Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half-forgotten patterns of civility and moments of inarticulate awe. Reverence gives meaning to much that we do, yet the word has almost passed out of our vocabulary.Reverence, says philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff, begins in an understanding of human limitations. From this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control -- God, truth, justice, nature, even death. It is a quality of character (...) that is especially important in leadership and in teaching, although it figures in virtually every human relationship. It transcends religious boundaries and can be found outside religion altogether.Woodruff draws on thinking about this lost virtue in ancient Greek and Chinese traditions and applies lessons from these highly reverent cultures to today's world. The book covers reverence in a variety of contexts -- the arts, leadership, teaching, warfare, and the home -- and shows how essential a quality it is to a well-functioning society.First published by Oxford University Press in 2001, this new edition of Reverence is revised and expanded. It contains a foreword by Betty Sue Flowers, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, a new preface, two new chapters -- one on the sacred and one on compassion -- and an epilogue focused on renewing reverence in our own lives. (shrink)

The book provides an analysis of a key notion in our lives, causation: what its nature is; how we should characterise it in language, how it relates to laws of nature, how causes differ from their effects and why they tend to occur earlier than their effects.

The Gamer’s Dilemma challenges us to justify the moral difference between enacting virtual murder and virtual child molestation in video games. The Dilemma relies for its argumentative force on the claim that there is an intuitive moral difference between these acts, with the former intuited as morally acceptable and the latter as morally unacceptable. However, there has been no empirical investigation of these claims. To explore these issues, we developed an experimental survey study in which participants were asked to reflect (...) on imaginary video game scenarios as part of a 2 (undertake virtual murder or molestation) X 2 (against an adult or child) X 2 (in a high or low realism virtual environment) factorial design. We found that there was a significant difference between people’s views about virtual murder and virtual molestation. Whether the virtual act was performed against an adult or child was non-significant in most conditions, whereas whether it was performed in a high or low realism virtual environment was significant in most conditions. Gender did not impact these results, whereas perceived gaming experience, hours of video game play per week, and integrity did. These results provide an empirical grounding for future discussions of the Gamer's Dilemma. (shrink)

This undergraduate textbook introduces some fundamental issues in philosophy of science for students of philosophy and science students. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with knowledge and values. Chap. 1 presents the classical conception of knowledge as initiated by the ancient Greeks and elaborated during the development of science, introducing the central concepts of truth, belief and justification. Aspects of the quest for objectivity are taken up in the following two chapters. Moral issues are broached in (...) Chap. 4, which discusses some aspects of the use and abuse of science, taking up the responsibilities of scientists in properly conducting their business and decision-makers in their concerns with the import of science for society. Part 2 contrasts the view of scientific progress as the rejecting of old hypotheses and theories and replacing them with new ones, represented by Karl Popper, with the conception of progress as accumulating knowledge, saving as much as possible from older theories, represented by Pierre Duhem. A concluding chapter defends the natural attitude of taking the theories of modern science to be literally true, i.e. realism, in the face of arguments drawn partly from the history of scientific progress in criticism of this stance. (shrink)

It is well-known that the entangled quantum state of a composite object cannot be reduced to the states of its parts. This quantum holism provides a peculiar challenge to formulate an appropriate mereological model: When a system is in an entangled state, which objects are there on the micro and macro level, and which of the objects carries which properties? This paper chooses a modeling approach to answer these questions: It proceeds from a systematic overview of consistent mereological models for (...) entangled systems and discusses which of them is compatible with the quantum mechanical evidence (where quantum states are understood realistically). It reveals that entangled quantum systems neither describe undivided wholes nor objects that stand in irreducible relations. The appropriate model assumes that the entangled property is an irreducible non-relational plural property carried collectively by the micro objects, while there is no macro object. In this sense, quantum holism is an instance of property holism, not of object holism. (shrink)

Health Humanities draws upon the multiple and expanding fields of enquiry that link health and social care disciplines with the arts and humanities. It aims to encourage innovation and novel cross-disciplinary explorations of how the arts and humanities can inform and transform healthcare, health and wellbeing among researchers, practitioners and the public. It foregrounds a range of scholarship and innovative practice in this field. Through the development of critique and critical theory, it enables readers to question not only current practice (...) in medical and health humanities but also foundational assumptions of healthcare, health and wellbeing. Suitable for students and scholars working in this exciting interdisciplinary field, this book sets out the context for an emergent and innovative field. (shrink)

Discusses the conflict between subjective time and historical time, looks at how fiction and historical writings create a model of temporal experience, and considers the question of sense and reference.

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

This paper develops a trivalent semantics for the truth conditions and the probability of the natural language indicative conditional. Our framework rests on trivalent truth conditions first proposed by Cooper (1968) and Belnap (1973) and it yields two logics of conditional reasoning: (i) a logic C of certainty-preserving inference; and (ii) a logic U for uncertain reasoning that preserves the probability of the premises. We show systematic correspondences between trivalent and probabilistic representations of inferences in either framework, and we use (...) the distinction between the two systems to cast light on the validity of inferences such as Modus Ponens, Or-To-If, and Conditional Excluded Middle. Specifically, the conditional behaves monotonically in C, but non-monotonically in U; Modus Ponens is valid in C, but valid in U only for non-nested conditionals. The result is a unified account of the semantics and epistemology of indicative conditionals that can be fruitfully applied to analyzing the validity of conditional inferences. (shrink)

This paper develops a trivalent semantics for indicative conditionals and extends it to a probabilistic theory of valid inference and inductive learning with conditionals. On this account, (i) all complex conditionals can be rephrased as simple conditionals, connecting our account to Adams's theory of p-valid inference; (ii) we obtain Stalnaker's Thesis as a theorem while avoiding the well-known triviality results; (iii) we generalize Bayesian conditionalization to an updating principle for conditional sentences. The final result is a unified semantic and probabilistic (...) theory of conditionals with attractive results and predictions. (shrink)

Why is ordinary language vague? We argue that in contexts in which a cooperative speaker is not perfectly informed about the world, the use of vague expressions can offer an optimal tradeoff between truthfulness (Gricean Quality) and informativeness (Gricean Quantity). Focusing on expressions of approximation such as “around”, which are semantically vague, we show that they allow the speaker to convey indirect probabilistic information, in a way that can give the listener a more accurate representation of the information available to (...) the speaker than any more precise expression would (intervals of the form “between”). That is, vague sentences can be _more informative_ than their precise counterparts. We give a probabilistic treatment of the interpretation of “around”, and offer a model for the interpretation and use of “around”-statements within the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In our account the shape of the speaker’s distribution matters in ways not predicted by the Lexical Uncertainty model standardly used in the RSA framework for vague predicates. We use our approach to draw further lessons concerning the semantic flexibility of vague expressions and their irreducibility to more precise meanings. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of imagistic violence by focusing—by means of a phenomenology open to dialogue with neighboring disciplines, from historiography to semiotics—on the particular case of photographs depicting atrocities, examples of photojournalism or images captured at crime scenes by forensic agents and presented as evidence during trials. To this end, I will implement a three-step analysis. First, I will seek to clarify the meanings associated with photography presented as evidence by adopting Husserl’s (...) phenomenological framework and by following a historiographical and juridical approach while verifying the grounds for the opposition that appears to be emerging between a paradigm of resemblance and a model of indirect, conjectural knowledge. Second, I will focus on how photography’s capacity to sustain a maximum degree of the reproduction of the real is problematized when the pictorial object is a violent scene that suspends, contradicts, and dismantles the order of the viewer’s experience. Finally, I will conclude by offering a hypothesis on the act of “seeing-with-other” and its phenomenological implications for the case of imagistic violence as evidence. Specifically, I will argue that we are more likely to understand imagistic violence at the level of a collective seeing than through a solitary gaze. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Recovering One's Self from PsychosisA Philosophical AnalysisThe author reports no conflicts of interest.Rosanna Wannberg (2024) has given us a dense but helpful introduction to certain philosophical questions raised by the fact that many patients recovering from psychotic illnesses describe their recovery in terms of gaining or regaining a 'sense of self' and a 'sense of agency,' which often involves acceptance of the 'fact' of being mentally ill, for example, (...) of 'having schizophrenia.' She raises two important questions: How should we understand what is going on in these accounts? and What are the implications of these reports for our understanding of what it is to have a 'sense of self' or a 'sense of agency'—of 'subjectivity' generally—which might have, both, clinical and nonclinical implications?What does it mean to have a self or a sense of having one, agency or a sense of having it? One might think these are the possession or experience of something 'inner' such as feelings of confidence or assurance, perhaps having a kind of inner structure or a set of deeply held ideas which give us coherence, motivate us and justify our actions, and which we can know by 'looking inward,' in an introspective act which provides direct, privileged acquaintance.Yet Wittgenstein called this a dangerously misleading 'picture' which 'held us captive,' and needed always to be 'gotten rid of' (Wittgenstein, 1958). One way of seeing the problem is to consider that no inner 'object,' no thing inside us, can be, or give us a sense of having, a self or agency, because no mere thing (whether an experience of confidence, or having an inner structure) can have any meaning or provide any explanation. A thing (like a word on a page) is just a thing—inert, dead— and must be interpreted, that is used, before it can play a role in our 'forms of life' (Wittgenstein, 1958) including explaining our sense of self or agency.Semantic externalists (Burge, 1979; Putnam, 1975), have argued that even what is internal to our minds—like thoughts—have contents which are determined by experiences in the 'outside' world in which we have lived and learned: if our experiences in the world, they have shown, were different, then so, also, would be the contents of our thoughts. It has even been argued that internal mental experiences which appear to be purely phenomenological (such as an image or a thought-token, so-called narrow content) can only [End Page 67] be identified and thought about using concepts having references in the external world: there is, so it is claimed, no narrow content (Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne, 2018); or, if there is, it is of no explanatory use in psychology (Fodor, 1994).If this is the philosophical background from which Wannberg confronts first-person accounts of recovery from psychosis which include (re)gaining a sense of self or agency, and if this philosophy is right, what becomes of the accounts? How are they to be understood?To meet this challenge, Wannberg invokes an alternative account of self-possession and firstperson authority provided by Richard Moran (2001). Moran's position is that we find or possess ourselves when we find or hold beliefs about the world which we do not merely believe but endorse or avow, where to endorse or avow a belief about the world is to find and endorse reasons in the world, which support that belief. Thus, I can avow that it's raining if I can look outside and see that it is raining. This Moran calls the transparency condition. Endorsing or avowing both a belief and the external reasons for it gives the self what Moran refers to as authenticity and which also might be said to provide cohesion, consistency and intelligibility—plausibly, a 'sense of self.'The transparency condition also applies to beliefs that justify actions. We act intentionally when we can give good reasons for what we do (Anscombe, 1957; Moran, 2001) and we can give good reasons for what we do when we can identify facts in the world that support those reasons. Thus, the transparency condition can explain both a sense of self and a sense... (shrink)

In their article ’Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach’, Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen contend that, on several of the most prominent accounts of disease, pregnancy should be considered a disease. More specifically, of the five accounts they discuss, each renders pregnancy a disease or suffers serious conceptual problems otherwise. They take issue specifically with the dysfunction account of disease and argue that it suffers several theoretical difficulties. In this response, we focus on defending the dysfunction account against their (...) main objections and show why a version of the dysfunction account is viable on account of the indispensability of normativity in biology and medicine. After disarming their main objections to the dysfunction account, we briefly respond to their treatment of the normality of pregnancy and then draw a distinction between adverse symptoms and underlying causes to show why even though pregnancy may have ’disease-like’ features, it is not a disease. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHRISTIANITY AND VIOLENCE: A RESPONSE TO ROBERT DALY Paul Nuechterlein Emmaus Lutheran Church, Racine, Wisconsin While listening to the presentations up to now, I've found myself to be continually scrapping what I was going to say and going on to something else. The only thing I've saved so far is to begin with a sincere thanks to you, Bob Daly, for this paper. It is such an excellent (...) start on the themes ofthis conference, to cover such a broad range ofthe history and the data of Christianity on the theme of violence and institution. And yet, through that broad range ofanalysis, you also help us to focus on what I see as some very important issues, especially the one that you lifted up and emphasized againjust now, the issue ofuniversal salvation. At the risk of sounding a bit like a schoolboy with a new vocabulary word, that issue is for me an insight, to usethatLonerganian term, thatbrings togethermany things under a single view. Iknow thatthere's been abroadrange ofinterestinviolence in general, and especially as it is manifested in Christian institutions of which Tm a part. Then there has also been an interest in the issue ofuniversal salvation. I've actually already been a believer, a hoper in that for quite some time. But the way that you brought them together in this paper, that is the insight for me. It is something that I honestly will take away from this conference as being very important. You've made us see that connection and from that to raise the question: if, as Christians, we continue to imagine ourselves as possibly destined to an ultimate violence of hell as a place of eternal damnation and torture, how much has that played a part in our earthly willingness to participate in violence? Does it make it easier for us to say yes to violence here in this life, when we can imagine ourselves as possibly destined to an ultimate violence? You make that connection, you mention Paul Nuechterlein35 it as a massively central problem, and you've convinced me of it. I think its something we needto work on. We now need to find ways of lifting up that minority viewpoint of hoping for universal salvation to become once again the majority viewpoint. The question thus focuses on the strategy of how to do that. Because there's always the danger that, as we become zealous about something, we can start presenting it in a forceful and violent way. For instance, people could come away from what we're trying to convince them of, and ask themselves: "Gee, did he just say something like: 'You're going to Hell if you don't stop believing in Hell.'?" We can perhaps come across that way if we're too forceful about it. Before your remarks, I hadn't made the connection with the Vietnam War. I hadn't noticed how much that could help us toward the strategy we seek. What turned the American people against the war was seeing its violence on their TV screens, violence that didn't fit in with their imaginative view of themselves. Is there a way in which we can work that sort of strategy by replacing our imagination of ultimate violence with at least the hope of universal salvation? One of my favorite stories—itjust came to me as you were talking—is from the Lynn Brothers, Matthew and Dennis, two Catholic priests or former Catholic priests. They have a little book about the goats, from the image of Matthew 25 on the separation of the sheep from the goats. They tell a story about working with a woman who came to one of them in counseling, frightened for her son. Her son had been in all kinds of addiction problems, all kinds of trouble with the law throughout his life, and was coming to apoint where he was really bottoming out. And through all ofthat, the thing that she still worried about the most was: when he dies, is he going to go to hell? The problem, of course, was that she was still holding on to that majority vision, and I think it... (shrink)

Translation of Paul Guyer's "Kant’s Deductions of the Principles of Right".

BackgroundThe use of genetic test results in risk-rated insurance is a significant concern internationally, with many countries banning or restricting the use of genetic test results in underwriting. In Australia, life insurers’ use of genetic test results is legal and self-regulated by the insurance industry (Financial Services Council (FSC)). In 2018, an Australian Parliamentary Inquiry recommended that insurers’ use of genetic test results in underwriting should be prohibited. In 2019, the FSC introduced an industry self-regulated moratorium on the use of (...) genetic test results. In the absence of government oversight, it is critical that the impact, effectiveness and appropriateness of the moratorium is monitored. Here we describe the protocol of our government-funded research project, which will serve that critical function between 2020 and 2023.MethodsA realist evaluation framework was developed for the project, using a context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) approach, to systematically assess the impact of the moratorium for a range of stakeholders. Outcomes which need to be achieved for the moratorium to accomplish its intended aims were identified, and specific data collection measures methods were developed to gather the evidence from relevant stakeholder groups (consumers, health professionals, financial industry and genetic research community) to determine if aims are achieved. Results from each arm of the study will be analysed and published in peer-reviewed journals as they become available.DiscussionThe A-GLIMMER project will provide essential monitoring of the impact and effectiveness of the self-regulated insurance moratorium. On completion of the study (3 years) a Stakeholder Report will be compiled. The Stakeholder Report will synthesise the evidence gathered in each arm of the study and use the CMO framework to evaluate the extent to which each of the outcomes have been achieved, and make evidence-based recommendations to the Australian federal government, life insurance industry and other stakeholders. (shrink)

Brian Leiter’s second book on Nietzsche brings together ideas and arguments that have already had a significant influence on the field through their earlier formulations in his articles from the past two decades. It is thus indispensable reading for anyone interested in Leiter’s evolving project of showing that Nietzsche has the correct naturalistic approach to issues in moral philosophy and moral psychology. As usual with Leiter’s scholarship, this monograph is extremely clear, densely argued, and philosophically sophisticated.Leiter nicely frames this book (...) with an introduction in which he offers his latest thoughts on Nietzsche’s naturalistic approach and with a concluding chapter in which he joins Joshua Knobe... (shrink)

에서 선험적 규정은 의지와도 인식과도 관련되지 않는다. 그것은 판단 자체를 다룬다. 그것은 어떻게 무언가가 판단되어야 하는가를 확립한다. 미적 판단은 유쾌함과 불쾌함을 다룬다. 유쾌함은 단순한 감각이 아니라 감정이다. 미적 판단은 나의 본성과 관련되는 판단이지 오성이나 의지와 관련된 것이 전혀 아니다. 그것들은 나로부터 나오는 것이지 자연 자체로부터 나오는 것이 아니다. 그것들은 나로부터 나오지만 유비적인 것들이다. 나는 그것들을 구상하지만 이 일은 마치 나의 자연(본성)을 누군가가 구성하기라도 한 것처럼, 자연이 그것을 구상할 수 있었기라도 한 것처럼 일어난다. 그런 이유로 그 판단들은 반성적인 것이지 규정적인 것이 (...) 아니다. 이 글에서 나는 두 문제를 제기할 것이다. 하나는 단순한 반성으로서의 미적 판단이 어떻게 또한 규정적이고 선험적일 수 있는가? 다른 하나는 단순한 규정적 판단들이 문제가 되든, 아니면 반성적 판단들과 규정적 판단들 사이의 구분이 문제되든, ‘비판’이라는 말은 동일한 의미를 가지는가? 하는 것이다. 나는 과 사이에 칸트 철학의 구조적인 변화가 있다는 것을 보여줄 것이다. (shrink)

The discussion of the recently derived quantum Hamilton equations for a spinning particle is extended to spin measurement in a Stern–Gerlach experiment. We show that this theory predicts a continuously changing orientation of the particles magnetic moment over the course of its motion across the Stern–Gerlach apparatus. The final measurement results agree with experiment and with predictions of the Pauli equation. Furthermore, the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen–Bohm thought experiment is investigated, and the violation of Bells’s inequalities is reproduced within this stochastic mechanics approach. (...) The origin of the violation of Bell’s inequalities is traced to the the non-local nature of the velocity fields for an entangled state in the stochastic formalism, which is a result of a non-separable probability distribution of the considered particles. (shrink)

Davidson’s account of singular causal statements as expressing relations between events together with his views on event identity lead to inferences involving causal statements which many of his critics find counterintuitive. These are sometimes said to be avoided on Kim’s view of events, in terms of which this line of criticism is often formulated. It is argued that neither Davidson nor Kim offer a satisfactory account of events - an essential prerequisit for the relational theory - and an account of (...) singular causal statements in terms of a modal sentential connective is advocated in place of the relational view. Such an account suffices to block the counter-intuitive inferences without needing to resort to a theory of events. It is suggested that a theory of events might be built upon a connective account of singular causal statements, but no such theory is presented here. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we should recognize (...) a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda­ tions will be given special attention. (shrink)

Genome editing enables very accurate alterations to DNA. It promises profound and potentially disruptive changes in healthcare, agriculture, industry, and the environment. This paper presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the contemporary development of genome editing and the tension between continuity and change. It draws on the idea that actors involved in innovation are guided by “sociotechnical regimes” composed of practices, institutions, norms, and cultural beliefs. The analysis focuses on how genome editing is emerging in different domains and whether this marks (...) continuity or disruption of the established biotechnology regime. In conclusion, it will be argued that genome editing is best understood as a technology platform that is being powerfully shaped by this existing regime but is starting to disrupt the governance of biotechnology. In the longer term is it set to converge with other powerful technology platforms, which together will fundamentally transform the capacity to engineer life. (shrink)

Discusses the conflict between subjective time and historical time, looks at how fiction and historical writings create a model of temporal experience, and considers the question of sense and reference.

How can the Biblical God be the Lord and King who, being typically unseen and even self-veiled at times, authoritatively leads people for divine purposes? This article’s main thesis is that the answer is in divine moral leading via human moral experience of God (of a kind to be clarified). The Hebrew Bible speaks of God as ‘king,’ including for a time prior to the Jewish human monarchy. Ancient Judaism, as Martin Buber has observed, acknowledged direct and indirect forms of (...) divine rule and thus of theocracy. This article explores the importance of divine rule as divine direct leading, particularly in moral matters, without reliance on indirect theocracy supervised by humans. It thus considers a role for God as Über-King superior to any human king, maintaining a direct moral theocracy without a need for indirect theocracy. The divine goal, in this perspective, is a universal commonwealth in righteousness, while allowing for variation in political structure. The article identifies the importance in the Hebrew Bible of letting God be God as an Über-King who, although self-veiled at times, leads willing people directly and thereby rules over them uncoercively. It also clarifies a purpose for divine self-veiling neglected by Buber and many others, and it offers a morally sensitive test for unveiled authenticity in divine moral leading. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Recurrence‐Awareness Recurrence‐Evidence Recurrence‐Significance Recurrence‐Time Recurrence‐Coherence Conclusion.

The contemporary world is witness to an intense, sometimes violent controversy about secularism. These trends have been exacerbated by the emergence of fundamentalism, which challenges the secular society and the secularization of philosophical ideas and ethical values. Paul Kurtz has been personally involved in the campaign for secularism throughout his career as a philosopher. This book reflects his participation in this battle and extends his thinking to new areas. Secularists maintain that the state should not impose a religious creed (...) on its citizens and that it should respect freedom of conscience, the right to believe or disbelieve in the prevailing orthodoxy. This right is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Rights of Man enunciated in the French Revolution. Many powerful religious institutions including Islam, Hinduism, Protestant Fundamentalism, conservative Roman Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism, and others do not accept this principle. And many totalitarian countries that claim to be secular nevertheless seek to impose a kind of doctrinaire ideological uniformity, often equivalent to a religious creed. Kurtz is perhaps best known for his Humanist Manifesto II. Here he takes it to a new level, arguing that secularism today needs to be allied to the emergence of democratic institutions that respect individual freedom andthe pluralistic society. He argues that a defense of secularism entails a defense of the civic virtues of democracy, which include the toleration of dissent and alternative lifestyles and the willingness to negotiate differences.Naturally how this develops is relative to the socio-cultural context in which it emerges. Consequently, secularism will take different forms in different societies, and the term multi-secularism best describes that. Many people believe that it is impossible to maintain a moral order without the support of religion. Kurtz vigorously denies that, and this volume attempts to explicate the values and principles of secular morality, which he sees as the cornerstone of the open democratic society. (shrink)

"L'espèce humaine est la seule qui sache qu'elle doit mourir, et elle ne le sait que par l'expérience" (Voltaire). Certes, mais que signifie cette "expérience" pour la personne humaine? Et d'abord, que signifie la mort de l'autre, du prochain? Pour Paul-Louis Landsberg, l'appropriation spirituelle de la mort est une tâche décisive pour toute personne humaine. Les voies de cette appropriation sont diverses, mais ce n'est qu'en relation avec une personnalisation progressive du tout de l'existence humaine qu'elle acquiert réellement un (...) sens nouveau. Et c'est dans l'expérience mystique que la proximité avec l'expérience de la mort est la plus forte. Le Problème moral du suicide (1942) est un texte précieux, plus encore aujourd'hui qu'il y a cinquante ans. A l'encontre de ceux qui soutiennent le "droit" à la mort volontaire, P.-L. Landsberg explique que "l'homme est l'être qui peut se tuer et qui ne doit pas le faire", et, en ce sens, le suicide est un " problème spécifiquement humain". (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Role of Practice Yoga Scholarship Aristotelian and Yoga Ethics Yoga and Yoga Metaphysics Yoga and Ethics Why Hatha Yoga? Discussion Acknowledgements.

In his posthumously published Journals and Papers,, Kierkegaard boldly claimed, "Oh, once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author. Then it will be read, translated into foreign languages as well. The reader will almost shrink from the frightful pathos in the book." Certainly, Fear and Trembling has been translated into foreign languages, and its fame has ensured Kierkegaard's place in the pantheon of Western philosophy. Today, however, most shrink from the (...) book not because of its frightful pathos but because of its fearsome impenetrability. In this first volume of a Reading Kierkegaard miniseries, Martens carefully unfolds the form and content of Kierkegaard's celebrated pseudonymous text, guiding and inviting the reader to embrace the challenge of wrestling with it to the end. Throughout, Martens demonstrates that Fear and Trembling is not merely a book that contains frightful pathos; it is also an entree into Kierkegaard's vibrant and polyphonic corpus that is nearly as restless as the faith it commends. (Publisher). (shrink)

A Time for Wisdom is for a beleaguered audience that wants to cultivate this virtue and elevate themselves above the noise and toxicity of the modern world. Written by a pair of psychologists, it unpacks the research that has been conducted on the subject in recent years but that hasn't been communicated to readers in a relevant way. What's more, the book takes our current scientific understanding and integrates it with timeless concepts of wisdom that have, for millennia, guided men (...) and women through life's troubles. With this as their foundation, the authors lay out four practices to pursue wisdom in our daily lives. These include receiving knowledge; practicing detachment; experiencing tranquility, and cultivating transcendence. These are profound and spiritual ideas that can quiet the shallow cacophony of the crowd and bring us inner peace. The authors make these practices clear and accessible and show us the immense satisfaction we can enjoy by aspiring to live by them. A Time for Wisdom is an invitation to step outside the circus of contemporary life, to break free from its fanfare of foolishness. It commends a course of action towards the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, towards calm and clear moral reasoning. And it gives us a recipe for self-transcendence so that we-like the great sages and scientists before us-can rise above the immediacy of the moment and a taste of the numinous and the infinite. (shrink)

This book discusses ethical behavior through the genocidal stages of the Holocaust. Paul E. Wilson first looks at the antisemitism in Germany and Europe beginning in the decades preceding the Nazis reign of terror, and goes on to discuss the ethical decisions made in the initial stages that moved society toward genocide. The author maintains that the stages of genocide represent subtle changes that can be happening within a society in response to the moral choices made by actors. By (...) giving attention to the stages of genocide in the Holocaust, this book contributes to the overall understanding of how the Holocaust was possible, and encourages the moral community to join the watch for the development of genocide in the modern world. (shrink)