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Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy: The Worldviews of Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman
by A. Z. ObiedatThis is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge’s critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha’s spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity’s best-case scenario.
Modernity, Religion, and the War on Terror
by Richard Dien WinfieldThe war on terror cannot be truly understood without investigating the legitimacy of modernity, the challenge that religion presents to modernization, the inescapable conflicts attending the emergence and expansion of modernity, and the post-colonial predicament from which Islamist reaction arises. Richard Dien Winfield illuminates the war on terror in light of these issues, presenting an anti-foundationalist justification of the rationality and freedom of modernity, while assessing how religion can stand in opposition to modernity and why Islam has been a privileged vehicle of anti-modern religious revolt. Winfield shows that the privatization that religion must undergo to be compatible with modern freedom involves no capitulation to relativism, but rather is a theological imperative on which the truth of religion depends. Exposing the limits of any purely secular modernization of Islam, Winfield shows how Islam can draw upon its core tradition to repudiate the oppression of Islamist reaction and become at home in the modern world.
Modernity's Wager: Authority, the Self, and Transcendence
by Adam B. SeligmanAdam Seligman, one of our most important social thinkers, continues the incisive critique of modernity he began in his previously acclaimed The Idea of Civil Society and The Problem of Trust. In this provocative new work of social philosophy, Seligman evaluates modernity's wager, namely, the gambit to liberate the modern individual from external social and religious norms by supplanting them with the rational self as its own moral authority. Yet far from ensuring the freedom of the individual, Seligman argues, "the fundamentalist doctrine of enlightened reason has called into being its own nemesis" in the forms of ethnic, racial, and identity politics. Seligman counters that the modern human must recover a notion of authority that is essentially transcendent, but which extends tolerance to those of other--or no--faiths. Through its denial of an authority rooted in an experience of transcendence, modernity fails to account for individual and collective moral action. First, deprived of a sacred source of the self, depictions of moral action are reduced to motives of self interest. Second, dismissing the sacred leaves the resurgence of religious movements unexplained. In this rigorous and imaginative study, Seligman seeks to discover a durable source of moral authority in a liberalized world. His study of shame, pride, collective guilt, and collective responsibility demonstrates the mutual relationship between individual responsibility and communal authority. Furthermore, Seligman restores the indispensable role of religious traditions--as well as the features of those traditions that enhance, rather than denigrate, tolerance. Sociologists, political theorists, moral philosophers, and intellectual historians will find Seligman's thesis enlightening, as will anyone concerned with the ethical and religious foundations of a tolerant society.
Moderns Worth Keeping
by Russell FraserIn this new volume, Russell Fraser assembles fourteen twentieth-century writers he judges "worth keeping." All were famous in their time, but many outlived it, enduring an eclipse that Fraser intends this book to dispel. Each of the authors differs in background and in the kinds of writing practiced, and while together they do not constitute a modern canon, Fraser persuasively presents them as a group distinguished by a more than ordinary affiliation for language. Leading off are Oscar Wilde and J. M. Synge, both of whom were Irish and principally known as playwrights. The Scottish poets Edwin Muir and G.M. Brown are complemented by three great Europeans: Paul Valery, Eugenio Montale, and Osip Mandelstam, "mandarins" who wrote for an elite of their time, not a social elite, but readers who could read. The New Critics, who gave language first place in their writing, loom large in this account. R.P. Blackmur and Allen Tate are followed by Delmore Schwartz, Austin Warren, and Francis Fergusson, lesser stars orbiting those greater than themselves. Kingsley Amis the novelist and James Dickey the poet, with whom the book concludes, had a great run at fame and fortune, but ended bleakly. The world was livelier for these writers' presence, and what they left us still gives satisfaction. This heterogeneous group may be said to be our saving remnant. In a time of coarsened feeling, its members possess in high degree the ability to discriminate, seeing acutely, and inspiring feeling where it was dead. Their function is therapeutic, even restorative for the life of letters. To give them a hearing is the principal purpose of the book.
Modes of Communication in Stravinsky’s Works: Sign and Expression (Routledge Research in Music)
by Per DahlIgor Stravinsky left behind a complex heritage of music and ideas. There are many examples of discrepancies between his literate statements about music and musicians and his musical compositions and activity. Per Dahl presents a model of communication that unveils a clear and logical understanding of Stravinsky's heritage, based on the extant material available. From this, Dahl argues the case for Stravinsky’s music and his ideas as separate entities, representing different modes of communication. As well as describing a triangular model of communication, based on a tilted and extended version of Ogden's triangle, Dahl presents an empirical investigation of Stravinsky's vocabulary of signs and expressions in his published scores - his communicative mode towards musicians. In addition to simple statistics, Dahl compares the notation practice in the composer’s different stylistic epochs as well as his writing for different sizes of ensembles. Dahl also considers Stravinsky’s performances and recordings as modes of communication to investigate whether the multi-layered model can soften the discrepancies between Stravinsky the literate and Stravinsky the musician.
Modes Of Explanation
by Michael Lissack Abraham GraberModes of Explanation is the first book in decades to attempt to bring these conflicting approaches together and to offer a compelling narrative to explore how the paradox of 'explanation' can converge.
Modes of Learning: Whitehead's Metaphysics and the Stages of Education
by George AllanEducators are familiar with Alfred North Whitehead's three stages of education: romance, precision, and generalization. Philosophers are familiar with his metaphysical theories about the primacy of temporal processes. In Modes of Learning, George Allan brings these two sides of Whitehead's thought together for the first time in a book suitable for both those initially approaching Whitehead's metaphysics and experts alike.Allan develops a series of analogies between Whitehead's ideas about how we learn and key concepts in his later metaphysical writings, demonstrating that both how we learn and how the world changes involve a tension between open-ended exploration and systematic organization. Novel ideas free us from the blinders imposed by old habits and beliefs. Yet only when these ideas are integrated with the old ways are we able to improve our individual and collective lives—until changing circumstances call for further new ideas and fresh integrations.Using a rich variety of examples, Allan illuminates the metaphysical ideas he explores by tethering them concretely to the educational practices in which they are rooted. This shows a key but neglected feature of Whitehead's thought: his pragmatic theory of truth, with its functionalist approach to experience and its humanistic appreciation of the frailty of all human endeavors.
Modes of Protest And Resistance: Strange Change in Morals Political (Radical Theologies and Philosophies)
by Margaret BetzThis book presents a philosophical analysis of the different forms of political resistance and protest. It explores the normative space of resistance that is beyond self-defense and civil disobedience, and proposes the concept of “resistance violence” as a separate and special normative category. Instances that fall under this category can be, accordingly justified, even if they prove to be practically ineffective, by appealing to their role in preserving or upholding the dignity of the resistors or those who they aim to protect. Margaret Betz draws from important and interesting historical examples to establish the concept, and proposes to apply it to better understand contemporary struggles against injustice.
Modes of Truth: The Unified Approach to Truth, Modality, and Paradox (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
by Carlo Nicolai; Johannes SternThe aim of this volume is to open up new perspectives and to raise new research questions about a unified approach to truth, modalities, and propositional attitudes. The volume’s essays are grouped thematically around different research questions. The first theme concerns the tension between the theoretical role of the truth predicate in semantics and its expressive function in language. The second theme of the volume concerns the interaction of truth with modal and doxastic notions. The third theme covers higher-order solutions to the semantic and modal paradoxes, providing an alternative to first-order solutions embraced in the first two themes. This book will be of interest to researchers working in epistemology, logic, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and semantics.
Modest Nonconceptualism
by Eva SchmidtThe author defends nonconceptualism, the claim that perceptual experience is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content. Continuing the heated and complex debate surrounding this topic over the past two decades, she offers a sustained defense of a novel version of the view, Modest Nonconceptualism, and provides a systematic overview of some of the central controversies in the debate. An explication of the notion of nonconceptual content and a distinction between nonconceptualist views of different strengths starts off the volume, then the author goes on to defend participants in the debate over nonconceptual content against the allegation that their failure to distinguish between a state view and a content view of (non)conceptualism leads to fatal problems for their views. Next, she makes a case for nonconceptualism by refining some of the central arguments for the view, such as the arguments from fineness of grain, from contradictory contents, from animal and infant perception, and from concept acquisition. Then, two central objections against nonconceptualism are rebutted in a novel way: the epistemological objection and the objection from objectivity. Modest Nonconceptualism allows for perceptual experiences to involve some conceptual elements. It emphasizes the relevance of concept employment for an understanding of conceptual and nonconceptual mental states and identifies the nonconceptual content of experience with scenario content. It insists on the possibility of genuine content-bearing perceptual experience without concept possession and is thus in line with the Autonomy Thesis. Finally, it includes an account of perceptual justification that relies on the external contents of experience and belief, yet is compatible with epistemological internalism.
Modus Vivendi Liberalism
by David MccabeA central task in contemporary political philosophy is to identify principles governing political life where citizens disagree deeply on important questions of value and, more generally, about the proper ends of life. The distinctively liberal response to this challenge insists that the state should as far as possible avoid relying on such contested issues in its basic structure and deliberations. David McCabe critically surveys influential defenses of the liberal solution and advocates modus vivendi liberalism as an alternative defense of the liberal state. Acknowledging that the modus vivendi approach does not provide the deep moral consensus that many liberals demand, he defends the liberal state as an acceptable compromise among citizens who will continue to see it as less than ideal. His book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and political theory.
Möglichkeit metaphysischer Erkenntnis auf Grundlage der Vernunft: Eine kritische Analyse der Ansätze al-Ġazālīs und Immanuel Kants (BestMasters)
by Mehmet Akif AydinDie Frage nach der rationalen Beweisbarkeit Gottes spielt eine zentrale Rolle in der rationalen Theologie (ʿilm al-kalām). Theologen betrachten sie als den ersten Schritt bei der Auseinandersetzung mit der Religion, da ein Wahrheitsanspruch, der allein auf den Aussagen eines Propheten basiert, letztlich zu einem Zirkelschluss führen würde. Daher muss die Existenz Gottes zunächst rein rational bestimmt werden. Ob die Vernunft jedoch ausreicht, um metaphysische Angelegenheiten zu erfassen, ist umstritten. Diese Arbeit untersucht die kritischen Ansätze al-Ġazālīs (gest. 1111) und Immanuel Kants (gest. 1804) zur Frage der metaphysischen Erkenntnis und beleuchtet die Grenzen, auf die die Vernunft bei der Erfassung metaphysischer Fragestellungen stößt.
Mohammadan Dyn: Classes Iii-x (classic Reprint)
by Stanley Lane-PoolFirst published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Mohammed: The Man and His Faith
by Tor AndraeLong considered an essential survey of the origins, tenets, and substance of Islam, this biographical classic conveys a deep understanding of the Prophet and his faith. "Even today, after a period of development of thirteen centuries," author Tor Andrae notes, "one may clearly discern in genuine Islamic piety the uniqueness which is ultimately derived from its founder's personal experience of God." Andrae's fascinating profile of Mohammed's life and times encompasses the rich diversity of the Prophet's influence, exploring not only his impact on religion and history but also his political and social relevance.Beginning with an overview of Arabia in the sixth century, Andrae chronicles Mohammed's youth and the circumstances surrounding his prophetic call, offering a cogent analysis of his religious message and doctrine of revelation. The author discusses the conflicts surrounding the Prophet's early preachings that culminated in his flight from Mecca to Medina, where his leadership duties expanded to include the roles of politician, ruler, and military commander. In conclusion, an evaluation of Mohammed's personality offers insights into the everyday conduct that has served as a model to succeeding generations of Muslims.Comprehensive in scope and even-handed in perspective, this is one of the finest volumes available in English about Islam. Mohammed: The Man and His Faith is essential reading for students of religion, and its inspiring examination of Mohammed's deep piety and the power and spiritual energy of his religion will enthrall readers who are well versed in Islam as well as those unfamiliar with the Prophet's life and teachings.
Mohammed and Charlemagne
by Henri PirenneThe final work of the great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, this remarkable classic — published after his death — offers a revolutionary perspective on how Europe under the influence of a Roman Empire centered in Constantinople evolved into the Europe of Charlemagne and the Middle Ages.Departing from the standard view that Germanic invasions obliterated the Roman Empire, Pirenne advances the radical new thesis that "the cause of the break with the tradition of antiquity was the rapid and unexpected advance of Islam," and event of historical proportions that prevented the western Mediterranean from being what it had always been: a thoroughfare of commerce and thought. It became instead what Pirenne refers to as "a Musulman lake," thereby causing "the axis of life [to shift] northwards from the Mediterranean" for the first time in history.
Molecular Logic and Computational Synthetic Biology: First International Symposium, MLCSB 2018, Santiago, Chile, December 17–18, 2018, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #11415)
by Madalena Chaves Manuel A. MartinsThis book collects the revised selected proceedings of the First International Symposium in Molecular Logic and Computational Synthetic Biology ( MLCSB), held in Chile, Santiago, in December 2018. The volume contains 7 full revised papers along with 2 surveys from 19 submissions presented at the symposium. One of the goals of the MLCSB 2018 was to explore the potential of molecular logic frameworks to study the emerging behavioural patterns in biological networks, combining discrete, continuous and stochastic features, and resorting both to specific or general-purpose analysis and verification techniques.
Molecular Red
by Mckenzie WarkIn Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other. Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build. From the Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov--Lenin's rival--as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov.The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway's cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought. Molecular Red proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures.From the Hardcover edition.
Molecular Theory of the Living Cell
by Sungchul JiThe book presents the first comprehensive molecular theory of the living cell ever published since the cell doctrine was formulated in 1838-1839. It introduces into cell biology over thirty key concepts, principles and laws imported from physics, chemistry, computer science, linguistics, semiotics and philosophy. The author formulates physically, chemically and enzymologically realistic molecular mechanisms to account for basic living processes such as ligand-receptor interactions, enzymic catalysis, force-generating mechanisms in molecular motors, chromatin remodelling, and signal transduction. Possible solutions to basic and practical problems facing contemporary biology and biomedical sciences have been suggested, including pharmacotherapeutics and personalized medicine.
Molecular World: Making Modern Chemistry
by Catherine M. JacksonA compelling and innovative account that reshapes our view of nineteenth-century chemistry, explaining a critical period in chemistry&’s quest to understand and manipulate organic nature.According to existing histories, theory drove chemistry&’s remarkable nineteenth-century development. In Molecular World, Catherine M. Jackson shows instead how novel experimental approaches combined with what she calls &“laboratory reasoning&” enabled chemists to bridge wet chemistry and abstract concepts and, in so doing, create the molecular world. Jackson introduces a series of practice-based breakthroughs that include chemistry&’s move into lampworked glassware, the field&’s turn to synthesis and subsequent struggles to characterize and differentiate the products of synthesis, and the gradual development of institutional chemical laboratories, an advance accelerated by synthesis and the dangers it introduced.Jackson&’s historical reassessment emerges from the investigation of alkaloids by German chemists Justus Liebig, August Wilhelm Hofmann, and Albert Ladenburg. Stymied in his own research, Liebig steered his student Hofmann into pioneering synthesis as a new investigative method. Hofmann&’s practice-based laboratory reasoning produced a major theoretical advance, but he failed to make alkaloids. That landmark fell to Ladenburg, who turned to cutting-edge theory only after his successful synthesis.In telling the story of these scientists and their peers, Jackson reveals organic synthesis as the ground chemists stood upon to forge a new relationship between experiment and theory—with far-reaching consequences for chemistry as a discipline.
Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy (Rewriting the History of Philosophy)
by Gabriele FerrettiIn 1688 the Irish scientist and politician William Molyneux sent a letter to the philosopher John Locke. In it, he asked him a question: could someone who was born blind, and able to distinguish a globe and a cube by touch, be able to immediately distinguish and name these shapes by sight if given the ability to see? The philosophical puzzle offered in Molyneux’s letter fascinated not only Locke, but major thinkers such as Leibniz, Berkeley, Diderot, Reid, and numerous others including psychologists and cognitive scientists today. Does such a question represent a philosophical puzzle or a problem that can be solved by experimental tests? Can vision be fully restored after blindness? What is the relation between vision and touch? Are the senses linked through learning or bound at birth? Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy is a major collection of essays that explore the long-standing issues Molyneux’s problem presents to philosophy of mind, perception and the senses. In addition, the volume considers the question from an interdisciplinary angle, examines the pre-history of the question, and aspects of it that have been ignored, such as perspectives from religion and disability. As such, Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy presents a set of philosophically rich, empirically informed, and scientifically rigorous original investigations into this famous puzzle. It will be of great interest to students and researchers in philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences including neuroscience, neurobiology and ophthalmology, as well as those studying the mind, perception and the senses.
Moment by Moment
by Thich Nhat Hanh Jerry BrazaPracticing mindfulness means performing all activities consciously. This awareness enables us to become more fully alive in each moment, enjoying life to the fullest and avoiding the stress and guilt that have been written into our habits by our socialization. Practiced correctly and consistently, mindfulness can be the basis for transforming our lives and our relationships with others.Based on the author's Mindfulness Training Program, this book provides simple exercises for applying this practice to our daily lives. Jerry Braza offers hig gentle wisdom to the reader, with specific guidance and exercises for managing stress, quieting the mind, transforming feelings, enhancing productivity, and completing unfinished emotional business.
Momentary Buddhahood
by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche Anyen Rinpoche Allison Choying ZangmoWe think of enlightenment as something that happens all at once, like a tidal wave that cleans away everything impure. In truth, however, realization happens incrementally, from moment to moment. And in any moment when true wisdom is recognized, all concepts and afflictions are freed right on the spot and we can affirm for ourselves that the experience of enlightenment is possible. When we do, we experience a moment of the mind of a buddha - "momentary buddhahood." In this tantalizing presentation, Anyen Rinpoche offers a vision of the crucial necessity of mindfulness in any exploration of the Buddha's path - especially the path of tantric practice.
Moments of Capital: World Theory, World Literature (Currencies: New Thinking for Financial Times)
by Eli Jelly-SchapiroUndertaken at the interface of critical theory and world literature, Moments of Capital sets out to grasp the unity and heterogeneity of global capital in the postcolonial present. Eli Jelly-Schapiro argues that global capital is composed of three synchronous moments: primitive accumulation, expanded reproduction, and the "synthetic dispossession" facilitated by financialization and privatization. These moments correspond to distinct economic and political forms, and distinct strands of theory and fiction. Moments of Capital integrates various intellectual traditions—from multiple trajectories of Marxist thought, to Weberian inquiries into the "spirit" of capitalism, to anticolonial accounts of racial depredation—to reveal the concurrent interrelation of the three moments of capital. The book's literary readings, meanwhile, make vivid the uneven texture and experience of capitalist modernity at large. Analyzing formally and thematically diverse novels—works by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Marlon James, Jennifer Egan, Eugene Lim, Rafael Chirbes, Neel Mukherjee, Rachel Kushner, and others—Jelly-Schapiro evinces the different patterns of feeling and consciousness that register, and hypothesize a way beyond, the contradictions of capital. This book develops a new conceptual key for the mapping of contemporary theory, world literature, and global capital itself.
Moments of Disruption: Levinas, Sartre, and the Question of Transcendence
by Kris SealeyIn Moments of Disruption, Kris Sealey considers Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Paul Sartre together to fully realize the ethical and political implications of their similar descriptions of human existence. Focusing on points of contact and difference between their writings on transcendence, identity, existence, and alterity, Sealey presents not only an understanding of Sartrean politics in which Levinas's somewhat apolitical program might be taken into the political, but also an explicitly political reading of Levinas that resonates well with Sartre's work. In bringing together both thinkers accounts of disrupted existence in this way, a theoretical place is found from which to question the claim that politics and ethics are mutually exclusive.
Moments of Mindfulness
by Thich Nhat HanhThis beautifully designed gift book contains many of the best-loved inspirational quotations and passages from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Basic meditation instructions and messages of peace, love, insight, understanding, and compassion accompany two-color illustrations throughout, with blank pages for personal reflections and inspiration. Moments of Mindfulness is a perfect journal for spiritual exploration.Moments of Mindfulness is intended to be used as a personal notebook or to simply read for everyday inspiration, and to help bring mindful practices and reflection to daily life. With illustrations by Jenifer Kent, beautiful details and design, it makes a wonderful gift.