In the first part of this paper Hugh Rayment-Pickard challenges Mark Bevir's assumption that Derrida does not care about historical or other kinds of truth. A consideration of Derrida's early work on Husserl shows deconstruction to be a kind of skepsis or epoche launched in search of the truth. Yet deconstruction reveals the truth as ‘undecidable’, which means that Derrida's commitment to the truth must take the form of ‘faith’. The second part of the paper considers an example of (...) definite intentional meaning given in Mark Bevir's Logic: Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux. On examination, Petrach's motivation can be seen to be radically divided between secular and religious concerns, a split vividly illustrated in his imaginary dialogue with St Augustine: The Secret. Finally, Rayment-Pickard looks briefly at Derrida's own dialogue with St Augustine, ‘Circumfession’, which also argues that human intentions are irreducibly complex and plural. (shrink)

HSÜN Tzu's essay on "Rectifying Terms" is justly considered a work of "great logical interest." For in this essay, one finds a remarkably modern concern with such topics as the rationale for having terms; the empirical and pragmatic bases for the classification of terms; the formation of generic and specific terms; the importance of observing established linguistic practices; the necessity of complying with proper standards for the institution, ratification, and regulation of the uses of language ; the nature of argumentative (...) discourse ; and the problems inherent in successful linguistic communication. A careful examination of some passages in other essays also suggests an awareness of the distinction between deductive, inductive, and analogical inferences, though Hsün Tzu provides us no explicit discussion of the nature of reasoning and its validating rules. (shrink)

Hindu philosophical classic text on Vedānta philosophy, compiled from 108 Upanishads and Upadeśapañcadaśī of Satyanārāyaṇa Jhā; text with commentaries.

Purpose. The paper is aimed at analyzing in a comparative way the philosophical conceptions of the human, proposed by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger as the main representatives of the analytic and continental tradition of philosophizing in the XXth century. The theoretical basis of the study is determined by Wittgenstein’s legacy in the field of logical and linguistic analysis, as well as Heidegger’s existential, hermeneutical, and phenomenological ideas. Originality. Based on the analysis of the philosophical works of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, (...) the initial principles of their anthropological concepts in the unity of transcendental preconditions, essential foundations, and correlations to the world in the technosphere are reconstructed. It is demonstrated that, despite the difference in the explanation of the peculiarities in the interpretation of the realm of the transcendental and basic characteristic of the inner world of human, both philosophers emphasized the understanding of the human being through the prism of language and the need for anthropologization of science and technology. Conclusions. Wittgenstein and Heidegger developed their own original considerations on the nature of human being, which fully conform to the basic theoretico-methodological principles of their philosophical conceptions. The former focused on how language reflects a human’s world and serves as a means of expressing their knowledge and aspirations. The latter, on the contrary, interpreted the world as a reflection of language that expresses itself through human. As a supporter of analytic methodology and, accordingly, of accuracy in formulations, Wittgenstein came to the concept of the unspeakable in the process of reflection on the being of human over the language. But in Heidegger’s existential discourse, which is full of metaphors and neologisms, being of human is limited by the concept of Nothing. As a consequence, it is noted that the ontological status of values is transcendental to the world according to Wittgenstein, but it is immanent to the world, according to Heidegger. It is argued that the Austrian thinker developed a linguo-psychological approach to the study of human through the prism of the mental, but the German philosopher comprehended the human on the basis of the concept of self in the ontological sphere. It has been demonstrated that both thinkers have pointed to the challenges faced by humans in the development of science and technology while emphasizing the importance of substantiating their anthropological foundations. (shrink)

UNTIL RECENT YEARS moral traditions have not been an important topic for moral philosophy. With few exceptions, attention has been directed to the problem of moral justification, to the search for universal criteria for the assessment of moral beliefs or judgments regardless of their traditional provenance. Generally, philosophers aspire to formulate "the view from nowhere." Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue there has been a revival of interest in the concept of a living, moral tradition, especially among moral (...) philosophers concerned with the possibility of an ethics of virtue or character as a viable alternative to the ethics of principle or, say, to deontological, utilitarian, or contractarian ethics. We must observe here that in the three decades prior to 1981, some moral philosophers displayed similar concern with tradition, although terms other than "tradition" were used, for example, "forms of life," "ways of life," "moral practices," and "moral community." Rawls's conception of reflective equilibrium is also developed with an eye on the notion of tradition. Indeed, Rawls has been quite explicit about his tradition-oriented approach to moral theory: "What justifies a conception of justice is not its being true to an order antecedent to and given to us, but its congruence with our deeper understanding of ourselves and our aspirations, and our realization that, given our history and the traditions embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable doctrine.". (shrink)