For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive discussion of determinables, determinates, and their relation ('determination', for short), covering the historical development of these notions, the theoretical options for understanding them, and certain of their contemporary applications.

This is the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s carta de 24 de octubre, 1851, a letter encapsulating many of his views on revolution and decision. This remarkable letter, sent as a diplomatic missive while he was serving the Spanish crown in Paris, describes how Napoleon III––stuck between the 1848 constitution’s prohibition against his election and his impending coup that will crown him emperor––must gain the support of the liberal bourgeoise middle class if he is to maintain his (...) rule over France. The letter is also of great importance to Donoso and Schmitt scholars because it contains the first and only time Donoso uses the complete term “las clases discutidoras,” which, through Schmitt’s injudicious and repeated misspellings as “una clasa discutidora” has become famous for its characterization of the liberal bourgeoisie as the “discussing” or “disputing” class that is incapable of action at the precise historical moment when a decision is most direly needed to save the constitution from inner or outer existential threats. (shrink)

I first discuss Kit Fine's distinctive 'schema-based' approach to metaphysical theorizing, which aims to identify general principles accommodating any intelligible application of the notion(s), by attention to his accounts of essence and dependence. I then raise some specific concerns about the general principles Fine takes to schematically characterize these notions. In particular, I present various counterexamples to Fine's essence-based account of ontological dependence. The problem, roughly speaking, is that Fine supposes that an object's essence makes reference to just what it (...) ontologically depends on, but various cases suggest that an object's essence can also make reference to what ontologically depends on it. As such, Fine's account of ontological dependence is subject to the same objection he raises against modal accounts of essence and dependence---that is, of being insufficiently ecumenical. (shrink)

For Hegel, personhood is developed primarily through the possession, ownership, and exchange of property. Property is crucial for individuals to experience freedom as persons and for the existence of Sittlichkeit, or ethical life within a community. The free exchange of property serves to develop individual personalities by mediating our intersubjectivity between one another, whereby we share another’s subjective experience of the object by recognizing their will in it and respecting their ownership of it. This free exchange is grounded the abstract (...) right to property which is defined by the liberal institution of private property. Like all legal/juridical rights, the abstract property right and its related institution are productions of the state, which can also claim priority over them. This prioritization reveals the dialectic inherent in the both the conception and exercise of the right, in which the private right to property at the level of civil society confronts the public right of the state, resulting in both the preservation and uplifting of the right, and, at the same time, its cancellation or annihilation. (shrink)

Following historical developments, this article traces two basic motives for employing sets within a physical setting and discusses whether they truly pose a problem for ‘mathematical naturalism’.

From Buñuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou to recent works by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, the cinematic destruction of the eye has become iconic due to its striking effect upon film spectators’ visceral experiences as well as its ability to influence their symbolic or fetishistic desires. By exploiting the natural discomfort and disgust produced by these types of images and then situating them within an aesthetic and psychoanalytic framework, Refn and other filmmakers provide a visual showcase for a unique (...) type of cinematic violence, one which demands that viewers reappraise the value of their own eyes as well as the values which reflect social attitudes towards law enforcement, crime, and justice. (shrink)

Legendary director, actor, author, and provocateur Werner Herzog has incalculably influenced contemporary cinema for decades. This essay collection by professional philosophers and film theorists from around the globe offers a diversity of perspectives on how the thinking behind the camera is revealed in the action Herzog captures in front of it.

The Olivieri symposium offers an opportunity to reflect on the Canadian regulatory climate and public governance. Baylis’s paper raises a concern about the Canadian bio-ethics community’s collective silence and stewardship regarding the Olivieri case.1 A similar collective silence greeted the recent McDonald report2 on research governance in Canada. The McDonald report assessed the integrity and effectiveness of research governance arrangements and concluded that serious reform was required.Curiously, although the McDonald report was recently referred to in a Canadian Medical Association Journal (...) editorial as an example of Canadian leadership,3 it has never received an editorial commentary in the CMAJ. Nor has any article in the CMAJ ever addressed the McDonald report. Yet the CMAJ created an ethics editorship and a senior Canadian bioethicist was chosen for the position in light of the growing importance of ethics in public policy.4 A chapter of the McDonald report also focused on the mandate of the Canadian Medical …. (shrink)

Arguably no concept is more fundamental to science than that of causality, for investigations into cases of existence, persistence, and change in the natural world are largely investigations into the causes of these phenomena. Yet the metaphysics and epistemology of causality remain unclear. For example, the ontological categories of the causal relata have been taken to be objects (Hume 1739), events (Davidson 1967), properties (Armstrong 1978), processes (Salmon 1984), variables (Hitchcock 1993), and facts (Mellor 1995). (For convenience, causes and effects (...) will usually be understood as events in what follows.) Complicating matters, causal relations may be singular (Socrates’s drinking hemlock caused Socrates’s death) or general (Drinking hemlock causes death); hence the relata might be tokens (e.g., instances of properties) or types (e.g., types of events) of the category in question. Other questions up for grabs are: Are singular causes metaphysically and/or epistemologically prior to general causes or vice versa (or neither)? What grounds the intuitive asymmetry of the causal relation? Are macro-causal relations reducible to micro-causal relations? And perhaps most importantly: Are causal facts (e.g., the holding of causal relations) reducible to non-causal facts (e.g., the holding of certain spatiotemporal relations)? (shrink)

El objetivo de la formación doctoral es la generación y difusión de nuevo conocimiento, sin embargo, no es claro cómo los programas de doctorado en Colombia se relacionan con este tipo de producción académica. A partir de ello, en el presente estudio se presenta el panorama general de la producción académica a través de las instituciones de educación superior colombianas que ofertan programas de formación doctoral en psicología. La producción académica se obtuvo de la base de datos Scopus en una (...) muestra de 13 universidades. Tras una búsqueda inicial, se encontraron 1345 documentos, con los cuales se realizó un análisis de los indicadores de productividad y de las redes de colaboración al interior de la disciplina en el país. Posteriormente, esta información se contrastó con la información nacional registrada en el sistema de Currículum Vitae Latinoamericano y del Caribe de 193 profesores asociados a las universidades que ofertan los programas de doctorado. Al comparar la producción académica nacional e internacional, se encontró una mayor correlación entre la dirección de tesis de posgrado y la publicación en revistas nacionales. Por lo tanto, se puede afirmar que el impacto de la formación doctoral en la generación de nuevo conocimiento es relativo y tiene un alcance limitado, siendo principalmente las revistas nacionales el medio de difusión de este conocimiento. Se recomienda evaluar el impacto de los productos asociados a la formación posgradual y la visibilidad internacional, con énfasis en las revistas indexadas en bases de datos internacionales. (shrink)

More than 1.5 billion students experienced disruption to education as a result of COVID-19, representing the most substantial interruption to global education in modern history. Many educational institutions transitioned to emergency remote teaching (ERT) overnight, which has presented an array of distinct challenges for educators. Using virtual interviews and an experiential approach to thematic analysis, the study examined Scottish primary teachers’ (n = 10) lived experiences of adapting to ERT practice. Findings demonstrated three main themes; ‘Meeting Learners’ Needs,’ ‘Influencing Engagement’, (...) and ‘The Impact of ERT on Teachers’. Key findings suggested that differentiating learning, engaging, and communicating with learners is more difficult during ERT than face-to-face teaching. Parental engagement is vital, however, is influenced by several mitigating factors. Finally, ERT is likely to have substantial effects on the wellbeing of those involved. Implications of these findings are considered and discussed. (shrink)

This article examines Richard Lynch’s metaphysics and finds that he ultimately resolves his account of being in terms of essens—that which denotes the essential structure that a being (ens) has apart from existence. For Lynch, unlike many of his Jesuit contemporaries, existence is accidental to being. Yet, even if essens is distinct from existence, it is not altogether lacking being, but is accorded a certain kind of “essential being,” which is identified with the possible. Lynch thus seems to re-appropriate an (...) essentialist metaphysics that has antecedents in Avicenna and Henry of Ghent’s notion of esse essentiae. More proximate to Lynch is the Jesuit thinker Francesco Albertini, who takes Henry’s metaphysics and conveys it to Baroque Scholasticism. Lynch continues down that metaphysical path which, as we shall see, generated fierce controversy among late seventeenth-century Scholastics regarding the nature of creaturely possibility. (shrink)

This article argues, first, that the fundamental structure of the skeptical argument in Kripke's book on Wittgenstein has been seriously misunderstood by recent commentators. Although it focuses particularly on recent commentary by John McDowell, it emphasizes that the basic misunderstandings are widely shared by other commentators. In particular, it argues that, properly construed, Kripke offers a fully coherent reading of PI #201 and related passages. This is commonly denied, and given as a reason for rejecting Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein's text. (...) Second, it is pretty universally accepted that Kripke's Wittgenstein is a `non-factualist' about ascriptions of meaning. The article argues that, when Kripke's discussion is rightly understood and the content of `non-factualism' is clarified, there is an important sense in which the skeptical solution is not committed to non-factualism. (shrink)

The term ‘moral resilience’ has been gaining momentum in the nursing ethics literature. This may be due to it representing a potential response to moral problems such as moral distress. Moral resilience has been conceptualised as a factor that inhibits immoral actions, as a favourable outcome and as an ability to bounce back after a morally distressing situation. In this article, the philosophical analysis of moral resilience is developed by challenging these conceptualisations and highlighting the risks of such limiting perspectives. (...) It is argued that moral resilience is best understood as a virtue with two associated vices, faintheartedness and rigidity. The intellectual virtue of practical wisdom is required to express resilience as a virtue. This understanding leads to recommendations for professional education, for practice and for further research. (shrink)

This article argues, first, that the fundamental structure of the skeptical argument in Kripke’s book on Wittgenstein has been seriously misunderstood by recent commentators. Although it focuses particularly on recent commentary by John McDowell, it emphasizes that the basic misunderstandings are widely shared by other commentators. In particular, it argues that, properly construed, Kripke offers a fully coherent reading of PI #201 and related passages. This is commonly denied, and given as a reason for rejecting Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein’s text. (...) Second, it is pretty universally accepted that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is a ‘non-factualist’ about ascriptions of meaning. The article argues that, when Kripke’s discussion is rightly understood and the content of ‘non-factualism’ is clarified, there is an important sense in which the skeptical solution is not committed to non-factualism. (shrink)

(Note: this is the lead article in a forthcoming issue of _Australasian Philosophical Review_ edited by Dana Goswick, with invited comments by Karen Bennett, Ricki Bliss, Jonathan Schaffer, Alexander Skiles. In June 2024 there will be an open call for other commentators; please contact Dana or Jessica if you are interested.) A wide range of scientific, religious/cosmological, and philosophical views presuppose that there is what I call `metaphysical structure', whereby (i) some goings-on in a given domain D are (absolutely or (...) comparatively) fundamental; and (ii) (comparatively) non-fundamental goings-on in D metaphysically depend on (absolutely or comparatively) fundamental goings-on in D. Such presuppositions motivate two broadly metametaphysical questions: (i) what makes it the case that some goings-on in a domain D are (absolutely or comparatively) fundamental? and (ii) what makes it the case that (comparatively) non-fundamental goings-on in a domain D metaphysically depend on (absolutely or comparatively) fundamental goings-on in D? Here I advance my preferred 'Fundamentality First' package deal approach to metaphysical structure, which couples a primitivist approach to fundamentality with a pluralist approach to metaphysical dependence. (shrink)

This collection of essays on themes in the work of John Locke , George Berkeley , and David Hume , provides a deepened understanding of major issues raised in the Empiricist tradition. In exploring their shared belief in the experiential nature of mental constructs, The Empiricists illuminates the different methodologies of these great Enlightenment philosophers and introduces students to important metaphysical and epistemological issues including the theory of ideas, personal identity, and skepticism. It will be especially useful in courses devoted (...) to the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that a distinctive metaphysical relation— ‘Grounding’—is ultimately at issue in contexts in which some goings-on are said to hold ‘in virtue of’’, be ‘metaphysically dependent on’, or be ‘nothing over and above’ some others. Grounding is supposed to do good work in illuminating metaphysical dependence. I argue that Grounding is also unsuited to do this work. To start, Grounding alone cannot do this work, for bare claims of Grounding leave open such basic questions as whether (...) Grounded goings-on exist, whether they are reducible to or rather distinct from Grounding goings-on, whether they are efficacious, and so on; but in the absence of answers to such basic questions, we are not in position to assess the associated claim or theses concerning metaphysical dependence. There is no avoiding appeal to the specific metaphysical relations typically at issue in investigations into dependence—for example, type or token identity, functional realization, classical mereological parthood, the set membership relation, the proper subset relation, the determinable/determinate relation, and so on—which are capable of answering these questions. But, I argue, once the specific relations are on the scene, there is no need for Grounding. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Introduction Twenty-five years ago it was pretty widely held among Anglo- American philosophers that it was sheer confusion to suppose that an ...

Toward the end of Chapter Four, Richard Moran provides a summary statement of some of his chief objectives in earlier portions of his book. He says.

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and the (...) larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)