Renaissance philosopher, mathematician, and theologian Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) said that there is no proportion between the finite mind and the infinite. He is fond of saying reason cannot fully comprehend the infinite. That our best hope for attaining a vision and understanding of infinite things is by mathematics and by the use of contemplating symbols, which help us grasp "the absolute infinite". By the late 19th century, there is a decisive intervention in mathematics and its philosophy: the philosophical mathematician (...) Georg Cantor (1845-1918) says that between the realm of the finite and the absolute infinite, there is an intermediate realm partaking in properties in a certain sense of both the finite and the infinite: the transfinite realm. Like the finite, the transfinite realm is a realm of mathematical objects, numbers, and knowledge. Like the absolute infinite, the transfinite is a form of infinity insofar as transfinite sets and numbers transcend any finite number. Echoing Cusanus and neo-Platonism, Cantor says that the transfinite sequence of all ordinals is a symbol of the absolutely infinite, that is, God. This paper considers how the doctrine of symbolism and the philosophers' different commitments to the laws of logic, especially the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), enables these thinkers to articulate a transcendental apophatic approach to divinity. (shrink)

Highlighting Hegel's conceptual realism Hoffmann focuses on an undervalued move in his dialectic: inversion. Easily proving completeness for Kant's table of categories, Hoffmann shows how metabolic dialectic substantiates Hegel's claim for his _Logic_: it is indeed the science of absolute form!

Hans Blumenberg wollte allein durch seine Philosophie sprechen. Seine Person sollte den Blicken der Öffentlichkeit entzogen bleiben. Und doch ist die Lesbarkeit seiner Welt nur durch das Licht seiner Zeit und ihrer Kämpfe möglich. Unter dem Nationalsozialismus wegen seiner jüdischen Mutter verfolgt, geprägt vom katholischen Milieu seines Vaters und einem humanistischen Elitegymnasium in der Hansestadt Lübeck, ist er am Ende ein typischer Vertreter der alten Bundesrepublik. Seit frühester Jugend ein obsessiver Leser, hat er Literatur, Philosophie, Theologie, Naturwissenschaften und Zeitgeschichtliches gleichermassen (...) aufgesaugt und daraus ein herausragendes Werk geschaffen. Im Rückgriff auf bisher unerschlossene Archivquellen legt Rüdiger Zill in seinem reich bebilderten Buch die lebensgeschichtlichen Wurzeln dieses Werks frei und zeigt, dass es keineswegs so monolithisch ist, wie es auf den ersten Blick erscheint. Vielmehr versteht man es nur, indem man seine Wege und Umwege nachvollzieht sowie die Vernetzungen mit den Wissenschaften in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der absolute Leser gewährt erstmals einen umfassenden Einblick in die Werkstatt eines Autors, der wie kein zweiter die Entwicklung seiner Arbeit akribisch dokumentiert hat. Hans Blumenberg beim jahrzehntelangen Lesen, Entwerfen und Formulieren über die Schulter zu sehen heisst auch, etwas über das faszinierende Handwerk des Denkens selbst zu lernen."--Dust jacket flap. (shrink)

In this major new work the leading philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that philosophical materialism has failed to meet the key scientific, theoretical and political challenges of the modern world, from relativity theory and quantum physics to Freudian psychoanalysis and the failure of twentieth-century Communism. To bring materialism up to date, Žižek proposes a new foundation for dialectical materialism. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designates as the speculative approach of thought - all (...) other forms of materialism fail. In Absolute Recoil, Žižek offers a startling reformulation of the ground and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Absolute needs (as against instrumental needs) are independent of the ends, goals and purposes of personal agents. Against the view that the only needs are instrumental needs, David Wiggins and Garrett Thomson have defended absolute needs on the grounds that the verb ‘need’ has instrumental and absolute senses. While remaining neutral about it, this article does not adopt that approach. Instead, it suggests that there are absolute biological needs. The absolute nature of these needs is defended by appeal to: their (...) objectivity (as against mind-dependence); the universality of the phenomenon of needing across the plant and animal kingdoms; the impossibility that biological needs depend wholly upon the exercise of the abilities characteristic of personal agency; the contention that the possession of biological needs is prior to the possession of the abilities characteristic of personal agency. Finally, three philosophical usages of ‘normative’ are distinguished. On two of these, to describe a phenomenon or claim as ‘normative’ is to describe it as value-dependent. A description of a phenomenon or claim as ‘normative’ in the third sense does not entail such value-dependency, though it leaves open the possibility that value depends upon the phenomenon or upon the truth of the claim. It is argued that while survival needs (or claims about them) may well be normative in this third sense, they are normative in neither of the first two. Thus, the idea of absolute need is not inherently normative in either of the first two senses. (shrink)

Kennedy (Linguist Philos 30:1–45, 2007) forcefully proposes what is now a widely assumed semantics for absolute gradable adjectives. On this semantics, maximum standard adjectives like “straight” and “dry” ascribe a maximal degree of the underlying quantity. Meanwhile, minimum standard adjectives like “bent” and “wet” merely ascribe a non-zero, non-minimal degree of the underlying quantity. This theory clashes with the ordinary intuition that sentences like “The stick is straight” are frequently true while sentences like “The stick is bent” are frequently informative, (...) and fans of the indicated theory of absolute gradable adjectives appeal to loose talk in response. One goal of this paper is to show that all extant theories of loose talk are inconsistent with this response strategy. Another goal is to offer a revised version of Hoek’s (Philos Rev 127:151–196, 2018, in: Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium, 2019) recent theory of loose talk that accommodates absolute gradable adjectives after all, while being defensible against a range of important concerns. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

In the traditional understanding, human dignity is often portrayed as a «final», «inherent», and «absolute» value. If human dignity as the core of the status of a human being did indeed have thos characteristics, this would yield a severe limitation for obligations that stem from the moral status of non-human animals, plants, eco systems and other entities discussed in environmental ethics; for obligations that arise from human dignity standardly take priority over the duties toward entities with non-human moral status. Yet, (...) many theorists of human dignity nowadays have given up the traditional picture in favour of a more «contingent» understanding of human dignity that abandons one or more of its traditional characteristics.In this paper, I argue that to the contrary, we have good reasons to think that the three characteristics of human dignity just mentioned can indeed be attributed to a value that deserves the name «human dignity». In a first part, I argue for a specific understanding of the three value characteristics under consideration. After these preliminaries, I show in a second part that given such an understanding, we have ample evidence that we can indeed say that human dignity is an inherent, absolute and final value; and also that these three characteristics are properties of a single value. (shrink)

The problem of absolute generality has attracted much attention in recent philosophy. Agustin Rayo and Gabriel Uzquiano have assembled a distinguished team of contributors to write new essays on the topic. They investigate the question of whether it is possible to attain absolute generality in thought and language and the ramifications of this question in the philosophy of logic and mathematics.

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. A long (...) awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field. (shrink)

According to David Lewis, a realist about possible worlds must hold that actuality is relative: the worlds are ontologically all on a par; the actual and the merely possible differ, not absolutely, but in how they relate to us. Call this 'Lewisian realism'. The alternative, 'Leibnizian realism', holds that actuality is an absolute property that marks a distinction in ontological status. Lewis presents two arguments against Leibnizian realism. First, he argues that the Leibnizian realist cannot account for the contingency of (...) actuality. Second, he argues that the Leibnizian realist cannot explain why skepticism about one's own actuality is absurd. In this paper, I mount a defense of Leibnizian realism. (shrink)

How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a (...) simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation. (shrink)

Ist es möglich, das Absolute zu begreifen? Hegel behauptet Ja und irritiert seit gut 200 Jahren mit der Radikalität und Komplexität seines Ansatzes. Ermylos Plevrakis zeigt, inwiefern Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik als die rein logische Grundlagenforschung zum begrifflichen Fundament aller Metaphysik zu lesen ist.

The text is concerned with a class of two-sided stochastic processes of the form. Here is a two-sided Brownian motion with random initial data at time zero and is a function of. Elements of the related stochastic calculus are introduced. In particular, the calculus is adjusted to the case when is a jump process. Absolute continuity of under time shift of trajectories is investigated. For example under various conditions on the initial density with respect to the Lebesgue measure,, and on (...) with we verify i.e. where the product is taken over all coordinates. Here is the divergence of with respect to the initial position. Crucial for this is the temporal homogeneity of in the sense that,, where is the trajectory taking the constant value. By means of such a density, partial integration relative to a generator type operator of the process is established. Relative compactness of sequences of such processes is established. (shrink)

Moral Absolutes sets forth a vigorous but careful critique of much recent work in moral theology. It is illustrated with examples from the most controversial aspects of Christian moral doctrine, and a frank account is given of the roots of the upheaval in Roman Catholic moral theology in and after the 1960s.

Although contemporary powers metaphysics largely understands itself as a metaphysical realist undertaking, recently powers have come to the surface also within an idealist context. This paper aims to characterize and motivate an absolute idealist conception of powers. I compare realist and idealist powers metaphysics in their respective responses to Humean scepticism concerning powers, thereby motivating the claim that the very idea of a power is actually best understood as an idealist idea. I continue to characterize the absolute idealist’s understanding of (...) power, for which it is necessary to see that the content of her power notion is inseparable from the way in which she arrives at that notion. I close with a brief reflection on the absolute idealist’s understanding of the power of thought, which is where idealist and realist powers metaphysics diverge most radically. (shrink)

This book puts forward a theory of absolutization, bringing together a multi-disciplinary understanding of this central flaw in human judgement, and what we can do about it. This approach, drawing on Buddhist thought and practice, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, embodied meaning and systems theory, offers a rigorous introduction to absolutization as the central problem addressed in Middle Way Philosophy, which is a synthetic approach developed by the author over more than twenty years in a series of books. It challenges disciplinary boundaries (...) as well as offering a substantial framework for practical application. (shrink)

This volume explains how Star Trek allows viewers to comprehend significant aspects of Georg Hegel's concept the absolute, the driving force behind history. Gonzalez, with wit and wisdom, explains how Star Trek exhibits central elements of the absolute. He describes how themes and ethos central to the show display the concept beautifully. For instance, the show posits that people must possess the correct attitudes in order to bring about an ideal society: a commitment to social justice; an unyielding commitment to (...) the truth; and a similar commitment to scientific, intellectual discovery. These characteristics serve as perfect embodiments of Hegel's conceptualization, and Gonzalez's analysis is sharp and exacting. George A. Gonzalez is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, USA. He specializes in the fields of political theory, popular culture, and environmental politics and policy. In the areas of popular culture and political theory he has published two articles in the journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, as well as the book The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future. (shrink)

The absolute pessimistic induction states that earlier theories, although successful, were abandoned, so current theories, although successful, will also be abandoned. By contrast, the relative pessimistic induction states that earlier theories, although superior to their predecessors, were discarded, so current theories, although superior to earlier theories, will also be discarded. Some pessimists would have us believe that the relative pessimistic induction avoids empirical progressivism. I argue, however, that it has the same problem as the absolute pessimistic induction, viz., either its (...) premise is implausible or its conclusion does not probably follow from its premise. (shrink)

As an important corollary of this interpretation of absolute knowledge, the dissertation concludes with the suggestion that Hegelian philosophy need not be regarded merely as an interesting curiosity in the history of ideas, but rather that it can serve as a vital and potentially rewarding source of fresh theoretical insights. ;Instead, the concrete completeness of speculative philosophy can only consist in the activity of a dynamical, ceaselessly self-examining and self-regulating intellectual community. In one sense, of course, no finite system can (...) ever be complete, insofar as it will inevitably be guilty of errors and misconceptions. Yet at the same time, the infinite System is perfect and complete, insofar as it contains within itself the means whereby its own unavoidable flaws will be discovered, corrected, and "forgiven"--i.e. aufgehoben into vanishing moments of a universal totality. ;In opposition to most traditional interpretations of Hegel, the position is maintained that Hegel himself deliberately faced this problem, and that a true understanding of his proposed solution requires a radical Aufhebung of the concept of cognition as such. Relying primarily on the penultimate chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit, the dissertation argues that absolute knowledge can neither be a finalized system of fully explicit content, nor an endless movement toward such an ideal state. ;This dissertation undertakes a critical examination of one central problem in Hegelian philosophy: viz., whether the final realization of "absolute knowledge" is logically consistent with significant epistemic progress in the system's continuing development. Serious consideration of the concept of systematic completeness, as interpreted on Hegel's terms, uncovers the existence of a profound paradox. On the one hand, if the Truth is the Whole, then the truth of any finite part or aspect of that Whole depends upon its place within the system as a totality. In order to grasp the part and comprehend it correctly, one must already have a systematically ordered knowledge of the universe in its entirety. Yet the methodological open-endedness of dialectical thinking precludes the acceptance of any particular theoretical formulation as final or complete in itself. Hegel interprets the history of philosophy as a progression of successive formulations of the Truth, each of which improves on its predecessors by reconciling their internal contradictions, but no one of which is adequate in itself. Hence, no theoretical world view, including Hegel's own, can rest content within its limits, for the inevitable advance of thought must in the end throw it down. (shrink)

St. Thomas Aquinas has always considered intelligence a potency higher than the will, absolutely speaking. That being said, and in my view, the existential primacy of the will in the act of freedom (particularly in choosing the existential end) is also indisputably Thomistic, as Cornelio Fabro has shown. This paper endeavors to explain Aquinas' doctrine on the absolute primacy of the intellect and thus show that these two primacies can be affirmed coherently, that is, the intellect’s absolute primacy and the (...) will’s existential primacy. Firstly, I will explain the reasoning St. Thomas Aquinas uses in the Summa to justify the absolute primacy of the intellect over the will. Secondly, I will explore some parallel texts, in order to shed light on my interpretation of the Summa and expand our view regarding this and related doctrinal points. Thirdly, I will offer a brief study of Fabro’s position, one in which his concerns regarding the intellect’s absolute primacy are taken into account and carefully considered. (shrink)

Is there a notion of contradiction—let us call it, for dramatic effect, “absolute”—making all contradictions, so understood, unacceptable also for dialetheists? It is argued in this paper that there is, and that spelling it out brings some theoretical benefits. First it gives us a foothold on undisputed ground in the methodologically difficult debate on dialetheism. Second, we can use it to express, without begging questions, the disagreement between dialetheists and their rivals on the nature of truth. Third, dialetheism has an (...) operator allowing it, against the opinion of many critics, to rule things out and manifest disagreement: for unlike other proposed exclusion-expressing-devices (for instance, the entailment of triviality), the operator used to formulate the notion of absolute contradiction appears to be immune both from crippling expressive limitations and from revenge paradoxes—pending a rigorous nontriviality proof for a formal dialetheic theory including it. (shrink)

The doctrine of God’s absolute simplicity denies the possibility of real distinctions in God. It is, e.g., impossible that God have any kind of parts or any intrinsic accidental properties, or that there be real distinctions among God’s essential properties or between any of them and God himself. After showing that some of the counter-intuitive implications of the doctrine can readily be made sense of, the authors identify the apparent incompatibility of God’s simplicity and God’s free choice as a special (...) difficulty and associate it with two others: the apparent incompatibilities between essential omnipotence and essential goodness, and between perfect goodness and moral goodness. Since all three of these difficulties are associated with a certain understanding of the nature of God’s will, the authors base their resolution of them on an account of will in general and of God’s will in particular, drawing on Aquinas’s theory of will.Taking creation as their paradigm of divine free choice, the authors develop a solution of the principal incompatibility based on three claims: God’s acts of choice are both free and conditionally necessitated; the difference between absolutely and conditionallynecessitated acts of will is not a real distinction in God; and the conditional necessity of God’s acts of will is compatible with contingency in the objects of those acts. The heart of their solution consists in their attempt to make sense of and support those claims.The authors extend their solution to cover the two associated apparent incompatibilities as well.The article concludes with observations on the importance of the doctrine of God’s absolute simplicity for resolving problems in religious morality and in the cosmological argument. (shrink)

This article argues for acknowledging the existence of an absolute distinction between faith and science. It is often assumed in the science and religion debate that such a distinction would be ahistorical and uncontextual. After discussing this critique, the analogy with love and facts will be used to explain how an absolute distinction between faith and science may exist nonetheless. This contrast, however, does not imply compartmentalization. It is shown that the absolute distinction between faith and science is of crucial (...) importance to understand the historical contexts that so many contributors to the science and religion debate refer to in their argument against the approaches of Independence or Contrast. The article concludes that within our messy and complex practices there is an absolute distinction between faith and science—our historical contexts cannot be understood without it. (shrink)

In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Elizabeth Anscombe makes a “disenchanting” move: she suggests that secular philosophers abandon a special “moral” sense of “ought” since she thinks this no longer makes sense without a divine law framework. Instead, she recommends recovering an ordinary sense of ought that pertains to what a human being needs in order to flourish qua human being, where the virtues are thought to be central to what a human being needs. However, she is also concerned to critique consequentialist (...) views for their rejection of absolute prohibitions. This raises the question of whether the disenchanted form of Aristotelian ethical naturalism that she recommends to secular philosophers can support such absolute prohibitions. Anscombe expresses skepticism on this point and seems ultimately to recommend a divine law ethic, at least as a supplement to a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic. This chapter takes issue with Anscombe’s view, in part: the author agrees that the disenchanted form of Aristotelian virtue ethics cannot support absolute prohibitions, but disagrees that appeal to divine law is the best way to understand these prohibitions since it misses the intrinsic reasons for them: namely, they concern that which is sacred or reverence-worthy and thus should be regarded as inviolable and as involving a “special moral ought.” This means that a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic that can properly recognize moral absolutes will need a reenchanting move: namely, it needs to recognize the special normative demands of the sacred. This chapter also explores the question of what “moral ontology” can best make sense of the moral phenomenology of the sacred, but the main aim is to show the significance of a common anti-consequentialist form of moral perception that involves a sense of the sacred. (shrink)

What is time? This is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Emily Thomas explores how a new theory of time emerged in the seventeenth century. The 'absolute' theory of time held that it is independent of material bodies or human minds, so even if nothing else existed there would be time.