German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.

17th century
Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), the Lutheran philosopher who founded Christian theosophy, influenced later key figures including F.W.J. Schelling and G.W.F. Hegel, who called him "the first German philosopher".

Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was both a philosopher and a mathematician who wrote primarily in Latin and French. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th century advocates of rationalism. The work of Leibniz also anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or a priori definitions rather than to empirical evidence.

Leibniz is noted for his optimism – his Théodicée tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws.

Leibniz is also known for his theory of monads, as exposited in Monadologie. They can also be compared to the corpuscles of the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes and others. Monads are the ultimate elements of the universe. The monads are "substantial forms of being" with the following properties: they are eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony (a historically important example of panpsychism). Monads are centers of force; substance is force, while space, matter, and motion are merely phenomenal.

18th century

Wolff
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant. His main achievement was a complete oeuvre on almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak of Enlightenment rationality in Germany.

Wolff was one of the first to use German as a language of scholarly instruction and research, although he also wrote in Latin, so that an international audience could, and did, read him. A founding father of, among other fields, economics and public administration as academic disciplines, he concentrated especially in these fields, giving advice on practical matters to people in government, and stressing the professional nature of university education.

Kant

In 1781, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) published his Critique of Pure Reason, in which he attempted to determine what we can and cannot know through the use of reason independent of all experience. Briefly, he came to the conclusion that we could come to know an external world through experience, but that what we could know about it was limited by the limited terms in which the mind can think: if we can only comprehend things in terms of cause and effect, then we can only know causes and effects. It follows from this that we can know the form of all possible experience independent of all experience, but nothing else, but we can never know the world from the "standpoint of nowhere" and therefore we can never know the world in its entirety, neither via reason nor experience.

Since the publication of his Critique, Immanuel Kant has been considered one of the greatest influences in all of western philosophy. In the late 18th and early 19th century, one direct line of influence from Kant is German Idealism.

19th century

German idealism

German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The most prominent German idealists in the movement, besides Kant, were Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, (1775–1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), who was the predominant figure in nineteenth century German philosophy. Also important were the Jena Romantics Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Novalis (1772–1801), and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829). August Ludwig Hülsen, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Salomon Maimon, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Arthur Schopenhauer also made major contributions.

Fichte
As a representative of subjective idealism, Fichte rejected the Kantian "thing-in-itself." Fichte declares as the starting point of his philosophy the absolute "I," which itself creates the world with all its laws. Fichte understands the activity of this "I" as the activity of thought, as a process of self-awareness. Fichte recognizes absolute free will, God and the immortality of the soul. He sees in law one of the manifestations of the "I".

Speaking with progressive slogans of defending the national sovereignty of the Germans from Napoleon, Fichte at the same time put forward chauvinist slogans, especially in his Addresses to the German Nation (1808), for which Fichte is regarded as one of the founders of modern German nationalism.

Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, who initially adhered to the ideas of Fichte, subsequently created his own philosophical system. Nature and consciousness, object and subject, Schelling argued, coincide in the Absolute; Schelling called his philosophy "the philosophy of identity."

In natural philosophy, Schelling set himself the task of knowing the absolute, infinite spirit that lies at the basis of empirical visible nature. According to Schelling, the science of nature, based exclusively on reason, is designed to reveal the unconditioned cause that produces all natural phenomena. Schelling considered the absolute as a beginning capable of self-development through contradictions; in this sense, Schelling's philosophy is characterized by some features of idealist dialectics. In his early philosophy, around 1800, Schelling assigned a special role to art, in which, according to him, the reality of "higher being" is fully comprehended. Schelling interpreted art as "revelation." The artist, according to Schelling at this time, is a kind of mystical creature who creates in unconsciousness.

For Schelling, the main instrument of creativity is intuition, "inner contemplation." In later life, Schelling evolves towards a mystical philosophy (Mysterienlehre). He was invited by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV to the post of professor at the University of Berlin with the aim of combating the then-popular ideas of the left-liberal Young Hegelians. It was during this period of his life that Schelling created the mystical "philosophy of revelation".

Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is widely considered to be the greatest German idealist philosopher. According to Hegel's system of objective or absolute idealism, reality is self-movement, and its activity can be expressed only in thinking, in self-knowledge. It is internally contradictory, it moves and changes, passing into its opposite.

Hegel presents the dialectical process of self-development in three main stages, which are ordered conceptually, not temporally. The first stage is logical, was describes the "pre-natural" structure being in the "element of pure thinking." At this stage, the "absolute idea" appears as a system of logical concepts and categories, as a system of logic. This part of Hegel's philosophical system is set forth in his Science of Logic. At the second stage, the "idea" is considered "in its externality" as nature. Hegel expounded his doctrine of nature in The Philosophy of Nature. The highest, third step in the self-development of the idea is spirit, which Hegel, for the most part, presents as it increasingly comes to know itself in history. Hegel reveals this stage of development of the "absolute idea" in his work Philosophy of Spirit from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and in his lectures at the University of Berlin, many of which cover material not found in his published writings. The highest stage of spirit is presented as in the forms of art. religion, and philosophy.

The main works of Hegel are The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Science of Logic (1812–1816), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Spirit) (1817), Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821).

German Romanticism
Immanuel Kant's criticism of rationalism was a source of influence for early Romantic thought. Hamann's and Herder's philosophical thoughts were also influential on both the proto-Romantic Sturm und Drang movement and on Romanticism itself.

The philosophy of Fichte was of pivotal importance for the Romantics. The founder of German Romanticism, Friedrich Schlegel, identified the "three sources of Romanticism": the French Revolution, Fichte's philosophy, and Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister.

Schelling, who was associated with the Schlegel brothers in Jena, took many of his philosophical and aesthetical ideas from the Romantics, and also influenced them on their own views: "In his philosophy of art, Schelling emerged from the subjective boundaries in which Kant concluded aesthetics, referring it only to features of judgment. Schelling's aesthetics, understanding the world as an artistic creation, has adopted a universal character and served as the basis for the teachings of the Romantic school." It is argued that Friedrich Schlegel's subjectivism and his glorification of the superior intellect as property of a select elite influenced Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition, which György Lukács called "the first manifestation of irrationalism". As much as Early Romanticism influenced the young Schelling's Naturphilosophie (his interpretation of nature as an expression of spiritual powers), so did Late Romanticism influence the older Schelling's mythological and mysticist worldview (Mysterienlehre).

According to Lukács, Kierkegaard's views on philosophy and aesthetics were also an offshoot of Romanticism.

Schopenhauer also owed certain features of his philosophy to Romantic pessimism: "Since salvation from suffering associated with the will is available through art only to a select few, Schopenhauer proposed another, more accessible way of overcoming the "I" – Buddhist Nirvana. In essence, Schopenhauer, although he was confident in the innovation of his revelations, did not give anything original here in comparison with the idealization of the Eastern world outlook by reactionary Romantics – it was indeed Friedrich Schlegel who introduced this idealization in Germany with his Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (About the language and wisdom of the Indians)."

In the opinion of György Lukács, Friedrich Nietzsche's importance as an irrationalist philosopher lay in that, while his early influences are to be found in Romanticism, he founded a modern irrationalism antithetical to that of the Romantics Even in his post-Schopenhauerian period, however, Nietzsche paid some tributes to Romanticism, for example borrowing the title of his book The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882–87) from Friedrich Schlegel's 1799 novel Lucinde.

Lukács also emphasized that the emergence of organicism in philosophy received its impetus from Romanticism:

This view, that only 'organic growth', that is to say change through small and gradual reforms with the consent of the ruling class, was regarded as 'a natural principle', whereas every revolutionary upheaval received the dismissive tag of 'contrary to nature' gained a particularly extensive form in the course of the development of reactionary German romanticism (Savigny, the historical law school, etc.). The antithesis of 'organic growth' and 'mechanical fabrication' was now elaborated: it constituted a defence of 'naturally grown' feudal privileges against the praxis of the French Revolution and the bourgeois ideologies underlying it, which were repudiated as mechanical, highbrow and abstract.

Wilhelm Dilthey, founder (along with Nietzsche, Simmel, and Klages) of the intuitionist and irrationalist school of Lebensphilosophie in Germany, is credited with leading the Romantic revival in hermeneutics of the early 20th century. With his Schleiermacher biography and works on Novalis, Hölderlin, and others, he was one of the initiators of the Romantic renaissance in the imperial period. His discovery and annotation of the young Hegel's manuscripts became crucial to the vitalistic interpretation of Hegelian philosophy in the post-war period; his Goethe study likewise ushered in the vitalistic interpretation of Goethe subsequently leading from Simmel and Gundolf to Klages.

Passivity was a key element of the Romantic mood in Germany, and it was brought by the Romantics into their own religious and philosophical views. The theologian Schleiermacher argued that the true essence of religion lies not in the active love of one's neighbor, but in the passive contemplation of the infinite. In Schelling's philosophical system, the creative absolute (God) is immersed in the same passive, motionless state.

The only activity that the Romantics allowed is that in which there is almost no volitional element, that is, artistic creativity. They considered the representatives of art to be the happiest people, and in their works, along with knights chained in armor, poets, painters and musicians usually appear. Schelling considered an artist to be incomparably higher than a philosopher, because the secret of the world can be guessed from his minutia not by systematic logical thinking, but only by direct artistic intuition ("intellectual intuition"). Romantics loved to dream of such legendary countries, where all life with its everyday cares gave way to the eternal holiday of poetry.

The quietist and aestheticist mood of Romanticism, the reflection and idealization of the mood of the aristocracy, again emerges in Schopenhauer's philosophical system The World as Will and Representation, ending with a pessimistic chord. Schopenhauer argued that at the heart of the world and man lies the "will to life," which leads them to suffering and boredom, and happiness can be experienced only by those who free themselves from its oppressive domination. Even the artist is freed from the power of the will only temporarily. As soon as he turns into an ordinary mortal, his greedy will again raises its voice and throws him into the embrace of disappointment and boredom. Above the artist stands, therefore, the Hindu sage or the holy ascetic.

Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians

Hegel was hugely influential throughout the nineteenth century; by its end, according to Bertrand Russell, "the leading academic philosophers, both in America and Britain, were largely Hegelian". His influence has continued in contemporary philosophy, especially in Continental philosophy.

Right Hegelians
Among those influenced by Hegel immediately after his death in 1831, two distinct groups can be roughly divided into the politically and religiously radical 'left', or 'young', Hegelians and the more conservative 'right', or 'old', Hegelians. The Right Hegelians followed the master in believing that the dialectic of history had come to an end—Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit reveals itself to be the culmination of history as the reader reaches its end. Here he meant that reason and freedom had reached their maximums as they were embodied by the existing Prussian state. And here the master's claim was viewed as paradox, at best; the Prussian regime indeed provided extensive civil and social services, good universities, high employment and some industrialization, but it was ranked as rather backward politically compared with the more liberal constitutional monarchies of France and Britain.

Speculative theism was an 1830s movement closely related to, but distinguished from, Right Hegelianism. Its proponents (Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1796–1879), Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–1866), and Hermann Ulrici (1806–1884) were united in their demand to recover the "personal God" after panlogist Hegelianism. The movement featured elements of anti-psychologism in the historiography of philosophy.

Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians drew on Hegel's idea that the purpose and promise of history was the total negation of everything conducive to restricting freedom and reason; and they proceeded to mount radical critiques, first of religion and then of the Prussian political system. They felt Hegel's apparent belief in the end of history conflicted with other aspects of his thought and that, contrary to his later thought, the dialectic was certainly not complete; this they felt was obvious given the irrationality of religious beliefs and the empirical lack of freedoms—especially political and religious freedoms—in existing Prussian society. They rejected anti-utopian aspects of his thought that "Old Hegelians" have interpreted to mean that the world has already essentially reached perfection. They included Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), David Strauss (1808–74), Bruno Bauer (1809–82) and Max Stirner (1806–56) among their ranks.

Karl Marx (1818–83) often attended their meetings. He developed an interest in Hegelianism, French socialism, and British economic theory. He transformed the three into an essential work of economics called Das Kapital, which consisted of a critical economic examination of capitalism. Marxism became one of the major forces on twentieth century world history.

It is important to note that the groups were not as unified or as self-conscious as the labels 'right' and 'left' make them appear. The term 'Right Hegelian', for example, was never actually used by those to whom it was later ascribed, namely, Hegel's direct successors at the Fredrick William University (now the Humboldt University of Berlin). (The term was first used by David Strauss to describe Bruno Bauer—who actually was a typically 'Left', or Young, Hegelian.)

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels, also a Young Hegelian originally, was a friend and associate of Marx, together with whom he developed the theory of scientific socialism (communism) and the doctrines of dialectical and historical materialism. His major works include The Holy Family (together with Marx, 1844) criticizing the Young Hegelians, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), a study of the deprived conditions of the working class in Manchester and Salford based on Engels's personal observations, The Peasant War in Germany (1850), an account of the early 16th-century uprising known as the German Peasants' War with a comparison with the recent revolutionary uprisings of 1848–1849 across Europe, Anti-Dühring (1878) criticizing the philosophy of Eugen Dühring, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) studying the utopian socialists Charles Fourier and Robert Owen and their differences with Engels' version of socialism, Dialectics of Nature (1883) applying Marxist ideas, particularly those of dialectical materialism, to science, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) arguing that the family is an ever-changing institution that has been shaped by capitalism. It contains an historical view of the family in relation to issues of class, female subjugation and private property.

Dietzgen
Joseph Dietzgen was a German leatherworker and social democrat, who independently developed a number of questions of philosophy and came to conclusions very close to the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels. After the revolution of 1848 he emigrated to America and in 1864 in search of work, he went to Russia. Working in a tannery in St. Petersburg, Dietzgen devoted all his leisure time to works in the field of philosophy, political economy and socialism. In Russia he wrote a large philosophical treatise, The Essence of the Mental Labor of Man, a review of the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx. In 1869 Dietzgen returned to Germany, and then moved again to America, where he wrote his philosophical works Excursions of a Socialist in the Field of the Theory of Knowledge and Acquisition of Philosophy.

Marx highly appreciated Dietzgen as a thinker. Noting a number of mistakes and confusion in his views, Marx wrote that Dietzgen expressed "many excellent thoughts, and as a product of the independent thinking of a worker, worthy of amazement." Engels gave Dietzgen the same high assessment. "And it is remarkable," wrote Engels, "that we were not alone in discovering this materialistic dialectic, which for many years now has been our best tool of labor and our sharpest weapon; the German worker Joseph Dietzgen rediscovered it independently of us and even independently of Hegel."

The "academic socialists"
The Kathedersozialismus movement (academic socialism) was a theoretical and political trend that arose in the second half of the 19th century in German universities. The "academic socialists" – mostly economists and sociologists belonging to the "Historical School" – tried to prove that a people's state could be built in Prussian Germany through reform, without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and of the state, thus rejecting the Marxist notion of class struggle. In 1872 the Kathedersozialisten formed in Germany the "Union of Social Policy". Their ideas were similar to those of the Fabian socialists in Britain.

"Academic socialism" supported a variation of Otto von Bismarck's welfare state. The most notable "academic socialists" in Germany were Bruno Hildebrand, who was openly against Marx and Engels, Gustav von Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, Lujo Brentano, Johann Plenge, Hans Delbrück, Ferdinand Toennies and Werner Sombart. In the labor movement in Germany, their line was supported by Ferdinand Lassalle.

Dühring
Eugen Dühring was a German professor of mechanics, philosopher and economist. In philosophy he was an eclectic who combined positivism, mechanistic materialism and idealism. He criticized the views of Friedrich Engels. Dühring's views on philosophy, political economy and socialism found support among some Social Democrats, in particular by Eduard Bernstein. Engels dedicated his entire book Anti-Dühring to criticizing Dühring's views.

Schopenhauer

An idiosyncratic opponent of German idealism, particularly Hegel's thought, was Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 –1860). He was influenced by Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhism, and was known for his pessimism. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), claimed that the world is fundamentally what we recognize in ourselves as our will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he eloquently described a lifestyle of negating  desires, similar to the ascetic teachings of Vedanta and the Desert Fathers of early Christianity.

Towards the end of Schopenhauer's life and in the years after his death, post-Schopenhauerian pessimism became a rather popular "trend" in 19th century Germany. Nevertheless, it was viewed with disdain by the other popular philosophies at the time, such as Hegelianism, materialism, neo-Kantianism, and the emerging positivism. In an age of upcoming revolutions and exciting new discoveries in science, the resigned and a-progressive nature of the typical pessimist was seen as detriment to social development. To respond to this growing criticism, a group of philosophers greatly influenced by Schopenhauer such as Julius Bahnsen (1830–81), Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), Philipp Mainländer (1841–76), and even some of his personal acquaintances developed their own brand of pessimism, each in their own unique way.

Mainländer
Working in the metaphysical framework of Schopenhauer, Philipp Mainländer sees the "will" as the innermost core of being, the ontological arche. However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important respects. With Schopenhauer the will is singular, unified and beyond time and space. Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism leads him to conclude that we only have access to a certain aspect of the thing-in-itself by introspective observation of our own bodies. What we observe as will is all there is to observe, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, via introspection we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism.

Additionally, Mainländer accentuates on the idea of salvation for all of creation. This is yet another respect in which he differentiates his philosophy from that of Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, the silencing of the will is a rare event. The artistic genius can achieve this state temporarily, while only a few saints have achieved total cessation throughout history. For Mainländer, the entirety of the cosmos is slowly but surely moving towards the silencing of the will-to-live and to (as he calls it) "redemption".

Neo-Kantianism

Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to a revived type of philosophy along the lines of that laid down by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, or more specifically by Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy in his work The World as Will and Representation, as well as by other post-Kantian philosophers such as Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843) and Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841).

The neo-Kantian schools tended to emphasize scientific readings of Kant, often downplaying the role of intuition in favour of concepts. However, the ethical aspects of neo-Kantian thought often drew them within the orbit of socialism, and they had an important influence on Austromarxism and the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein. The neo-Kantian school was of importance in devising a division of philosophy that has had durable influence well beyond Germany. It made early use of terms such as epistemology and upheld its prominence over ontology. By 1933 (after the rise of Nazism), the various neo-Kantian circles in Germany had dispersed.

Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was initially a proponent of Schopenhauer. However, he soon came to disavow Schopenhauer's pessimistic outlook on life and sought to provide a positive philosophy. He believed this task to be urgent, as he believed a form of nihilism caused by modernity was spreading across Europe, which he summed up in the phrase "God is dead". His problem, then, was how to live a positive life considering that if you believe in God, you give in to dishonesty and cruel beliefs (e.g., divine predestination of some individuals to Hell), and if you don't believe in God, you give in to nihilism. He believed he found his solution in the concepts of the Übermensch and Eternal Recurrence. His work continues to have a major influence on both philosophers and artists.

Mach and Avenarius

Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. Mach's philosophy is set forth in his works Analysis of Sensations (1885), Cognition and Delusion (1905), and others. Mach viewed things as "complexes of sensations," denying the existence of an external world independent of human consciousness. The philosophy of Machism found support among Western European Marxists such as Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer, and in Russia among a part of the Bolshevik intelligentsia (Alexander Bogdanov, Vladimir Bazarov, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Pavel Yushkevich, Nikolai Valentinov etc.). Machian views were also widespread among early 20th century Western physicists, including most notably Albert Einstein.

Richard Avenarius was a German philosopher and one of the founders of empirio-criticism. According to Avenarius, consciousness and being, subject and object ("I" and "environment") are in constant, obligatory connection ("fundamental coordination"); there is no being without consciousness, there is no consciousness without being. But Avenarius considered consciousness to be the basis of this connection. According to Avenarius, a thing cannot exist independently of consciousness, without a thinking subject.

Vladimir Lenin dedicated his entire book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909) to the criticism of the philosophical views of Mach and Avenarius, writing that "this philosophy serves the clergy, serves the same purposes as the philosophy of Berkeley and Hume."

20th century

Neo-Hegelianism

Neo-Hegelianism, also known as Post-Hegelianism, was a trend developing in the early 20th century, mostly but not exclusively in Germany. Important German neo-Hegelians include Richard Kroner, Nicolai Hartmann, Siegfried Marck, Arthur Liebert, and Hermann Glockner, while the Frankfurt School can also be said to have been influenced by neo-Hegelianism.

Spengler

Oswald Spengler was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art and their relation to his organic theory of history. The main work of Spengler, setting out his philosophy of history, The Decline of the West, was published shortly after the defeat of Imperial Germany in World War I. In this work, Spengler predicts the inevitable collapse of the capitalist civilization, which he identifies with European culture. Spengler's philosophy is imbued with elitism and a dislike for democracy. He declared the workers (the "fourth estate") to be "outside of culture," "outside of history"; the mass, Spengler wrote, is the end of everything, "radical nothing." Spengler praised the "Old Prussian spirit," the monarchy, the nobility and militarism. For him, war is "an eternal form of higher human existence."

Spengler's philosophy of history" is based on the denial of scientific knowledge. The historical researcher, in his opinion, is the more significant, the less he belongs to science. Spengler opposes intuition to logical, rational knowledge, denying the principle of causality and regularity in social life. Spengler rejects the possibility of knowing objective truth, defending absolute relativism. Along with historical regularity, Spengler rejects the concept of historical progress, tries to prove the meaninglessness of history and the absence of development in it. Spengler contrasts the scientific understanding of natural historical development with historical fatalism – predestination, "destiny." Spengler also denies the unity of world history. His history breaks down into a number of completely independent, unique "cultures," special organisms above and beyond, having an individual destiny and experiencing periods of emergence, flourishing and dying.

Spengler reduces the task of the philosophy of history to comprehending the "morphological structure" of each "culture," which supposedly is based on the "soul of culture." According to Spengler, Western European culture entered a stage of decline already starting from the 19th century, that is, with the victory of capitalism; the period of its heyday was the era of feudalism. In his work Preussentum und Sozialismus Spengler advances the idea of "German socialism" against "Marxist socialism". It has been argued that Spengler's ideas had an influence on Hitler and Nazism. A philosophy of history close to Spenglerian views was promoted after the Second World War by the English historian Arnold Toynbee.

Analytic philosophy

Frege, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle
In the late 19th century, the predicate logic of Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) made the first substantial advance over Aristotelian logic since its inception in Ancient Greece. This was the beginning of analytic philosophy. In the early part of the 20th century, a group of German and Austrian philosophers and scientists formed the Vienna Circle to promote scientific thought over Hegelian system-building, which they saw as a bad influence on intellectual thought. The group considered themselves logical positivists because they believed all knowledge is either derived through experience or arrived at through analytic statements, and they adopted the predicate logic of Frege, as well as the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) as foundations to their work.

Continental philosophy

While some of the seminal philosophers of twentieth-century analytical philosophy were German-speakers, most German-language philosophy of the twentieth century tends to be defined not as analytical but 'continental' philosophy – as befits Germany's position as part of the European 'continent' as opposed to the British Isles or other culturally European nations outside of Europe.

Phenomenology
Phenomenology began at the start of the 20th century with the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano (1838–1917), and then the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Max Scheler (1874–1928) further developed the philosophical method of phenomenology. It was then transformed by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), whose famous book Being and Time (1927) applied phenomenology to ontology, and who, along with Ludwig Wittgenstein, is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Phenomenology has had a large influence on Continental Philosophy, particularly existentialism and poststructuralism. Heidegger himself is often identified as an existentialist, though he rejected this.

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the philosophical theory and practice of interpretation and understanding.

Originally hermeneutics referred to the interpretation of texts, especially religious texts. In the 19th century, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and others expanded the discipline of hermeneutics beyond mere exegesis and turned it into a general humanistic discipline. Schleiermacher wondered whether there could be a hermeneutics that was not a collection of pieces of ad hoc advice for the solution of specific problems with text interpretation but rather a "general hermeneutics," which dealt with the "art of understanding" as such, which pertained to the structure and function of understanding wherever it occurs. Later in the 19th century, Dilthey began to see possibilities for continuing Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics project as a "general methodology of the humanities and social sciences".

In the 20th century, hermeneutics took an 'ontological turn'. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time fundamentally transformed the discipline. No longer was it conceived of as being about understanding linguistic communication, or providing a methodological basis for the human sciences – as far as Heidegger was concerned, hermeneutics is ontology, dealing with the most fundamental conditions of man's being in the world. The Heideggerian conception of hermeneutics was further developed by Heidegger's pupil Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), in his book Truth and Method.

Frankfurt School

In 1923, Carl Grünberg founded the Institute for Social Research, drawing from Marxism, Freud's psychoanalysis, and Weberian philosophy, which came to be known as the "Frankfurt School". Expelled by the Nazis, the school reformed again in Frankfurt after World War II. Although they drew from Marxism, they were outspoken opponents of Stalinism. Books from the group, like Adorno's and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment and Adorno's Negative Dialectics, critiqued what they saw as the failure of the Enlightenment project and the problems of modernity.

Since the 1960s, the Frankfurt School has been guided by Jürgen Habermas' (born 1929) work on communicative reason and linguistic intersubjectivity.

See also

Critical theory
Culture of Germany
German literature
Goethe-Institut
History of philosophy
List of Austrian intellectual traditions
List of German-language philosophers
Logical empiricism
Modern philosophy
Phenomenology

References

External links

Austrian Philosophy by Barry Smith

Culture of Germany
German literature

German philosophy


A hexahedron (plural: hexahedra) is any polyhedron with six faces. A cube, for example, is a regular hexahedron with all its faces square, and three squares around each vertex.

There are seven topologically distinct convex hexahedra, one of which exists in two mirror image forms. (Two polyhedra are "topologically distinct" if they have intrinsically different arrangements of faces and vertices, such that it is impossible to distort one into the other simply by changing the lengths of edges or the angles between edges or faces.)

There are three further topologically distinct hexahedra that can only be realised as concave figures:

Related pages
Prismatoid

References

Other websites
Polyhedra with 4-7 Faces  by Steven Dutch

Polyhedra

Hexahedron


Conception Abbey, site of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, is a monastery of the Swiss-American Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation. The monastery, founded by the Swiss Engelberg Abbey in 1873 in northwest Missouri's Nodaway County, was raised to a conventual priory in 1876 and elevated to an abbey in 1881. In 2021 the community numbered fifty-eight monks who celebrate the Eucharist and Liturgy of the Hours daily and who staff and administer Conception Seminary College, The Printery House, and the Abbey Guest Center. Monks also serve as parish priests and hospital chaplains in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph and other dioceses.  There is also a large postal facility attached to The Printery House, operated by lay employees, which includes package shipping and delivery facilities.

Conception Abbey is located in Conception, Missouri, just outside Conception Junction.

History
Conception Abbey was established on 8 December 1873, by Benedictine monks of the Swiss abbey of Engelberg as a place of refuge should their monastery be suppressed by the Swiss government. They also came in response to the appeal of the Rev. James Power to minister to the spiritual needs of a colony of Irish and German settlers which he had established in northwest Missouri in 1858, prior to the Civil War. Benedictine Sisters from Maria Richenbach, a convent located not far from Engelberg, arrived in Missouri in 1873 soon after the monks, hoping ultimately to found a convent where special devotion to the Eucharist could be fostered.

The founders of Conception Abbey were Fathers Frowin Conrad, O.S.B. (1833-1923), and Meinrad Widmer (1844-1901), of Lucerne, Switzerland. Frowin Conrad, named Placid at birth, was born in Auw, Canton Argau, Switzerland, on 2 November 1833, the eldest of twelve children, eleven boys and one girl. Of the eleven boys, five became priests, four of these Benedictine monks. Educated by the Jesuits as a youth, he entered the abbey school of Einsiedeln to study theology and then entered monastic life at Engelberg.

Fr. Frowin made his profession in 1853 and was ordained a priest in 1856. In the next seventeen years, he served as prefect and professor in Engelberg's school, held many of the major offices in the monastery (including the important post of novice-master), pastor of the monastery's parish, and chaplain to the nearby convent of Maria Richenbach. These appointments witness the fact that he enjoyed the complete confidence of the abbot of Engelberg, Anselm Villiger.

Having been directed to found a monastery of his order in the United States in 1873, Fr. Frowin founded the Benedictine monastery of New Engleberg at Conception, which was erected into an abbey in 1881. In 1885 Fr. Frowin was chosen as the abbey's first abbot.

Meinrad Widmer was baptized as Joseph Widmer on 1 March 1844 at Hohenrain, Canton Luzern, Switzerland. During his boyhood he attended the Catholic school of his hometown, was confirmed in 1855, and later worked on the family farm. The Mother General of the Sisters of Mercy at Ingenbohl, Canton Schwyz, employed him to work on the extensive farm of their convent.  When he was twenty-eight, he left Ingenbohl for Grafenort in Unterwalden to work on the estate belonging to the Abbey of Engelberg. There he met Fr. Frowin Conrad and soon afterwards decided to become part of the new Benedictine foundation. At his religious profession he took the name Meinrad, perhaps in honor of the monastery of Saint Meinrad in Indiana, whose abbot and prior were so helpful in the early days of the Engelberg foundation.

Joining Fr. Frowin and Fr. Meinrad was Fr. Adelhelm Odermatt, O.S.B. He was born Karl Odermatt on 10 December 1844 at Ennetmoos nears Stans, Nidwalden. He entered Engelberg as a novice on 29 September 1865. He became a professor in Engelberg's school and assistant pastor of the Engelberg parish at the time Frowin Conrad was pastor of the parish. Fr. Adelhelm was assigned to Maryville as pastor of the parish there.

Fr. Adelhelm and Fr. Frowin, prior of the new foundation, seem to have disagreed about the nature of the new foundation in Missouri: Fr. Frowin was influenced by the customs of the Beuronese foundations and Saint Meinrad Abbey in Indiana while Fr. Adelhelm hoped to reproduce in the United States Engelberg's observance and spirit. Fr. Adelhelm and another Engelberg monk left Conception on 1 June 1881 seeking a location for a new monastery. They established Mount Angel Abbey in 1882.

In 1880, according to the U.S. Federal Census enumerated in June, the monks numbered twenty-two in their household (eight priests, six clerics, two novices, and six laybrothers) and the sisters another twenty-four in a separate household. In the Album Benedictum published for 1880 it was noted that the monks served the following parishes: one priest served the cathedral in St. Joseph, Missouri, one priest served Saint Columba Parish in Conception, Missouri (with its missions at Albany, Saint Patrick's, Dolorosa in Gentry County, and Guilford and Whitesfield in Worth County), and two priests served Saint Mary Parish in Maryville and its stations in Nodaway County at Barnard, Bolkow, Hopkins, Pickering, and Rosendale. The Album Benedictum noted for 1880 that the library contained 3000 volumes.

Acknowledgement of sex abuse
In 2019, Abbot Benedict Neenan, the monastery's abbot, unveiled a list of 8 monks who were credibly accused of committing acts of sex abuse while serving on behalf of Conception Abbey, seven of whom are dead and one removed from ministry. These monks were: Fr. Vincent Barsch, Fr. Bede Parry, Fr. Edgar Probstfield, Fr. Regis Probstfield, Fr. Gilbert Stack, Fr. Hugh Tasch, Fr. Paschal Thomas, and Fr. Isaac True. An additional deceased monk with a credible allegation was added to this list in 2020: Fr. Vincent Heinen. Abbot Benedict Neenan also issued an "unconditional apology to all victims and their families affected by the evil of clergy sexual abuse."

College and Seminary

College of New Engelberg
The school was founded on 2 July 1886 and was called the College of New Engelberg with classes offered on the high school and junior college level. By 1915 the college enrolled 118 students.

Conception Seminary
In 1942 under the guidance of Abbot Stephen Schappler the college changed its name and restricted enrollment to candidates for the priesthood, offering a 12-year program including a preparatory high school, a junior college, a senior college, and a school of theology. In 1956 the Benedictine High School was moved to Omaha. The seminary's enrollment peaked at 549 students in 1965 but went into decline following the Second Vatican Council.

Clarence Thomas studied to become a priest at the seminary in 1968, and in 1991 was named to the United States Supreme Court.

Conception Seminary College
In 1972 the theology school closed and it focused on being a liberal arts school. A pre-theology curriculum was added in 1982. The college now estimates that it has educated 75 percent of the priests in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese.

The Printery House
One of the main endeavors of the Abbey has been The Printery House. It began as an in-house publication effort in the 1930s, would expand to become Conception Abbey Press in the 1950s, and then would change its name to The Printery House in 1973. It is noted for its calligraphy and artwork for the stationery they create and distribute.

Abbots
Source:
1881-1922 Frowin Conrad
1922-1937 Philip Ruggle
1937-1961 Stephen Schappler
1961-1970 Anselm Coppersmith
1970-1976 Kevin McGonigle
1977-1987 Jerome Hanus (later ordained as Bishop)
1987-1993 James Jones
1993-1996 Marcel Rooney (later became Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation from 1996 to 2000)
1996-2016 Gregory Polan (later became Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation from 2016 to present)
2016–present  Benedict Neehan

Basilica
The Abbey Church of Conception was designed by Adrian Wewer, a Franciscan. The cornerstone was laid on 20 May 1883, and it was dedicated on 10 May 1891. Two years later in 1893 it was hit by a tornado. As the church was rebuilt the Beuron murals were added. On 10 May 1941 Pope Pius XII declared it a minor basilica.

A two-decade $9 million restoration was completed in 1999.

Foundations
Over the decades Conception Abbey attempted a number of foundations: St. Michael Priory in Cottonwood, Idaho; St. Benedict Abbey in Benet Lake, Wisconsin (1945); Mount Michael Abbey and High School in Elkhorn, Nebraska (1956); St. Pius X Monastery in Pevely, Missouri (1951); and Skt. Knud's Kloster, a priory in Copenhagen, Denmark. St. Benedict Abbey and Mt. Michael Abbey are the two foundations functioning today.

2002 shooting
At about 8:40 am, on the morning of 10 June 2002, a 71-year-old man identified as Lloyd Robert Jeffress of Kearney, Missouri, went through the basilica into the monastery, killing Brother Damian Larson, 62, and Father Philip Schuster, 84, and wounding Father Kenneth Reichert, 68, and Father Norbert Schappler, 75. Jeffress carried into the basilica two boxes – one containing a MAK-90 rifle (a Chinese-made replica of the AK-47) and a stripped down .22 caliber rifle. Having made the circuit of the monastery hallways, Mr. Jeffress returned to the basilica where he shot and killed himself. Larson and Schuster were buried in the abbey cemetery following the Mass of Christian Burial celebrated on June 14, at which 1200 relatives and friends of the abbey were present. No motive has ever been determined for the shooting.

A 2008 documentary was produced by St. Louis filmmaker Jay Kanzler. The film, which was shown at the 2008 St. Louis International Film Festival, discussed the way of life in the monastery, and the 2002 shooting.

References

External links
Official site
Official history of the abbey
The Printery House
Official history of Clyde Monastery
Jay Kanzler's documentary, St. Benedict's Rule

1873 establishments in Missouri
Benedictine monasteries in the United States
Basilica churches in Missouri
Religious organizations established in 1873
Benedictine colleges and universities
Swiss-American history
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City–Saint Joseph
Roman Catholic churches in Missouri
Clarence Thomas

Conception Abbey


Ecotec (capitalized ECOTEC, from "Emissions Control Optimization TEChnology") is a General Motors (GM) and Opel Automobile GmbH (Opel) trademark that refers to a series of emissions technologies that were implemented throughout a range of GM engines. ECOTEC can refer to the following diesel and petrol engines originally produced by General Motors:

 Ecotec Family 0 – straight-four DOHC engines produced by Adam Opel AG and GM Powertrain US.
 Ecotec Family 1 – straight-four SOHC/DOHC engines produced by Adam Opel AG, GM Korea, and GM do Brasil.
 Ecotec Family II – straight-four SOHC/DOHC engines produced by Adam Opel AG, Holden, and GM do Brasil.
 Ecotec L850 – straight-four all-aluminium DOHC engines produced by Adam Opel AG, GM Powertrain US, and Saab Automobile Powertrain AB.
Ecotec V6 – a version of the Series II 3800 V6 engine, produced by the Holden Engine Company between 1995 and 2004.
 CDTI (Common Rail Diesel Turbo Intercooled) Ecotec – common rail diesel engines for Opel/Vauxhall cars:
 Originally designed and produced by Fiat (MultiJet) and currently produced by Adam Opel AG. Also produced by Isuzu (Circle L).
 VCDi Ecotec – common rail diesel engines for Chevrolet and Holden cars, produced by GM Korea (a licensed VM Motori RA 420 SOHC and Family Z).
 DTI (Diesel Turbo Intercooled) Ecotec – diesel engines for use in Opel/Vauxhall cars, produced by Isuzu (Circle L).
 SIDI (Spark Ignition Direct Injection) Ecotec – petrol Medium Gasoline Engine produced by Adam Opel AG.
 EcoTec3 is the name used on General Motors' Small Block Gen 5 Engines. All include direct injection, cylinder deactivation, and continuously variable valve timing, either in V6 form of 4.3L or V8 form of either 5.3L or 6.2L.

The trademark ECOTEC has also been used on Opel automobiles which are powered by the following engines produced by PSA PowerTrain:
EB: The ECOTEC trademark is used on the Opel Crossland X and Opel Grandland X equipped with the 110 hp variant (Crossland X) and 130 hp variant (Grandland X) of PSA's EB petrol engine. Lower-powered variants of this engine lack an engine designation, while higher-powered variants (for Crossland X) are designated as TURBO.

General Motors engines

Ecotec


Kunsthochschule Kassel (German; "Kassel College of Art") is a college of fine arts in Kassel, Germany. Founded in 1777, it is a semi-autonomous department of the University of Kassel.

History

Kassel Art Academy
After the Seven Years' War (1756 to 1763), Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, began establishing industry and manufacturing in Hesse and brought artists and scholars to Kassel. On October 18, 1777, he separated the "Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture de Cassel" from the Collegium Carolinum and opened the Fridericianum in 1779 as one of the first public museums on the European continent. In the same year, the academy received its first statutes, in which the role of promoting art outweighed that of teaching. The co-founder and teacher of painting was Johann Heinrich Tischbein (1772–1789).

The change to an art school took place in 1838 after responsibility for the academy was transferred to the government in 1832. Towards the end of the 19th century, academic teaching became increasingly separated from training in commercial art. A separate arts and crafts school was created. The main aspects here were the training to become an art teacher and the introduction of the first workshops.

Together with the Stuttgart Art Academy, female students were officially admitted at the beginning of the 20th century in limited teaching and separate classes. In the 1920s, the academy also introduced workshops in order to do justice to the increasing importance of craftsmanship in art. The Prussian government's attempt to merge the academy and the arts and crafts school failed. In 1931 the academy was officially closed due to austerity measures. Only one class for painting with Kay Nebel continued. In 1935, the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Public Education (REM) set up a scholarship program for young talent in National Socialist art in Berlin. This program was led by Kay Nebel and Ludwig Thormaehlen (Kassel State Museum). In the period between 1933 and 1944, the school changed its name several times and the staff was significantly reduced. It continued to exist as a "state crafts school", "master school for German crafts", and as a "master school for creative crafts", but was downgraded to a technical school. In 1943 the building and furnishings were destroyed in an air raid. The school's files were also destroyed. Classes were stopped on May 1, 1944. The temporary end of the institution, which had last operated under the name "Kassel State Master School", finally came with the dismissal of the acting senior director of studies, Bruno Beneke, on January 6, 1946 at the instigation of the military government.

New foundation and comprehensive university in Kassel
After the war, the arts and crafts school was reopened in 1946 under the name "School for Crafts and Art", later "Werkkunstschule", and in 1947 the academy was reopened under the name "Werkakademie". This became the "State University of Fine Arts" in 1960. Thanks to the protected position of the professor and documenta founder Arnold Bode, after his success in 1962, expansion took place through the didactic interpretation of practice and application within the Kassel school. During this time, the Werkkunstschule gained a good reputation under director Jupp Ernst. In 1962 she moved into a new building by Paul Friedrich Posenenske on the edge of Karlsaue. In 1968 the state university followed in an immediately neighboring building. Two years later, the so-called "College of Fine Arts" merged.

In 1971, the Kassel Comprehensive University was founded and all university-like facilities in Kassel and Witzenhausen were integrated into the new university. Initially, in the founding phase, the organizational units 04 Gestalt Theory, 05 Painting/Sculpture, 06 Architecture/Landscape Architecture, 07 Graphic Design, 08 Industrial Design and 09 Art Studies emerged from the "College of Fine Arts". In 1977, the OE Architecture/Landscape Architecture moved from Karlsaue to Holländischer Platz. This heralded the separation of architecture from the other artistic/design subjects, although some areas of architecture remained at Karlsaue until the end of the 1990s.

In the development phase, departments were formed from the organizational units in 1978: FB 10 Art and FB 11 Design (as of the SS 1979 course catalog). The OE Architecture/Landscape Architecture has already been merged with the OE Architecture of the former technical college (the engineering school) and the FB 12 Architecture and the FB 13 Urban Planning, Landscape Planning emerged from the OE Architecture, Urban Planning, Landscape Planning. These two departments went to the Kassel University as Study Area I and later to the University of Kassel as FB 06 ASL – Architecture, Urban planning, landscape planning outside of art school. This meant that the artistic/design area lost the landscape/architecture, even if interdisciplinary collaboration continued for a long time.

During this time, the Technical Center was founded as an interdisciplinary unit that brings together workshops and laboratories primarily for students of artistic and design courses. The "HbK" still existed in the old buildings on Karlsaue, while the growing comprehensive university filled several locations and the new, central campus on Holländischer Platz.

The university stood out over the years as a "college of fine arts" thanks to its experimentalism, particularly in architecture and openness. The protagonist of this phase is the "earth building pope" Gernot Minke, who aggressively succeeded in combining targeted discussion and applied practice. Eberhard Fiebig was also a representative of this phase until the late 1980s. During this time, the school developed its own, integrated system of presentation and communication. Nevertheless, Lucius Burckhardt, socio-economist and urban planner, who cultivated open space and walking sciences for many years, is a representative of this time, although he belongs to the Department of Architecture, urban planning, landscape planning.

In the summer semester of 1980, the artistic/design area was reorganized into three departments: FB 22 Art, FB 23 Visual Communication and FB 24 Product Design (initially counting FB 10/1–3). This structure was maintained for 20 years, until the late 1990s.

University and path to art school
In the 1990s, the Kassel University of Applied Sciences moved from the development phase to the consolidation phase. This was accompanied by tight funding, which fell short of expectations, particularly in the area of positions. The university management now focused on concentrating the departments. At the same time, the discussion about profile creation and representation of universities began in the higher education sector. The Kassel Comprehensive University (GHK) initially changed its name to the University-Comprehensive University of Kassel (UGK) in 1993 and later to the University of Kassel in 2003. The artistic departments wanted to be able to better represent and assert themselves as an art college in Kassel. At the end of the 90s, a commission was set up to prepare the Kassel Art School. Finally, in 2000, the departments 22 art (fine arts, art studies, art education), 23 visual communication and 24 product design were combined to form department 20 as a semi-autonomous department. This was granted the right to a rector. The official name was "Kassel School of Art at the University of Kassel". Reiner Kallhardt became the founding rector, Karin Stempel was elected as the first female rector in 2004, followed by Christian Philipp Müller in 2011. In 2013, Joel Baumann became rector of the art school, followed by Martin Schmidl in November 2021.

Notable people

 Daniel Stieglitz
 Peter Angermann
 Sinan Akkuş
 Bernhard, Count of Bylandt
 Julius Bien (1826−1909)
 August Bromeis
 Paul Ehrhardt (1888−1981), student 1929−1931
 Bernd Friedmann
 Horst Gläsker
 Ludwig Emil Grimm
 Dörte Helm (1898−1941), student 1915−1918
 Siglinde Kallnbach, attended 1976−1983
 Harry Kramer
 Eduard Niczky
 Bjørn Melhus
 Eva Moll
 Amalie Tischbein
 Halsey Rodman
 Hans Sautter (1877–1961), became professor in 1919, director from 1931 to 1933
 Wilhelm Schmidthild
 Curt Witte (1882–1959), professor from 1916 to 1932, director from 1925 to 1931
 Miao Xiaochun

See also
Collegium Carolinum (Kassel)

References

1777 establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
Buildings and structures in Kassel
Universities and colleges in Hesse
University of Kassel
Educational institutions established in 1777

Kunsthochschule Kassel


Play Dead is a 2009 black comedy film directed and co-produced by Jason Wiles, and written by Wiles and Shem Bitterman. The film stars Chris Klein, Fred Durst, and Jake Busey. Filming took place at the end of 2006, in Ely, Nevada and Los Angeles, California. The film was ultimately released direct-to-video on September 22, 2009.

Plot

Ronnie Reno is a former TV action star in need of a comeback. After a failed audition, he ends up snowbound in a remote town in Nevada overrun with meth dealers including Merle and his dimwitted henchman, Ledge, who works as a crossing guard. After Reno finds the body of a dead DEA agent in Ledge's bathtub, he reunites with his former co-stars including Devon in order to save the town's residents and himself.

Cast
 Chris Klein as Ronnie Reno
 Fred Durst as Ledge
 Jake Busey as Merle Jones
 Michael Beach as Devon
 Paul Francis as Ray Jones
 Timothy Ryan Hensel as Dickford Jones
 James Koetting as Sheriff
 Robert Cicchini as TV Announcer

Production
In 2005, one of the film's eventual producers passed through Ely, Nevada on his way to Utah, while inadvertently leaving his wallet on his car roof. Three weeks later, the White Pine Sheriff's Office contacted the producer, and his wallet was ultimately returned. The occurrence was one reason that Ely was chosen as a filming location for the film. Director Jason Wiles, who wrote the film with producer Shem Bitterman, also chose the area because of its historic mine-town feeling and its wide-open views. Producer Kurt Tuffendsam said, "The town is amazing. It's hard to find a place like this." Tuffendsam also said, "Our movie actually centers around the town of Ely," unlike the 2001 film Rat Race, in which Ely stood in as Silver City, New Mexico.

In November 2006, production scouts planned for scenes to be shot at Ely's nearby Robinson Mine, as well as Steptoe Valley, and the road leading to Cave Lake State Park. Filming began in Los Angeles, California, on November 25, 2006, while filming in Ely was scheduled to begin the following week. On the second day of filming in Ely, a blizzard struck and the film crew did not have the option to wait through it; Bree Hicken, the film's script supervisor, said the film "actually turned out better" because of the blizzard, stating that the snow helped to make the film a true dark comedy. Play Dead was originally meant to be shot as a summer film. Filming in Ely took place in temperatures as low as 20 degrees below zero, for 12 hours at a time. Filming often continued into the night to allow for perfect shots.

The film's climactic scene, which would require extras, was scheduled to be shot on Ely's Aultman Street on the morning of December 8, 2006. Bitterman's 10-year-old daughter, Annabelle, had a role in the film as an endangered resident. Interior and exterior shots of Ely's Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall were filmed for the movie. Filming concluded in Nevada on December 14, 2006, and returned to Los Angeles on December 17, 2006. Filming concluded two days later. In February 2007, the film was expected to be shown at film festivals after editing was completed.

In addition to Tuffendsam and Bitterman, Wiles also served as a producer on the film, alongside Mark Koetting, Mike O'Shea and Tom Rooker. Brett Herrin served as executive producer. A trailer for the film was released in August 2008, advertising a summer release. The film was ultimately released on DVD by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment on September 22, 2009.

Reception
Tyler Foster of DVD Talk reviewed an early screener DVD copy of the film and wrote, "I've had many reactions to movies over the years, but Play Dead elicited a true rarity: complete and utter bewilderment. And I don't mean bewilderment as to what the plot was, who the characters were or things like the geography of scenes, what I mean is: who is this movie intended for? How did all of these actors read it and decide they wanted to do it? How did a co-writer/director (actor Jason Wiles, marking his sophomore directorial effort) with a completely nonsensical movie have the organizational and leadership skills to direct the final product? And most importantly, why did anyone buy it and offer to put it on DVD?" Foster concluded, "Skip it, I guess...unless you want to try and solve a cinematic puzzle."

Jordan Harrison of Home Media Magazine wrote, "Play Dead wobbles between the comedy, drama and action genres. It is rich with offensive language, and tries to be funny in places where it should have taken itself seriously. The best thing about the movie was Durst's performance. The film is worth seeing just for his role."

References

External links

2009 films
2009 action comedy films
2009 black comedy films
American action comedy films
American black comedy films
Films set in Nevada
Films shot in Nevada
Films shot in Los Angeles
2009 comedy films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films
English-language action comedy films

Play Dead (2009 film)


Moral skepticism (or moral scepticism in British English) is a class of  meta-ethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism: the view that there are knowable and objective moral truths.

Some defenders of moral skepticism include Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus, David Hume, J. L. Mackie (1977), Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Joyce (2001), Michael Ruse, Joshua Greene, Richard Garner, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2006b), and the philosopher James Flynn. Strictly speaking, Gilbert Harman (1975) argues in favor of a kind of moral relativism, not moral skepticism. However, he has influenced some contemporary moral skeptics.

Forms of moral skepticism
Moral skepticism is divided into three subclasses: moral error theory (or moral nihilism), epistemological moral skepticism, and noncognitivism. All three of these theories reach the same conclusions, which are:

(a) we are never justified in believing that moral claims (claims of the form "state of affairs x is (morally) good," "action y is morally obligatory," etc.) are true, and, furthermore,
(b) we never know that any moral claim is true.

However, each method arrives at (a) and (b) by a different route.

Moral error theory holds that we do not know that any moral claim is true because
(i) all moral claims are false,
(ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and
(iii) since we are not justified in believing any claim we have reason to deny, we are not justified in believing any moral claims.

Epistemological moral skepticism is a subclass of theory, the members of which include Pyrrhonian moral skepticism and dogmatic moral skepticism. All members of epistemological moral skepticism share two things: first, they acknowledge that we are unjustified in believing any moral claim, and second, they are agnostic on whether (i) is true (i.e. on whether all moral claims are false).
 Pyrrhonian moral skepticism holds that the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral claim is that it is irrational for us to believe either that any moral claim is true or that any moral claim is false. Thus, in addition to being agnostic on whether (i) is true, Pyrrhonian moral skepticism denies (ii).
 Dogmatic moral skepticism, on the other hand, affirms (ii) and cites (ii)'s truth as the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral claim.

Finally, Noncognitivism holds that we can never know that any moral claim is true because moral claims are incapable of being true or false (they are not truth-apt). Instead, moral claims are imperatives (e.g. "Don't steal babies!"), expressions of emotion (e.g. "stealing babies: Boo!"), or expressions of "pro-attitudes" ("I do not believe that babies should be stolen.")

Moral error theory
Moral error theory is a position characterized by its commitment to two propositions: (i) all moral claims are false and (ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false. The most famous moral error theorist is J. L. Mackie, who defended the metaethical view in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). Mackie has been interpreted as giving two arguments for moral error theory.

The first argument people attribute to Mackie, often called the argument from queerness, holds that moral claims imply motivation internalism (the doctrine that "It is necessary and a priori that any agent who judges that one of his available actions is morally obligatory will have some (defeasible) motivation to perform that action"). Because motivation internalism is false, however, so too are all moral claims.

The other argument often attributed to Mackie, often called the argument from disagreement, maintains that any moral claim (e.g. "Killing babies is wrong") entails a correspondent "reasons claim" ("one has reason not to kill babies"). Put another way, if "killing babies is wrong" is true then everybody has a reason to not kill babies. This includes the psychopath who takes great pleasure from killing babies, and is utterly miserable when he does not have their blood on his hands. But, surely, (if we assume that he will suffer no reprisals) this psychopath has every reason to kill babies, and no reason not to do so. All moral claims are thus false.

Epistemological moral skepticism
All versions of epistemological moral skepticism hold that we are unjustified in believing any moral proposition. However, in contradistinction to moral error theory, epistemological moral skeptical arguments for this conclusion do not include the premise that "all moral claims are false." For example, Michael Ruse gives what Richard Joyce  calls an "evolutionary argument" for the conclusion that we are unjustified in believing any moral proposition. He argues that we have evolved to believe moral propositions because our believing the same enhances our genetic fitness (makes it more likely that we will reproduce successfully). However, our believing these propositions would enhance our fitness even if they were all false (they would make us more cooperative, etc.). Thus, our moral beliefs are unresponsive to evidence; they are analogous to the beliefs of a paranoiac. As a paranoiac is plainly unjustified in believing his conspiracy theories, so too are we unjustified in believing moral propositions. We therefore have reason to jettison our moral beliefs.

Nietzsche's moral skepticism centers on the profound and ongoing lack of consensus among philosophers regarding foundational moral propositions. He highlights the persistent debates on whether the basis of right action is rooted in reasons or consequences, and the diverse, conflicting theories within Western moral philosophy.

Noncognitivism

Criticisms

Criticisms of moral skepticism come primarily from moral realists. The moral realist argues that there is in fact good reason to believe that there are objective moral truths and that we are justified in holding many moral beliefs. One moral realist response to moral error theory holds that it "proves too much"—if moral claims are false because they entail that we have reasons to do certain things regardless of our preferences, then so too are "hypothetical imperatives" (e.g. "if you want to get your hair-cut you ought to go to the barber"). This is because all hypothetical imperatives imply that "we have reason to do that which will enable us to accomplish our ends" and so, like moral claims, they imply that we have reason to do something regardless of our preferences.

If moral claims are false because they have this implication, then so too are hypothetical imperatives. But hypothetical imperatives are true. Thus the argument from the non-instantiation of (what Mackie terms) "objective prescriptivity" for moral error theory fails.  Russ Shafer-Landau and Daniel Callcut have each outlined anti-skeptical strategies. Callcut argues that moral skepticism should be scrutinized in introductory ethics classes in order to get across the point that "if all views about morality, including the skeptical ones, face difficulties, then adopting a skeptical position is not an escape from difficulty."

See also
 Amoralism
 Perspectivism
 Psychological determinism
 Is–ought problem

References

Further reading
 Butchvarov, Panayot (1989). Skepticism in Ethics, Indiana University Press.
 Gibbard, Allan (1990). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
 Harman, Gilbert (1975). "Moral Relativism Defended," Philosophical Review, pp. 3–22.
 Harman, Gilbert (1977). The Nature of Morality. New York: Oxford University Press.
 Joyce, Richard (2001). The Myth of Morality, Cambridge University Press.
 Joyce, Richard (2006). The Evolution of Morality, MIT Press. (link)
 Lillehammer, Halvard (2007). Companions in Guilt: arguments for ethical objectivity, Palgrave MacMillan.
 Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin.
 Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (2006a). "Moral Skepticism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (link)
 Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (2006b). Moral Skepticisms, Oxford University Press.
 Olson, Jonas (2014) Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence, Oxford University Press.
 Kalf, Wouter (2018) Moral Error Theory, Palgrave MacMillan.

External links

Metaethics
Skepticism
Ethical theories

Moral skepticism


Red Bluff Air Force Station (ADC ID: SM-157, NORAD ID: Z-157) is a closed United States Air Force General Surveillance Radar station.  It is located  west-southwest of Red Bluff, California.  It was closed in 1970.

History
Red Bluff Air Force Station was initially part of Phase II of the Air Defense Command Mobile Radar program. The Air Force approved this expansion of the Mobile Radar program on October 23, 1952.  Radars in this network were designated "SM."  The station consisted of 30.84 acres, was acquired by the Air Force on May 25, 1955.

The station became operational on 1 April 1956 when the 859th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron was moved to the new station.  Initially Red Bluff used AN/MPS-8 and AN/MPS-11 radars, and initially the station functioned as a Ground-Control Intercept (GCI) and warning station.  As a GCI station, the squadron's role was to guide interceptor aircraft toward unidentified intruders picked up on the unit's radar scopes.   The AN/MPS-11 remained until 1963. In 1959 the Air Force placed AN/FPS-6 and -6A height-finder radars and removed the AN/MPS-8 from Red Bluff.

During 1960 Red Bluff AFS joined the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system, feeding data to DC-13 at Adair AFS, Oregon.  After joining, the squadron was redesignated as the 859th Radar Squadron (SAGE) on 15 July 1960.  The radar squadron provided information 24/7 the SAGE Direction Center where it was analyzed to determine range, direction altitude speed and whether or not aircraft were friendly or hostile.  On 31 July 1963, the site was redesignated as NORAD ID Z-157.

In 1964 Red Bluff became a joint-use facility with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), using the AN/FPS-67 search and AN/FPS-6 and AN/FPS-90 height-finder radars located on site.

In addition to the main facility, Red Bluff operated several AN/FPS-14 Gap Filler sites:
 Janesville, CA      (SM-157A)
 Whitmore, CA        (SM-157B)
 Hayfork, CA         (SM-157C)

The 859th was inactivated 30 September 1970 and the station was closed due to budget restraints.  8.1 acres were turned over to the FAA on November 15, 1971, and 22.615 acres, currently known as Ridgeway County Park, were turned over to the Tehema County for use as a public park on August 2, 1972.  The 4.24-acre Red Bluff Housing Annex included 16 family housing units, located within the city of Red Bluff in Tahema County. It was declared excess and turned over to GSA on December 10, 1970. In 1972, GSA quitclaimed portions of the 4.24 acres to 17 grantees, and the remaining 0.03 acres turned over to the City of Red Bluff by the Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare. A 1991 Family Housing Area report stated that the original housing area, currently divided among 14 owners as 17 single-family homes, were all occupied.

The majority of the site (excluding Family Housing) is known as Ridgeway County Park, with the remainder used by the FAA as a weather station. Many of the original structures have been removed. Structures present and still in use at the time of a 1991 USACE site investigation include the operations building, rec hall, pump house and well, and sewage treatment facility. Structures still present but not used since DOD occupation include a swamp cooler for the rec hall, the sewage treatment plant chlorinator, and the sewage treatment pump house.

Air Force units and assignments

Units
 Constituted as the 859th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron
 Activated at Hamilton AFB, California on 8 September 1955
 Moved to Red Bluff AFS, California on 1 April 1956
 Redesignated 859th Radar Squadron (SAGE) on 15 July 1960
 Inactivated on 30 September 1970

Assignments
 28th Air Division, 1 April 1956
 25th Air Division, 1 March 1959
 Portland Air Defense Sector, 1 March 1960
 26th Air Division, 1 April 1966 - 30 September 1970

See also
 List of USAF Aerospace Defense Command General Surveillance Radar Stations

References

 Cornett, Lloyd H. and Johnson, Mildred W., A Handbook of Aerospace Defense Organization  1946 - 1980,  Office of History, Aerospace Defense Center, Peterson AFB, CO (1980).
 Winkler, David F. & Webster, Julie L., Searching the Skies, The Legacy of the United States Cold War Defense Radar Program,  US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories, Champaign, IL (1997).
 Information for Red Bluff AFS, CA

Installations of the United States Air Force in California
Formerly Used Defense Sites in California
Red Bluff, California
Semi-Automatic Ground Environment sites
History of Tehama County, California
1956 establishments in California
1970 disestablishments in California
Military installations established in 1956
Military installations closed in 1970

Red Bluff Air Force Station


The Appalachian Highlands is one of eight government-defined physiographic divisions of the contiguous (conterminous) United States. The land area is linked together with the Appalachian Uplands of Canada to make up the Appalachian Mountains. Therefore, from a geographic standpoint, the term Appalachian Highlands is not a synonym for the term Appalachian Mountains. The Highlands includes seven physiographic provinces, which is the second level in the physiographic classification system in the United States. At the next level of physiographic classification, called section/subsection, there are 20 unique land areas, (with one of the provinces having no sections).

This article focuses on identifying the areas geographically, and directing the reader to the related articles to learn about the specific physiographic elements of each separate land area.

The diversity of the Appalachian Highlands physiographic division is notable. The academic article underlying the concept was paper authored by Nevin N. Fenneman in 1916 reporting the results of a committee of the American Association of Geographers that was tasked with clarifying geographical classification in the United States.  That paper groups the seven provinces together under the Appalachian Highlands division level, but Fenneman's subsequent volume on the physiography of the eastern United States treats the Highlands's provinces separately by chapter.  As an introduction to the first province of the Highland, Fenneman says "(l)ike other physiographic divisions, this one takes its name from its most prominent feature; it is therefore designated as a highland, but it is by no means all high." Fenneman goes on to say that "(s)o far as this extensive region has unity, it is found in the results of repeated uplifts, involving for the most part greater altitude and stronger relief than that of adjacent regions."

The seven provinces are:

 Adirondack
 Appalachian Plateau
 Blue Ridge
 Piedmont
 New England
 St. Lawrence
 Valley and Ridge

Adirondack province

The Adirondack Mountains are a circular dome of mountains in Northeastern New York about 160 miles wide with more than 100 peaks, at least 40 that are over 4,000 feet tall.  There are over 200 named lakes, with the number of smaller lakes, ponds, and other bodies of water reaching over 3,000. The region has over 1,200 miles of river.  The current relief owes much to glaciation. Among the named lakes around the mountains, are Lake George, Lake Placid, and Lake Tear of the Clouds (which is the source of the Hudson River). The Adirondack High Peaks are a list of 46 mountains in the Adirondacks that are above or close to 4,000 feet in elevation. The list was created when it was believed that all 46 peaks were at least 4,000 feet tall.  However, later surveys showed that four of the peaks are actually lower than 4,000 feet. One 4,000 foot peak was also not included in the original list.  The tallest peak is Mount Marcy, which is the highest point in New York at 5,344 feet (1,629 m). Although the mountains are formed from ancient rocks more than 1 billion years old, geologically, the 160-mile wide dome area (called a massif), is relatively new. Because of this, the Adirondacks have been referred to as "new mountains from old rocks." It is theorized that there is a "hotspot" beneath the region, which causes continued uplift at the rate of 1.5-3 cm annually.

Appalachian Plateau province

The Appalachian Plateau physiographic province is a large, dissected plateau region in the eastern United States. It extends from New York southwest to Alabama. It runs parallel to Lake Erie on the northwest, but does not include the land adjacent to the Great Lakes. The plateau is composed of sedimentary rocks, including sandstones, conglomerates, and shales, that were deposited during the late Paleozoic Era. These rocks are generally flat-lying, but have been dissected by streams to form a rugged and mountainous terrain.  In addition to these sedimentary rocks, beds of coal are locally significant throughout the Appalachian Plateaus, making this area the heart of the American coal industry.

The Appalachian Plateau is divided into several physiographic sections:

 The Mohawk Plateau is located in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.  It is characterized by its low relief and rolling hills.

 The Kanawha province contains most of West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, and northeastern Kentucky. The province is named after the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio River.

 The Southern New York provinces begins west of Albany, the south of Buffalo, and runs parallel, but not to the edge of, Lake Erie. It stays south of Cleveland and takes in the northeastern portion of Ohio.

 The Catskill Mountains are located in southeastern New York and are known for their scenic beauty and waterfalls.

 The Allegheny Mountains are located in central Pennsylvania and West Virginia and are the highest mountains in the Appalachian Plateau.

 The Cumberland Plateau is located in southeastern Kentucky and Tennessee and is characterized by its gently rolling hills and dissected valleys.

 The Cumberland Mountains are located in central Alabama and are the southernmost mountains in the Appalachian Plateau.

Blue Ridge province

The Blue Ridge province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands physiographic division.  This province is about 580 miles long and consists of northern and southern physiographic sections, which divides near the Roanoke River gap. The northern section runs along a narrow ridge from just south of Harrisburg, PA.  The southern section is a plateau area that stretches to northern Georgia, with the southernmost point near Amicalola Mountain in Dawsonville, Georgia with the westernmost section being near Cohutta Mountain in Murray County, GA.  The Blue Ridge Mountains are named for their distinctive blue haze, which is caused by the presence of atmospheric pollutants and water vapor.  This contributes to the characteristic haze on the mountains and their perceived color.The mountains are made of highly deformed metamorphic rocks of largely Precambrian ages (>541 million years). These include schists, gneisses, slates, and quartzites, and are extensively intruded by igneous bodies. The Blue Ridge Mountains contain the highest mountains in eastern North America south of Baffin Island. The highest peak in the Blue Ridge is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet.

Piedmont province

The Piedmont province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. It is located in the eastern United States and stretches about 900 miles from New York to Alabama. The province starts in Rockland County, New York near South Mountain  on the west side of the Hudson River.

The eastern border of the Piedmont runs along a fall line, the point at which rivers traditionally drop rapidly from harder metamorphic rocks to softer sedimentary rocks.  Because the fall line is the spot where rivers become unnavigable, port cities typically have sprung up where rivers cross this boundary. The east side of the Piedmont runs along the Hudson, parallel to Manhattan, NY through New Jersey, then along a line near the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, VA, Raleigh, NC, Columbia, SC, Augusta, GA, Macon, GA, and Montgomery, AL. (Richmond, and Raleigh are the only cities from this list that are within the boundaries of the Piedmont). The west side of the Piedmont runs through lesser populated areas, from south of Harrisburg, PA  to Lake Martin in Elmore County, Alabama.

There are two sections of the Piedmont. The primary portion is called the Uplands section. There are two unconnected sections of the province called the lowlands. These areas are in the New York City and Harrisburg, PA areas.

The Piedmont is characterized by rolling hills and valleys that are underlain by crystalline metamorphic rocks. The Piedmont is a region of great geological diversity. It is underlain by a variety of rocks that range in age from Precambrian to Cenozoic. The oldest rocks in the Piedmont are gneisses and schists that formed more than a billion years ago during the Grenville orogeny. These rocks were later intruded by granites and other igneous rocks during the Paleozoic era. During the Mesozoic era, the Piedmont was covered by shallow seas that deposited layers of sandstone, shale, and limestone. These sedimentary rocks were later deformed and uplifted during the Cenozoic era.

The Piedmont is also home to several important mineral resources. The region has long been known for its deposits of gold, which were mined extensively during the 19th century. Other important minerals found in the Piedmont include copper, iron, mica, and granite.

New England province

The New England province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands division of the United States. It includes five subdivisions: the New England Uplands, New England Seaboard Lowland, Green Mountain, White Mountain, and Taconic.

 The New England Uplands is the area runs from the northernmost point in Maine to the area south of Reading, PA, excluding other notable physiographic features found in the other four sections.

 The White Mountain section starts in the area around Traveler Mountain and rounds west to the Maine/Canadian border. The namesake White Mountains are on the southern border of the section.

 The Green Mountain section is in Vermont from the Canadian border west of Montpelier south to the Hoosac Mountain Range.

 The New England Seaboard Lowland encompasses the "nose" of Maine along the Canada/US border and south including Augusta, Maine, Portland, Maine, Boston, Massachusetts, to around Charleston Beach, RI.  It includes only the northern tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown, Massachusetts. It also excludes the Island of Nantucket and Long Island, NY.

 The Taconic section contains part of the Taconic Mountain range west of the Green Mountains and east of Albany, NY.

Much of the New England province's bedrock aquifers are in consolidated rocks of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic origin. Some of these aquifers, mainly in the western portion of Vermont, consist of carbonate rocks (primarily limestone, dolomite, and marble). These consolidated rocks yield water primarily from bedding planes, fractures, joints, and faults, rather than from intergranular pores.

Like the adjacent physiographic provinces, a large part of the New England province was peneplained during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, then uplifted, extensively dissected, and finally glaciated.

St. Lawrence province (Champlain section)

The St. Lawrence Valley is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division, containing only the Champlain physiographic section.    The St. Lawrence Plain is a vast, flat plain, with elevations rarely exceeding 300m  (1,000 feet) in Vermont and New York. This area was originally a forest-wetland complex, although very little of the forest remains today. The province abuts the eastern edge of the St. Lawrence River in New York along the Canadian border and contains most of Lake Champlain in Vermont and New York. Most of the northern border of the St. Lawrence Valley province is adjacent to a physiographic division in Canada that is not part of the Appalachian Mountains in that country.  Canada considers all land of the St. Lawrence Valley to be part of the Central Lowlands. The part of the St. Lawrence Valley province that abuts the Appalachian Uplands of Canada meets the Eastern Quebec Uplands.

Valley and Ridge province

The Valley and Ridge province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division, located in the eastern United States. It is bordered on the east by the Blue Ridge and Piedmont provinces and on the west by the Appalachian Plateau. There are three sections of the province, the Hudson section, the Central section, and the Tennessee section.

 The Hudson section takes in the southern section of Lake Champlain including|South Bay, and follows the man-made Champlain Canal to the point at which the Hudson River turns south toward Albany. It continues along the Hudson to Staatsburg, NY.

 The Central section runs through New York, south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, then through Virginia and West Virginia and ends on the border of Burkes Garden, VA in Tazewell County, VA.

 The Tennessee section runs through southwest Virginia, covering the Clinch Mountains. It contains Bristol,VA/Bristol,TN and Knoxville, TN, then turns southward before it gets to Chatanooga, TN which is to the west. It covers Dalton and Rome, GA and Birmingham, Ala, ending before it gets to Tuscaloosa, AL.

The province is a series of northeast-southwest trending synclines and anticlines composed of Early Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. Limestones and shales are more susceptible to erosion and make up much of the valleys, whereas more resistant sandstones and conglomerates form the ridges.

The Valley and Ridge province extends for nearly 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from the St. Lawrence Valley in upstate New York to the Coastal Plain of central Alabama. Its width varies from 14 to 80 miles (23 to 130 km). The area is home to many valuable resources, both economic and geoheritage. Vast beds of anthracite coal exist in Pennsylvania and are mined at depths up to 600 m (2,000 ft). Iron and Zinc are also produced in the Valley and Ridge province, mined from the minerals hematite (iron) and sphalerite (zinc).

Notes

References

Physiographic regions of the United States
Geography of Appalachia

Appalachian Highlands


Pinto Island is an island in the U.S. state of Alabama, within the city limits of Mobile.  Located on the northwestern coast of Mobile Bay, it is bounded on the west by the Mobile River, on the south by Mobile Bay, on the east by the Spanish River, and on the north by Pinto Pass (now partially infilled with dredged material to form a land bridge) and Blakeley Island.  It is dedicated to industrial uses, primarily  shipbuilding.  The BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards was originally the site of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company, and most recently Atlantic Marine, which was acquired by BAE in 2010.  The Alabama State Port Authority operates a terminal on the southern end of the island for the ThyssenKrupp steel plant upriver in Calvert. Austal USA owns part of this Island chain taking up most of the central part with a stocking shop channel on the west bank. In June 2018 BAE Systems Southeast completed a total shutdown of all facilities on Pinto Island, selling all their land and ship yards to Austal USA, giving Austal USA 51% control of Pinto Island land area from center to South shore.

The island is approximately  at its widest and  at its longest with an average elevation of .  It, along with downtown and Blakeley Island, forms District Two of Mobile's city council districts.

References

Islands of Alabama
Landforms of Mobile County, Alabama
Mobile Bay

Pinto Island


Katherine Ayres is an American writer of children's literature.

Background
Born in 1947 in Columbus, Ohio, she was raised in Ohio, West Virginia, and New York. In 1965 she graduated from West Islip High School in West Islip, New York. She completed her BA at The College of Wooster in 1969 and her MA at Tufts University in 1974. Her first career was as a teacher and elementary school principal. In the 1990s she began writing for children.

Ayres coordinates the Chatham University Master of Fine Arts Program in Children's and Adolescent Writing in Pittsburgh.

Books
 Family Tree, fiction (New York: Delacorte Press, 1996).
 North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad, fiction (New York: Delacorte Press, 1998).
 Voices at Whisper Bend, fiction (Middleton, Wisconsin: Pleasant Company, 1999).
 Silver Dollar Girl, fiction (New York: Delacorte Press, 2000).
 Under Copp's Hill, fiction (Middleton, Wisconsin: Pleasant Company, 2000).
 Stealing South: A Story of the Underground Railroad, fiction (New York: Delacorte Press, 2001).
 A Long Way, fiction (Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2003).
 Macaroni Boy, fiction (New York: Delacorte Press, 2003).
 Matthew's Truck, fiction (Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2005).
 Up, Down, and Around, fiction (Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2007).

References

Sources
Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2002.

External links
 Katherine Ayres website

1948 births
Living people
Writers from Pittsburgh
Chatham University faculty
People from West Islip, New York
American children's writers
American women children's writers
Writers from Columbus, Ohio
American women academics
21st-century American women

Katherine Ayres