La théocratie hébraïque est un système unique de croyances, de conduites et de rites, qui a favorisé la cohésion du peuple et le consentement aux règles de la vie commune. Il est vrai que le régime dit théocratique des Hébreux n’est pas une simple illusion rétrospective, propre à tous ceux qui veulent appuyer le pouvoir politique sur l’illusion d’une intervention directe de Dieu dans les affaires de l’État. En effet, la théocratie juive, qui a effectivement existé dans les limites de (...) deux siècles environ, ne déroge pas, dans l’analyse qu’en livre Spinoza, à la thèse que tout pouvoir politique est immanent à la puissance de la multitude, puissance dont il provient et puissance à laquelle il conduit. Le pouvoir qu’a institué Moïse, ni monarchique, ni aristocratique, ni populaire, est une forme faible de démocratie instituée, où le pouvoir, dit appartenir à Dieu, n’appartient de fait à aucun homme. C’est en ce sens que la Loi apparaît comme l’altérité des prescriptions mêmes de la raison, dans des conditions historiques déterminées. (shrink)

The sensation of red light falling on your eyes has something in common with the experience of looking at a cartoon in the New Yorker. The phenomenal quality of the sensation and the funniness of the joke are both properties of your subjective take on an external event and both arise in two steps. With sensations, your brain responds to signals from bodily sense organs with an internalized evaluative response; your mind reads this response and represents what it's like as (...) the subjective property of redness. With jokes, the cartoonist creates a clever drawing; your mind takes in the drawing and represents what it's like as the subjective property of funniness. This analogy -- deliberately deflationary -- helps elucidate the nature of phenomenal consciousness and its neural correlates, and exposes the 'hard problem' as a conceptual error. (shrink)

It seems that the choice for the subject "Christian Ethics in Ukrainian Culture" was made by everyone: the so-called "traditional Churches" and the authorities. The move, however, leaves much room for thought. First, who will teach this subject in educational institutions? We propose to use the experience not only of the western regions of Ukraine, including Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, etc., but also of the Ostroh Academy National University. When on March 24, 2000, the Rivne Regional Council decided to introduce the subject (...) of Christian ethics in Rivne schools, the National University "Ostroh Academy" became one of the basic training centers for teachers of Christian ethics. The creation of a faculty for the training of teachers of Christian ethics caused, accordingly, the recruitment of students. (shrink)

The geodesics and the curvature of a metric representing an isolated tachyon are investigated. It is argued that the properties are unphysical and inconsistent with observation, thus providing further evidence against the existence of tachyons.