Maḥmūd, Zakī Najīb, 1905-; philosophers; Egypt; biography; interview.

Logical thinking; criticism and interpretation; Arab philosophers.

Guidelines for an ideal Islamic society and the responsibilities of Muslim according to Islamic teachings.

Bourdieu carved out a distinctive analytical niche for his reflexive sociology. His epistemological tool of field analysis, sometimes coupled with statistical correspondence analysis, is particular...

Faith and reason--Islam; Human beings--philosophy; Faith--philosophy; Islamic philosophy.

2. Saebyŏngnyŏk chʻodang esŏ on pʻyŏnji.

Critical appreciation of an article on Islamic philosophy, by the founder of Ahmadiyyah sect; read at a gathering of religious scholars in Lahore in 1896.

Islamic modernism; Islamic philosophy; 20th century.

Gerechtigkeit gilt als Kardinaltugend für ein gutes und richtiges Leben. Was aber bedeutet sie inhaltlich und wie lässt sie sich begründen? Der gedankliche Mittelpunkt der Darstellung ist die epochale Neubestimmung der Gerechtigkeit durch John Rawls. Seine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit hat zu vielen Diskussionen, Weiterführungen und Gegenentwürfen Anlass gegeben, die exemplarisch vorgestellt und vier Fragestellungen zugeordnet werden: Ist ein Gesellschaftsvertrag als Grundvoraussetzung der Theorie unabdingbar? Muss nicht die Gemeinschaft als Ort der Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen stärker betont werden? Ist der Stellenwert, den Rawls der (...) Gleichheit zuschreibt, angemessen? Gewährt er der Freiheit einen adäquaten Raum? Den Abschluss bildet ein argumentationsethischer situationsbezogener Ansatz. (shrink)

‘Jürgen Habermas’, wrote the American philosopher Ronald Dworkin on the occasion of the great European thinker’s eightieth birthday, ‘is not only the world’s most famous living philosopher. Even his fame is famous.’ Now, after many years of intensive research and in-depth conversations with contemporaries, colleagues and Habermas himself, Stefan Müller-Doohm presents the first comprehensive biography of one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. From his political and philosophical awakening in West Germany to the formative relationships with Adorno (...) and Horkheimer, Müller-Doohm masterfully traces the major forces that shaped Habermas’s intellectual development. He shows how Habermas’s life and work were conditioned by the possibilities offered to his generation in the unique circumstances of regained freedom that characterized postwar Germany. And yet Habermas’s career is fascinating precisely because it amounts to more than a corpus of scholarly work, however original and influential that may be. For here is someone who continually left the protective space of the university in order to assume the role of a participant in controversial public debates Ð from the significance of the Holocaust to the future of Europe Ð and in this way sought to influence the development of social and political life in an arena much broader than the academy. The significance and virtuosity of Habermas’s many writings over the years are also fully and expertly documented, ranging from his early work on the public sphere to his more recent writings on communicative action, cosmopolitanism and the postnational condition. What emerges from this biography is a vivid portrait of one of the great public intellectuals of our time Ð a unique thinker who has made an immense and lasting philosophical contribution but who, when he perceives that society is not living up to its potential for creating free and just conditions for all, becomes one of its most rigorous and persistent critics. (shrink)

A comprehensive biography which covers Adorno's life, work and times: from childhood, through to his student years, his years in emigration, his return to post-war Germany, his time in Frankfurt, his role as a public intellectual, and his ...

A speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) in behavioural decisions is known to occur in a wide range of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa. Accurate decisions often take longer for a given condition, while fast decisions can be inaccurate in some tasks. Speed-accuracy tactics are known to vary consistently among individuals, and show a degree of flexibility during colour discrimination tasks in bees. Such individual flexibility in speed-accuracy tactics is likely to be advantageous for animals exposed to fluctuating environments, such as changes in predation (...) threat. We therefore test whether individual speed-accuracy tactics are fixed or flexible under different levels of predation threat in a model invertebrate, the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. The flexibility of speed-accuracy tactics in a foraging context was tested in the laboratory using a ‘meadow’ of artificial flowers harbouring ‘robotic’ crab spider predators. We found that while the ranking of bees along the speed and accuracy continuums was consistent across two levels of predation threat, there was some flexibility in the tactics used by individual bees – most bees became less accurate at colour discrimination when exposed to predation threat when flower types were rewarding. The relationship between decision speed and accuracy was influenced by predator detectability and the risk associated with making incorrect choices during the colour discrimination task. Predator crypsis resulted in a breakdown in the relationship between speed and accuracy, especially when making an incorrect floral choice incurred a distasteful quinine punishment. No single speed-accuracy tactic was found to be optimal in terms of foraging efficiency under either predation threat situation. However, bees that made faster decisions achieved higher nectar collection rates in predator free situations, while accurate bees achieved higher foraging rates under predation threat. Our findings show that while individual bees remain relatively consistent in terms of whether they place greater emphasis on speed or accuracy under predation threat, they can respond flexibly to the additional time costs of detecting predators. (shrink)