In the ontological argument for the existence of God, Descartes famously argues that the idea of God is the idea of a perfect being. As such, the idea of God must combine all of the perfections. Now, as (necessary) existence is a perfection, God must exist. Leibniz criticized Descartes’ argument, pointing out that it rests upon the hidden assumption that God is possible. Leibniz argues, however, that God is really possible because realities cannot oppose one another, and so there could be no real opposition between the perfections. So, at least in the case of God, conceivability entails real possibility. Kant rejects this assumption and insists that the non-contradictoriness of an idea is not an adequate criterion for the real possibility of the object of the idea, for although predicates may be combined in thought to form a concept, this does not entail the properties they indicate may be so combined in reality. For this reason, Kant believes that it is impossible to prove the real possibility of God, and so the ontological argument is not sound. In this paper, I examine Kant’s reasons for reaching this conclusion. I pay particular attention to Kant’s argument in the Amphiboly, which deals with the concepts of agreement and opposition, and where Kant stresses the importance of the distinction between logical and real opposition. I will argue that this distinction plays a crucial role in Kant’s rejection of the ontological argument and rationalist Leibnizian–Wolffian metaphysics in general. I also show how Kant’s rejection of the possibility of what he calls the complete determination of a concept in the Ideal of Pure Reason, plays a role in his rejection of the conceivability entails real possibility principle.
Governance is the same as governance and means the techniques and strategies that take place on the population in a geographical area. The logic of governance has gone through three periods of metaphysics, mechanics and quantum. Political thought from Machiavelli to Marx belongs to the period of mechanical rule. In this article, governance meaning the logic of government and governance at three levels of principles, institutions and techniques has been considered and the framework of Foucault and religion theory has been used to interpret the texts. The evolution of governance from metaphysical to physical and the emergence of mechanical governance are directly related to governance practices based on modern political logic and wisdom and the emergence of humanities and new technologies. This article examines the establishment, glory, and decline of mechanical rule. The ideas of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the social contract were formulated and established in the form of mechanical rule, and flourished with the intellectual efforts of Montesquieu, Kant, Hegel, Mill, and others. The next century saw Nozick, Habermas (and postmodern critics) come up with alternative techniques for overcoming bottlenecks. Throughout the article, the principles, institutions and techniques of mechanical governance are analyzed. Throughout the article, the principles, institutions and techniques of mechanical governance are analyzed. The article shows that from Machiavelli to Marx we see the formation of the mechanics of power and the establishment, glory and decline of mechanical rule.
Political institutions and public administration (General), Political institutions and public administration - Asia (Asian studies only)
Robert Pippin was for decades among the most outspoken American Hegelians, defending Hegel’s idealist legacy not only against the post-Hegelian turn towards non-discursive or non-notional reality but also rejecting Heidegger’s treatment of Hegel. So it comes as a shock when,in his new book The Culmination (Pippin, 2024), he endorses Heidegger’s characterization of Hegel’s thought as the culmination of Western metaphysics, as the full deployment of its basic premise that being equals logos, i.e., that the truth of everything that exists (or that can exist) can be articulated in the form of discursive judgments, so that the full system of logic is at the same time a full ontology, the description of conditions that everything that exists should meet. In all probability, Heidegger’s answer would have been that capitalism is just one among ontic organizations of the technological disclosure of Being – as he put it, Soviet Union and the US are “metaphysically the same.” To this we should insist that capitalism is not simply an ontic phenomenon, one of the possible versions of technological attunement: capitalism is not just a social phenomenon, it also has a transcendental-ontological status. It is not modern science and technology as such which push us to continuous domination over and exploitation of nature – they function like this only within the frame of capitalism with its permanent propensity towards expanded self-reproduction. So, Pippin is right here: it is not enough to mention technological disponibility as the source of the disappearance of Meaningfulness – one should add the word “capitalism” never used by Heidegger. Here Marx surprisingly meets radical conservatives: Patrick Buisson, the French ultra-conservative, was right in claiming that “le grand deconstructeur, c’est le capitalisme.”
Typical accounts of reference demand that referring terms denote existent objects. This assumption is shared by theories across a variety of areas of philosophy, in particular, direct reference views in philosophy of language; neo-Fregean conceptions in the philosophy of mathematics, and easy-ontology approaches in metaphysics. In this paper, this assumption is resisted and the significance and the possibility of referring to the nonexistent is highlighted. After identifying difficulties in all these three theories and resisting a free-logic approach, ontologically neutral quantifiers, which do not require the existence of what is quantified over, are suggested as providing a better conception. It is concluded that the difficulties raised to the previous theories do not affect the ontologically neutral approach, while the approach, properly conceived, allows for nonexistent objects to have properties.
The discourse on African metaphysics as it relates to human development is centered around the notion of personhood predominantly extractable from the layers of oral and written traditions across African cultural worldviews. This research aims to critically evaluate the idea of African metaphysics in the light of inquiries surrounding the meaning and nature of human development, through an interrogation of the concept of person and personhood, expressed within the subsets of African socio-cultural conceptualisations, particularly the Yoruba notion of Omoluabi, which will form a crucial layer of engagement for this research. Basically, while (on the one hand); the tendency to see a generic theory of human personality or personhood as tenable everywhere would create a clash of realities in different climes and cultures, (on the other) the differences from culture to culture are perceived dialogically as handed on through stories and histories of human development from birth until death. To this end, this research will interrogate the concept of human development on the basis of how socialisation processes specifically seen through the agencies of local folklores and folktales, customs and traditions tend to interact with, influence as well as impact upon the individual view of self and the other as it relates to the conception of personality, and its succeeding roles within the community. Keywords: Africa, Metaphysics, Communitarianism, Personhood, Human Development.
Bu makale, genelde İslam düşüncesini özelde kelâmı Aristo’nun Fizik VIII’inden yola çıkarak fizik ve metafizik arasındaki ilişki açısından incelemekte ve İbn Rüşd’ün (öl. 595/1198) İbn Sînâ’ya (öl. 428/1037) ve Eşʻarî kelâmına dair eleştirilerini isbât-ı vâcib meselesi minvalinde yeniden değerlendirmektedir. İbn Rüşd, Eşʻarî kelâmcılarının bir metafizik inşa edemediklerini ihsas ettirerek, hudûs delillerinin yapısal problemler içerdiğini iddia etmektedir. İbn Rüşd'ün analizine göre, kelamcıların hudûs delili odaklı kozmolojik argümanları, polemikten bağımsız olamayacak şekilde son derece karmaşık bir yapıya ulaşmış ve bu durum, konunun uzmanları için dahi kavranması zor bir hal almıştır. Somutlaştırmak gerekirse, kelamcıların isbât-ı vâcib delilleri, hadis-ezeli (fizik-metafizik) ilişkisine dair problemleri çözme yerine daha içinden çıkılmaz hale getirme eğilimindedir. Diğer bir yandan ise İbn Rüşd, ezelî-hâdis dikotomisine dair ana problemleri metafizik üzerinden çözen İbn Sînâ ve İbn Sînâcılara karşı sükutunu korurken, isbât-ı vâcib meselesinde filozofların Aristo fiziğini atıl hale getirmelerini tenkit etmektedir. Öte yandan kelâmcıların hudûs delilleri ile kozmolojik/fizik temelli bir argüman sunmuş olmaları, İbn Rüşd’ü tatmin etmemiştir. İbn Rüşd zaviyesinden bakıldığında kelâmcılar, ne -biraz önce bahsedildiği gibi- ezelî-hâdis problemini metafizik önermelerle çözebilmişlerdir ne de kozmolojik argümanlarında fizik prensiplerini doğru bir şekilde uygulayabilmişlerdir. Kelamcıların fiziği doğru bir şekilde icra edememeleri iddiası, insicamlı bir metafizik de inşa edemekleri ithamını da beraberinde getirmektedir. İbn Rüşd haklı mıdır ve İbn Sînâ’nın ve kelâmcıların isbât-ı vâcib delilleri fizik-metafizik ilişkisi açısından yapısal sorunlar içermekte midir? İsbât-ı vâcib açısından fizik hala zorunlu mudur? Ya da isbât-ı vâcib için fizik kendi başına yeterli midir? Metafiziksiz bir isbât-ı vâcib delili mümkün müdür? Fiziği ya da metafiziği ihmal etmek ne gibi sorunlara neden olmaktadır? Makale, bu soruları çeşitli açılardan inceleyecektir.
This paper deals with the “Table of the Categories of Freedom” in the second main chapter of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. It provides an account of the role these categories are supposed to play and also of their conceptual content. The key to a proper understanding lies in the realisation that they are derived from the socalled table of judgements in the Critique of Pure Reason and the functions of thinking, which it compiles by means of a metaphysical deduction. I therefore interpret the categories of freedom consistently from the table of judgements and reconstruct their conceptual content from the functions of thinking underlying each category. Furthermore, Kant justifies by means of a transcendental deduction the fact that the categories of freedom necessarily relate to all objects of the will. I argue that the categories are concepts constitutive for the object of the will: the role they play is that of the functions of willing an object. Finally, I show that the categories of freedom reach beyond Kant’s foundation of moral philosophy. They point to the later Metaphysics of Morals in that Kant associates an ambitious systembuilding claim with them. The idea is therefore that the table of the categories organises the system of moral philosophy.
Although Spinoza and, for that matter, modern European philosophers were known among some Iranians for centuries, it was not until the final decades of the twentieth century that they were eventually received into the Iranian intellectual scene. Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, whenever there came about a perception of a need, Iranians, the state as well as the civil society, actively and extensively borrowed from the European intellectual achievements. But not in philosophy. Except among radical fringe circles, a need for modern philosophy did not arise until the crisis of the theocratic state exposed the inadequacy of our native philosophical traditions for underwriting a modern state. The turn to modern philosophy reflects the dawning of this awareness, at least in civil society. In this turn Spinoza occupies a privileged place due to the exceptional potencies of his vision, and its pertinence to a theocratic situation that is in crisis both in its ethics and its metaphysics of power.
The type and program of Kant's monetary philosophy in ethics is prescient and pre-empirical (or metaphysical) principles of ethics. With this goal in the foundation of metaphysics, ethics, moral value, absolutely, only the decent will is the good field; An intention that is determined by the moral law, absolute, rational and simple, and the motive of action is duty and not something else, including a feeling of compassion and a desire to achieve the result and obedience to God's orders. Kant presents various formulas for the moral law (universal law, universal law of nature, humanity, self-reflection and kingdom of ends). In Post-Criticism II, Kant relates the completion of abstraction to integration problems. One of the problems that Kant deals with is speed, relationships, and sexual intercourse, which can only be fulfilled legally in the form of marriage. In addition, marriage is not based on friendship or love, but based on sexual intercourse and agreement between a man and a woman for the exchange of sexual organs. This image of marriage and sexual relations raises various issues in Kant's field of ethics; including that opposition to individuality in the interaction between people, how is it gathered in the fulfillment of sex and marriage? Does Kant's formula of humanity make an exception in this case or does it somehow justify marriage in the same formula? Prohibition of ownership of a person's body, how can it be collected by marriage, which is the transfer of this ownership? The commentators of Kant answer these questions with the points that I will discuss in this article. Kant, along with theorists of physical law in ethics (such as Thomas Aquinas), believes that sexual intercourse with a married person is obviously devoid of any virtue, unless it is done with the motive of reproduction. Kant's opposition to certain sexual relations and/or sexual movements (such as masturbation, sexual relations with animals and homosexuals) can be understood in this context. Finally, in this article, the place of love in Kant's ethics is discussed and the question is whether we have a duty to love others.
This article argues that the concept of the “barbarian” is inapplicable to the Chinese tradition. By contrasting the Greek and later European view on what it means to be human with the image of the authentic human in Chinese philosophy, this paper argues that the Chinese tradition did not have a conception of what the Greeks understood as “barbarian”. In the former, the ideal of the human is understood through an investigation of the concept of ousia, which is characterized by a dualistic hierarchy between “form” and “matter”. The same dualism and hierarchy that distinguishes ousia, can be mapped onto the Greek distinction between the human and barbarian. Chinese metaphysics is not consistent with the Greek idea that reality is constituted by unchanging forms that are self-identical and keep within their own boundaries. Relatedly, the idea that there is a static hierarchy among the myriad things of the world is also foreign to Chinese metaphysics. Instead, the Chinese metaphysical tradition assumes that nothing will stay the same forever as all “things” are a function of how they relate to an ever-changing environment. One important consequence of this view is that the human and non-human distinction is much more dynamic. Related to this dynamic view of self is the (Confucian) view that the human being only becomes authentically human through their acculturation. This acculturation is the process of a person’s growth through public symbolic media such as li (礼), yue (乐) and wen (文). This process of growth shapes the person into an other-regarding social being (ren 仁). Importantly, no one is born a fully-realized human; human-ness is not an essence that is possessed but is always a result of the process of acculturation.
Social sciences and state - Asia (Asian studies only)
This article aims to address the metaphysical dimension of cosmological models, be they mythological, philosophical, religious or modern scientific, using multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodology. Such an approach is a novelty, both in the theological field and in the philosophical field and secular sciences, which studies the origin of man and the universe.
Contribution: The originality of this article consists in introducing the concept of transcendental cosmology, which, along with spiritual cosmology can be a serious theological and philosophical reply to the Bing Bang theory.
This article tries to highlight main characteristics of the metaphysical
frame of Marxist pedagogy. At first, it is important to see that the
concept of ideology alone (in the question regarding totalitarian
ideologies) presupposes a very specific metaphysic, i.e. metaphysic of
the representing subject and subject of representations-ideas. In such
a metaphysic a specific decision about humanity of man as well as
worldliness of the world is introduced in the form of re-presentation
and objectifying. How the humanity of man is understood? Is there
not, under the political rhetoric of ideologies (totalitarian and not-
-totalitarian) a deeper common ground hidden, as our reference to the
metaphysics of the subject was supposed to indicate? Insofar as
upbringing in the European tradition has a sense of bringing man up
to his own humanity, there is an implicit concept of human being in
every concept of education. And insofar as man is not only an object
in the world but also the “subject for the world” (Husserl), every such
concept is arising from the correlation man-world. We would like to
look more closely at the conditions of this correlation man-world
in 20th century.
O presente artigo visa refletir sobre o pensamento de Hannah Arendt à luz do par conceitual necessidade-liberdade. Esse caminho é produtivo, pois dá conta tanto da obra mais conhecida e reconhecida da autora quanto das suas reflexões anteriores à <em>Origens do Totalitarismo</em>, que se dirigiam, na sua maioria, à comunidade dos Judeus e tinham a questão judaica como ponto central. As meditações arendtianas sobre o judaísmo, consideradas no presente artigo, foram publicadas em duas coletâneas na França: <em>La tradition Cachée</em> (1987) e <em>Auschwitz et Jérusalem</em> (1991). O artigo gravita em torno da defesa arendtiana sobre a inerência entre política e liberdade e sua substituição pela compreensão da política como submetida à esfera da necessidade. Essa perspectiva, segundo a autora, fez-se presente na tradição assimilacionista entre os judeus, mas já tinha obtido a hegemonia na cultura ocidental. Isso sucedeu em razão da primazia da <em>vita contemplativa</em> sobre a <em>vita activa</em>, do trabalho e da questão social em detrimento da ação e, por fim, da supremacia da filosofia da história em prejuízo da Filosofia Política.
Domanda. Se il paziente sa quello che sta facendo, e lei sa perché lo sta facendo, perché interpretare quello che sta facendo anziché chiedergli perché lo fa? Bion. Questo è un altro mistero. Perché non trasferirlo direttamente da lui stesso a lui stesso? Perché è necessaria una persona esterna? Perché l’essere umano non può essere come un lombrico? Perché avere un partner? Perché non avere una vita sessuale con sé stessi senza altre seccature? Perché non si può avere una relazione direttamente con sé stessi senza l’intervento di una specie di levatrice mentale o fisica? Pare che abbiamo bisogno di “rimbalzare” su un’altra persona, di avere qualcosa che rifletta indietro quello che diciamo prima che esso possa diventare comprensibile (Bion, 1984b, p. 59).
Per sapere chi sono io devo chiederlo a te. Quindi la mia essenza è fuori di me. Tu, gli altri, siete il ‘mio’ segreto. La natura eccentrica dell’animale umano viene percorsa attraverso una riflessione sull’opera dello psicoanalista Wilfred Bion. Avendo in mente una domanda finale: se io sono tu, l’Io – propriamente - non esiste. Allora è un impostore? C’è un modo per essere io che non sia fittizio?
The transition from the science of forms of thought and methods of knowledge to thescience of principles of objective logical content of being was indicated through foundations,structure and theoretical scope of formal and metaphysical logic in the philosophical systemof Branislav Petronijević. Hence, the formal logic and metaphysical logic are propedeuticalsciences of Petronijević’s system of metaphysics which together with the theory of knowledgeand logic constitute the pure philosophy in the synthesis of universal knowledge.