The present "philological commentary" is directed at those who have decided to take time for reading the original text, at least in an English translation. The first volume "Textual Criticism" is intended to meet the difficulties caused by the fact that our text editions are based on manuscripts separated from the original by more than a millennium.

The original New Testament documents disappeared very early, probably before the end of the first century, as they are not even quoted in the post-apostolic period and are not even mentioned as having been seen by anyone anywhere. The surviving manuscripts that have come down to us are copies of copies. And these copies have many errors. Therefore, textual criticism is used in order to restore the primitive form of the text before the errors and changes produced by (...) the hands and minds of copyists. A Herculean effort has been made to arrive at the form of the text that circulated or was known in the early years of Christianity. Textual critics, for example, raised many hypotheses and theories such as textual types, with the aim of pointing to handwritten copies that could be closer to what was thought to be the first century text. Editions of "Novum Instrumentum Omne" by Erasmus of Rotterdam, which went on sale March 1, 1516, and "The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881)" by Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort" represent the effort of scholars to give the public an edition of the Greek New Testament based on the best and oldest surviving Greek manuscripts. The present research intends to describe the beginning of the textual criticism of the New Testament with emphasis on the edition of the Greek New Testament of Erasmus of Rotterdam, in the researches of the scholars B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort and in the theory of the textual types. (shrink)

This paper explores the mutual implication of critical realism and semiosis (or the intersubjective production of meaning). It argues that critical realism must integrate semiosis into its account of social relations and social structuration. This goes well beyond the question of whether reasons can be causes to include more basic issues of the performativity of semiosis and the relationship between interpretation (verstehen) and causal explanation (erklären). The paper then demonstrates how critical realism can integrate semiosis into its accounts of dialectic (...) of structure and agency through an evolutionary approach to structuration. It also demonstrates how critical semiotic analysis (including critical discourse analysis) can benefit from critical realism. In the latter respect we consider the emergence of semiotic effects and extra-semiotic effects from textual practices and give two brief illustrations of how this works from specific texts. The paper concludes with more general recommendations about the articulation of the discursive and extra-discursive aspects of social relations and its implications for critical realism. (shrink)

This study develops a critical framework for evaluating ad hoc inflation in Qur’anic borrowing theories—explanations that multiply hypothetical intermediaries, lost sources, or selective adaptations in order to sustain the claim that the Qur’an derives its narratives from Jewish or Christian precedent. By systematically comparing the Qur’anic portrayals of Moses, Pharaoh, Joseph, Mary, Jesus, Lot, and Solomon with the spectrum of Late Antique traditions, archaeological evidence, linguistic data, and ancient Near Eastern cultural contexts, the analysis identifies domains where the Qur’anic material (...) diverges sharply from known Christian, Jewish, Gnostic, and folkloric accounts while exhibiting internal coherence and historically resonant detail. These divergences occur precisely in places where borrowing models would predict dependence or replication. The study argues that, methodologically, each additional layer of hypothetical transmission required to explain such divergences increases model complexity without increasing explanatory power. A more disciplined comparative approach reveals that the Qur’anic narratives often preserve structural, legal, linguistic, and geographical patterns unattested in the alleged source traditions, while avoiding their contradictions, anachronisms, and theological motivations. The proposed framework provides a clearer set of criteria for distinguishing genuine literary dependence from conjectural reconstruction, thereby offering a more rigorous basis for future work in Qur’anic historiography and Late Antique textual interactions. (shrink)

Aristotle discusses intellect in Metaphysics 12.9. This chapter, however, seems incomplete, because a question posed in it (1074b36–8) remains unaddressed. Another passage (1072b14–30) in Metaphysics 12.7 seems to address a similar topic, yet appears extraneous to its present chapter. This article argues that the placing of the aforementioned passage within Metaphysics 12.7 is incorrect, and its original position is actually at the end of Metaphysics 12.9. This alternative reading offers a better understanding of 1072b14–30, and has the potential to finalize (...) the unfinished discussion in Metaphysics 12.9. (shrink)

Mills writes: G. A. Cohen's influential ‘technological determinist’ reading of Marx's theory of history rests in part on an interpretation of Marx's use of ‘material’ whose idiosyncrasy has been insufficiently noticed. Cohen takes historical materialism to be asserting the determination of the social by the material/asocial, viz. ‘socio‐neutral’ facts about human nature and human rationality which manifest themselves in a historical tendency for the forces of production to develop. This paper reviews Marx's writings to demonstrate the extensive textual evidence (...) in favour of the traditional interpretation ‐ that for Marx, the ‘material’ includes the economic, and is thus ineluctably social in character. Thus those critics of Cohen who have urged the inclusion of the relations of production in historical materialism's explanans do seem to have Marx's terminological and conceptual backing. (shrink)

This book addresses a central dilemma in critical theory today: how to theorize the subject as both a construct of oppressive discourse and as a dialogical agent. By engaging a wide range of leading philosophical and critical thinkers—James, Habermas, MacIntyre, Rorty, Taylor, Derrida and West are all critiqued—Meili Steele proposes linking language with human agency in order to develop an alternative textual and ethical theory of the subject. Developing this theory through readings that address issues of identity politics, race (...) and feminist theory, Steele argues that we do not have to choose between an idealized or demonized modernity, offering new ways of understanding the ethical and political dimensions of imaginative narratives. (shrink)

James Kreines's Reason in the World (2015) offers an engaging and thought-provoking examination of Hegel's ambitions in the Science of Logic. However, it has gone unnoticed that there are two fundamental misinterpretations in his account of ‘Mechanism’ from the Logic. First, Kreines interprets the chapter as beginning with a ‘pure mechanism’ hypothesis that investigates the coherence of a purely mechanistic explanation of the world that makes no appeal to the immanent concept of things. Thus, according to Kreines, the Concept is (...) absent from the beginning of ‘Mechanism’ and only appears in the final section of the chapter, in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ in the subsection on the law, what Kreines conceptualizes as ‘reasonable mechanism’. Second, within his overall interpretation of ‘Mechanism’ as the development from the ‘pure mechanism’ hypothesis to ‘reasonable mechanism’ Kreines claims that there are logical moments that are explanatorily relevant and some that are not. Thus, Kreines will want to claim that Hegel's analysis of ‘pure mechanism’ reveals that ‘pure mechanism’ fails to be explanatorily relevant because, a) the logical moments do not have a concept immanent to them, and b) have ‘indifference’. It is only in the law that mechanistic explanations become explanatorily relevant because of the appearance of the Concept and the disappearance of ‘indifference’. I argue against both these positions. First, I think that there is no textual support for the idea that ‘Mechanism’ begins without the Concept immanent to it. Second, I think that Kreines is mistaken to equate ‘indifference’ with explanatory irrelevance and the absence of the Concept. My approach in this paper is to give my own analysis of the relevant passages from ‘Mechanism’ and, in doing so, to both show the misgivings of Kreines's interpretation and to offer an alternative way of reading the chapter. (shrink)

Language and politics go hand in hand and learning and comprehending political genre is to learn a language created for codifying, extending and transmitting political discourse in any text/talk. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s CDA and Rhetoric, the current study aims at investigating Donald Trump’s First Speech, from the point of frequency and functions of some rhetorical strategies (Parallelism, Anaphora and the Power of Three, Antithesis and Expletive, etc.), Nominalization, Passivization, We-groups and Modality as well as Lexical and (...) Textual Analysis, presented to the UN delivered on Sep. 19, 2017. Specifically, the study seeks to determine: (1) how President Trump succeeded in conveying his notions and assumptions to his intended audience, and in convincing and negotiating, (2) how he attempted to explicitly and implicitly pass his attitudes on his targets, and (3) how those orientations, intended notions and assumptions were seamlessly presented to his addressees in discoursal and lexico-grammatical levels; (4) and finally in this underlying trend how he achieved his own ends. The results of the study hope to enhance reading comprehension and writing in academic registers for EFL/ESL students. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between misprints and misreadings from the per- spective of textual history and literary philosophy. While misprints are often dismissed as technical accidents, they may have profound cultural consequences. Conversely, misread- ings can generate creative reinterpretations that influence theology, literature, and philoso- phy. By analyzing historical case studies—from the infamous “Wicked Bible” to interpre- tive traditions in Shakespeare, Kafka, and Biblical exegesis—we argue that the interplay of error and interpretation is not merely accidental but a (...) structural engine of cultural creation. (shrink)

One of the main philosophical works by Alexander of Aphrodisias, De principiis, is lost in its original Greek text, but it is preserved in three extant Medieval Semitic versions, one in Syriac and two in Arabic, which were written in the Near East between 500 and 950 AD. These versions are not totally identical and, as we have shown in 2012, they are in a rather complex textual relationship. As we will show in this article, a tentative reconstruction of (...) the lost text should be based upon an attentive and point‑to‑point comparative analysis of some aspect of all three versions. We have tentatively called the abore way “critical translation”. (shrink)

First of all, I would like to thank to the Philosophy of Law Department for this encounter with Professor Solum. It is really a pleasure meeting you Professor, and having the possibility to discuss this profoundly interesting and courageaus text with my colegues and specially with its author. The adjetive I have just used is not simply politeness, I really think we are in front of a very interesting work not only because of its persuasive humorous rhetoric but mainly because (...) it is a text that interrogates its own tradition even if it is with the intention to oxygenate, give air to it. And from a critical position that is something always to be welcomed. Nevertheless what I want to argue in this brief words is that what it is surprising (for my humble point of view) is that originalism, even in this new textual linguistic outfit or clothing, doesnt still address the question of the concept of origin itself. A question and a signifier that has a long inscription not only in western philosophical and interpretative traditions (meaning Nietzsche, Freud, Philosophical Hermeneutics as Gadamer, Ricoeur or in Derrida s deconstruction and so on) but also in non western interpretative tradition such as the Talmudic, for example. In these lines of thought the origin is unreachable, either lost or doesnt exist at all as far as there is no absolute ground that soustain an unique pure original meaning. In short, it is an empty signifier, obviously in dispute. So at last what it is called “original public meaning” it is no more than the result of the force relations between discourses. In other terms, there is an internal intimate relationship between power, language and interpretation. As Bajtin puts it (a russian linguist from the early XX century): the sign is the arena of social struggle. Or as Roland Barthes use to write: power parasitizes the language itself. (shrink)

The study of monosemy has gained scholarly attention for its role in enhancing precision and reducing ambiguity in political and editorial discourse. Student publications often address governance, education reforms, youth involvement, and community welfare, reflecting students’ critical engagement with societal issues. However, previous research on editorial language has primarily examined rhetorical strategies, with limited focus on the use of monosemy in student publications. This qualitative research, grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), investigates the occurrence of English monosemy in political editorial (...) articles written by students at Davao de Oro State College. A total of thirteen (13) articles, randomly collected from the Facebook pages of student publications between September 2022 and September 2024, served as the corpus for analysis. The study categorizes the types of monosemy employed, including contextual, diachronic, synchronic, functional, lexical, pragmatic, and semantic, and explores their communicative functions. Data were analyzed using CDA and validated through expert review. Findings reveal that student publications frequently employ monosemic terms, with semantic monosemy emerging as the most dominant type. The study also shows that monosemy fulfills multiple functions, with the ideational metafunction being the most prominent, followed by interpersonal and textual functions. Future research is encouraged to examine monosemy across diverse writing genres such as academic reports, business documents, and creative nonfiction. Exploring its contributions to clarity, precision, and efficiency in professional and literary communication would provide valuable insights. Moreover, adopting mixed method approaches, including linguistic analysis, surveys, and case studies, could further illuminate how monosemy enhances understanding across different fields. Its significance in legal, scientific, and instructional writing should also be investigated to refine specialized discourse, ensuring effective knowledge dissemination and interpretation across disciplines. (shrink)

Thomas Reid (1710–96) is increasingly being seen as a highly significant philosopher and a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. This new edition of Reid's classic philosophical text in the philosophy of mind at long last gives scholars a complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry. The critical text is based on the fourth life-time edition (1785). A selection of related documents showing the development of Reid's thought, textual notes, bibliographical details of previous editions and a full introduction by (...) the editor makes this an important contribution to the study of this increasingly respected philosopher. Key Features: Complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry accompanied by a judicious selection of manuscript evidence relating to its composition. Comprehensive Introduction providing an historical and philosophical account of the formation of the Inquiry. Detailed textual notes which include bibliographical details and allusions, translations, references to secondary literature and selected passages from Reid's manuscripts. (shrink)

OPEN ACCESS FREE DOWNLOAD. This chapter discusses Kant's 1763 "possibility proof" for the existence of God. I first provide a reconstruction of the proof in its two stages, and then revisit my earlier argument according to which the being the proof delivers threatens to be a Spinozistic-panentheistic God—a being whose properties include the entire spatio-temporal universe—rather than the traditional, ontologically distinct God of biblical monotheism. I go on to evaluate some recent alternative readings that have sought to avoid this result (...) by arguing that the relevant facts about real modality can be ultimately grounded in God’s powers or thoughts – or that Kant just leaves the grounding relations mysterious. I argue that the textual and philosophical costs of each of these alternative readings are formidable. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the fate of the proof in the critical period. Some commentators think that it disappears altogether, or that it is downgraded such that it produces a mere regulative idea of God as the most real being. I suggest that the proof survives but that the mode of assent it licenses towards its conclusion changes from knowledge to a certain kind of Belief (Glaube). (shrink)

Available manuscripts of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians have a variant reading of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper in 11:24. The longer reading contains “take, eat” while the shorter reading does not. The two readings have a noticeable difference in meaning. The longer one highlights the individual value of the Eucharist; the shorter version, however, favors its institutional significance. The existence of the two readings can be interpreted as evidence for ideological dynamics in the early church. Depending on (...) which of the two readings is considered prior, the church history would be seen either as an increase of clerical authority, or as an increase of value of the individual. (shrink)

Eric Watkins has argued on philosophical, textual, and historical grounds that Kant’s account of causation in the first Critique should not be read as an attempt to refute Hume’s account of causation. In this paper, I challenge the arguments for Watkins’ claim. Specifically, I argue (1) that Kant’s philosophical commitments, even on Watkins’ reading, are not obvious obstacles to refuting Hume, (2) that textual evidence from the “Disciple of Pure Reason” suggests Kant conceived of his account of causation (...) as such a refutation, and (3) that none of Hume’s early German critics provided responses to this account that would have satisfied Kant. Watkins’ reading of Kant’s account of causation is thus more compatible with traditional views about Kant’s relationship to Hume than Watkins believes. (shrink)

Abstract:As a well-known critic in the seventeenth-century China, Jin Shengtan distinguishes himself through his innovative reading strategies as well as on strong attack on previous hermeneutics practices. This paper compares the same openings of the Act 5 of Book II in the 1498 Hongzhi edition of Wang Shifu‟s Xixiang ji (The Story of the Western Wing) and Jin Shengtan‟s edition, examining the textual changes Jin made therein and the limitation of his commentary. Moreover, this paper associates Jin Shengtan‟s annotated (...) commentary with Grandma Jia‟s commentary of the same scene in Chapter 54 of The Story of the Stone. 摘要：金聖歎是十七世紀中國著名的批評家，他以其創新的解讀策略以及對以往詮釋學實踐的有力批判 而著稱。本文通過比較了 1498 年弘治版王實甫《西廂記》第二回第五折與金聖嘆本批《西廂記》本的 的相同開篇，探討了金聖嘆對文本的改動、刪補修正及其註釋的局限性。此外，本文也將金聖嘆的註釋 與賈母對《紅樓夢》第五十四回同一場景的註釋連結起來。. (shrink)

This article details the variety of critical strategies in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, finding strong connections with her writing as a reviewer for the Analytical Review, the literary review published by the reformer and Dissenter Joseph Johnson. In Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft employed textual analyses and an evolving set of theoretical positions that had been introduced in the course of her career at the Analytical Review. By elucidating the importance of the reviews and the (...) specificity of Wollstonecraft’s procedures, this article contributes to a growing consensus that Rights of Woman initiated feminist literary criticism. (shrink)

The prohibition against using others ‘merely as means’ is one of Kant’s most famous ideas, but it has proven difficult to spell out with precision what it requires of us in practice. In ‘How to Use Someone “Merely as a Means”’ (2020), I proposed a new interpretation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for using someone ‘merely as a means’. I argued that my agent-focused actual consent inter- pretation has strong textual support and significant advantages over other readings of (...) the prohibition. In the present essay, I respond to comments by Claudia Blöser, Irina Schumski, and Oliver Sensen. I first address the role of maxims in relation to the Formula of Humanity, and I spell out in more detail the relation between the agent’s belief and the actual facts pertaining to the consent of the person who is used as means to the agent’s end. I then discuss the importance of the requirement that agents make their use of others conditional on the others’ consent as a matter of moral principle. I next show that the proposed reading of the prohibition, despite its focus on the agent’s maxims and practical reasoning, yields important conclusions about the moral status of external actions, and I address several cases that are pur- ported to spell trouble for my reading of Kant’s prohibition. I end by outlining two challenges for possible (rational) consent readings of the prohibition against using others merely as means. (shrink)

The field of artificial intelligence operates under a foundational category error encoded in the term Natural Language Processing. We argue that current large language models (LLMs) engage in neither natural processes, nor language in any philosophically or linguistically coherent sense, nor processing as understood in cognitive science. Instead, they perform high-dimensional statistical pattern matching on textual corpora, an extraordinary engineering achievement that remains persistently mislabeled. . Our argument unfolds in three phases: First, we demonstrate the empirical and architectural differences (...) between human learning and transformer-based models. . Second, we examine the conceptual confusion that arises from treating understanding as substrate-independent (like flight) rather than substrate-dependent (like digestion). . Third, we investigate why language models work at all if they do not understand language. Drawing on Saussure's structuralism, distributional semantics, and the historical failure of symbolic AI, we analyse the structural conditions that make language amenable to statistical prediction and why this generates the appearance of understanding. . Through philosophical analysis (Searle, Dreyfus, structural linguistics), cognitive science, and computational history, we distinguish legitimate engineering accomplishment from ontological overreach. . We propose replacing Natural Language Processing with Statistical Text Synthesis to restore conceptual clarity and foster more responsible development. This is not a semantic quibble but a necessary intervention: what we call these systems shapes what we build, how we regulate them, and what we come to believe they can do. (shrink)

Propaganda is one of the most apparent avenues of ideological struggle. Amidst the battlefield in the social consciousness, the purpose of this study is to forward revolutionary ideology through intensification of revolutionary propaganda, specifically the pamphlet. It is a crucial step for revolutionaries in the aim to forward their methods of propaganda writing to overcome the illness of stereotypical propaganda writing as described by Mao Zedong. Stereotypical propaganda writing in the practice of progressive propaganda leads to a genesis of a (...) manufactured language characterized by the alienation of the masses from the language of revolutionaries and the alienation of revolutionary-propagandists from the practical experience of the masses. To overcome stereotypical propaganda writing, revolutionary propagandists must have a semiotic framework and a dialectical-materialist understanding of their relationship as Author-propagandists with the Reader-masses. By incorporating modest authorial-intentionalism from E.D. Hirsch and the Model-Reader theory of Umberto Eco into textual relationships, the role and the purpose of the sign as a medium in communicating ideologies can be established. In the process, it poses an alternative against the prevalent post-structuralist view of semantic autonomy and reader-response theory in the field of literary criticism. This paper also uses V.N. Voloshinov’s linguistic theory as the framework for semantico-pragmatic linguistic relations and social intercourse as the material base of the sign. (shrink)

For academics and students, Education Management in Managerialist Times offers a critical guide to existing educational management texts and makes a strong case for redefining educational management along more socially and politically informed lines. The book also offers practitioners alternative management strategies intended to contest, rather than support, managerialism, while being realistic about the context within which those who lead and manage schools currently have to work.

This paper presents the Index of the Interesting (II) — a formalized method for evaluating the quality of texts across genres, from scholarly theories to literary narratives. Building on the author's earlier theoretical work on "the interesting" as a cognitive-aesthetic category (Epstein 2001, 2009), the study operationalizes the original insight that interestingness equals provability divided by probability. The Index comprises a core function measuring unexpectedness and credibility, and a modulator capturing secondary parameters: interpositional tension, openness, rhythm, and resonance. The paper (...) provides theoretical foundations with reference to the etymology of "inter-esse" (being between), presents the formula's structure with detailed parameter descriptors, and offers calibration examples using canonical texts: Gogol's "The Overcoat," Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog," Montaigne's "Of Friendship," Bacon's "Of Studies," Bakhtin's "Epic and Novel," and classical aphorisms from Hippocrates, La Rochefoucauld, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Genre-specific adaptations for essays, aphorisms, and other forms are discussed. The method emerged through extended dialogue between the author and the large language model Claude (Anthropic), representing an early case of humanistic methodology developed through human-AI collaboration — what the author terms "syntellect" (a concept introduced in Epstein 2004). The paper reflects on the implications of this co-thinking for the future of humanistic research. The Index of the Interesting offers both a diagnostic tool for authors and critics seeking to improve texts, and a theoretical framework for analyzing the qualities that make texts intellectually and aesthetically compelling. (shrink)

This report presents an exhaustive, multidisciplinary investigation into the origins of Christianity, specifically focusing on the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, the forensic reality of his crucifixion, and the evidentiary basis for his bodily resurrection. Operating under the rubric of the "Minimal Facts" methodology-which utilizes only those data points granted by the vast majority of scholars across the ideological spectrum-this inquiry synthesizes ancient historiography, textual criticism, medical pathology, legal standards of evidence, and Bayesian probability calculus. The analysis demonstrates (...) that the traditional naturalistic hypotheses (Legend, Hallucination, Conspiracy, and Swoon) fail to possess the explanatory scope or power required to account for the historical data. Conversely, the resurrection hypothesis, when situated within a theistic philosophical framework supported by arguments from consciousness and modern verification of miracles, emerges not merely as a possibility, but as the most coherent and probable explanation for the rise of the Christian faith. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to explore a recent hypothesis about what the main mss. are for establishing the text of Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea (henceforth EN). This hypothesis was recently advanced on the basis of evidence coming from EN I-II. In exploring this hypothesis, I confine myself to the text of EN X.6-9 [=Bywater X.6-8], and, as a result, I propose a new text for EN X.6-9 [=Bywater X.6-8] based on a fresh collation of nine mss—four of which were not (...) taken into account in previous editions of the EN—and based on readings that can be gathered from the Arabic translation of the EN that was preserved in the Fez ms. The text proposed in this paper is accompanied by textual notes that justify my decisions regarding some difficult passages. (shrink)

This book contains 86 essays and papers by the Russian sculptor and hermeneutic philosopher Vladimir Zimmerling (1931-2017) addressed the issues in aesthetics, ethics and cultural history. The apparatus includes the introductory article, the commentary, the name and the subject indexes prepared by the book editor, Anton Zimmerling. The appendix contains 70 pictures of Vladimir Zimmerling's sculptures. Vladimir Zimmerling's conception is build on the combination of the empiricism principle with the elements of hermeneutics and metalinguistic criticism. His essays and papers (...) focus on the foundations of aesthetics and ethics. Vladimir Zimmerling was one of the pioneers of the analytic approach to the poetics of Ossip Mandelstam with his paper "Промер" ["The Measurement"], (1974-1975) devoted to 10 difficult Mandelstam's poems including "Грифельная Ода", "Слепая ласточка бросается к ногам", "Я слово позабыл, что я хотел сказать". (shrink)

In the 16th century, western science made a great leap. Meanwhile, in China, the development of textual criticism (including scholars Gu Yanwu 1613-1682, Dai Zhen 1724-1777, Duan Yucai 1735-1815, Wang Niansun 1744-1832) also facilitated the development of scientific factors (Hu Shi 1967).This paper argues that Qian-Jia scholars爷work represented a new era of traditional research that the value of scholarships and intellectual work (starting from Gu Yanwu 1613-1682, Dai Zhen 1724-1777, Duan Yucai 1735-1815, Wang Niansun 1744-1832, etc.) is essentially (...) based on what they created and believed, overtly or overtly, the principle of logic certainty—a newly developed indigenous rationalism in the Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

This two-part volume presents a comprehensive church-historical and critical examination of early Christianity and Islam during their formative centuries. Part I, Anatomy of Early Christianity: Church-Historical Aspects of Christian Records, analyzes early Christian literature and manuscript traditions through the lens of three foundational elements: regional selection, theological patterning, and differential regulation. Through four substantive chapters, the study traces Christianity's evolution from its initial symbolism and teachings through its institutional development, culminating in a detailed reconstruction of a fourth-century Church writer that (...) exemplifies these foundational aspects. The analysis draws upon diverse manuscript traditions to illuminate the psychological and socio-economic forces that shaped early Christianity's first three centuries. Part II, Anatomy of Early Islam: Historical Development and Aspects of the Quran, examines Islam's emergence from pre-Islamic Arabia through its formative post-Muhammad period. Organized in three sections, this part explores the cultural, social, and religious contexts that shaped Islam's development, distinguishing between Meccan surahs (reflecting Muhammad's original message) and Medinan surahs (showing community influence). The study emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to Quranic manuscripts, the transformation of religious concepts including the evolving understanding of Allah, Muhammad's role as social reformer, and the development of Islamic identity within the Abrahamic tradition. Throughout, the work highlights the ethical foundations of compassion and social cohesion that characterized early Islamic society. By employing rigorous scholarly methodologies and church-historical analysis, this volume contributes to ongoing academic discourse on the origins and evolution of these major religious traditions, revealing how both faiths emerged through complex processes of cultural integration, theological innovation, and institutional formation. (shrink)

The article argues for the variant ‘tractabimus’ in Book 8, ch. 1 of Augustine’s De Trinitate as opposed to the reading ‘tractavimus’ adopted in the Corpus Christianorum edition, and explains the implications of this variant for the understanding of the overall structure of the work.

In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in (...) the broader sense), after which I pose a few questions. These questions are not meant to prove that there are any serious problems with her argumentation. Instead, they are meant in the spirit of dialogue and allow her to elaborate her work for her audience. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of digital tools in enhancing feminist and ecological awareness through literature pedagogy in Indonesia. Against the backdrop of ongoing gender-based and environmental crises, we explore how digital learning practices intersect with critical literary studies. Focusing on two key works by Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha, The Wandering: Choose Your Own Red Shoes Adventure (2020) and Apple and Knife (2018), the study investigates how these texts can be integrated into English language and literature classrooms to encourage student (...) engagement with themes of bodily autonomy, ecological justice, and gendered resistance. Utilizing a decolonial ecofeminist lens and qualitative textual analysis, this research observes how students, through activities such as digital storytelling, interactive fiction writing, visual mapping, and role-based performance, recontextualize Paramaditha’s narratives into contemporary digital forms. The findings suggest that embedding these literary texts within participatory digital pedagogy not only nurtures critical reading and multimodal literacy but also supports students in confronting socio-ecological inequalities. By situating feminist literature within digital environments, this paper advocates for an alternative model of language and arts education that fosters critical, situated, and imaginative responses to gender and environmental concerns in the Indonesian digital context. (shrink)

Using Philosophical Formalism, I am executing a close textual examination of Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” as a “postmodern” novel. By looking into the implications of genre and/into the supposed self-aware critico-novelistic vision of Pynchon, I cascaded this critique as follows: Part 1: the semiotic/semiological texture of the novel; Part 2: the novel as a critical attempt to the Enlightenment-infused concepts in the contemporary time-space reality; Part 3: the novel as a psychedelic commentary on the modernist psychosis, (...) thus a celebration and an interrogation of the legacies (?) of the intricacies or the lack thereof of the Postmodern cultural mood; for better or worse. What we can gleaned from this novel as a signifying practice of the Postmodern turn is something that is open to interpretations that I wish to consolidate and bring forth to the discourse—(con-)current to the issues that hover the Subject—elsewhere. (shrink)

Ethics education in post-graduate philosophy departments and professional schools involves disciplinary knowledge and textual analysis but is mostly unconcerned with the ethical lives of students. Ethics or values education below college aims at shaping students’ ethical beliefs and conduct but lacks philosophical depth and methods of value inquiry. The «values transmission» approach to values education does not provide the opportunity for students to express doubt or criticism of the proffered values, or to practice ethical inquiry. The «inquiry» approach (...) to values education recognizes the need and the capacity of young people to grapple with moral ambiguity and pluralism, to confront their own moral doubts, to criticize conventional norms and to engage in ethical inquiry. Values clarification, critical thinking and Philosophy for Children are inquiry approaches to values education, with important differences. Five wisdom practices common among early Greek and Roman philosophical schools should inform ethics education at all levels. First, philosophy was understood as the disciplined study and practice of living well. Second, knowledge and discursive thinking played a limited role in relation to the life worth living. Third, these schools taught certain contemplative or «spiritual» exercises, including meditation, examination of one’s conscience, fraternal correction, contemplation of the cosmos, practicing present-moment awareness and reflection on death. Fourth, many of these schools established philosophical communities that practiced collaborative research, dialogue, mutual correction, and the cultivation of philosophical friendship. Fifth, the primary aim of intellectual and contemplative practices in these schools was self-transformation, from states of confusion, restlessness, egotism, and craving, to states of temperance, compassion, and tranquility. (shrink)

COMENTARIO 4° EN EL MARCO DE LA TESIS "UN ESTUDIO EN METODOLOGÍA INTERTEXTUAL Y EXEGÉTICA EN SALMO 91". . . En el presente comentario yo retomo el enfoque transcultural, iniciado en uno de los comentarios anteriores míos, el cual apliqué en el trato de la temática "pie" (o, "pies"). La evidencia pareceria estar insistentemente hablando de la relevancia de un sector de la literatura hebrea para la interpretación de determinados elementos de la arqueologia egipcia así como en favor de la (...) relevancia de lo arqueológico para la literatura hebrea. (shrink)

Comentario 1°, desde un enfoque transcultural, en el marco de la tesis “Un Estudio en Metodología Intertextual y Exegética en Salmo 91” cuanto al uso conjugado de la figura del רגל en posición de sujeto gramatical del verbo מוט, uso que la referida investigación percibe, debido a su frecuencia y estabilidad, como una fraseología. (fecha de publicación del comentario en Academiaedu: 2/6/2022) . . . . Nada de lo que voy a decir a continuación es conclusivo, yo solamente estoy argumentando, (...) especulando, indagando… aún es bastante prematuro el pensamiento, sin embargo, lo que sigue, es una “exposición” conjetural en el sentido que hay evidencias como para poder hablar de ello con cierta necesidad y algo de certeza, de hecho, ya lo hacen y yo, también, lo estoy trabajando. . . . . Una vez que finalicé la tesis decidí sacar del centro _no lo abandoné, lo sigo trabajando paralelamente_ de mi atención al objeto central de la investigación (en este caso, la tradición literaria hebrea comúnmente denominada el “Salmo 91”, o, siendo más técnico, los manuscritos 11Q11 y 4Q84 datados de alrededor de 2000 años según The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library) para devotar atención a dos palabras en especial de entre aquellas que pude analizar en aquel momento las cuales denotan tener importantes implicaciones no solamente, como pude ver, en la construcción del pensamiento implicado en los manuscritos hebreos y griegos con los cuales traté entonces sino que, también, de aquél que se puede observar en parte de la producción de algunas sociedades antiguas puesto de manifiesto por la arqueología, en este caso, hablo la figura del רגל (traducido frecuentemente como “pie”) en posición de sujeto gramatical del verbo מוט (a menudo traducido como “tropezar”; ver la tesis para saber mi posicionamiento respecto a dichas traducciones, entonces). Como expuse en la investigación y lo repito aquí, hay un aparente problema entre la forma hebrea de los textos analizados y su versión griega en el hecho de que si bien los autores hebreos llevados en cuenta parecen consensuar cuánto al uso del sustantivo רגל asociado al verbo מוט, lo mismo no es cierto cuando vamos a sus versiones griegas puesto que se observa el uso de diferentes verbos griegos para traducir מוט, lo que me hizo querer tratar de entender (ver tesis pata conocer mí reflexión al respecto, entonces), por un lado, qué circunstancias o pensamientos en la mente del traductor, o, traductores, pudieron haberle guiado a optar por diferentes traducciones griegas para un único termino hebreo (decir que el flujo de la traducción es del hebreo al griego no es algo totalmente seguro, pudo haber sido al revés e, incluso, se podría especular si no estamos delante del caso de una tradición aún más antigua la cual vino a ser transcrita tanto al griego como al hebreo, ya que hay evidencia como para pensarlo). . . . . Lo que quiero destacar, para ser más objetivo, es la relevancia de dichas palabras, sobre todo, de la figura del "pie", en diferentes culturas antiguas, en especial, la egipcia la cual, de paso, claramente hace notar su fuerte presencia en los renglones de diferentes manuscritos del Mar Muerto. El “pie” parece haber sido un tema de importancia en el antiguo Egipto (por ejemplo, pensar en la discusión del pie izquierdo adelantado de las estatuas egipcias y griegas), así como denotó serlo para varias de las composiciones hebreas tenidas en cuenta en la tesis y no hablo de su uso en referirse a un miembro, anatómicamente hablando, del cuerpo humano, sino que me refiero, como lo detallo en la investigación, a su empleo simbólico (chequear la tesis para ver mis conclusiones sobre su uso simbólico en dichos documentos, entonces). Lo ciertos es que en algún momento de nuestra historia como humanidad hemos decidido atribuirle al “pie” valores, más que simplemente mirarlo como un vehículo de locomoción. Tratar de percibir por medio de la filología y artefactos arqueológicos qué valores son estos y, sobre todo, porqué y para qué de ellos, es un ejercicio de retrospección histórica necesario sobre nuestro desarrollo como especie, en un sentido socio, antro, anato y filosófico, además de poder notar cómo influyó esta percepción en nuestra vida actual. También, me gustaría llegar a alguna conclusión, si me lo permite la evidencia, sobre la influencia del pensamiento egipcio referente al “pie” en su uso en la literatura hebrea, o, viceversa. Puede que las conclusiones de la tesis al respecto ya son relevantes como para poder echar más luz sobre esta discusión, al parecer, transcultural, si es que podemos hablar de que hay compatibilidad en cuanto a su aplicación en los distintos contextos antiguos donde se aprecia esta retorización de dicho miembro. (shrink)

The intent of this chapter is to suspend the belief in the goodness of literacy -- our chirographic bias -- in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the engagement with texts structures human consciousness, and particularly the minds of children. In the following pages literacy (a term which in this chapter refers to the ability to read and produce written text) is discussed as a consciousness altering technology. A phenomenological analysis of the act of reading shows the child’s (...) engagement with texts as a perceptual as well as a symbolic event that builds upon but also alters children’s speech acts. Speaking and reading are both forms of language use, but with different configurations of perceptual and symbolic qualities. Children’s literature uses textual technology and, intentionally or not, participates in structuring children’s pre-literate minds. Some of its forms, such as picture books and early readers, are directly intended to bridge the gap between the pre-literate listener and the literate reader and ease the transition into the literate state. It is my hope that the phenomenological analysis of the experiences of speaking and reading might help us understand more clearly how children’s literature impacts the minds of children. Such an analysis can awaken a critical awareness of the power that letters wield as they shape the reader’s psychological reality, and it can sharpen our sense of wonder about the metamorphosis of language from speaking to writing. (shrink)

Structural features of the Batman narrative often serve to naturalize capital accumulation while systematically marginalizing critiques of structural inequality. By synthesizing continental philosophy and critical theory, this analysis deconstructs a corpus of eleven Batman texts (1966–2019), ranging from Western comics and films to Japanese manga. The study introduces two original conceptual frameworks: hero fetishism, the textual operation that presents heroic capacity as an inherent character trait while obscuring its material basis in accumulated capital; and the compliance simulator, narrative structures (...) that reconfigure the audience as passive witnesses rather than active participants in the pursuit of justice. While centered on ideological critique, the research engages aspirational, psychoanalytic, and queer readings to demonstrate how these perspectives intersect with the core critical analysis. Operating at a textual level, the study identifies the subject positions offered by these narratives rather than claiming direct audience effects. Findings reveal a consistent tendency to: obscure the origins of Wayne Enterprises’ capital; pathologize structural dissent as individual psychiatric symptoms; delegitimize collective action; and frame justice as an elite gift rather than a collective right. While the Japanese Bat-Manga! (1966) offers a distinct cultural variation, the broader framework remains highly applicable to the narratives of platform capitalism and contemporary tech billionaires. Ultimately, this analysis identifies structural tendencies within textual forms that warrant critical attention in the study of advanced capitalist mythology. (shrink)

This paper compares criticisms of Singapore’s meritocracy, especially against its impact on income disparities and class divisions, with Michael Sandel’s critique of the meritocratic ethic in the United States. Despite significant differences in their history and politics, meritocracy has similar dysfunctions in both societies, allowing us to draw theoretical conclusions about meritocracy as an ideal of governance. It then contrasts Sandel’s communitarian critique of meritocracy with recent Confucian promotion of political meritocracy and meritocratic justice and argues that the Confucian principle (...) of “promoting the virtuous and talented” is different from the contemporary conception of meritocracy. Textual evidence indicates that a Confucian understanding of “merit” is contrary to the technocratic expertise of contemporary meritocracies. Furthermore, pre-Qin Confucian texts do not support a conception of justice that emphasizes individual desert; they address distributive problems from the perspective of needs and sustaining social relations. The texts also support limiting the reign of merit when it results in inequalities that cause suffering, inhibit personal cultivation of some groups, or undermine social relations. The paper concludes with an assessment of Singapore’s on-going attempts to improve its meritocracy from a Confucian perspective. (shrink)

This essay examines the contemporary condition of philosophy under the regime of emission without listening, characterized by textual proliferation detached from any interlocutive function. It argues that current discursive production no longer reorganizes the field of the possible, but rather becomes a mechanism of visibility and institutional legitimation. The critique focuses on three nuclei: textual inflation as a symptom of symbolic disarticulation; citation transformed into an emblem of belonging rather than a conceptual operator; and algorithmic silencing, which reduces (...) difference to mere statistics of compatibilities. Against this scenario, the text proposes rethinking philosophy as a mediation of symbolic legibility, where listening and hesitation emerge as ontological conditions of thought. The argument is articulated in critical dialogue with Adorno and Deleuze, recovering diagnoses of the sterilization of communication and displacing them into an ontology of emerging complexity. The central contribution lies in affirming philosophy not as commentary or performance, but as an operative gesture of symbolic inscription capable of sustaining difference and reorganization within the contemporary saturation of discourse. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the concluding book of Thomas of York’s Sapientiale, within the framework of the ongoing critical edition project. The complex relationships between manuscripts F, R, and V reveal an in fieri editorial situation and constant authorial revision. Drawing on textual and paratextual evidence, the study confirms the stemma proposed by Fiorella Retucci and Antonio Punzi and offers an integrative interpretation of the work. The paper shows that the editorial shifts reflect a deep doctrinal reconsideration of the project, (...) grounded in the maturation of the distinction between ens in generali and ens in speciali. This distinction is key to the inclusion and ordering of the final arguments, such as cosmology, celestial intelligences, and the soul. Finally, on the basis of the structure of manuscript V, the study supports the hypothesis that the correct numbering of the concluding book was originally the sixth rather than the seventh. (shrink)

This paper offers a nuanced perspective on the intellectual merit of output generated through human-AI-LLM collaboration, challenging prevalent critiques that dismiss such work as inherently low-quality or lacking originality. We contend that effective human-AI-LLM partnership positions human intellect as the primary driver of ideas and critical discernment, with Large Language Models (LLMs) serving as sophisticated "textual rendering engines"[^1] and "duplicating machines"[^2] for thought. This collaboration amplifies human creativity, overcomes cognitive and physical bottlenecks in articulation, and refines linguistic expression while (...) faithfully preserving the human's core ideas. By examining the dynamic interplay where an AI LLM functions as an advanced assistant for rendering and amplifying human thought, we argue that the true measure of intellectual merit lies in the originality of the human-originated ideas and the rigor of the arguments, rather than the tools employed. This paper advocates for a discerning engagement with AI LLMs, demonstrating their potential to elevate human intellectual output and contribute significantly to the frontier of knowledge. (shrink)

This article presents a critical analysis of two influential readings of Kant’s Second Analogy, namely, Gerd Buchdahl’s “modest reading” and Michael Friedman’s “strong reading.” After pointing out the textual and philosophical problems with each, I advance an alternative reading of the Second Analogy argument. On my reading, the Second Analogy argument proves the existence of necessary and strictly universal causal laws. This, however, does not guarantee that Kant has a solution for the problem of induction. After I explain why (...) the empirical lawfulness of nature does not guarantee the empirical uniformity of nature, I examine the modal status of empirical laws in Kant and argue contra Buchdahl and Friedman that empirical laws express two different kinds of necessity that are not reducible to each other. -/- . (shrink)

This article aims to critically examine three approaches to reflexivity in philosophical texts, specifically the case when the textuality becomes its own topic. The first approach is when there is no reflexivity at all. It is just describing how – according to the author – things are. As an example of this approach I take German media philosophy. This tradition is specific because reflexivity is supposed to be its very topic. However, the media philosophers succeeded in touching the indefinability of (...) mediality itself. Another method is to question one’s own and possibly also the reader’s position. I have chosen Annemarie Mol’s empirical philosophy as the example here. The problem is that despite following the “ontological turn”, the author remains (probably inevitably) also to a large extent trapped in the fact that he/she describes the world, that is, in subject/object dichotomy and therefore, in epistemology. The third way to write aims to make readers feel what the author tells. My example here is the varied work of Walter Benjamin whom I for the purpose of this article consider more as a prophet rather than the precise thinker who he (also) by all means was. While using the second approach myself, I discuss advantages and challenges of the three and find their points of touch. (shrink)

“Signs in Trance: A Critical Collection on the Semiotics of Lícia Soares de Souza” was written in five languages and is considered the most important ethnographic and semiotic study of Bahia in the past five decades, coauthored with leading scholars from seven different countries. More than a personal tribute, Signos em Transe articulates biographical and ethnographic elements, highlighting not only the honoree's career but also the institutional, cultural, and epistemological impacts of her academic work at universities such as Uneb, Ufba, (...) Uefs, Uesb, and international institutions like Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Université Laval, University of Kassel, and Saarland University. Curated, organized, and presented by the thinker Taurino Araújo, Signs in Trance engages in dialogue with the tradition of the philosophia perennis by investigating the universality of meaning across diverse cultures, languages, and historical contexts. Through a transdisciplinary approach—one that weaves symbolic analysis, hermeneutics, and aesthetics into lived cultural experience—while ethnographically examining the intellectual legacy of Lícia Soares de Souza within a broad epistemological horizon, the work reveals the contours of a philosophy of life committed to ethical interpretation, existential reflection, and the integration of knowledge in a perpetual interplay between tradition and innovation, reason and intuition, text and world. Contributions from Prominent Figures in the Humanities Among the authors who contribute critical texts are renowned researchers such as Winfried Nöth, Eurídice Figueiredo, Berthold Zilly, Cyro de Mattos, Taurino Araújo, Zilá Bernd, Rita Olivieri-Godet, Luiz Eudes, Bernard Andrès, Claire Varin, Ricardo Justo, Jean-François Côté, Emiliano José, Louise Duprè, Calmon Teixeira, and Suênio Lucena. 'Signs in Trance' was launched at the Academia de Letras da Bahia- ALB (Bahian Academy of Letters), in a ceremony presided over by the esteemed Academician Aleilton Fonseca, with institutional support from Uneb and CNPq. The essays in Signos em Transe cover everything from the fundamentals of semiotics to contemporary applications, establishing connections between semiotics and fields such as literature, linguistics, communication, language teaching, Francophonie, cultural criticism, art, and history in a domain marked by challenges and complexities. "From 1 - Semiotics/Semiology to 6 - Social Communication, the reader will also find relevant approaches to 2 - French language teaching and Canadian studies; 3 - French-speaking Canadian poetry; 4 - Brazilian literature and cinema and its 5 - Geopoetics and literature of the Canudos cycle around the foundational core of Euclides da Cunha.". (shrink)

The lexical priority of fair equality of opportunity in John Rawls’s justice as fairness, which has been sharply criticized by Larry Alexander and Richard Arneson among others, is left almost entirely undefended in Rawls’s works. I argue here that this priority rule can be successfully defended against its critics despite Rawls’s own doubts about it. Using the few textual clues he provides, I speculatively reconstruct his defense of this rule, showing that it can be grounded on our interest in (...) self-realization through work. This reconstructed defense makes liberal use of concepts already present in A Theory of Justice , including the Aristotelian Principle (which motivates the achievement of increasing virtuosity) and the Humboldtian concept of social union (which provides the context for the development of such virtuosity). I also show that this commitment to self-realization, far from violating the priority of right in Rawls’s theory, stems directly from his underlying commitment to autonomy, which is the very foundation of the moral law in his doctrine of right. The reconstituted defense of this priority rule not only strengthens the case for justice as fairness but also has important and controversial implications for public policy. (shrink)

Ontology is a burgeoning field, involving researchers from the computer science, philosophy, data and software engineering, logic, linguistics, and terminology domains. Many ontology-related terms with precise meanings in one of these domains have different meanings in others. Our purpose here is to initiate a path towards disambiguation of such terms. We draw primarily on the literature of biomedical informatics, not least because the problems caused by unclear or ambiguous use of terms have been there most thoroughly addressed. We advance a (...) proposal resting on a distinction of three levels too often run together in biomedical ontology research: 1. the level of reality; 2. the level of cognitive representations of this reality; 3. the level of textual and graphical artifacts. We propose a reference terminology for ontology research and development that is designed to serve as common hub into which the several competing disciplinary terminologies can be mapped. We then justify our terminological choices through a critical treatment of the ‘concept orientation’ in biomedical terminology research. (shrink)

Between 1927 and 1936, Martin Heidegger devoted almost one thousand pages of close textual commentary to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between Kant and Heidegger by providing a fresh analysis of two central texts: Heidegger’s 1927/8 lecture course Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his 1929 monograph Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I argue that to make sense of Heidegger’s reading of Kant, one must resolve (...) two questions. First, how does Heidegger’s Kant understand the concept of the transcendental? Second, what role does the concept of a horizon play in Heidegger’s reconstruction of the Critique? I answer the first question by drawing on Cassam’s model of a self-directed transcendental argument, and the second by examining the relationship between Kant’s doctrine that ‘pure, general logic’ abstracts from all semantic content and Hume’s attack on metaphysics. I close by sketching the implications of my results for Heidegger’s own thought. Ultimately, I conclude that Heidegger’s commentary on the Critical system is defined, above all, by a single issue: the nature of the ‘form’ of intentionality. (shrink)

In the age of web 2.0, the university is constantly challenged to re-adapt its ‘old-fashioned’ pedagogies to the new possibilities opened up by digital technologies. This article proposes a rethinking of the relation between university and (digital) technologies by focusing not on how technologies function in the university, but on their constituting a meta-condition for the existence of the university pedagogy of inquiry. Following Ivan Illich’s idea that textual technologies played a crucial role in the inception of the university, (...) we will first show the structural similarities between university thinking and the text as a profanation of the book. Secondly, we describe university thinking as a type of critical thinking based on the materiality of the text-on-the-page, explaining why the text has been at the centre of university pedagogy since the beginning. In the third part, we show how Illich came to see the end of the culture of the text as a challenge for the university, by describing the new features of the text-as-code incompatible with the idea of reading as study. Finally, we challenge this pessimistic reading of Illich’s and end with a call for a profanatory pedagogy of digital technologies that could mirror the revolutionary thinking behind the mediaeval invention of the text. (shrink)

Legal theorists seek to persuade other jurists of certain theories: Textualism or purposivism; formalism or realism; natural law theory or positivism; prison reform or abolition; universal or particular human rights? Despite voluminous literature about these debates, tremendous uncertainty remains about which views experts endorse. This Article presents the first-ever empirical study of American law professors about legal theory questions. A novel dataset of over six hundred law professors reveals expert consensus and dissensus about dozens of longstanding legal theory debates. -/- (...) Law professors also debate questions about the nature of the legal academy. Descriptively, which subjects (e.g. constitutional law) and methods (e.g. law & economics) are most central within the legal academy today? And prescriptively, should today’s legal academy prioritize additional areas (e.g. legislation) or methods (e.g. critical race theory)? There is great interest in these questions but no empirical dataset of experts’ views; this results in uncertainty about which views experts endorse. This Article’s empirical study also clarifies these questions, documenting law professors’ evaluation of over one-hundred areas of law. -/- The legal theory and legal academy findings support implications for legal scholarship, education, and practice. Clearly, debates about law and the legal academy’s evolution should not be settled by a survey. Nevertheless, insofar as law professors are experts about these issues, it is instructive to discover and carefully examine what views those experts hold, so as to help determine which views are most likely to be true and how the legal academy ought to develop. (shrink)