scholarly journals Who speaks for Hume: Hume's presence in the 'Dialogues concerning Natural religion'

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (34) ◽  
pp. 113-137
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Davidović
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Natural Religion

One of the reasons for many different and even opposing interpretations of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is the absence of consensus concerning the question of which character in the Dialogues represents Hume. In this paper I argue that taking Philo to be his primary spokesperson provides us with the most consistent reading of the whole work and helps us better understand Hume's religious viewpoint. I first stress the specific dialogue form of Hume's work, which requires us to take into account literary tools such as irony and double-talk when interpreting it. From there I proceed to show why I believe that my hypothesis is better supported than the other two main hypotheses concerning Hume's presence in the Dialogues, the first one being that Cleanthes represents Hume and the other one that none of the characters consistently speaks for Hume but rather that the whole structure of the work does that. Although there is both textual and historical evidence which suggests that Hume favoured Cleanthes, I show that his opinions deviate from Hume's well-known views on important subjects such as scepticism, morality and Christianity, while Philo's opinions on these subjects agree with Hume's almost verbatim. The second hypothesis is proven to be wrong by the fact that Philo actually consistently defends Hume's opinions. Finally, I argue that Philo's understanding of true religion as a philosophical position devoid of any religious import agrees with Hume's religious scepticism.

Museum, Not Temple

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Katarina Horst ◽  
Aida Pagliacci Pizzardi
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Framework ◽  
New Ways Of Working ◽  
Cultural Assets ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Museums And Collections

A Museum is not a temple but a place giving an ethical, moral framework to the meeting of people and cultural assets. Museum's outfitting must be able to make visitors understand, without any further mediation. Two aspects are shown: the need to be suitable for early childhood and the capacity of being a reference of citizenship. For centuries, some Museums and Collectors have used illegal digs as a source to acquire antique objects, with the result that most Museums and Collections possess a large amount of objects with no trace of their provenance. The countries of origin, on the other hand, feel deprived of their past. There is a change necessary: a change in how to deal with ancient objects, which should be presented because of their historical evidence. A new way of dealing with objects is possible: examples of new collaborations between the officials of the Countries of origin and the Museums are given. In the new ways of working in the culture sector the public will be the profiteer, beginning with everyone's own personal experience.

Webs of Belief or Practices: the Problem of Understanding

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Social Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Major Symptom ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

ObjectivityandThere is No Such Thingas a Social Science make an odd pair: one is a substantive historical discussion of a philosophical concept central to philosophy and to scientific practice and debate which provides an explanation of the history of the development and changes in the concept; the other is a defense of a philosophical position which in effect denies that any such explanation is possible, and attacks “the craving for explanation” as a philosophical disease whose major symptom is social science itself. Galison and Daston, the authors of Objectivity, are historians of science whose approach is connected to the “social study of science” without explicitly adopting any of its methodological theses. But in taking on the concept of objectivity they go to the philosophical heart of the scientific enterprise itself.

Quranic Studies, part IV: Some methodological notes

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Andrew Rippin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Common Objection

In this article I will focus upon authors who have suggested basic methodological challenges to the assumptions of Wansbrough's approach to the Muslim interpretative tradition found in part IV of his book, Quranic Studies. A common objection arises to Wansbrough's insistence on having textual evidence for historical claims and his seeing those texts which do provide historical evidence as complex expressions of several generations of editors. Two works, one an article by Issa Boullata and the other, a book by C.H.M. Versteegh, will be dealt with in some detail in this paper in order to clarify the issues which are at stake.

scholarly journals Jacques Derrida: The Double Liminality of a Philosophical Marrano

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Kutash
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
French Language ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The One

There is an analogy between two types of liminality: the geographic or cultural ‘outside’ space of the Marrano Jew, alienated from his/her original religion and the one he or she has been forced to adopt, and, a philosophical position that is outside of both Athens and Jerusalem. Derrida finds and re-finds ‘h’ors- texte’, an ‘internal desert’, a ‘secret’ outside place: alien to both the western philosophical tradition and the Hebraic archive. In this liminal space he questions the otherness of the French language to which he was acculturated, and, in a turn to a less discursive modality, autobiography, finds, in the words of Helene Cixous, “the Jew-who-doesn’t know-that-he-is”. Derrida’s galut (exile) is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It is a private place outside of all discourse, which he claims, is inevitably ethnocentric. In inhabiting this outside space, he exercises the prerogative of a Marrano, equipped to critique the French language of his acculturation and the western philosophy of the scholars. French and Hebrew are irreconcilable binaries, western philosophy and his Hebrew legacy is as well. These issues will be discussed in this paper with reference to Monolingualism of the Other and Archive Fever as they augment some of his earlier work, Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena.

Religious Experience and Transcendence

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-220
Author(s):  
Hampus Lyttkens
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Other Hand

Someone may ask what the reasons are for putting religious experience and transcendence together. My answer is the following. My general philosophical position is empirical by nature. I am of the opinion that everything that is said about reality must in some way or other, in order to be true or probable, be related to or grounded in reality. If God is thought to be real in some sense of the word and if he is said to have the quality of being transcendent, there must be some sort of empirical reasons for it. Experience is generally - at least in its objective variant - a usual way of motivating propositions about reality. There is therefore reason to ask: Is there anything in religious experience that motivates giving God the predicate of transcendence? And on the other hand: What conditions would there have to be in our world of experience to justify a consideration of a theory of Transcendence?

The Asafo System in Historical Perspective

1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansu K. Datta ◽  
R. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Military Bands

There has been some controversy as to the origins of the Asafo, the patrilineal military bands of the coastal Akan, and especially of the Fante, in Ghana. One view holds that the asafo system is indigenous to Fante society, the other that its development is in some way connected with the presence of Europeans on the coast from the end of the fifteenth century onwards. After an examination of the nature of the asafo system and of its patrilinealism, historical evidence relating to the asafo, the manceroes (young men), and town wards in Fante society is set out in some detail. It is concluded that the asafo system is probably indigenous in its origins, but that its development, particularly on the coast and among the Fante especially, has been much influenced by situations resulting from contact with Europeans.

scholarly journals The Many Uses of Forgeries: The Case of Douville's Voyage au Congo

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 369-387
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
The Social ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
The Many ◽  
New Evidence

A forged travel account reminds me of a raffia palm in central Africa, because there is a use for every part of such a palm: the wine (sap), the nuts (edible), the raffia (for textiles), the other leaves (for roofcovering), the branches (for furniture), its pith (for making various articles), and lastly the grubs inside the pith (also edible). Nothing is wasted. In the same way a forged travel account can be deconstructed until all its parts down to the very last sentence or proper name can be used as evidence for one or another kind of history. The considerable interest fraudulent travel accounts can have for the historian of Africa is usually far underrated because once they are exposed as forgeries they tend to be summarily dismissed and henceforth to be avoided like the plague. At most, it is conceded that sometimes part of a forged account rests on the author's observations and experiences at the time and in the place where his (the known forgers seem to have been all male) narrative placed them and may therefore actually be genuine.The usefulness of forgeries as evidence goes well beyond this, however, and rests on two arguments. First, a narrative forgery is never totally the product of a person's imagination, if only because it strives to achieve the verisimilitude required to be passed off as genuine. A good part of any such forgery must therefore rest on valid observations made by someone, somewhere. If one can discover from where and when such elements stem, they add new evidence to the record about that where and when. Secondly, the very choice of topics and themes; raised in a forgery is historical evidence in its own right, for it tells us much about the expectations of both the social milieu in which the work was written and its intended audience at the time (not always the same social aggregates). To develop and illustrate these points, there may well be no better instance than the notorious book whose unmasking raised a great geographic furor in the earlier nineteenth century—the notorious Douville forgery.

Silent Trade: Myth and Historical Evidence

1974 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 9-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.F. de Moraes Farias
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
North Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Second Category

Since it is related by so many we can accept itCa da MostoThere have been several accounts of the practice known as ‘silent trade’ in west Africa during the last thousand years. The oldest known account, that of Herodotus, is almost twenty-five hundred years old–although it probably refers to northwest rather than west Africa. Such accounts purport to describe exchanges of imported goods for gold from sub-Saharan Africa. These exchanges are said to have been made according to very particularized rules: two (and only two) trading parties would transact business with one another. They would do this not only without the help of middlemen but also without speaking to one another, or coming face to face or even within sight of each other. Elaborate precautions would in fact be taken to prevent any kind of direct visual contact. Despite this mutual avoidance and the resulting impossibility of negotiating rates of exchange, agreement presented no serious difficulties. Bargaining was carried out through gradual adjustment of quantities, arrived at by alternate moves by the two parties. Though each of the two in turn would have to leave his goods unguarded in a place accessible to the other, neither would take advantage of this for dishonest purposes. A shared table of market and moral values, as well as (and in spite of) silence and mutual invisibility, were thus the trademarks of such exchanges.The available accounts may conveniently be grouped into two categories. One category represents the exchanges as taking place between traders coming from what are assumed to be ‘more developed’ cultures (e.g., Carthage or medieval north Africa) and ‘less developed’ barely known cultures outside the sphere of direct influence of the greater sub-Saharan pre-colonial states. The other category refers to contacts between those barely known cultures of the hinterland and black Africans (e.g., Wangara, ‘Accanists’) playing the role of middlemen between the gold producers and the Arabs and Moors or Europeans. It is on the information provided by these middlemen that the second category of accounts depends.

scholarly journals Inapt gratitude: against expansionist views

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrance McConnell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Moral Norm ◽  
The Other ◽  
Character Trait ◽  
General Character ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Psychological Literature ◽  
The Difference ◽  
As If

AbstractPsychologists and philosophers have written much about gratitude recently. Many of these contributions have endorsed expansionist views of gratitude, counseling agents to feel and express gratitude in many circumstances. I argue that the essential features of the moral norm of gratitude are that a beneficiary acknowledges and appreciates benefits provided by another who is acting from beneficence, and is disposed to provide a comparable benefit to the benefactor if a suitable occasion arises. The best-known philosophical version of expansionist views claims that gratitude is apt even in cases where the “benefactor” not only did not intend to benefit the other, but intended to harm her. In the psychological literature, expansionists typically do distinguish between being grateful to and being grateful that. But they also write as if there is one general character trait of gratefulness. In this paper I argue that the philosophical position considered is mistaken on conceptual and moral grounds, and that the dominant view among psychologists fails to recognize the difference between two different traits of gratitude, one a moral virtue and the other a prudential virtue.

The Eleian Mantic Gene

Antichthon ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 14-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Bourke
Keyword(s):  
Archaic Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
The Temple

AbstractThe Eleian manteis who practised at the altar of Zeus in Olympia appear to have belonged to two separate gene, the Iamids and the Klytiads. This paper first considers the identity and number of the Eleian mantic gene and then questions the long-held assumption that the Iamid genos was the first to become established at Olympia. It is argued that the foundation myths that appear in Pindar and Pausanias are probably the result of the embellishment of pre-existing tradition in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. While neither archaeology nor further textual evidence entitles us to assume that mantic activity at Olympia predated the late Archaic period, an early Classical inscription, certain of the sculptures on the temple of Zeus and a later series of inscriptions from Olympia do make it possible to infer that two mantic houses, of which the Iamids were one and the Klytiads likely the other, were practising at Olympia from that time or earlier. Some reflection upon the limitations of myth as historical evidence is offered before the conclusion is reached that we cannot be certain that the Iamids constituted the senior house.

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