History of Ideas

Contrairement aux interprétations coutumières il y a un dialogue permanent entre la République, le Politique et les Lois et non une rupture ou un changement substantiel de la pensée politique de Platon. Une analyse minutieuse de Leg. V 739a1-740a2 montre clairement cette cohérence, en particulière la tournure "dieux ou fils des dieux" qu'y apparaît se rattache à l'état ordonné de l'âme et plus spécifiquement à la connaissance philosophique et n'indique pas l'abandonnement des positions de la République. De cette façon sont réfutées les thèses soutenues par A. Laks depuis quelques années sur le rapport entre la République et les Lois.
In spite of the usual interpretations there is a continuous dialogue between the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws and not a break or a substantial change in Plato's political thought. A detailed analysis of Laws V 739a1-740a2 shows beyond all doubt this strict coherence, especially the expression "gods or children of gods" that appears in this passage is related to the ordered state of the soul and more specifically to the philosophical knowledge and does not point to a revision of the doctrines defended in the Republic, so that the interpretation of the relationship between the Republic and the Laws defended since the beginning of the 90'ties by A. Laks can be considered as definitively refuted.

In order to accept this Student Recruiter agreement with the College of Mental Health Counselling, you must believe in and agree with the value of learning about counselling through the online course described at www.ctihalifax.com, and you must act in good faith accepting that the College will remunerate you as per the terms of this agreement in #5 below. Because a Student Recruiter must communicate the following, therefore completing the below steps is considered a Skill Test in order to qualify. When the College receives full tuition from your first referral, you will be considered a Student Recruiter.

L'hospitalité est une pratique en apparence simple et universellement partagée. Il serait donc tentant d'en fournir une définition générique : l'hospitalité est l'institution qui règle l'interaction entre un accueillant (chez lui) et un accueilli (nouveau venu), consistant en un processus de familiarisation réciproque (faire connaissance, entretenir une relation, etc.). Elle a comme fonctions la dispensation de bienfaits, l'amorçage de la socialité, l'identification de l'étranger, ou l'intégration temporaire de l'invité.
L'hospitalité ne saurait néanmoins être réduite à une vertu privée. Elle est au contraire une pratique politique : elle institue des règles, des frontières, et des dispositifs d'intégration ou d'exclusion. Cet ouvrage expose les différentes formes qu'elle a pu revêtir, des sociétés traditionnelles à nos jours en explicitant les relations de pouvoir qui se jouent dans le langage vertueux de l'hospitalité. Une telle généalogie permet de retrouver les moments et les lieux clés qui ont façonné ce concept en le transformant, le déplaçant et le recomposant selon sa fonction politique.

The paper discusses the major characteristics of modernity and post-modernity presented in Passion of the Western Mind by contemporary depth psychologist and philosopher Richard Tarnas. The essay, created for a course taught by Dominican theologian Fr. Edward Krasevac on the nature and history of Western thought, summarizes Tarnas's view of the larger cultural and historical contexts in which the dominant epistemologies and perspectives of modernity and post-modernity evolved and serves as a basic introduction to some of the distinctive features of modern and post-modern philosophical criticism.

Abraham Abulafia (1240–1290) is considered to be one of the most significant Jewish mystics and is one of the few who taught a comprehensive system of meditative practices designed to induce ecstatic religious experiences. At the heart of Abulafia’s meditation techniques lies the coordination of breath and body while pronouncing the Hebrew letters of the Name of God. Specifically, Abulafia instructs the practitioner to empty and stop the breath, paralleling a technical breathing practice in Yogic Pranayama called “Kumbhaka”. The Islamic polymath Al-Biruni’s (973–1048) Arabic translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is proposed as one possible transmission vector for this Yoga technique across radically different cultures and geographies into Abulafia’s method, which then profoundly influenced major Jewish personalities down to our day.

Culture is widely believed to play an important role in the international aviation system. Given the many factors, including the infrastructure of aviation, that affect aviation safety, the role of culture remains uncertain. It is accepted that culture must exert some influence on the ...

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

Any cursory review of the past five years of Italian historiography on fascism obviously would be subject to multiple criticisms and be Condemned for partiality, especially since the time span under investigation is relatively brief and only the work of select Italian scholars can be considered.
Not all the published literature on fascism could be taken into
account, given the enormous attention still given to the subject in academic monographs and journalistic accounts.

Art and Ideas
Francisco de Hollanda and Sixteenth-Century Aesthetics

The historians of aesthetics who have studied the problem of
ideas in art theory (from Panofsky to Baeumler and Tatarkiewicz) have overlooked Da pintura antiga, by Portuguese artist and theoretician Francisco de Hollanda (1517-1584), a text where the Platonic notion of idea enters a treatise on art for the first time.
The present volume aims to fill such gap by shedding light on an author who has long been overshadowed by the great Michelangelo (whom Hollanda met during his stay in Rome in the years 1538-1540), as well as by advancing an analysis of the aesthetic concepts that emerge not only from Da pintura antiga, but from the entire body of Hollanda’s works.
The most significant element is that in Hollanda’s approach art
theory appropriates connotations previosuly reserved for poetic
creativity. In fact, poetry had borrowed from Platonic philosophy the notion of “divine frenzy” to describe the inspired poet. According to Hollanda, on the contrary, it is the artist who, possessed by such frenzy, is able to rise to the world of ideas. Artistic creativity thus acquires a sacred dimension: “ancient painting” is seen as a sort of “prisca pictura” that, like Ermete Tremegisto’s “prisca theologia”, reveals the most hidden truths. The “melancholic”
artist, who possesses an inspired and bizarre imagination,
as best exemplified by “grottesche”, is the only one capable of
grasping the idea and fixing it with uncommon rapidity in a
sketch. This is a complex and not always immediately successful procedure. Thus, Hollanda considers blindness as a privileged factor to grasp the kind of beauty that the artist, like the prophet, can see only with his “inner eyes”, eyes that are not dimmed by sensible perceptions.
Consequently, “drawing” becomes a key element of Hollanda’s
thought. Drawing emerges as the basis not only of painting,
sculpture, and architecture, but of all the arts that are connected with images: from martial strategy to civil and military engineering; from maps to the design of insignia, livery, clothes, and ornaments.
Hollanda moves beyond the distinction between major
and minor arts, and his approach emerges as more modern than the one that Vasary will articulate a few years later in his famous definition of the “arts of drawing”.

The First of the Modern Ottomans blends biography with intellectual history. On the one hand, it is the story of an Ottoman life – the life of the scribe, ambassador, and prolific historian Ahmed Vâsıf (ca. 1735-1806), a man who improbably rose from obscurity in Baghdad to travel the empire, fight its wars, advise its sultans, and, in time, write its history. As a full-scale biography, the book is a rarity for the field of Ottoman history and reconstructs Vâsıf’s life, career, and opinions through meticulous research in both Ottoman and European sources. On the other hand, The First of the Modern Ottomans is also one of the first detailed intellectual studies of the early modern Ottoman Empire. Weaving together Vâsıf’s life and thought with the larger intellectual currents of the day – especially at the court of Sultan Selim III in Istanbul – it explores central debates among the Ottoman ruling elite over Europe, political reform, war and peace, justice, and the empire’s renewal. Vâsıf’s life reveals a vital response to the empire’s challenges at the turn of the nineteenth century – one that was novel and deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics, and statecraft.

The second Book of the Politics has been object of multiple considerations, but it has called the attention of the scholars mainly because of its detailed criticism of Plato's political projects, especially the Republic. In fact Aristotle devotes 6 of the 12 chapters of Book II to examine Plato's proposals. Most of the scholarly contributions are focused on the criticism of Plato trying either to demonstrate the justice of Aristotle's reproaches or to invalidate his chapters on the basis of a supposed inexactness of his words.

A collective intellectual biography that sheds new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy.

Would the most recognizable ideas in the French social sciences have developed without the influence of Brazilian intellectuals? While any study of Brazilian social sciences acknowledges the influence of French scholars, Ian Merkel argues the reverse is also true: the “French” social sciences were profoundly marked by Brazilian intellectual thought, particularly through the University of São Paulo. Through the idea of the “cluster,” Merkel traces the intertwined networks of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Fernand Braudel, Roger Bastide, and Pierre Monbeig as they overlapped at USP and engaged with Brazilian scholars such as Mário de Andrade, Gilberto Freyre, and Caio Prado Jr..

Through this collective intellectual biography of Brazilian and French social sciences, Terms of Exchange reveals connections that shed new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy, even as it prompts us to revisit established thinking on the process of knowledge formation through fieldwork and intellectual exchange. At a time when canons are being rewritten, this book reframes the history of modern social scientific thought.

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke. Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke.

Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

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Born in rural Hesse, Germany, Leo Strauss (1899–1973) became an active Zionist and philosopher during the tumultuous and fractious Weimar Republic. As Eugene R. Sheppard demonstrates in this groundbreaking and engaging book, Strauss gravitated towards such thinkers as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt as he sought to identify and overcome fundamental philosophical, political, and theological crises. The rise of Nazism impelled Strauss as a young Jewish émigré, first in Europe and then in America, to grapple with—and accommodate his thought to—the pressing challenges of exile. In confronting his own state of exile, Strauss enlisted premodern Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza who earlier addressed the problem of reconciling their competing loyalties as philosophers and Jews.

This is the first study to frame Strauss’s political philosophy around his critique of liberalism and the problem of exile. Sheppard follows Strauss from Europe to the United States, a journey of a conservative Weimar Jew struggling with modern liberalism and the existential and political contours of exile. Strauss sought to resolve the conflicts of a Jew unwilling to surrender loyalty to his ancestral community and equally unwilling to adhere to the strictures of orthodox observance. Strauss saw truth and wisdom as transcending particular religious and national communities, as well as the modern enlightened humanism in which he himself had been nurtured. In his efforts to navigate between the Jewish and the philosophical, the ancient and the modern, Berlin and New York, Strauss developed a distinctively programmatic way of reading and writing “between the lines.” Sheppard recaptures the complexity and intrigue of this project which has been ignored by those who both reject and claim Strauss’s legacy.

After once being central to geographical explanations, cognitive-behavioural research is now viewed as a backwater inhabited by a small, if productive, minority. This paper reflects on this dramatic reappraisal and comments on options for the future. It has three main parts. The first surveys the reasons for the declining image of cognitive-behaviouralism as an approach to geographical problems. The second part draws attention to links between the production of knowledge and trends in the wider environments in which geographers work. The final section appraises the options now open for cognitive studies by geographers. It argues that the sustained mood of reappraisal within human geography makes conditions favourable for a renewed, but measured affirmation of the value of cognitive-behaviouralism.

In der Geisteskultur des Mittelalters existierten vielfältige Vorstellungen einer Überlegenheit kollektiver über individuelle Konzepte des Gütergebrauchs und -besitzes, die Befürwortern von Kollektivökonomien und kommunistischen Ordnungsmodellen in der Neuzeit immer wieder als positive Bezugspunkte dienten. Im folgenden Beitrag wird aus mediävistischer Perspektive geprüft, ob das mittelalterliche Ideengut tatsächlich in eine logische Verbindung zu Modellen moderner Share Economy gebracht werden kann. Hierzu werden zunächst die philosophischen, juridischen und religiösen Traditionslinien zusammengeführt, in deren Bahnen sich das Denken über Gütergemeinschaft im Mittelalter bewegte. Darauf aufbauend, rückt anschließend der englische Philosoph und Theologe John Wyclif in den Fokus. Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts entwickelte dieser eine differenzierte Lehre des dominium, in deren Rahmen er sich für eine Gütergemeinschaft der Gesamtkirche aussprach. Um die Kohärenz der Wyclif’schen Güterlehre sowie ihre Kompatibilität mit den Prinzipien von Share Economy ermessen zu können, wird sie gezielt mit den Regeln erfolgreichen Commonings nach E. Ostrom konfrontiert, aus denen eine Vielzahl gegenwärtiger Allmende-Konzepte ihr Regularium bezieht. Auf diese Weise werden substantielle Unterschiede, aber auch überraschende Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen mittelalterlichen und postmodernen Ideen des Commoning erkennbar.

The resplendent image of the elephant –celebrated, feared, admired and honoured is a key part of the Indian ethos and collective conscience. The elephant in Indian culture has been a crucial symbol of many ideas like power and intelligence. Elephants, due to their astounding physiology became a vital part of the army and as an animal to both impress and terrify. The linkage between the elephant and kingship, along with its need of forest in a situation where captive breeding is unfeasible, has been discussed in the paper. The paper surveys major periods of Indian history and the role of coalescence of instrumental and symbolic factors in the persistence of elephants. The usefulness of the elephant, the taboo on its killing, the rise and spread of the worship of Ganesha, the role of king’s enamor for the giant, the spread of the institution of the war elephant in various parts have been closely examined. Moreover, a comparison of India and China too has been attempted to see the difference in the ethos and land ethic of the two critical socio-political and cultural entities. The paper also discusses the newly emerging theoretical framework of ethno-elephantology which places keen interest on local cultures and critiques humanist polarities of nature and culture.

The author Julia Warth was awarded the Gerhard-Ritter-Preis for her biography of Walther von Seydlitz-Kurtzbach. Taken prisoner after surrendering in Stalingrad, the general, descended from a famous military family, came forward as the leader of the "Bund Deutscher Offiziere" and vice-president of the "Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland"  founded in September resp. July 1943 in the POW camp Lunyovo near Moscow. Aside from certain unsubstantiated value judgements concerning Seydlitz´ patriotic motives this detailed biography conveys an objective portrait of the ill-fated Prussian-German officer who fell out with Hitler when attemtping to save his country from total demise.

This paper presents an overview of the adoption of Adam Smith’s work in the Central European countries, namely the Czech lands and the Hungarian Kingdom in the last third of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, after a short presentation concerning the teaching and writing on economic issues in Smith’s time, we discuss various channels through which Smith’s ideas reached Central Europe. We take stock of the economists influenced by his thoughts, most of them students at the University of Göttingen. In the second part, we discussed the life and the work of Gregorius von Berzeviczy, an eminent economist living in the Kingdom of Hungary, who seemed to be most influenced by the teaching of the Great Scotsman. We reviewed Berzeviczy’s main works and discussed his influence.

A B S T R A C T Visualisations can highly contribute to the importance and authority of new ideas, concepts, and knowledge claims. Among the many visualisations, few become well-known and influential in environmental governance. Whilst these have been objects of specific research, this study questions what constitutes and underpins their influence. For this, the paper codifies influential visualisations and defines criteria for studying their visual characteristics. The criteria are applied to two case studies, the " traffic light " and the " planetary boundaries " diagrams. To increase the validity of the findings, the study also introduces two " failure cases " as a plausibility check.

This inaugural lecture outlines the contours of a history of critical thinking. Drawing on case studies from the 19th, 20th, and 21st-century humanities, it draws attention to demands that critical thinking makes on the self – that is, to skills, virtues, attitudes, and capacities characteristic of what one might call a “critical self.” On the one hand, the cultivation of such qualities in research and teaching alike is a theme that allows for cross-disciplinary comparisons of the kind that historians of the humanities like to make. On the other, it touches directly on questions of contemporary relevance. What does it mean to foster critical thinking skills in contemporary academia? Is critical thinking compatible with care and compassion, or does it cultivate a stance of detachment, perhaps even of suspicion? Is critical thinking a much-needed remedy against fake news, or are societies struggling with political polarization and diminishing trust in public institutions likely to benefit more from a “postcritical turn”?

A review essay of Peter Harrison's The Territories of Science and Religion. In addition to summarizing this important book, I provide extended critique of Harrison's argument for religion as a reification in the seventeenth century. Particular emphasis is paid to Harrison's proposal of the existence of a primarily non-propositional concept of religion. Since writing this, Peter engaged in a two-hour recorded exchange to appear in Fides et Historia.