Protagoras of Abdera, Socrates’ older contemporary, is regarded as one of the most prominent representatives of the so-called sophistic movement. Instead of simply accepting the biased reports given by Plato and Aristotle about this sophist, the contributors to this volume review the complicated doxographical situation and make a case for Protagoras as a philosopher in his own right. Two major themes of this volume are Protagoras’ relativism and his case for a moral and political ideal, both of which are contrasted (...) with the metaphysical idealism of his future opponents in the Academy and the mundane conventionalism typically associated with the sophists. It turns out that rather than a parasitic force of intellectual subversion, Protagoras may have been a prolific and original thinker aiming at a coherent and comprehensive view of man’s place in the world. (shrink)

This book offers a text and translation of Theophrastus' "Metaphysics," together with a full commentary, which may be used as an introduction to the terminology of Aristotle's school. The Introduction provides an assessment of Theophrastus' contribution to Peripatetic thought on the principles of being.

The volume “Conceptualizing Friendship in Time and Place” brings together reflections on the meaning and practice of friendship in a variety of social and cultural settings in history and in the present time, focusing on Asia and the Western world.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche’s Philosophy ed. by Herman Siemens and James PearsonVanessa LemmHerman Siemens and James Pearson, eds., Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche’s Philosophy London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 302 pp. ISBN: 978-1-3500-6695-3 (cloth); 978-1-3501-6383-6 (paper). £23.30.Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche’s Philosophy is a collection inspired by the 2014 Friedrich Nietzsche Society conference on “Nietzsche, Love, and War.” However, the content of the book is broader than the conference, (...) encompassing the themes of conflict and contest in Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole. The volume is divided into four main parts: part 1: “Nietzsche’s Ontology of Conflict”; part 2: “Conflict and Culture: Nietzsche’s Agon and the Greeks”; part 3: “Ethos and Conflict: Nietzsche’s Warriors and Warrior-Philosophers”; and part 4: “Conflict and Contestation in Language, Rhetoric and Style.” Surprisingly, the volume does not include a section dedicated to conflict and politics. This question is dealt with to some extent in individual chapters across the four parts of the book.The volume is composed of fourteen chapters largely drawn from the conference presentations, with additional chapters solicited from Nicolas Lema on agon and politics in Nietzsche’s early writings; Frank Chouraqui on hyperbole and conflict in the slave revolt in morality; Ritchie Robertson and Enrico Müller on Nietzsche and Burkhardt; and Guillaume Métayer on philosophy and terrorism and the notion of “Attentat” in Nietzsche. As such, the volume achieves a balance of views on these topics from both established and doctoral and postdoctoral scholars in Nietzsche studies, as well as from both Anglo-Saxon and Continental traditions in philosophy.The volume is ambitious and claims to fill what it identifies as a series of gaps and shortcomings in current Nietzsche scholarship. According to the editors, most commentators “have failed to recognize the integral role of conflict in Nietzsche’s philosophy not only as a theme, but as a dynamic and structural principle that cuts across the different domains of his thought and acts as a moving center of gravity throughout his philosophical development” (1). Conflict and Contest takes its starting point from the works [End Page 218] of Wolfgang Müller-Lauter and Paul van Tongeren, who both understand “conflict and struggle as the hermeneutic key” to understanding Nietzsche’s philosophy (8). The volume makes a welcome addition to Nietzsche scholarship, complementing the monographs of Yunus Tuncel’s Agon in Nietzsche (2013), Christa Davis Acampora’s Contesting Nietzsche (2013), and of course those recently published by the editors: Herman W. Siemens, Agonal Perspectives on Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Critical Transvaluation (2021), and James S. Pearson, Nietzsche on Conflict, Struggle and War (2022).The edited volume opens with a programmatic defense of the centrality of conflict and contest in Nietzsche’s work, beginning with his early writing on Greek agonistic culture, his middle period comprising an “extended apology of war” in HH and “a conflict-based theory of character” in D, a “stronger connection between knowledge and the conflict of drives” in GS and BGE, all the way to the development of his will to power thesis, which underpins, according to the editors, Nietzsche’s “radically immanent ontology of conflict” (5). The editors’ introduction offers an overview that includes a conceptual analysis of the terms “conflict,” “struggle,” and “will to power” (2–5), as well as an outline of the various domains of conflict across Nietzsche’s oeuvre (5–7): physical, biological, political, psychological, philosophical, and cultural.The editors make an important point right at the beginning of the book, namely, that Nietzsche has a highly differentiated understanding of conflict and struggle, reflected in the irreducible multiplicity of terms found in his philosophy, such as Agon, Auseinandersetzung, Concurrenz, Dissonanz, Gegensaetzlichkeit, Kampf, Konflikt, Krieg, Streit, Wettkampf, Wettspiel, Wettstreit, Widerspruch, Widerstreit, Zwiespalt, Zwietracht, and Zwist (1). Finding an adequate way of capturing this plurality of meanings in the original (German) text when translating into English is no doubt a challenge. In parts 3 and 4, for example, the term Kampf is translated variously as war, struggle, and contest, making it difficult for the reader to trace the various meanings back to the original... (shrink)

Since Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982) the ethics of care has developed as a movement of allied thinkers, in different continents, who have a shared concern and who reflect on similar topics. This shared concern is that care can only be revalued and take its societal place if existing asymmetrical power relations are unveiled, and if the dignity of care givers and care receivers is better guaranteed, socially, politically and personally. In this first volume of a new series (...) leading care ethicists from Europe and the United States focus on the moral significance of two concepts in the debate that ask for further reflection. In discussion with the work of Axel Honneth on recognition and the work of Emmanuel Housset on compassion a contribution is made to a reconsideration of recognition and compassion from an ethics of care perspective. This volume contains contributions by Andries Baart, Estelle Ferrarese, Chris Gastmans, Mieke Grypdonck, Emmanuel Housset, Carlo Leget, Hilde Lindemann, Axel Liegeois, Christa Schnabl, Joan C. Tronto, Annelies van Heijst, Linus Vanlaere, Frans Vosman and Margaret Urban Walker. (shrink)

Bonaventure's metaphysical thought and his interpretation of Aristotle Contemporary scholarship on Bonaventure has characterized him as the Neo-platonic foil to the Aristotelianism of his day. The present book, however, shows a Bonaventure who is highly enthusiastic about utilizing the philosophy of Aristotle and who centers much of his philosophical project around interpreting and understanding the texts of Aristotle. Two goals are central to this book. The first is to shed light on Bonaventure's greatly understudied ontology and theory of forms, demonstrating (...) how his philosophical system is an important and unique alternative to other medieval Aristotelian systems. The second is to establish, more broadly, how Bonaventure's interpretation of Aristotle is a resource which should be mined for contemporary efforts in thinking about and reading Aristotle himself. Ebook available in Open Access. (shrink)

Opens a window on the ways in which Russian thinkers have historically considered the political.

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 volume contains a selection of papers from the International Conference on Argumentation by prominent international scholars of argumentation theory. It provides an insightful cross-section of the current state of affairs in argumentation research. It will be of interest to all those working in the field of argumentation theory and to all scholars who are interested in recent developments in this field.

Games, Norms, and Reasons: Logic at the Crossroads provides an overview of modern logic focusing on its relationships with other disciplines, including new interfaces with rational choice theory, epistemology, game theory and informatics. This book continues a series called "Logic at the Crossroads" whose title reflects a view that the deep insights from the classical phase of mathematical logic can form a harmonious mixture with a new, more ambitious research agenda of understanding and enhancing human reasoning and intelligent interaction. The (...) editors have gathered together articles from active authors in this new area that explore dynamic logical aspects of norms, reasons, preferences and beliefs in human agency, human interaction and groups. The book pays a special tribute to Professor Rohit Parikh, a pioneer in this movement. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemological and cognitive studies, as well as recent trends in computer science and game theory have revealed an increasingly important and intimate relationship between Information, Interaction, and Agency. Agents perform actions based on the available information and in the presence of other interacting agents. From this perspective Information, Interaction, and Agency neatly ties together classical themes like rationality, decision-making and belief revision with games, strategies and learning in a multi-agent setting. Unified by the central notions Information, Interaction, and Agency, (...) the essays in this volume provide refreshing methodological perspectives on belief revision, dynamic epistemic logic, von Neumann games, and evolutionary game theory; all of which in turn are central approaches to understanding our own rationality and that of other agents. (shrink)

Dynamic epistemic logic is the logic of the effects of epistemic actions like making public announcements, passing private messages, revealing secrets, telling lies. This paper takes its starting point from the version of dynamic epistemic logic of [2], and demonstrates a tool that can be used for showing what goes on during a series of epistemic updates: the dynamic epistemic modelling tool DEMO [7, 9]. DEMO allows modelling epistemic updates, graphical display of update results, graphical display of action models, formula (...) evaluation in epistemic models, and translation of dynamic epistemic formulas to PDL [22] formulas. DEMO is written in Haskell. This paper intends to demonstrate its usefulness for visualizing the model transformations that take place during epistemic updating. (shrink)

It is well known that, in classical theory, Liouville's theorem shows that if an ensemble of systems is distributed over a small element of volume in phase space, the ensemble fills a region of equal volume at all later instants of time. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is associated with the products of the errors in conjugate coordinates and momenta, and such products can be interpreted in terms of volume elements in phase space. Comparison of these two facts leads (...) to the assertion in the interesting volume on “Statistical Mechanics” recently published by J. E. and M. G. Mayer that “The Liouville theorem is essential for the complete understanding of the uncertainty principle. (shrink)

This paper seeks to defend the thesis that this American project of military hegemony has a variety of global security costs of such combined magnitude that there is a strong prima facie case against the resort to armed force by the United States, so that its wars might be wrong even when there is a just cause. My thesis is based on the jus ad bellum principle of proportionality.

INTRODUCTION There is no doubt that "subjectivity" is one of the central issues of twentieth century philosophy and art. At the beginning of the century ...

The general public and environmental policy makers often perceive management actions of environmental managers as “science,” when such actions are, in fact, value judgments about when to intervene in natural processes. The choice of action requires ethical as well as scientific analysis because managers must choose a normative outcome to direct their intervention. I examine a management case study involving prescribed burning of sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) communities in south-central Montana (USA) to illustrate how to teach students to ethically evaluate a (...) management action by precisely identifying: 1) the proposed management action, 2) the deficiency of the system to be remedied by the action, 3) the stakeholders affected by the action, and 4) the category and type of values affirmed in the management action. Through such analysis, students are taught to recognize implicit and explicit value judgments associated with management actions, identify stakeholders to whom managers have legitimate ethical obligations, and practice a general method of ethical analysis applicable to many forms of environmental management. (shrink)

A fair share of change problematics in organizations can be led back to the human factor. In earlier days the problem used to be that the worker was considered as a mechanical element, as ‘a pair of hands’ (Henry Ford). Nowadays we know that people want to be taken seriously and, if so, in general perform better. But when you concentrate on the worker’s sense of meaning for the sake of better achievements, do you really take him seriously? Or does (...) he get, be it in a subtle way, again enlisted in other man’s target schemes? The widespread cynicism about what happens in organizations, in spite of extensive Human Resource Management, and the high percentage of failing change trajectories call for a closer examination of man in organizations and his resistance. -/- For such an examination this thesis turns to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, namely to his treatment of rationality. Rational thought according to Levinas has the merit of making the world lucid and controllable. But at the same time it strips things and people of their identity and incorporates them in a homogenized rational order. Illusory, but nonetheless oppressive. Rationality’s totalitarian character can provoke resistance and grief with people who are enlisted by it. This can lead to a shameful confrontation in which the thinker is being confronted with his victim’s resistance and sees himself and his thinking made questionable. By proceeding along this route, thinking can be brought to self-criticism and to revision of standpoints. -/- This description by Levinas of rational thinking shows similarity to what managers do in organizations. They make their business controllable, but at the same time with their planning and schemes they create a totalitarian straitjacket. This similarity suggests that also the reactions to imperialistic rationality from Levinas’ description ought to be found in organizations. Is it indeed possible to indicate there the kind of resistance and grief Levinas speaks about? Does that give rise to confrontations between managers and their co-workers who are supposed to subordinate to their schemes? Do managers then feel shame? And do those shameful confrontations consequently lead to self-reflection and change? -/- Desk research suggests that the above elements are partly to be found in the literature of management theory. Interviews with managers show that Levinas’ line of thought can also be found in its completeness within organizations. At the same time it becomes clear that becoming conscious of the elements of that line of thought – that rationality is all-conquering, that it provokes resistance, that that can lead to shame as well as to a new beginning – this is a difficult path to travel. The related experiences are easily forgotten and sometimes difficult to excavate. Translation of Levinas’ thinking into terms of management and organization can help us spot them where they play their role in organizations. (shrink)

The main object of this study is to find out whether the differences between classical and medieval thinking about work, occupations and technology are so significant that we are justified in speaking of a real break between Antiquity and the Middle Ages in this connection; or whether there is a possible continuity of ideas. From a comparative perspective five themes are being researched to shed light on this ques-tion. In the first two chapters the author looks into the traditional view (...) of negative ideas about work in Antiquity. Chapter three subsequently deals with monks and their attitude towards labour. In chapter four the place of the so-called artes mechanicae in medieval classifications of knowledge is being studied. In chapter five we find an analysis of twelfth-century sermons ad status. These three chapters principally deal with the question whether Christianity brought about a change in attitude towards work. (shrink)

Multiple authors in cognitive science of religion (CSR) argue that there is something about the human mind that disposes it to form religious beliefs. The dispositions would result from the internal architecture of the mind. In this article, I will argue that this disposition can be explained by various forms of (cultural) learning and not by the internal architecture of the mind. For my argument, I draw on new developments in predictive processing. I argue that CSR theories argue for the (...) naturalness of religious belief in at least three ways; religious beliefs are adaptive; religious beliefs are the product of cognitive biases; and religious beliefs are the product of content biases. I argue that all three ideas can be integrated in a predictive coding framework where religious belief is learned and hence not caused by the internal architecture of the mind. I argue that the framework makes it doubtful that there are modular cognitive mechanisms for religious beliefs and that the human mind has a fixed proneness for religious belief. I also argue that a predictive coding framework can incorporate a larger role for cultural processes and allows for more flexibility. (shrink)

Gödel always claimed that he did not know Skolem's Helsinki lecture when writing his dissertation. Some questions and doubts have been raised about this claim, in particular on the basis of a library slip showing that he had requested Skolem's paper in 1928. It is shown that this library slip does not constitute evidence against Gödel's claim, and that, on the contrary, the library slip and other archive material actually corroborate what Gödel said.

The paper is meant to be a contribution to the study of Indian and comparative ethics. It treats the Vajjālaggam, an anthology of Prākrit stanzas (subhāsita literature) dealing with a variety of topics. Focusing on the ‘ethical’ sections of the VL, it tries to describe and analyse its underlying ethical system. In Part I the different ethical themes of the VL (Valour and Destiny, Virtues and Vices, Masters and Servants, Friendship and Affection, Poverty and Charity) are described in detail. In (...) Part II it is shown that the VL. offers a clear example of a virtue ethic with a strong emphasis on self‐regarding virtues (gunas), based on a pluralistic and instrumental theory of the good. The paper also treats the crucial ethical problem of the relationship between personal well‐being and virtuousness as described in the VL. (shrink)