The theory of prophet hood, based on a competent imagination, is one of the original contributions of al-Farabi to Islamic thought. The purpose of this article is to examine the imaginative power that underlies the prophet's law-making in al-Farabi's political thought. In our research, we have concluded that the prophet can put the universal truths in the form of laws only with the representation ability of a competent imaginary. Emanation, overflowing from the separate intellects that form the supralunary world, (...) also constructs the sublunary world through the imagination of the prophet. In this system, the power of imagination is a central faculty that embodies and organizes the imaginary from Active Mind and makes it accessible to all levels of people. Without the imagination that transforms the reasonable into sensible forms, it is not possible to put laws and to deliver them to people. In order to be in contact with the higher principles, the prophet must also have a competent mental faculty. Finally, in our study, the connection of the imaginary, which represents the emanation coming from the Active Mind, with the intellect faculty in this context is also questioned in terms of law-making. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 76–81 Comments on Eugene Thacker’s “Cosmic Pessimism” Nicola Masciandaro Anything you look forward to will destroy you, as it already has. —Vernon Howard In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. The cosmicity of the sigh resides in its profound negative singularity. Moving via endless auto-releasement, it achieves the remote. “ Oltre la spera che piú larga gira / passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core ” [Beyond the sphere that circles widest / penetrates (...) the sigh that issues from my heart]. 1 The axiomatic sigh of the pessimist is in a way the pure word of philosophy, a thought that thinks without you, speaks where you are not. The live pneumatic form of the soul’s eventual exit from the dead body’s mouth, the sigh restores consciousness to the funeral of being, to the passing away that is existence. Pessimism speaks in piercing aphorisms because first it sighs. “Beyond the sphere passeth the arrow of our sigh. Hafiz! Silence.” 2 … pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. To the pessimist, the ‘real’ world—the world on whose behalf we are expected to wake up in the morning—is a ceaseless index of its own unreality. The pessimist’s day is not an illumined space for the advancement of experience and action, but a permanently and inescapably reflective zone, the vast interior of a mirror where each thing is only insofar as it is, at best, a false image of itself. Within this speculative situation, inside the doubleness of the mirror, pessimism splits into two paths, false and true, one that tries to fix pessimism (establish a relation with the mirror) and decides in favor of the apparent real, and another that totally falls for pessimism (enters the mirror) and communes with the greater reality of the unreal. These two paths are distinguished by their relation to pessimism’s guilt vis-à-vis the world’s reality-project. The first form, that which remains pessimism for the world and puts on a smiling face, stays guilty to itself (i.e. unconscious) and thus turns hypocritical, becoming at once the pessimism of the commoner who really just wants things to be better for himself and the pessimism of the elite who wants to critically refashion reality in his own image. The general form of this worldly, hypocritical pessimism is the impulse to ‘make the world a better place’, which is the global mask under which the world is diurnally made worse. The second form, that which follows pessimism away from the world and ceases to put on a smiling face, refuses guiltiness as itself theessential Occidental mode of pretense and turns honest, becoming at once the intelligent pessimism required of all ordinary action and the radical pessimism necessary for self-knowledge: seeing that no one is capable of doing good. The general form of this universal, honest pessimism is the impulse not to worry, to give up and embrace dereliction, which is the only real way the world is actually improved. Where worldly pessimism is the engine productive of interminably warring secular and sacred religions (good-projects), universal pessimism strives hopelessly for the paradise of a supremely instantiated pessimus: things are getting so bad that there is no longer any time for them to get worse; things are so constantly-instantly worst that this is BEST. Cosmic pessimism is the mode of universal pessimism which can yet discourse with the world, which has not chosen silence and can spread the inconceivably BAD NEWS in an orderly form ( kosmos ) that the world can understand (if it wanted to). … the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world. That is what the world is (the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world). … a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos. Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. Pessimism’s love of fate is a blind love, a love of the blindness of being human in a cosmos conceived around the human’s eclipse, a heavy levitation in the contradictory space between the inescapability of its having been and the impossibility of its will-be. Pessimism’s song of futility is a sensible way of loving fate, with a minimum of eros, by means of a kind of matrimonial love of the fatal. As music, pessimism stays open to the irreparable and the inexorable without the binding of affirmation, in the apparent absence of the radical, infinitely surplus will that absolute amor fati seems to require. Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? “Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he achieves will scarcely be worth the trouble of his achieving it. We should aspire to the impossible, to absolute and infinite perfection [….] The apocatastasis is more than a mystical dream: it is a norm of action, it is a beacon for high deeds [….] For true charity is a species of invasion [….] It is not charity to rock and lull our fellow men to sleep in the inertia and heaviness of matter, but rather to arouse them to anguish and torment of spirit.” 3 … the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought. “The paroxysm of interior experience leads you to regions where danger is absolute, because life which self-consciously actualizes its roots in experience can only negate itself [….] There are no arguments [….] On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos [….] I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing .” 4 It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. According to the earliest account of Cecilia’s martyrdom, the beheading turns out worse. After not severing her head in three strokes, “the cruel executioner left her half dead” (seminecem eam cruentus carnifex dereliquit). 5 Cecilia’s effortlessly powerful endurance of the three strokes—a fitting icon for pessimism as an art of dereliction—demonstrates the “passivity and absence of effort [….] in which divine transcendence is dissolved.” 6 There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. Like words from a pre-waking dream. There is no reason to think that they are not. NOTES 1. Dante Alighieri. Vita Nuova . ed. and trans. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1995. 41:10. 2. Hafiz of Shiraz. The Divan . trans. H. Wilberforce Clarke. London: Octagon Press. 1974. 10.9. 3. Miguel de Unamuno. The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations . trans. Anthony Kerrigan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1972. 305-6. 4. E.M. Cioran. On the Heights of Despair . trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1992. 9-10. 5. Giacomo Laderchi. S. Caeciliae Virg[inis] et Mart[yris] Acta. . . Rome. 1723. 38. 6. Georges Bataille. On Nietzsche . trans. Bruce Boone. London: Continuum. 2004. 135. See Nicola Masciandaro. “ Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia .” A Commentary on Eugene Thacker’s "Cosmic Pessimism" Gary J. Shipley Pessimism is the refusal to seek distraction, the refusal to remodel failure into a platform for further (doomed) possibilities, the refusal of comfort, the acceptance of the sickness of healthy bodies, the cup of life overflowing with cold vomit. If, as Ligotti suggests when discussing Invasion of the Body Snatchers , 1 humans prefer the anxieties of their familiar human lives to the contentment of an alien one, then the pessimist, we could argue, represents some perverted combination of the two, preferring (presuming he has a choice) the defamiliarization of human life to the contentment of its unquestioned mundanity. The quasi-religious state of mind that Wittgenstein would mention on occasion, that of “feeling absolutely safe,” 2 is a state the pessimist could only imagine being approximated by death, or perhaps some annihilative opiate-induced stupor. This Wittgensteinian commingling of certainty and faith looks every bit the futile gesture, a mere rephrasing of collapse or partial collapse. The only certainty open to the pessimist is that of the toxic formula of life itself—a formula known and lacuna-free. Certainty, far from being the gateway to deliverance, becomes the definitive impediment; and the possibility of salvation, as long as it remains, becomes crucially reliant on postulations of ignorance, epistemic gaps, a perennial incompleteness: “the perfect safety of wooed death […] the warm bath of physical dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the miniscule unknown.” 3 The height of Leibniz’s Panglossian insanity nurtured the idea that our knowing everything—via the universal calculus—could be accurately described a triumph, as opposed to a nightmare in which our every futility is laid bare. Stagnancy and boredom are perhaps two of the greatest ills of Western civilisation, and the most potent pessimism tells you that you’re stuck with both. The most we can hope for, by way of salvation, is to throw open our despair to the unknown. The fact that Schopenhauer’s pessimism stopped short of morality and allowed him to play the flute, as Nietzsche complained, highlights the predicament of a man who despite having adorned nothingness with a smiling face still found himself alive. The demand here is that it be felt: a cross-contamination of intellect and emotion. The safety net of numerous parentheses makes for a failed philosophy, rather than a philosophy of failure. Depressives make bad pessimists, because, unless they choose to die, living will always infect them with necessities of hope, forcing them to find something, anything (all the various “as ifs”) to make existence tolerable. For as Cioran observed, while “[d]epressions pay attention to life, they are the eyes of the devil, poisoned arrows which wound mortally any zest and love of life. Without them we know little, but with them, we cannot live.” 4 And even when cured of our depressions we’ll find ourselves consumed, eaten alive by the hyper-clinical (borderline autistic) mania that replaces them: a predicament captured all too clearly in the microscriptual fictions of Robert Walser, where spectral men and women stifle their depressive madness with protective comas of detail, their failed assimilations buried beneath thick crusts of remote data. Like Beckett’s Malone their stories may have ended, but cruelly their lives have not. Pessimism is an extraneous burden (a purposeless weight) that makes everything else harder to carry, while at the same time scooping it out and making it lighter. If pessimism had a sound it would be the harsh non-noise of tinnitus—the way that every person would hear themselves if they refused their distractions long enough to listen: a lungless scream from the extrasolar nothing of the self. The music of pessimism—if indeed we can imagine such a thing—is the reverberating echo of the world’s last sound, conjectured but never heard, audible only in its being listened for. The one consolation of this hollow paradox of audibility being, that “he will be least afraid of becoming nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now.” 5 The pessimist suffers a derangement of the real, a labyrinthitis at the nucleus of his being: he’s the stumbling ghost relentlessly surprised that others can see him. If Cioran’s refusal is manifested in sleep (when even saying ‘no’ is too much of a commitment), then Pessoa’s resides in the dreams inside that sleep. Pessoa chooses to exploit the fact that he’s being “lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied” 6 by growing more voids to live him. His is a Gnostic breed of sleep, “sleeping as if the universe were a mistake,” 7 a sleep that dreams through Thacker’s cosmic pessimism (“a pessimism of the world-without-us.”, “the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time” 8 ), through the critical error of there being anything at all when there could be nothing. The metaphysical pessimist is someone who, however well life treats them, still desires to wake from it, as from the poisonous air of a bad dream. Pessimism is a paradox of age, being simultaneously young and old; its youth residing in a refusal to accept the authority of existence (its rich history, its inherent beneficence), a refusal to “get over” the horror of what it sees with its perpetually fresh eyes, and its maturity in the unceremonious disposal of the philosophical playthings (those futile architectures) of adolescence. As Thacker remarks: “Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique.” 9 A sentiment shared with Pessoa, who duly categorizes those that choose to enact this futile struggle: “The creators of metaphysical systems and of psychological explanations are still in the primary stage of suffering.” 10 If the pessimist has shared a womb with anyone, it’s with the mystic and not the philosopher. As Schopenhauer tells us: “The mystic is opposed to the philosopher by the fact that he begins from within, whereas the philosopher begins from without. […] But nothing of this is communicable except the assertions that we have to accept on his word; consequently he is unable to convince.” 11 The crucial difference between the mystic and the pessimist is not the latter’s impassivity and defeatism, but his unwillingness/inability to contain in any way the spread of his voracious analyticity, his denial of incompleteness, his exhaustive devotion to failure. The truth of our predicament, though heard, is destined to remain unprocessed. Like the revelations of B.S. Johnson’s Haakon (“We rot and there’s nothing that can stop it / Can’t you feel the shaking horror of that?” 12 ) the pessimist’s truths are somehow too obvious to listen to, as if something inside us were saying, “Of course, but haven’t we gotten over that?” Pessimism is simple and ugly, and has no desire to make itself more complex or more attractive. The true moral pessimist knows that the Utilitarian’s accounts will always be in the red. He can see that for all his computational containments, his only honest path is a negative one, and that such a path has but one logical destination: that of wholesale human oblivion. Thacker notes how at the core of pessimism lies the notion of “the worst,” through which death is demoted by the all-pervasive suffering of a life that easily eclipses its threat. And so with doom made preferable to gloom, death begins to glint with promise, “like beauty passing through a nightmare.” 13 But even among pessimists suicide is, for the most part, thought to be an error. Schopenhauer, for instance, regarded suicide a mistake grounded in some fundamentally naïve disappointment or other. Pessoa too thought suicide an onerous escape tactic: “To die is to become completely other. That’s why suicide is a cowardice: it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.” 14 There is a call here to be accepting of and creative with the puppetry of your being, an insistence that it’s somehow a blunder to attempt to hide in death from the horrors you find inlife. 15 Tied up with this perseverance is the slippery notion of the good death, for maybe, as Blanchot warns, suicide is rarely something we can hope to get right, for the simple reason that “you cannot make of death an object of the will.” 16 “Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete,” 17 and this is not simply because the project itself belies something yet to be disclosed, but because the project itself is a thing waiting. It waits on a cure it knows will not come, but for which it cannot do anything (as long as it continues to do anything) but wait. NOTES 1. See Thomas Ligotti. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race . New York: Hippocampus Press. 2010. 91. 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein. “A Lecture on Ethics.” Philosophical Review . (74) 1. 1965. 8. 3. Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire . New York: Vintage. 1989. 221. 4. E. M. Cioran. The Book of Delusions . trans. Camelia Elias. Hyperion. 5.1. (2010): 75. 5. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 609. 6. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 67. 7. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 35. 8. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 68. 9. Ibid. 73. 10. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 341. 11. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 610-11. 12. B.S Johnson. “You’re Human Like the Rest of Them.” in Jonathan Coe. Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson . London: Picador. 2004. 177. 13. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 415. 14. Ibid. 199. 15. “Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.” Anne Sexton. No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose . ed. Steven Gould Axelrod. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1985. 92. 16. Maurice Blanchot. The Space of Literature . trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1989. 105. 17. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 75. (shrink)

Medieval thinkers unanimously believed a human soul has various powers. Yet, the latter point is also nearly the only one they agreed upon. In the paper, I focus on two contrary opinions maintained by Henry of Ghent and William of Ockham. Whereas Henry of Ghent held powers of the soul are defined with respect to the activities they are powers-for, Ockham refuted such a contention. To make his point Ockham launches a thought experiment: if God created an intellective soul without (...) creating anything else, wouldn’t the powers in this soul still exist fully? Upon succinctly presenting Henry of Ghent’s view on the powers of the soul, I provide a detailed analysis of Ockham’s counterargument. I argue Henry could still reply to Ockham’s rebuttal, and show how the latter bares a remote resemblance to Avicenna’s flying man argument. (shrink)

Para elaborar sua profetologia, Maimônides retoma conceitos relativos às teorias do intelecto de Al-Fārābī e de Avicena, que, por sua vez, se baseiam nas noções sobre a alma de Aristóteles. Dessa perspectiva, a Revelação divina deve ser considerada um fato natural inserido na totalidade da natureza criada por Deus. Compreender a Revelação significa, portanto, compreendê-la a partir do homem, uma vez que o profeta, apesar de se tratar de alguém que se destaca do conjunto da humanidade, é sempre um ser (...) humano, possuidor de uma natureza humana. Desse modo, a doutrina da profecia – central no "Guia dos Perplexos" ‒ é elaborada a partir da natureza humana à luz da filosofia racional greco-árabe. Os falāsifa – filósofos muçulmanos helenizantes – já ensinavam que a profecia é possível graças a certa perfeição da natureza humana . Esse ensinamento está fundamentado na teoria do intelecto apresentada por Aristóteles em "De Anima" III, 5, 430a 10 et seq. Contudo, para os filósofos de expressão árabe , a profecia é resultante de certas condições físicas e psíquicas determinadas pelo fluxo necessário das emanações, cuja teoria deriva da "Teologia Pseudo-Aristotélica", um tratado neoplatônico atribuído ao Estagirita que, durante a Idade Média, circulou amplamente nos ambientes filosóficos tanto dos judeus quanto dos muçulmanos. Na cosmovisão neoplatônica adotada por eles, o intelecto do profeta reflete a luz e o conhecimento divino derramado pelo fluxo emanatório do Ser primeiro no mundo celeste, composto pelas dez inteligências separadas, suas almas e esferas. No processo emanatório, a faculdade da imaginação do profeta recebe da última inteligência, o Intelecto Agente, as verdades dos preceitos positivos e culturais da religião, que a imaginação transforma em alegorias e símbolos a serem transmitidos para a humanidade. Maimônides faz da imaginação a pedra de toque de sua profetologia. To elaborate his prophetology, Maimonides uses concepts relating to Al-Fārābī and Avicenna's theories of the intellect which, in turn, are based on Aristotle's notions of the soul. Within this perspective, divine Revelation should be considered a natural fact within the totality of nature created by God. Understanding Revelation therefore means understanding it from a human standpoint, since the prophet ‒ despite being a figure who is set apart from the rest of humanity – is always a human being, with a human nature. Thus, the doctrine of prophecy ‒ central to "The Guide of the Perplexed" ‒ is elaborated based on human nature in light of the rational Greco-Arabic philosophy. The falāsifa – the Hellenizing Muslim philosophers – taught that prophecy is possible thanks to certain perfection of the human nature . This teaching is based on the theory of the intellect, as presented by Aristotle in "De Anima" III, 5, 430a 10 et seq. Therefore, for the philosophers of Arabic expression , prophecy is the result of certain physical and psychic conditions determined by the necessary flow of emanations, whose theory is derived from the "Pseudo-Aristotelian Theology", a Neoplatonic treatise attributed to the Stagyrite which, in the Middle Age, widely circulated in the philosophical milieu, among both Jewish and Muslim. In the Neoplatonic cosmic vision which they adopted, the prophet's intellect reflects the divine light and knowledge overflowing from the emanatory flow from the first Being in the celestial world, which is composed of the ten separate intelligences, their souls and their spheres. In the emanatory process, the prophet's faculty of imagination receives from the ultimate intelligence, the Active Intellect, the truths of the positive and cultural precepts of religion, which the imagination transforms into allegories and symbols to be transmitted to humanity. Maimonides makes the imagination the cornerstone of his prophetology. (shrink)

Thoughts and theoretical reflections about “governance” in Islamic society, whether theorizing about the desired structure of government or describing the characteristics of an ideal ruler, is one of the most important topics studied in the field of political thought and philosophy in Islam, to which great names such as Farabi, etc. are connected. In this context, this research, through a comparative approach, seeks to examine and analyze the views of Farabi and Sohrawardi about the ideal ruler from the perspective of (...) a judicial approach. Based on such an approach, a philosopher like Farabi considers the different ways of connecting to the active intellect as the separation of the theoretical intellect from matter and the connection to the active intellect, and a divine sage like Sohrawardi also speaks of the separation of the theoretical intellect and the separation of the power of imagination, which is manifested in a prophet. In the eyes of both thinkers, human reason has the ability to overcome material existence. This type of excellence is a condition for achieving complete metaphysical knowledge and theoretical perfection. The ultimate happiness is the achievement of the active intellect. “The Absolute First Leader” and “Quṭb (Imam or pole)” have both achieved this position. Introduction The ideal government and ruler, in the system of Islamic philosophy, are based on the approach of philosophers to wisdom and their opinions and ruling foundations. The philosophers’ approach to wisdom and intellect in the system of Islamic philosophy has changed and developed from Farabi to Sohrawardi and later. Based on this change in the method and approach to wisdom of the sages, philosophical issues and topics including the issue of government and the ideal ruler, have also undergone changes and transformations. Despite the significant evolution of Islamic philosophy in the two Peripatetic and Illuminative systems, it seems that the ideal ruler in Sohrawardi’s philosophy, which he refers to as “the pole/Imam (quṭb),” is compatible with the first leader of al-Farabi’s utopia. The problem of this research is to investigate the characteristic features of “Qutb” and “First Leader/Philosopher” in the Peripatetic and Illuminative systems of philosophy based on Sohrawardi and Farabi’s approach to wisdom and its types. “Qutb” in Sohrawardi’s thought In the wisdom of enlightenment, the perfect human being and the “Qutb” to whom the position of caliph belongs, is perfect in intuitive and argumentative wisdom, and in other words, he is both adept in reflection and adept in discussion. In Sohrawardi’s thought, the rulers must know wisdom as well be practical wayfarers, that is, they must possess a combination of theoretical and practical wisdom. On the one hand, Sohrawardi’s theory is influenced and consistent with Plato’s theory, both of which emphasize the “ruling sage,” and on the other hand, it is influenced by the Iranian tradition and the benefit of the ideal kings from wisdom and intellect, and “Khurra-yi Kiani”1 and the approval of God, which is in the interpretation Religious and close to Sufism and Shiism, it is interpreted as Qutb and divine sage. A Qutb or an Imam is one who is connected with the active intellect, receives grace from the higher realm, and spreads goodness, prosperity, knowledge, justice, and virtue among religions with a divine plan. “The First Leader” in Farabi’s thought The First Leader is someone who does not need the guidance of another human being; rather, all sciences and knowledge are obtained by him in esse and he is able to infer appropriate actions and behavior from general reasoning. He can also best guide others to perform these meritorious deeds; the same actions and actions that bring a person to happiness. These abilities are realized in people of great and outstanding nature by connecting to the active intellect. Such a person, in fact, in the eyes of the ancients, is a king and ruler and worthy of revelation. The rule of such a person is the first rule and his leadership is the first leadership, and the rule of others that is through his rule will be the subordinate rule, and people under the rule of this leader and leader are virtuous people, the chosen ones, and the fortunate ones. Conclusion In examining and comparing the two viewpoints, it should be said that a philosopher like Farabi considers the different ways of connecting to the active intellect to be the separation of the theoretical intellect from matter and the connection to the active intellect, and a Godly sage like Sohrawardi also speaks of the separation of the theoretical intellect and the power of imagination, which manifests itself in a prophet, where we witness detachment from matter and the ability to remove the soul from the body. In the eyes of both thinkers, human reason has the ability to overcome material existence. This type of excellence is a condition for achieving complete metaphysical knowledge and theoretical perfection. The ultimate happiness is the achievement of the active intellect.”First Leader”and “Qutb” have both achieved this position. Based on this, the complete transcendence of material existence is possible for certain people. (shrink)

The notion of physical premotion (praemotio physica) is usually associated with the theological topic of divine concurrence (concursus divinus). In the present paper I argue that the Thomist Domingo Báñez (1528–1604) applied the concept of premotion (though not the expression “praemotio”) also in his psychology. According to Báñez, the active intellect (intellectus agens) communicates a kind of “actual motion” to the phantasma (i.e. the mental sensory image perceived by the imagination) in order to render it a collaborator of intellectual (...) cognition. Such an actual motion is, in other words, a premotion to the effect, as the phantasma is, in Báñez’s view, “elevated” to the production of an effect that transcends its proper powers. This Báñez’s theory was largely accepted in the subsequent development of Thomism. (shrink)

After a very brief introduction, Davidson begins with an informed and detailed account of the views of Aristotle and his major commentators, whose writings had enormous influence on the development of the medieval traditions. Davidson's account is supplemented with a critical exposition of the relevant teachings from the Plotiniana Arabica, from al-Kindi, and from a treatise on the soul attributed to Porphyry in the Arabic tradition. Impressive as all this is, it is simply stage setting for Davidson's detailed accounts of (...) the doctrines and arguments of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. (shrink)

A study of problems, all revolving around the subject of intellect in the philosophies of Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, this book starts by reviewing discussions in Greek and early Arabic philosophy which served as the background for the three Arabic thinkers. Davidson examines the cosmologies and theories of human and active intellect in the three philosophers and covers such subjects as: the emanation of the supernal realm from the First Cause; the emanation of the lower world from the (...) transcendent active intellect; stages of human intellect; illumination of the human intellect by the transcendent active intellect; conjunction of the human intellect with the transcendent active intellect; prophecy; and human immortality. Davidson shows that medieval Jewish philosophers and the Latin Scholastics had differing perceptions of Averroes because they happened to use works belonging to different periods of his philosophic career. (shrink)

One of the largest ongoing debates in scholarship on Avicenna concerns his epistemology of the first acquisition of intelligible forms or concepts. “Emanationists” hold that intelligibles are emanated by the separate Active Intellect directly into human minds. “ionists” hold that intelligibles are abstracted by the human intellect from sensory images. Neither of these positions has a satisfactory grip on Avicenna’s philosophy. I propose that the two positions can be reconciled because Avicenna states in many texts that (...) what the AI emanates is a power, and not the various intelligible forms. I argue that this can only be the power of abstraction itself. This new interpretation does greater justice to Avicenna’s system and reveals his unique place in the history of epistemology. (shrink)

One of the chief innovations in medieval adaptations of Aristotelian psychology was the expansion of Aristotle's notion of imagination orphantasiato include a variety of distinct perceptual powers known collectively as the internal senses. Amongst medieval philosophers in the Arabic world, Avicenna offers one of the most complex and sophisticated accounts of the internal senses. Within his list of internal senses, Avicenna includes a faculty known as “estimation”, to which various functions are assigned in a wide variety of contexts. (...) Although many philosophers in the Arabic world as well as in the Latin West accepted Avicenna's positing of an estimative faculty, Avicenna's best-known critics, al-Ghazâlî and Averroes, found Avicenna's arguments in support of a distinct estimative faculty problematic. For different reasons, both Averroes and Ghazâlî raised the basic question of whether one needed to posit a distinct faculty of estimation to supplement the perceptual abilities of the other internal senses, and whether the notion of an estimative power as defined by Avicenna was internally coherent. Such criticisms suggest that the Avicennian conception of estimation is not entirely unambiguous, and that a correct understanding of Avicenna's motivations for delineating an estimative power requires a careful study of the diverse activities assigned to it throughout Avicenna's philosophical writings. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the (...) power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Averroes on Intellect: From Aristotelian Origins to Aquinas’s Critique by Stephen R. OgdenLuis Xavier López-FarjeatStephen R. Ogden. Averroes on Intellect: From Aristotelian Origins to Aquinas’s Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 296. Hardback, $90.00.Stephen Ogden’s book is a remarkable contribution to one of the most controversial topics within the tradition of interpreters of Aristotle’s De anima. As is well known, Aristotle defines the intellect (nous) as “the (...) part of the soul by which it knows and thinks” (DA III.4, 429a9– 10). This doctrine of the intellect becomes rather obscure in DA III.5, where Aristotle states that there is a passive intellect that needs to be actualized through an active intellect. This passage contains, perhaps, the most debated statement in Aristotelian psychology. Aristotle argues that the passive or potential intellect is the part of the soul that, in a sense, becomes all things as it knows them. The intellect, however, has another aspect: in a sense, it makes all things. This is what Aristotle calls the “active” or “agent” intellect. This characterization is fairly ambiguous: it is separable (chôristos), separated (chôristheis), not passive (apathês), unmixed (amigês), and it is essentially an activity (têi ousiai energeia); furthermore, it is immortal (athanaton), eternal (aidion), and always thinking.According to Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation, Aristotle holds that since the human intellect is in potency, its actualization needs the intervention of an intellect that is always thinking, namely, the active intellect. Alexander associates the active or agent intellect (poiêtikos nous) with the divine intellect and divine intellection as it appears in Aristotle’s Metaphysics XII.9, 1074b33–35, another famous passage where Aristotle describes the first mover as thought thinking itself. A long tradition of interpreters and commentators, both ancient and medieval, discussed whether Aristotle held that the actualization of the potential intellect came from an external intellect—be it God (as Alexander thought) or another kind of separate intellect (as was the case for Islamic philosophers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes), or whether Aristotle was referring to two aspects within a single human intellect (as Thomas Aquinas held, for instance).As its title indicates, Ogden’s book focuses on Averroes, a Muslim philosopher who proposed one of the most puzzling interpretations of the Aristotelian doctrine of the intellect. It is puzzling, perhaps false, and even absurd, because it holds that “the intellect that understands intelligible concepts is a single, separate, eternal substance shared by [End Page 659] all humanity”(1). Strange as it may seem, this position—which Ogden calls the “unicity thesis” (1)—was among the most debated in the Jewish and Christian traditions throughout the medieval period and the Renaissance. But beyond detailing the mere reception and historical assimilation of Averroes’s doctrine, Ogden takes on the task of arguing for its philosophical coherence. It is not a simple task. One might think that, rather than helping to clarify Aristotle’s theory, Averroes made it more complicated. If it is already difficult to understand the Aristotelian definition of the active intellect and to decide whether it is a separate intellect or part of the soul, Averroes seems to make things worse by arguing that the active or agent intellect (in Latin, intellectus agens or intelligentia agens; in Arabic, ‘aql al-fa“āl) and the so-called material or possible intellect (intellectus materialis; ‘aql hayūlānī) are both single, separate, and eternal intellects.As is well known, and as Ogden himself explains, Thomas Aquinas criticized the idea of two separate intellects (passive and active) and provided an account that is in principle satisfactory, according to which the two intellects are intellectual powers of each person’s soul. There is an enormous amount of scholarly literature evaluating the merits of Thomas Aquinas’s refutation of Averroes and his followers. But as Ogden notices, few scholars— among them, Richard C. Taylor, Jean-Baptiste Brenet, Deborah Black, and Josep Puig—have pointed out that the two philosophers begin their discussions with different assumptions. In my view, one of the greatest merits of Ogden’s book is that, as far as I... (shrink)

I will focus on the following question: “Is Avicenna[aut]Avicenna an empiricist?”. I will introduce Avicenna’sAvicenna language of “signification”, “understood content”, “mentalMental impression” and “conception”. Then, following Kenneth P. Winkler[aut]Winkler, K. ~ P., I will distinguish between origin-empiricism and content-empiricism Empiricism and reinterpret the distinction in Avicenna’sAvicenna language as OEA and CEA. I will show that Avicenna’sAvicenna analysis of the relationship between knowledge, on the one hand, and sensation and imagination, on the other hand, includes three (...) empiricist themes. I use these themes to argue that that Avicenna is committed to OEA. Then, I will consider three “possible” limitations to Avicenna’sAvicenna origin-empiricism. I will show that a common empiricist solution, that relies on the compositionality of the “understood contentContent”, quia demonstration and relative conceptions, has significant limitations. I will argue that a careful examination of these limitations, and the epistemology of the primary conceptions, show that Avicenna is not committed to CEA. I will conclude that “Is Avicenna[aut]Avicenna an empiricist?” has no simple yes-or-no answer. This raises a parallel open question: “Is Avicenna a rationalist?”, in some sense. After briefly commenting on this question, I will consider a related, but generally dissociated, question on the reality of abstraction, namely “Is Avicenna an abstractionist?” I will explain how the common replies to both questions rely on different incompatibility principles, according to which emanation from the active intellect is incompatible with apprehension by or abstraction from sense-perception. I will end by outlining the elements of a reading of Avicenna that assumes neither of these incompatibility principles. (shrink)

Although in modern times and clinical settings, we rarely see the old characteristics of tribal shamanism such as deep trances, out-of-body experiences, and soul retrieval, the archetypal dreams, waking visions and active imagination of modern depth psychology represents a liminal zone where ancient and modern shamanism overlaps with analytical psychology. These essays explore the contributors' excursions as healers and therapists into this zone. The contributors describe the many facets shamanism and depth psychology have in common: animal symbolism; recognition of (...) the reality of the collective unconscious; and healing rituals that put therapist and patient in touch with transpersonal powers. By reintroducing the core of shamanism in contemporary form, these essays shape a powerful means of healing that combines the direct contact with the inner psyche one finds in shamanism with the self-reflection and critical awareness of modern consciousness. The essays draw from the contributors' experiences both inside and outside the consulting room, and with cultures that include the Lakota Sioux, and those of the Peruvian Andes and the Hawaiian Islands. The focus is on those aspects of shamanism most useful and relevant to the modern practice of depth psychology. As a result, these explorations bring the young practice of analytical psychology into perspective as part of a much more ancient heritage of shamanistic healing. Contributors: Margaret Laurel Allen, Norma Churchill, Arthur Colman, Lori Cromer, Patricia Damery, C. Jess Groesbeck, Pansy Hawk Wing, June Kounin, Carol McRae, Pilar Montero, Jeffrey A. Raff, Janet S. Robinson, Meredith Sabini, Dyane N. Sherwood, Sara Spaulding-Phillips, Bradley A. Te Paske and Louis M. Vuksinick. (shrink)

The article analyzes the activity of the greatest classic of the Islamic philosophy - Ibn Sina, aimed at the revision of Aristotelianism, mainly in terms of its synthesis with Islamic monotheism. Preferential attention is paid to the metaphysical section of Avicennian multivolume encyclopedia “The Healing”. Instead of Aristotelian God / the Prime Mover as the final cause, which serves as the source of the movement of the world, Avicenna establishes God / Necessary Being, who acts as the Giver of (...) being. Developing the ontological foundation of creationism, i.e. the creation of every thing in the world, the philosopher introduces a distinction between essence and existence, which will pass through the subsequent history of philosophy. Ibn Sina thoroughly modifies the Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of God and His essential cataphatic attributes. The intellectual narcissism of God, Who only knows Himself in Stagirite, he changes with the concept of Divine Omniscience and His providence of all existents. Ibn Sina transforms Aristotelian eternalism into eternalistic creationism, modifying the emanationist scheme of cosmogenesis advanced by al-Farabi, in which the process of proceeding of the existents from the First Principle appears as an intellectual act. The Muslim philosopher complements Aristotelian cosmology with the doctrine of angels, whom he identifies with cosmic intellects and souls as the governors of the celestial spheres. Avicennian radical innovation is in the doctrine of Active Intellect, who is not only the ruler of the sublunar world, but actually is its demiurge. This intellect is assigned with the function of the illumination of the human intellect, as well as with the role of the archangel Gabriel the transmitter of divine revelation according to Muslim tradition. From the philosophical perspective, Avicenna develops alien to Aristotelianism topics related to the prophecy and revelation, the immortality of the soul and its otherworldly fate. (shrink)

In his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes elevates arithmetic and geometry to the status of paradigms for all the sciences, because of the potential for certainty in their results. This emphasis on certainty is present throughout the Cartesian corpus, but in the Rules and other early works the substance dualism characteristic of Cartesian philosophy is not as obvious. However, when several key concepts from this early work are considered together, it becomes clear that Cartesian dualism necessarily follows. (...) The most important of these concepts are: Descartes’s rejection of the Scholastic theory of sense data in favor of a telecommunicative theory of perception; his innovative reconceptualization of mathematics in which he treats number and magnitude as interchangeable, making use of the symbolism of algebra; his frequent use of visual metaphors to describe perception in general, as well as other cognitive activity. It is in consideration of this third point that Descartes’s treatment of the imagination shows its importance, for the relationship of the imagination to the intellect parallels that of geometric figures to algebraic formulae. Though the role of the imagination in the Rules seems to make the status of a dualist ontology in this work more ambiguous, this paper will argue that in fact it is precisely in the treatment of imagination that one can find the traces of a fully developed substance dualism. (shrink)

Aristotle's explanation of the “active intellect” inDe AnimaIII, 5 constitutes a problem for us simply because we have to take this philosopher so seriously. If he were a writer given to poetic lapses or mythical adornments to his work we could consider dismissing the whole chapter as unessential. However, we know that Aristotle does not write unessential chapters, and that he is invariably engaged in an attempt to explain his subject fully and systematically, neither adding to it nor leaving (...) anything out.TheDe Anima, for example, is an attempt to describe the characteristics of living things, in an ascending order from the basic functions of vegetables to the most abstract thinking by human beings. The activities of nutrition, sensation, common sense, imagination, and movement are presented in Book II and in the early part of Book III. (shrink)

The seventh chapter focuses on the aftermath of the decline of Cartesianism as a leading force in the Dutch academic context. After De Volder and De Raey, indeed, only Ruardus Andala in Franeker carried on the teaching of Cartesian physics (which he taught by commenting upon Descartes’s Principia) and metaphysics, mainly for the sake of contrasting Spinozism and other forms of radical Cartesianism. Thus, Descartes’s philosophy came a dead end on the eve of the eighteenth century. Yet, Leiden Cartesianism and (...) the Leiden experimental tradition (which could include, after De Volder and Senguerd, the activities of Herman Boerhaave), favoured the introduction of Newtonianism as the standard in teaching natural philosophy. This was carried out by ’s Gravesande, who used logic and metaphysics (including rational theology), that is, the chief foundational disciplines in the Cartesian tradition, to introduce students to and justify the assumptions (methodological and ontological) of a Newtonian approach in natural philosophy. This had two outcomes. On the one hand, his arguments in metaphysics (i.e. ontology) have the function of clarifying which objects natural philosophy can investigate. These are natural laws, whose ultimate source in substances or modes cannot be ascertained by intellect alone, as they depend on the power of God. On the other, given the fact that experience is our only means of grasping such laws (which are then mathematically handled) he provides a rational-theological justification of experiential evidence, as capable of providing us with a degree of certainty equal to mathematical evidence. As for the Cartesians, this is still the paradigm of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, with the introduction of Newtonianism foundational disciplines such as logic and metaphysics (including rational theology) served as a justification for and a reflection on a given scientific methodology. Thus, philosophy started to be actually detached from the natural sciences, and to assume a subservient role with respect to them, as once it was the ancilla theologiae. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somaesthetics, Education, and the Art of DancePeter J. Arnold (bio)This essay has two related purposes. The first is to explicate what dance as an art form should minimally comprise if it is to be taught as a distinctive aspect of education in the school curriculum. The second and main purpose is to argue that dance, if taught in accordance with what is outlined, is not only an efficacious means (...) in the development, understanding and promotion of somaesthetics, a new term in aesthetic theory, but an example of itsvery embodiment. Put differently it will be upheld that the practice of danceis not only an excellent vehicle in the promotion of somaesthetics but a paradigm case of what it is.But what is somaesthetics? Briefly put, in common with the thinking of some noted philosophers in the past, it can be said that somaesthetics is as much concerned with the idea of being a person and living well as with the development of rational thought and the development of the intellect. It emphasizes, in particular, that the soma in the form of its physical skills, senses and pleasures plays no less a part in the living of a full life than conceptual understanding and the imaginative use of language.1 Richard Shusterman, upholding these sentiments, refers to somaesthetics asthe critical and meliorating study of the experience and use of one's body as a locus of sensory aesthetic appreciation and creative self-fashioning. It is....devoted to the knowledge, discourses, practices, and bodily disciplines that structure such somatic care or can improve it.2Although such values and concerns are known to many educationists, they are rarely acted upon or taught in a deliberate or systematic way. Even within the realms of dance and sport more could be done than is done somaesthetically to educate in the interests of what it is to be a whole person. [End Page 48]Before embarking on the task of exemplifying dance as a form of somaesthetics, it will be helpful first to say a little about education and the idea of dance as a valued human practice; and second, to say something about the aesthetic in relation to art.Education and the Art of Dance as a Valued Human PracticeWhat is clear about the idea of dance as an art form is that it is more than the human body making rhythmical and patterned movements in space. It can be more accurately described as a coherent and complex range of actions in which intentions are physically expressed in terms of a meaningful performance that is artistic in nature and not merely aesthetic in appeal.It is my view that these elements of what constitutes dance best come together and are most readily grasped when it is seen as a valued form of human practice. Following Alistair MacIntyre, I take the term "practice" to meanany coherent and complex form of socially established co-operative human activity through which goods internal to that activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended.3The idea of the arts as forms of practice is helpful in at least two important ways. First, it draws attention to the fact that an art, like medicine, the law, or sport, is a distinctive form of life with its own standards, values, and procedures. Second, it recognizes, in keeping with the idea of education, thatthe internal goods of an activity, like the art of dance, will enlighten and enlarge the powers of the participant. MacIntyre undoubtedly recognizes the connection between the idea of a practice and the concept of education when he observes the proper end of education isto help to discover activities whose ends are not outside themselves — The critical ability which ought to be the fruit of education serves nothing directly except itself, no one except those who exercise it — above all the task of education is to teach the value of activity for its own... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in AestheticsAlexandra Kertz-WelzelO, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea....1Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or watching TV, (...) as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince:One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy."... You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices.Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 561-569 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Introduction: Thinking about Idols in Early Modern EuropeJonathan Sheehan University of MichiganAbstractThis essay is an introduction to a collection of six articles on early modern debates about idolatry. If the debates started in religion, however, they quickly generated political, philosophical, anthropological, and even scientific corollaries. These may appear to be abstract and theoretical questions, but they (...) produced a complex set of answers with important consequences for many people. To see what was at stake, we need look no further than the New World and its missions. If the most frequently cited texts in the collection of articles are Bartolomé de las Casas and José de Acosta, it is because the New World forced the reality of idolatry onto the wider European stage.When does an image become a god? The early Christian apologist Minucius Felix had an answer. A log "is cut, is hewn, is planed," and is still no god. A stone "is sculptured, and is polished by some abandoned man" and still is no god. A sculpture "is set up, and even yet it is not a god." But, "lo, it is adorned, it is consecrated, it is prayed to—then at length it is a god, when man has chosen it to be so, and for the purpose has dedicated it." 1If only it were that easy. Felix offered just half of the story as David Freedberg has argued. Veneration does not produce that unhealthy power that idols exert over the attentive viewer. Rather, the opposite is true: idols are venerated because they exert this power. All images seem to contain at least traces of it. They draw our eye with ineluctable command, and force themselves on our attention. The image is just a representation, of course. It has been made by humans and can only ever gesture to an absent presence. And yet, images are also effective. Their ability to move us depends on "the possibility of fusion" between image and prototype. The crucifix is always only wood or stone, but its power comes from what might be called, with Freedberg, a "sacred contagion" that penetrates from behind the veil of representation. Indeed, its value as a religious object depends on this [End Page 561] contagion. Worshipers know that those tears shed by the Virgin in anguish at Christ's broken body are, in reality, just paint over mute stone and wood. Nevertheless, they are moved by those specks of material. If not, why have a statue in the first place? "The miraculous object has an effectiveness that proceeds as if the original body were present," Freedberg notes, "but the difficulty lies in cognitively grasping that 'as if.'" 2 Men do not choose to invest images with power over their imaginations and intellects. Even before images are prayed to, before they are consecrated, they already have that power.Whatever one thinks of the phenomenology of images, there is no doubt that this super-human power of idols obsessed many people in the early modern period. An object that had no power to inspire attention and devotion was hardly a threat, after all. The enormous waves of iconoclasm that swept across Europe—Germany in the 1520s, Scotland in the late 1550s, the Netherlands in the 1560s, England in the 1640s—were not directed at decorative tiles, pews, or doorstops. They were directed exactly at those things that made the devout feel the presence of the divine. And no one was quicker to identify these powerful images than the breakers themselves, who, in their extreme acts of rage, confirmed the effects that these supposedly dead bits of wood and stone exerted over them. The man in Ulm in 1534 who defecated into "the mouth of an effigy of Christ" demonstrated his extreme revulsion at what was, in reality, merely a lump of brute material. 3 Perhaps, if asked, he would have insisted that his scatological exuberance was designed to show definitively the impotence of the... (shrink)

This essay argues that, contrary to the prevailing view according to which reflection in Kant's aesthetic judgment is interpreted as ‘the logical actus of the understanding’, we should pay closer attention to Kant's own formulation of aesthetic reflection as ‘an action of the power of imagination’. Put differently, I contend in this essay that the rule that governs and orders the manifold in aesthetic judgment is imagination's own achievement, the achievement of the productive synthesis of the ‘fictive power’, (...) entirely independent of the understanding. While this view does not entail that the faculty of the understanding is not necessary in aesthetic reflection, a stronger emphasis on the role of imagination in aesthetic reflection allows us to realize that its schematizing and interpretive activity, while consistent with, goes well beyond the discursive demands of the understanding insofar as it intimates the supersensible ground of freedom that manifests itself as ‘the feeling of life’. Therefore, I show in this essay that the imagination's unique interpretive power has a special role in completing Kant's critical system by facilitating the connection of the sensible to the supersensible, which further helps us appreciate imagination's practical as opposed to merely cognitive significance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fabuler la fin du monde: La puissance critique des fictions d’apocalypse by Jean-Paul EngélibertCyril CamusJean-Paul Engélibert. Fabuler la fin du monde: La puissance critique des fictions d’apocalypse [Fabulating the end of the world: The critical power of apocalypse fiction]. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2019. 239 pp. Print. 20€. ISBN 978-2-348-03719-1.Jean-Paul Engélibert is a well-established expert on apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction. His exploration of the genre thus far (...) includes the monograph Apocalypses sans royaume: Politique des fictions de la fin du monde, XX–XXIe siècles (2013), numerous articles, as well as the essay collection L’Apocalypse: Une imagination politique, XIXe–XXIe siècles (2018), which he co-edited. In his latest book, Fabuler la fin du monde, he returns to several texts and aspects of the genre previously covered, delving deeper into what he calls “fictions of the end of the world.” In the ten chapters, gathered in five parts, he approaches his subject as a seasoned scholar in the field of comparative literature, and his analysis draws from comparisons between modern fiction’s representation of apocalypse and biblical literature’s visions of apocalypse and messianism. The book also offers ecocritical insights into the specter of Anthropocenic manifestations in fiction, with reflections on the interrelated genres of utopia and dystopia, theories of cinema, and philosophical writings on the catastrophic history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.The range of fictional works discussed is wide, including Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville’s Le dernier homme (1805); Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); Émile Souvestre’s Le monde tel qu’il sera (1846); Didier de Chousy’s Ignis (1883); Robert Merle’s Malevil (1972); José Saramago’s Blindness (1995); Antoine Volodine’s Minor Angels (1999); Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003); Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006); Céline Minard’s Le dernier monde (2007); Davide [End Page 163] Longo’s The Last Man Standing (2010); and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake [2003], The Year of the Flood [2009], and MaddAddam [2013]). Engélibert also touches on feature-length movies such as Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959), Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012), and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995), as well as on other literary and audiovisual fictions, such as E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909), Edward Bond’s dramatic trilogy The War Plays (1985), and the first season (2014) of Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s TV series The Leftovers (2014–17).Engélibert’s exegeses of the genre build around two aspects of the evolving relationship of apocalyptic narratives to the context of their production. Apocalypse (in the sense of “the end of the world” rather than the etymological sense of “revelation”) is no longer primarily a religious myth: the creation and use of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the theorization of the Anthropocene, and the mainstreaming of concerns over climate change have made the term “apocalypse” a very real, tangible prospect for the future. Engélibert relies on Günther Anders’s Die atomare Drohung (1981) to highlight the importance of the A-bomb in bringing home the reality of potential annihilation to people’s collective consciousness. Yet his second contextual/historical point is that the Anthropocene (albeit unnamed at the time) actually started with the Industrial Revolution, and that thinkers and polemicists such as Charles Fourier or Eugène Huzar, as well as contemporary fiction writers, were already acknowledging the environmental impact of humans and their economic/industrial/technological activity as threats to human and nonhuman life, and to the health of the planetary system itself.1Citing the work of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Christophe Bonneuil on the history of climate science, Engélibert analyzes in detail several nineteenth-century novels (namely Le Dernier homme, Frankenstein, Le monde tel qu’il sera, and Ignis) and one early-twentieth-century story (Forster’s “The Machine Stops”) that denounce the harm that the idol of the time, Progress, was already wreaking on nature and human life... (shrink)

Given the importance of imagination for Kant, Fichte and Schelling, it is significant that the word only comes up once in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and that it is not a chapter heading alongside "Sense-Certainty," "Perception," "Understanding" and "Reason." ;Part I. "Imagination in Theory" looks at the development in Hegel's theory of imagination from the Differenzschrift and Faith and Knowledge, through three different versions of the Philosophy of Spirit . Part II. "Imagination in Practice," focuses on the final moment of (...) the imagination according to the 1830 Philosophy of Spirit--Sign-making Phantasie. I discuss two examples--the artist's activity as described in the Aesthetics, and the 'religion of imagination'--Hinduism as Hegel understood it in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Part III synthesizes the two previous parts, showing that the Phenomenology of Spirit is the culmination of the imagination's theoretical and practical activity: while in theory imagination is the middle moment of Vorstellen, practically it is at the heart of Aufhebung and thus of Spirit's inception and development. The Phenomenology is the story of consciousness' progress through its self-presentations. Imagination is therefore present throughout the entire book. I do not engage the moments of the Phenomenology, but focus instead on the single appearance of the word imagination in the Preface, and on how Hegel reinterprets Fichte's wavering imagination as a moment within the reflection--the "medium" of this 'Science of Experience.' ;Between 1801-1807 language becomes an increasingly important moment of imagination; by 1830 the externalizing of representations in communication is a moment of imagination. Hegel's psychology of the genesis of imagination and its moments reveals Spirit to be the community of interpreters. In the thesis Hegel's imagination is thought through to the Phenomenology, however, it is in the final transition of the Phenomenology--from Religion to Absolute Knowing, from picture thinking to knowing according to the Concept--that Hegel thinks the imagination through to its end. My Epilogue briefly discusses that transition, and the end of imagination in Absolute Knowing. (shrink)

Revelation is a central category in many religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism or Unificationists are difficult if not impossible to imagine without it. For some, revelation signifies a decisive event in the past, for others it is a present reality. It plays a central role in shaping religious identities, and it is the reason for much criticism. Some follow a religion only because of its claim to divine revelation, whereas others criticize it as "hearsay upon hearsay" (Paine) on which they (...) would never rest their belief. Some religions have built elaborate institutions of priests and privileged interpreters to safeguard their revelation, control access to it and to protect the right way of interpreting and communicating it. But claims to revelation have also been criticized as strategies of self-immunization, which allow religions to avoid critical public debate of their views and teachings, or legitimize the position of those in power. The 33rd Conference of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in 2012 addressed these complex issues by concentrating on three areas of debate: I. Revelation and Reason, II. Hermeneutics of Revelation, III. Phenomenology of Revelation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in QuestionG. Felicitas MunzelRichard L. Velkley. Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. x + 192. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $18.00.In this collection of essays Velkley realizes a dual achievement: a penetrating scholarly analysis of a familiar topic, modern philosophy's on-going criticism of rational Enlightenment as a "project aiming at progressive rational mastery of nature (...) and the human situation" (60, 3), and an exemplary presentation of philosophizing as a self-reflexive activity in which the "know thyself" is posed to philosophy itself. The focus is on the German Idealist tradition, taking its origins from Rousseau and Kant to "reform, not simply to reject," but still to "overcome earlier modern accounts of scientific reason as abstract, mechanistic, and narrow, and as failing to do justice to the concrete wholeness or richness of nature and human experience, thus impoverishing our conceptions of morality, political life, and human aspirations toward the noble, the sacred, and the beautiful" (93). Velkley's scholarly interpretation identifies Rousseau as the pivotal figure who is the source both of the modern philosophical effort to achieve "human wholeness" by recovering an "original prediscursive or prerational unity" (an account that is the further source of the distinction between culture and civilization [12]) and of the "bifurcation in the ways to reach such wholeness," the ways of "citizenship" and "natural freedom" (13-14). The essays argue for an "important connection between Rousseau and Heidegger, through Kant and Schelling" (6). [End Page 345]While other thinkers are treated (for example, Pufendorf and Nietzsche), the essays primarily examine the writings of these four thinkers to elucidate "the persistence of a set of problems and a way of questioning" particular to modern philosophy (8).Velkley points out that Rousseau's critique of modern rationality is far more subtle than it is usually read. Granted, "through its introduction of self-reflectiveness into the previously 'innocent' and prereflective human situation," reason is perceived as the "true origin" and not the means for overcoming human ills (53). However, the "prereflective origin is nowhere to be found," it is an "imaginative construction," and it is a "mistake to take at face value any apparent assertion that natural man was merely an animal with only instinct and sensation" (37, 41). Because of his distinctively human awareness of time, natural man, "far from being mere animal," is "the only being whose openness to being exposes him to the nonbeing of death" (48). In short, "some 'bondage' to reason" is inescapable and "Rousseau's various plans for the reform of politics, education, the family, and the philosophical life" should be read as "ways of making the most of that bondage" (33).In the case of Kant, Velkley's emphasis is on the critical effort to resolve the dialectic, to correct the rational self-ignorance "so that the striving of reason for totality will not turn into a nihilistic rejection of reason" (112); or put another way, Rousseau inspires Kant's quid juris question, the issue of the "justification of reason as a whole," specifically the legitimacy of the categories (50-61, 101). Schelling, together with Kant's other Idealist successors, seeks a "greater unity, integration, wholeness, and concreteness than Kant provides" (113). The two main aspects of Schelling's project that Velkley discusses are (1) the discovery of the true human self in nature, the "hidden infinite unconscious self beneath the apparent finite conscious self," a "self whose objectification by the finite categories of discursive reason is quite impossible" and which thus discloses an "infinite contradiction" (115); and (2) the affirmation of the error of earlier philosophizing as belonging "essentially to philosophical inquiry" and being the very "precondition for finding truth" (125). From the philosophical attempt to correct reason's fundamental error, to its reading of "being in error" as an ineliminable step in the historical progress of reason and philosophy, Velkley turns to Heidegger's effort to step behind traditional metaphysics altogether and to move "forward into a new thinking beyond metaphysics" (142), from speech about Being to language as a power of disclosure of Being that overpowers the... (shrink)

This is a book about imaginative work and its relationship with the construction of knowledge. It is fully acknowledged by epistemologists that imagination is not something opposed to rationality; it is not mere fantasy opposed to intellect. In philosophy and cognitive sciences, imagination is generally “delimiting not much more than the mental ability to interact cognitively with things that are not now present via the senses.” For centuries, scholars and poets have wondered where this capability could come from, whether it (...) is inspired by divinity or it is a peculiar feature of human mind. The omnipresence of imaginative work in both every day and highly specialized human activities requires a profoundly radical understanding of this phenomenon. We need to work imaginatively in order to achieve knowledge, thus imagination must be something more than a mere flight of fantasy. Considering different stories in the field of scientific endeavor, I will try to propose the idea that the imaginative process is fundamental higher mental function that concurs in our experiencing, knowing and understanding the world we are part of. This book is thus about a theoretical idea of imagining as constant part of the complex whole we call the human psyche. It is a story of human beings striving not only for knowledge and exploration but also striving for imagining possibilities.​. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:348 BOOK REVIEWS to God's commandments is "the way and condition of salvation" (VS # 12). Now obedience to the commandments entails, in addition to a good motivation or a willingness to strive, the conformity of an action's object to the specifying content of the commandment. What is the significance of a commandment to honor one's father and mother, if it does not specify actions? The commandments of God (...) specify what kinds of action are, or are not, in conformity with the true good of man. In his analysis of the moral act, the Pope holds that the object of the act is "the primary and decisive element for moral judgment" (VS # 79). Actions which by the nature of their object are unable to be ordered to man's true end can never be "good" actions. Further, he notes that acts, even individual acts, are determinative of the goodness or badness of the person. These points are summarized nicely in the following passage: Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the person to his ultimate end and the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by reason. If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in conflict with our ultimate end, the supreme good, God himself (VS # 72). I believe that Keenan's study commendably highlights the freedom of the will in the order of exercise, and its power to exercise dominion over the intellect in the order of specification. Keenan also insightfully emphasizes the central role of the love of God as the root of our striving to live well. Yet any willing can only be consequent to some knowing. Further, the willingness to strive and be determined, if it is good, is a willingness to be determined, or specified, by the true good known by reason and faith. This willingness, which is a crucial element in moral goodness, must be completed by actions in conformity with the true good. Human goodness is in freely, and lovingly, living out the truth of human nature and its end. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. JOHN A. D. CUDDEBACK Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth. By JOHN FINNIS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. 113. $24.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper). Not long after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Alasdair MacIntyre told a group of Catholic bishops: " As a matter of autobio- BOOK REVIEWS 349 graphical fact, I came to the conclusion that there were exceptionless and binding [moral] norms prior to and quite independently of any faith in Divine Revelation." Within the Church Macintyre entered, however, there existed, and exists, widespread doubt and confusion about "moral absolutes" or " exceptionless moral norms." Certain eminent Catholic moral theologians today dissent from Pope John Paul's teaching that " there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object." In the face of this dissent, John Finnis has produced a powerful philosophical and theological defense of the papal teaching. Moral Absolutes presents the 1988 Michael J. McGivney Lectures which Finnis delivered at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. The hook consists of four chapters: "Foundations," "Clarifications," "Christian Witness," and "Challenge and Response." Like Macintyre, Finnis maintains that the authority of scripture and tradition supplement reason's grasp of certain specific types of act as intrinsically wicked and, therefore, never to he performed. Although his goal is to vindicate the proposition that there are moral absolutes, rather than to say which, or even how many, moral norms qualify as " exceptionless " (and therefore as, in the relevant sense of the term, " absolute "), his examples include norms against abortion (and, more generally, the direct killing of innocent human beings), adultery, fornication, contraception, homosexual sex, blasphemy, and disclaimer of the faith. As Finnis observes, the Church's tradition of proclaiming these norms and their absoluteness is "massively solid." Against certain neoscholastic... (shrink)

Since the time Plato wanted to banish poetry from his ideal state by accusing Homer of “imitation”, the tension between poetry and philosophy has made itself evident. Our study aims to rethink this highly controversial relationship and to question the relationship between logic, which is the basis of the intellectual sciences, directly connected to logos, and poetry, which is seen as closer to sensation and to “mythos”. This questioning about the possibility of logical thinking through poetics will be realized through (...) language, logic and poetics. In this context, our discussion ground will be the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, which is accepted as the first work of philosophy of art, in Islamic philosophy, specifically in Avicenna. While commenting on Aristotle, muslim logicians and Avicenna included poetry in logic by placing Poetics in the Organon. This very inclusion invites us to think about the logical status of poetry for Avicenna. In this context, the question we will pursue with Avicenna will be essentially: What is the logical status of poetry and what is the possibility of poetic syllogism? According to Avicenna, poetry is related to the “possibles”, and in this respect, it allows to consider being and non-being together. While poetry addresses imagination, the fact that the imagination is between the sensation and the intellect, makes poetry’s position of “mediator” valuable. In order to show what this position means, we will try to discuss the relationship between poetry and logic through a number of basic themes of the Avicennian philosophy, such as powers of the soul, the relationship between sensation-imagination-intellect, the distinction of essence-existence, the importance of imitation, and types of syllogism. Finally, we will discuss, through particular examples, the place given to the poetry, and examine the possibilities of poetry and the relationship between the poetic and the logical, in terms of the aforementioned theory of poetry. (shrink)

The nature of the real self -- Whole person and duality -- How nature is dual -- Real self and false self -- A primary certainty -- Certainty in the self -- The original cogito argument -- Overcoming representation -- The theory of right and wrong -- The defining principle -- Narrowing the definition -- The centrality of reason -- A question of proof -- Reason and intelligence -- A universal activity -- Human and animal consciousness -- Anti-spiritual assumptions -- (...) Intellect and religious ideals -- Creativity and spirituality -- The anomaly of creativity -- An archetypal view of creation -- Creativity resistant to systems -- Conforming to the divine pattern -- Happiness and the extension of time -- Happiness distinct from pleasure -- Implications for ascetic values -- Collective suffering -- Transcendence and normal experience -- The inner duality of consciousness -- The core of consciousness -- Theology and reductionism -- A radical conclusion -- The abstract and the concrete -- Common sense concreteness -- Mediation by living organisms -- Spirituality and power -- The freedom of the will -- Confusions about free will -- Free will and release from fate -- Arguments for free will -- Freedom and knowledge of truth -- The law of action and reaction -- Sources in scripture -- The causal principle and continuity -- What controls the world? -- Causality includes free will -- Choice of the lesser evil -- Apparent breaches of the law -- The insentience of the active faculties -- Cosmic reaction and judgement -- Consequences for modern religion -- Providence and fate -- Forms of cosmic order -- Providence and archetypal order -- Fate, providence, and salvation -- Fate and astrology. (shrink)

Challenging recent work that contends that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. This tradition - which Scott Paul Gordon locates in seventeenth-century religious discourse, in early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, in mid eighteenth-century acting theory, and in the emergent novel - resists autonomy and defers agency from the individual to an external 'prompter'. Gordon (...) argues that the trope of passivity aims to guarantee a disinterested self in a culture that was increasingly convinced that every deliberate action involves calculating one's own interest. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass (1817?–1875) is a monumental American figure. As a runaway slave and leading black thinker, speaker, and writer in the abolitionist movement and during Reconstruction and its tragic collapse, his legacy in American history is singular. His ideals and scorching criticisms have marked American political thought about democracy, religion, race, racism, liberty, and equality. American political parties claim him, especially the Republican Party, with which he has an early connection and which has used his figure as cover for their (...) less than egalitarian projects, as do different ideological camps. One can find accounts of Douglass as an existentialist, revolutionary, proto-libertarian, liberal, civic republican thinker. His North Star continues to guide those who welcome its light, although it may lead them down different political-ideological paths.In all of this, one can imagine that those not familiar with the details of Douglass’s narratives and deeds might, in the context of all of that national hagiography, lose track of the fact that he was a black man. Frederick Douglass was a black man born into slavery, survived that brutal regime for twenty-one years, and then escaped and became a principal leader of the American abolition movement and leading black political thinker. Shortly after escaping slavery, he wrote his first famous autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and subsequently two more, in addition to volumes of speeches, articles, and a novel. It is as if his monumentality, like marble, alabaster, or bronze—the stuff of civic memorials—would obscure that irreducible fact in its grand monotones.Nick Brommell’s The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass reminds readers that that irreducible fact is a nontrivial, essential element of Douglass’s life and work. Bromell argues that this includes the political theory, a product of Douglass’s black political philosophy that runs through it all. He contends that Douglass argued for an inclusive conception of personhood and active citizenship, which America’s founding public philosophy, distorted by white supremacy, purposefully did not. Its elements include a defense of the moral personhood of blacks and their full and equal citizenship and a view of political community enlivened by group solidarities and active citizenship in defense of justice.In the course of his analysis, Bromell, a literary theorist, draws on an assortment of contemporary philosophical, rhetorical, and political theories, all of which have a critical theoretical bent, to explicate Douglass’s ideas. This method bears fruit in an instructive analysis of the rhetorical structure of Douglass’ his arguments. Brommell’s analysis of Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom usefully explains how it stands out, not only in terms of updated autobiographical details, but also style and analytical and argumentative intent. This is a reading that other scholars have pioneered, but his rhetorical analysis fleshes out, for example, the role of moral sentiments, care, and intimate and social relations in Douglass’s narrative.A central feature of Bromell’s analysis is that Douglass employs what he and others call a “fugitive rhetoric” that comprises an emphasis on the perspective of his and other black Americans’ standpoints, the holding of opposite ideas in tension, and the use of the rhetorical technique “chiasmus,” where a statement is repeated in reverse order in successive phrases or clauses. It is an illuminating analysis, but Bromell goes further by claiming that Douglass was committed to the tenets of contemporary standpoint epistemology. Douglass certainly referenced and employed his experience and viewpoint as a black man and former slave in his work, just as he directly addressed the viewpoints and interests of black Americans. However, whether this means that Douglass was committed to the set of ideas that we now call standpoint epistemology is another matter. This concern applies to Bromell’s reading of Douglass’s method of holding seemingly contrasting ideas in tension and his use of chiasmus. Contemporary philosophical theories of chiasmus carry particular metaphysical and epistemological implications, and those theories might shed light on Douglass’s political projects. However, their incidental utility does not mean they definitively describe Douglass’s intent or public philosophy. This is a specifically important point because those theories lead to subjective conceptions of truth, especially relating to ethics and politics, while Douglass, as Bromell recognizes, repeatedly and emphatically endorsed what he took to be universal normative truths.In the same vein, Bromell makes several additional claims regarding the conceptual distinctiveness of Douglass’s view of power, dignity, rights, and citizenship. Douglass employed conceptions of each and other important ideas specific to his style, approach, and ends. As other black political thinkers did before him, he used these concepts to condemn slavery, racism, and the hypocrisy of American Republicanism and Christianity to assert the equal moral personhood and dignity of blacks and demand equal rights and citizenship. Bromell rightly emphasizes the role of “power,“ as an individual capability, in Douglass’s view of natural rights, moral dignity, and citizenship. It is an emphasis that is in keeping with both Douglass’s personal narrative and his national political projects. Douglass did not think that Americans—that Black Americans or abolitionists—should passively wait for deliverance from either God or national political leadership. Likewise, Bromell is correct to push back on reductions of Douglass’s views to Lockean, Rousseauian, or Kantian interpretations. Douglass is more than an incarnation of standard deontological, liberal, or civic republican philosophy. As a nineteenth-century black radical thinker, he stood in relation and contributed to those moral and political philosophical traditions. However, Bromell’s claim that Douglass’s conceptions of power, natural rights, and citizenship are conceptually distinct from the large host of major philosophical, theological, and political theoretical accounts that preceded him and influenced those ideas in his time is suggestive but not decisive.Like other writers and theorists before him, Bromell offers us another Douglass—as a black critical political theorist. This is a testament to the fecundity of Douglass’s black political-philosophical legacy. It is a legacy that leads to competing interpretations of him; all the same and for all their differences, his scorching prophetic vision of liberty, equality, citizenship, and progress unites them all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Wider View”: André Hellegers’s Passionate, Integrating Intellect and the Creation of BioethicsWarren Thomas Reich* (bio)AbstractThis article provides an account of how André Hellegers, founder and first Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, laid medicine open to bioethics. Hellegers’s approach to bioethics, as to morality generally and also to medicine and biomedical science, involved taking the “wider view”—a value-filled vision that integrated and gave meaning (...) to what otherwise was disparate, precarious, and conflicting. This article shows how Hellegers’s wider view of bioethics was shaped by events in his own life, his resultant sense of the precariousness of life and health, his commitment to religious inclusiveness, his research in fetal medicine, his clinical experience in obstetrics, his role in the struggle to change the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on fertility control, and his developing concepts of health and disease. Hellegers was committed to and worked toward bioethics as a self-consciously interdisciplinary field in which the contributing disciplines adapt to each other—rather than sustain themselves as autonomous disciplines—to create a dynamic and complex intellectual, clinical, and social activity.André Hellegers’s personality and life were like that of a meteor: brief appearance on the scene; high-speed, flaming trajectory; quick burn-out; its smallest residue worth examining for ages to come. You had to watch carefully, for otherwise you might miss what he was about—what he was really about. He had an unusually probing and unflagging mind, coupled with the ability to make people think; and in a very real sense, that is what he was always about. André was an extremely effective communicator. He was like Fred Astaire: he had flair and charm, and no matter how crowded the room, you instantly knew when he entered it. Like Astaire, he had a deep intensity and striving for perfection while making his art always look like great fun. He was an engaging [End Page 25] story-teller who also knew how to stun intelligent people with his insightful, often ironic and humorous thinking that got to the bottom of things very quickly, leaving his interlocutors with a huge agenda for further reflection. Yet in spite of all this alluring talent, André never attracted attention to himself in a vain way. Even as raconteur, he was always working, getting people to think and talk.There were three great passions in Hellegers’s life that enabled him to inspire and shape bioethics as he did. He had a passionate intellect that was constantly probing for new clarity at new levels of understanding and values, and he had the ability to infect other people with his intellectual passion. André Hellegers was deeply rooted in a Catholicism scarcely imaginable in the United States—an open, historically-conscious, northern European faith that kept him free of ideology while providing him a foundation on which he built a rich ecumenicity of theological and philosophical bioethics. Finally, and perhaps most decisively for his founding work in bioethics, Hellegers pushed and probed to get a world that was almost totally unaccustomed to communicating over disciplinary lines (incredibly, virtually no interdisciplinary conferences had taken place before his day) to dialogue and collaborate across the barriers of medicine, politics, and religion.IntroductionThe customary way of writing a history of someone’s involvement in the origins of something—say, the origins of a nation or, I suppose, the origins of bioethics—certainly would not customarily start with the foregoing type of vignette. It would have as its purpose to discuss such things as issues, events that raised issues, methods pursued and applied, and outcomes achieved. However, in this modest account of some of the major contributions of the late André E. Hellegers, M.D., to the development of the field of bioethics, I intend to focus on a different level of historical inquiry, one that portrays and explains the person, his world-view, and his motivation, as well as the cultural forces and events that conspired to make Hellegers and the people with whom he came into contact vibrant with a sense of innovative and creative—not to mention urgent—inquiry. I believe that... (shrink)

This paper concerns Hegel's early treatment of the productive imagination in his 1803–1804 Faith and Knowledge. I show how he articulates that activity in terms of a pair of speculative unities, which solve lingering problems of self-knowledge and self-constitution from Kant's B-deduction. On the one hand, I argue that the familiar unity of spontaneity and receptivity makes possible knowledge of the moment of self-positing. On the other hand, I contend that Hegel's talk of imagination as both an “organic idea” and (...) an “intuitive intellect” refers to a self-constituting capacity that intellects like ours possess. I show that self-constitution is possible, for Hegel, only in so far as intellects like ours possess a capacity to unify possibility and actuality in thought, or to think themselves into being. (shrink)

Aristotle’s restriction of intellect to humans raised the problem of how animals are able to react to and learn from their environment if they lack the ability to recognize classes of objects, an ability supposedly conferred by intellect. Aristotle’s delineation of the internal senses into the common sense, imagination, and memory did not include a locus for the cleverness or prudence that he found animals to possess in varying degrees. Avicenna supplemented Aristotle’s internal senses by adding the estimative (...) class='Hi'>power, which allowed animals to recognize the value of a perceived object in terms of its potential benefit or harm. Albert the Great, who showed more interest than most medieval philosophers in the problem of animal behavior, adopted the estimative power and began his inquiry by considering pygmies, which he judged to be the highest form of animal. This inquiry led Albert to weaken but in the end to retain the distinction based on intellectual abilities between animals and humans. (shrink)

In this article, it is often pointed out to a more specific area by using the term Ṣūfi art on the basis of the aforementioned understanding. Thus, an analytic approach is adopted along with the usage of deductive method, and a layer of meaning is tried to be established through criticism and analysis. Firstly, a basic framework was constructed by mentioning the origins of Ṣūfi art. Then the attention was drawn to the sacredness included in Ṣūfi art in terms of (...) its historical frame and ontological structure. It is asserted that Ṣūfi art is based on four basic arguments: beauty, creativity, transcendence, and imagination. Ṣūfis considered art as an activity of beauty and the expressive power of it. Relying on the basic motive that Allah is the Greatest Artist, the Ṣūfis believe that the beauty of their art is a manifestation of Divine Names. They saw art as an expression of manifestation and unveiling. The Ṣūfis, who deemed the world in terms of Divine Beauty (Jamāl), witnessed the manifestations of the Divine Attribute of Beauty in all things; as a result of this witnessing, the masterpieces of Islamic art came into existence. It is the sapiental and the gnostic outlook that underlies this success of the Ṣūfi orders (tariqa) in Islamic history. In Ṣūfism, the perfection (kamāl) presupposes the beauty (jamāl); and each beauty presupposes also the perfection. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish beauty from perfection in the Ṣūfi art. The sense of loving the beauty is so strong for them that they have tried to reflect the perfect beauty they witness in their works of art, to give an external presence to the phenomenon of beauty and to make the spiritual reality visible that is innate within their beings. Ṣūfism is in a sense an effort to seek beauty. It has been an endless longing to seek, search and witness The All Beauty, that is God Himself. The effort to search for Divine Beauty is sometimes revealed by tune, and sometimes by harmonious words or by a single line. Then, they turn into music, poetry, calligraphy and illumination. According to the maxim stating “There is a path from heart to heart”, these works were transmitted from one generation to another, ensuring the continuity of this Divine tune. Despite the fact that Ṣūfi works make no pretensions to be art as such, they were widely accepted, influenced the masses and gained appreciation in that they were created by people with a sincere heart, intimate sentiments and a deep world of contemplation. The second stage of the gnostic dimension in Islamic arts has been tried to be expounded through the ultimate goal of Ṣūfi art. In Ṣūfi tradition, the aesthetics and sensitivity of art attract attention at every opportunity, but the Ṣūfis did not consider art as their main aim. For them, art denotes only a means. Ṣūfis, who appeal to the eyes, ears and mind with the artistic forms, endeavoured to permeate to the hearts with the spiritual atmosphere provided. With their performances, exuberance and success in different branches of fine arts, they mobilized the aesthetic sentiments in each person's nature and ensured that the human pleasure become accorded with the divine pleasure. Focusing on the sapiential and gnostic dimension of Islamic arts, the basic principles of Ṣūfi art are emphasized as the third stage. It is also suggested that these principles also have a religious content are marked with religious style, have a strong sense of sacredness, possess generality and the peculiarity, have symbolic and representative aspects, are based on symbolism and have traditional characteristics, their style of expression is based on revelation, and are not intended to provoke carnal desires. As to the fourth remarkable factor within the sapiential and gnostic dimension of Islamic art, the Ṣūfi worldview behind the mentioned artistic works is given. As to the fifth remarkable factor in the gnostic dimension of Islamic arts, the thought behind the world of art sustained in the dervish lodges (tekke) is discussed. These dervish lodges were emphasized as the most important places where the beautiful word, beautiful sound and beautiful line converge and these lodges were evaluated as the kitchen where the fine arts were prepared and as the boiler where the arts are cooked. It is due to these features that each of the dervish lodges in Ottoman Empire became a kind of education and fine arts centre. In these lodges, many musicians, composers, poets, illuminators, bookbinders, carvers, engravers and marbling masters were trained. While the dervishes in the dervish lodges exhibited their own unique works of art, they also carried out the requirements of their spiritual trainings (sayru sulūk). (shrink)

In Averroes’s epistemology, knowledge is universal, but it is always singular in terms of the known. Averroes believes that there is no need for an activity, even in the sense that used by those who have the idea of "kumūn" rational forms being formed by other rational forms of the same kind, or for a power such as in the example of polishing a mirror to reflect an image. Similarly, he argues that there are no discrete abstract forms of (...) existing things because otherwise, everyone would have to know everything. Although there are different degrees and levels, the existence of absolute metaphysical forms is subject to change and increases with the multiplication of their subjects. There are three means of knowledge: sensation, imagination, and intellect. Unlike the sensation and perception modes in animals, humans perceive the outer appearance of objects as well as their unique meanings and distinctions. Like animals, the function of sensation in humans is to mediate the self. While perception is abstract and spiritual in one sense, it is material and concrete in another. Averroes does not find it correct to link the knowledge of the contingents of the world to the eternal knowledge of God. Beacuse this implies that there is a difference in God's knowledge between the state of the world's existence and non-existence. In addition, human knowledge about contingents is deficient and changeable, whereas God's knowledge is the cause of the existence of contingents and is unchanging. Ultimately, it does not seem possible for humans to comprehend the nature of God's knowledge. It is agreed with Alexander of Aphrodisias that there should be a distinction between the active and imaginative intellects, but he differs from him in the point that the imaginative intellect disappears. According to Averroes, the active intellect in action is eternal, unlike Themistius’ view. According to Averroes, the intellect is neither a pure potentiality nor a distinct substance. That is to say, if the imaginative intellect were an actual thing, it could not perceive other things. If the intellect were absolute, everyone would know the same things. Similarly, if the intellect were absolute plurality, there would be no unity and connection between intellects. If the intellect were merely an accepting capacity, it could not perceive absence. According to Averroes, the active intellect is not a distinct intellect that gives form or governs the spheres, but rather the form and purpose of the imaginative intellect. There are two powers of this intellect: to abstract the concepts in their potential state from their matter and to make them actual and accepting them. In conclusion, it can be said that Averroes made a substance-centered philosophy regarding the possibility and reality of knowledge, and while he did not deviate from the Aristotelian line, he had to make new openings. Paradoxically, he tries to explain both the actual/abstract and potential/material aspects of the intellect that are postulated by introducing an original soul theory with the imaginative intellect. Therefore, he places importance on both a priori knowledge and sensation and imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical EssaysTed KinnamanPaul Guyer, editor. Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Pp. xxiii + 253. Cloth, $75.95. Paper, $27.95.The volume under review is a collection of essays on a wide range of topics concerning Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. All the papers included here have been published (...) previously, although many of them in places where they might not be easily accessible to English-speaking philosophers. While some of the articles will be familiar to Kant scholars, this collection should be useful to specialists and valuable to students first delving into the third Critique.One essay in the volume, Guyer's own piece on "Kant's Principles of Reflecting Judgment," will be of particular interest to Kant scholars. Guyer's thesis here is that the account of reflecting judgment Kant offers in the Critique of the Power of Judgment is both continuous with the account of regulative principles of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason and the basis of the unity of the third Critique as a whole. He supports this by demonstrating how each of the sorts of judgment discussed in the work can be seen as an application of the broader account of reflecting judgment in general. Guyer identifies five such applications, and shows that each of them has three features central to regulative principles: they set a goal of constructing a system within a certain specific range of cognitions; they require the suitability of objects for attainment of the goal in question, and thus are transcendental [End Page 499] and not merely logical principles; and they supply heuristic advice for the investigation of nature. Thus every form of judgment can with justice be considered as an instance of the general activity of reflecting, that is, finding a universal for a given particular.Several of the essays included here concern the most prominent issues relating to the Analytic of the Beautiful. Nick Zangwill's piece deals with the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment, while Christopher Janaway's "Kant's Aesthetics and the Empty Cognitive Stock" debunks what he sees as misguided readings of the role of concepts in judgments of taste. In "The Idealism of Purposiveness," an excerpt from his 1993 book Kantian Aesthetics Pursued (Edinburgh, 1993), Anthony Savile criticizes what he calls the "established reading" of Kant's claim that beautiful objects exhibit "purposiveness without purpose." On this reading, to say that a thing is purposive without purpose is to say that it appears to be designed, but to no particular purpose. Savile argues instead that we should take purposiveness without purpose to indicate that an object is suitable for a function, but not as a result of conscious design. Articles by Eva Schaper (from her well-known book on Kant's aesthetics) and Malcolm Budd discuss the distinction between free and dependent beauty and the account of the sublime, respectively.Some of the other selections in the volume are interesting for their focus on somewhat neglected aspects of the third Critique. One such aspect is the role of the imagination in Kant's account of aesthetic appreciation, and by extension in cognition more generally. In "Imaginative Freedom and the German Enlightenment," Jane Kneller argues that appreciation of the role of imaginative freedom in Kant's account of aesthetic judgment helps to connect Kant to the Enlightenment rationalist tradition that saw the value of art in its ability to educate and improve those who appreciate it. This education cannot, of course, be of the most straightforward nature, since Kant emphatically argues that to judge a thing beautiful is altogether different from judging it morally good. Instead, Kneller argues, our awareness of our own imaginative freedom provides us with evidence of our ability to realize the "highest good" on earth, evidence otherwise denied us in Kant's philosophy. Also addressing the theme of imagination is Donald Crawford's "Kant's Theory of Creative Imagination," in which he points out striking parallels between Kant's account of the imagination's role in mathematics and in the creation of fine art.Another aspect of Kant... (shrink)

This paper aims at reconstructing the ethical issues raised by Spinoza's earlyTreatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Specifically, I argue that Spinoza takes issue with Descartes’ epistemology in order to support a form of “ethical intellectualism” in which knowledge is envisaged as both necessary and sufficient to reach the supreme good. First, I reconstruct how Descartes exploits the distinction between truth and certainty in hisDiscourse on the Method. On the one hand, this distinction acts as the basis for Descartes’ (...) epistemological rules while, on the other hand, it implies a “morale par provision” in which adequate knowledge is not strictly necessary to practice virtue. Second, I show that Spinoza rejects the distinction between truth and certainty and thus the methodological doubt. This move leads Spinoza to substitute the Cartesian Cogito with the idea of God as the only adequate standard of knowledge, through which the mind can attain the rules to reach the supreme good. Third, I demonstrate that in theShort TreatiseSpinoza develops this view by equating intellect and will and thus maintaining that only adequate knowledge can help to contrast affects. However, I also insist that Spinoza's early epistemology is unable to explain why human beings drop conceive of the idea of God inadequately. Thus, I suggest that in his later writings Spinoza accounts for the insufficiency of adequate knowledge in opposing the power of the imagination and passions by reconnecting the nature of ideas with the mind's conatus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2007 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesSan Diego, California, November 16–17, 2007Peter A. HuffThe Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies sponsored two sessions in conjunction with the 2007 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Each session highlighted themes related to the work of a major figure in Buddhist-Christian dialogue. The first session, addressing the topic “Homosexuality, the Church, and the Sangha,” was organized in honor of (...) Roger Corless (1938–2007), longtime member of the society, dual practitioner of Roman Catholicism and Vajrayana Buddhism, and a well-known voice for “queer sangha.” The second session, a panel discussion titled “The Thought and Legacy of Masao Abe,” focused on the career achievements of Abe (1915–2006), widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and influential scholars in modern Zen studies, interreligious dialogue, and comparative philosophy.The first session, moderated by Harry Wells (Humboldt State University), featured three papers on issues of gender, sexual ethics, and religious identity. Robert Fastiggi, professor of systematic theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary (Detroit), presented the paper “The Catholic Church and Homosexuality.” Arguing that the Catholic tradition avoids an “either/or” approach to homosexuality, he outlined the church’s official distinction between morally neutral homoerotic identity and what Vatican documents call “intrinsically disordered” homosexual acts. He also noted that Catholic researchers differ significantly on the question of the genetic origins of same-sex attraction. The key to Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality, he explained, is a “theology of the body” that envisions male-female complementarity as the divinely ordained pattern of creation. Fastiggi suggested that further discussion of related ideas such as celibacy, chastity, desire, and concupiscence would enhance future Buddhist-Christian dialogue on homosexuality.Ilene Stanford, a ThD candidate in religion, gender, and culture at Harvard University, presented the next paper, “In or Out? Marriage as a Social Practice.” Describing marriage in the United States as a “site of contestation,” she explored the conflicting [End Page 137] models of sexual union that currently inform public debates in political and ecclesiastical contexts. Using William Johnson’s A Time to Embrace: Same-Gender Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics (2006) as a point of departure, she argued that many contemporary examinations of sexual relationships, even some of the most inclusive, fail to reckon with the way in which the West’s Augustinian legacy continues to make heterosexual marriage the norm for all moral reflection on sexual identity and expression. The escalating controversy in the international Anglican community, she said, exposes the weaknesses of Johnson’s “deliberative democracy” model and other theoretical models that minimize the role of political and social power in the construction of sexual ideals.José Ignacio Cabezón, who holds the XIV Dalai Lama Chair in Tibetan Buddhism at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presented the final paper: “Is Homosexual Sex ‘Sexual Misconduct’? Critical Reflections on Some Classical Indo-Tibetan Sources.” Analyzing the changing portraits of sexual immorality in the Pali canon, Indian Sanskrit texts, and Tibetan scholastic treatises, Cabezón traced the evolution of monastic commentary on lay sexuality over the course of several centuries. What originated primarily as a simple prohibition against some forms of male adulterous activity, he explained, eventually became an unprecedented attempt to regulate intricate details of sexual behavior. Identifying Ansanga (fourth century ce) as the first Buddhist writer to proscribe same-sex activity between men, Cabezón suggested that changing social mores, intra-Buddhist debates, and the fertile monastic imagination contributed to the gradual elaboration of moral teaching in ancient and classical Buddhist literature.After the paper presentations, Richard Reilly, professor of philosophy at St. Bonaventure University, responded with provocative comments. He raised critical points about the significance of the distinction between sexual acts and erotic relationships, the strategic though limited value of “deliberative democracy” in multicultural faith communities, and the need for more rigorous comparative study of homophobic legislation in Buddhist and Abrahamic religious traditions. Sparking an engaging discussion among presenters and members of the audience, Reilly’s remarks underscored the importance of ongoing interdisciplinary investigations into homosexuality, the church, and the sangha.The society’s second session at the AAR provided a venue for former... (shrink)

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and the (...) larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)

This paper addresses Suárez’s understanding of imagination and phantasy, dealing with it in the general Aristotelian debate on the internal senses. Paragraph 1 sketches Aristotle’s, Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s accounts of imagination, examining especially the boundary between human and animal cognition. Paragraph 2 addresses especially the Jesuits’ understanding of the topology of the internal senses, linking it with the Jesuit strategy for the demonstration of the soul’s immateriality and immortality. Paragraphs 3 and 4 deal with Suárez’s simplification of the internal (...) senses, aimed at establishing a direct opposition between intellection (in men) and a general lower cognitive activity founded in the use of sensory representations (shared by men and animals). Paragraphs 5 and 6 focus on the role of phantasy in Suárez’s account of the illumination of phantasms, on Suárez’s use of Scotus’ concepts of ‘sympathy’, and ‘concomitance’ and the relevance of such a model in the demonstration of the soul’s immortality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 273 Verene, Donald Phillip. Vico's Science of Imagination. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981, Pp. 227. $19.5o. In Chapter 1 (Introduction: Vico's Originality), Verene announces two principal concerns, a two-fold approach, and the predominant contention of his study.. 1. Principal concerns: "to consider the philosophical truth of Vico's ideas themselves, rather than to examine their historical character" (p. 19); to consider "the importance of Vico's conception (...) of barbarism for understanding present society" (p. 28). 2. Two-fold approach: "to interpret the central theses of Vico's thought" from the inside in the spirit of the whole and, at the same time, "to develop the problems of Vico's philosophy themselves" (pp. 19--21 ). 3. Predominant contention: "that Vico's ideas constitute a philosophy of recollective universals which generates philosophical understanding fronl the image, not the rational category. This approach regards imagination as a method of pfiilosophical thought" (p. 19) and the imaginative universal as "a key to his conception of knowledge" (p. 67). Vico's philosophy is depicted and characterized by Verene as fi)llows. Beginning with the imagination (fantasia) as an original and independent power of mind, Vico builds his philosophy on the image, the imaginative universal, thereby creating a position outside Western philosophy as traditionally understood. His New Science is a process of recollective fantasia, a kind of memory, and the system built constitutes a system of memory for all of human reality. By means of his concept of memory, Vico works his way back to the world of original thought, the mythicopoeticfantasia of the first men. His discovery of the imaginative universal as their way of thinking and their kind of knowledge establishes a new genetic origin for philosophical thought. Recollective fantasia constitutes the subject-matter and form of Vico's science itself', i.e., the term designates a type of nlemory through which the New Science is acconlplished as well as the type of thought from which it must be understood. "The New Science is a metaphysical fable, h creates a vera narratio of the recollectire imagination. The storia ideale eterna is an ideal trnth, but not an a priori or fictional one. As the master image of the recollective mind, it precisely contains all of the human event. Metaphysical truth, achieved through the exercise of.[antasia.., is generated out of the mind itself.., as images that actually contain the providential structure of reality" (p. 125). Vico's per|ornlative science "is man's true production of a knowledge of" his own nature" (p. 133). "The proof of the science is found through the reader making it for himself" (p. 156). What is the "recollective imaginative universal"? (a term coined by Verene) as distinguished from the universale fantastico? Vico identifies the latter quite simply. Poetic imagination, he tells us, was active in the first men who, "not being able to form intelligible class concepts of things, had a natural need to create poetic characters ; that is, imaginative class concepts or universals, to which, as to certain models or ideal portraits, to reduce all the particular species that resembled them." (The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Cornell University Press, 1968; orig. pub. 1948, w ) Thus in the theological age, 274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY "Jove was born naturally in poetry as a divine character or imaginative universal, to which everything having to do with the auspices was referred by all the ancient gentile nations, which must therefore all have been poetic by nature" (9 381). In the age of heroes, Achilles embodies the idea of valor common to all strong men and Ulysses the idea of prudence common to all wise men (9 403). The myths, fables, and allegories brought to birth by poetic imagination were true stories for their makers. Imaginative universals or genera, "as the human mind later learned to abstract forms and properties from subjects, passed over into intelligible genera, which prepared the way for philosophers.... " (9 934)- Abstracting, categorizing, and predicating on the basis of properties in common, the philosophers in their intelligible class concepts no hmger think in the same manner as the first men did... (shrink)

As reflected in the spirit of the times, certain fundamental changes have occurred in such concepts as nature, reason, and life. While in the liberal era nature appeared to man as a sphere to be conquered by him for the enhancement of his material happiness, today it is an ideal offering an escape from the vicissitudes of social life. Confidence in the power of reason and of science turns into hatred of intelligence, because the latter is an instrument of (...) domination for the privileged classes, and leads the majority of men to accept utopian dreams which cannot be realized. Whereas the philosophy of liberalism glorifies the individual as an active agent having a higher meaning, he now falls into disrespect as a merely passive link in the overpowering totality of life.This article analyses Hamsun as a typical representative of such a postliberal ideology. At all points where he develops his own interpretation of life and the world, he portrays the longings of a disillusioned bourgeois civilization in terms of these new concepts. The ideal which he pictures as an escape from the bourgeois civilization of our times is only superficially in conflict with it. His most important subjects and themes derive their social function from a historical situation which calls for an attitude of obedient subordination to authority.There are two elements in Hamsun's dream of a return to nature : the resentful disillusionment which wants to fence off nature as its private property, because it has little to expect from the social reality in which it lives, on the one hand ; and on the other, the adoration of the heroic as reflected in the overpowering sweep of the forces of nature. This admiration of power is further enhanced by the glorification of peasant life. The ideal of nature is finally characterized by a biological interpretation of erotic relationships. Brutality and sentimentality interchange abruptly within such an ideology as they do in actual authoritarian character types of the present day.Hamsun criticizes all important aspects of urban life, exhibiting another form of his anti-rational attitude. However, it is important to notice his relationship to industry : he has contempt for the working class but utters not one critical word against the employers.His philosophy of life, which minimizes the individual and exalts the powers that be, corresponds to the trends of the time : men are scurrying around like ants, without plan or aim ; most of them are crushed, and this is justified because the forces of life require unconditional obedience and absolute subordination of the individual.Finally the author presents some characteristic documents about the influence which Hamsun has exerted. In the post-war period socialists and liberals were singing the same paeans of praise for Hamsun as the fascists more recently.Les trois transformations les plus importantes de la conscience sociale au cours de ces cinquante dernières années, concernent les idées de nature, d'esprit et de vie. Dans le libéralisme, la nature apparaît avant tout comme une réalité que l'homme doit maîtriser pour accroître ses richesses matérielles. Aujourd'hui, dans son apparence immédiate, elle devient un idéal qui doit libérer les hommes des déceptions que leur inflige l'existence collective. Au lieu de la confiance ancienne en l'esprit et en la science, éclate maintenant la haine de l'intellect, qui sans doute offre aux classes privilégiées un instrument affiné de domination, mais n'apporte à la majorité des hommes que des utopies rationalistes sans signification concrète. L'individu, que la philosophie libérale transfigurait en lui attribuant une fonction supérieure, apparaît comme un élément passif d'une totalité toute puissante, la vie.L'article montre ensuite en Hamsun un représentant typique de cette idéologie post-libérale. Sur tous les points décisifs, sa conception de l'homme et de la nature révèle sa véritable signification : elle traduit dans des catégories nouvelles les aspirations de la bourgeoisie déçue. L'opposition entre son idéal et la société bourgeoise est d'ailleurs tout apparente. La fonction sociale de ses thèmes les plus importants est la préparation d'une humanité soumise, prête à s'incliner sans protester devant l'autorité.Derrière le rêve de Hamsun d'une existence en accord immédiat avec la nature, on aperçoit le ressentiment petit bourgeois, qui veut faire de la nature sa propriété privée parce qu’il a peu à attendre dans la réalité. On aperçoit aussi le culte de l'héroïque en soi, que symbolise la violence desphénomènes naturels. Le culte de la force est encore accentué par la transfiguration du paysan. L'idéal d’une vie conforme à la nature est finalement caractérisé par la représentation biologique que se fait Hamsun des rapports érotiques. Constamment, dans cette idéologie, sentimentalisme et brutalité se juxtaposent sans intermédiaire — mélange qui appartient en propre également au type d’homme autoritaire du présent.L’anti-intellectualisme de Hamsun se manifeste sous forme d’une critique des éléments les plus importants de la civilisation urbaine. En particulier, son jugement sur l’industrie est décisif ; il méprise le prolétariat, sans jamais dire un mot contre les entrepreneurs.Sa représentation, marquée par l’actualité, du néant de l’individu et du respect qui convient devant les puissances existantes, s’exprime aussi dans une philosophie de la vie. Les hommes grouillent comme des vers, beaucoup sont piétinés ; mais cette destinée est juste, car la puissance de la vie a le droit d’exiger de l’individu obéissance sans réserve et soumission absolue.A la fin, l’article rassemble quelques témoignages caractéristiques de l’accueil fait à Hamsun. Il en résulte qu’en particulier après la guerre, socialistes et libéraux ont admiré sans critique Hamsun de la même manière que des littérateurs fascistes. (shrink)

In the sacred texts, human beings are described as being created in the most beautiful way. In order to understand and define its integrity of existence in the most accurate way, it is necessary to know both its biological and spiritual aspects. In addition to the well-known and generally accepted characteristics of humans such as will and responsibility, there are also basic realities that constitute humans such as nafs, soul and mind. One of the most powerful factors that make (...) a person virtuous or worthless both in the presence of the Creator and in the eyes of people is the nafs. The nafs has many different meanings such as ”the essence of man, soul, person, self-being, mind, life, lust, desire, the source of bad habits".Philosophers, Sufis and theological scholars with different philosophical ideas in different periods in the history of thought have discussed and evaluated the subject of the nafs. Pythagoras considered the nafs as a substance separate from the body, Democritus as fire or heat, Plato as a substance that gives movement to the body. Aristotle, on the other hand, pointed out the difficulty of defining the soul and talked about three types of the nafs: vegetative, animal and human. The concept of nafs, on whose definition philosophers cannot agree, has a strategic importance as it is accepted as the point of separation of good and evil in religious literature. Because the human nafs, by its nature, has a structure that is prone to worldly pleasures, human desires, wishs and passions. Likewise, human beings are creatures of will, and thanks to this feature, they have the ability and freedom to establish positive and negative relationships and evaluate the beings and events around them. What should be the attitude of a person who has these characteristics towards pleasures, desires and passions? The main theme of our study is Mawardi's answer to this question and the solutions he identified. It was stated that having will makes humans different and superior to other living creatures. In this context, what is expected from a person is to use his will to control his nafs by displaying a sensitive, conscious and astute attitude towards the desires of his soul. It is observed in real life that failure to control one's nafs creates undesirable consequences both individually and socially. If the nafs cannot be controlled consciously, a person may become a victim of excessive passion for the world and the things in it. It is possible for humans to become arrogant and proud and to corrupt the environment, society and the world and make it uninhabitable as a result of pursuing their desires. Therefore, there is a need for a constantly dynamic and active consciousness regarding this feature of the nafs. There is no positive situation that an uncontrollable, undisciplined nafs that is a slave to its desires and passions will bring to its owner. The undisciplined and uncontrolled nafs causes individual, religious, moral and social traumas such as taqiyya, insincere words and actions, formal religious attitudes and behaviors, and alienating others for simple, primitive reasons. This is the point that the thinker focuses on and draws attention to. If a person can manage to control and discipline the passions and desires of his nafs by using his will, space will be opened for virtues that will bring happiness to individual and social life, such as brotherhood, solidarity, altruism. Mawardi evaluated this issue in the fifth chapter of his work Edebü'd-Dünyâ ved-Dîn. Mawardi, who thinks that education is an important factor in the reformation of the nafs, says that the mind and revealed knowledge given to man by God are indispensable elements of this struggle. Because he thinks that the alliance of reason, revelation and knowledge is necessary in distinguishing between right and wrong and in being patient with the harmful and evil tendencies of the nafs. A person who takes revelation, reason, knowledge and wisdom as a guide and whose emotions, thoughts and behaviors are shaped by this guide will not be defeated by his nafs. For this reason, Maverdi emphasizes especially when evaluating the subject of “Literary of the soul” that a person needs decency in adulthood as well as in childhood. In this context, he identified issues such as arrogance, pride, false envy and wrath, which he thought could hinder the evolution of virtue and virtue in individual and social life, and also showed the reasons for these and how to combat them. (shrink)

How can a just peace be built in sites of genocide, massive civil war, dictatorship, terrorism, and poverty? In Strategies of Peace, the first volume in the Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding series, fifteen leading scholars propose an imaginative and provocative approach to peacebuilding. Today the dominant thinking is the "liberal peace," which stresses cease fires, elections, and short run peace operations carried out by international institutions, western states, and local political elites. But the liberal peace is not enough, the authors (...) argue. A just and sustainable peace requires a far more holistic vision that links together activities, actors, and institutions at all levels. By exploring innovative models for building lasting peace-a United Nations counter-terrorism policy that also promotes good governance; coordination of the international prosecution of war criminals with local efforts to settle civil wars; increasing the involvement of religious leaders, who have a unique ability to elicit peace settlements; and many others--the authors advance a bold new vision for peacebuilding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 207-224 [Access article in PDF] Virtual Witnessing and the Role of the Reader in a New Natural Philosophy Richard Cunningham [Figures]How did the self-described new natural philosophies of the early modern period displace other philosophic (moral, ethical, legal), and specifically religious, discourses as the locus of truth in our culture? Natural philosophy's rejection of disputation and of revelation as means of producing truth in (...) favor of the "discovery" of truth was more accurately an introduction of the invention of truth than of its discovery, and this invention demanded the creation of and participation of a certain kind of reader. Rhetorical examination of the early modern magnetic philosopher William Gilbert's most influential work, De Magnete, 1 will help us understand the "paradigm change," to use Thomas Kuhn's oft-misquoted term, 2 from a culture that accepted probabilistic truth in the natural realm to one that expected moral certainty, from a culture that accepted revelation as a legitimate means of access to truth to one that increasingly recognized only the "discovery" of truth through sensual experience disciplined through experiment.One way this paradigm change was effected was through the inclusion of the reader as an active participant in the new natural philosophies. The reader was included in the new natural philosophies by engendering in him desires for particular forms of knowledge and particular ways of attaining that knowledge. Peter Dear notes that "in the seventeenth century old practices changed and new ones appeared. Those changing practices represent shifts in the meaning of experience itself" (12-13), and he then asks the question that might well have been on the tongues of many as the old practices gave way to the new: "how can a universal knowledge-claim about the natural world be justified on the basis of singular items of individual experience?" (13). A crucially important way to justify the universal knowledge-claim on singular items of individual experience [End Page 207] was through the employment of a technique Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have labeled "virtual witnessing" (60-65). Briefly, "virtual witnessing" describes the use of linguistic resources to produce a vicarious experience enabling a reader to confer agreement as though she had actually been present when an experiment was conducted. Virtual witnessing alone, however, cannot explain how the scientific became the dominant truth-producing paradigm in our culture. Virtual witnessing intermingled with a variety of other elements in early modern natural philosophy to encourage readers to participate in the invention of "true" accounts of the world in which we live. In this article I will apply the tools of rhetorical analysis as I use the example of De Magnete to elaborate on how a Foucauldian form of disciplinary impulse combined in the early modern period with the technology of virtual witnessing to create an audience inculcated with desire, interest, and belief in the new natural philosophy, which had to precede and accompany expansion of the scientific into the dominant truth-producing paradigm it has long since become.For the sake of clarity I should expound upon the two key elements of my argument, "discipline," in the Foucauldian sense in which I use the term, and "virtual witnessing." According to Michel Foucault, "discipline" is "a political anatomy of detail... situated on the axis that links the singular and the multiple" (139-49), and I argue that this point, on the "axis that links the singular and the multiple," is exactly the point that enables modern science. William Gilbert's De Magnete can help us understand how knowledge and power--or epistemê and technê, to use another, perhaps more rhetorically inflected, vocabulary--combined in the early modern period to produce the effects that would become those of modern science. Gilbert provides an excellent example of the movement from the production of truth through revelation to the production of truth through discovery and the experimental method. De Magnete persuades its reader by rendering visible a formerly invisible "universal nature," 3 so that truth is no longer warranted by the invisible workings... (shrink)