As the contribution of renewable energy increases to meet climate change objectives, so does the extent to which electricity is generated by individuals and communities, moving a centralised system to a more decentralised one, with associated system management and integration challenges. However, new digital and storage technologies are enabling local system management, and reducing the need fo…
The emerging development of genetic enhancement technologies has recently become the focus of a public and philosophical debate between proponents and opponents of a liberal eugenics – that is, the use of these technologies without any overall direction or governmental control. Inspired by Foucault’s, Agamben’s and Esposito’s writings about biopower and biopolitics, the author sees both…
Considerable socio-political change has re-configured the discursive space once occupied by ‘utopia’. Within the cultures of late capitalism and the organisational matrices of bio-political administration, that space is no longer animated by images of idealised states that are yet to come, or by a sense of simple failure in the production of those same states. Rather, it is overdetermined b…
In reaction to the spread of globalization, recent years have seen considerable growth in the number of intentional communities established across the world. In this collection of articles and lectures, many of them previously unpublished in English, the author analyzes various aspects of the philosophy of the kibbutz and draws parallels with other societies and philosophical trends, in the hop…
This book comprehends an intercultural and interdisciplinary framework including current research fields like Roboethics, Hermeneutics of Technologies, Technology Assessment, Robotics in Japanese Popular Culture and Music Robots. Contributions on cultural interrelations, technical visions and essays are rounding out the content of this book.
The book offers an innovating, interdisciplinary analysis of the relation between globalisation and Europeanisation from a value-driven and human-centric perspective. The approach goes beyond the traditional analysis and applies the proposed conceptual framework to various interconnected policy fields and issues, crucial to Europe's future.
Weighing up the costs and benefits of economic interdependence in a finance-driven world, this book argues that globalization, understood and promoted as absolute freedom for all forms of capital, has been oversold to the Global South, and that the South should be as selective about globalization as the North. ‘Liberalization, Financial Instability and Economic Development’ challenges the o…
Did the Reformation introduce a new approach to philosophy? How did this historical caesura influence key thinkers in the history of modern philosophy up to the twenty-first century? This volume discusses the Reformation as a philosophical event in the early modern era – and its astonishing impact on key issues in philosophy until today. The contributors analyse central patterns of Luther's t…
Plutarch's dialogue On the daimonion of Socrates is a unique combination of exciting historical romance and serious philosophical and religious discussion. The volume offers a range of essays on themes providing further insights into this masterly literary piece: on the historical, religious and philosophical background and on thematic connections with other works by Plutarch.
Synesius' essay De insomniis ('On Dreams') inquires into the meaning and importance of dreams for human beings and treats themes - most of all the relationship of humans to higher spheres -, which for religiously- and philosophically-minded people are still important today.