While scholars have suggested several explanations to how and why societies deal with an authoritarian past, to date there has been little discussion about religious legacies in postcommunist transitional justice. Building upon emerging qualitative research, this study breaks ground by showing that lustration, a transitional-justice mechanism which limits the political participation of former authoritarian actors, is statistically robustly affected by societies’ mainstream religious legacy. Analyzing thirty-four postcommunist states from 1990 to 2012, tobit regression models demonstrate that Catholic and Protestant traditions (...) affect lustration positively, Muslim traditions negatively, while the impact of Orthodox traditions remains statistically insignificant. The findings problematize but support an understanding of religious traditions as potentially corresponding to complicity with the former regime, which in turn affects lustration during postcommunist upheavals. (shrink)

In this compelling and timely treatise, cultural theorist and educator Peter Trifonas puts forth the first book-length study of Jacques Derrida's 'educational texts:' that is, those writings most explicitly concerned with the ethics and politics of the historico-philosophical structures constituting the scene of teaching. The text examines how deconstruction allows us to re-think the socio-historical and ethico-philosophical aspects of pedagogical practices and policies, including pedagogical theories that have had direct bearing on the ethical and cultural ideals forming the reason (...) of Western educational systems and the exclusion of its 'Others.'. (shrink)

The place of moral innocence in politics is the central theme of Peter Johnson's subtle and original book.

Everyone allows that human and animal minds are distinctively (indeed, massively) different in their manifest effects. Humans have been able to colonize nearly every corner of the planet, from the artic, to deserts, to rainforests (and they did so in the absence of modern technological aids); they live together in large cooperative groups of unrelated individuals; they communicate with one another using the open-ended expressive resources of natural language; they are capable of cultural learning that accumulates over generations to result (...) in science, art, and agriculture; and they are remarkably thoughtful and inventive. There is much less agreement about how these manifest differences should be explained, however. (shrink)

_The Nature of the Mind_ is a comprehensive and lucid introduction to major themes in the philosophy of mind. It carefully explores the conflicting positions that have arisen within the debate and locates the arguments within their context. It is designed for newcomers to the subject and assumes no previous knowledge of the philosophy of mind. Clearly written and rigorously presented, this book is ideal for use in undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind. Main topics covered include: * the (...) problem of other minds * the dualist/physicalist debate * the nature of personal identity and survival * mental-state concepts The book closes with a number of pointers towards more advanced work in the subject. Study questions and suggestions for further reading are provided at the end of each chapter. _The Nature of the Mind_ is based on Peter Carruthers' book, _Introducing Persons_, also published by Routledge. (shrink)

In 1936, G. Birkhoff and J. v. Neumann published an article with the title The logic of quantum mechanics'. In this paper, the authors demonstrated that in quantum mechanics the most simple observables which correspond to yes-no propositions about a quantum physical system constitute an algebraic structure, the most important proper ties of which are given by an orthocomplemented and quasimodular lattice Lq. Furthermore, this lattice of quantum mechanical proposi tions has, from a formal point of view, many similarities with (...) a Boolean lattice L8 which is known to be the lattice of classical propositional logic. Therefore, one could conjecture that due to the algebraic structure of quantum mechanical observables a logical calculus Q of quantum mechanical propositions is established, which is slightly different from the calculus L of classical propositional logic but which is applicable to all quantum mechanical propositions. This calculus has sometimes been called 'quan tum logic'. However, the statement that propositions about quantum physical systems are governed by the laws of quantum logic, which differ from ordinary classical logic and which are based on the empirically well-established quantum theory, is exposed to two serious objec tions: Logic is a theory which deals with those relationships between various propositions that are valid independent of the content of the respective propositions. Thus, the validity of logical relationships is not restricted to a special type of proposition, e. g. to propositions about classical physical systems. (shrink)

On being told that "translation is an impossible thing," Anatole France replied: "precisely, my friend; the recognition of that truth is a necessary preliminary to success in art." The task of Transplantings is to add flesh and bones to that familiar quip. Indeed, Daniel Weissbort notes that Viereck's study represented a sixty-five year long project. Now, it is finally being brought to print in its full form, with the completion of the final manuscript shortly before Viereck's death. If translation is (...) a special genre in its own right, the translation of poetry, especially from major foreign languages, is a special subset of that genre. What emerges in the imperfect act of translation is an aesthetic dimension that Viereck considers unique in its own right. Transplantings provides new insight into Viereck as a poet of substance, but more than that as a public intellectual. He is critical in probing the work of the major figures such as Stefan George and Georg Heym. To round out this monumental new look at German poetical history, Viereck reviews Goethe, Novalis, and Rilke among others. For Viereck, the difference between the poetical and the political is critical. The quality of poetry is not measured by politics, nor can the worth of political action be defined by commitment to the poetical. The experience of German thought, as well as French and Italian efforts, reveals a divide that can be narrowed but hardly bridged by rhetoric. Transplantings does not simplify the task of the reader. Rather it shows without doubt that the passion of great poetry is part of a national tradition. Efforts at translation indicate how such poetry becomes part of an international culture. This is a major work by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. It merits reading, and then, re-reading. "Peter Viereck was that rare scholar who captured the European experience with America, while fully realizing the American encounter with Europe. He did so with consciousness of and compassion for both sectors of Western Civilization" --Irving Louis Horowitz, Society Peter Viereck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic, and historian. He held the Kenan Chair in History at Mount Holyoke College. He was known as one of America's conservatism's early leaders and was the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships both in history and poetry. (shrink)

Fabienne Peter on whether difficult political decisions should be made by experts.

Early modern experimental philosophers were opposed to speculation, and yet many endorsed speculative theories. This chapter gives a partial explanation of why this is so, using Robert Boyle’s acceptance and promotion of the corpuscular philosophy as a case study. It argues that, in addition to furnishing experimental evidence for the corpuscular hypothesis in his Forms and Qualities, Boyle attempted to establish its epistemic superiority over other speculative theories on the grounds that it is founded upon superior principles. In his ‘Excellency (...) and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis’, Boyle claims that the principles of the corpuscular philosophy are more intelligible, more parsimonious, ontologically primary, simpler and more comprehensive than those of its rivals. On grounds of comparative plausibility then, according to Boyle, the corpuscular philosophy is eminently preferable to its rivals. The final section of the chapter traces the legacy of Boyle’s appraisal of the epistemic status of the corpuscular philosophy in the writings of many of his compatriots from the mid-1660s to the Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers of 1728. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 94, Issue 3, pp 381 - 390 Reference can fail in a way that intentionality cannot. Though the stream of phenomenal experience typically does not fail to target objects outside, it may do. How does the mind go about targeting objects beyond itself? The speculative conjecture of this paper is that it does so by a type of process which can be called _pointing_, and that the acts or act-aspects of pointing can be called _pointers_. The notion (...) of a pointer has several suggestive roots. One is the familiar physical gesture of pointing. Another is the existence of directional signs such as on roads. The third is the software data types making direct reference to memory locations in computers, also called ‘pointers’. A final source is demonstrative pronouns and other deictic expressions in language, of which Peter Geach wrote, “a demonstrative pronoun … works like a pointer, not like a label”. I suggest that there is in the mental cognitive repertoire a structurally and semantically analogous type of act which pierces the passivity of perception, directs us outside the machine, and prepares the way for drawing others’ minds to the same thing. (shrink)

At the heart of Peter Singer’s utilitarianism is the impartial weighing of the interests of those affected by our actions. Singer calls this the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. This paper argues that Singer’s Principle does not accord with our moral intuitions and the logic of our moral thinking. It discusses the Principle in the context of the parable of the Prodigal Son and his Brother – a parable that raises the issue of impartiality in a particularly challenging (...) way. What the parable shows is, first, that our moral thinking often turns on judgements of fairness that are prior to any impartial weighing of interests; and, second, that impartial fairness itself is sometimes transcended by compassionate love. Both of these points have important implications for bioethics. (shrink)

Tragedy plays a central role in Hegel's early writings on theology and politics. Hegel’s overarching aim in these texts is to determine the kind of mythology that would best complement religious and political freedom in modernity. Peter Wake claims that, for Hegel at this early stage, ancient Greek tragedy provided the model for such a mythology and suggested a way to oppose the rigid hierarchies and authoritarianism that characterized Europe of his day. Wake follows Hegel as he develops his (...) idea of the essence of Christianity and its relation to the distinctly tragic expression of beauty found in Greek mythology. (shrink)

In this major study, Peter Zarrow examines how textbooks published for the Chinese school system played a major role in shaping new social, cultural, and political trends, the ways in which schools conveyed traditional and 'new style' knowledge and how they sought to socialize students in a rapidly changing society in the first decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on language, morality and civics, history, and geography, Zarrow shows that textbooks were quick to reflect the changing views of Chinese (...) elites during this period. Officials and educators wanted children to understand the physical and human worlds, including the evolution of society, the institutions of the economy, and the foundations of the nation-state. Through textbooks, Chinese elites sought ways to link these abstractions to the concrete lives of children, conveying a variety of interpretations of enlightenment, citizenship, and nationalism that would shape a generation as modern citizens of a new China. (shrink)

An exploration of the relationship between quantum theory and concepts of individuality and identity from ancient Greece to the present.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
iscussion “WELL WIDE OF THE MARK”: RESPONSE TO STONE’S REVIEW OF THE ABC OF ARMAGEDDON P H. D History, Philosophy and Religious Studies / U. of Winnipeg Winnipeg, , Canada   .@. hether or not it is wise to defend one’s first book against the slings and Warrows of outrageous fortune, Bertrand Russell was never one to let indignities pass without response, and I will take my example (...) from him. Peter Stone’s review of my The ABC of Armageddon: Bertrand Russell on Science, Religion and the Next War, – is so irretrievably muddled that when he concludes “a thoroughly confused book ends on a thoroughly confused note”, this state of confusion most accurately represents the condition of the reviewer. The problem here is not an author and his book “adrift at Armageddon”, as the title of Stone’s review maintains, but a reviewer rowing furiously with one oar. Whatever inadequacies there are in The ABC of Armageddon, they are not those Stone so enthusiastically catalogues in his series of speculations as to what I might have done, but didn’t. In awaiting this review in Russell, I worried about how my various suggestions about Russell’s writing in the interwar period—even my definition of what the interwar period was—would be received. To list a few: the idea that the Great War constituted a dividing line in his work, and why; that his work in the interwar period should be judged as a whole; that his work in the interwar period was worth evaluating, not simply being dismissed as evidence of early philosophical dotage; the way Russell’s published ideas were entwined with those of his Anglo-American contemporaries; the theme of the “old savage in the new civilization” in Russell’s work, and in that of his contemporaries; the dimension of “rhetorical performance” and Russell’s deliberate stance as a  Russell, n.s.  (): – (at ). russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  -  Discussion preacher; the differences between The Prospects of Industrial Civilization and The Scientific Outlook, on the one hand, and Religion and Science and Power: a New Social Analysis, on the other; the possible influence of Albert Schweitzer on the value of “an operational metaphysic” that allowed an older Russell to act as though ideas like “reverence for life” were true, even if they could not be proven. The list could continue. Stone overlooks all of these ideas, preferring instead to demonstrate my inability to hit targets at which he feels I should have aimed, characterizing my approach and my intentions in some unhelpful ways that are well wide of the mark. I was astounded to learn, for example, that I “assume the role of a political theorist towards Russell’s work”, and thus I “attempt to lay out an argument by Russell and critique it, so as to leave behind a stronger argument in its wake” (p. ). Because I am a political theorist, Stone concludes, “this book is simply a failure as a work of history” (p. ). Instead, being an historian he says, would have involved “situating Russell’s views in the personal and social context in which they emerged.” Writing as a “political theorist” himself (out of the Political Science department at Rochester University, where he is adjunct faculty), Stone’s defence of the historical approach is no doubt well intentioned. Had he followed his own prescription, however, he would have found this book to be substantially the same text as my dissertation (“The Old Savage and the Scientific Outlook: Science, Religion and Social Ethics in the Writings of Bertrand Russell, – ” [McMaster, ]). In the prefatory material appropriate to dissertations in Religious Studies (but not to books intended to sell) Stone would have found some of the acknowledgements and explanations whose absence he found the most irksome. Having dubbed me a political theorist, he excoriates me for an inadequate understanding of utilitarianism, instrumentalism, pragmatism and so on, utterly  In an editorial note discouraged by my editors at  Press but still permitted here, I cannot resist responding to Stone’s editorial notes disparaging the “highly inadequate” citations of Russell studies literature. I am well aware of Philip Ironside’s... (shrink)

The Bibliographic Bases of Hume's Understanding of Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonism PETER S. FOSL N~q~e ~vaoo 6t~ttoxe~v' Epicharmus OVER THE PAST FORTY YEARS, the work of many scholars has served to advance and secure a hermeneutical approach to the development of modern philoso- phy first articulated by Richard H. Popkin3 The central proposition upon which this approach turns is that the discovery and application of ancient I am grateful to Richard Popkin, Julia Annas , Jonathan Barnes , Craig Walton (...) , Tom L. Beauchamp , and a number of anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. LOn the back of one of the sheets of his memoranda Hume wrote this remark. It may be translated as: "Keep sober and remember to be skeptical"; Ernest Campbell Mossner, "Hume's Early Memoranda, 1729-4o: The Complete Text," Journal of the Histo U of Ideas 9.4 : 5o3n.17 9 Richard H. Popkin, "David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism," The Philosophical Quarterly 1. 5 : 385-4o7; "The Sceptical Crisis and the Rise of Modern Philosophy," Parts I, II, and III, Review of Metaphysics 8 : 131-51, 3o7-33, 499-51o; The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza ; "Scepticism and the Counter-Reformation in France," Archiv ffir.. (shrink)

_A renowned scholar’s reflections on the romantic period, its disparate participants, and our unacknowledged debt to them_ With his usual wit and élan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media. Gay’s scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about (...) how to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all? Guiding readers through the history of the romantic movement across Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, Gay argues that the best way to conceptualize romanticism is to accept its complicated nature and acknowledge that there is no “single basket” to contain it. Gay conceives of romantics in “families,” whose individual members share fundamental values but retain unique qualities. He concludes by demonstrating that romanticism extends well into the twentieth century, where its deep and lasting impact may be measured in the work of writers such as T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf. (shrink)

A major problem with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is that Jesus is meant to be both God and man. Richard Swinburne attempts to overcome the problem by having it that in him there are two consciousnesses – the consciousness of being God, and the consciousness of being a man. This position is rejected, on the Aristotelian ground that one consciousness is enough to explain with dignity the mind of Christ.

Peter Spirtes. Conditional Independence in Directed Cyclic Graphical Models for Feedback.

In 1963 at the University of Cambridge, Peter Eisenman -- world famous for his Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (2005) and respected and feared by his colleagues for his intellectual acuity and quick-wittedness -- wrote a dissertation on the formal basis of modern architecture. This striking document, with its idiosyncratic photographs, fully deserves to be published here, for the first time, in a faithful reproduction of the original. In an afterword, Peter Eisenman discusses this remarkable starting point of his (...) practical and theoretical work. (shrink)

This website is a supplement to Peter D. McDonald’s book The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences, which was first published by Oxford University Press in February 2009. It is intended for anyone curious to know more about the subject and for those interested in doing further research into the vast topic of apartheid censorship.

In this chapter, Amato explores the concept of “vernacular rationality” introduced by Emmanuel Chukwude Eze in his On Reason: Rationality in a World of Cultural Conflict and Racism. Amato interrogates the different ways this idea can be unfolded, expanded, and developed in the spirit if not the letter of Eze’s employment in relation to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics—in particular, its conception of the role tradition plays in the pursuit of understanding and the idea of hermeneutics as practical philosophy. A more (...) hermeneutical conception of vernacular rationality would have the benefit of embracing the linguisticality of our circumstance, and reorienting our rationality toward one another in conversation and dialogue. From the standpoint of Philosophical Hermeneutics this requires us to engage in a critical-constitutive relation toward our tradition(s), emphasizing the work of listening within and between tradition(s), and broadening the circle of listening so as to strengthen the practical connections that allow conversation and dialogue to overcome the irrational and inhumane. (shrink)

Scheuerman’s book is one of the handful of significant attempts to rethink Schmitt’s work systematically over the past four decades. In so doing, he raises three key questions for me. First, is Schmitt’s work a sincere contribution to legal and political theory, or an attempt to argue for setting the rule of law aside for authoritarianism, that is, an instrumental critique of indeterminacy? Second, to what extent is Schmitt – critical of the ‘bourgeois’ rule of law, critical of globalization – (...) really a thinker defending capitalism? Can he really be associated with the Ordoliberals (even if they adopted his arguments from 1931 to 1932 in their own writing of the time)? Third, to what extent were Schmitt’s early contributions to National Socialist law aimed at responding to legal indeterminacy, and to what extent did they in fact point towards a radicalism of German law within the Nazi system, especially insofar as they endorsed making decisions based on the principles of justice of the Nazi state – and potentially against the express language of statutes? (shrink)

As argumentation theory has moved away from classical logic as a standard, sources have played an increasingly important role in the psychology of argumentation. Considering the connections between arguments and their sources is important for both descriptive and normative projects. This chapter draws together different strands of research in the psychology of argumentation and their differing views on source characteristics: namely, procedural rules, pragmatics, argumentation schemes and Bayesian Argumentation. We argue for a reconciliation of these different approaches around a probabilistic (...) notion of relevance. (shrink)

Although generally philosophers have put a high valuation on reason, increasingly the role of emotions in motivating action is being recognized. The essays in this volume explore the emotions from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Aristotelian views of the passions to the new findings of cognitive science, and from such diverse starting points as medieval literature and psychological studies.

This introductory paper offers a look into the intellectual and technical progress that led Robert E. Lucas to his seminal paper entitled Expectations and the neutrality of money. It is argued that...

Welches ist die Bedeutung des Humanismus für die soziologische Erkenntnisbildung? Seit der Entstehung der Soziologie wurde diese Frage immer wieder aufgeworfen – um bald darauf wieder zu verschwinden. Und damit blieb auch der eigentliche Gegenstand dieser Frage bis heute verborgen: die Bestimmung der Kultur der Soziologie. Denn die soziologische Erkenntnisbildung, das Erstehenlassen der Wirklichkeit des menschlichen Zusammenlebens in Begriffen, ist eine „kulturelle Tätigkeit“. Am gegenwärtigen Zustand der Soziologie zeigt sich dieser Mangel besonders deutlich, droht das Streben nach soziologischer Erkenntnis sich (...) doch im Niemandsland zwischen „multiparadigmatischen“ Verlegenheitslösungen, Hyperrealitäten methodischer und statistischer Codes und technokratischem Dienstleistungswissen buchstäblich zu verlieren. – Vor diesem Hintergrund versammelt der Band grundlegende Untersuchungen des Vehältnisses von Humanismus und Soziologie. Dabei kommen so unterschiedliche Strömungen wie die Kritische Theorie, Rational Choice und der Poststrukturalismus, so unterschiedliche Autoren wie Karl Mannheim, Talcott Parsons, Leo Strauss und Alfred Weber zur Sprache. Auf diese Weise ermöglicht der Band einen neuen Blick auf die Soziologie, insbesondere auf deren geisteswissenschaftliche Dimension. (shrink)