One feature that classical apocalyptic writings commonly share is their eschatological dimension, their "sense of an ending"1—the end of the world, of time, of humanity. But whereas traditional apocalyptic texts were for the most part utopian, their tales of destruction followed by narratives of redemption, modern secular apocalyptic literature is largely dystopian, ending in pure devastation. According to some scholars, the very arrival of modernity, beginning with Cartesian philosophy and its inherent doubt, was apocalyptic in nature. In the twentieth century, (...) as Thomas Altizer has argued, no central literary work—from Rilke to Kafka and from Joyce to Beckett—managed to eschew the apocalyptic.2 Today, at the .. (shrink)

This volume of essays is an important introduction to the thought of one of the twentieth century's most significant yet underappreciated philosophers, Richard McKeon. The originator of philosophical pluralism, McKeon made extraordinary contributions to philosophy, to international relations, and to theory-formation in the communication arts, aesthetics, the organization of knowledge, and the practical sciences. This collection, which includes a philosophical autobiography as well as the out-of-print title essay "Freedom and History" and a previously unpublished essay on "Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic (...) Inquiry," is a testimony to the range and systematic power of McKeon's thinking for the social sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

Richard McKeon was a philosopher of extraordinary creativity who brought profoundly original ideas to bear on more standard ways of thinking and learning. A classicist, medievalist, and revolutionary intellectual, he fashioned an approach to philosophy as a plural conversation among varied traditions of thought, epochs, and civilizations. This second volume of McKeon's selected works demonstrates his approach to inquiry and practice in culture, education, and the arts. Together, the writings in this book show how McKeon reinvented the ancient arts of (...) rhetoric, grammar, logic, and dialectic for the new circumstances of a global culture. In essays on creation and criticism, for instance, rhetoric is distinguished from grammar and shown to be the master art of invention, judgment, and pluralistic interpretation. Writings on themes of culture, meanwhile, explore the self-invention of mankind as justification for the arts, the development of the humanities, and the organization of the sciences. In the closing essays on education and philosophy, McKeon considers the implications of his ideas for the future of the liberal arts and higher learning. (shrink)

Richard McKeon enjoys an enviable reputation as an erudite historian of ideas and exegete of philosophic texts. However, the originality and scope of his achievement as a systematic philosopher are less widely known. In this ambitious three-volume edition, of which _Philosophy, Science, and Culture_ is the first, a selection of McKeon's writings will be collected to showcase his distinctive approach to the analysis of discourse. Volume I covers philosophic theory through his writings on first philosophy and the methods and principles (...) of the sciences, Volume II examines philosophic arts through his writings on aesthetics and forms of discourse as a whole, and Volume III looks at philosophic practice through his writings on world community and the relations of cultures. _Philosophy, Science, and Culture_ covers topics that range from philosophic semantics to the processes of the sciences to the forms of human rights. This collection makes McKeon's mission as a philosopher unmistakable. He characterized himself as a philosophic pluralist; he was an American philosopher in the tradition of the pragmatists, one whose philosophy subtly resonates with C. S. Peirce and John Dewey. McKeon also explored the themes of deconstructionism and other late-twentieth-century philosophies decades before their popular emergence—but, in generating a matrix of possibilities for productive debate, he avoided both relativism and the entrapments of dogmatism. An important collection of his writings, this series will establish Richard McKeon as one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century. Richard McKeon taught philosophy at the University of Chicago from 1935 to 1973, and at the time of his death had published eleven books and 158 articles on an extraordinary array of topics and cultures. Among his many national and international distinctions, he was awarded the highest honor of the American Philosophical Association when he was invited to give the Paul Carus Lectures in New York in 1965. (shrink)

The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy provides a rich panoramic view of what philosophy offers or disturbs in psychoanalysis and what it represents for psychoanalytic theory and practice. The thirty-three chapters present a broad range of interfaces and reciprocities between various aspects of psychoanalysis and philosophy. It demonstrates the vital connection between the two disciplines: psychoanalysis cannot make any practical sense if it is not entirely perceived within a philosophical context. Written by a team of world-leading experts, including (...) established scholars, psychoanalysts and emerging talents, the Handbook investigates and discusses the psychoanalytic schools and their philosophical underpinning, as well as contemporary applied topics. Organized into five sections, this volume investigates and discusses how psychoanalysis stands in relation to leading philosophies such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Kant; philosophical perspectives on psychoanalytic schools such as Freud, Klein, Bion, Kohut, and Lacan; how psychoanalysis addresses controversial topics in philosophy such as truth, language and symbolism, ethics, and theories of mind. The last section addresses contemporary applied subjects in psychoanalytic thought: colonialism, gender, race, and ecology. This Handbook offers a novel and comprehensive outlook vital for scholars, philosophers, practicing psychoanalysts and therapists alike. The book will serve as a source for courses in psychoanalysis, philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, semiotics, cognitive science, consciousness, gender, race, post-colonialism theories, clinical theory, Freud's studies, both in universities and psychoanalytic training programs and institutes. (shrink)

Until recently, the ocular surface is thought by many to be sterile and devoid of living microbes. It is now becoming clear that this may not be the case. Recent and sophisticated PCR analyses have shown that microbial DNA‐based “signatures” are present within various ethnic, geographic, and contact lens wearing communities. Furthermore, using a mouse model of ocular surface disease, we have shown that the microbe, Corynebacterium mastitidis (C. mast), can stably colonize the ocular mucosa and that a causal relationship (...) exists between ocular C. mast colonization and beneficial local immunity. While this constitutes proof‐of‐concept that a bona fide ocular microbiome that tunes immunity can exist at the ocular surface, there remain numerous unanswered questions to be addressed before microbiome‐modulating therapies may be successfully developed. Here, the authors will briefly outline what is currently known about the local ocular microbiome as well as microbiomes associated with other sites, and how those sites may play a role in ocular surface immunity. Understanding how commensal microbes affect the ocular surface immune homeostasis has the potential revolutionize how we think about treating ocular surface disease. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the opinion of a Jewish Averroist Rabbi Josef Ibn Caspi on the relation between prophetical and philosophical truth. In the beginning of the article, we will see that in some of his writings, R. Caspi claims the prophet’s knowledge to be superior to that of the philosopher. However, in the second part of the article, we will analyze his commentary on Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed. In this commentary R. (...) class='Hi'>Caspi also mentions the opposite opinion: that the knowledge of the prophet is only his knowledge as a philosopher and that even true prophets’ can have a few false prophecies just as good philosophers may have a few wrong opinions. He thus equates the knowledge of a prophet to that of a philosopher. In the conclusion of the article we try to determine how one can distinguish between the texts that explain the true opinion of R. Caspi and the text that our author wrote only for political and pedagogical reasons. (shrink)

Following participation in Dr. Yair Caspi’s “Psychology in Judaism” workshop, the writers contemplate whether the teaching of Caspi’s model in academic settings could become simultaneously a fresh addition to interdisciplinary approaches to the teaching of Judaism in Israeli Academic life, and an academic addition to the contemporary trend to Jewish renewal in Israeli society. The model is based on weekly facilitated workshops in which participants both reflect on and discuss their lives and also explore unique interpretations of Jewish (...) texts and ideas, constantly seeking the borderline where their lives inform the text and vice versa. The process leads to the re-enchantment of ancient Jewish concepts, the reinvention of the Jewish religious experience in a contemporary paradigm and idiom, and the possibility of deep transformative insight. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Emotions That Last LongerArgyris Stringaris (bio)Keywordsemotion, mood, Aristotle, longitudinal studies, SchelerDistinguishing between emotions and cognitions does not seem entirely straightforward. Both are said to involve some form of computational activity and both to require a decision-making process. For example, according to Lazarus’ appraisal theory of emotions, “the person must decide whether what is going on is relevant to important values or goals” (Lazarus 1991, 30). Conversely, feelings seem (...) to be easier to separate from other experiences and, accordingly, those having a feeling are usually in position to contrast them with, say, what they would describe as their thoughts. Moreover, people would claim without much hesitation that they are able to distinguish between feelings: some are “good” and some are “bad,” whereas others are “deep” and others still “shallow.” The reliability of feelings—as judged by, for example, how we currently feel about something that seemed to be a good feeling some time ago—is certainly imperfect, but this does not necessarily negate their value.Rosfort and Stanghellini (2009) raise several important and complex issues about emotions and provide us with several good reasons to think more about feelings. They argue that, if, as some proponents of the cognitive theory of emotions claim, we can have emotions and not even know about them, then, at least, whenever we have feelings we are in position to know that we have emotions. For the authors, this is one of the main reasons why feelings are so crucial in “uncovering a person's situatedness in the world.” Feelings “reveal the diverse phenomenal structure” of emotions and, thus, according to the authors there is a need to distinguish between fundamental states such as moods and affects. The distinction is one classically made in continental psychopathology and the authors draw on interesting, and little known, aspects of the phenomenological tradition in doing so. They base their distinction on three dimensions, namely intentionality, temporality, and narrativity—these they consider as three core aspects of personhood.The authors’ strategy is yielding and it seems worthwhile that their work be further pursued. A great number of very interesting questions arising from Rosfort and Stanghellini's article. For example, the authors state that moods and affects are “opposites” of each other. Although they seem distinguishable on the basis of what the authors say, there is no compelling reason to see them as opposites. To use one of their examples, the fact that anxiety is different from fear because it lasts longer and because it is more diffuse does not mean that the two are either polar opposites or orthogonal to each other. Perhaps more important, it could be argued that short and focused emotional states, such as fear, may be predicated upon the more enduring ones, in this case anxiety. Conversely, it could mean that the occurrence of a [End Page 277] shorter, more focused state, of an affect in the authors’ terminology, will trigger longer-lasting and diffuse states, that is, moods. Furthermore, how long is long enough for something to constitute an affect? According to the authors, sadness is an example of a mood, whereas grief is classified as an affect. But sadness may be short lived and be highly focused; grief, on the other hand, can persist for months. And what is grief if not an instance of sadness? The authors wisely concede some of these points in their paper.It seems that a more general question needs to be asked: how long may emotions last? Emotions are regarded by many as short-lived and transient phenomena. However, within each person there is probably a fair degree of consistency in some patterns of emotional reactions. Thus, not least according to common belief, it is the angry man who is prone to angry outbursts (in Aristotle, the swiftly moving to anger, εὐκίνητος πρὸς ỏργὴν is the angry man, ỏργίλος or ỏξύθυμος).). This view seems justified by some evidence. Consider, for example, the predictions of temperamental characteristics at age three from the Dunnedin study (Caspi 2000); those children found to be emotionally labile, restless, and impulsive are, compared with so-called inhibited children, about three times more likely to become adults with antisocial personality. Or consider how predictive... (shrink)