L'A. esamina l'interpretazione della cosmogonia platonica nel sesto libro del De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum di Filopono. Lo studio propone inoltre un breve esame della questione della relazione fra filosofia aristotelica e platonica nel neoplatonismo greco.

The paper tries to develop some of the main characteristics of Dilthey’s “phenomenology of metaphysics” in the second part of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. It is argued that we have to understand this phenomenology as an attempt to go beyond both Kant’s and Comte’s criticism of metaphysics. According to Dilthey the core of all metaphysics is its ideal of a logical coherence of the world: in contrast to modern science, Dilthey says, metaphysics is based on the conviction that there (...) is an objective and internal coherence of reality behind the phenomena. Even if this coherence is reduced to its minimal form, that is to the combination of substantiality and causality, even then, Dilthey argues, it constitutes a projection of the living unity of human consciousness into extramental reality, and this prevents metaphysics from being science. Gradually the Christian metaphysics of the Middle Ages has been replaced by science, both in our knowledge of nature and in our knowledge of our spiritual self. Consequently metaphysics as a scientific project is for Dilthey a historical phenomenon, which irrevocably belongs to the past. The apparent completion of metaphysics in the ‘private metaphysical systems” of the Modern Age is in fact, Dilthey claims, the “euthanasia” of metaphysics, its unconscious noble and gentle suicide. For they conceive nature as a “colossal fantastic reflection of the metaphysician’s own self”, and in that way achieve a complete transformation of objective into subjective reality. By so doing, however, metaphysics destroys itself at the very moment of the complete fulfilment of its task. In the systems of Leibniz, Hegel etc. the old ideal of a total understanding of the world is apparently realised. But at the same time this means, according to Dilthey, that objective reality as such no longer exists. The total disclosure of the metaphysical secret is for Dilthey nothing else but the disclosure of the illusory nature of all metaphysics. (shrink)

L’article se propose de vérifier le caractère néoplatonicien de la métaphysique d’Ammonius, fils d’Hermias, dans le dialogue intitulé Ammonius de Zacharie de Mytilène. Jusqu’à présent la recherche a cru pouvoir conclure de ce texte que la pensée d’Ammonius se rapprochait à certains égards du christianisme. Plusieurs éléments dans l’ Ammonius prouvent pourtant sans équivoque que le chef d’école alexandrin est resté fidèle au néoplatonisme païen, et notamment à la distinction proclusienne entre l’éternité divine et la perpétuité du monde.

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

In der Geschichte der Logik spielt die Darstellung verschiedener formallogischer Sachverhalte in veranschaulichenden Figuren eine grosse Rolle. Eines der bekanntesten Beispiele solcher Figuren ist die beruhmte pons asinorum oder Eselsbrucke. Diese Figur findet sich zum erstenmal in dem Kommentar des Johannes Philoponos zu den Ersten Analytiken des Aristoteles. Die griechischen Aristoteliker haben einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung der Syllogistik geleistet. Einige ihrer Beitrage - wie dieser der Eselsbrucke - wurden durch Averroes und Albert den Grossen der lateinischen Tradition weitergegeben. Die (...) meisten haben aber auf die Ubersetzertatigkeit des 16. Jahrhunderts warten mussen, bevor sie im Rahmen der Argumentationstheorie voll zur Geltung kamen. (shrink)

Ziel des Beitrages ist, die Bedeutung der Mysterien für das Denken des jungen Nietzsche, der unauffällig, aber dezidiert die Kernbegriffe seines Philosophierens - das Apollinische und das Dionysische, die Tragödie, die ästhetische Rechtfertigung der Welt - mit einer 'Geheimlehre' vervindet, auszuloten. Eine textnah Interpretation seiner Aussagen zur apollinischen bzw. dionysischen Mysterienordung zeigt, dass die tragische griechische Kultur im Mysterienvorgang als kultischem un institutionellem Geschehen begründet ist. Aus Nietzsches Analyse dieser die Metaphysik des Willens exemplarisch zum Ausdruck bringenden Kultur geht hervor, (...) dass ohne Mysterien der Wille sich nicht optimal entfalten kann. Diese Einsicht überträgt Nietzsche auch in die Sprache seines Philosophierens.The aim of the article is to fathom the meaning of mystery cults in Nietzsche's early thinking. in a discreet manner, he associates the key concepts of his philosophy - the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the tragedy, the aesthetic justification of the world - with a 'secret doctrine'. A close reading of his writings on the Apollonian and Dionysian 'mystery order' shows that the tragic Greek culture is founded on the mysteris as cultic and institutional happenings. Nietzsche's analysis of this culture, which gives expression to the metaphysics of the will in an exemplary fashion, reveals that without mystery cults the will cannot unfold itself optimally . Nietzsche translates this insight also into the language of his philosophy. (shrink)

This paper seeks a deeper understanding of the congener as a factor in animal and human behaviour. It does so, not by concentrating on analyses of stimulus exchanges - largely specific to the species - by which a congener is recognized, but on the more general questions of why a notion of congener exists at all and why it plays such an extraordinary important role in animal and human behaviour.Three separate approaches, by way of anthropomorphic psychology, a paraphysical energy model (...) and the physical theory of the implicate order, lead to the recognition of a certain inseparability of self and congener; and to an interpretation of the content of the notion of congener and of the behaviour in relation to it, in terms of the fundamental concept of energy and the even more fundamental one of order. (shrink)

Locke & Bogin's (L&B's) main thesis can be extended to the acquisition of the phrasal vocabulary in that the acquisition of much phrasal vocabulary combines the acquisition of linguistic knowledge with pragmatics and performance and in that the apprenticeship system for such learning begins to flower in adolescence.

In the wake of the 1980 CSCE follow-up meeting US human rights objectives should be defined contextually so as to include besides the traditional human rights ingredients, i.e. the right to personal integrity, civil and politica! liberties, such values as peace, national security, nuclear non-proliferation, economie growth and redistribution. To this effect, the US should stress more a proper «world order» as its ultimate policy goal. Doing so would provide it at once with the flexibility needed in the international forum (...) and with the credibility needed on the domestic scene, in order to achieve some visible results. A high-pitched declaratory policy in favor of human rights leads to ineffectiveness with Communist nations and to arbitrary pressures on authoritarian countries which somehow rely on US assistance.Thus, the US should proceed contextually on the basis of a more balanced «human rights» concept. (shrink)

The sociobiological fashion has for a long time discouraged the development of theories of the immediate causation of behaviour. It is only recently that new approaches are being developed to improve on the classical ethological theory originated by Lorenz and Tinbergen. One new departure is behavioural field theory (BFT) which brings back the concept of energy in behaviour, without being susceptible to the drawbacks of the energy or fuel concept of classical theory. In this paper the new theory is explained (...) in some detail and it is shown to be illuminating, predictive and testable in examples of play-like and territorial behaviour. (shrink)

Classical ethology, with its emphasis on separability of parts, has largely failed to do justice to the wholeness of the individual animal, to the integrity of group behaviour and to the continuity between observable behaviour and consciousness. Field theory has potentialities to do better, as illustrated in this paper with reference to morphogenetic and behavioural fields. A behavioural domain is delineated — playlike behaviour — where field theory is particularly relevant. It is shown that the concept of symmetry can suggest (...) new questions as well as explain some generally known phenomena of group behaviour. New interpretations of displacement activities and of etho-ecological adaptations are offered, both of which involve the whole individual animal. (shrink)

Displacement acts, once a hot topic in ethology, but wrapped in silence for two decades since, have recently been suggested to indicate and relax social tension (Maestripieri et al., 1992; Wiepkema, 1987). The first of these contentions seems to be in contradiction with some of the classical ethological studies of displacement behaviour, in particular those supporting the disinhibition hypothesis, since the latter would not predict any positive correlation between amount of tension (i.c. intensity of the conflict) and the occurrence of (...) displacement acts.A critical examination of these studies reveals that a positive correlation of the sort has been found, but that proponents of the disinhibition hypothesis tried to explain it in terms of their own model, rather than taking it at its face value. (The reason for this is that they viewed it as pleading for the surplus hypothesis which they rejected). It can be shown that at least some of their explanations are grounded on assumptions which are arbitrary. Also, the disinhibition hypothesis does not account for the occurrence of displacement behaviour in contexts with tension but without conflict. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Authority, Reading, Reflexivity: Pierre Bourdieu and the Aesthetic Judgment of KantKoenraad Geldof (bio)Translated by Alex Martin (bio)1. AuthorityFor some time now, Pierre Bourdieu has been a true author 1 —a producer, in other words, of an impressive number of theoretical and analytical discourses in a wide variety of research fields. 2 Whether in anthropology or ethnology, in the sociology of institutions or of the structure and workings of the (...) market of symbolic goods, or in the sociology of literature, the name Bourdieu imposes itself: it establishes authority. Contributing to this is another particularity quite typical of authority: it gets itself talked about; it generates, at accelerated speed, discourses that in one way or another (re-)produce and thus reinforce the authority of the author who was their point of departure and origin. The international proliferation of articles dealing with one aspect or another of Bourdieu’s thought, 3 essay collections, 4 and introductions to Bourdieu’s work 5 testifies to this. The intensity of metadiscursive production not only gives material form to the intrinsic analytic pertinence and richness of the discourse on which it comments—these are evident—but also shows, independent of the pieces’ intentions, that the proliferation is situated in a process of (re-)production of authority, that it is an integral part of a canonizing effort. The articles and introductions problematize, implicitly or explicitly, the direct accessibility of Bourdieu’s discourse. They make the oeuvre into a complex totality, difficult and diversified to the extreme, whose coherence can be revealed only with the help of a gradual, exegetic, and essentially submissive reading practice.To put it another way, and to examine the question more closely, the metadiscursive (re-)production of the authority of the author we call Pierre Bourdieu reveals itself to be [End Page 20] ambivalent: it is at once innovative—it invites the uninitiated to get to know a fascinating new universe of thought—and authoritarian, indeed even conservative. An introduction is never a simple mediation of discourse between an author and his or her potential readers: it provides a sort of user’s guide, it (re-)produces a reading habitus, an ideology of the correct interpretation the reader must learn and interiorize to be able to distinguish orthodox from false, heterodox, readings. Between the metadiscourse/commentary and the authority it discusses, a relationship of tautological circularity is established that surreptitiously transforms the discourse read into a legend (into what must be read): the possibility of an autonomous reading practice is erased by a pedagogy of legendary decoding. 6The authority of an author, that of Bourdieu for example, is consequently implicated in a dynamic of opening (the proliferation of metadiscourses) and closing (the tendency to discipline reading, to make it obey certain norms of legibility). It would be erroneous, however, to attribute the paradoxical aspect of authority simply to the ambivalent effect of metadiscourses/commentaries. This is because authors who establish authority can only rarely escape the canonizing efforts of which they are the object: in many cases, authors themselves participate in the production and reproduction of a mode of reading and interpretation judged to be legitimate. The fact that no authority can completely and exhaustively control its discursive and institutional space does not in any way contradict, therefore, that other distinctive and essential feature of authority: its intrinsic animation by a desire to control, by the desire to see itself respected. Authority wants to become Law and be recognized as such. Thus the tendency of certain authors to become actively involved in the modes of appropriation of their name and their discourses, to endeavor to make the reading of the author’s work not simply an act of connaissance but also a proof of reconnaissance. Authority detests being insufficiently or poorly known. Let us take the case of Bourdieu. As an author, he is first and foremost the one to whom we owe Raisons pratiques, La distinction, Homo academicus and Les règles de l’art, the producer, in other words, of a series of momentous works that, upon publication, established authority. Furthermore, Bourdieu is also the author of a considerable number of accompanying discourses, dominated by the... (shrink)

Astrolabes serving all latitudes are very rare. This recently rediscovered sixteenth-century Spanish example raises a host of questions which can only be addressed by considering all other such instruments and the few available textual sources. The instruments can all be traced back, not always directly, to an invention of the eleventh-century Andalusian astronomer Ali ibn Khalaf, preserved in the Old Castillian Libros del Saber de Astronomía of King Alfonso X. The design of this particular astrolabe and the engraving on it (...) are investigated in detail, and the as yet unidentified maker is associated with the circle around Juan de Herrera, architect of the palace-monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. (shrink)

While ethical and empirical interest in so-called secondary variants and incidental findings in clinical genetics contexts is growing, critical reflection on the ethical foundations of the various recommendations proposed is thus far largely lacking. We examine and critique the ethical justifications of the three most prominent disclosure positions: briefly, the clinical geneticist decides, a joint decision, and the patient decides. Subsequently, instead of immediately developing a new disclosure option, we explore relevant foundational ethical values and norms, drawing on the normative (...) and empirical ethical literature. Four ethical signposts are thereby developed to help guide disclosure discussions. These are: respectful sharing of the clinician’s expertise; transparent communication; epistemic modesty; and respect for the embedded nature of the patient. We conclude by considering the most common current disclosure positions in the light of the four ethical signposts. (shrink)

The article attempts to describe the constitution, the methods of work and the conclusions of the Commission of State for Ethical Problems in Belgium.This Commission was requested by the Government to study the problems of family-planning, of anonymity of the mother and of abortion. The Commission was composed by 25 members telling 11 doctors, 1 chemist, 1 biologist, 1 sociologist and 11 doctors in law. Two reports were presented to the Government: one signed by 13 members and one signed by (...) 12 members. The author, who was member of the group of the 13 gives her opinion about all the activities of the Commission. (shrink)