I take paraconsistent logic to be one of the most important and significant developments in logic and metaphysics in the last 100 years, challenging, as it does, one of the deepest dogmas entrenched in Western philosophy: that consistency is a sine qua non of rational thought. This paper looks back at the modern development of the subject. It is partial, in that it concerns only what one might call the formative years of the subject. It is personal, in that I describe my own involvement in some areas. The first part of the paper concerns paraconsistency as such. It starts with the name itself, its origin and its meaning. After a brief look at the history before the 20th century, it notes the work of the early pioneers: Orlov, Jaśkowski, Halldén, Smiley, Val and Richard Routley, and da Costa. For each of these, it describes both what motivated them, and the techniques they used in their constructions. It then describes the early reception of paraconsistency, and the way that it became a global movement. Next, the paper turns to dialetheism, again starting with the name itself and its meaning. After a brief look at the history of the notion before the 20th century, it describes the origin of the modern subject in the work of Richard Routley/Sylvan and myself. Finally, it turns to one of the major applications of paraconsistency: inconsistent mathematics—and specifically set-theory, arithmetic, and geometry. It notes the work of da Costa, Routley/Sylvan, Meyer, Mortensen, and others, describing some of the results concerning the mathematical theories they investigated.
This paper reviews the complex and nuanced treatment of metaphysics in the first major works of Jacques Derrida (1967-72), and it supplements deconstruction with existential themes in order to safeguard it from the accusation of nihilistic relativism. The critique of logocentrism, often systematized through a paradoxical 'ontology of the trace', has been embraced by phenomenology and post-deconstruction, but also seen as insufficient for today's challenges. Returning to Derrida's demonstrations, I explore why metaphysics must be textual if it is to produce two operations constitutive of thinking: a certain technology of forgetting and an experience of meaning as singularized in words. This textuality is, specifically, that of writing, which reveals how, beyond truth, it is meaning-making that is sought by metaphysics and its writers. The techne of writing, then, plays a special role in individual, existential empowerment, but this interpretation of the history of ideas as a power struggle does not amount to moral relativism, because writing can help us sustain a unique and constructive passion for the margins.
The focus of this article is the examination of potential applications of linguistic philosophy, particularly the philosophy of natural language, to elucidate certain aspects of cosmology. Using the foundational principles of Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics as a guide, the article suggests plausible strategies for employing the tools of linguistic philosophers in analyzing key concepts within, for example, Chinese cosmology. The vast majority of researchers of Chinese cosmology used one of the two most common approaches – historical or philosophical. The historical approach involved the analysis of the cosmological concept of crises through the prism of the history of the development of socio-cultural and political factors, as well as through the analysis of the historical development of the main ideas and texts. The philosophical approach considered the cosmological concept as a “philosophical school”, tending to consider cosmology in the context of comparison with the Western tradition of philosophy and science. Both approaches have significant limitations. Strawson is not a classic representative of linguistic philosophy, because his approach to using the methodology of the school of everyday language is original and allows returning metaphysics to the field of view of analytical philosophy. His metaphysical essay on the model of the relationship between language and the world does not raise questions about the criteria of existence. This is important because Chinese cosmology is closely related to cultural factors and rituals. It is the analysis of cosmology as a complete system that should become the main task of the researcher. The methodology of the school of everyday language in Strawson’s interpretation is seen as promising for providing an original interpretation and clarification of some main points of non-European cosmology. The goal is to assess whether the methodology of Ordinary Language Philosophy remains relevant for advancing cosmological and metaphysical accounts.
The issue of separation or distinction between the Church and the State has rarely been discussed. More often it has fallen prey to pragmatic solutions. When we look at the history of Church-State relations, we can observe either cooperation or hostility. The Church is looked upon with a sympathetic eye when it supports certain political solutions and with hostility when it criticizes the State. In the case of cooperation, the distinction is apparently acceptable; in the case of hostility, separation is recommended. This article primarily seeks to show the difference between separation and distinction. Both terms appeared in John Locke’s notable Letter Concerning Toleration. Unfortunately, even this philosopher failed to see the difference between the two terms. Assuming that man has many degrees of freedom within the State, the Church is needed as an institution separate from the State to help understand the profound meaning of human freedom, yet free to speak with its own voice and in accordance with its mission. The Church also needs to be aware of the fact that it is distinct from the State, being wary of any close political involvement.
The article presents an overview of some of the most general directions of problem statement in comparative research of Heidegger’s and Dogen’s teachings. Proceeding from the attitudes of methodological character common for both thinkers towards the gnoseological and ontological positions, the author pays special attention to the problems of discursive and suggestionistic thinking, subject-object dichotomy, substantiality of existence, true and phenomenal being, nature of time and temporality. Dogen and other Chan/Zen thinkers’ tendency to reject analytical, discursive thinking was accompanied by an active appeal to the suggestive language of artistic images. This attitudinal rejection of conceptual thinking was determined, on the one hand, by the need to overcome the framework of the established Buddhist dogma that impeded the development of living Buddhist thought, and, on the other hand, by the affirmation of the non-substantiality of existence, the identity of phenomenal and absolute being. According to Dogen’s idea, the notion of substance and identity generates a subject-object dichotomy, illusive from the Buddhist point of view, which can only be overcome in the state of satori enlightenment. A similar situation can be found in the methodological guidelines of Martin Heidegger, who, in his project of destruction of ontology, seeks to overcome and rethink the concepts of Western metaphysics that have become rigid and lost their original meaning and, in his later works, refers to the language of suggestive thinking. Heidegger’s phenomenological approach to the analysis of fundamental structures of human existence in Being and Time is also focused on overcoming the subject-object dichotomy and completely removes the problem of substance. At the same time, both thinkers are characterized by ontological orientation of philosophical thinking: both Heidegger and Dogen are focused on the problem of truth of being and human attitude to it. This ontological installation also reveals a number of substantive parallels, which are expressed in a similar interpretation of existence through the phenomenon of time, as well as the similarity of under-standing of the structural basis of time.
The results of a study of the situation of light designation in akathists to Russian saints is presented in the article. The relevance of studying the phenomenon of light on this material is due, firstly, to the most important text-forming role of light designs in this hymnographic genre, and secondly, to the need for an in-depth study of the role of the verb in the organization of the Slavic sentence. The situation of light designation became the direct object of analysis, and the participants in this situation became the subject. The focus of research attention is on the relevant valence (semantic and syntactic) characteristics of the verb as the structural center of the sentence. The main research methods were: functional-semantic, contextual analysis of lexical units, statistical. As a result of the study, a linguistic corpus of light designations (3,157 units) was identified, their part-of-speech affiliation was characterized, a chronological distribution was demonstrated, and the dominant root-forming elements (svet-, siya-, zar-, blist-, svesh-) were established. Particular attention is paid to the grammatical mechanisms that provide light designation, as well as to its direct participants. The emphasis is on the main participant — the light. The description of the register of possible semantic roles of participants in the situation of light designation (Subject, Object and their subtypes) is focused on the division traditional in the Orthodox metaphysics of light: “uncreated light”, “smart light” and “sensual light”.
Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
Fascinated by the recent scientific progress, even some philosophers today claim that philosophy is dead and that natural sciences (quantum cosmology, cognitive sciences) can answer questions which were once considered a domain of metaphysics: is our universe finite? Do we have free will? etc. The essay tries to problematize this claims by raising a series of questions. First, it is easy to show that modern science itself relies on a series of philosophical propositions. Second, what accounts for the role of science in our world is its link with capitalism. Third, we should distinguish between knowledge and truth: not only philosophy, other discourses (like Marxism or psychoanalysis) also practice a notion of truth which cannot be reduced to knowledge.
In this paper, I evaluate the work of two contemporary cosmologists, Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin, through the lens of Henri Bergson’s metaphysics of time. Barbour and Smolin center their cosmological systems on their respective philosophical conceptions of time: for Barbour, time is a human illusion that must be eradicated from cosmology; for Smolin, time must be considered a reality of the universe, a force of change that underlies our everyday observations and which not even the laws of physics can escape. Both systems, however, run into dead ends. Barbour cannot escape dealing with observed movement and change and ultimately restricts them to the human brain, where these phenomena are left unexplained; Smolin posits the need for a meta-law that would account for why temporal phenomena unfold as they do, but fails to provide such a law. As I will show, Bergson’s original take on the problem of time has a lot to offer to both sides of the debate. On Barbour’s side, it provides compelling arguments against the latter’s eradication of time, which, if accepted, would invalidate the philosophical assumptions behind his cosmology; on Smolin’s side, Bergson sidetracks the “meta-law” problem and offers a deeper understanding of time than the one presented by Smolin, putting forth a consistent philosophical theory of time which, as I will show, is missing from the latter’s work. Ultimately, my aim is to illustrate, through Bergson’s work, how, without the aid of philosophy, cosmology is likely to keep running into such dead ends.
In this paper I argue that we need to take irreducibly plural logic more seriously in metaphysical debates due to the fact that the verdict of many metaphysical debates hangs on it. I give two examples. The main example I focus on is the debate recently revived by Jonathan Schaffer over the fundamental cardinality of the world. I show how the three main arguments provided by Schaffer are unsound in virtue of an employment of plural logic. The second example I give is a more general issue about the possibility of emergent properties of mereological wholes. Employing plural logic there is a new way to understand such cases. The upshot is that plural logic greatly matters to metaphysics and hence can no longer be ignored the way it has in this area.
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; -ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">The article discusses new and republished translations of Susan Sontag’s work, recently launched by the Karakter publishing house: <em>Regarding the Pan of Others</em>, <em>On Photography</em>, and <em>Against Interpretation and Other Essays</em>. The article focuses on the elements of Sontag’s thought that make her a forgotten mother of feminist and gender theoreticians, as well as such influential critics as Michel </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">F</span><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">oucault and </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">R</span><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">oland Barthes. The article points out to continuations of Sontag’s thought in contemporary theoretical and social projects, and to the pertinence of her critical observations on theories based on metaphysics of presence: psychoanalysis, Marxism, or hermeneutics. The article also touches upon history of war photography and related war journalism, and upon the ambivalent quality of imaging of the misery of war. It also present historical and cultural circumstances of the development of Sontag’s thought in the intellectual milieu of New </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">Y</span><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';" lang="EN-US">ork in the 1960s. The discussion recapitulates the main statements of Sontag’s essays, relating them to a wider theoretical context, which is aimed at a reappraisal of the forgotten intelectual in the history of literature.</span></span></p>
Literature (General), Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
Aspectos básicos da leitura heideggeriana de Nietzsche. As possibilidades e as possíveis distorções operadas por tal interpretação em alguns conceitos fundamentais do pensamento nietzschiano. Num primeiro momento, explicitam-se as duas atitudes de Heidegger diante da história da filosofia e de seus principais pensadores, em momentos diferentes de seu pensamento. Em seguida, analisa-se, com um certo distanciamento crítico, em que sentido, conforme Heidegger, ocorre a consumação da metafísica do sujeito pensante [Descartes] na metafísica da vontade de potência e na ideia de além do homem, em Nietzsche.<br>This article presents the basic aspects of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche and the possibilities and possible distortions of this interpretation with regard to some basic concepts of Nietzschean thought. First, we make explicit two different attitudes of Heidegger toward the history of philosophy and its leading thinkers, as found in different periods of Heidegger's thought. Secondly we analyze, with a certain critical distance, in what sense, according to Heidegger, metaphysics is the consummation of the thinking subject (Descartes) in the metaphysics of the will to power and the idea of beyond man in Nietzsche.
A reflexáo bioética, em tempos de globalizaçáo, defronta-se com o desafio de abarcar, de forma sistemática, as visões de mundo que definem, em última instância, as atitudes existenciais e as prioridades políticas, econômicas e sociais da humanidade. O objetivo desse trabalho foi o de desenvolver uma metodologia que permita contribuir para dar conta de tal desafio, renovando assim a chamada "via longa" da Ética e a abordagem ontológica na Bioética. Para tal intento buscou-se um método que chamo hiperdialético, posto que pressupõe o náo desconhecimento das superações concretas, parciais e deficitárias que ocorrem no mundo real, no pensamento, no comportamento e na história. Desta forma buscou-se dar inteligibilidade a conceitos usuais nas áreas das quais a Bioética é tributária, através de uma topologia na qual os conceitos e categorias ganham operacionalidade e inteligibilidade uma vez que estáo articulados entre si de tal forma a delimitarem quatro campos distintos, espécies de campos epistemológicos. Como resultados, sáo desvendados os vínculos, especialmente os fenomenológicos, os axiológicos e os ideológicos de conceitos que refletem saberes acumulados em vários campos do conhecimento, no entanto muitas vezes desarticulado pelos excessos analíticos e hermenêuticos na filosofia contemporânea. A partir desta metodologia que parte do
telos para o ontos, buscou-se uma aproximaçáo do fundamento último do homem, ou seja, de um ser em busca por sentido que, sujeita a perigosos desvios, é essencialmente busca de autotranscendência que ocorre, no entanto, no plano da imanência e é nesse campo que se imprimem as tensões e tenções entre o ser e o dever-ser.