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Fluid Ontologies: Myth, Ritual and Philosophy in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. L. R. Goldman and C. Ballard. eds. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1998. 172 pp.

When David Gorlaeus (1591-1612) passed away at 21 years of age, he left behind two highly innovative manuscripts. Once they were published, his work had a remarkable impact on the evolution of seventeenth-century thought. However, as his identity was unknown, divergent interpretations of their meaning quickly sprang up. Seventeenth-century readers understood him as an anti-Aristotelian thinker and as a precursor of Descartes. Twentieth-century historians depicted him as an atomist, natural scientist and even as a chemist. And yet, when Gorlaeus died, he was a beginning student in theology. His thought must in fact be placed at the intersection between philosophy, the nascent natural sciences, and theology.

The aim of this book is to shed light on Gorlaeus' family circumstances, his education at Franeker and Leiden, and on the virulent Arminian crisis which provided the context within which his work was written. It also attempts to define Gorlaeus' place in the history of Dutch philosophy and to assess the influence that it exercised in the evolution of philosophy and science, and notably in early Cartesian circles. Christoph Lüthy is professor of the history of philosophy and science at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. - Toen David Gorlaeus (1591-1612) op 21-jarige leeftijd overleed, liet hij twee baanbrekende manuscripten na. De postuum gepubliceerde werken hadden een grote invloed op het wetenschappelijk denken in de zeventiende eeuw. Doordat Gorlaeus' identiteit onbekend was, ontstonden al snel zeer uiteenlopende interpretaties van de publicaties. Lezers uit de zeventiende eeuw dachten met een anti-aristotelische denker en een voorloper van Descartes van doen te hebben. Twintigste-eeuwse historici schilderden hem af als een atomist, natuurwetenschapper en zelfs als chemicus. Gorlaeus was echter 'slechts' beginnend theologiestudent en zijn werk bevindt zich op het kruispunt van filosofie, de ontluikende natuurwetenschappen en theologie. Christoph Lüthy beoogt met dit boek inzicht te geven in de familieomstandigheden van Gorlaeus, zijn opleiding aan de universiteit van Franeker en Leiden en de historische context waarin hij zijn werk schreef. Ten slotte probeert Lüthy te bepalen welke plaats Gorlaeus' werken innemen in de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse filosofie en wat hun invloed was op de ontwikkelingen in filosofie en wetenschap.

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds to these essays

Many of Kant's commentators and critics interpret his moral philosophy solely in terms of the cognitive dimension of his categorical imperative. Such a predominant manner of reading Kant gives rise to the criticism that his moral philosophy is too far removed from the actual way in which human beings orient themselves as moral persons in the world. In response to this general tendency in Kant interpretation, my dissertation proposes to offer an experiential approach to Kant's ethics. By the expression experiential I mean an approach to Kant's thinking that attends to the living sense in which we experience the phenomena and realities that his moral philosophy presents. In this dissertation I consider three common criticisms of Kant's moral philosophy (dogmatism, formalism and rigorism), and I show how an experiential approach to Kant's ethics can help us to respond to these three charges. In chapter one I explain the central arguments that Kant's foundational works in moral philosophy proposed, and I outline the three criticisms of Kant's ethics. In chapters two and three I present my experiential approach to Kant's practical philosophy by exploring the experiential character of happiness [Glückseligkeit], moral feeling [moralisches Gefühl] and the ethical duties that Kant derives in his doctrine of virtue [Tugendlehre]. In the fourth chapter I show how my experiential approach to Kant can help us to address these three criticisms that are commonly leveled against his ethics, and in the fifth and final chapter I consider how this experiential approach can be fruitfully applied. For instance, I show how an experiential approach to Kant can help instructors to better introduce Kant to first time Kant readers, and I demonstrate how an experiential approach to Kant allows us to bring Kant's insights into an interesting and revealing conversation with Emmanuel Levinas. With respect to this latter conversation, I show how a critical comparison between these two thinkers can lead us to investigate the rather intriguing ...

Max Weber and Charles Peirce: At the Crossroads of Science, Philosophy, and Culture marks the first time that the leading European social scientist, Max Weber has been brought into conversation with the leading American philosopher, Charles Peirce. This conversation helps us to not only better understand the challenges that are facing global modernity at the beginning of the 21st century but also points to creative ways to redress them.

"This book articulates Soviet philosopher Boris Hessen's groundbreaking analysis of socioeconomic development, technological progress, and natural scientific theory; reassesses Hessen's legacy to the history and philosophy of science; and reflects on Hessen's enduring significance in today's world of social inequality and technological progress"--

The reality of a radically changing world is beyond dispute. The notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a heuristic key for the world of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, big data, the internet of things, and biotechnology. The discussion of emerging technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution highlights urgent questions about issues like intention, function, risk, and responsibility. This publication stimulates further reflection, ongoing conversation, and eventually the production of more textured thinking. The conversation with technology and with thinkers on technology, holds the promise of a certain fecundity, the possibility to see deeper into human evolution, but also, may be, into the future of humankind.

Riding, hunting, fishing, bullfighting: Human-animal relations are diverse. The anthology presents various case studies of situations in which humans and animals come into contact and asks for the anthropological and philosophical implications of such encounters. The contributions by renowned scholars such as Garry Marvin, Albert Piette, and Kazuyoshi Sugawara present multidisciplinary methodological reflections on concepts such as embodiment, emplacement, or the 'conditio animalia' (in addition to the 'conditio humana') as well as a consideration of the term 'situationality' within the field of anthropology.

Menexenus is one of the least studied among Plato's works, mostly because of the puzzling nature of the text, which has led many scholars either to reject the dialogue as spurious or to consider it as a mocking parody of Athenian funeral rhetoric. In this book, Pappas and Zelcer provide a persuasive alternative reading of the text, one that contributes in many ways to our understanding of Plato, and specifically to our understanding of his political thought.The book is organized into two parts. In the first part the authors offer a synopsis of the dialogue, address the setting and its backgrou

This volume collects papers on central aspects of Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie (Theory of Objects) and its transformation in contemporary logic, semantics and ontology covering the impact of his views on grasping and representation, the status of nonexistent or inconsistent objects and their incorporation in theories like Noneism and Possible-World-Semantics, as well as studies on Meinong's notion of probability. Mauro Antonelli, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; Marian David, University of Graz, Austria.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Introduction: Explaining Values and Valuation -- 1. Explaining Values and Valuation: A Question That Has Inspired Many Theories -- 1.1. The Diversity and Empirical Inefficiency of Value Theories -- 1.2. Miinchhausen's Trilemma -- 1.3. Miinchhausen's Trilemma and Scientific Knowledge -- 1.4. Miinchhausen's Trilemma and the Explanation of Norms and Values -- 1.5. "Fideist" Theories -- 1.6. Skeptical Theories -- 1.7. Rational Theories -- 1.8. Normative and Positive Beliefs -- 1.9. The Trilemma and Moral Life -- 2. Rational Theories: Limits of the "Rational Choice Model" -- 2.1. The Attractiveness of Rational Choice Theory (RCT) -- 2.2 Whether RCT Is General -- 2.3. Alternative Way -- 2.4. Two Examples from Tocqueville -- 2.5. "Cognitive Rationality" -- 2.6. A Special Case of Utmost Relevance -- 2.7. RCT: A Particular Case of a More General Model -- 3. Relativistic vs. Naturalistic Theories: Their Interest and Limits -- 3.1. That Value Relativism Is Widespread -- 3.2. Do We Need to Accept These Views as Sociologists and as People? -- 3.3. The Naturalistic Reaction -- 3.4. The Reasons for Moral Convictions -- 3.5. Communitarianism Revisited -- 4. A Seminal and Difficult Notion: "Axiological Rationality" -- 4.1. Weber Often Ill-Understood -- 4.2. The Methodological Principles of Weber's Sociology -- 4.3. Why These Principles? -- 4.4. Moral Feelings -- 4.5. "Gesinnungsethik" and "Verantwortungsethik" -- 4.6. Back to Kant? -- 5. Generalizing the "Rational Choice Model" into a Cognitivist Model -- 5.1. Explaining Collective Beliefs: The "Cognitivist" Model -- 5.2. Type 2 Beliefs: Examples from Cognitive Psychology -- 5.3. Type 3 Beliefs: Examples from the Sociology of Knowledge -- 5.4. Type 3 Beliefs: Examples from the Sociology of Norms and Values