This collection features original essays that examine Walter Benjamin¿s and Theodor Adorno¿s essays and correspondence on literature. Taken together, the essays present the view that these two monumental figures of 20th-century philosophy were not simply philosophers who wrote about literature, but that they developed their philosophies in and through their encounters with literature. Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature is divided into three thematic sections. The first section contains essays that directly demonstrate the ways in which literature enriched (...) the thinking of Benjamin and Adorno. It explores themes that are recognized to be central to their thinking¿mimesis, the critique of historical progress, and the loss and recovery of experience¿through their readings of literary authors such as Baudelaire, Beckett, and Proust. The second section continues the trajectory of the first by bringing together four essays on Benjamin¿s and Adorno¿s reading of Kafka, whose work helped them develop a distinctive critique of and response to capitalism. The third and final section focuses more intently on the question of what it means to gain authentically critical insight into a literary work. The essays examine Benjamin¿s response to specific figures, including Georg B¿chner, Robert Walser, and Julien Green, whose work he sees as neglected, undigested, or misunderstood. This book offers a unique examination of two pivotal 20th-century philosophers through the lens of their shared experiences with literature. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars across philosophy, literature, and German studies. (shrink)

The idea that consciousness and complexity are closely related has been a major driver of the popularity of integrated information theory of consciousness, despite its major formal, phenomenological, and neuroscientific shortcomings. Here, I argue that we can recover this intuition by replacing its biologically neutral notion of complexity with an evolutionary one that I shall dub “pathological complexity.”.

THE FREEHOF INSTITUTE OF PROGRESSIVE HALAKHAH The Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah is a creative research center devoted to studying and defining the progressive character of the halakhah in accordance with the principles and theology of Reform Judaism. It seeks to establish the ideological basis of Progressive halakhah, and its application to daily life. The Institute fosters serious studies, and helps scholars in various portions of the world to work together for a common cause. It provides an ongoing forum through (...) symposia, and publications including the quarterly newsletter, HalakhaH, published under the editorship of Walter Jacob, in the United States. The foremost halakhic scholars in the Reform, Liberal, and Progressive rabbinate along with some Conservative and Orthodox colleagues as well as university professors serve on our Academic Council. This collection of essays is the product of the symposia held in Atlanta and Pittsburgh in 1995 and 1996. This book follows the volumes DYNAMIC JEWISH LAW; Progressive Halakhah - Essence and Application (1991), RABBINIC -LAY RELATIONS IN JEWISH LAW (1993), CONVERSION TO JUDAISM IN JEWISH LAW (l994), DEATH AND EUTHANASIA INJEWISH LAW (1995) and THE FETUS AND FERTILITY IN JEWISH LAW (1995), ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA IN JEWISH LAW (1997). It is part of a series whose subjects are diverse and the approaches taken by the authors are equally so. We wish to encourage wide ranging discussions of contemporary and historic themes. (shrink)

In this radical reinterpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Walter E. Wehrle demonstrates that developmental theories of Aristotle are based on a faulty assumption: that the fifth chapter of Categories is an early theory of metaphysics that Aristotle later abandoned.

This original and accessible text is more than an introduction to comparative philosophy in the East and West. It is also a guide to 'philosophizing' as a thinking process. In addition to outlining the presuppositions of different traditions, it discusses their methods and techniques for reasoning in what the author calls four dimensions of 'philosophical space': object, subject, the situational and the aspective/perspective dimension.

(2002). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 282-285.

Rehabilitation For Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a state-of-the-science review of the effectiveness of rehabilitation interventions.

This book aims merely to study the human values that were sought and realized by Greek democracy, the chief problems that it faced, the measure of success and ...

The essay reproduced here is chapter 6 from Death’s Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche since 9-11 . In it, Walter A. Davis provides an analysis of Žižek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real that becomes a critique both of Žižek's general project and the Lacanian theory of the psyche on which it is grounded.