This paper has been prompted by the conviction that a number of ethical and political doctrines in Plato remain obscure and somewhat unintelligible unless related to the contemplative experience of the Platonic philosopher. 1 I shall concentrate here on one such doctrine, the distinction between philosophic and popular virtue, especially as it appears in the Phaedo and the Gorgias . But in order first to clarify our conception of the relationship between contemplation and virtue, I shall examine the fourteenth-century English (...) classic, The Cloud of Unknowing , which is mainly concerned with the practice of contemplation and only remotely connected with Plato. 2 One finds in The Cloud a perceptive account of the contemplative's acquisition of ‘perfect’ virtue which enables us to see the distinction between philosophic and popular virtue in Plato in a fresh light. After discussing the important passage in the Phaedo where the distinction is drawn, I shall criticise the account of virtue in Plato given by D. Z. Phillips and H. O. Mounce in Moral Practices where the contemplative context is minimised by their endeavour to see morality wholly in terms of conventions . 3 In this section, the argument between Socrates and Polus in the Gorgias will be discussed in light of the way Phillips and Mounce distinguish their respective ethical positions. The object of the paper is not only to point to the significance of contemplation in Plato's ethics which has been overlooked by many modern philosophers, but also to note the way our understanding of the dialogue form in Plato depends on the unique perspective of the contemplative philosopher. (shrink)

This is a volume of four studies on Plato and Aristotle by one of the best of the young French specialists on ancient philosophy. The most important paper is perhaps the first, in which Brague attempts to refute the traditional interpretations of Timaeus 37d5ff., according to which time is a moving image of eternity. I can merely give his conclusion here, which is that the moving heavens are an image of the eternal, and that there is an image of the (...) moving heavens, but not of the eternal. Next in interest, for this reviewer, is the second study, "L'isolation du sage. Sur un aspect du mythe de Politique." The reference is to the Eleatic Stranger's myth of the reversed cosmos. M. Brague focuses his attention on the passage from 271d3-6 and, in a manner that defies summary, combines philological Spitzfindigkeit and philosophical phronesis to arrive at two main conclusions: whereas the purpose of politics is to safeguard the minimal conditions of philosophical contemplation, the tasks of government cannot be included in philosophy; the highest activity of this same god, when he does not govern, is contemplation. Hence god is characterized by a "duality" of activity, not simplifiable into a unity. Two further studies follow, one on the Aristotelian formula ὁ ποτὲ ὄν the other on the priority of οὐσία with respect to time in Metaphysics Z 1. In the first, Brague analyzes the "centrifugal" force by which time advances, as the "now of nows,": by ejecting at once past and future. In the second, Brague concludes that "that which is first with respect to the ousia is also first with respect to the logos. But the converse is not true. That which is first with respect to the logos is not necessarily first with respect to the ousia. This has important consequences, among them that we speak of the predicates of ousia via logos; hence the priority of ousia to its predicates is established by logos."--Stanley Rosen, Pennsylvania State University. (shrink)

Region R Question: How many objects — entities, things — are contained in R? Ignore the empty space. Our question might better be put, 'How many material objects does R contain?' Let's stipulate that A, B and C are metaphysical atoms: absolutely simple entities with no parts whatsoever besides themselves. So you don't have to worry about counting a particle's top half and bottom half as different objects. Perhaps they are 'point-particles', with no length, width or breadth. Perhaps they are (...) extended in space without possessing spatial parts (if that is possible). Never mind. We stipulate that A, B and C are perfectly simple. We also stipulate that they are connected as follows. A and B are stuck together in such a way that when a force is applied to one of them, they move together 'as a unit'. Moreover, the two of them together exhibit behavior that neither would exhibit on its own — Perhaps they emit a certain sound, or glow in the dark — whereas C is.. (shrink)

What motivates a polemic like Felicia Ackerman's Philosophy of Hospice? Ackerman announces that in addition to analyzing and criticizing hospice principles as embodied in the National Hospice Organization's her article will also present ” She presents, in fact, two examples of hospice practice: one is a dubious anecdote, the meaning of which she apparently misunderstands, and the second is a description of a twenty-year-old policy of St. Christopher's Hospice in England, which, I believe, is no longer strictly adhered to.

This book compiles and reviews the most prominent linguistic theories into a single source that serves as an essential reference for future solutions to one of the most important challenges of our age.

Donald Davidson has made enormous contributions to the philosophy of action, epistemology, semantics and philosophy of mind and today is recognized as one of the most important analytical philosophers of the late twentieth century. _Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning and Knowledge_ addresses * Davidson's writings on epistemology and theory of language with their implications of ontology and philosophy of mind * the central issue of whether truth is the ultimate goal of enquiry, challenged by contributions from Richard Rorty and Paul Horwich (...) * Davidson's approach to semantics and applied linguistics as addressed by Kirk Ludwig, Gabriel Segal, Peter Pagin, Stephen Neale, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore and Reinaldo Elugardo * Davidson's advances in the philosophy of mind in relation to the views of Williard V. Quine, John McDowell and Peter F. Strawson, in essays by Roger Gibson and Anita Avramides. (shrink)

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self‐representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self‐representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, we examine two (...) key forms of polymorphism of self‐representation: dreams (or dream episodes) in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or ‘observer’ perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases ‘vicarious dreams’ and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self‐representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self‐representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming. (shrink)

Purpose. Romanticism as a movement developed in Germany, where, becoming the philosophy of time in the 18th-19th centuries, spread to all European countries. The "mobility" of the Romantic doctrine, its diversity, sometimes contradictory views, attitude to man as a free, harmonious, creative person led to the susceptibility of this movement by ethnic groups, different in nature and mentality. Its ideas found a wide response in Ukraine with its "cordocentric" type of culture in the early nineteenth century. Since the peculiarity of (...) "Ukrainian Romanticism" was its "literary-centric" nature, the purpose of this study is to analyse and comprehend the place of man in the national philosophy and literature of this period. Accordingly, the main tasks of the work are as follows: to determine the main features, the nature of Ukrainian Romanticism; to trace the main vectors of comprehension and image of man in the literature of this time. Theoretical basis. The ideas of European Romanticism were creatively rethought and assimilated during the emergence of new Ukrainian literature. It provided samples of highly artistic works, unique names of talented writers – creators and thinkers, who in their works reflected the philosophy of time. Based on the works of F. Schlegel, partly E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, Romanticism in the Ukrainian humanities, in terms of philosophy, culturology, as well as at the intersection with literature, was studied by T. Bovsunivska, Y. Hrybkova, S. Efremov, N. Kalenichenko, S. Kozak, T. Komarynets, D. Nalyvayko, Y. Nakhlik, I. Ogorodnyk, V. Ogorodnyk, A. Sinitsyna, D. Chyzhevsky, M. Yatsenko, E. Kyryliuk, M. Biletsky, D. Dontsov, S. Efremov, G. Kostyuk, S. Krymsky, Y. Sherekh and others. Originality. The authors of the article prove that Romanticism in Ukraine, being "literary-centric" inherently, having absorbed the main ideas and features of European Romanticism, has its own features and vectors of formation and development. Man in this kind of movement, thanks to the means of art, appears very clearly as a spiritually rich, sensitive, vulnerable and strong person. For him or her, the highest value is freedom, the ability to make freely independent fateful decisions. Conclusions. Ukrainian writers, reflecting the philosophical ideas of Romanticism, saw in man a harmonious combination of "natural" and "social", through which he indirectly carries out his own national existence. In addition to the objective realities of the external world, in their works, Romantic writers appeal to the subjective, internal, spiritual, "ideal" world of the hero, who interacts with reality through his own system of values. At each level of development of the humanities and methodology of cognition, this allows a new reading of these works. (shrink)

The authors study opera from the perspective of the theories of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and argue that opera's second death corresponded with the rise of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. With a preface by Lanfossi and an afterword by Alberto Toscano.

Marcel Beaufils fut un pedagogue exceptionnel qui exerca une influence decisive sur l'evolution de l'esthetique musicale en France, a partir des annees 50. Or, parmi ses ouvrages, Musique du son, musique du verbe est tres certainement celui qui porte le plus fortement la marque de son activite d'enseignant au Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris ; cette mission, il semblait l'entendre davantage comme celle d'un declencheur d'idees, catalyseur, plutot que du transmetteur d'un savoir fige une fois pour toutes. Bouleversant (...) toute tentative de classification academique, toute certitude acquise, ce livre laisse des pointilles ; un grand souffle traverse son ecriture. N'en deplaise aux musicographes, il s'agit la d'un ouvrage de creation, qui nous rappelle que Marce Beaufils etait egalement un ecrivain qui savait manier le verbe a la fois en tant que dramaturge et en tant que poete. (shrink)