The article aims at providing grounds for the analysis of the confrontation of scientific views in the context of E. Agassi’s famous thesis: “science is always socially engaged, but it should not be socially dependent”. This socio-epistemological analysis focuses on the clash between Lysenko’s interpretation of the Lamarckian methodology of H. Spencer’s views and representatives of the Russian school of classical Mendelian genetics. A distinctive feature of Akademgorodok in the 1970s-1980s was that almost every academic institute had a person (...) responsible for organizing a specialized scientific-methodological seminar on philosophical and methodological problems of a particular field of knowledge. Recollections of the participants of these seminars and reconstruction of the issues discussed at that time are rich empirical material, providing an opportunity to test modern conceptions in the field of social anthropology, social epistemology, and sociology of science. The revival of genetics in our country began with the founding of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences/SB RAS. It is shown that this confrontation between Lamarckism and Mendelism in 1930s-1960s develops from the denial of the theses of the ideological opponents to the emergence of accompanying interdisciplinary research. At the same time, a special role is given to the specification of the methodological function of philosophy and to those forms of its realization that scientists personally participating in scientific-methodological seminars, were more inclined to associate with “substantive” rather than “sociological” aspects of the description of the situation. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization an inherent unsustainability (...) driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

The paper gives an overview of the main stages of the development of «The Siberian Journal of Philosophy». It is shown how the journal is permanently linked with the history of the Philosophy Faculty of Novosibirsk State University. The role of Academician Yu. L. Ershov in the development of professional philosophical education at NSU is revealed and explained. The Summer Philosophical Schools held by the Faculty and the Siberian Philosophical Seminar’s are noted as a main factors that formed (...) the philosophical community around the NSU. Today, the journal acts as an organizer of interaction within the professional community and represents the face of the university in the media space of Russian philosophy. The author believes that for twenty years the journal has earned authority and has become a notable phenomenon in the life of the philosophical community not only in Siberia, but throughout the country. (shrink)

Although history is the pre-eminent part of the gallant sciences, philosophers advise against it from fear that it might completely destroy the kingdom of darkness—that is, scholastic philosophy—which previously has been wrongly held to be a necessary instrument of theology.

CHAPTER I GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE SUBJECT THERE is some difficulty in defining the subject of Ethics in a manner which can fairly claim general acceptance ...

From a purely historical point of view Lucan's epic is important, because it represents an intermediate stage between the contemporary account by Caesar of his defeat of the Pompeians and the later versions in Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. However, it does not merely show us the development of the historical tradition about the war, in particular that part of it which did not stem ultimately from Caesar himself. It is a milestone in the development of Roman ideas about the (...) fall of the Republic. For, while we can only tentatively deduce the attitude which Augustan writers, especially Pollio and Livy, adopted towards this war, Lucan represents the views of those who had not only lived under the monarchy which was the final product of the conflict begun in 49 B.c., but had experienced its less agreeable consequences under the later Julio-Claudians. (shrink)

Text and context: two ways to Clausewitz -- A learned officer among others -- Frederick the Great and his interpreters Clausewitz and Schlieffen -- Phases in the history of strategy -- From ideal to ambiguity: Johannes von Miller, Clausewitz -- And the people in arms -- "Half against my will I have become a professor" -- Two historians on defeat and its causes.

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Originally published 1974. Thousands of elementary schools for the children of the poor were founded during the nineteenth century, yet there is scarcely a published history of a single one of them. This volume is precisely such a history and the authors trace its story against the background of local and national change in education and society. On the basis of a unique collection of records the authors have pieced together a picture of the social composition of the (...) school, its curriculum and teaching methods, and its administration and finance. They relate the history of the school to that of London and the church, to that of educational authorities and educational policy. (shrink)

This book surveys the vast body of medieval Jewish philosophy, devoting ample discussion to major figures such as Saadiah Gaon, Maimonides, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Abraham Ibn Daoud, and Gersonides, as well as presenting the ancillary texts of lesser known authors. Sirat quotes little-known texts, providing commentary and situating them within their historical and philosophical contexts. A comprehensive bibliography directs the reader to the texts themselves and to recent studies.

This book is about innovation, reflection and inclusion. Cultural innovation is something real that tops up social and technological innovation by providing the reflective society with spaces of exchange in which citizens engage in the process of sharing their experiences while appropriating common goods content. We are talking of public spaces such as universities, academies, libraries, museums, science-centres, but also of any place in which co-creation activities may occur. The argument starts with the need for new narratives in the (...) class='Hi'>history of philosophy, which can be established through co-creation, the motor of cultural innovation. The result is redefining the history of philosophy in terms of a dialogical civilization by ensuring continuous translations, individual processes of reflection and collective processes of inclusion. Readers will grasp the effectiveness of the history of philosophy in societies that are inclusive, innovative and reflective. (shrink)

AS THE subtlest part of his see-saw strategy in the Cratylus, Socrates recites several dozen comic etymologies. One of their explicit lessons is that the founders of language were Heracliteans who concealed the ontology of flux in common names. Socrates gives the etymologies, he says, to illustrate the Heraclitean Cratylus's pronouncement that names are natural. The etymologies are bait for Cratylus, of course; they are meant to lure him into a defense of his dogma. But they are more than a (...) stratagem. The Socratic etymologies raise the question whether philosophy can escape the history of its language--a history perhaps of concealed ontology or the tyranny of sense-experience or the myths of one's forefathers. Philosophy as articulate falls under forces, multiple and hardly known, which shape linguistic meaning. A question for Socrates, which I would like to make my own, is the question whether metaphysical inquiry can appropriate the history of the languages in which it must subsist. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that the history of science is, in some significant sense, rational and thus that historical episodes may serve as evidence in choosing between competing normative methodologies of science, the question arises: "Just what is this history-methodology evidential relation?" After examining the proposals of Laudan, a more plausible account is proposed.

This paper describes one possible origin point for fraudulent behavior within the American pharmaceutical industry. We argue that during the late nineteenth century therapeutic reformers sought to promote both laboratory science and increasingly systematized forms of clinical experiment as a new basis for therapeutic knowledge. This process was intertwined with a transformation in the ethical framework in which medical science took place, one in which monopoly status was replaced by clinical utility as the primary arbiter of pharmaceutical legitimacy. This new (...) framework fundamentally altered the set of epistemic virtues—a phrase we draw from the philosophical field of virtue epistemology—considered necessary to conduct reliable scientific inquiry regarding drugs. In doing so, it also made possible new forms of fraud in which newly emergent epistemic virtues were violated. To make this argument, we focus on the efforts of Francis E. Stewart and George S. Davis of Parke, Davis & Company. Therapeutic reformers within the pharmaceutical industry, such as Stewart and Davis, were an important part of the broader normative and epistemic transformation we describe in that they sought to promote laboratory science and systematized clinical trials toward the twin goals of improving pharmaceutical science and promoting their own commercial interests. Yet, as we suggest, Parke, Davis & Company also serves as an example of a company that violated the very norms that Stewart and Davis helped introduce. We thus seek to describe one possible origin point for the widespread fraudulent practices that now characterize the pharmaceutical industry. We also seek to describe an origin point for why we conceptualize such practices as fraudulent in the first place. (shrink)

Contemporary theory of international politics faces a twofold problem: the critical engagement with legacies of national power politics in connection to 20th Century International Relations and the regeneration of notions of humanity. This book contributes to this engagement by a genealogy of thoughts on war, peace, and ethics"--Provided by publisher.

These three books illustrate some key themes in the history of science and the history of microscopy. First is a new enthusiasm among some historians and philosophers of science to embrace the history of microscopy as an area worthy of study, a recognized area of investigation for the historian and philosopher of science. In so doing these historians have redefined the subject area from the more traditional and much researched history of microscopes, with its emphasis on (...) the technical, to a consideration of the community of practitioners of microscopy and the theoretical contexts in which they carried out their studies. They have attempted to view the practice of microscopy and its practitioners within a conceptual, philosophical, and social context. They have by no means excluded technical considerations, but have argued that those alone can explain neither the rise, flourishing, and apparent decline of microscopy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nor its resurgence in the nineteenth century. Rather, they have argued that an analysis of microscopy must include social and conceptual considerations in addition to the technical. With these three books we have moved at last from the history of microscopes to the history of microscopy, within the context of the history and philosophy of science. The history of microscopy can now take its place within the larger inter-disciplines of HPS and STS. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen was a writer, philosopher and literary critic whose work was published widely in the nineteenth century. As a young man Stephen was ordained deacon, but he later became agnostic and much of his work reflects his interest in challenging popular religion. This two-volume work, first published in 1876, is no exception: it focuses on the eighteenth-century deist controversy and its effects, as well as the reactions to what Stephen saw as a revolution in thought. Comprehensive and full of (...) detailed analysis, this is an important work in the history of ideas. Volume 2 focuses on eighteenth-century moral philosophy, political philosophy and literature, and on the literary and religious reactions to the revolution in thought. Utilitarianism is discussed at length, as well as the work of thinkers such as Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Burke and Adam Smith. (shrink)

This research discusses the history of a certain space in the capital of Hungary as the physical concretization of the Soviet Union’s ideological impact on the country. Even though this 360 meters × 85 meters territory has had a very short lifetime of circa sixty years, it has been the location of many political and cultural events of nationwide importance. After the territorial and chronological contextualization, this article introduces the story of all the planned, established, demolished or removed public (...) buildings and statues that were located there from the mid-20th century until 2011. The text contains art analysis and comparative research methodologies to point out the conscious allusions and unconscious correlations of different regimes and their aims and ideologies in time. The third section provides possible explanations and analyzing tools to understand the relevance and the possible future options of the square. Lastly, the paper points out further possible research directions to investigate the broader topic of the connection between an urban location and the representational will of the contemporary leadership from different angels. (shrink)

Antonio Signorini’s contribution to the constitutive theory of non-linear elasticity is reconstructed and analyzed. Some uninformed opinions suggesting he had a minor role, lacking of significant results, are discussed and refuted. It is shown that Signorini should be rightly credited for being among the first scholars aware of the central problem of non-linear elasticity: the determination of the general form of the elastic potential.

Many researchers insist that computational methods will transform the historical profession, while an equally large number reject these claims as unwarranted hype. This study attempts to place the debate in historical and social context. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part offers a brief review of computational history. It asks whether the “computational turn” bears any resemblance to quantitative history and how it fits within the digital humanities. The second part describes the authors’ recent attempts (...) to apply computational methods to an existing project in the history of science using a standardized workflow. It demonstrates that each step of the workflow adds another layer of subjectivity. The third part reflects on what computational methods mean for the historical profession. It systematically reviews the positive aspects of computational history (open access, interdisciplinary collaboration, and new perspectives) as well as the negative aspects (inequality, fragility, and the threat of automation) and offers prescriptions based on the authors’ experiences. (shrink)

Simone Téry (1897–1967), French journalist and novelist, joined the French Communist Party in the mid-1930s after visiting the Soviet Union. She worked as a correspondent for L'Humanité, Vendredi and Regards; the latter post took her to Spain during the Civil War. The resulting texts, Front de la liberté: Espagne 1937–1938 (1938) and Où l'aube se lève (1945), form the basis of my analysis of Téry's desire to write the history of the present in inter-war France. These texts, a work (...) of reportage and a novel respectively, illustrate the relationship between the poetic, or imaginative, and the historical, or factual, in historical fiction. This relationship is particularly relevant to the literary history of 1930s France, given the highly politicized nature of literary production in the period and the resulting debates over the nature and future of the realist novel. Téry's rejection of modernism in favour of socialist realism suggests a conversion, common in left-wing writers of the period, to the notion that the modernist text is incapable of ‘containing’ history. The essay raises the question of French women writers’ relationship to committed literature in the 1930s, and demonstrates that women were active in this domain. (shrink)

History and the Paradoxes of Metaphysics in Dantons Tod is the first in-depth analysis exploring the dynamic relationship between Hegelian metaphysics and Georg Büchner's literary masterpiece. This study illuminates the fascinating paradoxes emerging from Büchner's portrayal of the collision of historical reality with the monumental concept of freedom developed in the monistic idealism of Hegel. It also brings to light much-neglected interconnections between Büchner's Hegelian reading of Spinoza and his theories on nature and history.

Philosophy of history is analyzed here from the point of its epistemological and ontological meaning. The author considers that the ontological point of view makes it possible to conceptualize the history as the unity of its all times - Past, Present and Future. The connection between these three times based on their relation to the concept of Eternity which has been symbolically formed within the mythological, religious and utopian Weltanschauung. The necessity of these relations transforms philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>history into a special kind of ontological historical knowledge. The study of history from the prospect of unity is only possible within the historical interpretation of Future as an epoch of bridging the gap between Time and Eternity. Author calls this philosophical concept the Time of Freedom. (shrink)

Inductive Logic is number ten in the 11-volume Handbook of the History of Logic. While there are many examples were a science split from philosophy and became autonomous (such as physics with Newton and biology with Darwin), and while there are, perhaps, topics that are of exclusively philosophical interest, inductive logic — as this handbook attests — is a research field where philosophers and scientists fruitfully and constructively interact. This handbook covers the rich history of scientific turning points (...) in Inductive Logic, including probability theory and decision theory. Written by leading researchers in the field, both this volume and the Handbook as a whole are definitive reference tools for senior undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in the history of logic, the history of philosophy, and any discipline, such as mathematics, computer science, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence, for whom the historical background of his or her work is a salient consideration. (shrink)

A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. By Holger Gzella. Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 111. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. xv + 451. $363.

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - (...) precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This set tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by aestheticians of modern times. This second volume tells how over the course of the century philosophers in Germany, Britain, and eventually the United States struggled to return to a broader approach to the value of aesthetic experience by finding room for the emotional and playful aspects of art. (shrink)

The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, burst into that turbulent time with passion, anger, and radical acts of resistance. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Native people began to protest the decades--centuries--of corruption, racism, and abuse they had endured. They argued for political, social, and cultural change, and they got attention. The photographs of activist Dick Bancroft, a key documentarian of AIM, provide a stunningly intimate view of this major piece of American history from 1970 to (...) 1981. Veteran journalist Laura Waterman Wittstock, who participated in events in Washington, DC, has interviewed a host of surviving participants to tell the stories behind the images. The words of Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, Pat Bellanger, Elaine Salinas, Winona LaDuke, Bill Means, Ken Tilsen, Larry Leventhal, Jose Barreiro, and others tell the stories: the takeovers of federal buildings and the Winter Dam in Wisconsin, the founding of survival schools in the Twin Cities, the Wounded Knee trials, international conferences for indigenous rights, the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan and the Longest Walk for Survival, powwows and camps and United Nations actions. This is the inside record of a movement that began to change a nation. Dick Bancroft has been the unofficial photographer for the American Indian Movement since 1970. He has traveled the world to take these photographs. Laura Waterman Wittstock, a writer and media consultant, covered the early years of the American Indian Movement as a journalist. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, recipient of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, is an activist for indigenous rights in Guatemala. (shrink)

This article is based on the assumption that core concepts of National Socialism—different from Marxism—turn not on economic, but on moral concepts, or categories heavily related to such concepts as honour, loyalty, decency and comradeship. The article investigates National Socialism from the standpoint of moral judgments, and turns this investigation into part of a moral history. It further is concerned with the continuing impact of National Socialism beyond the military, political and ideological defeat of 1945; the moral historical approach (...) can show how this influence continues at a level hitherto relatively unexamined. The moral history of National Socialism involves more than a shift of perspective. It opens up a specific, barely explored, field of research. This draws upon a variety of sources, especially films (Hotel Sacher—1939 and Downfall—2004 are discussed). The examination is directed to the concept of loyalty within this framework; it is a concept of virtue, which is moreover suited to illuminate some aspects of the functioning of Nazi morality, and its subsequent influence. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] edited volume is based on the proceedings of an international workshop held in 2009 on the theme of ‘Material Evidence and Narrative Sources’ during the fourteenth annual gathering of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, focused on ‘Interdisciplinary Studies of the History of Islamic Societies’. Fifteen articles seek to (...) integrate material and textual evidence for the medieval and modern Middle East, deliberately adhering to a trend of interdisciplinarity that began in the 1970s, exemplified in the approach of specific studies by Michael Cook, Leor Halevi, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar, and Jacob Lassner, as well as in the recent publications of the editors, D. J. Talmon-Geller’s Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids... (shrink)

The long-accepted interpretation of the history of modern philosophy is that, beginning with Descartes, philosophers explicitly took the data of consciousness as their epistemic foundation. Descartes supposedly held that the mind always thinks and that consciousness is an necessary to thought. Unsatisfied with this doctrine, Leibniz and Locke modified this view of the conscious nature of thought. The former introduced the concept of unconscious thought with petites perceptions, the latter argued that while thought is conscious, the mind does not (...) always think. The mind-body distinction Descartes is to have introduced, with which later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers allegedly struggled, is between what is conscious and what is not conscious. The various conceptions of consciousness integral to this history are assumed not to differ from one another to any interesting extent. ;A purpose of this study is to question this understanding of modern views of consciousness. I contend that there is evidence that conventional reading of the history of the concept of consciousness in modern philosophy is unacceptable. Its simplicity obscures the richness and complexity of the various conceptions of consciousness and their roles in modern philosophy. ;The standard view provides no analysis of the early modern concept of consciousness. The present study comprises primarily an analysis of a work which was supposed by its author to be the first effort at an account of consciousness in Western philosophy. Thus this study is the beginning of an attempt to place the development of modern views of consciousness in its historical context. Though its results are schematic and incomplete, they do include grounds for taking the possibility that a 1728 author's claim to present the first systematic treatment of consciousness to be a reasonable possibility. (shrink)

An abrupt break in the prevailing modes of artistic expression, for many, marks the advent of modernism in the early twentieth century, but revisionary attempts to pin down a precise moment of its emergence remain disputed. History of a Shiver proffers a different approach, tracing the first inkling of modernism instead to the nineteenth century's fascination with music.As Jed Rasula deftly shows, melomania--the passion for music--gave rise to concepts like Richard Wagner's "endless melody" and the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work (...) of art, which in turn infused the arts of the fin de siècle with an aura of expectancy, challenging them to induce musical effects by their own means. With each art aspiring to produce the effects of another artistic medium, a synesthetic yearning ran like a shiver through the body of art that would emerge over the next half century. Rasula traces this pan-arts polyphony from German Romantic theory to early experiments in "visual music," encompassing such diverse phenomena as American fixation on Arcadia, early film theory, and the lure of the fourth dimension. All the while, he keeps focus on the paramount historical consequence in elevating music to a new universal aesthetic standard, arguing that Wagnerism was first among modern "isms."In surveying this momentous interplay among arts, History of a Shiver ranges from literature, music and painting to theatre, cinema, dance, photography, and civic pageantry. It retells the story of modernism by recovering not an idea, but a feeling--the hair-raising potential for each painting, literary text, or musical composition to herald an unprecedented domain of human enterprise. (shrink)

A key issue in economic discourse today is the relation between economic behaviour and morality. Few would want to deny that human beings are in some sense moral or ethical creatures, but the devil is in the detail. Should we think of economic behaviour as an essentially amoral process – a process adequately characterised by a means-ends rationality – into which any number of subjective ethical concerns or orientations may be intruded to give a particular action its determinate moral content? (...) Or is it rather the case that our moral being runs deeper than this, in the sense that all of our behaviour – ‘economic’ or otherwise – is enabled or capacitated by a competence that is fundamentally ethical in character? With new analyses of the work of Hobbes and Smith, Dixon and Wilson offer a fresh approach to the debate surrounding economics and morality with a novel discussion of the self in economic theory. This book calls for a change in the way that the relation between economic behaviour and morality is understood – from an understanding of morality as a kind of preference that informs certain types of other-regarding behaviour, to an idea of morality as a competence that enables or, rather, conditions the possibility of all forms of human behaviour, other-regarding or not. Offering a new insight on homo economicus, this book will be of great interest to all those interested in the history of economics and of economic thought. (shrink)

In his disputatio, Johann Peter von Ludewig provides a history of rational philosophy among the Arabs and sets out to contextualize the Turks’ attitude to it. Like many Lutheran scholars of the time, Ludewig believed that Islam, as a religion, impeded the development of rational philosophy in the Arab world. However, unlike those philosophers, he examines external influences that may have fed the interest of Arab Muslims in rational philosophy, especially dialectic. Unlike Orthodox Lutherans, such as Pfeiffer and Kromayer, (...) in his conclusion, Ludewig prays that Muslim philosophers cultivate reason to overcome the "deceit of Muhammadanists" toward rational worship. The use of the contentious and seemingly oxymoronic phrase “rational worship” (logikē latreia: λογική λατρεία, from Rom. 12:1), combining “rationality” and “worship” together refects, to a certain extent, the Enlightenment belief that reason could be used to understand the nature of God against any type of irrational religiosity. The idea of worshipping God rationally and equating God with reason shows the intellectual engagement of Protestant scholars with Enlightenment rationalism. (shrink)

Voegelin's magisterial account of medieval political thought opens with a survey of the structure of the period and continues with an analysis of the Germanic invasions, the fall of Rome, and the rise of empire and monastic Christianity. The political implications of Christianity and philosophy in the period are elaborated in chapters devoted to John of Salisbury, Joachim of Flora, Frederick II, Siger de Brabant, Francis of Assisi, Roman law, and climaxing in a remarkable study of Saint Thomas Aquinas's mighty (...) thirteenth-century synthesis. Although _History of Political Ideas_ was begun as a textbook for Macmillan, Voegelin never intended it to be a conventional chronological account. He sought instead an original comprehensive interpretation, founded on primary materials and taking into account the most advanced specialist scholarship—or science as he called it—available to him. Because of this, the book grew well beyond the confines of an easily marketable college survey and until now remained unpublished. In the process of writing it, Voegelin himself outgrew the conceptual frame of a "History of Political Ideas," turning to compose _Order and History_ and the other works of his maturity. _History of Political Ideas_ became the ordered collection of materials from which much of Voegelin's later theoretical elaboration grew, structured in a manner that reveals the conceptual intimations of his later thought. As such, it provides an unparalleled opportunity to observe the working methods and the intellectual evolution of one of our century's leading political thinkers. In its embracing scope, _History of Political Ideas_ contains both analyses of themes Voegelin developed in his later works and discussions of authors and ideas to which he did not return or which he later approached from a different angle and with a different emphasis. _The Middle Ages to Aquinas_ has withstood the test of time. What makes it still highly valuable is its thoroughly revisionist approach, cutting through all the convenient clichés and generalizations and seeking to establish the experiential underpinnings that typified the medieval period. (shrink)

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy. In 1952 the book was published by Princeton University Press in an English translation by the distinguished scholar of Chinese history, Derk Bodde, "the dedicated translator of Fung Yu-lan's huge history of Chinese philosophy". Available for the first time in paperback, it remains the most complete work on the subject (...) in any language. Volume I covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 B.C., a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. Volume II discusses a period lesser known in the West--the period of classical learning, from the second century B.C. to the twentieth century. (shrink)

The predominant scholarly opinion argues that, for the ancients, the idea of history held no meaning because time was regarded as a circular pattern in which events are repeated. Only human thought and art were meaningful. This opinion, however, is based on an a priori definition of history as the whole temporal process. If the term "history" is examined from the standpoint of its use during antiquity, the analyses of the notions of time and history change. (...) Rather than being regarded as circular and repetitious, time had no pattern at all. Though this concept posed some philosophical problems for ancient thinkers, including Aristotle, time was not discussed as a medium of history. The interest in history as an academic discipline and its view as a linear process with an origin and an end independent of human thought occurred only with the gradual and rhetorical transition to Judaeo-Christian belief. (shrink)

In this issue, the founder of the Donetsk regional branch of the Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies, theologian, candidate of historical sciences, senior researcher of the Department of Religious Studies of the GS Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, President of the Center for Religious Studies member of the Expert Council on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations under the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, member of the Strategic Council under the Minister of Culture (...) and Information Policy of Ukraine. I. Kozlovsky worked for more than 25 years in the Donetsk Regional State Administration as a chief specialist and head of the department for religions, in the early 1990s he established the College of Religious Studies at Donetsk Open University, which was later transformed into the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the State University of Information. intelligence, and has done much to promote interfaith and interreligious dialogue and cooperation in the Donetsk region, whose religious map is very diverse. At the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, I. Kozlovsky became one of the organizers of the interfaith prayer marathon "Prayer for Ukraine", which took place in Donetsk from early March to November 2014, which was attended by members of the Donetsk branch of the UAR. Until 2016, some members of the UAR, led by I. Kozlovsky, who still remained in the occupied territories, collected data on the state of religious freedom in Donetsk and the region. In 2016, I. Kozlovsky was imprisoned by a terrorist group of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" and was held captive for almost 2 years. (shrink)

It is not clear to me that there is any longer the institutional will to train students, as both Henry and I were trained, in the languages, histories and philosophies that enable one to approach the texts of classical, medieval and renaissance intellectual history in particular. Today a student who is drawn to a study of pre-modern ideas and historical settings will be asked why on earth such an irrelevant subject matter should attract any interest or indeed, funding. Even (...) in Politics Departments there has been a tendency to keep alive only small pockets of normative theorists who have neither interest in nor knowledge of the history of their own discipline or of the languages they use with such confidence. For this reason, I want to say something about what I take to be the importance of studying the history of political thought in a modern university, because I think that we are gradually losing sight of a range of ways of thinking and speaking that will have, and is already having, dire consequences for the more everyday world we live in. (shrink)

This is the first biography of the last and greatest British idealist philosopher, R. G. Collingwood, a man who both thought and lived at full pitch. Best known today for his philosophies of history and art, Collingwood was also a historian, archaeologist, sailor, artist, and musician. A figure of enormous energy and ambition, he took as his subject nothing less than the whole of human endeavor, and he lived in the same way, seeking to experience the complete range of (...) human passion. In this vivid and swiftly paced narrative, Fred Inglis tells the dramatic story of a remarkable life, from Collingwood's happy Lakeland childhood to his successes at Oxford, his archaeological digs as a renowned authority on Roman Britain, his solo sailing adventures in the English Channel, his long struggle with illness, and his sometimes turbulent romantic life. In a manner unheard of today, Collingwood attempted to gather all aspects of human thought into a single theory of practical experience, and he wrote sweeping accounts of history, art, science, politics, metaphysics, and archaeology, as well as a highly regarded autobiography. Above all, he dedicated his life to arguing that history--not science--is the only source of moral and political wisdom and self-knowledge. Linking the intellectual and personal sides of Collingwood's life, and providing a rich history of his milieu, History Man also assesses Collingwood's influence on generations of scholars after his death and the renewed recognition of his importance and interest today. (shrink)

I draw attention to one of the most important sources of Kuhn’s ideas in Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Contrary to the popular trend of focusing on external factors in explaining Kuhn’s views, factors related to his social milieu or personal experiences, I focus on the influence of the books and articles he was reading and thinking about in the history of science, specifically, sources in the history of chemistry. I argue that there is good reason to think that (...) the history of chemistry had a profound influence on Kuhn’s thinking, and what is remarkable is that this has eluded our attention for so long. I also argue that his interest in the history of chemistry was due to the influence of James B. Conant and Leonard Nash. (shrink)

Mandelstam’s criticism of the Rayleigh theory of the blue color of the sky (1907) and his polemic with M. Planck (1907–1908) did not become notable events in the history of physics. However, the method of their coverage in the Soviet and in the post-Soviet physics literature is remarkable. Most of Soviet physicists and historians of physics supported Mandelstam's point of view in his criticism of both Raleigh and Planck. The situation changed only at the beginning of the 21st century: (...) in the Russian literature the publications appeared emphasizing that in the Raleigh–Mandelstam and Planck–Mandelstam controversies Mandelstam was not right, Raleigh and Planck were closer to the truth. Which presumptions of this trend can be noted? This was patriotism of the scientific school peculiar to Mandelstam’s graduate students and the former graduate students, the patriotism connected with solidarity which helped Mandelstam’s community to survive in the Soviet totalitarian regime and in the totalitarian organization of science. This was also progressionism which was popular among academics and among men in the street. The phenomenon of common knowledge, mutual knowledge among the members of a scientific community should be taken under consideration. Common knowledge is connected with the non-thematized anonymous inclusion of the ideological terminology into scientific discourse. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE THE PHILOSOPHER MOSAIC IN NAPLES Ever since the discovery in Torre Annunziata of a duplicate1 of the Villa Albani mosaic showing a group of ...

This three-volume series provides a critical examination of the history of theology in Scotland from the early middle ages to the close of the twentieth century. Volume II begins with the early Enlightenment and concludes in late Victorian Scotland.