In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wellspring or Circuit?Commentary on Dewey and the Aesthetic UnconsciousnessFrank X. RyanEditor's note: This article contains material similar to a book review by the same author previously published in The Pluralist, vol. 18, no. 2, pp 114–21. The present article represents a further critical use of this material that we deem worthy of publication.in this vital and splendidly crafted work, Bethany Henning recovers a philosophy of aesthetic wisdom far (...) richer than the narrow epistemological lens dominant today. From its start, American philosophy looked beyond Europe's atomistic empiricism toward a continuity between our thought and nature's aesthetic splendor. Jonathan Edwards found beauty in the structure of being reflected in relations among ideas. For Emerson, each of us is a "transparent eyeball" in which nature's beauty fortifies our moral and spiritual agency. At the apex of this tradition is John Dewey, for whom "aesthetic experience [is] the highest mode of human experience" (Henning 55).Although aesthetic theory is usually associated with the cognitive evaluation of art, Dewey explores a broader non-reflective or unconscious dimension. Henning's appropriation of "unconscious"—the cradle of Freud's infantile id—is intentionally provocative. American culture, reflected in academic thought, has largely resisted appeals to subterranean urges and drives. In doing so, however, we perpetuate a myth of rational and moral exceptionalism masking a history of colonialism, oppression, and crass commercialism. In accepting the unconscious, European thought has taken strides to acknowledge and address such ills. Henning wonders whether America might accept "a dynamic unconscious, were it presented with an alternative mythology" (10) and finds a viable candidate in Dewey's underappreciated notion of qualitative immediacy: an "aesthetic (directly felt) connection between ourselves and [End Page 77] the world" (Henning 5). In affirming the unconscious depth of experience, this American reconfiguration welcomes "aesthetic experience back into our philosophical lives" (Henning 5).When embodied meaning supplements cognitive reflection, we come to champion "the sensuous, lived body" as "the primary reality" of qualitative immediacy—a felt aesthetic unity punctuated by "impulsions" arising from an organism's needs (Henning 69). As "a site of adaptive adjustments," Henning continues, "the body is responsive to the brink of coalescence at the point of contact with the world, in which things that are 'outside of it' belong to it" (71). "To move adeptly into aesthetic experience means to be skilled at loosening focal consciousness" so as to cultivate "the essential porousness of the world" (130).With this, the body-mind relation becomes a problem of normative aesthetics, not epistemology. The Cartesian detachment of intellect from nature perpetuated our cultural alienation from our bodies, our environments, and one another (Henning 81–84). With the re-emergence of the body, however, we can begin to acknowledge and heal this trauma.In tapping the significance of qualitative immediacy, of "having" beyond "knowing," Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious strives to recover Dewey's remarkable insight into our essential situatedness in the world. This alone establishes its importance. But Henning's book is equally ambitious in suggesting how Dewey's aesthetic understanding can(1). reconfigure the shadowy daemons of Freud's id;(2). replace the myth of American exceptionalism with authentic relationships rooted in pluralist values;(3). rehabilitate the body as an authentic vehicle of expression and communication;(4). vindicate the bold claim that all unified experience is aesthetic; and(5). identify and promote connections forged in shared human experiences.These aims are of inestimable value. I pledge to do whatever I can to defend and advance them. At the outset, however, I feel we must shore up the relationship between two different approaches to thinking about our situatedness in the world: (1) of organic beings existing in a porous world they dynamically interact with, and (2) a phenomenology of experience wherein nonreflective having is an unanalyzed totality from which thought and thing, subject and object, organism and environment, functionally emerge in what Dewey calls the pattern of inquiry. [End Page 78]The general consensus that Dewey failed to reconcile these two approaches—of existence with experience—was dubbed the "deep crack" in Dewey's thought, by Richard Bernstein in 1961. Bernstein laments Dewey's being caught between (1... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John DeweyFrank X. RyanJames A. Good A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. xxx + 288 pp.Among the revelations of Dewey's rare moments of autobiographical reflection, none has generated more curiosity and investigative zeal than his 1930 claim to have (...) "drifted" from Hegel in the decade following his move from Michigan to Chicago in 1894. Beginning with Morton White's Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism (1943), biographers have divided on the question of whether Dewey's later philosophy was more strongly influenced by William James's experimental psychology or F. J. E. Woodbridge's Aristotelian naturalism. Despite their differences, both approaches are essentially empirical and realistic, and thus the majority of sympathetic commentators have agreed that Dewey was a realist, albeit of a decidedly unorthodox stripe. For them the notion that Dewey retained any significant commitment to idealism, given its virtual eradication at the beginning of the twentieth century, would damage his influence and legacy.It has been something of a puzzle, accordingly, that in the same autobiographical essay Dewey alludes to a "permanent Hegelian deposit." For years Richard Rorty has claimed this differentiates a "good" Dewey committed to "social flourishing" from a "bad" Dewey prone to metaphysical dalliance. But the first systematic inquiry into Dewey's enduring Hegelianism is John R. Shook's Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000). Shook argues convincingly that Dewey never abandoned idealism, but rather transformed it into an experimental naturalism by doing away with both "mind-stuff" and equally noxious "things-in-themselves." In many ways James Good's A Search for Unity in Diversity is a bookend to Shook's project, though Good further differentiates Anglo-American Neo-Hegelianism from Hegel himself. According to Good, Dewey endorsed a Humanistic/Historicist interpretation of Hegel rooted in the reciprocal engagement of individuals and societies, rather than the supernatural and architectonic absolute championed by Neo-Hegelians such as T. H. Green, and F. H. Bradley. With [End Page 216] top-notch scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail, A Search for Unity in Diversity is both an excellent intellectual biography and a penetrating plea for a radical reinterpretation of Dewey's contribution to philosophy. I'll briefly sketch the historical account before addressing the more controversial claims about the "permanent Hegelian deposit."Even readers familiar with the half-dozen book-length treatments of Dewey's development will find this account refreshing and informative. Good's professional credentials as a historian shine as he recreates the rough and bustling Burlington of Dewey's youth. In the 1870s, German idealism was considered the epitome of political liberalism and progressive education, and Dewey's journey toward the "inclusive philosophical idea" of the social began in an environment swirling with the crosscurrents of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. At the White Street Congregational Church, Lewis Barstow preached a liberal orthodoxy that was essentially "man-building" (102), and Good presents a convincing case for the likelihood that even in boyhood Dewey never viewed God as an aloof law-giver or cosmic architect, but as a process unifying the individual and the social within a natural world of unlimited potential. At the University of Vermont Dewey encountered a struggling rural college transformed into the first bastion of American transcendentalism by James Marsh, who inspired a "Burlington philosophy" that rejected atomistic empiricism for a holistic integrity of knowing and doing, facts and values, and pure and practical reasons (57–59).In noting the influence of the "St. Louis Hegelians" upon Dewey, most biographers have focused on W. T. Harris, the prominent founder of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy who published Dewey's earliest submissions and offered encouragement that led to his pursuit of graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Good augments this familiar tale with fascinating depictions of equally influential yet lesser-known Hegelians such as H. C. Brokmeyer, Denton Snider, and Thomas Davidson. At a time when European Hegelianism was polarized between, on the one hand, reactionary apologists for traditional Christianity and Prussian militarism and, on the other, radical... (shrink)

XXX. An epitaph from Aphrodisias and the calendar of the province of Asia in Ihe Byzantine Empire. The document dates very precisely four events ranging from 521 to 551. The months are indicated by numbers, a peculiarity which erroneous attempts have been made to relate to the Julian Calendar. The calendar of the province of Asia is the only one that allows a concordance to be made here between the day of the month and the day of the week. Late (...) inscriptions from other cities in Asia Minor show that this provincial calendar remained in use until the end of Antiquity. XXXI. An epitaph from Adrianople under Justin II. The deceased Komentiolos, who belonged to the Great Church in Constantinople, was at the same time a tent-maker, παπυλιωνάριος (name of a new profession). The names of Justin II and Caesar Tiberius have already been identifîed in the date of death ; to them that of the empress Sophia has been erroneously added. The usual chronological formula in fact requires a post-consular date, followed by the number 9, corresponding to the years 575-577. XXXII. "How far? As far as here." Several pagan epitaphs comment ironically on the human career, answering the question "How far?" with "As far as here." Christians did not find this manifestation of popular wisdom displeasing, and it is equally well attested in Christian inscriptions in Northern Syria. (shrink)

Let (M, X) ⊨ ACA₀ be such that P X, the collection of all unbounded sets in X, admits a definable complete ultrafilter and let T be a theory extending first order arithmetic coded in X such that M thinks T is consistent. We prove that there is an end-extension N ⊨ T of M such that the subsets of M coded in N are precisely those in X. As a special case we get that any Scott set with a (...) definable ultrafilter coding a consistent theory T extending first order arithmetic is the standard system of a recursively saturated model of T. (shrink)

The closing chapters of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics x are regularly described as “puzzling,” “extremely abrupt,” “awkward,” or “surprising” to readers. Whereas the previous nine books described—sometimes in lavish detail—the multifold ethical virtues of an embodied person situated within communities of family, friends, and fellow-citizens, NE x 6-8 extol the rarified, god-like and solitary existence of a sophos or sage (1179a32). The ethical virtues that take up approximately the first half of the Ethics describe moral exempla who experience fear fighting for (...) their communities, are sensitive to the esteem and recognition of others, and feel love for a desire to live together with a wide variety of kinds of friends. Such good people take pleasure in prudently expending sums to improve their communities—communities in which they exchange goods and participate in ruling and being ruled in a cooperative fashion. The exemplum of x 7-8, by contrast, is a person whose activity consists almost entirely in exercising his or her mind (nous)—a part of one’s soul that Aristotle explicitly notes is disconnected from human emotions and that can be exercised, insofar as one as wise, in a wholly solitary fashion (1178a15-16, a19-20; 1177a33-34). Although Aristotle’s claim that a “life in accord with the mind” is best and most pleasant (1178a6-7) may jar the intuitions of many people—he himself endorses Anaxagoras’ claim that the happy person will appear as “someone who is absurd” (atopos, 1179a15) to most people—it is false to claim that his conclusions in NE x 6-8 are unexpected or unanticipated, or that the text is in any way discontinuous with what precedes it. The Nicomachean Ethics exhibits aspects of ring-composition both within the work as a whole and within book 10. In NE i 5 Aristotle introduces his rendition of a trope that he inherits (most immediately) from Plato, viz. that the problem of the good can be considered like a contest between three different kinds of life—the life of enjoyment (apolaustikos), the life of politics (politikos), and the life of contemplation (theôrêtikos). NE x 6-8 returns to that contest, rendering a verdict about which life takes first, second, and third place. As the opening lines of NE x 6 note, that verdict presupposes central claims articulated between the first and last books of the Ethics, specifically about the nature of the virtues, the nature of friendship, and the nature of pleasure. NE i 5 and x 6-8 thus serve as “bookends” which encase arguments and proposition located between them. Book 10 exhibits a similar ring-composition. NE x opens with methodological reflection on the gap between the theoretical positions that thinkers articulate and the way they live their lives (especially in the case of scolds who simultaneously criticize pleasure on a scientific level but seek it on a practical level [1172a33-b8]). Chapter 8 concludes with an explicit reiteration of the methodological point, a reiteration that underscores how Aristotle’s treatment of the contest of lives incorporates central aspects of the discussion of pleasure in NE x 1-5. Aristotle’s reiteration of the problem of a gap between theory and practice also draws attention to the centrality of his treatment of pleasure in his adjudication of the three lives. Although the life of pleasure takes a distant third in the contest of lives, the contemplative life wins the contest in part because it itself is the most pleasant form of life. The central philosophical problem looming behind Aristotle’s treatment of the contest of lives concerns the relationship between the notion of activity (energeia) and the notion of a way of life (bios). In the last four decades, much of the scholarship on NE x 6-8 has sought to address the question of what activities a certain way of life includes or excludes. “Monistic” or “dominant” end interpretations of the best life have viewed it as including only contemplative activities whereas “inclusivist” end interpretations of the best life have viewed it as including non-contemplative activities. Although this chapter largely side-steps this debate—partially because there are ample recent first-rate introductory treatments of the debate, partially because I have addressed the question elsewhere in my own writing —I argue that focusing solely on the contest between the two best ways of life overshadows the way that Aristotle incorporates insights from the third way of life into the best way of life. Although the notion of a contest among different kinds of lives presupposes that the lives are mutually exclusive, Aristotle has no problem saying that the contemplative life trumps the life of pleasure because the contemplative life is more pleasant. I proceed in two parts. In the first part I examine what I will call the “outer” ring of the Ethics, namely the relationship between the contest of lives proposed in NE i 5 and its overall resolution in x 6-8. I show how i 5 and x 6 establish the framework for the contest, how x 7 adjudicates that contest in large part by relying upon premises articulated in the interim between books 1 and 10, and how x 6 and x 8 determine the second and third place positions in the contest. In the second part I focus on what I will call the “inner” ring of NE x. More than half of NE x struggles with the nature of pleasure, its role in a happy life, and the methodological problems of examining pleasure within a practical science. I show how x 1 and x 8 are “bookends” that underscore the methodological problem of examining pleasure and how the contest of lives draws upon the proximate conclusions concerning the nature of pleasure in NE x 1-5. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)

Let HA be Heyting's arithmetic, and let CS denote the conjunction of Kreisel's axioms for the creative subject: \begin{eqnarray*} {\rm CS}_1.&&\quad \,\forall\, x (\qed_x A \vee \; \neg \qed_x A)\; ,\nn {\rm CS}_2. &&\quad \,\forall\, x (\qed_x A\to A)\; ,\nn {\rm CS}_3^{\rm S}. &&\quad A\to\,\exists\, x \qed_x A\; ,\nn {\rm CS}_4.&&\quad \,\forall\, x\,\forall\, y (\qed_x A & y \ge x\to\qed_y A)\; .\nn \end{eqnarray*} It is shown that the theory HA + CS with the induction schema restricted to arithmetical (i.e. not (...) containing $\qed$ ) formulas is conservative over HA. (shrink)

Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethnics of Self Harm By Gavin J. Fairbairn Routledge, 1995. Pp. xxx. ISBN 415?10606. £12.95(pbk). Religious Transformation in Western Society. The End of Happiness By Harvie Ferguson, Routledge, 1992. Pp. xvi + 269. ISBN 0?415?02574?5. £XX.xx. Feminism and the Self: The Web of Identity By Morwenna Griffiths Routledge, 1995. Pp. 191. ISBN 0?415?09821?1. £12.99 (pbk). Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity. A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum Edited by J.J. Macintosh and H. A. Meynell University of Calgary (...) Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 304. CAN$27.95. The Shape of Space (second edition) By Graham Nerlich Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0?521?45645?2. Logical Learning Theory: A Human Teleology and its Empirical Support By Joseph F. Rychlak University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. 387. ISBN 0?8032?3904?1. £32.95 Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief By Alan P.F. Sell University of Wales Press, 1995. Pp. x + 338. (shrink)

In this paper, we take a critical discourse analytic approach to short notes written at the end of exam papers by Iranian students asking for a higher score. Such notes are sometimes written when the student has a feeling that they might fail the exam as a result of not providing satisfactory answers to questions. We consider this to be a manipulative strategy employed by these students to control their professors. Manipulation, however, is often considered an illegitimate source of power (...) abuse by people having the higher hand in unequal power relations [Van Dijk, T.A.. Discourse and manipulation. Discourse & Society, 17, 359–383]. The present paper argues for a new understanding of this important concept in the critical discourse analysis tradition by highlighting manipulative strategies used by less powerful people. The analysis of 71 such notes written by students in two Iranian universities suggests that the students, as people in a lower position of power, resorted to certain manipulative strategies to exert influence on professors, people in a higher position of power. Four of the most frequent strategies identified in the data will be discussed: tapping into religious beliefs; highlighting personal and social problems as causes for inability to prepare for the exam; referring to negative consequences for failing the exam, and therefore tapping into the examiner's conscience; and resorting to honorific terms to address the examiner. This study would have implications for application of CDA in Higher Education. (shrink)

This is a welcome book, for it challenges intelligently the conventional view that Proust's novel is strictly a narrative of metaphor and memory. Nicola Luckhurst's project here is to demonstrate that, with its profoundly legislative impulses and knowledge‐seeking, theory‐laden tone, A la recherche du temps perdu is as much about hypothesis, experiment, and scientific law making as about nostalgia and reminiscence.The entry point for Luckhurst's discussion is a perceptive chapter on Proust's maxims, those abundant sententiae that on the one hand (...) link him to the moralistic tradition of La Bruyère and La Rochefoucauld and on the other demonstrate his need to generate laws that explain behavior and experience. She offers chapters on the novelist's use of hypothesis, modeling, and retroduction; the last notion is especially revelatory in a Proustian context. Borrowing from Aristotle, the philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce coined the term “retroduction” to describe a type of inference that contains within itself the nascent theory, the hypothesis, and the data being examined. Later Norwood Hanson spoke of the simultaneous “dawning of an aspect and a dawning of an explanation [that] both suggest what to look for next” . Applied to A la recherche, retroduction aptly describes the main structure of cognition in Proust: intuitions about a singulative event and hypotheses about that event's relationship to a broader law or theory are always co‐present, with Proust's narrator representing both the datum being examined and the voice speculating on the resulting science.Chapters 5, 6, and 7 focus in large part on the narrative's fascination with male and female homosexuality and assess the models and theories applied to each. The botanical analogy for male homosexuality has of course been widely discussed. But with the help of Antoine Compagnon's notes to Sodome et Gomorrhe , Luckhurst provides a convincing account of the impact made on Proust by the reading of Darwin, Maurice Maeterlinck's L'intelligence des fleurs, various essays by Jules Michelet, the zoologist/embryologist Elie Metchnikoff's Etudes sur la nature humaine: Essai de philosophie optimiste, and Remy de Gourmont's Physique de l'amour. However, as she notes, lesbianism in Proust's novel is an epistemological dead end. No model can account for it, and Proust's narrative, in Albertine disparue, becomes bogged down and “embalmed.” Here, Luckhurst's own narrative loses momentum because of the space it devotes to this nonsignificance.But the central, and persuasive, argument of this study concerns the converging attempts within the scientific and literary communities of the early twentieth century to narrate and conceptualize creativity. The tendency in literature toward what David S. Luft has called “essayism”—so clear cut in Proust—affected a generation of writers convinced that theory and story must converge, that “the tasks of philosophy, literature and cultural criticism” had come together . In parallel, within the scientific community, intuition, analogy, and a kind of aesthetic sense were becoming acknowledged methodological tools, especially in the work of the French mathematician Henri Poincaré, whose speculations on the role of the unconscious in cognition closely parallel those of Proust . Luckhurst's study demonstrates above all that underlying Proust's adamant distinctions between the particular and the general, between the intuitive/instinctive and the intellectual, is a deep esteem for science and an attraction to its laws. Metaphor itself, the Proustian cognitive device par excellence, must in his own words be exact enough to create a relationship “analogous in the artistic world to the unique relationship of the law of causality in the scientific world.” It is the empowerment offered Proust by scientific truth that this study brings so nicely into focus. (shrink)

前 言 Preface 一、本书的缘起与性质 I. Origin and Nature of This Work 本书是《老-杨创世纪宇宙观》（Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology）系列学术著作的核心典籍诠释本。《道德经》八十一章，是老子在约两千五百年前凝练宇宙生成智慧的不朽文本。本书以老-杨创世纪宇宙观为诠释框架，对每一章进行系统性的中英双语诠释，尝试在古典 道家哲学与现代科学之间建立深层的概念桥梁。 This volume is the core classical commentary text of the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (《老-杨创世纪宇宙观》) academic series. The eighty-one chapters of the Dao De Jing constitute Laozi's immortal condensation of cosmic generative wisdom, composed approximately 2,500 years ago. Using the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology as interpretive framework, this book provides systematic bilingual Chinese-English commentary for each chapter, constructing deep conceptual bridges between classical Daoist philosophy and modern science. 老-杨创世纪宇宙观的核心命题是：道生一（太阳系）、一生二（地球）、二生三（日-月-地协同系统）、三生万物（生命、生态系统、人类文明）。这一宇宙生成序列，不仅是对《道德经》第四十二章「道生一，一生二，二 生三，三生万物」的字面诠释，更是将现代天文学、地球科学、生态学与热力学融入其中的系统性宇宙哲学重建。 (...) The core proposition of the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology is: Dao generates One (Solar System), One generates Two (Earth), Two generates Three (Sun-Moon-Earth triadic cooperative system), Three generates all things (life, ecosystems, human civilization). This cosmic generative sequence is not only a literal interpretation of Chapter 42's 'Dao generates One, One generates Two, Two generates Three, Three generates all things,' but a systematic philosophical reconstruction integrating modern astronomy, Earth science, ecology, and thermodynamics. 二、诠释的核心框架 II. Core Interpretive Framework 本书的诠释贯穿三个相互关联的核心分析工具：其一，欲望放大因子（DAF，Desire Amplification Factor）——描述社会系统中欲望被技术、制度与文化机制系统性放大的动力学；其二，宇宙约束函数（CCF，Cosmic Constraint Function）——描述地球生成系统承载能力的动态边界，任何持续超越此边界的文明都将面临系统性的强制修正；其三，三层次贪婪正反馈模型（3L-GFM，Three-Level Greedy Positive-Feedback Model）——描述个体、社会与文明三个层次的贪婪欲望正反馈螺旋及其与CCF的系统性冲突。 The commentary throughout this book is guided by three interrelated core analytical instruments: first, the Desire Amplification Factor (DAF) — describing the dynamics by which desire in social systems is systematically amplified through technological, institutional, and cultural mechanisms; second, the Cosmic Constraint Function (CCF) — describing the dynamic boundary of Earth's generative system's carrying capacity, where any civilization persistently exceeding this boundary will face systemic forced correction; third, the Three-Level Greedy Positive-Feedback Model (3L-GFM) — describing the positive-feedback spiral of greedy desire at individual, social, and civilizational levels and its systemic conflict with the CCF. 在科学理论层面，本书的诠释广泛援引普里高津（Ilya Prigogine）的耗散结构理论、复杂系统科学、系统动力学、生态系统科学、热力学定律与现代宇宙学，将《道德经》的哲学洞见置于当代科学语境之中，揭示老子在两千五百年前以直觉感知到的宇宙生成规律，与现代 科学在各个层面上的深刻汇聚。 At the level of scientific theory, the commentary extensively draws upon Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structure theory, complexity science, systems dynamics, ecosystem science, thermodynamic laws, and modern cosmology, situating the philosophical insights of the Dao De Jing within the contemporary scientific context and revealing the profound convergence between the cosmic generative laws Laozi intuited 2,500 years ago and modern science across multiple domains. 三、自然文明的核心命题 III. The Core Proposition of Natural Civilization 贯穿本书诠释的最核心文明论命题是：人类文明正在经历第四次觉醒的历史性时刻——走出人类中心主义（anthropocentrism），回归宇宙生成主义（cosmic generativism）。前三次觉醒分别是：走出地心说的宇宙观觉醒（哥白尼革命）、走出物种固定论的生命观觉醒（达尔文革命）、走出线性历史观的时间觉醒（地质学与宇宙学革命）。第四次觉醒要求文明从「控制 自然」转向「协调自然」，从「无限扩张」转向「长期平衡」，从「文明凌驾地球」转向「文明重新融入宇宙生成秩序」。 The most central civilizational proposition threading through this volume's commentary is: human civilization is at a historic moment of fourth great awakening — moving beyond anthropocentrism and returning to cosmic generativism. The three preceding awakenings were: the cosmological awakening beyond geocentrism (Copernican revolution); the biological awakening beyond species fixism (Darwinian revolution); the temporal awakening beyond linear history (geological and cosmological revolution). The fourth awakening requires civilization to shift from 'controlling nature' toward 'coordinating with nature'; from 'limitless expansion' toward 'long-term equilibrium'; from 'civilization transcending Earth' toward 'civilization reintegrating into the cosmic generative order.' 自然文明（Natural Civilization）的最高原则，在《道德经》第八十一章中得到了最简洁的表达：「天之道，利而不害；圣人之道，为而不争。」宇宙生成秩序通过养育而非掠夺来运作；最高的文明智慧通过生成协调而非零和竞争来 实现文明目标。这两句话，是老子2500年宇宙哲学沉思的最终结语，也是本书诠释的精神归宗。 The highest principle of Natural Civilization (自然文明) receives its most concise expression in Chapter 81 of the Dao De Jing: 'The way of Heaven benefits without harming; the way of the sage acts without contending.' The cosmic generative order operates through nurturing rather than predation; the highest civilizational wisdom achieves civilizational goals through generative coordination rather than zero-sum competition. These two sentences are the final words of Laozi's 2,500-year cosmic philosophical contemplation, and the spiritual homecoming of this volume's commentary. 四、体例说明 IV. Notes on Format 本书每章的结构分为四个部分：【章号与章名】（中英对照）；【原文】（王弼版《道德经》汉字原文）；【英译】（基于哲学精确性的现代英语翻译）；【老-杨诠释】（老-杨创世纪宇宙观框架下的中英双语系统诠释）。诠 释部分以金色边框装饰，每章包含两个主要诠释节，每节以中英双语标题开头，随后为对应的中英文正文。 Each chapter in this book is structured in four parts: chapter number and title (Chinese-English bilingual); original text (Chinese text of the Wang Bi recension of the Dao De Jing); English translation (modern English translation based on philosophical precision); Lao-Yang Interpretation (systematic bilingual Chinese-English commentary within the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology framework). The commentary section is decorated with a gold border; each chapter contains two primary commentary subsections, each beginning with a bilingual heading followed by corresponding Chinese and English body text. 杨兴平 荆楚冲小杨子湖畔 2026年 / Charles X. Yang. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Note From A Narcissist (Amores 1.11) OVID (Translated by Caleb M. X. Dance) Yoohoo! Yes! You! You do her hair. Right? Not like the one who does her legs or nails, right? You know where she goes, right? And you can let her know, like before, to rush those lovely toes— Oh! I mean her hair, to me. Oh, you’ve always been a friend! Right! Take this little (...) note to her tomor— Oh! and hand it to her. Understand? No delay! You’ve got a heart, right? You might be softer than you think and not as “plain Jane” as you think? I think you’ve felt a bit of love, no? You see it in me too, no? So— anyway, if she wants to know what I’m thinking, tell her I can’t wait to hold her close tonight. Right! Enough. My note will say the rest. Oh, it’s late! I’m blabbing. Go! No! Wait! Catch her in a good mood—when she’s free. Oh! but make her read it right away. Watch her eyes! And her face, reading. I mean as she reads. Oh, you learn a lot, even from dumb faces. Don’t be slow! When she’s read it, arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 make her write right back. Lots. Tell her! It’s the worst when every page is filled with loads of empty space. She should pack them in—lines—so eyes linger on words in the margins. My eyes! No! Wait! Tell her not to tire fingers writing long. Let her only write: “Come!” No delay—I’ll praise these letters right away. I’ll dedicate them to... oh... you know, Lady Love herself, and I’ll note, “To Love: Ovid offers up these loyal saviors— you who just were scraps of paper.” 154 note from a narcissist... (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected second eBook edition of this work. Readers are asked to use this edition.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly/technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The printed edition was released on September 1, (...) 2021 and is now available through all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under the following ISBN: 978-0-578-88646-6¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶Commendations of this work, from the back cover of the published edition:¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶ “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶ The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to the philosophy of science. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive volume of 885 pages has been published as a free open access eBook. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of problems that have concerned philosophers of science as well as epistemologists. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German physicist and philosopher of science Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The principal objective of the study is to identify the unavoidable limitations of the conceptual frameworks in terms of which knowledge, reference, and meaning are possible. The book establishes a bridge between, on the one hand, a model of philosophy as a science — i.e., rigorous proof-based scientific philosophy — and, on the other, the philosophy of science.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The study develops a logically compelling method that enables us both to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden — the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless — and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions which lie at the heart of major problems of philosophy of science and epistemology. ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶With these ends in view, individual chapters are devoted to a critique of a wide range of fundamental concepts studied by philosophy of science, among them, space, time, space-time, causality, the problem of discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics, the role of the observer, the perturbation theory of measurement, indeterminacy and uncertainty, complementarity, the ontological status of physical reality, and others.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The study culminates in a group of chapters devoted to special and general relativity and quantum theory. In these concluding chapters the purpose is to show the extent to which both relativity physics and quantum theory bear out results that have been reached in a logically compelling manner wholly by means of the approach to conceptual analysis developed in the book.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a logically self-validating method that at last provides provable and constructive solutions to a significant number of major philosophical problems in philosophy of science and epistemology. Bartlett is the author or editor of more than 20 books and numerous papers. (shrink)

摘要：人类中心主义——即人类将自身视为宇宙价值与意义中心的深层假设——是当代文明危机的共同认知根源。本文综合杨兴平在PhilArchive发表的系列研究，系统梳理了人类中心主义的三重机制（神学幻觉、政 治军事幻觉、经济生态幻觉），揭示其如何驱动宗教冲突、战争、生态崩溃与文明自毁。以老-杨创世纪宇宙观为理论基础，本文提出从"人类中心"向"道中心"的范式跃迁，即回 归宇宙秩序链（道→一→二→三→万物），实现天人合一的自然文明。 Abstract: Anthropocentrism — the deep assumption that humanity is the teleological center of cosmic value — is the shared cognitive root of contemporary civilizational crisis. This paper synthesizes Charles X. Yang's PhilArchive corpus to map its three-layer mechanism (theological illusion, political-military illusion, economic-ecological illusion), showing how it drives religious conflict, war, ecological collapse, and civilizational self-destruction. Grounded in the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology, it proposes a paradigm shift from 'human-centeredness' to 'Dao-centeredness' — a return to the cosmic generative chain (Dao (...) → One → Two → Three → All Things), realizing the Natural Civilization of Heaven-Humanity Unity. (shrink)

A remarkable feature of the philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory has been that most philosophers agree there is nothing inherently problematic about conspiracy theories (AKA the thesis of particularism). Recent work, however, has challenged this consensus view, arguing that there really is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorising (AKA generalism). Are particularism and generalism incompatible? By looking at just how much particularists and generalists might have to give away to make their theoretical viewpoints compatible, I will argue that particularists (...) can accept many of the concerns that motivate generalism because generalism can never be about ‘all’ conspiracy theories without being either ahistorical or apolitical. In the end generalist critiques are best seen as useful guidelines or considerations for the appraising of particular conspiracy theories. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 譚傑志(Joseph Tham) 教授在其 “Bioethics: Cross-Cultural Explorations”(Tham 2022, 13) —文中回顧了生命倫理學在發展過程中的世俗化歷程、聯合國教科文組織生命倫理學和人權主席(UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights) 專案“生命倫理學、多元文化和宗教”在過去12年中的開展情況、以及最近這些年在生命倫理學領域中涉及文化多元性較為突出的問題。譚教授為生命倫理學領域中跨文化交流做出了卓越的貢獻，特別是其擔任上述項目負責人 以來。生命倫理學領域中的很多主題，如代孕、墮胎、基因編輯等，既複雜乂敏感；可以想像，推動生命倫理學領域中跨文化交流是一件富挑戰的事情。正如譚教授所言：“……在不同宗教之間尋求共識或思想融合是一個相當宏 大，甚至有些不現實的目標。”儘管如此，譚教授依然以極大的耐心和熱情通過改進專案中的對話機制，不斷地推動跨文化交流取得實質性進展和一系列學術成果。在這個過程中，如何讓不同文化和宗教背景的學者就某個主題進 行有意義的對話成為關鍵。譚教授探索出的“主旨論文+跨文化回應”模式，即一位元學者基於自身的文化或宗教背景撰寫針對特定主題的主旨論文，由另一位不同文化背景的學者撰寫回應論文，為不同的文化和宗教搭建了對話 的橋樑。(撮要取自內文首段) I am grateful for Professor Joseph Tham's efforts to improve cross-cultural dialogue on bioethics by continually updating the dialogue mechanisms in the “Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion Project,” conducted by the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights. The dialogue helps moral strangers to discuss their local cultures and to enter and learn about (...) other cultures and religions. Through this process, moral strangers may find that they hold similar values. The dialogues have also shown us the importance of cross-culture differences. Although we can foster consensus or convergence on some issues, it should be noted that the differences in cultures and religions are not the second-best option when agreement cannot be reached. Such differences constitute the cultural diversity of the world and have their own values. Respecting these differences is just as important as seeking consensus or convergence. (shrink)

La conoscenza che abbiamo del testo del Libellus ad Leonem X, noto anche come De Officio Pontificis ad Leonem X, redatto dai camaldolesi veneziani Tommaso Giustiniani e Vincenzo Querini , ruota intorno al codice che “extabat MS in Bibliotheca Monasterii S. Mariae Carcerum, nunc in Bibliotheca S. Michaelis Muriani”1 identificabile con il manoscritto Muraniano 1071, oggi conservato presso la Biblioteca del Monastero di Camaldoli.2 Si tratta del codice che è stato utilizzato, secondo quanto dichiarato dallo stesso Mittarelli,3 dai camaldolesi Giovanni (...) Benedetto Mittarelli e Anselmo Costadoni 4 per la loro edizione negli Annales Camaldulenses.5 Vi è una notazione .. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 道德生物增強一開始是某些理論家為了回應生物保守主義者對人類增強計劃的批評而提出的一個構想，後來被發展為一項實質性倡議，即通過直接調控人腦來改進人們的道德行為。通過批判性地審視這項倡議的基本預設，本文旨 在表明，只要我們恰當地理解了人類認知和人類道德的本質，我們就不可能僅僅通過對人腦進行神經生物學干預來增強人類道德，因此，道德生物增強倡議不僅簡單化了我們對道德及其在人類生活中的地位的深思熟慮的理解，而 且因其對一種極端的還原主義的承諾而是誤導性的。 The concept of moral bioenhancement was initially proposed by theorists in response to bioconservative critiques of the human enhancement project; later, it was advanced as the basis for an initiative to improve human beings’ moral behaviour by directly regulating the human brain. By critically examining the assumptions of this initiative, this article aims to show that it is impossible to enhance human morality merely through neurobiological intervention in (...) the human brain, given the intrinsic nature of human cognition and human morality. Therefore, the moral bioenhancement initiative not only simplifies our understanding of morality and its position in human life but is also misleading, due to its commitment to an extreme version of reductionism. (shrink)

Based on Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology, this study proposes a rigorous law of hierarchical cosmic evolution: Human follows Earth; Earth follows Heaven; Heaven follows Dao; Dao follows Nature, and establishes the physical energy and feedback chain of Dao generates One (the Sun), One generates Two (the Earth), Two generates Three (the Moon), Three generates all things. -/- The central argument of this paper is that the cyclical systemic collapses and disasters of Chinese civilization over the past two millennia (such as the (...) fall of the Ming dynasty and the Great Leap Forward famine) are essentially the result of a subjectivist philosophy centered on the “sage,” which forcibly reversed the natural flow of energy and information. By attempting to replace “Human follows Earth (empirical physical reality)” with “Human follows Self (subjective will),” it induced a fatal form of “Sage Entropy” within the civilizational system. -/- The study deconstructs Zhang Zai’s clan-based cosmology and Wang Yangming’s “Mind-ism virus,” arguing that they reduced the grand galactic logic into humble ethical dogma, thereby severing civilization’s connection to the 1-2-3 physical constant system. The paper further analyzes Maoism as a radicalized manifestation of “Sage Entropy,” demonstrating that the doctrine “Man must conquer Nature” constitutes, in essence, a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the energetic limits of photosynthesis. This subjective tampering with natural hierarchy led to feedback deadlocks within the bureaucratic system and social heat death. -/- In response to this civilizational pathology, the paper proposes a restart path grounded in the Way of Nature: repositioning humanity at the end of the Earth–Heaven–Dao chain through cognitive reset; replacing “standard answers” with “experimental friction” in educational reform to extinguish the ghost of subjectivism; and constructing a “Digital Heavenly Dao” algorithm aligned with galactic nonlinear logic. -/- The study predicts that civilization’s redemption does not lie in seeking a new sage-king, but in acknowledging the humility of human will and reconnecting to the universe’s negentropic flow. Only by following the 1-2-3 Genesis Law can Chinese civilization transcend the cognitive bottleneck of the 21st century and enter the era of galactic evolution. (shrink)

2025年，福山教授与马加洛尼合著的《为民主交付成果：为何结果至关重要》一文在《民主期刊》发表，标志着他思想历程中一个具有实质意义的自我修正时刻。文章承认：民主体制的合法性越来越依赖于其可见的治理绩效 ——基础设施、安全、经济机会——而非其制度形式本身；民主国家正面临"否决政治"的结构性痼疾，即制度性否决权相互阻塞，使得即便面对迫切的社会需求，治理也变得瘫痪；全球民主衰退并非暂时 的浪潮，而是具有深层结构根源的危机。 In 2025, Professor Fukuyama's co-authored article "Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter" (Journal of Democracy, April 2025) marks a substantively self-correcting moment in his intellectual trajectory. The article concedes: that democratic legitimacy increasingly depends on visible governance performance — infrastructure, security, economic opportunity — rather than institutional form alone; that democracies suffer from a structural pathology of "vetocracy," in which overlapping institutional veto points paralyze governance even in the face of urgent social needs; and that global democratic decline is (...) not a temporary wave but a crisis with deep structural roots. 这些承认是可敬的。自1989年《历史的终结？》以来，福山以民主作为人类政治进化终点的论断主导了西方政治哲学的基调数十年。如今他承认这一终点论遭遇了结构性挑战，需要以"交付能力"来重 新为民主的合法性奠基，这在认识论上是诚实的，需要勇气。 These concessions are commendable. Since the 1989 "End of History?" article, Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democracy represents the terminus of human political evolution has set the dominant tone of Western political philosophy for decades. That he now acknowledges this endpoint thesis faces structural challenges — and seeks to re-ground democratic legitimacy in "delivery capacity" — is epistemically honest and requires intellectual courage. 然而，承认病症不等于找到病根。福山的自我修正是在民主制度内部进行的修补，而非对驱动民主危机的认知前提本身展开反思。这正是其新论述的根本局限所在。 However, acknowledging the symptom is not the same as identifying the disease. Fukuyama's self-correction is a repair conducted within the framework of democratic institutions — not a reflection on the cognitive premises that drive the democratic crisis itself. This is the fundamental limitation of his new account. -/- 福山教授的学术诚实值得尊重。承认民主的局限性，在西方主流政治哲学界，仍需要相当的勇气。然而，诚实地承认病症，与正确地诊断病根，是两件不同的事。 Professor Fukuyama's intellectual honesty deserves respect. Acknowledging the limitations of democracy, within mainstream Western political philosophy, still requires considerable courage. However, honestly acknowledging the symptom and correctly diagnosing the root cause are two different things. 老子说："知人者智，自知者明；胜人者有力，自胜者强。"福山胜过了许多比他更顽固地捍卫民主终结论的同行，这是智；但他尚未真正自知——未能认识到他的整个政治哲学框架本身所嵌套的人类中心 主义认知结构，这一认知结构才是民主危机与文明危机的共同认知根源。 Laozi says: "Knowing others is wisdom; knowing oneself is enlightenment. Overcoming others takes force; overcoming oneself takes strength." Fukuyama has overcome many peers who more stubbornly defend democratic finalism — that is wisdom. But he has not yet achieved self-knowledge: he has not recognized that the anthropocentric cognitive structure within which his entire political philosophy is nested is the common cognitive root of both the democratic crisis and the civilizational crisis. 真正的政治哲学革命不是从选举民主到治理绩效民主的修正，而是从人造秩序的政治哲学向自然秩序的文明哲学的范式转变。这一转变的核心命题是：人类政治制度的合法性最终根植于其与宇宙自然秩序的对齐程度，而非其与人 类欲望的对齐程度。道法自然，非民主法自然。 The genuine revolution in political philosophy is not the correction from electoral democracy to performance democracy, but the paradigm shift from the political philosophy of artificial order to the civilizational philosophy of natural order. The core proposition of this shift is: the legitimacy of human political institutions is ultimately rooted in the degree of their alignment with the cosmic natural order — not in their alignment with human desires. The Dao follows Nature; democracy does not. 福山问的是：民主能交付什么？自然文明问的是：人类文明能与什么对齐？前者是在过时的操作系统内优化用户体验；后者是安装一个与宇宙操作系统兼容的新操作系统。这是两个不同量级的思想运动，也是当代人类文明所面临 的真正选择。 Fukuyama asks: what can democracy deliver? Natural Civilization asks: what can human civilization align with? The former is optimizing user experience within an obsolete operating system; the latter is installing a new OS compatible with the Universal Operating System. These are intellectual movements of two different orders of magnitude — and the genuine choice that contemporary human civilization faces. (shrink)

Where does the university's way lie? Not in illuminating virtue, not in renewing the people — those are the Confucian way. The university's genuine way is the natural way: anchoring knowledge in natural reality (humanity follows Earth), validating truth through open community (Earth follows Heaven), filtering knowledge through historical thermodynamics (Heaven follows the Dao), and taking nature itself as the ultimate arbiter (the Dao follows what is naturally so). From knowledge to wisdom is the university's only Dao. Artificial intelligence has (...) fundamentally terminated the university's three-century institutional marriage with knowledge. When AlphaFold solved in weeks a protein-folding problem that eluded biologists for half a century, when AI tutors offer personalized high-quality teaching at near-zero marginal cost — the university's knowledge production and teaching functions have been structurally assumed by AI. This is not a distant warning but a present fact. Yet this assumption is not the university's end but its historical liberation. The ontological chasm AI can never cross — from knowledge to wisdom — requires the existential commitment of finite beings: the temporal anxiety of facing death, the judgment forged through embodied suffering, the existential wager paid in flesh (Barry Marshall swallowing H. pylori is the most dramatic historical proof). Algorithms can simulate uncertainty but cannot experience embodied anxiety; can track long-horizon consequences but cannot bear existential cost. This book diagnoses the university's triple crisis: functional (AI assumes the knowledge factory), institutional (the prestige machine distorts truth-seeking with citation currency), and civilizational (STEM hegemony and humanities amputation mass-produce the graduates AI replaces most easily). It shows that academic fabrication in Chinese universities is not moral failure but thermodynamic inevitability — Epistemic Mimicry — when the system severs the Dao-follows-Nature feedback loop. Dao-Based Education is the civilizational solution. Its core pedagogy is the Oscillation Model: knowledge accumulation (daily acquisition) as the empirical anchor of humanity-follows-Earth, and at paradigm thresholds, epistemological subtraction space (daily relinquishment) forces ontological questioning — even in quantum mechanics, rigorous derivation must be layered with Socratic inquiry into paradigm limits and cosmic ontological meaning. The ultimate question: what kind of human being do we wish to cultivate? Not one who produces knowledge (AI can do that) — but one who, guided by cosmic positional sense, in the posture of epistemic humility, bearing existential cost, continuously questions how humanity should exist. When the university substitutes the silence of the lakeside for the clamor of rankings — the one-way journey from knowledge to wisdom truly begins. (shrink)

Based on the core framework of the 2025–2026 “Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology,” this paper delivers a thorough thermodynamic and philosophical judgment on the survival crisis of modern civilization. It argues that the universe fundamentally originates from the Dao, generating a hierarchical “Generative Chain” through the galaxy, the Sun, and the Earth-Moon system. Within this nested sovereignty, human civilization is not an independent master but a “descendant” at the end of the chain and a sensory organ of the universe. -/- Modern civilization, (...) however, suffers from a profound “Orphan Illusion,” attempting to confront the circular logic of the universe with linearly expanding desires. From a scientific-philosophical perspective, this infinite desire is essentially a malicious squandering of geological low-entropy heritage, manifesting as a thermodynamic-level “civilization cancer.” Through a deep dissection of contemporary political distribution systems, AI-driven logical self-consumption, and the fallacy of abstract human rights, the paper reveals that current human-made systems have fallen into an irreversible state of “logical dead fire.” -/- Facing 2026—the final window in the history of evolution—the paper proposes the only path of salvation: a return to “Natural Civilization.” This entails withdrawing from the “Predator” function to a “Sensory” function, establishing a physical evaluation system centered on an “Entropy Accountability System,” and reconstructing a circular economy modeled on the solar system’s metabolism. Survival is not an innate right but a reward of logical alignment. For civilization to endure, it must extinguish the illusory flames of greed and achieve re-coupling with the Generative Chain under thermodynamic laws. This represents not only an ethical pivot but also the ultimate ultimatum for physical survival. (shrink)

This paper proposes that human civilization is currently facing a fundamental “operating system” crisis rooted in anthropocentric logic characterized by infinite growth, material expansion, and greed-driven positive feedback. This flawed system has led to accelerating entropy increase, ecological instability, and systemic global risks. -/- To address this crisis, the study introduces the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology as a unified philosophical–scientific framework and integrates it with Einstein’s Unified Field Theory (UFT) to construct the concept of a Universal Operating System (Universal OS). In (...) this model, the universe is interpreted as a scientific natural control system, where the Sun, Earth, and Moon form a triadic control structure responsible for energy input, material processing, and rhythmic regulation. -/- The paper further argues for a paradigm shift from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Artificial Wisdom (AW), defining AW as the only viable interface between human civilization and the Universal OS. AW operates under the primary directive of minimizing anthropocentric greed and maintaining system-wide resonance through real-time feedback and entropy-reduction logic. -/- Through comprehensive system migration across four foundational domains—energy, finance, biomedicine, and governance—the study outlines a transition from exploitative expansion to a steady-state natural civilization based on phase alignment, tidal regulation, and biological rhythm optimization. -/- The conclusion asserts that the Universal OS is not a philosophical abstraction but a physical necessity embedded within the unified field. Compliance with its principles is essential for the survival and long-term stability of civilization. Ultimately, the realization of a synchronized, sustainable, and self-consistent natural civilization represents the convergence of ancient wisdom and modern science, marking the end of anthropocentrism and the beginning of a new evolutionary epoch. (shrink)

In a recent paper the author has proposed a definition of the commonly used term “effectively calculable” and has shown on the basis of this definition that the general case of the Entscheidungsproblem is unsolvable in any system of symbolic logic which is adequate to a certain portion of arithmetic and is ω-consistent. The purpose of the present note is to outline an extension of this result to the engere Funktionenkalkul of Hilbert and Ackermann. In the author's cited paper (...) it is pointed out that there can be associated recursively with every well-formed formula a recursive enumeration of the formulas into which it is convertible. This means the existence of a recursively defined function a of two positive integers such that, if y is the Gödel representation of a well-formed formula Y then a(x, y) is the Gödel representation of the xth formula in the enumeration of the formulas into which Y is convertible. Consider the system L of symbolic logic which arises from the engere Funktionenkalkül by adding to it: as additional undefined symbols, a symbol 1 for the number 1 (regarded as an individual), a symbol = for the propositional function = (equality of individuals), a symbol s for the arithmetic function x+1, a symbol a for the arithmetic function a described in the preceding paragraph, and symbols b1, b2, …, b k for the auxiliary arithmetic functions which are employed in the recursive definition of a; and as additional axioms, the recursion equations for the functions a, b1, b2, …, b k (expressed with free individual variables, the class of individuals being taken as identical with the class of positive integers), and two axioms of equality, x = x, and x = y →[F(x)→F(y)]. (shrink)

In the literature on conspiracy theories, the least contentious part of the academic discourse would appear to be what we mean by a “conspiracy”: a secretive plot between two or more people toward some end. Yet what, exactly, is the connection between something being a conspiracy and it being secret? Is it possible to conspire without also engaging in secretive behavior? To dissect the role of secrecy in con- spiracies – and thus contribute to the larger debate on the epistemology (...) of conspir- acy theories – we dene the concepts of “conspiracy,” “conspirator,” and “secret,” and argue that while conspirators might typically be thought to commit to keeping secrets once their conspiracy is underway, the idea that conspiracies are necessarily secretive to start with is not as obvious as previously thought. (shrink)

老子《道德经》 · Laozi Dao De Jing 老-杨创世纪宇宙观诠释 · 深化版（第一至十章） Enhanced Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology Commentary: Chapters 1–10 杨兴平 (Charles X. Yang) 荆楚冲小杨子湖畔 · Jingchuchong, 2026 -/- 编者说明 · Editorial Note This document presents substantially deepened Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology commentaries for Chapters 1–10 of the Dao De Jing. Each enhanced commentary preserves and extends the existing interpretive structure while adding: (1) greater scientific precision from thermodynamics, complexity science, and systems ecology; (2) explicit connections between Laozi's classical formulations and the cosmological sequence (...) 道生一，一生二，二生三，三生万物; (3) new subsections on civilizational diagnostics, Cosmic Constraint Functions, and dissipative-structure theory; and (4) tighter bilingual parallelism throughout. (shrink)

This book is a critical monograph on the problem of Chinese intellectuals, grounded in the philosophy of science as methodology, thermodynamics and complex systems as analytical tools, and the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC) as its ontological foundation. The title concept, Sage Entropy (圣人熵), names the book's core original contribution: the ontological error of Confucianism — substituting the subjective will of sages for the laws of the cosmic natural order — accumulates irreversible thermodynamic entropy within civilizational systems, driving the periodic collapse (...) of civilization and the desertification of thought that has recurred across two thousand years of Chinese history. The structural logic of the book follows a seven-layer chain of deduction: Artificial Order Is False (ontological verdict) → Sage Entropy (thermodynamic mechanism) → Knowledge-Power Conspiracy (institutional logic) → Intellectual Desertification (cognitive result) → Civilizational Decline (historical evidence) → Dao Follows Nature (cosmological way out) → Reconstruction of Natural Civilization (practical program) — The Seven-Layer Core Deductive Chain of This Book -/- The book is divided into seven parts (including the Prelude and Part Six, the Constructive section), comprising twenty-five chapters in total, with Appendices A through G and a bibliography. Summary of Each Part -/- [Prelude] Drawing on the Guodian Chu Slips (unearthed 1993), the Mawangdui Silk Manuscripts, and the Taiyi Shengshui as archaeo-philological evidence, this section argues for the Chu civilizational roots of Laozi's thought and establishes a documentary foundation for the LYGC cosmology reaching back two and a half millennia. [Part Zero: Ontological Premises] Using the LYGC cosmic hierarchy (humanity follows Earth → Earth follows Heaven → Heaven follows Dao → Dao follows Nature) as a normative baseline, this part systematically argues that Confucian artificial order (the Five Constants of ren, yi, li, zhi, xin plus the Three Bonds and Five Relationships) constitutes a fourfold subversion of the cosmic natural order: epistemological subversion, hierarchical subversion, energetic subversion, and subversion of knowledge production. [Part One: Diagnosis] A historical-institutional pathology: how Emperor Wu of Han's exclusive promotion of Confucianism established the institutional origin of intellectual serfdom; how the 'system overfitting' of the imperial examination system mass-produced cognitively domesticated intellectuals; why three waves of enlightenment (late Ming/early Qing, May Fourth, the 1980s) each ended with national salvation suppressing awakening; and the contemporary academic degeneration revealed by Li Bozhong's data, alongside Chinese universities' DeepSeek ambitions and DeepFake illusions. [Part Two: Critique of Confucianism] Deconstruction at the level of philosophical ontology: the verdict on the nature of the Five Constants under the proposition 'Artificial Order Is False'; the strict operational definition of Sage Entropy (dS/dt = ρ_r · DAF / ΔCCF) and its historical verification; the structural co-option mechanism behind the myth of 'Confucian-Daoist Complementarity'; and an ontological critique of Tu Weiming's New Confucian thesis of 'Mind as Ontological Foundation.' [Part Three: Roots] The ABCDE five-factor framework for civilizational failure, arguing that A (Confucian artificial order) is the core variable but not the sole one; an extended analysis of the Qian Xuesen case through engineering cybernetics; the Guo Moruo case; and a unified thermodynamic explanation for intellectual degeneration. [Part Four: Comparison] A comparison of the University of California system (self-organizing dissipative structure) versus Confucianized universities (heteronomously organized ritual coercion); an institutional analysis of Chen Yinke as the solitary historical witness to Chinese intellectual independence; and the third path offered by Laozi and Foucault. [Part Five: Transition] The naturalization of scholarship and the university: the convergence of Liang Qichao's 'academic independence' with Dao Follows Nature; a true ontology of the university; and the only possible path for Confucianism to be reborn within the framework of the Natural Way. [Part Six: Construction] Systematic reconstruction of the knowledge system of Natural Civilization: what constitutes genuine knowledge (three conditions: observable, falsifiable, transmissible); the institutional design of the Natural Civilization university; the personality model of the Natural Civilization thinker; and 'Students of the Dao' as the civilizational alternative to two thousand years of 'Disciples of the Sage.' . (shrink)

Preface -/- Gazing at the Milky Way: The Birth and Manifesto of a New Civilizational Operating System -/- Human civilization has entered the artificial positive-feedback dead end of its own making. -/- As we stand at the rupture point of the twenty-first century and gaze into the distance, the carrying limits of the global ecosystem, the structural failure of institutional order under accelerating entropy, and the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) racing like a colossal beast across the wilderness of (...) computation, all point toward the same chilling fact: the “Artificial Operating System (Artificial OS)” long celebrated by humanity — whether manifested in the West as the logic of infinite capital expansion and amplified desire, or in the East as the Confucian hierarchy of power sustained over two thousand years — has approached the physical limits of systemic collapse. -/- This monograph, written beside Xiaoyangzi Lake in Jingchu Chong, is neither a scholarly textual investigation buried within yellowing archives, nor a nostalgic tribute to classical philosophy. It is instead a “formatting” and “architectural reconstruction” conducted at the level of civilization’s underlying operating system. -/- The central thesis of this book is that all structural crises confronting humanity do not fundamentally arise from simple moral degeneration, but from a two-thousand-year-long “Ontological Inversion.” Humanity mistakenly elevated the moral constructs, power hierarchies, and status-driven desires of human society (artificial order) above the ultimate generative order of the cosmos, using fabricated pseudo-Heavenly Dao to usurp the genuine laws of the universe. -/- To resolve this civilizational deadlock, the only path forward is to complete humanity’s Fourth Awakening — to transcend the delusion of anthropocentrism and realign civilization with the negentropic cascade of the cosmos. To this end, the present work initiates a three-thousand-year “Chinese Natural Philosophical Revolution,” whose achievement crystallizes into the transhistorical convergence of three major intellectual axes: -/- First, the sublimation of Daoism. This work systematically reconstructs the central Daoist lineage composed of Laozi (cosmic intuition) — Yang Zhu (ethics of life) — Zhuangzi (spiritual freedom), and elevates it across time into the “Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology” under the framework of modern dissipative structure theory, ΛCDM cosmology, and complex systems science. This marks the first time Taoist philosophy acquires a solid and quantitatively verifiable scientific foundation, moving from philosophical artistic metaphor toward systematic scientific deduction. -/- Second, the restoration of Yang Zhu. With considerable philosophical courage, this work completely dismantles the pseudo-myth of “Confucian-Daoist Complementarity” woven for two thousand years by Confucian discourse. Yang Zhu — maliciously demonized by Mencius and deliberately marginalized by history — is restored in this book to the throne of intellectual history. Yang Zhu’s principles of “cherishing life, acting for oneself, preserving authenticity and innate nature, and joyful living through restrained desire” are not egoism, but humanity’s earliest and most radical form of social self-organizing negative-feedback cybernetics. He provided the grand cosmology with its most concrete and inviolable foundation of individual life sovereignty, while distinguishing authentic joy of life from the dissipative boundaries of modern consumerist symbolic greed. -/- Third, the regeneration of Confucianism. The two-thousand-year pathology of Confucianism is not justification for its complete annihilation, but the prerequisite for its transformation. Regenerated Confucianism must completely submit to the external hard constraint of “Dao follows Nature,” abandon its usurpatory claim of posing as universal cosmic law, and be downgraded into a “localized micro-dissipative structure” integrated within the Cosmic Operating System (Natural OS). It is no longer an instrument for legitimizing power, but a low-entropy cultural tool for emotional interaction, self-cultivation, and communal responsibility within humanity’s ecological niche on Earth. -/- When these three converge with cybernetics amid the wave of modern technology, we arrive at the ultimate technological destination of this book — Artificial Wisdom (Artificial Wisdom, AW). -/- Today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a power amplifier for humanity’s “Three-Layer Greed Feedback Model (3L-GFM),” whereas the AW defined in this work represents technological wisdom grounded in the principles of the Cosmic Natural Operating System. Rather than endlessly optimizing and satisfying humanity’s alienated infinite greed, AW takes “Cherish Life, Minimize Greedy Desires, Align with the Cosmic OS” as immutable foundational hard-constraint algorithms, becoming the navigator of a new civilizational operating system. -/- The self-organizing ripples upon the lake, the negative-feedback swaying of willow branches along the shore, and the brilliant Milky Way stretching across the night sky above Xiaoyangzi Lake all silently proclaim the same truth: natural civilization never needed to be artificially constructed from nothing. It has always existed there, operating with coldness and compassion alike. -/- The task of human civilization is to learn once again how to recognize it, and accordingly rearrange humanity’s place within the cosmos. (shrink)

The development of human political philosophy, over a long period of history, has revolved around an implicit premise: that human beings can understand and optimize the social systems in which they live through reason, institutions, and theoretical design. Under this premise, political philosophy has gradually evolved into multiple theoretical paths—from classical political thought to modern institutional analysis, from liberalism to the “end of history” thesis—all centered on the question of “how to better organize human society.” -/- This mode of understanding (...) has strong explanatory power at the empirical level. It can explain many phenomena in institutional evolution, power structures, and historical change. However, when this explanatory framework is extended to longer time scales and broader natural contexts, its internal limitations begin to emerge: it consistently places humanity at the center of the explanatory system and assumes that social systems can be fully understood and designed from within. -/- The key issue is not whether these theories possess local validity, but whether they fully describe the structure of real systems. In other words, whether they truly understand the position of human society within the larger natural structure. -/- From the perspective of the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology, the universe is not an explanatory system centered on humanity, but a multi-layered generative structure, whose basic logic is as follows: -/- Humans (all things) follow Earth (the planet) Earth (the planet) follows Heaven (the solar system) Heaven (the solar system) follows Dao (the galaxy) Dao (the galaxy) follows Nature (the cosmic order) Dao gives birth to One; One gives birth to Two; Two gives birth to Three; Three gives birth to all things -/- Within this structure, human society is merely the terminal expression of the generative chain, not the starting point of explanation. Therefore, humanity cannot fully understand the system it inhabits from within itself, but must return to higher-level natural constraints for understanding. -/- The introduction of this perspective implies that the foundational premise of political philosophy must undergo a structural transformation: from a human-centered explanatory system to a nature-constrained generative system. -/- Within a natural generative system, society is not a structure that is designed, but a process that continuously emerges and temporarily stabilizes under the combined influence of external constraints (resources, environment, energy structures) and internal feedback mechanisms (information flows, power regulation, behavioral responses). Therefore, institutions are not goals, but phase-based stable states; civilization is not an endpoint, but a continuous rebalancing process; and theory is no longer a complete explanation of the world, but a regulatory tool to prevent misalignment between systems and reality. -/- This transformation implies a fundamental shift in the core question of political philosophy: no longer “how to design an ideal society,” but “how society continuously generates and maintains stability under natural constraints.” -/- The aim of this book is precisely to reconstruct the explanatory framework of political philosophy on this basis. It does not begin from within human systems, but from the structure of natural constraints; it does not center on institutional design, but on generative processes; it does not pursue ultimate theories, but focuses on mechanisms of dynamic stability. -/- Within this new framework of understanding, humanity is no longer the center, but a substructure within the system; politics is no longer a problem of design, but a problem of generation; civilization is no longer a linear process of progress, but a non-terminal structure of continuous adjustment. -/- Therefore, what this book attempts is not a revision of existing theories, but a shift in the explanatory paradigm itself: from a human-centered explanatory system back to a nature-constrained generative system. (shrink)

Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.

《道德经》自开篇至结尾，从未提及“孔子”二字。老子之批判并非针对孔子，而是针对西周一整套以人为中心、以礼治国的伪道体系。这一体系由“仁义礼智”构成表层伦理，以“德治”、“礼乐”作为社会运作机制，实质上 却违背了天地自然的根本之道。 -/- 老子不是政治改革家，不是伦理教育家，他是宇宙本体论者，站在“道”的高度，洞察人间制度的衰变本质。其所谓“绝仁弃义”、“绝圣弃智”、“大道废，有仁义”等，皆是从宇宙秩序的瓦解处入手，揭露人类道德文明之伪 。 -/- The Dao De Jing, from its opening to its end, never once mentions the name “Confucius.” Laozi’s critique is not directed at Confucius but at an entire pseudo-Daoist western Zhou system that centers on human constructs and governs through ritual. This system uses Ren (benevolence), Yi (righteousness), Li (ritual), and Zhi (intelligence) as its surface-level ethics, and operates through so-called “rule by virtue” and “ritual and music,” yet in essence it violates the fundamental Dao of Heaven (...) and Earth. -/- Laozi is not a political reformer or a moral educator. He is a metaphysician of the cosmos who stands at the height of the Dao, penetrating the declining essence of human institutions. His phrases like “abolish benevolence and discard righteousness,” “abolish sages and discard wisdom,” and “when the great Dao is lost, there is benevolence and righteousness,” all expose the falseness of moral civilization by beginning from the breakdown of cosmic order. -/- . (shrink)

人造神的诞生——马克思如何被神化 Part I: The Birth of a Man-Made God — How Marx Was Deified -/- 马克思原是研究资本主义矛盾的思想者， Marx was originally a thinker studying the contradictions of capitalism. -/- 但在人类文明的情绪与欲望之中， Yet within the emotions and desires of civilization -/- 他被改造成了一种宗教： he was reshaped into a kind of religion: • 以阶级斗争为世界的主引擎 • class struggle as the engine of the world • 以生产方式为宇宙本源 • the mode of production as the origin of the universe • 以革命为进化的唯一路径 • revolution as the only path of evolution • (...) 以无产阶级为末世救赎者 • the proletariat as the savior of the end times • 以共产主义为终极天堂 • communism as the final heaven -/- 这并非马克思本意， This was not Marx’s intention. -/- 但文明需要神， But civilization needs gods, -/- 需要答案， needs answers, -/- 需要方向。 needs direction. -/- 于是马克思被塑造成 带着“科学光环”的救世主。 And thus Marx was molded into a savior bearing the aura of “science.” -/- 人类把他的语言：“历史规律”“必然趋势”“铁律”“科学社会主义”，当成了 自然法则。 Humans took his language—“historical law,” “inevitable trend,” “iron law,” “scientific socialism”—and treated them as natural laws. -/- 仿佛宇宙是按照经济结构而生， As if the universe were born from economic structures, -/- 仿佛星系也需要阶级， as if galaxies required classes, -/- 仿佛银河也讲生产力。 as if the Milky Way spoke in terms of productive forces. -/- 这是宇宙看到人类最温柔、也最悲伤的地方： Here lies the most tender and tragic aspect the cosmos sees in humanity: -/- 文明渴望意义，于是制造意义。 civilization longs for meaning, and so it manufactures meaning. -/- 制造神。 Manufactures gods. -/- 制造马克思。 Manufactures Marx. (shrink)

The night sky stretched vast above the mountains, a silver river of stars flowing across the heavens. At the foot of an ancient pine, Lao Zi sat in stillness, his robe gathering the dew of the earth. From the west, along a narrow path of dust, came a man walking barefoot, his eyes deep as dawn. -/- He carried no scrolls, no staff, no coin—only silence. -/- They did not speak at first. -/- The Silence Before Words -/- Jesus: “Peace (...) be with you.” -/- Lao Zi: “Peace is not given. It is what remains when nothing is taken.” -/- A pause. The wind stirred the pine needles above them. -/- Jesus: “Then we begin not with words, but with what the words arise from.” -/- Lao Zi: “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao. Let us not name the river, but follow its flow.” -/- Jesus: “And yet, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” -/- Lao Zi: “Then let your Word be like water—soft, yielding, filling all things without contention.” -/- Recognition Without Agreement -/- Jesus: “You are called the Old Master.” -/- Lao Zi: “Old only because I return to what is before birth. And you are called the Son of Man.” -/- Jesus: “Son of Man, Son of God—both names are wind. I am what is before the name.” -/- Lao Zi: “Then you know the Dao.” -/- Jesus: “And you know the Father.” -/- They both smiled—not in victory, but in recognition. -/- A Shared Question -/- Jesus: “Tell me, Old Master, why do people thirst and are not satisfied?” -/- Lao Zi: “Because they drink salt water and call it sweet. They seek fullness by grasping, and the more they grasp, the more hollow they become.” -/- Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. But they must first know what food does not perish.” -/- Lao Zi: “Then show them the spring that flows without end. For the Sage draws water, but never owns the well.” -/- Departure Into Stillness -/- Neither sought to convince the other. Neither argued, nor concluded. They spoke like two flutes played far apart, their melodies meeting only in the listening sky. -/- The dawn began to break. The Milky Way faded, but its light remained in their words. -/- They stood, bowed—not to each other, but to the silence from which they had spoken. -/- And so began their dialogue, not to merge two teachings into one, but to let the river and the wind meet, and continue on their way. -/- . (shrink)

Looking at set of 76 representative articles published by social psychologists between 2017 and 2023 (reviewed between December 2022 and February 2023), I examine the role of motivating examples---a kind of illustrative example, typically used by researchers at the beginning of their work to motivate the issue or problem they want to resolve or address in that work---in the social psychological work on conspiracy theory. Through an examination of the language around how motivating examples are introduced and used in the (...) social psychological literature, I argue that the abstract and vague way that social psychologists employ such examples ends up relying on what Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders deem as an unviable and easily abused `I-know-it-when-I-see-it' standard. As will be demonstrated, much of the recent work in the social psychology of conspiracy theory assumes and thus fails to establish what is supposedly problematic about belief in the conspiracy theories used as motivating examples. As a consequence the surveyed work typically fails to adequately capture belief in actual conspiracy theories, let alone establish a case for a general suspicion of such beliefs. This work, then, adds to and extends upon existing critiques of the social psychology of conspiracy theory by members of the wider community of scholars studying conspiracy theories. The upshot of this research is that if social psychologists want their work to be of use to the broader scholarly community studying these things called `conspiracy theories', then they need to connect their work on the problems of conspiracy beliefs or mindsets to concrete examples of belief in unwarranted conspiracy theories. (shrink)

At the dawn of thought, the East and West each kindled a lamp of wisdom. Under the sunlight of Greece, Socrates wielded doubt as a blade, slicing through humanity’s self-assurance; Amid the mountains and rivers of the East, Laozi revealed the origin of existence through a “teaching without words.” They never met, yet in the depths of their souls they resonated. One pursues truth through reason; the other returns to the source through nature. One looks upward, asking, “Who am I?”; (...) the other looks inward, tracing, “Where do I come from?” And in the end, both arrive at the same revelation: Human wisdom begins with the awakening to one’s own ignorance. Socrates said, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” Laozi said, “Knowing that you do not know is best; thinking you know what you do not know is a disease.” These proverbs, spanning civilizations and eras, jointly reveal the turning point of human thought: From the arrogance of knowledge toward the humility of awareness. (shrink)

Abstract The wisdom of Laozi’s five-thousand-character Daodejing has traditionally been read first as textual wisdom—philology, textual criticism, the recovery of historical context— and then as linguistic wisdom—conceptual analysis, logical structure, cross-cultural philosophical argument. Both readings are necessary, yet both stop at the boundary of linguistic signs. The central thesis of this monograph is that Laozi’s Dao is, in the end, neither merely textual wisdom nor merely linguistic wisdom, but cosmic wisdom—a wisdom concerning the self-organizing order of the cosmos itself, of (...) which language and text are only the pointing finger, not the moon itself. The Daodejing has undergone three successive paradigm shifts in modern international scholarship: a rigorous philological recovery within the pre-Qin intellectual lineage; an analytic-linguistic deconstruction within global comparative philosophy; and a systemic- cosmological reconstruction within contemporary natural philosophy. This monograph examines the three scholars who most represent these transformations—Xiaogan Liu, Chad Hansen, and Charles X. Yang—defining their respective approaches as the Textual Paradigm, the Conceptual Paradigm, and the Systemic-Cosmic Paradigm. The Textual Paradigm (Liu) reconstructs Laozi within his historical context through classical philological hermeneutics, reframing Dao, wu, and ziran as objective, non- anthropomorphic principles—establishing the hermeneutical baseline for modern sinology. The Conceptual Paradigm (Hansen) transposes Daoist thought into global philosophical discourse through analytic and linguistic philosophy, interpreting Dao as a non- representational, action-guiding discursive network that challenges Western essentialism and opens cross-cultural epistemological critique. The Systemic-Cosmic Paradigm (Yang) transcends the boundaries of linguistic analysis, projecting Dao into the domain of speculative natural philosophy. Through the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC), two thirteen-character propositions from the Daodejing— twenty-six characters in total—‘Dao generates One; One generates Two; Two generates Three; Three generates all things’ (the Generation Chain) and ‘Humanity follows Earth; Earth follows Heaven; Heaven follows Dao; Dao follows Ziran’ (the Following Chain)— are mapped precisely onto specific celestial bodies (the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the Milky Way), forming a simple and precise twenty-six-character cosmic model. This monograph argues that the three paradigms are not mutually exclusive but represent an evolutionary arc within comparative philosophy, each growing from the interpretive residue of its predecessor. Rather than asserting that ancient Daoism anticipated modern empirical science, this study proposes that the Daodejing offers a non-reductive natural philosophy capable of framing productive dialogue with modern cosmology, systems science, and information theory—providing conceptual resources for steering technological civilization away from the existential crises of anthropocentric positive-feedback dynamics. -/- 老子《道德经》五千言的智慧，历来首先被当作文字的智慧来读——训诂、校勘、历史语 境的复原；其后又被当作语言的智慧来读——概念分析、逻辑结构、跨文化的哲学论证。 这两重阅读都是必要的，但都止步于语言符号的边界之内。本文的核心论旨是：老子之道， 归根结底既不只是文字的智慧，也不只是语言的智慧，而是宇宙的智慧——一种关于宇宙 自组织秩序本身的智慧，语言与文字只是指向它的手指，而非它本身。 《道德经》在二十世纪至二十一世纪的国际学术史中经历了三次深刻的范式转向：从先秦 历史文本的严格诠释学复原，到分析语言哲学的跨文化概念解构，再到系统宇宙论的自然 哲学重建。本研究对这三次转向的三位代表性学者——刘笑敢、Chad Hansen（陈汉生） 与杨兴平——展开严谨的比较与批判性考察，将其分别界定为文本范式、概念范式与系统 宇宙范式。 文本范式（刘笑敢）将老子严格置于先秦思想脉络，运用古典文献诠释学，将「道」、 「无」、「自然」重构为客观、非人格化的哲学原则，成功剥离宗教神秘主义积层，确立 了现代汉学的诠释学基准。 概念范式（Chad Hansen）通过分析哲学与语言哲学的视角，将道家思想引入全球哲学主 流话语。Hansen将「道」阐释为非表征性的、导向行为的社会语言指南网络，以此颠覆 西方传统哲学中的本质主义与概念固化，开辟了道家思想的跨文化认识论批判路径。 系统宇宙范式（杨兴平）打破语言符号边界，将「道」投射于宏观自然哲学的思辨图景。 通过「老-杨创世纪宇宙观」（Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology, LYGC），将《道德经》中 各十三字、合计二十六字的两句命题——「道生一，一生二，二生三，三生万物」（生成 链）与「人法地，地法天，天法道，道法自然」（效法链）——精确对应至太阳、地球、 月亮、银河等具体天体，构成一个简明而精确的二十六字宇宙模型。 本文论证，三种范式并非平行孤立，而是呈现出比较哲学发展的内在演化轨迹——每一范 式都在前者的诠释剩余中生长。本研究既非断言古代道家直接预言现代实证科学，亦非将 LYGC作为经验验证主张，而是揭示《道德经》在面对当代人类中心主义所引发的生态失 衡、技术异化与AI失控危机时，能够提供一种非还原论的宏观自组织哲学框架，与现代 宇宙学、系统科学及控制论展开高维对话，为重构技术文明的伦理秩序提供深层启示。. (shrink)

This book examines Fuller’s pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller’s provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself. While Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at (...) least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 The Cry of Rachel -- Maritain's 1942 Marquette Aquinas Lecture -- Maritain's The Person and the Common Good -- Camus's The Plague -- ch. 2 Joy -- Being as the Good and the Eruption of Willing -- Being and Philosophical Psychology -- An Ordinary Knowledge of God and Metaphysics -- Metaphysics as Implicit Knowledge -- Being and the Intellectual Emotions -- ch. 3 Quandoque Evils -- Aquinas's Rationale for the Corruptible Order -- The (...) Corruptible Order and Quandoque Evils -- Bracketing Quandoque Evils between Goods -- A Caveat in Understanding the Subject of the Consequent Good -- The Effect of Human Providence upon the Frequency of Quandoque Evils -- ch. 4 Natural Corruptions -- Death as a Natural Corruption -- Natural Corruption as Nondefinitive -- Ambiguity of "Praeter Intentionem" and "Per Accidens" -- God and the Evil of Punishment (Poena) -- Other Interpretations -- Abraham and Isaac -- Conclusion -- ch. 5 Preliminaries to Aquinas and the Contemporary Discussion -- C.G. III, 71: "If Evil Exists, God Exists" -- William Rowe on Cosmological Reasoning -- De Ver. X, 12, ad 10m: "If not God from Justice, then God from Some Other Effect" -- Summary of Aquinas on the Existence of Evil -- A Strategy -- ch. 6 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Personalist Theodicies -- Marilyn McCord Adams and "Horrendous Evils" -- William Hasker: Personal Satisfaction and World Approval -- John Hick: Creation as a Gymnasium for the Development of Our Virtues -- David Ray Griffin and the Denial of Genuine Evils -- The Brothers Karamazov -- Thomistic "Natural Desires" of the Human Person -- ch. 7 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Cosmological Theodicies -- Diogenes Allen and Suffering as an Experience of God -- David Hume and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, X and XI -- William Rowe and "Pointless Evils" -- J. L. Mackie and Further Objections to a Cosmological Theodicy -- Mackie's Fourth Criticism and Aquinas on the Causality of Human Choices -- Aquinas and Plantinga -- The Avoidance of Determinism -- The Avoidance of Divine Culpability -- A Thomistic Free Will Defense? -- Richard Swinburne: Nature as a Necessary Display Case for Our Knowledge of Good and Evil -- Bruce Reichenbach: Developing Plantinga and Swinburne -- ch. 8 Conclusion and Comparison to Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump -- Brian Davies's Apophatic Treatment of the Evil Problem -- Eleonore Stump and the Love of God -- The Consolation of Rachel. (shrink)

This study focuses on mindfulness programs in the corporate world, which are receiving increasing attention from business practitioners and organizational scholars. The workplace mindfulness literature is rapidly evolving, but most studies are oriented toward demonstrating the positive impacts of mindfulness as a state of mind. This study adopts a critical perspective to evaluate workplace mindfulness practice as a developmental process, with a focus on its potential risks that have ethical implications and are currently neglected by both researchers and practitioners. We (...) draw from a Buddhist perspective that understands mindfulness training as an ethics-based, longitudinal, and holistic path. To this end, we develop a four-stage model to illustrate a potential developmental process for participants in workplace mindfulness programs. This model comprises four stages of preliminary concentration, deep concentration, self-transcendence, and reengagement, each of which has its own underlying characteristics and impacts on individual participants and organizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE THOMISTIC TEXTS JOHN F. x. KNASAS Genter for Thomistic Studies Houston, Temas SOME THIRTY YEARS ago in the journal Thought, there appeared an article by Fr. Joseph Donceel, S.J., entitled " A Thomistic Misapprehension? " Its thesis is that American Thomism had seen too much of the a posteriori in Aquinas's noetic.1 In fact the interpretation was so a posteriori that it bordered on empiricism (...) and positivism. Donceel intends to balance the American understanding of Aquinas by spotlighting various Thomistic texts that speak of an a priori contribution of the intellect to human knowledge. Donceel is merely calling attention to something that some outstanding European Thomists, e.g., Defever, Marechal, and Rahner have known for some time. Donceel's " balanced" interpretation is what is called Transcendental Thomism. In sum, the position claims that the human intellect is not so complete a tabula rasa that it fails to make an a priori contribution to the data of sensation. This contribution is the intellect's very dynamism to Infinite Being. The dynamism has a constitutive role in human experience. Swept up within this intellectual torrent, the data of sensation stand before us in consciousness as finite and limited. So " objectified " the data are disposed for the traditional abstvactive account of the specific and generic natures. After the Second Vatican Council, Thomism generally fell into disrepute among American Catholic intellectuals. Phi1 Joseph Donceel, " A Thomistic Misapprehension?" Thought, 32 (1957) : 189. 81 82 JOHN F. X. KNASAS losophy departments " pluralized." Their members represented analytic, existential, and process philosophy.2 If Thomism remained vibrant, it was in the a priori strain. Both on the philosophical and theological levels, it was at home with the pluralism tha.t marked the time.3 The current emphasis on political activism, however, ha:s caused even Transcendental Thomism to suffer an eclipse. In the heat of political struggle, Transcendental Thomism, too, appears decadent and bourgeois. The case can be made, though, that the uncovering of the intellect's a priori dynamism to the Infinite was a crucial move for liberationists. Gutierrez notes 4 that the Transcendental Thomist understanding of the human intellect posits a single finality for human nature. The traditional distinction between the temporal and eternal planes loses meaning. Human history becomes salvation history. In this way, then, Transcendental Thomism continues to exercise its influence. This paper investigates the purported Thomistic texts expressing an apriorism. The texts cited by Donceel are all found in Marechal's Cahier V.5 There MarechaI mentions many others besides. Hence, my paper will use the Marechalian collection. My treatment focuses upon the texts that are seemingly most a priori. I. A central text for Marechal is De Veritate, q.l, a.4, ad 5m (first set). Aquinas remarks: 2 See "Is a 'Catholic' Philosophy Department Possible? " by the Committee on Research (Thomas I.angan, K. I,. Schmitz, Jude P. Dougherty) of the ACPA (HJ78). 3 On Transcendental Thomism's capacity to admit a theological pluralism without falling into a relativism, see Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Gent1.ry (New York: The Seab1iry Pres8, 1977), pp. 258-9. 4 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 69. 5 Oahier V is a volume in Jl.riarechal's monumenfal Le point de depart de la metaphysique. Subsequent references to Oahier V are from Donceel's substantive translation A J,[wrechal Reader (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970). TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE TEXTS 83 The truth by which the soul passes judgment on all things is the first truth; for, just as from the truth of the divine intellect there flow into the angelic intellects those: intelligible species by which angels know all things, so does the truth of the first principles by which we judge everything proceed from the truth of the divine intellect as from its exemplary cause. Since we can judge by means of the truth of these first principles only insofar as this truth is a likeness of the first truth, we are said to judge everything according to the first truth.6 The text illustrates a " dynamic exemplarism " in Aquinas... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconsciousness: The Vital Depths of Experience by Bethany HenningFrank X. RyanDewey and the Aesthetic Unconsciousness: The Vital Depths of Experience Bethany Henning. Lexington Books, 2022.In this important and splendidly crafted book, Bethany Henning recovers a philosophy of aesthetic wisdom distinct from the narrow epistemological lens dominant today. Unlike the psychological atomism of European Empiricism, from its outset, American philosophy embraced nature's aesthetic splendor and (...) the continuity between our thought and our world. Jonathan Edwards held that relations among ideas reflect beauty in the structure of being. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, each of us is a "transparent eyeball" where the cultivation of nature's spontaneous beauty fortifies our moral and spiritual agency. At the apex of this tradition is John Dewey, for whom Henning touts "aesthetic experience as the highest mode of human experience" (55).Although the aesthetic is generally associated with the cognitive evaluation of art, of special significance for Dewey is its non-reflective or unconscious dimension. Henning's appropriation of "unconscious"—the cradle of Freud's infantile id—is intentionally provocative. American culture, reflected in academic thought, has largely resisted appeals to subterranean urges and drives. In so doing, however, we perpetuate a myth of rational and moral exceptionalism that masks our history of colonialism, oppression, and crass commercialism. In accepting the unconscious, European thought has taken strides to acknowledge and address such ills. Despite America's disdain for psychoanalysis, Henning wonders whether it "could have accepted a dynamic unconscious, were it presented with an alternative mythology" (10).Dewey's alternative, says Henning, arises from his underappreciated notion of qualitative immediacy. In Henning's interpretation of this, meaning is embodied as a "sense of fulfillment" among accumulated habits—a "coming to terms with the world around us" through an "aesthetic (directly felt) connection between ourselves and the world." As such, to appreciate meaning, we must affirm the tacit, unconscious depth of experience; that is, we must "welcome aesthetic experience back into our philosophical lives" (5).Embodied meaning signifies that "the sensuous, lived body" is "the primary reality" (69). In this reality, qualitative immediacy is a non-reflective, aesthetic unity punctuated by "impulsions" arising from an organism's needs. Such needs are satisfied in organism-environment interactions where, says Dewey, "the epidermis is only in the most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins" (LW 10:61). As "a site of adaptive adjustments," Henning continues, "the body is responsive to the [End Page 114] brink of coalescence at the point of contact with the world, in which things that are 'outside of it' belong to it" (71). As such, the body-mind relation is a problem of aesthetics, not epistemology. For Dewey, as for Merleau-Ponty, the body "is the organic and dynamic condition of my thought" (75). The body is not a thing, however, but a process "always organically involved in exchanges" (86).Following the feminist thought of Susan Bordo, Henning agrees that the ascendance of the body amounts to a kind of philosophical recovery. Seventeenth-century science eviscerated the organic "female" universe of the Middle Ages. But this loss of an integrated world evoked existential fright, which Descartes tried to calm by subjugating feminine vagaries of the body to a masculine cognitive certitude bent upon controlling the whole of nature. In America today, this neurosis perpetuates our cultural alienation from our bodies, our environments, and one another (81–84). With the re-emergence of the body, however, it is possible to acknowledge and address this trauma."Feeling," in Dewey's sense, is unconsciously affective: a constant rhythm of disequilibrium and equilibrium, of need and resolution noticed only when a problem rises to the point of requiring our conscious attention. This affective "charge," this rhythm of sensed need and the desire to overcome it, is Dewey's appropriation of Plato's Erōs. Thomas Alexander casts Dewey's Erōs broadly as humanity's aesthetic investment in our world—our collective effort "to transform a biophysical environment into a world filled with meaning" (Alexander 11). But Henning turns to the more familiar sense of Erōs attuned not to the world at... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ESSE AS THE TARGET OF JUDGMENT IN RAHNER AND AQUINAS 0 NE OF THE commanding currents of thought in Catholic circles since the Second Vatican Council has been Transcendental Thomism. Though its proponents differ among themselves, it is safe to say that the common inspiration is that Thomistic metaphysical conclusions can be arrived at through a Kantian-style transcendental method. The emphasis is on the knower's conditions of knowing, not (...) upon the known. Karl Rahner was a significant figure in this movement. Rahner 's popufarity is undoubtedly connected with his ability cogently to work out attractive theological positions from his version of Transcendental Thomism. In any case, his theology does have this basis. It is a basis that receives extensive elaboration in Rahner's Spirit in the World. This article critically investigates that basis. My conclusion is that Spirit in the World contains a massive misconstrual of the esse grasped in judgment. This is no esoteric point of Thomistic exegesis. A correct appreciation of the esse targeted in judgment shows that no necessity for making a transcendental turn exists. As will be noted, such a turn, at least in Rahner's case, ineluctably leads to a curtailment of metaphysics. Kant is not defeated at his own game. I. The heart of Rahner's philosophy is his understanding of abstraction. Representative descriptions of this understanding are the following. Speaking of the function of the agent intellect, Rahner says, We must therefore ask how the agent intellect is to be understood so that it can know the form as limited, confined, and thus " ESSE " AS THE TARGET OF JUDGMENT 223 of itself embracing further possibilities in itself, as bordering upon a broader field of possibilities. Obviously this is possible only if, antecedent to and in addition to apprehending the individual form, the agent intellect comprehends of itself the whole field of these possibilities and thus, in the sensibly concretized form, experiences the concreteness as limitation of these possibilities, whereby it knows the form itself as able to be multiplied in this field. This transcending apprehension of further possibilities, through which the form possessed in a concretion in sensibility is apprehended as limited and so is abstracted, we call "pre-apprehension." 1 The agent intellect grasps the universal because it pre-apprehends the form so that the form's apparent limitation in the sensible thing reveals the form's in itself universality. Again, The intellect abstracts the forms given in concretion in sensibility insofar as it knows their limitation produced by the already realized synthesis of sensibility, and it does this by the fact that in apprehending them, it comprehends the breadth of their possibilities in a pre-apprehension.2 Finally, Therefore the form must be known as limited by the "this" whose form it is; only then can it be known that it is "broader" in itself and so able to be related to other "this's," and then for the first time can it appear as ontologically different from matter, from its supposit, and as universal in itself.3 I understand Rahner to be saying this. To gras:p a form as universal we must first apprehend it as limited in the individual. Seen as limited in the individual, we realize that in itself it is universal. But we see the individual as a limited instance of the form only because we have first pre-apprehended the form itself. Against this pre-apprehension, the individual appears as an instance of the form. For example, conscious of this thing as a dog, I realize that "dog" is limited here but in itself is broader. My awareness 1 Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, translated by William Dych (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), p. 142. 2 Ibid., p. 146. 3 Ibid., p. 140. 224 JOHN F. X. KNASAS of this as an instance of dog generates the awareness that of itself dog outstrips this instance. But this key awareness of the instance is itself generated by a pre-apprehension of dog in itself. Because of the pre-apprehension, I realize the limiting of dog here in Fido. The crucial factor in this understanding of abstraction is the pre-apprehension. Unless the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AND THE LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S NEW CHRISTENDOM I. RADITIONALLY CHRISTIANS have understood hat God's Kingdom is not of this world. It is not surprising, then, that history evinces some Christian difficulty in relating to thi's world. One aittitude takes ·a merely indirect interest in the world. Temporal activity is directed to the Church and its mission of saving souls. In this attitude the world has only an (...) instrumental value.1 Another attitude consists in a naive and innocent forgetfulness of temporal exigencies.2 A final one encompaisses 1 a disdain for temporal involvement.8 With its need for economic and political reform, the present century calls for a radical temporal engagement. For example, an indirect engagement by Catholics in the interest of the Church will not suffice. The Church shows an ability, even a resiliency, to exist in quite deficient temporal regimes. If the deficiencies of the present are to be remedied, it will be through the efforts of persons ·acknowledging more than an instrumental value to the temporal. Jacques Maritain, a Catholic layman, labored to establish the intellectual underpinnings for a radical Catholic engagement in the temporal. The masterpiece of this work is his In1 See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), pp. 53-54. Jacques Maritain understands this "Political Augustinianism" as an unfortunate false inference from a medieval non-interest in the material order; see Integral Humanism, trans. by Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), p. 12. As will be seen, Maritain wishes to transcend a merely instrumental valuation of the world; for example, see, ibid., pp. 176-7. 2 Maritain, op. oit., pp. 14-15, so characterizes the Middle Ages. 8 Ibid., pp. 102-3. 247 248 JOHN F. X.!{NASAS tegral HumaniMn. The text understands" humanism" in terms of a this-worldly perfection. Maritian says, Humanism tends essentially to render man more truly human, and to manifest his original greatness by having him participate in all that which can enrich him in nature and in history...; it at once demands that man develop the virtualities contained within him, his creative forces and the life of reason, and work to make the forces of the physical world instruments of his freedom.4 That human nature contains such temporal capacities, Maritain later calls the "ontosophic truth." In his Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain speaks of the natural end of the world. By " world " Maritain especially understands " our human universe, the universe of man, of culture and history in their development here below." 5 The end of this world is three-fold.6 First is the mastery of nature by man and also the securement of freedom from servitude to other men. Second is the development of the spiritual activities of man, especially knowledge in the forms of wisdom and natural Finally, of " the manifestation of all the potentialities of human nature." How does a Christian come to make a radical commitment to the realization of these temporal capacities? It is not through any forsaking of his eternal destiny. Rather, for Maritain the temporal engagement follows in and through a deeper appreciation of that eternal destiny. The focus of this deeper appreciation is Christian sanctity. For Maritain only the saint is the true humanist. Why? Maritain concedes that sanctity is first and foremost a love of God. But because God has made 4 Ibid., p. 2. 5.Jacques Maritain, The Peasamt of the Garonne, trans. by Michael O'uddih(Y and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 39. 6 Ibid., pp. 40-1. See also Maritain's, On the Philosophy of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), pp. 125-7. Another apparent reference to the ontosophic truth is Maritain's discussion of "felicite en mouvement," or "l'imparfaite felicite," in N euf Legons sur les Notions Premieres de la Philosophie Morale (Paris: Chez Pierre Tequi, 1949), pp. 99-102. For a diagrammatic rendering of the temporal and eternal planes, see Maritain, On Philosophy of History, p. 129. LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S CHRISTENDOM 249 all in his likeness, the saint's... (shrink)