Hasil untuk "Metaphysics"

Martín F. Echavarría Anavitarte

The theory of knowledge of Thomas Aquinas is strongly influenced by the Aristotelian theory of abstraction and the agent intellect. Along with this theory, Thomas Aquinas also assimilates the Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination. In our paper, we show how Aquinas articulates these two theories, that of the agent intellect and that of divine illumination, in his Summa Theologiae. The agent intellect is the internal formal and efficient principle of human knowledge, but God is also the efficient, exemplary and final cause of human knowledge, inasmuch as He creates the human soul with its innate light, moves it to its operation, regulates it with the Eternal Reasons, and is in whom happiness is all about. In Saint Thomas, the affirmation of the metaphysical consistency of the second causes is not to the detriment of the power of the first Cause, but on the contrary. The causation of its own science by the created intellect, second cause, and the causation of it by God, First Cause, are strongly related and require each other.

Samuel Lelièvre

When examining the relationship of Ricoeur’s philosophy to the field of ontology and metaphysics, a text entitled “Discourse, metaphysics and the hermeneutics of the self” may attract attention as it provides useful and meaningful insights. This text is a reworking of a better-known text, “De la métaphysique à la morale” (1993), but remains different by focusing on analyses relating to an ontology and metaphysics of human action and agency, and considers the speculative structure of a hermeneutics of the self constituted since Oneself as Another (1990). Originating from a conference held at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 1993 and 1995, this text was first published in 1998 in the proceedings of that conference; the present version aims at making it accessible again and improving its editorial form.

Elliot T. Polsky

Part one of this two-part paper looked at the modern semantic developments underlying Gilson’s innovative and highly influential semantic theory in Being and Some Philosophers (BSP)—the existential neutrality of the copula, the distinction between predication and some positing or “thetic” function of judgment, and the distinction between predication and assertion. The present part of this paper offers a rereading of Gilson’s work in light of this modern backdrop. It argues that Gilson’s BSP, rather than being a purely historical exegesis of the writings of a thirteenth-century friar, is a work of original philosophizing inspired by Aquinas, but principally engaged with modern debates. In particular, it advances a Brentano-inspired reading of Aquinas in place of Maritain’s Pfänder-inspired reading of him. Rereading Gilson in his historical setting clarifies the meaning and implication of many phrases and theses that have become commonplaces in philosophical discourse, in part because of Gilson’s work.

James Taylor

This paper considers the political, geo-philosophical musings of Deleuze and Guattari on spatialisation, place and movement in relation to the religious nomad (wandering ascetics and reclusive forest monks) inhabiting the borderlands of Thailand. A nomadic science involves improvised ascetic practices between the molar lines striated by modern state apparatuses. The wandering ascetics, inhabiting a frontier political ecology, stand in contrast to the appropriating, sedentary metaphysics and sanctifying arborescence of statism and its corollary place-making, embedded in rootedness and territorialisation. It is argued that the religious nomads, residing on the endo-exteriorities of the state, came to represent a rhizomatic and politico-ontological threat to centre-nation and its apparatus of capture. The paper also theorises transitions and movement at the borderlands in the context of the state’s monastic reforms. These reforms, and its pervasive royal science, problematised the interstitial zones of the early ascetic wanderers in their radical cross-cutting networks and lines, moving within and across demarcated frontiers. Indeed, the ascetic wanderers and their allegorical war machine were seen as a source of wild, free-floating charisma and mystical power, eventually appropriated by the centre-nation in it’s becoming unitary and fixed.

Ephraim Radner

This article explores the meaning of mortality defined as a fundamental quality of human existence, in its scriptural, premodern, and modern Christian understandings. While the scriptural description of a basic human liability to death was both definitive for Christian self-understanding for almost two millennia, it was sufficiently unelaborated as to provide room for alternative readings of mortality’s essential qualification of human nature and thus destiny: is human liability to death an intrinsic aspect of that created nature (i.e. from God), or something historically contingent and thus extrinsic to that nature, i.e. through the Fall? While different answers were given to these questions, the pre-modern classical Christian tradition held the two readings together in seeing mortality as shaping a human life of genealogical commitment and humility, joined to the expectation of post-mortem judgment leading to punishment or reward. The article describes this pre-modern practical understanding of mortality, viewed as revelatory of God’s nature, as well as the transformation of this perspective brought by scientific, medical, and political changes in modernity. These changes led to radical shifts in how one understood mortality’s intrinsic and/or extrinsic character, with creation, Fall, and redemption displaced as key elements in mortality’s significance and replaced with the causative presuppositions and possibilities of contemporary materialist and idealist monist metaphysics, exemplified here by transhumanist and posthumanist outlooks and programmes. While current historical dynamics may have created a new climate of receptivity for classical views of mortality, contemporary Christianity remains mostly uncertain as to the meaning of mortality and as to its place in essentially defining human life in relation to God.

A. Koyré

A. Gewirth

H. Putnam, James F. Conant

Vicente Llamas Roig

<p><strong>Resumen</strong></p><p>La metafísica en la era de alienación transcendente (período orgánico de la historia del pensamiento occidental dominado por la expectativa de un destino gnoseomórfico superior -espejismo de un superyo accedente al metafenómeno de ser-) es sierva del símbolo (signo en función metasémica), tanto como la anti-metafísica (post-nietzscheana) era del ello, en su adicción al icono (signo del epílogo que postra al sujeto en una radical inmanencia alienante), pueda ser esclava de las máscaras morfológicas de esa facción psíquica. Una posible revitalización de la metafísica pasaría por la instrumentación de la metáfora ontológica como figura transpositiva del fenómeno de ser en su pulsión óntica pura, el ser de fenómeno. Tal es la propuesta de este ensayo. </p><p><strong><em>Palabras clave</em>:</strong> alienación, fenómeno, signo, metáfora ontológica.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>Metaphysics in the age of transcendent alienation (organic period in the history of western thought ruled by the prospect of a superior gnoseomorphic fate  –mirage of a superego that tries to reach the meta-phenomenon of being) works as the servant of the symbol (sign in meta-semic function), likewise the anti-metaphysical (post-Nietzschean) era of the id, by its addiction to the icon (evidence of the epilogue that leaves the subject prostrate under a drastic alienating immanence), may be the slave of the morphological masks of that psychic feature. A possible renewal of metaphysics would entail the instrumentation of the ontological metaphor as a transposition figure of the phenomenon of being in its pure ontic basis, the being of phenomenon. Such is the proposal of this essay.</p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em>:</strong> alienation, phenomenon, sign, ontological metaphor.</p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong>Orcid: </strong><span id="orcid-id" class="orcid-id-https">https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4830-3003</span></p>

D. Kovacs

W. Harper, M. Friedman

Vladimir Borisovich Aleksandrov

In the article, views of the Russian philosophers on progress are considered. It is noted that a basic point of reflections of a number of domestic thinkers on the matter is the criticism of the «eudemonistic» approach consisting in understanding of progress as increases of happiness of the person and improvement of conditions of his life. They treat this approach as a projection of a way of thinking peculiar to political economy according to which driving motive of economic development is increase of requirements. Neither the political economy nor other concrete sciences cannot define in their opinion criteria of satisfaction of requirements. The Russian philosophers also criticize the concept of progress, which gained distribution in Marxism as increases of opportunities for development of the personality. In their opinion, its insolvency is in understanding of the personality not based on deep metaphysics, as in the German classical philosophy, in particular in Hegel’s philosophy, but reduced to its understanding as an epiphenomenon of the public relations. Addressing to idea of progress, the science inevitably mixes historical progress and progress of a civilization that conducts to loss of a moral perspective of historical progress and, as result, to peculiar «progress religion». For the Russian philosophy progress is, first, a moral task. The metaphysics of progress in the Russian philosophy is based on distinction of two types of thinking: chiliastic - connected with belief in a thousand-year kingdom with triumph of goodness (an example of such thinking is social-ism), and eschatological taking out the history purpose out of its limits. In the deepest meaning progress is the eschatological idea assuming statement of history in the face of transcendence. However, it does not mean that it indicates the need of «desecration of real life», as, however, and acceptance of unjustified optimism. The history for the Russian thinkers is an accruing contradiction between the good and evil. For this reason for the Russian thinkers, tragic vision of history is peculiar. Progress of a civilization is possible in history, but an internal result of history is tragedy. In the article is noted that the Russian thinkers revealed deep metaphysics content of the idea of progress, having separated approach of positive science from philosophical sense of this problem. Having concentrated the attention on a human aspect of progress, they brought a moral perspective of idea of progress to the forefront. The Russian philosophers showed that the image of the purpose of history has deep metaphysical sense and cannot be expressed in the terms defining life of the person in the terrestrial world.

Marco Damonte

Anthony Kenny e Orlando Todisco, in due diversi contesti, hanno proposto un originale accostamento tra Wittgenstein e alcuni filosofi francescani. Alla luce di questi studi è possibile chiedersi quale valore possa avere la nozione di francescanesimo wittgensteiniano e quale utilità essa ricopra nell’identificare i caratteri di una filosofia francescana. Nella prima parte considererò l’atteggiamento di Kenny nei confronti di Duns Scoto, le cui tesi, dapprima frettolosamente associate a quelle del neopositivismo, vengono poi adeguatamente contestualizzate all’interno della contrapposizione tra la tradizione neoplatonica-agostiniana e l’aristotelismo radicale nell’Università di Parigi. Nella seconda parte, analizzerò il parallelo suggerito da Todisco tra Wittgenstein e Occam, con particolare attenzione alla filosofia del linguaggio, alla critica alla metafisica e alla nozione di ineffabilità. Dopo aver evidenziato i limiti storiografici di entrambe queste proposte, concluderò sostenendo che il francescanesimo wittgensteiniano non può essere considerato un progetto di ricerca autonomo capace di stabilire delle tesi comuni. Esso comunque non è una mera provocazione, in quanto offre interessanti considerazioni circa una affine modalità di porsi gli interrogativi filosofici da parte di Wittgenstein e dei filosofi francescani. Questo esito permette di identificare alcune condizioni necessarie perché si possa parlare di una filosofia francescana all’interno della storia della filosofia.   In two very different contexts, Anthony Kenny and Orlando Todisco have proposed an original combination between Wittgenstein and some Franciscan thinkers. Thanks to their studies it is possible to question the value and the usability of the expression Wittgensteinian Franciscanism in order to identify the features of a Franciscan philosophy. In the first paragraph, I will take the approach of Kenny about Duns Scotus into consideration. At the beginning of his career, Kenny hastily associates Scotus’ theses to the Neo-Positivistic ones, but in his mature works, Kenny adequately contextualizes them within the contrast between, on the one hand, the Neoplatonic-Augustinian tradition and, on the other, the radical Aristotelism held at the Paris University. In the second paragraph, I will study in depth the parallelism suggested by Todisco between Wittgenstein and Occam, paying particular attention to the philosophy of language, to the criticism toward some types of metaphysics, and to the notion of ineffability. After having underlined the historiographic limits of both of these proposals, I will conclude arguing that Wittgensteinian Franciscanism cannot be appreciated as an autonomous research project able to establish common theses. All the same, it is not a mere provocation, in fact it presents interesting considerations about analogous modalities to submit philosophical questions shared between Wittgenstein and Franciscan thinkers. This outcome allows to distinguish some necessary conditions in order to identify a Franciscan philosophy in the history of Western thought.

F. Correia, Benjamin Schnieder

J. Derrida, E. Husserl

C. Waters

P. Higgs, C. Gilleard

ABSTRACT Objectives: To interrogate the concept of personhood and its application to care practices for people with dementia. Method: We outline the work of Tom Kitwood on personhood and relate this to conceptualisations of personhood in metaphysics and in moral philosophy. Results: The philosophical concept of personhood has a long history. The metaphysical tradition examines the necessary and sufficient qualities that make up personhood such as agency, consciousness, identity, rationality and second-order reflexivity. Alternative viewpoints treat personhood as a matter of degree rather than as a superordinate category. Within moral philosophy personhood is treated as a moral status applicable to some or to all human beings. Conclusion: In the light of the multiple meanings attached to the term in both metaphysics and moral philosophy, personhood is a relatively unhelpful concept to act as the foundation for developing models and standards of care for people with dementia. Care, we suggest, should concentrate less on ambiguous and somewhat abstract terms such as personhood and focus instead on supporting people's existing capabilities, while minimising the harmful consequences of their incapacities.

C. Peacocke

M. J. Clark, David Liggins

G. Priest