This article deals with the incompatibility of Christian and Jewish stereotypes in asceticism and tries to establish new models for approaching ascetic tendencies within the latter. In the context of halachic regulations we examine different ascetic aspects within Judaism, with a special focus on medieval Spain. In this area we observe a certain interaction between Jewish and Sufi trends, esp. in the works of Bachja ibn Paquda, Abraham bar Chijja and Abraham Maimonides. In the works of these authors we (...) find tripartite models of asceticism which signify the path to the deity. In a comparison with Sufi texts such as those of Al-Gazali, the three levels of repentance/law, meditation/path and the recognition of the divine truth are shown to be intertwined in a similar way, and all describe the way of the philosopher or mystic to the highest knowledge. In a further section this tripartite schema is compared to kabbalistic texts with their ideas of ascent and union with the divine within ecstatic kabbalah. In the first example we observe how an erotic impulse may lead to an ascetic way of life and how the horizontal move out of society leads to a vertical ascent of the soul and the foundation of a new, mobile society. In the second text we also detect the three intertwined stages of our model and see how ascetic preparations lead to an erotic union of the mystic’s soul with the divine intellect. Asceticism is described in both texts as a mode of transformation and the path between two extremes, which finally leads to intimate knowledge of the deity. (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Lehre vom Gottlichen Willen bei den Judischen Religionsphilosophen des Mittelalters von Saadja bis Maimuni Seite Einleitung Das Problem des gottlichen willens in den philosophischen Systemen der Araber Die Stellung der judischen Religionsphilosophen zu dem vviiie-nsproblem I. Eklektiker, Saadja II Neuplatoniker Gabirol b) Bachja Jehuda Halewi d) Josef ibn Saddik III. Aristoteliker Abraham ibn Daud b) Maimuni Schlu Literaturangabe Personenverzeichnis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com (...) This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Interiority and Law presents a groundbreaking reassessment of a medieval Jewish classic, Baḥya ibn Paquda's Guide to the Duties of the Hearts. Michaelis reads this work anew as a revolutionary intervention in Jewish law, or halakha. Overturning perceptions of Baḥya as the shaper of an ethical-religious form of life that exceeds halakha, Michaelis offers a pioneering historical and conceptual analysis of the category of "inner commandments" developed by Baḥya. Interiority and Law reveals that Baḥya's main effort revolved around establishing a (...) new legal formation - namely, the "duties of the hearts" - which would deal entirely with human interiority. Michaelis takes up the implications of Baḥya's radical innovation, examining his unique mystical model of proximity to God, which he based on an increasingly growing fulfillment of the inner commandments. With an integrative approach that puts Baḥya in dialogue with other medieval Muslim and Jewish religious thinkers, this work offers a fresh perspective on our understanding of the interconnectedness of the dynamic, neighboring religious traditions of Judaism and Islam. Contributing to conversations in the history of religion, Jewish studies, and medieval studies on interiority and mysticism, this book reveals Baḥya as a revolutionary and demanding thinker of Jewish law. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the opinion of a Jewish Averroist Rabbi Josef Ibn Caspi on the relation between prophetical and philosophical truth. In the beginning of the article, we will see that in some of his writings, R. Caspi claims the prophet’s knowledge to be superior to that of the philosopher. However, in the second part of the article, we will analyze his commentary on Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed. In this commentary R. Caspi also mentions (...) the opposite opinion: that the knowledge of the prophet is only his knowledge as a philosopher and that even true prophets’ can have a few false prophecies just as good philosophers may have a few wrong opinions. He thus equates the knowledge of a prophet to that of a philosopher. In the conclusion of the article we try to determine how one can distinguish between the texts that explain the true opinion of R. Caspi and the text that our author wrote only for political and pedagogical reasons. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

It is well known that Maimonides rejects the Kalam argument for the existence of God because it assumes the temporal creation of the world, a premise for which he says there is no “cogent demonstration (burhan qat'i) except among those who do not know the difference between demonstration, dialectics, and sophistic argument.”Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), I:71:180. All references are to this translation; parenthetic in-text references are to part, chapter, (...) and page. By contrast, he claims to establish belief in the existence of God “through a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect” (I:71:182). Taken at his word, Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of the deity, like Aquinas’s five ways, have traditionally been read as models of medieval natural theology: of the power of human reason to independently establish revealed truth. In recent years, however, the same demonstrations have assumed a second kind of significance. For scholars, like myself, who argue that Maimonides holds severe views about the limitations of human knowledge of divine science and metaphysics, these demonstrations are the strongest conceivable counterevidence.The locus classicus for this view is Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I Twersky, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), I:82–109. See also his “Les Limites de la Métaphysique selon Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja et Maimonide; Sources et Antitheses de ces Doctrines chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise et Chez Themistius,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13 (1981): 211–25; “Dieu et L’Etre Selon Maimonide: Exégese d’Exode 3,14 et doctrine connexe,” in Celui qui est: Interprétations juives et chrétiennes d’Exode 3, 14, ed. A. de Libera et E. Zum Brunn (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf [Collection “Patrimoines”], 1986), 15–24; and “The Relation between Maimonides’ Halakhic and non-Halakhic Works,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed., S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987). Pines concludes, on the basis of the limitations of the intellect with respect to knowledge of metaphysics, that Maimonides, like Kant, gives priority to the practical over the theoretical. For arguments drawing different ‘skeptical’ conclusions, see my “Maimonides in the Skeptical Tradition,” ms.; “Maimonides on the Growth of Knowledge and the Limitations of the Intellect,” to appear in Tony Levy, ed., Maimonide: Traditions philosophiques et scientifiques médievales arabe, hébraique, latine; “Logical Syntax as a Key to a Secret of the Guide of the Perplexed,” (in Heb.), Iyyun 38 (1989): 137–66; “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed., H. Levine and R. Cohen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), pp. 173–226; and The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (forthcoming). If Maimonides really held that humans cannot apprehend metaphysical truths about the deity, how could he have demonstrated (or even thought he could demonstrate) the existence of God? If he does demonstrate it, then humans evidently do have knowledge of metaphysics. As one distinguished scholar has recently protested, it is nothing less than “perverse” to interpret Maimonides as “meaning that the existence of God is unknowable when he in fact prides himself on having demonstrated the existence of God in four different ways.”Herbert A. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–1993): 49–103, 86. See also Alfred L. Ivry, “The Logical and Scientific Premises of Maimonides’ Thought,” in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Allan Arkush (Amsterdam: Harwood Publishers, 1998), pp. 63–97, 70. (shrink)

Das Verhältniss des Thomas von Aquino zum Judenthum und zur jüdischen Litteratur.--Eine bisher unbekannte dem Bachja ibn Pakuda zugeeignete Schrift.--Die philosophischen und ethischen Anschauungen in Abraham bar Chijja's Hegjon ha-Nefesch.--Ueber Abraham bar Chijja's "Buch der Enthüllung".--Die Familie Schemtob in ihren Beziehungen zur Philosophie.--Die Stellung des Simon ben Zemach Duran in der Geschichte der jüdischen Religionsphilosophie.--Die philosophischen Lehren des Isaak ben Salomon Israeli.

The Jewish Philosophy Reader is the first comprehensive anthology of classic writings on Jewish philosophy from the Bible to postmodernism. The Reader is clearly divided into four separate parts: Foundations and First Principles, Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Philosophy, Modern Jewish Thought, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy. Each part is clearly introduced by the editors. The readings featured are representative writings of each era listed above and are from the following major thinkers: Abrabanel, Baeck, Bergman, Borowitz, Buber, Cohen, Crescas, Fackenheim, Geiger, Gersonides, (...) Goodman, Graetz, Halevi, Hartman, Heschel, Hess, Hirsch, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Paquda, Kellner, Kook, Krochmal, Leibowitz, Levinas, Maimonides, Maybaum, Mendelssohn, Novak, Philo, Plaskow, Rosenzweig, Saadia, Scholem, Seeskin, Soloveitchik, Spinoza, Strauss, Wolf, Zunz. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 271-272 [Access article in PDF] Lenn E. Goodman. Jewish and Islamic Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Pp. xv + 256. Cloth, $55.00. This book is a bold if not audacious survey of select themes in Jewish and Islamic philosophy. The "crosspollinations" to which the subtitle refers carry the author back to classical Greece, (...) and forward to Spinoza, Kant, Bergson, Darwin, and beyond. Medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers are placed as the centerpieces of a humanistic tradition rooted in the past and still resonating in the present.This is a view of medieval philosophy to which many a medievalist would like to subscribe, but which few would dare describe with such brio and eloquent assurance as Lenn Goodman, who is both a historian of philosophy and a philosopher. This confidence waylays Goodman, though, in that he regularly substitutes pronouncements for patient explanation and argument. The reader who is not already familiar with the issues discussed and positions advanced will have a hard time following him. More informed readers may well question many of his summary judgments and piquant observations.The ideal reader of this work is one who has read Goodman's other studies, to which the notes frequently refer. The arguments adumbrated here are presumably laid out in detail in these earlier essays and books. The text before us is thus for the most part more a statement of faith, the author's summary credo, than a reasoned exposition of Jewish and Islamic philosophy. To Goodman, "the approach is synthetic rather than descriptive" (ix).The book deals with "issues of abiding philosophical interest: freedom and determinism, the nature and meaning of history, the basis of ethical values, the foundations and social implications of friendship, the viability and relevance of the idea of God." These admirable themes are pursued in separate yet complementing chapters that compare the tenth-century free-thinker and physician Muhammad ibn Zakariyâ al-Râzî and Epicurus; the tenth-century pietist Bahya ibn Paquda and Kant; and the fourteenth-century Maghribi historian Ibn Khaldûn and Thucydides. Three other chapters compare, respectively, Maimonides and such major Islamic philosophers as Avicenna, Al-Ghazâlî, and Ibn Bâjjah; Maimonides, Al-Ghazâlî, and the Persian ethicist Miskawayh (tenth/eleventh centuries); and Maimonides, Aristotle, and Spinoza.It is at once obvious that Maimonides (twelfth century) is at the heart of this work, reflecting Goodman's longstanding interest in this towering figure of medieval Jewish philosophy. Less obvious is Goodman's contention that Maimonides is to be seen not only in relation to Avicenna, Al-Ghazâlî, and Ibn Bâjjah, but also to Râzî, Bahya, and Miskawayh. Goodman has constructed a narrative of persons and ideas, abstracting from their contexts common concerns and purposes. While there is much to admire in these constructions—patently erudite and challenging as they are—the direct filiations Goodman assumes are often conjectural at best.Take, for example, Goodman's chapter on "Maimonides and the Philosophers of Islam," with its subtitles of "Creation" and "Theophany." These terms are shorthand for Maimonides' treatment of the science of physics and metaphysics, both in their normative and extraordinary appearances. Goodman correctly notes that Maimonides is deeply indebted to Muslim philosophers (and their Greek predecessors) for his knowledge of these fields, though he does stretch matters in singling out the importance of Al-Kindî and Râzî as influences upon Maimonides' thought.Goodman does this in part because he believes Maimonides shared, in varying degrees, a creationist position with them. Goodman accepts at face value Maimonides' assertion that only a creationist thesis allows for voluntarism, a (theologically) meaningful Divine Will. "Only voluntarism," Goodman asserts in the name of Maimonides, "can break the stranglehold of necessity, making emanation itself possible, allowing change, and crucially, allowing change in the natures of things, that is, evolution, as a means of bringing creation to 'maturity'"(98). This statement, besides its anachronistic introduction of evolution into medieval notions of change, misinterprets Maimonides' view... (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to expose tn short the influence of some Hispanic Jewish thought in Spinozab ethics, especially Zn Gabirol and his booh The Improvement of the Moral Qualities, Fons Vitae and Selection of Pearls: and in ibn Paquda and his book The Duties of the Heart, bes..

Rabbis of thirteenth-century Spain were often exposed to two traditions, that of Northern France-Germany and that of Moslem Spain. Until now, the dominant discussion of how they balanced the contrast has been Bernard Septimus' analysis of Nahmanides (Ramban), who managed to draw fruitfully on both. Rabbenu Yonah b. Abraham of Gerona, Ramban's only slightly less famous relative, presents a useful counterexample.Rabbenu Yonah's early works reflect an almost-total immersion in Northern French ways of thinking and writing. Only gradually does he engage (...) ideas from Moslem Spain, suggesting that the mixing of the two traditions in his later writings resulted from years of slow growth and exposure to such Moslem Spanish authors as Rif, R. Bahye ibn Paquda, and Maimonides.His example suggests that how to react to these differing influences was a continuing issue for these rabbis, and that tracking it offers an important key to understanding the intellectual history of the rabbis of that era. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the ethical views of medieval Jewish philosophers, showing that the varieties of Jewish philosophy in the medieval period defy easy categorization, let alone condensation into a single notion of Jewish ethics. Scholars surveyed include Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Bahya ibn Paquda, Judah Halevi, Abraham ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Daud, Moses Maimonides, Levi Gersonides, Jedaiah Bedersi, Hesdai Crescas, Joseph Albo, and Joseph ibn Shemtob.

This paper examines Hermann Cohen's idiosyncratic construction of a medieval Jewish philosophical tradition, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on his Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis . This construction, not unlike modern accounts, is filtered through the central place of Maimonides. For Cohen, however, Maimonides' centrality is defined not by his systematization of Aristotelianism, but by his elevation of ethics over metaphysics. The ethical and pantheistic concerns of Maimonides' precursors, according to this reading, anticipate his uniqueness. Whereas Shlomo ibn Gabirol's pantheistic doctrine (...) of emanation, for example, assigned little weight to ethics, Abraham ibn Daud rebelled against such a doctrine. Ibn Daud—much like Bahya ibn Paquda and Abraham ibn Ezra—becomes part of a Jewish philosophical tradition that culminates in Maimonides' rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, this paper examines the way in which Cohen envisaged the pre-Maimonidean philosophical tradition, putting his highly critical reading of Shlomo ibn Gabirol and his pantheistic obsession with prime matter in counterpoint with his more favorable readings of Abraham ibn Daud and Bahya ibn Paquda. (shrink)

L’article se penche sur l’opposition bi‑l‑majāz vs. bi‑l‑ḥaqīqa qu’on rencontre dans plus d’un traite d’al‑Kindī. Il s’agit de determiner si l’usage qu’en fait al‑Kindī se situe sur le plan lexical, voire semantique, a savoir l’opposition ‛sens propre’ vs. ‛sens figure’ ou devrait plutot se lire sur le plan ontologique, ḥaqīqa s’appliquant alors a tout ce qui est propre a Dieu et majāz a ce qui est cree par lui et donc en derive. S’appuyant sur les conclusions de Wolfhart Heinrichs au (...) sujet de la genese de la dichotomie ḥaqīqa ‑ majāz, l’auteure montre que l’usage qu’al‑Kindī en fait releve de l’ordre ontologique, ce en quoi il s’accorde avec les milieux mu‛tazilites contemporains du philosophe. Cette interpretation est relayee par un temoin plus tardif, a savoir le theologien et philosophe andalou Baḥya Ibn Paqūda dont le traite al‑Hidāya ilā farā’iḍ al‑qulūb fait d’importants emprunts a la Philosophie Premiere d’al‑Kindī. (shrink)

Contents: Heft 1. Die Psychologie Saadias.--Heft 2. Die Psychologie der jüdischen Neuplatoniker. A. Die Psychologie Ibn Gabirols.--Heft 3. Die Psychologie der jüdischen Neuplatoniker. B. Josef Ibn Saddik.--Heft 4. Die Psychologie des Aristotelikes Abraham Ibn Daud.

Although Dirār b. ʿAmr is the most important mutakallim of the second century, he is unfortunately one of the unjustified names in the history of kalām. Dirâr is a mutakallim whose name is rarely mentioned in theological publications published in both Turkish and foreign languages until recently, and his importance and position are still not noticed. As a matter of fact, Josef van Ess and W. Montgomery Watt, who are famous orientalists, discovered this tragic fact and tried to make up (...) for this deficiency to some extent with their studies. Dirâr wrote a refutation of Aristotle's theory of substance and accident, opened a new way with his understanding of existence based on accidents and led Ash'ari with the theory of kasb and Ebu'l-Huzayl al-‘Allaf with his kalām accumulation. Undoubtedly, one of the things that makes Dirār important is that he had views that went beyond his time and caused him to contradict his contemporaries as early as the second century in terms of the history of Islamic thought. Considering the list of works that have not survived, except for one, in such a period when the mainstream sects were not yet formed and they were on the eve of their formation, Dirār was generally in a critical dialogue with the Islamic and non-Islamic movements he encountered and knew. For this reason, it is almost impossible to place him in any religious sect mentioned in his period. Because he often preferred to follow his own ideas rather than the opinions of others on many issues. Naturally, this makes it difficult to place Dirār in a certain school and frees him from all kinds of bonds. Yes, in the sources we come across many allegations, accusations and slanders that Dirār is a Cahmi/Jabri, he is a Mu‘tazili, he is an innovator with malignant ideas, he is an infidel to put a bounty on his head. Understanding the reasons for these depends on getting to know Dirār, understanding his ideas, and determining his position. If we say in the context of our study, the position of Dirār is actually a state of non-position, and we think that the concept that best expresses this situation in a new interpretation is "nawābit". In the light of our analysis, we see that, with the exception of a name, nawābit is used as a concept with a negative content and connotation in both theology and philosophy. The exceptional person is the famous philosopher Ibn Bājja (Avempace) from Andalusia, the contemporary of Ibn Rushd (Averroes). While Mu‘tazili mutakallims use nawābit to humiliate groups such as Ahl-i hadith and Hashviyye, which adopt the narration-oriented line that puts reason and acumen to the second place, Al-Fārābī also uses the fault types and the sick characters in his virtuous city that he has constructed to describe. Ibn Bājja, on the other hand, considers the people called nawābit within his project to be equivalent to the "mutawahhid" (alone human) whose "precaution" he aims; this usage which corresponds with the context of the concept in the study. Because, in our study, nawābit is not considered as an identity, but as a representation of a character. (shrink)

The theoretical principles and methodological aspects of the thermal field-flow fractionation applied to study the thermal diffusion of the macromolecules in solution and colloidal particles in suspension were developed. The theoretical analysis indicated that the miniaturization of the separation channel for thermal field-flow fractionation should improve the performance of this technique. A new microchannel was conceived and built. The experimental results obtained for polymer samples with an extended range of molar masses from relatively low up to ultrahigh and for the (...) colloidal particles confirmed that the achieved resolution is the same but the versatility of the microchannel is superior to that of the standard size channels owing to the substantial decrease in the heat energy flux. This important improvement allows us to achieve very high resolution when applying constant-field-force operation, it makes it much easier to program the temperature drop which is an advantageous operational mode from the viewpoint of the time of analysis, and it extends considerably the range of perfectly controlled temperatures of the cold and hot walls. The sample amount needed for one analysis can be as small as a few nanograms. (shrink)

This essay is a chapter in a book about the concepts of will and action in late-antique philosophy. It focuses on Augustine of Hippo's concept of the will. Augustine is notorious for developing the concept of an 'evil will', something considered impossible in classical Aristotelian philosophy. The essay tries to show how Augustine developed this concept from an 'intellectualist' position. It argues that while it is true that later voluntarist philosophies could refer back to Augustine as a starting point, Augustine (...) himself must also be considered within the intellectualist tradition. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Ein wichtiger Aspekt des Themas „Religion und Gewalt“ ist der Zusammenhang von Sprache und Gewalt. Sprache kann Gewalt sowohl literarisch- ästhetisch darstellen als auch ausüben, direkt, als psychische Gewalt, oder indirekt, als physische Gewalt, insofern sie zur Ausübung physischer Gewalt „bewegt“. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte diesen Themenkomplex anhand einer frühchristlichen Apologie, der Rede Tatians an die Griechen etwas genauer untersuchen. Vergleichbare Untersuchungen wurden bisher in erster Linie an christlichen Texten des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts im Hinblick auf eine in (...) jener Epoche wahrgenommene Zunahme von Intoleranz und Gewaltbereitschaft des Christentums, insbesondere gegenüber Juden, Heiden und Häretikern unternommen. Eine Analyse einer weit früheren Apologie wie der Tatians – sie ist tatsächlich einer der frühesten erhaltenen Texte dieser Art – legt jedoch nahe, dass die Motive für die Verwendung sprachlicher Gewalt differenzierter Art waren und nicht auf eine dem Christentum inhärente Tendenz zur Intoleranz reduziert werden können. Auf dem Hintergrund heutiger soziolinguistischer Forschung sollte die Verwendung sprachlicher Gewalt vielleicht sogar eher als eine Technik zur Deeskalation physischer Gewalt erwogen werden denn als Indiz für eine Tendenz zur Eskalation physischer Gewalt. (shrink)

Hermeneutics can loosely be defined as the theory or philosophy of the interpretation of menaing. It is a central topic in the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of art and language and in literary criticism. This book, first published in 1980, gives a detailed overview and analysis of the main strands of contemporary hermeneutical thought. It includes a number of readings in order to give the reader a first-hand acquaintance with the subjects and the debates within it.

The text presents the general cultural-historical thesis that one cannot adequately understand philosophy after the Second World War if one does not understand it in interaction with politics and popular culture. These three spheres find themselves in a variable triangular constellation after the Second World War. Methodologically, the text is guided by the fact that this interplay is also organised in a triangular and variable way, namely according to the options of coexistence, conflict and cooperation. Adorno’s philosophy serves as a (...) challenging example. The principle of coexistence, conflict and cooperation also serves as a framework for the second part of the text, which reformulates Adorno’s socio-critical question about the possibility of change as an ontological question. In the constellation with politics, pop music can in this context express in its own way what in philosophy is called the principle of ontological contingency. (shrink)

“This is a book about politics.” (XV) Bereits der erste Satz des Vorwortes gibt die Zielrichtung vor. Der an der University of California in Santa Barbara lehrende Althistoriker Harold A. Drake (D.) hat es sich auf mehr als 600 Seiten – der Verfasser spricht bescheiden von “a sketch” (XVII) – zum Ziel gesetzt, die facettenreiche Gestalt des spätantiken römischen Kaisers Konstantin (306–337) und seine Religionspolitik primär aus der Perspektive des begabten, auf einen umfassenden gesellschaftlichen Konsens hinarbeitenden Politikers zu beschreiben.

In der klassischen Metaphysik war der alle speziellen Aspekte der Wirklichkeit übergreifende Gesichtspunkt der des „Seins". Dem entspricht in Puntels Buch ein Theorierahmen für das uneingeschränkte „universe of discourse". Methodisch angemessen ist ihm ein nicht-fundamentalistisches kohärentiell-reflexives Begreifen, dem sich auch die Sache selbst in eben dieser Struktur darstellt, nämlich als Beziehungseinheit von Begriff und Wirklichkeit, von Semantik und Ontologie, woraus sich sowohl eine an der Sprache orientierte Sicht der Dinge ergibt als auch eine mit dem Ganzen koextensive, also sich selbst (...) einschließende Geist-Strukur als reflexiver Maßstab allen Begreifens. Damit ist eine „prima philosophia" wiedergewonnen, die als methodisch-inhaltlicher Rahmen für das Begreifen der einzelnen Bereiche des Universums geeignet ist, nämlich der Naturphilosophie und Anthropologie, der Ethik und Ästhetik, der Geschichts- und Religionsphilosophie.In classical metaphysics, „Being" constituted the one viewpoint, which encompassed all particular aspects of reality. In Puntel's book, corresponding to this viewpoint is a theoretical framework for the unrestricted „universe of discourse." For him, a non fundamentalist comprehension of reality will be methodologically adequate, insofar as it is both coherent and reflexive. For only in and though the structure of this comprehending can the subject matter present itself as a relational unity of concept and reality, and of semantics and ontology. This structure will yield both a view of things that is linguistically orientated, as well as a mind-structure that is coextensive with the whole of reality, itself included. This mind-structure serves, then, as a reflexive criterion for all acts of comprehension. With this, the book regains a „prima philosophia," understood as a methodological and content-filled framework suitable for the comprehension of individual spheres of the universe, namely, the philosophy of nature and anthropology, ethics an aesthetics, as well as the philosophy of history and religion. (shrink)