Stephen Gaukroger traces the development of Descartes's thought in the social, religious, and intellectual context of seventeenth‐century Europe. Gaukroger describes Descartes's upbringing and his education at the Jesuit La Flèche collège, and shows the role these played in the development of his ground‐breaking work in philosophy and science. The book details the effects of his relationships with others on his work, both through collaboration and through conflict. It discusses the history of the composition of his major works and details their (...) structure and content. It documents the correspondence, which played a major part in the development of his thinking, both before and after publication. The book concludes, as it begins, with his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia on the subject of the passions. (shrink)

The 1994 biography of Lenin by General Dmitri Volkogonov, the chairperson of President Yeltsin's commission for examining the Soviet archives, has been hailed as exposing Lenin's crimes. Volkogonov charges that Lenin's fanaticism caused him to order acts of inhuman cruelty; that he was an agent of the German government; that the October revolution was the coup of a minority; that Lenin was the originator of the idea of a one-party dictatorship; that he persecuted religious believers; and that he (...) created the totalitarian system that was perfected by Stalin. Volkogonov's evidence from archival and other sources is examined, and his charges are found to be unjustified. (shrink)

This collection of essays deals with the relationship between Wittgenstein's life and his philosophy. The first two essays reflect on general problems inherent in philosophical biography itself. The essays that follow draw on recently published letters as well as recently published diaries from the 1930s to explore Wittgenstein's background as an engineer and its relation to the Tractatus, the impact of his schizoid personality on his approach to philosophy, his role as a diarist, letter-writer and polemicist, and finally (...) the complex issue of Wittgenstein as a Jew. Written by a first-rate team of Wittgenstein scholars including two published biographers of the philosopher, Brian McGuinness and Ray Monk, this collection will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Cet article a pour objet le rapport éventuel entre la biographie épicurienne, dans sa fonction de proposer des modèles de félicité humaine, et la biographie telle qu’elle est pratiquée dans le platonisme de l’Antiquité tardive, notamment dans le De vita Pythagorica de Jamblique. Il est montré que des traits du portrait de Pythagore, tel que Jamblique le représente, le mode de vie qu’il cultivait et qu’il enseignait à ses disciples, évoquent des éléments spécifiques à l’éthique d’Épicure. La manière dont la (...) biographie avait été pratiquée dans les écoles épicuriennes, servant à proposer des exemples de la vie du sage, à imiter et assimiler par les membres de l’école, fait l’objet d’une deuxième section. Enfin, plus généralement, il est noté que l’éthique épicurienne a pu trouver place dans la philosophie néoplatonicienne, chez Porphyre et chez Jamblique, au niveau de la vie pratique, de la discipline du corps et des désirs corporels. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Despite widespread interest in individual life histories, few biographies of scientists make use of insights derived from psychology, another discipline that studies people, their thoughts, and their actions. This essay argues that recent theoretical work in psychology and tools developed for clinical psychological practice can help biographical historians of science create and present fuller portraits of their subjects' characters and temperaments and more nuanced analyses of how these traits helped shape their subjects' scientific work. To illustrate this thesis, the (...) essay examines the early career of James McKeen Cattell—an influential late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century experimental psychologist—through a lens offered by psychology and argues that Cattell's actual laboratory practices derived from an “accommodation” to a long‐standing “cognitive deficit.” These practices in turn enabled Cattell to achieve more precise experimental results than could any of his contemporaries; and their students readily adopted them, along with their behavioral implications. The essay concludes that, in some ways, American psychology's early twentieth‐century move toward a behavioral understanding of psychological phenomena can be traced to Cattell's personal cognitive deficit. It closes by reviewing several “remaining general questions” that this thesis suggests. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.3 (2005) 44-57 [Access article in PDF] Literary Biography: The Cinderella of Literary Studies Michael Benton There are no prizes for guessing who are the two ugly sisters: Criticism, the elder one, dominated literary studies for the first half of the twentieth century; theory, her younger sister, flounced to the fore in the second half. Meanwhile, 'Cinders,' who had been doing the chores (...) for centuries, has been magically transformed in recent times, decked out in new clothes by Richard Holmes, Claire Tomalin, Juliet Barker, Peter Ackroyd et al., and, as the millennium approached, celebrated and admired on all sides. At the start of the new century, literary biography remains in vogue. The bibliography that carries it forward is rolling, and there is no sign of it turning into a pumpkin. Why is Cinderella so popular?One obvious if superficial answer might be that literary biography is where literary people go who find the contemporary preoccupation with theory to be personally undernourishing and critically unenlightening; they would rather stay with the literary works themselves and with the lives, the minds, and the times that produced them. Yet it is not only literary biography that is thriving; life writing in general is the fastest-growing area of mainstream publishing, evidence for which can be seen in Waterstone's flagship store in London's Piccadilly, which devotes its prime ground-floor site to thousands of biographies. This commercial high profile is responding to an evident, if unfocused, need to look at other lives and understand them. Individual reasons for the popularity of biography range from prurient interest and hero worship to a, perhaps unrecognized, search for coherence and purpose in an age that is often disinclined either to accept institutional values or to respect traditional authority. The motives for this search usually include the desire for recognizable success, to which end the invention of a convincing identity is essential. Biographies offer models of how others live, face challenges, and cope with change; they are prime sites for studying ourselves. Curiously, this justification for biography as providing [End Page 44] a model for living was felt most strongly when this literary genre first emerged in the eighteenth century. The difference today is that the model has changed: Biography as a moral exemplum based upon Christian principles has been replaced in today's celebrity culture by the demand for models of success provided by public personalities. Nonetheless, whatever the range of satisfactions readers seek in biography, life writing offers, in one form or another, detailed pictures of widely different ways of living and amid these, perhaps, some clues to how an individual sense of identity might be shaped.Literary biographies (i.e., biographies of writers, not biographies with a particular literary quality) are a significant and, in some respects, a unique subgenre since they purport to offer access to the creative imagination. They have a long and distinguished history from Johnson and Boswell to the present day; they are sometimes written by other novelists (Elizabeth Gaskell on Charlotte Bronte, Peter Ackroyd on Dickens); and autobiographical writing may take the form of poetry (Wordsworth) or fiction (Joyce).1 Furthermore recent writing in this field has increasingly introduced elements of metabiography in books by Adam Sisman2 and Lucasta Miller.3 It is evident, therefore, that literary biography offers a rich and varied area of study that raises issues about the relationships among biography, history, fiction, and poetry that are fundamental to aesthetic education.Yet despite this promise, it has become a truism to declare that biography has failed to establish any theoretical foundations upon which to build. Backscheider quotes Ira Nadel's remark on the absence of "a sustained theoretical discussion of biography incorporating some of the more probing and original speculations about language, structure, and discourse that have dominated post-structuralist thought."4 She goes on to lament the poverty of criticism; the absence of a cultivated readership; the failure to engage even with the practical questions of selection, organization, or presentation; and indicates that readers of biography are too easily... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Intertextual Biography in the Rivalry of Cratinus and AristophanesZachary P. BilesMore than a decade ago, Malcolm Heath provided an influential explanation for charges of plagiarism between comic poets when he posited a growing store of ideas that were recycled as quickly as they were invented. As a result, "Anything put on stage in a comedy would become public property and be absorbed into the repertoire, so that all (...) comic poets contributed to it; and all drew on it, although each would aim to give a new and original twist to the material which he borrowed, so that the repertoire constantly evolved. If this was so, then any poet could lay claim to originality... and any rival could make a counterclaim of plagiarism."1 These remarks have important implications for the study of Old Comedy, not least in exposing the irony of such assertions as that of Antiphanes (Poiēsis, fr. 189 K-A), which overstates generic distinctions between tragedy and comedy on the score of originality. Beyond merely acknowledging comedy's essentially adaptive nature, Heath's position suggests that a certain degree of allusiveness was, as it were, built into the genre. Unfortunately there are few opportunities to test the potential insights that follow from Heath's general proposition since the corpus of comic fragments poses so many questions of plot, context, attribution, and-always important for this kind of study-chronology.There is one sequence of plays, however, that has attracted attention since antiquity as an example of comic poets responding to one another and for which valuable insights can still be gained by building on Heath's thesis. In 423 Cratinus took the prize against Aristophanes' Clouds with Pytine, a play in which Cratinus boldly portrayed himself as the hero while borrowing heavily from Aristophanes' caricature of him in Knights the previous year. While interest in the relationship of these plays has been renewed in recent years, the convergence of issues pertaining to adaptation, intertextuality, and rivalry has not been fully explored. Besides discussing these ideas as they relate to Knights and [End Page 169] Pytine, I shall extend the thread of artistic borrowing at either end, first by positing a stage autobiography of Cratinus that both predates and inspired Knights, and then by tracing elements of intertextuality between Wasps and Pytine. Generally speaking Heath's model proves to be of great value; however, my study makes an important modification by treating competition as a vital aspect of comic poetry.2 The intertextuality of these plays primarily depends on poetic biography, and the notion of competition is central to my understanding of stage biography as comic poets employed it either to assert their own superiority or malign their rivals. After examining the biographical interplay in the rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes, I end by applying the intertextual model more generally to Wasps, a play that advertises itself as a competitive response and whose intertextual relationship with Pytine can be viewed as a function of competitive strategy.IThe trail of evidence begins with a scholion on Knights 400. Commenting on the chorus's elusive response to Cleon ("If I don't despise you, may I become a blanket in Cratinus' house!"), the scholiast writes:(= Pytine test. ii K-A)3 [End Page 170]Certain errors about Cratinus' retirement aside,4 the scholiast shows himself to be a reliable witness to the play by his knowledge of the plot and ability to cite the text in the continuation of his commentary (fr. 193). Thus, with the exception of treating the more fully developed caricature of Cratinus as a drunk in the Knights parabasis as the actual source of inspiration for his self-portrayal in Pytine, generations of scholars have followed the scholiast's characterization of Pytine as a redemptive play, however exaggerated this biographical (mis)representation may have been in both plays. Two recent studies have raised objections to the traditional understanding of Knights and Pytine. Troubled by a certain feeling of allusiveness in the jokes about Cratinus in Knights and Acharnians, Keith Sidwell hypothesizes a source for the audience's familiarity with details of Cratinus' life by arguing that his stage "biography " was not an Aristophanic... (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)

I enter a debate about state-socialism elite’s reproduction and higher education to propose an implementation of Bourdieu’s hysteresis effect. I argue that the intelligentsia and the interwar university shaped biographical paths of academics stronger than the political factors, which are usually brought to the forefront by contemporary researchers. I analyse academic biographies shaped by the socialist university and reconstruct a model academic biography in the post-WWII period, in particular, in Poland. I compare it with biographies of professors from working-class (...) and peasant backgrounds, and arrive at the conclusion that the differences are minor. Those who formed a seemingly perfect new intelligentsia were socialized by the traditional academic habitus. A few who entered the new academic world from working class or peasant backgrounds had to embrace the interwar university ethos in order to justify their own merits in belonging. I propose a model of opposite hysteresis vectors to explain tensions between academia and political field. (shrink)

In the early 20th century, after hundreds of years of gradual decline, the California condor emerged as an object of intensive scientific study, an important conservation target, and a cultural icon of the American wilderness preservation movement. Early condor researchers generally believed that the species' survival depended upon the preservation of its wilderness habitat. However, beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of scientists argued that no amount of wilderness could prevent the condor's decline and that only intensive scientific management (...) - including captive breeding - could save the species from certain extinction. A bitter and highly politicized battle soon developed over how to best preserve the condor. For 5 years the condor was extinct in the wild; however, by the time that officials released the first captive-bred birds the condor recovery program had garnered widespread public support, even among its former critics. Today, condor advocates from the scientific and activist communities work together to manage the species and protect its habitat. The condor's story illustrates some of the tensions, problems, and successes that have accompanied the rise of conservation biology as a scientific field and environmental movement in the United States. (shrink)

The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since the last century, taking into account recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy, cultural theory, and more. Offering a radically new portrait of the creator of psychoanalysis, this book explores the man in all his complexity alongside an interpretation of his theories that cuts through the stereotypes that surround him. (...) The development of Freud's thinking is addressed not only in the context of his personal life, but also in that of society and culture at large, while the impact of his thinking on subsequent issues of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social theory is fully examined. Whitebook demonstrates that declarations of Freud's obsolescence are premature, and, with his clear and engaging style, brings this vivid figure to life in compelling and readable fashion. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes is recognized as one of the fathers of modern philosophy and political theory. In his own time he was as famous for his work in physics, geometry, and religion. He associated with some of the greatest writers, scientists, and politicians of his age. Martinich has written a complete and accessible biography of Hobbes. The book takes full account of the historical and cultural context in which Hobbes lived, drawing on both published and unpublished sources. It will be (...) a great resource for philosophers, political theorists and historians of ideas. The clear, crisp prose style will also ensure that the book appeals to general readers with an interest in the history of philosophy, the rise of modern science and the English Civil War. (shrink)

The life of George Price (1922-1975), the eccentric polymath genius and father of the Price equation, is used as a prism and counterpoint through which to consider an age-old evolutionary conundrum: the origins of altruism. This biographical project, and biography and history more generally, are considered in terms of the possibility of using form to convey content in particular ways. Closer to an art form than a science, this approach to scholarship presents both a unique challenge and promise.

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to the political and literary dimensions of (...) his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege is one of the founding figures of analytic philosophy, whose contributions to logic, philosophical semantics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics set the agenda for future generations of theorists in these and related areas. Dale Jacquette's lively and incisive biography charts Frege's life from its beginnings in small-town north Germany, through his student days in Jena, to his development as an enduringly influential thinker. Along the way Jacquette considers Frege's ground-breaking Begriffschrift, in which he formulated his (...) 'ideal logical language', his magisterial Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, and his complex relation to thinkers including Husserl and especially Russell, whose Paradox had such drastic implications for Frege's logicism. Jacquette concludes with a thoughtful assessment of Frege's legacy. His rich and informative biography will appeal to all who are interested in Frege's philosophy. (shrink)

John Bayley was married to Iris Murdoch for 45 years. In the last few years of her life, Murdoch developed Alzheimer’s, and John Bayley wrote a memoir about their life together, including the difficulties of looking after her with the disease. Although the Memoir was generally well-received, some critics called the publication an act of betrayal, because of the intimacy of some of the revelations, because of the public reduction of a great mind to a sick old woman, and especially (...) because of Murdoch’s inability to consent or respond to it. I agree, but I think it was even worse than that. I want to distinguish the ‘shallow’ betrayal of a ‘three-dimensional’ person in the narrow timeframe of the present from a ‘deep’ betrayal – and I will argue that Bayley is guilty of both. Deep betrayal essentially involves a close intimate of the victim betraying the ‘four-dimensional’ person across her whole life, as well as betraying the relationship between them. Such a betrayal inevitably casts a shadow back on our understanding of the earlier relationship between Bayley and Murdoch. (shrink)

The first part of this comment presents the biography of Henryk Elzenberg whose creative life is shared between four centers of intellectual life in Poland: Cracow, Warsaw, Vilnius and Toruń.The second part of this article depicts the creative profile of H. Elzenberg: a philosopher forming an axiological vision of world and man, directing attention towards a general theory of value; where he placed the foundation for his ethics, esthetics and the philosophy of man.

The “Lives of Great Religious Books” from Princeton University Press is a series with the worthy goal of introducing general readers to major works from many different traditions. The phrase “lives of” indicates that the point is not just to elucidate the work’s meaning but also to trace how it has been interpreted between the time of its composition and the present day. In Richard H. Davis, the author of one previous book on visual culture in India and another (...) dealing with Śaiva ritual, Princeton has found a happy conjunction of scholar and subject matter. To The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography Davis brings years of reflection on the diversity of religious expression in medieval and modern India, and.. (shrink)

Since political theorist Leo Strauss’s death in 1973, American interpreters have heatedly debated his intellectual legacy. Daniel Tanguay recovers Strauss from the atmosphere of partisan debate that has dominated American journalistic, political, and academic discussions of his work. Tanguay offers in crystal-clear prose the first assessment of the whole of Strauss’s thought, a daunting task owing to the vastness and scope of Strauss’s writings. This comprehensive overview of Strauss’s thought is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand his philosophy and legacy. (...) Tanguay gives special attention to Strauss’s little-known formative years, 1920-1938, during which the philosopher elaborated _the_ theme of his research, what he termed the “theological-political problem.” Tanguay shows the connection of this theme to other major elements in Strauss’s thought, such as the Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns, the return to classical natural right, the art of esoteric writing, and his critique of modernity. In so doing, the author approaches what is at the heart of Strauss’s work: God and politics. Rescuing Strauss from polemics and ill-defined generalizations about his ideas, Tanguay provides instead an important and timely analysis of a major philosophical thinker of the twentieth century. (shrink)

James A. Harris's biography of David Hume is the first such study to appear since Ernest Mossner's The Life of David Hume (1954). Unlike Mossner, Harris aims to write a specifically "intellectual biography", one that gives "a complete picture of Hume's ideas" and "relates Hume's works to the circumstances in which they were conceived and written" (vii). Harris's study turns on four central theses or claims about the character of Hume's thought and how it is structured and developed. (...) The claims are: (1) Hume's Treatise has no claim to any sort of "privileged" status in relation to Hume's other major works -- which include his Essays and his History of England. -/- (2) There is no system, doctrine, or fundamental aims or ambitions that serve to unify Hume's thought. -/- (3) Irreligious aims and interests are not of any particular or unique importance for Hume's thought. Moreover, whatever irreligious aims and objectives Hume may have had, they reflect his moderate, neutral and detached attitude to this and all other subjects -- there is no underlying animus or hostility against religion that motivates his contributions to this subject. (4) Hume's thought should be understood and explained not in terms of his concern with some specific subject matter or body of doctrine but rather in terms of his style and his identity as a "philosophical man of letters". -/- The general picture of Hume that emerges from this study, as constructed around these four core theses, is, as I will explain, incomplete, unconvincing and, in important respects, seriously flawed and misleading. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophers are often thought to be aloof, unworldly, and perhaps even boring people, who, at least from the time of Aristophanes’ characterization of Socrates, have been frequently represented as having their heads or their whole beings in the clouds. Add to these qualities, the dryness that appears in many of Immanuel Kant’s works and the primness and propriety associated with Prussia, and one gets a picture of Immanuel Kant that is not very appealing and certainly not one that would make (...) one wish to read a detailed story of his life. However, in this wonderful book Manfred Kuehn does what many might have considered impossible: he makes the life of Kant fascinating. Indeed, he attains the ideal that he sets out for any biography of a philosopher: to “be both philosophically and historically interesting” and to “integrate the story of the philosopher’s life with a philosophically interesting perspective on his work”. (shrink)

Julian Schwinger was one of the leading theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. His contributions are as important, and as pervasive, as those of Richard Feynman, with whom he shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics. Yet, while Feynman is universally recognized as a cultural icon, Schwinger is little known even to many within the physics community. In his youth, Julian Schwinger was a nuclear physicist, turning to classical electrodynamics after World War II. In the years after the war, he (...) was the first to renormalize quantum electrodynamics. Subsequently, he presented the most complete formulation of quantum field theory and laid the foundations for the electroweak synthesis of Glashow, Weinberg, and Salam, and he made fundamental contributions to the theory of nuclear magnetic resonance, to many-body theory, and to quantum optics. He developed a unique approach to quantum mechanics, measurement algebra, and a general quantum action principle. His discoveries include 'Feynman's' parameters and 'Glauber's' coherent states; in later years he also developed an alternative to operator field theory which he called Source Theory, reflecting his profound phenomenological bent. His late work on the Thomas-Fermi model of atoms and on the Casimir effect continues to be an inspiration to a new generation of physicists. This biography describes the many strands of his research life, while tracing the personal life of this private and gentle genius. (shrink)

The acquisition by the Bodleian Library in 1948 of the Lovelace papers has made possible a number of historically oriented papers on Locke and his philosophy, e.g., J. Yolton's John Locke and the Way of Ideas, J. W. Gough's, Locke's Political Philosophy, and W. v.Leyden's publication of the Essays on the Law of Nature. Cranston's biography is a distinguished addition to this list: it makes full use of the source material and is as thorough as one could ask in (...) revealing the concerns--especially political concerns --of Locke's life. It is rather less satisfactory in its treatment of his epistemological development. --R. F. T. (shrink)

Professor Hannay’s biography on the famous Danish thinker is a welcome addition to those previously made available in English. Ever since Walter Lowrie’s monumental Kierkegaard was published several decades ago, those who read Søren Kierkegaard in English have had to sift through the historical details for themselves in order to distinguish among fact, fiction, and legend. Whereas the ghost of Lowrie’s Kierkegaard is virtually dead and gone, the Kierkegaard who took its place had a less sharply defined personality. This (...) changes, however, with Hannay’s new book. Hannay offers not a few of his own insights as he recreates the mind and personality of Kierkegaard, some of which are as interesting as they are speculative, but he offers the skeptical reader a host of sources by which to check his interpretation. (shrink)

The article reviews current historical research on the life and work of Max Weber. The completion of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) by the Mohr Siebeck publishing house not only made it possible to put a new textual basis behind the systematization of Weber’s legacy — which is key for a general theoretical grounding and self-explanation of sociology — but also elevated historical and biographical studies devoted to Weber. This has been achieved by introducing many new sources and (...) clarifying old ones. The article is based on an analysis of Weber’s most recent intellectual biography published in 2019. It was written by Gangolf Hübinger, a German academic and a member of the MWG editorial staff since 2004. Hübinger’s book presents Weber’s life as a convergence of some concentric circles that revolve around several major themes. Among them are social and cultural features of “organized modernity” as the turning point era in the history of the West; the formative years of Weber as an individual and a scholar; the intellectualization of modernity and its consequences; Weber’s invention of a new academic discipline, political sociology; the intellectual networks with which Weber was involved as a scholar and politician. An important advantage of this new biography is that it provides a detailed description of the current study of Weber’s theoretical legacy and the prospects for the development of a “Weberian paradigm” in today’s social science and humanities. (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)

This paper deals with the questions of emergence and complex (mental and social) systems and with downward determination from the viewpoint of perspectival realism. These are issues concerning the foundations of the human sciences, generally speaking, and particularly psychology and sociology. A criterion is put forward, which distinguish metaphysicalfrom ontological (conceptual) problems, and the notions of complex, hierarchic system and causation that would be suitable for those that defend emergence and perspectivist foundations of the human sciences are discussed. Este artigo (...) trata das questões da emergência de sistemas complexos (mentais e sociais) e da determinação descendente do ponto de vista do realismo perspectivista. Essas são questões sobre os fundamentos das ciências humanas em geral e, em particular, da psicologia e da sociologia. É proposto um critério para distinguir problemas metafísicos de problemas ontológicos (ou conceituais), e são discutidas as noções de sistema complexo hierárquico e de causação que seriam adequadas para uma fundamentação emergentista e perspectivista das ciências humanas. (shrink)

Julian: An Intellectual Biography, first published in 1981, presents a penetrating and scholarly analysis of Julian’s intellectual development against the background of philosophy and religion in the late Roman Empire. Professor Polymnia Athanassiadi tells the story of Julian’s transformation from a reclusive and scholarly adolescent into a capable general and an audacious social reformer. However, his character was fraught with a great many contradictions, tensions and inconsistencies: he could be sensitive and intelligent, but also uncontrollably spontaneous and subject (...) to alternating fits of considerable self-pity and self-delusion. Athanassiadi traces the Emperor Julian’s responses to personal and public challenges, and dwells on the conflicts that each weighty choice imposed on him. This analysis of Julian’s character and of all the issues that confronted him as an emperor, intellectual and mystic is based largely on contemporary evidence, with particular emphasis on the extensive writings of the man himself. (shrink)

As much comprehensive introduction to Hegel’s thought as biography, this major work is the fruit of serious study of the relation between Hegel’s philosophy and his life in a revolutionary age. Pinkard, author of two previous philosophic books on Hegel, combines careful analysis of letters and other contemporary documents, concise discussion of Hegel’s major works and many of his smaller essays, and a thorough knowledge of German political and social history into a detailed, exciting narrative that links, but does (...) not reduce, Hegel’s thought to his tumultuous times. (shrink)

Since political theorist Leo Strauss’s death in 1973, American interpreters have heatedly debated his intellectual legacy. Daniel Tanguay recovers Strauss from the atmosphere of partisan debate that has dominated American journalistic, political, and academic discussions of his work. Tanguay offers in crystal-clear prose the first assessment of the whole of Strauss’s thought, a daunting task owing to the vastness and scope of Strauss’s writings. This comprehensive overview of Strauss’s thought is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand his philosophy and legacy. (...) Tanguay gives special attention to Strauss’s little-known formative years, 1920-1938, during which the philosopher elaborated _the_ theme of his research, what he termed the “theological-political problem.” Tanguay shows the connection of this theme to other major elements in Strauss’s thought, such as the Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns, the return to classical natural right, the art of esoteric writing, and his critique of modernity. In so doing, the author approaches what is at the heart of Strauss’s work: God and politics. Rescuing Strauss from polemics and ill-defined generalizations about his ideas, Tanguay provides instead an important and timely analysis of a major philosophical thinker of the twentieth century. (shrink)

_Who Was Jacques Derrida?_ is the first intellectual biography of Derrida, the first full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence, and his philosophical roots. It is also the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the ambassador of "theory," the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities. Mikics lucidly and sensitively describes for the general reader Derrida's deep connection to his Jewish roots. He succinctly defines his vision of philosophy as a (...) discipline that resists psychology. While pointing out the flaws of that vision and Derrida’s betrayal of his most adamantly expounded beliefs, Mikics ultimately concludes that “Derrida was neither so brilliantly right nor so badly wrong as his enthusiasts and critics, respectively, claimed.". (shrink)

This work is the intellectual biography of the greatest of American philosophers. Peirce was not only a pioneer in logic and the creator of a philosophical movement pragmatism he also proposed a phenomenological theory, quite different from that of Husserl, but equal in profundity; and long before Saussure, and in a totally different spirit, a semiotic theory whose present interest owes nothing to passing fashion and everything to its fecundity. Throughout his life Peirce wrote continually about sign and phenomenon (...) (or phaneron). Consequently his writings must be studied chronologically if they are not to appear incomprehensible or contradictory. One of the merits of this book is to clarify Peirce's thought by analysing its development chronologically. We follow the evolution of Peirce's thought from his critique of Kantian logic and Cartesianism (Chap. I, “Leaving the Cave”: 1851-1870) to his discovery of modern logic and pragmatism (Chap. II, “The Eclipse of the Sun”: 1870-1887) and finally to a semiotic founded on a phenomenology the base of which is the logic of relations and the crowning-point scientific metaphysics (Chap. III, “The Sun Set Free”: 1887-1914). The book includes a detailed chronology, a general bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

Adam Podgórecki (1925–1998), a sociologist, author of brilliant Chinese-styled parables and a compulsory immigrant, is merely acknowledged in certain circles of sociologists in the world. The present article offers, first, a sketch of Podgórecki’s biography. As his life divided into two separate parts after he left communist Poland in 1977, he uniquely experienced dissimilar academic milieus, oppressive in Poland, then competitive abroad. What is emphasized both generated some problems for him as an old-fashioned “disobedient in thinking” thinker. Secondly, the (...) text offers a brief analysis of selected papers of Adam Podgórecki and outlines the factors influencing the reception of his work in Western sociology. An explanation of his career path is grounded in some concepts of the sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

Après avoir appartenu au monde sinisé pendant deux mille ans, le Vietnam, conquis par la France en 1858, est entré dans une nouvelle ère. Les intellectuels vietnamiens, surtout ceux issus des écoles franco-indigènes et parlant bien le français, commencent à faire connaître les idées et les penseurs occidentaux à leurs concitoyens. C’est grâce à eux que Tolstoï devient alors célèbre à travers le pays. Dans cet article, nous tentons de donner un aperçu général de la réception de Tolstoï au Vietnam (...) dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Nous analysons en particulier la biographie de Tolstoï publiée en 1939 et considérée comme l’une des biographies modernes les plus réussies. Conçue et rédigée par Nguyen Phi Hoanh qui souhaitait donner aux lecteurs une compréhension complète de la vie, de l’œuvre, mais aussi des idées de Tolstoï, cette biographie interroge également la pertinence de la philosophie du romancier russe, en particulier sa doctrine de la non-violence dans un contexte colonial. (shrink)

A good presentation of an exciting "educator, citizen, reformer in Midwestern America before and after the Civil War," active in the abolitionist movement and founder of two American colleges.--F. E. B.