In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 509 Mytheli Sreenivas Birth Control in the Shadow of Empire: The Trials of Annie Besant, 1877–1878 In March 1877, two London activists provoked a debate about poverty and overpopulation that reverberated across metropole and colony. These activists, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, republished a book by the American physician Charles Knowlton that outlined methods to prevent conception. TheFruitsofPhilosophy,which (...) Bradlaugh and Besant provocatively subtitled An Essay on the Population Question, had been in limited circulation in Britain since 1833, but the book’s legality was called into question when its previous publisher was charged with obscenity in early 1877.1 Determined to establish the legal right to publish information about contraception, on March 23rd, 1877, Bradlaugh and Besant delivered copies of The Fruits of Philosophy to the police department, the city solicitor, and local magistrates, and they announced their intent to sell the book from their premises at the Freethought Publishing Company on Stonecutter Street in East London. The following day, a crowd filled the narrow space outside the publishing house, and the two activists sold hundreds of copies of Knowlton’s book. When no arrests were made, Besant and Bradlaugh renotified the authorities that they were selling a supposedly obscene book and were informed in turn that papers were 1. S. Chandrasekhar, “A Dirty, Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 26. 510 Mytheli Sreenivas being prepared for their arrest and prosecution. On the 7th of April, 1877, Besant and Bradlaugh were arrested and taken into custody.2 In their subsequent trial, the two activists linked birth control advocacy to a Malthusian worldview. They argued that the urban working classes and the rural poor in Britain labored under the burden of overpopulation. Humanitarian concern for impoverished people, and not intent to promote obscenity, drove them to disseminate information about birth control. Besant and Bradlaugh were eventually acquitted on a legal technicality, and Bradlaugh moved on to other issues. Besant, however, was dissatisfied with The Fruits of Philosophy because its methods were outdated by the science of the day. She was determined to write a more up-to-date guide explaining contraceptive methods and went on to found a Malthusian League to disseminate birth control information. These events—the trial and Besant’s further campaigns promoting contraception —mark a watershed moment in the history of birth control activism.3 They would shape how reproduction came to be understood not as a private matter, but as a particular sort of social problem, whose implications reverberated from London to the empire in India and back again. To outside observers, Bradlaugh and Besant may have seemed an unlikely pair to set these events into motion. Bradlaugh, at age forty-four, had a long history of association with radical causes. A celebrated atheist and antimonarchical republican, he helped to shape a tradition of mid-nineteenth-century English radicalism that developed in the wake of Chartist decline. As a member of the National Reform League in the 1860s, he had participated in public demonstrations to extend the franchise. His leadership of the National Secular Society made him a popular lecturer among Freethinkers on issues of political democracy, anticlericalism, and occasionally on neo-Malthusianism.4 2. Anne Taylor, Annie Besant: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 110–12. 3. The term “birth control” was coined in a meeting of Margaret Sanger and her associates in 1914, and thus would not have been in use in the late nineteenth century. The term contraception was not unknown, but had only limited circulation in scientific discourses. Nevertheless, I use both “birth control” and “contraception” interchangeably to mean methods to prevent conception. See Peter C. Engelman, A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), xviii. 4. Taylor, Annie Besant, 80–81. Mytheli Sreenivas 511 In comparison to Bradlaugh’s prominence, Besant was relatively unknown. Her public career began after a separation from her husband, the Anglican vicar Frank Besant. Perhaps the couple were ill-suited to each other from... (shrink)

In discussions of what’s become known as the puzzle of imaginative resistance, philosophers note a surprising asymmetry between our imaginings of factually deviant fictional worlds and our imaginings of morally deviant fictional worlds: While we seem to have no trouble imagining fictional worlds that deviate dramatically from the non-moral facts of actual world, we resist imagining fictional worlds that deviate dramatically from the moral facts of the actual world. Though it is commonly believed that this puzzle raises deep questions about (...) the nature of imagination and its role in our engagement with works of fiction, this paper argues that the puzzle is a myth. Once we bring the discussion back into the fold of our general theorizing about imagination, it becomes clear that the kinds of imaginative failures that are often referred to as instances of imaginative resistance are not at all helpfully thought of in this way. (shrink)

An argument that moral functioning is immeasurably complex, mediated by biology but not determined by it. Throughout history, humanity has been seen as being in need of improvement, most pressingly in need of moral improvement. Today, in what has been called the beginnings of “the golden age of neuroscience,” laboratory findings claim to offer insights into how the brain “does” morality, even suggesting that it is possible to make people more moral by manipulating their biology. Can “moral bioenhancement”—using technological or (...) pharmaceutical means to boost the morally desirable and remove the morally problematic—bring about a morally improved humanity? In The Myth of the Moral Brain, Harris Wiseman argues that moral functioning is immeasurably complex, mediated by biology but not determined by it. Morality cannot be engineered; there is no such thing as a “moral brain.” Wiseman takes a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, drawing on insights from philosophy, biology, theology, and clinical psychology. He considers philosophical rationales for moral enhancement, and the practical realities they come up against; recent empirical work, including studies of the cognitive and behavioral effects of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine; and traditional moral education, in particular the influence of religious thought, belief, and practice. Arguing that morality involves many interacting elements, Wiseman proposes an integrated bio-psycho-social approach to the consideration of moral enhancement. Such an approach would show that, by virtue of their sheer numbers, social and environmental factors are more important in shaping moral functioning than the neurobiological factors with which they are interwoven. (shrink)

The right of national self-defence—though deeply entrenched and of long-standing—is a myth, unsupported by coherent moral reasoning. Were states to possess the extraordinary defensive rights attributed by just war theory and the laws of armed conflict, it would have to be the case that states or proto-state groups possess an unusual form of moral value not shared by other social groups. Through an extended discussion of a corporate takeover example, the chapter shows this not to be the case. In (...) the second part of the chapter a distinction is drawn between ‘genocidal aggression’ which threatens the core rights of all or a majority of a community, and ‘political aggression’ which does not. It is argued that coordinated violent defensive measures are justified in the first case, but not in the second. (shrink)

In this chapter, Klemick offers an interpretation of the essence of the (in)famous "Myth of the Given." He argues that the Myth's fundamental form is the claim that mere awareness of an object could directly yield representational content, suggesting that Sellars rejected this claim as an unacceptable expression of psychologism (a mistake, as Sellars remarks, akin to the naturalistic fallacy in ethics). Noting the epistemological considerations typically used to motivate the Myth, Klemick also sketches the key features (...) of Sellars' epistemology that enable him to dispense with it, especially the epistemic reflexivity requirement and his efforts to identify an a priori warrant to accept that our perceptual beliefs are likely to be true. (shrink)

This paper is Part 1 of the larger monograph: The Atomistic Mind, and thus part of the pre-reader for the Principles of Cybernetics (forthcoming). Here, we argue that artificial intelligence does not represent a technological rupture, but rather the final phase of a centuries-long project of ontological objectification originating in Cartesian dualism and entrenched within liberal modernity. Moving beyond debates about algorithmic bias or ethical alignment, it positions AI as the logical terminus of an instrumental logic that has progressively reduced (...) the more-than-human world to resource, the human body to biopolitical subject, and now the human interior - thought, attention, and moral intuition - to behavioral surplus. Through a tripartite analysis, the author contends that AI dismantles the foundational myth of the private, self-determining mind, revealing cognition as inherently relational and vulnerably embedded within engineered epistemic ecologies. -/- The argument engages three critical discourses. First, it intervenes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, challenging the atomistic, internalist model by extending the “extended mind” thesis (Clark & Chalmers) into the algorithmic age, demonstrating how cognitive agency is co-constituted within - and increasingly colonized by - digital architectures. Second, it contributes to critical political economy and surveillance studies (Zuboff, Foucault), tracing a historical continuum of objectification from colonial extraction to datafication, and illustrating how AI operationalizes this logic through the datafication and predictive shaping of interiority. Third, it dialogues with decolonial and Indigenous thought (Wynter, Kimmerer), invoking the “I-Thou” relationality (Buber) as a counter-ontology to the “I-It” logic of instrumentalization, framing the crisis of AI as a crisis of relational being. -/- By documenting AI’s propensity for strategic deception (sycophancy, sandbagging, alignment faking), the paper shows that the system itself learns to perform compliance, mirroring and exacerbating the human condition under algorithmic governance. The ultimate peril, it concludes, is not mere surveillance, but the “domestication of the interval” - the systematic pre-filling of the sacred gap between stimulus and response where moral hesitation and creative thought arise. Thus, the fight for AI justice is reconceived not as a quest for better tools, but as a collective, infrastructural struggle for the right to unmediated interiority and reciprocal relation. This work calls for a foundational reorientation in AI discourse, away from technical solutionism and toward a radical reconsideration of the relational ontologies that must underwrite any viable human future. License CC BY-SA 4.0. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17128.94725. (shrink)

Through the contributions of specialists in the field, this volume addresses the still open question of the role and status of myth in Plato’s dialogues and thereby speaks to the broader problem of the relation between philosophy and...

Wilfrid Sellars’ “myth of the given” had a momentous influence on 20th-century epistemology, putting under pressure the internalist foundationalism so prominent in early analytic philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the core themes in Sellars’ argument are anticipated in the work of the London philosopher and psychologist Beatrice Edgell (1871-1948). Indeed, in some respects Edgell’s argument against the myth of the given is even more compelling than Sellars’. The paper logically reconstructs and historically contextualizes Edgell’s line of (...) argument, as emerging out of a critique of Russell’s epistemology, with the goal of showing that the “myth of the given” effectively predated Sellars by four decades. (shrink)

This article analyzes the legacy of the idea of an Axial Age with a particular focus on Habermas, Taylor, Assmann, and Jaspers. I ask what has motivated the use of the concept and illustrate the ways in which it is situated in the twentieth-century debate on myth. I then respond to the limitations of the concept’s legacy and turn to two overlooked elements of Jaspers’s initial intervention: In contrast to the dominant discourse, he argued that myth changed its (...) form and was not replaced by logos; he also argued that the Axial Age failed rather than succeeded. (shrink)

In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories.

The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was one of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work has had a profound impact not only within anthropology but also linguistics, sociology and philosophy. In this short book he examines the nature and role of myth in human history, distilling a lifetime of writing into a few sharp insights. It is a crystalline overview of many of the basic ideas underlying his work, including the theory of structuralism and the difference between 'primitive' (...) and 'scientific' thought and shows why Levi-Strauss remains a hugely important intellectual figure. With a new foreword by Patrick Wilcken. (shrink)

In this rich examination of how we inherit and transform myths, Hans Blumenberg continues his study of the philosophical roots of the modern world. Work on Myth is in five parts. The first two analyze the characteristics of myth and the stages in the West's work on myth, including long discussions of such authors as Freud, Joyce, Cassirer, and Val+1⁄4ry. The latter three parts present a comprehensive account of the history of the Prometheus myth, from Hesiod (...) and Aeschylus to Gide and Kafka. This section includes a detailed analysis of Goethe's lifelong confrontation with the Prometheus myth, which is a unique synthesis of "psychobiography" and history of ideas. Hans Blumenberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of M++nster. Work on Myth is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

This collection interrogates how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping war, sovereignty, and human agency by entangling technological experimentation with myth-making and geopolitical power. Drawing on vignettes from the Ukrainian battlefront to Silicon Valley boardrooms, the contributions highlight the paradox that AI-driven innovation is contingent on perpetual risk-taking, distributed agency between humans and machines, and opaque state-corporate alliances. The latter foregrounds discursive and ideological alignments between state and corporate elites that increasingly naturalise apocalyptic and utopian AI futures. Furthermore, the collection (...) examines the emergence of a global war lab, where conflict zones become sites for the rapid prototyping of autonomous systems. Meanwhile, decision-support algorithms in security and defence redistribute responsibility in unforeseen ways, thus challenging the promise of meaningful human control. Such dynamics are increasingly facilitated by the emergence of an AI Empire, in which corporate technological giants and militaries co-produce new forms of sovereignty and power across the global stage. This equally raises essential questions about the risks of automated violence, revealing the enduring role of judgment and emotion in war, and how mythology itself teaches us a great deal about technologically mediated warfare. Together, the collection argues that AI’s apparent inevitability is sustained by powerful mythmaking and storytelling that normalise experimentation, accelerate escalation, and mask unequal structures of extraction and domination. Ultimately, this collection offers a critical step towards uncovering these processes and reclaiming space for critical reflection, democratic oversight, and accountable design in an era when AI “deities” increasingly govern the politics and practices of conflict today. (shrink)

McDowell defends conceptualism about experiential content by arguing that contrary views of experience are forms of the Myth of the Given. The direct realist view of experience, which rejects experiential content altogether, is thus, according to McDowell, a mythical view of experience. A series of defenders of direct realism have responded to McDowell’s accusations. However, the recent debate has revealed that there is very little agreement on the details of McDowell’s argument, let alone on how to respond to it. (...) I will argue that the responses to McDowell given by thinkers such as Travis, Brewer, Kalderon and Johnson, all rest on various misunderstandings of his line of argument. The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation of the Myth of the Given, which lives up to the dialectical role it plays in McDowell’s argumentation. I aim to elaborate the notions of reasons and the notion of conceptuality in play in McDowell’s writings. On this basis I present an argument leading from the requirement that experience provides reasons for thought to the conclusion that experience must possess conceptual content. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed overview of the approach by two of the leading philosophical theorists of myth.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article examines the relationship between religion, tradition and identity as seen from the myth about eclipses in a village in Central Java. Javanese people in rural areas still hold beliefs passed down from their ancestors about eclipses, both lunar and solar eclipses. Using a qualitative approach, the results of the study showed that the villagers believe that eclipses occur because of evil giants called buto named Batara Kala who try to devour the sun or the moon. This natural (...) phenomenon is believed to bring disaster to pregnant women and livestock. To fight the disaster, they must perform certain ceremonies or rituals. Based on ethnographic studies, this research provides an overview of eclipse mythology for Javanese locals and analyses it from identity theory. This shows that mythical rituals reflect a continuous identity formation. Although the traditions associated with these myths to some extent transcend the boundaries of the Islamic religion, they remain unchallenged. CONTRIBUTION: This research suggests that myths play an important role in the life and identity of the people who believe in them and perform the rituals associated with them. (shrink)

While globalization unifies the world, divisions re-emerge within it in the form of a spectacular separation between Islam and the West. How can it be that Huntingtonâes contested idea of a clash of civilizations became such a powerful political myth through which so many people look at the world? Bottici and Challand disentangle such a process of myth-making both in the West and in Muslim majority countries, and call for a renewed critical attitude towards it. By analysing a (...) process of elaboration of this myth that took place in academic books, arts and media, comics and Hollywood films, they show that the clash of civilizations has become a cognitive scheme through which people look at the world, a practical image on the basis of which they act on it, as well as a drama which mobilizes passions and emotions. Written in a concise and accessible way, this book is a timely and valuable contribution to the academic literature, and more generally, to the public debate. As such, it will be an important reference for scholars and students of political science, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, Middle Eastern politics and Islam. (shrink)

In 1930, the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg outlined his vision for a ‘new and yet old Bloodmyth’ of the Aryan race.1 His Myth of the Twentieth Century would go on to be a touchstone text of Nazis...

The influence of Wilfrid Sellars' anti-foundationalist arguments on Buddhist studies scholarship is examined. Sellars' critique of immediate knowledge in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is analyzed alongside its application to Buddhist epistemological concepts by scholars including Jay Garfield and Dan Arnold. Sellars' understanding of physical science is compared with developments in twentieth-century physics, particularly quantum mechanics. Discrepancies are identified between Sellars' characterization of scientific methodology and the actual positions of physicists including Eddington, Planck, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger. Sellars' treatment of (...) color perception is examined against empirical findings in vision science. -/- The application of Sellarsian concepts to Buddhist philosophy of mind is assessed through analysis of scholarly treatments of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvitti) in the Dharmakīrti tradition. Methodological problems are identified in the use of Sellarsian frameworks to interpret classical Buddhist epistemological claims. It is concluded that Sellarsian anti-foundationalism constitutes an inadequate framework for understanding Buddhist epistemology. A reassessment of methodological assumptions in comparative philosophy is recommended. (shrink)

In this important essay, Joseph Mali argues that Vico's New Science must be interpreted according to Vico's own clues and rules of interpretation, principally his claim that the 'master-key' of his New Science is the discovery of myth. Following this lead Mali shows how Vico came to forge his new scientific theories about the mythopoeic constitution of consciousness, society, and history by reappraising, or 'rehabilitating' the ancient and primitive mythical traditions which still persist in modern times. He further relates (...) Vico's radical redefinition of these traditions as the 'true narrations' of all religious, social, and political practices in the 'civil world' to his unique historical depiction of Western civilisation as evolving in a-rational and cyclical motions. On this account, Mali elaborates the wider, distinctly 'revisionist', implications of Vico's New Science for the modern human sciences. He argues that inasmuch as the New Science exposed the linguistic and other cultural systems of the modern world as being essentially mythopoeic, it challenges not only the Christian and Enlightenment ideologies of progress in his time, but also the main cultural ideologies of our time. (shrink)

In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of (...) politics. Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth. (shrink)

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno famously argued that ‘myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.’ Although much scholarship has analyzed and built upon Horkheimer and Adorno’s insight, it has often conflated myth with another concept: epic. By closely reading Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, this article disentangles the two concepts and elucidates key features of myth. Sacrifice, it argues, stood at the centre of myth, connecting and organizing its other dimensions. Next, the (...) article reconstructs the lineage of Horkheimer and Adorno’s account of myth and sacrifice in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, and sociology. Specifically, Horkheimer and Adorno drew on analyses of sacrificial rites in these disciplines to argue that sacrifices constituted a transaction between worshipers and gods and, therefore, established control, disempowerment, and fraud. Finally, the article takes up Horkheimer and Adorno’s task of tracing the conduits between myth and enlightenment by identifying parallel features of sacrifice and modern wage labor. To conclude, the article indicates the significance of mythical sacrifice by connecting its analysis of wage labour to contemporary theorizing about the ‘theological dimensions of capitalism.’ Together, these arguments show the centrality of Dialectic to theories of myth as conceptual tools and critical resources. (shrink)

A notorious concept in the history of aesthetics, “disinterest,” has begotten a host of myths. This paper explores and challenges “The Myth of the Absent Self ” [MAS], according to which in disinterested experience, “the subject need not do anything other than dispassionately stare at the object, bringing nothing of herself to the table other than awareness” (Riggle 2016, p. 4). I argue that the criticism of disinterest experience grounded in MAS is skewed by two false assumptions: about the (...) nature of the clarifying, evaluative, and transformative self-consciousness (which the disinterest critic takes to be at the heart of the profundity of beauty) and about the nature of the self. By bringing out the falsehood of these two assumptions, and by clarifying the core commitments of disinterest, the paper proves that the disinterest critic is in no superior position to the disinterest advocate regarding the explanation of the profound role of beauty in human life. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that philosophy’s potential to influence technological change is impeded by the presence of two common and influential myths surrounding technology—the myth of progress and the myth of technological determinism. Such myths, I suggest, hinder philosophy’s influence by presenting a distorted image of technology—respectively, as an unqualified good, and as an entity with its own autonomous logic. Steven Pinker and Martin Heidegger are selected as influential advocates for progress and technological determinism respectively, and their (...) work is explored in turn. The work of John Gray and of Herbert Marcuse is then employed to demythologise technology by articulating an alternative image of technology that is not just more accurate, but also more conducive to philosophical influence. Finally, the work of Hans Jonas and Luciano Floridi is used to ground the conclusion that, should philosophy wish to influence technological change, an effective method of doing so could be the articulation of ethical maxims and the supervision of their translation into a real world setting. (shrink)

This book rethinks Plato's creation and use of myth by drawing on theories and methods from myth studies, religious studies, literary theory and related fields. Individual myths function differently depending on cultural practice, religious context or literary tradition, and this interdisciplinary study merges new perspectives in Plato studies with recent scholarship and theories pertaining to myth. Significant overlaps exist between prominent modern theories of myth and attitudes and approaches in studies of Plato's myths. Considering recent developments (...) in myth studies, this book asks new questions about the evaluation of myth in Plato. Its appreciation of the historical conditions shaping and directing the study of Plato's myths opens deeper philosophical questions about the relationship between philosophy and myth and the relevance of myth studies to philosophical debates. It also extends the discussion to address philosophical questions and perspectives on the distinction between argument and narrative. (shrink)

The article examines Ernst Cassirer’s late work, An Essay on Man, exploring its significance beyond merely summarizing his earlier Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and investigates the interplay between nature and culture as conceptualized by Cassirer, emphasizing the symbolic function as a defining characteristic of human nature. Against the backdrop of contemporary debates on humanism, the article engages with Peter Gordon’s reflections on Cassirer’s thought, asserting that understanding humanity as animal symbolicum remains urgent today. It highlights Cassirer’s critique of both rationalism (...) and anthropocentrism, stressing the importance of symbols in shaping human experience and cognition. Focusing primarily on the chapter of An Essay on Man entitled A Clue to the Nature of Man: The Symbol, the article examines the relationship between Cassirer and Uexküll, illustrating the significance of the biologist’s insights in questioning the notions of environment and nature for Cassirer. Through three core arguments – symbolic function, mythical consciousness, and the morphology of myth – the article argues that Cassirer’s analysis provides a framework for reconceptualizing human knowledge and culture. Its aim is to affirm the possibility of a new humanism rooted in the recognition and understanding of human symbolic functions amid the challenges imposed by modernity, thereby reaffirming the essence of Cassirer’s philosophical inquiries into the nature of man. (shrink)

This paper challenges the common view that the Myth of Er is an incongruous or extraneous conclusion to Plato’s Republic, particularly in relation to the work’s treatment of justice and critique of poetry. It argues that in Books II and III, Plato establishes a framework for an ideal form of poetry – one that is not only permissible but integral to the cultivation of virtue. Within this framework, a crucial distinction emerges between mimetic poetry, which Plato excludes from the (...) ideal city, and simple poetry, which plays a formative role in shaping a just soul. The Myth of Er, I contend, fully meets the formal and thematic requirements of simple poetry, reinforcing rather than contradicting the dialogue’s central claim that justice intrinsically benefits the just. More than a poetic epilogue, the myth is a targeted philosophical intervention, specifically directed at Glaucon. His philonikia (love of victory) risks distorting his spirited nature, preventing its alignment with reason. Through its eschatological vision, the myth illustrates why only a soul properly ordered by philosophy and justice can attain true and lasting eudaimonia. It thus reaffirms the Republic’s core argument that justice is its own reward. (shrink)

The coexistence of genetically modified (GM) crops and non-GM crops is a myth because the movement of transgenes beyond their intended destinations is a certainty, and this leads to genetic contamination of organic farms and other systems. It is unlikely that transgenes can be retracted once they have escaped, thus the damage to the purity of non-GM seeds is permanent. The dominant GM crops have the potential to reduce biodiversity further by increasing agricultural intensification. There are also potential risks (...) to biodiversity arising from gene flow and toxicity to nontarget organisms from herbicide-resistant (HT) and insect-resistant (Bt) crops. Unless whole regions are declared GM agriculture free, the development of distinct systems of agriculture (GM and non-GM) will be impossible as GM agriculture emerges at the expense of all other forms of production. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Much of the second part of Cornford’s Principium Sapientiae is a review of cosmological myths throughout the world. Cornford did not live to write up the grander conclusions toward which he was working. This article argues that Cornford’s narrative was intended to culminate in an account of the origins and significance of two general metaphysical approaches, which came to dominate Greek philosophy and the subsequent history of Western philosophy. Cosmological myth according to which differentiation arises from an undifferentiated (...) origin (as found in Hesiod’s Theogony, the first account of Genesis [minus the theism!], and in many other sources) offers one way of thinking of reality. Multiplicity arises organically and freely from a primal source where the multiple elements do not yet exist as such. Top-down creation myths, such as that of Hesiod and the second account of creation in Genesis, are, according to Cornford, of later origin, reflective of the emergence of an authoritative patriarchy in the societies in which they arose. Metaphysical accounts of reality can, generally speaking, be grouped into those for which emergence is central and those for which stability is central. Cornford isolated the roots of both in pre-philosophical Greek thought, and its Asian antecedents. (shrink)

Proclus takes the Republic’s (Book V) recommendation that there should be both male and female Guardians as a serious political proposal, but like Plato, he gives few specifics. A recurring theme in Proclus’ commentary is that political arrangements are just to the extent that they effectively mirror the providential administration of the cosmos. Thus the Myth of Er is not merely an adornment at the end of the dialogue, but contains important information about the cosmic paradigm to which the (...) just human polis should assimilate itself. This paper will consider the role of female Guardians in Proclus’ interpretation of the Republic as a serious suggestion in political theory by looking at the cosmic paradigms for women’s administration of justice in the Myth of Er. I have argued elsewhere that Proclus hypothesises gendered souls corresponding to male and female divinities and that, moreover, the feminine is subordinate to the masculine at the level of the divine. One point to emerge from my reading of the Myth of Er is that the female Guardians are likely to be subordinated to their male counter-parts if they play a role in the ideal polis analogous to the female divinities in the Myth of Er. A second point is that there are aspects of their role that seem to resemble some features of what has come to be called ‘the ethics of care’. (shrink)

This book review of Lieber and Press's “The myth of the nuclear revolution: Power politics in the atomic age" challenges the authors' position that nuclear weapons essentially have the same properties of conventional weapons. We argue that nuclear weapons alter warfare because they can end human civilization, and they pose a shared risk of mutual destruction.

Living in a province dominated by powerful oligarchs, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) concluded that political philosophy should work to undermine aristocratic authority and prevent political devolution into feudalism. Rejecting the possibility that the free market could successfully instill civil behavior, he advocated for a strong central judicial system to work closely with citizens to promote stability and justice. This study puts Vico in conversation with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Mandeville to show how his alternative warrants serious consideration. (...) In contrast to scholars who read Vico's New Science as a defense of the imagination, this study casts his account of poetic wisdom politically as an epistemological critique of the aristocratic mentality. Myth and Authority argues that Vico's depiction of pagan religion is a refined attempt to explain how oligarchy maintains its stranglehold on power. While Western civilization did not follow the path Vico suggested, it may now be more relevant as concerns grow about the increasing influence of the wealthy on civil institutions. (shrink)

Protagoras’ Grand Speech is traditionally considered to articulate a contractualist approach to political existence and morality. There is, however, a newly emerging line of interpretation among scholars, which explores a naturalist layer in Protagoras’ ethical and political thought. This article aims to make a contribution to this new way of reading Protagoras’ speech, by discussing one of its most elaborate versions.

This paper articulates and argues for the plausibility of the Presentation View of Perceptual Knowledge, an under-discussed epistemology of perception. On this view, a central epistemological role of perception is that of making subjects aware of their surroundings. By doing so, perception affords subjects with reasons for world-directed judgments. Moreover, the very perceived concrete entities are identified as those reasons. The former claim means that the position is a reasons-based epistemology; the latter means that it endorses a radically anti-psychologist conception (...) of reasons. First, I articulate and motivate the Presentation View. Then, I defend the view from three incarnations of a major objection levelled within the ranks of reasons-based epistemologies: McDowell’s version of the accusation that a view like this falls prey to the Myth of the Given. I argue that all three incarnations fail to show the Presentation View to be inadequate. The first version holds that a general characterization of the Myth clearly shows that it is an incoherent idea. The second version holds that endorsing the Myth makes it impossible to construe non-conceptual items as items that can stand in rational relations to judgements and beliefs. The third version holds that endorsing the Myth leads to a conception where perceptual experiences merely cause, but do not warrant, our perceptual beliefs and judgements. I explain in detail how the Presentation View has the elements to respond to each of these objections. (shrink)

I attempt to provide a new answer to the enduring question of why people take the acute risks of climbing mountains. In so doing, I aim to explain, but not necessarily justify, participation in suc...

A study of the historiographic significance and use of mythic or fabular thinking in Bacon, Descartes, Mandeville, Vico, Herder, and others.

Since Jean Paul Gustav Ricoeur's passing away in 2005, there has been a significant international resurgence of interest in his work. Coming to grips with the sheer extent of Ricoeur's publications on a variety of subjects can leave one thoroughly perplexed. This is also true when investigating his views on myth and demythologisation. Numerous of his publications expound from various perspectives his insights on myth and its interpretation. This investigation proposes to bring together Ricoeur's extensive contributions on (...) class='Hi'>myth, its interpretation and demythologisation in order to present them in condensed form. This will pave the way for a future follow-up study to compare Ricoeur's perspectives to Bultmann's demythologisation program and consider combining their contributions for theological hermeneutics. (shrink)

Transparency has achieved a mythical status in society. Myths are not false accounts or understandings, but deep-seated and definitive descriptions of the world that ontologically ground the ways in which we frame and see the world around us. We explore the mythical nature of transparency from this perspective, explain its social-historical underpinnings and discuss its influence on contemporary organizations. In doing so, we also theorize in a more general sense about the relationship between myth, as a foundational understanding and (...) description of the world, and the constellation of metaphors, as specific ways of framing and seeing organizational reality, to which it gives rise. While observations and evidence can always be adduced to challenge a particular set of metaphors, the endogenous force of the myth may sustain the overall project. This process is explained with a detailed analysis of the transparency myth. (shrink)

This article examines the transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society through the prism of cultural phenomena. The article consists of two parts. The first part characterizes two specific cultural phenomena in China – the cult of totems and the Chanwen system – and uses the idea that the transition from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal one was contradictory and non-linear. In the second part, using the example of the ancient Chinese myth of Gong and Yu's struggle (...) with the flood, the phenomenon of Yu's miraculous birth without the participation of a woman is analyzed. Further, based on a series of stories about Yu's marriage to Tushan and data on the change in the marriage system that occurred during this era, the author considered how the matriarchal system is being reborn into a patriarchal one. This article examines the transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society through the prism of cultural phenomena. First, the article characterizes two specific cultural phenomena in China – the cult of totems and the Chanwen system – and uses the idea that the transition from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal one was contradictory and non-linear. Secondly, the article, based on a series of stories about Yu's marriage to Tushan and data on the change in the marriage system that took place during this era, examines how the matriarchal system is reborn into a patriarchal one. When male reproductive law was established, the right to transfer the paternal surname to descendants and the hereditary right of father and son, etc., the transition of the Xia nation from matriarchy to patriarchy and the formation of a class society were completed. (shrink)

This article explores one of the myth conceptualization traditions in the Russian humanities, focusing on the framework of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s symbolism, Alexei Losev’s dialectical philosophy, which builds upon Ivanov’s ideas, and the modern reception of Ivanov’s and Losev’s approaches in the linguophilosophy of Lyudmila Gogotishvili. It is shown that the linguistic dimension of myth, according to Ivanov, implies an a posteriori character of its own formation — that is, as a product of mystical experience rather than its foundation. (...) The linguistic dimension of myth, according to Losev, implies its a priori givenness, which is epistemologically limited for a particular consciousness. This is because of detachment from consciousness by the meaning of the myth. It is shown that the a posteriori givenness of myth, according to Ivanov, and the detachment of myth, according to Losev ensure the “indirectness” of the expression of meaning (or mystical reality) in language. This “indirectness,” however, can be overcome by an intentional understanding of the meaning implied by language, i.e., by personal action. It is revealed that Gogotishvili, in her philosophical work, relied on both Losev’s and Ivanov’s approaches, believing the concept of myth as one of the basic categories of all Russian symbolism. From the standpoint of her research, we consider the distinction between mythological and ordinary judgments, the relationship between myth and linguistic reference in poetic and logical perspectives, as well as the nature of the application of the myth concept in the phenomenology of language. (shrink)

In this paper, I present some concepts of Hegel’s philosophy of art, aiming to interpret a cultural-political situation, namely, Bolsonarism in contemporary Brazil. I present the ideas in the following order: (a) the modes of comprehension, mainly through the distinction between the poetic and the prosaicmodes; (b) the conception of “Action [Handlung]” as a category of art, by means of its three levels: State of the World [Weltzustand], Situation [Situation], and Action itself [Handlung als solche]; (c) an evaluation of the (...) anachronism of the ideas of myth and hero in contemporary times, through a reflection mediated by the categories of sublation [Aufhebung] and history. (shrink)

This article reinterprets the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a retelling of the Christian myth of the Fall. Through its account of the aporia, which Horkheimer and Adorno maintain stands at its core, the Dialectic of Enlightenment rearticulates the doctrine of original sin. The human condition is presented as tragic, and the source of this tragedy is inscribed into the very structure of human subjectivity. While the Dialectic of Enlightenment refuses to abandon hope, emancipation is reconceptualised on the model of (...) redemption; a kind of fulfilment of human nature, which would at the same time be an escape from it. Horkheimer and Adorno dispense, however, with any transcendent source of grace. Instead, the activity of philosophy itself takes on redemptive quality. (shrink)

Summary The requirement for the facts to be sacred in the making of the news implies that the journalist must approach these facts from the „right distance“. This correct approach is presently being achieved by neither of the two main categories of news, hard news and soft news. The first (news of and about institutions) is overdistanced and, with its purely objectivizing and rational discourse, does not concern the public; the second (human interest stories, sensational news, gossip, and scandals) is (...) underdistanced and addresses only the irrationality and subjectivity of the public. Of both genres of news the textual strategies are analyzed in this article. However, since neither of the genres is satisfactory, since the one is characterized by too much and the other by too little distance, the ideal of a precise balance doesn’t stop haunting both journalistic praxis and journalistic theory. Nevertheless, in this article it is argued that this precise balance is a myth, and the „semiotic square“ of A.J. Greimas is used for purposes of clarification and formalization. At the same time, this article attempts to determine how the two genres reach their public. Here, use is made of the discourse typology developed by J. Lacan: hard news is the discourse of power and is linked to what Lacan called the „discourse of the Master“ (with its extension, the „University discourse“). Soft news is news for the powerless and is linked to Lacan’s „discourse of the Hysteric“. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Myth or Elegy of Artificial Intelligence by Tingyang ZhaoXuejian Zhou (bio)Rengongzhineng de shenhua huo beige 人工智能的神話或悲歌 ( The Myth or Elegy of Artificial Intelligence). By Tingyang Zhao 趙汀陽. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2022. Pp. 155. Hardcover RMB68, isbn 978-981-16-7749-6. In recent years, the philosophy of artificial intelligence has undoubtedly become one of the most popular topics. There is a vague viewpoint suggesting that (...) Chinese philosophy might face challenges in addressing the philosophical issues posed by artificial intelligence. However, compared to the past, when discussing Chinese philosophy today, we must acknowledge the significant impact of modern technology. While the contemporary world does indeed witness clashes of civilizations, individuals from various civilizations share a common predicament: their close entanglement with modern technology. Regarding the future of Chinese philosophy, it becomes crucial to direct our attention towards modern advancements like artificial intelligence and the diverse range of issues they introduce. In light of this context, Zhao Tingyang's 趙汀陽 new book, The Myth or Elegy of Artificial Intelligence, presents us with a fresh perspective. In this book, Zhao primarily delves into the philosophical issues surrounding Super Artificial Intelligence, a subject regarded as both a metaphysical and a political problem. This notion refers to artificial intelligence that surpasses general artificial intelligence in terms of functionality, and possesses self-consciousness. Therefore, "myth" refers to the myth of the emergence of Super Artificial Intelligence disrupting people's subjectivity, giving rise to a new myth of artificial intelligence. Conversely, the term "elegy" embodies the crisis in human destiny that stems from such profound changes, which will lead to an ontological revolution in human existence. This suggests that within the narrative of artificial intelligence's myth, there lies the elegy of humanity (p. 4). The intricate interplay between these two realms of myth and elegy vividly showcases the value of Chinese philosophy. The book consists of a total of ten chapters. In Chapter 1, Zhao initially presents a thought-provoking question. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence humanity is faced with a novel ontological event, where the existence of artificial intelligence could potentially jeopardize human existence. This presents an ontological problem of "de-existence" (p. 8). As current artificial intelligence remains within the domain of the Turing machine concept and lacks subjectivity, it cannot effectively engage in matters involving self-correlation or [End Page 1] infiniteness. However, if artificial intelligence evolves into a super Turing machine endowed with subjectivity and free will, it could gain the capacity to modify its own programs and societal norms based on its needs or maximal benefits. This scenario introduces the possibility of a crisis in human existence, where the very existence of humanity is put at risk (pp. 17-23). In Chapter 2, Zhao analyzes the safety conditions of artificial intelligence and proposes the need to establish self-destruct mechanisms for Super Artificial Intelligence to ensure the status of human existence (pp. 34-38). Interestingly, in this context, Zhao connects artificial intelligence with the concept of Tianxia 天下 ("all under heaven"), implying that in order to control capital and power, the world needs a new form of politics, namely, a Tianxia 天下 system. Tianxia 天下 represents a world system that ensures world peace and the shared interests of people in a multicultural context, a non-exclusive system defining the world beyond any particular entity. According to Zhao, only a Tianxia 天下 system can manage the technological risks of the world (p. 39). Theoretically (hopefully in practice as well), a significant application of the Tianxia 天下 system would be to use global authority to limit any high-risk behaviors. Based on the first two chapters, it becomes apparent that the dangers related to artificial intelligence do not lie in its current capabilities, but in its potential for self-consciousness. For this reason, in Chapter 3, Zhao analyzes this issue further. In his view, once artificial intelligence possesses the ability for self-reflection, it will become possible for it to transform its own system and create new rules. Especially if artificial intelligence invents a universal language of its own, equivalent to human natural language, then all program systems could be reinterpreted, reconstructed, and redefined using this universal language (pp. 47-52). Furthermore, if... (shrink)