Comparative Theology as a Postcolonial Hermeneutics: A Global Historical Approach to the Encounter between Augustinian Christianity and Tiantai Buddhism

Introduction. The article examines some activities of Russia’s leading spiritual institution — Kazan Theological Academy — which was training missionaries throughout the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Goals. The article seeks to characterize research endeavors of the Academy’s students in the field of Buddhism. Our review and analysis of term papers attest to Russian spiritual institutions adopted elements of classical comparative theology — including denunciation of other doctrines, description of Christianity’s superiority over other faiths — and taught would-be missionaries certain methods of converting non-Russians to Christianity. Materials. The study focuses on archival documents contained in Catalogue 2 of Collection 10 (‘Kazan Theological Academy’) at the State Archive of Tatarstan, and is first to introduce the latter into scientific circulation. Results. A total of 62 documents happen to deal with the topic under study within Catalogue 2. Term papers authored by students of Kazan Theological Academy indicate their appeals to the theme of Buddhism were fuelled by practical concerns. Materials covering various aspects of Buddhism and translations of Buddhist religious texts proper are of undoubted interest. Conclusions. In the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, a distinguished school of comparative theology took shape in K azan. The students would turn to theoretical and methodological foundations of new trends in religious studies (European religious teachings and comparative theology), meticulously investigate historical documents and primary sources, undertake prominent efforts of translating Buddhist religious texts to conduct comprehensive research that has no analogues in theological science. Competent argumentation, convincing logic of presentation, critical insights into both Christianity and the alien (to them) Buddhist doctrine were characteristic of those works. The subject of research would be explicitly comprehended and carefully explored by the authors. Many such studies in comparative theology actually aimed at denying Buddhism the status of religion, which is evidenced by their titles. The Revolution and subsequent closing of Kazan Theological Academy interrupted the scholarly traditions of an oldest spiritual institution but its legacy in the form of students’ term papers is still of utmost interest and needs further study.

Reviewed by: Divining the Woman of Endor: African Culture, Postcolonial Hermeneutics, and the Politics of Biblical Translation by J. Kabamba Kiboko Alinda Damsma Keywords African culture, history of magic, witchcraft, colonialism, postcolonialism, Sanga culture, Christianity, divination, divinatory magic, Basanga people, 1 Samuel 28, Central Africa, Kisanga Bible, Bible, biblical magic j. kabamba kiboko. Divining the Woman of Endor: African Culture, Postcolonial Hermeneutics, and the Politics of Biblical Translation. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 644. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017. Pp. xxxii + 288. One of the most significant biblical texts dealing with female divination is 1 Samuel 28:3–25, the story about King Saul's visit to a female necromancer in Endor. However, misconceptions about "the woman of Endor" have dominated the text's long reception history: she has often been (mis)labelled as a witch. In this monograph biblical scholar Jeanne Kabamba Kiboko, who is also a clergywoman and Bible translator, discusses these persistent misconceptions and how they were passed on to African culture through the colonial period, with far-reaching consequences for the mission church's attitude towards indigenous divinatory practices. In the prologue the reader learns more about the author's background: she was born into the Sanga (also known as Basanga) people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her relatives were devout Roman Catholics but also honoured their native way of life and their ancient religious traditions, including divinatory practices, which were condemned by the church. Yet, despite the deep-rooted, negative attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward divination, Kiboko already observed early on the striking similarities between the culture of the Hebrew Bible and the Sanga culture in which she was immersed, especially with regard to the positive use of divination. In this study the author demonstrates her thorough understanding of divination, witchcraft, and attitudes toward them from ancient times to the present day. She acquaints the reader with divinatory practices in the ancient Near East during the second and first millennia BCE, thus providing a helpful background for our understanding of 1 Samuel 28. She also examines the anti-divinatory sentiments in medieval to modern Christian Europe which the colonial missionizing agents brought with them to Africa. Within the African context, Kiboko mainly focuses on the divinatory practices of her own Basanga people. She explains how the mission church failed to distinguish witchcraft from the positive use of divination in the Basanga way of life, thus condemning all types of divination as demonic practices. [End Page 140] With her postcolonial literary investigation of 1 Samuel 28 Kiboko compellingly demonstrates not only the multicultural spiritual challenges which she had to face, but also the linguistic challenges: the vocabulary of divination used in the translations that were popular in the region, such as the French La Sainte Bible (LSG) and the Kisanga Bible, served well in the colonial context, but it no longer serves the complex situation which the church currently faces in Central Africa (where women, men, and children are still being persecuted as "witches"). For example, according to the worldview of the Basanga people, there are bad spirits, such as the mufu, an angry, haunting ghost. In the Kisanga Bible the Hebrew word Elohim, which refers to Samuel's spirit summoned by the woman of Endor, is rendered as mufu. However, due to the choice of the term mufu, with its negative connotations, this entire episode in 1 Samuel 28 is seen as demonic in the Kisanga Bible. In fact, it is Kiboko's thesis that the vocabulary of divination in this passage (and throughout the Bible) has been widely mistranslated, not only in the LSG and in the Kisanga Bible, but also in the authorized English translations and many other translations and scholarly writings. Kiboko subsequently exposes several cases of mistranslation through her word study of a number of key terms within the rich vocabulary of divination in the Hebrew Bible. Although not all of these terms are used in 1 Samuel 28, she argues that their examination is essential for understanding the inner biblical conflict surrounding acts of divination. She subsequently examines the history and social context of these terms in ancient times and demonstrates that each...

Religion is an important social force, both for good and evil, in the modern world. In the final volume of his comparative theology, Keith Ward considers the main ways in which religion and society interact, and the ways in which the major world religions need to adapt themselves in the modern world. These religions are examined as forms of social life, ranging from communities which seek to renounce the world, to those which seek to embody the laws of God in society, those which see religions in critical dialogue with social structures, and those which see religion as a primarily individual matter. The ideas of eretz Yisrael, the umma of Islam, the Buddhist sangha, the Christian church, and the Hindu sampradaya are critically analysed. Ward also considers the doctrine of the church in Aquinas, Calvin, Schleiermacher, and Tillich, and develops a view of the church in a global perspective by means of both a historical and thematic approach. He proposes a radical vision of the church as a person-affirming, world-transforming society in the emerging global community of many faiths and cultures. The relation of religious belief and morality, and the ambiguous role of religion in society, is investigated, and the need for a new religious paradigm is defended, expressing a global perspective without insistence on uniformity.

This chapter examines the philosophical works of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, especially those parts that were of significance for Mehta. Accordingly, it first addresses Heidegger’s early texts pertaining to the question of being and the hermeneutics of facticity. It then turns to Gadamer’s development of what he called “philosophical hermeneutics.” Mehta’s postcolonial hermeneutics is an indirect, yet sophisticated challenge to Gadamer’s, as Chaps. 4 and 6 in particular will detail. The chapter concludes with a return to Heidegger’s later works, that is, those works specifically on poets, poetry, and the ontological difference. Insofar as Heidegger and Gadamer were influential on Mehta’s philosophical career, this chapter contends that in order to understand J. L. Mehta, one must first understand Heideggerian and Gadamerian thought. This chapter prepares the reader for the sustained engagement with Mehta’s work in Chaps. 4, 5, and 6.

This chapter explores the extent to which a sociological inquiry of the comparative study of religion would be mutually beneficial through reciprocal illumination in reference of Francis Clooney’s comparative theology. Then, it is concerned with problematizing the Buddhist text of Bodhicaryavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) in connection with the Buddhist principle of dependent origination, in which a Christian critical, constructive commentarial work should come into focus. In view of a Christian commentarial interpretation, I further attempt to problematize the elective affinity of the bodhicitta idea via the Heart Sutra in its affirmative context as well as in Imperial Japanese accommodation. This sociological inquiry facilitates a hermeneutical project for developing the comparative study of Buddhist compassion and the Christian symbol of theologia crucis for mutual illumination and common practice.

Introduction. The article continues to analyze research essays authored by students of Kazan Theological Academy. Materials. The study examines a total of 62 newly introduced archival documents from Catalogue 2 of Collection 10 (‘Kazan Theological Academy’) at the State Archive of Tatarstan. The classification method and that of descriptive analysis have proved instrumental enough in identifying certain features inherent to archival sources of the investigated collection. Results. Works on Buddhism from Catalogue 2 of Collection be divided into six thematic sections, namely: 1) on essentials and various systems of the Buddhist doctrine — 16 files; 2) comparative analyses of Christian and Buddhist faiths — 19 files; 3) analyses and critical insights into Buddhist texts — 11 files; 4) Russian-to-Kalmyk translations of Christian texts — 3 files; 5) conversion of Kalmyks to Christianity — 9 files; 6) reviews and comments by professors on the aforementioned works — 4 files. All archival documents of the specified catalogue have been duly reviewed and analyzed. Materials covering various aspects of Buddhism and translations of Buddhist religious texts proper are of undoubted interest. Conclusions. The paper resumes the appeals to the theme of Buddhism were fuelled by practical concerns. Missionary activities among Kalmyks required thorough knowledge of Buddhist religious texts and a deep understanding of the harmonious Lamaist system. To facilitate these, departments of Kazan Theological Academy would introduce disciplines helpful in learning the target language and dogmas of Buddhism. The quality of term papers, their thematic contents, use of works authored by leading Russian and Western European scholars with expertise in the history and various aspects of Buddhism attest to decently high training standards at Kazan Theological Academy. The remarkable cohort of brilliant scholars within the Academy’s walls contributed a lot to that students became engaged in the study of Buddhism. The shaped school of comparative religious studies made it possible to adopt theoretical and methodological foundations of European religious teachings and comparative theology, explore Buddhist texts, undertake enormous translation and research efforts that have no analogues in Russian theological science to date.

The argumentation of this article deals with the 'technology-mediated/ing personhood and selfhood' thesis. Firstly, the author suggests that most discussions about selfhood in cyberspace ignore the technological dimension and are trapped in the dichotomy between the real and the virtual. Borrowing Heidegger's conception of technology as the fundamental condition of existence of human being, the author formulates the thesis of 'technology-mediated/ing personhood and selfhood'. This paper also illustrates the dynamics and tension of this human-technology complex through 'cyborg' and 'prosthesis'. The author employs the concept of 'constellation of subjectivity' to make sense of 'technology-mediated/ing personhood and selfhood', and further extends in the meaning of 'memory device'. The author argues that we should discuss selfhood in cyberspace in a more general framework, transcending the dilemma between true and false by exploring the historical trajectory, power relation and social consequence of this network-connecting condition of human existence.

Reviewed by: Laruelle: Against the Digital by Alexander R. Galloway Don Ihde (bio) Laruelle: Against the Digital. By Alexander R. Galloway. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Pp. 288. $27.50. Alexander R. Galloway is a professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University who specializes in continental philosophy, and in this case deals with what the back cover describes as “the idiosyncratic French thinker, François Laruelle.” I was shocked to realize I had never heard of Laruelle. Anxious to fill in any gaps in what has been the dominance of French philosophical thought in humanities, I plunged into what began as an almost impenetrable exposition of a philosopher who extolls the One, derides its distinction into Two and what is called “the standard model” of philosophy—identified by the author as the digital—and who (Laruelle) advocates non-philosophy. After a few pages, three prior philosophical experiences began to show relevance: First, early in my own graduate education I was fascinated with the Presocratics. Parmenides, after all, was the philosopher of the One, revived here in a more post-Heideggerian tone by Laruelle. Second, I was fortunate enough to twice live in Paris, first during the monumental years 1967–68, and later again in 1984, precisely times when French philosophy was in its heyday both in the universities and the streets. But was I missing something? Reading Laruelle I realized that there was another French philosophical strand not that of the dominant philosophies of the “Events of May.” And third, a very different philosophical strand related first to a fascination with Zen Buddhism while in theological school and later while working on my first forays into auditory phenomenology. Could we “think” non-linguistically? Or is thinking in a language—inner speech—a persistent feature of human experience? Is the One necessarily without language? Today one can recognize that unlike the dominant university/street talk of 1968, phenomenology—(Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur), hermeneutics (Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger), critical theory (Jürgen Habermas, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse—Louis Althusser in France), structuralism (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure) post-structuralism (Jacques Derrida), postmodernism (Jean-François Lyotard)—there had begun what later is called “speculative [End Page 708] realism,” which one can associate with Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Laruelle. This strand, already present in 1968 with Deleuze, blooms later, closer to and after 1984. It is this strand which holds Galloway’s attention. Of the principals, Deleuze is probably the best known and Galloway claims, “We are all Deleuzians today” (p. 96). Laruelle places close to Deleuze, but even closer to Badiou. Yet all three are nostalgically Presocratics, I would say via a strand from Heidegger. Heidegger tried to return philosophy to the singular question of Being, in Presocratic language a variant on the One. Speculative realists, still following the strange blend of quasi-mythical but also highly abstract language, return to precisely these meditations. And they reinsert various “Platonic” strands of mathematical idealism. But Galloway’s target, captured in the subtitle, is the digital, which in the above renewed Presocratic conversation is the Two, the many, the multiple, the Digital. The standard model, academic philosophy, follows the Two, the Digital, and thus in the most concrete chapters of part II, withdrawing from the Standard Model, there is discussion of computers, capitalism, the black universe, etc. It is clear that digital technologies, in a capitalist network, are the enemies of “reality” of this Laruellean sort. This is an understandable reading and it reconnects with much of what also was the spirit of 1968—a revival of Marxism in its French mode (including Althusser, Deleuze, Badiou, and Laruelle), and a study of the theme of “autonomous technology,” a technology run away and on its own, now re-emergent as globalization. Laruelle, most radical of the group, wants to “unify philosophy and capitalism together as a single term” (p. 120). And finally, as Galloway reaches toward his conclusion, he claims, “All thought is essentially pre-Socratic” (p. 190). Included here should be the ultimate rejection of the digital and its technological incarnations (although he admits Laruelle says little about technologies as such...

This paper forms part of a Literature Compass cluster of articles which examines the current state of Victorian Literary Studies and future directions. This group of four essays was originally commissioned by Francis O’Gorman (University of Leeds), who also provides an introduction to the cluster.The full cluster is made up of the following articles:‘Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? – Introduction’, Francis O’Gorman, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00467.x.‘Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? – Revising the Canon, Extending Cultural Boundaries, and the Challenge of Interdisciplinarity’, Joanne Shattock, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00468.x.‘Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? –“Interesting Times” and the Lesson of “A Corner in Lightning”’, David Amigoni, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00469.x.‘Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? – Historicism, Collaboration and Digital Editing’, Valerie Sanders, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00470.x.‘Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? – Historicism and Hospitality’, John Bowen, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741‐4113.2007.00471.x.***The field of Victorian Studies has been dominated by a historicist approach and methodology. Much of the most influential work in Victorian Studies could be summarised under the heading ‘historical research in culture’. Yet there are serious conceptual difficulties with such an historicist approach, in particular those identified in Martin Heidegger's seminal essay ‘The Age of the World Picture’ and by the exemplary work of Jacques Derrida, particularly his writings on the question of hospitality. In this article, I explore the hospitality of Victorian studies, both within nineteenth‐century texts and the hospitality of the field itself, to question the limits of the Victorian historicism to which we are accustomed. I argue that the lack of attention to European literary and philosophical work – my examples include the fiction of Gustave Flaubert, as well as the work of Heidegger and Derrida – mark particularly problematic limits to the hospitality of Victorian studies in its dominant historicist conceptions.

Küresel tarih yaklaşımı, modern dünyayı şekillendiren etkileşim ve bağlantıları anlamaya, bölünmüşlüğü önlemeye ve dünya inşasına dair belirli bir perspektif sunmaya yönelik bir yöntem olarak ortaya çıktı. Bu çalışmada, tarih disiplini içerisinde hızla gelişen ve yalnızca Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nde değil, aynı zamanda Avrupa ve Asya’da da yaygınlık kazanan küresel tarih yaklaşımı ele alınarak bu yaklaşımın ortaöğretim öğrencilerinin akademik başarıları üzerindeki etkisi incelendi. Yarı deneysel desenin kullanıldığı bu araştırma, ünitenin kazanımları da dikkate alınarak 3 hafta boyunca toplam 6 ders saatiyle sınırlandırıldı. Deney grubundaki öğrencilere küresel tarih perspektifini yansıtan ünite uygulanırken, kontrol grubundaki öğrencilere mevcut tarih öğretim programında yer alan ünite sunuldu. Çalışmanın konusuna ve amacına uygun olduğu düşünülen ortaöğretim 12. Sınıf öğrencileri, çalışma grubu olarak belirlendi. Bu bağlamda, T.C. İnkılâp Tarihi ve Atatürkçülük ders kitabının 5. Ünitesi olan “II. Dünya Savaşı Sürecinde Türkiye ve Dünya” ünitesi, okul olarak Van ili İpekyolu ilçesinde yer alan mesleki ve teknik Anadolu lisesi, Anadolu lisesi ve Anadolu imam hatip lisesi olmak üzere üç farklı devlet okulu seçildi. Araştırmada hem deney hem de kontrol gruplarında yer alan öğrencilere ön test ve son test olarak başarı testi uygulandı. Toplam 30 sorudan oluşan başarı testi, ÖSYM tarafından 1998-2022 yılları arasında araştırma konusuyla ilgili çıkmış sorulardan seçildi. Araştırma sonucunda küresel tarih yaklaşımıyla hazırlanan tarih ünitesinin, ortaöğretim öğrencilerinin akademik başarılarında anlamlı ve olumlu bir etki oluşturduğu belirlendi.

Wittgenstein’s Legacy: Metagrammar, Meaning, and Ordinary Language David Herman (bio) Review of: Walter Jost, Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language Criticism Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2004. Ambitious in scope, richly integrative, and extensively researched, this study demonstrates its author’s familiarity with ideas from multiple fields of inquiry, including classical as well as modern rhetoric, critical theory, philosophy, and literary modernism. The chief aim of the book is to work toward integration and synthesis; drawing on theorists ranging from Martin Heidegger and Kenneth Burke to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, and using the poetry of Robert Frost to work through the author’s focal concerns, the book seeks to develop a framework for interpretation in which “grammar and rhetoric, philosophy and literature, reason and desire, reference and semiotics, truth and antifoundationalism” might be brought into closer dialogue with one another (1). More precisely, Jost characterizes literature and philosophy as the termini of his discussion, suggesting that rhetoric can be used to negotiate between these discourses (7). Hence, although the four chapters in Part II develop extended readings of Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man,” “West-Running Brook,” “Snow,” and “Home Burial,” respectively, the present book is more about exemplifying a specific kind of critical inquiry, interpretation, argument, and community activity than it is about a particular poet, historical trajectory, literary period, or cultural moment. Frost’s poems present me with an occasion to rethink a nexus of questions about the everyday and the ordinary, language, experience, common sense, judgment, and exemplarity; to question assumptions about the grammatical and rhetorical possibilities of literary criticism; and to reexamine what I take to be underappreciated resources for criticism to be found in the traditions of rhetoric, hermeneutic phenomenology, pragmatism, and so-called ordinary language philosophy and criticism. (4) The introduction further specifies what the author means by the “ordinary language criticism” mentioned at the end of the passage just quoted and also in the book’s subtitle. Ordinary language criticism, in Jost’s account, takes inspiration from the ordinary language philosophy pioneered by Wittgenstein, refined by J.L. Austin, and recontextualized by Cavell (Claim, In Quest, Must; see also Baillie and Cohen). For theorists in this tradition, people learn (and later use) concepts thanks to their place within a larger form of life and the modes of language use associated with that form of life. Although abstract logical definitions play a role in specialized discourses (e.g., certain forms of philosophical analysis), in other discourse contexts boundaries between concepts are fixed by “situated criteria, the features and functions of things, the behaviors and actions of people in certain circumstances in which we operate with our words” (8). For example, when I hear someone say plank in a conversation I do not try to match that person’s usage against an abstract mental checklist of necessary and sufficient conditions for “plankness” in order to make sense of the term.1 Rather, I monitor whether the ongoing discourse is about the construction of ships, archaic practices of meting out justice at sea (as in walk the [gang]plank), or political campaigns, and I draw an inference, possibly incorrect, about which concept of “plank” is appropriate given the broader context in which the term plank is being used. “Plank” is irreducibly caught up in these contexts of usage; there is no single, decontextualized meaning of plank (cf. Herman 2002), but rather multiple, partly overlapping meanings, each determined by the use of the term in the situated, rule-governed modes of discourse production and interpretation that Wittgenstein called “language games” and Jean-François Lyotard “phrase regimens.” Further, these language games are not wholly autonomous practices but can impinge on one another, as when through a metaphorical extension plank migrates from the language game(s) of the shipwright to those of the politician and the pundit. The key insight here, though, is that plank does not denote “plank” prior to its being used in some language game or other, even if only the stripped-down “games” in which dictionary definitions or the rules of logic are used to map out semantic relationships among terms.2 But what would be the specific brief of...

division between scientifically-- minded Anglo-American analytic philosophy and more literature-oriented Continental philosophy dominated twentieth century thought. These movements have a common origin, however. In order to trace them to their sources, we need not even go back to the Kantian idea of transcendental philosophy that unites them;1 we may simply travel to the early decades of the twentieth century to get a glimpse of the disagreement between Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger concerning the proper philosophical method and the problems such a method may address. Such an historical approach is sketched by Michael Friedman in his recent book, A Parting of the Ways.2 Analytic philosophers', such as Friedman's, historically focused studies of their own tradition, especially of its birth on the European continent, are interesting in relation to another recent development, namely, the intensification among European philosophers of the originally more or less American debate over naturalism and anti-naturalism, a debate that significantly transforms the analytic tradition. While Americans and the English language of course continue to dominate the international philosophical scene,3 there are some signs indicating a more pluralistic future. It seems that analytic philosophy, founded in the German-speaking world (especially Vienna), is gradually reoccupying, in its post-analytic, naturalized and more metaphilosophically concerned phase, its original homeland after several decades of primarily American dominance.4 As a recent collection of essays by German and Italian philosophers demonstrates,5 the methodological and metaphilosophical controversy over naturalism is at the heart of some of the most interesting contemporary work in and around the analytical paradigm in Europe. purpose of this essay is to briefly review this complex development in the light of some examples provided by Friedman and the contributors to NCP.6 I shall argue that what was left behind in the division of our philosophical scene in the 1920s and 1930s is now to be faced again in the on-going reevaluation of naturalism. We need to address essentially the same problems. In particular, the need for a middle way between naturalism and anti-naturalism, on the one hand, and between analytic and Continental philosophy, on the other hand, seems to be as urgent now as it was then. Friedman's own work, inspired by Kant and neo-Kantianism, is a splendid example of the kind of re-evaluation of naturalism we need;7 an analogical re-evaluation is proposed by some of the authors of NCP (e.g., Hans Jorg Sandkuhler) who defend forms of culturalism, historicism, or at least anti-reductionism, instead of reductive naturalism. * * * * Rather than exploring the technical questions debated in recent naturalism literature, I shall go directly into the heart of the naturalists' and their critics' disputes. program of naturalism in recent philosophy is perhaps most lucidly expressed by Domenico Parisi in his The Naturalization of Humans (NCP, 75-87): human beings should not, according to the naturalist, be viewed as in any (special) sense, that is, not as special or unique in any other sense than the unexciting one in which all natural kinds are special or unique simply by being different from other kinds, but should rather be reintroduced into nature and seen simply as natural phenomena among others, to be investigated by the exact methods of the advanced natural sciences. Wherever the use of scientific methods leads us, there we should go. It is to be expected that the advancement of natural science will reduce the apparently features of humanity -- the mind, cognition, consciousness, intentionality, agency, moral motivation, etc.-to something more fundamental, eventually to the interactions between elementary physical particles. So far so good. But what are the legitimate scientific methods by means of which human life and its typical phenomena ought to be studied, according to naturalists? …

O artigo apresenta o debate a respeito da autonomia e não-autonomia da tecnologia na sociedade, a partir da discussão empreendida na sociologia da ciência e da recente literatura sobre a produção tecnológica, notadamente a que se inicia com o trabalho de Martin Heidegger, Question concerning technology. Considerando esse trabalho de Heidegger uma reflexão seminal sobre o tema da tecnologia, é proposta uma inversão "ontológica" na relação entre ciência e tecnologia, ao colocar esta última como uma realidade anterior à ciência. O texto procura contrastar diferentes acepções a respeito da tecnologia, mediante recortes analíticos os mais diversos, a saber, diferentes perspectivas teórico-metodológicas, concepções filosóficas e enfoques, entre os quais o econômico, o sociológico e o histórico. É dado destaque especial ao confronto entre o enfoque sociológico e o econômico. Ao final, pretende-se reunir elementos para a argumentação a respeito da não-autonomia da tecnologia na sociedade e do que tem sido chamado o conteúdo social da tecnologia.

A Few Thoughts on the Possibility of Intercultural Thinking in a Global Age Kai Marchal (bio) Introduction Until recently, most humanities scholars (including philosophers) in North America and Europe lived in a world where China was notable for its absence. In the great debates of the 1990s and early 2000s on postmodernism, the end of history, the legacy of Marxism, and the future of liberalism, no Chinese contributions were heard, nor were they in the more recent debates on the relationship between Islam and the West, the post-secular age, genetic engineering, the digital age, or Speculative Realism. Only most recently, with the changed geopolitical situation, are Chinese thinkers starting to receive more attention. In this context, Eric S. Nelson’s book Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought makes an important contribution to further opening up the West to Chinese discourses. Nelson’s book is a historical study about the reception of Chinese philosophy by German-speaking philosophers in the early twentieth century. However, it quickly becomes clear that his book is actually much more ambitious; spanning more than three hundred pages, it covers vast periods of Chinese philosophy (from Confucius and Laozi to the late Heidegger), but also seeks to bridge immense historical and cultural differences. The real thrust of Nelson’s book, however, may be found in the implicit claim that the adherents of Western philosophy, as the French Sinologist and philosopher François Jullien has famously asserted, do not need to appropriate Chinese thinking through a form of historical-transcendental self-criticism; rather, the Other has long been embedded in the history of Western (especially German-speaking) philosophy and can thus be brought into effect at any time. The history of Western philosophy, Nelson writes programmatically in his introduction, “is historically already interculturally and intertextually bound up with non-Western philosophy” (p. 3). Philosophers are seldom good historians. Since Plato first elevated the death of Socrates to an almost mythical narrative about the birth of philosophy, many Western thinkers have engaged in writing historical narratives about the development of philosophy with the intent of educating other people on the basis of their philosophical perspective. The way philosophers write histories of philosophy reveals hidden philosophical [End Page 238] commitments and reflects particular commitments that, with hindsight, often appear quite arbitrary. As Nelson demonstrates convincingly, the exclusive identification of philosophy with Europe, argued for most famously by G.W.F. Hegel, is itself a result of cultural interaction, or, as Nelson puts it, “a relatively recent modern invention” (p. 13). In the age of globalization, Nelson’s case studies on how different philosophers in the German tradition (Edmund Husserl, Rudolf Eucken, Hans Driesch, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, and others) interacted with Chinese thought undermine the still widespread idea that philosophy is of Greek origin and can be practiced only in European languages. Particularly convincing is Nelson when he detects “constellations” of intercultural philosophizing that have long since been forgotten, such as the exchanges between Carsun Chang (Zhang Junmai 張君勱) and Eucken and Driesch in the 1920s or Georg Misch’s further development of Dilthey’s hermeneutics in the form of a historical-critical reflection regarding the global origins of philosophy (chapters 2 and 5). Reviewers have already highlighted the numerous strengths of this volume. It is a landmark study in intercultural philosophy that will shape the research field for years to come. In my essay, I would like to describe a few difficulties that, in my understanding, still hamper a project like Nelson’s. I want to focus on two aspects: (1) the relationship between philosophy and its history and (2) Heidegger and the “hermeneutic primacy of interpretation.” The Relationship between Philosophy and Its History There can be no doubt that philosophy has a highly problematic relationship with its own historicity. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that historical approaches in philosophy often run counter to problem-oriented ones. Students who take seriously the claims to knowledge of the natural sciences will not necessarily feel the desire to work through the doctrines of philosophers like Plato, Rousseau, Kant, or even Husserl, but rather engage with the ongoing debates among contemporary thinkers and neuroscientists. Nelson...

This volume offers a selection of essays by leading specialists on modality and the metaphysics of modality in the history of modern philosophy, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It revisits key moments in the history of modern modal doctrines, and illuminates lesser-known moments of that history. With this historical approach, the book aims to contextualize and even to offer alternatives to dominant positions within the contemporary philosophy of modality. Hence the volume contains not only new scholarship on the early-modern doctrines of Baruch Spinoza, G. W. Leibniz, Christian Wolff, and Immanuel Kant, but also work relating to less familiar nineteenth-century thinkers such as Alexius Meinong and Jan Łukasiewicz, together with essays on celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Bertrand Russell, whose modal doctrines have not previously garnered the attention they deserve. The volume thus covers a variety of traditions, and its historical range extends to the end of the twentieth century, since it addresses the legacy of Willard Van Orman Quine’s critique of modality within recent analytic philosophy.