This paper considers the significance of the informal publication and circulation in the work of one of the most important analytic philosophers of the late 20th Century, Saul Kripke. I argue that everyday copying technologies such as tape recording and photocopying enabled academic philosophers in the 1970s and 1980s to create and reproduce living documents whose private preservation and circulation offered a way to make and maintain a community of interest, carve out a space for oral discourse and, most significantly (...) for histories of alternative print technologies, that these technologies and techniques of reproduction were essential to the composition of Kripke’s ground-breaking and revolutionary published work. The recording, transcripts and photocopies archived Kripke’s ideas and offered access to them outside of institutional publishing channels. Kripke lectured a great deal, usually without notes, and was known to be reluctant to commit his ideas to print; this ‘szamizdat’ (as he refers to it) also preserved a space for the oral as the preferred mode of communication for philosophical discourse, connecting the modern tradition with the ancients, an oral tradition held together with magnetic tape, typescript, photocopies, and digital text files. This archival study draws attention to the intermediality of Kripke's work through close examination of his acknowledgments, prefaces, and footnotes to work up a history of the everyday media inscriptions (the recordings, typescript transcriptions, photocopies etc.) and practices (the lectures, seminars, and international social networks of distribution) that underpin the production of both his published and unpublished work. This essay brings a media archaeological approach into contact with scholarship on the history of the book and intellectual history. It foregrounds the role of the oral and aural in the history of print and contributes to our understanding of circulation and reproduction as a cultural practices. (shrink)

I discuss the necessity of global systematic viewpoints for economic history books.

This book aims to give a better understanding of dharma through an extraordinarily exhaustive account of both the word and the concept through an incisive analysis of Vedic, Buddhist, Puranic, Smriti, and bhakti texts, and even some works of literature.

The book is a history of the concept of experience in philosophy. Minakov focuses mainly on Western 19-20th century philosophical movements and their use of the experience concept. Author uses topological method to describe growth of the conseptual content of experience, as well as decline in its use in the end of 20th century.

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson became an international celebrity, profoundly influencing contemporary intellectual and artistic currents. While Bergsonism was fashionable, L. Susan Stebbing, Bertrand Russell, Moritz Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap launched different critical attacks against some of Bergson’s views. This book examines this series of critical responses to Bergsonism early in the history of analytic philosophy. Analytic criticisms of Bergsonism were influenced by William James, who saw Bergson as an ‘anti-intellectualist’ (...) ally of American Pragmatism, and Max Scheler, who saw him as a prophet of Lebensphilosophie. Some of the main analytic objections to Bergson are answered in the work of Karin Costelloe-Stephen. Analytic anti-Bergsonism accompanied the earlier refutations of idealism by Russell and Moore, and later influenced the Vienna Circle’s critique of metaphysics. It eventually contributed to the formation of the view that ‘analytic’ philosophy is divided from its ‘continental’ counterpart. (shrink)

The primary objective of this book is to open space for rethinking the relationship between art and politics. It seeks to combat one of the fundamental assumptions that has plagued many of the previous debates on this issue: that art and politics are distinct entities definable in terms of common properties, and that they have privileged points of intersection, which can be determined once and for all in terms of an established formula. This common sense assumption is rooted in (...) a transcendent illusion according to which there are more or less fixed characteristics that unify our terms, concepts, and practices in such a way as to guarantee their meaning. Against this substantialist approach, Radical History & the Politics of Art argues for a praxeological account that begins the other way around by analyzing specific cultural practices without presupposing a conceptual unity behind them. Such an orientation is radically historicist in the sense that it recognizes that all of our practices—be they linguistic, theoretical, aesthetic or political—are historically constituted and that they are necessarily part of a temporal dynamic. Hence the contingent nature of the labels used to classify various practices or even identify ‘practice’ as such. Radical history thereby proposes a significant departure from the extant debates on art and politics by maintaining that there is no ‘art’ or ‘politics’ in general, nor a singular relation between them. There are only historically constituted practices in various conjunctures, some of which have been labeled, through practical acts of denomination, as ‘artistic’ or ‘political.’ Instead of proposing one more response to the oft-repeated question ‘what is the relationship between Art and Politics?’ this book seeks to overcome the presuppositions that plague such a question. It thereby changes the very nature of the investigation by asking: ‘how do the diverse aspects of practices identified as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘political’ overlap, intertwine and sometimes merge in precise socio-historical force fields of action? (shrink)

This book contains a selection of papers from the workshop *Women in the History of Analytic Philosophy* held in October 2019 in Tilburg, the Netherlands. It is the first volume devoted to the role of women in early analytic philosophy. It discusses the ideas of ten female philosophers and covers a period of over a hundred years, beginning with the contribution to the Significs Movement by Victoria, Lady Welby in the second half of the nineteenth century, and ending (...) with Ruth Barcan Marcus’s celebrated version of quantified modal logic after the Second World War. The book makes clear that women contributed substantially to the development of analytic philosophy in all areas of philosophy, from logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science, to ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. It illustrates that although women's voices were no different from men's as regards their scope and versatility, they had a much harder time being heard. The book is aimed at historians of philosophy and scholars in gender studies. (shrink)

This book places Benjamin’s writing on revolution in the context of his conception of historical knowledge. The fundamental problem that faces any analysis of Benjamin’s approach to revolution is that he deploys notions that belong to the domain of individual experience. His theory of modernity with its emphasis on the disintegration of collective experience further aggravates the problem. Benjamin himself understood the problem of revolution to be primarily that of the conceptualization of collective experience (its possibility and sites) under (...) the conditions of modern bourgeois society. The novelty of his approach to revolution lies in the fact that he directly connects it with historical experience. Benjamin’s conception of revolution thus constitutes an integral part of his distinctive theory of historical knowledge, which is also essentially a theory of experience. Through a detailed study of Benjamin’s writings on the topics of the child and the dream, and an analysis of his ideas of history, the fulfilled wish, similitude and communist society, this book shows how the conceptual analysis of his corpus can get to the heart of Benjamin’s conception of revolutionary experience and distil its difficulties and mechanisms. (shrink)

Review of 'History of Rationalities: Ways of Thinking from Vico to Hacking and Beyond' by Luca Sciortino Palgrave McMillan, Cham (Switzerland) 2023, pp. 351 € 84,94 .

The analyses in the book investigate the possibilities and foundations of a completely new philosophy of history, although outlined in dialogue with M. Heidegger. The fundamental questions the author asks are: Why, wherefrom is there history? Why are we humans historical? Why is there historiography? Primarily and ultimately, the response to each of these questions is: because we are MORTAL. Accordingly, the first chapter tackles the possibilities and lays the foundations of an ontology of history. Built (...) upon these, the second chapter analyses the being of the PAST and its existential characteristics – as NOT-BEING-ANY-MORE, as HAD-BEEN-NESS. Chapter three turns towards the FUTURE and analyses its existential characteristics as NOT-YET-BEING. Chapter four is an explicit return to the dialogue with Heidegger, which surfaces the main aspects of the essential belonging together of the fundaments and origins of philosophy and history. The Appendix is an applied philosophical research related to the previous subjects which examines the interlacements of DEATH and SECRET in the phenomenon of TERRORISM. (shrink)

The concept of antinatalism is now becoming popular on the Internet. Many online newspaper articles deal with this topic, and numerous academic papers on antinatalism have been published over the past ten years in the fields of philosophy and ethics. The word “antinatalism” was first used in the current meaning in 2006, when the two books that justify the universal negation of procreation were published: one by David Benatar and the other by Théophile de Giraud. However, we can find various (...) prototypes of antinatalistic thoughts in ancient Greece, ancient India, and modern Europe. You might recall the name Schopenhauer. In this paper, I briefly summarize the history of antinatalistic thoughts and propose a set of categories on antinatalism and related thoughts. (shrink)

Recension of the 2023 book "Ethics and Time in the Philosophy of History" an interesting book on metaphysics, moral philosophy, existentialism, and speculative philosophy of history.

This book reconstructs Heidegger’s philosophy of time by reading his work with and against a series of key interlocutors that he nominates as being central to his own critical history of time. In doing so, it explains what makes time of such significance for Heidegger and argues that Heidegger can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of time. Time is a central concern for Heidegger, yet his thinking on the subject is fragmented, making it difficult to grasp (...) its depth, complexity, and promise. Heidegger traces out a history that focuses on the conceptualisations of time put forward by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Husserl—an “alternative history of time” that challenges how time has been defined and studied within both philosophy and the sciences. This book explores what happens when we take seriously Heidegger’s claim that these seven figures are essential to any understanding of time, setting out what this can tell us about existence, possibility, and philosophy as a historical discipline. Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Heidegger, phenomenology, the philosophy of time, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Our understanding of ourselves and the world as historical has drastically changed since the postwar period, yet this emerging historical sensibility has not been appropriately explained in a coherent theory of history. In this book, Zoltán Simon argues that instead of seeing the past, the present and the future together on a temporal continuum as history, we now expect unprecedented change to happen in the future and we look at the past by assuming that such changes have (...) already happened. This radical theory of history challenges narrative conceptualizations of history which assume a past potential of humanity unfolding over time to reach future fulfillment and seeks new ways of conceptualizing the altered socio-cultural concerns Western societies are currently facing. By creating a novel set of concepts to make sense of our altered historical condition regarding both history understood as the course of human affairs and historical writing, History in Times of Unprecedented Change offers a highly original and engaging take on the state of history and historical theory in the present and beyond. (shrink)

The continuing interest in the book of S. Hawking "A Brief History of Time" makes a philosophical evaluation of the content highly desirable. As will be shown, the genre of this work can be identified as a speciality in philosophy, namely the proof of the existence of God. In this study an attempt is given to unveil the philosophical concepts and steps that lead to the final conclusions, without discussing in detail the remarkable review of modern physical theories. (...) In the first place the concept of causality used by Hawking is analyzed in terms of the classical four aspects of cause, that is causa formalis, materialis, efficiens and finalis. Thereafter the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic proof of the existence of God is presented and compared with Hawking's approach. In his argumentation he uses a concept of causality, which in contrast to the classical philosophy neglects completely an ontological dependence and is reduced to only temporal aspects. On the basis of this temporal causality and modern physical theories and speculations, Hawking arrives at his conclusions about a very restricted role of a possible creator. It is shown, that neither from the philosophical nor the scientific view his conclusions about the existence of God are strictly convincing, a position Hawking himself seems to be aware of. (shrink)

On the History of Political Philosophy: Great Political Thinkers from Thucydides to Locke is a lively and lucid account of the major political theorists and philosophers of the ancient Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods. The author demonstrates the continuing significance of some political debates and problems that originated in the history of political philosophy. Topics include discussions concerning human nature, different views of justice, the origin of government and law, the rise and development of different (...) forms of government, idealism and realism in international relations, the distinction between just and unjust war, and the sources of public authority and the nature of legitimate sovereignty. The organizing principle of the book is the idea that the great political thinkers were searching for the best political order and a criterion for human conduct in both domestic and international politics. The book presupposes no previous knowledge of political philosophy. It will therefore be a valuable introductory book for students of philosophy, politics, and international relations. As it opens eyes to the perceptions that historical knowledge may convey, it will also be an illuminating and engaging reading for a general reader. (shrink)

Political Philosophy history is beyond centenaries and there are many books written in each time period and some of them are just the discussion of the current time and other have their impact for long after. With my interest about political philosophy I found this book humanity by” Zaman Ali” just with randomly search on internet and I found it interesting by its label as it is human philosophy and then read it.

The present yearbook (which is the fourth in the series) is subtitled Trends & Cycles. It is devoted to cyclical and trend dynamics in society and nature; special attention is paid to economic and demographic aspects, in particular to the mathematical modeling of the Malthusian and post-Malthusian traps' dynamics. An increasingly important role is played by new directions in historical research that study long-term dynamic processes and quantitative changes. This kind of history can hardly develop without the application of (...) mathematical methods. There is a tendency to study history as a system of various processes, within which one can detect waves and cycles of different lengths – from a few years to several centuries, or even millennia. The contributions to this yearbook present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global historical, political, economic and demographic processes, as well as their mathematical models. This issue of the yearbook consists of three main sections: (I) Long-Term Trends in Nature and Society; (II) Cyclical Processes in Pre-industrial Societies; (III) Contemporary History and Processes. We hope that this issue of the yearbook will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences. (shrink)

Ideas will always resist single-statement definitions, but in a rough attempt at generalization one can say that they either play or are attributed a very special role in thinking and expressive processes, in perhaps all domains of human culture. People who specialize in creating, receiving, transforming, and disseminating them are usually called “intellectuals”—even if they do not monopolize those social practices. The constitution and circulation of ideas as structures of thinking and expression, the settings in which they originate and to (...) which they respond, the material supports in which they are conveyed as well as the intellectual agents specialized in dealing with them are studied by the history of ideas and its neighboring fields. These include intellectual history, history of concepts, histoire des mentalités, Geistesgeschichte, history of books, and even cultural history, sociology of knowledge, and the histories of science, philosophy, literature, and the humanities. As it is obvious, such labels do not support a clear-cut division of labor, nor can they be lined up in an organogram that would fix constant hierarchical relations between them. They show up with incommensurable frequency, displaying different connotations within different academic cultures. This explains why in some cases—as in Geistesgeschichte, Begriffsgeschichte, or histoire des mentalités—equivalent English terms are considered problematic or unnecessary. Having flourished, spread, and sometimes also decayed within different national, disciplinary, and generational contexts, the fields designated by them can only have intricate and overlapping limits. A good way to understand the traditions connected to the history of ideas is hence to look closely to their messy border zones. The closest and most intricate connections are those between “history of ideas” and “intellectual history,” which is reflected in the fact that these terms are often employed interchangeably—a use that will be noted also in the remainder of the present text. Even so, “intellectual history” clearly emerged as preferential designation in the English-speaking world in the final decades of the twentieth century. A reason for this is the spread of the suspicion that “ideas” are burdened by essentialist traits that would render us insensitive to historical discontinuity. The notion of ideas is also sometimes regarded as much too oblivious of the way language conditions thought, and accordingly some analysts suggest that it would be out of line with the best theoretical intelligence established since the so-called linguistic turn (see Kelley 2002a: 310–14). However, others claim that ideas should not be equaled to expressed words, as they refer to occurrences that are best described with psychological terms such as beliefs and attitudes, and, further, that there would be non-essentialist ways of addressing them . What seems more uncontroversial is that, in comparison to “history of ideas,” “intellectual history” opens up an enlarged space of ambivalence as regards the analytical focus, which can then toggle from intellectual products to intellectual producers, consumers, and the cultural frameworks in which they interact. There are also important crossroads between the history of ideas and conceptual history (or Begriffsgeschichte), as both terms signal to the historical study of basic structures of thought. Conceptual history, however, at least in its most well-known variety, which was very much inspired by social-historical approaches, tends to be less centered on biographical and psychological issues and to introduce concepts as more depersonalized linguistic entities. Such and other connections and disconnections between the various ways of attending to “the reflective communal life of human beings in the past” (Burrow) will be further discussed in the following from the perspective of a geographically multicentered historical synopsis. Hopefully, its many limitations will be compensated by the possibilty of bringing to the fore relations that otherwise would not become so salient. (shrink)

This bibliographical guide gives a comprehensive overview of the historiography of philosophy and thought in the Japanese language through an extensive and thematically organized collection of relevant literature. Comprising over one thousand entries, the bibliography shows not only how extensive and complex the Japanese tradition of philosophical and intellectual historiography is, but also how it might be structured and analyzed to make it accessible to a comparative and intercultural approach to the historiography of philosophy worldwide. The literature is categorized and (...) organized according to thematic focus areas such as geographical regions and continents, nations or peoples, religious traditions and philosophical teachings such as Buddhism, Islam, Shintō, and Confucianism, as well as disciplines such as ethics, aesthetics, and political thought. The bibliography is accompanied by an introduction outlining the research method as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyzing the material, followed by a chronological overview of the historiography of philosophy and thought in the Japanese language and of the Japanese tradition of writing “world histories of philosophy.” As a first step towards a “history of the historiography of philosophy” in non-European languages, we hope that this guide will provide a useful tool for interculturally oriented scholarship aimed at a non-Eurocentric and diversified historiography of philosophy in a global perspective. (Open access, see link below.). (shrink)

According to the working definition of the International Big History Association, ‘Big History seeks to understand the integrated history of the Cosmos, Earth, Life and Humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods’. In recent years Big History has been developing very fast indeed. Big History courses are taught in the schools and universities of several dozen countries. Hundreds of researchers are involved in studying and teaching Big History. The unique approach of (...) Big History, the interdisciplinary genre of history that deals with the grand narrative of 13.8 billion years, has opened up a vast amount of research agendas. Big History brings together constantly updated information from the scientific disciplines and merges it with the contemplative realms of philosophy and the humanities. It also provides a connection between the past, present, and future. Big History is a colossal and extremely heterogeneous field of research encompassing all the forms of existence and all timescales. Unsurprisingly, Big History may be presented in very different aspects and facets. In this volume the Big History is presented and discussed in three different ways. In its first part, Big History is explored in terms of methodology, theories of knowledge, as well as showcasing the personal approach of scholars to Big History. The second section comprises such articles that could clarify Big History's main trends and laws. The third part of this book explores the nature of teaching Big History as well as profiling a number of educational methods. This volume will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Astrophysics, Geology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Linguistics and other areas of study. (shrink)

A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen’s theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen’s claim that the (...) goal underlying historical writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen’s theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. Ultimately, Assis not only shows how Droysen helped reinvent the relationship between historical knowledge and human agency, but also traces some of the contradictions and limitations inherent to that project. (shrink)

This book shows, "Nothing is permanent in this World" consisting of true events in span of life when matches with Classical Literature of reality against illusions..

Ancient Chinese history holds a quality which has syncretized traditional thought with its cultural wealth unified of mystical and mythological figures in the background. Such that classical documents, which had begun to be written before Common Era, has directly influenced the political regime, education system and status of society in China. One of the most prominent features of these works is to propound collective knowledge about perception of cosmology, attitudes to earthiness, community standards, policy and morality. Among Five Classics (...) works of these masterpieces of Chinese philosophy, Book of Changes which stands closest to metaphysical narrative, mainly consists of the texts about prophecy. While this piece of work had been referred as a divination guide in Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC), it turned into a cosmological text that included a range of philosophical commentary during Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The mainstay of this remarkable change is the direct correlation of all the concepts and terms that characterize the worldly beyond along with the relevant text, especially yin-yang dualism, which symbolizes an extraordinary harmony in early Chinese thought. Traditional idea suggests reciprocity in which heaven, earth and man are interconnected to maintain natural order. However, the superiority attributed to human beings also brings compulsive responsibilities to idealize a compatible society. This paper aims to discuss influences of cosmological and anthropological items on human behaviors explained in prescriptive perspective. (shrink)

Recent literature on Christian nationalism by sociologists of religion in the United States identifies a perceived novel phenomenon: the fusion of authoritarian governmental forms with Christianity. However, the socio-historical origin of this international trend has been left relatively unexplored. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to create a single international account that lends itself to future comparative theoretical frameworks and analyses through the term "Christofascism." -/- The chapter can also be accessed on google books at the link included in (...) the description. Finally, order the book on Routledge's website, also linked in the description. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explain economic dualism in the history of modern Europe. The emergence of the manorial-serf economy in the Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary in the 16th and the 17th centuries was the result of a cumulative impact of various circumstantial factors. The weakness of cities in Central Europe disturbed the social balance – so characteristic for Western-European societies – between burghers and the nobility. The political dominance of the nobility hampered the development of (...) cities and limited the influence of burghers, paving the way to the rise of serfdom and manorial farms. These processes were accompanied by increased demand for agricultural products in Western Europe. (shrink)

Since the stone age humankind has created masterworks which possess a mysterious quality of solidity and grandeur or monumentality. A Paleolithic Venus and a still life by Cezanne both share this monumentality. Michelangelo likened monumentality to sculptural relief, Braque called monumentality 'space', and Hans Hoffman, himself one of the masters, called monumentality 'pictorial depth.' The masters agreed on the import of monumentality, but none of them left a clear explanation of it. In 1943 Earl Loran published his classic book (...) on Cezanne's pictorial structure but, as I demonstrate, his explanation was misleading. This book provide a clear explanation, as did an earlier book by Robert Casper. This book also traces some history of monumentality with reproductions. It also explains how some painters achieved monumentality and how a student can attempt it. Pictorial space is created in the tension between pairs of opposing planes. Opposing planes pull against each other, each containing the other, paradoxically, within the flat surface of the canvas. Sculpture also can be 'plastic': opposing masses pull against each other, each containing the other and creating tension in the space which lies between them. Painting has other aspects like subject matter, expression, style and technique but pictorial space does not depend on these. Monumentality moves us profoundly and apparently has done so since the Paleolith. Using patients' vignettes, I show that there are profound parallels between the structure of a monumental work of art and the structure of an evolving personality. In Winnicott's words, such a personality has 'depth ... an interior space to put beliefs in ... an inside ... a space where things can be held ... the capacity to accept paradox [to contain opposites] ... room and strength ... and originality and the acceptance of tradition as the basis for invention'. A monumental painting also meets this description. I argue that monumental art provides a visual portrait of an evolving personality just as myth, as Freud and Jung both showed, provides a narrative portrait of an evolving personality. An evolving personality is perhaps humankind's most important creation; an underlying purpose of both myth and art is to help us achieve it. I demonstrate in this book that monumental art represented the evolving personality since at least 35,000 BC. Thus to understand monumentality is to better understand the personality and its history. (shrink)

“Trends in Logic XVI: Consistency, Contradiction, Paraconsistency, and Reasoning - 40 years of CLE” is being organized by the Centre for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science at the State University of Campinas (CLEUnicamp) from September 12th to 15th, 2016, with the auspices of the Brazilian Logic Society, Studia Logica and the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference is intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of CLE, and is centered around the areas of logic, epistemology, philosophy and (...) class='Hi'>history of science, while bringing together scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science and other disciplines who have contributed significantly to what Studia Logica is today and to what CLE has achieved in its four decades of existence. It intends to celebrate CLE’s strong influence in Brazil and Latin America and the tradition of investigating formal methods inspired by, and devoted to, philosophical views, as well as philosophical problems approached by means of formal methods. The title of the event commemorates one of the three main areas of CLE, what has been called the “Brazilian school of paraconsistency”, combining such a pluralist view about logic and reasoning. (shrink)

Alex Rosenberg’s latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives (...) are morally and ethically pernicious. Rosenberg’s book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now “preempting” explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg’s argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one. (shrink)

A Fortiori Logic: Innovations, History and Assessments is a wide-ranging and in-depth study of a fortiori reasoning, comprising a great many new theoretical insights into such argument, a history of its use and discussion from antiquity to the present day, and critical analyses of the main attempts at its elucidation. Its purpose is nothing less than to lay the foundations for a new branch of logic and greatly develop it; and thus to once and for all dispel the (...) many fallacious ideas circulating regarding the nature of a fortiori reasoning. -/- The work is divided into three parts. The first part, Formalities, presents the author’s largely original theory of a fortiori argument, in all its forms and varieties. Its four (or eight) principal moods are analyzed in great detail and formally validated, and secondary moods are derived from them. A crescendo argument is distinguished from purely a fortiori argument, and similarly analyzed and validated. These argument forms are clearly distinguished from the pro rata and analogical forms of argument. Moreover, we examine the wide range of a fortiori argument; the possibilities of quantifying it; the formal interrelationships of its various moods; and their relationships to syllogistic and analogical reasoning. Although a fortiori argument is shown to be deductive, inductive forms of it are acknowledged and explained. Although a fortiori argument is essentially ontical in character, more specifically logical-epistemic and ethical-legal variants of it are acknowledged. -/- The second part of the work, Ancient and Medieval History, looks into use and discussion of a fortiori argument in Greece and Rome, in the Talmud, among post-Talmudic rabbis, and in Christian, Moslem, Chinese and Indian sources. Aristotle’s approach to a fortiori argument is described and evaluated. There is a thorough analysis of the Mishnaic qal vachomer argument, and a reassessment of the dayo principle relating to it, as well as of the Gemara’s later take on these topics. The valuable contribution, much later, by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto is duly acknowledged. Lists are drawn up of the use of a fortiori argument in the Jewish Bible, the Mishna, the works of Plato and Aristotle, the Christian Bible and the Koran; and the specific moods used are identified. Moreover, there is a pilot study of the use of a fortiori argument in the Gemara, with reference to Rodkinson’s partial edition of the Babylonian Talmud, setting detailed methodological guidelines for a fuller study. There is also a novel, detailed study of logic in general in the Torah. -/- The third part of the present work, Modern and Contemporary Authors, describes and evaluates the work of numerous (some thirty) recent contributors to a fortiori logic, as well as the articles on the subject in certain lexicons. Here, we discover that whereas a few authors in the last century or so made some significant contributions to the field, most of them shot woefully off-target in various ways. The work of each author, whether famous or unknown, is examined in detail in a dedicated chapter, or at least in a section; and his ideas on the subject are carefully weighed. The variety of theories that have been proposed is impressive, and stands witness to the complexity and elusiveness of the subject, and to the crying need for the present critical and integrative study. But whatever the intrinsic value of each work, it must be realized that even errors and lacunae are interesting because they teach us how not to proceed. -/- This book also contains, in a final appendix, some valuable contributions to general logic, including new analyses of symbolization and axiomatization, existential import, the tetralemma, the Liar paradox and the Russell paradox. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Nominalism in history, its application, and its historiographical implications. By engaging with recent scholarship as well as classic works, a survey of Nominalism’s role in the discipline of history is made; such examination is timely, since it has been done but scantily in a purely historical context. In the light of recent theoretical works, which often display aporias over the nature and method of historical enquiry, the paper offers new considerations on historical theory, which (...) in the author’s view may solve some of the contradictions that have surfaced in recent times. The Nominalistic stance is argued against by disputing theorists such as Paul Veyne, who has made a case for Nominalism in history. A brief philosophical section introduces Nominalism in its metaphysical dimension and the discussion is speedily brought to its significance for history. The paper also proposes a solution to the misconstrued yet too often vague application of scientism in history, and offers theoretical grounds that might solve some of the ‘stormy grounds’ historiography finds itself today. Articles by Marcel Gauchet and History and Theory’s Anton Froeyman and Bert Leuridan are engaged with, as well as Murray Murphy’s books on the philosophy of history. Works by Georg Gadamer, Marc Bloch, Benedetto Croce, Hyppolite Taine, and Anthony Grafton crucially inform the discussion and brace the consequential conclusion. (shrink)

The development of the use of computers and software in art from the Fifties to the present is explained. As general aspects of the history of computer art an interface model and three dominant modes to use computational processes (generative, modular, hypertextual) are presented. The "History of Computer Art" features examples of early developments in media like cybernetic sculptures, computer graphics and animation (including music videos and demos), video and computer games, reactive installations, virtual reality, evolutionary art and (...) net art. The functions of relevant art works are explained more detailed than usual in such histories. The second edition for the Book on Demand (Lulu Press, 2020) includes an update of chapter II.1.1 (first edition 2014). (shrink)

A polemical account of Australian philosophy up to 2003, emphasising its unique aspects (such as commitment to realism) and the connections between philosophers' views and their lives. Topics include early idealism, the dominance of John Anderson in Sydney, the Orr case, Catholic scholasticism, Melbourne Wittgensteinianism, philosophy of science, the Sydney disturbances of the 1970s, Francofeminism, environmental philosophy, the philosophy of law and Mabo, ethics and Peter Singer. Realist theories especially praised are David Armstrong's on universals, David Stove's on logical probability (...) and the ethical realism of Rai Gaita and Catholic philosophers. In addition to strict philosophy, the book treats non-religious moral traditions to train virtue, such as Freemasonry, civics education and the Greek and Roman classics. (shrink)

Because we tend to study fight books in isolation, we often forget how difficult it is to understand the precise place they occupy in the sociocultural and historical fabric of their time, and spill the many clues they inevitably contain on their owner, their local society, their precise purpose. In order to unlock that information, we need to study them in their broader sociocultural and historical context. This requires a background and research skills that are not always easily accessible to (...) everyone. To illustrate the point, in this paper I show in some detail what is required to make sense of the claim that Aristotelian philosophy and science influenced the medieval fight books in relevant ways, and that understanding this influence helps us to better understand the fight books per se. I give an outline of the general historical framework, and apply it to a testcase: Talhoffer’s Thott 290 2° Ms., with some interesting results. My hope is that this framework may be of some use to other researchers in HEMA Studies who want to dig deeper in sources of interest to them. (shrink)

This is a greatly expanded version of my article "Anarchism and the Beats," which was published in the book, The Philosophy of the Beats, by the University Press of Kentucky in 2012. It is both an historical and a philosophical analysis of the postwar American counterculture. It charts the historical origins of the postwar American counterculture from the anarchists and romantic poets of the early nineteenth century to a complex network of beat poets and pacifist anarchists in the early (...) decades after World War II. The beat poets understood themselves to be religious prophets of a new form of liberated consciousness. Poetry was both a means to achieve this new form of consciousness and a means to express that consciousness once it was achieved by other means including travel, psychedelic drugs, sex or meditation. The transformation of consciousness sought by the beats was therefore primarily religious in nature, not political or ideological. However, that does not mean that the beats believed that the transformation of consciousness they sought had no political or social implications. On the contrary, the beats were almost all anarchists. It merely means that, for them, political ideology follows consciousness, not the reverse. (shrink)

Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and his School of Mind dominated the intellectual world of sixteenth-century Ming China (1368-1644), and his Confucian philosophy has since remained an essential component of East Asian philosophical discourse. Yet, the volume of publications on him in the Western-language literature has consistently paled in comparison to the volume of scholarship on classical Chinese philosophy, modern Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, and Daoism. Studying Wang Yangming: History of a Sinological Field explains the history of writing in the West (...) about the famed Ming dynasty scholar-official. From eighteenth-century French Jesuit books to English-language publications in 2020, this book provides a historical overview and summary of a literature published by scholars attempting to grapple with one of the most influential Confucians in the history of China, East Asia, and the world. (shrink)

The aim of this collection is to create a curated set of key German source texts from the eighteenth-century life sciences devoted to theories of generation, heredity, and race. The criteria for inclusion stem from our sense that there is an argument to be made for connecting three domains of inquiry that have heretofore remained mostly distinct in both their presentation and scholarly analysis: i) life science debates regarding generation and embryogenesis, ii) emerging philosophical and anthropological theories regarding the nature (...) of racial typology, and iii) the role of empire in supplying the ethnographic materials in use as evidence for the various investigations and theories being proposed. The Key Texts volume thus has three sections. The first section is devoted to selections from theorists working to create an account of the processes guiding generation and embryogenetic development. Given that at the time there were few ways to definitively prove that babies received contributions from both parents in their creation, mixed-race children became increasingly valuable sources of evidence for those insisting on joint inheritance. Although this sets up the second section of the volume—since one can trace a clear facet of racial biometric science out of this original set of enquiries—the bulk of section two is devoted to the many different accounts created at the time to understand and delineate racial differences. The third section is focused on ‘race and empire’ in order to situate the scientific texts of the previous sections in their socio-historical context. By including these pieces, it is our aim to remind readers that scientific curiosity over the nature and origin of racial diversity did not develop in a vacuum but indeed existed in full knowledge of the exploitation and dispossession of human beings. The ‘materials’ for this research program were in many cases either directly taken from black and brown human beings caught up in Europe’s colonial projects or were provided by the data gathered during large-scale voyages of exploration. The material basis of this type of research was rarely reflected upon by any of the theorists in sections one and two of the volume, a fact that has led many historians of science to focus on these theories without attention to the socio-historical context; we are deliberately trying to avoid this and indeed to deepen our own readers’ appreciation of the fact. (shrink)

In this book, Fukuyama seeks to provide affirmative answers to two fundamental questions: Has the ideal of liberal democracy effectively triumphed throughout the world so that we can now speak of the end of humankind's ideological development and thus the end of history? If so, is this a good thing?

From ancient conceptions of becoming a philosopher to modern discussions of psychedelic drugs, the concept of transformation plays a fascinating part in the history of philosophy. However, until now there has been no sustained exploration of the full extent of its role. Transformation and the History of Philosophy is an outstanding survey of the history, nature, and development of the idea of transformation, from the ancient period to the twentieth century. Comprising twenty-two specially commissioned chapters by an (...) international team of contributors, the volume is divided into four clear parts: -/- - Philosophy as Transformative: Ancient China, Greece, India, and Rome - Transformation Between the Human and the Divine: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy - Transformation After the Copernican Revolution: Post-Kantian Philosophy - Treatises, Pregnancies, Psychedelics, and Epiphanies: Twentieth-Century Philosophy. -/- Each of these sections begins with an introduction by the editors. Transformation and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of western and non-western philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates institution reconstructing critique—the central methodological strategy employed by Axel Honneth in his latest book Freedom’s Right designed to articulate and justify the normative standards employed by a critical theory of the present. It begins by considering, at a general level, the promises and limits of three ideal-typical normative methodologies of social critique: first principles critique, intuition refining critique, and institution reconstructing critique. It then turns to the details of Honneth’s history and diagnosis of market (...) spheres of society as one key example of institution reconstruction critique. This leads to a consideration of some challenges facing this kind of critique, paying particular attention to problems posed by alternative reconstructions of the same data. It argues, in particular, that there is a troubling indeterminacy in this reconstruction, since alternative teleologies yield substantively different normative analyses of capitalism, and hence substantively different social critiques. In conclusion, the paper suggests some methodological remedies which might need to be adopted in order to make good on the promise of institution reconstructing critique while avoiding some of its most challenging problems. (shrink)

This is the first volume to offer a systematic consideration and comprehensive overview of Christianity’s long engagement with the Platonic philosophical tradition. The book offers a detailed consideration of the most fertile sources and concepts in Christian Platonism, a historical contextualization of its development, and a series of constructive engagements with central questions. Bringing together a range of leading scholars, the volume guides readers through each of these dimensions, uniquely investigating and explicating one of the most important, controversial, and (...) often misunderstood elements of Christian intellectual history. (shrink)

This is the book of abstracts of the 19th Brazilian Logic Conferences. The Brazilian Logic Conferences (EBL) is one of the most traditional logic conferences in South America. Organized by the Brazilian Logic Society (SBL), its main goal is to promote the dissemination of research in logic in a broad sense. It has been occurring since 1979, congregating logicians of different fields — mostly philosophy, mathematics and computer science — and with different backgrounds — from undergraduate students to senior (...) researchers. The meeting is an important moment for the Brazilian and South American logical community to join together and discuss recent developments of the field. The areas of logic covered in the conference spread over foundations and philosophy of science, analytic philosophy, philosophy and history of logic, mathematics, computer science, informatics, linguistics and artificial intelligence. Previous editions of the EBL have been a great success, attracting researchers from all over Latin America and elsewhere. -/- The 19th edition of EBL takes place from May 6-10, 2019, in the beautiful city of João Pessoa, at the northeast coast of Brazil. It is conjointly organized by Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), whose main campus is located in João Pessoa, Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), whose main campus is located in the nearby city of Campina Grande (the second-largest city in Paraíba state) and SBL. It is sponsored by UFPB, UFCG, the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Paraíba. It takes place at Hotel Luxxor Nord Tambaú, privileged located right in front Tambaú beach, one of João Pessoa’s most famous beaches. (shrink)

Hailed as "a feast" (Washington Post) and "a modern-day bestiary" (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Beginning at the time of Alexander the Great, the monsters come fast and furious--Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, (...) right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unravels traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated. (shrink)

A History of Intelligence and “Intellectual Disability” examines how the concepts of intellectual ability and disability became part of psychology, medicine and biology. Focusing on the period between the Protestant Reform and 1700, this book shows that in many cases it has been accepted without scientific and psychological foundations that intelligence and disability describe natural or trans-historical realities.

This research explores the “ History of Vietnamese Vocational Educational and Training (VET) since 1954”. It provides policymakers, educators, and administrators with a review of Vietnam’s VET models through three significant periods, 1954 to 1975, 1976 to 1985, and 1986 to the present. The research was conducted at 13 vocational schools of 13 provinces and cities in Vietnam. Data were collected from documentary and interview data. Participants were former and current MOLISA policymakers and managers, current and former DOLISA officials, (...) former and current principals and head teachers of vocational schools from 13 provinces and cities of Vietnam. They were selected using the snowball method, where initial participants recommend the potential subsequent participants. Findings show that the informal VET model originating from the ancient past in the form of the traditional vocational village undeveloped to establish the formal VET model in Vietnam. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century when the French invaded Vietnam and set up the first vocational school system, that the formal VET model was formed. Since 1954 Vietnamese VET has experienced three different models. From 1955 to 1975 Vietnam was divided into two different political areas: in South Vietnam, the VET system was based on the French VET model. Whereas, the VET system of North Vietnam followed the model of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). After Vietnam was unified in 1975, the VET model of North Vietnam was applied across the country and the VET model of South Vietnam was replaced. Since 1986, the Vietnamese government has implemented a Doi Moi policy (the renewal policy), and the Vietnamese VET system has transferred from the USSR’s VET model to the German dual model. -/- The Vietnam government has been faced challenges in implementing this model. Findings show that these challenges partially came from the history of the Vietnamese VET development. It was not until 1969 when the Vietnamese government established the General Department of Technical Workers Training (GDTWT) to design and manage the VET system, that the public VET system in Vietnam was officially founded. During the period of 1975 to 1986, under the support of the USSR, the Vietnamese VET system was influenced by the USSR’s VET style, which was subsidised and attached to the plans of the state economy. Although the Vietnamese government implemented a Doi Moi policy (the renewal policy) in 1986, which transitioned from a subsidised to market economy, the VET system was not reformed to meet the demands of market economy. It was not until 1991, the Vietnamese government VET policies aimed to modernise its VET system to meet the needs of a market economy. It was further delayed until 2006 when the law of VET was issued, and the public VET system in Vietnam was standardised. Since 2016, to modernise the VET system, the Vietnamese government has cooperated with the Australian government to develop a dual model in Vietnam. This study provides an overall look of Vietnamese VET development through its three historical periods, 1954 to 1975, 1976 to 1985, 1986 to the present. (shrink)