Value Inquiry Book Series Online

This edited volume focuses on gender and love as emerging through complex “entanglements and weavings”. At a time when constructionist ideas are losing support, we interrogate theoretical paradigms to assess if constructionist notions still hold value or if new approaches are needed to address the effects of materiality and non-human agency. Without claiming any unison or definite answers, we offer situated, agential cuts into gender and love in various discursive-material phenomena, including Biblical and Rabbinic literature, ecosexual performance art, the writings of Ursula Le Guin and Angela Carter, butch identities, Bengali folktales, Ferzan Özpetek’s cinema, Golem literature, sexual pursuits in Danish nightlife, mother-daughter relationships, women warriors in the PKK, and BDSM performances. Artistic photographer Sara Davidmann has contributed to the book with the cover illustration and a creative afterword including seven photographs on the interaction between the photographer, her studio, and LGBTQ+ people.

The question of the self, of what the self is (or even if there is a self), has been one that has grown alongside humanity – has haunted humanity – throughout our history. Blurred: Selves Made and Selves Making guides the reader down these dark corridors, shining light on the specters of theories past and unveiling a new self-view to hover afresh, beckoning to roadways beyond.

In this remarkably interdisciplinary study, philosophy of mind joins with contemporary neuroscience and cutting-edge psychology to lay bare the how of identity formation, judgment, and behavior generation. Drawing on thinkers from both the Continental and Analytic traditions, consciousness is explored and a uniquely realist self-concept presented that, if adopted, offers a life lived otherwise.

In debates about philosophical anthropology human beings have been defined in different ways. In Modern and Postmodern Crises of Symbolic Structures, the contributors view the human being primarily as animal symbolicum. They examine how the human being creates, interprets and changes symbolic structures, as well as how he is affected and impacted by them. The focus lies on the context of modernity and postmodernity, which is characterized by a number of interrelated crises of symbolic structures. These crises have affected the realms of science, religion, art, politics and education, and thus provoked crucial changes in the human being’s relations to himself, others and reality. The crises are not viewed merely as manifestations of dysfunctions, but rather as complex processes of transformation that also provide new opportunities.

Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity considers the problem of the Russian intelligentsia’s self-identification in its historic-philosophical and historic-cultural aspects. The monograph traces the rise of the intelligentsia, from the 18th century to the present day, problematizing its central ideas and themes. In this historical context, it proceeds to investigate the distinctive intellectual, spiritual and biographical opposition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in relation to the character and fate of the Russian intelligentsia, with its patterns of thought, ideology, fundamental values and behavioral models. Special attention is given to the binary patterns of the intelligentsia’s consciousness, as opposed to dialogical and holistic modes of apprehension.

Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness brings Buddhist voices to the study of consciousness. This book explores a variety of different Buddhist approaches to consciousness that developed out of the Buddhist theory of non-self. Topics taken up in these investigations include: how we are able to cognize our own cognitions; whether all conscious states involve conceptualization; whether distinct forms of cognition can operate simultaneously in a single mental stream; whether non-existent entities can serve as intentional objects; and does consciousness have an intrinsic nature, or can it only be characterized functionally? These questions have all featured in recent debates in consciousness studies. The answers that Buddhist philosophers developed to such questions are worth examining just because they may represent novel approaches to questions about consciousness.

The Italian Pragmatists were a group of philosophers in the early 20th century, most notably including Giovanni Vailati, Mario Calderoni, Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini. They gathered around the journal Leonardo, published in Florence. The Italian philosophers were in contact with the American Pragmatists, especially with C.S.V. Peirce and W. James, and developed many original and provocative ideas that made the Italian Pragmatists allies and enemies.
Critics have often stressed the differences between their versions of Pragmatism. This volume emphasizes what they shared, and their value for philosophy and culture.

This transdisciplinary project represents the most comprehensive study of imagination to date. The eclectic group of international scholars who comprise this volume propose bold and innovative theoretical frameworks for (re-) conceptualizing imagination in all of its divergent forms. Imagination and Art: Explorations in Contemporary Theory explores the complex nuances, paradoxes, and aporias related to the plethora of artistic mediums in which the human imagination manifests itself. As a fundamental attribute of our species, which other organisms also seem to possess with varying degrees of sophistication, imagination is the very fabric of what it means to be human into which everything is woven. This edited collection demonstrates that imagination is the resin that binds human civilization together for better or worse.

Smart Technologies and Fundamental Rights covers a broad range of vital topics that highlight the ethical, socio-political, and legal challenges as well as technical issues of Artificial Intelligence with respect to fundamental rights. Either humanity will greatly profit from the use of AI in almost all domains in human life, which may eventually lead to a much better and more humane society, or it could be the case that people may misuse AI for idiosyncratic purposes and intelligent machines may turn against human beings. Therefore, we should be extremely cautious with respect to the technological development of AI because we might not be able to control the machines once they reached a certain level of sophistication.

Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology provides the English-speaking world with access to post-Soviet philosophic thought in Russia for the first time. The Anthology presents the fundamental range of contemporary philosophical problems in the works of prominent Russian thinkers. In contrast to the “single-mindedness” of Soviet-era philosophers and the bias toward Orthodox Christianity of émigré philosophers, it offers to its readers the authors’ plurality of different positions in widely diverse texts. Here one finds strictly academic philosophical works and those in an applied, pragmatic format—secular and religious—that are dedicated to complex social and political matters, to pressing cultural topics or insights into international terrorism, as well as to contemporary science and global challenges.

Beauvoir in Time situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in the historical context of its writing and in later contexts of its international reception, from then till now. The book takes up three aspects of Beauvoir's work more recent feminists find embarrassing: "bad sex," "dated" views about lesbians, and intersections with race and class. Through close reading of Beauvoir's writing in many genres, alongside contemporaneous discourses (good and bad novels in French and English, outmoded psychoanalytic and sexological authorities, ethnographic surrealism, the writing of Richard Wright and Franz Fanon), and in light of her travels to the U.S. and China, the author uncovers insights more recent feminist methodologies obscure, showing that Beauvoir is still good to think with today.

The Anthology of the Works of Ugo Spirito captures the trajectory of Ugo Spirito’s complex body of thought that spanned more than fifty years, from 1921 to 1977. While confronting difficult contemporary problems related to philosophy and science, liberalism and socialism, fascism and communism, and other economic and ideological aspects such as corporativism and democracy, Spirito revealed a persistent desire to reach truth and the absolute. Yet, he also voiced his failure to remain faithful to any philosophical or political system considered definitive and unquestionable. Unable to reach incontrovertibility, he consistently dissected the prevailing contemporary ideas and systems, including his own beliefs, developing at the same time the ‘antinomic’ approach, a method of critical analysis that undermined any truth reputed irrefutable. Today, Spirito stands as one of most anti-conformist Italian thinkers for he challenged the certainties of modern thought.

In Civility, Nonviolent Resistance, and the New Struggle for Social Justice, Amin Asfari brings together scholarly contributions addressing the causes of injustice in its many forms. Predicated on the idea that violence and injustice are systemic and historical, this collection includes chapters that examine the antecedents and effects of prejudice, state-sponsored violence, policies of exclusion, and the social forces that shape and solidify their existence.

Moving beyond ad-hoc, ahistorical, and descriptive explanations of violence and injustice, this volume provides a scholarly, multidisciplinary approach to confronting them. Contributions reflect the many ways in which injustice manifests, and civil, nonviolent means of engagement are emphasized, challenging the very systems that give rise to these notions.

Words, Deeds, Bodies by Jerry H. Gill concentrates on the interrelationships between speech, accomplishing tasks, and human embodiment. Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michael Polanyi have all highlighted these relationships. This book examines the, as yet, unexplored connections between these authors’ philosophies of language. It focuses on the relationships between their respective key ideas: Wittgenstein’s notion of “language game,” Austin’s concept of “performative utterances,” Merleau-Ponty’s idea of “slackening the threads,” and Polanyi's understanding of “tacit knowing,” noting the similarities and differences between and amongst them.

Now available in Open Access thanks to the support of the University of Helsinki.

Vagaries of Desire is a major collection of new essays by Timo Airaksinen on the philosophy of desire. The first part develops a novel account of the philosophical theory of desire, including Girard. The second part discusses Kafka’s main works, namely The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika, and Thomas Hobbes and the problems of intentionality. The text develops such linguistic tropes as metaphor and metonymy in connection with topics like death and then applies them to Kafka’s texts. The third part makes an effort to understand the mysteries of sadism and masochism in philosophical and rhetorical terms. The last article criticizes Thomas Nagel’s influential account of sexual perversion and develops a viable alternative.

In Wind and Whirlwind the great philosopher Ágnes Heller and social scientist Riccardo Mazzeo explain the pros and cons of utopias and dystopias as they are described in literary works and their relevance to understand the world we live in and the hidden consequences of apparently appealing life trajectories.

Neuroscientists often consider free will to be an illusion. Contrary to this hypothesis, the contributions to this volume show that recent developments in neuroscience can also support the existence of free will. Firstly, the possibility of intentional consciousness is studied. Secondly, Libet’s experiments are discussed from this new perspective. Thirdly, the relationship between free will, causality and language is analyzed. This approach suggests that language grants the human brain a possibility to articulate a meaningful personal life. Therefore, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.



Contributing author Sofia Bonicalzi has received funding from the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 754388 (LMUResearchFellows) and from LMUexcellent, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Bavaria under the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal Government and the Länder.

This volume moves beyond the mainstream scholarly scepticism over the Christ of Faith and considers if there is sufficient evidence to establish the existence of the more mundane Historical Jesus. Using the logical tools of the analytic philosopher, Lataster finds that the relevant sources are unreliable as historical documents, and that the key method of those purporting that the Historical Jesus existed is to appeal to sources that do not exist. Considering an ancient hypothesis suggesting that Jesus began as a celestial messiah that certain Second Temple Jews already believed in, and was later allegorised in the Gospels, Lataster discovers that it is more reasonable to at least be agnostic over Jesus’ historicity.

Audacity of the Spirit by A.F. Losev (1893-1988) dares us to think holistically, dialectically. Translated from the Russian original Дерзание духа (Politizdat Moskva, 1988) by Peter R. Weisensel and Vitali I. Betaneli, the book falls into three parts: the dialectical method; Losev’s application of dialectics to history and culture; and his personal reflections on studying philosophy. Losev’s insatiable intellectual curiosity probes a remarkable variety of areas. Positions he considers, though, are not always easily reconcilable, as with Marxism-Leninism and Orthodox Christianity. In Losev’s conception of culture, however, culture and the intrinsic unity of any given cultural order is the common element that underlies everything living, even the order’s incompatibles. The given culture cannot be reduced to any single position nor to all of them taken together. Audacity of the Spirit is an introduction to dialectics for beginners, but it is also a major philosopher’s summing-up of his reflections to a non-specialized audience.

In this book, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic theory of modalities (the actual, possible, and necessary), as applied to the discourse of philosophy in its post-Kantian and especially post-Derridean perspectives. He relies on his own experience of living in the USSR and the US, dominated respectively by imperative and possibilist modalities. Possibilism assumes that a thing or event acquires meaning only in the context of its multiple possibilities, inviting counterfactual and conditional modes of description. The author focuses on the creative potentials of possibilistic thinking and its heuristic value. The book demonstrates the range of modal approaches to society, culture, ethics, and language, and outlines potentiology as a new philosophical discipline interacting with ontology and epistemology.

This book argues that all truths systems include paradoxes. Paradoxes, such as found in the sciences, philosophy and religion offer themselves as mutually shared partners in a dialogue of arguably incommensurable truths on the basis of their underlying truth. Paradoxes leap beyond the epistemic border of individual truth claims. A dialogue of truths, grounded in paradox, reaches before, and at the same time past singular truths. A paradox-based dialogue of truths elevates the communication of disciplines, such as the sciences and religion, to a meta-discourse level from which differences are not perceived as obstacles for dialogue but as complementary aspects of a deeper and fuller truth in which all truths are grounded.

Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism: Intersections and Innovations discusses a) how feminist analyses allow for and encourage the re-conceptualization of concepts and ideas once thought familiar from traditional ethical and political philosophy, and b) traditional political topics and issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. The chapters that focus on the former explore the possibility of “queering” such concepts as autonomy, violence, resistance, peace, religion, and politics, while the chapters that focus on the latter bring feminist and pacifist sensibilities and arguments to bear on classic political questions such as when and how violence and war are justified, the appropriateness of various responses to climate change, and the correct way to engage with such topics and themes in educational, institutional settings.

Contributors are David Boersema, Barrett Emerick, Tamara Fakhoury, Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon, William C. Gay, Jennifer Kling, John Lawless, Megan Mitchell, and Harry van der Linden.

Richard Rorty’s “neo-pragmatism” launched a powerful challenge to entrenched philosophical certainties of modernity, articulating a powerful picture of normativity as a distinctive activity of human beings. This “contingentism,” with its emphasis on indeterminacy, ambiguity, uncertainty, and chance, depicts normativity as a practical human possibility rather than a metaphysical bottleneck which we must overcome at the cost of repudiating the concrete ways we grant epistemic and ethical meaning to our activities. The book is a critical survey of Rorty’s philosophy, in light of contemporary theoretical debates around language, truth, justification, and naturalism, as well as his own resourceful attempts to renew philosophy from within by using the conceptual tools and argumentative techniques of both analytic philosophy and pragmatism.

By way of dialogues, Michael Krausz offers philosophical reflections about his life as philosopher, artist, and musician. He also rehearses his views about relativism, interpretation, creativity, and self-realization. Much of Krausz’s work has been inspired by conversations with thinkers such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Isaiah Berlin, the Dalai Lama, and musicians such as Josef Gingold, Frederik Prausnitz, and Luis Biava. While the death of his grandparents in Auschwitz continues to disquiet his consciousness, Krausz’s critiques of versions of Advaitic Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism led him to a distinctive humanism. This thought-provoking book includes personal and professional accounts about particular philosophers, artists, and musicians. It will edify anyone who, like Krausz, has confronted issues of self-identity and human existence.

Current research claims loneliness is passively caused by external conditions: environmental, cultural, situational, and even chemical imbalances in the brain and hence avoidable. In this book, the author argues that loneliness is actively constituted by acts of reflexive self-consciousness (Kant) and transcendent intentionality (Husserl) and is, therefore, unavoidable. This work employs a historical, conceptual, and interdisciplinary approach (philosophy, psychology, literature, sociology, etc.) criticizing both psychoanalysis and neuroscience. The book pits materialism, mechanism, determinism, empiricism, phenomenalism, behaviorism, and the neurosciences against dualism, both subjective and objective idealism, rationalism, freedom, phenomenology, and existentialism. It offers a dynamic of loneliness, whose spontaneous subconscious sources undercuts the unconscious of Freud and the “computerism” of the neurosciences by challenging their claims to be predictive sciences.

"Mijuscovic demonstrates a psychological framework in which the self is motivated by a fear of loneliness and the desire for intimacy. The author thoroughly substantiates his perspective via a ‘History of Ideas’ format, which engages Plato’s metaphor of ‘the Battle between the Gods and the Giants,’ an allusion to the historical debate between idealists and materialists. Ultimately, these two groups and their allies attempt to address the question: can senseless matter think? The idealists, with whom Mijuscovic identifies, assert the reality of the self, reflexive self-consciousness, and the spontaneity of the mind."
-Joshua Marcus Cragle, University of Amsterdam, Journal of Thought, Fall/Winter 2019

"Ben Mijuskovic continues his ambitious life project in this fifth installment of an interdisciplinary series in consciousness and loneliness within philosophical, psychological, and literary discourse. Mijuskovic possesses the unique combination of academic, clinical, and professional experience to cross the aisle between philosophers and therapists. Such a CV emboldens his argument for a return to a metaphysical argument for human consciousness culminating in intrinsic and inevitable loneliness. Embracing this universal reality is the first step to philosophical grounding and psychological wholeness. His methodology, argumentation, and conclusions tend to be highly provocative in the age of contemporary neuroscientific and pharmaceutical predominance."
-Michael D. Bobo, Norco College, Philosophy in Review 40.1 (February 2020)

In this book, William Brant uncovers social causes of violence, in search of reductive measures. Multiple legal systems are explored as reducers and implementers of violence and threats, especially criminal justice systems. War, propagandizing, power, corporate and governmental involvement in social domination, statehood, dangerous ideologies, and tribal sexual domination are explored in many cultures. Various levels and methods are given for observing, measuring and analyzing how people think and behave regarding the law, including examples of comedy. A theoretical chapter presents legal theory in relation to conceptions of possibility and misconceptions. These ideas are applied to judiciaries, which expose winning strategies for lawyers’ desired verdicts. Dr. Brant accounts for the interconnections between sexual selection, legal systems and wars.

This book investigates the importance of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and poetics in rethinking humanities. In particular, Ricoeur’s insights on reference as refiguration and his idea of interpretation as a triadic process (which consists of mimesis 1 – prefiguration, mimesis 2 – configuration, and mimesis 3 – refiguration) will be applied to philosophy of science and to literary and historical texts. It will be shown that Ricoeur’s idea of emplotment can be extended and applied to scientific, literary and historical texts. This multidisciplinary research will include philosophy of science, metaphysics, hermeneutics, and literary theory.

Many judgments regarding what is good or bad, possible or impossible, rely upon unspoken assumptions or frameworks which are used to view and evaluate events and actions. Philosophers uncover these hidden aspects of thoughts and judgments, scrutinizing them for soundness, validity, and fairness. These assumptions and frameworks permeate the topics of violence, nonviolence, war, conflict, and reconciliation; and these assumptions influence how we address these problems and issues. The papers in this volume explore what kind of assumptions and frameworks would be needed in order for people to see nonviolence as a sensible approach to contemporary problems. Topics include conceptions of positive peace, nonviolence and international structures, and perspectives on peace education. Contributors are Elizabeth N. Agnew, Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, William C. Gay, Ronald J. Glossop, Ian M. Harris, John Kultgen, Joseph C. Kunkel, Douglas Lewis, Danielle Poe and Harry van der Linden.

This book, winner of the 2007 Siglo XXI International Essay Prize, is unique in its approach to exile and offers remarkable insights into the subject. It discusses both human nature and the phenomenon of exile with depth and exactness from the combined perspectives of philosophy, morality, politics, anthropology, and history. After retracing the lessons learned through diverse experiences of exile from antiquity to modern times, it uses poetry as metatestimony to examine exile, subjectivity, and the many moral and political implications involved. The result is a series of thoughtprovoking connections between exile and the way we assume our lives.

The essays in The Philosophy of Spirituality explore a new field in philosophy. Until recently, most philosophers in the analytic and continental Western traditions treated spirituality as a religious concept. Any non-religious spirituality tended to be neglected or dismissed as irremediably vague. Here, from various philosophical and cultural perspectives, it is addressed as a subject of independent interest.

This is a philosophical response to increasing numbers of spiritual but not religious people inhabiting secular societies and the heightened interaction between a multitude of spiritual traditions in a globalized age. A provocative array of approaches (African, Indigenous, Indian, Stoic, and Sufic perspectives, as well as Western analytic and continental views) offer fresh insights, many articulated by emerging voices.

Contributors are Mariapaola Bergomi, Moses Biney, Christopher Braddock, Drew Chastain, Kerem Eksen, Nikolay Milkov, Roderick Nicholls, Jerry Piven, Heather Salazar, Eric Steinhart, Richard White, Mark Wynn and Eric Yang.

The Neo-Kantian philosopher Cassirer and the psychoanalyst Lacan are two key figures in the so-called medial turn in philosophy: the notion that any form of access to reality is mediated by symbols (images, words, signifiers). This explains why the theories of both philosophers merit a description in their own unique idioms, as well as having their respective basic tenets compared. It will be argued that, rather surprisingly, these tenets turn out be complementary - actually correcting each other – based on their shared notion of man as an animal symbolicum. Its fruitfulness will be substantiated for a limited number of topics within the humanities: perception, language, politics and ethics, and mental disorder, all to be considered from this perspective.

Clinical Trials and the African Person aims to position the African notion of the self/person within the clinical trials context. As opposed to autonomy-based principlism, this other-regarding/communalist perspective is the preferred alternative model. This tactic draws further attention to the inadequacy of the principlist approach particularly in multicultural settings. It also engenders a rethink, stimulates interest, and re-assesses the failed assumptions of universal ethical principles.
As a novel attempt that runs against much of the prevailing (Euro-American) intellectual mood, this approach strives to introduce the African viewpoint by making explicit the import of the self in a re-contextualized arena, meaning within the community and a given milieu. Thus, research ethics must go beyond autonomy-based considerations for the individual, to rightly embed him/her within his/her community and the environment.

Peace, Culture, and Violence examines deeper sources of violence by providing a critical reflection on the forms of violence that permeate everyday life and our inability to recognize these forms of violence. Exploring the elements of culture that legitimize and normalize violence, the essays collected in this volume invite us to recognize and critically approach the violent aspects of reality we live in and encourage us to envision peaceful alternatives. Including chapters written by important scholars in the fields of Peace Studies and Social and Political Philosophy, the volume represents an endeavour to seek peace in a world deeply marred by violence. Topics include: thug culture, language, hegemony, police violence, war on drugs, war, terrorism, gender, anti-Semitism, and other topics.

Contributors are: Amin Asfari, Edward Demenchonok, Andrew Fiala, William Gay, Fuat Gursozlu, Joshua M. Hall , Ron Hirschbein, Todd Jones, Sanjay Lal, Alessandro Rovati, Laleye Solomon Akinyemi, David Speetzen, and Lloyd Steffen.

John Lachs (1934-) has been one of the most interesting American philosophers for nearly sixty years. His philosophical, educational, and public activity has been an attempt to show the relevance of philosophy to life. This is the first book dedicated to his thought. International scholars have proposed different themes in Lachs’ philosophy, so as to present its enormous potential. Lachs’ responses to his critics shows that dialogue with his critics is an inspirational activity for both sides. Lachs’ way of philosophizing can be seen as exemplary for those who want to unify and present a clear and understandable articulation of moral and philosophical messages to everyone.

In Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Literature Wojciech Chojna discusses Ingarden’s theory of literary works and develops a phenomenological account of identity which accommodates differences in interpretations and value judgments without succumbing to relativism. The latter is overcome not through falling back on essentialism but from within relativism.

Literature offers us diverse experiences changing our perceptions of ourselves and the worlds we live in. Absolutism proclaiming unmitigated access to the meaning of literary texts is intolerant of differences and leads to violence in life. Conversely, relativism, in the illusory spirit of radical tolerance, turns meanings and values into historically contingent, incompatible interpretations, where communication and reconciliation is impossible, thus justifying ideological conflicts and violence.

The studies included in the Care of the Self: Ancient Problematizations of Life and Contemporary Thought focus on different manifestations of “taking care of the self” present in ancient and contemporary thought. Each of these studies approaches the issue of taking care of the self from a different perspective: Part I by Vladislav Suvák focuses on Socrates’ therapeutic education; Part II by Lívia Flachbartová centres on Diogenes’ ascetic practices; and Part III by Pavol Sucharek concentrates on Henri Maldiney’s existential phenomenology.
Taking care of the self (epimeleia heautou) is not just one of a great many topics associated with ancient ethics. Echoing Michel Foucault, we could say that the care of the self applies to all problematizations of life.

Metaphysics or Ontology? treats the evolution of the object of metaphysics from being, to the concept of being, to, finally, the object (thought). Possible being must be non-contradictory, but an object of thought includes anything a human being can think, including contradictions and nothingness. When the concept of being, or object of thought, replaces existence as the object of metaphysics, it becomes something other than metaphysics—ontology, or something beyond ontology. However, ontology cannot examine existence because it only investigates concepts and possibility. Only classical metaphysics investigates reality qua reality. This book masterfully treats the history of this controversy and many other important metaphysical questions raised over the centuries

Plotinus and the Moving Image offers the first philosophical discussion on Plotinus' philosophy and film. It discusses Plotinian concepts like "the One" in a cinematic context and relates Plotinus' theory of time as a transitory intelligible movement of the soul to Bergson’s and Deleuze’s time-image. Film is a unique medium for a rapprochement of our modern consciousness with the thought of Plotinus. The Neoplatonic vestige is particularly worth exploring in the context of the newly emerging “Cinema of Contemplation.” Plotinus' search for the "intelligible" that can be grasped neither by sense perception nor by merely logical abstractions leads to a fluent way of seeing. Parallels that had so far never been discussed are made plausible. This book is a milestone in the philosophy of film.

Contributors are: Cameron Barrows, Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Michelle Phillips Buchberger, Steve Choe, Stephen Clark, Vincenzo Lomuscio, Tony Partridge, Daniel Regnier, Giannis Stamatellos, Enrico Terrone, Sebastian F. Moro Tornese and Panayiota Vassilopoulou.

Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition presents a reading of Thomas Aquinas’ claim that “being” is the first object of the human intellect. Blending the insights of both the early Thomistic tradition (c.1380—1637AD) and the Leonine Thomistic revival (1879—present), Brian Kemple examines how this claim of Aquinas has been traditionally understood, and what is lacking in that understanding.

While the recent tradition has emphasized the primacy of the real (so-called ens reale) in human recognition of the primum cognitum, Kemple argues that this misinterprets Aquinas, thereby closing off Thomistic philosophy to the broader perspective needed to face the philosophical challenges of today, and proposes an alternative interpretation with dramatic epistemological and metaphysical consequences.

Silence exists at the edge of the world, where words break off and meaning fades into ambiguity. The numerous treatments of silence in Steven L. Bindeman’s Silence in Philosophy, Literature, and Art question the misleading clarity of certainty, which persists in the unreflective discourse of common experience. Significant philosophical problems, such as the limits of language, the perception of sound and the construction of meaning, the dynamics of the social realm, and the nature of the human self, all appear differently as a consequence of this questioning. Silence is shown to have two modes, disruptive and healing, which work together as complementary stages within a creative process. The interaction between these two modes of silence serves as the dynamic behind the entire work.

In Deciphering Reality: Simulations, Tests, and Designs, Benjamin B. Olshin takes a problem-based approach to the question of the nature of reality. In a series of essays, the book examines the detection of computer simulations from the inside, wrestles with the problem of visual models of reality, explores Daoist conceptions of reality, and offers possible future directions for deciphering reality.

The ultimate goal of the book is to provide a more accessible approach, unlike highly complex philosophical works on metaphysics, which are inaccessible to non-academic readers, and overly abstract (and at times, highly speculative) popular works that offer a mélange of physics, philosophy, and consciousness.

Memento mori is a broad and understudied cultural phenomenon and experience. The term “memento mori” is a Latin injunction that means “remember mortality,” or more directly, “remember that you must die.” In art and cultural history, memento mori appears widely, especially in medieval folk culture and in the well-known Dutch still life vanitas paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet memento mori extends well beyond these points in art and cultural history. In Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter suggests that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori. Bennett-Carpenter shows that documentaries may offer composed transformative experiences in which a viewer may renew one’s consciousness of mortality – and thus renew one’s life.

How to Make Our Signs Clear is the result of an international cooperation between European and Brazilian Peircean scholars (I. A. Ibri, E. Višňovský, C. Paolucci and others) and strives to dispel simplifications of Peirce´s semiotic as well as to collect various insights into it and into its consequences for philosophy, especially philosophy of language, pragmatism and epistemology. The central theme of this book is the notion of the sign as a specific triadic relational unit, treated from various perspectives and applied to various fields of philosophy: semeiotic knowledge grows up from the discussions, common interests and possible conflicts between the readers of Peirce´s works. This book does not offer a general overview of Peirce´s theory of signs, but rather various analyses of consequences of some capacities of his semiotic.

This book explores the philosophical/religious thought of Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Nikos Kazantzakis in relation to the concept of transcendence. Each of these thinkers has made a strong impact on Western religious and philosophical thought, but each from a nearly completely different angle as well as from a different national background. This comparative study therefore crosses both national and perspectival boundaries. Each of the three thinkers struggled with the notion of transcendence but in uniquely distinct fashion. The conclusion offers yet a third model, the author’s, for understanding transcendence focusing on the concept of “mediation”.

In Natural Language and Possible Minds: How Language Uncovers the Cognitive Landscape of Nature Prakash Mondal attempts to demonstrate that language can reveal the hidden logical texture of diverse types of mentality in non-humans, contrary to popular belief. The widely held assumption in mainstream cognitive science is that language being humanly unique introduces an anthropomorphic bias in investigations into the nature of other possible minds. This book turns this around by formulating a lattice of mental structures distilled from linguistic structures constituting the cognitive building blocks of an ensemble of biological entities/beings. This turns out to have surprising consequences for machine cognition as well. Challenging mainstream views, this book will appeal to cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, linguists and also cognitive ethologists.

Publication of the Global Studies Directory represents an unprecedented project in world practice. Based on the professional assessment by a large international team of experts, the Directory offers information on the most well-known scholars, political and public figures who have made outstanding contributions to the establishment and development of global studies or made a fundamental impact on the formation of global world. The Directory also contains comprehensive information about organizations, periodicals and special literature of direct relevance to the theory and practice of globalization and fully demonstrates the state of affairs in the field of study on a global level. This project is a continuation of many years of research which first resulted in the publication of the Global Studies Encyclopedic Dictionary, the companion publication to the Directory.

In The Sequential Imperative William Edmondson explains how deep study of linguistics – from phonetics to pragmatics – can be the basis for understanding the organization of behaviour in any organism with a brain. The work demonstrates that Cognitive Science needs to be anchored in a linguistic setting. Only then can Cognitive Scientists reach out to reconsider the nature of consciousness and to appreciate the functionality of all brains.

The core functionality of the brain – any brain, any species, any time – is delivery and management of the unavoidable bi-directional transformation between brain states and activity – the Sequential Imperative. Making it all work requires some general cognitive principles and close attention to detail. The book sets out the case in broad terms but also incorporates significant detail where necessary.

Most white philosophers of religion generally presume that philosophy of religion is based on what is a false universality; whereby the white/Western experience is paradigmatic of humanity at-large. The fact remains that Howard Thurman, James H. Cone and William R. Jones, among others, have produced a substantial amount of theological work quite worthy of consideration by philosophers of religion. Yet this corpus of thought is not reflected in the scholarly literature that constitutes the main body of philosophy of religion. Neglect and ignorance of African American Studies is widespread in the academy. By including chapters on Thurman, Cone and Jones, the present book functions as a corrective to this scholarly lacuna.

This collection of humanist readings of Simone de Beauvoir’s work is a novel contribution to contemporary research on Beauvoir, and a defense of the importance of the humanities. It demonstrates the significance and value of humanistic research through the work of Beauvoir, and argues that the reception and influence of her works demonstrate the transformative potential of humanistic research.
Organized around three topics, each chapter ascertains Beauvoir’s relation to the humanities and the humanist tradition. The first group focuses on Beauvoir’s interdisciplinary methodology and critical thinking, the second on her ethics of freedom and the construction of values. The last section explores how Beauvoir uses literature as a laboratory for developing her ideas on human interaction. The chapters can be studied as independent essays, or read together as a whole.
Simone de Beauvoir—A Humanist Thinker reveals new and previously unexplored dimensions of Beauvoir’s work by exposing her as a significant and inspiring humanist thinker. This volume attests that Beauvoir’s works continue to offer conceptual tools and insights enabling readers to critically analyze their own situation. In today’s world, where religious fanaticism and totalitarian ideologies are gaining ground, humanist values and humanistic research are more important than ever.

Why we read literature and why we should read literature are age-old questions that have, in recent years, gained unprecedented scope and intensity, against the backdrop of what has been perceived as a world-wide crisis in the humanities. While scholars frequently discuss different types of value separately, in this volume values of literature are approached in the plural: we argue that the ethical, aesthetic, cognitive, affective, social, historical, and existential values of literature should be explored in connection with each other. The three parts of the book explore the relationship between ethics and aesthetics; the cognitive, affective, and social values of literature; and the construction and questioning of literary values in society. Throughout the book, we discuss the different things literature can do – ranging from affirmation of social dogmas to its capacities for self-questioning and challenging of moral certainties – through the dynamic interplay of its ethical and aesthetic, cognitive and affective aspects. Literature not only reflects and draws on the values of the historical world from which it stems; it also actively addresses, challenges, and transforms those values and explores new ways to understand value. Through these complementary processes, literature engages in its own distinctively literary forms of value inquiry.

This book addresses ethical conflicts arising from saving the lives of patients who need a transplant while treating living and dead donors, organ sellers, animals, and embryos with proper moral regard. Our challenge is to develop a better world in the light of debatable values and uncertain consequences.

This volume tests a hypothesis—philosophy and science are identical forms of behavioristic, organizational psychology: a psychological habit of wondering about causes of organizational existence, formation, and behaviour. Focusing attention on two universal and culturally influential great ideas—freedom and religion—this volume’s array of international scholars demonstrate that leading ancient and medieval philosophers did philosophy in this way. Also, well-known philosophers/scientists like Mortimer J. Adler and John N. Deely practiced philosophy this way. Doing so is precisely what made these philosophers uniquely capable of generating great ideas as motivational principles that dramatically alter cultures. In a nutshell, this work offers significant support for its historically and philosophically ground-breaking thesis.

Quintessence of Dust by Harry Redner argues for a science of matter and a philosophy of mind based on emergence. Mind emerges from matter through five essential stages – “quintessence” (Hamlet). Human mind is differentiated from animal mind primarily by reference to art (Homo ludens). This approach draws support from Donald, Edelman and other palaeoanthropologists, psychologists and neurologists.
The emergent relation between two entities is defined as an indissoluble non-identity. The “mind as machine” thesis, artificial intelligence and cognitivism are criticised. The alternative emergentist approach comes close to Spinoza. The book attempts a synthesis of the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities based on philosophic premises.

"... I find the core of the argument, as well as its exposition, coherent, convincing and illuminating ... I put Quintessence of Dust in the top 5% of books in the field."
-Miguel Candel Sanmartin, University of Barcelona, in Thesis Eleven August 2022

This new and expanded edition of G. John M. Abbarno’s anthology The Ethics of Homelessness underscores what is ignored in plain sight: people without a home or dwelling are also without privacy and dignity. It is argued that they lack moral standing. The chapters uncover the harsh realities of poverty where economic value overrides competing human values. Naomi Zack argues that homelessness is symbolic of society’s materialistic values. It has a tendency to resist sufficient charity and perpetuates conditions of injustice. Uma Narayan questions whether the homeless have protection under the U.S. Constitution. Other authors present an enlarged sphere of homeless to include runaway children, refugees, adoptees and the disabled. The book demonstrates the value of applied philosophy.