This collection of ground-breaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer: how prayer relates us to the divine; prayer's ability to reveal what is essential about our humanity; the power of prayer to transform human desire and action; and the relation of prayer to cognition. It takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view, demonstrating that the phenomenology of prayer is as much about the character and boundaries of phenomenological analysis as it is about (...) the heart of religious life.The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Bruce Ellis Benson, Mark Cauchi, Benjamin Crowe, Mark Gedney, Philip Goodchild, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Lissa McCullough, Cleo McNelly Kearns, Edward F. Mooney, B. Keith Putt, Jill Robbins, Brian Treanor, Merold Westphal, Norman Wirzba, Terence Wright and Terence and James R. Mensch. Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion on Modern Idolatry and The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Norman Wirzba is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College, Kentucky. He is the author of The Paradise of God and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader. (shrink)

By entering the medical profession, physicians have consented to accept a standard level of risk of infection. In most instances, the risk of contracting HIV does not exceed this level.

This paper investigates Hermann Weyl’s reception of philosophical concepts stemming from the German Idealist Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In particular, Weyl’s ‘agens theory’ of matter, which he held around 1925, will be looked at. In the extant literature, the—admittedly also important—influence of Husserl on Weyl has mainly been addressed. Thus, apart from investigating some detailed Fichtean inheritances in Weyl’s concepts of causality, chance and continuity, the general difference which Weyl saw between the philosophies of Fichte and Husserl will also be discussed. (...) For Weyl this is above all a difference between an active constructivism and a rather passive phenomenological seeing. Further, the paper shows in some detail the way Weyl was drawn into a certain reading of Fichte by his Zurich colleague, the philosopher Fritz Medicus. The methodological frame of the paper is that of Konstellationsforschung, a historical and systematic approach which proves to be particularly fruitful when investigating a German Idealist context and which allows special attention to be given to the acting subjects within the constellation under investigation. Conversely, Weyl’s agens theory suggests amendments to this methodology.Keywords: Hermann Weyl; Fritz Medicus; Johann Gottlieb Fichte; Theory of matter; Activity vs. passivity; Konstellationsforschung. (shrink)

Chapter I: The Geometry of Visibles 1 . The N on- Euclidean Geometry of Visibles In the chapter "The Geometry of Visibles" in Inquiry into the Human Mind, ...

The two contrasting theoretical approaches to visual perception, the constructivist and the ecological, are briefly presented and illustrated through their analyses of space and size perception. Earlier calls for their reconciliation and unification are reviewed. Neurophysiological, neuropsychological, and psychophysical evidence for the existence of two quite distinct visual systems, the ventral and the dorsal, is presented. These two perceptual systems differ in their functions; the ventral system's central function is that of identification, while the dorsal system is mainly engaged in (...) the visual control of motor behavior. The strong parallels between the ecological approach and the functioning of the dorsal system, and between the constructivist approach and the functioning of the ventral system are noted. It is also shown that the experimental paradigms used by the proponents of these two approaches match the functions of the respective visual systems. A dual-process approach to visual perception emerges from this analysis, with the ecological-dorsal process transpiring mainly without conscious awareness, while the constructivist-ventral process is normally conscious. Some implications of this dual-process approach to visual-perceptual phenomena are presented, with emphasis on space perception. Key Words: constructivist; dual-process approach; ecological; size perception; space perception; two visual systems; visual perception theories. (shrink)

A recurring problem in psychiatry is the meaningfulness, or otherwise, of its domain. Critics of psychiatry accuse the discipline of misconstruing mental phenomena and behavior, including the verbal sort, as meaningless symptoms, in keeping with other medical specialisms. A myoclonic jerk is taken by the neurologist to mean nothing beyond signaling pathology of the nervous system. But this approach, critics argue, strips psychiatric phenomena of their meaning. Accordingly, Louis Sass has described a tendency, "particularly among organic psychiatrists… to ignore the (...) psychological interpretation or empathic understanding of mental symptoms". Neuropsychiatric symptoms such as visual hallucinations... (shrink)

A human life is not made up of measurable equal increments. There are crises, setbacks and advances, obstacles and pathways, highs and lows. The prevailing methods for the study of significant lives, insofar as there is any interest at all in the subject, are hampered by scientism and materialism. The means for understanding how we progress as individuals in relation to society and to the future of humankind cannot be found in the standard disciplines of psychology or sociology, which are (...) looking for measurable results and are dominated by the quest for objectivity. Guided primarily by the thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, we observe here the patterns in the life of two pioneering physicians, centuries apart, Theophrastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, and Sigmund Freud. Inspiration, revelation, conversion, orientation, grace are at the center, but none of these terms is reducible to material measurement. A new approach is suggested that better informs us about what makes the world go ‘round, the grammatical imperative, which subsumes even love. (shrink)

This brief and engaging introductory text treats philosophy as a dramatic and continuous story--a conversation about humankind's deepest and most persistent concerns, in which students are encouraged to participate. Tracing the exchange of ideas between history's key philosophers, Philosophical Conversations: A Concise Historical Introduction demonstrates that while constructing an argument or making a claim, one philosopher almost always has others in mind. The book addresses the fundamental questions of human life: Who are we? What can we know? How should we (...) live? and What sort of reality do we inhabit? Throughout, author Norman Melchert provides a generous selection of excerpts from major philosophical works and makes them more easily understandable with his lucid explanations. Extensive cross-references highlight the organizing themes and show students how philosophers have responded to each other's arguments. A more concise edition of Norman Melchert's The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, Fifth Edition, Philosophical Conversations is designed to be especially accessible and visually attractive to first- and second-year college students in introduction to philosophy courses. Enhanced by numerous pedagogical features, it offers: * Shorter and/or simplified presentations of much of the material * A second color that enlivens the text and makes it more visually interesting * An expanded art program featuring more than 100 photographs, illustrations, and cartoons * Classic art at the opening of each chapter * Numerous brief quotations from poets, politicians, and thinkers that underscore philosophical points and stimulate thought * Explanatory footnotes and basic study questions throughout * "Questions for Further Thought" at the end of each chapter * Key terms, boldfaced at their first appearance and collected at the end of each chapter and in a detailed glossary at the back of the book * "Sketches"--which provide glimpses of the ideas of various philosophers not already discussed in detail in the narrative--and "Profiles," which offer more in-depth looks at several thinkers, philosophical schools, and movements including Taoism, Zen, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Iris Murdoch * An Instructor's Manual and Test Bank on CD that highlights essential points and offers numerous exam questions. (shrink)

I was seven or eight years old. In Hebrew school we had just learned the Aleph-Bet and were, haltingly, beginning to sound out words. As we spoke the ancient text, our teacher translated: "... And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. ..."[note 2] Here was magic; here was the supernatural; here was the creation of the universe. I resonated to the story. I was filled with wonder, far more than had ever been elicited by any fairy (...) tale my parents had read to me. I pictured in my imagination the majesty of it: God speaks and Nature obeys. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn a paper presented to the American Historical Association annual meeting in 1934, entitled “The Predicament of History,” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy argued that professional (or “...

The Catalogue of Palm Leaf Manuscripts kept in the Otani University Library. Otani University Library, Kyoto 1995. lxxxi, 778 pp. No price given.

Empirical evidence is reviewed indicating that the extraordinary aspects of the human mind are due to our species’ ability to go beyond simple “dyadic associations” and to process the relations among three items of information simultaneously. Classic explanations of the “triadic” nature of human skills have been advocated by various scholars in the context of the evolution of human cognition. Here I summarize the core processes as found in (i) the syntax of language, (ii) tool-usage, and (iii) joint attention. I (...) then review the triadic foundations of two perceptual phenomena of great importance in human aesthetics: (iv) harmony perception and (v) pictorial depth perception. In all five subfields of human psychology, most previous work has emphasized the recursive, hierarchical complexity of such “higher cognition,” but a strongly reductionist approach indicates that the core mechanisms are triadic. It is concluded that the cognitive skills traditionally considered to be “uniquely” human require three-way associational processing that most non-Primate animal species find difficult or impossible, but all members of Homo sapiens – regardless of small cultural differences – find easy and inherently intriguing. (shrink)

The rise of Canadian national identity in the 1960s contributed to a flourishing small press movement across the country. One of the most impressive, long-standing and influential presses of this era was Coach House Press, located near the University of Toronto. Book design, creative forms of editing, collaborative and community-oriented work all became a focus of idealism in the Coach House context, as its founders borrowed from earlier international models, but relied, too, on the Canadian moment to devise new ways (...) to disseminate and create literary culture. More recently, a similar idealistic model in publishing and press work has appeared in Nova Scotia at Kentville’s Gaspereau Press. Gaspereau’s founders, like those at Coach House, have searched for an alternative plan and method- through an in-house dedication to the craft of design and bookmaking- that is unlike that applied by mainstream publishers. One could argue that the two outfits represent a counter-tradition in Canadian cultural life, a dedication to artisanal work, as well as to forms of collaborative editing and design. With the publishing and bookselling industry under great pressure in Canada from shifts in technology and government support, counter-traditional models like Gaspereau Press present the possibility of unique forms of cultural output and marketing. Behind such efforts we recognize philosophies and notions of cultural community that run counter to major trends. This paper examines the history of both presses, specific publications, and the impact of such work on the broader Canadian literary scene. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Iago’s Roman Ancestors JAMES TATUM Othello is that rare thing: a tragedy of literary types who half suspect they are playing in a comedy. —D. S. Stewart, 1967 In memoriam Bill Cook1 Shakespeare’s Othello is a drama created for a world where everyone was bound by “service,” a formal connection to someone else superior, in a hierarchy that linked all persons in court, theater, and society through unavoidable obligation. (...) Service could range from the lightest kind of tie, to indentured servitude. This meaning of “service” reflects its origin in Norman French, from the Latin word for slavery, servitium. It is Iago’s sense of the word in his comment to his dupe Roderigo: “Why, there’s no remedy, ’tis the curse of service.” The perceived color of Othello poses a perennial challenge which producers and directors in the United States have to consider every time Othello is performed. Jim Crow did not officially end in most parts of the former Confederacy until the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s; and even then such legacies of slavery and segregation as color prejudice remain a challenge, alive if now not entirely well, and they haunt many a production. It is this more recent history that inspired Patrick Stewart’s “photo-negative” production of Othello in Washington, DC in 1997, in which the English actor himself played Othello while the rest of the cast were black. Given recent and not so recent history, it is important to realize that there actually is a slave hard at work throughout Othello, from opening scene to last: not Othello himself, but his “ancient” or ensign, Iago. arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 the slave-playwright of shakespeare’s OTHELLO Lodovico: O, thou Othello, that was once so good, Fallen in the practice of a damnèd slave, What shall be said to thee? Othello, 5.2.289–91 the plot of Shakespeare’s Othello comes from the story “Disdemona and the Moorish Captain” in Giraldi Cinthio’s The Hundred Tales (1565), but the theatrical tradition he used to adapt it for the stage was not other tragedies. He went back to a classical theater he had used to write one of his earliest successes, The Comedy of Errors, one he knew as well as any other through his study of it in Latin grammar school and afterwards: Roman comedy. What resulted was something of a puzzle to his later critics. Since the 17th century some of Shakespeare’s readers have alternately complained or marveled at the way Othello has the fast pace and structure of a farce. This accounts for its exceptional power as a tragedy when it is intelligently performed; the double catastrophe of Othello’s murder of Desdemona and his own suicide come more quickly and more violently, for example, than the endings of Macbeth, King Lear, or Hamlet. All of Othello’s characters are cast in the stereotypical roles first created in Menander and other playwrights of Greek New Comedy, and then passed on to later European vernacular theater through Plautus and Terence’s adaptations. In performance, Shakespeare’s Iago is at once a reprise of his earlier stage villains and a reincarnation of the servus callidus or clever slave playwright of Plautus. It is as if Zero Mostel’s Pseudolus in Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum were playing Richard III. Iago creates what he regards as a comedy, from its opening scene before Brabantio’s house to its catastrophic end in Cyprus, and to the bafflement of Christian interpreters and others, he seems incapable of recognizing the enormity of his evil. Unlike his resourceful Roman ancestors, who think up ingenious plots to help their less clever owners 78 iago’s roman ancestors in their love affairs, Iago’s scenario is demonic, designed to destroy his master Othello, not save him. As I’ve suggested, one comedy in particular may have played an important role in the making of Othello: Plautus’ Amphitryon, with its story of Jupiter’s adulterous affair with Alcmena, the wife of the heroic king Amphitryon of Thebes. To aid him in his schemes Jupiter calls on his son the trickster... (shrink)

The policy changes governing the relations between the pharmaceutical, medical device and service industries and academic clinical research physicians, recommended by the Institute of Medicine,1 the American Academy of Medical Colleges,2 and much discussed in the media and on our campuses, aim to create some protective ethical firewalls. However, some potentially critical consequences of these steps are missed if we do not acknowledge what else is on the table, and who is sitting at it. By only reacting defensively to the (...) juggernaut of righteous indignation over the loss of purity in a faculty physician's approach to medical problem solving, we are allowing the process to blind us to the difficulties in establishing fair and equitable management of all of the potential conflicts of commitment and conflicts of interest we incur, not only as faculty members, but also as departments and academic medical centres . Critically, this involves all sources of revenue—private, commercial and public—that support our professional and institutional commitments as well as our personal finances.i To counter the present crackdown on inappropriate financial relationships effectively, we will need to reframe the questions, and convince all stakeholders to the process that there is more to this crisis than can be resolved through our public confessions of commercial largesse obliged. The Phrma Code guidelines3 have resulted in what is believed to be a defensible, if as yet legally untested, compartmentalisation of the commercial sector's marketing, medical education and research sponsorship activities. We at the AMC are a long way from understanding how those same missions, as they emanate from our multifarious commitments, can be isolated and individually managed. Defining the parameters for establishing institutional conflicts of interest and commitment are beyond our essay's scope, but with the very public emphasis on capitalist subversion of …. (shrink)

Several models of macromolecular arrangements in eukaryotic chromosomes have been proposed during the past fifteen years. Many of the models are consistent with physical and chemical data on the molecular components of chromosomes, and a few have the appearance of meeting the requirements for cytological organization in chromosomes. However, one of the most frustrating problems in developing a working model is to provide a scheme that fits genetic function while satisfying the structural parameters. This has not yet been achieved.Although emphasis (...) in this review has been placed on uninemic and polynemic models, alternatives, such as a bineme, for example, remain. It is clear, moreover, that the issue can be resolved only through continued efforts to make direct observations of chromosomes with light and electron microscopy coupled with the additional tools ofX-ray analysis and analytical biochemistry. A recent analysis byWray andStubblefield has led to a rather innovative model of the chromosome, and exemplifies the kind of approach needed to clarify the phenomenon. Furthermore, analyses of meiotic chromosomes may provide valuable insight for relating organization to genetic function . Of particular interest are mutation events as related to subchromatid organization, and the reorganization of chromosomal fibrils during early meiotic stages. At present, and as a generalization, the evidence points more strongly toward at least a binemic arrangement of chromosomal subunits than toward a uninemic one. (shrink)