The first anthology to highlight the problems of environmental justice and sustainable development, Reflecting on Nature provides a multicultural perspective on questions of environmental concern, featuring contributions from feminist and minority scholars and scholars from developing countries. Selections examine immediate global needs, addressing some of the most crucial problems we now face: biodiversity loss, the meaning and significance of wilderness, population and overconsumption, and the human use of other animals. Spanning centuries of philosophical, naturalist, and environmental reflection, readings include the (...) work of Aristotle, Locke, Darwin, and Thoreau, as well as that of contemporary, mainstream figures like Bernard Williams, Thomas Hill, Jr., and Jonathan Glover. Works by Val Plumwood, Bill Devall, Murray Bookchin, and John Dryzek comprise a radical ecology section. Featuring insightful section introductions by the editors, this comprehensive and timely collection of philosophical and environmental writing will inform, enlighten, and encourage debate. (shrink)

A consumer society that has embraced global capitalism while striving to preserve all the comforts and conveniences provided by technoscience is arguably fatally ill. Much support for this gloomy diagnosis is provided by, among others, Hannah Arendt, Northrop Frye, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Their reflections on the health of a human culture point up the urgency of the need to rethink the idea of good reasoning that predominates in the West. However, they also indicate that a healthier, more life-enhancing conception of (...) good reasoning will arise only when a concern for justice and wisdom displaces the traditional ideals of pure and certain knowledge or eternal truths. To this end, Nietzsche recommends that philosophy ought now to concentrate on producing `cultural physicians' who would strive to fashion a philosophy of concern. This type of philosophical therapist requires a radically nonmodern approach to philosophy that must pivot on a vitalistic metaphysics capable of overcoming pervasive nihilistic ideologies which illustrate a globally spreading mythology of unconcern. Hence an effective and lasting cultural therapy will depend on the emergence of a general will/desire to broaden the conception of good reasoning beyond the narrow perspectives established by modern science. And this will depend in turn on the education of future educators who stress above all the importance of cultivating the mythopoeic imaginations of the young. (shrink)

Kierkegaard notwithstanding, Hegel's notion of the "good" and "bad" infinity was not unprecedented. On the contrary, this attempt to invest a "logical" category with ethical significances goes back to the very roots of the Western metaphysical tradition. In the Pythagorean doctrine of limit and the unlimited, limit was the arche of the good; the unlimited of evil. In the Pythagorean concept of number as an ens, limit and the unlimited attained ontological status. And since number constituted the determinate character of (...) all things, the Pythagorean peras and apeiron was a logos doctrine, the rational principle of the universe. Thereby Pythagoreanism marked a great advance over the Ionian materialisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 227-229 [Access article in PDF] Philip Pothen. Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. x + 235. Paper, $29.95. Most scholarship argues that Nietzsche grants art a position of vital importance for culture, history, and philosophy. Philip Pothen seeks to challenge this general view of Nietzsche [End Page 227] while at the same time raising new questions (...) about Nietzsche's thoughts on art and how Nietzsche's views on art relate to his philosophical concerns. He does not locate Nietzsche's "deep suspicion and at times hostility" (1) toward art in a specific period of Nietzsche's thought, but instead traces it from the notebooks of the 1870s through Nietzsche's so-called "positivist period" to the very end of his productive life. The result is an honest attempt to recognize Nietzsche's ambivalent and at times hostile attitude toward that which is often times unquestionably admired.Although the Birth of Tragedy is the central text for most scholarship about Nietzsche's thoughts on art, this scholarship does not generally look to contemporaneous unpublished private writings. By conducting a close reading of Nietzsche's first published work in juxtaposition with selections from the Nachlass, Pothen shows that even as early as the 1870s, Nietzsche was developing some of the major themes of his subsequent writings on art. Nietzsche had begun to make decisive breaks with conceptual presuppositions inherited from Schopenhauer and the Kantian philosophical framework as well as from Wagner.Nietzsche's earlier belief in a rebirth of the Dionysian through works of genius such as Wagner's was severely criticized by Nietzsche himself in his 1886 Preface to the Birth of Tragedy. The second chapter of this book looks at Nietzsche's criticism of the concept of "genius" and the recognition of the "death of art" in modern artists such as Wagner. Pothen shows that Nietzsche gives a highly naturalistic account of genius, criticizing traditional notions that elevate the genius to a higher status than the merely talented artist.According to Pothen, the decadence of modern art, the deception of the artist, and the "end of art" suggests a type of "sickness" for Nietzsche. Art "represents a suppression of the instincts of becoming" (56). Pothen claims the future of art and its possible "death" are much more severe for Nietzsche than, for instance, Hegel. The challenging conclusion is that Nietzsche, not Hegel, properly announces the "death of art" in modernity.What, however, of the "monological work of art" that Nietzsche first formulates in the Gay Science? By considering the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a decisive conclusion and not an inferior appendage, Pothen argues that this work "for All and None" illustrates "a radical and perhaps impossible orientation" (9) that the godless artist must take up according to Nietzsche. It is a creative position "in favor of solitude [Einsamkeit], forgetting [vergessen] and inner strength" (74).Chapter four of Pothen's book addresses the concept of the "will to power." Pothen argues that it is a "metaphysical principle" of explanation that nevertheless undermines certain other metaphysical concepts such as a unified "subject" as well as traditional aesthetic concepts such as artistic autonomy. Pothen challenges Heidegger's claim that art is the "highest expression" of the will to power for Nietzsche while utilizing Heidegger's insights into art to highlight and question previous themes in the book such as the reduction of art to physiology (117-32).Chapter five concentrates on Nietzsche's analysis of the psychology of production and his critique of the Kantian themes of "disinterestedness" and the "judgment of taste." The book ends with a look at Nietzsche's final productive year of 1888. In works such as The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche, Pothen suggests, holds decadent works such as Wagner's as representative of all art produced "in the time of the death of God and the revaluation of all values" (169). For Nietzsche, modernity's inability to understand its own time might "herald the death or the end of this art of works... (shrink)

Pornography is everywhere, and it raises a host of difficult questions. What counts as pornography, first of all? When does material cross the line from being erotic to being objectionable? Where does a person's entitlement to sexual freedom end and another person's right not to feel objectified begin? How should rights be weighed against consequences in deciding what laws and policies ought to be adopted? Philosophers Andrew Altman and Lori Watson explore these and other issues in this succinct and (...) readable for-and-against volume. (shrink)

An intellectual biography of the American philosopher C. I. Lewis.

This article offers a feminist perspective on public sociology that suggests that the potential risks of going public with feminist sociological research are more pervasive and serious than proponents of public sociologies have previously acknowledged. At the same time, the promise of public sociologies for furthering feminist goals has been largely untapped. Here, the authors recount their own experience with widely publicized research that, while neither unique nor typical, serves to highlight potential risks of making feminist sociological research public. Feminist (...) scholars must be made aware of these risks as feminist research, which challenges existing gender inequalities and arrangements, is especially likely to encounter negative public reaction. The authors recommend collective and conscientious attention to both the medium and the message. The perspective on public sociologies presented here can help further the goals of public sociology and holds special promise for feminist sociologists who seek effective ways to promote social change. (shrink)

Monkeys and apes, inhabiting variable environments and subjected to K-selection, exhibit cultural behavior transmitted horizontally and vertically, like cetaceans. Behaviors enhancing better health and nutrition, predator avoidance, or mate selection, can affect differential reproduction.Furthermore, dominance hierarchies and social status not only affect the transmission and acceptance of new behaviors but they may also affect genetic inheritance.

The author argues that Michael Polanyi’s philosophy of science can be understood as an (unconscious) attempt to recapture elements of experience largely forgotten or repressed in modernity. Specifically, the author argues that Polanyi’s epistemology appears to draw on elements of oral—aural experience that have been relatively ignored by the heavily visual sensory orientation typical of modern Western societies. The author does this by first deriving the primary features of the modern objectivist conception of knowledge from Polanyi’s critique of objectivism and (...) then using the anthropological literature on the differences between oral and literate cultures to demonstrate that these same aspects of the objectivist paradigm correspond closely to typical features of literate, visual consciousness while Polanyi’s alternative formulations correspond to a more oral—aural orientation. (shrink)

To make abstractions hold good in actuality means to destroy actuality.

Diseases causing inherited retinal degeneration in humans, such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular dystrophy, are genetically heterogeneous and clinically diverse. More than 40 genes causing retinal degeneration have been mapped to specific chromosomal sites; of these, at least 10 have been cloned and characterized. Mutations in two proteins, rhodopsin and peripherin/RDS, account for approximately 35% of all cases of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa and a lesser fraction of other retinal conditions. This target article reviews the genes and mutations causing retinal (...) degeneration and proposes mechanisms whereby specific mutations lead to particular clinical consequences, that is, the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Retinitis pigmentosa and macular dystrophy are genetically heterogeneous diseases that cause retinal degeneration in humans and often result in severe visual impairment or blindness. Although many of the genes causing these diseases have not been identified, three photoreceptor-specific proteins have been implicated: rhodopsin, peripherin/RDS, and the P-subunit of rod phosphodiesterase. Mutations in the genes for these three proteins can cause either dominant retinitis pigmentosa, recessive retinitis pigmentosa, dominant congenital stationary night blindness, or dominant macular degeneration. Why this multiplicity of clinical phenotypes? Our target article summarizes the genetic and biochemical background to this question and proposes a number of possible explanations. Discussion focuses mainly on 73 distinct disease-causing mutations of rhodopsin. We feel that rhodopsin and other photoreceptor proteins can serve as model systems for unraveling the connection between genotype and phenotype, not only for inherited retinal diseases but for other degenerative disorders as well. (shrink)

Müller provides a valuable synthesis of neurobiological evidence on the epigenetic development of neural structures involved in language acquisition. The pluripotentiality of developing neural tissue crucially constrains linguistic/cognitive theorizing about supposedly innate neural mechanisms and contributes significantly to our understanding of experience–dependent processes involved in language acquisition. Without this understanding, any proposed explanation of language acquisition is suspect.

Résumé: Dans ce dialogue, deux personnages principaux, Philopolis et Éleuthérios, proposent la position communautarienne et la position contractualiste libérale comme fondements de la théorie politique. Le débat se déroule, comme tout bon débat devrait le faire, autour d’une bouteille de Chardonnay.

While some would see the main theme of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit as the emergence of the nature-bound subjectivity to free spirituality, or the resolution of the subject-object problem and the overcoming of subjective idealism, Petry’s chief concern is Hegel’s relation to empiricism. The doctrine of Subjective Spirit is for Petry a “survey” of the “immediate constituent factors involved in our ordinary activity as conscious beings”, organized according to the “commonsense realism and empiricism of the Idea.” The Idea makes possible a (...) hierarchical order wherein the levels of “an empirically ascertained subject-matter form a progression in degree of complexity.” Hegel’s chief contribution in Subjective Spirit is to organize into levels of complexity an existing body of “professional knowledge” in anthropology, psychology, etc., and it is Petry’s main aim to point to such a body of knowledge and show how Hegel made use of it. Before we examine this approach to Hegel, let us note the main contents of the three volumes. (shrink)

Against those commentators who consider Kant’s explicit reference to Copernicus’s heliocentric reversal either grossly misleading or simply irrelevant to the revolution in philosophy carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued in this paper that Kant’s transcendental idealist inversion of the familiar standpoint of realism and sound common sense fully justifies the talk of a ‘Copernican revolution,’ even if Kant himself never used the expression. It is not just the dominant ‘moving spectator’ motif (or transcendental turn) of (...) the Preface that has to do with Copernicus; both the immediately following ‘crucial experiment’ motif (on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves) and the ‘critical’ motif (regarding self-knowledge and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments) confirm the aptness of the Copernican analogy. Still, some commentators have stretched the analogy too far; the final section of the paper attempts to determine just how far it may reasonably be said to go. (shrink)