the sea, the sky, the human body and, generally, the "existing thing", all behave like isonomic towns or like the governing body of these towns. Philosophy will arise later, in Athens of the Vth century. (shrink)

The Nazis' use and misuse of Nietzsche is well known. The Superman, the "will to power," Nietzsche's equation of bourgeois democracy and decadence, and his denigration of reason were staples of Nazi propaganda. Communists also used and misused Nietzsche, but that fact is largely unknown because Soviet propagandists invoked reason and labeled Nietzsche the "philosopher of fascism," even while covertly appropriating his ideas. In this pioneering book, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal excavates the trail of long-obscured Nietzschean ideas that took root in (...) late Imperial Russia, intertwining with other elements in the culture to become a vital ingredient of Bolshevism and Stalinism. Nietzsche made a difference. He furnished intellectual ammunition for a prolonged conflict about culture, society, and politics that began around the turn of the century. His first Russian admirers were poets, philosophers, and political activists. They responded to the changes transforming their society by espousing new values and seeking a new faith by which to live and work. This response resulted in new aesthetic and political amalgams, such as Symbolism, Futurism, Nietzschean Christianity, and Nietzschean Marxism. The ensuing debates between and among their partisans reverberated throughout the wider culture and therefore also into Bolshevism, becoming the subject of an uninterrupted polemic between Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks, and among Bolsheviks, that continued into the 1930s. In Stalin's time, unacknowledged Nietzschean ideas were used to mobilize the masses for the great tasks of the first Five-Year Plan and the Cultural Revolution, which was intended to eradicate "bourgeois" values and attitudes from Soviet life and to construct a distinctly Socialist culture. Nietzsche's belief that people need illusions to shield them from reality underlay Socialist Realism, the official Soviet aesthetic from 1934 on. In the aftermath of de-Stalinization, the government cast Nietzsche as the personification of "bourgeois" nihilism and "bourgeois" individualism. Soviet intellectuals wishing to reappropriate their lost cultural heritage discovered the Nietzsche-influenced intellectuals of late Imperial Russia and reopened discussion on the issues they had posed. More than an exercise in historical rediscovery, _New Myth, New World_ offers a new interpretation of modern Russian history. By uncovering the buried influence of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet culture and politics, Rosenthal opens new avenues for understanding Soviet ideology and its influence on the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that recent philosophical attempts to ‘modernise’ Confucianism rehearse problematic relationships to the past that – far from broadening Confucianism’s appeal beyond its typical borders – end up narrowing its scope as a source of scholarly knowledge. This is because the very attempt to modernise assumes a rupture with a past in which Confucianism was once alive and relevant, fixing its identity to a static historical place disconnected from the present. I go on to explore alternative (...) means of situating past thought to present inquiry, by examining a debate among early 20th-century Chinese intellectuals over the value of their past heritage in a modern age. Their diverse responses undermine the certainty of a singular or persistent Chinese past, enabling a creative presentism that encourages deliberate filiation with alternative ‘tracks’ of past practice and thought. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 201-207. “Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life.” —Maurice Blanchot (1982, 89) Nikos Karouzos had a communist teacher for a father and an orthodox priest for a grandfather. From his four years up to his high school graduation he was incessantly educated, reading the entire private library of his granddad, comprising mainly (...) the Orthodox Church Fathers and the ancient classics. Later on in his life he sold the library for money, only to buy a little more time before he went broke again: “I carry sorrow like a cage/ I got no birds/ as I come back from her hair/ I see the profit emptied/ cool from terror.” (1993, Ι, 101) Nowadays—and ridiculously recently—we are more than apt to speak of a certain insouciance pertaining to the Greek form of expenditure: expenditure without any type of investment, sometimes not (even) symbolic. In the vaults of the European unconscious, this imprudent stance still conjures a “capital punishment” in the form of de-capitation, reflecting back the fear of excess and the terror of its consequences.1 Thus the Greek way of living is very close to what a stranger could have termed as “the Greek way of dying.” Yet, what is not often understood is that the Greek esprit , the same one that invented the maxim μηδ?ν ?γαν (“nothing in excess”), does not experience death solely as an imminent fear of bankruptcy. For it miraculously combines its unconditional acceptance with the promise of a resurrection that is always there in the scents of Spring, from Dionysus to the orthodox Christ: “Everyone resurrects himself through dying [….] Resurrection is the switching of mortalities.” (2002, 94) Hence, if an entire library was imprudently traded for a plate with seven olives, a sliced tomato and some fresh goat cheese, let us not be fooled: this is not the meal of the pauper, but that of “an aristocrat from God” (1993, II, 491) feeding his eloquent loudmouth, ridiculously cut open in an otherwise rock-solid caput . *** To speak of the Greek experience is to speak about a half-dead language that still utters in life what is seemingly excluded from it and thus forbidden to be talked about: death. Death as anything that is out of this world, as something that will never return . Still, along with an experience of death that recently waned as a worn-out academic fashion, the Greek experience is dead too. Nearly 2300 years of written words separating Homer from the fall of Byzantium equal 500 books on a library traded for money: “I am with the killed. Hence my deepest solitude. I do not feel this tremendous macho society, beyond from the fact that it is a ruthlessly consuming one. It is me who pays all the time .” (2002, 57) Let us do the math and see how much this dealing with the Greek experience is costing the poet and how much dealing with the Greek experience might cost us today. *** “I do not guarantee a single word.” (Karouzos, 1993, II, 454) Through its various dialects and forms, the Greek language speaks through an incessant historical dissemination. Anyone who is aware of this terrifying polymorphy and still calls himself a poet, must stand against a white sheet of paper, pen-in-hand, with a very particular duty: to be as fully inconsistent as possible. In the formally ironic uniqueness of the poem, the poet functions as “a band-aid for lesser and greater antinomies.” (1993, I, 251) Of course these antinomies are not exhausted in language—they are historical, political and, alas, existential. Yet, beyond appearances , it is language that ruthlessly encodes them through history, submitting the poet to the temptation of placing them one next to the other on a single white sheet. The closer their neighboring, the greater the scattering of the writer in the ironic uniqueness of the paper. In a work where poetic license is described as a “freedom-impasse” (2002, 51), this task is undertaken in full conscience of its personal consequences: “what I am interested in is to escape my individuality (envisioning the non-ego) […] Nevertheless, my dissociations never achieve duration.” (2002, 74-75) Hence, though poetry is the “deserted direction of will,” (1998, 62) the stance of the poet is not that of a Nietzschean “great man.”2 Whereas drunkenness provides a thread between the poem and the excess it both presupposes and infuses (“Poetry always enlarges. ‘Drunkenness’ is nothing more than that,” (2002, 85)), whereas language flashes in loudmouth spurts of déraison (“When I am alone I do something else. I utter words. For example, while having my ouzo and listening to music I am most likely capable of randomly shouting ‘Electricity!’” (2002, 138)), the poet never gives in to the double affirmation that would eventually risk the “element of pleasure in discourse.” (2002, 80)” It is exactly because the gap of the antinomies is so vast that poetry is not meant to be written with a hammer. Neither does writing consist in a reevaluation of those elements. In short, poetry is not an affirmation of difference, but the surprising beauty of chiming antinomies. We might never transcend them, but it is up to us to put them together. Yet again, this voisinage is not to be identified with the necessity of chance as an eternal return.4 On the contrary it is a return from that very return : Let us treat Yes as a No to No and No as a Yes […] And let us not forget that this pissed affirmation crumbled down Nietzsche’s intellect in the dark paths of this world. (2002, 88) This return from the “vicious circle” should in no way be taken as a form of artistic prudence. Rather it can be seen as a dribble of demonic inconsistency as Dionysus transforms himself into a Christ that is in turn de-theologized: “Who can forbid that? Every man is capable of his own theology, nothing can stop him.” (2002, 73-74) This is a turn towards an existential vision of the world, historically coinciding with a particular political defeat of the Left, to which the poet devoted all his life: after the defeat of the popular front I raised the question “why do we exist?” while others were asking “why we failed.” (2002, 57)5 But most of all it is a return to poetry that exceeds the existential question itself, going beyond the issue of faith. Poetry comes in as a question of return after a defeat that is confessed in full profanity. Though it accepts the necessity of the defeat, it does not affirm it. Though it negates it, the negation is not in the name of a promise to be delivered in the kingdom of heavens. Following a historical and existential defeat, poetry is born post mortem . It signals a return to Christ as “groundless religiousness in the surprise of the real as such” (2002, 72) which is at once a return to the refuge of childhood. It is not a question of endurance towards an eternal return. Rather it is a question on the possibility of an existential return. Returning in a world as someone who cannot enjoy any returns exactly because he is averse to guarantees. A return without returns. *** PHOTOCOPY OF HAPPINESS When I was young I used to pin down cicadas and step on ant nests. I used to stand there silent for hours. With threads I decapitated bees. Now I am a dead man breathing. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 336.) The return to the “paradise of childhood” (2002, 68) constitutes the devouring refuge of its own memory when defeat becomes the synonym of adulthood. The political struggles of a young communist in a country torn up by a civil war right after World War II fraught with incarcerations and exiles. Historically they resulted in the defeat of the communist movement in Greece and opened up a long turbulent road that would peak in the dictatorship of 1967. Existentially they led to a series of disillusionments: mental breakdown, divorce, abandonment of studies in law school. To the question “why do we exist” the answer was poetry. Still this exposé should not be read as a sweeping chronography of a man. For it actually happens to coincide with the historical fate of a nation that after its modern constitution never stopped dreaming of the glories of its past youth, in a present that was (and is) sweepingly disappointing. But isn’t this return to youth finally a way of compensating for a loss of youth that necessarily results in a losing adulthood? Will Greeks, the eternal children of Plato and Nietzsche, ever learn? How to return without dying, how to remember without wasting time? WE ARE IN THE OPEN MEANING Living the coldest mauve night right across Parthenon I went to take a piss on some foliage and I was enjoying the foliage as it was steaming. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 340) Beyond the historical tragedies of modern Greece and away from any personal disappointments, the relation that this land holds with language and history is mediated through the Greek light—whose omnipresence is the very condition of its transcendence. All historical contradictions from Dionysus to Christ took place under this light; all those disseminated dialects were spoken beneath its warmth. To paraphrase Lévinas,6 light is both the condition of the world and of our withdrawal from it—a withdrawal towards the invisibility of God, of the dead, of meta-physics, resulting from the temptation that all is still here, behind this light the visibility of which they once evaded: “birds, the allurement of God.” (1993, I, 17) Under that luminous sky, if Greeks can do anything at all, it is to envision a return that will never come. All they can do is write poetry—which is doing nothing; other than lending an ear to a disseminated language whispering a unity that cannot be promised, as an adulthood in defeat is ready to recognize. Trying “to trap the invisible in visibility” (1993, II, 483) they forget that they have grown up and one day they die—with the promise of return. Hence an additional meaning must be given to this return to childhood. It does not signal salvation but rather its promise. To the ears of an aged continent it means that the return to/of poetry is a losing game, a return without returns. “Europe, Europe… you are nothing more than the continuation of Barabbas.” (1993, I, 295) *** “Life is not there to verify theories.”7 The records show that Karouzos was finally given a second-class pension from the Greek government, at the time when he was being recognized by the literary press as one of Greece’s major contemporary poets. Being neither a bourgeois nor a nobelist, he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-communist, unconditionally faithful to the utopia of a classless society. He also drank, heavily. “Capitalism made an animal out of man/ Marxism made an animal out of truth/ Shut up.” (1993, II, 369) Perhaps one of the most scandalous divides of our times has been the one between the living and the dead, the latent prohibition that the living should not be concerned with the dead based on the mere impossibility of the dead to be concerned with the living in the first place. What adds to this scandal is that this divide abuses anything that cannot return to us by subsuming it under the same futility. Hence death is no longer “loss” in the usual sense. It no more refers to the things we lost but to our “loss” (of time, money and well-being) as we insist to dwell on them. Death is a waste —of time. It is this waste that we find in the insouciance of Greek expenditure; the waste in dealing with a language that most of its historical part is no longer spoken (a dead language); the waste in translating a poet who is ex definitio untranslatable; the waste of his vision, his money, his life. The waste of dealing with anything that cannot return and that cannot bring in any returns . But it is also the waste of life that poetry itself presupposes, the waste of dealing with invisibility, with anything that is out of this world and thus invokes the fear of death that is in turn—and surprisingly— nowhere to be found. Instead of death, what is there, beyond the light, is the being without us (to recall the Lévinasian il y a ), the mumble of our own nothingness which constitutes the price to be paid for writing poetry under an evergreek light. To understand this to-and-fro, is to realize that poetry is something out of this world that nevertheless takes place in this world, by virtue of this world. But to ridiculously equate this to-and-fro with death as non-existence, is to exile poetry along with its own possibility from this same old world: I do not believe that poetry will ever disappear from this world. […] But I am also sure that it does not have many chances of playing, as you say, a redemptive role in our vertiginous technological future. Without being endangered as a creative need, it will be placed on the side of history. (2002, 32) It is mainly there that we would like to locate the meaning of Nikos Karouzos’s poetry today. If we are willing to include the Greek original it is because we consider that it will be both a waste of time for us to do so (since most of you cannot read Greek) and because it might induce you to the even larger waste of learning it. We would additionally be glad if this small introduction served as an equally wasteful, academically useless piece of reading, gesturing towards a taboo of investing in anything Greek—that is in anything dead among the living, in anything that will never come back and maybe was never here in the first place. This is the only way to reserve for ourselves the possibility of poetry and preserve the light of its promise. “To return: that is the miracle.” (1993, I, 17) Athens, Greece July 10, 2011 NOTES 1 “ Capitale (a Late Latin word based on caput “head”) emerged in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[…] The word and the reality it stood for appear in the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) ‘… quamdam seminalem rationem lucrosi quam communiter capitale vocamus ’, ‘that prolific cause of wealth that we commonly call capital’” (Braudel, 1992, 232-233). 2 “A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? First : there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to despise and reject everything petty about him, including even the fairest, ‘divinest’ things in the world.” (Nietzsche, 1968, 505, §962) 3 Cf. Deleuze, 1986, 186-9. 4 “Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return.” (Deleuze, 189)5 In this 1982 interview Karouzos refers to the defeat of the communist movement in Greece after the civil war of 1946-1949 between the Governmental Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military division of the Greek communist party. Karouzos’s father was a member of the communist National Liberation front (EAM) members of which formed the mainl resistance movement (ELAS) in Greece during WWII. The poet was a member of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), which was a youth division of EAM. After the end of the war, ELAS was called to disarmament in view of the formation of a National Army. The members of EAM resigned from the government of national unity and a series of protests led to a 3 year civil war between ELAS and the Government Army. After the defeat of ELAS the Communist party was outlawed and many communists were exiled in deserted Greek islands. Karouzos, who took action in the Greek resistance and was active during the Greek civil war, was exiled in Icaria on 1947 and in Makronisos on 1953 where he was called two years earlier to do his military service. 6 “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being. To enter into being is to link up with objects; it is in effect a bond that is already tainted with nullity. It is already to escape anonymity. In this world where everything seems to affirm our solidarity with the totality of existence, where we are caught up in the gears of a universal mechanism, our first feeling, our ineradicable illusion, is a feeling or illusion of freedom. To be in the world is this hesitation, this interval in existing, which we have seen in the analyses of fatigue and the present.” (Lévinas, 1988,43-4) 7from a TV interview. THE POETRY OF NIKOS KAROUZOS From Redwriter [ Ερυθρογρ?φος ], in Collected Works, Vol . II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 463-4. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 9-10.] JESUS ANTI-OEDIPUS* Why were we once saving till the fifth day the Paschal lamb? The scriptures say: with this victim’s meat we ought to cleanse all of our senses. To give life to the whitest wave miraculous odors in the extension of the chest. Ideals to death. For us to witness the illustrious dawns of Absinthe and for the soul to be a deeply carved ornament on the fore we named will. Then many deer running amidst the evergreen growth with watery hymns, then, the unintended angels descending with heights spiraling in their momentum offer themselves to the luminous Adventure. Whence the need for speech and our sufferings covered with flags like the glorified dead. An incorporeal finger pointing at the flamboyant and fragrant holocausts within the tired horizons and the exhausted breadths with joys of the mistletoe on fire and shivering all of the green-leaved love. Something would have chirped again had we not driven it away— maybe the ewe’s grass. Something would have called us to the eternal resurrection— maybe the grace of spring. But now our heart is fiercely blinded, withdrawn to the appearances of Hades. Silence and ice incessantly cover the Infant Spirit in thatched times. While the cherry trees are dreaming faintly glowing in absolute darkness there’s nothing the Babylonians can contemplate in labs with automatic colored lights. How to rejoice now in the fifth day of the lamb? We have forked the stars. We’ve gradually become supposedly sublime with plucked chimeras in our hands. Avenged relentlessly by science. *Though the poem appears in a 1990 collection, it was actually written in 1968. Hence the reader must be aware in not associating Karouzos’ Anti-Oedipus with the famous 1972 work of Deleuze and Guattari, given that the former precedes the latter. ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙ-ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ Γιατ? κρατο?σαμε κ?ποτε ?ς την π?μπτη μ?ρα το πασχαλιν? πρ?βατο; Τα κε?μενα λ?νε: μ’ αυτο? του θ?ματος το κρ?ας ?πρεπε να καθαρ?σουμε ?λες τις αισθ?σεις. Για να δ?σουμε κ?μα στη ζω? λευκ?τατο θαυμ?σιες ευωδι?ς στην ?κταση του στ?θους. Ιδανικ? στο χ?ρο. Για να βλ?πουμε τα λαμπρ? χαρ?ματα του ?ψινθου και να ’ναι η ψυχ? στ?λισμα βαθυχ?ρακτο της πλ?ρης που την ε?παμε θ?ληση. Τ?τε πολλ?ς δορκ?δες τρ?χοντας αν?μεσα στην καταπρ?σινη φ?ση με τους υδ?τινους ?μνους, τ?τε, κατεβα?νοντας οι αθ?λητοι ?γγελοι με κυλινδο?μενο το ?ψος στην ορμ? τους χαρ?ζονται της αστραφτερ?ς Περιπ?τειας. ?θεν η μιλι? γι’ αυτ? χρει?ζεται και τα δειν? σκεπ?ζονται ωσ?ν τους τιμημ?νους νεκρο?ς με σημα?ες. Ασ?ματο δ?χτυλο δε?χνει τα φλογ?δη και μοσχοβ?λα ολοκαυτ?ματα στους κουρασμ?νους ορ?ζοντες στα εξουθενωμ?να πλ?τη καθ?ς αν?βουν οι χαρ?ς του νερα?δ?ξυλου και τρ?μει ολ?κληρη η πρασιν?φυλλη αγ?πη. Κ?τι θα κελαηδο?σε π?λι αν δεν το δι?χναμε— μπορε? της προβατ?νας το χορτ?ρι. Κ?τι θα μας καλο?σε στην απ?ραντη αν?σταση— μπορε? του ?αρος η χ?ρη. Μα η καρδι? μας ?γρια τυφλ?θηκε π?ρασε στα φαιν?μενα του ?δη. Σιγ? και π?γος αδι?κοπα σκεπ?ζει στους αχυρ?νιους καιρο?ς το Ν?πιο Πνε?μα. Την ?ρα που ονειρε?ονται οι βυσσινι?ς και λ?μπουν αμυδρ? μεσ’ στο απλ?τατο σκοτ?δι τ?ποτα δε στοχ?ζονται οι βαβυλ?νιοι στα εργαστ?ρια με τ’ αυτ?ματα χρωματιστ? φ?τα. Π?ς να χαρο?με πια την π?μπτη μ?ρα του προβ?του; Φουρκ?σαμε τ’ αστ?ρια. Γ?ναμε σιγ?-σιγ? δ?θεν υπ?ροχοι με μαδημ?νες χ?μαιρες στα χ?ρια. Μας ν?μεται σκληρ? η επιστ?μη. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 472. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18.] DIALECTΙCS OF SPRING Christ the straight angle; Christ the Pythagorean theorem. Christ the infinitesimal calculus from above the blessed Sets Christ. Christ the tessellation of massive particles Christ the zero mass. Hence we spray numbers and fields of lust. We are carabineers of diseased logic plus something— Observed means observer and Hekate The darkness luminous and light in the dark Astarte banqueters demons from today. ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΡΟΣ Χριστ?ς η ορθ? γων?α· Χριστ?ς το πυθαγ?ριο θε?ρημα. Χριστ?ς ο απειροστικ?ς λογισμ?ς ?νωθεν ?λβια Χριστ?ς τα Σ?νολα. Χριστ?ς η ψηφιδογραφ?α στα μαζικ? σωμ?τια Χριστ?ς η μ?ζα μηδ?ν. ?ρα ψεκ?ζουμε αριθμο?ς και πεδ?α λαγνε?ας. Ε?μαστε τυφεκιοφ?ροι νοσο?σης λογικ?ς και κ?τι-- παρατηρο?μενο σημα?νει παρατηρητ?ς και Εκ?τη σκ?τος το π?μφωτο και φως εν τ? σκοτ?? η Αστ?ρτη συνδαιτημ?νες δα?μονες απ’ ?ρτι. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18. [1993, II, 472]. CREDO (as we are used to say in Latin) Α I believe in one Poet expelled from heavens / fugitive from the god and vagabond, Empedocles / and here on earth / exile on the earth etc. of Baudelaire /. Β I believe in one Computer inside thunder and through matter. Γ Suffering undefiled / substantive / the Poet uplifts himself slow-burning suicidal implying lengthy sleeps. Δ Cutting down on prospective mistakes. Ε Of all things visible and invisible officiating the onion-peelings. Ζ The Poet has nothing / see the departed /. Η I believe in one Poet that says: madness I enjoy; he ridicules existence; let me light up from my mana. Θ Syntax he doesn’t care about when musicality commands him. Along with still more licenses, and Ts are played according to the concept sound anywhere. E.g. the winters here, he winters there; it will not come—I will not rest, etc. etc. Ι The Poet exercises thought until it’s stripped down. Κ And if he’s Greek he must always study the fineness of Attica, in light, mountains, fields and sea. For this fineness teaches language. Λ And if he’s deeply destined the Poet expresses the unexplainable of the explained; he happens to be a rightful heir to the scientist and his predecessor. Μ On the froth he does not last; the Poet blusters at the bottom of the pot. Ν Flamebred and never redeemed. Ξ The Poet must sometimes say: what a consumption of presence — be a bit lonely for a change! Ο The Poet is twilit. Π He is susceptible of deaths and resurrections. Ρ He looks from the corner of his eye and exists in a glance. Σ He follows behind the mother. Τ Eveningless when it comes to age. Υ I believe in one Poet who says: let the purities coincide. Until the Corinth of the Universe or even further. Φ In a higher despair. Χ In a brighter quintessence. Ψ In one sensation that lifts off. Ω Forgiving everyone. CREDO (ως ε?θισται να λ?με λατινιστ?) Α Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν εκτ?ς ουρανο? / φυγ?ς θε?θεν και αλ?της, Εμπεδοκλ?ς / και επ? της γης / εξ?ριστος π?νω στη γη κ.λπ. του Βωδελα?ρου /. Β Πιστε?ω εις ?να Υπολογιστ?ν εντ?ς κεραυνο? και δια της ?λης. Γ Υποφ?ροντας ?χραντα / ουσιαστικ?ν / ο Ποιητ?ς ανατε?νεται βραδυφλεγ?ς αυτ?χειρας εξυπακο?οντας πολ?ωρους ?πνους. Δ Τα υποψ?φια λ?θη λιγοστε?οντας. Ε Ορατ?ν τε π?ντων και αορ?των ιερουργ?ντας την αποκρομμ?ωση. Ζ Ο Ποιτ?ς ?χει τ?ποτα / βλ?πε τους αναχωρ?σαντες /. Η Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: η τρ?λα μ’ αρ?σει· γελοιοποιε? την ?παρξη· ας αν?ψω απ’ τη μ?να μου. Θ Συνταχτικ? δεν το γνοι?ζεται στην προσταγ? της μουσικ?τητας. Μαζ? και μ’ ?λλες ακ?μη λευτερι?ς, και τα νυ πα?ζονται κατ? την ?ννοια ?χος οπουδ?ποτε. Π.χ. τον χειμ?να εδ?, το χειμ?να εκε?· δε θ? ’ρθει – δεν θα καταλαγι?σουμε, κ. λπ. κ.λπ. Ι Ο Ποιητ?ς γυμν?ζει τη σκ?ψη σε απογ?μνωση. Κ Κι αν ε?ναι ?λληνας οφε?λει να σπουδ?ζει π?ντοτε της Αττικ?ς τη λεπτ?τητα, σε φως, βουν?, χωρ?φια και θ?λασσα. Διδ?σκει γλ?σσα η λεπτ?τητα το?τη. Λ Κι αν ε?ναι βαθι? πεπρωμ?νος ο Ποιητ?ς εκφρ?ζει το ανεξ?γητο του εξηγητο?· τυγχ?νει ν?μιμος δι?δοχος του επιστ?μονα και προκ?τοχ?ς του. Μ Στον αφρ? δεν ?χει δι?ρκεια· στο πατοκ?ζανο μα?νεται ο Ποιητ?ς. Ν Φλογοδ?αιτος και ποτ? ξελυτρωμ?νος. Ξ Ο Ποιητ?ς κ?ποτε πρ?πει να λ?ει: μεγ?λη καταν?λωση παρουσ?ας – γενε?τε και λ?γο μοναξι?ρηδες! Ο Ο Ποιητ?ς ε?ναι αμφ?φλοξ. Π Επιδ?χεται θαν?τους και αναστ?σεις. Ρ Ακροθωρ?ζει και υπ?ρχει σε ξαφνοκο?ταγμα. Σ Ε?ναι ουραγ?ς της μητ?ρας. Τ Αν?σπερος απ? ηλικ?α. Υ Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: να συμπ?σουν οι αγν?τητες. Μ?χρι την Κ?ρινθο του Σ?μπαντος ? μακρ?τερα. Φ Σε αν?τερη απελπισ?α. Χ Σε φαειν?τερη πεμπτουσ?α. Ψ Σε μια α?σθηση που πτηνο?ται. Ω Συγχωρ?ντας τους π?ντες. From Large Sized Logic [ Λογικ? μεγ?λου σχ?ματος ], Athens: Erato, 1989, n.p. [1993, II, 521-3]. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "The author introduces the reader to reasoning in law through the possilities, boundaries and traps of assuming personal responsibility and impersonal pattern adoption that have arisen in the history of human thought and in the various legal cultures. He discloses actual processes hidden by the veil of patterns followed in thinking, processes that we encounter both in our conceptual-logical quests for certainties and in the undertaking of fertilising ambiguity. When trying to identify definitions (...) lurking behind the human construct of facts, nitons, norms, logic, and thinking, or behind the practice of giving meanings, he discovers tradition in our presuppositions, and our world-view and moral stance in our tacit agreements. Recognising the importance of the role communication plays in shaping society, he describes our existence and institutions as self-regulating processes. Since law is a wholly social venture, we not only take part in its oeuvre with our entire personality, but are also collectively responsible for its destiny. In the final analysis, anything can be qualified as 'legal' or 'non-legal' in one or another recognised sense in which law can originate, but, as a relative totality, it can only be qualified as 'more legal' or 'less legal' in any combination of the above senses. Being formed in an uninterrupted process, neither the totality nor particular pieces of law can be taken as complete or unchangeably identical with itself. Therefore law can only be identified through its motions and computable states of 'transforming into' or 'withdrawing from' the distinctive domain of the law. Thereby both society at large and its legal professionals actually contribute to -by shaping incessantly- what presents itself as ready-to-take, according to the law's official ideology. For our initation, play, role-undertaking and human responsibility lurk behind the law's formal mask in the backstage. Or, this equals to realise that all we have become subjects from mere objects, actors from mere addressees. And despite the variety of civilisational overcoasts, the entire culture of law is still exclusively inherent in us who experience it day to day. We bear it and shape it. Everything coventional in it is convenctionalised by us. It has no further existence or effect bexond this. And with its existence inherent in us, we cannot convey the responsibility to be born for it on somebody else either. It is ours in its totality so much that it cannot be torn out of our days or acts. It will thus turn into what we guard it to become. Therefore we must take care of it at all times since we are, in many ways, taking care of our own". (shrink)

Event synopsis: The conference becomes a major academic event for republican studies in Russia and a meeting point with the leading European scholars in this field. In recent decades republicanism has become one of the central concerns in political theory and history, with studies exploring both republicanism as ‘a shared European heritage’ and reviving republican political thought to contribute to current debates on issues such as freedom, citizenship, equality, governance and international relations. Republicanism has been the topic of many (...) seminars at the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP) and the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. This time the conference focuses on the history of republican institutions, both in terms of ‘political thought’ and ‘cultural practices’. The emphasis of the conference is on the study of late medieval, early-modern and modern republican debates in Europe and North-Western Russian regions. The conference explores the institutional structures of city-republics in comparative perspective as well as the dynamics of relations between these entities in terms of cultural and intellectual exchange. The cross-cultural and comparative perspective of the conference asks for studies focusing on the transfers of knowledge and practices between city-republics and other regional powers, their shared heritage and diverging cultural and national trajectories. The conference wants to explore a variety of topics related to the functioning of economic, legal and political institutions devised to sustain non-authoritarian regimes. These can include studies of material artifacts and official documentation as well as studies of republican political thought reflecting on the internal constitution of republics and the differences with the ‘despotic’ governments. An important aim of the conference is to set up a new research network, bringing together scholars from different disciplinary and methodological backgrounds, including diverse strands of history, conceptual history and political theory. The aim is to initiate a systematic comparison of Western, Northern and Eastern European republics at conceptual and institutional levels. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 59-79 [Access article in PDF] Money and Sovereignty in Early Modern France Jotham Parsons [The mint official] must above all seek integrity in the moneys, on which our features are imprinted and on which the general good depends. For what would be safe if our image were offended, and if that which a subject ought to venerate in his (...) heart were immediately violated by a sacrilegious hand? 1Early modern French commentators on money and monetary policy were fond of quoting this very late antique chancery formula; 2 it even appears in the epigraph to one unpublished commonplace book on the subject from the early seventeenth century. 3 Its popularity was no doubt due partly to the fact that classical literature contained few other theoretical statements on the practicalities of issuing money. 4 It also showed how deeply classical humanism had shaped economic thought, as it had done to all of French political culture. This was apparent as early as 1514 in Guillaume Budé's scholarly classic, De Asse et partibus ejus. 5 By 1600 these influences had ensconced themselves so firmly that economic writers found it nearly impossible to talk about money without a [End Page 59] full panoply of classical erudition. 6 In France the second half of the sixteenth century saw the rise of a specialized, expert, and increasingly systematic tradition of monetary thought. Despite its classical vocabulary, this economic literature was in many ways "modern" in its methods, ambitions, and subject. While developing an account which aspired to a scientific explanation of commercial society and of how government and money interacted, the French commentators came to a partial realization of how radically their own society differed from those which had gone before. In this respect the prevailing climate of thought about money influenced even a writer as non-technical as Michel de Montaigne.Traditionally, scholarly treatment of early modern French economic texts has focused on a relatively small range of issues and authors. One such issue, the origins of the "quantity theory of money" (with Jean Bodin as its hero), is notable for its sterility, since that concept was not and could not have been meaningful to contemporaries. 7 The origin and development of "mercantilism" or, more broadly, of "political economy" in general, has proven a more fruitful subject of inquiry. 8 Undeniably, the changing relationships among governments, merchants, and the economy were a major public issue and, in the seventeenth century, a major site of theoretical reflection on the nature of political power generally. Even so, an excessive concentration on mercantilism is dangerous, for however one defines it, it was not the first, and for a long time not the most significant, economic discourse in France. Rather, from the 1560s well into the seventeenth century, French discussions of economic issues centered on very concrete problems brought about by the government's obligation to issue and maintain a stable currency. 9 While one would search this literature in vain for the specific doctrines of modern economics, I argue that it did represent a real achievement in the early modern understanding of commerce and the state. Though they have not received their due from scholars, the writers who took part in these debates formed a large and influential school with close ties to the actual institutions of government. 10 The French monetary theorists did an enormous amount [End Page 60] to set the stage for the mercantilist era. They developed a detailed notion of monetary economics as a specialized discipline, and above all they placed money and economic policy in the context of a multi-national system of commercial states. In so doing, they sought to comprehend and control not just money but the modern state itself.Early modern money was perched uncomfortably between commodity and fiat. Bewildering varieties of coins circulated, composed of all sorts of alloys. The government assigned a face value for each coin which it authorized to circulate in the abstract accounting unit called the "money of account." 11 This value was almost always greater than... (shrink)

The end of the twentieth century is a turning point for many elements of human culture. Religious life is no exception. Thus, in the history of Ukraine, this time has become a period of radical change in existing world-view structures and ideologies, the birth of new ones and the revival of forgotten world-views. Religion has played and continues to play a significant role in this process. Under these conditions, numerous non-traditional religious trends began to emerge and take root on (...) Ukrainian soil, one of which is Buddhism. The time of economic, political and, finally, meaningful and existent uncertainty, which has become a typical, "normal" phenomenon for Ukraine over the past 15 years, has caused among a certain number of Ukrainians to find meaningful stability in their lives and to make sense of it in the realm of unconventional denominations. Not the exception is Buddhism, which every year finds more and more of its adherents among Ukrainian citizens. About 100 Buddhist communities operate in Ukraine today, of which 43 already have official registration and legal personality. (shrink)

It is a recurring idea in the history of political philosophy that concepts and doctrines of private law are illuminative of public law and political philosophy. Central among these are contract and the trust. In this paper, I consider the prospects of a third: estoppel. The public law context in which estoppel is most commonly invoked is criminal law, and there especially in the service of understanding the defenses of entrapment and what I call officially induced mistake of law. (...) My question is how well it serves this role – how well the structure of the self-disentitlement that provides the rationales for the defences of entrapment and OIML on the non-exculpatory approach to each is articulated on the model of state estoppel, as I call it. I will argue that it fares well, and so that estoppel merits inclusion on the list of concepts and doctrines of private law that are illuminative of public law and political philosophy. In conclusion I will ask what the moral-expressive content of its deployment in that context is, and argue that, while the doctrines of contract and trust work as means to articulate claims about the basis and limit of political authority, the claim that some cases of state self-disentitlement can be modelled on estoppel represents a commitment to some core principles of the rule of law. (shrink)

This article sets out a new conception of ‘property as an asset of resilience’. Building on Fineman’s emphasis on ‘webs’ of resilience, and applying insights from Actor-Network Theory and Resilient Property Theory, we examine how the rhetorical claims asserted by owners and non-owners, individually and collectively, and the ways that law recognizes and endorses those claims, affect the production of property-as-resilience. Applying Fineman’s framework, we argue that the ‘embodiment’ and ‘embeddedness’ of human vulnerability is revealed by the necessary and inevitable (...) relationship we have with land, housing and place. Everyone—including homeless people—must ‘be’ somewhere (embodiment); however, it is our ability to access ‘assets of resilience’ through our social embeddedness in institutional structures and relationships that mitigates (or not) our experience and life opportunities. In this article we analyze the nature of real property as an asset of resilience, the consequences of exclusionary concepts of ownership for how resilience is allocated, and the implications for how we think and talk about ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ in property theories and property law. We consider the roles that states perform in the allocation of property as an asset of resilience: both directly, through the protection and enforcement of private property rights and official narratives about the nature of private property; and indirectly, as owners leverage the hinterland of privilege extended to ‘ownership’ and owners to deepen their own networks of resilience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Love of Country and Love of God: The Political Uses of Religion in MachiavelliBenedetto Fontana*This paper will discuss the place of religion in Machiavelli’s thought. 1 The traditional and generally accepted interpretation presents Machiavelli’s religion as a belief system whose value is determined by its functional utility to the state. In this he is said to resemble Cicero, 2 Montesquieu, 3 and Tocqueville, 4 among others. This view is (...) based on the proposition—one that is now fundamental to a modern understanding of Machiavelli—that his political theory develops a politics without moral, theological, and religious foundations (what Benedetto Croce 5 calls the “autonomy of politics” and Sheldon Wolin 6 the “autonomy of political theory”). Students of Machiavelli who ascribe to him an instrumentalist theory of religion rest their interpretation on this conception of politics: a distinction is established between religion viewed as religio, and religion conceived as fides, where the former is used to develop and cement social bonds and the latter is a faith based on a transcendent “truth.”A reading of the texts shows that Machiavelli discusses various kinds of religion. He refers, for example, to multiple forms of Christianity, such as “primitive” [End Page 639] or original Christianity, 7 official, medieval Christianity, the ecclesiastical principality of the papacy, as well as to ancient Judaism, 8 paganism, and to Islam. 9 However, it is possible to discern in Machiavelli two principal or distinctive types. One is based on the opposition Machiavelli sees between the religion of the Romans (which instills virtù) and the religion of the post-classical and post-Roman Christian world (which teaches humility and passivity). The other is prophetic religion, in which Machiavelli contrasts the prophet armed to the prophet unarmed. Thus, we have prophetic religion and non-prophetic religion; the former is either armed or unarmed, and the latter is either immanent (natural) or transcendent. 10Machiavelli’s stress on the importance of virtù (whether of the prince or of the people) suggests that religion is not simply religio—that is, a political technique to rule and to control the masses. Rather, it presupposes a concern for a moral fides which, though certainly not transcendent, is nevertheless necessary to the construction of a political order based on virtù. His concern with civil and military virtue links the armed prophetic religion with that of the ancient Romans, such that ancient Judaism, Islam, and a reformed Christianity (a kind of Lutheranism ante litteram) all stand opposed to primitive and post-classical Christianity.Machiavelli anticipates in theory the national, anti-papal, and anti-imperial movements that were later realized in history by the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations. He attempts to infuse the corrupt and decadent Christian conception of the world with a new, innovating spirit, one opposed to the prevailing medieval and scholastic conception of the world. In the past Christian philosophers and thinkers revised the classical notions of virtus and arete, transforming them into Christian concepts of value. Machiavelli attempts a similar “transvaluation of values” (Nietzsche), but for different ends and in a different direction: he reinterprets the Christian religion in order to assimilate it into his conception of virtù and his vision of a vivere civile.In the first part of this paper the relation Machiavelli establishes between “speaking with God” and the founding and/or reforming of states is explored. Parallels between Christian and pre-Christian (pagan and biblical) rulers reveal a basic ambiguity in Machiavelli’s belief that religion—that is, the claim of having spoken with God—is necessary to effective rule. In the second part [End Page 640] Machiavelli’s teaching (“new ways and methods”) is compared to Christ’s message of the “good news.” The contrast between the two is presented in terms of an opposition between different “ways of living,” each with its specific moral claims and political consequences. The opposition is not, the section argues, between logos and kratos, ethos and kratos, but rather between diverse ways of understanding logos and ethos. The final section argues that Machiavelli uses biblical, pagan, and Christian forms of religious symbols and metaphors in order to reevaluate the concepts of patria and amore. In so doing... (shrink)

The Umayyad State is widely criticized in the West as well as in its own region. Actually, this is normal situation. Because Hijaz Arabs who had no state experience, built a multinational state in short period of time. Yet, this caused serious matters. The fundamental point of the criticism is the payment of tax, also called jizya, which is taken from residents (mawālī) of Khorasan and Transoxania. However, in most studies on this subject, it is understood that the jizya taken (...) from mawālī is combined jizya and kharja, which is different type of tax. Although mawālī was tested for whether it passes religious criteria in critic periods or not, this situation did not last throughout the entire Umayyad history. It was continued for fifteen and twenty years. In this period, it was understood that the jizya tax taken from the mawālī, was caused by the unlawful practices of some regional governors, most of them were non-Muslim local tax officials and all their purpose was to collect the amount of combined jizya. It cannot be said that the Umayyad caliphs officially ordered written instructions in order to take the conceptual sense from the mawālī part. But some Khorasan governors, who detected that taxes were decreasing, blinked at the collection of the jizya from the mawālī.Summary: The tax policies of a state are of great importance for the political, social, and economic stability. A regular tax system minimizes the problems that the state mechanism might face. The establishment of a fair and just tax scheme is undoubtedly possible with a deep-rooted state experience. It is known that the Umayyad state which is the subject of this research has no state experience. Furthermore, ruling to the area which is on 13 million square kilometers and reaching to Kashgar in the East and to South France in the West and governing this multinational structure who are living on these regions, put the Umayyad government in a very difficult condition. With the vast borders and the stoppage of the conquests, some political, social and economic problems were experienced and these problems deeply affected the government. The groups which had argued with Shiites and Khārijites because of some various reasons led the country into collapsing. It is also known that many plague epidemics in the region of Damascus affected the society in a negative way, changing the capital and changing some of the border cities in favor of the Eastern Roman Empire.All these negativities certainly shaken the Umayyad state economically. It is understood from the data that the instability and political uncertainties in the country led to a decrease in the tax rates. For example, the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik İbn Marwān period, only half of the tax was collected at the time of Hazrat ‘Umar could be collected. It can be said that the public who avoided the general policies of the state avoided giving tax, in other words, the tax evasion. Also, the increasing migration from village to city and due to that, the vacancy of tribute tax collected land, failure to obtain expected yield because of rent fights on fertile lands, and conversion process in non-Muslim community are included in other reasons of reduction of taxes.In the Umayyad period, the issue of taking the jizya from the mawālī can be considered in this context. We do not have an independent work or research article on how this practice was initiated, how it was and how it was taken from mawālī, and how it was a state policy, and how long it was sustained. The studies that touch on this subject are far from being holistic. Even in the main sources it is seen that the concepts of kharāj and jizya are not fully understood and therefore used interchangeably. This may be considered normal for the first period in which the concepts are not in place. However, in the following centuries, the works that were copyrighted and, except for a few, instead of understanding and explaining this confusion, chose to use the word jizya from these two words which can be used interchangeably in texts. Therefore, this approach has led to the widespread conviction that the Umayyad state has taken jizya from the mawālī in the conceptual sense.Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf is claimed to have started the application of taken jizya from mawālī. However, Haccac aimed to provide the regularity of both agricultural products and the kharāj which is taken from farmers because of the status of the soil by sending Sawad villagers who migrated to the big cities and became Muslims by changing their religions. The status of the lands seized was decisive in taxation. According to this, the conquest and the territorial lands were taxed differently, but in some cases the same tax (kharāj) was taken. Non-Muslims who living in the territory of conquest were demanded jizya per capita. The jizya and kharāj tax collected from this category can be expressed as “joint jizya”. Regardless of whether the person is a Muslim or not, the fact that he was demanded from him due to the status of the land was interpreted by some researchers as juristic. However, in times of political instability, it is also a fact that mawālī is demanding jury in addition to the tribute tax. The point that is misunderstood or interpreted is that this practice was carried out throughout the entire Umayyad territory and the history. When examined, this distorted tax concept is actually concentrated in the area of Transoxania. Although some attempts were made to take the jizya from the mawālī to the country, the Umayyad caliphs have not allowed it. The practice of taking the jizya from the mawālī is actually followed by the killing Qutayba ibn Muslim al-Bāhilī (d. 96/715). This started political instability in the Transoxania and continued by some Khurāsān governors. These governors act according to the provocations of the Turkish governors and tax collectors of the region in order to be able to send their taxes completely. They claimed that the region in the region was not a sincere Muslim and, they continued to take the jizya from them.It can be said that jizya is not demanded as it is taken from non-Muslims in the common meaning from mawālī. Because any Umayyad caliph wrote no written instructions regarding this issue in the sources. It is understood that until the caliphate of ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azîz, the Umayyad caliphs were not even aware of this distorted tax policy in the area of Transoxania. To put it once again, this practice was initiated by some Khurāsān governors with the concern that tax revenues might decrease. However, it should not be forgotten that this unfair practice after 96/715 is limited to certain governors. For example, during the tenure of Naṣr b. Seyyâr, the last governor of Khurāsān (120-131 / 738-748), the jizya tax was completely removed from the mawālī. Another activity that shows this action is regional and that was ordered by some governors of Khurāsān. Therefore, this practice does not reflect the Umayyad state policy. This is also apparent in the fact that the Shiites, Kharijites, and those who carried out the Abbasid Revolution for thirty-two years, did not make an anti-Umayyad propaganda with provoking the slave by the way of wrong application. (shrink)