Exploring Maieutic Instruction

General views of the Socratic Method consist of it being a dialectical exchange based on probing questions concerning a topic. While this definition may prove practical, it may not do justice to the broad nature and practice of the instructional strategy. It is, therefore, equally important to explore how maieutic questioning grounds the Socratic Method as a viable instructional strategy. By realizing the maieutic process as giving birth to discoveries, educationists and students are given a clearer framework in implementing the Socratic Method in educational experiences. In further elucidating this claim, this chapter first draws from the maieutic practice found in Plato's dialogues. Second, the chapter explores research on maieutic questioning in teaching and learning experiences. Lastly, a recognition of both Socrates' original maieutic practice and the modern conception of it are advanced as strategies educationists can implement in their courses.

دور وزارة التعليم العالي في إعداد الموارد البشرية : دراسة نظرية لإعداد القوى العاملة

دور وزارة التعليم العالي في إعداد الموارد البشرية : دراسة نظرية لإعداد القوى العاملة This study attempts to identify the role of Higher Education Institutions in the preparation and training of qualified man- power. It investigates the establishments and development of Higher Educational Institutions, their modern conception and their problems in developing countries, especially in the Sudan .Higher Education cannot meet the needs for qualified man- power unless it works according to pre-set plans

Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984): Structural Approach and Pre-Modern Values

The prevailing part of art historians, critics and theoreticians from the mid-1950s even until today feels related to the means of expression of the modernist art trends from the last decade of 19th c. until the end of 1960-s. Modernism has become a sacred text, whose complexity should be interpreted, but not criticized. Sedlmayr’s conception of art is built on moral, religious, aesthetic and political grounds, which are the very reason for the actuality of his works – both in the specialized sphere of art history and in the wider public debate on values. That is why I will analyse his structural approach mainly in relation to his anti-modern conception of art. This is the task of this study. Sedlmayr’s effort to turn art history into a “strict science” is an independent part of his scientific pursuit; it is in relation, but is not subordinate to his conception of modern art. Those publications of his are discussed but only in the specialized literature on history of the methods in humanities, while his conception against modern art acquires an exceptional popularity. Because of that reason his theoretic contribution to the study of art remains in a penumbra. I argue that Sedlmayr’s conception has the following coinciding points with the official understanding of art in the time of socialism: – A denial to estimate art with aesthetic criteria, which the ideologists of socialist realism define as formalism, and Sedlmayr as aesthetism; – In socialism art should represent a positive ideal; Sedlmayr calls this ideal “human measure”; – Art should habituate to morals; – A conviction that the modern art from the end of 19th c. on is decadent; – A criticism against the “dehumanization” of art.

The origins of the term “phraseology”1

Most researchers associate the beginnings of phraseological studies with Charles Bally (1909) and Soviet studies, especially with V. V. Vinogradov (e.g. 1944; 2001 [1947]), and with English and German studies (e.g. Burger 1973; Rothkegel 1973). However, this article will show that phraseology actually has a centuries-long tradition, at least as far as some languages, including Italian, are concerned. For example, for the Spanish historical phraseological tradition it is worth mentioning Montoro del Arco (2012) and Olímpio de Oliveira Silva (2020). As the Spanish tradition has already been much studied, it will not be further investigated in this paper, although some Spanish “historical phraseologiae” have also been found (such as in the Italian-Spanish works by Franciosini 1620 and the plurilingual work by Pielat 1673). First, I will briefly show what “phraseology” means according to a modern conception, and what it meant originally. The development of the term is traced using some old rediscovered “phraseologiae”, which also have relevance to phraseography and phraseodidactics.

“They Shall Be Clothed in Shame”: Is Shame an Emotion in the Hebrew Bible?

The modern conception of the self as bifurcated between inner and outer realms has and continues to hold sway as an unchecked presumption in biblical interpretation. The past decade of biblical scholarship, however, has seen a burgeoning effort to problematize this imposition with regard to emotion and interiority. The present study joins this conversation by challenging the presumption of “shame” as an emotional and interior category in the Hebrew Bible, a challenge that has already been initiated but is ripe for further probing. Informed by a practice theory of emotion and embodied cognition, and focusing on the metaphor Shame is Clothing, which appears in Job, Ezekiel, and Psalms, this study proposes material and enactive readings of “shame” wherein so-called shame roots as bwš, klm, and ḥpr center on bodily diminishment and practices of defeat as a matter of relational dynamics and power disparities.

On Surprising Beauty. Aquinas’s Gift to Aesthetics

The article addresses the basic elements of Thomas Aquinas’s thought on beauty by analyzing some selected texts and points out some of the debates that still exist regarding the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s position on various issues, such as the question of the transcendentality of the beautiful. The fundamental aim is to recover some of Aquinas’s basic intuitions for contemporary aesthetics, which no longer makes use of many of the intellectual categories that were in common use in medieval philosophy, and to show how some of Thomas Aquinas’s fundamental ideas are closer to the aesthetic thought of some fundamental contemporary authors than the modern categories with which aesthetics was forged. This article is also intended to show how the modern conception of the beautiful has meant an ontological impoverishment with respect to the medieval thought.

A Commentary on Ambedkar's Posthumously Published "Philosophy of Hinduism" - Part II

This paper continues the commentary on Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s posthumously published Philosophy of Hinduism. Utilizing resources from various modern continental European philosophers and social theorists, particularly of religion, we elaborate on several key passages within Ambedkar’s overall framework of analysis. The paper continues to explore how Ambedkar conceives relations between philosophy and religion, and how historical shifts in general human consciousness have occurred whereby altering both fields. At the core of his being, Ambedkar is concerned with a methodological justification that will enable him to venture into a penetrating critique of the immoral and amoral nature of Hinduism’s social system of caste. In Part I of the commentary, we followed Ambedkar until he arrived at the criteria of ‘justice’ and ‘utility’ to judge the status of Hinduism. He wanted to test whether this Eastern world religion, which descends from antiquity, meets those criteria, which shape the modern conception of religion. In Part II of this commentary, we expand further on Ambedkar’s thesis as to why Hinduism fails to meet the modern conception when those twin criteria are not met. This thought presupposes various underlying philosophical transformations of the relations of ‘God to man’, ‘Society to man’, and ‘man to man’ within which the Hindu-dominated Indian society forecloses the possibility of individual equality, freedom, and dignity. In making contributions to Ambedkar studies, the philosophy of religion, and political philosophies of justice, this paper sets up Part III of the commentary, which will examine Ambedkar’s actual engagement with the classics of Hinduism’s philosophy and thought in general. Ultimately, Ambedkar is undeterred in his original critique of the social and moral failures of the caste system, thereby intimating ambitious possibilities for its eventual eradication.

Mathematics and Cosmology in Plato’s Timaeus

Plato used mathematics extensively in his account of the cosmos in the Timaeus, but as he did not use equations, but did use geometry, harmony and according to some, numerology, it has not been clear how or to what effect he used mathematics. This paper argues that the relationship between mathematics and cosmology is not atemporally evident and that Plato’s use of mathematics was an open and rational possibility in his context, though that sort of use of mathematics has subsequently been superseded as science has progressed. I argue that there is a philosophically and historically meaningful space between ‘primitive’ or unreflective uses of mathematics and the modern conception of how mathematics relates to cosmology. Plato’s use of mathematics in the Timaeus enabled the cosmos to be as good as it could be, allowed the demiurge a rational choice (of which planetary orbits and which atomic shapes to instantiate) and allowed Timaeus to give an account of the cosmos (where if the demiurge did not have such a rational choice he would not have been able to do so). I also argue that within this space it is both meaningful and important to differentiate between Pythagorean and Platonic uses of number and that we need to reject the idea of ‘Pythagorean/Platonic number mysticism’. Plato’s use of number in the Timaeus was not mystical even though it does not match modern usage.

Killing Vampires Efficiently with Ultraviolet Light

The modern mythology of the vampire isn’t ancient folklore but modern “fakelore” that has developed over the past two centuries. But it has grown in an organic way, not by considered construction, but by chance and accident and from a variety of influences. That being so, how is it that the modern conception of the vampire is not only destroyed by sunlight (a detail not in the original idea of the vampire) but specifically by ultraviolet light? And how did such a specific idea as destruction by ultraviolet light ever get into the public consciousness?

Polykoiranie IV (Bodin, La Boétie)

The line from Homer appears saliently in two famous 1570 texts, by Jean Bodin and Etienne de la Boétie respectively. It is shown how Bodin’s supposedly modern conception of sovereignty inherits aporias Scatter 2 has been following since Aristotle, and how the paradoxical prerogative to both make and break the law makes it impossible rigorously to discern monarchy from tyranny. La Boétie’s commentary on the line from Homer, and his general attempt to argue “against one,” is shown to lead to a complex and aporetical account on the edge of political space, in which the concepts of nature and of the One increasingly escape La Boétie’s conceptual grasp.