This study considers the role of epistemic turning points in the historiography of sexuality. Disentangling the historical complexity of scientia sexualis, I argue that the late 19th century and the mid-20th century constitute two critical epistemic junctures in the genealogy of sexual liberation, as the notion of free love slowly gave way to the idea of sexual freedom in modern western society. I also explore the value of the Foucauldian approach for the study of the history of sexuality (...) in non-western contexts. Drawing on examples from Republican China (1912—49), I propose that the Foucauldian insight concerning the emergence of a ‘homosexual identity’ in the West can serve as a useful guide for thinking about similar issues in the history of sexuality and the historical epistemology of sexology in modern East Asia. (shrink)

This article explores how a nonreductionist account of Nietzsche's influence on Michel Foucault can enrich our understanding of key concepts in singular works of both philosophers. I assess this exegetical strategy by looking at the two dichotomies Apollinian/Dionysian and ars erotica/scientia sexualis in The Birth of Tragedy and volume 1 of The History of Sexuality, respectively. After exploring the relation between these two dichotomies, I link the science of sexuality to the Apollinian art instinct via the existence of (...) Socratic culture and argue against the "pleasure of analysis" as a sublated form of (Dionysian) ars erotica. These considerations lead to the notions of history in Nietzsche's and Foucault's philosophies that result in situating the polyvalent Ursprung of Greek tragedy and the descent of ars erotica and scientia sexualis in an antimetaphysical and nonteleological picture of historical development.. (shrink)

This paper begins with a discussion of the scientia sexualis/ars erotica distinction, which Foucault first advances in History of Sexuality Vol. 1, and which has been employed by many scholars to do a variety of analytical work. Though Foucault has expressed his doubts regarding his conceptualization of the differences between Western and Eastern discourses of desire, he never entirely disowns the distinction. In fact, Foucault remains convinced that China must have an ars erotica. I will explore Foucault’s sources (...) of authority. To this end, I introduce the work of famous Dutch sinologist Robert Hans van Gulik, who published the tremendously influential Sexual Life in Ancient China in 1961, and also explore Joseph Needham’s view on Chinese sex. I argue that, Foucault, in his fierce polemic against the “Repressive Hypothesis”, himself imagined a utopian Other where pleasure and desire were organised differently. I end on a discuss on Orientalism and the project of “Sinography” of comparative literature scholars Haun Saussy, Eric Hayot and others. (shrink)

The historiography of sexology is young. It is also expanding at a remarkable pace, both in terms of the volume of publications and, more notably, in terms of its geographical, disciplinary, and intersectional reach. This special issue takes stock of these new directions, while offering new research contributions that expand our understanding of the interdisciplinary and transnational formation of this field from the late 19th through to the mid 20th century. The five articles that make up this special issue stage (...) historiographical interventions by challenging the tendency within sexological history to focus on the medical, the homosexual, the human, and the Western European at the expense of other disciplines, diagnoses, non-human subjects, and geographical locations. A particular strength of these contributions is their focus on mapping conversations among and between sexologists on both sides of the Atlantic in the early to mid 20th century – particularly in Germany, Britain, and the US – and between East and West in the early Cold War era. (shrink)

In the first volume of the History of Sexuality , Michel Foucault states in passing that prostitution and pornography, like the sexual sciences of medicine and psychiatry, are involved in the proliferation of sexualities and the perverse implantation. Against an influential misinterpretation of this passage on the part of film studies scholar Linda Williams, this paper takes up Foucault’s claim and attempts to explain the mechanism through which the sex industry, and pornography in particular, functions analogously to the sexual sciences (...) in terms of the normalizing form of power that Foucault describes. Whereas Williams sets the question of prostitution aside, and argues that pornography must be a confessional discourse for Foucault, this paper argues that consumption rather than confession is the mechanism through which both prostitution and pornography deploy sexualities within a disciplinary system of power. (shrink)

Foucault’s sodomite’: Damian’s Liber gomorrhianus (1049) reopened. Taking Michel Foucault’s famous statement about the difference between the ‘Medieval sodomite’ and the heteronormative ‘19th century homosexual’ as its cue, this article surveys the discursive source of that statement in the work of Peter Damian (1007–1072) with regard to his obscure, yet consequential text, Liber gomorrhianus (presented in 1049 to Pope Leo IX, preceding the Council of Reims). Drawing on the recent research by Ranft and because Damian is such an understated figure (...) in the corpus of Medieval philosophy, an overview of Damian’s life and work is presented, especially in terms of Damian’s 11th century reforming labour ethics. Only then the article proceeds to reopen Damian’s text, indicating that the ‘Medieval sodomite’ is far removed from an elementary precursor to the modern scientia sexualis homosexual, but is indeed presented by Damian as a complex and gender-inclusive licentious person, within the context of the disintegration of sexual morality (especially within the domains of celibacy and confession) in the middle to late 11th century church and monasteries. Cross-referencing the own translation of the Latin text with the translation of Payer, the article disseminates and critiques the key concepts in Damian’s argument for the summarily deposition of lapsi [fallen priests] and the expulsion of promiscuous monks (and nuns) from the orders, especially with regard to Damian’s concepts of contra-natural and irrational fornication. Pope Leo’s deeply pastoral and insightful answer to Damian ( Ad splendidum nitentis ) is presented in the last part of the article, including his sanctioning of Damian’s complex concept of sodomy, which on that ground, became the conceptual source for the council of Reims (1049), and subsequent Medieval councils dealing with the ‘problem of sodomy’ in the church and monasteries. The canons of those councils were indeed the source of Foucault’s analysis of Medieval sexuality – yet the more fundamental source was Damian’s obscure text. (shrink)

Foucault’s debt to Kant is usually examined with respect to his ethos of critique. In fact, Kant’s writings on aesthetic judgment, teleological judgment, and anthropology constitute an important, if implicit, object of Foucault’s genealogical efforts to free Western culture from a scientia sexualis that oppresses sexual minorities. Comparing Foucault’s use of Kant to the use made by psychoanalytic theorists of sexual difference, this paper argues that the concept of non-teleological pleasure found in Kant’s critique of aesthetic judgment may (...) provide grounds for queer thinkers to resist and reconfigure associations between death, knowledge, and sexuality as a function of organisms—associations inherited from the post-Kantian philosophical anthropology and biological medicine of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate ‘ilm al-bah (the science of coitus), as well as other world traditions of sexual knowledge, by European sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contrasted it with their own forms of inquiry into sexual matters in the modern field of sexual science. It argues that the homogenisation and minimisation of all ancient and non-European forms of medical knowledge about sex, even one as substantial as the (...) ‘ilm al-bah tradition, supported a particular story about the origins of sexology's own emergence as a new and unprecedented biomedical and scientific way of knowing, characterised by an opposition assumed between sexuality and religion, by a view of sexual variations as perversions or pathologies, and by a view of Arabs and Muslims as sexually excessive. The article focusses on French, English, German, Austrian, and Italian sources of the 19th century that discussed the history of sexual medicine, relating these accounts to recent attempts to historicise sexology. It considers how forms of colonial hierarchy and exoticist views of non-European cultures impacted the dismissal of ‘ilm al-bah among European sexual scientists and how they may continue to exert an influence on forms of modern historical inquiry that are not attentive to scholarship on medieval Islamicate sexual medicine. (shrink)

그리스도인의 삶은 언제나 정결의 덕을 칭송해왔다. 반면에 성적 유혹은 정결을 위협하는 문제이자 장애물로, 유혹을 이겨내고 정결을 보존하는 것은 우리 시대에도 중요한 가치이다. 특히 덕행의 길에 있어 악마의 유혹은 언제나 존재해왔고, 첫 사람 아담에서 부터 우리들에게까지 건강한 남자라면 성적 유혹을 피할 수 없다. 교회 안에서 널리 존경받는 성 안토니오와 성 베네딕도도 다른 많은 이들처럼 이런 성적 유혹을 겪었지만, 그것을 이겨내었고 정결의 덕을 보존하였다. 이 연구에서는 이 두 성인의 성적 유혹 이야기를 다루려 한다. 두 성인의 유혹 이야기는 오늘날 우리에게도 많은 가르침과 충고를 (...) 준다. 악마의 유혹은 다양하고 언제나 우리를 노리고 있다. 안토니오가받았던 다양한 유혹은 우리에게 매일 일어나는 유혹과 유사하다. 그리고 첫 기적을 했었던 베네딕도도 유혹을 받았다는 것은, 우리가 아무리 강하게 보일지라도, 얼마나 허약한 존재인지 우리에게 일깨워 준다. 성인들이 성적 유혹을 해결하는 방법도 오늘날 우리에게 많은 가르침을 준다. 그들은 다양한 방법으로 유혹을 이겨나갔는데, 안토니오는 기도, 믿음, 단식, 그리스도를 생각함 등 여러 방식으로 유혹을 이겨나갔고, 베네딕도는 외적 고통을 통해서 유혹을 이겨내었다. 그리고 이 모든 해결법들은 하느님에 대한 신앙과 은총 아래에서 이루어진다. 만일 우리가 유혹을 극복하기를 원한다면, 우리는 다양한 방식을 가지고 끊임없이 악마의 유혹을 거슬러 싸워야 하며, 그렇게 싸워 나갈 때, 하느님에 대한 믿음과 그분의 은총 아래에서 유혹을 이길 수 있다: 우리를 위해서 육을 입으신 그리스도의 도우심으로, 우리는 영적 성숙에 나아갈 수 있는 것이다. (shrink)

**For my more recent views of the third kind of cognition, see my "Finding Oneself in God"** -/- Abstract: Cognition of the third kind, or scientia intuitiva, is supposed to secure beatitudo, or virtue itself (E5p42). But what is scientia intuitiva, and how is it different from (and superior to) reason? I suggest a new answer to this old and vexing question at the core of Spinoza’s project in the Ethics. On my view, Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva resembles (...) Descartes’s scientia more than has been appreciated. Although Spinoza’s God is not Descartes’s benevolent, transcendent God, Spinoza agrees with Descartes that the highest certainty requires that a cognizer correctly conceive of God and her causal relation to God; it is only with cognition of the third kind that a cognizer can be certain that her adequate (that is, clear and distinct) representations of extramental things agree with formally real, extramental ideata, and so are true. If this is right, a reading of Spinoza that has dominated scholarship since the Ethics’ publication is misguided: for Spinoza, it is not always the case that having (and recognizing that one has) a clear and distinct idea is sufficient for knowing that that idea is true. I end the chapter by suggesting why scientia is intuitive for Spinoza: Spinoza attempts to avoid Cartesian-Circle-style circularity by insisting that a cognizer must intuit the correct representation of God and God’s relation to things. (shrink)

Descartes's conception of matter changed the account of physical nature in terms of extension and related quantitative terms. Plants and animals were turned into species of machines, whose natural functions can be explained mechanistically. This article reflects on the consequences of this transformation for the psychology of human soul. In so far the soul is rational it lacks extension, yet it is also united with the body and affected by it, and so it is able to act on extended matter. (...) The article examines Descartes's concept of scientia and his different uses of nature, and argues that there is much more continuity between Aristotelian and Cartesian psychology than is usually recognized when it comes to an explanation of the functions of the embodied human soul. If this makes psychology unfit for inclusion in the new science of nature, its object is still a natural phenomenon and has an important place within scientia as Descartes conceived of it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scientia propter quid nobis—The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus by Wouter GorisClaus A. AndersenGORIS, Wouter. Scientia propter quid nobis—The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus. Münster: Aschendorff, 2022. viii + 296 pp. Paper, € 49.00The central claim of Wouter Goris's new book is that the (...) Quaestio de cognitione Dei traditionally (both in one late medieval manuscript and in some modern scholarship) attributed to John Duns Scotus not only is inauthentic but in fact represents an early reaction against Scotus's teaching on the scientific nature of metaphysics. The Quaestio in particular explores Scotus's distinction between a science "in itself" and one "for us" and, going beyond Scotus's own doctrine, shows how this distinction is applicable to metaphysics.The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers a critical edition of the Quaestio de cognitione Dei, which has hitherto been available in a plain transcription published by C. R. S. Harris in 1927. Harris's text was based on a single manuscript from the fifteenth century (Oxford, Merton College, Ms. 90); Goris bases his edition on a manuscript from the early fourteenth century (Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, Ms. 172), one that does not attribute the text to Scotus. Goris highlights that the text has significant parallels in the prologue of John of Reading's Scriptum on the first book of the Sentences; there is presently not sufficient evidence for claiming that Reading is the author of the De cognitione Dei, but it does seem clear that either Reading or some other Franciscan friar relying on Reading's Scriptum authored the text between 1316 and 1325. The Quaestio itself consists of two articles. Two appendices to the edition document longer passages from Reading's Scriptum.Part 2 investigates the use of the distinction between a science in itself and one for us in Duns Scotus and some of the early Scotists. Scotus's doctrine developed over time. At Oxford Scotus taught that theology in se is about the divine essence in its particularity; theology for us is about the most perfect concept of God attainable for human beings by natural means, that is, the concept "infinite being." It falls to metaphysics to prove that there is such a kind of being. At Paris Scotus rather taught that both theology in se and theology for us are about the divine essence in its [End Page 549] particularity. The implication is that a strictly demonstrative science about God is possible for human beings in this present life, a knowledge of God that is completely independent of metaphysics. Goris argues that this shift in the view of theology explains the absence of Scotus's famous "twin doctrines" of the univocal concept of being and of being as the first adequate object of the intellect from his theological epistemology of the Parisian period. Not too surprisingly, in the wake of Scotus we find several authors grappling with the relationship between theology and metaphysics. The positions investigated by Goris vary considerably. Richard of Conington distinguishes between human metaphysical knowledge of being and God's own metaphysical knowledge of being; the latter represents a more perfect knowledge of both God himself and creatures as included under the concept of being. Francis of Marchia employs a distinction between a general metaphysics (about being as being) and a special metaphysics (about divine being), but on the level of science for us the special part of metaphysics is subordinated to the general one. Nicolas Bonetus, by contrast, advocates a sharp distinction between metaphysical knowledge of being and natural theology; he structures his metaphysics as a purely ontological discipline and treats natural theology as a separate science; Goris sees this reorganization as Bonetus's most decisive contribution to the history of metaphysics.Part 3 analyzes the fundamental doctrines defended in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei and compares them with those of Scotus and John of Reading. The first article of the Quaestio introduces two important distinctions, the first of which is between metaphysics in itself and metaphysics for us; these two... (shrink)

Historically, Thomas Aquinas has been controversial for his use of Averroistic-Aristotelian metaphysics. Because of his doctrine of simplicity many of argued that this entails a necessitarian view of nature—a debate that would pass through Spinoza, Descartes, and even to this day. Nevertheless, Thomas would prevail, not only to sainthood, but to become the patron of education and the Teacher of the Church. The task in this paper is to demonstrate that, contrary to many current contentions in Protestant, and especially Evangelical (...) circles, Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics remains a suitable, viable, even preferable framework for Christian Theism and, for the purposes of this paper, scientific thought. The specific focus will be on creation metaphysics and the relationship between current science and Christian thought raised by Lydia Jaeger. I will conclude with an example of the ability of radical contingency in Thomas to both satisfy contemporary physics and frame a consistent and coherent Christian Theism. (shrink)

Der Begriff der „Mystik“ wird vorrangig ais eine religiose Kategorie verwendet, deren Sinngehalt im gelaufigen Sprachgebrauch nicht nur unscharf, sondern auch unklar ist. Die Versu- che, den Begriff philosophiehistorisch und interdisziplinar vor dem Hintergrund der Human- und Naturwissenschaften enger zu fassen, potenzieren und polarisieren seine Vieldeutigkeit. Im Gegenteil dazu scheint es, dass die theologischen Reflexionen auf die besonderen Formen der Religiositat, welche unter dem Begriff der Mystik subsumiert werden, am ehesten ein adäquates Verständnis der Frage und der Strategien der Einheit (...) des Menschen mit Gott zu vermitteln imstande sind. Zu den Voraussetzungen eines vertieften Verständnisses gehoren jedoch die Vertrautheit mit den philosophischen und religiösen Traditionen, welche die theoretische Basis und gleichsam das Werkzeug für die mystische Spekulation bereitstellen, sowie die Kenntnis der Modelle einer unio mystica. Die fur das Begriffsverständnis der Mystik maßgeblichen Voraussetzungen sind Gegenstand dieses Beitrags, der sich auf eine Skizze diesbezüglicher Ansichten des Albertus Magnus beschränkt. Dieser, als Begründer der deutschen Dominikanerschule angesehene Universalgelehrte, gilt als der Wegbereiter der rheinischen Mystik, zu deren Exponenten u. a. Dietrich von Freiberg, Meister Eckhart und Heinrich Seuse gerechnet werden. Eine getreue Wiedergabe der Ansichten des Albertus Magnus ist das Ziel dieser Prasentation, die zugleich eine Stimme in der Diskussion sein will, die u. a. von Alois M. Haas, Kurt Ruh, Werner Beierwaltes, Ruedi Imbach, Burkhard Mojsisch, Alain de Libera, Kurt Flasch und Loris Sturlese zum Begriff der dominikanischen Mystik teilweise kontrovers geführt wird. (shrink)

Cet article constitue le second volet d’une même réflexion consacrée aux rapports de l’art et plus particulièrement de l’architecture avec les mathématiques à la Renaissance. Après une première étude consacrée à la place des mathématiques dans la constitution de l’opérativité architecturale, l’auteur renverse sa perspective en examinant l’influence que l’architecture, dans son usage des mathématiques, a pu avoir sur la constitution même des mathématiques, comme si l’architecture de la Renaissance s’érigeait finalement en métamathématique.

Die Tradition der Metaphysik, auf die sich die Neuzeit bezieht verdankt ihre Physiognomie den systematischen Ansätzen, die den nach Aristoteles „zweiten“ Anfang der Metaphysik im 13. Jhd. Bestimmen. Der Zusammenhang, der die mittelalterliche Metaphysik mit der neuzeitlichen Metaphysik und Metaphysikkritik verbindet, ist jedoch immer noch zu wenig erforscht. Die vorliegende Untersuchung greift den einflußreichsten der mittelalterlichen Ansätze, den des Johannes Duns Scotus, auf und verfolgt seine Rezeption und Transformation über Francisco Suárez und Christian Wolff zu Immanuel Kant und Charles Sanders (...) Peirce. Nach Duns Scotus ist Metaphysik als Wissenschaft vom Seienden als Seienden nur dann möglich, wenn man sie nicht als Wissenschaft vom ersten ausgezeichneten Seienden, sondern als Wissenschaft vom ersterkannten Begriff des Seienden versteht. Da dieser Begriff nur im Rückgang auf die Voraussetzungen unserer kategorialen Prädikate erfaßt und nur im Durchgang durch seine modalen Bestimmungen entfaltet werden kann, faßt Scotus Metaphysik strikt als „Transzendentalwissenschaft“ (scientia transcendens) und ordnet ihr als Inhalt die formalmodale Bestimmung und Explikation der „ratio entis“ zu. Die Erkenntnis des unendlichen Seienden ist Teil dieser Explikation und nur als solche möglich. Die neuzeitliche Gestalt der Metaphysik, die sich auf der bisher meist herangezogenen Folie der Metaphysik des Thomas von Aquin als Traditionsbruch darstellt, erweist sich im Blick auf das Konzept des Scotus als Resultat einer kritischen Transformation. (shrink)

From scientia to science Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9483-3 Authors Peter R. Anstey, Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, 9054 New Zealand Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Uno de los aspectos destacados del pensamiento de Martin Heidegger es la crítica a la ciencia. En Heidegger esta crítica parte del supuesto de la falta de base, de soporte que la sostenga, que tiene la ciencia al no contemplar precísamente que haya de tener un fundamento último, sino que se centra únicamente en su propio progreso sin volver la vista atrás hacia aquello que tiene como raíz. Heidegger señala en su obra en repetidas ocasiones que "la ciencia no piensa". (...) Ese no pensar de la ciencia suena en el propio Heidegger como paradójico porque la misma ciencia implica precísamente el ejercicio del pensar, siendo ese el cometido de la actividad científica. Pero a lo que se refiere Heidegger con ese no-pensar de la ciencia es a que ésta ha derivado en una ciencia del ente sin tener en cuenta para nada el ser que la funda. Nuestro propósito en este trabajo entonces será el de esclarecer la crítica a la ciencia que hace Heidegger. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften (...) sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

In the Fifth Meditation Descartes considers the problem of knowledge preservation : the challenge of accounting for the diachronic certainty of perfect knowledge [scientia]. There are two general solutions to PKP in the literature: the regeneration solution and the infallible memory solution. While both readings pick up on features of Descartes’ considered view, I argue that they ultimately fall short. Salvaging pieces from both readings and drawing from Descartes’ virtue theory, I argue on textual and systematic grounds for a (...) dispositionalist solution. On this view, the diachronic certainty of scientia is achieved through virtuous habits of belief. (shrink)

Oma algses mitmetähenduslikkuses on see F. Baconi aforism kõige tihendatum tõdemus, mis tõmbab olemusliku eraldusjoone ühelt poolt antiikse ja keskaegse ning teisalt uusaegse arusaama vahele teadusest ja teadusteadmisest. Artiklis püüab autor anda võimaluste piires tervikpildi uusaja teaduse industriaalselt (tehnoloogiliselt) orienteeritud teadmistüübi tekkimisest. Uusaja teaduse kujunemiseks vajaliku pöörde maailmavaateliste eeldustena tuleb käsitleda: (1) põhimõtteliselt uut subjekti ja objekti käsitust; (2) täiesti uut väärtusruumi, uut teaduse ideoloogiat (ilmalikkus, kriitiline vaim, tõesus ja praktiline kasulikkus); (3) tunnetuslaadi muutust — kontemplatsioonilt interventsioonile, kvaliteedi kirjeldamiselt kvantiteedi (...) uurimisele; (4) looduse käsitlemist Kosmose asemel seaduspäraselt korrastatud objektide “väljana”. Uue tunnetusstiili — empiirilise ja teoreetilise tunnetuse kokkuviimine, hüpoteetilis-deduktiivse metodoloogia kujundamine Galilei poolt, abstraktse ja sünteetilis-tekstilise loomuga spekulatsiooni asendumine uurimisobjekti ehituse, korrapära ja põhjuslikkuse objektiivse analüüsiga, universaalsete loodusseaduste doktriini kujunemine jms—kujunemine konstitueeris uut tüüpi teadmise. Teadmise kui nähtava maailma piltkoopia asemele luuakse teadmine kui loodusobjektide seaduspära analüütiline rekonstruktsioon. See on vormiltmatemaatiline, päritolult eksperimentaalne ning loodusobjektide kontrollimisele ja ümbertegemisele suunatud nn valdamisteadmine. This F. Bacon's aphorism in its original ambiguity is the most condensed belief that draws a distinctive essential line between ancient and medieval understanding of science and scientific knowledge on one hand and modern understanding on the other. The author aims at providing, as far as possible, an integral overview of emerging of the industrially (technologically) orientated type of knowledge of modern times. Ideological/philosophical preconditions of the change necessary for emerging of modern science are: (1) a fundamentally new approach to the subject and object; (2) a completely new system of values, a new ideology of science (secularity, critical spirit, trueness and utilitarianism); (3) a change in manner of cognizance - from contemplation to intervention, from describing quality to studying quantity; (4) treating nature as a naturally organised "field" of objects instead of the Cosmos. Emerging of a new style of cognizance - bringing together of empirical and theoretical cognition, the devise of the hypothetical-deductive method by Galilei, replacement of speculations abstract and synthetic-textual in nature with objective study of the structure, regularity and causality of the object of study, establishment of the doctrine of universal natural laws etc - constituted a new type of knowledge. Knowledge as a copy of the visible world is replaced by knowledge as an analytical reconstruction of the regularity of natural objects. It is so-called dispositive knowledge, morphologically mathematical, originally experimental and aimed at control and alteration of natural objects. (shrink)

Molinism, formerly an invective, is nowadays a topic of philosophy. This book, however, does not deal with the modern renaissance of Middle Knowledge, rather, it explores its proliferation during the 17th and 18th centuries. The focus shifts from reviewing current trends in Church History to rehearsing the metaphysics that backed up Middle Knowledge. Fact, in Molinism, is threefold: It could have been otherwise, it belongs to some possible world, it is necessarily known by the Omniscient. Whereas the classical account of (...) God's foreknowledge rests on its being postvolitional, the Molinist qualification of this account denies that it applies to the counterfactuals. On what else then does it prevolitionally depend that God knows for sure something to happen rather than not to happen? The Salmantine Treatise on God's foreknowledge edited here provides some additional piece of evidence of a deep Molinist disagreement. Though the manuscript was ready for print in 1653, this business failed and the manuscript fell into oblivion along with its author. The Jesuit Luke Wadding (1593-1651) belongs to a number of men from Waterford who at a time, when intolerance forced Catholics into large scale emigration, hopefully turned towards Spain. He must not be confounded with his famous namesake, the Franciscan friar, who was his cousin. (shrink)

I am not going to solve in this paper the plethora of problems and riddles surrounding Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva, but I do hope to break some new ground and help make this key doctrine more readily understandable. I will proceed in the following order (keep in mind the word ‘proceed’). I will first provide a close preliminary analysis of the content and development of Spinoza’s discussion of scientia intuitiva in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and (...) the Ethics. In the second part, I will address two closely related questions which have drawn the attention of many readers: (i) Is scientia intuitiva a cognition that is inferential? and (ii) Is scientia intuitiva a kind of cognition that is closely tied to causation? To the surprise of many, I will argue that Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge is both inferential and causal (in a certain rigid sense of ‘inferential’ and ‘causal’ to be explained below). In the third and final part, I will explain Spinoza’s preference for scientia intuitiva and his frequent use of mathematical examples, and then attempt to map the major remaining questions and problems surrounding the doctrine. (shrink)

Legal dogmatics in Continental European law (scientia iuris, Rechtswissenschaft) consists of professional legal writings whose task is to systematize and interpret valid law. Legal dogmatics pursues knowledge of the existing law, yet in many cases it leads to a change of the law. Among general theories of legal dogmatics, one may mention the theories of negligence, intent, adequate causation and ownership. The theories produce principles and they also produce defeasible rules. By means of production of general and defeasible theories, (...) legal dogmatics aims at obtaining a system of law that is both internally coherent and harmonized with its background in morality and (political) philosophy. Legal dogmatics is necessary in the context of constitutional constraints on the majority rule. Only if the courts act on the basis of Reason they can be a legitimate counterpart of the majority rule. And Reason cannot be exhausted by particular decision making. It also needs a more abstract deliberation, given by expert jurists. However, legal dogmatics has been a target of several kinds of criticism: empirical, morally-political, epistemological, logical, and ontological. The position taken in this article is to answer such criticism by mutually adjusting philosophy and the practices of the law. (shrink)

Marsílio de Pádua, embora não tenha escrito sobre Teoria da História, contudo oferece pistas para analisar-se como a ciência histórica estava formulada no século XN. Pela leitura de seus textos, vê-se como formulou a teoria a partir de fatos candentes de seu tempo.

“Considered objectively, there can be only one human reason, there... can be only one true system of philosophy from principles, in however many different and even conflicting ways one has philosophized about the same proposition”—so declares Kant in the Vorrede to the “Doctrine of Right.” Kant makes this observation in the process of framing a striking claim: “prior to the development of critical philosophy there had been no philosophy at all.” Eckart Förster adduces this claim as a point of departure (...) for undertaking “to grasp and understand the single [sic] thought” that orients his ambitious new study, Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction. It is thus with reference to Kant’s pronouncement that Förster propounds his book’s lead thought, or at least the first part of it: “philosophy begins in 1781 and ends in 1806,” this in the sense that over those twenty-five years “philosophy became a science, thereby also arriving at knowledge of itself.” Förster sets himself the task of elucidating the “internal dynamic” of the “fundamental idea” that informs the philosophical-historical thesis to which he keys his investigation. The fundamental idea in question is the classic speculative problematic of objective knowledge, which in the Kantian context of Förster’s study takes the form of the issue of how it is that we know (discursively, intuitively) “the supersensible substrate of appearances.” Beyond simply anatomizing this issue, however, the author engages “to reproduce its immanent development,” systematically “reconstructing” it through interlinked analyses of seminal writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Goethe, and Hegel. (shrink)