This essay concerns the problem of individuation in metaphysics in relation to the question of individuality in politics. It rejects the assumption in muchof ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy and theology that unity and diversity are opposed and that this opposition produces conflict and violence. Theproposed alternative is a metaphysics and politics of relationality. This alternative is not so much indebted to Aristotle, but instead goes back to Platonist metaphysics and its transformation by Augustine and Boethius. By privileging substance (...) over all other categories, Aristotle not only relegated the transcendent immaterial actuality from the immanence of the material world but also divorced particular beings from the universal Prime Mover or God. By contrast, for Plato, the transcendent universal Good individuates all immanent particulars relationally at the level of the oikos, the polis, and the cosmos. Crucially, by combining the concept of creation ex nihilo with the metaphysics of participation, Augustine and Boethius reconfi gured Plato’s Good in the direction of the Creator-God and Trinitarian relationality. Thus, each and every being is individuated because it is a particular reflection of the universal Good, a unique and singular expression of God’s self-communicative actualization in the world. (shrink)

This essay concerns the problem of individuation in metaphysics in relation to the question of individuality in politics. It rejects the assumption in muchof ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy and theology that unity and diversity are opposed and that this opposition produces conflict and violence. Theproposed alternative is a metaphysics and politics of relationality. This alternative is not so much indebted to Aristotle, but instead goes back to Platonist metaphysics and its transformation by Augustine and Boethius. By privileging substance (...) over all other categories, Aristotle not only relegated the transcendent immaterial actuality from the immanence of the material world but also divorced particular beings from the universal Prime Mover or God. By contrast, for Plato, the transcendent universal Good individuates all immanent particulars relationally at the level of the oikos, the polis, and the cosmos. Crucially, by combining the concept of creation ex nihilo with the metaphysics of participation, Augustine and Boethius reconfi gured Plato’s Good in the direction of the Creator-God and Trinitarian relationality. Thus, each and every being is individuated because it is a particular reflection of the universal Good, a unique and singular expression of God’s self-communicative actualization in the world. (shrink)

I argue for the primacy of the mental from recent physicalists’ endorsements of phenomenal transparency and the non-transparency of the physical. I argue that the conjunction of these views shows that (1) arguments for dualism from introspection are difficult to resist; and (2) a kind of Hempel’s dilemma that removes constraints that block substance dualism. This shows that (1) raises the probability of the primacy of the mental, while (2) lowers the probability of the primacy of (...) the physical. Lastly, I argue that the conjunction of (1) and (2) raise the probability of substance dualism. (shrink)

Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long-standing puzzle, (...) arguing that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works. The theory of Metaphysics Zeta is meant to explain central features of the standing doctrine of the Categories, and so presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. The Categories offers a theory of underlying ontological configurations, while book Zeta gives form the status of primary substance because it is primarily the form of a concrete object that explains its nature, and this form is the substance of the object. So when the late theory identifies primary substance with form, it appeals to an explanatory primacy that is quite distinct from the ontological primacy that dominates the Categories. Wedin's new interpretation thus allows us to see the two treatises as complementing each other: they are parts of a unified history of substance. (shrink)

Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long-standing puzzle, (...) arguing that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works. The theory of Metaphysics Zeta is meant to explain central features of the standing doctrine of the Categories, and so presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. The Categories offers a theory of underlying ontological configurations, while book Zeta gives form the status of primary substance because it is primarily the form of a concrete object that explains its nature, and this form is the substance of the object. So when the late theory identifies primary substance with form, it appeals to an explanatory primacy that is quite distinct from the ontological primacy that dominates the Categories. Wedin's new interpretation thus allows us to see the two treatises as complementing each other: they are parts of a unified history of substance. (shrink)

What follows is an investigation of the ontology of Franz Brentano with special reference to Brentano's later and superficially somewhat peculiar doctrine to the effect that the substances of the material world are three dimensional places. Taken as a whole, Brentano's philosophy is marked by three, not obviously compatible, trait. In the first place, his work is rooted in the metaphysics of Aristotle, above all in Aristotle's substance/accident ontology and in the Aristotelian theory of categories. In the second place, (...) Brentano embraced a Cartesian epistemology. He saw the source of all knowledge as residing in our direct awareness of our own mental phenomena and in our capacity to grasp evident incompatibilities in the realm of concepts.) Thirdly, he regarded the existence of an external world as at most probable, and denied outright the existence of a world similar to the world that is given in experience. Finally, and in some sense linking together these opposing strands, he propagated an idea of what he called "descriptive psychology", a discipline which would on the one hand yield exact knowledge of the structures and categories of mental life, and on the other hand provide an epistemologically sure foundation for other branches of philosophy. As we shall see, it is this psychological aspect of Brentano's philosophy which leads him to his conception of the substantiality of place. Surprisingly, however, the psychological considerations which underlie Brentano's thinking will be shown to raise a series of questions strictly ontological in nature, questions which are not without a systematic interest of their own. (shrink)

Substance ontologists claim that substances are ontologically primary because the category of substance enjoys unique explanatory potential. Unless it can be shown that "only" substances fulfill the central explanatory tasks in ontology, this inference from explanatory success to ontological primacy amounts to a fallacy akin to the error Whitehead called 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness'. I investigate recent prototypical arguments for substance metaphysics and try to show that some explanatory functions of substance can also be (...) fulfilled by other ontological categories. In particular, I argue against M. Ayers that there is no reason to think that all and only substances are discrete individuals, natural wholes, and logical units. I conclude that the category of substance does not provide us with a uniquely powerful explanans for the notion of logical and physical unity. (shrink)

I discuss neuroscientific and phenomenological arguments in support of Millikan's thesis. I then consider invariance as a unifying theme in perceptual and conceptual tracking, and how invariants may be extracted from the environment. Finally, some wider implications of Millikan's nondescriptionist approach to language are presented, with specific application to color terms.

By the late Ming, the concept of ‘the mind/heart-cum-principle’ 心即理 had generated confusion in the relations between xing (human nature) and xin (mind/heart). Moreover, with the increasing interpenetration of the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, some scholars became gravely concerned that the perversion of traditional Confucian thinking had resulted in the degeneration of the moral and social order. Li Cai (1529–1607) was one of these concerned scholars. Wielding the two concepts of ‘zhizhi’ (knowing the ultimate end) and ‘xiushen’ (...) (self-cultivation) in the Great Learning, Li wrestled with Wang Yangming’s teachings by reasserting the primacy of xing, insisting that moral reality must involve direct individual action in order to preserve the unity of substance and effort. Li’s keen awareness of the inner tension between the mind/heart and xing not only prompted his critical reflections on Wang ’s thought but also on Zhu Xi’s. In so doing, he sought to address the fundamental question of what Confucianism is by clarifying the boundaries between the three teachings, and reshaping the spiritual values of Confucianism. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with the most basic tenet in Aristotelian metaphysics, namely that ousia or ‘substance’ is ontologically prior to the nine other categories of being, including the pros ti, the condition of being literally ‘toward something’ or what is sometimes called 'relation' or ‘relationality.’ Aristotle repeats this frequently throughout his works and it is, I take it, manifest. However, in the Politics, so I argue here, Aristotle’s dialectical study of common appearances leads him to describe ‘human (...) being’ in a way that runs contrary to this. That is, insofar as the human being is the zoon politikon or ‘political animal,’ it seems to be constituted as the being it is precisely by way of its relatedness to other human beings in the polis. I then try to determine the moment of ‘birth’ for this essentially relational being, and find that it may not be the emergence of the human from the womb, but rather, at least according to this interpretation of the Politics, the moment when we enter into the logos together with others in posing, discussing, debating, and re-posing the abidingly open question of the human Good. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with the most basic tenet in Aristotelian metaphysics, namely that ousia or ‘substance’ is ontologically prior to the nine other categories of being, including the pros ti, the condition of being literally ‘toward something’ or what is sometimes called 'relation' or ‘relationality.’ Aristotle repeats this frequently throughout his works and it is, I take it, manifest. However, in the Politics, so I argue here, Aristotle’s dialectical study of common appearances leads him to describe ‘human (...) being’ in a way that runs contrary to this. That is, insofar as the human being is the zoon politikon or ‘political animal,’ it seems to be constituted as the being it is precisely by way of its relatedness to other human beings in the polis. I then try to determine the moment of ‘birth’ for this essentially relational being, and find that it may not be the emergence of the human from the womb, but rather, at least according to this interpretation of the Politics, the moment when we enter into the logos together with others in posing, discussing, debating, and re-posing the abidingly open question of the human Good. (shrink)

Significant scholarship has been devoted to the problem of the incompatibility of Aristotle’s accounts of substance in the Categories and in the Metaphysics. Substance, in the former treatise, is that category of being distinguished from the other accidental categories by reason of the ontological dependence of accident upon substance: every accident must be present in a substance to be present at all. Primary substances such as “Socrates” are distinguished from secondary substances such as “human being” or (...) “animal” since secondary substances are said of primary ones. Only primary substances are neither said of a subject nor present in a subject, depending upon nothing else for their existence. This assertion of the ontological primacy of the individual seems to be withdrawn by Aristotle, however, in the Metaphysics, in which substance emerges in a discussion of the hupokeimenon—the underlying subject of which everything else is predicated. This subject is to be understood in three senses: as matter, as form, and as the composite of the two. Primary substance, finally, is granted to form alone, the “most perplexing” of the candidates, according to Aristotle, and the one that turns out to refer to the same thing as essence. Since what Aristotle means by essence looks to be a form common to all individuals of a particular species, it is not surprising that commentators identify at worst a contradictory theory regarding substance, and at best a transformation of an immature theory of substance into a mature one. (shrink)

According to the standard view of his metaphysics, Leibniz endorses idealism: the thesis that the world is made up solely of minds or monads and their perceptual and appetitive states. Recently,this view has been challenged by some scholars, who argue that Leibniz can be seen as admitting corporeal substances, that is, animals or embodied souls, into his ontology, and that, therefore, it is false to attribute a strict idealism to him. Subtler accounts suggest that Leibniz begins his philosophical career as (...) an advocate of (some form of) the modern ‘mechanical’ philosophy and ends his career as an idealist, raising the issue when and why Leibniz adopts his monadological metaphysics. This article argues that, given a constellation of metaphysical, logical, and theological views, Leibniz is committed to the ontological primacy of mind or form even in his ‘middle years’. (shrink)

First Philosophy and the Kinds of Substance JOSEPH G. DEFILIPPO ON A CERTAIN INTERPRETATION Aristotle's Metaphysics contains two incompati- ble conceptions of metaphysics or, as he calls it, first philosophy. At two points in the treatise he identifies first philosophy with theology . Along with this identification comes a certain view about the nature and number of theoretical sciences. We are told in E. 1 that there are three: natural philosophy, mathematics, and theology. Natural philosophy deals with nonseparate,' mutable (...) substance, whereas the objects of mathematics are nonseparate but immutable. It is left to theology to study substance that is both separate and immutable . Hence it is prior to the other two theoretical sciences and more worthy of honor. But for Aristotle first philosophy is not merely a compartmentalized science concerned with a single genus or kind of substance; he means it to be a universal science of "being qua being." Indeed, it is the status of first philosophy as the primary theoretical science that is supposed to provide for its universal scope. As he says in E. 1, it is universal "in this way, because it is first" 0o26a3o-31). Large and well- known difficulties loom in the way of this tantalizing idea. First, it is not clear how theology's position of primacy is the cause of its universal scope; if anything, divine substance seems to be a special item within a more.. (shrink)

Scholars paid scant attention to Giles of Rome’s Quaestiones methaphisicales. This is due to many reasons. The Quaestiones are likely the first of the Aristotelian commentaries written by Giles and all XVI-century printed editions conserve but a reportatio of the course on Metaphysics that Giles probably gave in Paris between 1268/1269 and 1271. Since Giles never edited the text of his lectures, we cannot be sure that Giles approved the list and the contents of the questions we may read today. (...) Moreover, the current list is also incomplete because a study of cross-references in Giles’ Aristotelian commentaries showed that Giles wrote other questions, not included in the list we have today. Despite of these features, Giles’ Quaestiones are import both historically and philosophically. They contribute to fixing the chronology of Giles’ first works and to illustrating the metaphysics of the early Giles. In particular, a close examination of the questions on Books VII and VIII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, devoted to substance and accidents, shows various things. For example, the influence exerted by Averroes’s Commentary on Giles’s teaching and, accordingly, the pivotal role played by the notion of definition in the explanation of the essence of substance and accidents. More generally, such an examination permits us bringing to light the exegetical devices Giles used in order to reconcile Thomas Aquinas’s view of the primacy and unicity of substantial form with his idiomatic position that indeterminate dimensions must precede in some way substantial form. If this were not the case, Giles argues, we could not explain the process of particularization and multiplication of a form that is in itself ‘unparticular’. (shrink)

Scholars paid scant attention to Giles of Rome’s Quaestiones methaphisicales. This is due to many reasons. The Quaestiones are likely the first of the Aristotelian commentaries written by Giles and all XVI-century printed editions conserve but a reportatio of the course on Metaphysics that Giles probably gave in Paris between 1268/1269 and 1271. Since Giles never edited the text of his lectures, we cannot be sure that Giles approved the list and the contents of the questions we may read today. (...) Moreover, the current list is also incomplete because a study of cross-references in Giles’ Aristotelian commentaries showed that Giles wrote other questions, not included in the list we have today. Despite of these features, Giles’ Quaestiones are import both historically and philosophically. They contribute to fixing the chronology of Giles’ first works and to illustrating the metaphysics of the early Giles. In particular, a close examination of the questions on Books VII and VIII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, devoted to substance and accidents, shows various things. For example, the influence exerted by Averroes’s Commentary on Giles’s teaching and, accordingly, the pivotal role played by the notion of definition in the explanation of the essence of substance and accidents. More generally, such an examination permits us bringing to light the exegetical devices Giles used in order to reconcile Thomas Aquinas’s view of the primacy and unicity of substantial form with his idiomatic position that indeterminate dimensions must precede in some way substantial form. If this were not the case, Giles argues, we could not explain the process of particularization and multiplication of a form that is in itself ‘unparticular’. (shrink)

Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. He goes on to clarify Spinoza's understanding of infinity, mereological relations, infinite modes, and the flow of finite (...) things from God's essence. In the second part of the book, Melamed relies on this interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in Spinoza's metaphysics. First, he shows that Spinoza had not one, but two independent doctrines of parallelism. Then, in his final main thesis, Melamed argues that, for Spinoza, ideas have a multifaceted structure that allows one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet, within Spinoza's metaphysics, Thought clearly has primacy over the other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is as elaborate, as complex, and, in some senses, as powerful as God. (shrink)

The present dissertation consists of a developmental account of the problem of the ontological status of individuality as manifested initially in the metaphysical thought of Aristotle and subsequently developed by Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francis Suarez. ;The philosophical context for the problem of individuality's ontological status is set by the theme, prominent in Greek philosophy, of unity as a mark of what is most real and most perfect. The historical precedent for viewing individuality as fitting under this theme, and (...) thus as having ontological importance, is provided by Aristotle's doctrine of primary substance, which characterizes individuality as a type of unity that pertains to the most fundamental aspects of reality such as this man or this horse. Though this doctrine highlights the ontological primacy of individual entities, the specific issues of where individuality fits on the ontological map, and what role it plays in constituting substances, are discussed only indirectly by Aristotle. These matters remain mostly unaddressed until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which individuality becomes a focal point of philosophical discussion due to the integration of Aristotelian metaphysical thought into Christian doctrine and the accompanying recognition of individuality as a topic of critical importance. ;The problem of individuality's ontological status can be summarized in terms of two questions. First, what kind of thing is individuality, i.e., where does it fit on the ontological map? Second, how is individuality related to the other metaphysical aspects of a thing, such as their form, common nature, etc.? Aquinas's treatment of this problem reveals strong roots in the Aristotelian doctrines of substance and of unity as a transcendental attribute of being. Scotus's account likewise is developed in the context of the aforementioned Aristotelian notions, but is more extensive than Aquinas's and more suggestive of individuality's importance given Scotus's identification of metaphysics as the science of the transcendentals and of individuality as a transcendental. Suarez's treatment of the ontological status of individuality builds upon these notions, synthesizing the insights of his predecessors to formulate an account that is more explicit, more precise, and in many ways more rigorous than his predecessors' accounts. (shrink)

In this book, Yitzhak Y. Melamed offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza. Against Curley's influential reading, he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. Against the claim that it is a category mistake to consider (...) things as properties, he argues that the distinction between things and properties has been thoroughly undermined both in the early modern period and in contemporary metaphysics (in bundle theories, and some versions of trope theory). He goes on to clarify Spinoza’s understanding of infinity, mereological relations, infinite modes, and the flow of finite things from God’s essence. In the second part of the book, Melamed relies on this interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in Spinoza's metaphysics. First, he shows that Spinoza had not one, but two independent doctrines of parallelism. The Ideas-Things Parallelism stipulates an isomorphism between the order of ideas in the attribute of Thought and the order of things in nature. The Inter-Attributes Parallelism establishes an isomorphism among the order of modes in each of the infinitely many attributes. He shows that these two doctrines are independent of each other and that each has different implications. Relying on this clarification of the doctrines of parallelism, Melamed develops his final main thesis. Here he argues that, for Spinoza, ideas have a multifaceted (in fact, infinitely faceted) structure that allows one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet, within Spinoza's metaphysics, Thought clearly has primacy over the other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is as elaborate, as complex, and, in some senses, as powerful as God. (shrink)

This thesis promotes a therapeutic revision of fundamental assumptions in contemporary ontological thought. I show that none of the extant standard theories of objects provides a viable account of the numerical, qualitative, and trans-temporal identity of objects, and that this is due to certain substance-ontological premises. I argue that in order to state the identity conditions of objects we must abandon these premises, together with the idea that objects enjoy ontological primacy. ;I follow a methodological program of formally (...) criticizing an ontological framework by demonstrating that each of the theories developed within this framework is incoherent, i.e., either inconsistent or subject to vicious regress. I proceed in three steps. First, I show that the substance-ontological paradigm cannot be characterized in terms of its basic entities, since there is no extensional, intensional, or functional definition of the notion of substance common to all extant substance ontologies; consequently, I propose to describe the substance-ontological paradigm in terms of its basic assumptions. ;Second, I analyze the contemporary discussion of the problem of individuality, the problem of universals, and the problem of persistence, and uncover 22 characteristic implicit assumptions of substance ontology. I show on the basis of representative examples that, due to their commitment to substance-ontological presuppositions, all extant types of solutions to the three mentioned problems are incoherent. In particular, I take issue with the bare particular view, the qualified particular view, and the bundle view of individuality; different varieties of platonist and nominalist theories of universals and of relational and functional theories of predication; and the endurance and perdurance approaches to persistence. ;Third, while historical process-ontological schemes have dropped some of the revealed substance-ontological presuppositions, I finally explore the result of rejecting all of them and sketch a scheme based on dynamic masses which promises to yield coherent explanations of the ontological features of those complex processes which we commonly consider to be objects. (shrink)

Edwin Hartman explores Aristotle's metaphysical assumptions as they illuminate his thought and some issues of current philosophical significance. The author's analysis of the theory of the soul treats such topics of lively debate as ontological primacy, spatio-temporal continuity, personal identity, and the relation between mind and body. Aristotle presents a world populated primarily by individual material objects rather than by their parts or by universals. The author notes that defense of this view requires Aristotle to create the notion of (...) form or essence. A material object, the Philosopher holds, is identical with its particular essence, and is not a combination of form and matter. Most important, a person is a substance and his essence is his soul. Personal identify is therefore bodily identity, and survival consists in bodily continuity. The relation between a state of perceiving and a state of the body is a special case of the weak identity between form and matter. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This article explores the later Schleiermacher’s metaphysics of substance and what it entails concerning the question of transcendental freedom. I show that in espousing a metaphysics of substance, Schleiermacher also abandoned an understanding of nature as a mere mechanism, a view implying what I call a “state-state view of causation” (“SSV” for short). Adoption of the view of the self as substance was motivated by the primacy of practical and religious concerns in Schleiermacher’s later work: in (...) Christian Faith, an analysis of self-consciousness from a first person point of view grounds this understanding of the self. In fact, in Christian Faith, ontology, and thereby theology, is only possible through such a first person analysis. The development of Schleiermacher’s views over time, and the reasons accompanying this development, can be fully understood only the in the context of his engagement with the work of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. In what follows I trace this development through an analysis of the philosophical problems and influences shaping Schleiermacher’s mature view, and shed light on his understanding of self-consciousness and its relation to God. My own account should also serve to correct some recent misunderstandings that have made their way into the secondary literature. (shrink)

Edwin Hartman explores Aristotle's metaphysical assumptions as they illuminate his thought and some issues of current philosophical significance. The author's analysis of the theory of the soul treats such topics of lively debate as ontological primacy, spatio-temporal continuity, personal identity, and the relation between mind and body. Aristotle presents a world populated primarily by individual material objects rather than by their parts or by universals. The author notes that defense of this view requires Aristotle to create the notion of (...) form or essence. A material object, the Philosopher holds, is identical with its particular essence, and is not a combination of form and matter. Most important, a person is a substance and his essence is his soul. Personal identify is therefore bodily identity, and survival consists in bodily continuity. The relation between a state of perceiving and a state of the body is a special case of the weak identity between form and matter. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Michael T. Ferejohn presents a new analysis of Aristotle's theory of explanation and scientific knowledge, in the context of its Socratic roots. Ferejohn shows how Aristotle resolves the tension between his commitment to the formal-case model of explanation and his recognition of the role of efficient causes in explaining natural phenomena.

This paper examines Aristotle’s notion of priority with the specific aim of capturing the sort of priority that characterizes the primacy of substances in his metaphysics. I reject the traditional interpretation, which understands the ontological priority of substances in terms of independent existence. But there are rather two sorts of priority: the ontological priority of substances should be understood in terms of completeness, whereas the ontological priority of “substances-of-something” (the essences) is a causal-explanatory priority. Furthermore, an important piece of (...) Aristotle’s argument against Platonism is that these two sorts of priority – namely, the completeness priority and the causal-explanatory priority – should be kept distinct. (shrink)

This article starts with the idea that the task of social philosophy can be defined as the diagnosis and therapy of social pathologies. It discusses four conceptions of social pathology. The first two conceptions are ‘normativist’ and hold that something is a social pathology if it is socially wrong. On the first view, there is no encompassing characterization of social pathologies available: it is a cluster concept of family resemblances. On the second view, social pathologies share a structure (e.g. second-order (...) disorder). The last two conceptions are ‘naturalist’ and hold that something is wrong because it is pathological. The third view takes it that society is the kind of substance that can fall ill – an organism. The fourth view operates with the notion of a social life that can degenerate. The four conceptions are compared along six criteria: (1) is the view plausible?; (2) is it informative (if true)?; (3) does it help define the task of social philosophy?; (4) does it take naturalistic vocabulary seriously?; (5) does it hold that pathologies share a structure?; and (6) how does it see the primacy of being wrong and being pathological? (shrink)

The objective of this thesis is to present a naturalised metaphysics of information, or to naturalise information, by way of deploying a scientific metaphysics according to which contingency is privileged and a-priori conceptual analysis is excluded (or at least greatly diminished) in favour of contingent and defeasible metaphysics. The ontology of information is established according to the premises and mandate of the scientific metaphysics by inference to the best explanation, and in accordance with the idea that the primacy of (...) physics constraint accommodates defeasibility of theorising in physics. This metametaphysical approach is used to establish a field ontology as a basis for an informational structural realism. This is in turn, in combination with information theory and specifically mathematical and algorithmic theories of information, becomes the foundation of what will be called a source ontology, according to which the world is the totality of information sources. Information sources are to be understood as causally induced configurations of structure that are, or else reduce to and/or supervene upon, bounded (including distributed and non-contiguous) regions of the heterogeneous quantum field (all quantum fields combined) and fluctuating vacuum, all in accordance with the above-mentioned quantum field-ontic informational structural realism (FOSIR.) Arguments are presented for realism, physicalism, and reductionism about information on the basis of the stated contingent scientific metaphysics. In terms of philosophical argumentation, realism about information is argued for primarily by way of an indispensability argument that defers to the practice of scientists and regards concepts of information as just as indispensable in their theories as contingent representations of structure. Physicalism and reductionism about information are adduced by way of the identity thesis that identifies the substance of the structure of ontic structural realism as identical to selections of structure existing in re to combined heterogeneous quantum fields, and to the total heterogeneous quantum field comprised of all such fields. Adjunctly, an informational statement of physicalism is arrived at, and a theory of semantic information is proposed, according to which information is intrinsically semantic and alethically neutral. (shrink)

This paper delineates the thrust of Augustine's theodicy against the broader background of his Christian Neoplatonic outlook. We examine Augustine's initial Manichean influences and see how these beliefs carry over to his mature thought, which is evident in the seventh book of the Confessions. After Augustine's time with the Manicheans, we look at how he was so influenced by the books of the Platonists (libri platonicorum). Although Augustine's position regarding the problem of evil shifts, his idea of the primacy (...) of the soul is still evident in his thought process. To wit, Augustine posits that evil must be considered a privation of the Good, so much so as to reach the point of complete nonentity. Human beings' ability to be corrupted by evils rests in their position as being created ex-nihilo by God. With this creation also comes an inherent mutability. Due to human mutability, Augustine believes that God is not responsible for such evil actions. This paper also contrasts this belief with modern empiricist David Hume's idea regarding God's responsibility for human actions. Hume argues that the volition of all human actions rests in God as Creator of the world. As creator, Hume claims that God places human beings in a position to act. If humans are predisposed to perform evil actions, they cannot be faulted. Augustine would counter that argument by claiming that evil is not a substance. Not being a substance, evil is there not ascribable to God. Ultimately, Augustine's theodicy is based upon the goodness of God. (shrink)

This paper seeks to lay down the theoretical groundwork for the emergence of holistic cross-cultural philosophical investigations of personal identity ¾ investigations that approach the theoretical, phenomenological, psychological, and practical-ethical dimensions of selfhood as indissociable. My strategy is to discuss three closely connected conceptual distinctions that the Buddhist approach to personal identity urges us to draw, and a lucid understanding of which is essential for the emergence of appropriately comprehensive and thus genuinely cosmopolitan discussions at the cross-road between Western and (...) Buddhist philosophical traditions. The first, primary distinction is that between the “visceral sense of self” and the “substance view of self”. This in turn gives rise to two derivative distinctions, namely between “harbouring VSS” and “believing SVS”, and between “overcoming VSS” and “rejecting SVS”. After discussing these distinctions, I consider and respond to three philosophical objections to features of Buddhist approach to selfhood that are thrown into sharper relief when attention is paid to these three distinctions. I then discuss some of the ways the foregoing may inform research in cross-cultural philosophy of personal identity. This discussion focuses on: the primacy of the first-person stance in matters of personal identity; the relationship between numerical identity and narrative identity; interdisciplinarity in the study of selfhood; and personal identity and egoism. (shrink)

Wedin addresses the debate over whether nonsubstantial individuals, that inhere in a subject but are not said of a subject, i.e. accidents, such as the pallor of Socrates, are nonrecurring particulars or a kind of determinate universal. Wedin examines the secondary literature on this topic and divides it into two schools of thought, determined by the contributions of J.L. Ackrill and G.E.L. Owen. According to Ackrill, individuals in non‐substance categories are particular to the substance they are in; Owen (...) critiques Ackrill's view, and proposes that these items can recur in more than one subject and hence are a sort of universal. Wedin finds Owen's thesis unsatisfactory, even after supplementing it with an improved version due to Michael Frede; instead, Wedin argues for a revised version of Ackrill's interpretation of nonsubstantial individuals as nonrecurrent particulars. According to Wedin, Aristotle is committed to individuals only—e.g. to Socrates and to the particular bit of pallor in him: this conclusion has an important bearing on the ontological status of individuals and on the primacy of substance to nonsubstantial items. (shrink)

I argue that Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego draws on Kant's theory of spontaneity to articulate its metaphysical account of consciousness's mode of being, to defend its phenomenological description of the intentional structure of self‐consciousness, and to diagnose the errors that motivate views of consciousness qua person or substance. In addition to highlighting an overlooked dimension of Sartre's early relation to Kant, this interpretation offers a fresh account of how Sartre's argument for the primacy of pre‐personal consciousness works, (...) and brings the extent of his proximity to idealist models of mind into greater relief. It also affords Sartre the resources to respond to criticisms that his account of self‐consciousness relies on a spurious distinction and that his view of freedom cannot explain how consciousness is conditioned by its world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. TherrienJean-Paul JugeCross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. Therrien (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), xxii + 303 pp.Although Origen of Alexandria has been misrepresented and maligned since his own lifetime, allies have always arisen to defend him in his stead. Especially after the French Catholic reappraisal (...) of Origen's theology in the twentieth century, the once-dominant interpretation of Origen as a Platonist dressed in Christian garb no longer holds sway among most scholars. As Mark Therrien notes, however, traces of a "metaphysical reductionist" interpretation of Origen, propounded most notably by Adolf [End Page 295] von Harnack, still influences Origenian scholarship (89). Therrien's book vigorously opposes this line of interpretation and provides a rereading of crucial passages in Origen's On First Principles (Peri archōn) and his Commentary on John. In addition to presenting a fresh interpretation of these texts, Therrien also offers an introduction for those who are encountering Origen's theology for the first time. Rather than prefacing with biographical remarks, this book dives straight into Origen's major theological texts, allowing the reader, as Henri de Lubac put it, "to see Origen at work."Therrien operates under the principle that Origen is above all a biblical theologian whose speculation is driven primarily by his commitment to exegesis rather than Platonic presuppositions. Thus, his reading of various controversial excerpts of Origen, particularly from the Peri archōn, pays close attention to the biblical verses that Origen cites, which operate not as mere ornamentation but as the indispensable mechanics of his theology.This book is divided into eight chapters, each of which presents a "fundamental pillar" of Origen's thought: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, eschatology the soul, the world, the Cross, and deification. Drawing attention to the first two cycles that comprise Origen's Peri archōn, Therrien treats the first cycle as authoritative to Origen's system, since it is here that Origen presents the Church's teaching in a more dogmatic form prior to the zetetic approach of the second cycle. Chapter 1 highlights the anti-Valentinian polemic that contextualizes Origen's account of divine incorporeality and the possibility of genuine knowledge of God. Following the insights of Cyril O'Regan, Therrien notes that an extreme apophaticism led the Valentinian Gnostics to "assimilat[e] God to creaturely categories," as seen in their account of various deities emanating from God as if by a material transfer of substance (36). For Origen, only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are absolutely incorporeal, and it is their absolute incorporeality that separates the Trinity from all creatures. Despite this fundamental distinction between the Trinity and creation, Origen affirms that a limited knowledge of God is possible for rational creatures with the caveat that, whenever God is likened analogically to a created reality, the dissimilarity is always greater (38). Therrien contends that, unlike the Gnostics, Origen envisions the material world as the positive and even necessary means for creatures to derive knowledge of God.Chapter 2 focuses on Origen's Christology, especially the primacy of Christ's title "Wisdom," which the author accounts for by explaining the logic behind Origen's exegesis of John's Prologue and Prov 8:22. Long before the Arian controversy of the fourth century, Origen insisted that God is eternally Father and thus generates the Son from all eternity. Origen has often been characterized, however, as arguing that God's eternal status as Creator [End Page 296] necessarily entails the existence of creation ab aeterno. Therrien points out that such a reading conflates Origen's two distinct notions of creation: the foreknown existence of creatures as "sketched and prefigured" in Wisdom from all eternity and the concrete, substantial existence of creatures that begins in time (60). The investigation of Origen's pneumatology in chapter 3 shows how Ps 103 (in the Septuagint) informs Origen's notion of the Holy Spirit as Creator. For Origen, creation is not simply a past event, but is instead a dynamic process: "Created beings must, so to... (shrink)

Developing a British perspective on the abortion debate, I take up some ideas from Patrick Lee’s fine paper, and pursue, in particular, the idea of individual humans as goods in themselves. I argue that this notion helps us to avoid the familiar mistake of making moral value impersonal. It also shows us the way out of consequentialism. Since the most philosophically viable notion of the person, the individual human, is (as Lee argues) a notion of an individual substance that (...) is there from conception, the move has a third effect, which is to rule out abortion. (shrink)

A matter of significance for the history of philosophy is the question of what are the issues that underlie Leibniz's response to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in his own New Essays on Human Understanding. Exploration of that question can contribute to interpretations of both Locke and Leibniz. Equally important, it can provide insight into problems of philosophy that have their genesis in the seventeenth century. ;The dissertation uses the Essay and the New Essays to explore what it regards as (...) the central conflict between Locke and Leibniz: the conflict about the primacy of metaphysics. It takes for its focus their differing positions on atomism, contrasting the particle theory of matter that it finds central to the Essay with Leibniz's metaphysical unit, the monad. It develops the implications of those differing positions for an idea of nature specifically--nature here conceived as the arena in which science and metaphysics meet. ;The thesis of the dissertation is that the positions of Locke and Leibniz on atomism express opposing responses of philosophy to science; and, further, that this opposition had profound significance for the subsequent direction of philosophy. The first element in the thesis is the specific concern of the dissertation. Its second element, which suggests an approach to the history of philosophy since the seventeenth century, is an issue for further exploration. ;Locke's Essay is shown as a deliberate construction of an epistemology grounded in the new science, combining that purpose with an explicit rejection of the value of metaphysical speculation as the basis for knowledge. Locke's scientific background and orientation determine his analysis of ideas, of the powers and qualities of matter, and of real essences of material substances. ;In contrast, the New Essays is seen as asserting the primacy of metaphysics for the solution of epistemological and scientific questions. Leibniz's arguments against atomism are examined, to show why the basic reason for his rejection of all particle theories of matter is their violation of specific metaphysical principles. His positive position is presented in a discussion of the monad, emphasizing its characteristics in the realm of nature. (shrink)

Today Shaftesbury is studied chiefly because he was a pivotal figure in English ethics; the publication of his Characteristics marked the turn from the primacy of abstract rational principles, in Cambridge Platonism, to the psychologically-based ethics of the "moral sense" school. Grean presents Shaftesbury more broadly, as expressing the basic faith of the Enlightenment, which still underlies the liberal democratic culture of the West. Shaftesbury maintains "that society, right and wrong was founded in Nature, and that Nature had a (...) meaning and was herself, that is to say in her wits, well governed and administered by one simple and perfect intelligence." According to Grean, the motif of "enthusiasm" distinguishes Shaftesbury from his contemporaries; thus the main goal of this study is to understand all the ramifications of the doctrine. In the early chapter entitled "Enthusiasm," we are given Shaftesbury's description of it as a psychological phenomenon, a powerful experience "which occurs when the mind receives or creates ideas or images too big for it to contain." Windelband generalizes the phenomenon into an "enthusiasm" for the true, good, and beautiful which lives out all the peculiar power of man by the elevation of his soul above itself to more universal values. Grean tells us that "enthusiasm" is central to Shaftesbury's account of how we respond to beauty, how we make and are made by the good, how we know the truths of morals which are "patterns of meaningful possibilities... intended not merely to describe but to transform reality." In the early pages of Part I, the historical detail and comments on secondary literature, although very readable, are tangential to the philosophic argument and delay our coming to grips with the author's thesis. Soon, however, in chapters on religion, virtue, and creative form, Grean's mastery of Shaftesbury's holistic philosophy forcefully comes across. We are shown that it is dynamic, unified, and not antirational, and here the reader can derive a characterization of "enthusiasm" sufficiently broad for Grean's purposes. The doctrine means that human nature is capable of ultimate commitment, creative intuition, spontaneity, and disinterested love; further, "enthusiasm" is involved in the method of philosophy and the method of writing. Like Plato, Shaftesbury believed that external beauty can lead us to inner beauty. His philosophy is gracefully written, and Grean points out the relation of style and substance in his subject, while writing readably himself. As a study of Shaftesbury, for whom true philosophy could not be restricted to abstract theory but must form a whole with its practical application, this book is sympathetic in manner as well as in its conclusions. Notes, index, selected bibliography and historical preface provide aids to further study.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Today Shaftesbury is studied chiefly because he was a pivotal figure in English ethics; the publication of his Characteristics marked the turn from the primacy of abstract rational principles, in Cambridge Platonism, to the psychologically-based ethics of the "moral sense" school. Grean presents Shaftesbury more broadly, as expressing the basic faith of the Enlightenment, which still underlies the liberal democratic culture of the West. Shaftesbury maintains "that society, right and wrong was founded in Nature, and that Nature had a (...) meaning and was herself, that is to say in her wits, well governed and administered by one simple and perfect intelligence." According to Grean, the motif of "enthusiasm" distinguishes Shaftesbury from his contemporaries; thus the main goal of this study is to understand all the ramifications of the doctrine. In the early chapter entitled "Enthusiasm," we are given Shaftesbury's description of it as a psychological phenomenon, a powerful experience "which occurs when the mind receives or creates ideas or images too big for it to contain." Windelband generalizes the phenomenon into an "enthusiasm" for the true, good, and beautiful which lives out all the peculiar power of man by the elevation of his soul above itself to more universal values. Grean tells us that "enthusiasm" is central to Shaftesbury's account of how we respond to beauty, how we make and are made by the good, how we know the truths of morals which are "patterns of meaningful possibilities... intended not merely to describe but to transform reality." In the early pages of Part I, the historical detail and comments on secondary literature, although very readable, are tangential to the philosophic argument and delay our coming to grips with the author's thesis. Soon, however, in chapters on religion, virtue, and creative form, Grean's mastery of Shaftesbury's holistic philosophy forcefully comes across. We are shown that it is dynamic, unified, and not antirational, and here the reader can derive a characterization of "enthusiasm" sufficiently broad for Grean's purposes. The doctrine means that human nature is capable of ultimate commitment, creative intuition, spontaneity, and disinterested love; further, "enthusiasm" is involved in the method of philosophy and the method of writing. Like Plato, Shaftesbury believed that external beauty can lead us to inner beauty. His philosophy is gracefully written, and Grean points out the relation of style and substance in his subject, while writing readably himself. As a study of Shaftesbury, for whom true philosophy could not be restricted to abstract theory but must form a whole with its practical application, this book is sympathetic in manner as well as in its conclusions. Notes, index, selected bibliography and historical preface provide aids to further study.--M. B. M. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.1 (2005) 83-105 [Access article in PDF] Does Malebranche Need Efficacious Ideas? The Cognitive Faculties, the Ontological Status of Ideas, and Human Attention Susan Peppers-Bates But whatever effort of mind I make, I cannot find an idea of force, efficacy, of power, save in the will of the infinitely perfect Being. Malebranche, Elucidation 15 One of the signatures of 17th century rationalists is (...) their replacement of the Scholastics's dependence on the deliverances of the senses with a dependence on the deliverances of the intellect as the key to gaining knowledge.1 Correct use of the intellect leading to freedom from the passions and to certain knowledge figures prominently in the works of Spinoza and Leibniz. Descartes's Meditations uses skeptical doubt to withdraw the mind from the senses, and his reliance on the meditative genre not only reveals to his readers the intellect as a distinct source of knowledge, but also trains them to use properly their will or faculty of judgment. Commentators have argued persuasively that overthrowing the sense-based epistemology and metaphysics of the Aristotelians depended on "discovering" the primacy of one's intellect over the senses, and using the deliverances of the mind to establish solid foundations for a new metaphysics and epistemology.2 Indeed, [End Page 83] outlining the proper use of the mind's faculties arguably lay at the basis of the Cartesian program in particular. This importance can be seen in Arnauld and Nicole's influential Port-Royal Logic, which aimed at training its readers in the proper use of the intellect.3Few would question Nicolas Malebranche's inclusion in the rationalist tradition.4 For while Malebranche famously takes ideas out of the Cartesian mind and transports them to God's—thus privileging the divine over the natural light—he shares Descartes's belief that our intellect, not our senses, holds the key to metaphysical truths such as the essence of matter, the mind-body distinction, and the existence of God.5 Yet, recently, Nicholas Jolley has contended that Malebranche's later commitment to "efficacious ideas" undermines his earlier belief in the power of the cognitive faculties: he believes that Malebranche abandons his view that the mind makes "real use" of the intellect to know intelligible objects.6 Jolley's position builds upon Alquié and Robinet's claims that around 1694-95 Malebranche moved from a vision "in" God to a vision "by" God. Now God's ideas act on and modify the soul with both sensations and intellectual concepts, rather than the human intellect contemplating ideas in the Divine Reason.7Alquié and Robinet argue that Malebranche, pushed by the battles with Arnauld and Régis over the status of ideas, introduced the language of "efficacious" ideas to explain how the union of the human and the divine mind is supposed to work.8 Robinet in particular suggests that in cashing out the metaphor of God enlightening human minds, Malebranche moved from a static "ontologist" view of idea-objects in God to an active "illuminationist" view whereby divine ideas cause(intellectual [End Page 84] and sensory) perception by modifying the soul.9 Once one accepts this view of the place and function of efficacious ideas in Malebranche's metaphysics, it seems natural to accept Jolley's declaration that the only way for the mind to apprehend ideas in God is if those ideas "act directly on the mind; [if] they thereby cause cognitive states to arise in a substance which is devoid of all genuine cognitive capacities of its own."10 Indeed, Jolley suggests that Malebranche ultimately made the soul passive in all its states, including its volitional ones.11In this paper, I argue that a strong interpretation of efficacious ideas, whereby they appear to become true causal agents, must be rejected precisely because it pushes us into an incorrect reading of Malebranche's theory of the divine and human faculties. Making ideas true causal agents within God privileges divine reason at the... (shrink)

This paper highlights the contributions of three major Islamicists, Louis Massignon, Henry Corbin, and Frithjof Schuon, to the understanding of the Qur’ân. Their works point to the epistemologic primacy of the contemplative and esoteric dimensions of the Book. Its linguistic texture and modalities are here understood as expressing the very limits of language, the proportional reciprocity between the actualization of inner meaning and spiritual fruition, and its ultimate metaphysical substance. These principles and their spiritual consequences may constitute the (...) best antidote to contemporary fundamentalist and modernist reductionism in scriptural hermeneutics. (shrink)

In a recent discussion note1 C. D. C. Reeve investigates the reasons for Heraclitus assigning a primary position to fire, as contrasted with the other substances like earth and water which go to make up the physical universe. Reeve considers and rejects other reasons for the primacy of fire that have been put forward, such as the symbolic associations of fire, the role of fire in governing the universe, or the claim that everything becomes fire at some time or (...) other. Rather, Reeve argues, the primacy of fire in Heraclitus' physical theory can be explained purely in terms of that physical theory. (shrink)

In a recent discussion note1 C. D. C. Reeve investigates the reasons for Heraclitus assigning a primary position to fire, as contrasted with the other substances like earth and water which go to make up the physical universe. Reeve considers and rejects other reasons for the primacy of fire that have been put forward, such as the symbolic associations of fire, the role of fire in governing the universe, or the claim that everything becomes fire at some time or (...) other. Rather, Reeve argues, the primacy of fire in Heraclitus' physical theory can be explained purely in terms of that physical theory. (shrink)

I attempt to answer the question of what Aristotle's criteria for 'being a substance' are in the Categories. On the basis of close textual analysis, I argue that subjecthood, conceived in a certain way, is the criterion that explains why both concrete objects and substance universals must be regarded as substances. It also explains the substantial primacy of concrete objects. But subjecthood can only function as such a criterion if both the subjecthood of concrete objects and the (...) subjecthood of substance universals can be understood as philosophically significant phenomena. By drawing on Aristotle's essentialism, I argue that such an understanding is possible: the subjecthood of substance universals cannot simply be reduced to that of primary substances. Primary and secondary substances mutually depend on each other for exercising their capacities to function as subjects. Thus, subjecthood can be regarded as a philosophically informative criterion for substancehood in the Categories. (shrink)

I attempt to answer the question of what Aristotle's criteria for 'being a substance' are in the Categories. On the basis of close textual analysis, I argue that subjecthood, conceived in a certain way, is the criterion that explains why both concrete objects and substance universals must be regarded as substances. It also explains the substantial primacy of concrete objects. But subjecthood can only function as such a criterion if both the subjecthood of concrete objects and the (...) subjecthood of substance universals can be understood as philosophically significant phenomena. By drawing on Aristotle's essentialism, I argue that such an understanding is possible: the subjecthood of substance universals cannot simply be reduced to that of primary substances. Primary and secondary substances mutually depend on each other for exercising their capacities to function as subjects. Thus, subjecthood can be regarded as a philosophically informative criterion for substancehood in the Categories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique by Nathan BrownGreg EllermannBrown, Nathan. Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique. Fordham University Press, 2021. 318pp.Nathan Brown's Rationalist Empiricism is, above all, a book about philosophical method. It is also a highly significant study of the conceptual architecture of Marxism, developed by way of a critical return to the lesson of Althusser. Drawing on a range of disparate materials–from the (...) works of Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Meillassoux to contemporary experiments in digital photography and metrology–Brown demonstrates the necessity of "a mutual interruption of reason and experience" (31) for any theoretical or political practice that would avoid falling into ideological complacency.The book opens with an appraisal of "the speculative turn" (1) in 21st-century thought, a turn Brown characterizes as an intellectual dead-end. He remarks that the various new materialisms and object-oriented ontologies of the last decades were united by an inattention to method. Unconcerned to establish the necessity of their claims or with the relation between reasoning and reality, these philosophies made assertions instead of arguments; they mistook dogmatism for speculation.For Brown, it is the dialectic–specifically, the dialectic of reason and experience–that promises to renew the possibility of speculative thinking. Such renewal will entail refusing "the severance of speculation from critique" (2). It also requires thinking through a more basic problem: the relation between rationalism and empiricism. While rationalism "explore[s] what has to be thought according to the internal order and consistency of ideas," empiricism, as Brown has it, "claim[s] the genesis of ideas in experience" (3). Since Kant's first Critique, this binary and the effort to overcome it have set the terms of philosophical debate. Brown's striking contention is that the search for a synthesis or a hidden ground uniting these two positions (as, for instance, in Deleuze or Michel Henry) invariably leads us back to the transcendental–an improvement on the dogmatism of contemporary theory but a reduction of knowledge to "conditions of experience" [End Page 128] nonetheless (47). Brown therefore proposes another path: "a relational disjunction of rationalism and empiricism" animated by "the critical power of the tension between [them] to check one another's claims and to propel those claims further" (3). In other words, he develops a methodological dialectic whose two poles-the rationalist and the empiricist-alternately take on speculative and critical functions. There is no static alignment of the key categories in Brown's book. "Speculation and critique cannot be parceled out," he writes, "according to the division of reason and experience. Metaphysics, science, politics: each of these fields relies integrally upon the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience, their 'epistemological polarity'" (250). In Bachelard's terms, pivotal for the overall argument, reason and experience must be allowed to "transmute," "propel," and "say 'no' to one another" (8). It is their ungrounded dialectical relation that sustains true speculative thought.This methodological position has profound ontological implications. Looking to Althusser, Brown finds the beginnings of a theory of rationalist empiricism in the structural Marxist notion of the "concrete-in-thought" (15-16): the self-critical and experimentally verified knowledge of a science. Crucially, for Althusser there can be no concrete-in-thought without a "concrete-real," external to theory itself (15). Developing to the fullest this underappreciated point, Brown shows that rationalist empiricism must be a realism. Thus, the book's second, third, and fourth chapters elaborate a continuous argument concerning "the primacy of being over thought" (59), and the relationship between speculative and scientific knowledge. The central question is how speculation might extend or "extrapolate from the exteriorizing force of science, without being reducible to its forms of experience" (261). Refracting Hegel's Logic through the thought of Heidegger and Meillassoux, Brown ultimately offers a new account of the ontological difference–between being and beings, between speculative truth and "ontic," scientific knowledge–that privileges neither side and insists on their coordination. Once again, he declines to seek a synthesis, arguing that "true critique" (as Hegel characterized his speculative method) depends on "the ontological primacy of becoming" (91), on an absolute time bound up with... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 137-153 [Access article in PDF] Metaphor and the Making of Sense: The Contemporary Metaphor Renaissance William Franke Metaphor has gained a new lease on life through the revival of rhetoric in recent decades. For promoters of "la nouvelle rhétorique," such as Gérard Genette and Roland Barthes, rhetoric came to coincide with a total science of language that is practically coextensive with all social and (...) human knowledge, while in the Anglo-Saxon world, Wayne Booth, in the wake of Kenneth Burke, repristinated rhetoric as, not just a technical discipline, but a moral one, and, in fact, an all-embracing criticism of the humanities. 1 The fortunes of metaphor have revived and flourished in tandem with those of rhetoric as a whole. Over the more than two millennia of a progressive eclipse of rhetoric, during which it shrank from its original primacy as the master art of persuasion in law, literature, and politics and, moreover, as the general framework of culture, to the status of an ancillary art of elocution of exclusively formal import, metaphor was eventually confined to being just one particular instance within the schemes of classifications of tropes. It became an affair of style, an ornament of decorative discourse, as rhetoric came to be identified with mere elocutio and was no longer essentially also inventio--the finding of arguments, in which metaphor's role is actually paramount--and dispositio--the ordering of discourse into its syntactic parts, such as exordium, narration, discussion, peroration. As the originally tripartite art and science of rhetoric was amputated of two of its main divisions in the classical model established on the basis of Aristotle's three-book treatise, 2 metaphor became a merely formal enhancement and lost its roles as substantive and structuring for knowledge and discourse.The decline of interest in philosophical, Aristotelian rhetoric had much to do with metaphor's reduction to a merely technical or decorative device. But with the recent widening practically without limit of the terrain of rhetoric, and particularly with its restoration to its original standing as a philosophical discipline comprehending the substance of argument, metaphor [End Page 137] has once again acquired cognitive status and, moreover, has tended to become the name for figurative language in general and even, emblematically, for the rhetorical or rhetoricity as such. Where the power of rhetoric to reshape cognitive meaning and even to reinvent, or at least reconfigure, reality was once again recognized as irresistible throughout all the realms of discourse, the source and unity of this power seemed to require a name, and more often than not metaphor--on account of the transformative, inventive power associated particularly with it--has been adopted to serve this purpose.Today, under the aegis of metaphor, the power of figurative language, arguably the originating power at the source of all language and even of an articulated world as such, has newly become an object of research and general theoretical speculation. This extension of the concept of metaphor is bound up with a renewed view of figurative language in general as not only a substantive bearer of the content of discourse, but also as ontologically constitutive of the world, as operative at the origins of things and their identities. It has become possible to view all language as being metaphorical, and accordingly metaphorical operations of transfer and redefinition have been recognized as being the very essence of language and of all that comes to articulation through it. Furthermore, as witnessed by burgeoning publications and conferences, metaphor has become a topic onto which practically all the classic philosophical problems of ontology and epistemology are projected and appear in a new, specifically linguistic, light. 3This new ascendency of metaphor is certainly not uninflected or uncontested, even within the camps of the new rhetoricians. Genette, in "La rhétorique restreinte" (1972), resists the "inflation of metaphor" to become the trope of tropes and the figure of figures in a wide range of writers epitomizing modern poetics--particularly Marcel Proust, Roman Jakobson, and Michel Deguy (1969). Genette argues against reduction of... (shrink)

ON A GENERAL READING of the Metaphysics and the treatises of the so-called Organon, the types of assertion which Aristotle would allow as genuine predications seem relatively straightforward. According to the Categories, for instance, a species is characteristically predicated of the individuals falling under it, while genera and differentiae are predicated both of the relevant species and their associated individuals. The predicates are, in these instances, universals in a familiar Aristotelian sense. Furthermore, these intra-categorial predications, such as "Socrates is a (...) man" and "white is a color," are not the only instances of categorial acts. Aristotle also admits certain cross-categorial predications as logically well-formed; for example, "Socrates is white" and "Socrates is in the marketplace". These latter predications are at first glance also intelligible enough, though there are in both cases questions yet to be faced about the logical structure and ontological commitments of such ways of speaking. For Aristotle, one metaphysical theme presented even on the face of these linguistic appearances is the possibility that being a substrate for predication counts as a criterion for ontological primacy or, more generally, that being an ultimate substrate for meaningful discourse is grounds for being primarily real. An obvious corollary to this line of thought is the thesis that whatever might be said of or predicated of such primary substrata is ontologically dependent upon them. Just such a criterion seems to be at work in disqualifying universals from their claim to be substance in a significant sense. Therefore, it would be somewhat surprising to find primary substance appearing anywhere as a predicate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Bodyheartminding” (xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and FieldRoger T. Amesin body consciousness: a philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics, Richard Shusterman expands upon a professional oeuvre in which his exploration of the phenomenon of “body consciousness” has effected nothing less than a somatic turn in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative.1 But his contribution does not end there. Over the (...) past two decades, the reach and influence of his “somaesthetics” has been extended to the gates of China. Indeed, it has become a theme engaged by scholars of China’s indigenous philosophical traditions, thus providing an opportunity for a further edifying conversation between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions.2 And it is this conversation, as it has been inspired by Shusterman’s work, that I propose to join in this short essay.In Body Consciousness, Shusterman tells the story of how John Dewey advances the pragmatic project of not only understanding the body better, but indeed of applying the Alexander Technique as his way of using his own body properly.3 Just as Dewey has been a prominent resource for Shusterman in his development of somaesthetics, for Dewey in turn, it was William James’s Principles of Psychology that was a self-confessed inspiration for the development of his own evolving interpretation of pragmatism.4 Indeed, one way of reading Dewey’s philosophical career and his thirty-seven-volume opus is that it is a sustained effort to take the radical “stream-of-consciousness” insights developed in James’s Principles to their logical, systematic conclusion. In pursuing this project, while appreciative, Dewey is at times impatient with James’s dualistic lapses in which he continues to separate individuals from community, mind from body, emotions from intellect, agents from actions, and theory from practice. Dewey takes these unfortunate reversions to old ways of thinking as serving only to confound James’s holistic doctrines of pure experience and radical empiricism. Given Dewey’s own postulate of [End Page 100] immediate and continuous empiricism, one way of tracking his journey from having been inspired by James’s biological naturalism to achieving his own philosophical coherence is to register his unrelenting aversion to dualism in any form.But Dewey himself was not always consistent in this respect. Shusterman gives an account of the early neo-Hegelian Dewey who, affirming the familiar transcendent conception of soul we associate with idealism, unsurprisingly embraces a clear soul and body dualism. And in spite of the philosophically mature Dewey’s best efforts to think “process,” he has no choice but to use both a language and a grammar freighted with substance ontology that resists his more holistic insights. On occasion, even while trying to remain consistent in his thinking, Dewey seems to fall victim to terminology that if not dualistic is at best ambiguous. Dewey’s struggle against this problem of equivocation is particularly apparent in some of the language he appeals to in attempting to put the Humpty Dumpty of mind and body together again. In his effort to register the irreducible continuity and inseparability of the nonanalytic abstractions we differentiate as body and mind—the ontological givenness or “hadness” of “bodyminding”—Dewey still at times invokes terms such as “combination,” “integration,” “unity,” and so on, that take as their suppressed premise “two things becoming one.” By way of contrast, in the correlative vocabulary of Chinese process cosmology, expressions such as yinyang 陰陽, the natural/cultural and the human (tianren 天人), and knowing and doing (zhixing 知行), primacy is given to vital relationality and the continuity it entails. It is not putting two things together that is referenced with these binomials, but the deepening of the horizon of constitutive, internal relationships that transforms the two aspects of the same phenomenon qualitatively into harmonics (he 和) for yinyang, sagacity (sheng 聖) for tianren, and acting wisely (zhi 智) for zhixing. In each instance, the two aspects themselves are simply conceptual abstractions from a complex relational process. The proper and effective measure (du 度) sought in this Confucian cosmology is not quantitatively more or less of two distinct things—taking mind and body as our example—but rather a qualitative and transformative change that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Lily of the Valley, or Love as Breathing in the ScentChantal Jaquet (bio)The Lily of the Valley, published by Balzac in 1836, can be considered as a standard in olfactory literature since the novel is entirely built on the perception of odors and the central role of breathing in romantic relationships. As the title indicates, it is in the floral and olfactory registers that the essence of love (...) expresses itself. Perfume presides over the birth of love, the recognition of the other, and the definition of the woman's identity. We can read it as a poetics of breathing that tells another story and re-enchants the world. The Lily of the Valley offers a powerful antidote to the impediments to breathing nowadays. I try here to interpret it like an ode celebrating another way of inhaling the world through love and perfumes.Love at first scentThe Lily of the Valley tells the story of the platonic love of a young man, Felix, for a married woman, Madame de Mortsauf. From the beginning, their first meeting takes place under the auspices of breath and perfume. During a party, Felix, who is extremely bored, finds refuge on an abandoned bench; a woman, taking him for a child, sits next to him. Felix is then immediately drawn to the stranger's perfume and is pulled out of his sullen torpor to feel an unparalleled fascination:Immediately, I smelt a woman's fragrance which shone in my soul as oriental poetry was to shine later. I looked at my neighbour and was more dazzled by her than I had been by the ball.(15)Perfume thus triggers love and becomes the very essence of the beloved woman. Before he perceives any visual detail, Felix is flooded with an olfactory emotion, which will be taken over and amplified by the poetic evocation of the Orient and its fragrances. The woman's scent, which re-enchants his morose universe, dazzles him with its brilliance and eclipses vision by taking possession of its attributes. It is only afterward that he begins to examine the shoulders, bosom, and hair of the woman with the luminous perfume. It is the act of inhaling her perfume that triggers his [End Page 34] love at first sight and wrests the following confession from him: "All of a sudden, I was in love" (16).This primacy of olfaction and breathing continue to hold true in the absence of the beloved when the latter is no longer smelled, but simply evoked: "At the thought that my queen-elect lived in Touraine I breathed the air with delight [...]" (16). The feelings that develop even before a second meeting takes place do not belie the first romantic olfactory sensation, but strengthen it following a process of crystallization that transforms the soulmate into a fragrant flower. The stranger, under the influence of Felix's poetic imagination, becomes the lily of the valley, a symbol of beauty and purity. Despondent over the disappearance of the woman he loves, whose name he does not even know, the young man, pressured by his family to seek distraction, travels to Touraine, to the Château de Frapesle, to stay with a friend of his mother's. He discovers a magnificent valley near Montbazon, which, in his eyes, can only be where his beloved resides. Here we see the perspicacity of the lover who picks up the scent of his beloved and sees her face in the landscape:She lived there. My heart had not misled me. [...] She was, as you already know, though you know nothing yet, THE LILY OF THIS VALLEY, where she grew for Heaven, filling it with the perfume of her virtues.(18)The olfactory dimension of the lily prevails here over floral vision. It is the perfume of her virtues exhaled in the valley that defines the beloved permanently and immemorially, and makes her into a celestial creature with the odor of sanctity. The use of the imperfect tense in "she was the lily" evokes the magic of a love story that seems like a fairy tale. She was the lily, because once upon a time there was a woman who... (shrink)

Life and the living (on Aristotelian biohorror) -- Supernatural horror as the paradigm for life -- Aristotle's De anima and the problem of life -- The ontology of life -- The entelechy of the weird -- Superlative life -- Life with or without limits -- Life as time in Plotinus -- On the superlative -- Superlative life I: Pseudo-Dionysius -- Negative vs. affirmative theology -- Superlative negation -- Negation and preexistent life -- Excess, evil, and non-being -- Superlative life II: (...) Eriugena -- Negation in the periphyseon -- The quaestio de nihilo: on nothing -- The quaestio de nihilo: superlative nothing -- Dark intelligible abyss -- Apophasis -- The apophatic logic -- Negation in Frege and Ayer -- Negation vs. subtraction in Badiou -- Negation and contradiction in Priest -- The dialetheic vitalism of negative theology -- Ellipses: Suhraward and the luminous void -- Univocal creatures -- On spiritual creatures -- Life as form in Aristotle -- The concept of the creature -- Univocity I: Duns Scotus vs. Aquinas -- Univocity in Aquinas' Summa theologica -- Univocity in Duns Scotus' Opus oxoniense -- The common nature of the creature -- Univocity II: Duns Scotus vs. Henry of Ghent -- Univocity in Henry of Ghent -- Negative vs. privative indetermination -- Absolute indetermination -- Univocity III: Deleuze's scholasticism three variations -- Spinoza et le problème de l'expression -- Différence et répétition -- Cours de Vincennes -- Univocal creatures -- Ellipses: Dgen and uncreated univocity -- Dark pantheism -- Everything and nothing -- Life as spirit in Aquinas -- The concept of the divine nature -- Immanence I: Eriugena's periphyseon -- Natura and the unthought -- Universal life -- Four statements on pantheism -- Immanence II: Duns Scotus' reportatio Ia -- Univocal immanence -- Actual infinity -- The pathology of the triple primacy -- Immanence III: Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia -- The coincidence of opposites -- The folds of life -- Absolute vs. contracted pantheism -- Speculative pantheism (Deleuze's interlocutors) -- Pantheism and pure immanence -- The insubordination of immanence in Deleuze -- Scholia I: the isomorphism of univocity and immanence -- Scholia II: the vitalist logic of common notions -- Scholia III: the life of substance -- Dark pantheism -- Ellipses: Wang Yangming and idealist naturalism -- Logic and life (on Kantian teratology) -- The wandering line from Aristotle to Kant -- Critique of life -- Spectral life and speculative realism -- Ontotheology in Kant, atheology in Bataille -- The night land. (shrink)