William James’ Principles of Psychology, in which he made famous the ‘specious present’ doctrine of temporal experience, and Edmund Husserl’s Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, were giant strides in the philosophical investigation of the temporality of experience. However, an important set of precursors to these works has not been adequately investigated. In this article, we undertake this investigation. Beginning with Reid’s essay ‘Memory’ in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, we trace out a line of development of ideas about (...) the temporality of experience that runs through Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, and finally the work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, both of whom were immediate influences on James (though James pseudonymously cites the latter as ‘E.R. Clay’). Furthermore, we argue that Hodgson, especially his Metaphysic of Experience (1898), was a significant influence on Husserl. (shrink)

Over 700,000 copies of the original hardcover and paperback editions of this stunningly popular book have been sold. Karen Armstrong's superbly readable exploration of how the three dominant monotheistic religions of the world—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have shaped and altered the conception of God is a tour de force. One of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, Armstrong traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From (...) classical philosophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one compelling volume. (shrink)

Recent historiography of 19th century biology supports the revision of two traditional doctrines about the history of biology. First, the most important and widespread biological debate around the time of Darwin was not evolution versus creation, but biological functionalism versus structuralism. Second, the idealist and typological structuralist theories of the time were not particularly anti-evolutionary. Typological theories provided argumentation and evidence that was crucial to the refutation of Natural Theological creationism. The contrast between functionalist and structuralist approaches (...) to biology continues today, and the historical misunderstanding of 19th century typological biology may be one of its effects. This historical case can shed light on current controversies regarding the relevance of developmental biology to evolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theories of Doctrinal Development: An AssessmentAndrew MeszarosMICHAEL SEEWALD’S book Dogma im Wandel1 is in some ways a new attempt at the project of Owen Chadwick’s From Bossuet to Newman.2 Chadwick offered a historical survey of approaches to development punctuated by a final epilogue reflecting on the enduring relevance of Newman. Seewald’s chapters too begin historically and end with a final reflection on where we are headed (or ought to (...) be headed). But the temporal frame that Seewald sets himself is far more ambitious. Whereas Chadwick was satisfied with chapters considering sixteenth-to eighteenth-century theology, ending with a prolonged engagement with Newman, and with Aidan Nichols taking up the baton from Chadwick in his From Newman to Congar, covering Newman again, and proceeding to the Modernists, some neo-Scholastics, and other key twentieth-century theologians (e.g., Rahner, Schillebeeckx, [End Page 653] Congar),3 Seewald’s book of seven chapters4 attempts something more far-reaching (even if his book is of similar length).Its ambitious scope has great potential. There is, to be sure, a great deal of reading that went into this work. And Seewald ought to be commended for not backing away from different historical epochs. As so much discussion about the development of doctrine is presented as a uniquely modern problem, Seewald’s foray into the patristic and medieval periods is most welcome, and invites others to continue this important work. Readers can learn something from each chapter. Interesting and relevant points of theological history and controversy are brought to the reader’s attention. There are, moreover, a number of sources, especially in the German original (whose notes are far more interesting and extensive), which it behooves scholars, especially in the English-speaking world, to engage with. Most importantly, however, we are indebted to Seewald for a sincere presentation of his understanding of development, an understanding which, in its general principles, is undoubtedly shared by many Catholics today, academics and nonacademics alike.Nevertheless, there are problems. Given the importance of development, especially today, it is important to address them in a charitable spirit. In what follows, I will engage with a series of issues brought up in the book. The first two, (i) history and contingency and (ii) the relationship between the Gospel and dogma, are perhaps the most theologically substantive, as they pertain immediately to our understanding of how revealed truth is communicated over time (i.e., doctrinal development). I will subsequently critically examine Seewald’s theological evaluations of particular auctoritates on development, which leads him to dismiss some and misappropriate others. The upshot is that the theological argument and historical scholarship are at times wanting. But first let us survey the book’s argument. [End Page 654]I. Summary of the ArgumentChapter 1 discusses the development of the concept “dogma” and the emergence of development theory, especially as a reaction to Protestant Dogmengeschichten. Chapter 2 highlights the dynamics of development already at play in the formation of Scripture and its theology, such as the emergence of paraclete theology in the New Testament.Chapter 3 discusses patristic approaches to doctrinal development (e.g., Augustine and Vincent). Seewald observes that historical circumstances, such as heresy, can drive development in a defensive way. He notes, however, that development can also be explained more positively as a part of divine pedagogy whereby the Church develops a teaching when it is, as it were, “ready” for it. For example, the pneumatology of Constantinople in 381 can be explained both defensively and positively: having already made progress in Christological doctrine at Nicaea, and in order to combat the pneumatomachians, the Church was ready to unpack the divinity of the Holy Spirit (65–67). Chapter 4 surveys key medieval contributions (e.g., Hugh of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas) to development theory in, for example, the concept of fides implicita. There is also a brief but helpful discussion of Anselm, whose defense of the filioque put into sharp relief the role of the logically necessary inference in development (86–93). The Reformation is but touched upon, and the Baroque period (where Chadwick’s work begins) is essentially passed over.With the longer... (shrink)

For over two and a half millennia human beings have attempted to invent strategies to “discover” the truth of time, to determine whether time is infinite, whether eternity is the infinite duration of a continuous present, or whether it too rises and falls with the cycles of universal creation and destruction. _Time-Fetishes_ recounts the history of a tradition that runs counter to the dominant tradition in Western metaphysics, which has sought to purify eternity of its temporal character. (...) From the pre-Socratics to Ovid and Plotinus, and from Shakespeare to Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, _Time-Fetishes_ traces the secret tradition of the idea of eternal recurrence and situates it as the grounding thought of Western philosophy and literature. The thinkers in this counter-history of the eternal return lingered long enough on the question of time to learn how to resist separating eternity from time, and how to reflect on the possible identity of time and eternity as a way of resisting all prior metaphysical determinations. Drawing out the implications of Nietzsche’s reinvention of the doctrine of return, Lukacher ranges across a broad spectrum of ancient and modern thinkers. Shakespeare’s role in this history as the “poet of time” is particularly significant, for not only does Shakespeare reactivate the pre-Christian arguments of eternal return, he regards them, and all arguments and images concerning the essence of time and Being, from an inimitably ironic perspective. As he makes transitions from literature to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Lukacher displays a theoretical imagination and historical vision that bring to the forefront a host of pre- and post-Christian texts in order to decipher in them an encounter with the thought of eternal recurrence that has been too long buried under layers of rigid metaphysical interpretation. (shrink)

This paper is a article of Pojeo Cho Yik (浦渚 趙翼: 1579~1655)’s point of view related to the book of Doctrine of the Mean (中庸) in the mid-Joseon Dynasty, when Neo Confucianism was overwhelming. At the age of 24, he wrote the Article of Doctrine of the Mean (jung yong seol 中庸說) which was explained the basic lines of the books related to the book of Doctrine of the Mean (中庸) to be written later. He wrote the Indivisual Opinion of (...) Zhongyong (jung yong sa ram 中庸私覽) at 29, and wrote the Hard-earned Zhongyong (jung yong gon deuk 中庸困得) at 37. This paper examines the transitions and consistency of his point of view of the Doctrine of the Mean (中庸) in Korean History of Classical Learning, focusing on the Indivisual Opinion of Zhongyong (中庸私覽) and the Hard-earned Zhongyong (中庸困得). The early research on his scholarship started from the work of clarifying the relationship between Wang Yangming (王陽明) and it has been mistaken as one of the schools derived from the teachings of Wang Yangming, but it turns out to be absolutely irrelevant. His thoughts and arguments are so strong in the colors of Neo Confucianism, whicd is derived from the teachings of Zhu Xi (朱熹). And the scholars who knew him at that time absolutely did not define his study as the study of Wang Yang-ming. We can not say that he is the opposite of Zhu Xi, just because his way of distinguishing sentences of the book of Doctrine of the Mean (中庸) is different from Zhu Xi. Because Zhu Xi had already mentioned it in his other works. And although he had been associated with the Yangming scholars, they had never mentioned him as a Yangming scholar. Cho Yik regarded Zhu Xi as the best person after Confucius, and genuinely admired him. His submission of opinions different from Zhu Xi only added to his meticulousness to further strengthen Zhu Xi’s neo Confucianism. (shrink)

The problem of becoming a social doctrine of Ukrainian Christianity, in particular Ukrainian Catholicism, has become especially relevant today in theological, philosophical and religious sciences, since objective study contributes to the production of not only a true picture of the Church-theological identity of the Ukrainian Orthodox ), which entrenched the historically and theologically not justified name - Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, but also the place and role of Christianity in modern times. to this Ukrainian public life in general. Ukrainian Catholicism, (...) represented by the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the heir to the Kyiv Church, has accumulated significant experience of collaborating with the public in various spheres of its activity, including in the social sphere, for more than a thousand years. (shrink)

This volume evaluates Thomas Bradwardine's view of time as a mathematical, philosophical and theological concept within the context of ancient and medieval ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions METHODOLOGY IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS: THE CASE OF PIERRE CHARRON Affanities, influences, borrowings, innovations, traditions, consistency--these are some of the key concepts of the time-honored and probably still dominant approach to the history of ideas. Scholars who seek to understand and interpret the philosophy and literature of the past in these terms tend to pay little attention to the social and institutional (...) factors which constituted the working conditions under which the ideas were conceived, articulated and disseminated; and it is precisely on those grounds that the traditional school has been increasingly challenged, over the past several decades, by historians (myself among others) who are convinced that, apart from their social context, the ideas themselves are virtually incomprehensible. A recent article on Pierre Charron by Maryanne Cline Horowitz may serve to illustrate some of the questions raised by these differences in method. At the close of her article, Horowitz explains the assumptions upon which she has conducted her investigation. Citing Peter Gay's interpretation of Ernst Cassirer, she affirms that "the critic begins the process of understanding a philosopher's work by searching for a dynamic center of thought. He must regard doctrines not as a series of discrete positions but as facets of a single point of view. The critic's equipment must therefore include the gift of empathy: he must sympathetically enter--indeed, relive---the thinker's world of ideas.''1 Following her own insight into the spirit of De la sagesse, and supporting it, of course, with a display of textual evidence, Horowitz argues that Richard Popkin was wrong to lay exclusive stress upon Charron's rejection of Aristotelian epistemology from the perspective of Pyrrhonian scepticism. "I think," she says, "that Charron's De la sagesse is based primarily on Stoic, rather than Sceptic principles." Although I agree in general with the main thrust of Popkin's thesis, I too have been critical of his failure to give sufficient weight to the neo-Stoic dements of Charron's thought. Hence it is not this conclusion to which I take exception.2 Charron has, from the very beginning, been found to have said a great many things and been subjected to a wide variety of interpretations. Horowitz emphasizes "the seeds of virtue and knowledge [as] the dynamic center of De la sagesse"--a view which may appear perfectly plausible to some readers. But it can never compel widespread conviction, for the simple reason that it is impossible for a twentieth-century critic to enter--unaided--into a world of ideas now part of a remote past. A book written nearly four centuries ago is not immediately perspicuous. Before trying on our neo-idealist wings and taking flight into the empyrean of late Renaissance moral treatises, we would do well to explore as many as possible of the following questions: Just who was our author? For whom did he write? Who x p. Gay, Introduction to E. Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Bloomington, 1963), p. 22, cited by M. C. Horowitz, "Pierre Charron's View of the Source of Wisdom," Journal o! the History of Philosophy, IX, 4 (October, 1971), 457. 2 A. Soman, "Pierre Charron: A Revaluation," BibliothOque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, XXXII (January, 1970), 57 n. 3. [495] 496 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in fact did read him? and how did his readers react? And what did our author think of their reactions.'?s Horowitz does not, apparently, give high priority to such questions. For rhetorical purposes, she readily agrees with Eugene Rice that "Pierre Charron's De la sagesse is the most important Renaissance treatise on wisdom." (Important to whom? and from what point of view? The criteria are not at all clear.) She assumes that Charron's epistemology was consistent, and that the second edition of 1604 represents a clarification of, or advance over, the first edition of 1601. (There is no historical evidence for making either assumption.) And she does not seem to entertain the possibility that Popkin could still be right about the impact of Charron's Pyrrhonian scepticism on the libertins Jrudits, although Charron may never in fact have been a Pyrrhonian sceptic.4 These are... (shrink)

Written by a team of distinguished scholars, this is an authoritative and comprehensive history of Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Illustrated with over 150 color and black-and-white pictures, chosen to illuminate and complement the text, this lively and readable work is an ideal introduction to philosophy for anyone interested in the history of ideas. From Plato's Republic and St. Augustine's Confessions through Marx's Capital and Sartre's Being and Nothingness, the extraordinary philosophical dialogue between (...) great Western minds has flourished unabated through the ages. Dazzling in its genius and breadth, the long line of European and American intellectual discourse tells a remarkable story--a quest for truth and wisdom that continues to shape our most basic ideas about human nature and the world around us. That quest is brilliantly brought to life in The Oxford History of Western Philosophy. With spectacular illustrations--including sixteen pages of full-color plates--this splendidly written volume takes the reader on a magnificient chronological tour through the revolutions of thought that have forged the Western philosophical tradition from ancient times to the present. Throughout, the six contributors--an internationally renowned team of philosophers including Roger Scruton, Anthony Quinton, and Anthony Kenny--bring the astonishingly diverse, wide-ranging landscape of intellectual history into sharp focus, emphasizing how notions seen today as part of an inevitable march of ideas were in their own time often considered radical, if not revolutionary. Thus we are treated, for example, to lively accounts of how Plato's "theory of forms" and Aristotle's pioneering exercises in logic broke with the past to irrevocably alter the course of Western thought. The authors also reveal the relationships between landmark thinkers, and the ways they drew on their intellectual heritage. They show, for instance, how St. Augustine and Aquinas, though advancing the cause of Christian doctrine, picked up where their pagan Greek forebears had left off. We witness how, during the Renaissance, the profound empiricist ideas underlying Descarte's famous utterance--"I think, therefore I exist"--lived in a tense but complementary relationship with Locke's rationalist theories. Moving into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the book explores how Hume greatly influenced Kant's conception of the "transcendental aesthetic," and how Hegel drew upon the lesser known (but groundbreaking) work of Fichte and Schelling. The authors bring the story up to our own time, vividly recounting the existential trend from Nietzsche ("God is dead") to Sartre, along with other increasingly fractious schools of thought. Along the way, we not only encounter the vast intellectual riches of the Western mind, but we also meet the personalities behind the great thoughts, from the saintly Hume (described by Adam Smith as having "come as near to perfection as anybody could") to the ill-mannered outcast Fichte. And the hundreds of maps and striking illustrations (including full-color reproductions of art ranging from medieval manuscripts to the works of Raphael, Ingres, and Magritte) form an integral part of the book, revealing the interweaving of art and ideas through the ages, as artists have striven to give visual immediacy to philosophical concepts. The Oxford History of Western Philosophy is the most authoritative single-volume account ever written for the general reader. Engagingly written and astonishingly far-reaching, it provides the consummate introduction to the intellectual bedrock upon which Western civilization is built. (shrink)

The article discusses the history of monotheism from the earliest times to the present. It begins with arguments against the notion of monotheists as an evolutionarily early stage in religion and then proceeds to characterize monotheism in the Old testament. The view that there was every a pre‐monotheistic phase of one ‘national God’ is called into question, along with the priority of the ‘God of history’ over the creator God. Association of the divine with social justice is shown (...) to be common to the ancient Near East as a whole; however, Israelite monotheism, it is argued, was associated with a kind of conservatism which preserved more features of an oral and gift‐exchange culture, while calling into question the more fetishistic aspects of such culture. Monotheism, it is claimed, is what refutes both myth and rationalism, while the superiority of one God to many gods is defended in connection with the theme of peace. The final section deals with the three monotheistic faiths, and argues that Christianity, with its doctrines of incarnation and the Trinity, is not qualifying monotheism and its distinctive features as just adumbrated, but on the contrary developing it in the purest and most consistent form. (shrink)

The early period Ismaili jurist Al-Qādî al-Nu'mān appears as an important figure in the formation of Ismaili jurisprudence. There is very little information about Kadı Nu'mân's family, childhood, education and intellectual environment. His full name is Abû Hanîfah Nu'man b. Muhammad b. Mansûr al-Qādî at-Tamîmî Al Qayrawānî. He was born around 290/903 (late 3rd (9th) century) into an educated family in Qayravan in North Africa. There are different opinions about the sect he belonged to when he was growing up. On (...) the other hand, it is difficult to say for certain whether Nu’mān received education in the Ismaili sect due to the understanding of taqiyya in the madhhab. However, it is understood from the basic jurisprudence texts Nu’mān wrote that he most likely did not receive a Sunni education. Historians refer to him as 'Qadi Nu’mān or Abu Hanifah al-Shi'i' in order not to confuse him with the imam of the Hanafi school. Qādî Nu’mān served at different levels of the Fatimid State. Around 313/925, he entered the service of the first Fatimid caliph, Mahdi (r. 909-934 CE/297-322 AH), as a copyist and secretary. During the reigns of the third caliph Mansur and the fourth Fatimid caliph Mu’izz (d. 365/975), Qādî Nu’mān first served as a judge in Tripoli and then in Mansouriya, the Fatimid capital. After the Fatimids conquered Egypt and the center of government was moved to Cairo, Qādî Nu’mān was appointed by the fourth caliph Mu’izz as the head of the appellate courts (maẓālim). Qadi Numans career was at the peak in the period of Caliph Muiz. Qādî Nu’mān worked as a judge in the Fatimid State for about twenty-six years and continued this duty until his death in 363 (973). After the fall of the Fatimid caliphate, there haven’t been any other Fatimid or Ismaili jurists. Qādî Nu’mān is considered by contemporary Ismaili writers as a figure who systematically transformed Ismaili fiqh into an independent sect of fiqh. It can be said that Ismaili fiqh was developed through his works in the Fatimid period. His works continued as the main references in the fiqh studies and after the Fatimid period. With the death of Qādî Nu’mān, the period of ijtihad in Ismaili fiqh and its the establishment phase of Ismaili fiqh came to an end; The sect, in which esoteric interpretations were at the forefront, emerged as a distinctive school of fiqh by discarding ambiguity. Qādî Nu’mān was a very productive writer. He wrote important works related to the field of furu al-fiqh and usûl al-fiqh. Among his works, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib is undoubtedly one of the most important works in the early history of fiqh methodology. The work in question, which was originally written with the aim of rejecting the Sunni fiqh method, discusses the approaches of the Sunni schools of fiqh on ikhtilāf, taqlid, ijma, nazar, qiyas, istihsan, ijtihad and ra’y in a polemical manner. It reveals the differences of the Ismaili method from the Sunni method in terms of the sources on which the fiqh is based, the authority to make ijtihad and the theory of interpretation of the texts. Qādî Nu’mān examined the relationship between reason and revelation in general and the role of religious authority in comprehending and interpreting the texts while criticizing Sunni methods. Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib has the characteristics of the works of development period as a form. It is possible to observe the question-answer and dialectic form which can be seen in the works of the development period throughout the work in question. Qādî Nu’mān endeavoured to persuade his opponents with a dialectical and argumentative style. Again, he replied to the Sunnis, who were his interlocutors, with their own proofs. In addition to these, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib has a unique feature in the matter of content. Because it is not very familiar to any Sunni handbook of usûl al-fiqh. It does not mention the hâss, âmm, ijma, qiyas, amir, nahy, alfaz bets, etc. The text is very similar to the Ahbari movement of the Jafari sect for it rejects all forms of ijtihad. It was written at a time when fiqh was not yet stable. Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib gives us crucial information about the development of different usûl and fiqh sources in the middle of the fourth century. However, what is interesting here is that the information he gives about Ismaili method and fiqh is very little compared to the one about Sunni method and fiqh. Much of it centered on Sunni thought and its rejection. However, his ultimate goal was to defend the Ismaili doctrine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Daniel Garber, Michael AyersDonald RutherfordDaniel Garber, Michael Ayers, editors. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 1616. Cloth, $175.Over a decade in preparation, this latest addition to the Cambridge History of Philosophy is an enormous achievement—both in its size and the contribution it makes to redefining [End Page 165] (...) the landscape of seventeenth-century philosophy. The editors make no bones about their intention to rewrite the history of early modern philosophy, reversing the trend dominant through much of this century of reading seventeenth-century philosophers in the light of twentienth-century “interests and preconceptions” (4). As they note, the movement to historicize our understanding of seventeenth-century philosophy has been underway for some time in the English-speaking world, furthered in many cases by contributors to these volumes. From this perspective, the present work represents, if not the culmination, at least a progress report on these efforts and the success they have achieved.As in previous volumes of the Cambridge History, the subject matter is treated thematically. Consistent with their larger goal, the editors have further attempted to organize the volumes in a way that remains faithful to the expectations of the period. Part I sets the stage with chapters that establish the larger social and historical context: “The institutional setting” (Richard Tuck); “The intellectual setting” (Stephen Menn); and “European responses to non-European culture: China” (D.E. Mungello). For the rest, the editors write, “the structure of the collection corresponds to one way, at any rate, in which an educated European of the seventeenth century might have organized the domain of philosophy” (2). First comes logic (including method and general ontology); then, the primary categories of being (God, body, soul); finally, the basic operations of the soul (understanding, will, action), whose treatment comprehends the topics of epistemology and ethics.Part II, “Logic, Language, and Abstract Objects,” opens with three short chapters by Gabriel Nuchelmans that survey the terrain of seventeenth-century logic according to the traditional divisions of term, proposition/judgment, and argument. These are followed by contributions on “Method and the study of nature” (Peter Dear); “Universal, essences, and abstract entities” (Martha Bolton); and “Individuation” (Udo Thiel).The discussion of metaphysics proper begins in Part III with the most fundamental being: God. Included here are chapters that examine specific theological issues—“The idea of God” (Jean-Luc Marion); “Proofs of the existence of God” (Jean-Robert Armogathe); “The Cartesian dialectic of creation” (Thomas M. Lennon)—as well as ones that deal more broadly with the crucial connection between philosophy and religion: “The relation between theology and philosophy” (Nicholas Jolley) and “The religious background of seventeenth-century philosophy” (Richard Popkin).Part IV, “Body and the Physical World,” forms the single largest part of the book and its intellectual core. It opens with two chapters—“The scholastic background” (Roger Ariew and Alan Gabbey) and “The occultist tradition and its critics” (Brian Copenhaver)—that effectively mark out the boundaries of the “new philosophy” that emerges in conjunction with the development of seventeenth-century science. These are followed by a series of chapters that examine particular features of that philosophy: “Doctrines of explanation in late scholasticism and in the mechanical philosophy” (Steven Nadler); “New doctrines of body and its powers, place, and space” (Daniel Garber, John Henry, Lynn Joy, and Alan Gabbey); “Knowledge of the existence of body” (Charles McCracken); “New doctrines of motion” (Alan Gabbey); “Laws of nature” (J.R. Milton); and “The mathematical realm of nature” (Michael Mahoney). [End Page 166]The final section of Volume I takes up the third main category of being: “Spirit.” It begins with Daniel Garber’s overview of the positions of the major figures, “Soul and mind: Life and thought in the seventeenth century,” followed by chapters on “Knowledge of the soul” (Charles McCracken); “Mind-body problems” (Daniel Garber and Margaret Wilson); “Personal identity” (Udo Thiel); and “The passions in metaphysics and the theory of action” (Susan James).Volume II of the History is devoted to topics that, in one way or another, elaborate operations of the soul. Part V, “The... (shrink)

Michelson traces contemporary debates on the doctrine of God back in time to the philosophical critiques of Hume and Kant. Charnock, Schleiermacher and Barth each offered accounts of the doctrine of God. This book offers a critical evaluation of these accounts and demonstrates how they were responding to early modern critiques of the possibility of knowing God. Indeed, this work also highlights how these critics built their arguments on faulty interpretations of classical theological tradition. In doing so, this book (...) carves out a provocative, construct path forward for contemporary theological reflection on the doctrine of God. (shrink)

Two essential periods may be identified in the early stages of the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets. The first was the period during which a very well known deficiency disease, rickets, acquired a scientific status: this required the development of unifying principles to confer upon the newly developing science of pathology a doctrine without which it would have been condemned to remain a collection of unrelated facts with very little practical application. One first such unifying principle was provided by (...) the notion of hygiene; while the blanket explanations provided by this notion alone were much too general to enable rickets to achieve scientific status, it did point out the need to look for specific external causes for the disease and to examine the life-style and dietary habits of the patients. The second phase of the conceptualization of the disease was the assumption of a specific cause — that is, using concepts developed in the area of infectious diseases. This was made possible by fundamental similarities between deficiency and infectious diseases, in spite of their apparent differences. Both types of illness have some of the characteristics of what Georges Canguilhem calls the ontological representation of disease as opposed to dysharmonic representations, which primarily concern the endocrine diseases. It is precisely this shift from one to the other manner of perceiving ill health that enabled the identification of the vitamin D-resistant rickets. Conceptualization of the notion of vitamin D resistancy required that the conditions causing the disease be looked for within the organism rather than outside it; this was thus the first time that endocrine concepts were applied to studying the physiology of vitamin D.The history of resistant rickets therefore represents an interesting model for understanding the growth of biomedical knowledge. It allows the development of a number of more general ideas on the question of the relationship between biology and medicine and on the thorny problem of specificity in medical thinking. As far as this topic is concerned it can be seen that there was an ongoing exchange between medical and biological thinking during the initial period up until 1937, and that one could deny any such specificity in medical thinking during this same period. Albright, for example, used human diseases as spontaneously produced models for experimental biology. It was also more feasible for an experimental biologist to administer toxic doses than for a clinician to do so.What, then, if any, is the place of the specificity of medical thinking in this history? The fact that medicine is characterized not only by it ccognitive content78 but also by its final aim, which is to restore health, makes it necessary to take factors other than objective knowledge into consideration. This is particularly evident in two aspects of medicine, therapeutics and nosology, and in approaching the notion of pathological individuality.Therapeutic activity has a largely empirical approach. Many drugs, such as cod-liver oil, were discovered empirically. Treatment often in the past, and still now, has proceeded by trial and error, upon no established theoretical basis. At this level the relationship between biology and medicine is roughly comparable to that between science and technology79 \3- that is, it is impossible to reduce either therapeutics or technical activities to the simple application of basic science. In this sense, the application of vitamin D to vitamin-resistant rickets is quite typical. Further-more, in the case studied here, the therapeutic activity heralds a definite breaking away from the medicatrix naturae of conventional medicine dating back to ancient times, and it embodies a new concept of the organism and of disease: no longer can the diseased organism be thought of as merely having a perturbed equilibrium requiring restoration by means of a natural style of medicine. On the contrary, vitamin D resistance is an obstacle that indicates profound biological dysfunction, to be rectified only by means of an extremely aggressive and therefore dangerous therapy. The therapy thus serves to reveal the severity of the dysfunction, thereby leading inevitably to conceptual innovation. This sheds light on the theoretical innovations of which the therapeutic activity is capable.Therapeutic activity is also influenced by notions of health and illness, normal and pathological states, none of which may be determined entirely objectively. For example, the term healing as used by Albright in the case of resistant rickets that he described may be discussed in this light.Nosology, or the classification of diseases, depends largely on the description of clinical syndromes, which are themselves mainly based on subjective elements (discomfort, disability, or the extent of a patient's suffering). The advent of pathological anatomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century disrupted classification by introducing the concept of localized anatomical lesions81-and, hence, an element of material objectivity \3- into nosology. Radiological examination further complicated matters by enabling the equivalent of an autopsy on living matter. Lastly, biological examination complicated nosology by showing that biological anomalies may exist in human beings without necessarily leading to a pathological condition. Medical thinking can choose to combine all these elements to describe a disease, but can also separate them and retain only a few, or a single one, according to requirements - as did Albright.The notion of biological and pathological individuality is fundamental to the development of medical thinking. Whatever its theoretical origin, medical thinking has since ancient times incorporated the idea that each individual reacts differently to the same treatment and his own specific pathological tendencies. I mentioned earlier that in the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets the notion of rachitic tendency reflected this type of thinking. After 1937, this history progressed by successively separating new individual entities, affecting smaller and smaller groups of individuals in each case. In other words, the need to understand and to define individual illness more closely required the development of new concepts and the construction of new individual categories of disease linking these concepts to older clinical, radiological, and biochemical elements. (shrink)

Is there an objective moral standard that applies to all our actions? To what extent should I sacrifice my own interests for the sake of others? How might philosophers of the past help us think about contemporary ethical problems? As the most recent addition to the Blackwell Readings in Philosophy series, History of Ethics: Essential Readings with Commentary brings together rich and varied excerpts of canonical work and contemporary scholarship to span the history of Western moral philosophy in (...) one volume. Editors Star and Crisp, noted scholars in their fields, expertly introduce the readings to illuminate the main philosophical ideas and arguments in each selection, and connect them to broader themes. These detailed and incisive editorial commentaries make the primary source texts accessible to students while guiding them chronologically through the history of Western ethics. Structured around a thematic table of contents divided into three distinct sections, History of Ethics charts patterns in the development of ethical thought across time to highlight connections between intellectual movements. Selections range from the work of well-known figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Mill to the work of philosophers often overlooked by such anthologies, including Butler, Smith, Sidgwick, Anscombe, Foot, and Frankena. Star and Crisp skillfully arrange the collection to connect readings to contemporary issues and interests by featuring examples such as Aquinas on self-defense and the doctrine of double effect, Kant on virtue, and Mill’s The Subjection of Women. Written for students and scholars of ethics, History of Ethics is a comprehensive collection of readings with expert editorial commentary that curates the most important and influential work in the history of ethics in the Western world. (shrink)

La langue latine du Moyen Age inclut dans sa substance même une réflexion sur le temps : langue du passé pourtant toujours présente, langue apprise sans être langue morte, et de ce fait inlassablement réinventée, au gré de leurs besoins, de leurs compétences ou de leurs aspirations, par ceux qui en usent, elle fournit le paradigme du rapport entre l'écoulement temporel et l'immutabilité de l'idéal. Dès lors, le thème du "sens du temps" a semblé aux organisateurs du VIIe Congrès du (...) Comité International de Latin médiéval, qui s'est tenu à Lyon du 10 au 13 septembre 2014, propre à favoriser le dialogue entre spécialistes de grammaire et d'historiographie, de philosophie et de poésie, d'histoire des sciences et de théologie, tous aptes à alimenter une réflexion sur le sujet à partir des documents les plus divers. C'est ce souci d'interdisciplinarité qu'entend refléter ici un large choix de communications présentées à l'occasion du Congrès. (shrink)

In this book we approach the development of the main doctrine of Trinitarianism. It is important to remind as we do so that that doctrine must be studied by both the criteria of Christian theology and history, and that as we study the development of doctrine, we need to establish a connection between what is confessed, or dogmas, and what is believed and taught, and go back diachronically from what is confessed to what was taught and to what was (...) believed. (shrink)

... END Reflections on Johannes Scottus's Place in Carolingian Eschatology BERNARD MCGINN I. Eschatology in the Ninth Century In 847, during the decade that ...

The only institution of culture in Ukraine, in which, based on the collected unique materials, the ideological principles and peculiarities of the doctrine and cult of world religions, traditional for the Ukrainian territories of the Christian denominations, and the activities of various religious organizations in our time are reproduced. Since the foundation of the Museum in 1973, its places of worship occupy cult objects, artistic works and religious subjects.

The article is devoted to the genesis of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. It shows us that the formation of the natural philosophical views of the German philosopher took place not only in a speculative way, in the critical reception of Schelling’s works, but, first of all and for the most part, was predetermined by Hegel’s own interest in natural science and acquaintance with some prominent scientists of that time. The focus of the paper is on the evolution of the (...) first part of Hegel’s natural philosophy: the doctrine of space and time as it presented in some excerpts from two revised lecture notes on the philosophy of nature, read by Hegel in the winter semester of 1821/1822 at the University of Berlin and published as an appendix to the article by Bonzipen. In his article, Bonzipen provides historical information on the fate of these texts, raises the question of their authorship, gives a general outline of Hegel’s thought, and also compares both texts with the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. From his point of view, the revised notes allow partly to illustrate, partly to fill in some gaps in the dialectic of two forms of abstract appearance known on the basis of the Encyclopedia. Bonzipen notes that Hegel’s speculative consideration of space and time is complemented by a discussion with the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. While reproaching traditional mathematics for being fixed on the quantitative aspect of reality, which does not allow to fully resolve the contradiction between space and time, Hegel at the same time refuses to attempt to build philosophical mathematics that focuses on the consideration of the qualitative certainty of the moments of space and time, declaring that although it is solvable, it is an extremely time-consuming task. This refusal becomes a turning point in the further development of the dialectical doctrine of space and time. (shrink)

The understanding which a philosopher has, can have, or ought to have of the work of his predecessors cannot be historical in character. Collingwood is right about evidence and the nature of historical understanding. But what a philosopher wrote is not evidence of his thought, it is his thought. The ideas and doctrines of past philosophers are not themselves in the past and do not therefore belong to a special period of the past. Philosophic ideas cannot be said to be (...) in time at all. Different interpretations of particular passages are strengthened or weakened by the citation of matters of historical fact, just as they may be by linguistic or literary knowledge. Such a clarification may enable us to resolve the question of the consistency of a passage with the rest of an author's work, but it does not destroy the philosophic character of the question. (shrink)

Writing about the history and politics of epidemics and pandemics requires stepping into a historiography that is expansive, transnational, and slotted into specific historical periods. This essay considers the main debates in this expansive historiography and highlights the strengths and limitations of dominant historiographical approaches to the study of epidemics and pandemics. This essay also interrogates the framing of three thematic periods, or categories, commonly identified by historians and social scientists in analyses of epidemics and pandemics: categories of “colonial (...) health,” “international health,” and “global health.” As this essay underscores, scholarship often analyzes epidemics and pandemics through overlapping and complex historical temporalities involving colonization, decolonization, and globalization. However, this approach is often constrained by the limitations of existing archives and the overwhelming focus of published scholarship on dominant institutions, scientific and political figures, and specific disease outbreaks that are commonly associated with categories of “colonial health,” “international health,” and “global health” from the late nineteenth to the present. As a result, scholarship may include linear narratives that flatten or generalize the legacies of epidemics and pandemics. The links between pathogens and pathologies are not linear, however, and colonial structures of power, disease tropes, and surveillance doctrines often persist across time and space. This essay ultimately seeks to challenge and complicate these dominant framings and categories from within. This approach highlights the connectedness—and complex continuities and discontinuities—in the political, economic, social, and scientific perceptions of and approaches to epidemic and pandemic risks. (shrink)

This volume charts the Bible's progress from the end of the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. During this period, for the first time since antiquity, the Latin Church focused on recovering and re-establishing the text of Scripture in its original languages. It considered the theological challenges of treating Scripture as another ancient text edited with the tools of philology. This crucial period also saw the creation of many definitive translations of the Bible into modern European vernaculars. Although previous translations (...) exist, these early modern translators, often under the influence of the Protestant Reformation, distinguished themselves in their efforts to communicate the nuances of the original texts and to address contemporary doctrinal controversies. In the Renaissance's rich explosion of ideas, Scripture played a ubiquitous role, influencing culture through its presence in philosophy, literature, and the arts. This history examines the Bible's impact in Europe and its increasing prominence around the globe. (shrink)

One can sympathize with [Leo] Strauss' ultimate aim—to protect the validity of moral judgment against that form of relativism which would assess the value of great philosophic works simply in terms of how they satisfied the needs of the times for which they were written. But in believing that "historicism " meant "relativism," and that all attention to the temporal relevance of great doctrines in the history of ideas was somehow perverse, Strauss was profoundly mistaken. Hermeneutics is not axiology. (...) Questions of truth and validity are fundamental, but they are dependent upon a prior solution of the problem of meaning. And for the establishment of meaning, contextual analysis is crucial. For it is not as if ideas were the ghostly inhabitants of another world, logically cut off from human purposes and intentions. All three things exist: ideas, agents, and social contexts, and the best history of ideas is, I believe, constituted by the careful consideration of the multiple interrelationships between them. It is false to believe that texts exhaust their own meaning. For there is always an historical grounding and a web of person and social events that give them wider and deeper significance. And this is precisely why we must ask such questions as: What sort of society was the author writing for and trying to persuade? What were the conventions of communication and the literary forms of discourse current at the time? What was the author's class affiliation, his place in the social hierarchy of his age? And perhaps above all: What were his moral commitments, the structure of his ideals? Albert William Levi, David May Distinguished University Professor of the Humanities at Washington University, Saint Louis, is the author of Philosophy and the Modern World; Literature, Philosophy and the Imagination; Humanism and Politics; and Philosophy as Social Expression, and The Idea of Culture. His "Culture: A Guess at the Riddle" appeared in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1977. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the genesis of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. It shows us that the formation of the natural philosophical views of the German philosopher took place not only in a speculative way, in the critical reception of Schelling’s works, but, first of all and for the most part, was predetermined by Hegel’s own interest in natural science and acquaintance with some prominent scientists of that time. The focus of the paper is on the evolution of the (...) first part of Hegel’s natural philosophy: the doctrine of space and time as it presented in some excerpts from two revised lecture notes on the philosophy of nature, read by Hegel in the winter semester of 1821/1822 at the University of Berlin and published as an appendix to the article by Bonzipen. In his article, Bonzipen provides historical information on the fate of these texts, raises the question of their authorship, gives a general outline of Hegel’s thought, and also compares both texts with the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. From his point of view, the revised notes allow partly to illustrate, partly to fill in some gaps in the dialectic of two forms of abstract appearance known on the basis of the Encyclopedia. Bonzipen notes that Hegel’s speculative consideration of space and time is complemented by a discussion with the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. While reproaching traditional mathematics for being fixed on the quantitative aspect of reality, which does not allow to fully resolve the contradiction between space and time, Hegel at the same time refuses to attempt to build philosophical mathematics that focuses on the consideration of the qualitative certainty of the moments of space and time, declaring that although it is solvable, it is an extremely time-consuming task. This refusal becomes a turning point in the further development of the dialectical doctrine of space and time. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I discuss some important aspects of what Kant means by considering time and space as unities. In the second part I try to explain how the unity of space and time is involved in the mind’s “legislating for nature.”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Early Vedānta Philosophy, Part TwoAndrew O. FortA History of Early Vedānta Philosophy, Part Two. By Hajime Nakamura. Translated by Hajime Nakamura, Trevor Leggett, et al.. Edited by Sengaku Mayeda. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004. Pp. xxi + 842. Hardcover $58.95.First, to address the exact nature of this volume: the bulk of A History of Early Vedānta Philosophy, Part Twoby Hajime Nakamura was part (...) of Nakamura's doctoral thesis submitted to Tokyo University in 1942, with, as the front flap states, "many additions and revisions done by the author himself." Part 1 was published by Motilal Banarsidass in 1976. For those interested, that first volume includes four parts: the chronology and significance of early Vedānta philosophy, early Vedānta philosophy as seen by other Indian (particularly Buddhist) thinkers and schools, scholars before the Brahmasūtra, and the nature and content of the Brahmasūtraitself. Part 2 is thus rather overdue, although various portions of this volume were published in the 1960s and 1970s. Hence, we should be grateful that the English-speaking world finally has more of the vast erudition of this titan of scholarship on Hindu thought, yet acknowledge that this is as much a pioneering historical document in Advaita research as a contribution to current knowledge.Despite this reservation, let us begin with fulsome praise: how many scholars in any discipline from any period can rival Hajime Nakamura? Even in his dissertation, he shows wide familiarity with Hindu and Buddhist thought, having consulted sources in Sanskrit, Pāli, Prakrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, English, German, and probably others. Who, ever again, would have the courage, or the linguistic skills, to attempt a book called Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples?Truly this was a jñānasāgara!Still, one must say that the present volume has shortcomings beyond age: it is not particularly well-organized or "user-friendly," not always well-focused, and sometimes repetitious. The translations, while clear, are generally not graceful. And in the decades since the bulk of this was written, much additional scholarship on key figures and texts discussed therein has been published, and new theoretical conceptualizations have arisen to aid our understandings. Depending on one's view, this text reveals the notable absence of (or freedom from) contemporary scholarly currents of postcolonial, postmodern, or feminist critique, nor does it reflect the move to greater social history often apparent today. It is also surprisingly noncomparative, given the author's later work. This, then, is mostly a traditional history of the development of ideas by one of the pitāmahasof classical Indian scholarship.The book is divided into four basic sections. First are remarks on the life, works, and ideas of post- Brahmasūtrabut pre-Śaṅkara thinkers such as Upavarṣa, Bodhāyana (who influenced Rāmānuja), and Bhartṛprapañca (whom Śaṅkara and Sureśvara opposed, particularly on jñānakarma-samuccaya), with frequent comparisons of their thinking with that of Śaṅkara. This section well traces the basic time and lineage of key thinkers, and nicely unpacks their views and later influence. [End Page 480]Next is an extended consideration of Gauḍapāda's Māṇḍükyakārikās, which is probably the most important pre-Śaṅkara Advaita work. Nakamura describes and offers extensive analysis of each chapter (prakaraṇa)and its characteristics separately, particularly the thought (on consciousness states, māyā, ajātivāda, and Buddhist ideas, respectively) and practices ( ommeditation, Self-realization, asparśayoga, etc.) distinctive to each. He clearly shows the differences in doctrine and application among the chapters, and between them and the Māndūkya Upaniṣad. Nakamura raises the questions of the text's authorship, sacrality, unity, and extent of Buddhist influence, which had already been debated by many scholars at that time, and yet this section shows its age; while even-handedly summarizing the discussion to that point, and offering his own judiciously reasoned conclusions (most importantly, that they are four independently composed treatises), his conclusions are neither groundbreaking nor today near to the last word. In fact, I was reminded of reading through those debates as I was... (shrink)

The nrst of the people to be thanked for their help during the composition of this work is Professor I.M. Bochenski, under whom I had the good fortune to study for an extended period of time. Without his help, it is doubtful that this work would have been writt"l1 at all. Among the other professors who helped along the way, I would like to cite in particular Professors A.F. Utz, M.D. Philippe and N. Luyten of the University of Fribourg. (...) Many friends were present at the birth of the ideas contained in this book. By naming K.G. Ballestrem, T.l. Blakeley and M.F. Gagern, I do not want to slight any of the rest. It was A. Spiekermann in Hollinghofen who saw to it that other preoccupations did not rob me of all the time needed for the study of the subject-matter and to the composition of this treatise. Of particular help in getting sources from the libraries of the world were Miss Lifschitz of the Institute of East-European Studies and Mr. Uldry of the Cantonal Library in Fribourg, Switzerland. Finally, my patient typist, Mrs. Frey in Munster, deserves special mention for her beautiful work. (shrink)

Proposal Information: In this paper it is argued that although Spinoza, unlike other great philosophers of the Enlightenment era, never actually wrote a philosophy of education as such, he did – in his Ethics – write a philosophy of self-improvement that is deeply educational at heart. When looked at against the background of his overall metaphysical system, the educational account that emerges is one that is highly curious and may even, to some extent at least, come across as counter-intuitive in (...) a contemporary setting. This is so because it grounds the greater social and political endeavors of humanity in the individual’s striving for an ever-increasing power of acting. Hence, education, for Spinoza, is a decidedly individualistic affair, but then again, so is the making of society. Since, for Spinoza, every instance of knowledge bears the unique mark of the individual body that expresses it, one might conclude that at the foundation of every social structure is an encounter between concrete bodies; each expressing a particular perspective from where to grasp the world. I would argue, based on this, that one of Spinoza’s main contributions to educational theory is his grounding of larger social endeavors in the striving of the individual. Hinged on the striving to be more rational, as dictated by the doctrine of the conatus, education appears to offer a way of grounding the structure of the human social world in the same principles as those guiding the individual. Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects thereby offers a way of linking the egoistic striving for power on behalf of the individual with the educational goal of building a sustainable society. It does so as it conditions self-improvement by the human characteristic to imitate what others desire. By being surrounded with people who desire to be more rational, one can utilize this desire for the good and become strengthened in one’s own striving for increasing one’s degree of existence. Consequently, the teaching situation is geared for guiding students towards a more rational life, at the same time as it is geared for the self-improvement of the teacher. This aspect of self-improvement is, ultimately, what will motivate the teacher in striving to enhance the lives of his or her students in the first place. Being unable to self-improve in isolation, the doctrine of the imitation of affects dictates that the rational person will be moved toward a life of generosity, not primarily for altruistic reasons, but out of a desire to become more rational and thus to gain in his or her own power of acting. The question that follows from this, of course, is how does one go about when inculcating a desire to be more rational in one’s students?Education, from a Spinozistic point of view, is ultimately about the cultivation of the potential that lies dormant in each individual, so that a person may live a happier life as a result of understanding, more adequately, their place in the natural world. The challenge, then, becomes one of overcoming the many obstacles that prevent a person from developing their potential. Pedagogy, from this point of view, may be understood in terms of the art of offering the right amount of resistance. This notion is based on the assumption that if a student encounters no resistance – or too much resistance – his or her potential remains just that – a potential. In order to develop this potential the student needs to overcome certain barriers. With regards to this, the role of the teacher may be conceived in terms of the one balancing the amount of resistance so that the student is properly challenged but at the same time not overwhelmed. Methodology or Methods/ Research Instruments or Sources Used: The paper makes for an attempt to outline a Spinozistic philosophy of education based on readings of Spinoza’s texts – primarily the Ethics – and some of the relevant secondary literature such as Della Rocca’s influential reading of Spinoza. As such it is a philosophical inquiry seeking to interconnect some key aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy with some of the major issues of education. Methodologically, this paper argues, in line with Melamed, that rather than turning to the history of philosophy in order to identify ‘precursors to [our] own views’, so as to validate what we already believe we know, it is more fruitful to turn to past philosophers in order to ‘challenge our most basic beliefs and intuitions by studying texts that are both well-argued and strongly opposed to our commonsense’. Accordingly, turning to Spinoza marks an attempt to revisit and reconceptualize some key aspects of educational thought. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings: A conclusion of this paper is that a Spinozistic philosophy of education would need to focus on resolving the tension between Spinoza’s egoism and education as a social project. To this end it identifies Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects as a possible link between the individual’s striving for power and the collective agenda of improving human well-being at large. It is also suggested that, in aspiring to inculcate a desire to be more rational in his or her students, the challenge for the Spinozistic teacher is to prompt the students to aspire to reach beyond the temporary satisfactions of the passions so as to acquire a more enduring sense of satisfaction and so that their well-being is more fully under their own command rather than under the command of various external influences. This, in turn, is connected with the notion of resistance in the sense that in experiencing the volatility of fortune – and thereby understanding the instability of relying on one’s passions – a person would appear to be more inclined to strive for a more enduring sense of happiness, even if this would mean giving up on some of the temporary pleasures that one has grown accustomed to. The resistance, then, may be conceived in terms of the overcoming of temporary pleasures that stand in the way of the developing of one’s potential. In this scenario the role of the teacher may be understood in terms of someone offering a well-balanced amount of resistance. This means that to accommodate one’s students – in the sense that one approaches them in terms of prospective customers, aspiring to satisfy their demands – is inimical to education insofar as the wants and desires of students are, generally speaking, caused by passive affects rather than their rational wills. References: Aloni, N.. Spinoza as Educator: From Eudaimonistic Ethics to an Empowering and Liberating Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40, pp. 531–544.Della Rocca, M.. Spinoza. New York: Routledge.Della Rocca, M.. Rationalism, Idealism, Monism, and Beyond. In: E. Förster & Y. Y. Melamed Spinoza and German Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7–26.Derry, J.. The Unity of Intellect and Will: Vygotsky and Spinoza. Educational Review, 56, pp. 113–120.Lloyd, G.. Spinoza and Educating the Imagination. In: A. O. Rorty Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 157–172.Melamed, Y. Y.. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nadler, S.. Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza’s Ethics. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26, pp. 224–244.Poulimatka, T.. Spinoza’s Theory of Teaching and Indoctrination. Educational Philosophy and Theory 33, pp. 397–410.Spinoza, B.. The Ethics. In: E. Curley A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton: Princeton Unive. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s philosophy is an attempt to re-establish truth in modern thought. The main – and indeed sole – criterion for truth is universality, he argues in all of his works, including the one on Saint Paul on which this essay focuses. In this book, Badiou argues that most of Saint Paul’s doctrinal topics can be related to the main concerns of his own thought. Thus Paul’s belief in Christ’s resurrection illustrates his own theory of the ‘event’; Paul’s characterization of (...) the church is linked with his own theory of the subject; and, finally, Paul’s entire intervention can be seen as one of the first affirmations in history of truth’s main criterion: universality. This article demonstrates how an unarticulated assumption secretly sustains Badiou’s entire theoretical framework: his belief in universal truth is supported by a belief in being’s inherent goodness. Badiou’s ‘ontology’ thus appears not so exclusively formal as he claims. Through a confrontation between Badiou’s interpretation of Paul and a reading of chapter eleven in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the essay shows how the universality that Paul’s text claims contains an important element that Badiou’s reading – and his entire philosophy – neglects. This element involves a distorted dialectics that has resonances with both the Derridean concept of the ‘originary supplement’ and Lacan’s notion of ‘objet petit a’. The essay closes with some critical reflections on the way Badiou connects truth with time. (shrink)

Even in the relatively recent literature on the issue of the philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger, some scholars recognize that despite a large number of very good accounts, the darkness surrounding the matter has not yet been totally lifted. In particular, we still lack a complete account of the exact influence that Husserl’s Phenomenology exerted on Heidegger’s project of a Fundamental Ontology. To use, e.g., Dahlstrom’s wording, until now, the available works on this subject “merely provide points of departure (...) for an explanation of the relation between the two phenomenologists” (Dahlstrom 2001, 142 n. 103; emphasis added). The situation is, of course, somewhat awkward, since Heidegger himself not only admitted his debt to Husserl’s philosophy, but also sometimes tried to guide us through the inner itineraries of this debt. In his Ontology: the Hermeneutics of Facticity (SS 1923), Heidegger admitted, in front of his students, that it was Husserl who gave him his philosophical eyes: “die Augen hat mir Husserl eingesetzt” (GA 63, 5). There are many occasions on which Heidegger thematizes his debt to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Two years later, in his Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time (SS 1925), he introduced his students to what he presented as the “three fundamental discoveries” of Husserl’s Phenomenology: intentionality, the doctrine of categorial intuition, and the phenomenological sense of the a priori, thereby publicly acknowledging his admiration for Husserl’s work. Both there and in BT, (1927) as well as in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (SS 1927), Heidegger constantly acknowledges the decisive dependence of his philosophy on Husserl’s thinking. [...] All the available textual evidence, then, makes clear that Heidegger considered the doctrine of categorial intuition, developed in the sixth LI, as the most decisive influence from Husserl on his own thought (with intentionality and the phenomenological a priori following closely). Now, what precisely is the meaning of this influence? How might that Husserlian doctrine have helped Heidegger shape the way in which he treated the sole concern of his entire philosophical career, namely the question of Being (Seinsfrage)? (shrink)

The purpose of the book is clear from the title: to provide "aids to the history of ideas." For, as Professor Tonelli remarks in his Introduction, "Historians of sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century ideas are realizing increasingly that dictionaries contemporary with the period under consideration are in many cases a basic aid to their work." He states that "the [primary] aim of this bibliography is to provide for the first time an extensive list of these dictionaries and their (...) basic locations in Europe, together with some information concerning their doctrinal affiliations, diffusion and present usefulness." The book consists of three lists. In the first list one finds dictionaries possessing the following traits: 1) an alphabetical ordering of topics; 2) entries which are not the names of persons, places or things; 3) generally speaking, prepared between 1500 and 1800. Bilingual dictionaries, i.e., dictionaries "of merely linguistic interest," and highly technical dictionaries are excluded from this first list. "The second list," remarks Professor Tonelli, "includes items which have been located and seen, but which do not answer to the criteria of selection listed above." The purpose of this second list is to give an account of items which were seen, but excluded from the first list, in order to establish that they have not been overlooked. Also this second list is to give an account of items which were seen, but excluded from the first list, in order to establish that they have not been overlooked as well as to point out that some of them may nevertheless be used as dictionaries. "The third list includes items which could not be located, although they are listed in bibliographies, or referred to elsewhere. Therefore, their character and utility could not be established. This third list is intended as an aid to further research.". (shrink)

From 22-25 May, 1999, the University of Groningen hosted an international conference on 'The Book of Nature. Continuity and change in European and American attitudes towards the natural world'. From Antiquity down to our own time, theologians, philosophers and scientists have often compared nature to a book, which might, under the right circumstances, be read and interpreted in order to come closer to the 'Author' of nature, God. The 'reading' of this book was not regarded as mere idle curiosity, (...) but it was seen as leading to a deeper understanding of God's wisdom and power, and it culturally legitimated and promoted a positive attitude towards nature and its study. A selection of the papers which were delivered at the conference has been edited in two volumes. The first deals with the perception of the Book of Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages; the second volume is devoted to the history of the concept in early modern and modern history. (shrink)

Professor Schiller's question, “Must philosophers disagree?” can be answered in the negative if a technique can be worked out whereby it becomes possible to answer the question, “What are they talking about?” It is the aim of the ensuing remarks to provide at least the outline of such a technique and to illustrate its possible effectiveness in the specific context of controversies about the nature of time. That philosophers may continue to disagree in spite of the suggestions offered is, (...) of course, to be expected in view of the long history of failures which compromise positions have encountered. The fate of the conciliator usually has been to receive the contempt of the embattled polemicists, and the fate of his peacemaking, to be construed as just another theory. Of course, this is in most cases the ulterior motive for his pretended altruism in assuming the rôle of arbitrator. Yet there are theories and theories. A position like that of Hume on the question of causality may reasonably be opposed to that of Leibniz but not in the same sense as to that of Kant. For the latter does attempt to provide a bridge between rationalism and empiricism and to do justice to the valid claims of each. The theory of time here proposed immodestly attempts a rapprochement among the multitudinous doctrines of time by setting forth one more doctrine. (shrink)

The initial impact of John Henry Newman’s 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine has previously been downplayed because scholars have neglected Roman sources on the question. These sources show that one of the most influential theologians in Rome at the time, Giovanni Perrone, S.J., learned from Newman’s theory and even advocated it publically in the city. After an 1847 exchange with Newman on the question of doctrinal development, Perrone employed Newman’s theory in publications that contributed to the (...) discussions preceding the decree of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. The article goes on to illustrate how Perrone’s influence upon these discussions helped to shape the Church’s official language regarding doctrinal progression in history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:119. THE IMPORT OF HUME'S THEORY OF TIME In this paper I examine the significance of Hume's theory of time for some of the more famous of the doctrines in the Treatise, and how it works as a basis for his peculiar brand of scepticism, a basis that is at least as important in this regard as his principle that all ideas are derived from some original (...) impression. To bring into relief some of the peculiarities of Hume's theory of time we may observe that it was not uncommon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to distinguish between space and extension and between time and duration, to say, as does for example Leibniz, that "in some way extension is to space as duration is to time", and perhaps also to agree with him "that duration and extension are attributes of things, but time and space are taken to be something outside of things and serve to measure them. " Duration taken as an attribute of things or substantives connotes the permanence, or perseverance, or continuation of the existence of such substantives. Thus Descartes says, "the duration of each thing is a mode [he subsequently calls it an 'attribute'] under which we consider the thing in so far as it continues to exist" (French version) or "perseveres 2 in existence" (Latin version). Or Spinoza: "Duration is the attribute under which we conceive the existence of created things in so far as they persevere in their own 3 actuality". But though duration refers to things as persevering or continuing in existence, it applies equally, as Descartes indicates, to both changing and unchanging things. In order to comprehend the duration of all things under the same measure we usually compare their duration with the duration of the greatest and most regular motions, which are those which create years and days, and these we call time.4 Spinoza's account of duration and time are much the same. Duration is the primary notion and time presupposes it. Going beyond Hume to Kant we find that in distinguishing 120. three modes of time, namely duration, succession and coexistence, Kant argues that succession presupposes duration and that all time determinations of change (or succession) presuppose substance as that which is permanent or continuant through change. In Hume, however, we find no distinction between space and extension, nor between time and duration. These are merely two pairs of synonyms. In the case of space Hume seems to prefer on the whole to talk about extension, probably because extension lends itself more easily to discussion of divisibility. In the case of time, however, which he, defines as succession, he is indeed aware of the view which we have just been considering, according to which duration is referred primarily to an object qua con-. tinuing or persevering or enduring, whether or not undergoing successive changes. This concept of duration, he says, I take to be the common opinion of philosophers as well as of the vulgar. (T37) Duration in this common philosophical and vulgar sense is not a synonym of Humean time or succession, and it is for Hume, a "fiction", something falsely attributed to objects. Why is this so? 'Tis evident, that time or duration [Hume is here taking the two terms as synonyms] consists of different parts... 'Tis also evident, that these parts are not co-existent: For that quality of the co-existence of parts belongs to extension, and is what distinguishes it from duration. Now as time is compos 'd of parts, that are not co-existent; an unchangeable object, since it produces none but co-existent impressions, produces none that can give us the idea of time; and consequently that idea must be deriv'd from a succession of changeable objects, and time in its first appearance can never be sever 'd from such a succession (T35,36) Although Hume maintains that there is no idea which is not derived from some original impression, it would appear that this is not strictly so with the idea of time [or, for that matter with the idea of space]. Rather time is the manner or way in which impressions appear to the mind, namely... (shrink)

Augustine’s account of time is often praised as unique among the philosophical doctrines found in late antiquity, but in the same laudatory breath, commentators almost always reject his ideas. This dual response finds popular voice in Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, in which he states that although he disagrees with Augustine’s conclusions, it is a “great advance on anything to be found on the subject in Greek philosophy.” According to this traditional interpretation, Augustine argues for a (...) subjective idealism regarding time wherein time is dependent on the human mind and is upheld by the mental attitudes of expectation, attention, and memory. Philosophers claim that a purely subjectivist conception of time, though intriguing, is unable to make sense of our best scientific theories. And theologians like Robert W. Jenson have even described Augustine’s account of time as a deeply confused artifact of his incompatible commitments to Neoplatonism and Christianity. -/- In contrast, I argue that Augustine’s view of time is both similar to our current scientific understanding of time and theologically useful. Once we understand Augustine’s approach, both in the context of his time and our own, I believe we can find insight about time as such and learn an important lesson about appropriate methodology for Christian philosophers and theologians. (shrink)

At the University of Pretoria, Historical Theology consists of various sub-disciplines, that is, History of Christianity, History of Doctrine, History of Theology, History of Missions, Church History, and Church Polity. This article is located in History of Missions, as a contribution to the centenary celebration of the Maranatha Reformed Church of Christ (MRCC). The main focus of this contribution is an analysis of Prof. P.S. Dreyer’s mission theology as reflected in his publications, and how (...) it shaped the mission policy of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHKA) and the growth of the MRCC. For 35 years (1954–1989), Prof. Dreyer was a member and chairman of the Mission Board of the NHKA. As part-time Superintendent of Mission and chairman of the Board, he not only had many administrative and financial responsibilities, but he also played a role in the establishment of at least 60 congregations in black communities, as well as the theological education of more than 200 MRCC students and ministers. All of this was based on a clear understanding of the nature of the church, as well as the responsibility and calling of the church to proclaim Jesus Christ to all people. Contribution: This article addressed the role of theology and individual theologians in the history of the church and mission in South Africa, and how it impacted upon the relationship between different race groups and the development of an indigenous Christianity. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the work of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” which is the most complete statement on the topic of his use of pseudonyms. The purpose of the article is to reveal the meaning of “The Point of View” for the study of the thinker’s creativity, to identify and discuss work-related problems. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of the cre­ation and (...) publication of “The Point of View”. The interpretations of pseudonymity in “The Point of View” and “Concluding Unscientific Postscript” are compared, the dif­ference between the goals and circumstances of the creation of works is considered. The reasons why Kierkegaard postponed the publication of “The Point of View” and never published it are analyzed. In the second part of the article the content of “The Point of View” is considered. Kierkegaard's interpretation of authorship and re­lated problems are analyzed. Kierkegaard connects his interpretation with the modern crisis of Christianity and shows that in these conditions a direct message about Chris­tianity is impossible. A religious author who carries out indirect communication ap­pears as a new religious type. The formation of these views of the thinker and their sig­nificance in the context of his epoch are discussed. The author of the article shows that the last part of “The Point of View” is in contradiction with its first part. Next, the criti­cism of “The Point of View” is considered. The author concludes that the skeptical atti­tude towards the content of the work is fair, but it is more aimed at destroying ideas about the possible integrity of Kierkegaard’s work and is influenced by Derrida’s doc­trine of deconstruction. The contradiction between the parts of “The Point of View” may be a consequence of Kierkegaard’s religious views and his communicative strat­egy. Arguments are made in favor of a positive attitude to the work and problems are formulated, work on which will help clarify the topic of pseudonymity. The author con­cludes that “The Point of View” is an important source through which we can trace the change in Kierkegaard’s attitude to his work. (shrink)

Intellectual history—the attempt to write the history of consciousness-in-general, rather than discrete histories of, say, politics, society, economic activity, philosophical thought, or literary expression—is comparatively new as a scholarly discipline; but it can lay claim to a long ancestry. It is arguable that intellectual history has its remote origins in the sectarian disputes of ancient philosophers and theologians, who, by constructing “histories” of their opponents’ doctrines, sought to expose the interests that had led them into error or (...) to locate the precise point at which they had strayed from the path of truth or righteousness. An especial interest in the history of thought and expression is, of course, characteristic of transitional ages in the lives of cultures; it arises when received traditions in thought and mythic endowments appear to have lost their relevance to current social problems or their presumed coherency, as in the Hellenistic age or the late Middle Ages. During such times, thinkers may try, by means of what is usually called “historical perspective,” to gain some purchase on their cultural legacy and to distinguish between “what is living and what is dead” within it. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half (...) dead and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the theological-academic ontological doctrine of the three types of being formulated within the framework of the Russian theological-academic philosophy of the 19th century. The study of this problem in the context of the general analysis of the phenomenon of theological-academic philosophy allows expanding our understanding of the genesis of Russian philosophy and its religious-philosophical component. The main aim of the article is the historical-philosophical analysis (on the material of philosophical courses of Russian (...) theological academies and original works of professors of academies) of the doctrine about three types of being, which was developed within the framework of the theological-academic philosophy in Russia in the 19th century. The set goal is achieved by means of textual and religious analysis methods, as well as historical-functional, historical-genetic, and comparative research methods. The authors conclude that the specificity of theological-academic philosophizing was determined by confessional affiliation and consisted in its theistic form: the transversal theme of all theological-academic interpretations was the problem of being. Thus, theological-academic ontology took the form of the doctrine of God as an absolute being and the world as its derivative. The theological-academic doctrine of the three types of being and the synthesizing function of the absolute in relation to theological and material being cannot be characterized as quite logical and consistent. The notion of God as an absolute being is conditioned by the aspiration of theological-academic philosophers not to go beyond traditional orthodoxy and is one of the main specific features of theological-academic philosophical interpretations of religious consciousness. At the same time, the historical and philosophical analysis of the works of professors from Russian theological academies allows tracing how the powerful ideological and theoretical potential accumulated in Russian theological academies after their reforms in the 19th century contributed to the development of professional philosophy in Russia, the development of a philosophical categorical apparatus and the systematic formation of Russian philosophical thought. The development of this theme responds to the urgent research tasks of the history of philosophy. Further, this topic is very interesting not only for historians of philosophy but also for historians of religion, historians of orthodoxy, and culturologists. (shrink)

The nature of matter and the idea of indivisible parts has fascinated philosophers, historians, scientists and physicists from antiquity to the present day. This collection covers the richness of its history, starting with how the Ancient Greeks came to assume the existence of atoms and concluding with contemporary metaphysical debates about structure, time and reality. Focusing on important moments in the history of human thought when the debate about atomism was particularly flourishing and transformative for the scientific (...) and philosophical spirit of the time, this collection covers: - The discovery of atomism in ancient philosophy - Ancient non-Western, Arabic and late Medieval thought - The Renaissance, when along with the re-discovery of ancient thought, atomism became once again an important doctrine to be fully debated - Logical atomism in early analytic philosophy, with Russell and Wittgenstein - Atomism in Liberalism and Marxism - Atomism and the philosophy of time - Atomism in contemporary metaphysics - Atomism and the sciences Featuring 28 chapters by leading and younger scholars, this valuable collection reveals the development of one of philosophy's central doctrines across 2,500 years and within a broad range of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Fan Zhen’s 范縝 Shenmielun 神滅論 is a famous Chinese treatise discussing the body-soul problem. This discussion had been advocated by Huan Tan 桓譚 and Wang Chong 王充. However, their views did not receive positive attention: at the beginning of the Eastern Han dynasty, their intellectual weight was far from significant enough to spur the court’s interest in the topic. During the time of Fan Zhen, Emperor Wu of Liang, a keen protector of the thought of dharma, raised the question (...) of the soul and the body to a political level, making it the focus of academic debate. The aim of this article is to give a comprehensive account on the development of the idea of the nonidentity and inseparability of the body and the soul as promulgated by Fan Zhen and his predecessors from the perspective of the history of ideas. (shrink)

The complexity of the scholastic view of descent stems from the attempt to find a reply to three different questions at the same time: those pertaining to the meaning of propositions, the relationships of inference between propositions, and the truth conditions of propositions. From each of these issues there arises a different sequence of developments to this doctrine, each of which has its own problems and solutions. Initially, the concept of descent is introduced in response to the problem of (...) determining the meaning of quantified propositions. This is the first axis of the development of the doctrine of descent, according to which descent consists of the construction of individual propositions which make explicit the meaning of the quantified proposition. The appearance of these new propositions, however, gives rise to the second axis in the development of the doctrine of descent. As soon as we have this multiplicity of singular propositions, it is possible to forget where they came from and how, simply considering the problem of their logical relationship with the original quantified proposition. This is how descent comes to be viewed not as an analysis of the meaning of the proposition, but as a relationship of consequence: that which could be established between a quantified proposition and a set of singular propositions. Lastly, when descent is considered as a relationship of consequence, it is possible to develop this doctrine in a third direction, given that this relationship between a quantified proposition and a set of singular propositions can be used as a means of showing the truth or falsehood of the quantified proposition. Pardo’s text is a good example of the problems which the concept of descent inevitably encounters when it is approached from three points of view which are superimposed upon each other without regard for their radical diversity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian DoctrineRichard A. WatsonC. F. Fowler. Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian Doctrine. International Archives of the History of Ideas, 160. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Pp. xiii + 438. Cloth, $168.00.As Defender of the Faith, René Descartes wrote his Meditations to fulfill the request of the Fifth Lateran Council in 1513 (...) "to support with rational demonstrations the Church's teaching on the immortality of the soul" (28). This allowed him to dedicate the Meditations to the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne in hopes of obtaining their approbation. The Faculty remained silent, but Descartes could interpret this as consent, although he removed from later editions the notice of approbation. What the Council asked for were demonstrations of the immortality of the soul and of the substantial union of the soul with the body.Mersenne thought the Meditiations were going to provide these demonstrations, so he included in the title of the first edition the promise to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, but in later editions Descartes changed this to a promise to demonstrate the distinction between the human soul and the body, or that the soul is an independent substance that is not destroyed by the death of the body, and so can be immortal. Independent substancehood does not prove that the soul is immortal, however, for Descartes agreed that God can destroy the soul at any time. This conclusion greatly bothered Mersenne and Arnauld. As for the absolute separation of the soul from the body, Descartes was criticized for supporting the Platonic doctrine of their absolute separation, making it impossible to demonstrate that the union between soul and body is substantial and not accidental. And "the central Christian doctrines of the Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, and Resurrection required a union of body and soul much more intimate than that of agent and instrument" (310). But all that Descartes's proof supports is the Platonic model of a sailor piloting a ship. Never mind that Descartes adamantly denies that the soul sits in the body thus—for the soul in union with the body feels the body as the sailor does not feel the ship—his friends and foes alike saw that the absolute difference of soul and body made their substantial union inexplicable. It also goes against the Aristotelian view of the Council of Vienne in 1311-1312 that "defined the rational soul as the forma corporis" (310). It is exactly this view that Descartes opposed by eliminating substantial forms from his philosophy.Arnauld warned Descartes about these problems, while Gassendi, Hobbes, and others attacked him. In response, Descartes expanded his views without altering them, and complained about being misunderstood. The Jesuit Father Bourdin's attacks hurt him most, for as he told Mersenne, this made him think that all the Jesuits (they stick together) were against him. This, Fowler argues, is why Descartes dedicated the Meditations to the Faculty of the Sorbonne, and not to the Jesuits.Fowler carefully presents the entire sweep of Descartes's ideas and arguments concerning the immortality of the soul and its union with the body. Descartes in fact did not manage to demonstrate either one. He did agree that of the three sorts of truths—those known by revelation alone, those known both by revelation and demonstration, and those known only by demonstration—these points about the soul belong in the middle category. But he never mentions immortality in the Meditations, and when Princess Elisabeth faces him with his inability to explain how the soul and body [End Page 120] can interact, he just says that we experience it. Gassendi asked him the same question, but Descartes ignored him. With other critics, he shifted the question into the first category of truths—it is a matter of revelation. This was not satisfactory either to his critics or to Descartes, for it had led Pompanazzi to materialism, and it led Descartes's first disciple Regius to say bluntly that metaphysics, and in particular Descartes's metaphysics, is irrelevant to the third category of truths, those of mechanics, physics, and medicine.Baillet calls... (shrink)