This article reviews Bülent Diken’s recent book, Nihilism. In so doing, it focuses especially on the disjunctive synthesis between passive nihilism and radical nihilism. Finally, the article claims that Diken’s project is to resuscitate the idea of revolution, to reinvent the revolutionary politics.

Abstractabstract:The concept of “boring dystopia,” a term coined by Mark Fisher, describes the banal and mildly coercive signs that are prevalent in contemporary neoliberal society. It is characterized by a pervasive sense of boredom, banality, and total alienation, which arises from the depletion of social connections caused by free-market fundamentalism and consumer culture. For the author, Edward Hopper’s paintings embody this sense of dystopia, as they depict deserted cityscapes and isolated figures, creating a vision of a society where human connection (...) and interaction have broken down. The COVID-19 pandemic response has further highlighted the erosion of empathy and compassion under neoliberal capitalism, making Fisher’s call for collective action and the creation of new forms of community and solidarity even more urgent. Edward Hopper’s haunting art reminds us that we are already living in a dystopia, and that it is crucial to confront this dystopian reality and imagine new possibilities for the future. (shrink)

Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected students’ attendance in the universities and causes universities to close down in more than 190 countries. On the other hand, novice engineers studied only a few lectures related to highway engineering. Their lectures have included very little knowledge about asphalt pavement construction as highway engineering consists of many areas that are not studied in detail during their studying years subject to their traditional education. Due to all mentioned, (...) a new drive to promote online learning paves the way to evaluate our future approach to curriculum development and delivery of educational materials for engineering courses. However, experts can offer solutions to these problems using their past experience. Hence, a system that allows experts to share their experience with other engineers after completing a project is needed. Nevertheless, the web-based expert system for maintaining flexible pavement problems in tropical regions designed in this study is a novel concept. Prior to developing this system, the need for such a system was determined through literature review and validated through a questionnaire survey. Experts were interviewed, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to construct the knowledge base of the system. Knowledge was presented as rules and coded in software through PHP programming. Web pages that support the user interface were designed using a framework that consists of CSS, HTML, and J-Query. Furthermore, the system was tested by an array of users engaged in highway engineering, namely, experts, teaching experts, novice engineers, and students. The mean values of the overall system evaluation performed by 20 users using a five-point Likert scale were 4, 4.5, 3.75, 4.25, 5, 4, and 3.5. Expert and user satisfaction prove the effectiveness of the proposed system. (shrink)

In Turkish-Islamic literature, many copyright or translation nasihatnama with religious-mystical content have been written. In these works written in verse or prose form within the scope of Islamic culture and classical Turkish literature, information about the principles of Islamic belief and worship was given, and people were advised to be moral, faithful, observant of the orders and prohibitions of religion, prioritizing the hadiths of the Prophet, benevolent and tolerant. One of these nasihatnamas is Gencü’l-Esrâr, in which verses consisting of different (...) verse types and shapes are connected to each other with instrumental couplets. The author, Sayyid Muhammed Ali Riza from Gaziantep, who is a link of the Sufi tradition, tried to guide the disciples by addressing the concept of heaven from various aspects. Sometimes by quoting verses and hadiths, he used argument and proof to make his word trustworthy, and he tried to boost people's desire to attain Paradise by combining aspects of literature with the fantasy of individual paradise on occasion. In our study, in which goals and forms the notion of heaven is targeted in Gencü'l-Esrâr. For this purpose, first of all, data about the paradise in Gencü'l-Esrâr were determined by using the scanning model, which is one of the research methods. All kinds of information, comments, and narratives that can help us to make an inference about Sayyid Muhammed Ali Rıza’s vision and description of paradise has been studied under four headings: “Physical Description and Content of Paradise”, “Description of Names, Types, and Gates of Paradise”, “Description of the Inhabitants of Paradise” and “Mysterious Expression of His Desire to Reach Paradise”. In the article, it has also been tried to reveal the narrative techniques used by the author and the narrative style he exhibited in the sections where heaven is depicted and narrated. This study, which reveals that heaven is handled in detail and artistically in Gencü'l-Esrâr, which was written in 1923 by adhering to the tradition of divan literature, is important in terms of shedding light on the existence of Islamic literature in the 20th century. (shrink)

This paper studies miniatures from two copies of Ibn Husam Husafi’s Haveranname. The first one is from the Tahran Gulistan Palace Library, which consists of four pages, and the one-paged work is from the Museum of Riza Abbasi. These miniatures have been produced by Ferhad of Shiraz School of Miniature and his apprentices, in which Ali is depicted in a fierce fight with a dragon. Four of these miniatures have been published but not thoroughly examined. No published information is available (...) about the other miniature, studied here. It is evident from the quality of the drawing that the miniature has been produced by Ferhad. In the miniature, Ali is portrayed on his horse, Duldul, in an open field, attacking a seven-headed dragon with his sword, Zulfikar. The miniature also contains some poetry as well as some depictions of people and imaginary creatures. The miniatures from Haveranname have been auctioned in various parts of the world. In the book of the record, there is no detail about how the museum has retrieved it. As a result of the analyses in the current research paper, it is proposed that the miniature originates from the copy of Haveranname of the Gulistan Palace Library and has been acquired in an auction. (shrink)

Philosophy and religion were the two important sources of knowledge for medieval Arab Muslim polymaths. Owing to the difference between the nature of philosophy and religion, the interplay between philosophy and religion often takes the form of conflict in medieval Muslim thought as exemplified by the Al-Ghazali versus Averroes (Ibn Rusd) polemic. Unlike the Al-Ghazali versus Averroes (Ibn Rushd) polemic, the interplay between philosophy and religion in the political philosophy of Abu Nasr Alfarabi takes the form of harmonious co-existence. Although, (...) for Alfarabi, religion is an inferior form of knowledge as compared to philosophy, the present article will show that philosophy and religion play equally significant roles in Alfarabi’s virtuous city and that in the absence of either philosophy or religion, the political system proposed by Alfarabi cannot exist. (shrink)

The social dimension of sustainable development and its impact on supply chains have so far received less attention than the environmental dimension. The aim of the research is to explore the intersection between social issues, corporate social responsibility actions and performance outcomes. A structured literature review of social issues in supply chains is presented, analysing the research published so far in peer-reviewed publications. Linking CSR and supply chain management allows the exploration of strategies and performance outcomes with a focus on (...) social issues. The corresponding responsible supply chain actions adopted by firms to address these issues are grouped into communication, compliance and supplier development strategies. Social and economic as well as buyer and supplier performance are identified as the key outcomes, but the interactions among these constructs would require further research. This paper contributes to the understanding of managing social issues in supply chains by linking social issues, responsible supply chain actions and performance outcomes. The paper consolidates related research by offering an overarching conceptual framework and points to future research directions and simultaneously provides insights into the management of social issues in supply chains. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to highlight an interdependence between procedural and agential norms that undermines their neat separation when appraising argumentation. Drawing on the munāẓara tradition, we carve a space for sequencing in argumentation scholarship. Focusing on the antagonist’s sequencing of critical moves, we identify each sequence’s corresponding values of argumentation: coalescence, reliability, and efficacy. These values arise through the mediation of virtues and simultaneously underpin procedural as well as agential norms. Consequently, an ambiguity between procedure and agent (...) becomes apparent. This ambiguity hints at the potential for a virtue theory of argumentation that draws on procedural norms. (shrink)

This paper considers how a Shi’a Islamic perspective of wisdom can inform contemporary business ethics theory. Given the growing business ethics literature that adopts an Islamic orientation, it is vital that Islamic tenets in a business context are established. Thus, this paper thoroughly researches the tenets of Shi’a wisdom theory using a hermeneutic analysis, guided also by Iranian theological scholars of ancient Persian and Arabic foundational texts, to provide a comprehensive explanation of the foundations of Shi’a faith relevant to business (...) ethics. Having established the principles of Shi’a wisdom, we outline points of consonance and dissonance in comparison to the Western humanist, primarily Aristotelian, orientations to wisdom. Although identifying apparently irreconcilable differences, this analysis reveals important elements of Shi’a wisdom theory that can significantly invigorate and influence business ethics theory. (shrink)

This thesis is an attempt to investigate the relation between the views of Wittgenstein as presented by Kripke and Donald Davidson on meaning and linguistic understanding. Kripke’s Wittgenstein, via his sceptical argument, argues that there is no fact about which rule a speaker is following in using a linguistic expression. Now, if one urges that meaning something by a word is essentially a matter of following one rule rather than another, the sceptical argument leads to the radical sceptical conclusion that (...) there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word. According to the solution Kripke’s Wittgenstein proposes, we must instead concentrate on the ordinary practice of meaning-attribution, that is, on the conditions under which we can justifiably ascribe meaning to each other and the utility such a practice has in our life. Davidson has also argued that following rules is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. According to his alternative view of meaning, a speaker’s success in this practice is fundamentally a matter of his utterance being successfully interpreted by an interpreter in the way the speaker intended. On the basis of these remarks, Davidson raises objections to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument and solution. In this thesis, I will argue that Davidson has failed to fully grasp the essentially sceptical nature of the argument and solution proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein. I will argue that as a result of this Davidson’s objections and his alternative solution to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument are mistaken. These criticisms are pursued via an investigation of Davidson’s problematic reading of Quine’s sceptical arguments for the thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. Having criticized Davidson’s actual response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein, I will claim that Davidson’s best option for resisting the sceptical problem is to adopt a form of non-reductionism about meaning. Claudine Verheggen’s recent claim that Davidson’s use of the notion of triangulation will help to establish non-reductionism will be argued to be a failure. I will urge that the main obstacle in defending a non-reductionist view is the problem of accounting for the nature of self-knowledge of meaning and understanding. After discussing Davidson’s account of self-knowledge and Crispin Wright’s objection to this account, I will argue that, although Wright’s objection is ultimately unsuccessful, Davidson’s account fails for other reasons. Finally, I tentatively suggest that the resources for an alternative response to the sceptical problem can possibly be extracted from Davidson’s account of intending, which has some features suggestive of a judgement-dependent account of meaning and intention. (shrink)

In this research, I tried to collect and study Qur’anic verses related to the topic of tolerance temper in the prophets’ calling to their people, through the calling of the Prophet Ibrahim, may God bless him and grant him peace, to his people. At the end of the research, it concluded with results, the most prominent of which were: that the Holy Qur’an is the constitution of morals and etiquettes, and it includes sublime etiquettes and refined morals, and that the (...) Prophet Ibrahim, may God bless him, was the most prominent worker of divine directives, especially with regard to tolerance temper with his people when calling them to Islam. The research also ended with a recommendation to conduct specialized studies on tolerance temper among the prophets in the rest of the Qur’anic surahs. (shrink)

Few philosophers endorse a virtue theory of praiseworthiness. The widespread aversion to any virtue theory of moral worth rests chiefly on a skeptical argument that emphasizes the fact that praiseworthy acts can be performed by people who lack the relevant virtue. This chapter studies this skeptical argument closely. It concludes that the skeptical argument's core premise has been misleadingly characterized. Once the core premise has been clarified, the virtue theory appears to escape the grip of the skeptical argument.

The struggle for domination clearly persists in The Homecoming as it does in almost all of Pinter’s works. Because of the vague atmosphere, enigmatic characters, and dark, tragicomic dialogue and action, a single decisive meaning for the play cannot be identified. Many character analyses have been carried out on the play, frequently focusing on Ruth and her decision at the end. Moreover, critics have sought to read the play in the light of psychoanalysis, centering on the characters’ past and complexes. (...) By adding a sociopolitical dimension to purely realistic or symbolic readings, this article attempts to analyze the relationships of domination and servitude between characters at the micro-level of the family structure through Marx’s notions of fetishism in relations between individuals, and commodity fetishism as expounded by Slavoj Žižek. With the help of Žižek’s ideas on ideology, a new layer of sociopolitical signification to the relationships held between characters is added, particularly that between Ruth and the men, which is seen as a parallel to the macro-level fetishized relationships in pre-capitalist societies and commodity fetishism in a capitalist one. (shrink)

This paper presents a streamlined taxonomy for categorizing offensive language in Arabic, specifically Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and the Levantine dialect. Addressing a gap in the existing literature, which has mainly focused on Indo-European languages, our taxonomy divides offensive language into seven levels (six explicit and one implicit). We adapted our framework from the simplified offensive language (SOL) taxonomy by (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara, Slavko Žitnik, Anna Bączkowska, Chaya Liebeskind, Jelena Mitrovic & Giedre Valunaite Oleškeviciente. 2021a. Lod-connected offensive language ontology and tagset (...) enrichment. In Shubert R. Carvalho & Renato R. Souza (eds.), Proceedings of the workshops and tutorials held at ldk 2021 co-located with the 3rd language, data and knowledge conference, Vol. 3064, 135–150. CEUR Workshop Proceedings), customizing it to reflect the unique linguistic and cultural nuances of Arabic. To validate this taxonomy, we created a new dataset from various social media platforms, primarily focusing on Twitter. This dataset was manually curated by human annotators and is described in detail within the paper, serving as both a validation tool for our taxonomy and a foundation for future research on offensive language detection in Arabic. Initial analysis of the dataset reveals complex patterns of offensive expressions in MSA and Levantine Arabic, underscoring the need to account for linguistic and cultural variations in studying online abuse. Our taxonomy and dataset are vital for advancing research in Arabic sociocultural studies, natural language processing, and linguistic analysis, and contribute to the study of low-resource languages. (shrink)

The problem of finite-time stability of switched genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays via Wirtinger’s integral inequality is addressed in this study. A novel Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional is proposed to capture the dynamical characteristic of GRNs. Using Wirtinger’s integral inequality, reciprocally convex combination technique and the average dwell time method conditions in the form of linear matrix inequalities are established for finite-time stability of switched GRNs. The applicability of the developed finite-time stability conditions is validated by numerical results.

Obstetrics and gynaecology always has reputation for being a highly litigious. The field of obstetrics and gynaecology is surrounded by different circumstances that stimulate the doctors to practice defensive..

On religion, philosophy philosophical study of religions and universe.

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641 -- Criticism and interpretation. ; Islamic philosophy -- Iran.

The main aim of this study was to empirically analyze whether Institutional Quality moderates the relationship between corporate governance and stock liquidity through the light of agency and information asymmetry theory. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first finance study. The sample consists of 230 non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan stock exchange during the period of 2009–2019. We used an instrumental variable approach and our new Institutional Quality index composed of world governance indicators and a corporate (...) governance index, developed via principal component analysis, to demonstrate a relationship between corporate governance and stock liquidity and check the moderating role of Institutional Quality by following the resources complementary phenomenon. Our results show a significant, positive relationship between the corporate governance index and stock liquidity, suggesting that well-governed firms have high liquidity. The results show that the Institutional Quality index has a positive moderating impact on the relationship between corporate governance and stock liquidity, suggesting that corporate governance in Pakistan is weak. Our results are robust to a series of endogeneity checks using alternative proxies of stock liquidity. (shrink)