Judaism and the West

From Indiana University Press: Grappling with the place of Jewish philosophy at the margin of religious studies, Robert Erlewine examines the work of five Jewish philosophers—Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Joseph Soloveitchik—to bring them into dialogue within the discipline. Emphasizing the tenuous place of Jews in European, and particularly German, culture, Erlewine unapologetically contextualizes Jewish philosophy as part of the West. He teases out the antagonistic and overlapping attempts of Jewish thinkers to elucidate the philosophical and cultural meaning of Judaism when others sought to deny and even expel Jewish influences. By reading the canon of Jewish philosophy in this new light, Erlewine offers insight into how Jewish thinkers used religion to assert their individuality and modernity.https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/bookshelf/1091/thumbnail.jp

At the Mind’s Limits and German-Jewish Symbiosis: Or, Améry on Guilt and the Possibility of Redemption

At the 50th anniversary of the Jean Améry’s Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten, published in English as At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations By a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, this work is garnering increased attention in the Anglophone world. Perhaps it should not be surprising that there is increased interest in this book at this moment when our attention is repeatedly drawn to the plight of immigrants and exiles, state sanctioned use of torture, and police violence—all themes At the Mind’s Limits deals with at length. While this recent attention is certainly appropriate, it nevertheless tends to blur the specific and particular socio-political and cultural contours of the work. Améry becomes a writer about the plight of the victim in general, such that specificity of his Jewishness is lost and the already submerged theological dimensions of his work remain obscure.

How Culture Impacts Relational Aggression in Elementary School-Age Children

The purpose of this study was to analyze whether cultural differences existed in forms of aggression and prosocial behaviors among 8 to 10 year old students in Ireland (N=145) and Puerto Rico (N=56) and if the prevalence of these forms of aggression differed between genders. Classroom teachers using the Children’s Social Behavior Scale – Teacher Form (Crick, 1996) rated all students in their classes on relational aggression, physical aggression, and prosocial behaviors. Three 2 (culture) by 2 (gender) analyses of variance were performed on each of the following dependent variables: relational aggression, physical aggression, and prosocial behavior. Teachers reported greater prevalence of relational aggression in Puerto Ricanstudents and greater prevalence of prosocial behavior among Irish students. Nosignificant differences were reported between cultures in physical aggression. Teachersreported higher prevalence of physical aggression among males compared to females andhigher prevalence of prosocial behavior among females when compared to males. Nosignificant gender differences were found in relational aggression. An interaction effectwas found in prosocial behavior with Irish females being higher in prosocial behaviorthan Puerto Rican females and Irish males. This research supports that culturaldifferences exist in relational aggression and prosocial behaviors among 8 to 10 yearviiolds. Gender differences in physical aggression and prosocial behaviors in this agesample were also supported. Future research, and the study\u27s limitations were discussed

Anti-uniqueness without articles

We report on the expression of singular nominals in Burmese, an articleless language, from original elicitation work. Bare nouns are interpreted as singular definites, to which the numeral tiq 'one' is added to form indefinites. We propose that tiq 'one' restricts the domain of the nominal to a singleton, and that its addition is subject to a Non-Vacuity constraint; this is the source of the anti-uniqueness inference of indefinites. We furthermore investigate the availability of tiq 'one' in anaphoric definites. Such behavior forms an argument that the compositional semantics of anaphoric definites does not involve contextual restriction via a situation variable, unlike unique definites

Restrictions on the position of exh

The grammatical approach to scalar implicatures attributes their introduction to a covert operator exh, which can be posited in various structural positions. By studying the interaction of scalar implicature calculation and the presuppositions of English also and again, we are able to pinpoint the structural position of exh. This diagnostic shows that some triggers of scalar implicature require exh to be adjoined as low as possible above them, whereas other triggers allow for more delayed adjunction of exh. We offer a concrete proposal for these behaviors in terms of syntactic feature-checking and show how it extends to cases involving ignorance inferences

Binding reconstruction and two modes of copy-chain interpretation

We present a theory for the interpretation of Ā-movement chains at LF in the copy theory of movement where the NP restrictor of a DP Ā-movement chain is interpreted in only one copy. Such a view is motivated for English by evidence from reflexive binding, building on observations in Barss 1986, and its interaction with parasitic gap licensing and weak crossover effects. Our approach offers a means for understanding the classification of Ā-movement types in Cinque 1990 and Postal 1994 in copy-theoretic terms