In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For (...) once, Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)--"founder of German existentialism" (Martin Heidegger) and "a lucid and flexible intelligence in the service of a genuine and ...

What roles does Iwa [character in Yoruba belief] play in Yoruba philosophy of existence, and how can these roles help provide a solution to challenges of contemporary socio-political order, not only in Africa but also across the globe? Both are the daunting questions this paper sets out to examine. The foundation of Yoruba philosophy of existence is predicated mainly on the moral pivot called iwa. It is on iwa, which has both ontological and ethical etymologies that (...) the meaning of life is based. Iwa regulates the social relations among people, and adherence to it within the Yoruba cultural matrix provides answers to complex questions of existence. It is submitted that the moral foundation of Yoruba philosophy of existence, as dictated by iwa, is a veritable basis for engendering normative principles for addressing problems in contemporary society as it harmonizes disparate interests for the common good, thereby reconciling the self with the other. (shrink)

Translation of Les philosophies de l'existence.

Agnotology is the study of how ignorance arises via circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead. Legates et al. had questioned the applicability of agnotology to politically-charged debates. In their reply, Bedford and Cook, seeking to apply agnotology to climate science, asserted that fossil-fuel interests had promoted doubt about a climate consensus. Their definition of climate ‘misinformation’ was contingent upon the post-modernist assumptions that scientific truth is discernible by measuring a consensus among experts, and that a near unanimous consensus exists. However, (...) inspection of a claim by Cook et al. of 97.1 % consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3 % endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. Agnotology, then, is a two-edged sword since either side in a debate may claim that general ignorance arises from misinformation allegedly circulated by the other. Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain. Therefore, Legates et al. appropriately asserted that partisan presentations of controversies stifle debate and have no place in education. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The question of the existence and the properties of time has been subject to debate for thousands of years. This considered and complete study offers a contrastive analysis of phenomenologies of time from the perspective of the problematics of the visibility of time. Is time perceptible only through the veil of change? Or is there a naked presence of 'time itself'? Or has time always effaced itself? McClure's new work also stages confrontations between phenomenology of time and analytical (...) class='Hi'>philosophy of time. By doing so he explores ancient issues from a fresh perspective, such as whether time passes, whether experimental time is 'real time', and whether the very concept of time is contradictory. (shrink)

One can only agree with Editor John R. Silber's observation on this little volume that it is "the finest introduction to Jaspers' own comprehensive philosophy...." Overshadowed in this country by the great attention currently given to Heidegger, the importance and power of Jaspers' thought has not yet been appreciated by English-speaking philosophers. Far from being opposed to the natural sciences, Jaspers-who began his intellectual life as a psychiatrist--says that without a grasp of science the philosopher is "like a blind (...) man." The properly philosophical subject matter, however, is the realm that inevitably eludes and "transcends" the scientific approach to man and natural objects. This he calls the "encompassing." The three lectures which compose The Philosophy of Existence, which was written after the publication of the three volumes of Philosophie and the composition of most of Von der Wahrheit, range over the whole of Jaspers' philosophical work. The first lecture concerns "The Being of the Encompassing"; the second, "Truth," which like the Encompassing is a continually receding ideal and so incapable of definitive articulation. The last deals with "reality," an ultimate which is grasped only in "ciphers" or symbols which are always able to be replaced by more adequate symbols. The Introduction and translation by Richard Gradau are marvelously done. The lectures themselves, delivered in 1937, were Jaspers' last public appearance, made shortly after his dismissal from his post at Heidelberg by the National Socialists.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt is one of the most influential political and legal theorists of the 20th century. His ideas have long been familiar to intellectuals in Europe. Despite growing interest in Schmitt, the analysis of the metaphysical structure and logic of Schmitt's political thought is still missing. This book tries to redress this flaw. It focuses on Schmitt's conception of the concrete, which is seen as the "metaphysical core" of his writings. For Schmitt, the concrete is a condition of possibility of (...) any order. Rather that a concept, it is a name for a borderline or a passage between a concept and life, between a mediating idea and an immediate existence. In addition to the structure and logic of Schmitt's thought, the book is a short presentation of all central themes in Schmitt's writings from Political Theology (1922) to The Nomos of the Earth (1950). (shrink)

Originally published in 1959, this work, intended as an introduction, attempts to examine the views of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre and Marcel on a wide variety of themes without neglecting some of the influences of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Husserl on the existentialist movement. It provides an analysis of the traditions which inspired the existentialists and of the traditions which they opposed.

The Star of Redemption, * which presents Franz Rosenzweig's system of philosophy, begins with the sentence "from death, (vom Tode) , from the fear of death, originates all cognition of the All" and concludes with the words "into life. " This beginning and this conclusion of the book signify more than the first and last words of philosophical books usually do. Taken together - "from death into life" - they comprise the entire meaning of Rosenzweig's philosophy. The leitmotif (...) of this philosophy is the life and death of the human being and not the I of philosophical idealism, where man ultimately signifies "for ethics" no more than" . . . a point to which it (ethics) relates its problems, as for science also he (man) is only a particular case of its general laws. "l Rosenzweig deals with the individual's actual existence, that which is termi nated by death; he speaks of the individual's hic et nunc, of his actions and decisions in the realm of concrete reality. This philosophy is not an exposition of theoretical principles. It is not concerned with man in general in abstract time, but rather with the individual human being, designated by a proper name, living in his particular time. ** Human existence in its finiteness and temporalness forms the focus in which Rosenzweig's motif can be gathered together. (shrink)

The translation of one of Dilthey's essays which aims at a bold synthesis of philosophic idealism with elements of religious psychology, historical methodology, and esthetics.

The translation of one of Dilthey's essays which aims at a bold synthesis of philosophic idealism with elements of religious psychology, historical methodology, and esthetics.

This book makes the connection between early Buddhism and nature. Early Buddhism was a system of thinking which applied the universal laws of nature to human beings. It was not a religion. It was a comprehensive worldview. But after the first 400-500 years, it was slowly lost.

This book offers a critical account of the fundamental elements of Leibniz's philosophy, as they manifest themselves in his metaphysics and philosophy of language. Emphasis is placed upon his hitherto neglected doctrine of nominalism, which states that only concrete individuals exist and that there are no such things as abstract entities – no numbers, geometrical figures or other mathematical objects, nor any abstractions such as space, time, heat, light, justice, goodness, or beauty. Using this doctrine as a basis, (...) the book considers the core of Leibniz's metaphysics and philosophy of language, including the well‐known principles of Contradiction, Sufficient Reason, Continuity and Individuation, and the concepts of Possible World, Individual Substance, Truth, and Necessity. (shrink)

In a non-German-speaking environment is Jaspers sometimes mistakenly called as an existentialist. But Jaspers saw himself as a philosopher of existence, and he sharply criticized existentialism. This error arose because of confusion in the translations of the names Existenzphilosophie and Existentialismus from German into other languages. The difference between these terms was actively discussed immediately after Sartre’s lecture on humanism, in which Sartre, as he thought, announced a new direction in philosophy — existentialism (Existentialisme), to which he also (...) included Jaspers as a religious member of this direction. The purpose of paper is to investigate and analyze Jaspers’ criticism of existentialism and his rejection of it. Because long before Sart re’s lecture, Jaspers wrote about the false philosophical method of the investigation of human being as opposed to the true way — the elucidation of existence (Existenzerhellung), and also noted that he created a new word to denote this false method — existentialism (Existentialismus). While Jaspers understood the elucidation of existence as self-reflection and self-experience, which deepen in the experiences of boundary situations (Grenzsituationen), he considers existentialism as the knowledge of human being as a certain object among other objects. Already later — after Sartre’s lecture — Jaspers began to criticize existentialism as a direction that arose under the influence of the philosophy of existence and as its decline. Jaspers connected existentialism mainly with Sartre and outlined the main grounds of his criticism: existentialism is based on bare abstraction and Sartre’s main slogan — existence (of personality) precedes essence — is an evidence of this; existentialism uses a certain poetic vagueness of some statements, and is an attempt to overcome nihilism through nihilism itself; this philosophy denies the existence of any transcendent basis of human and world. For these reasons, Jaspers rejected existentialism, which is fundamentally different from the philosophy of existence. (shrink)

The book falls into four segments. In the first (Chapter 1), the particular conception of deity that has been predominant in western civilization—the theistic idea of God—is explicated and distinguished from several other notions of the divine. The second segment considers the major reasons that have been advanced in support of the belief that the theistic God exists. In chapters 2 through 4 the three major arguments for the existence of God are discussed, arguments which appeal to facts supposedly (...) available to any rational person, whether religious or not. Chapter 5 considers religious and mystical experience as a source and justification for theistic belief. And in Chapter 6 we examine the role that faith may play in the formation and justification of religious belief. We also consider the important issue of whether belief in God may be entirely rational quite apart from any evidence in its behalf. The third segment undertakes an examination of the problem of evil, which some have thought to provide rational grounds for atheism, the belief that the theistic God does not exist. A number of topics quite central to theistic religion are considered in the fourth segment of the book, chapters 8 through 11. These topics include miracles, the question of life after death, problems in relating the idea of divine foreknowledge to the belief in human freedom, and problems arising from the existence of diverse religions. (shrink)

The experimental validity of research in the experimental philosophy of free will has been called into question. Several new, important studies (Murray et al. forthcoming; Nadelhoffer et al., Cognitive Science 44 (8): 1–28, 2020 ; Nadelhoffer et al., 2021; Rose et al., Cognitive Science 41 (2): 482–502, 2017 ) are interpreted as showing that the vignette-judgment model is defective because participants only exhibit a surface-level comprehension and not the deeper comprehension the model requires. Participants, it is argued, commit _bypassing_, (...) _intrusion_, and _fatalism_ errors. We respond in two ways: (1) we critique and improve existing methods for assessing deeper comprehension and (2) we develop videos to convey deterministic principles of change that succeed in significantly reducing participants’ bypassing, intrusion, and fatalism errors. Consequently, we have the best existing instrument for gauging folk intuitions about the relationship between free will and determinism. (shrink)

The notion of existence is a very puzzling one philosophically. Often philosophers have appealed to linguistic properties of sentences stating existence. However, the appeal to linguistic intuitions has generally not been systematic and without serious regard of relevant issues in linguistic semantics. This paper has two aims. On the one hand, it will look at statements of existence from a systematic linguistic point of view, in order to try to clarify what the actual semantics of such statements (...) in fact is. On the other hand, it will explore what sort of ontology such statements reflect. The first aim is one of linguistic semantics; the second aim is one of descriptive metaphysics. Philosophically, existence statements appear to reflect the distinction between endurance and perdurance as well as particular notions of abstract states and of kinds. Linguistically, statements of existence involve a particular way of drawing the distinction between eventive and stative verbs and between individual-level and stage-level predicates as well as a particular approach to the semantics of bare plurals and mass nouns. (shrink)

Alexander's views on universals are, it seems, quite important in the history of western philosophy. When Boethius gives in his second commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge his solution to the problem of universals as he conceived it, he claims to be adopting Alexander's approach. If true, this means that the locus classicus for all western medieval thinkers on this topic is really a rendering of Alexander's teaching. Alexander commented Aristotle’s statement in his On the Soul “The universal animal either is (...) nothing at all or is posterior if it exists”, and this commentary has been translated into Arabic several times in the classical period. In this study the anonymous Arabic translations of Alexander’s commentary has been translated into English. (shrink)