An exploration of modern society and the critical value of popular culture.

Ethical dilemmas and value conflicts affect cities globally, but urban leaders and citizens often avoid confronting them directly and instead view the governance of cities as primarily an administrative task or, even worse, a merely political one. Timothy Beatley challenges readers to consider the issues in our cities not simply as legal or economic problems but as moral ones, asking readers 'How can a city become more ethical?' Beatley unearths, exposes, and explores the many ethical questions (...) class='Hi'>cities face today and touches on many topics, from privacy and crime to racism and the ethics of public space. Drawing from recent policy debates and using extensive examples to consider complex ethical dilemmas, Beatley argues that cities must expand the definition of the moral community to include all their citizens. Cities must take profound steps to address social injustice and plan for climate change-both moral obligations-and this approachable and readable introduction to moral philosophy, urban planning, and social justice will help new generations to grapple with these global issues. (shrink)

Whybrow's interdisciplinary collection of urban writings demonstrates how performance is 'at work' in the city. His selection highlights both diversity and the potential for interaction, drawing attention to the possible identities produced by the multi-faceted nature of the modern metropolis.

Alors qu'il n'était pas vraiment apparu chez Platon, le 'philosophe-roi ' disparaît complètement dans Les politiques d'Aristote. En revanche apparaît pour la première fois celui de 'philosophie politique', en un sens bien éloigné de celui d'aujourd'hui, la théorisation abstraite, détachée de la pratique, réservée aux cabinets de philosophes, voire de consultants. La philosophie politique est entendue non pas comme la théorisation que l'on peut faire de la cité, mais l'étude-- theoria--que la cité fait d'elle-même, comme une forme d'autoconnaissance, c'est-à-dire une (...) contemplation de la cité par elle-même. Or cela implique que règne dans la cité non pas un personnage aux capacités extraordinaires, le 'philosophe-roi', mais une certaine pratique théorique, celle par laquelle les citoyens s'assemblent pour se connaître eux-mêmes directement. Ainsi, même si les critiques qu'il formule de la démocratie ne sont pas négligeables, Aristote fournit avec son Peri politeia, une définition fortement citoyenne de la philosophie politique"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this situation is rapidly changing. Against this backdrop, our specific contribution to the literature on ethics and law vis-à-vis promoting population health is to open up the ubiquitous presence of pets within cities and (...) class='Hi'>towns for further discussion. An expanding body of research suggests that pet animals are deeply relevant to people’s health (negatively and positively). Pet bylaws adopted by town and city councils have largely escaped notice, yet they are meaningful to consider in relation to everyday practices, social norms, and cultural values, and thus in relation to population health. Nevertheless, not least because they pivot on defining pets as private property belonging to individual people, pet bylaws raise emotionally charged ethical issues that have yet to be tackled in any of the health research on pet ownership. The literature in moral philosophy on animals is vast, and we do not claim to advance this field here. Rather, we pragmatically seek to reconcile philosophical objections to pet ownership with both animal welfare and public health. In doing so, we foreground theorizations of personhood and property from sociocultural anthropology. (shrink)

Introduction: Antonio López García's everyday urban worlds -- Gran Vía (1974-1981) -- Madrid desde Torres Blancas (1974-1982) -- Madrid desde la torre de bomberos de Vallecas (1990-2006) -- Epilogue: El sol del membrillo.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symbolic Mathematics and the Intellect Militant: On Modern Philosophy’s Revolutionary SpiritCarl PageWhat makes modern philosophy different? My question presupposes the legitimacy of calling part of philosophy “modern.” That presupposition is in turn open to question as regards its meaning, its warrant, and the conditions of its applicability. 1 Importance notwithstanding, such further inquiries all start out from the phenomenon upon which everyone agrees: philosophy running (...) through Plato and Aristotle looks significantly different from philosophy running from Descartes to Kant.My concern in this essay is with the phenomenon of the difference itself, rather than with the second-order questions associated with how properly to assign it historical meaning. I take the difference between ancient and modern philosophy to be as significant as differences in philosophy’s history can be: modern philosophy rests on a new interpretation of the nature and fulfillment of human reason, and disputes about the nature of human reason are the ultimate battles of philosophy. But the general thesis is not my main point. 2 The focus of this essay falls on what may be called the integrity of the phenomenon, on the specific interpretation of human reason that lends modern philosophy its peculiar face. [End Page 233]Modern philosophy’s strikingly revolutionary spirit is my point of departure. When Descartes writes in the first of his Meditations that “it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last,” 3 he reveals the same enthusiasm for total reform later found in Kant: “This attempt to alter the procedure which has hitherto prevailed in metaphysics, by completely revolutionizing it in accordance with the example set by the geometers and physicists, forms indeed the main purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason.” 4 How exactly did philosophy become so convinced that its central tradition—a sprawling, disorganized, ugly city, as Descartes has it in the Discourse (I:116)—needed razing to the ground in the interest of some rational town-planning? Moreover, the calls for revolution have not abated, despite contemporary disillusionment with both Cartesian rationalism and Enlightenment philosophy in general; they have grown more shrill. The confidence with which rationalism, foundationalism, universalism, logocentrism, Platonism, and so on are currently set at naught for the sake of contingency, particularity, and difference reveals the same revolutionary and totalizing spirit that marks the earlier phase of philosophy’s modernity. Such enthusiasm is reason’s freedom taken to an extreme. 5 What inspires this march of the intellect militant? What, if anything, justifies its hubristic self-assertions in the domain of philosophy? These are the questions I address.Descartes is commonly identified as the father of modern philosophy. While the full story of modern philosophy’s parentage is more complicated than this, it is fair to say that in Descartes self-consciousness of a new mode of doing philosophy emerges with a focus and revolutionary sense of purpose that caught philosophical imagination in his own time and continues to do so in ours. 6 Motifs of modern philosophy may be found in many places—Machiavelli, Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Jakob Boehme—nonetheless, Descartes’s intensely single-minded, even jealous advocacy commends itself to all but the most stubborn antiquarian mentality as modernity’s almost perfect philosophical representative. [End Page 234]That Descartes stands on a remarkable philosophical cusp is apparent in the contrast between the title and the subject matter of his most influential philosophical work: Meditationes de Prima Philosophiae (1641). To that point prima philosophia or First Philosophy had been construed as the metaphysics. It was not concerned with the critical question of how metaphysical sciences are possible and was not directly related to any doctrine of the human soul—except perhaps on the one point of the divinity of nous, the human soul’s highest part. In Descartes’s Meditations, on the other hand, the landscape has altered. Doubt, certainty, knowledge, the ego cogitans and its stream of representations are the new subject matter. What is first in philosophy is no longer what... (shrink)

This book addresses the social, functional and symbolic dimensions of urban space in today’s world. The twelve essays range from a conceptual framing of the issues to case descriptions, rich with illustrations. Together they provide a thorough exploration of the nature and significance of social space and particular aspects of its distribution in today’s urban spaces and the various factors that are competing for it. -/- The book addresses a topic that is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Questions of space are examined from (...) a rich variety of perspectives from urban planning to political philosophy, shedding some light on this shadowy process. Some of the issues addressed include the dichotomies of public and private space, rights and duties regarding the use of space, and conflicts over its allocation. Well-reasoned and lively discussions are offered from the perspective of basic values and rights. The recognition of the specifics of (minority community) identity as an institutional policy is raised in opposition to “abstract distributive accounts of justice” – economic pressures by developers and would-be gentrifiers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Photo-credit to Chicago Sun-Times and James Mescall. 4 "The town is beastly and the weather was vile": Bertrand Russell in Chicago, 1938-1939 Visiting Chicago in 1867, Lord Amberley offered his wife an appreciation of the city: "The country around Chicago is flat and ugly; the town itself has good buildings but has a rough unfinished appearance which does not contribute to its attractions."l While Bertrand Russell is known to (...) have accepted and developed particular aspects of his father's thought, it is more likely that his own visits to Chicago, rather than this nineteenth -century appraisal, brought him to the opinion that "the town is beastly and the weather was vile."z One might suppose Russell's longest stay reaffirmed his image of the city suggested in a 1922 article expressing fear of "a slow destruction of the civilization of China" through which "the big towns will become like Chicago."3 Here, Russell appears to have envisioned this city as an amorphous collection of streets and structures manifesting the least desirable values of American capitalism. In his Autobiography a single paragraph is devoted to his 1938-1939 experience of "the bleak hideousness of Chicago" (II, p. 332). Yet there was far more to Russell's six-month sojourn than the little he chose to recall in print. One-half year is a significant period in anyone's life, even for a man who lived ninety-seven (and a half) years. This article, then, presents an account of Russell's coming to and departure from Chicago and his diverse activities while a professor at the University of Chicago. The need to secure some permanent academic position was strongly felt by Russell in the mid-1930s. His ~aertrand and Patricia Russell, The Amberley Papers (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 57. zThe Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1968), II, p. 332. 3"How Washington Can Help China", New Republic, 4 Jan. 1922, p. 154. / 5 second marriage had ended and a third was beginn~ng; ~ar­ ticipation in the Beacon Hill experimen~ w~s behlnd hlmj and journalistic writing, though ~ contlnulng so~rce of income, was ceasing to be attractlve: No~ a d~slre to return to philosophical work, recurrlng fl~anclal troubles, and the fear of another, far m~r~ destr~ctlve.European~ar all contributed toward his declslon to lnvestlgate Amerlcan possibilities. My feelings are threefold: (a) I' have a lot of ideas in,my head that I long to work at and believe important (b) I am faced with such poverty that I may be unable to give a proper education to the child that is coming (c) That Europe is no place for children with the imminent risk of war--particularly England, which is ' 4 likely to suffer most in the next war. At first, with the help of his American publisher, Warder Norton, Russell approached Princeton University hoping for a research post "on the foundations of mathematics and philosophy" (letter to Norton, 13 Jan. 1937). But no prospect materialized, and he requested Norton to inquire at universities such as Columbia and Harvard. Finally in the spring of 1937 Russell received a letter from Professor Scott Buchanan who then represented the University of Chicago's Committee on the Liberal Arts (COTLA). Buchanan offered a place on COTLA with only minor teaching duties. Writing to Norton that this "seems a very agreeable job", Russell nevertheless suggested the post "may be reactionary and the sort of thing my radical friends would think I ought not to be connected with. '" it is a committee concerned with a conservative reform of education." But the invitation promised adequate time for independent research, and Russell, quite characteristically, concluded "my wish is to accept, but not if doing so would be wicked" (letter of 30 Apr. 1937). However, Buchanan, having soon thereafter left the University of Chicago for a Maryland college, corresponded no further with Russell. The COTLA job offer was officially withdrawn. Only in January 1938 did Russell again hear from a University of Chicago spokesman. Aware that Russell had been somewhat brusquely treated, Professor Richard P. McKeon of the Department of Philosophy now wrote "in the... (shrink)

The origins of Vico's social theory : Vichian reflections on the Neapolitan Revolt of 1701 and the politics of the metropolis -- Vico's cosmopolitanism : global citizenship and natural law in Vico's pedagogical thought -- Vico's social theory : the conundrum of the Roman metropolis and the struggle of humanity for natural rights -- From social theory to philosophy : Vico's disillusions with the Neapolitan magistracy and the new frontier of philosophy.

The Hague: the 'village' with court and government -- Dordrecht: the privileged city -- Haarlem: the frontier city of sand and wood -- Delft: the clean city -- Leiden: the old textile city with a new university -- Amsterdam: the city of wise merchants -- Utrecht: the bishop's city.

Memory of historical trauma has a unique power to generate works of art. This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York—three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas. Berlin experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the city’s reemergence as the German capital; Buenos Aires lived through the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and their legacy of state terror and disappearances; and (...) New York City faces a set of public memory issues concerning the symbolic value of Times Square as threatened public space and the daunting task of commemorating and rebuilding after the attack on the World Trade Center. Focusing on the issue of monumentalization in divergent artistic and media practices, the book demonstrates that the transformation of spatial and temporal experience by memory politics is a major cultural effect of globalization. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: When to Start Cycling An Experiment in Living Philosophical Tailwinds Voluntary Poverty Notes.

Whether one’s attention lies with the big wilderness outside or the wild people and places that survive amidst our ecologically impoverished cities and towns, a thorough and rigorous reflection on wildness remains as a task for environmental philosophy. The political and literary movements concerned with the wilderness have sparked passion, insight, and moments of brilliance, but by and large leave us today at best confused, and at worst naïve, with respect to our thinking of wildness. The attempts (...) at philosophical rigor from the ‘fields’ of so-called ‘environmental philosophy’ or ‘environmental ethics’ certainly bring one nofurther toward understanding the experiences of, say, 500 miles of tundra, or the power and push of a river, or the density of a rainforest, or a kiss. Keeping the illumination of direct experience in mind, this paper will attempt a phenomenology of wildness, using the work of 20th century French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of chiasm describes a perceptual relationship of intertwining, of intimacy and opacity, between Self and Other, in which the Other’s presence guides one’s own perceptions. Reflection around this chiasmic exchange may help us to understand the peculiar perceptual experience with what we call the wild, and perhaps to understand it as a sort of chiasmic wildness. This chiasmic wildness would not be incarcerated in wilderness areas or wild animals, but would exist in our embodied relationships with other people, animals, plants, and places. This paper is offered as an attempt at reflection, as what Martin Heidegger called a Holzweg: wandering down a path that may lead nowhere, but that must be followed beyond where one stands today. (shrink)

Preview: It is not a gross exaggeration to state that philosophy is an inherently urban phenomenon. Born and largely practiced in the Greek polis, it was developed throughout the ages in various places that more often than not were situated within city walls. Even if, udoubtedly, philosophy has never been limited solely to urban spaces, it has become more and more embedded in cities over the centuries. Consequently, from the 19th century on it has been part and (...) parcel of the intellectual life whose main centers have been towns since it has been almost exclusively researched on and taught within academic institutions. (shrink)

Explores how moving images both produce and are predicated on place.

The 2011 tsunami had a devastating effect on the east coast of Japan. Particularly poignant were the century-old markers on hillsides warning against building anywhere below. Nevertheless, such wisdom from traditional knowledge was disregarded because of the perceived invulnerability of the modern. This paper attempts to garner such traditional empirical knowledge regarding the siting of towns and cities by considering the Chinese art/science of fengshui or dili, the original purpose of which was to site human habitation in the (...) most favourable places for long term survival. This knowledge is then used to consider the placement of cities created by modernity, those founded on and flourishing through the advent of globalisation, such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, St Petersburg, and Sydney. (shrink)

This book has two main and connected themes - the conception and articulation of time in the Greek world and the creation of history, especially in the context of the Greek city. Both how time is expressed and how the past is presented have often been seen as reflections of society. By looking at the construction of the past through the medium of local historiography, where we can view these issues in the relatively restricted world of individual city-states, we can (...) gain a clearer insight into how different versions of the past and different constructions of time were offered to the community for approval. In this way, the citizens were able to negotiate time past and indeed their own history, and thereby to express their values and aspirations. (shrink)

Diese Arbeit reflektiert die Großstadt phänomenologisch konsequent als „Lebenswelt“ - die Lebenswelt Großstadt vorgestellt als Gestalt und Gestaltung wirklich wesentlichen Menschseins hier und jetzt. Damit, und das ist ein Ziel dieser Untersuchung, lässt sich eine Phänomenologie der Lebenswelt Großstadt nicht von einer existentiell gerichteten Anthropologie lösen. - Wir leben, arbeiten, lieben und leiden eben nicht in einer Lebenswelt an und für sich. Nicht eine abstrakt eingeführte Lebenswelt wird als das Fundament unseres Daseins vorgestellt, also unseres Wahrnehmens, Erkennens, Fühlens; nicht sie (...) ist Horizont unseres Krankseins, unserer Kunst und unserer Religion. Vielmehr wird die Lebenswelt Großstadt phänomenologisch eingeführt als die Wirklichkeit, die unser Da-und-So-sein prägt und verändert. So reflektiert sich die Lebenswelt Großstadt phänomenologisch als „aktives“ und „passives“, als „willkürliches“ und „unwillkürliches“ existentielles Aktgeflecht, in und mit dem sich das leibhafte Dasein ganz und gar als In-der-Welt-sein eingefaltet erlebt. Lebenswelt Großstadt und unser Da-und-So-in-der-Welt-sein können phänomenologisch also gleichgesetzt werden. Somit ist Daseins-Analyse Lebenswelt-Analyse und umgekehrt. Das hätte - und darauf macht diese Arbeit besonders aufmerksam - Folgen für Psychologie, Medizin, Psychiatrie, und nicht zuletzt auch für die Theologie. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper I try to analyze the fate of a new medical model that was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in European Latin society, particularly in the southern parts of Latin Europe. This model won the approval of the communities in which it was developed as part of an incipient network of medical care and attention. The new healer (Christian and male )that emerged from this model, whether physician or surgeon, based his practice on his knowledge (...) of Aristotelian natural philosophy. He was an intellectual and a social product fashioned and supported by traditional and new urban leader groups, whether civil or ecclesiastic, Christian or Jewish. Health and healers were considered part of the urban social organization both in large cities and in smaller towns.Full social acceptance of this new model was achieved only after heated debate. In practice, the new way of conceiving of medicine did not begin to become socially accepted outside intellectual circles until the new healer was able to offer specific solutions for the maintenance or restoration of health, both at an individual and at a collective level, and according to the criteria and feelings of the leader groups of the society of that time.Progress in research allows us to identify nene factors, at least, that were involed in the construction of these novelties in late medieval Latin society. (shrink)

English summary: The silent film of the Weimar Republic grappled with the norms and values of a society, whose elites dismissed it as a cultural product for the masses and the bulk of whose citizens were eager consumers of film. It scrutinized their civil facade and distanced itself with constructive irony and productive skepticism about their traditional (gender-) roles and modes of identity. Its silent message reaches us today like a message in a bottle from a temporary and distant, but (...) psychologically close, shore, and challenges us to translate it into the language of our own present. In the act of this metaphorically understood translation, one discovers the unexpected currency of Weimars silent film as a global form of art, which overcomes language barriers, moves people who possess various cultural horizons, and heals the trauma that lingers from the never finished Tower of Babel. The silent film of the Weimar Republic shines on us from a close remoteness with a beguiling power, which is its own genuine art. German description: Der Stummfilm der Weimarer Republik setzte sich kritisch mit den Normen und Werten einer Gesellschaft auseinander, deren Eliten ihn als Massenkulturprodukt ablehnten und deren Gros ihn gierig verschlang. Er hinterfragte ihre burgerliche Fassade und distanzierte sich mit konstruktiver Ironie und produktiver Skepsis von ihren tradierten (Geschlechter-)Rollen und Identitatsmustern. Seine stumme Botschaft erreicht uns heute wie eine Flaschenpost von einem zeitlich zwar fernen, psychologisch jedoch nahen Ufer, und fordert uns heraus, sie in die Sprache unserer eigenen Gegenwart zu ubersetzen. Im Akt dieser metaphorisch zu verstehenden Ubersetzung entdeckt man die unvermutete Aktualitat des Weimarer Stummfilms als einer globalen Kunstform, die Sprachbarrieren uberwunden, Menschen verschiedenster Kulturhorizonte bewegt und das Trauma des nie vollendeten Turms von Babel geheilt hat. Der Stummfilm der Weimarer Republik leuchtet uns aus naher Zeitferne mit einer betorenden Kraft entgegen, die nur echter Kunst eigen ist. (shrink)

Panorama de la vision du lieu et de l'urbain de 20 philosophes importants du 20e siècle de Simmel, James ou Heidegger à Maldiney, Nancy en passant par Derrida, Foucault ou Deleuze.--[Memento].

Spatial Turns brings together essays that apply a spatial analysis to German literature and other media and engages with specifically German theorizations of ...

Armond R. Towns demonstrates that humanity in media philosophy has implicitly referred to a social Darwinian understanding of the human as a Western, white, male, and capitalist figure. Building on concepts from Black studies and cultural studies, Towns develops an insightful critique of this dominant conception of the human in media philosophy and introduces a foundation for Black media philosophy.

The paper explores town-gown relations in Europe across thecenturies from the point of view of the university. It arguesthat the history of their relationship can be largely dividedinto two distinctive periods: one, in the period 1200–1800, whenthe University was in the town, but not of it; the other,post-1800, when the two were much more closely connected. Italso briefly examines the influence of the American campus modelon the European university system.

In the past fifteen years, Henri Lefebvre's reputation has catapulted into the stratosphere, and he is now considered an equal to some of the greats of European social theory (Bourdieu, Deleuze, Harvey). In particular, his work has revitalized urban studies, geography and planning via concepts like; the social production of space, the right to the city, everyday life, and global urbanization. Lefebvre's massive body of work has generated two main schools of thought: one that is political economic, and another that (...) is more culturally oriented and poststructuralist in tone. Space, Difference, and Everyday Life merges these two schools of thought into a unified Lefebvrian approach to contemporary urban issues and the nature of our spatialized social structures. (shrink)

This book is a new scholarly edition of Lincoln Steffensâ classic, â oemuck-rakingâ account of Gilded Age corruption in America. It provides the broader political background, theoretical and historical context needed to better understand the social and political roots of corruption in general terms: the social and moral nature of corruption and reform. Steffens enjoyed the support of a multitude of journalists with first-hand knowledge of their localities. He interviewed and came to know political bosses, crusading district attorneys and indicted (...) corruptionists spanning a cast of hundreds. He also benefited from the support of a large-scale, nationally prominent network of anti-corruption specialists and luminaries, including President Theodore Roosevelt. Steffens explored in detail the high Gilded Age corruption of New York City, Chicago, â oecorrupt and contentedâ Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Minneapolis. His work culminated in a well-documented record of Gilded Age corruption in the cities; and, with the addition of the editorial annotations, Chronology and Introduction of this edition, the reader is placed in a position to gain an overview and considerable insight into the general, moral and social-political phenomenon of corruption. This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies. (shrink)

In my book, Cities and Immigration, I suggest shifting responsibilities for the integration of immigrants from the state to the city level. The articles in this issue challenge some of my suggestions. I discuss these challenges with regard to three questions: should a city enjoy greater autonomy to decide who, and how many, immigrants should settle within its borders? Should immigrants enjoy local voting rights even before naturalization? And is there a morally preferable model for integrating immigrants into the (...) city? (shrink)

When town planning emerged at the end of the 19th century, its proponents did not envisage the city without nature. Some, such as Ebenezer Howard, believed the garden city would become the new face of the urban landscape, bringing together only the positive aspects of both city and country. Others, health experts and rationalists, advocated functional planning, where the ‘green space’ was part of the overall plan. And so nature was not forgotten. But what ‘nature’? A ‘nature’ external to the (...) town-dweller, like an ornament or decoration? Something that enhanced the built environment and not the very condition of our existence as human beings? Behind the planners’ inclusion of ‘nature’ lie very different intentions, from one period to another and one culture to another. The globalized, standardized ‘nature’ that was subsequently part of marketing the city is just an image; whether wild or tamed, it is no longer localized, no longer a partner in our condition as denizens of the earth. Thierry Paquot examines these continuing processes of change. (shrink)

Salop’s “Circular City” model of spatial competition is generalized to higher dimensions, and to “transportation” costs which are a power of distance. Assuming free entry, mill pricing is compared to location-based price discrimination. For dimensions above one, there is some too little entry below some cutoff power, and too much entry above it. This cutoff cost-power rises with dimension, and is larger under price discrimination. Mill pricing induces more entry for powers of four or less, and less entry for powers (...) of five or more. Overall, too much entry seems a more severe problem, which tends to price discrimination. (shrink)

This essay takes seriously Heidegger’s claim that a given place influences what gets built in it, which both expresses and creates how we dwell in that place. This in turn is a guiding metaphor for how we think about ourselves as dwellers, which for Heidegger is the true nature of philosophy. I argue that philosophy itself is most fully supported in an urban, city environment.

The contributions in this volume map out how technologies are used and designed to plan, maintain, govern, demolish, and destroy the city. The chapters demonstrate how urban technologies shape, and are shaped, by fundamental concepts and principles such as citizenship, publicness, democracy, and nature. The many authors herein explore how to think of technologically mediated urban space as part of the human condition. The volume will thus contribute to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from the perspective of the (...) philosophy of technology. This perspective also contributes to the discussion and process of making cities ‘smart’ and just. This collection appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the fields of philosophy of technology, urban planning, and engineering. (shrink)

What I call ambiguities of system due to the sheer complexity of Whitehead’s metaphysics and his analysis of process in terms of concrescence and transition threaten its coherence in terms of what we know empirically of the quantum and classical dimensions of nature. Ambiguities of equivocation pertaining to Whitehead’s use of the terms “contemporary” and “objectification,” as the latter is employed in relation to prehension and satisfaction, also threaten its coherence. The article proposes ways to reduce these threats and uncertainty (...) about coherence by clarifying ambiguities and by attending to the way Whitehead’s terms are predicated on the quantum and classical dimensions. (shrink)

Two powerful and interrelated transnational cultural expressions mark our epoch, Charismatic spirituality and global city. This book demonstrates how these two forces can be used to inform ethical design of cities and their common social lives to best support human flourishing, spirituality, and social and ecological wellbeing of their residents.

The volume describes a virtual tour of the cities in which Franz Brentano and his pupils worked and lived, with a reconstruction of the intellectual climate of their time. After the Introduction, the intellectual life of Wurzburg, Munich, Vienna, Prag, Lvov, Warsaw, Cambridge, Florence and Milan is presented and analyzed. The papers collected in this volume propose several answers to the following question: to what do we refer when we speak of Central European philosophy?. Interpretations of Central European (...) philosophy have developed in at least two broad directions. An interpretation fashionable during the 1970s lumps specific philosophical achievements, especially those of Mach and Wittgenstein, characterized by research into and development of new languages, of new philosophical, scientific and artistic grammars. In this situation, literature was seen as the exploration of meanings moving towards frontiers in which reality and possibility, science and metaphor, meet and merge. On the other hands, the theme of a Central European philosophy, connected with but independent of literature, has recently been given more thorough development. The two outstanding figures to have emerged from this inquiry are those of Bernard Bolzano and Franz Brentano. With reference to Brentano in particular, it is almost as if the collapse of the Empire also erased awareness of the common origin of many diverse components of Central European philosophical and scientific thought. The Polish logical school, logical neopositivism, phenomenology, the Prague school of linguistics, analytic philosophy, Gestalt psychology, the Vienna economics school - as well as a number of individual thinkers - are all movements and groups connected in some manner with Brentano's work and teaching. Although in some respects these are movements still at the centre of interest, the overall effect, the pattern of their common and unifying aspects have been neglected if they have not entirely disappeared. It seems that the unity of this philosophical tradition was lost with the end of the geographical and political unity of the Danubian empire and with the events that accompanied its downfall. After 1918 the centres of that tradition - Vienna, Prague, Lvov, Graz - belonged to different states, and its rich network of exchanges, contacts and relationships was dismantled forever. However, there still remained something of its philosophical style in each individual school; traits which enable us to speak, as the Authors have done in this volume, of Central European philosophy.". (shrink)