Francisco Leocata propone una nueva reducción fenomenológica, que llama reducción vital, la cual nombra el centramiento del sujeto encarnado, la necesidad de sabernos traspasados por la historia y por los otros como punto de partida para la producción de conocimiento en el seno de nuestra experiencia de la vida. Esta reducción vital permite pensar al ser humano desde las diversas disciplinas científicas, en diálogo con la fenomenología y la metafísica. Si bien Leocata construye su fenomenología personalista sobre las bases de (...) la fenomenología trascendental de Edmund Husserl, en este trabajo queremos resaltar las posibilidades que se abren a partir de un diálogo más estrecho con Merleau-Ponty, quien ha subrayado el carácter interdisciplinar de la fenomenología. (shrink)

RESUMENEn el presente trabajo queremos mostrar cómo en Gabriel Marcel la existencia tan sólo puede ser reconocida a partir de la condición encarnada del hombre. Para ello, contrapondremos primeramente la existencia a la objetividad, gracias a las nociones capitales de presencia y de participación. En segundo lugar, mostraremos cómo el cuerpo propio es fundamento de nuestro ser en el mundo. Por último, veremos porqué la encarnación es el dato central de la reflexión metafísica, en tanto que gracias a ella puedo (...) yo acceder a lo ontológico.PALABRAS CLAVES MARCEL, EXISTENCIA, OBJETIVIDAD, ENCARNACIÓN, METAFÍSICAABSTRACTIn this paper we would like to show how existence can only be recognized from man’s incarnate condition. In order to accomplish this task, we will have to contrast, in the first place, existence to objectivity, thanks to the capital notions of presence and participation. In the second place, we will show how the body-qua-mine is the foundation of our being in the world. Finally, we will focus on why incarnation is the central datum of metaphysical reflection, for thanks to it we may access ontological dimension.KEYWORDSMARCEL, EXISTENCE, OBJECTIVITY, INCARNATION, METAPHYSICS. (shrink)

RESUMENEn el presente trabajo queremos mostrar cómo en Gabriel Marcel la existencia tan sólo puede ser reconocida a partir de la condición encarnada del hombre. Para ello, contrapondremos primeramente la existencia a la objetividad, gracias a las nociones capitales de presencia y de participación. En segundo lugar, mostraremos cómo el cuerpo propio es fundamento de nuestro ser en el mundo. Por último, veremos porqué la encarnación es el dato central de la reflexión metafísica, en tanto que gracias a ella puedo (...) yo acceder a lo ontológico.PALABRAS CLAVES MARCEL, EXISTENCIA, OBJETIVIDAD, ENCARNACIÓN, METAFÍSICAABSTRACTIn this paper we would like to show how existence can only be recognized from man’s incarnate condition. In order to accomplish this task, we will have to contrast, in the first place, existence to objectivity, thanks to the capital notions of presence and participation. In the second place, we will show how the body-qua-mine is the foundation of our being in the world. Finally, we will focus on why incarnation is the central datum of metaphysical reflection, for thanks to it we may access ontological dimension.KEYWORDSMARCEL, EXISTENCE, OBJECTIVITY, INCARNATION, METAPHYSICS. (shrink)

El presente trabajo intenta introducir al lector en la problemática de la intersubjetividad desde la perspectiva fenomenológica-hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, atendiendo a la necesidad de las mediaciones simbólicas en el orden del reconocimiento. El fenómeno de la intersubjetividad será abordado aquí desde una perspectiva gnoseológica, ética, sociológica y hermenéutica, intentando desentrañar cómo es posible el reconocimiento mutuo entre subjetividades extrañas en un mundo común. Una reflexión sobre la intersubjetividad debe tener siempre presente la irreductibilidad de la persona como tal, reconocimiento (...) que es posible, en última instancia, por el amor y la caridad, el cual se manifiesta en la dinámica del intercambio de dones. Por otra parte, esta irreductibilidad de la persona supone el rechazo de la postulación de una tercera sustancia diferente del yo y del tú, que los subsumiera en su entidad, tal como parece suceder en el estructuralismo y en el hegelianismo. Es nuestra intención mostrar que se trata en Ricoeur de una fenomenología genética que rastrea lo extraño desde lo propio, teniendo como núcleo pivotante de su reflexión el homo capax que somos cada uno de nosotros y que actúa siempre en un mundo compartido (Lebenswelt). The present work pretends to be an introduction to the problem of intersubjectivity from the phenomenological and hermeneutical point of view of Paul Ricoeur. The phenomenon of intersubjectivity will be studied from a gnoseological, ethical, sociological and hermeneutical perspective, trying to disclose how a mutual acknowledgment between strange subjects in a common world can be possible. Meditation upon intersubjectivity must always attend on the irreductibility of persona as such, acknowledgment made possible by love and charity, and that reveals it sense in the espirit of giveness. In the other hand, the irreducitibility of persona implies rejecting the possibility of building a third substance, different from the I and the Thou, and which would submit them to its reality, as structuralism and hegelianism seems to propose. We intend to show that Ricoeur's position is one of a genetic phenomenology that search for the strange from the own, stating the homo capax that acts always in a shared world (Lebenswelt) as its central idea. (shrink)

La historia que Agustín de Hipona nos cuenta de sí mismo en sus Confesiones nos confronta con la esencial ambivalencia del lenguaje y la textualidad. Por un lado, los textos son ocasión para que los hombres se pierdan en cuestiones vanas y para que alimenten su soberbia. Por otro lado, es a través de los textos que Agustín encuentra el camino hacia Dios y la Verdad: la lectura de Cicerón, de Plotino y, ante todo, de las Sagradas Escrituras, lo llevan (...) a la conversión. Sin embargo, la ambivalencia de las letras muestra su mayor tensión en que es el mismo texto de la Biblia el que, al mismo tiempo, lo aleja y lo acerca a Agustín a Dios. En última instancia, la ambivalencia de las letras se resuelve en el modo en que el lector hace uso de ellas, en el modo en que las toma y se las apropia al modo de ser apropiadas por ellas. Las Confesiones son la historia de un letrado, el drama de una lectura que puede condenarnos tanto como salvarnos. (shrink)

Theology and philosophy, as archaeo-logical discourses, share the same calling to ground human experience in giving our life-world a fundamental meaning. Thus, they tend to confuse with each other. However, I argue, whereas theology’s discourse is a constructive one, as it performs the ultimate meaning of the world by an axiomatic and paradigmatic analogical predication of what God is, philosophy, on the contrary, de-constructs what theology ultimately proposes. When philosophy advances a new interpretation of the world, it turns into theology, (...) just as theology becomes philosophy when it breaks down the foundation of the actual world-view. Neither of both could exist without the other, and every other science is unable to undertake the task of questioning the roots of our world-views, as they are incapable of building a whole new world-view at any given time. Without these archaeological discourses, worlds become meaningless. Only by this double-movement of hermeneutics and deconstruction can Philosophy and Theology be still meaningful in our present time, articulating sense in our life-world and enabling the deep questioning of this very sense. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende introducir al lector en la problemática de la intersubjetividad desde la perspectiva de Paul Ricoeur, considerando el doble acceso, ético y gnoseológico, a la realidad del otro. Se estudiará en primer lugar cómo, a los ojos de Ricouer, la fenomenología husserliana debe enfrentar su prueba más definitoria, la de la explicitación del fenómeno de la intersubjetividad, y cómo puede superarla. En segundo lugar, se mostrará cómo Ricoeur no reduce el acceso al otro a la constitución egológica, sino (...) que, por el contrario, la subordina al a priori ético del respeto, que pone al otro como otro antes de cualquier tipo de constitución fenomenológica o de aproximación simpática. Es nuestra intención mostrar que no se trata en Ricouer de excluir ninguno de los dos accesos, sino que se trata de una fenomenología genética que rastrea lo extraño desde lo propio, atendiendo ante todo a la intencionalidad ética del hombre como lo definitorio en el orden intersubjetivo. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo intentaremos mostrar cómo la experiencia de la muerte pone en jaque la categoría metafísica de presencia, que se encuentra en el corazón de la obra de Gabriel Marcel. A diferencia de otras filosofías de la existencia, la significación metafísica de la muerte no la encontramos en la conciencia de la muerte propia, sino en el acontecimiento de la muerte de la persona amada. Por esta razón, el sentido de la muerte solo es inteligible en el marco (...) de la experiencia de la fidelidad y del amor, y su carácter trágico reside en que parece deslegitimar la promesa de eternidad en la comunión de los amantes y la consistencia ontológica de la existencia. Lejos de ser extraño al ritmo dramático de la filosofía marceliana, la reflexión en torno a la muerte subraya la necesidad de pensar la presencia en conjunción con la ausencia, lo cual nos abre a una filosofía que trasciende el ser entendido como presencia y apariencia, para abrazar lo inaparente como lo realmente significativo. De este modo, encontramos la radicalización de la fenomenología como hiperfenomenología en la propuesta de Gabriel Marcel, quien podría considerarse uno de los iniciadores de la tradición que hoy recibe el nombre de “giro teológico de la fenomenología”. (shrink)

Este trabajo muestra cómo una deconstrucción del cuerpo propio, desde la centralidad del tacto como autoafección (haptocentrismo), debe ser completada por una deconstrucción del aptocentrismo, es decir, de la comprensión del cuerpo propio como cuerpo del cual hago uso. Tanto el haptocentrismo como el aptocentrismo postulan al cuerpo propio como aquello que puede ser eminentemente apropiado por el viviente, una apropiación conceptualizada por el estoicismo como oikeiosis. En un recorrido que va desde el estoicismo hasta Michel Henry, pasando por Condillac, (...) Maine de Biran, Rosmini, Husserl, Bergson, Marcel y Merleau-Ponty, podrá advertirse cómo estas argumentaciones están motivadas por dicha necesidad de apropiación del cuerpo y, por tanto, cómo la autoafección debe comprenderse dentro del esquema de la autoapropiación del viviente. Este paradigma de la autoapropiación encuentra, sin embargo, su lugar aporético en el cuerpo propio, el cual no puede ser nunca apropiado del todo y se presenta como el lugar de la resistencia y de la expropiación. (shrink)

La filosofía ha encontrado en la literatura de Jorge Luis Borges un ámbito único para reflexionar en torno de sus propios problemas. En este ensayo examinaré las tensiones y contradicciones que afloran dentro del paradigma metafísico de la inmediación y de la intuición. El cuento de «Funes, el memorioso» ofrece la ocasión para pensar en la imposibilidad del hombre de afirmar un sistema de signos o una facultad perceptiva que ignore el inexorable resto que guarde la diferencia entre lo real (...) y lo representado. Una vida humana que se afirme en el ideal de un saber absoluto, de una visión ininterrumpida, es finalmente funesta. El hombre vive de las mediaciones y de las interrupciones, recuerda porque olvida, despierta porque sueña, conoce porque ignora: mira porque tiene párpados. (shrink)

In this paper we will try to show how Gabriel Marcel understands the junction between the self and the other as appears in his reflections on the opposition freedom-gift, on his critique of Sartre’s philosophy of freedom, and on metaphysical implications of love. These three approaches point out a way that leads to understand man’s tension between selfhood and alterity, in the heart of a fundamental communion which refer, ultimately, to the divine. Therefore, metaphysical and religious discourses are constantly crossing (...) but, instead of revoking value to Marcel’s philosophy, this double rapport teaches us a way of attending religious symbols and testimonies in order to get close to the meaning of human experience. (shrink)

Although Political Theology examined mainly the political dimension of the relationship between God-Father and God-Son, it is paramount to consider the political performance of the Holy Spirit in the Economy of Redemption. The Holy Spirit has been characterized as the binding cause and the principle of relationality both referring to God’s inner life and to God’s relationship with His creatures. As the personalization of relationality, the Holy Spirit performs a unique task: to bring together what is apart by means of (...) organisation. This power of the Spirit to turn a plurality into a unity is manifested in the Latin translation of oikonomía as disposition, that is, giving a special order to the multiple elements within a certain totality. Within this activity of the Spirit, Theodicy can be regarded as the way to depict God’s arrangement of the world and of history, bringing everything together towards the eschatological Kingdom of God. The paper aims at showing this fundamental activity of the Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, and intends to pose the question on how to think on a theology beyond theodicy, that is, how to think on a Trinitarian God beyond the categories of sovereignty and totalization. (shrink)

The idea of a self-organized system brings both political and biological discourses together, for they both aim at explaining how a certain compound can achieve self-unity out of plurality. Whereas biological metaphors in politics have been much examined, political metaphors in biology have not. In this paper I intend to show how political metaphors can enlighten biological discourses, taking the work of Aristotle as a case-study. The relationship between the main elements of a living-body could be better understood within a (...) political scheme: the soul rules over the body through pneuma, its prime minister. This scheme entails, thus, to re-examine Aristotle’s definition of soul in the light of the key concept of pneuma, and to replace the hylemorphic explanation with a triadic one. On the one hand, soul is the entelecheia of the body as it keeps both the form and the end of the organism, which is its unity. On the other hand, the moving-efficacious principle that performs unity by circulating through the body, and by linking the body to its environment is pneuma. Therefore, the political formula: “the king does not govern” could shed light upon the structure of the living body: whereas the soul rules the body, pneuma governs it. Although Aristotle does not build his biology upon political concepts, metaphors are already there, shaping his explanations, within the bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy. (shrink)

Neste artigo argumento que o conceito de crise está no coração da Teologia Política, focalizando o trabalho principal de Agostinho de Hipona, A Cidade de Deus. A estratégia de Agostinho é reunir os significados médicos e teológicos da crise para defender a soberania única do Único Deus, o único que decide e julga ao longo do curso crítico da história e o Único que porá fim a tudo com Seu Juízo Final. O foco no tratado de Agostinho também mostrará como (...) a disputa teológica política entre Carl Schmitt e Erik Peterson deve ser examinada mais uma vez, principalmente para redefinir o conceito de soberania pelo conceito de crise, pois ser considerado um soberano é em si algo a ser decidido. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJurgen Moltmann is one of the most important theologians in the XXth century who intended to leave aside a rigid and impassible notion of God. However, although Moltmann opens new ways to consider God’s life by stressing God’s passivity and relationality, the concepts of activity and self-sufficiency are still structuring the whole theological argument. I intend to show how our understanding of life has been shaped by a bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy that defines life by the use of the Greek (...) prefix ‘autos,’ and how this paradigm is still working on Moltmann’s theology, who is not able yet to overcome the metaphysical impassible God. I claim that only a radical deconstruction of this paradigm and the construction of a new way of defining life by the use of the Greek prefix ‘syn’ could enable to think seriously on God’s relationality and love. (shrink)

These essays discuss Vico's conception of metaphor and the imagination as unique elements in the history of Western philosophy that allow Vico to formulate a new relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. On this basis, rhetorical forms of thought and senses of language are shown to be at the basis of philosophical thought. Philosophy is understood as an enterprise that cannot overlook its traditional roots in poetic and rhetorical senses of the word. Connections between this point of view and Heidegger's analysis (...) of language and Being are shown. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Humanism as Philosophia (Perennis):Grassi's Platonic Rhetoric between Gadamer and KristellerRocco RubiniToday's situation is such that in our desacralized and demythologized world we believe in no annunciations, in no purely directive statements, in no evangelist, be it a God or a prophet. We turn to rational thought, to proofs and reasons in order to free ourselves from the subjectivity and relativity of appearances.... Thus not only is every access (...) to religious sacred texts closed to us but so also is the possibility of a metaphysics, a science that tells us about the "essence of man" (Humanism).—Ernesto Grassi, Rhetoric as PhilosophyDonald P. Verene commemorated Ernesto Grassi by recognizing that his work allows for a fresh approach to Vico, Heidegger, Renaissance, and rhetorical studies (1996, 295–303). While Grassi's authority on Vico remains undisputed, examination of his relevance to other fields of study is still wanting. As for Martin Heidegger, his students have been too numerous and successful for Grassi to easily claim pride of place among them. In turn, as Verene notes, American Renaissance scholarship has failed to realize that Grassi's work represents a direct alternative to that of Paul Oskar Kristeller, another student of Heidegger. Kristeller's influential characterization of Renaissance [End Page 242] humanism as a rhetorical and thus, in his view, nonphilosophical tradition often causes Grassi to be simply dismissed.1 Finally, his reception in rhetorical studies remains problematic and limited in its own right.In his Foreword to the reprint of Grassi's Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), Timothy W. Crusius clearly expresses the confused deference that has caused rhetoricians to steer clear of the "anomaly" Grassi represents. Crusius laments that scholars have not attempted to bring Grassi into conversation with partisans of rhetoric like Hans-Georg Gadamer and that very little attention has been paid to works such as The Primordial Metaphor (1994) or to the overall religious dimension of his thought. Crusius attributes this general neglect to the American rhetoricians' unfamiliarity with the Latin-humanist rhetorical tradition: Grassi, in direct opposition to Heidegger, would have fashioned his philosophy from Roman rather than Greek sources (2001, xiii–xviii).This essay closely narrates2 how Grassi's notions of metaphysics and "rhetoric" developed in his early writings in order to dispel some of the misconceptions that have prevented readers from entering what Grassi himself defines as the "originary tension" awakening his own and, indeed, any philosopher's concerns, interests, and pathos (1994, 5–6). For if Grassi often lamented Heidegger's philhellenism—an aversion to romanitas at which he and other "Latin" students such as José Ortega y Gasset took personal offense (1988, 347)—we shall see that his philosophy was originally grounded on a nontraditional reading of Greek sources. Indeed, a reader would be at pains to recover a sustained reading of Cicero or Quintilian in his entire corpus, while between 1932 and 1946 Grassi published three volumes dedicated to an original interpretation of Plato.3Whereas the following account might make Grassi's notion of "rhetoric as philosophy" even more idiosyncratic—originally founded neither on a recovery of Roman eloquence nor, as we shall see, on a rehabilitation of the Sophists—his early Platonism makes him conversant with Gadamer and provides insight into his religiosity. Grassi's distinctive Platonism also spurs consideration of his missed confrontation with Kristeller and of the mutual disregard between American Renaissance scholars and rhetoricians in the latter part of the twentieth century. The following pages place the reader in a position to appreciate the relevance of Grassi's work to current scholarship.Heidegger's Anti-Platonism and Recent Plato StudiesThe belated and ongoing publication of Heidegger's lectures prior to Being and Time (1927) has led us closer to the experience of his students and offered [End Page 243] clear insight into his preference for Aristotle over Plato. The WS 1924–25 lecture course on the Sophist—one of Heidegger's most sustained confrontations with Plato before his Plato's Doctrine of Truth (1942)—begins with the assertion "What Aristotle said is what Plato placed at his disposal, only it is said more radically and developed more scientifically" (1997, 8). By developing... (shrink)

This book shows otherwise. John Martin rehabilitates Neoplatonism, founded by Plotinus and brought into Christianity by St. Augustine.

Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event.

Heidegger's affirmation is categorical: “… the thinking expressed in Being and Time is against humanism”. Heidegger's thesis is not only categorical, it is also polemical. He maintains that the humanist conception does not grasp man's essence, and it is for this reason that he is opposed to humanism, which is a doctrine that “has not thought profoundly enough of man's humanitas.

The Routledge International Handbook of Neuroaesthetics is an authoritative reference work that provides the reader with a wide-ranging introduction to this exciting new scientific discipline. The book brings together leading international academics to offer a well-balanced overview of this burgeoning field while addressing two questions central to the field; how the brain computes aesthetic appreciation for sensory objects, and how is art created and experienced.

The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals.

Martin highlights the degree to which H. L. A. Hart’s legal positivism relies on Hobbesian assumptions. Like Hart, Hobbes combines utilitarian and retributivist elements. The best way to make sense of Hobbes’s theory of punishment is to follow Quentin Skinner and view both the “sovereign” and the “state” as distinct legal fictions. Unlike Hobbes, Hart asserts these fictions as facts. As a result, Hart’s philosophy of criminal law in Punishment and Responsibility is in tension with his legal philosophy in (...) The Concept of Law. Martin worries that Hart’s mixed theory is untenable: the utilitarian element threatens to overtake his core retributivist thesis. Ultimately, however, neither Hart nor Hobbes has the resources to explain why the autonomous individual matters in the context of criminal law. (shrink)

Of course, although this view on meaning was the prevailing one for almost a century, many of the people who initiated the enterprise of logical semantics, including people like Frege and Wittgenstein, had an open eye for all that it did not catch. However, the logical means which Frege, Wittgenstein, Russell, and the generation that succeeded them, had at their disposal were those of classical mathematical logic and set-theory, and these indeed are not very suited for an analysis of other (...) aspects of meaning than those which the slogan covers. A real change in view then had to await the emergence of other concepts, which in due course became available mainly under the influence of developments in computer science and cognate disciplines such as artificial intelligence. And this is one of the reasons why it took almost a century before any serious and successful challenge of the view that meaning equals truthconditions from within logical semantics could emerge. (shrink)

Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund" full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H. C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Mulsow shows that even in (...) the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Mulsow studied the writings of countless hitherto unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corrosively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. (shrink)

Recent developments in Continental philosophy have included the emergence of a school of “speculative realism,” which rejects the human-centered orientation that has long dominated Continental thought. Proponents of speculative realism differ on several issues, but many agree on the need for an object-oriented ontology. Some speculative realists identify realism with materialism, while others accord equal reality to objects that are non-material, even fictional. Several thinkers retain a focus on difference, a well-established theme in Continental thought. This paper looks at speculative (...) realism from the perspective of systems theory. Many of the tenets of speculative realism have long been features of systems metaphysics and are expressed clearly in a systems framework. However, some views of some speculative realists differ substantially from systems theoretic ideas. (shrink)

L’addition, dans la cinquième édition en 1683 de La Logique ou L’Art de penser, d’un chapitre consacré à la définition générale du signe et de plusieurs chapitres relevant spécifiquement d’une analyse des signes linguistiques, a été parfois interprétée comme une apparition tardive du “problème du langage” dans le traité d’Arnauld et Nicole. Parce que la plupart de ces chapitres supplémentaires sont la transposition de passages auparavant destinés dans la Perpétuité de la foi (1669-1674) à réfuter le sens calviniste de Ceci (...) est mon corps, on a été enclin à attribuer l’importance de la question du signe et du “problème du langage” dans l’édition de 1683 à une origine théologique. J’essaie au contraire de montrer que, dès la première édition de L’Art de penser en 1662, la problématisation des écarts des expressions linguistiques avec une correspondance terme à terme entre les mots et les idées a été indissociable pour Port-Royal de l’analyse des opérations de l’esprit. Selon moi, dans la Perpétuité de la foi, la critique du sens calviniste de la formule eucharistique constitue elle-même une application de cette analyse logique du langage : les passages incorporés ensuite dans L’Art de penser sont dans le prolongement des réflexions de 1662 sur les difficultés d’adéquation entre le dire et le vouloir-dire. Je montre pour finir que la définition générale du signe à Port-Royal suppose une restructuration de la définition augustinienne du De doctrina christiana, et fonde en 1683 une identification de la relation de signification linguistique à un rapport de représentation des mots aux idées, qui vient redoubler le rapport de représentation des idées aux choses établi en 1662. (shrink)

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)

The phenomenon of altruism extends from the biological realm to the human sociocultural realm. This article sketches a coherent outline of multiple types of altruism of progressively increasing scope that span these two realms and are grounded in an ever-expanding sense of “self.” Discussion of this framework notes difficulties associated with altruism at different levels. It links scientific ideas about the evolution of cooperation and about hierarchical order to perennial philosophical and religious concerns. It offers a conceptual background for inquiry (...) into societal challenges that call for altruistic behavior, especially the challenge of environmental and social sustainability. (shrink)

Divided into four parts, this treatise begins with well-known criticisms of nonreligious ethics and then develops an atheistic metaethics. In Part 2, Martin criticizes the Christian foundation of ethics, specifically the ’divine command theory’ and the idea of imitating the life of Jesus as the basis of Christian morality. Part 3 demonstrates that life can be meaningful in the absence of religious belief. Part 4 criticizes the theistic point of view in general terms as well as the specific Christian (...) doctrines of the atonement, salvation, and the resurrection. (publisher, edited). (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new solution to the problem of change: situationalism. According to this view, parts of reality fundamentally disagree about what is the case and reality as a whole is unsettled (i.e. metaphysically indeterminate). When something changes, parts of the world irreconcilably disagree about what properties it has. From this irreconcilable disagreement, indeterminacy arises. I develop this picture using situations, which are parts of possible worlds; this gives it the name situationalism. It allows a B-theory endurance (...) view on which there is genuine incompatibility when things change. There are costs to the view, which are explored, but it is a novel approach which offers a distinct explanation of what happens when things exist through change. (shrink)

Studie předkládá interpretaci souboru článků, které Jan Patočka uveřejnil na počátku své filosofické kariéry a v nichž programově vyložil vlastní stanovisko k problematice historického poznání a smyslu dějin. Na základě výkladu Patočkových statí studie konstatuje, že soubor ve svém celku připravuje předložení ucelené filosofické koncepce a že jeho prostřednictvím Patočka přispěl k soudobé diskusi, „sporu o smysl českých dějin“. Studie nejprve nabízí představení tohoto sporu a jeho dobového kontextu a argumentuje, že tato souvislost má podstatný význam pro porozumění Patočkovým textům. (...) Na základě toho poté studie shrnuje Patočkovu interpretaci hlavních zainteresovaných argumentačních pozic a kritiku, kterou vůči nim snáší. V následujícím kroku studie předkládá interpretaci Patočkova vlastního pojetí dějin. Na závěr představuje východisko tohoto pojetí, Patočkovu koncepci člověka. The paper proposes an interpretation of a set of articles published by Jan Patočka at the beginning of his philosophical career, in which he programmatically sets forth his point of view of the problem of historical knowledge and the meaning of history. Based on the reading of the texts the paper arrives at the conclusion that this collection as a whole anticipates a comprehensive philosophical concept and that by means of these texts Patočka contributed to the discussion of the day, “the dispute over the meaning of Czech history”. The paper begins by presenting the dispute as well as its contemporary context and argues that this link bears essential significance to the understanding of Patočka’s texts. On this basis it then summarizes Patočka’s interpretation of the different parties of the argument and the critique to which he submits them. In the next step the paper presents Patočka’s interpretation of his own conception of history. It concludes by an exposition of the basis of this conception, Patočka’s concept of man. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination. The naïve realist claims that some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects. In turn, the disjunctivist claims that in a case of (...) veridical perception like this very kind of experience that you now have, the experiential episode you enjoy is of a kind which could not be occurring were you having an hallucination. The common strategy of arguments from hallucination set out to show that certain things are true of hallucinations, and hence must be true of perceptions. For example, it is argued that hallucinations must have non-physical objects of awareness, or that such states are not relations to anything at all, but are at best seeming relations to objects. In insisting that veridical perceptual experience is of a distinct kind from hallucination, the disjunctivist denies that any of these conceptions of hallucination challenges our conception of veridical perceptions as relations to mind-independent objects. More specifically, I assume that the disjunctivist advocates naïve realism because they think that this position best articulates how sensory experience seems to us to be just through reflection. If the disjunctivist is correct in this contention, then anyone who accepts the conclusion of the argument from hallucination must also accept that the nature of sensory experience is other than it seems to us to be. In turn, one may complain that any such error theory is liable to lead to sceptical consequences. A Humean scepticism about the senses launches a challenge about our knowledge of the world through questioning the conception we have of what sense experience is, and how it can provide knowledge of the world. (shrink)

The new western way of war from Vietnam in Iraq -- Theories of the new western way of war -- The global surveillance mode of warfare -- Rules of risk-transfer war -- Iraq: risk economy of a war -- A way of war in crisis.