We describe a new class of experiments designed to probe the foundations of quantum mechanics. Using quantum controlling devices, we show how to attain a freedom in temporal ordering of the control and detection of various phenomena. We consider wave–particle duality in the context of quantum-controlled and the entanglement-assisted delayed-choice experiments. Then we discuss a quantum-controlled CHSH experiment and measurement of photon’s transversal position and momentum in a single set-up.

Dans la vie d'un lecteur, certains auteurs occupent une place à part : lectures inaugurales, compagnons de tous les jours, sources auxquelles on revient. La collection "Les auteurs de ma vie" invite de grands écrivains contemporains à partager leur admiration pour un classique, dont la lecture a particulièrement compté pour eux. Dans sa jeunesse, Thomas Mann a lu et médité Schopenhauer, philosophe de la volonté et du pessimisme, qui a largement influencé l'oeuvre de celui qui deviendra l'un des (...) plus grands écrivains modernes de la décadence. Cet hommage à son maître nous offre une clé précieuse de son parcours intellectuel. (shrink)

The central theological focus that unites the Book of Genesis is the promise that God first makes to Abraham and then repeats in various forms to Isaac, to Jacob, and, through Jacob, to Joseph “In you shall all the families of the earth be blessed”.

Drugs used to provide improvement of cognitive functioning have been shown to be effective in healthy individuals. It is sometimes assumed that the use of these drugs constitutes cheating in an academic context. We examine whether this assumption is ethically sound. Beyond providing the most up-to-date discussion of modafinil use in an academic context, this contribution includes an overview of the safety of modafinil use in greater depth than previous studies addressing the issue of cheating. Secondly, we emphasize two crucial, (...) but hitherto nearly overlooked, nuances to the issues: the potential for modafinil to decrease inequality and disadvantage in academic settings, and the fact that how modafinil is used dramatically impacts its effects on health, coercion, fairness, authenticity and effort. Finally, we explicitly defend the position that there are no qualitatively morally relevant differences between modafinil use and other enhancement modalities; any such differences are in degree,... (shrink)

In the Hebrew Bible, food assumes a sacramental dimension as the physical manifestation of God’s grace and blessing. YHWH requires Israel to eat responsibly according to the rules of YHWH’s fief, acknowledging YHWH’s provision with gratitude, abstaining from prohibited food, and distributing the bounty of the earth equitably.

To those who reenact the drama, the Passover narrative and ritual mediate the experience of both oppression and liberation. The Passover ritual provides an “order” by which the reality of suffering may be confronted and the earnest of hope celebrated. The sacred time of the Passover meal provides a rich spiritual heritage that nurtures not only Jews but also Christians.

Thomas Mann developed one of the most subtle theories of irony during World War I, concluding that the best irony was irony against both sides of any issue. Such irony was not inconsistent with love for humanity, and even for both sides. He may well have been justified in using irony against both sides in that war. But with the rise of the Nazis, he abandoned two-sided irony and used his irony mostly against them. One the one hand, (...) this meant a better political position, but on the other hand irony was almost absent from many of his wartime essays and declarations. That may have been justified in such a time of danger, but it meant less art and subtlety in his political writings. (shrink)

The German author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann perceived World War I as a moral battle against the civilization project rooted in the European enlightenment. Like many other German intellectuals of that time, Mann stresses an opposition between the concept of culture and that of civilization – this conflict is seen as inherent in the European soul – and defends Germany’s right to remain a culture that does not evolve into a civilization. The concept of culture (...) can contain irrational features such as mystical, bloody and terrifying teachings, whereas civilization is characterized by reason, enlightenment, skepticism and hostility towards passion and emotion. In his major work The Magic Mountain however, Mann tries to overcome this opposition and displays, through the metaphors of the text, that a new humanism is dependent upon a mystical and completely illogical balance between culture and civilization. The main character of the novel does not succeed in finding this balance. But, nonetheless, Mann continues to see the possibilities of a new humanism through this perspective in order to point out a humanistic hope in the shadesof two European world wars. (shrink)

Thomas Mann (1875-1955), was a leading figure in the 20th century and is writer who has been widely mentioned in world litetarure. He is known not only as the writer of milestone novels but also as the master of oppositions. The Buddenbrook’s Family (1901), The Death in Venice (1912), and The Magıc Mountain (1924) in particular are inspiring the same emotions in the readers of today as the day they were written. While these masterpieces have been the subject (...) of literature research and psychoanalysis, they have also been of interest in the realm of philosophy. In particular, from the perspective of philosophy, The Magic Mountain, was the main concern of this study. This study will indicate both the modern aspects of the story as well as try to show how this work was a mirror for its time. The story takes place in a sanatorium where people who suffering from tuberculosis are sent to recover. This is an illness without remedy in its time and which was widespread through the 19th century. Switzerland, with its lofty mountains, was chosen as a location for tuberculosis senatoriums which offered fresh air, good nutrition, and light exercise. While the hospitals of Davos village tried to treat the patients’ lung spots, they also forced them to follow a life of dicipline. The fact that the “spotted” people went to the senatorium, with no intention of going back to their previous life is the main concern of this study. The most interesting fact here is the chain of events that connected earth to the mystical mountains of this town. The main issue will be the question of why people perceived this earthly place in such a different way. (shrink)

T.J. Reed's study has long established itself as the standard work in English on Thomas mann, and offers as comprehensive a view of Mann's fiction and thought as is available in any language. It is based on a coherent close reading of Mann's oeuvre, literary and political, and also on manuscripts and sources, and was part of the first phase of literary scholarship that opened up the resources of the Zurich Thomas Mann Archive. Further (...) documents that have appeared since then - Mann's diaries, notebooks, and other correspondences - have not fundamentally altered the individual interpretations or the overall picture the study offers, and in some respects have emphatically confirmed them. A further chapter added to this edition covers the new documentation, gives a vigorous account of the main curents in Mann scholarship and criticism over the last two decades suggesting how we should now see the writer, the man, and the political figure, and above all the complex relationship between the three. (shrink)

The writers Thomas Mann and Erich Kästner took in the years between 1933 and 1945 extreme positions of inner and outer emigration, which can be shown concerning autobiographical aspects and concerning their works which they wrote during the time of national socialism. While Kästner, who represents the inner emigration, wrote humorous stories like "Drei Männer im Schnee" and "Der kleine Grenzverkehr", Mann completed his tetralogy of "Joseph und seine Brüder", which deals with the foundation and development of (...) the monotheistic jewish world religion, in France, Switzerland and America where in 1943 he began his dark artist novel "Doktor Faustus", while in Europe internicine warfare and the Shoa were in progress. While Erich Kästner, who was a very engaged political author in the so called Weimar Republic, was captivated during the period of national socialism by his inwardness, Thomas Mann released himself from this attitude in view of the Third Reich and became an emancipated author who was politically engaged and with moral integrity. (shrink)

Thomas Mann’s novel „Joseph und seine Brüder“ implies a theology working with a concept of God which is deeply influenced by Max Scheler’s lecture „Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos“. God is seen as someone whose development depends on the spiritual efforts of mankind.

In this article, we analyse the symbolic meaning of the Thomas Mann's novel, The Magic Mountain. We try to see the scope of the interpretations that consider the metaphors of death, time and culture as the main subject of the novel. Finally, we sustain the idea that Thomas Mann wants to tell us that beauty and perfection are the reverse of death and suffering.

It is not uncommon to hear that poor school performance, welfare dependancy, youth unemployment, and criminal activity result more from shortcomings in the personal makeup of individuals than from societal forces beyond their control. Are American values declining as so many suggest? And are those values at the root of many social problems today?Shaped by experience and public policies, people's values and social norms do change. What role can or should a democratic government play in shaping values? And how do (...) these values conditon the efficacy of public policy?In this book, six distinguished social scientists identify trends in America's values and their consequences, and consider public policy tools with which some of those values might be changed.Daniel Yankelovich begins with a discussion of how American values have shifted in the last half-century, and argues that affluence is the driving force behind these changes in values. James Q. Wilson argues that destructive habits which can lead to social pathologies, like crime and drug use, are set early in life; he examines how public policy might intervene when children are young to promote better values. David Popenoe maintains that America has veered too far towards industrialist values, and explores the resulting decline of families and many attendant social ills. Nathan Glazer describes the history and present status of the dispute over multicultural education. Jane Mansbridge examines the process of building cooperation, consensus, and public spirit. And George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen discuss the problem of gang criminality.Inthe past, social scientists have often sidestepped questions about values as undefinable, unquantifiable, and somehow unscientific. The essays in this volume address these questions at last.Henry J. Aaron, director of the Economic Studies program at Brookings, is the authorof numerous books, including most recently Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care (1991), and coeditor of Setting Domestic Priorities (1992). Thomas E. Mann is director of the Brookings Governmental Studies program, coeditor of Media Polls in American Politics (1992), and coauthor of the Renewing Congress series (1993). Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives at Stanford University. (shrink)

Son of a North German businessman, Thomas Mann chose as theme for his early narrative work the conflict between the standards and values of business and those of the artist-writer.Buddenbrooks andTonio Kröger exhibit the tension of values in opposite ways. InThe Magic Mountain, Mann expands his canvas to include military as well as business values in their relation to the creative potential in a young engineer who exiles himself to an Alpine tuberculosis sanatorium to enjoy a unique (...) educational experience. Mann believed that the businessman, like the artist, had a light and dark side, committed by the Protestant ethic, yet bound to entrepreneurial standards of utility and profit. On that account, the businessman, like the creative artist, may experience a certain alientation from ‘Life’. (shrink)

One of the most difficult and perplexing tenets of classical theism is the doctrine of divine simplicity. Broadly put, this is generally understood to be the thesis that God is altogether without any proper parts, composition, or metaphysical complexity whatsoever. For a good deal more than a millennium, veritable armies of philosophical theologians – Jewish, Christian and Islamic – proclaimed the truth and importance of divine simplicity. Yet in our own time, the doctrine has enjoyed no such support. Among many (...) otherwise orthodox theists, those who do not just disregard it completely explicitly deny it. However, in a couple of recent articles, William E. Mann has attempted to expound the idea of divine simplicity anew and to defend it against a number of criticisms. He even has gone so far as to hint at reaffirming its importance, suggesting that the doctrine may have a significant amount of explanatory power and other theoretical virtue as part of an overall account of the nature of God, by either entailing or in other ways providing for much else that traditional theists have wanted to say about God. In this paper, I want to take a close look at Mann's formulation of the doctrine and at a general supporting theory he adumbrates in his attempt to render more plausible, or at least more defensible, various of its elements and implications. As Mann has made what is arguably the best attempt to defend the doctrine in recent years, I think that such an examination is important and will repay our efforts. (shrink)

Thomas Mann desarolló una de las teorías más sútiles de la ironía durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, declarando que la mejor ironía era la ironía contra los dos lados de cualquier asunto. Tal ironía no era incompatible con el amor por la humanidad, y aun por ambas partes. Podría justificarse a Mann por usar la ironía contra ambos bandos de esa guerra. Pero tras el ascenso nazi, Mann abandonó la ironía contra los dos bandos e ironizó (...) solo contra el de los Nazis. De una parte, fue esa una posición política mejor, pero de otra perdió casi todo el uso del tropo de la ironía en sus escritos políticos y declaraciones durante la guerra. Cabía justificación, cierto, a causa de la gravedad del momento, pero sus escritos políticos perdieron en arte y sutileza. Palabras-clave: Ironía, Thomas Mann, política, teoría. (shrink)