The article is devoted to the analytical consideration of mystical-theological views on the essence of man in the Orthodox Christian worldview, developing the biblical idea of man as the image and likeness of God and as a microtheos (small god), or god by grace. The specificity of this direction is the transcendental-religious holistic approach, in which man is studied not autonomously, in his self-sufficient being, but in the aspect of his belonging to the anthropocosmic and, ultimately, theoanthropocosmic reality. The most important feature of this teaching is its apophatic nature, associated with the fact that biblical ideas-mythologemes related to Divine Revelation and mystical spiritual experience are not fully amenable to conceptualization and in their depths remain an incomprehensible mystery for rational thought, surpassing any human reason. According to one of the maxims of the Orthodox doctrine, summing up this understanding: “Man is a mysterious cryptogram that no one will ever be able to fully decipher and satisfactorily read” (Archimandrite Cyprian Kern).
Abstract One of the major questions of metaphysics throughout its history has been: What is? Spinoza has an astonishingly brief answer to this question: God. All that is—is just God (and his qualities). Chapter 1 of the current collection is dedicated to the elaboration of Spinoza’s answer. In this chapter, the author attempts to provide an advanced introduction to Spinoza’s three key ontological notions—substance, attribute, and mode—their interrelations, the history of the development of these concepts in the writings of Spinoza’s predecessors, and the recent, major scholarly debates regarding the meaning and function of these three concepts in Spinoza’s system.
Abstract In Metaphysics H.3, Aristotle discusses a difficulty raised by Antisthenes and his followers concerning the possibility of definition. The difficulty led the Antistheneans to conclude that it is impossible to define what a thing is (1043b23–32). While this passage is one of the major sources on the thought of Antisthenes, it poses a number of interpretive problems. It is, as Myles Burnyeat puts it, an ‘obscure passage … which lacks an agreed interpretation’. This chapter argues that, contrary to what is often thought, the difficulty derives from an argument to the effect that any attempt at defining what a thing is leads to an infinite regress of definitions. More specifically, it argues that the Antisthenean argument is based on a compositional conception of definition according to which the definition of a thing must mention the constituents of which the thing is composed. This account allows us to gain a better understanding of what the Antisthenean difficulty was, and why Aristotle chooses to address it in his discussion of hylomorphism in Metaphysics H.3.
This article is devoted to a brief analysis of the views of the German physicist in their comparison with the concept of the metaphysical foundations of the universe of modern physicists Alexei Vladimirovich and Lev Alekseevich Burov. The object of the study is the main philosophical work of Heisenberg - the treatise “The Order of Reality” - and the work of the Drillers called “Metaphysical Status of physical Laws”. The metaphysical concepts of the multimodular reality of the mentioned authors are compared, and a brief historical basis for the emergence of these concepts is given. The substantiation of the importance of philosophical research in the field of physics and mathematics, and quantum physics is given - in particular. The necessity of further research of the issue is postulated considering the latest concepts in natural science within the framework of binary geometrophysics of Yu.S. Vladimirov. In conclusion, the importance of the modal (or multimodular) nature of reality is argued for the construction of a new, comprehensive picture of the world, within which it would be possible, finally, to understand the essence of quantum processes that determine reality, and to reach a fundamentally new level of philosophy of natural science.
This chapter examines the narratological concept of metalepsis in relation to metaphysical texts, investigating how competing metaphysical assumptions affect the ways in which metalepsis is thought to operate in relation to empirical experience. It takes as a major point of reference Christopher Nolan’s 2010 movie Inception, in which three distinct narrative levels are troped as dreams within dreams. The film’s closing scene raises and leaves unanswered the question whether the level inhabited at that point by the central character is his ‘reality’ (as he believes) or whether he is still within a dream. For many people who inhabit the world of empirical experience, that world is not ultimate ‘reality’, which lies at one level removed. As examples of this attitude in texts concerned with metaphysics, the chapter explores Fate in Virgil’s Aeneid and the apostrophized God in Augustine’s Confessions before focusing on the Platonic appeal to the world of the Forms. In the emergence of a ‘classical’ metaphysics of an ultimate reality lying beyond time, change, and narrative, however, the key ancient figure is Parmenides; but ancient texts that embrace those very features, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, already point to the ‘counter-classical’ metaphysics which has come to the fore in the wake of Heidegger’s Being and Time and has recently achieved remarkable prominence. The conclusion of the chapter explores how, within such a ‘counter-classical’ metaphysics, the narrative frames by which we order and project our empirical experience break in on each other as they establish what we accept as our ‘reality’.
Sergei Anatol'evich Nizhnikov, Argen Ishenbekovich Kadyrov
Despite various interpretations of Heidegger's philosophy, he is undeniably a deep critic of the metaphysical tradition in European philosophy. His task of overcoming metaphysics once again aroused interest in the fundamental issues of life in the era of the total dominance of private sciences. In the article, the authors explore the concept of metaphysics and its criticism in the work of M. Heidegger, as well as subsequent interpretations, in particular by O. Peggeler (“New Ways with Heidegger”, 1992). Criticism of metaphysics was a necessary condition for overcoming it to build a fundamental ontology. Having experienced the influence of Nietzsche, Heidegger does not remain a Nietzschean, because he considers him the last metaphysician to be overcome. In this regard, Peggeler recognizes Heidegger's main work not as “Being and Time”, but as “Reports to Philosophy” (1936), where he sought to reveal the primary sources of the concept of metaphysics. Heidegger's views regarding the interpretation of the development of metaphysics in different historical eras are specially considered.
This chapter provides an outline of the main philosophical and interpretative problems involved in Spinoza’s key concepts: Substance, Attribute, and Modes. Spinoza’s God has infinitely many qualities that constitute, or are adequately conceived as constituting, his essence, while the other qualities of Spinoza’s God, though not constituting God’s essence, follow necessarily from God’s essence. Spinoza calls the former “Attributes [attributa]” and the latter “Modes [modi].” Following a clarification of Spinoza’s understanding of Substance [substantia] in the first part of this essay, we will study in the second and third parts Spinoza’s conception of attributes and modes, respectively.
This chapter examines two crucial aspects of the metaphysics of meaning—propositions and possible world-states. It reviews why propositions—needed as meanings of sentences and objects of the attitudes—can neither be extracted from theories of truth conditions, nor defined in terms of possible world-states, It then explains why they also cannot be the mysterious, inherently representational, abstract objects they have traditionally been taken to be. Instead of explaining the representationality of sentences and cognitive states in terms of their relations to the supposedly prior and independent representationality of propositions, we must explain the representationality of propositions in terms of the representationality of the cognitive states with which they are connected. A new account of is presented along these lines.