This essay accounts for the adolescent popularity of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by arguing that both novels indirectly appropriate the mid-twentieth-century figure of the rebel. By denying their “prime movers” much of a childhood, however, both novels heroize rebels who never suffer the dilemma that defines the adolescent according to Erik H. Erikson: the struggle between identity and role confusion. Following Erikson and Julia Kristeva, this essay reads Rand's prime movers as figures of a post-Oedipal fantasy of (...) self-reconciliation and career-oriented drive—figures who invite their reader into the fantasy of a life lived without adolescence's defining identity crisis. (shrink)

Ferdinand Mount has been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians who have shaped human history over the past two millennia In this fascinating, and provocative book, he examines the proposals for a political theory from a number of widely different historical figures. Twelve key people, from the great orator and statesman of Ancient Greece (Pericles) to the inspiration of the founding of the state of Pakistan (Muhammad Iqbal) we take a colourful and rip-roaring journey through the historical figures who (...) have both inspired and provoked Mount in equal measure. The lives of men such as Jesus Christ, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson are discussed and comparisons are drawn between the various approaches each figure promoted in their works - whether philosophical, or political theories. For those wishing to be guided by Mount's choices and be swept along by his brilliantly erudite prose, this will be a particular enjoyable read. Lots of colour, humour and passion governed all these people careers and Mount brings them to life like no one else can. Praise for the international-bestselling Tears of the Rajas:- 'Mount is a skilled and fluent writer who does his subject justice' --Literary Review 'Mount relates this remarkable story with a gentle wit, a lightness of touch, a boyish enthusiasm as well as a genius for the telling pen-portrait... It is a remarkable story, and cumulatively amounts to an epic panorama of British Indian history much more substantial than the 'collection of Indian tales, a human jungle book', which Mount modestly describes as his aim in the introduction.' --William Dalrymple, The Spectator 'What [Mount] provides instead is of far greater value: a perceptive antidote to nationalistic prejudicial thinking, and an opportunity for a greater understanding of the aftereffects of British imperialism in some of the world's most troubled regions.' Sunday Times 'Although Tears of the Rajas is replete with stirring tales of adventure, it is a deeply humane book. Mount's heart is at all times with the people of India, whose lives are turned upside down by blundering attempts at modernisation.' The Times. (shrink)

According to the standard view, the function of the unlimited dunamis argument (Physics VIII.10, Metaphysics Λ.7 1073a5–11) is to introduce a new property of the first immovable mover, namely its lack of magnitude. The paper challenges this view and argues that the argument at issue serves to prove that the eternal motion of the first heavenly sphere is caused by an immovable mover rather than by a moved mover. Further, the paper shows that, at least in Phys. (...) VIII, the unlimited dunamis argument is the main argument for the immobility of the Prime Mover. (shrink)

For two and a half millennia readers of Aristotle have been struggling to understand just what sort of causation is being attributed to the Prime Unmoved Mover or PM, whether final or efficient, assuming that this supreme being could not be a material cause or even a formal cause of the entire cosmos. Fred Miller entered into this still ongoing debate with a fresh proposal, drawing on an almost incidental remark in GC 1.6.323a25-33 that was later picked up (...) by Philoponus in his commentary on Aristotle’s text. The fundamental question is whether the PM’s causal role is to be restricted to a case of final causation or is there evidence for efficient causation as well? Just how ancient this question of interpretation is can be clearly shown by the following remarks made by Simplicius in the first half of the sixth century in his Neo-Platonist commentary on Phys VIII.6.267b17-26:Simplicius goes on to argue in some detail for this dual picture, primarily because of his harmonizing approach to Plato and Aristotle, but also by referencing some very specific passages in other works—notably Cael, GC, DM—but also Met, albeit only from its first book (1361.11-1363.24). He starts out here by claiming that “[n]o one disputes that Aristotle calls god or the primary mover a final cause” but realizes that showing that the PM is an efficient cause as well needs some textual support, which he dutifully attempts to provide. We will be going over some of the same ground cited here in trying to articulate Aristotle’s conception of divine causation and in particular to decide if Fred Miller’s thoughts about the “untouched toucher” will help us in the overall endeavor to explore Λ.6-10. Since he points out (at p. 278) that the PM could hardly be a material cause or even a formal cause, his framing the issue as to whether the mode of causation here is exclusively efficient or exclusively final, or, on the other hand, both at once, seems very close to how Simplicius set up the problem. Indeed, he cites the same section of Simplicius’s commentary quoted above and finds this ancient perplexity a good jumping off point for his own attempt to shed light on a fundamental issue of interpretation, noting that if we balk at the Neo-Platonic suggestion that Aristotle’s PM “is on a par with Plato’s demiurge,” the question becomes: “in what way is the prime mover supposed to be an efficient cause?” (p. 279). Miller’s novel suggestion is that one way of dealing with this question is the thought that the PM is an “untouched toucher.” It is crucial to his picture that this suggestion is strongly tied to the prospect of finding “a way in which the unmoved mover of the cosmos could be a genuine efficient cause” (p. 287) and not I believe, as W.D. Ross may have held, an efficient cause only by being a final cause. This will become important when we explore what untouched touching would be quite generally, given the emphasis on the psychological dynamics of this sort of affective action as suggested by the everyday examples provided by both Aristotle and Philoponus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Look at the Prime MoverDavid BradshawThe last twenty years have seen a notable shift in scholarly views on the Prime Mover. Once widely dismissed as a relic of Aristotle's early Platonism, the Prime Mover is coming increasingly to be seen as a key—perhaps the key—to Aristotle's mature metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Perhaps the best example of the revisionist view is Jonathan (...) Lear's Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Lear describes Aristotle's position as a form of "objective idealism." It is idealism because Aristotle believes that the fundamental nature of reality conforms to the mind, rather than vice versa; it is objective because the mind to which reality conforms is not that of any particular thinking being, but the divine mind—that is, in a sense, mind itself. "Objects must conform to knowledge, but that does not in the least reveal them to be constituted by any contribution from us... Since, for Aristotle, there is nothing distinctively human about the mind to which objects are conforming, there is no basis for saying that the essences we contemplate are mere appearances."1 Although it may seem strange to think of Aristotle as an idealist, Lear makes a plausible case for his interpretation based on the relevant texts (primarily De Anima III.4 and Metaphysics XII.6-10), and he successfully integrates it into his treatment of other important themes in Aristotle's philosophy.Attempts such as Lear's to tease out the significance of divine thinking are not the only new development afoot. Whereas Lear seems to accept the traditional view that the Prime Mover is a final but not an efficient cause, others such as Thomas de Koninck and Sarah Broadie have challenged that view.2 They have successfully shown, in my opinion, that Aristotle's position requires [End Page 1] that the Prime Mover be in some fashion an efficient cause. But they have not successfully elucidated the nature of this causality, nor have they explained how it is related to the theme rightly given prominence by Lear, the creative character of divine thought.My purpose here is to bring these two strands together—to use an interpretation of divine thinking much like Lear's to illuminate Aristotle's otherwise vexing and obscure remarks about the Prime Mover's causality. Rather than follow the time-honored route of commenting upon the commentators, I will examine the whole issue afresh, working in roughly the order dictated by Aristotle's text. My hope is to present a comprehensive interpretation of the Prime Mover that is more compelling than any yet offered by either the revisionists or their critics.1. Activity and Actuality in Metaphysics XIIMetaphysics XII.6 begins with a terse argument for the existence of a first unmoved mover. In the course of this argument Aristotle drops some important clues about the nature of the Prime Mover and its relation to the cosmos.The argument runs as follows: (1) Time cannot come into being or pass away, for that would involve the paradox of a moment before time or a moment after time. (2) Given Aristotle's own definition of time as "the number of motion in respect of before and after," or any other definition linking time inseparably to motion, motion also cannot come into being or pass away, and so must be continuous. (3) There must be a mover to cause this continuous motion. (4) The mover cannot merely be something capable of causing the motion, but must actively do so (, 1071b17). (5) Even for the mover to act continually is not sufficient if its substance includes potency or is potency (, 1071b18), for then the mover could possibly not be, and so could not guarantee an eternal motion. (6) Therefore the very substance of the mover must be actuality (, 1071b20). In the next sentence Aristotle goes on to speak as if there might be more than one mover, noting that "these substances must be without matter, for they must be eternal, if anything is eternal" (1071b20-22). After this nothing more is said about the possibility of more than one mover until chapter XII.8.There is an... (shrink)

There is a certain conventional interpretation of Aristotle's argument, in Metaphysics Λ.7, for the identification of the first unmoved mover as God, according to which that argument has the following outline.

In Laws book X Plato tries to give us conclusive evidence that there are at least two gods (one good and the other bad). The reasoning depends crucially on the idea of ‘self moving motion.’ In this paper I try to show that the ‘evidence’ is not persuasive. (Nevertheless, the idea of ‘self – moving motion is interesting.).

[Aristotle on Movers and the Prime Mover].

Volume 32, Issue 3, May 2024, Page 388-400.

In Meta. Λ 8, Aristotle argues that the heaven –and, thus, the cosmos – is numerically unique on the grounds that its first unmoved mover is numerically unique. The latter is numerically unique because it is ‘essence’ and does not have matter. “But whatever is many in number has matter.” I refer to this inference as Aristotle’s metaphysical argument for the uniqueness of the cosmos. A problem arises: If the subsidiary unmoved movers of the planetary spheres are, like the (...) prime unmoved mover, immaterial substances and belong to the same species of unmoved mover, it seems that they could not be numerically distinct from that first unmoved mover – while Aristotle maintains that they are, in fact, numerically distinct. That is, as immaterial substance, it/they could not be individuated by matter. However, if they do, as souls or soul-like forms, inform matter, it seems that there is no reason why the first unmoved mover, which moves the sphere of fixed stars or outermost, celestial sphere, should not similarly inform the matter of that celestial sphere. In the latter case, Aristotle’s argument for the uniqueness of the heaven and cosmos would be vitiated. The first unmoved mover would be the form of the outermost celestial sphere; and there would evidently be no metaphysical reason why that form could not be materially instantiated by other outermost celestial spheres, each enclosing its own cosmos distinct from our own. I argue that neither of the two salient options for resolving this problem with Aristotle’s metaphysical argument for the uniqueness of the cosmos is satisfactory. The result, so I maintain, is Aristotle’s diremption of divinity into two essentially unrelated aspects: divinity as autonomous, ‘hermetic’ cognition and divinity as ultimate cause of cosmic motion and change. (shrink)

This piece offers an edition, translation, and analysis of a newly discovered text by Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī, a leading Aristotelian of the Baghdad school in the tenth century. It briefly discusses what Aristotle meant, at the end of the Physics, by saying that the Prime Mover is “in” the outermost heaven. Ibn ʿAdī argues, in part through an exhaustive discussion of the senses of the word “in,” that God is in the sphere only in the sense that an (...) object of intellection is in an intellect. This solution is discussed against the background of ancient commentaries on the same passage. (shrink)

Ch.9 of Metaph. 12 gives no support to the common view (against which I have argued elsewhere) that in ch.7 Aristotle identifies his Prime Mover not only as a god but also as an intellect. Rather, ch.9 approaches the divinity of intellect as a common belief (ἔνδοξον) from the Greek philosophical and poetic tradition (as at ch.7, 1072b23) that now requires dialectical testing. Here Aristotle initially establishes that there is a most active intellect (proposed ch.7, 1072b18–19: demonstrated ch.9, (...) 1074b17–21, b28–9), and that it contemplates what is best (proposed loc. cit.: demonstrated ch.9, 1074b21–7). Thus ch.9 proceeds by deducing, as a new result, characteristics implying that this intellect is itself the Prime Mover, since its object, qua best, must be the god of ch.7, and divine intellect is essentially identical (1074b33–1074a5), and an indivisible unity (a5–10), with that object. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Λ.6-7 Aristotle argues that an unmoved substance causes the outermost sphere to rotate. His argument has puzzled and divided commentators from ancient Greece to the present. I offer a novel defense of Aristotle's argument by highlighting the logic of classification that Aristotle deploys. The core of Aristotle's argument is the identification of the unmoved substance on the 'table of opposites' as simple and purely actual. With this identification in place, Aristotle argues that the outermost sphere activates its capacity (...) to relocate its body by rotating because this is how it can be a simple and actual substance. But unlike traditional attempts to rehabilitate Aristotle's argument, I argue that the sphere does not rotate in order to imitate the Prime Mover. Rather, the sphere rotates because that is good for it to do, and the Prime Mover is a metaphysically necessary source of simple and actual substantial being, which the sphere acts for the sake of. (shrink)

This paper elaborates some of the conceptual implications of Derrida’s call for “another thinking of life” in Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison. The paper first argues that Derrida’s deconstruction of the opposition between metaphorical and literal uses of the discourse of life in La vie la mort is radicalized in Voyous when he argues that democracy’s “autoimmunitary suicide” should be the point of departure for rethinking life in general. To understand further these autoimmune-suicidal tendencies, the paper turns to Derrida’s (...) engagement with Aristotle’s conceptual figure of the prime mover in Voyous. The paper argues that Derrida turns to Aristotle because the prime mover illustrates the ways in which the concept of life remains historically and structurally informed by the philosophical value of ipseitocratic sovereignty, which is allergic to the disseminatory, proliferating, and improper qualities that the philosophical tradition has always ascribed to democracy. Autoimmunity thus provides a way for thinking of a democratic life that is not entirely determined by the teleological power of any divinely good life. (shrink)

If the prime mover must be considered as efficient cause and not only as a final cause, then one must ask: why does God move the heavens? We hold the position that the anthropocentrism which Aristotle maintains is able to sufficiently justify the thesis that God moves the spheres so that human beings may exist. This provides an additional motive for accepting providence, which is manifestly ordered specifically towards man.

It is generally agreed that the prime mover of contemporary consumerism is aesthetics. However, today's consumer aesthetics often leads to decisions and actions that have negative environmental consequences. By taking apparel industry, represented by fast fashion, as a quintessential example of this problem, I argue that aesthetics can no longer claim immunity from environmental considerations—there needs to be a paradigm shift for consumer aesthetics. A proposed new environmentally minded consumer aesthetics promotes a paradoxical role for material ephemerality in (...) enhancing an object's longevity, and it places importance on the personal connection with an object's story, as well as our engagement with the material world more generally. (shrink)

In Rethinking Language Arts: Passion and Practice, author Nina Zaragoza uses the form of letters to her students to engage pre-service teachers in reevaluating teaching practices, thus bringing to life a vision of an alternative classroom environment in which the teacher is the prime mover and creative leader. Zaragoza discusses and explains the need for teachers to be decision makers, reflective thinkers, political beings, and agents of social change in order to create a positive and inclusive classroom setting. (...) This book is both a critical text that deconstructs the way language arts are traditionally taught in our schools as well as a visionary text with clear, no-nonsense directions on how to provide much needed change in our schools. (shrink)

Cleary discusses the origin, development, and use of the many senses of priority as a central thesis in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Cleary contends that one of the most revealing problems for the ambiguity of Aristotle’s relationship to Platonism is that of the ontological status of mathematical objects. In support of his claim, Cleary analyzes a curious passage from Aristotle’s _Topics, _where he appears to accept a schema of priorities that makes mathematical entities more substantial than sensible things. How does Aristotle try (...) to reconcile the ordering of things dictated by sciences like mathematics and dialectic with the ordering of sense experience upon which his own physics and metaphysics are based? To find the answer, Cleary reviews three different outlines of the many senses of priority given by Aristotle himself and found in _Categories _12-13, _Metaphysics _Delta 11, and _Metaphysics _Theta 8. Cleary suggests there is an implicit hierarchy for Aristotle that leads him to posit the Prime Mover at its apex as complete actuality and, therefore, as the focus for the concept of priority. Having reviewed Aristotle’s treatment of the many uses of priority, Cleary demonstrates how the concept is used in some typical arguments by Aristotle for his mature metaphysical positions. (shrink)

: The article discusses two issues implied by the structure of De caelo I.9: Aristotle’s further defence of the uniqueness of the universe and, in more detail, the general question of whether the cosmology of De caelo overlaps, or is even compatible, with Aristotle’s theology including the notion of the Prime Mover. It offers an analysis of several long-standing difficulties including the question of whether the lines 279a18–22 imply an external mover of the heavens. The negative answer (...) that I will defend does however not solve the problem of how Aristotle conceives the source of natural cosmic motion. In this respect, the article pays close attention to the peculiar conception of the animate supralunary matter and to De caelo II.3, 286a7–21 as a text that complements I.9 by relying on the holistic self-motion that implies no Prime Mover, but requires the separation of the supralunary and the sublunary spheres. The article also concludes that Arist otle, despite his rejection of the unceasingly revolving world soul, inherits some Platonic difficulties that arise once we make the notion of the divine life irreducible to divine thinking. (shrink)

This article concerns the work of the prime movers of the Neo-Meinongian “revival,” Terry Parsons and Richard Routley, and specifically their solution to the issue of how to formulate the Characterisation Principle (a thing that is so and so, is so and so). Both adopted variations of the nuclear/non-nuclear (characterising/non-characterising) strategy. This article discusses their implementations of the strategy and its problems.

ABSTRACT At some point between 1684 and 1698 a Dartmouth tradesman started to perform experiments with the power of steam in his workshop. In the course of this investigation Thomas Newcomen discovered how to cause a partial vacuum by rapid condensation under a piston and incorporated this prime mover within an engine that was consistently reliable and proved commercially viable for draining mines. Consensus is that his initial apparatus was partly derived from an air pump, however historians have (...) debated how this isolated ironmonger could have garnered sufficient theoretical understanding to pursue such a line of enquiry, let alone the know-how to make suitable devices and mechanisms. Just how remote was Newcomen from London ‘science’? This paper examines his relational connections, identifying potential links with Denis Papin, Robert Hooke and an authority on mine pumps, Christopher Kirkby. The case of Newcomen illustrates the proliferation of modern ideas and values through relational networks, and, most importantly, the know-how to innovate. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on the Metaphysics, offers a faithful rendering of the argument in the course of his almost literal paraphrase; but in the Summa Contra Gentiles, when he undertakes to give "the arguments by which Aristotle sets out to prove the existence of God," the argument from time is strangely omitted. Thomas is not peculiar in this omission. Maimonides before him evinces no recognition of the argument from time, and I am aware of no modern discussion of (...) it. The one directly relevant passage in Book Lambda is certainly exiguous enough, and it might perhaps be suggested that Aristotle himself failed to grasp the argument as independent of the argument from motion. The argument from time is indeed absent from the Physics in anything like its full force, though an abbreviated version of it is peripherally anticipated in chapter 1 of Bk. 8. There being such a meagreness of supporting documentation in the Aristotelian corpus itself, it is not altogether surprising that the key passage--Met. 1071b3-10--should be passed over as merely a highly condensed synopsis of the argument from motion. I am confident, however, that, elliptical as the passage is, it actually uncovers an argument for the prime mover quite distinct from the main argument of the Physics. (shrink)

Pragmatism is brass tacks philosophy. In fact, it's more than just that, as the pragmatist also holds the view that philosophy ought to be brass tacks philosophy. Pragmatisms are not simply aligned in terms of what solutions they propose for philosophical problems, but they are aligned in terms of how they view philosophical problems and what solutions would be in the first place. In many ways, this metaphilosophical view is the prime mover for pragmatist first-order philosophizing. The pragmatist (...) may enjoin that there is no first philosophy, but for most pragmatists, their metaphilosophy functions as one.1The founding documents of pragmatism, Peirce's "Consequences of Four Incapacities," James's "The Sentiment of... (shrink)

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is one of the most famous and important philosophers of the twentieth century. In this account of his life and work A.C. Grayling introduces both his technical contributions to logic and philosophy, and his wide-ranging views on education, politics, war, andsexual morality. Russell is credited with being one of the prime movers of Analytic Philosophy, and with having played a part in the revolution in social attitudes witnessed throughout the twentieth-century world. This introduction gives a clear (...) survey of Russell's achievements across their wholerange. (shrink)

As militarization of bodies politic continues apace the world over, as military organizations again reveal themselves as primary political, economic and cultural forces in many societies, we argue that the emergent and potentially dominant form of political economic organization is a species of neo-feudal corporatism. Drawing upon Bourdieu, we theorize bodies politic as living habitus. Bodies politic are prepared for war and peace through new mediations, powerful means of public pedagogy. The process of militarization requires the generation of new, antagonistic (...) evaluations of other bodies politic. Such evaluations are inculcated via these mediations, the movement of meanings across time and space, between formerly disparate histories, places, and cultures. New mediations touch new and different aspects of the body politic: its eyes, its ears, its organs, but they are consistently targeted at the formation of dispositions, the prime movers of action. (shrink)

The concept of self-motion is not only fundamental in Aristotle's argument for the Prime Mover and in ancient and medieval theories of nature, but it is also central to many theories of human agency and moral responsibility. In this collection of mostly new essays, scholars of classical, Hellenistic, medieval, and early modern philosophy and science explore the question of whether or not there are such things as self-movers, and if so, what their self-motion consists in. They trace the (...) development of the concept of self-motion from its formulation in Aristotle's metaphysics, cosmology, and philosophy of nature through two millennia of philosophical, religious, and scientific thought. This volume contains "Self-Movers" (David Furley), "Aristotle on Self-Motion" (Mary Louise Gill), "Aristotle on Perception, Appetition, and Self-Motion" (Cynthia Freeland), "Self-Movement and External Causation" (Susan Sauvé Meyer), "Aristotle on the Mind's Self-Motion" (Michael Wedin), "Mind and Motion in Aristotle" (Christopher Shields), "Aristotle's Prime Mover" (Aryeh Kosman), "The Transcendence of the Prime Mover" (Lindsay Judson), "Self-Motion in Stoic Philosophy" (David Hahm), "Duns Scotus on the Reality of Self-Change" (Peter King), "Ockham, Self-Motion, and the Will" (Calvin Normore), and "Natural Motion and Its Causes: Newton on the 'Vis Insita' of Bodies" (J. E. McGuire). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Not only in philosophy but in religion as well, concepts such as God, World and Man are discussed quite considerably. Nevertheless, an understanding of these concepts requires careful, detailed and systematic analyses. One of the methods of achieving the same is to use a comparative framework. Within Islam, Wahdatul-Wujud is an important mystical and philosophical perspective that has witnessed a tumultuous journey. It has however played a dominant role in Islamic thought. Within Indian philosophy, Vedānta has played a very influential (...) role. Visistādvaita as a school of thought has also played a great role to interpret core philosophical concepts of Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutras. In this research paper, we attempt to provide a comparative analysis of Visistādvaita and Wahdatul-Wujud marking out the aspects of similarity and departures. What stands out as relevant and insightful as an implication of the comparative method is an understanding of these two approaches. Wahdatul-Wujud is redefined as a panentheistic philosophy which believes that God exists inside of everything, but is at the same time, transcendent of everything. In this type ofbelief, God is seen as an eternal spark of all things, the Prime Mover. Quite similarly, Visistādvaita, on the other hand is conceived as a Qualified Non- dualistic philosophy which believes in subsuming every diverse phenomena and experience under an underlying unity. (shrink)

The article analyzes the activity of the greatest classic of the Islamic philosophy - Ibn Sina, aimed at the revision of Aristotelianism, mainly in terms of its synthesis with Islamic monotheism. Preferential attention is paid to the metaphysical section of Avicennian multivolume encyclopedia “The Healing”. Instead of Aristotelian God / the Prime Mover as the final cause, which serves as the source of the movement of the world, Avicenna establishes God / Necessary Being, who acts as the Giver (...) of being. Developing the ontological foundation of creationism, i.e. the creation of every thing in the world, the philosopher introduces a distinction between essence and existence, which will pass through the subsequent history of philosophy. Ibn Sina thoroughly modifies the Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of God and His essential cataphatic attributes. The intellectual narcissism of God, Who only knows Himself in Stagirite, he changes with the concept of Divine Omniscience and His providence of all existents. Ibn Sina transforms Aristotelian eternalism into eternalistic creationism, modifying the emanationist scheme of cosmogenesis advanced by al-Farabi, in which the process of proceeding of the existents from the First Principle appears as an intellectual act. The Muslim philosopher complements Aristotelian cosmology with the doctrine of angels, whom he identifies with cosmic intellects and souls as the governors of the celestial spheres. Avicennian radical innovation is in the doctrine of Active Intellect, who is not only the ruler of the sublunar world, but actually is its demiurge. This intellect is assigned with the function of the illumination of the human intellect, as well as with the role of the archangel Gabriel the transmitter of divine revelation according to Muslim tradition. From the philosophical perspective, Avicenna develops alien to Aristotelianism topics related to the prophecy and revelation, the immortality of the soul and its otherworldly fate. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, rock music has been the prime mover of an emergent national recording industry in Australia. This is a story in turn of increasing size, complexity, diversity, and sophistication, before its ultimate decline into the 21st century. This story has not been told in full previously and this article is a first step to make good this gap in the historical and cultural sociology of popular music. In this study, which has two parts, we (...) survey record labels, recording techniques and forms, and the music that was bought and sold. In Part One (published in Thesis Eleven 109, 2012: 71–88) we chronicled the emergence of modern record production, the rise of rock music, and the development of a local recording industry in Australia between 1945 and 1970. In Part Two we narrate the rise and fall of Australian local, regional and national rock music cultures and the ebb and flow of independent labels and their labyrinthine relations to the transatlantic centre of the world-system of rock music industry. In particular we focus on four aspects: 1) technological change: the dominance of the vinyl album in the 1970s but its eventual usurpation by cassettes and then compact discs before the ultimate decline of all formats in the rise of the internet and the i-pod; 2) infrastructure: the development of the recording industry as a system of recording studios and record factories; as a system of impresarios and musician management; and also as a system that integrates performance circuits, radio, television, film, and eventually computer, product placement, advertising, and promotion through the cultivation and manipulation of taste markets in consumer culture etc.; 3) business logistics and markets: the tracking of the record labels, their struggles for markets and copyright control, local and global; and 4) musical production and repertoire. Since the digital revolution started eating away firstly and most conspicuously at the recording industry, the 50 years from 1945 to 1995 can now more clearly be seen as the rise and fall of rock music and its major technological form, the vinyl record. This is why we call it ‘the vinyl age’. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of three thinkers from almost as many intellectual and cultural traditions: Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and discusses the extent of the knowledge of particulars which each one ascribed to God. Avicenna de-reified Aristotle’s abstract and isolated Prime Mover and argued that God can know particulars but limited these to universals. Maimonides disanalogized divine from human knowledge, arguing that the epistemic mode predicated of mankind cannot be equally predicated of God, and that God (...) knows particulars qua particulars even as his Knowing encompasses all of eternity in a single act of knowledge. Attempting an intermediate path between the former’s highly discursive reasoning and the latter’s more scriptural approach, Gersonides postulated that God can know particulars qua particulars—as is befitting a Perfect Being—but this He does ‘mediately’ as it were, via the emanative ordering comprising the separate intelligences and culminating in the Active Intellect. (shrink)

Resistance is a puzzle for politics. Its presence is perceived as the sign of a healthy political culture, yet the controversies it raises cannot always be resolved without changing the fabric of the political community. In this, some see it as a fundamental danger, a risk within democracy. Resistance is thought of as a problem to solve, a matter to handle, an irritant to quell, a brake on progress and development. Yet there exists a strong current in political theory, and (...) practice, that stood this perspective on its head. This tradition assigns to resistance the role of prime mover in social ontology, and of creative drive in political relations. This paper discusses this contribution and its legacy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In “Il faut défendre la société”, Foucault attempted to historicize and criticize Nietzsche’s equating of the social with struggle. In order to do so, Foucault produced a descriptive discursive history of his genealogical project by deploying the method of the critical archaeology. Foucault realized thereinafter that his archaeological exposition of the genealogical discourse in fact laid bare a close historical and conceptual bond between genealogy and modern racial discourses. In the first lectures, Foucault, unearthed the genealogical discourse hidden in (...) the literature written by the nobility as they attempted to resist the centralisation of royal power. In the latter part of his lectures, he described a discursive interplay between genealogy-as-struggle and the biopolitical practices of the modern state. As such, he gave a tentatively description how the modern state inherited and extensively applied the notion of struggle in its biopolitical control on its populations. The immoral and historical consequences of this affinity, resulting in the biopolitics of genocide, warranted Foucault to distance himself from Nietzsche’s concept, which in effect resulted in rethinking the social within the framework of gouvernmentalité, in which struggle was a modality rather than the prime mover of society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS'S FOURTH WAY AND THE APPROXIMATING RELATION HERE IS, IT CAN BE SAID, at least one troubleome premise (to some, unacceptable) in each of the Five Ways recorded by Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (S.T., I, q.2, a.3, c.). Three of the W·ays, i.e., the First and the Second and the Fifth, have a premise which describes God-Prime Mover (Primum Movens, quod a nullo movetur), First Efficient (...) Cause (Causa Efficiens Prima), Intelligent Orderer (Aliquid Intelligens, a quo omnes res naturales ordinantur in finem), respectively-in a way which falls short of a proper or adequate (unmistakable, unquestionable, unique) identification of God. That is, it is not necessary that the Prime Mover be God, or that the First Efficient Cause be God, or that the Intelligent Orderer be God. For, whatever else God is, God is the Creator, and the Prime Mover is not. And neither is the First Efficient Cause; nor is the Intelligent Orderer. This happens because the empirical point of departure of each of these three Ways gives the causality of the Prime Mover, of the First Efficient Cause, and of the Intelligent Orderer an effect and a scope which make it impossible to identify them with the effect and the scope of the causality of the Creator. The two remaining ways, though providing a description of God which quite properly or adequately identifies God-SelfNecessary Being (Ens per se necessarium), Most a Being (Maxime Ens), respectively-make an analytic claim which is troublesome (to some unacceptable), in any case difficult to understand. In the Third Way, it is the analytic claim that "... si... omnia sunt possibilia non esse, aliquando nihil fuit in rebus;" and in the Fourth Way, it is the analytic claim that 17 18 JOSEPH BOBIK ". [si]... magis et minus dicuntur de diversis secundum quod appropinquant diversimode ad aliquid quod maxime est...,... est... aliquid quod est verissimum et optimum et nobilissimum... et... maxime ens." There are three parts in the argument of the Fourth Way,1 and it is the first of these which is difficult to understand. The first part moves from the observed existence of the more and the less good, true, noble, etc. to the concluded existence of the most good, true, noble, etc.-the simpliciter good, true, noble, etc., as it is called in the Contra Gentiles formul,ation of an argument (S.G., I, cap. 13) which is similar to (though also quite different from) the Fourth Way of the Summa Theologiae.2 The second part argues that the most true or verissimum 1 It will be of help to the reader to have the text of the Fourth Way in hand, and to have its three parts explicitly distinguished. Quarta via sumitur ex gradibus qui in rebus inveniuntur. First part: Invenitur enim in rebus aliquid magis et minus bonum, et verum, et nobile: et sic de aliis huiusmodi. Sed magis et minus dicuntur de diversis secundum quod appropinquant diversimode ad aliquid quod maxime est: sicut magis calidum est, quod magis appropinquat maxime calido. Est igitur aliquid quod est verissimum et optimum et nobilissimum, Second part: et per consequens maxime ens: nam quae sunt maxime vera, sunt maxime entia, ut dicitur II Metaphys. Third part: Quod autem dicitur maxime tale in aliquo genere, est causa omnium quae sunt illius generis: sicut ignis, qui est maxime calidus, est causa omnium calidorum, ut in eodem libro dicitur. Ergo est aliquid quod omnibus entibus est causa esse, et bonitatis, et cuiuslibet perfectionis: et hoc dicimus Deum. 2 Whereas the Fourth Way uses the approximating relation to move to the existence of the Maxime Ens from the fact that there are real things which are more and less, the way of the G.G. uses the approximating relation to move to the existence of the Maxime Ens from the fact that there are propositions such that one is more false than the other (and so, less true than the other) more puzzling still than the Fourth Way. Here is the text of the G.G. argument: Potest etiam alia ratio colligi ex verbis Aristotelis. In II enim Metaphys. ostendit quod ea quae sunt maxime vera, sunt et... (shrink)