This paper examines Hermann Cohen's idiosyncratic construction of a medieval Jewish philosophical tradition, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on his Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis . This construction, not unlike modern accounts, is filtered through the central place of Maimonides. For Cohen, however, Maimonides' centrality is defined not by his systematization of Aristotelianism, but by his elevation of ethics over metaphysics. The ethical and pantheistic concerns of Maimonides' precursors, according to this reading, anticipate his uniqueness. Whereas Shlomo ibn Gabirol's pantheistic doctrine (...) of emanation, for example, assigned little weight to ethics, Abraham ibn Daud rebelled against such a doctrine. Ibn Daud—much like Bahya ibn Paquda and Abraham ibn Ezra—becomes part of a Jewish philosophical tradition that culminates in Maimonides' rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, this paper examines the way in which Cohen envisaged the pre-Maimonidean philosophical tradition, putting his highly critical reading of Shlomo ibn Gabirol and his pantheistic obsession with prime matter in counterpoint with his more favorable readings of Abraham ibn Daud and Bahya ibn Paquda. (shrink)

This article interrogates the concepts of faith, the ethical, and tragedy in Fear and Trembling by examining Johannes De Silentio’s allusions to heroic characters. I argue that these heroes are emblematic of faith or tragedy through their orientation to a promise in their respective mythic narratives. Abraham’s faith in the covenant with God commits him to the reconcilability of virtue and the good life, while the tragic heroes’ commitments to the ethical reveal their inability to transcend the (tragic) presumption (...) that virtue and the good life are ultimately incommensurable. I conclude by sketching a politics corresponding to De Silentio’s conception of tragedy. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a reading of Fear and Trembling that responds to critiques of Kierkegaardian ethics as being, as Brand Blanshard claims, “morally nihilistic,” as Emmanuel Levinas contends, ethically violent, and, as Alasdair MacIntyre charges, simply irrational. I argue that by focusing on Isaac's singularity as the very condition for Abraham's “ordeal,” the book presents a story about responsible subjectivity. Rather than standing in competition with the relation to God, the relation to other people is, thus, inscribed (...) into this very relation. Fear and Trembling, I contend, advocates a bidirectional responsibility that is constitutive of subjectivity itself and, as such, actually resonates with certain aspects of Levinasian ethics. I conclude by suggesting that Abraham's ordeal is not due to the conflict between a nonreligious duty and the duty to God, but instead reflects a tension that is internal to the life of faith itself. (shrink)

Artikeln är en översikt av den tysk-judiska invandringen till Sverige från 1770-talet och framåt. Till en början skedde invandringen till stor del i form av kedjemigration från Mecklenburg. Många i pionjären Aaron Isaacs släktkrets invandrade, likaså i släktkretsen kring hans kompanjon Abraham Aaron. Under 1800-talet fortsatte frivilliginvandringen men nu i mindre form av kedjemigration och med mer differentierad geografisk bakgrund än tidigare. Så småningom kom invandringen från Tyskland numerärt att överflygas av den så kallade östjudiska invandringen; av (...) de judar som bodde i Sverige 1880 var bara åtta procent födda i Tyskland och 1920 mindre än fem procent. Många tysk-judiska invandrare vid denna tid, såsom bankmannen Louis Frænckel, gjorde betydelsefulla insatser i det svenska industriundret. Trots den restriktiva invandringspolitiken på 1930-talet kom ett antal tysk-judiska flyktingar till Sverige, såväl individuellt som genom särskilda kvoter. Många blev betydande aktörer i olika sektorer av samhället, och några blev internationellt kända namn som författaren och Nobelpristagaren Nelly Sachs och kärnfysikern Lise Meitner. Många flyktingar fick dock inte arbete som motsvarade deras utbildningar. Bland ”1945 års räddade” fanns tämligen få från Tyskland. (shrink)

Melchizedek’s meeting with Abraham in the King’s Valley would mark the history of the chosen people. As king of Salem and priest of the Almighty God, Melchizedek meets the patriarch with bread and wine and then blesses him in the name of the God they both served. Assuming this liturgical ritual Abraham offers Melchizedek a tenth of everything, by this acknowledging and accepting his sacerdotal service. Even though at a first sight their gestures are somewhat natural, we will (...) understand going through our study that the attitude of each character implies a deeper significance. This is emphasized firstly in psalms, in the context of several Messianic sentences, which refer to an eternal priesthood that finds its origins not in the service of Aaron, but in that of Melchizedek. This text would generate and fundament later the Pauline discourse on the priesthood of Jesus Christ and implicitly of the Christians. The resemblance of Melchizedek with Jesus Christ is maximized by Saint Apostle Paul who states that the king of Salem was “without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life”. Who is, in fact, this mysterious character? Why did the Hebrew want to identify him with a known biblical character? What are the reasons that determined the Christian authors to recompose the history of this character? These are just a few of the questions we intend to answer through the research that we are about to present. (shrink)

Immediately before the release of DSM-5, a group of psychiatric thought leaders published the results of field tests of DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. They characterized the interrater reliability for diagnosing major depressive disorder by two trained mental health practitioners as of “questionable agreement.” These field tests confirmed an open secret among psychiatrists that our current diagnostic criteria for diagnosing major depressive disorder are unreliable and neglect essential experiences of persons in depressive episodes. Alternative diagnostic criteria exist, but psychiatrists rarely encounter them, (...) forestalling the discipline’s epistemological crisis. In Alsadair MacIntyre’s classic essay, such crises occur in science when a person encounters a rival schemata that is incompatible with their current schemata and subsequently constructs a narrative that allows them to reconstruct their own tradition. In search of rival schemata that are in conversation with their own tradition, psychiatric practitioners can utilize alternative diagnostic criteria like the Cultural Formulation Interview, embrace an epistemologically humble psychiatry, and attend to the narrative experience of a person experiencing a depressive episode. (shrink)

Recently there has been a strong movement towards reflections about the “geography of reason,” especially among philosophers who deal with postcolonial thinking. There is also a renewed interest among different schools of thought, both analytical and continental, in the ways our “life world,” or “embodiment,” or “situated cognition,” shape our minds and eventually the philosophy we do. As a result, we have seen some recent publications on the nature and import of the concept of “place” by authors such as Edward (...) Casey, Jeff Malpas, and Bruce Janz. In Philosophy in an African place, Bruce Janz introduces the concept of “philosophy-in-place” with the question as to what it is to do philosophy in a particular context of lived experience or, more specifically, what it is to do philosophy in an African place. This paper expands on Janz's “philosophy-in-place” by developing what will be called a “philosophy through place.” It starts with Janz's discussion of the problem of placing philosophy and a philosophy-in-place. Then it attempts to develop an argument for a “philosophy through place” and its implications for considering the place of philosophy in Africa and the challenge it poses to philosophy. (shrink)

The main designs of modern theories of syntax assume a process of syntagmatic organization. However, research on first language acquisition leaves no doubt that the structured combination of single lexical items cannot begin until a critical mass of lexical items has been acquired such that the lexicon is structured hierarchically on the basis of hierarchical feature bundling. Independent of a decision between the main views about the design of a proto language (the grammarless “Holophrastic view”,Arbib & Bickerton 2010: 1,Bickerton 2014) (...) or the ‘Compositional View’ as taken byRizzi (2010),Carstairs-McCarthy (2010), and others. What seems to be the minimal offset for language is the existence of grammatical categories like verb and noun, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, functional categories as needed for the expression of all kinds of agreement between the distinct categories to form recursively structured complexes. I follow the different stages of complexification asking whether there is paradigmatic next to syntagmatic organization and what its added value is for the evolution of grammar. The conclusion will be that paradigmatics is an indismissible part of the organization of early language in that it structures the lexicon so as to make primary and secondary syntactic merge possible and, consequently, is also a prerequisite for movement. The guiding idea of this position is Roman Jakobson’s insistence on the twofold organization of language and grammar. The two organizational designs, syntagmatics and paradigmatics, are manifest within each module: in the phonetic, the morphological, the syntactic, the semantic, and the pragmatic form (consider Jakobson’s1971a,breiterated argument). (shrink)

This article takes up film and imagination via the problem of empathy. Proposing a different entry into contemporary polemics over empathy, the ‘empathic imagination’ is reconceptualized as a problematic of form rather than psychological experience. That is, instead of adopting a pre-given notion of empathy to illuminate the relation between film and the spectator's moral imagination, this article considers how that imagination is constituted in and through the image to begin with. After tracing the genealogy of empathy in German aesthetics, (...) the concept is put into play through readings of ‘#Look Beyond Borders’, an online video produced by Amnesty International, and two documentaries by Johan van der Keuken – Face Value and Herman Slobbe. In these works, the facial image is read as the imaginary terrain in which to explore very different notions of what might count as empathy and the empathic imagination in film and media. (shrink)

in his recent text Sustainable Knowledge, Robert Frodeman argues that the unchecked proliferation of academic knowledge is unsustainable. While his account provides a basis for more sustainable disciplinary practices, it fails to show how the knowledge produced by such practices is ultimately superior to traditional academic knowledge. This essay provides an epistemic justification for sustainable knowledge. It begins by introducing the maker’s knowledge tradition as an alternative to traditional academic knowledge. It then expands and advances this tradition through Dewey’s naturalized (...) epistemology. Ultimately, it develops an account of knowledge that is not only of a higher quality than traditional knowledge but... (shrink)

On the centenary of Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” his essay still performs interpretative work. In it, Weber argues that the vocation of a scientist is to produce specialized, rationalized knowledge that will be superseded. Weber says this vocation is a rationalized version of the Protestant conception of calling or vocation (Beruf), tragically disenchanting the world and leaving the idea of calling as a worthless remains (caput mortuum). A similar trajectory can be seen in the physician William Osler’s writings, (...) especially his essay “Internal Medicine as a Vocation,” in which the calling of a physician is described as both rational and noble. While Osler’s conception of the physician’s vocation has been formative for contemporary medicine, physicians are reporting burnout and leaving medical practice at escalating rates. As physicians abandon their noble vocations, an alternative conception of a physician’s vocation is needed. From the worthless remains of the physician’s rational and noble vocation, the labor of a physician can find grounding in humility. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of the 12th-century philosophical and ethical classic that has been a key work in the development of medieval Jewish thought.

William Abraham studied Philosophy at the University of Ghana, and even more Philosophy at Oxford University. Thereafter, he gained permission to take part in the competitive examination and interview for a fellowship at All Souls' College. The examination was once described, with some exaggeration, as 'the hardest exam in the world!' It included a three-hour essay. Following his success in becoming the first African fellow of All Souls, his interest in African politics quickly developed into a Pan-African perspective. The (...) Mind of Africa, written while he was still at All Souls, was a fruit of that enlarged perspective. After several years as a Fellow, he had occasion to visit Ghana in 1962. There Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, successfully persuaded him to return to Ghana to teach at the University of Ghana, Legon and he subsequently resigned from All Souls. In 1968, he went to the United States as a visiting professor. This was followed by invitations to teach at various academic institutions there, including Berkeley and Stanford. He subsequently settled in California, where he continued to teach and research philosophy in the University of California at Santa Cruz until his retirement. The Mind of Africa appeared at a time when a number of African countries were obtaining, or fighting for, their political freedom from their colonial rulers and becoming independent nations and expecting to build new societies in accordance with their own visions and conceptions, though not necessarily jettisoning all the features of their colonial heritage. Building new societies requires appropriate ideologies and philosophies fashioned within the crucible of their cultural and historical experiences. Thus, the relation between ideology and society is taken up at the very outset of the book... The Mind of Africa is important for Africa's future and identity. (shrink)

The human microbiome is the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that cover our skin, line our intestines, and flourish in our body cavities. Work on the human microbiome is new, but it is quickly becoming a leading area of biomedical research. What scientists are learning about humans and our microbiomes could change medical practice by introducing new treatment modalities. This new knowledge redefines us as superorganisms comprised of the human body and the collection of microbes that inhabit it and reveals how (...) much we are a part of our environment. The understanding that microbes are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary for survival recasts our interaction with microbes from adversarial to neighborly. This volume explores some of the science that makes human microbiome research possible. It then considers ethical, legal, and social concerns raised by microbiome research. Chapters explore issues related to personal identity, property rights, and privacy. The authors reflect on how human microbiome research challenges reigning views on public health and research ethics. They also address the need for thoughtful policies and procedures to guide the use of the biobanked human samples required for advancing this new domain of research. In the course of these explorations, they introduce examples from the history of biomedical science and recent legal cases that shed light on the issues and inform the policy recommendations they offer at the end of each topic's discussion.This volume is the product of an NIH Human Microbiome Project grant. It represents three years of conversations focused on consensus formation by the twenty-seven members of the interdisciplinary Microbiome Working Group. (shrink)

In this article the authors reflect on regulations which have been developed to protect research subjects and data in research which uses human subjects. They suggest that regulations related to informed consent and privacy protection are burdensome in research which uses human subjects. They argue that a new category of research risk must be established which informs research subjects of the level of risk that they will be exposed to by participating in the research.

PART ONE Ethical Relativity: Background and Analysis ...

This book is concerned with the relationship between processes of accumulation and aspects of distribution. The analyses of Ricardo and Marx are reevaluated and redeveloped in the light of advances made by von Neumann, Sraffa and more contemporary theoreticians. Joint production systems are integrated into the analysis, which allows the authors to define the effect of the theorem of non-substitution, and to reconsider the problem of obsolescence and the choice of technique.

Jean-François Lyotard é un dos filósofos franceses da segunda mitade do século XX que intentou darlle unha oportunidade á elaboración dun pensamento do acontecemento a partir da súa unión co motivo da diferenza. O punto de arranque é a consideración de que o coñecemento non pode reducir toda diferenza a identidade, ao quedar sempre marxes e restos que non se poden traducir dunha lingua a outra nin asimilar por un concepto unificador. Lyotard apostará por tratar de prefigurar o xurdimento da (...) novidade cun pensamento que vaia máis alá do homoxéneo. A diferenza pretenderá deixar sinalados os restos inasimilables e intraducibles, tamén os despropósitos, mentres, asemade, dá espazo e lugar a un discurso e unha comunicación aberta, aínda que desaxustada, que axude a que algo aconteza. (shrink)

_Higher Education in Nazi Germany_ was first published in 1944, when it was apparent that Germany was likely to lose the war. Developing themes that were to become commonplace in the analysis of totalitarian regimes, it provides an account of how higher education became a means of both installing and re-enforcing the dominant state ideology.

Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century addresses the troubling questions posed by the modern Jewish worshiper, including such obstacles to prayer as the inability to concentrate on the words and meanings of formal liturgy, the paucity of emotional involvement, the lack of theological conviction, the anthropomorphic and particularly the masculine emphasis of prayer nomenclature, and other matters. In assessing these difficultites, Cohen brings to the reader the writings on prayer of some seminal 20th century Jewish theologians. These (...) include Herman Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Avraham Yitzhak, Hoakohen Kook, Mordecai M. Kaplan, R. Arele, Aaron Rote, Elie Munk, Abraham J. Heschel, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Eugene B. Borowitz, and Lawrence A. Hoffman. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The current research paper seeks to investigate how Evangelicals and Pietist, the most fervent of Protestants sought to ‘educate’ the masses outside the educational framework of ecclesiastical and state structures within the Hungarian Kingdom. More specifically the study intends to offer a concise overview of the history of Protestants who spread the gospel through the distribution of affordable Bibles, New Testaments and Christian tracts. It shows how various denominations worked together as well as directs attention to their theological outlook which (...) transcended ethnic boundaries. It is a well-known fact in mission and church history that such undertakings were carried out to stir revivalism. The study also throws light on how influential role the Scottish Mission as well as Archduchess Maria Dorothea played in stirring revivalism through the aforementioned means. The history of these kinds of endeavours, especially that of the most significant ones like the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society and Religious Tract Society has not been treated adequately by historians of religion and education, intellectual historians and social historians. This research output is a contribution to give an account of the multi-ethnic and transdenominational work of Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Slovaks and Romanians working for a common goal. (shrink)