In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.4 (2002) 629-633 [Access article in PDF] Phiroze Vasunia. The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Classics and Contemporary Thought 8. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. xiv + 346 pp. Cloth, $45. Alexandre Tourraix. L'Orient, mirage grec: L'Orient du mythe et de l'épopée. Edited by Evelyne Geny. Paris: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2000. 165 pp. Paper, fi24.39. Professor (...) Tourraix is an optimistic reactionary. He sets out his aim with refreshing clarity. He seeks to challenge "l'orthodoxie provisoirement établie," which denies that the Greeks were "tributaires de la représentation du monde véhiculée par leur langue... indo-européenne." Tourraix accuses the "adepts" of this "orthodoxy" of citing Dumézil when he excluded Greece from the regularity of Indo-European patterns of thought, while they reject his basic trifunctional theory. This, Tourraix insists, is not a "doctrine" or an "ideological credo," but the result of a "rational elaboration" (15-16).Tourraix is not concerned with radical outsiders. He dismisses the whole of Said's Orientalism because of the latter's blunder in referring to the chorus of the Persae as women. He warns that Bernal should not be taken seriously because his works are not founded on a "scientific hypothesis but on ideological presuppositions" (75). Tourraix's opponents are the professional classicists, notably Martin West, Walter Burkert, and Ruth Edwards. These promote the idea of a substantial Southwest Asian influence on Greek civilization but are unconcerned with Egypt. In the terminology of this reviewer, Tourraix's polemic is not against the "Revised Ancient Model" but as a supporter of the "Extreme" version, he opposes the "Broad Aryan Model."Tourraix's two centers of concern are Troy and Thebes. Troy interests him as a marginal entity between Greek and Barbarian. He admits that pottery and Hittite texts indicate that there were Mycenaean influences in the Troad. On the other hand, he rightly points out that Homer Hellenized the Trojans more than evidence from other sources can sustain. It has also been impossible to correlate the Homeric version of the city's fall with the date and scale of the destructions of Troy VI, VIIa, and VIIb. Tourraix therefore follows the hypothesis of Paul Wathelet that the destruction described in the epics was not that of an unimportant settlement on the Dardanelles but was really that of the great Greek city of Thebes, which was undoubtedly destroyed in the thirteenth century B.C.E.This is just one example of Tourraix's general approach, which is not to accept things at face value but to probe more deeply. On the central theme of his [End Page 629] book, he agrees that many Greek myths and legends would suggest "Oriental" connections and origins and that much Greek iconography appears to be "Oriental" or Egyptian (75). But he knows that such symbols were devoid of content (23). Unfortunately for his scientific credentials, however, he frequently has to rely on the words probablement or peut-être to see Indo-European essences behind the Oriental forms (e.g., 22-23).Clearly Tourraix has always been concerned with Indo-European "cultures." He has published extensively on both Greeks and Persians and the relations between them. When looking at Greek culture, he sees three main indicators of "l'héritage indo-européen." The first is language: He takes a Whorfian view of its determining power and is unconcerned that less than 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has known Indo-European cognates. The second indicator is trifunctionalism: Tourraix sees the Indo-European base whenever he encounters a triple. Three, however, is an attractive number to speakers of many languages. The Christian Trinity appears to have originated among Aramaic speakers, and Mesopotamian and Phoenician cities had the same tripartite division of the male inhabitants into citizen, resident alien, and slave that later occurred in the Greek poleis. Thus, besides its vagueness, trifunctionalism is not an... (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Dans cet ouvrage de référence consacré à une analyse approfondie du thème du consentement aux soins dans la pratique médicale, M.-F. Civil porte son regard de médecin et de philosophe sur les comportements de bon nombre de praticiens à l'heure actuelle plus ou moins soumis à la « mathématisation » de la médecine. Loin de se contenter d'un état des lieux complet de la question, il nous conduit pas à pas sur les chemins d'une (...) « éthique existentielle » tout à fait singulière, renvoyant à des situations pratiques de soins où délibérer avant d'agir et réfléchir à l'action déjà prise permet aux patients d'exprimer le sens donné à leur vécu dans le cadre de leur projet de vie immédiate ou future. Son approche très phénoménologique, aux côtés notamment de Heidegger et Husserl, ouvre la porte à un vaste chantier de réflexion pour tous ceux qui envisagent de se pencher sur la manière concrète d'être-au-monde en médecine comme souci pour soi et pour les autres. Ainsi ce livre interpelle les étudiants, les chercheurs, les professionnels de santé, mais également tous ceux qui ont été, ou seront, tôt ou tard, confrontés au problème du consentement.". (shrink)

Writing in 1978, on the eve of Thatcherism’s political triumph, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (Hall et al., 2013, p. 193) claimed Britain was experiencing a ‘crisis of hegemony’; a political, e...

This article identifies civilizational analysis as one response to a recent crisis in the sociology of large-scale social configurations and explores how far the concept of civilization can go in analyzing the contemporary global social constellation. The reasoning proceeds in four steps. First, a brief review of the recent conceptual debate in social theory and historical sociology leads to the conclusion that concepts such as ‘civilization’ and ‘modernity’ still work with too strong presuppositions about continuity and commonality of patterns of (...) world interpretation. Second, a proposal is made to distinguish several basic problématiques that all human collectivities need to address and to suggest that such a distinction lends itself to research-oriented disentangling of various aspects of social phenomena. In an explorative manner, third, this approach will be applied to South Africa and Brazil, two social configurations that can fruitfully be studied as collectivities but lend themselves much less to civilizational analysis. By way of conclusion, finally, the trajectories of these non-European modernities will briefly be compared to the European one to illustrate the potential of this approach for a global sociology of plural trajectories of modernity. (shrink)

First published in 1923, _The Prospects of Industrial Civilization_ is considered the most ambitious of Bertrand Russell's works on modern society. It offers a rare glimpse into often-ignored subtleties of his political thought and in it he argues that industrialism is a threat to human freedom, since it is fundamentally linked with nationalism. His proposal for one government for the whole world as the ultimate solution, along with his argument that the global village and prevailing political democracy should be its (...) eventual results, is both provocative and thoroughly engaging. (shrink)

The New Leviathan, originally published in 1942, a few months before the author's death, is the book which R. G. Collingwood chose to write in preference to completing his life's work on the philosophy of history. It was a reaction to the Second World War and the threat which Nazism and Fascism constituted to civilization. The book draws upon many years of work in moral and political philosophy and attempts to establish the multiple and complex connections between the levels of (...) consciousness, society, civilization, and barbarism. Collingwood argues that traditional social contract theory has failed to account for the continuing existence of the non-social community and its relation to the social community in the body politic. He is also critical of the tendency within ethics to confound right and duty. The publication of additional manuscript material in this revised edition demonstrates in more detail how Collingwood was determined to show that right and duty occupy different levels of rational practical consciousness. The additional material also contains Collingwood's unequivocal rejection of relativism. David Boucher's introduction shows that The New Leviathan and The Idea of History are integrally related and that neither can be properly understood independently of the other. He is also concerned to show how many of Collingwood's ideas have a contemporary relevance, and that his ideas on barbarism are not so unusual as they might at first appear. (shrink)

The article reviews the social theory of Harry Redner with particular reference to his view of the relationship between high literacy (book culture) and civilization. The question is posed whether, alongside book culture, an axial-type metaphysical culture is also key to the definition of civilization.

The authors investigated the relevance of consequentialism in commercial space exploration as well as in the actively developing space market. The authors conclude that space expansion and colonization of space objects will lead to a revision of the foundational consequentialism provisions. Consequentialism, formed during the history of terrestrial civilization, loses its effectiveness under conditions of space commercialization. The basics of planetary thinking are different from those of cosmic thinking. Therefore, considering the meaning of the terms “cosmic expansion” and “colonization of (...) the cosmos” through the existing theory of consequentialism faces serious contradictions. There is a range of problems that are not explored in modern philosophy and ethics due to the lack of an empirical basis for philosophical analysis. (shrink)

A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century. By Charles Holcombe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xxiv + 403. $33.

The New Leviathan, originally published in 1942, a few months before the author's death, is the book which R. G. Collingwood chose to write in preference to completing his life's work on the philosophy of history. It was a reaction to the Second World War and the threat which Nazism and Fascism constituted to civilization. The book draws upon many years of work in moral and political philosophy and attempts to establish the multiple and complex connections between the levels of (...) consciousness, society, civilization, and barbarism. Collingwood argues that traditional social contract theory has failed to account for the continuing existence of the non-social community and its relation to the social community in the body politic. He is also critical of the tendency within ethics to confound right and duty. The publication of additional manuscript material in this revised edition demonstrates in more detail how Collingwood was determined to show that right and duty occupy different levels of rational practical consciousness. The additional material also contains Collingwood's unequivocal rejection of relativism. David Boucher's introduction shows that The New Leviathan and The Idea of History are integrally related and that neither can be properly understood independently of the other. He is also concerned to show how many of Collingwood's ideas have a contemporary relevance, and that his ideas on barbarism are not so unusual as they might at first appear. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to analyze and criticize, both positively and negatively. Whitehead's concept of progress. Whitehead's progressive cosmology is critically examined, as is the relationship between technology and moral progress. The fragility of progress is emphasized.

he study revisits "civilization" in the context of globalization, analyzing its applicability and potential to mask cultural differences. It specifically contrasts the Western n o t i o n , a n c h o r e d i n c i t i z e n s h i p a n d environmental mastery, with the ancient Chinese "wenming" that signifies enlightenment and social harmony. "Civilization" stresses progress of science and technology, along with the process of globalization. "Wenming" (...) draws from the Book of Chamges' principles, stressing the importance of ritual propriety and family over individualism, and "hé ér bù tóng" or "harmony without uniformity." This perspective promotes unity while respecting individuality. The research suggests that integrating ancient Chinese philosophy could enhance global cooperation by acknowledging the depth of cultural heritage and the importance of diverse societal values. (shrink)

The emerging discipline of complexity science, applied to the social sciences, seeks to study the rise of human civilization as a part of a natural, evolving biological system that exploits energy resources to fuel its growth into a complex social system. In order to understand the whole system, the reductionist approach, typical to Western science, must be supplanted. The atomistic study of various scientific fields as separate mechanical parts of the system must be broadened, creating a more holistic view of (...) human culture as an integral part of larger universal process of evolution and creation. In this article I wish to integrate the various scientific fields, including physics, chronobiology, biology, evolutionary psychology, and the social sciences, to achieve a unified understanding of our cultural evolution. (shrink)

This article addresses a neglected problem in Searle’s social ontology, namely, how human civilization may collapse. In the first section, I provide the theoretical framework. In the second section, I offer the key elements to understanding Searle’s ontology as well as his philosophy of society, emphasizing the role of constitutive rules and deontic powers. In the third section I examine how they improve trust and co-operation. Global and local natural disasters are distinguished in the fourth section, because the former is (...) sufficient to undermine pacts, promises, constitutive rules and deontic powers, while the latter is neither sufficient nor necessary. In the fifth and final section, I put forward an argument via a thought experiment that allows us to anticipate what would occur if people did not keep promises and pacts, on the one hand, and did not respect constitutive rules and deontic powers, on the other hand. Such events, I argue, would result in the collapse of civilization. (shrink)

The basic elements in the ontology of human civilization are status functions. Those are functions that can be performed not in virtue of physical structure alone but only in virtue of collective acceptance by the community of a certain status. Money, property, government and marriage are all examples of status functions. Status functions are all created by repeated applications of the same logical operation, in a preliminary formulation: X counts as Y in context C.On examination it emerges that all status (...) functions are created by a certain kind of representation that has a logical form of a speech act that I call a “Status Function Declaration.” These are explained.This lecture was delivered without notes and the current publication is very informal. I hope the reader will forgive the informality. (shrink)

The materialistic philosophy which sees 'man' as pitted against his environment is rapidly breaking down as technological man becomes more and more able to oppose the largest systems. Every battle that he wins brings a threat of disaster. The unit of survival—either in ethics or in evolution—is not the organism or the species but the largest system or 'power' within which the creature lives. If the creature destroys its environment, it destroys itself.Man needs the earth in order to walk, the (...) sea to swim or sail, the air to fly. Of necessity he acts within the world and in order to be, he must in some measure adapt himself as one part of nature to other parts.In this paper, I argue that global climate change and... (shrink)

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be interpreted (...) as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

At a time when there is general speculation about civilization, or civilizations, as well as on what the relationships are between Western and other civilizations, it is logical to try to define precisely what the men of ancient Greece thought about the question, since Western civilization owes so much to them.It may be that they did not think about it at all, or at least they thought nothing that could be expressed in modern terms. The fact is that ancient Greece (...) did not have a word for civilization: the French and English words come from Latin, not from Greek, while the first examples given in French and English dictionaries are the privileged example of Greece, “the civilization of Greece.” Did the Greeks use a paraphrase? Or a different word? If we consult a English-Greek dictionary we are surprised to see that the word given for “civilized” is hèmeros) that is, “docile,” “tamed.”. (shrink)