This paper demonstrates the symbiotic, real bond between the existence of the state, culture and religion, through which a person living in a national community can strive to achieve Aristotelian eudaimonia. The expression of this bond can be found, among other things, in the solemn Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of April 2, 1997, in which the Constituent Assembly, establishing the very foundation of the state’s order, referred to God, emphasizing the importance of Poland’s Christian heritage. This heritage draws its identity not from a cultural vacuum, but from the achievements of Latin civilization, which served as the building blocks that formed the long history of the Piast State, beginning in the tenth century. This paper is therefore intended to answer the question of whether the Third Republic, in the twenty-first century, is also a continuation of the great cultural heritage of Latin civilization.
This article examines the particular way Souriau’s concepts of instauration and modes of existence have been inherited by Bruno Latour in his Inquiry into Modes of Existence. It suggests that Bruno Latour has hacked some key-aspects of Souriau’s general ontology in order to regionalize it and, by doing so, to give the Moderns an accurate depiction of the plurality of beings they hold dear. It then shows how Souriau’s concept of instauration is crucial to Latour’s project of rethinking and repopulating modern institutions, in a gesture aimed at making metaphysics a vital practice that has the power to make the world worth of worrying and caring for.
According to Westernization theory of R. Davari Ardakhni, the only way to get rid of underdevelopment is to undergo modernization, although underdevelopment phenomena has emerged in non-western countries because of modernization of Europe. M. T. Tabatabaei has formulated this paradoxical situation of underdevelopment theoretically, and summarized the critics’ views of Westernization as called theoretical rupture in Davari’s thought. Tabatabaei commented on Davari’s theoretical rupture critique and refuted it by demarking intellectual level from philosophical one. This article firstly, claims that the philosophical problem of underdevelopment paradox is not answered properly, and secondly, redefines the problem as closedness of development and seeks to find a way to come out of it, using Davari’s hints himself, stressing the role of science in this regard. Therefore, first, Davari’s works are studied and notes are taken about the underdevelopment specifications, and the conditions of participation of underdeveloped countries in scientific paradigms. Then, according to Davari’s hints to the conditions of contributing in scientific paradigms, we try to use the philosophy and metaphysics of science theories and concepts, in order to resolve the closedness paradox of underdevelopment.
AbstractSince the last decades of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the use of metaphysics by philosophers when approaching conceptual problems in biology has increased. Some philosophers call this tendency in philosophy of biology ‘Metaphysics of Biology’ (Guay and Pradeu in Synthese 1–20, 2017). In this paper, I aim at characterizing Metaphysics of Biology by paying attention to the diverse ways philosophers use metaphysics when addressing conceptual problems in biology. I will claim that there are two different modes of doing Metaphysics of Biology, namely MetaphysicsforBiology and MetaphysicsinBiology.
This paper studies Bergson’s notions of utility and affect in light of their relationship to the process of self-constitution as it is developed in Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory as well as how these ideas were taken up in the thought of Levinas and Whitehead. I begin by mentioning three basic critiques of Bergson’s work focusing on the charge that his philosophy is problematically impersonal. In the first part of the paper, I explore how the notion of affect may counter such a charge. Affect, although sparsely treated, plays a fundamental, determining role in Bergson’s notion of self-constitution. I then show how this view might be at odds with Bergson’s determination of nature as utilitarian. In light of this conflict, the paper speaks of two Bergsons, one overly utilitarian and the other with a vague but important focus on affect. Part two then outlines the basic metaphysics of Whitehead and Levinas in order to show that their critiques of utilitarian and vital philosophies share the same focus on affect that was already present in Bergson’s philosophy. Noting this similarity, the paper concludes by arguing that, in the moments when they seem most critical of Bergson, it is possible to read Whitehead and Levinas as being, in fact, distinctly Bergsonian.
Se determina la posición y función primigenia del concepto de fin (Zweck) en Nuremberg (como final del silogismo y tránsito puro a la idea). Además, se reconstruyen las modificaciones sistemático-arquitectónicas que dieron paso al surgimiento, en la Lógica, de la sección Objetividad y a la consecuente modificación de la posición del fin, que se insertará dentro de ésta como una forma específica de causalidad (finalidad externa), diferenciada de los procesos mecánico-químicos. Con esta modificación, el tránsito del fin a la idea cesa de ser puro, perfilándose específicamente como un momento instrumental del concepto en su proceso de realización en lo objetivo.
This paper puts Agamben in conversation with the topic of secularization. The fit between thinker and topic is quite natural, given that Agamben frequently approaches modernity through a theological archive, takes secularization narratives as the contrast space for his own account of intellectual history, and regularly discusses secularization through the lens of signatures. The result is that his work ends up revising secularization narratives by relocating the source of modernity in a deeper metaphysical regime rather than a past historical moment. The paper begins first by outlining Agamben’s engagement with secularization theorists and concepts throughout the Homo Sacer series. Next, I sketch Agamben’s ontological picture, exploring the “arché” as the backdrop for his analysis of secularization as a signature. I conclude with three ways Agamben’s work might reconfigure our conversations about the secular and allow engagement with new theoretical partners. By turning our attention away from the binaries of religious/secular to the third option represented by the messianic, Agamben revises traditional narratives about the decline of metaphysics, broadens our alternatives beyond the overly-narrow constraints represented by someone like Charles Taylor, and opens the beginnings of a possible rapprochement with postcolonial accounts of modernity.
This paper is a review of the book: Paul Robinson, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science (Leominster, Herefordshire, UK: Gracewing, 2018). According to the author, Robinson’s book is a double-hearted adventure. On the one hand, Robinson patiently and methodically rebuilds the reader’s capacity for knowing and loving truth by returning to Aristotelian and Thomistic principles and insights, showing how realism is the approach needed for the human mind to look for, know, and delight in what is objectively true. On the other hand, The Realist Guide is a ruthless dismantling of the various false edifices and untenable ideologies that thicket the modern academy.
My aim is to demonstrate the specificities and differences between transcendental deduction of concepts and deduction of the fundamental principles of pure practical reason in Kant’s metaphysics. First of all it is necessary to examine
Kant’s attitude to the metaphysics of his time and the problem of its new justification. Kant in his philosophy explicated not
only the theoretical world of cognition, but also the practical world of freedom. Accordingly, the fundamental means of proving metaphysics’ claims are the deduction of pure concepts of understanding (deduction of experience) and the deduction of the principles of pure practical reason (deduction of freedom). The underlying premises of the Kantian project
of reviving metaphysics, “the Copernican Turn”, the critical methods and basic principles of transcendental (formal) idealism also provide the methodological basis of transcendental deduction, a new method of proving the claims of metaphysics in various spheres of human being. Proceeding from the above, I analyse the essence, structure and the peculiarities as well as the differences between the deduction of experience and the deduction of freedom. I single out the following features of the two types of deduction. First, theoretical use of reason is aimed at objects while practical reason is aimed at noumena, the foundations of will and freedom. Second, the transcendental deduction of space and time, as well as the deduction of categories, is preceded by transcendental reduction, which is absent in the deduction of freedom. Third, Kant orients the methodological movement of deductions in opposite directions. Theoretical deduction proceeds from pure forms of
sensible intuition to concepts of understanding and thence to fundamental principles. Practical deduction proceeds from a priori principles to the concepts of the metaphysics of morals and thence to moral feelings. Fourth, deduction in the theoretical sphere forbids speculative reason to go beyond experience. Practical deduction has pointed to the intelligible world and
has proved its “legitimacy”.
Ibn Sīnā’s reading of Aristotle is that of an Arabic and Neoplatonized Aristotle, but, above all, critical, as the two commentaries of his Kitāb al-Insāf, i.e., on Lambda 6-10 and the pseudo-Theology, show. Ibn Sīnā read Aristotle’s works only in Arabic translation and was therefore influenced by their very wording. However, as his commentary on Lambda 6-10 shows, he looked at different translations, or even indirect testimonies, as e.g. Themistius’ paraphrase. Moreover, Ibn Sīnā offers a Neoplatonic inspired interpretation of Aristotle’s metaphysics, especially its theology. Such Neoplatonic reading is almost natural if one, as he does, considers the Theology, which mainly offers a paraphrase of Plotinus’ Enneads IV-VI, as a genuine Aristotelian work, even if Ibn Sīnā suspects a manipulation of the text by dishonest people, in all likelihood some Isma‘ilites. Eventually, Ibn Sīnā, despite his great reference for Aristotle, detects some flaws in the latter’s thinking, or, at least, in its very wording. All in all, Ibn Sīnā reveals to be a critical commentator, who considered Aristotle as the father, or even Godfather, of philosophy, but who nevertheless placed the search for truth above all.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Ancient history
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Camera Obscura” famously ends with the death of its blind protagonist, Bruno Kretschmar, from the hand of Kretschmar’s former mistress, Magda Peters. In the little-known version of the novel’s ending, which the author abandoned in 1931, but nevertheless preserved among his papers, now on hold at the Library of Congress (USA), the blind man fiercely shoots Magda in revenge for her unfaithfulness and cruelty as well as in the hope of regaining his vision after the girl’s demise. This first-time publication of the castoff ending of “Camera Obscura” is preceded with an essay that compares the two versions, along with the last pages of “Laughter in the Dark”, the author’s translation of the novel to English. It also investigates the moral choices and narrative devices Nabokov relied on when choosing the more predictable, but also less brutal finale. Furthermore, the analysis draws parallels between the ending Nabokov chose not to publish and the intriguing scene of Quilty’s murder in “Lolita”, with its motifs of blindness and references to camera obscura as an artist’s tool used for creating an optical illusion. The comparison leads to conclusions about such aspects of Nabokov’s art as his visual poetics, strategies of intertextual concealment, and metaphysical imagination.
Literature (General), Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
<p>The transcendental relationship applied to the relationship soul and body in man</p><p class="MSGENFONTSTYLENAMETEMPLATEROLENUMBERMSGENFONTSTYLENAMEBYROLETEXT20">My goal is to analyse, first, the meaning of the category of the relationship, according to the concepts contained in the DM 47 over the predicamental and/or transcendental relationship category, applying it to the existing in the cosmos, the relationship between knowledge and the thing known and the compositum body-soul. Here I will make a reference to the similarity between Suarez and Kant about the postulate of the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul.</p>