A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism. Edited by Matthias Henze. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2012. Pp. xv + 568. $50.

This article examines Catherine Malabou’s philosophical concept of plasticity as a new materialist methodology. Given that plasticity simultaneously maintains the ability to receive, give, and annihilate form, plasticity and plastic readings offer material-discursive possibilities for educational research. This article begins by discussing the evolution of plasticity, applications thereof, and its location within new materialist philosophy. To then demonstrate the possibilities of plasticity, this article takes the example of educational policy reform in relation to technology-centered models of education. A plastic reading (...) of ongoing policy discourses argues that conceptualizing policy, stakeholders, and technology as plastic contribute new scholarly understandings regarding the shape and movement of educational policy formation. Significantly, the methodology of plastic readings provides an ideal lens through which to approach educational policy development as a series of entangled ideas and interests. In addition, plastic readings enable the re-envisioned types of analysis and critique increasingly called for by qualitative methodologists and new materialist scholars. (shrink)

BackgroundVaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) is a pivotal tool for preventing a significant cause of cervical cancer. One particular culturally recognized context associated with negative attitudes toward the HPV vaccine is the religiousness of parents. However, relatively speaking, there remains a scarcity of studies that have focused specifically on religious groups, especially non-Christian groups. PurposeTo better understand the basis for members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community to object to the HPV vaccine and how such objections can and cannot be reduced, (...) thereby improving cultural competence—namely, the cultural understanding and ethical addressing of HPV vaccination refusal. MethodsThis qualitative study conducted semi-structured interviews with ten Israeli ultra-Orthodox mothers who are opposed to administering the HPV vaccine to their daughters. The content analysis addressed these results and extracted the major issues arising from these particular interviews. ResultsFour main novel insights were found pertaining to the negative stance toward HPV vaccination among mothers in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community: (a) lack of knowledge about the HPV vaccine is not part of the reasoning against it; (b) rabbinical authority might have a lesser influence than expected for the moderation of HPV vaccine refusal; (c) complicated viewpoints regarding childhood vaccination may be the larger non-moderating context for HPV vaccination refusal; and (d) cultural competence is important for the ability to change the negative attitudes toward HPV vaccination. ConclusionsThe study may improve cultural competence regarding HPV vaccination and contribute to decreasing objections to the HPV vaccine in ultra-Orthodox communities. (shrink)

Some metabolic pathways are nearly ubiquitous among organisms: the genes encoding the enzymes for such pathways must therefore be ancient and essential. De novo pyrimidine biosynthesis is an example of one such metabolic pathway. In animals a single protein called CADAbbreviations: CAD, trifunctional protein catalyzing the first three steps of de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis in higher eukaryotes; CPS, carbamyl phosphate synthetase domain; CPSase, carbamyl phosphate synthetase activity; ATC, aspartate transcarbamylase domain; ATCase, aspartate transcarbamylase activity; DHO, dihydroorotase domain; DHOase, dihydroorotase activity; (...) GLN, glutaminase subdomain or subunit of carbamyl phosphate synthetase, GL Nase, glutaminase activity; SYN, synthetase subdomain or subunit of carbamyl phosphate synthetase; SYNase, synthetase activity. carries the first three steps of this pathway. The same three enzymes in prokaryotes are associated with separate proteins. The CAD gene appears to have evolved through a process of gene duplication and DNA rearrangement, leading to an in‐frame gene fusion encoding a chimeric protein. A driving force for the creation of eukaryotic genes encoding multienzymatic proteins such as CAD may be the advantage of coordinate expression of enzymes catalyzing steps in a biosynthetic pathway. The analogous structure in bacteria is the operon. Differences in the translational mechanisms of eukaryotes and prokaryotes may have dictated the different strategies used by organisms to evolve coordinately regulated genes. (shrink)

This special issue “Inferences and Information Processing in a Conditional Framework“ is dedicated to conditionals as central objects for inferencing and information processing. It presents selected revised papers of the Workshop on Conditionals, Information, and Inference, CII'04, held in Ulm, Germany, co-located with the German national conference on AI, KI'2004.Conditional statements If A then B carry a very special kind of information that can not be captured by interpreting them as material implications. Roughly speaking, the premise, A, provides a context (...) in which it seems plausible to conclude B. So, each conditional can be seen as establishing a tight but flexible link between premise and conclusion, making up a unique piece of information. This link can and has been used successfully for knowledge representation, in particular, for nonclassical inferences and revising beliefs.It is just this generic, dynamic nature of conditionals that makes them most fascinating objects which are, however, difficult to control. But it seems that the problems one typically encounters when using conditionals for reasoning, mostly occur due to the narrowness of thinking strictly along classical lines that we have been getting used to. Classical logic has imposed a rigidity on human thinking that helped a lot making reasoning formal, precise, and clear. Conditionals, on the other hand, open up dimensions beyond classical theories, leaving room for plausibility, uncertainty, intuition, and commonsense reasoning. Philosophers and logicians have been discussing their logical nature since the …. (shrink)

Was ist Vernunft im Gegensatz zur Sinnlichkeit? Diese Frage erortert der erste Teil dieser Studie, die unterscheidet zwischen Vernunft als Verstehen bzw. Verstand und Vernunft in vollem Sinn: Verstand ist z. B. das Sich-Erinnern an die eigene Vergangenheit, das Vergegenwartigen der Erlebnisse anderer in der Einfuhlung, das Vorausplanen der Zukunft. Vernunft im vollen Sinne dagegen ist Institution des Vergegenwartigens in der Sinnlichkeit oder Kultur, z. B. die menschliche logische Sprache, die Bilder, vergegenwartigende Spiele. Vernunft hat auch mit Erkennen und Wahrheit (...) zu tun, worum es in einem zweiten Teil geht. Hier setzt der Autor sich unter anderem mit tierischem Erleben im Gegensatz zum menschlichen Erkennen, mit naturwissenschaftlichem Erkennen und religiosem Glauben sowie mit Erkennen in den Humanwissenschaften auseinander. An Beispielen aus ganz unterschiedlichen Bereichen, mit vielen Bezugen zur europaischen Philosophie und in sehr personlichem Ton zeigt Iso Kern, was Vernunft ist. (shrink)

I evaluate two claims; that (a) Jesus’ message as recorded in the gospels implies exclusivism with respect to salvation and that, correspondingly, (b) Christians should be exclusivists with respect to salvation. I evaluate these claims through a cataloguing and evaluation of the logical condition involved in each of the claims regarding conditions for salvation made by Jesus in the Gospel of John. As a result, I argue that (a) is false and that, correspondingly, so is (b).

There remains only the obligation to thank those who have helped me with specific suggestions and the editors who have kindly granted permission to reprint material which first appeared in the pages of their journals. To the former group belong Alan B. Brinkley and Max O. Hocutt Portion of chap ters I and VI were published in Philosophy of Science; of chapters IV and V in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine; of chapter VIII in Dialectica; of chapter IX in The (...) British lournal for the Philosophy of Science; and of chapter XIII in Synthese. J.K.F. New Orleans, 1971 PREFACE In this book I have tried to describe the scientific method, understood as the hypothetico-experimental technique of investigation which has been prac ticed so successfully in the physical sciences. It is the first volume of a three-volume work on the philosophy of science, each of which, however, is complete and independent. A second volume will contain an account of the domain in which the method operates and a history of empiricism. A third volume will be devoted to the philosophy of science proper: the metaphysics and epistemology presupposed by the method, its logical structure, and the ethical implications of its results. (shrink)

There remains only the obligation to thank those who have helped me with specific suggestions and the editors who have kindly granted permission to reprint material which first appeared in the pages of their journals. To the former group belong Alan B. Brinkley and Max O. Hocutt Portion of chap ters I and VI were published in Philosophy of Science; of chapters IV and V in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine; of chapter VIII in Dialectica; of chapter IX in The (...) British lournal for the Philosophy of Science; and of chapter XIII in Synthese. J.K.F. New Orleans, 1971 PREFACE In this book I have tried to describe the scientific method, understood as the hypothetico-experimental technique of investigation which has been prac ticed so successfully in the physical sciences. It is the first volume of a three-volume work on the philosophy of science, each of which, however, is complete and independent. A second volume will contain an account of the domain in which the method operates and a history of empiricism. A third volume will be devoted to the philosophy of science proper: the metaphysics and epistemology presupposed by the method, its logical structure, and the ethical implications of its results. (shrink)

Concerning the foundation of Ethics, three different types of theories may be distinguished inside the Confucian tradition. A first type considers ethical rules as necessary for a harmonious social life and the welfare of man as a social being. A second typesees the foundation of ethics in its correspondence with the cosmical order. For a third type, the original tendencies and demands of the human heart or mind are the roots ofethics. The ethical theory more closely discussed in this paper, (...) and which belongs to the third type, is that of Wang Yangming (1472-1529). In his ethical theory, Wang endorsed first the position of Mencius (fourth and third cent. B.C.) and based ethics on original human tendencies and feelings such as love, sympathy, shame, indignation against injustice, etc. However later he was faced with the problem, of how we are able to distinguish these original good tendencies from egoistic (bad) intentions which also belong to our heart. Wang solves this problem by his new theory oiliang zhi („original knowing”). According to this theory, „original knowing” is a kind of immediate consciousness or awareness present in every intention: In every intention we are more or less aware of the ethical quality of this intention, and in acting according to this awareness, this awareness becomes more and more clear and may attain full enlightenment. (shrink)

We argue that the simplicity condition on a probability function on sentences of a predicate language L that it takes only finitely many values on the sentences of any finite sublanguage of L can be viewed as rational. We then go on to investigate consequences of this condition, linking it to the model theoretic notion of quantifier elimination.

Freges Werk eröffnete und leitete den Prozeß der Emanzipation der Logik von der ontologisch fundierten zur autarken, von allen nicht-logischen Voraussetzungen losgelösten Logik der Zeichen. Unmittelbaren Aufschluß über den Beginn dieser neuen Epoche gibt Freges Briefwechsel mit den führenden Theoretikern und Philosophen seiner Zeit. Kern des Bandes ist seine Korrespondenz mit Hilbert (über die Grundlagen der Geometrie), mit Husserl (über Sprachphilosophie) und mit Russell (über Logik).

Der Kern der Logik, wie er sich in den Sätzen der Identität, des ausgeschlossenen Widerspruches und des ausgeschlossenen Dritten ausgedrückt findet, ist nicht revidierbar, auch nicht mit Hilfe von mehrwertigen Logiken. Überdies kommt der Logik, will man die uneingeschränkte Möglichkeit von Widersprüchen eliminieren, gegenüber der Dialektik der methodologische Primat zu. Der unaufhebbare Primat der Logik ist jedoch ein Primat und keine absolute Herrschaft, d.h. es ist möglich, die Grenze der Anwendbarkeit der Logik zu ermitteln. Diese Grenze ist dann erreicht, (...) wenn ein kontextvariantes Objekt nicht zu einem kontextinvarianten Objekt umgeformt werden kann. Das ist z. B. der Fall beim Ganzen im Sinne der Totalität. Dies Ergebnis hat Folgen für die Gültigkeit des Popperschen Falsifikationsprinzips: Läßt sich zeigen, daß die Widersprüche einer These nur von kontextvarianten Objekten, die sich nicht in kontextinvariante Objekte verwandeln lassen, herrühren, so ist die betreffende These aufgrund dieser Widersprüche allein noch nicht korrekturbedürftig, geschweige denn widerlegt. (shrink)

v. 1. Philosophie. Rechtsphilosophie -- v. 2-4. Volkenrecht -- v. 5-6. Rechtsgeschiedenis. Burgerlijk recht. Procesrecht. Octrooirecht. Studie.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bonaventure's Reductio of the Nine Choirs of Angels:How Bonaventure Compressed Two Monumental Traditions into Nine Words and Nine Short PhrasesRandall B. Smith"There is probably no better illustration in medieval thought of how the genius of the symbolic imagination also involves deep speculative insight." So wrote Bernard McGinn of Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in deum in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Woman in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350.1 There is no (...) question that the Itinerarium is a book suffused with symbolic imagery; so much so, in fact, that it can sometimes seem to lapse into a confusing jumble.Certainly there are many sections of the Itinerarium that have baffled readers over the years, often because Bonaventure's use of imagery is so unique and creative and the truths he is attempting to enunciate are so far beyond our normal ways of thinking about God. But there is a short passage in chapter 4 of the Itinerarium that seems to defy interpretation precisely because of what one might describe as an almost austere terseness and brevity. The point Bonaventure wishes to make is one he communicates in little more than a list of nine words and nine short, parallel phrases.The passage I have in mind is this one in Itinerarium 4.4.When these things have been accomplished, and our spirit has been brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem, it is ordered [End Page 583] hierarchically so that it can ascend upward. For no one enters into that city unless that city has first descended into the person's heart by means of grace, as John sees in his Apocalypse. It descends into the heart when our spirit has been made hierarchical by the reformation of the image, by means of the theological virtues, the enjoyment of the spiritual senses, and the ecstasy of rapture; for it has been purged, illumined and brought to perfection.In this way our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels when within it the following are found in an appropriate order: announcing, dictating, leading, ordering, strengthening, commanding, receiving, revealing, and anointing. These correspond to the nine choirs of angels. The first three of the foregoing levels in the human mind relate to nature; the next three relate to work; and the final three relate to grace. When it has attained these, the soul, by entering into itself, enters into the heavenly Jerusalem where, as it considers the choirs of angels, it sees in them the God who dwells in them and who works in all their operations.Therefore, Bernard says to Pope Eugene that "God loves in the Seraphim as charity; knows in the Cherubim as truth; sits in the Thrones as justice; reigns in the Dominations as majesty; rules in the Principalities as a guiding principle; protects in the Powers as salvation; is at work in the Virtues as strength; reveals in the Archangels as light; assists in the Angels as kindness." From all this, God is seen as all in all when we contemplate God in our minds where God dwells through the gifts of the most generous charity.2Notice in the passage I have quoted above that Bonaventure says our spirit must be "brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem," and that this requires it be "ordered hierarchically so that it can ascend upward." This serves as a transition into a rather odd pair of lists—one with nine words and the other with nine short, parallel phrases—that Bonaventure associates with the nine angelic choirs. These two lists of the nine choirs of angels do not, however, correspond exactly with one [End Page 584] another, for reasons I will explain below. And although these two lists of the nine ranks of angels in the angelic hierarchy take up just a few lines in Bonaventure's text, there is a lot of background information we will need to fill in to provide the necessary context to appreciate them. Indeed, as we will see, in this short passage, Bonaventure was able using the methods of the thirteenth-century sermo modernus style to reduce two monumental commentary traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels—one that... (shrink)

Introduction Cholbi, Michael (et al.) Pages 1-10 -/- Assisted Dying and the Proper Role of Patient Autonomy Bullock, Emma C. Pages 11-25 -/- Preventing Assistance to Die: Assessing Indirect Paternalism Regarding Voluntary Active Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Schramme, Thomas Pages 27-40 -/- Autonomy, Interests, Justice and Active Medical Euthanasia Savulescu, Julian Pages 41-58 -/- Mental Illness, Lack of Autonomy, and Physician-Assisted Death Varelius, Jukka Pages 59-77 -/- Euthanasia for Mental Suffering Raus, Kasper (et al.) Pages 79-96 -/- Assisted Dying for (...) Individuals with Dementia: Challenges for Translating Ethical Positions into Law Downie, Jocelyn (et al.) Pages 97-123 -/- Clinical Ethics Consultation and Physician Assisted Suicide Adams, David M. Pages 125-147 -/- License to Kill: A New Model for Excusing Medically Assisted Dying? Huxtable, Richard (et al.) Pages 149-168 -/- Medically Enabled Suicides Cholbi, Michael Pages 169-184 -/- Saving Lives with Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Organ Donation After Assisted Dying Shaw, David M. Pages 185-192 -/- Implanted Medical Devices and End-of-Life Decisions Gill, Michael B. Pages 193-215 -/- Everyday Attitudes About Euthanasia and the Slippery Slope Argument Feltz, Adam Pages 217-237 -/- “You Got Me Into This…”: Procreative Responsibility and Its Implications for Suicide and Euthanasia Weinberg, Rivka Pages 239-252 . (shrink)

A number of general points behind the story of this paper may be worth setting out separately, now that we have come to the end.There is perhaps one obvious omission to be addressed right away. Although the word “information” has occurred throughout this paper, it must have struck the reader that we have had nothing to say on what information is. In this respect, our theories may be like those in physics: which do not explain what “energy” is (a notion (...) which seems quite similar to “information” in several ways), but only give some basic laws about its behaviour and transmission.The eventual recommendation made here has been to use a broad type-theoretic framework for studying various more classical and more dynamic notions of proposition in their interaction. This is not quite the viewpoint advocated by many current authors in the area, who argue for a whole-sale switch from a ‘static’ to a ‘dynamic’ perspective on propositions. This is not the place, however, to survey the conceptual arguments for and against such a more radical move.This still leaves many questions about possible reductions from one perspective to another. For instance, it would seem that classical systems ought to serve as a ‘limiting case’, which should still be valid after procedural details of some cognitive process have been forgotten. There are various ways of implementing the desired correspondence: e.g. by considering extreme cases with ⫅ equal to identity, or, in the pure relational algebra framework by considering only pairs (x, x). What we shall want then are reductions of dynamic logics, in those special cases, to classical logic. But perhaps also, more sophisticated views are possible. How do we take a piece of ‘dynamic’ prose, remove control instructions and the like, and obtain a piece of ‘classical’ text, suitable for inference ‘in the light of eternity’?There is also a more technical side to the matter of ‘reduction’. By now, Logic has reached such a state of ‘inter-translatability’ that almost all known variant logics can be embedded into each other, via suitable translations. In particular, once an adequate semantic has been given for a new system, this usually induces an embedding into standard logic: as we know, e.g., for the case of Modal Logic. Like-wise, all systems of dynamic interpretation or inference proposed so far admit of direct embedding into an ordinary ‘static’ predicate logic having explicit transition predicates (cf. van Benthem 1988b). Thus, our moral is this. The issue is not whether the new systems of information structure or processing are essentially beyond the expressive resources of traditional logical systems: for, they are not. The issue is rather which interesting phenomena and questions will be put into the right focus by them.The next broad issue concerns the specific use of the perspective proposed here, vis-à-vis concrete proposals for information-oriented or dynamic semantics. The general strategy advocated here is to locate some suitable base calculus and then consider which ‘extras’ are peculiar to the proposal. For instance, this is the spirit in which modal S4 would be a base logic of information models, and intuitionistic logicthe special theory devoting itself to upward persistent propositions. Or, with the examples in Section 4.1, the underlying base logic is our relational algebra, whereas, say, ordinary updates then impose special properties, such as ‘idempotence’: $$xRy \Rightarrow yRy$$ Does this kind of application presuppose the existence of one distinguished base logic, of which all others are extensions? This would be attractive-and some form of relational algebra or linear logic might be a reasonable candidate. Nevertheless, the enterprise does not rest on this outcome. What matters is an increased sensitivity to the ‘landscape’ of dynamic logics, just as with the ‘Categorial Hierarchy’ in Categorial Grammar (cf. van Benthem 1989a, 1991) where the family of logics with their interconnections seems more important than any specific patriarch.Finally, perhaps the most important issue in the new framework is the possibility of new kinds of questions arising precisely because of its differences from standard logic. Notably, given the option of regarding propositions as programs, it will be of interest to consider systematically which major questions about programming languages now make sense inside logic too.EXAMPLE. Correctness. When do we have $$\left[\kern-0.15em\left[ \pi \right]\kern-0.15em\right](\left[\kern-0.15em\left[ A \right]\kern-0.15em\right]) \subseteq \left[\kern-0.15em\left[ B \right]\kern-0.15em\right]$$ for (s, t) propositions A, B and a dynamic (s, (s, t)) proposition π?Program Synthesis. Which dynamic proposition will take us from an information state satisfying A to one satisfying B? (This question needs refinement, lest there be trivial answers.)Determinism. Which propositions as programs are deterministic, in the sense of defining single-valued functions from states to states?Querying. What does it mean to ask for information in the present setting? (Again, individual types referring to e will be crucial here.)This is not merely an agenda for wishful thinking. Within Logic, there are various ways of introducing such concerns into semantics, especially, using tools from Automata Theory. (See van Benthem 1989c for further discussion of such computational perspectives in ‘cognitive programming’.)At least if one believes that ‘dynamics’ is of the essence in cognition (rather than a mere interfacing problem between the halls of eternal truth and the noisy streets of reality), the true test for the present enterprise is the development of a significant new research program not merely copying the questions of old. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 178-181 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus. Edited by Perry Schmidt-Leukel with Gerhard Koberlin and Thomas Josef Gotz, OSB. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 2001. 179 pp. The papers collected here represent a significant step forward in European scholarship on Buddhist-Christian relations. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel remarks in his helpful introduction, they are an experiment in correlating auto-interpretation and hetero-interpretation, introspection and extrospection.Each of the first (...) three sections—on China/Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe—begins with a historical study. Iso Kern clears up some misconceptions about the Jesuits' approach to mission work in China, stating that they did in fact preach Jesus crucified (37) and the doctrine of Atonement (41) in the face of a grave danger that Christianity would simply be absorbed into Buddhism (33). Whereas Buddhism had no specifically religious clash with the state, Christianity did, and this was eventually sealed by martyrdom in both China and Japan. Introducing part 2, Heinz Murmel gives a sober reassessment of the vehement controversies between a certain segment of Buddhism and a certain type of Christianity in Ceylon. Only the high-caste highland nikayas were protected by the British (63); the more popular, rural Buddhists of the lowlands felt excluded and threatened and gave rise to what became known as "Protestant Buddhism." The "great debates" between bitterly anti-Christian monks and Protestant clergymen were not as important as the records may suggest, and even the fiery Anagarika Dharmapala later disclosed that he felt great devotion to Jesus. Finally, Frank Usarski reviews the heated debates between ill-informed Christians and overaggressive Buddhist converts such as Karl B. Seidenstucker as Buddhism established itself in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century. The History of Religions school seemed to suggest that Christianity was culturally inferior to Buddhism, which was allegedly proved by Christian attitudes to [End Page 178] vegetarianism and the general anti-intellectualism of Christianity. Christianity was inauthentic, derivative, "Buddhism in Jewish garments" (120).Yet even Seidenstucker, the renegade Protestant, converted to Catholicism toward the end of his life.Each historical contribution is followed by an essay on the contemporary situation in the three regions, and these vary greatly in substance. Shizuteru Ueda offers a profound meditation on the significance of Keiji Nishitani for Buddhist approaches to Christianity. If Nietzsche posed the fundamental question of "life without why " (44-45), the thought of Meister Eckhart contains the answer (curiously, Ueda insists that this answer must be European, because Europe "determines the world" [47]). The "ground" on which we stand, interpreted as Nishida's "place (basho) of nothingness," is "ground-less." This is not nihilism but the overcoming of nihilism by nihilism, the shûnyatâ of shûnyatâ (46). Jesus as the Christ is the God/man and therefore the mediator, the absolute in history (53). He occupies the "place" (basho) of infinite openness, unconditioned ultimacy (55). He is thus unique, but not universal: the ultimate "for me" is not necessary "for the whole of mankind" (56). The actual encounter between Buddhist and Christian absolutes takes place in silence.Santikaro Bhikkhu, the friend and translator of Buddhadâsa Bhikkhu in the last eight years of his life, tells how his mentor gradually overcame his initial suspicion ofChristianity, perhaps because he was not confronted with colonial oppression as Dharmapala was in Ceylon. Distinguishing between "people language" and " dhamma language," he eventually arrived at a certain equivalence between the Christian God and Buddhist dhamma understood as a nonpersonal, nondual transcendent that is nevertheless not outside nature (85, 90). What Jesus the Teacher of Wisdom offers in the Sermon on the Mount, if practiced, is sufficient for salvation (93). In the perspective of dhamma language, however, the God of Christian convention is conditioned, and Jesus as Son of God cannot be unique. Though inconclusive and sometimes obscure because of Buddhadâsa's indifferent grasp of English, this is surely an astonishing journey for one who tried to understand each tradition, including his own, from the sources. It brought him fierce criticism from fellow Buddhists, however, who branded him a... (shrink)

In his Metrica, Hero provides four procedures for finding the area of a circular segment (with b the base of the segment and h its height): an Ancient method for when the segment is smaller than a semicircle, $$(b + h)/2 \, \cdot \, h$$ ( b + h ) / 2 · h ; a Revision, $$(b + h)/2 \, \cdot \, h + (b/2)^{2} /14$$ ( b + h ) / 2 · h + ( b / 2 (...) ) 2 / 14 ; a quasi-Archimedean method (said to be inspired by the quadrature of the parabola) for cases where b is more than triple h, $${\raise0.5ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle 4$} \kern-0.1em/\kern-0.15em \lower0.25ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle 3$}}(h \, \cdot \, b/2)$$ 4 / 3 ( h · b / 2 ) ; and a method of Subtraction using the Revised method, for when it is larger than a semicircle. He gives superficial arguments that the Ancient method presumes $$\pi = 3$$ π = 3 and the Revision, $$\pi = {\raise0.5ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle {22}$} \kern-0.1em/\kern-0.15em \lower0.25ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle 7$}}$$ π = 22 / 7. We are left with many questions. How ancient is the Ancient? Why did anyone think it worked? Why would anyone revise it in just this way? In addition, why did Hero think the Revised method did not work when $$b > 3\;h$$ b > 3 h? I show that a fifth century BCE Uruk tablet employs the Ancient method, but possibly with very strange consequences, and that a Ptolemaic Egyptian papyrus that checks this method by comparing the area of a circle calculated from the sum of a regular inscribed polygon and the areas of the segments on its sides as determined by the Ancient method with the area of the circle as calculated from its diameter correctly sees that the calculations do not quite gel in the case of a triangle but do in the case of a square. Both traditions probably could also calculate the area of a segment on an inscribed regular polygon by subtracting the area of the polygon from the area of the circle and dividing by the number of sides of the polygon. I then derive two theorems about pairs of segments, that the reviser of the Ancient method should have known, that explain each method, why they work when they do and do not when they do not, and which lead to a curious generalization of the Revised method. Hero’s comment is right, but not for the reasons he gives. I conclude with an exploration of Hero’s restrictions of the Revised method and Hero’s two alternative methods. (shrink)

Unmittelbarkeit bezeichnet in der philosophischen Tradition etwas, was keiner weiteren erklarenden Begrundung bedarf und sich von selbst versteht, also unmittelbar einleuchtet. Dialektisches Denken bricht diese Selbstverstandlichkeiten auf, indem es auch die Kategorie der Unmittelbarkeit vermittelt; die dialektische Kritik der Unmittelbarkeit ist Aufklarung im Begriff, die das Gegebene nicht fraglos hinnimmt. Dies wird im Ruckgang auf die Geschichte des Begriffs dargelegt. Ihren Wendepunkt hat diese Geschichte bei Hegel, der den Schein der Unmittelbarkeit aufzeigt, indem er Unmittelbarkeit selbst als vermittelt erweist. Hieran (...) knupft Marx an, wenn er mit und gegen Hegel ein Konzept gegenstandlicher Vermittlung entwickelt. Damit springt er aus dem Gleis der nachhegelschen Philosophie, die - wie auch Feuerbach und andere Junghegelianer - gegen Hegel wiederum unvermittelte Unmittelbarkeiten aufbietet. Die gegenstandliche Vermittlung in realwissenschaftlichen Kontexten, wie z. B. in der Kritik der politischen Okonomie, zeigt jedoch gegenuber der Bewegung des Begriffs in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik auch Grenzen der Vermittlung auf: bestimmte Gegensatze, so Marx, konnten nicht vermittelt, sondern es konne nur ihre Existenzgrundlage abgeschafft werden, so z. B. der Gegensatz von Lohnarbeit und Kapital. Hegels und Marx' Kritik der unvermittelten Unmittelbarkeiten erweist sich, so die zentrale These des Buches, bis in die Gegenwart als aktuell; sie ist Kern dialektischer Kritik an der scheinbaren Selbstverstandlichkeit des Bestehenden. Andreas Arndt ist Professor fur Philosophie an der Theologischen Fakultat der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin; er ist seit 1992 Prasident der Internationalen Hegel-Gesellschaft e. V. (shrink)

Obwohl Claude Lefort auaerhalb Frankreichs nur Eingeweihten bekannt sein durfte, war er einer der einflussreichsten politischen Theoretiker fur den franzosischen Diskurs seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Nach dem Krieg hatte er in diversen Projekten an der Etablierung einer franzosischen kritischen Linken pragend mitgewirkt, die sich gegen die partei- und Sowjetunionstreue Linie Sartres durchzusetzen hatte. So entwickelte er ein Verstandnis des kommunistischen Totalitarismus, das dann gleichsam eine Kontrastfolie fur seine Demokratie- und Menschenrechtstheorie abgeben konnte. In allen diesen Aspekten lassen sich wesentliche Entwicklungen (...) auch der internationalen politiktheoretischen Debatten auf seine Diskussionsbeitrage zuruckfuhren. Am bekanntesten ist sicherlich seine These von der Verortung des Kerns der Demokratie in einer streitbaren Zivilgesellschaft, welche sich der staatlichen Kontrolle ebenso entzieht, wie sie die Besetzung des "leeren Ortes der Macht" durch die politischen Akteure verhindert. Der Band rekonstruiert die Demokratie- und Politiktheorie Leforts und bettet jene bekannte These in vielfaltige und sehr viel weiter reichende theoretische Kontexte ein. In der Arbeit mit den Ideen Leforts konnen die Beitrager daruber hinaus zeigen, dass Leforts Theorie auch fur aktuelle Phanomene und Debatten (wie z.B. die Occupy!-Bewegung, die Debatte um den Populismus und diejenige um die Konstitutionalisierung des Volkerrechts) nach wie vor von groaer Originalitat und ungeminderter Bedeutung ist. (shrink)

In fünf Kapiteln thematisiert das Buch Kants Ethik im Ganzen, dabei werden die zentralen moralphilosophischen Schriften Kants als Einheit bzw. als eine sukzessive Fortentwicklung hin zu einer ›vollständigeren‹ Ethik aufgefasst, bei der der formale Kern schrittweise durch materiale Momente angereichert und erweitert wird. Erst dadurch ergibt sich ein adäquates Bild der kantischen Ethik. Der Ausdruck »im Ganzen« bezieht sich also zum einen auf die Gesamtheit der in den Blick genommenen Werke und zum anderen auf die ›Komplementarität‹ von formaler und (...) materialer Seite. Die schrittweise Erweiterung bzw. Anreicherung wird als Anwendung rekonstruiert, nämlich als eine Anwendung des kategorischen Imperativs auf den Menschen in ganz konkreten Zuständen und Umständen, sodass am Ende auch kasuistischen Überlegungen ein angemessener Raum gegeben wird. Dies ist ein Aspekt, der im ›überkommenen‹ Kant-Bild bislang zu wenig Beachtung gefunden hat. Durch diesen umfassenderen Blick auf Kants Ethik als Ganzes können immer wieder erhobene Einwände bzw. Vorwürfe (wie z. B. Unanwendbarkeit, Formalismus, Gesinnungsethik sowie Rigorismus) entschärft oder auch zurückgewiesen werden. (shrink)