Richard Rorty claims that philosophy can either be seen as a practice whose primary goal is to show the interrelationship between the different practices in our society or as a discipline whose main aim is to discover the essence of the objects we posit as well as the normative concepts we employ in different discourses. Michel Foucault’s works have usually been associated with the initial characterization of philosophy mentioned above. However, in what follows, I demonstrate how Foucault’s general theme, what (...) he dubs “the discourse of true and false,” intersects with the view that philosophy is the search for the nature of the normative notions we employ in different discourses. In a similar manner, I demonstrate how Foucault’s conception of truth conforms to minimalism’s schema for truth. Though his theme’s intersection with the characterization of philosophy as the search for universal categories and essences is in line with his criticism of how discourses dictate the ways of constituting, seeing and compartmentalizing an object, the manner in which his conception of truth conforms to minimalism’s schema for truth leads to a paradoxical situation for his conception of truth may also be seen as a byproduct of a discourse about truth itself. Keywords - Rorty, Foucault, truth, minimalism, deflationism, discourse of true and false. (shrink)

This paper discusses the tenability of John Greco's solution to the problems of the nature and value of knowledge in his book, Achieving knowledge (2010). Divided into two parts, the discussion (1) specifies how both problems have developed until the current period and (2) determines whether Greco, with his virtue reliabilism, supplies an adequate solution to both problems. I take the view that regardless of Greco's adoption of a contextualist semantics, his epistemic theory remains inadequate so long as it is (...) unable to specify the extent to which a person's abilities can be appropriately involved in the attainment of knowledge or any success from ability. (shrink)

In this paper, I place Mary Leng’s version of mathematical instrumentalism within the context of the debate in mathematical realism/anti-realism as well as within the context of the platonism/nominalism debate. I maintain that although her position is able to show how the conjunction of Quinean naturalism and confirmational holism does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that mathematical objects must necessarily exist for they are indispensable in our best scientific theories; her usage of both theses still leads to platonism. Such (...) is the case for her characterization of scientific theories as akin to a set-theory that accommodates fictitious objects and statements within it is untenable due to the dependence of fictions on a realist ontology. Keywords: fictionalism, mathematical instrumentalism, indispensability argument, Mary Leng, platonism, nominalism. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the relationship between job burnout and employee performance in the feed industry during the ASF outbreak. Further, the researchers employed a descriptive-correlational research design in order to analyze the acquired data and produce pertinent findings. Thus, the researchers gathered data from one hundred two (102) feed industry employees. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (IWPQ) were employed to ascertain the extent of job burnout experienced by the respondents and evaluate employee performance, (...) respectively. Based on the statistical analysis, there is a significant relationship between job burnout and employee performance. Moreover, the study's findings were thoroughly analyzed and discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological WordplayPamela R. BleischJames J. O’Hara. True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. xvii 1 320 pp. Cloth, $44.50, £35.This monograph provides a study and catalogue of Vergilian poetic etymological wordplay, defined by O’Hara as “explicit reference or implicit allusion to the etymology of one of the words a poet (...) is using. A poet may simply explain or allude to the derivation of a word or may suggest further that the derivation of the name is appropriate because it corresponds to some essential feature of the thing named, or gives the true explanation (etymos logos) of the thing” (3). O’Hara’s monograph includes an introductory essay of 163 pages: in part 1 he surveys etymological thinking and wordplay before Vergil, particularly, but not exclusively, the Alexandrian poets; in part 2 he analyzes the form and style of Vergilian wordplay; and in part 3 he examines how etymologizing furthers Vergil’s poetic goals, focusing on some of the prevailing imagery and themes of the Aeneid. The main portion of the monograph is a heavily annotated catalogue which presents and discusses all examples of etymological wordplay that O’Hara or any other scholar has found in Vergil’s Aeneid, Eclogues, and Georgics.O’Hara’s catalogue of Vergilian etymological wordplay is a gold mine of information and a welcome contribution to Vergilian studies. Bartelink’s Etymologisering bij Vergilius, published more than thirty years ago and never translated from the Dutch, had made Vergilian etymology a largely inaccessible topic. Organized by category and lacking indices locorum and verborum, Bartelink’s work did not readily lend itself to consultation. O’Hara’s monograph, with running commentary format, indexes, and cross-references, is easy to use. His catalogue is heavily annotated: each entry includes a quotation of the Vergilian etymologizing passage, discussion of the wordplay, passages from ancient grammarians or poets that explicitly mention the derivation, passages from elsewhere in Vergil or other poets which allude to the same or similar etymologies, [End Page 300] and, finally, up-to-date bibliographical references. As for dubious examples of etymologies, O’Hara tends to be much more inclusive and open-minded than Bartelink: “I place them in the catalogue, with question marks and often with discussion of the problem, in part because what looks implausible to me may look more plausible to another” (112 n. 367). He does not restrict his study to poetic etymology alone but includes “a slightly broader range of wordplay, both to be more useful and because strenuous efforts to distinguish or separate etymological wordplay from ‘related phenomena,’ are not worthwhile, and probably not true to the practice of the poets” (3). Thus he even includes anagrams (e.g., amor/Roma at Aeneid 4.347) in his catalogue, although he expresses reasonable doubts about their value as etymologies. The catalogue contains a wealth of material not found in Bartelink; see, for example, the discussion of Dictamnum, of mater Acidalia, and the section on wandering Dido and the planets. (This last is a must-read, and, to my mind, provides compelling evidence for Pöschl’s identification of Dido with the moon in Iopas’ song [Art of Vergil, Ann Arbor, 1966: 151–54]; and cf. Brown, HSCP 1989, 322–23).The monograph takes a descriptive rather than analytical approach and refrains from engaging in the debate over the determinacy or indeterminacy of meaning in Vergilian poetry; it may prove more accessible and timeless as a result. O’Hara is a reader’s writer: clear, concise, and helpful; his bibliography demonstrates his characteristic thorough research. The University of Michigan Press has done a beautiful job formatting a text fraught with pitfalls: extensive quotations in Latin and Greek featuring italics, boldface, and dotted underlining; plenteous and lengthy footnotes featuring all of the above. The very few errors I found did not detract from the authority or accessibility of the book; the volume does credit to both press and author.O’Hara’s introductory essay is intended as a preliminary to the catalogue, rather than as a full discussion of... (shrink)

This collection presents stimulating and diverse essays by scholars from several different fields; the contributors have made important contributions to the ...

In this paper, I will demonstrate via reductio ad absurdum that a resolute reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus should reconsider their equation of “throwing away the ladder” with the “end of philosophy.” To do this, I will show that an inconsistency arises in Wittgenstein’s view regarding the relationship of philosophy and science since he associates “the correct method of philosophy” with the propositions of science at the end of the aforementioned text. Due to this, I will maintain that it is reasonable (...) to posit that the sharp distinction that Wittgenstein makes between philosophy and science in the Tractatus is merely illusory. An interesting consequence of this is that if this interpretation holds then this provides sufficient grounds to maintain that what some scholars refer to as “the end of philosophy” may actually be the beginning of “Wittgenstein’s naturalism.”. (shrink)

I will argue that Japanese liberalism is distinct from its Western counterparts by adopting Maruyama Masao’s description of how the development of Japanese liberalism has been continuously influenced by the ethical and political thought of the Yamazaki Ansai school. I will use Maruyama’s description of the relationship between the two to demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Japanese liberalism from its Western counterparts in the current period provides us with one of the manifestations of the inconsistencies of communitarianism. I will show (...) that it is an inconsistent position since it is still bound by the association of consciousness and rationality. To be more explicit, my argument against communitarianism will emphasize that Japan’s adoption of liberalism as the basis for the legitimacy of rule in its nation-state is best understood in the context of liberalism’s emphasis on the association of consciousness, rationality, and their respective roles in the creation of social reality. (shrink)

Tres filósofos catalanes: Joaquín Xirau. Eduardo Nicol. José Ferrater Mora.--La herencia de Ortega y Gasset: José Gaos. Luis Recaséns Siches. Manuel Granell. Francisco Ayala. María Zambrano.--Dos filósofos independientes: Juan D. García Bacca. Eugenio Imaz.--Panorama general de la filosofía española en América.

Tomo I. Una antología comentada de su obra -- Tomo II. Una antología comentada.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Socrates Plays the Buffoon:Cautionary Protreptic in EuthydemusAnn N. MicheliniPlato's Euthydemus is somewhat uninteresting to traditional philosophers, who tend to treat the dialogues from the aspect of their theoretical content.1 The arguments repeatedly presented by Socrates' opponents are below Platonic standards,2 while Socrates carries on only a single, somewhat truncated logos of his own. The dialogue's primary interest lies elsewhere, in the odd use it makes of protreptic or conversionary (...) philosophical rhetoric and in its highly ambivalent examination of Socratic tactics. Socrates' adversaries are a pair of ludicrous charlatans, caricatures of the other fifth-century "Sophists"3 whom Plato satirized; but the tactics of the two brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, are also awkwardly close to those of Socrates himself. No other Platonic dialogue features interlocutors who make a habit of practicing the Socratic question-and-answer mode, and in no other dialogue does Socrates allow anyone but himself to assume the dominant role of interrogator. 4 The "sandwich" format, in which two Socratic discussions [End Page 509] are flanked by three series of arguments by the brothers, both contrasts Socrates and his opponents and points up their similarity.The encounter is marked by its concern for protreptic, the exhortation, pervasive in later philosophical writing, as it is in the fourth-century texts of Isocrates and Xenophon, to leave conventional ways of life and care for wisdom and moral virtue.5 At the beginning of the discussion (274d7-e5), Socrates asks Dionysodorus whether his wisdom can be transmitted to even one person not yet persuaded of its efficacy. Socrates rather tendentiously concludes from Dionysodorus' positive response that the brothers would therefore be best at exhortation to virtue, and throughout the discussion he persists in pushing them to demonstrate their protreptic.6 This desire in turn motivates his self-abasing relation to Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, whom Socrates continually begs, on behalf of his young friend Clinias, to reveal their priceless wisdom and save the boy from bad influences. Not only does Socrates set up the brothers as masters of protreptic but he even offers his own version, showing that wisdom is the key to happiness and concluding that it is "necessary to philosophize" (282d1) in order to be happy. The fact that protreptic language is so little in evidence in Plato's other work implies an exceptional status for Euthydemus, the only dialogue that both employs the terminology of protreptic and focuses on the problems of philosophic exhortation and conversion.The phrase "exhort to philosophy and virtue" is conventional: it appears very frequently in both Xenophon and Isocrates.7 But, while Socrates in Apology describes his vocation in terms of an open protreptic of rebuke and exhortation, his use of the elenchus in the dialogues [End Page 510] is more subtle and tactful.8 More important, the trope of exhortation to virtue is notable for its absence from almost all Platonic texts9 except Euthydemus and the eccentric Clitophon.10 The thematic importance of the phrase in Euthydemus is emphasized by repetition and by overlap between the reported dialogue and its setting, in which Socrates exhorts Crito to join him as a student of the brothers' wisdom, and in which Crito expresses his concerns about the education of his son (, 307a2). In his important work on protreptic, Konrad Gaiser attempted to derive later protreptic from speeches by fifth-century "Sophistic" teachers that were designed to win pupils for training in rhetoric and politics. But, while admonitory or moralizing discourses were composed by figures such as Prodicus and Hippias, as they were by others from Hesiod onward, it does not seem likely that the specifically conversionary protreptic that appears in fourth-century writers derives from thinkers who were primarily concerned with demonstrations of skill. The real source for protreptic is likely to have been the Socratics themselves, writers who used the unconventional Socratic persona both to rebuke immorality and to show the inadequacy of traditional moral concepts. This Socratic protreptic demanded nothing less than a change of life.11Whether the dialogue Clitophon is by Plato or not, it affords a valuable proof that protreptic was associated with Socratic technique: Clitophon, an associate of Thrasymachus in Republic... (shrink)

Platonic dialogues are self-concealing, presenting ideas by indirection or in riddling form, often exploring a difficulty or aporia without arriving at a solution. Since philosophers have begun to see Plato's work as imbued with irony, double meaning, and ambiguity, literary techniques that accommodate such layered meanings become a necessary adjunct to interpretation. The dialogue Politicus explores through an aporetic process a central Platonic concern, the relation between ideal and real. Close analysis of the important section dealing with law and constitutions (...) reveals some of the complexity. By his wayward conduct of the argument, the Eleatic stranger repeatedly forces reevaluation of earlier arguments or conclusions. At the close of the cosmic myth , the Stranger warned against confusing the divine monarch, a true shepherd, with his mortal counterpart, the best ruler, whose discovery is the aim of the dialogue. The distinction that was made then is simple in context, but complex in view of the conclusion at 303b8-c5 that the participants in all governments except the ideal monarchy are supreme wizards and fakers. The truly real statesman thus recedes into a distance remote from the world of practical politics, while the familiar regimes are marked as irretrievably flawed and inauthentic. The ability of the fake statesmen to deceive by impersonating the true king also means that it may be impossible to make the crucial distinction between king and tyrant, since either may disregard the laws. The strange fable of legalism run wild confirms the ludicrous and destructive results of rigid obedience to law, but concludes that rigidity is necessary to the false regimes. The corollary is that seekers after truth, like Socrates or even the Stranger himself, must always be rejected by law-based societies. (shrink)

Antropología filosófica es un manual en el que el autor pretende dar un paseo ameno y didáctico en torno a las dimensiones humanas desde un punto de vista antropológico y filosófico. El hombre como ser vivo y como animal racional, cultural, económico, social, sentimental y religioso.Contiene además un diccionario filosófico que ayudará al alumno a aclarar los términos que trata.

v. 1. Metodología e introducción histórica.--v. 2. La Edad de Oro.--v. 3. Del Barroco a la ilustración (Siglos XVII y XVIII).--v. 4. Liberalismo y romanticismo.--v. 5. La crisis contemporánea (3 v.).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.2 (2002) 293-297 [Access article in PDF] Angela Hobbs. Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness, and the Impersonal Good. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xviii + 280 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Hobbs directs this stimulating but rather unfocused study to a question of considerable interest and centrality in Platonic studies: the engagement of Platonic texts with the traditional Greek ethic of heroic endeavor. As she is (...) able to show, the Platonic texts appropriate much of the traditional language and ideology familiar from archaic literature to a new paradigm in which the eccentric [End Page 293] figure of Socrates is the exemplar. Hobbs emphasizes the rhetorical value of this approach, in that it could help to make the image of philosophy accessible and appealing to the young men whom Plato wished to attract as students and colleagues at the Academy. She points to the difficulties of this appropriation, however; and more can be said about the problems that it poses for Platonic rhetoric.The most cogent and interesting analysis in the book is dedicated to the Republic. Hobbs is able to show the connection between traditional concepts of andreia and the function of the soldier class of the ideal city, the thumoeideis. She traces to a common source the apparently various aspects of Plato's thumos and its corresponding social class—readiness to anger, concern for social status, an intense sense of shame, and indignation at unfairness. Platonic thumos represents "the need to form an ideal image of the self in accordance with one's conception of the fine and noble [kalon]." When the image is threatened, "anger, self-disgust and shame are likely to be the result. This ideal of oneself also needs to be confirmed by social recognition: others must treat one in accordance with one's self-image" (30).Hobbs demonstrates that the susceptibility of the thumos element to the kalon is key to the training of the guardian class from childhood, when intellectual understanding is less developed. She has interesting things to say about the role of the kalon in the value schemes of the Republic and Symposium (222-31), arguing that, as a Form, it must ultimately be identical with the Good (agathon), but that the kalon, because of its greater accessibility to an undeveloped intellect, is an easier way to begin the ascent toward the ideal. She effectively connects the concept of the thymoeidic personality to the description of the timocratic man in Republic 8.549c-550b, and, in the middle chapters of the book, to Callicles in the Gorgias, whose motivation, she argues, is primarily thymoeidic or timocratic, since he values sensual indulgence primarily as a token of the power and autonomy desired by the lover of prestige.While Hobbs is certainly right to use Achilles as the exemplar of the traditional ethic that Plato confronts, she is less successful in arguing that Achilles is a central figure in the Republic. In fact, as she points out, he disappears altogether from the myth of Er, where he is replaced by Aias. Achilles cannot be connected with the Platonic concept of thumos in its positive aspects once it has been argued that he is depicted as greedy and impious (390e, 391c). A number of Hobbs's other claims, that Platonic texts identify Socrates with Odysseus, or that Achilles performs his heroic acts through fear of death, are not supported by an adequate textual analysis. Hobbs tends to push a single allusion out of its context to reach extreme speculative conclusions. That Socrates in the Protagoras (315b9 and c8) quotes Odysseus' words ("And then I noted him," "And I also saw Tantalus") as he lists famous figures in Hades does not necessarily mean that Socrates becomes an Odysseus figure: such an identification would require more than these passing allusions, which function quite sufficiently as an ironic comment on the viewing of celebrities. That Homer's Achilles refers to the bleakness [End Page 294] of life in the underworld or emphasizes what he loses by his heroic choice does not mean that... (shrink)