Nulle part dans son oeuvre Aristote n'avait traite de la notion de providence. C'est a Alexandre d'Aphrodise, exegete du corpus aristotelicien qui vecut au III siecle que nous devons la tentative originale d'aborder la question du destin et de la providence selon les principes et les methodes du Stagirite. La presente edition, fruit d'un inestimable travail de recherche philologique, riche d'un apparat critique complet, presente un etat des lieux des connaissances sur l'auteur et commente ce texte longtemps meconnu ou se (...) melent les pensees grecques et arabes. La longue introduction fournit une abondante documentation, notamment sur l'identite d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise et propose une liste exhaustive de ses oeuvres, assorties a chaque fois d'un bref commentaire, tant pour les ecrits en grec que pour ceux dont seule la traduction arabe nous est parvenue. De riches commentaires philosophiques donnent tous les elements pour comprendre la portee de ce texte aux influences multiples. Cette edition est en outre dotee d'un stemma, d'une bibliographie, d'un index verborum et d'un index nominum. (shrink)

Dans le De fato, Alexandre construit une théorie péripatéticienne du destin et réfute les Stoïciens, partisans dune conception dure du destin. Par là il offre un document majeur sur le déterminisme dans lAntiquité. Louvrage montre comment lexégèse dAristote lui permet de proposer une conception nouvelle de la responsabilité.

Preliminaries: Terminology and Notation We may make a distinction between temporally definite and temporally indefinite sentences. ...

trans. R. W. Sharples. Alexander addresses a number of questions drawn from a range of topics in Aristotle's works.

In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. _Fate, Time, and Language_ presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis (...) reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. (shrink)

In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. _Fate, Time, and Language_ presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis (...) reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. (shrink)

In the early steps of the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant briefly addresses the threat posed by usurpatory concepts such as 'fate' and 'fortune'. Commentators have largely passed over these remarks, but in this paper I argue that a careful analysis of the reasons why 'fate' and 'fortune' are usurpatory reveals an important point about the relation between the Deduction and the Principles chapters of the Critique. In particular, I argue that 'fate' (...) and 'fortune' are usurpatory because they are unable to discriminate between the particular contents of experience, and that this requires that Kant provide an account of how the categories are able to accomplish this task. And this in turn shows that the justificatory work begun in the Deduction can be completed only in the Schematism and Principles. (shrink)

: Fate and fatalism have been powerful notions in many societies, from Homer's Iliad, the Greek moira, the South Asian karma, and the Chinese ming in the ancient world to the modern concept of "destiny." But fate and fatalism are now treated with philosophical disdain or as a clearly inferior version of what is better considered as "determinism." The concepts of fate and fatalism are defended here, and fatalism is clearly distinguished from determinism. (...) Reference is made to the ancient Greek and Chinese versions to explore the various dimensions of these ideas. (shrink)

The author could have shown the other perspective also where fate or fortune is proclaimed to be in the hands of a person. It is notable that almost all of the translations and works she cites are by authors from outside the Indian tradition, with a Semitic bearing on their thought. The author comes a bit too strongly and without sufficient background material, in brushing aside as inconsequential, years of thought and philosophising in the Indian tradition. However, no (...) Eastern tradition gives a concrete validity to the existence of heaven and hell, and they are just some flavours in the religious stories and anecdotes, of which Puranas form a major part. Heaven, hell, fate, and fatalism are pronouncedly Semitic concepts. Had the author presented a balanced view, this book had the potential to become a remarkable work. (shrink)

Essays on key moments in the intellectual history of the West This book forms a major contribution to the discussion on fate, providence and moral responsibility in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early Modern times. Through 37 original papers, renowned scholars from many different countries, as well as a number of young and promising researchers, write the history of the philosophical problems of freedom and determinism since its origins in pre-socratic philosophy up to the seventeenth century. The main (...) focus points are classic Antiquity (Plato and Aristotle), the Neoplatonic synthesis of late Antiquity (Plotinus, Proclus, Simplicius), and thirteenth-century scholasticism (Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent). They do not only represent key moments in the intellectual history of the West, but are also the central figures and periods to which Carlos Steel, the dedicatary of this volume, has devoted his philosophical career. (shrink)

Mark Spencer has brought together eighty-seven American discussions, dating from 1758 to 1850, of Hume’s work. A few of these discussions may previously have received scholarly attention, but most have not. A few of the items are brief, no more than a paragraph or two, and some others are slight, even as clues to the cultural history of the thirteen colonies and the United States they became. But taken as a whole, the collection adds a valuable new dimension to that (...) history and to our knowledge of Hume’s reception in North America. Many items provide useful background to Spencer’s forthcoming book on the reception of Hume’s political thought in eighteenth-century America. (shrink)

Robert Hanna's twelfth book, The Fate of Analysis, is a comprehensive revisionist study of Analytic philosophy from the early 1880s to the present, with special attention paid to Wittgenstein's work and the parallels and overlaps between the Analytic and Phenomenological traditions. By means of a synoptic overview of European and Anglo-American philosophy since the 1880s-including accessible, clear, and critical descriptions of the works and influence of, among others, Gottlob Frege, G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Alexius Meinong, Franz Brentano, (...) Edmund Husserl, The Vienna Circle, W.V.O. Quine, Saul Kripke, Wilfrid Sellars, John McDowell, and Robert Brandom, and, particularly, Ludwig Wittgenstein-The Fate of Analysis critically examines and evaluates modern philosophy over the last 140 years. In addition to its critical analyses of the Analytic tradition and of professional academic philosophy more generally, The Fate of Analysis also presents a thought-provoking, forward-looking, and positive picture of the philosophy of the future from a radical Kantian point of view. (shrink)

The ‘model approach’ facilitates a quantitative-oriented study of conceptual changes in large corpora. This paper implements the ‘model approach’ to investigate the erosion of the traditional art-nature distinction in early modern natural philosophy. I argue that a condition for this transformation has to be located in the late scholastic conception of final causation. I design a conceptual model to capture the art-nature distinction and formulate a working hypothesis about its early modern fate. I test my hypothesis on (...) a selected corpus of 25 works published in the Dutch academic milieu between 1607 and 1748. I analyse the corpus through a procedure based on concordancing of keywords associated with the model. I argue that the results obtained constitute a successful pilot study for the implementation of the model approach on larger scale research. (shrink)

Central passages: Plutarch On Stoic Self‐Contradictions 1045b–c; 104950, 1056; Stobaeus Ecl. I 79.1–12. The physical and ontological foundations of the Stoic theory of determinism are investigated: the active principle, causation, motion, and qualitative states and how they relate to the Stoic concept of propositions. Stoic teleological determinism grows out of the basic assumptions of Stoic cosmology and is thus firmly anchored in early Stoic physics. Stoic physics stands out in antiquity not so much because it is a deterministic system, (...) but because it contains a worked‐out theory of universal, mechanical, causal determinism. In the Stoic theory of universal fate, the teleological and mechanical aspects of Stoic determinism are combined. (shrink)

The article considers the interpretation of the culture and philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Babylon in the texts of writers of the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries. This topic was highly important and widely discussed in connection with the outstanding discoveries of archaeological expeditions in the 1900–1920s in the Valley of the Kings on the Nile. In his treatise “Tajna trekh: Egipet i Vavilon”, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, referring to religious views of the previous eras, attempted to find an ideological synthesis that (...) could unite and reconcile people in the hard times of wars and revolutions. Alexander Chayanov in his story “Puteshestvie moego brata Alekseia v stranu krest’ianskoj utopii” turned to the biblical symbolism of the Tower of Babel which sought to overcome, as it were, the chaos that engulfed society—to give a warning against rash prometheistic ideas. He examined the ability of man to fight against the power of fate, to remain true to himself and to his ideas. In his mystical stories there can be traced allusions to the mysteries of the goddess Isis. Their heroines bear chthonic features. Chayanov examined how the feeling of love can destroy or revive the hero depending on his integrity and readiness to undergo evolution in order to find harmony. (shrink)

This book traces the concept of melancholy in Walter Benjamin's early writings. Rather than focusing on the overtly melancholic subject matter of Benjamin's work or the unhappy circumstances of his own fate, Ferber considers the concept's implications for his philosophy. Informed by Heidegger's discussion of moods and their importance for philosophical thought, she contends that a melancholic mood is the organizing principle or structure of Benjamin's early metaphysics and ontology. Her novel analysis of Benjamin's arguments about theater (...) and language features a discussion of the _Trauerspiel_ book that is amongst the first in English to scrutinize the baroque plays themselves. _Philosophy and Melancholy_ also contributes to the history of philosophy by establishing a strong relationship between Benjamin and other philosophers, including Leibniz, Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger. (shrink)

Most of us have felt, at one time or another, an attraction to the idea that fate plays a role in our lives. It is difficult to dismiss entirely the notion that certain things were somehow meant to be. Perhaps key events did not just happen but were inevitable, maybe even a part of our destiny. As thoughtful and critical beings, however, we may find that we cannot explain to ourselves or to others just what fate means. In (...) this groundbreaking work, Michael Gelven confronts the question of fate and shows how it is possible to think clearly about fate without abandoning logic or philosophical sophistication. Dismissing the mysterious or the psychological, Gelven subjects the issue to rigorous philosophical examination, thereby opening the topic to critical and rational sensibility. Gelven raises the challenging question "what is fate?" and seeks to answer it by expressing the problem in terms of what it means to be fated. Chance, destiny, fortune, inevitability--these four aspects of fate provide the foundation for the investigation. Gelven closely examines these aspects through four corresponding figures--the gambler, the historian, the birthday celebrant, and the tragedian--and demonstrates how each interacts with fate. His findings are both surprising and provocative. Finally, Gelven explores the full significance of what it means to be an individual buffeted by uncontrolled destinies. Placing the great human issues of freedom, mortality, rationality, and truth within the context of his discussion, Gelven reveals how our existential meaning is indeed consistent with our being fated. Written in clear, nontechnical language for the philosophical audience as well as for those who are simply perplexed by fate's wanton authority, Why Me? offers an enlightening and stimulating inquiry into the nature of our existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Origen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture by Claire HallMilanna FritzOrigen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture by Claire Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 195 pp.Origen's (AD 185–255) surviving corpus is studied by scholars across the disciplines of theology philosophy and classics. Drawing from each of these fields, in Origen and Prophecy, Clare Hall applies Origen's self-proposed (...) tripartite exegesis of Scripture, in which verses can be read at a "somatic, psychic, or pneumatic level," to his conceptualization of prophecy [End Page 293] (193). Hall's argument examines the "landscape of pagan, Jewish, and early Christian religiosity" and considers the "whole range of Origen's corpus" in relation to "wider structures and themes in his work" (4, 25). In doing so, Hall presents a compelling analysis embedding Origen's system of exegesis and theology of prophecy within the intellectual history of prophecy in the late classical and early Christian world.In her first few chapters, Hall explores Origen's definitions of prophecy in relation to its Jewish and Greco-Roman influences and his system of scriptural exegesis. Hall remains cognizant of terminology used by classical authors as she describes Origen's word choice, noting, for instance, that he varies his language most when the prophetic validity of the author is in question (9–12). She summarizes Greek, Roman, and Jewish conceptualizations of prophecy, then turns to Scripture and early Christian texts, all of which shape Origen's own "notions of wisdom, knowledge, and prophecy" (20, 29). Hall argues that Origen's On First Principles and homilies on Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are underlaid by a coherent exegetical system. Further, she explains, Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs applies this same system to other forms of knowledge, including prophecy, which has a future-telling sense, a moral sense, and a mystical and revelatory sense (27, 50, 39–45). In her analysis, Hall provides insight into the philosophical and theological foundations for the "revelatory potential of allegory" as understood by Origen and other early Christian authors and carefully distinguishes Origen's own beliefs from the tenets of Origenism (30–31). To strengthen her argument, Hall cites a plethora of secondary scholars on Origen, including Caroline Bammel, Gunnar af Hällström, Robert Hauck, and Ilaria Ramelli (18–25).In her next few chapters, Hall unfolds Origen's system of distinguishing between true and false prophets and his advocacy for the unity of prophecy within Scripture in his response to Marcionism (199, 149–52). Chief among Hall's insightful contributions, however, is her treatment of the complex interrelation of prophecy and human autonomy: within Origen's framework, how does providential foreknowledge permit human free choice? To approach an answer, Hall traces the emerging conception of free will as "freedom of decision" among Greek authors such as Aristotle, Chrysippus and the Stoics, the Platonists, the Epicureans, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, who, she argues, laid the groundwork for Origen's "innovative narrative understanding of free will" in the context of "epistemological considerations surrounding prophecy" (55–71, 75). These sections of her book present a striking glimpse into early Christian departure from the Greek classical tradition, and her exploration of Origen's defense of both free will and [End Page 294] divine foreknowledge opens the door to further research on his theology of conversion and the relation between grace and nature (75–85, 91).While the entirety of her work is thought-provoking, some elements of Hall's presentation of Origen's theology may be open to a critical response by patristic scholars. Throughout her work, Hall consistently characterizes Origen's spiritual readings of Scripture—and prophecy—in direct opposition to its literal readings. For instance, she writes that, for Origen, just as "some verses do not have a somatic reading and cannot be taken literally," some prophecies are intended to be read as "stumbling blocks or riddles for the exegete to ponder," rather than accurate or "coherent" predictions of the future (193, 53). Additionally, Hall ties Origen's insights on prophecy in the Old Testament to his depiction of Christ as the "ultimate content of... (shrink)

The book offers the first analysis of the influence exercised by the concept of space on the emergence and continuing operation of international law. By adopting a historical perspective and analysing work of two central early modern thinkers – Leibniz and Hobbes – it offers a significant addition to a limited range of resources on early modern history of international law. The book traces links between concepts of space, universality, human cognition, law, and international law in these two (...) early modern thinkers in a comparative fashion. Through this analysis, the book demonstrates the dependency of the contemporary international law on the Hobbesian concept of space. Although some Leibnizian elements continue to operate, they are distorted. This continuing operation of Leibnizian elements is explained by the inability of international law, which is based on the Hobbesian concept of space, to ensure universality of its normative foundation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Leibniz on Innate Ideas and the Early Reactions to the Publication of the Nouveaux Essais (1765)* GIORGIO TONELLI LIzmNIz' Nouve~ Essais,written in 1703-1705 (citedhereafter as NE), were posthumously published by Raspe x in 1765, at the beginning of a Leibniz revivalwhich was alsomarked by thelargeDutens editionof 1768. As the greatupheaval in Kant's thought took place in 1769, and as thisupheaval had as one of itsmain characteristicsthe rejection of (...) sensibility as the sole source of knowledge,2 it is easy to infer that Kant's reading of the NE may have been one of the elements prompting him to adopt his new solution. It is not the ambition of this paper to answer that difficult question: rather it is an attempt towards clearing the ground for an answer to it, by inquiring into the early reactions of philosophical circles, especially German, to the appearance of the NE. To what extent was the significance of the particular doctrines expounded in the NE noticed? To what extent did contemporary philosophers realize that these were to profoundly modify the picture of Leibniz' psychological tenets? And, therefore, to what extent could Kant have been stimulated by a widespread reaction to pay special attention to the peeu!ia~lies of that work7 In conformity with this purpose, I shall focus my research on the question o/the origin of knowledge. As it is my task to reconstruct a general philosophical atmosphere, I will not confine my research to philosophic reactions prior to 1769, but will also take into consideration some attitudes of the following decade. As frequently happens in the history of ideas, the impact of a certain event may be noticed almost immediately after its occurrence, but the documentation of its effects may be available only after a certain delay. But they are nevertheless indicative of that prior impact. Before starting this enquiry, I shall: (1) point out the difference between the doctrine in question as it is expounded in the NE and as it appeared in the previously published works of Leibniz; (2) examine the interpretations of Leibniz' psychology prior to 1765, especially as represented in the version which was accepted by Wolff and incorporated into his system. * I want to expressmy gratitude to my friend Dr. Heinrieh Schepers,Director of the LeibnizStelle of Miinster University, for severalreferences and suggestions,and for his sympathy with the subjectof this paper. 1 Oeuvres philosophique$ latines et franfaises du feu Mr. de Leibniz tir~es de ses Manuscrits qui #e conservent dans la Biblioth~que royale ~ Hanovre et publi~es par M. Rud. Eric Raspe. Avec une preface de Mr. Kaestner, Professeur en math$matique d GOttingue (Amsterdam et Leipzig, 1765). Cf. (3. Tondli, "Die Umwiilzung yon 1769 bed Kant," Kant-Studien,LIV (1963), 369 ft. [437] 438 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I. It is an obvious principle in Leibniz' metaphysics that all knowledge stems from the interior of the soul, or monad: from this point of view, it may correctly be stated that for Leibniz all knowledge is innate. It is equally obvious in our day that Leibniz held that there is a basic distinction between the way we know necesstwy and universal truths, emerging from the soul's intellect, and the way we know contingent and particular truths, emerging from the soul's sensibility. Therefore, from a psychological and exoteric point of view (as in the NE) the first kind of truths may be called innate (par excellence), while the second may be called acquired. As it happened, the works of Leibniz published prior to 1765 almost exclusively represented the general metaphysical point of view, and this led to a fatal distortion of his thought by his followers. The interpretations of Leibniz were from the very beginningm and still are in our day---profoundly influenced by the fact that many of Leibniz' works were not published in his lifetime, but appeared (and still shall appear) posthumously during more than two centuries. Consequently the distinction between the origin of necessary and the origin of contingent truths was generally overlooked. This is clearly explained by an examination of Leibniz' worksa which were published before his death (1716) and shortly thereafter. One of the most influential... (shrink)

This two-volume work examines far-reaching debates on the concept of courage from Greek antiquity to the Christian and mediaeval periods, as well as the modern era. Volume 1 explains how competing accounts of epistêmê, rational wisdom, and truth dominated classical antiquity. Early Christian and mediaeval thinkers, in contrast, favoured fortitude founded on faith and fear of God over philosophical reasoning left to its own devices. Volume 2 turns to theories of courage from the early modern period to the (...) present. It shows how the twin laws of polis and physis are at the heart of post-medieval thought. Courage is found at the crossroads of love and dread, freedom and fate, happiness and suffering, as well as power and submission to the ruling order. The later influence of evolutionism, existentialism, and the social and natural sciences on moral philosophy is also addressed at some length. The protection of people's best interests, the passions and powers of the human will, and the rule of active energy in all aspects of life supplant courage formerly viewed through the lens of reason or faith, or a combination of the two. These new ideas, paradoxically, herald the end of the ethics of courage. They also undermine the courage of ethical thinking. Courage is no longer an end in itself, nor is it a means to happiness "at the end." Regardless of what Gandhi, Tillich, and Foucault have to say about the topic, late modernity and the global age witness a marked loss of interest in courage as an idea worthy of conceptual investigation. Debates about the moral implications of courage give way to the value-free science of resilience, which studies how people can recover from past trauma and find wellness, primarily in the realm of physis. (shrink)

This collection of essays presents new insights into what shaped and constituted the Renaissance and early modern views of fate and fortune. It argues that these ideas were emblematic of a more fundamental argument about the self, society, and the universe and shows that their influence was more widespread, both geographically and thematically, than hitherto assumed.

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible (...) with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will. (shrink)

Abstract: This article contends that the relation of early logical empiricism to Kant was more complex than is often assumed. It argues that Reichenbach's early work on Kant and Einstein, entitled The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (1920) aimed to transform rather than to oppose Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. One the one hand, I argue that Reichenbach's conception of coordinating principles, derived from Kant's conception of synthetic a priori principles, offers a valuable way of accounting (...) for the historicity of scientific paradigms. On the other hand, I show that even Reichenbach, in line with Neo-Kantianism, associated Kant's view of synthetic a priori principles too closely with Newtonian physics and, consequently, overestimated the difference between Kant's philosophy and his own. This is even more so, I point out, in the retrospective account logical empiricism presented of its own history. Whereas contemporary reconstructions of this history, including Michael Friedman's, tend to endorse this account, I offer an interpretation of Kant's conception of a priori principles that contrasts with the one put forward by both Neo-Kantianism and logical empiricism. On this basis, I re-examine the early Reichenbach's effort to accommodate these principles to the paradigm forged by Einstein. (shrink)

The project examines the reasons for the many philosophical difficulties, and the failures, that Nietzsche sensed when he had concluded The Birth of Tragedy. The subsequent philosophical decision he made, on the way to reconceiving the classical ideas of tragedy, destiny, and martyrdom, allowed him to begin to conceive of what he would identify as a thinking devoted to affirmation. Everything he commits himself to writing after 1872, including the unpublished notes on myth from the Philosophenbuch, is a response to (...) the disillusionment of his belief in Dionysos and the false promise of tragic affirmation. The Greek god had become a problem and an obstacle. Sustaining him, as a philosophical idea, was going to prove to be highly mixed; the struggle would become relentless. The Greek god is, in many ways, impossible to believe in as an ideal, in antiquity or for the present; and for a specific reason: the connection between the institution of the Dionysian festival and the religious ritual of sacrifice could not be ignored by Nietzsche. His sense of a "Dionysian nausea" has been overlooked. Tragedy and sacrifice are a binding relation in the Greek polis. Nietzsche seems to recognize the fact and commits himself to directly confronting the tragedy/sacrifice relation in all his subsequent works and with the intent on being a unique, individual resource for the truth of his self-revelations. He identifies himself with a new conception of the martyr (the witness) in order to provide an alternative to the classical martyr as the victim of violence and death and who, moreover, is executed by the state. Socrates and Jesus are omni-present for him. Nietzsche presents himself as new world-historical alternative and the self-revelations of a witness for the individuals he will often call (especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra) his friends and neighbours and disciples. Is the whole of his philosophical enterprise successful? Do his self-revelations lead to the creation of the free spirit and therefore give him some assurance about the future of his legacy? Or does his commitment to the eternal recurrence, for example, lead him to a terrible realization? The study presents the force of Nietzsche's thought as he created the resources, which he hoped could be effectively transferred to a reader, to begin to create an affirmative reality he defines from out of the fullness of the free spirit and the philosopher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 227-229 [Access article in PDF] Philip Pothen. Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. x + 235. Paper, $29.95. Most scholarship argues that Nietzsche grants art a position of vital importance for culture, history, and philosophy. Philip Pothen seeks to challenge this general view of Nietzsche [End Page 227] while at the same time raising new (...) questions about Nietzsche's thoughts on art and how Nietzsche's views on art relate to his philosophical concerns. He does not locate Nietzsche's "deep suspicion and at times hostility" (1) toward art in a specific period of Nietzsche's thought, but instead traces it from the notebooks of the 1870s through Nietzsche's so-called "positivist period" to the very end of his productive life. The result is an honest attempt to recognize Nietzsche's ambivalent and at times hostile attitude toward that which is often times unquestionably admired.Although the Birth of Tragedy is the central text for most scholarship about Nietzsche's thoughts on art, this scholarship does not generally look to contemporaneous unpublished private writings. By conducting a close reading of Nietzsche's first published work in juxtaposition with selections from the Nachlass, Pothen shows that even as early as the 1870s, Nietzsche was developing some of the major themes of his subsequent writings on art. Nietzsche had begun to make decisive breaks with conceptual presuppositions inherited from Schopenhauer and the Kantian philosophical framework as well as from Wagner.Nietzsche's earlier belief in a rebirth of the Dionysian through works of genius such as Wagner's was severely criticized by Nietzsche himself in his 1886 Preface to the Birth of Tragedy. The second chapter of this book looks at Nietzsche's criticism of the concept of "genius" and the recognition of the "death of art" in modern artists such as Wagner. Pothen shows that Nietzsche gives a highly naturalistic account of genius, criticizing traditional notions that elevate the genius to a higher status than the merely talented artist.According to Pothen, the decadence of modern art, the deception of the artist, and the "end of art" suggests a type of "sickness" for Nietzsche. Art "represents a suppression of the instincts of becoming" (56). Pothen claims the future of art and its possible "death" are much more severe for Nietzsche than, for instance, Hegel. The challenging conclusion is that Nietzsche, not Hegel, properly announces the "death of art" in modernity.What, however, of the "monological work of art" that Nietzsche first formulates in the Gay Science? By considering the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a decisive conclusion and not an inferior appendage, Pothen argues that this work "for All and None" illustrates "a radical and perhaps impossible orientation" (9) that the godless artist must take up according to Nietzsche. It is a creative position "in favor of solitude [Einsamkeit], forgetting [vergessen] and inner strength" (74).Chapter four of Pothen's book addresses the concept of the "will to power." Pothen argues that it is a "metaphysical principle" of explanation that nevertheless undermines certain other metaphysical concepts such as a unified "subject" as well as traditional aesthetic concepts such as artistic autonomy. Pothen challenges Heidegger's claim that art is the "highest expression" of the will to power for Nietzsche while utilizing Heidegger's insights into art to highlight and question previous themes in the book such as the reduction of art to physiology (117-32).Chapter five concentrates on Nietzsche's analysis of the psychology of production and his critique of the Kantian themes of "disinterestedness" and the "judgment of taste." The book ends with a look at Nietzsche's final productive year of 1888. In works such as The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche, Pothen suggests, holds decadent works such as Wagner's as representative of all art produced "in the time of the death of God and the revaluation of all values" (169). For Nietzsche, modernity's inability to understand its own time might "herald the death or the end of this art of works... (shrink)

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. He stresses the (...) nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the _Tractatus_ with the "therapeutic" readings of _Philosophical Investigations_. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the _Tractatus_, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's _Being and Time_--a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

This paper pursues precise information on the use of the Sanskrit word buddhi, “the intellect,” in the context of epic adhyātma discourse. The term buddhi makes its debut in this genre of discourse in texts of the Mahābhārata’s Mokṣadharmaparvan before going on to become a central term of classical Sāṃkhya philosophy. This paper examines closely the presence and role of the “intellect” in the argument of the Manubṛhaspatisaṃvāda, a text that is unusually rich in its theorizing and description of the (...) intellect. But this text is not primarily about the intellect, even if that organ plays a prominent role in the three main phases of the text’s teaching. The Manu-Bṛhaspati is a major, deliberately constructed body of teaching on ethics, ontology, and psychology, and what it says regarding the buddhi is embedded in those teachings, usually, but not always, incidentally. This paper tries to grasp those teachings in their particular idiom and present Manu’s teachings on the buddhi in the natural progression and settings of the overall argument. A number of points comparing the buddhi in this text to the adhyātma text-pair of MBh 12.187/239–41 are made and a striking contrast between Manu’s buddhi and the ‘saving buddhis’ of the early Mokṣadharma is discussed briefly. The main points regarding the buddhi in Manu’s teachings turn out to be: First, and most importantly, the buddhi has the ability not only to see and “resolve” current sensory experience coming from the senses and the mind, but to store those sensations and re-arrange and re-interpret them outside of ‘real time’. This ‘trans-temporal depth’ of the buddhi may be the reason for the second major fact about it, that the buddhi is the locus in a person from which that person’s residual energy from past deeds operates; the buddhi transmits that energy and its qualitative differentiations into the mind and the senses, entities that derive from it and operate “below” it. Third, the buddhi’s ability to select and arrange past perceptions and imagine not previously observed arrangements among them is the source of its fatefully erroneous substitution of the immediately present, phenomenal self of experience for the transcendent true Self. Fourth, the buddhi’s ability to imagine and re-interpret experience makes it the principal faculty for determining the truth of things that are not immediately apparent to the senses. Establishing the existence of the transcendent soul is the most important such truth, for that serves as the foundation for one’s eventually coming to see the true Self. Fifth, the buddhi works with the main perceptual organ, the mind, to clarify and then neutralize the operation of the senses, allowing yoga meditation to go forward. In the course of yoga meditation, when the buddhi is emptied of karma energy, the buddhi becomes “tantamount to the manas” and the ultimate reality is “seen, as if it were a streak of gold on a touchstone,” undoing the buddhi’s fateful error. Sixth, a point stressed in several places in the text, is that the entire embodied soul, which is basically led by the buddhi, is tremendously energetic in its rush down to the physical reality. It is not clear whether some of this energy is part of the original emanation of the principle of the embodied soul from the Absolute, but it is clear that some of it is the energy of karma stored in the “intellect.”. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan.

"In the sweat of your face you will eat bread" - this well-known biblical imperative from the Book of Genesis is best suited to the general characteristics of the life path of the famous Ukrainian scholar and theologian Ivan Ivanovich Ogienko, also known as Metropolitan Ilarion. All his long enough life, from early childhood to his death, he worked for the benefit of his native Ukrainian people, expressing his hard work one of the most significant of his existential traits. (...) Maybe that's why Christianity came to the liking of the ancient ancestors of Ukrainians, who called for individualization through the hard work they never frightened, because they found in it not only livelihood but also the joy of unlucky fate. In the image of his widowed and hard-working mother, Ivan Ogienko saw the fate of the entire enslaved Ukraine and, from an early age, firmly believed that only a conscientious work for the good of his people could earn the right to God's reward. "Serve the people, then serve God!" became the main life principle of I. Ogienko, the amazing hard work of which requires a separate and meticulous scientific research. (shrink)

_Hegel and Schelling in Early Nineteenth-Century France_ is a two-volume work that documents the French reception of G. W. F. Hegel and F. W. J. Schelling from 1801 to 1848. It shows that the story of the "French Hegel" didn't begin with Wahl and Kojève by giving readers a solid understanding of the various ways in which German Idealism impacted nineteenth-century French philosophy, as well as providing the first ever English-language translations of excerpts from the most important philosophical texts (...) of the era. Inside volume one, readers will find a number of interpretative frameworks to help them get to grips with this neglected field in the history of ideas. In addition to excerpted translations and a narrative of Hegel’s and Schelling’s fate in France during the early nineteenth century, this volume includes an introduction on transnational reception history, as well as an analytical catalogue of the translations of their work produced in French at this time, of the publications which appropriated or interrogated their philosophical legacy, and of the journals, institutional structures and other mechanisms of dissemination that brought Hegel’s and Schelling’s philosophy into France. The book thus details the ways in which French philosophers of the period took up the debates and concepts of German Idealism, transformed them or rejected them. In this way, it aims to contribute to a reversal of the serious neglect of early nineteenth-century French thought in English-language scholarship and, in so doing, goes beyond a nation-based narrative of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

“Foreknowledge, Fate and Freedom” is concerned with diagnosing and debunking a pervasive and prevalent folk intuition: that a foreknown future would be problematically, and freedom-hinderingly, fixed. In it, I discuss foreknowledge in and of itself, but also as a lens through which we can examine other intuitions and concepts: the apparent asymmetry of future and past; worries about fate and free will; notions of coincidence and likelihood; assumptions about God, time travel and ourselves. This thesis provides the first (...) philosophical map of a region of conceptual space visited often by the folk and popular culture, and as a result ties together a host of disparate threads in the literature. I make three central claims: 1. The folk intuition is wrong in rejecting foreknowledge wholesale on the basis that it entails a problematically fixed future, and thereby undermines our freedom. 2. Foreknowledge gives rise to new problems, and sheds new light on old ones, but none of these are insurmountable. 3. The same paradoxes thought to plague backwards time travel can arise in foreknowledge cases, and can be defused in the same way. I conclude that foreknowledge is puzzling, but possible: it neither inevitably entails fatalism nor precludes free will. While its consequences may be strange, they are not sufficient to vindicate the folk intuition. (shrink)

Development of an animal embryo involves the coordination of cell divisions, a variety of inductive interactions and extensive cellular rearrangements. One of the biggest challenges in developmental biology is to explain the relationships between these processes and the mechanisms that regulate them. Teleost embryos provide an ideal subject for the study of these issues. Their optical lucidity combined with modern techniques for the marking and observation of individual living cells allow high resolution investigations of specific morphogenetic movements and the construction (...) of detailed fate maps. In this review we describe the patterns of cell divisions, cellular movements and other morphogenetic events during zebrafish early development and discuss how these events relate to the formation of restricted lineages. (shrink)

The reputations of scientists among their contemporaries depend not only on accomplishment, but also on interactions affected by influence and personality. The historical lore of most fields of scientific endeavor preserve these reputations, often through the identification of founders, innovators, and prolific workers whose contributions are considered fundamental to progress in the field. Historians frequently rely on the historical lore of scientists to guide their studies of the development of ideas, exhibiting justifiable caution in reassessing reputations in the light of (...) current knowledge. However, the transmission of historical lore can obscure the relative importance of accomplishment, influence and personality in shaping contemporary reputations, leaving the historian to either accept reputations at face value or attempt to reconstruct the context in which they were created. The science of taxonomy, because of its rules of priority, leaves a relatively accurate record of historical accomplishment through the persistence of taxa in catalogues and faunal guides. These records allow the modern historian an unbiased means to assess the relative accomplishments of historical figures and therefore a means to critically reassess reputations independent of personality and influence. In the historical lore of North American ichthyology, Louis Agassiz at Harvard and Spencer Baird at the Smithsonian emerge as central figures in the early development of the field during the mid-1800s, contributing not only through the quality and quantity of their science, but also through their roles as institutional leaders and mentors to workers who followed. Charles Girard, originally a student of Agassiz's and later a coworker with Baird, receives little notice in the history of ichthyology, and his reputation is that of a minor player in the initial description of the North American fish fauna, and one whose work appears to have been flawed or even careless when compared to his contemporaries. However, a review of both contemporary and modern taxonomic works reveals that Girard's productivity far exceeded that of either Agassiz or Baird. Furthermore, an examination of the tendency of Girard and his contemporaries to introduce synonymous names into the literature, which might reflect careless or uncritical work, suggests that Girard was among the more accomplished workers of his era, including Agassiz and Baird. Girard's low ranking in the folklore of North American ichthyology, therefore, can not be attributed to discernible shortcomings in his scientific work, but rather to a public and private campaign of criticism waged by Agassiz after Girard's departure from Harvard. While Agassiz's dispute with Girard stemmed from their personal interactions, he expressed them as criticisms of Girard's work, and thus helped shape Girard's scientific reputation as it has been transmitted through the lore of ichthyology. This case study reveals how scientific reputation may not always rest on accomplishment, but can be influenced by personal interactions obscured by time but nonetheless important to history. (shrink)

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible (...) with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will. (shrink)

For all the differences in the teachings and fate of Franz Rosenzweig and Mikhail Bakhtin, comparing them with one another is extremely instructive and reveals important and often lost meanings of 20th-century philosophy. Bakhtin made his debut in 1929 as the author of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creative Art, but then went into exile for sufficient years and emerged from oblivion only in the 1960s. Rosenzweig died in 1929 and was almost forgotten for many years. Now, almost a century later, (...) we see in Bakhtin’s philosophy, especially in his early works, and in Rosenzweig’s philosophy very much in common. Both sought to create a new philosophical system that radically rethinks the subject of philosophy. Both went beyond the traditional New European ontology, both recognized the fundamentality of language and language arts in the philosophy of the future, and, finally, both became the creators of the philosophy of dialogue as an important trend in 20th-century thought. For all that, there were many cultural, religious, and intellectual differences between Bakhtin and Rosenzweig. However, consideration of both the commonalities and differences in their philosophical systems is extremely fruitful not only for the cultural history of the 20th century but also for philosophical studies of the future. (shrink)

The paper analyzes, from a perspective which is itself existential-ontological, the way in which in an early text of Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation) [1922] – which had already outlined some determinative elements of the ideas expounded in Being and Time –, the meditation on the always living and current conditions and hermeneutical situation of philosophizing expanded in fact into an inquiry about the origins, grounds, essence and sense of philosophy as such. Meditation in (...) and through which philosophy identifies itself and is founded on the one hand exactly as a mode of existence of the mortal “human Dasein” (menschliches Dasein), that is a factic mode of existence of this, philosophy, on the other hand, itself originates from and in man’s factic life exactly with the aim of being the modality through which this being – namely ourselves – returns towards the problematization of his existential possibilities even by taking upon himself the burden and “weight” of radical interrogation. Which therefore goes and must go itself and resolutely – because if this entirely “without God” and consequently a-theist – to the historical and ontological roots of a present con-temporarized (mitzeitigt) both with the past and the future existential horizons of the assumed factic possibilities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will ed. by Jörg Noller and John WalshDai HeideJörg Noller and John Walsh, editors. Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xlvii + 297. Hardback, $105.00; paperback, $32.99.This volume collects new (and in many instances the first) English translations of eighteen works—by Johann Fichte, Salomon Maimon, Karl Reinhold, August Heydenreich, and (...) Hermann Pistorius, among others—that engage with Kant’s critical theory of freedom as it is encountered in his three Critiques and other writings from the late 1780s and early 1790s. The essays were written between 1786 and 1800. Noller and Walsh open the volume with a thorough and penetrating introduction to Kant’s historical context, Kant’s theory of freedom, and the newly translated essays themselves. Given how central Kant’s theory of freedom is to every aspect of his systematic philosophy, and how intensely scholars have focused upon it in recent decades, this volume is a welcome addition to the existing literature. Not only is it important to have these essays translated into English, but it is also helpful to have them collected in a single volume. This volume will thus be an invaluable resource, and not merely for English-speaking scholars of Kant. For considerations of space, I cannot discuss every essay in the volume. Instead, I emphasize those contributions that strike me as especially noteworthy or relevant to contemporary discussion.The standout of the first group of essays, on “Freedom and Determinism,” is the contribution by Hermann Andreas Pistorius (1730–98), which reinforces his status as one of Kant’s most trenchant Leibnizian critics. Pistorius subjects Kant’s account of “the concept of freedom itself, its origin, its content, and its objective validity” to a withering critique, contending that this is “the most obscure aspect of his system” (5). Pistorius raises the now familiar worry that Kant’s relegation of transcendental freedom to things in themselves violates his own epistemic strictures. He goes on to argue that even if this worry can be evaded, we must “assume that the human being’s actually free actions (which likewise are things in themselves) appear as necessary to him, as a thing in itself ” (8). In other words, our representations of deterministic sequences are representations of things in themselves “obscured and distorted by the fog of sensibility,” which renders Kant’s philosophy ultimately a version of “the Leibnizian idealism which the author so strongly rejects” (8). Also of note here is the set of careful objections by Johann August Heinrich Ulrich (1746–1813) to the notion of timeless agency that appears to be required for Kant’s account of transcendental freedom, an issue that remains alive and well in contemporary discussions of transcendental freedom.The section on “Freedom and Imputability” begins with two contributions by Carl Christian Erhard Schmid (1762–1812), who contends that only morally good actions are imputable, a claim he takes to be grounded in the doctrine of intelligible fatalism: “the [End Page 669] assertion of the natural necessity of all actions of a rational being according to laws of the causality of things in themselves” (78). Johann Christoph Schwab (1743–1821) responds directly to Schmid’s intelligible fatalism in two essays published in the Philosophisches Archiv. The first essay criticizes Schmid’s endorsement of Kant’s appeal to “a supersensible I in addition to the empirical I” (84, emphasis in original). He contends that this requires Schmid “to attribute predicates to the rational I that elevate it to the rank of the deity” (86). In the second essay, Schwab responds directly to Schmid’s intelligible fatalism, arguing that intelligible fatalism is not superior to ordinary determinism. He concludes by speculating that Schmid’s intelligible fatalism is “at bottom identical with Leibnizian-Wolffian determinism” (91). This section of the book concludes with the attack moved by Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823) against intelligible fatalism, which Reinhold sees as incompatible with fundamental aspects of the critical philosophy.Each of the essays in the third section, on “Freedom and Consciousness,” takes up Kant’s discussion of the “fact of reason” in his... (shrink)

The Crisis of German Historicism Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss - two major political thinkers of the twentieth century, both of German- Jewish background and forced into exile in America - were never friends or intellectual interlocutors. Yet they shared a radical critique of contemporary idioms of politically oriented discourses and a lifelong effort to modify reflective approaches to political experience. Liisi Keedus reveals how Arendt's and Strauss's thinking about political modernity was the product of a common intellectual formation in (...) Weimar Germany, by examining the cross-disciplinary debates guiding their early work. Through a historical reconstruction of their shared interrogative horizons - comprising questions regarding the possibility of an ethically engaged political philosophy after two world wars, the political fate of Jewry, the implications of modern conceptions of freedom, and the relation between theoria and praxis - Keedus unravels striking similarities, as well as genuine antagonisms, between the two thinkers. (shrink)