Body and World is the definitive edition of a book that shouldnow take its place as a major contribution to contemporary existentialphenomenology. Samuel Todes goes beyond Martin Heidegger and MauriceMerleau-Ponty in his description of how independent physical natureand experience are united in our bodily action. His account allows himto preserve the authority of experience while avoiding the tendencytoward idealism that threatens both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.Todes emphasizes the complex structure of the human body ;front/back asymmetry, the need to balance (...) in a gravitational field, and so forth ;and the role that structure plays in producing the spatiotemporal field of experience and in making possible objective knowledge of the objects in it. He shows that perception involves nonconceptual, but nonetheless objective forms of judgment. One can think of Body and World as fleshing out Merleau-Ponty's project while presciently relating it to the current interest in embodiment, not only in philosophy but also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. Todes's work opens new ways of thinking about problems such as the relation of perception to thought and the possibility of knowing an independent reality ;problems that have occupied philosophers since Kant and still concern analytic and continental philosophy. (shrink)

I. Language and Phenomenon /. Phenomenon We always have to start with the beginning, and the beginning is the factual — what is actually there — and being ...

The article provides a systems-theoretical analysis of the Cartoon Crisis and the way the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, responded to the expectations of Muslim groups in particular and the business community. The analysis shows that the Prime Minister followed a single strategy throughout the crisis, namely, insisting on a secular understanding of the separation of politics and religion. Religion, in this view, should not interfere in politics, and politics should not interfere in religion. The main outline of the (...) analysis shows that Prime Minister Rasmussen, paradoxically, found himself using a theological distinction in order to make a political argument. In doing so, Rasmussen shows, in contrast to his former argumentations, that modern, so-called `secular' politics is actually based on a religious Protestant understanding of the separation of the two realms, though the use Rasmussen made of this separation remains political. (shrink)

Herrschaftslegitimation ist eines der großen Themen europäischer Geschichtsschreibung zur Frühen Neuzeit. Dazu gehört nicht nur die theoriebezogene Begründung konkreter Herrschaftsausübung, sondern auch die Legitimation ihrer Infragestellung, die bis zur Rechtfertigung von Widerstand gehen konnte. Im Umkreis der Reformation wurde in ganz Europa seit Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts diese dem Mittelalter bereits wohlvertraute Debatte verzahnt mit der Frage nach dem "wahren" Glauben. Und damit erhielt das Recht, die Legitimität von Herrschaft in Frage zu stellen, eine weitere, sehr wirkmächtige Komponente, denn der (...) anderskonfessionelle Herrscher konnte zum tyrannischen Herrscher erklärt werden. Die im Sammelband publizierten Beiträge knüpfen an diese Fragestellung an und diskutieren sie unter Verwendung eigenständiger methodischer Verfahren, die als Kommunikation über Herrschaft charakterisiert werden können und in der wissenschaftlichen Debatte neu sind. (shrink)

Africa as a continent has experienced and still going through lot of negative, derogatory and dehumanizing experiences. This, in turn formed the basis of the identity crises that rock the continent. Some Western philosophers, historians, sociologist and so on are of the opinion that Africans do not have an identity nor history of their own; this is emboldened in the idea that Africa is not part of world history. This view may not necessarily be unconnected with the clash of culture (...) occasioned by the colonization of the continent of Africa by the Western world. Against this backdrop, the discourse examines what constitute African identity before the advent of colonialism. This is done to unravel the content and context of Africa(n) identity before the subjugation of the continent’s identity by the colonial master. This search, which seems to have formed the basis of the contemporary contention of the Africans’ diaspora wanting to know ifs they are truly Africans or a hybrid of different cultures remain the fulcrum of this discourse. In driving home the argument of the paper, different philosophies such as afrocentricity, afropolitanism, negritude, transnationalism as articulated by African scholars are reviewed with the aim of reconstructing the misconception and misrepresentation of the images alluded to Africa. Hence, using the analytical method of philosophical investigation, the paper project afrocentricity as a philosophy that is basic to the quest of identity in the African diaspora than afropolitanism. (shrink)

Although Archaea inhabit the human body and possess some characteristics of pathogens, there is a notable lack of pathogenic archaeal species identified to date. We hypothesize that the scarcity of disease‐causing Archaea is due, in part, to mutually‐exclusive phage and virus populations infecting Bacteria and Archaea, coupled with an association of bacterial virulence factors with phages or mobile elements. The ability of bacterial phages to infect Bacteria and then use them as a vehicle to infect eukaryotes may be difficult for (...) archaeal viruses to evolve independently. Differences in extracellular structures between Bacteria and Archaea would make adsorption of bacterial phage particles onto Archaea (i.e. horizontal transfer of virulence) exceedingly hard. If phage and virus populations are indeed exclusive to their respective host Domains, this has important implications for both the evolution of pathogens and approaches to infectious disease control. (shrink)

Samuel Todes’s book, Body and World, makes an important contribution to the current debate among analytic philosophers concerning non–conceptual intentional content and its relation to thought. Todes’s relevant theses are: (1) Our unified, active body, in moving to meet our needs, generates a unified, spatio–temporal field. (2) In that field we use our perceptual skills to make the determinable perceptual objects that show up relatively determinate. (3) Once we have made the objects of practical perception determinate, we can (...) make ‘practical perceptual judgements’ about them. Such ‘judgements’ have conditions of satisfaction, but they are non–conceptual in that they are a way of coping with an actual object in this situation, from this point of view, in this light, in this orientation, and so forth. (4) By withholding our activity, however, we can transform our practical perception into a detached, spectatorial perception of qualities that are experienced as independent of the object they qualify. (5) Thanks to our conceptual imagination, we can then treat these qualities as reidentifiable properties of reidentifiable objects that can be entertained by thought. (shrink)

Tõde või eimiski [= Truth or Nothingness]. A collection of philosophical essays 1990-2021. In Estonian. -/- Kogumikku hoolikalt valitud tekstid on ühelt poolt loomingulised, lugejat intrigeerivad ning interdistsiplinaarsed – kõige rohkem põimitakse filosoofilisi arutlusi psühholoogilistega. Kuid teisest küljest on esseed filosoofiliselt ranged, demonstreerides oskust jääda ka rakenduslikes teemaarendustes üdini filosoofiks. Raamatus leidub nii filosoofia olemuse üle arutlevaid tekste, kaasahaaravaid filosoofia suurkujude tõlgendusi, põhjalikult käsitletakse ka praktilise filosoofia alla kuuluvaid teemasid kuni meie kaasaja poliitilise olukorra diagnoosi ja kriitikani välja. Raamatu lõpus (...) on intervjuu väljaandjaga. (shrink)

Dreyfus presents Todes's (2001) republished Body and World as an anticipatory response to McDowell (1994) which shows how preconceptual perception can ground conceptual thought. I argue that Dreyfus is mistaken on this point: Todes's claim that perceptual experience is preconceptual presupposes an untenable account of conceptual thought. I then show that Todes nevertheless makes two important contributions to McDowell's project. First, he develops an account of perception as bodily second nature, and as a practical-perceptual openness to the (...) world, which constructively develops McDowell's view. Second, and more important, this account highlights the practical and perceptual dimension of linguistic competence. The result is that perception is conceptual "all the way down" only because discursive conceptualization is perceptual and practical "all the way up". This conjunction of McDowell and Todes on the bodily dimensions of discursive practice also vindicates Davidson's and Brandom's criticisms of McDowell's version of empiricism. (shrink)