_The Radical Orthodoxy Reader _presents a selection of key readings in the field of Radical Orthodoxy, the most influential theological movement in contemporary academic theology. Radical Orthodoxy draws on pre-Enlightenment theology and philosophy to engage critically with the assumption and priorities of secularism, modernity, postmodernity, and associated theologies. In doing so it explores a wide and exciting range of issues: music, language, society, the body, the city, power, motion, space, time, personhood, sex and gender. As such it is both controversial (...) and extremely stimulating; provoking much fruitful debate amongst contemporary theologians. To assist those encountering Radical Orthodoxy for the first time, each section has an introductory commentary, related reading and helpful questions to encourage in-depth understanding and further study. (shrink)

Zum ersten Mal uberhaupt werden durch die vorliegende Untersuchung verschiedene zentrale Aspekte der literarischen Kleinform aSprucho in umfassender Weise behandelt.

This paper reviews the hole argument as an argument against spacetime substantivalism. After a careful presentation of the argument itself, I critically review possible responses.

I chart the philosophical development of neglected figure Margaret Macdonald and situate that development in the context of mid-century analytic philosophy more broadly. I examine Macdonald’s changing attitude towards verificationism, and show that these changing views led her, in 1950 and beyond, to a very thorough appreciation of language use as capable of being employed in the execution of distinctive kinds of performative act. I compare Macdonald’s views with the far better known work of J. L. Austin, and I emphasise (...) the extent to which she has, despite her insightful contributions, been omitted from the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Despite its importance in the history of philosophy, the work of the Spanish thinker Averro"es (1126-1198) has been left largely unexplored in this century. This book is the only general account of Averro"es' philosophy in English. Leaman analyzes his thought and influence, particularly his metaphysics and theory of meaning, arguing that while his work belongs within the cultural and political context of medieval Islam, it remains of considerable philosophical and historical significance.

No longer is pregnancy a repulsive or shameful condition in Hollywood films, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female character. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family. Not all representations signify progress. Oliver finds that in many pregnancy films, our anxieties over modern reproductive practices and technologies are made manifest, and in some cases perpetuate conventions curtailing women's freedom. (...) Reading such films as _Where the Heart Is_ (2000), _Riding in Cars with Boys_ (2001), _Palindromes_ (2004), _Saved!_ (2004), _Quinceañera_ (2006), _Children of Men_ (2006), _Knocked Up_ (2007), _Juno_ (2007), _Baby Mama_ (2008), _Away We Go_ (2009), _Precious_ (2009), _The Back-up Plan_ (2010), _Due Date_ (2010), and _Twilight: Breaking Dawn_ (2011), Oliver investigates pregnancy as a vehicle for romance, a political issue of "choice," a representation of the hosting of "others," a prism for fears of miscegenation, and a screen for modern technological anxieties. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The (...) beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

In “The Book of the Crown (_Kitāb al-Iklīl_) of pseudo-Rhazes” Oliver Kahl and Henrietta Sharp Cockrell offer a facsimile edition, with annotated English translation and introductory study, of a unique and highly unusual medieval Arabic medical text.

The combination of increased availability of large amounts of fine-grained human behavioral data and advances in machine learning is presiding over a growing reliance on algorithms to address complex societal problems. Algorithmic decision-making processes might lead to more objective and thus potentially fairer decisions than those made by humans who may be influenced by greed, prejudice, fatigue, or hunger. However, algorithmic decision-making has been criticized for its potential to enhance discrimination, information and power asymmetry, and opacity. In this paper, we (...) provide an overview of available technical solutions to enhance fairness, accountability, and transparency in algorithmic decision-making. We also highlight the criticality and urgency to engage multi-disciplinary teams of researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and citizens to co-develop, deploy, and evaluate in the real-world algorithmic decision-making processes designed to maximize fairness and transparency. In doing so, we describe the Open Algortihms project as a step towards realizing the vision of a world where data and algorithms are used as lenses and levers in support of democracy and development. (shrink)

The problems of evil and suffering have been extensively discussed in Jewish philosophy, and much of the discussion has centred on the Book of Job. In this study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why have the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given their status as the chosen people? He explores these issues through an analysis of the views of Philo, (...) Saadya, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and post-Holocaust thinkers, and suggests that a discussion of evil and suffering is really a discussion about our relationship with God. (shrink)

Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise. From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies (...) have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In _Women as Weapons of War_, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to _bare_ arms is a sign of freedom and progress. Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence. (shrink)

As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Sense and Non-Sense of (...) Revolt_, _Intimate Revolt_, and _Hannah Arendt_. Editor Kelly Oliver has also added new material to the introduction, summarizing Kristeva's latest intellectual endeavors and updating the bibliography. (shrink)

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

John Earman's recent proposal that a substantive version of general covariance consists in the requirement that diffeomorphism invariance be a gauge symmetry is critically assessed. I argue that such a principle does not serve to differentiate general relativity from pre-relativistic theories. A model-theoretic characterization of two formulations of specially-relativistic theories is suggested. Diffeomorphisms are symmetries of only one such style of formulation and, I argue, Earman's proposal does not provide a reason to deny diffeomorphisms the status of gauge transformations relative (...) to this formulation. Carlo Rovelli's distinction between "passive" and "active" diffeomorphism invariance is also clarified. (shrink)

Substantivalists believe that spacetime and its parts are fundamental constituents of reality. Relationalists deny this, claiming that spacetime enjoys only a derivative existence. I begin by describing how the Galilean symmetries of Newtonian physics tell against both Newton's brand of substantivalism and the most obvious relationalist alternative. I then review the obvious substantivalist response to the problem, which is to ditch substantival space for substantival spacetime. The resulting position has many affinities with what are arguably the most natural interpretations of (...) special and general relativity. I move on to consider and reject two recent antisubstantivalist lines of thought. The interim conclusion is that the best argument for relationalism is an appeal to Ockham's razor. However, for this to be successful there must be genuine relationalist theories that share the theoretical virtues of their substantivalist rivals but without the additional ontological commitment. The bulk of the paper is therefore an investigation of various concrete relationalist proposals. I distinguish three options for the relationalist in the face of the success of Galilean invariant physics and trace how these generalise to relativistic physics. One of the options is particularly promising but, since its basic objects end up being spacetime points, this does not help the prospects of relationalism as traditionally conceived. I end with some reflections on the fate of substantivalism in the aftermath of the Hole Argument, concluding that we have as yet to be given good reasons to abandon the natural, substantivalist interpretation of current physics. (shrink)

The generation of meaning is the primary precondition for acting and thinking. The essays in this volume contribute to a discourse on this matter with a decentred, globalized world in mind. The notions civilization, humanism and modernity - far from being exclusively Western ideas - may facilitate joint efforts of reflecting on the universality of current human conditions, particularly since such reflexion is possible from particular cultural perspectives. Modernity presents us with a second Axial Time in which the quest for (...) a plural, but shared, humane world is the challenge. (shrink)

From Abhidharma to Zurvan, this important new resource identifies and defines the principal concepts and individuals in Asian philosophy throughout the world. The comprehensive geographic coverage encompasses China, Japan, India, the Middle East, the United States and Australasia, with an emphasis on contemporary developments and movements. Featuring 650 signed A-Z entries, the Encyclopedia emphasises the present-day vitality of Asian philosophy, and provides extensive coverage of trends such as the reciprocal exchange of theories between East and West, and new schools of (...) thought such as orientalism. Entries include: * Confucius and Confucianism * karma * shamanism * no-self * Madhyamaka School of Buddhism * hungry ghosts * orientalism * Ramanuja * simplicity * Yi Yulgok * Wantokism * Chuang-tzu/Zhuangzi * tantra * harmony * Sufism * Yin-Yang * Mulla Sadra * Zen * and much more. Cross-references; bibliographies and annotated suggestions for further reading; variants provided for all foreign terms (e.g. Pali/Sanskrit, Arabic/Persian). (shrink)

Desarrollo de algunas relaciones conceptuales entre una teor a del conocimiento y una teor a de la sociedad. Para ello, se analizan problemas de historia de la ciencia y conceptos tales como verdad y racionalidad. Finalmente, se argumenta contra la idea de que los enfoques sociol gicos y filos ficos del conocimiento que consideran seriamente la dimensi n social quedan comprometidos con concepciones convencionalistas.

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the source of the contemporary idea of human dignity, but his conception of human dignity and its relation to human value and to the requirement to respect others have not been widely understood. Kant on Human Dignity offers the first in-depth study in English of this subject. Based on a comprehensive analysis of all the passages in which Kant uses the term ;dignity, as well as an analysis of the most prominent arguments for (...) a value of human beings in the Kant literature, the book carefully examines different ways of construing the relationship between dignity, value and respect for others. It takes seriously Kant s Copernican Revolution in moral philosophy: Kant argues that moral imperatives cannot be based on any values without yielding heteronomy. Instead it is imperatives of reason that determine what is valuable. The requirement to respect all human beings is one such imperative. Respect for human beings does not follow from human dignity for this would violate autonomy but is an unconditional command of reason. Following this train of thought yields a unified account of Kant s moral philosophy. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy has often been treated as mainly of historical interest, belonging to the history of ideas rather than to philosophy. This volume challenges this belief, and provides an indispensable reference tool. It includes: * Detailed discussions of the most important figures from earliest times to the present day * Chapters on key concepts in Islamic philosophy, and on relevant traditions in Greek and western philosophy * Contributions by 50 leading experts in the field, from over 16 countries * Analysis (...) of a vast geographical area with discussions of Arabic, Persian, Indian, Jewish, Turkish and South East Asian philosophy * Comprehensive bibliographical information and an extensive index Seyyed Hossein Nasr is Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. He has held academic positions across the United States, as well as in Beirut and Tehran. He has written extensively on many aspects of Islamic philosophy; his work has been translated into over 20 languages. Oliver Leaman is a Reader in Philosophy at Liverpool's John Moores University and has published widely on Islamic philosophy and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Nach Euklid: Raumgeschichten in Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur der Moderne. Dieser Band rekonstruiert Raumentwürfe aus der Philosophie Husserls und Cassirers, der Gestaltpsychologie, der Kunstgeschichte Riegls und Einsteins, schließlich Rilkes und Musils literarische Räume. Um 1900 verliert die Geometrie ihre Anschaulichkeit: Mehrdimensionale und nicht-euklidische Räume lassen sich nicht mehr vor Augen führen. Welchen Effekt hat dieser epistemologische Bruch auf jene Disziplinen, für die bis dahin Euklids Geometrie als Modell eines exakten und zugleich anschaulichen Wissens galt? Wie verändern sich die Raumkonzepte in (...) Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur, wenn sich ihre Weltbilder nicht mehr in einem dreidimensionalen, kartesischen Gehäuse unterbringen lassen? (shrink)

Sensen analyzes Kant’s justification of duties to oneself. Why does Kant say that duties to oneself have priority over other duties? Sensen concludes that there is a common idea behind the different formulas of the categorical imperative: the idea that our human capacities have a high importance. Kant’s ethics needs anthropology to derive concrete duties from this general idea.

Is the objective passage of time compatible with relativistic physics? There are two easy routes to an affirmative answer: (1) provide a deflationary analysis of passage compatible with the block universe, or (2) argue that a privileged global present is compatible with relativity. (1) does not take passage seriously. (2) does not take relativity seriously. This paper is concerned with the viability of views that seek to take both passage and relativity seriously. The investigation proceeds by considering how traditional A-theoretic (...) conceptions of passage might be generalized to relativistic space-times without incorporating a privileged global present. I argue that the most promising position marries the idea that open possibilities for the future are settled as time passes with a ‘non-standard’ interpretation of the relevant formal models. (shrink)

In his paper ``What is Structural Realism?'' James Ladyman drew a distinction between epistemological structural realism and metaphysical (or ontic) structural realism. He also drew a suggestive analogy between the perennial debate between substantivalist and relationalist interpretations of spacetime on the one hand, and the debate about whether quantum mechanics treats identical particles as individuals or as `non-individuals' on the other. In both cases, Ladyman's suggestion is that an ontic structural realist interpretation of the physics might be just what is (...) needed to overcome the stalemate. The main thesis of this paper is that, whatever the interpretative difficulties of generally covariant spacetime physics are, they do not support or suggest structural realism. In particular, I hope to show that there is in fact no analogy that supports a similar interpretation of the metaphysics of spacetime points and of quantum particles. (shrink)

Das Werk Michel Foucaults hat das Feld politiktheoretisch informierter Analysen erheblich erweitert und dazu beigetragen, Grundbegriffe der Politischen Theorie neu zu verstehen. Der Band unternimmt erstmalig eine Bestandsaufnahme zum Spektrum der aktuellen Arbeiten mit und zu Foucault in der Politischen Theorie. Die Beiträge thematisieren Foucaults Konzeptionen von Freiheit, Kritik, Wahrheit, Macht oder Staat, verorten Foucault im Verhältnis zu Latour, Bourdieu oder Haraway und problematisieren Foucault u.a. vor dem Hintergrund der Geschichte des Marxismus und der Gegenwart des Neoliberalismus. Der Inhalt• Foucault, (...) die Politische Theorie und das Politische• Reflexion politiktheoretischer Grundbegriffe („Theorie“)• Komparatistische Studien („Vergleich“)• Neuperspektivierung konkreter Handlungsfelder („Problematisierung“) Die ZielgruppenStudierende, Lehrende und WissenschaftlerInnen in Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie, Kulturwissenschaft und Philosophie Die HerausgeberDr. Oliver Marchart ist Professor für Politische Theorie am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Wien.Dr. Renate Martinsen ist Professorin für Politische Theorie am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Duisburg-Essen./div. (shrink)

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

A systematic treatment of Hume's conception of imagination in all the main topics of his philosophy.

Systematically improving patient safety is of the utmost importance, but it is also an extremely complex and challenging task. This illuminating study evaluates the role of professionalism, regulation and law in seeking to improve safety, arguing that the 'medical dominance' model is ill-suited to this aim, which instead requires a patient-centred vision of professionalism. It brings together literatures on professions, regulation and trust, while examining the different legal mechanisms for responding to patient safety events. Oliver Quick includes an examination (...) in areas of law which have received little attention in this context, such as health and safety law, and coronial law, and contends in particular that the active involvement of patients in their own treatment is fundamental to ensuring their safety. (shrink)