In the seventeenth century, the concept of natural law was linked with that of “innate ideas”. Natural laws were said to be ideas imprinted by nature or by God on men's minds and were the very foundation of religion and morality. Locke's attack on innate ideas in the first book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding is therefore considered to be an assault on natural law. Modern critics like Peter Laslett, W. von Leyden and Philip Abrams are of the opinion (...) that Locke's critique of innate ideas in the Essay cannot be reconciled with the concept of natural law in the Two Treatises of Government. (shrink)

A new translation of the Platonic Letters, with clear and judicious discussion of their importance and individual claims to authenticity. By comparing the ideas expressed in the epistles with those in the late dialogues, Morrow provides an excellent corrective to some earlier views that the doctrines are un-Platonic because they do not square with passages in the middle period dialogues. Letters VII and VIII, the longest and most important of the collection, are shown to have excellent claims to authenticity. An (...) important and welcome addition to our English translations and editions of Plato.--R. S. B. (shrink)

Издание предназначено для специалистов по истории зарубежной философии, онтологии и теории познания; читателей, интересующихся историей философии и историей культуры.

Film can be a significant way of doing public philosophy. This chapter sketches some essential public features of philosophy by using popular films. Learning to watch popular films as philosophical expressions, on par with books and articles, brings film and philosophy to inform one another and illuminate important areas of overlap. Memento is an especially uncanny film because it begins with the story's ending. Daniel J. Clark's 2018 documentary film Behind the Curve charts the resurgence of flat‐Earth theory in the (...) United States. Its core thesis is that false, avowed belief in flat‐Earth is sustained partly by an irrational weighing of evidence reinforced by various social, psychological, and economic benefits that come from holding the belief. We gain insight into a classic mechanism of motivated reasoning from Tony Kaye's film American History X, a fictional exploration of the rise of white supremacist ideology in US white working‐class neighborhoods. (shrink)

Монография предназначена студентам старших курсов высших учебных заведений факультета иностранных языков, аспирантам и преподавателям.

This article surveys and discusses the core points of contact between notions of information structure and notions of presupposition. Section 1 is devoted to the ‘weak’ presuppositional semantics for focus developed by Mats Rooth, describing its properties with regard to verification and accommodation and showing that it can successfully account for a wide range of phenomena. Section 2 examines the stronger thesis that focus–background structures give rise to existential presuppositions, and finds the counterarguments that have been raised to carry considerable (...) weight. Section 3 looks into the relationship between Givenness and run-of-the-mill presuppositions, finding that this relationship is looser than might be expected, mainly because a presupposition may be in need of focus marking instead of givenness marking. (shrink)