The article analyzes the notion of philosophical education in Étienne Gilson’s essay History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education. The French thinker presents philosophy not as a collection of doctrines but as a life devoted to the pursuit of wisdom, requiring a personal act of knowledge and inner formation. The teaching of philosophy makes sense only insofar as it leads to authentic philosophizing rather than merely the transmission of knowledge. A key role in this process is played by the history of philosophy, which makes it possible to encounter great masters and enter into dialogue with their works. The master–disciple relationship, also through the reading of the classics, constitutes the foundation of philosophical formation. Gilson emphasizes the communal dimension of philosophy, understood as participation in the community of philosophers built over the centuries.
The subject of this article is the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth. Central to the analysis is an attempt to reconstruct the place and role of metaphysics in the Pope’s analysis and, more broadly, in his understanding of biblical hermeneutics. One of the central ambitions of our author was to develop an integral method of reading and understanding Scripture, in which historicalcritical, metaphysical and dogmatic themes presuppose and complement each other. The article first examines the modalities of the appearance of metaphysical threads in Benedict XVI’s meditations, then analyzes his understanding of prayer in a metaphysical key, and finally sketches the concept of a new human being made possible by the work of Jesus and needing metaphysical categories to be fully described. Thus, it turns out that Ratzinger was able to show a truly biblical metaphysics in Jesus of Nazareth and prove that metaphysical thinking is not at odds with the assumptions of the historical-critical method, if the latter, of course, is not understood in a reductionist manner and in accordance with modern prejudices. In this way, I argue, Ratzinger sketches in his trilogy an integral theological method for reading the biblical text and ultimately synthesizes the biblical, metaphysical and dogmatic approaches.
This article develops a hermeneutic study of Heidegger’s text <i>The Word of Nietzsche: “God is Dead”.</i> We attempt to read Heidegger’s remarks in the context of the “period of transition” that, according to Nietzsche, is occurring in the history of western thought and culture. This essay unfolds in the following manner: beginning with Heidegger’s contention that Nietzsche’s philosophy is the “fulfilment” of Platonism, we go over the problem of nihilism in relation to the metaphysics of the will to power, which for Heidegger requires revising Cartesian subjectivity in search of a new ontology. Heidegger’s critique of modernity encompasses a narrative that goes from “Plato” to “Nietzsche”, leading to a reconsideration of the notions of art and truth. Finally, we attempt to interpret the meaning of the “madman’s lament” voicing the passing of God.
The article examines the foundations that constitute the formulation of the metaphysical question in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. The article focuses in detail on the period of 1929-1930, which includes the report “Was ist Metaphysik?” and the lecture course “Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt–Endlichkeit–Einsamkeit”. The introduction to the article and the main problem are three prejudices from Being and Time that make it impossible to ask a clear question about being. The main material is presented on the basis of primary sources: “Being and Time”, “Basic Concepts of Metaphysics”. The peculiarity of Heidegger’s work of the 1929s and 1930s is the approximation of the research methodology in the 1927 treatise to the present. Phenomenological hermeneutics and fundamental ontology were used in relation to the ancient Greeks to develop a metaphysics of ciphers or special words in which Heidegger concentrated the Greek experience of being. During the 1930s, Heidegger would make an effort to realize this experience by looking for points of intersection between Greeks and Germans in German idealism and poetry. Since the Greeks are ruled by aeon (temporal time) and agon (the spirit of competition), modern metaphysics needs to develop a special concept of being that would distinguish who Germans are, where they came from, and where they are going. The article proposes a distinction between higher being - divine, human life-world – social, human essence – cultural, working, shepherd. Being, being and man are subject to metaphysical questioning as the most general concepts. That is, those that immediately or a priori express a certain clarity. Nihilism, as the spirit of the time, demands that metanarratives be questioned and self-evidence be reassessed. An outstanding achievement of Heidegger’s metaphysical question is the distinction being as Seyn. The nationalist or folk Old German definition of being both frees it from academic requirements and accurately captures the open horizon in which the existence of the first half of the 20th century was frozen. Since this essence of man is presented after the linguistic turn, it lacks the main feature of the turn-a specific linguistic ability or words that clarify being. The article aims to study Martin Heidegger’s metaphysical teaching in the 1929-1930s. The article concludes that the metaphysics of the above-mentioned years of Heidegger’s philosophy reveals itself in parallel with the spirit of the time of the then German conservative revolution. As we know, Martin Heidegger did not remove the question of being and selected names for it, because he was looking for an appropriated lawn and a boundary, beyond which the exit to the lawn opens. This article offers a look at this problematic in the contextual name of metaphysic – Seyn.
The article discusses concrete and material aspects of Levinas’s ethical metaphysics. Firstly, the paper shows that, in contrast to several alternative modern conceptions of subjectivity, the Levinasian subject is not at a safe distance from the world but involved in it through sensing and “enjoyment” and therefore vulnerability. After that the paper highlights the materiality and concreteness of Levinas’s ethical metaphysics, a “deformalization” radically opposed to abstractness. It is precisely owing to the transcendence of the Other that the face is always concrete, always a specific, concrete, material solicitation of aid.
The thesis of this article is that the self is a construct or illusion and simultaneously real. The notion of self is constitutive in metaphysics and operates subconsciously and indirectly in all human activities. The metaphysical self constitutes its own reality. The article is critical of developments in cognitive science and neuroscience where neurocentrism reduces self to brain processes. The tenet is that the self is more than its biological make-up and the measurement of brain processes. The metaphysical as well as illusory aspects of self are discussed. Some important aspects of self that are visited include the construction of the self, its bodylines, contextuality, intentionality and unity. The nature of human intuition as grounded in our evolutionary make-up is proposed as a basis for the unity of the self. The role of the self in religion is briefly dealt with, focusing on the link between the notion of self and the concept of God.
This rough guide provides Prof. Milbank’s answers to questions from Sven Grosse for a conference, in German, held in Basel, Switzerland in 2017. This written interview will be published in German, but Prof. Milbank has kindly offered Acta Theologica the exclusive publication of this interview in English. It should be read along with the interview with Profs Milbank and Ward published in this Supplementum of Acta Theologica.
What follows is not an ordinary academic paper. Instead, it is a polemical summary designed to give a general idea of Radical Orthodoxy (RO) in terms of its origins, main ideas, milieu and general cultural “feel”. If a great deal is mentioned about past thinkers and genealogies of the modern, it is not because RO thinkers suppose that this is at the heart of the modern, but rather because rival, liberal theological outlooks often, in part, depend, either openly or covertly, on stories about the past and the readings of some crucial thinkers. “Telling a different story” is then crucial to any genuinely subversive theological proposal. The majority of the stories I shall tell are based on scholarly research on RO, much thereof generally accepted by experts, if not always well disseminated. It is rather my “take” on these stories and their historical and contemporary implications that are most debatable and controversial.
Christianity, Practical religion. The Christian life
The paper considers principles and preconceptions of some dialectical theories of ancient and modern philosophy which are used for justification of ontology. The author pays most attention to proving his thesis that in the history of justification of ontology classical modern dialectics prevented the reduction of being to entity. Hence, he seeks to determine historical paradigms and types of dialectical theories of ontological knowledge depending on how the principles of these theories correspond with the understanding of the ontological difference, i.e. the difference between being and entity. In particular, the author argues that Hegel’s classical dialectics partly corresponds with the understanding of the ontological difference, and Marx’s postclassical dialectics do not. The paper contains the criticism of the metaphysical prejudices of Hegel and Marx which is particularly based on the principle of the phenomenological understanding of being, as well as on the author’s principle of the dialectical resolution of the well-known paradox of subjectivity.
In this paper, I will be discussing Derrida’s reworking of metaphysics as history. Derrida describes history as the history of the metaphysical concept, where ontology delineated a strict division of the signified and the signifier, whereby the signified designated full presence to the signifier, which brings about a certain logocentrism. What this paper has done is show through Derrida that the signified is nothing outside the signifier and that it has to be relayed through time, history, and differance. This is a democratic move as it opens up possibilities for reading. By suggesting that meaning is not ossified and is not to be located outside the text but within the text, Derrida democratizes reading by suggesting that reading is an act of invention and that the possibilities for different readings are endless, where representation would hold you to an objective truth. This paper has shown that this history of the metaphysical concept as we know it, with transcendental and empirical strictly delineated and divided, has come to an end as there never has been anything but writing, meaning is located within the text rather than without, and the reader actively invents his reading instead of simply discovering an objective transcendental signified.
Abstract
In constructive empiricism Van Fraassen intends to defend the epistemological distinction between truth and empirical adequacy as well as between cognitive belief and pragmatic acceptance, based on epistemological distinction between observable entities and unobservable entities. Some of the critics not only disagree with these two epistemological distinctions, but also opposed to the mentioned basic epistemological distinction. Although van Fraassen himself with a linguistic evasiveness accepts the ambiguousness of the observable predicate of some entities such as molecule in order to sympathize with these critics, he considers some entities such as electron as definitely unobservable without providing any clear criteria and insists on the mentioned basic distinction. The present paper intends to argue that one can defend the basic epistemological distinction based on the epistemological limit of perception (vision) and the criteria of presence or absence of the observable refrence to the naked eye. Consequently, in order to reject the epistemological distinction between truth and empirical adequacy as well as between cognitive belief and pragmatic acceptance, Van Fraassen’s critics should appeal to some argument other than denying the epistemological distinction between observable entities and unobservable entities.
The author attempts to answer the question concerning whether or not philosophy is needed in seminaries. In light of his analysis, it can be concluded that philosophical studies for future priests are a serious alternative to the fideistic positions often adopted by Catholics. The presence of philosophy in the seminary curriculum is supported by: (1) the need for building intellectual foundations of the religious faith professed by a cleric; the faith which cannot do without reason and abstain from justifying the rationale of its content; (2) the need for introducing the alumnus to the mysteries of the classical philosophy of being which can equip him with a better understanding of human nature and the surrounding reality. In this way, the seminarian: (1) acquires a reasonable belief that the human mind is able to know the objective and universal truth, including the truth about God as the Ultimate Cause of all that exists; (2) is able to enter into an intelligent dialogue about the truth with an increasingly globalized world.
Albert Einstein, filozof-bilim adamı modelinin en önde gelen örneklerindenbirisidir. Bir bilim adamı olmasına rağmen, o, din, Tanrı, metafizik ve felsefegibi konularla da ilgilenmiş ve bu noktada ciddiye alınması gereken çeşitligörüşler ileri sürmüştür. Bu bakımdan, Einstein, dinî tecrübe ile bilim, fizik ilemetafizik, din ile bilim arasında kayda değer bağlar ve ilişkiler kurmuştur. Builişkilerin, önemli diyebileceğimiz metafizik ve felsefî uzantıları bulunmaktadır.Bu çalışma, bu uzantıları açığa çıkarma, inceleme ve felsefî olarak değerlendirmeamacı gütmektedir. Buna göre, Einstein’ın din, bilim ve felsefeye dair görüşleribizi felsefî açıdan iki önemli sonuca götürmektedir: Birincisi, din ile bilim arasındakarşılıklı bir ilişki ve etkileşim vardır. Dolayısıyla din bilimi, bilim de dinietkiler. İkincisi, fizikten metafiziğe çıkan bir yol vardır. Bilim adamı, bakışınıayrıntılı olarak üzerinde çalıştığı parçadan bu âlemin bütünlüğüne kaydırdığındametafizikle karşı karşıya gelir. Bu bakımdan, fizik ile metafizik arasında birbağ vardır. Son çözümlemede, bilimin sunduğu veriler, felsefeciye felsefe yapmaimkânı sunmaktadır. Dolayısıyla, burada, Einstein örneği üzerinden bilimsel ve rilerin felsefî potansiyeline, din felsefesi yapma imkânına ve bu felsefenin (din,bilim ve felsefe arasında) ara bulucu veya köprü kurucu rolüne işaret edilmiştir.
Quine, em seu livro
Philosophy of Logic, identifica lógica com lógica de primeira ordem e defende a concepçáo segundo a qual a completude é uma propriedade necessária dos sistemas lógicos. O objetivo deste trabalho é discutir a argumentaçáo de Quine e mostrar que suas idéias a respeito da natureza da lógica apresentam diversos problemas tanto conceituais, como técnicos.
This article treats of an issue of Kant’s the metaphysics of perception as a specific sphere where concept of sense perception within transcendental philosophy seem to be rooted into a wider context of metaphysical presuppositions. The text is an epitome of a few Kant’s aporias which appear when he does not notice a metaphysical background which constitutes basic relation between subject and object in sense perception.