Several recent papers dealing with Plato's position on the imperfection of the phenomenal world draw heavily on the differences between two kinds of predicates in order to show the following: In the middle dialogues, Plato posits Forms only as referents of what the writers call incomplete predicates. He does not posit Forms as referents for complete predicates. When interpreters ignore the differences between these kinds of predicates, they ascribe too radical a view regarding the imperfection of the phenomenal world to (...) the middle dialogues. The ontology of these dialogues includes sensible particulars which retain their identity over time even though they are continually changing in some respect or other. (shrink)

This is a study of the development of Western inwardness from Plato to Augustine. It traces the origin of three concepts: inward turn, private inner space, and outward expression. All three were originally theological concepts; i.e., they belonged to philosophical theories that related God to the soul. ;Part I examines the precursors of these three concepts in Plato, then notes the central contribution made by Aristotle's doctrine that the mind is identical with the Forms it knows. This allows Plotinus to (...) identify the divine Mind with the intelligible world and locate it within the soul. This then is the foundation of Plotinus' inward turn: in turning its mind into its own interior, the soul is turning to the divine. ;Part II argues that it was Augustine who invented the concept of a private inner space of the self. Augustine's search for God builds on Plotinus' inward turn, but must adjust to the fact that Christian doctrine denies the divinity of the soul. Hence the inner self in Augustine is no longer the intelligible world, but the soul's own inner world. It only becomes a private world, however, inasmuch as the soul is fallen and therefore separated from other souls by the opacity of mortal bodies. (shrink)

Time and narratice technique compared. Two novelists, Heliodorus, 3rd century author of the novel Aethiopica and Sigrid Combüchen, contemporary Swedish novelist using a dystopian Europe around 2050 as a scenic setting. In both stories girls and women are captured and killed by soldiers. Both narrators are external to the story being told, presented in the past tense. But Combüchen´s narrator adopts it as a confession, and a turning point in his career as a commanding general, characterized by"double-bind".

The biblical image of Wisdom as the power who “orders all things well” in nature and in human life can be read in the light of contemporary information theory. Some current scientific speculation offers an interpretation of reality as a vast information‐processing system, in which informational situations are continuously transformed through algorithmic operations. This interpretation finds a metaphysical counterpart in the distinction between “nature natured” and “nature naturing” in the philosophical theology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This confluence of religious, metaphysical, (...) and scientific imagery suggests a picture of the world in which the processes of “nature naturing,”“human humaning,” and “God Godding” inform and recur in each other. (shrink)

Explanation of terms in Mīmāṃsā, an orthodox school in Hindu philosophy.

Life and works of Vācaspatimiśra, fl. 976-1000, Hindu philosopher; with special reference to his contribution to the Advaita school.

Human-eyelid conditioning was the principal source of information on Pavlovian conditioning, especially human, in the 1950s and 1960s, but it suffered a sharp decline in productivity, beginning in the late 1960s. The present article treats the decline as a case study with potential implications concerning the survival contingencies of research specialties. We make use of questionnaire data from eyelid-conditioning researchers and examine a variety of publication, topic-of-investigation, and institutional data to identify the major factors in the decline of human-eyelid conditioning.

Islamic education; Islamic ethics; thesis.

Maistre’s Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg is modeled on Plato’s Laws. Plato and Maistre both demand the political control of natural inquiry, and implement these controls through theodictic conversation. Maistre, following the lead of Plato’s legislator, publishes an exemplary conversation about providence between a young man tempted by an atheistic Enlightenment and two older, wiser, and more learned men of affairs. Maistre defends providentialism from materialist interpretations of natural science even as Plato defended it from ancient materialism.

Purpose. The paper is aimed at studying the peculiarities of the Oleksandr Kulchytskyi’s doctrine of human, taking into account the context of European philosophy and especially in comparison with the paradigm of philosophizing in the Lviv-Warsaw school. The theoretical basis of the study is determined by Kulchytskyi’s scholarly works in the field of philosophy and philosophical anthropology, as well as the latest researches that reinterpret the influence of Twardowski’s theoretico-methodological ideas on the formation of the philosophical worldview of the Ukrainian (...) thinker. Originality. Based on the appeal to primary sources, Kulchytskyi’s philosophical doctrine of human in the unity of its basic principles and theoretico-practical results is reconstructed. The ways of forming the key ideas of his philosophical anthropology are determined, their originality is substantiated, despite the cooperation with Twardowski’s school, as well as despite numerous discussions and researches of Western European philosophico-anthropological, existentio-ideological and socio-psychological issues. Conclusions. It is found out how the philosophical worldview of Oleksandr Kulchytskyi was formed and how he gradually came from the research of the human psyche within the framework of anthropological structural psychology to the realization of the need to study philosophical anthropology. The personalistic features of his philosophical doctrine of human are characterized; in particular, attention is paid to the distinction between the concepts of person and personality, determining the importance of the social factor for the formation of human worldview, didactic aims of anthropological studies. It is shown how in Kulchytskyi’s philosophical anthropology the analysis of the existentio-worldview dimension of human existence, manifested in different spiritual situations and socio-cultural conditions that influence the specifics of thinking and the nature of the personality mentality, acquires special importance. The originality of Kulchytskyi’s arguments about human in the context of both Ukrainian philosophy and in general European philosophical thought is stated. (shrink)

IN 1983 THE STUTTGART PUBLISHING FIRM OF PHILIPP RECLAM brought out a slim volume containing an introduction and seven essays by Robert Spaemann, then Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. Entitled Philosophische Essays, it presents and illustrates Spaemann’s philosophical project: to understand the phenomenon of modernity, to criticize the deficiencies of modern thought, and to preserve what is good in modernity by rehabilitating the teleological understanding of nature that modernity largely rejected. A second edition in 1994 included three (...) more essays. As little of Spaemann’s work has yet appeared in English, the aim of this paper is modest: to present as clearly and accurately as possible his position in the Philosophische Essays. (shrink)