This chapter introduces the main argument and themes of the book, and positions it within earlier and existing scholarship on archaic and classical Greek literature, religion and philosophy. Particular points of focus include the relationship between Greek tragedy, ritual and theology, and influential mid-twentieth-century research on Sophocles (the ’classics’ of Sophoclean scholarship). The chapter also discusses ancient biographical traditions surrounding Sophocles’ religiosity and piety.

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the larger themes addressed by the book, focusing on the question of contingency and how letters can be considered as literary ‘works’. The chapter argues that chance or happenstance itself governs letters and letter-writing both in material and in affective or conceptual ways. It proposes that the ‘radical contingency’ of letters can be said to set them apart from literary works more specifically conceived, in the sense that the latter do not generally and in principle hold a primary or formative connection with the specific events surrounding their composition. The chapter argues that the question of contingency connects with Keats’s governing ideas about life – with what he repeatedly refers to in his letters as life’s ‘circumstances’, ‘chance’, or ‘accidents’.

The Introduction offers an overview of the main themes of the book, focusing especially on Hegel’s claim that our sensuous experience of beauty offers a distinctive access to metaphysical truth. The basic nature and parameters of this sensuous aesthetic experience – what Hegel calls “sensuous intuition” – are explored to set the stage for the analysis that follows. In anticipation of the book’s main claim about the distinctive sort of ontological truth that artworks in particular serve to reveal on Hegel’s account – namely, that they put us in touch with the transformative event of spirit’s birth in and through nature – the chapter includes a sketch of the path of the book from the ontology and aesthetics of nature through to the ontology and aesthetics of artworks.

Chapter 1 maps out the theoretical and cultural context for the early twenty-first century’s multi-scalar view of life. Progressing from the microscopic scale to the planetary perspective, I present the recent shifts in microbiology, biomedicine, anthropology, and Earth system science that are shaping our awareness of interdependence between living processes. In each domain, I draw attention to the narrative and rhetorical aspects of these epistemological shifts. This overview leads me to discuss some of the theoretical terminology frequently used to conceptualise interdependence across scales, and the different models of life brought into play by the terms process, network, assemblage, and meshwork. The final section outlines the scalar rhetoric and tropes of early twenty-first-century popular science. Here I examine the relation between trans-scalar rhetoric, which emphasises the necessity of thinking across scales, and multi-scalar tropes, which substitute one scale of life for another. From a scale-critical perspective, I examine the epistemological tensions at work in those tropes.

What is consciousness? Can we study consciousness scientifically or is consciousness beyond empirical science, as many philosophers have claimed throughout the ages? This chapter provides a short history of the topic, including philosophical and scientific milestones, and gives an overview of what is to come in subsequent chapters.

After sketching two indicative moments from Emerson’s 1867 westward lecturing trip – his visit to the Santee Sioux in Minnesota and his visit to a group of Hegelian philosophers in St. Louis – this Introduction to the New Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson gives an overview of the volume contributors’ main thematic emphases. These are Emerson in relation to his contemporary moment; his religious and spiritual development; transatlantic Romanticism; nature, the environment, and climate; ethics and self-reliance; political resistance and slavery; race, US imperialism, and Asia; aesthetics, poetry, philosophy, and experimentalism; and his late style and legacy. While many readers of Emerson are most familiar with the iconic picture of him as the Sage of Concord, this introduction paints a picture of a transitional and transnational Emerson who tirelessly lectured across the United States throughout his lifetime, who can be placed in his contemporaneous transatlantic currents of Romantic literature, religion, philosophy, or science, and who nonetheless looks forward to modernist poetic, aesthetic, or musical innovations.

This article presents a comprehensive neuroethical framework that seeks to deepen our understanding of human consciousness and free will, particularly in the context of psychiatric and neurological disorders. By integrating insights from neuroscience with philosophical reflections on freedom and personal identity, the paper examines how various states of consciousness from interoception to self-awareness influence an individual’s autonomy and decision-making capabilities. The discussion utilizes a multidimensional, bottom-up approach to explore how neurobiological processes underlie different levels of conscious experience and their corresponding types of freedom, such as “intero-freedom” related to internal bodily states and “self-freedom” associated with higher self-awareness. This stratification reveals the profound impact of neurological conditions on patients’ freedom of choice and the ethical implications therein. The insights gained from this analysis aim to inform more tailored and effective treatments for psychiatric patients, emphasizing the restoration of autonomy and respect for their inherent dignity. This work underscores the essential unity of the human person through the lens of neuroethics, advocating for healthcare policies that recognize and enhance the personal freedom of those with mental health challenges.

This article, titled “A Unified Understanding of the Human Mind - A Neuroethical Perspective,”examines the evolution of the concept of the human mind in Western thought and its integration with neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, and relational dimensions. The author explores how the understanding of the mind has changed over time, influenced by shifts in philosophical paradigms, scientific advancements, and societal perspectives. The article traces the historical development of the mind’s concept, starting from ancient Greece, through influential thinkers like Plato and René Descartes, and progressing to contemporary perspectives. It highlights various philosophical and scientific approaches, including structuralism, functionalism, empiricism, and associationism, which have shaped our understanding of the mind. The article also delves into contemporary integration, where advancements in neuroimaging and the rise of holistic approaches offer a more nuanced understanding of the human mind. The author emphasizes the importance of the relational dimension and the interconnectedness of mental processes, the brain, and the external environment. This integrated perspective can benefit psychiatric treatment and psychological assessments by fostering a holistic approach to mental health. In conclusion, the article advocates for a multidimensional perspective that bridges subjective and objective aspects of human experience, offering promise for theoretical knowledge and practical applications in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience.

This chapter addresses one of the most important areas of philosophy – ethics – and uses it to examine aspects of the role of the law in education. Of all the areas of philosophy, more has probably been written about ethics, and over a longer period, than any other. In addition, all cultures are structured around a fundamental ethical system: the law. However, irrespective of their importance, both subjects are currently notable for their lowly status within the teacher education curriculum.

This chapter makes the case for the importance of philosophy as a discipline in its own right, as a subject area vital to the better understanding of education and as a set of self-reflective practices that can make us better teachers. Philosophy is concerned largely with those areas of study and speculation beyond the reach of empirical analysis, addressing problems about how we construct knowledge, how we produce a just society and how we determine ‘right’ from ‘wrong’. Its central research methodology is simply to think with clarity. The significance of this discipline has not been limited to answering abstract questions about the human condition; philosophy has been instrumental in both making us into rational and reflective citizens and framing the ideas behind our entire system of mass schooling.

This chapter argues that the issue of ‘truth’ has played a foundational role, not only within the discipline of philosophy but also within many different aspects of Australian culture. However, there seems to be little agreement on what it really is, and while some philosophers contend that truth is a meaningless concept – a linguistic mirage – most would argue there’s something of importance there, but what is it? Even if we struggle to determine the real nature of truth – as we did with the real nature of right and wrong in Chapter 14 – at least we structure our culture, our knowledges and our school curricula around stuff we know to be unequivocally true … or do we? Arguably, many of the assumptions we make, often derived from five centuries of European colonialism, do not stand up to close scrutiny. They are often ‘truths’ that suit particular interests of the powerful, and subtly act to reinforce their worldview.

This book began with specific goals in mind. The first was to address the issue of mass education in ways that had something to offer a range of different readers. This book is not aimed specifically at undergraduates, any more than it is directed at practising teachers or university academics. Each chapter has been organised with a progressive layering of complexity and density, such that readers with differing levels of knowledge and expertise should still be able to get something out of it. This has not been written as a textbook, with bitesized pieces tailor-made for tutorial digestion. This book was put together for a range of reasons: it is a summary of the current state of play within Australian (and global) theories of education; it is a resource book for those interested in assessing the weight of different conceptual approaches to mass schooling; it is an analysis of various issues within contemporary society as they relate to education; it is a (relatively) gentle critique of reductionist analyses of our schooling institutions and their outcomes; and it is a call for us not to forget the value of philosophy within the broader play of the social sciences.

The Roman eagle, speaking for Christianity, teaches the insuperable difference between divine and human justice. Given the life Dante has endorsed, the eagle’s view and Dante’s must diverge. They do so regarding the case of one who lives a good life but, without Christian faith, is condemned. Why, if reason guides him to that life, is faith nevertheless needed?The eagle’s response makes clear that it’s not justice, a common good, but resurrection that is the ultimate concern.God’s arbitrariness in dispensing this good is a credential of the power needed to provide it.

The Heaven of Saturn depicts the effect that orientation on this good has on philosophy. With the question of human good taken as resolved, the contemplatives actively discourage reasoned inquiry concerning humanly significant matters; any such inquiry could suggest doubt regarding God’s power to provide the key good.Peter Damian, a source of the handmaiden image, known for thinking God to be unbounded by the law of noncontradiction, conveys this message.He embraces the unknowability of God’s ways even to those who have been saved.The stark clarity of Peter’s position prepares Dante’s confrontation with this novel obstacle to the philosophic life raised by Christianity.

Another central concept or entity which Leroi-Gourhan drew from Bergson was Homo faber. In a brief but influential passage of Creative Evolution, Bergson posited that fabrication, making with materials, was a defining human trait. Intelligence was not for contemplation but rather for action, for producing artificial objects and tools. This Homo faber and its creative intelligence received mixed reactions. While the emphasis on techniques and their role in human history was welcomed by historian Henri Berr and by Marcel Mauss, the latter also stressed their fundamentally collective and rational dimensions, rather than individual or organic ones. At the same time, many prehistorians and philosophers of the time readily assumed an evolutionary sequence from primitive Homo faber to developed Homo sapiens. Until the 1950s, Leroi-Gourhan too held such views, considering the most ancient remains of technical activities (stone tool manufacture and use) too crude to be of much informative value.