bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gastronationalism on the Ground
Authors: DeSoucey Michaela
Published: January 2018

This chapter uses an ethnographic lens to explore how gastronationalist sentiments crisscross the social worlds, landscapes, and local economies of the French regions that celebrate foie gras production. It underscores the affective relationships that both producers and consumers have toward this food, and also analyzes tensions over foie gras's moral disapprobation as a modern and contested industry. The chapter asks how micro-level practices of production and consumption articulate with the more macro-level politics of identity, especially in places where foie gras “traditions” are classified as heritage; if the heritage being celebrated is a dissonant one; and how the people involved in the production of foie gras experience the dissonance of nostalgic romanticism and the industry's empirical realities.
General Introduction
Authors: Folkerts Menso , Hughes Barnabas , Wagner Roi , Berggren J. Lennart
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter provides a brief background to the interchange of mathematical knowledge across three civilizations during the medieval period, as well as this volume's editing and publication history. Medieval Europe, from around 800 to 1450, was a meeting place of three civilizations: the Latin/Christian civilization that was forming on the foundation of the defunct Western Roman Empire; the Jewish/Hebrew civilization, which witnessed great scholarly activity in every location where Jews resided; and the Islamic/Arabic civilization, whose European center was in Spain, but which had a close relationship with the Islamic civilization of North Africa. The scope and diversity of these sources has, in turn, presented some challenges which led to certain editorial features prevalent in the following chapters.
Introduction
Authors: Barany Zoltan
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter provides two central arguments. The first is that the response of the regime’s regular armed forces to an uprising is critical to the success or failure of that uprising. This is a contention that is by now largely, but not universally, accepted as one of the cardinal tenets of revolutions: they cannot succeed without the support of the regime’s coercive apparatus, most particularly the regular army. The second major argument, one that has not been made before, is that we can make a highly educated guess about—and in some cases even confidently predict—the army’s response to a revolution or popular uprising if we have in-depth knowledge about a particular army, its relationship to state and society, and the external environment.
An Entangled Bank
Authors: Cadotte Marc W. , Davies T. Jonathan
Published: January 2018

This chapter reviews the history of the use of phylogenetics in ecology, beginning with a discussion of early attempts to classify the diversity of life and the development of evolutionary theory. In particular, it examines how early taxonomists, starting with Carl Linnaeus, have grouped species by similarity in their traits and how early ecologists and biologists such as Charles Darwin recognized the importance of relatedness in influencing ecological interactions and species distributions. The chapter proceeds by focusing on the introduction of the neutral theory of biodiversity into mainstream ecology and the development of the niche-based model of community assembly. It also considers how some ecologists questioned the relevance of phylogenetic corrections for ecology and concludes by analyzing the emergence of ecological phylogenetics or ecophylogenetics.
Speciation, Extinction, and the Distribution of Phylogenetic Diversity
Authors: Cadotte Marc W. , Davies T. Jonathan
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the use of phylogenetic methods to explain macroevolutionary trends in speciation, extinction, and the distribution of phylogenetic diversity across space and through time. The diversity of life is unevenly distributed across the globe. Species richness tends to be higher at lower latitudes and elevations, and the distribution of life forms also varies across space. For example, Foster's rule suggests that on islands small species evolve to become bigger, while large species evolve to become smaller. Equally, the distribution of evolutionary history shows large spatial variation, reflecting the histories of speciation, extinction, and dispersal. This chapter first considers how large, global phylogenies make it possible to map the distribution of phylogenetic diversity and develop a conservation strategy to maximize coverage of the tree of life. It then discusses the variation in diversification across spatiotemporal gradients and shows that phylogenetic diversity covaries significantly with taxonomic richness.
Using Phylogenetic Information to Make Better Conservation Decisions
Authors: Cadotte Marc W. , Davies T. Jonathan
Published: January 2018

This chapter explains how phylogenetic information can be used to make better conservation decisions. Evidence shows that human-caused climate change is likely to be the dominant cause of extinction in the near future. Phylogeny can provide a powerful tool for aiding decision making in species conservation. The chapter first considers the importance of preserving evolutionary history by focusing on the tree of life, the phylogenetic tree connecting all living organisms that provides a powerful metaphor for conservation biology. It then examines phylogenetically based metrics for quantifying evolutionary history, including phylogenetic diversity for evaluating sites and evolutionary distinctiveness for comparing species. It also discusses the integration of evolutionary history with extinction probabilities for conservation prioritization using relative extinction risk to weight evolutionary distinctiveness, or EDGE (evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered). Finally, it describes how to prioritize biodiversity hotspots of evolutionary distinctiveness and how to apply metrics to conservation prioritization.
Islamic Topographies
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines a second kind of pathway, one concerning ideas and practices of religion and politics. In India, British rule both validated religious governance of family affairs and drove Islamic leaders to carve out their own spaces for teaching, learning, and the administration of Islamic law. In postcolonial Britain, the same logics of religious governance and autonomy facilitate efforts to transpose Islamic institutions to London or Birmingham. British Islamic actors have employed three distinct processes to create these spaces: they reproduce South Asian religious differences in Britain, they adapt Islam to the opportunity structures found in Britain, and they maintain transnational ties to religious or political movements elsewhere. To some degree, these three processes—reinforcing boundaries, adapting locally, maintaining transnational ties—figure in all Islamic actors' practical schemas for shaping British Islam.
Competing Justifications
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: January 2018

This chapter addresses the anxiety of justification, which asks about the selection among competing types of argumentation and the challenge of arriving at a common judgment from diverse starting points. This challenge is exacerbated for a British shariʻa council, as it lacks a shared set of laws or jurisprudence on which to base decisions. Each scholar has his or her own repertoire of texts and traditions, practical knowledge (of Britain, Pakistan, or elsewhere), and ideas about rights and fairness. They have different educational histories and have developed individual theological allegiances to different Islamic legal schools and to different ways of interpreting scripture. They also differ in what legal scholars call judicial temperament: how to weigh multiple criteria, such as the value of precedent, the practical effects of a decision on litigants, and the intent of lawgivers. The chapter then explores the moral, theological, and epistemological debates regarding the practice of justification.
When Women Rule in Birmingham
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: January 2018

This chapter looks at the Birmingham Central Mosque's council, where women take the lead. The Birmingham council began as a place for women to find advice and help, and only later transformed itself into a shariʻa council. Women may come or call for a variety of reasons. However, many who contact them regarding a divorce are turned away because of a rule adopted several years previously by the council. The council had been hearing all cases where a woman wished to end her marriage, until one day when they granted a woman her religious divorce, only to have her turn around and stop cooperating with her husband on the civil divorce. This unfortunate consequence of their divorce judgment led the council to only accept cases where the civil divorce—if one was needed—had been completed, so that women could not keep their husbands from remarrying.
Shariʿa in English Law
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on the fears and accusations about the English law's recognition of shariʻa. In his February 2008 remarks, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams explored ways in which the legal system might “recognise shariʻa.” Despite the storm of media criticism, he was joined later that year by Britain's highest justice, Lord Phillips, in saying that English law should recognize certain elements of shariʻa. It is in the domain of family law where suggestions that private Islamic bodies might take on a function of the civil courts raise the greatest degree of legal and social concern. Although some Islamic scholars have urged Parliament to create formal linkages between law courts and Islamic shariʻa councils, these councils carry out no actions that have the force of state law. For the moment, then, the main possibility for legal “recognition” of Islamic law in England would be if civil courts were to act on some elements of an Islamic divorce proceeding.
When Can Shariʿa Be British?
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses how Islamic institutions are keeping Muslims from fully integrating into English, or British, society. Some Islamic institutions deeply trouble at least some non-Muslims in Britain; others do so much less. Shariʻa councils are accused of threatening legal unity, oppressing women, and encouraging Islamic radicalism and domestic violence. But other institutions, despite the clear role of shariʻa, are relatively accepted. The chapter then considers two kinds of Muslims. Liberal or “moderate” Muslims fit in by adapting to English behavior and by embracing what are claimed to be modern British ideas about gender roles. By contrast, conservative Muslims don't shake hands, live by themselves in Leicester or Dewsbury, and might promote extremism. Ultimately, shariʻa councils and Muslim schools have become the major objects of broad British fears about domestic Islam. Both seem to cross boundaries in a way that threatens the unity of Britain, or of England.
Conclusions
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter examines the concentration of British Muslims within British locations. Concentration of people with similar pasts, old-country anchors, and theological tendencies makes it possible to draw rings around one's own group, and to build bridges back home without sensing a need to do so with those next door. But even if some Islamic public actors have seen little reason to move away from established modes of reasoning and practice, and the very welcoming soil of Britain has encouraged them to reproduce older forms, doing so in a new context has inevitably led to social transformations—all the more as the new contexts shift in response to these efforts. Indeed, the shariʻa councils are not replicas of anything existing today or yesterday in South Asia but an effort to create—on the basis of remembered social forms but in a new social context—mechanisms to respond to British Muslims' demands.
Why Do People Migrate?
Authors: Garip Filiz
Published: January 2018

This chapter provides an overview of the migration field, and a brief review of Mexico–U.S. migration flows up to 1965, the year the analysis here begins. It describes the data and methods that led the author to discover four groups among first-time migrants from Mexico to the United States between 1965 and 2010. The first cluster—mostly uneducated and poor men from rural communities—was the majority in the 1970s but dropped to a small minority by the 1990s. The second cluster—many of them teenage boys from relatively better-off families—peaked in the 1980s, becoming the majority group at that time, but declined consistently in size thereafter. The third cluster—mostly women with family ties to former migrants—was increasing slowly in size until it experienced a sudden spike in the early 1990s. And the fourth cluster—mostly educated men from urban areas—grew persistently over time, grabbing the majority status among all first-time migrants in the early 1990s.
“Putting Down Roots”
Authors: Garip Filiz
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses a particular group that continually increased its share among the first-time migrants between 1965 and 2010—from less than 10 percent to nearly 70 percent. This group, called urban migrants, included a large share of men, mostly from urban communities in the border, central-south, and southeastern regions of Mexico rather than the traditional migrant-sending rural communities in the central-west. Urban migrants were significantly more educated compared to the circular, crisis, and family migrants in the preceding chapters, and also relative to non-migrants at their time. The group worked mostly in manufacturing and construction in the United States, earned significantly higher wages than the other migrant groups, and made fewer return trips to Mexico.
Introduction
Authors: Rose Julie L.
Published: January 2018

This book defends the idea that workers are entitled to a fair share of free time. Contemporary liberal egalitarian theories of justice have implicitly assumed that how much leisure time citizens have is not an appropriate concern of a liberal theory of justice. The liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice is to ensure that all citizens have fair access to specific goods, the particular components of one's particular conception of the good, by ensuring a fair distribution of resources, the all-purpose means that are generally required to pursue any conception of the good. The book asserts that citizens have legitimate claims to free time on the basis of the effective freedoms principle, a foundational tenet of liberal egalitarianism. This introduction discusses some relevant features of the distribution of free time in the contemporary United States and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.
Leisure as a Specific Good
Authors: Rose Julie L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that the standard conception of leisure time as a specific good is the main reason why it has been neglected by theorists of distributive justice. In particular, leisure has been interpreted as: time engaged in intrinsically valuable activities, namely philosophical contemplation; time engaged in play or recreation; or time not engaged in paid work. The standard liberal egalitarian approach to the distribution of such specific goods—liberal proceduralism—is to ensure that all citizens have fair access to such goods by ensuring a fair distribution of all-purpose resources. The chapter considers how liberal proceduralism makes a distinction between specific goods and resources and contends that leisure time should be understood not only as a specific good, but also as itself a resource—as the resource of free time. It also asserts that free time must be incorporated into a theory of distributive justice.
Free Time as a Resource
Authors: Rose Julie L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that free time—defined as the time not committed to meeting one's own or one's dependents' basic needs—is a resource to which citizens could plausibly have claims in a public and feasible liberal egalitarian justice. To develop the idea of free time as a resource, the chapter begins with the recognition that time itself is a resource. It then discusses three ways, drawn from time-use research, of defining free time: as time not engaged in typically necessary activities, as time not engaged in subjectively necessary activities, and as time not engaged in objectively necessary activities. It also considers how a formulation of free time might address issues of individual responsibility and asserts that the typically necessary and subjectively necessary definitions of free time are not appropriately understood as resources in the relevant sense. The chapter concludes by proposing a particular objective definition of free time.
Free Time for Caregivers
Authors: Rose Julie L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on gender and caregiving to demonstrate how recognizing citizens' claims to free time contributes to a liberal egalitarian theory of gender justice. It argues that gender justice requires that men and women not only have free choices from among equal options, but also choose from among just background conditions. One of those conditions is that all citizens must have their fair share of free time, with caregiving for children and other dependents treated as a necessary activity like necessary paid work. This entails that citizens must be able to choose to engage in paid work and caregiving and still have free time, as realized through a set of workplace accommodations for parents and other caregivers. Aside from the conditions for free choice and equal options, gender justice requires that men and women choose their household responsibilities from among these just background conditions.
Conclusion
Authors: Rose Julie L.
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter considers how to provide free time, asking how much free time citizens are entitled and how citizens' claims to free time are to be guaranteed. For citizens to possess their fair share of free time, they must both have their fair amount of free time, and have it under fair conditions to make effective use of it. Recognizing citizens' claims to free time provides grounds to bolster and adjudicate a range of contested employment and welfare policies and distinctive labor regulations. Recognizing free time as a resource that is valuable to citizens in the same way as the resources of income and wealth also provides grounds to challenge the presumption in favor of unceasing economic growth as a social goal. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that in the just society all citizens would have their fair shares of free time.
Self-Styling
Authors: Chumley Lily
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the pedagogical forms through which students who matriculate to art academies after years of highly technical test prep are taught to practice creativity and “find themselves.” It offers an ethnography of the discussion-based, “critique”-style “creativity classes” (chuangzaoke) that are a central part of university-level art and design curriculum. Building on the linguistic anthropology of pedagogy, this chapter describes how art students are taught to “entextualize” a style by narrating a self, performatively anchoring an aesthetic that is always drawn from the work of others in a unique and highly personal subjectivity. The chapter reflects on the political implications of this subjectivity and its forms of practice.
Aesthetic Community
Authors: Chumley Lily
Published: January 2018

This chapter first contrasts two professional sites in which practice communities and aesthetic communities emerge: a giant art fair called Art Beijing, and a private meeting between a small group of young artists and a curator. It next examines the studios and cafés (kafeiguan or jiuba) in which artists and designers socialize, before showing how communities expand spatiotemporally through objects and media. Throughout, the chapter considers fantasies of sociality provoked by anxieties about anomie: memories of the community around Yuanmingyuan that was torn down during the reconstruction of the city; attempts to build a community of artists and designers turned kung fu (gong fu) practitioners; and a fantasy of a public art library, imagined by a young photographer, which never came to be.
Introduction
Authors: Nacol Emily C.
Published: January 2018

This chapter briefly discusses three insights into early modern British engagement with risk: the presence of a distinct conceptual refinement in late seventeenth-century sources; the tight relationship between risk and trust in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political thought and political economy; and the character of the political subject, which is worked out in the early modern engagement with risk. Beyond these three observations, the chapter also argues that early modern British engagement with risk offers two narratives—views of risk that persist in our own time and shape our orientation toward an unknown future. These include accounts of risk as a threat to security, as well as depictions of risk as an opportunity to be exploited for profit or gain.
“Experience Concludeth Nothing Universally”
Authors: Nacol Emily C.
Published: January 2018

This chapter begins with Thomas Hobbes' intertwined theories of knowledge and politics, as they emerged from his experience of a violent civil war and fierce struggles over epistemological and political authority. Hobbes provokes an early modern engagement with the concept of risk in politics by positing uncertainty as the main problem that political theory and political order are meant to solve. For Hobbes, uncertainty is the root cause of violence and insecurity, and thus it becomes a target for elimination when he begins to think about how to construct a safe political community. The chapter reconstructs Hobbes' commitment to a science of politics modeled on geometry, emphasizing its certain character by contrasting it with other ways of knowing about politics that are more experiential, such as prudence.
For Love of the Prophet
Authors: Salomon Noah
Published: January 2018

For some, the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others, it violates the proper domains of both religion and politics. Yet, while there has been much discussion of the idea and ideals of the Islamic state, its possibilities and impossibilities, surprisingly little has been written about how this political formation is lived. This book looks at the Republic of Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic statehood. Focusing not on state institutions, but rather on the daily life that goes on in their shadows, the book examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst. The book investigates Sudan at a crucial moment in its history—balanced between unity and partition, secular and religious politics, peace and war—when those who desired an Islamic state were rethinking the political form under which they had lived for nearly a generation. Countering the dominant discourse, the book depicts contemporary Islamic politics not as a response to secularism and Westernization but as a node in a much longer conversation within Islamic thought, augmented and reappropriated as state projects of Islamic reform became objects of debate and controversy. The book reveals both novel political ideals and new articulations of Islam as it is rethought through the lens of the nation.
Rebuilding the Muslim Mind
Authors: Salomon Noah
Published: January 2018

Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic governance not only offers the researcher a unique site to observe Islamist interventions in practice, but also allows us to observe how these policies are consumed within the diverse publics to which they attend, which is the goal of this chapter. A study of the regime's project of epistemological enlightenment offers a way of answering questions such as: Has the Islamic project of the Inqadh been a success? To what extent has the government of Sudan accomplished its goal of instilling its Islamic program in the citizenry? Are new Muslim subjects emerging out of the era of National Salvation, or was the Inqadh period largely one of slogans that bore little fruit among the masses? The chapter attempts to get a better a sense of the impact of the Islamic state by tracing first the nature of the regime's Islamic epistemological project and then observing how it was both inhabited and contested by the Sudanese to whom it was directed. It shows both its indelible presence in Sudanese public life and its inability to be enclosed within the agenda of its makers.
Politics in the Age of Salvation
Authors: Salomon Noah
Published: January 2018

This chapter presents a story that makes an interesting set of claims about the nature of political authority in Islam. First, it made the point that the notion of an intellectual vanguard that could awaken the Sudanese to their true responsibilities under Islam (and indeed show them what true Islam was) was deeply offensive, not just to Sufis, but to secularists and practicing Muslims of all stripes. Next, it is important to recognize that in this story, just as in the political strategy of the Inqadh, al-Turabi uses Islam to disarm political critique. The remainder of the chapter addresses the following question What might it mean to leave Islamic politics untranslated? It does so by looking at a vision of the Islamic state that “not only [finds itself, but positions itself] in competition or confrontation with social scientific forms of knowledge.”
Introduction
Authors: Barnett Michael N.
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book immerses itself in the history of American Jews and traces how the American experience shaped the identity of American Jews; how this identity is intertwined with the political theology of Prophetic Judaism; how the political theology accounts for an outward orientation that is more cosmopolitan than tribal; and how this foreign policy orientation shaped American Jews' responses to the Jewish Problem and the Jewish Question. As a work of history, this book is deeply informed by the historical record and draws from memoirs, archives, secondary research, and interviews. As a work of interpretation it is informed by what the social sciences and humanities tell us about the relationships between various kinds of political communities and their relations with others.
The Making of a Prophetic People
Authors: Barnett Michael N.
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the century, when American Jews were absorbed by the task of acculturation. As American Jews grew more settled, accepted, and confident, they began asking the US government to use its growing power to stop the persecution of Jews abroad. In the long run, American Jews placed their faith in the same sort of liberalism and rule of law that had been so good to them. Because illiberal states that were tormenting Jews were unlikely to become converts to liberalism, the Jews of France, Britain, and the United States hoped that their governments would impose these reforms. Additionally, they were antinationalists and anti-Zionists. In their view, the answer to the Jewish Problem was not a Jewish homeland in some godforsaken backwater in the Middle East where they were not wanted. Zionism was unrealistic and could potentially lead to questions American Jews would prefer were never asked.
Visions of a Lost Caliphal Capital: Baghdad, 1258 CE
Authors: Hassan Mona
Published: January 2018

This chapter establishes the intense desire and nostalgia for Baghdad as the Abbasid Caliphate's cosmopolitan capital and its centrality in the Muslim imaginary, among the near and the far. Poetry, historical chronicles, and scholarly literature from Muslim Spain in the west, Yemen in the south, and Egypt, western North Africa, geographical Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India further east richly illustrate a shared perception among interconnected literary elites about the Abbasids' temporal and spiritual preeminence, despite all of their political reversals. For many premodern Muslims, the world without a caliph was so unimaginable that it boded the imminent end of time itself—an eschatological interpretation that reverses contemporaneous Christian views of empire.
Methods for Describing Oscillations, Fluctuations, and Cycles in Univariate Series
Authors: Harding Don , Pagan Adrian
Published: January 2018

This chapter investigates the three ways that economic researchers have approached the task of describing the ups and downs in the macroeconomy: oscillations, fluctuations, and cycles. Each has a different way of describing the phenomenon being investigated and summarizing it. These vary depending on the frequency of the data one is working with. Moreover, often many series rather than a single one are used to describe the recurrent pattern. Oscillations refer to the fact that peaks and troughs occur in a regular fashion. Cycles refer to the fact that the ups and downs in economic activity can be seen in a graph as a set of local peaks and troughs. Fluctuations come from the observation that a series showing ups and downs can be said to exhibit volatility.
Constructing Reference Cycles with Multivariate Information
Authors: Harding Don , Pagan Adrian
Published: January 2018

The chapter looks at how recurrent events might be dated by using a number of series rather than a single one. There is no one method to do this, but in many cases, the procedures come up with rather similar results. Much depends on how one wants to use the dating information. If it is for judging models or evaluating some macroeconomic propositions, then the ability to automate the selection process easily would be a paramount consideration. Alternatively, if it was desired to establish a definitive dating of cycles in activity or financial series, then it is probably the case that a variety of methods would be used with some judgment applied when determining the weight given to each. Further work is needed on how the methods perform when faced with simulations from estimated models rather than using actual data, as their effectiveness is unclear in such a changed environment.
Accounting for Observed Cycle Features with a Range of Statistical Models
Authors: Harding Don , Pagan Adrian
Published: January 2018

This chapter looks at observed features of the cycle in a variety of time series. It sets out these features for the United States and a number of other countries, and then asks whether these features can be replicated by the use of a particular statistical model—a linear autoregression. For such linear models it is possible to broadly account for the observed features using moments of the series for growth rates, and this strategy is employed in the chapter. It then uses a particular nonlinear statistical model to see if it can match all the features, and further looks at two other nonlinear models first dealt with in Chapter 4. The chapter concludes with an examination of whether the binary indicators summarizing the recurrent states can be used in the context of standard multivariate methods such as vector autoregressions. This turns out not to be straightforward owing to the nature of the binary variables.
Predicting Turning Points and Recessions
Authors: Harding Don , Pagan Adrian
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that the problems in predicting recessions stem from the nature of the definition of a recession. Much of the literature that claims success does not predict recessions as such. Rather it focuses on either whether one can predict growth in economic activity or whether one can identify the current status of the economy—what is often referred to as “nowcasting” rather than forecasting. The chapter reviews the literature on predicting recessions. The review leads to the conclusion that there are good reasons it is extremely difficult to predict recessions. Understanding these leads to an appreciation of the barriers to be faced in the task, and also suggests that many of the claims made about how the forecasting record can be improved should be treated with skepticism.
A Short History of German Philosophy
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This book provides an original history of German-language philosophy from the Middle Ages to today. In an accessible narrative that explains complex ideas in clear language, the book traces the evolution of German philosophy and describes its central influence on other aspects of German culture, including literature, politics, and science. Starting with the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, the book addresses the philosophical changes brought about by Luther's Reformation, and then presents a detailed account of the classical age of German philosophy, including the work of Leibniz and Kant; the rise of a new form of humanities in Lessing, Hamann, Herder, and Schiller; the early Romantics; and the Idealists Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The following chapters investigate the collapse of the German synthesis in Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche. Turning to the twentieth century, the book explores the rise of analytical philosophy in Frege and the Vienna and Berlin circles; the foundation of the historical sciences in Neo-Kantianism and Dilthey; Husserl's phenomenology and its radical alteration by Heidegger; the Nazi philosophers Gehlen and Schmitt; and the main West German philosophers, including Gadamer, Jonas, and those of the two Frankfurt schools. Arguing that there was a distinctive German philosophical tradition from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the book closes by examining why that tradition largely ended in the decades after World War II.
Does German Philosophy Have a History? And Has There Ever Been a “German Spirit”?
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to provide a brief survey of German philosophy and thereby to bring out peculiarities that distinguish this philosophy from those of other European nations. The book shows that reflection on the concept of Geist (spirit) is a crucial part of the German spirit. Despite all the changes in German philosophy, plausible lines of development will be made clear; without them, a history really cannot be written. The chapter then explains the reasons why it makes sense to produce a new account of the history of German philosophy at the beginning of a century that will no longer be a European one.
The Change in the Philosophical Situation Brought about by the Reformation: Paracelsus’s New Natural Philosophy and the “No” in Jakob Böhme’s God
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the thoughts of natural philosopher Theophrastus Bombastus of Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493–1541), and Jakob Böhme (1575–1624). Like most of the innovative ideas of the sixteenth century, Paracelsus's philosophical-scientific ideas belong to the time of fermentation between the collapse of Scholastic science and the emergence of the new science in the seventeenth century. The polemic against traditional medicine, especially the humoral pathology that derived from books rather than from direct experience, is conducted in a churlish manner reminiscent of Luther and with bombastic self-praise. Böhme is considered first epoch-making German philosopher of the modern period. He was a cobbler who had had experienced mystical visions and wanted to provide a deeper foundation for his traditional Lutheran piety (inspired by the Bible) through a philosophical account of the development of God, nature, and redemption through Christ.
The Longing for a System: German Idealism
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines German idealism, which is the only philosophical school of thought has retained the epithet “German.” The reason being is because it was the most intellectually ambitious philosophy that Germany has produced; and because it succeeded in integrating almost all the innovative achievements of earlier German philosophy in the shape of a system, the most complex form of philosophical thought. The religious motivation of the three main figures within this movement contributed to the emergence of a kind of philosophical religiousness that was new in world history. These three crucial figures are Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).
The Revolt against Christian Dogmatics: Schopenhauer’s Discovery of the Indian World
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who is considered one of the greatest German prose stylists. His essay “Über Schriftstellerei und Stil” (“On Authorship and Style”) should be read by anyone who ventures to write in German. His phenomenological insight is penetrating, his many interests are almost as encyclopedic as Hegel's, and his architectonic system-building talent is considerable. Schopenhauer radically challenged the philosophy of the logos that had existed since the Greeks, and he did so without falling into the alternative of materialism, which is flat (and has been commonplace since Antiquity). Without Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and his descendants would not have been possible; and his influence extends to the whole of subsequent German, indeed European intellectual history.
The Revolt against the Bourgeois World: Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the philosophy of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872). Marx's ideas made German philosophy the most directly powerful in historical terms. The dogmatism with which Marx offered simple solutions to difficult problems sprang from a will not only to personal power, but also and especially to social change, and underlying the latter was an understandable indignation at the moral condition of the bourgeoisie. Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity, 1841) was the most influential among the works of left-wing Hegelians. His magnum opus consists, like Kant's Critiques, of two parts, an analytics and a dialectics. In the first part, Feuerbach seeks to find meaning in religion by revealing its true—that is, its anthropological—essence. In the second, he attacks its untrue—that is, its theological—essence, by trying to uncover contradictions in Christian dogma.
The Revolt against Universalistic Morals: Friedrich Nietzsche
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). It argues that no other thinker has contributed so much to Germany's estrangement from its classical era. The low quality of his philosophical technique, along with his phenomenological power and brilliant style, accelerated the cultural decline. Journalists and intellectuals prefer to read him rather than Leibniz or Kant, and this has not improved the press or the culture industry. His discontent prophetically anticipated that of whole generations which fell under his spell, because he expressed their sensitivities with unsurpassable incisiveness. However, Nietzsche also triggered a positive change in the history of consciousness, i.e., a sensitivization with regard to the abyssal depth of the human soul and culture, as well as knowledge of the risk to the spirit and the questionable nature of exceptional moral achievements.
The Exact Sciences as a Challenge and the Rise of Analytic Philosophy: Frege, the Viennese and Berlin Circles, Wittgenstein
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses the emergence of a philosophical school that is now dominant in the Anglo-American world called “analytical philosophy.” The first form taken by analytic philosophy, now long since abandoned, was logical positivism or logical empiricism (the former sympathized with phenomenalism, the latter was more realistically oriented). Logical positivism's goal is a unified science modeled on physics. The intended system of constitution seeks to move from one's own mental qualities to physical objects, from these to the mental qualities of others, and finally to the objects of the social sciences. With regard to the mental qualities of others, behaviorism, which reduces the mental to externally observable behavior, is considered a scientific conception of the world.
The Search for a Foundation of the Human Sciences and the Social Sciences in Neo-Kantianism and Dilthey, and Husserl’s Exploration of Consciousness
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter begins with a discussion of Neo-Kantianism. It then covers the works of Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), the most important representatives of the second branch of Neo-Kantianism, the Baden School, which is concerned with the philosophical grounding of the human sciences and the social sciences as distinct from the natural sciences. It also looks at the work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) who had, before Neo-Kantianism, attempted to ground the human sciences in an “understanding psychology” that was not based on laboratory work but guided by a philosophy focused on the meaning of life; and that of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the most important critic and stimulator of Dilthey, and probably the twentieth-century thinker who remained most loyal to the traditional concept of reason.
National Socialist Anthropology and Political Philosophy: Arnold Gehlen and Carl Schmitt
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on Arnold Gehlen (1904–1976) and Carl Schmitt (1888–1985). Gehlen's Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (“Man, His Nature and Place in the World,” 1940), may be the most important philosophical book published under the Third Reich. The book concentrates on the peculiar mode of being of a finite, rational being that knows it is finite: an obvious subject when belief in God has ceased while at the same time a thirst for reality prevails that is not satisfied by the subtle foundational ideas of Frege and Husserl. Schmitt was one of the most important political thinkers of the past century, despite his moral repulsiveness. This was evident in his inability to feel remorse after the war, his mawkish self-pity regarding his own fate (he was a potential defendant in the Nuremberg trials until Robert Kempner decided against arraigning him), his complete lack of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, and indeed the ostentatious display of his Catholicism, with whose ethical core his original political ideas were in the most blatant contradiction.
Why We Cannot Assume That There Will Continue to Be a German Philosophy
Authors: Hösle Vittorio
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that institutionally, there is little reason to predict a great future for German philosophy. The philosophical form of religiousness that so strongly distinguished Germany from the United States, has evaporated, presumably because sadness and shame over the twelve cursed years has crippled appropriation of the spiritual treasures of the past, which can take place only with hermeneutic reservations, for example on the occasion of the anniversaries of classics. Moreover, it is well known that German scientific institutions are not at present in the best of shape. The weaknesses of the German system have been amply discussed over the past two decades, but it is unlikely that fundamental reforms will be undertaken in the foreseeable future, because too many interests would be adversely affected.
Ties That Bind
Authors: Dow Katharine
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines how surrogacy troubles ideas about motherhood, maternal responsibility, and maternal bonding. In particular, it considers how ideas about altruism in surrogacy relate not only to individual ethical decision making but also to a sense of community and shared identity. One of the practical problems that surrogacy presents is the risk that the surrogate mother might decide to keep the baby. This is also an ethical question of whether or not surrogate mothers should form a bond with the children they carry for intended parents. The chapter explores how people in Spey Bay drew on the maternal bond to make nuanced claims about motherhood and the ethics of surrogacy to show how “natural” concepts like the maternal bond are used contingently and strategically in ethical judgements about reproduction and parenting. Finally, it uses the example of surrogacy to analyze the salience of altruism as a site of ethical value.
A Stable Environment
Authors: Dow Katharine
Published: January 2018

This chapter concludes that the book has explored what the people of Spey Bay think about the ethics of reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies in order to elucidate what reproductive ethics is, not only in the sense of what people judge to be good but also in terms of what counts as belonging to the domain of ethics. In Spey Bay, the key values people associated with “good” reproduction and parenthood were responsibility, care, and altruism and one way they expressed this was in the hope that people—and not necessarily only the infertile or single-sex couples—would consider adoption or fostering before turning to assisted conception. In this ethnography, the book has also introduced the concept of ethical labor to describe some of the characteristics of the everyday work that goes into making a good life in Spey Bay. It has examined what the people thought about surrogacy, maternal bonding, and environmentalism.
Learning Zulu
Authors: Sanders Mark
Published: January 2018

When this book's author began studying Zulu, he was often questioned why he was learning it. This book places the author's endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. The book combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, the book reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth century to widespread efforts, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to teach a correct form of Zulu. The book looks at the white appropriation of Zulu language, music, and dance in South African culture, and at the association of Zulu with a martial masculinity. In exploring how Zulu has come to represent what is most properly and powerfully African, the book examines differences in English- and Zulu-language press coverage of an important trial, as well as the role of linguistic purism in xenophobic violence in South Africa. Through one person's efforts to learn the Zulu language, the book explores how a language's history and politics influence all individuals in a multilingual society.