This book is a general survey of the Greeks' extraordinarily rapid advance from a mythological to a rational view of the world and of man's origins and place in the universe. The continuity of this development and the influence of myth on philosophy are closely studied. There is also a constant assessment of the Greeks' approach to modern scientific and philosophical conceptions, including the Darwinian theory, but the affinity of our civilization to theirs is never overstressed.

I first characterize a moral mistake in coercion. The principle of independence with which I criticize coercion seems also to condemn exchange. I propose an account of exchange from which it follows that exchange upholds independence after all. In support of that account I argue that, of the accounts of exchange that occur to me, only this one has the consequence that, on general assumptions, a person can take part in exchange while acting, intending, and believing with sufficient reason. I (...) argue that the hiring of very poor people by very rich people for labor from which the rich draw a substantial surplus does not give rise to an exchange of this kind. These instances of the wage labor relation resemble coercion insofar as they violate independence. (shrink)

This anthology, the largest collection of Pythagorean writings ever to appear in English, contains the four ancient biographies of Pythagoras and over 25 Pythagorean and Neopythagorean writings from the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The material of this book is indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand the real spiritual roots of Western civilization.

A summary of teachings on the nature of incorporeal principles in the realm of Mind or Spirit.

"Only a wayfarer born under unruly stars would attempt to put into practice in our epoch of proliferating knowledge the Heraclitean dictum that `men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed.'" Thus begins this remarkable interdisciplinary study of time by a master of the subject. And while developing a theory of "time as conflict," J. T. Fraser does offer "many things indeed"--an enormous range of ideas about matter, life, death, evolution, and value.

Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but (...) few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike. As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry. Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that joint action permits a certain degree of luck. The cases I have in mind exhibit the following structure: each participant believes that the intended ends of each robustly support the joint action. This belief turns out to be false. Due to lucky circumstances, the discordance in intention never becomes common knowledge. However, common knowledge of the relevant intentions would have undermined the joint action altogether. The analysis of such cases shows the extent to which (...) common knowledge of the participants’ intentions can be harmful to joint action. This extends a recent line of research that has questioned the necessity of common knowledge in joint action. (shrink)

Salience reasoning, many have argued, can help solve coordination problems, but only if such reasoning is supplemented by higher-order predictions, e.g. beliefs about what others believe yet others will choose. In this paper, I will argue that this line of reasoning is self-undermining. Higher-order behavioral predictions defeat salience-based behavioral predictions. To anchor my argument in the philosophical literature, I will develop it in response and opposition to the popular Lewisian model of salience reasoning in coordination games. This model imports the (...) problematic higher-order beliefs by way of a ‘symmetric reasoning’ constraint. In the second part of this paper, I will argue that a player may employ salience reasoning only if she suspends judgment about what others believe yet others will do. (shrink)

Philosophy and Hip-Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form opens up the philosophical life force that informs the construction of Hip-hop by turning the gaze of the philosopher upon those blind spots that exist within existing scholarship. Traditional Departments of Philosophy will find this book a solid companion in Contemporary Philosophy or Aesthetic Theory. Inside these pages is a project that parallels the themes of existential angst, corporate elitism, social consciousness, male privilege and masculinity. This book illustrates the abundance of philosophical (...) meaning in the textual and graphic elements of Hip-hop, and thus places Hip-hop within the philosophical canon. (shrink)

The civilisation of space and the civilisation of time -- The breed of the evasive man -- The third sex -- Negrified America -- The decay of words -- The psychoanalysis of skiing -- The myth and fallacy of irrationalism -- The Olympian ideal and natural law -- The taste for vulgarity -- The laughter of the gods -- The concept of initiation -- Freedom of sex and freedom from sex -- Romanness, germanicness, and the 'light of the north' -- (...) Subliminal influences and 'intelligent stupidity' -- The myth of east and west and the 'meeting of religions' -- The youth, the beats, and right-wing anarchists -- Initiatic centres and history -- The metaphysics of sex and the 'one' -- What 'tradition' is. (shrink)

The election of President Donald Trump, through his campaign of race-baiting, sexual harassment, and blatant disregard for human decency, lowered the moral bar of American public discourse. Julius Bailey’s latest book discusses the current state of hypocrisy and mistrust in the American political system, especially as these affect ethnic minorities and low-income groups. In powerful and inspiring prose, Bailey writes with a voice well informed by current events, empirical data, and philosophical observation. Bailey looks at the causes and consequences (...) of this new era and applies his passionate yet astute analysis to issues such as hate speech, gerrymandering, the use of the Confederate flag, and America’s relationship with the gun. _A percentage of the revenue from this book’s sales will be donated to two organizations: The Movement for Black Lives and Color of Change._. (shrink)

Suppose that U and U' are normal ultrafilters associated with some supercompact cardinal. How may we compare U and U'? In what ways are they similar, and in what ways are they different? Partial answers are given in [1], [2], [3], [5], [6], and [7]. In this paper, we continue this study. In [6], Menas introduced a combinatorial principle χ(U) of normal ultrafilters U associated with supercompact cardinals, and showed that normal ultrafilters satisfying this property also satisfying this property also (...) satisfy a partition property. In [5], Kunen and Pelletier showed that this partition property for U does not imply χ (U). Using results from [3], we present a different method of finding such normal ultrafilters which satisfy the partition property but do not satisfy χ (U). Our method yields a large collection of such normal ultrafilters. (shrink)

Reviewed Works:M. Magidor, Combinatorial Characterization of Supercompact Cardinals.Carlos A. Di Prisco, William S. Zwicker, Flipping Properties and Supercompact Cardinals.Donna M. Carr, $P_\kappa\lambda$-Generalizations of Weak Compactness.Donna M. Carr, The Structure of Ineffability Properties of $P_\kappa\lambda$.Donna M. Carr, $P_\kappa\lambda$ Partition Relations.Donna M. Carr, A Note on the $\lambda$-Shelah Property.

`All over Italy men were conscripted, and weapons requisitioned; money was exacted from towns, and taken from shrines; and all the laws of god and man were overturned.' The Civil War is Caesar's masterly account of the celebrated war between himself and his great rival Pompey, from the crossing of the Rubicon in January 49 B.C. to Pompey's death and the start of the Alexandrian War in the autumn of the following year. His unfinished account of the continuing struggle with (...) Pompey's heirs and followers is completed by the three anonymous accounts of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish Wars, which bring the story down to within a year of Caesar's assassination in March 44 B.C. This generously annotated edition places the war in context and enables the reader to grasp it both in detail and as a whole. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s idealization of public dialogue pits literature and narrative against objectivity and ethics, thus leaving non-intellectual practitioners in the lurch. The evolutionary arc of Rorty’s oeuvre merits an assessment of the historiography he uses to prevent figures like Michel Foucault and Cornel West from being full participants in public dialogue. Miranda Fricker’s account of the collective explains confidence and transparency in an ironized ethical tradition that mediates irony and objectivity. Fricker’s mediation positions West’s use of Foucault’s to re-narrate pragmatism (...) as a way to embrace the process of rendering ethical experience universalizable. Ironized post-philosophical cultures can be explained responsibly by ironists within critically reflective ethical traditions. Confidence in pragmatism occurs when publics admit critical self-reflective inquiry from non-intellectuals. (shrink)

Respectively, Martin Buber and Richard Rorty imaginatively account for the philosophy and publicity of dialogue. Rorty’s account imagines dialogue as if the secularization of public political culture is inevitable. Buber’s account imagines a philosophy of dialogue in which religious considerations are unproblematic. Rorty’s repudiation of religion’s political influence results in an unnecessary estimation of the American government’s role in redressing social evils, especially those evils that are the result of the collective action of affiliated agents whose individual intentional choices are (...) not presumed blameworthy.2 Social evils obtain when choices accrue in associations and institutions that cause cruelty on a... (shrink)