Gene drives are potentially ontologically and morally disruptive technologies. The potential to shape evolutionary processes and to eradicate (e.g. malaria-transmitting or invasive) populations raises ontological questions about evolution, nature, and wilderness. The transformative promises and perils of gene drives also raise pressing ethical and political concerns. The aim of this article is to arrive at a better understanding of the gene drive debate by analysing how ontological and moral assumptions are coproduced in this debate. Combining philosophical analysis with a critical (...) reading of the gene drive literature and an ethnographic study of two leading research groups, the article explores the hypothesis that the development of and debate about gene drives are characterized by a particular intervention-oriented mode of coproduction. Based on the results of this exploration, we highlight the need for a broadening of the perspective on gene drives in which empirical, moral, and ontological concerns are addressed explicitly in their interplay rather than in (disciplinary) isolation from each other. (shrink)

In this article, I address and argue against the tendency to understand the anthropocene as inaugurating the end of nature. I conduct two key moves. First, by way of an engagement with the concept of anthropocene technology I explain how understanding the anthropocene as the end of nature prevents us from recognizing what the anthropocene is all about: interventionism. Secondly, I illustrate how a nondualist understanding of the human-nature relation allows us to recognize interventionism as the hallmark of the anthropocene (...) without falling back into the hierarchical human-nature conceptions that underlie interventionism. A nondualist framework that conserves the human-nature distinction helps us in our ability to relate critically to contemporary science and technology in the anthropocene. I illustrate the conceptual narrative of the article through the specific case of gene drive technology development. (shrink)

What does it mean for Christ to be the "image of God"? And, if Christ is the "image of God," can the human person also unequivocally be understood to be the "image of God"? Augustine's Early Theology of Image examines Augustine's conception of the imago dei and makes the case that it represents a significant departure from the Latin pro-Nicene theologies of Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, and Ambrose of Milan only a generation earlier. Augustine's predecessors understood the imago dei (...) principally as a Christological term designating the unity of divine substance. But, Gerald P. Boersma argues, Augustine affirms that Christ is an image of equal likeness, while the human person is an image of unequal likeness. Boersma's careful study thus argues that a Platonic and participatory evaluation of the nature of "image" enables Augustine's early theology of the image of God to move beyond that of his Latin predecessors and affirm the imago dei both of Christ and of the human person. (shrink)

The development of the certified Fair Trade market was initiated by a group of indigenous communities in Mexico. Over time, their vision of Fair Trade as a different type of market has become increasingly marginalized by an emphasis on poverty reduction. This article presents their understanding of what Fair Trade should and should not be. It presents the key principles of the Fair Trade market as effectiveness, ecological sustainability, social sustainability, and more direct producer-consumer relationships. The key challenges that confront (...) Fair Trade in living up to these principles are the need to democratize the formal structures of Fair Trade so as to give a greater voice to small producers and to link with other social movements to confront the dominant neo-liberal trade regime. (shrink)

This article explores the use of islands as tools of geographical and intellectual containment - or what we call “islanding” - in the scientific and policy literature about gene drive technologies in conservation. In the first part of the article, we explore the narrative of contained gene drive use on islands and discuss how it juggles notions of localness and localization of gene drives and their (test) releases. We question the possibility and narrative of containing the spread of gene drives (...) technologically or geographically, and argue that the gene drives for conservation literature strategically combines contradictory and reductive understandings of islands and containment. The second part of the article is devoted to reflection on nonlocal concerns about gene drives and the possibility of local gene drive decisions. We argue that attempts to legitimize local gene drives through local decision-making evade normative concerns about their nonlocalizability and risk instrumentalizing local communities for nonlocal agendas. Our overarching conceptual aim is therefore to open up a domain of thinking around the possibility of demarcation in our world – of our political, normative decisions, and of our reality – and to argue for the vital importance of reflection on this possibility in technological decision-making. (shrink)

Gene drives are potentially ontologically and morally disruptive technologies. The potential to shape evolutionary processes and to eradicate (e.g. malaria-transmitting or invasive) populations raises ontological questions about evolution, nature, and wilderness. The transformative promises and perils of gene drives also raise pressing ethical and political concerns. The aim of this article is to arrive at a better understanding of the gene drive debate by analysing how ontological and moral assumptions are coproduced in this debate. Combining philosophical analysis with a critical (...) reading of the gene drive literature and an ethnographic study of two leading research groups, the article explores the hypothesis that the development of and debate about gene drives are characterized by a particular intervention-oriented mode of coproduction. Based on the results of this exploration, we highlight the need for a broadening of the perspective on gene drives in which empirical, moral, and ontological concerns are addressed explicitly in their interplay rather than in (disciplinary) isolation from each other. (shrink)

As bishops, both Augustine and Ambrose wrote sermons on Psalm 118 towards the end of their lives. This article puts these two exegetical works in dialogue with each other by focusing on the common theological theme of participation operative in both commentaries. I argue that both Ambrose and Augustine present a Christological account of participation which functions as the basis of their respective ecclesiologies. Within this overarching Christological framework, the article notes that Ambrose grounds participation in the imago Dei, whereas (...) Augustine’s takes his starting point from the grace Christ offers through the incarnation. (shrink)

Makes the case that the different stances Aristotle and Socrates take toward politics can be traced to their divergent accounts of friendship.

This essay traces the intellectualist position of Pierre Rousselot (1878–1915) as he developed it in reaction to neo‐Thomist scholasticism, and argues that at the heart of Rousselot's approach lay a sacramental ontology. Rousselot's 1908 dissertations on St. Thomas's intellectualism and on love in the Middle Ages are best understood in the context of the 1907 condemnations of Modernism. Rousselot questioned the firmly entrenched rationalist approach of the neo‐Thomist revival. While continuing in the Thomist intellectualist tradition, he argued for a chastened (...) epistemology in which the intellect aimed beyond discursive knowledge at union with God. The implication, for Rousselot, was that in its current condition, the human intellect could arrive at knowledge only in an indirect fashion. Accepting Thomas's view of the unity between love of desire and love of friendship, Rousselot emphasized the continuity between nature and the supernatural. Furthermore, his insistence that rational judgements of credibility were powerless without corresponding ‘eyes of faith’ implied a sacramental view of the natural order as pointing to the supernatural end of the beatific vision. His moderated intellectualism, with its implied sacramental ontology, would prove an attractive paradigm for the later movement of nouvelle théologie. (shrink)

ObjectiveFatigue after burns is often attributed to the hyperinflammatory and hypermetabolic response, while it may be best understood from a bio-psychological perspective, also involving the neuro-endocrine system. This longitudinal multi-center study examined the course of fatigue up to 18 months postburn. The contribution of bio-psychological factors, including burn severity, pain, and acute PTSD symptoms, to the course and persistence of fatigue was studied in a multifactorial model.MethodsParticipants were 247 adult burn survivors. Fatigue symptoms were assessed with the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (...) during the acute phase and subsequently at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months postburn, and were compared to population norms. Age, gender, burn severity, acute PTSD symptoms and pain were assessed as potential predictors of fatigue over time in a latent growth model.ResultsAt 18 months postburn, 46% of the burn survivors reported fatigue, including 18% with severe fatigue. In the acute phase, higher levels of fatigue were related to multiple surgeries, presence of pain, and higher levels of acute PTSD symptoms. Fatigue gradually decreased over time with minor individual differences in rate of decrease. At 18 months, pain and acute PTSD symptoms remained significant predictors of fatigue levels.ConclusionsProtracted fatigue after burns was found in almost one out of five burn survivors and was associated with both pain and acute PTSD symptoms. Early detection of PTSD symptoms and early psychological interventions aimed at reducing PTSD symptoms and pain may be warranted to reduce later fatigue symptoms. (shrink)

God's hospitality or welcome of human beings into eternal life can be approached by means of Western or Eastern strategies. I explore Derrida's understanding of "pure hospitality", which contains parallels with apophatic theology. I then appeal to Irenaeus's eschatology, which exhibits a fruitful tension between kataphatic and apophatic elements, to provide a transcendent warrant for human hospitality. On the one hand, the Bishop's millenarian opposition to Gnosticism implies the continuation of the substance of creation in the eternal Kingdom. On the (...) other hand, Irenaeus's emphasis on deification and visio Dei suggests a future of "pure hospitality" and openness. (shrink)

The city of Jerusalem is the focal point of Augustine’s exegesis of the Psalms of Ascent. In Enarratio in Psalmum 121, Augustine presents Jerusalem as a collective unity contemplating God’s being. The city is thoroughly established in peace and love and participates intimately in the divine life. The essential features of the Jerusalem described in Enarratio in Psalmum 121 align neatly with the created intellectual realm of contemplation outlined in Confessiones Book 12. Both texts envisage a city that participates in (...) the divine idipsum. This city is a creature so intimate with God’s being that its creaturely mutability is checked. Both texts articulate this created intellectual realm as participating in God’s eternity. In both cases, this participation is realized in contemplation: through the constancy of its vision, it is conformed to that which it sees. Finally, both the aeterna Ierusalem and the caelum caeli are a communion—in fact, a city—united in love. In Enarratio in Psalmum 121, Augustine urges his congregants to join themselves to this edifice that is still under construction; in the Confessiones, he presents himself as a pilgrim groaning and longing with desire to be part of the Jerusalem that is above, his mother and patria. (shrink)

Als er iéts duurzaam kan worden genoemd, zijn het wel levensbeschouwingen. Vermoedelijk is bij de mens de reflectie op het eigen leven begonnen toen het cognitieve vermogen om te reflecteren ontstond. Rotstekeningen van tienduizenden jaren oud zijn de eerste tastbare aanwijzingen in die richting. En sindsdien is de mensheid blijven reflecteren op zijn eigen bestaan, op de wereld om hem heen, op het firmament erboven en op de samenhang tussen dat alles. Op welk moment daarbij het bovennatuurlijke, spirituele of goddelijke (...) in de reflecties werd betrokken is onbekend, maar zeker ook al duizenden jaren geleden. Wereldbeschouwingen hebben in de regel implicaties voor het menselijk handelen, ze zijn zelden uitsluitend beschouwend van karakter. Ze bevatten bijvoorbeeld impliciete of expliciete opvattingen over de ontologie, de ‘aard der dingen’, ons vermogen om de werkelijkheid te kennen en ze hebben meestal implicaties voor de ethiek. (shrink)

How ought we to deal with our embodied existence–-and particularly the emotion of grief–-in the light of the gospel? Gregory of Nyssa recognizes the embodied character of our emotional lives, but he refuses to exempt the passion of grief from moral evaluation. While the Cappadocian father is attuned to the powerful role that the emotion of grief plays in our lives, he is also keenly aware of the fallen character of the body and of the problematic character of the passions. (...) For Nyssen, grief and moral theology do not belong to two separate worlds. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Taking my cue from Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir, I discuss the struggles Stanley Hauerwas experiences in trying to identify a place he can call home. The memoir suggests that his academic endeavours have taken Hauerwas far from his hometown, Pleasant Grove, Texas. The book shows, however, that places such as Pleasant Grove function for Hauerwas as anticipations of the heavenly eschaton. To suggest that Christians have no home here on earth does not take into account sufficiently the “real presence” (...) of the heavenly future in everyday realities, such as Stanley's love of Paula Gilbert and a person's appropriate affection of his country. (shrink)

This article is an analysis of the Socratic account of love presented by Diotima in Symposium 210a–212a. The author explores and responds to two philosophic objections to this account of love: first, that it is self-absorbed and, second, that it is incapable of loving a particular person. He argues that this criticism misses the mark. Diotima’s account of eros is not so much egotistical as ordered to an objective good. Further, in the final analysis, eros is not grasping and acquisitive (...) but generous and diffusive. Finally, the author argues that the Socratic account of love is, in fact, especially well equipped to love the particular. (shrink)

This special issue of Grazer Philosophische Studien brings together a number of carefully selected and timely articles that explore the discussion of different facets of self-consciousness from multiple perspectives. The selected articles mainly focus on three topics of the current debate: (1) the relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual ways of self-representation; (2) the role of intersubjectivity for the development of self-consciousness; (3) the temporal structure of self-consciousness. A number of previously underexposed, yet important connections between different approaches are explored. The (...) articles not only represent the state of the art in their respective areas of research and make new insights available, but also provide an overview of different methodologies: ranging from philosophy of language and mind to phenomenology and cognitive science. The volume is of interest for philosophers, cognitive scientists and researchers in related disciplines who are concerned with investigating the nature and origin of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This article explores how corporate governance processes and structures are being used in large Australian companies to develop, lead and implement corporate responsibility strategies. It presents an empirical analysis of the governance of sustainability in fifty large listed companies based on each company’s disclosures in annual and sustainability reports. We find that significant progress is being made by large listed Australian companies towards integrating sustainability into core business operations. There is evidence of leadership structures being put in place to ensure (...) that board and senior management are involved in sustainability strategy development and are then incentivised to monitor and ensure implementation of that strategy through financial rewards. There is evidence of a willingness to engage and communicate clearly the results of these strategies to interested stakeholders. Overall, there appears to be a developing acceptance amongst large corporations that efforts towards improved corporate sustainability are not only expected but are of value to the business. We suggest that this is evidence of a managerial shift away from an orthodox shareholder primacy understanding of the corporation towards a more enlightened shareholder value approach, often encompassing a stakeholder-orientated view of business strategy. However, strong underlying tensions remain due to the insistent market emphasis on shareholder value. (shrink)

In this article, two ways of thinking about the potential disruptiveness of de-extinction and gene drives for conservation are presented. The first way of thinking zooms in on particular technologies and assesses the disruptiveness of their potential implications. This approach is exemplified by a framework proposed by Hopster (2021) that is used to conduct our assessment. The second way of thinking turns the logic of the first around. Here, the question is how gene drives and de-extinction fit into a wider (...) and partly pre-existing context of disruption of human-nature relations. By only zooming in on a particular technology and its potential implications, the context out of which the technology is born is unavoidably disregarded. Gene drives and de-extinction are catalysts of a wider disruption already underway. And it is precisely because this disruption is already underway that the terrain is opened for the development and application of these technologies. In other words, the disruptiveness of these technologies strengthens the disruptiveness that was already underway and vice versa. It is argued that the two ways of thinking about emerging technologies in conservation need to go together, meaning in technology assessment both perspectives need to be included. (shrink)

The continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies. Although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights, environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain. This paper focuses on the role and performance of Apple Inc in the global (...) value chain in Asia. Apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing Apple components. This analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected. (shrink)

Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato explores a Socratic intuition about belief, doxa -- belief is "shameful." In aiming for knowledge, one must aim to get rid of beliefs. Vogt shows how deeply this proposal differs from contemporary views, but that it nevertheless speaks to intuitions we are likely to share with Plato, ancient skeptics, and Stoic epistemologists.

While substantial evidence is emerging internationally of positive increases in the participation of women on company boards, there is less evidence of any significant change in the proportion of women in senior executive ranks. This paper describes evidence of positive changes in the number of women on boards in Australia. Unfortunately these changes are not mirrored in the senior executive ranks where the proportion of women remains consistently low. We explore some of the reasons for these disproportionate changes and examine (...) the likely effect of the recent amendments to the Australian stock exchange’s corporate governance code designed to improve gender diversity both on boards and throughout organisations. Based on the early corporate response to these regulatory changes, it is interesting to consider whether Australia’s approach in promoting voluntary self-regulation at the corporate level may be as effective in the long run as the emerging trend in Europe to apply legislated quotas for female corporate board representation. Interview evidence is presented suggesting that the primary reasons for the lack of women in leadership are not simply lack of opportunity at the apex of the corporation, but issues at mid-management level that are unlikely to be resolved by mandatory board quotas. In some circumstances carefully monitored voluntary targets may be more effective at promoting cultural and strategic change at the heart of the corporation. In summary, mandatory quotas may achieve early and significant results in terms of female board representation. However, voluntary targets for women’s participation on boards and in executive ranks may promote more effective cultural and practical change in support of greater representation of women in leadership. (shrink)

This book argues that political philosophy is central to early Stoic philosophy, and is deeply tied to the Stoics' conceptions of reason and wisdom. Broad in scope, it explores the Stoics' idea of the cosmic city, their notion of citizen-gods, as well as their account of the law.

Recent research on moral decision-making has suggested that many common moral judgments are based on immediate intuitions. However, some individuals arrive at highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions about when it is permissible to harm other individuals. Such utilitarian judgments have been attributed to effortful reasoning that has overcome our natural emotional aversion to harming others. Recent studies, however, suggest that such utilitarian judgments might also result from a decreased aversion to harming others, due to a deficit in empathic concern and social (...) emotion. The present study investigated the neural basis of such indifference to harming using functional neuroimaging during engagement in moral dilemmas. A tendency to counterintuitive utilitarian judgment was associated both with ‘psychoticism’, a trait associated with a lack of empathic concern and antisocial tendencies, and with ‘need for cognition’, a trait reflecting preference for effortful cognition. Importantly, only psychoticism was also negatively correlated with activation in the subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC), a brain area implicated in empathic concern and social emotions such as guilt, during counterintuitive utilitarian judgments. Our findings suggest that when individuals reach highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions, this need not reflect greater engagement in explicit moral deliberation. It may rather reflect a lack of empathic concern, and diminished aversion to harming others. (shrink)

French philosopher Louis Pierre Althusser (1918 -1990) helped define the politico-theoretical conjuncture of pre- and post-1968. Today, there is a recrudescence of interest in his thought, especially in light of his later work, published in English as Philosophy of the Encounter (Verso, 2006). This has led to renewed debates on the reformulation of conflicting notions of materialism, on the event as both philosophical concept and political construction, and on the nature of politics and the political. These original essays by leading (...) scholars aim to provide a new assessment of Althusser's thought, especially in relation to contemporary debates. Organized in four sections that represent the main currents in Althusser's scholarship, the book discusses materialism and the different formulations of the relationship between politics and philosophy, Althusser's interpretations of political thinkers (including Machiavelli, Deleuze and Gramsci), the resources he provides to critique political economy and politics in post-Marxist thought, and the theorization of ideology and politics. Encountering Althusser is a groundbreaking resource that highlights Althusser's continuing relevance to contemporary radical thought. (shrink)

Academic publications of empirical public health research often entail recommendations for moral action that address practitioners and policy makers. These recommendations are regularly based on implicit moral judgments with the underlying reasons not explicitly stated. In this paper, we elaborate on the moral relevance of such judgments and the need to explain them in order to account for academic argumentation. We argue for an explicit reporting of bridge principles to increase the transparency of the reporting of public health research. The (...) reporting of bridge principles can inform readers, support them in understanding the relationship between empirical and normative claims in a specific paper, and may pave new ways for the rigorous reporting of empirical research that has moral implications. Furthermore, it can be used to classify studies to systematically address the justification for their argumentation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically explore whether crowdsourced Big Data enables an inclusive humanitarian response at times of crisis. We argue that all data, including Big Data, are socially constructed artefacts that reflect the contexts and processes of their creation. To support our argument, we qualitatively analysed the process of ‘Big Data making’ that occurred by way of crowdsourcing through open data platforms, in the context of two specific humanitarian crises, namely the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and (...) the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. We show that the process of creating Big Data from local and global sources of knowledge entails the transformation of information as it moves from one distinct group of contributors to the next. The implication of this transformation is that locally based, affected people and often the original ‘crowd’ are excluded from the information flow, and from the interpretation process of crowdsourced crisis knowledge, as used by formal responding organizations, and are marginalized in their ability to benefit from Big Data in support of their own means. Our paper contributes a critical perspective to the debate on participatory Big Data, by explaining the process of in and exclusion during data making, towards more responsive humanitarian relief. (shrink)

Vogt puts forward a novel version of the Guise of the Good: the desire to have one's life go well shapes and sustains mid- and small-scale motivations. Her book lays out a non-relativist version of Protagoras's Measure Doctrine and defends a new realism about good human lives.

The Stoics’ theory of kataleptic impressions looks different once we attend to their analysis of the Sorites paradox. In defending this view, I reject the long-standing assumption that the Stoics develop their theory by focusing on sensory impressions. The Stoic approach to vagueness shows, for example, that non-sensory impressions can be seemingly indistinguishable by belonging to a series. It also draws attention to an understudied dimension of Stoic theory: in aiming to assent only to kataleptic impressions, one aims to avoid (...) not only assent to false impressions but also assent to those that are neither true nor false. (shrink)

Some narrative approaches assume a tight relation between narrative and selfhood. They hold that the self-understanding of persons as individuals possessing a set of particular character traits is above all narratively structured for it is constituted by stories persons tell or can tell about their lives. Against this view, it is argued that self-understanding is also characterized by certain non-narrative and invariant mental features. In order to show this, a non-narrative awareness of self-identity over time will be analyzed. It will (...) be argued that this basic form of awareness plays a fundamental role for the possibility of a richer form of self-understanding. (shrink)

What enables everyday collective attitudes such as the intention of two persons to go for a walk together? Most current approaches are concerned with full-fledged col- lective attitudes and focus on the content, the mode or the subject of such attitudes. It will be argued that these approaches miss out an important explanatory enabling feature of collective attitudes: an experiential state, called a “sense of us”, in which a we-perspective is grounded. As will be shown, the sense of us pre-structures (...) collective intentional states and is thus relevant to an adequate understanding of collective atti- tudes. The argument receives indirect support by insights into distortions of interaction due to implicit stereotypes. (shrink)

The threat simulation theory of dreaming states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a threat simulation (...) response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children. (shrink)

Concept properties are an integral part of theories of conceptual representation and processing. To date, little is known about conceptual properties of abstract concepts, such as idea. This experiment systematically compared the content of 18 abstract and 18 concrete concepts, using a feature generation task. Thirty‐one participants listed characteristics of the concepts (i.e., item properties) or their relevant context (i.e., context properties). Abstract concepts had significantly fewer intrinsic item properties and more properties expressing subjective experiences than concrete concepts. Situation components (...) generated for abstract and concrete concepts differed in kind, but not in number. Abstract concepts were predominantly related to social aspects of situations. Properties were significantly less specific for abstract than for concrete concepts. Thus, abstractness emerged as a function of several, both qualitative and quantitative, factors. (shrink)

The article explores the relation between personal identity and life-changing decisions such as the decision for a certain career or the decision to become a parent. According to L.A. Paul, decisions of this kind involve “transformative experiences”, to the effect that - at the time we make a choice - we simply don’t know what it is like for us to experience the future situation. Importantly, she claims that some new experiences may be “personally transformative” by which she means that (...) one may become a “new kind of person” having a different subjective perspective and “identity”. The article discusses this understanding of a transformed future self. It will be argued that different notions of identity can be distinguished with respect to Paul’s claim: the notion of identity in the sense of a personality as well as the notion of numerical identity in the sense of sameness. By distinguishing these two notions it will become more clear how a future experience may indeed qualify as “personally transformative”. Moreover, it will be shown that the notion of a self-understanding of persons helps to further clarify the kind of change at issue. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued the Stoics develop an account of corporeals that allows their theory of bodies to be, at the same time, a theory of causation, agency, and reason. The paper aims to shed new light on the Stoics' engagement with Plato's Sophist . It is argued that the Stoics are Sons of the Earth insofar as, for them, the study of corporeals - rather than the study of being - is the most fundamental study of reality. (...) However, they are sophisticated Sons of the Earth by developing a complex notion of corporeals. A crucial component of this account is that ordinary bodies are individuated by the way in which the corporeal god pervades them. The corporeal god is the one cause of all movements and actions in the universe. (shrink)