_First Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality_ brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Andrew Bailey’s highly regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new edition. The comprehensive introductory material for each chapter and selection remains, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology have been added. New readings include Edmund Gettier on justified true belief, Wesley Salmon on induction, and Helen Longino on feminist science.

This volume presents the excellent and popular translation by Haldane and Ross of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy , an introduction by Stanley Tweyman which explores the relevance of Descartes' Regulae and his method of analysis in the Meditations , and six articles which indicate the diversity of scholarly opinion on the topic of method in Descartes' philosopy.

The article will be devoted to such problems as a idea of subsidiarity, a cosmopolitan right and a visitor figure in context and interpretation of ancient and modern philosophy. The article deals with the concept of subsidiarity which is taken as a point of departure for the discipline of borderology, an academic study with Kantian roots. Borderology, according to the principle of subsidiarity, can present as a new field of investigation which invites philosophers and social scientists to replace a “top (...) down” with a “bottom up” procedure. The figure of the visitor is close linked with the experience of subsidiarity which means the freedom and initiative below the level of State. In Immanuel Kant’s strategy for perpetual peace, the figure of the visitor launches a critique of a tendency to self-aggrandizement, characteristic of the modern State and thereby a defense of the political independence of local border regions. The visitor also invites us to see, think and work to liberate our own subjectivity from false voices of sovereignty. Kant articulates the offer of the visitor by bringing in the term Verkehr. Using Kant scholar Otfried Höffe,s methodology we show how idea of subsidiarity is overlooked in international political theory, explain some constitutive principles of borderology, from which is more important is the methodological principle of an intercultural discourse and presents borderology as an anti-Huntingtonian model for border studies. (shrink)

This volume presents, for the first time in English, Husserl’s seminal 1923/24 lecture course First Philosophy together with a selection of material from the famous research manuscripts of the same time period. The lecture course is divided into two systematic, yet interrelated parts. It has long been recognized by scholars as among the most important of the many lecture courses he taught in his career. Indeed it was deemed as crucially important by Husserl himself, who composed it with (...) a view toward eventual publication. It is unsurprising, then, that First Philosophy is the only lecture course that is consistently counted among his major works. In addition to furnishing valuable insights into Husserl’s understanding of the history of philosophy, First Philosophy is his most sustained treatment of the phenomenological reduction, the central concept of his philosophical methodology. The selection of supplemental texts expands on the topics treated in the lectures, but also add other themes from Husserl’s vast oeuvre. The manuscript material is especially worthwhile, because in it, Husserl offers candid self-criticisms of his publicly enunciated words, and also makes forays into areas of his philosophy that he was loath to publicize, lest his words be misunderstood. As Husserl’s position as a key contributor to contemporary thought has, with the passage of time, become increasingly clear, the demand for access to his writings in English has steadily grown. This translation strives to meet this demand by providing English-speaking readers access to this central Husserlian text. It will be of interest to scholars of Husserl’s work, non-specialists, and students of phenomenology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What is First Philosophy? The Science of Being qua Being Categories and Change What Being is Primary? Overview of Metaphysics Z Subject Essence The Problem of Matter The Status of Form Potentiality and Actuality Form–Matter Predication Form and Functional Matter Primary Substances Theology Bibliography.

I argue that Metaphysicsλ‎ is a unified work, and one which is not a continuation of the central books ΖΗΘ‎. It outlines an extensive project in First Philosophy, which has close connections with ΑΒΓΕ‎, but which proceeds on a different trajectory from ΖΗ‎. The principal problem in understanding λ‎ as a whole is how to reconcile Aristotle's explicit presentation of the book as a highly unified study with the disparate character of its two halves – the first a (...) general‐metaphysical enquiry into the features which changeable substances have as being substances of that kind, the second a detailed investigation of the specific character and activity of immaterial substances. My paper aims to show how this reconciliation is possible, and what we can learn about Aristotle's conception of first philosophy as a result. (shrink)

Ethics as First Philosophy brings together original essays by an outstanding group of international scholars that discuss the work of Emmanuel Levinas. The book explores the significance of Levinas' work for philsophy, psychology and religion. Ethics as First Philosophy comprises an excellent collection of work on this major contemporary thinker. The book presents Levinas philosophy from a wide and well-balanced variety of perspectives. The contributions range from thematic discussions of Levinas central concepts to explorations of his affinities and (...) differences with other key writers such as Kant, Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Blanchot and Derrida. Some of the authors focus on the religious and philosophical issues presented by Levinas while others analyze the role of Levinas within phenomenology in or within recent French philosophy. (shrink)

The dissertation focuses on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In claiming "ethics is first philosophy," Levinas helps overcome the perceived indifference to ethical concerns among post-modern thinkers. However, it is often overlooked that this claim is as much about philosophy as it is about the importance of ethics. The dissertation explains why Levinas' philosophy turns to ethics and what philosophy is capable of once it has adopted this ethical figure. ;The first section is devoted to Levinas' Totality and (...) Infinity. There, Levinas argues that ethics reorients philosophy by accomplishing the metaphysical desire for beings as such, what Levinas calls the absolutely other. A reading of Jacques Derrida's essay "Violence and Metaphysics" shows that Totality and Infinity is profoundly determined by a theological conceptuality and correlatively by forgetting the ontological difference. This suggests that the primacy of ethics depends on an anterior instance, thus rendering Levinas' first philosophy secondary. ;The second section of the dissertation positions Levinas' ethical philosophy within the tradition of phenomenological philosophy and its quest for a subject who is first or ultimate. Whereas Husserl practiced the reduction to the point where it reached consciousness, Levinas practices it to a point beyond that: responsibility. Ethics intervenes as a supplement to Husserl's phenomenology: ethics is added to phenomenology in order to explain its possibility at the same time as it replaces phenomenology with ethical descriptions. This section concludes by contesting the privilege that Levinas accords to ethics in the phenomenology of the subject. It does so by showing that Heidegger's Dasein analytic offers phenomenological philosophy a similar subject. ;The third section argues that in responsibility, phenomena appear which do not appear when the subject is consciousness. These include religious phenomena. The phenomenology of responsibility can thus be the basis for a philosophy of religion. Like the modern philosophy of religion figured in Hegel and Nietzsche, it articulates the rationality or significance of religious phenomena without recourse to the dogmatic authority of faith or historical tradition. However, a philosophy of religion issued from Levinas surpasses the origin of this tradition in the death of God and end of metaphysics. (shrink)

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is often a starting point for students of philosophy. It forms the basis for much of Continental thought, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. Descartes’ text invites readers on a philosophical journey and this brief overview by Kurt Brandhorst is designed to prepare and accompany them. Brandhorst guides first-time readers through Descartes' language and offers pathways to a clear understanding of his method, ideas, and conclusions, while at the same time stimulating serious meditation on (...) this deeply influential philosophical text. (shrink)

The response developed in this book is the creation of a metaphysical understanding of law or, in other words, what Aristotle called a 'first philosophy'.

This book provides a study of Walter Benjamin's first philosophy in two senses: it focuses on his early philosophy as a source of insight into his later works, and it explores his thinking about the nature of truth, method, experience, the relation of body and mind, and the limits of human knowledge. While most attention is paid to Benjamin's later works, his writings from roughly 1914-1925 explore philosophical themes and develop a critical method. This book argues that this early (...) work founds a series of original and lasting questions and insights. Benjamin understands experience as a broken continuum of diverse forms of spiritual expression, each of which is ephemeral. This leads Benjamin to a series of thought figures: the notion of language as a medium of experience; a philosophy of perception based in the natural history of the human body; an emphasis on mimesis as a faculty of creative assimilation; and a discovery of memory as a power for excavation of meaning in past experience. This book demonstrates that the need for a new understanding of the metaphysical structure of experience, as well as a new conception of truth, play a special role in shaping Benjamin's subsequent work. Walter Benjamin's First Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on the thought of Walter Benjamin, 20th-century Continental philosophy, comparative literature, and modern German thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 189-206 [Access article in PDF] First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy Chaïm Perelman "As a crystal reconstitutes itself from one of its particles, all philosophy creates itself from the idea of an open dialectic, and carries, in itself, the same dialectical character." —Ferdinand Gonseth A number of metaphysicians, including Bergson and Heidegger, consider metaphysics the only knowledge of consequence and use the word to (...) refer to their own philosophies. But a large number of eminent metaphysicians, among them Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte and Hegel had only disdain for metaphysics and used the word to discredit the philosophy of their adversaries. D'Alembert (602-604) once noted that those referred to as metaphysicians had little regard for one another. "I have no doubt," he added, "that this title will soon be an insult to our great minds, just as the name sophist which, although it meant wise, was debased in Greece by those who bore it and rejected by the true philosophers."The preceding remarks should, I think, convince the few who would still doubt it that declaring oneself an adversary of metaphysics does not mean that one does not do metaphysics. On the contrary, the very fact of opposing a certain conception of metaphysics presupposes that one advocates another conception of metaphysics; this needs to be made explicit, if it is only implicit. In a very interesting study, Mr. Everett W. Hall has recently analyzed the metaphysical assumptions of four types of positivism (Mach, Comte, Watson, Carnap). Even without this analysis the conclusion is predictable; he who is opposed to a certain manner of treating a problem remains himself within the same problematic. Indeed, such oppositions produce a continuous expansion and dialogue about the meaning of the word "metaphysics." This happens not through an automatic and necessary dialectic, but through the dialectic directed by the philosopher's concerns.The first metaphysicians set forth a particular philosophy of being [être]; those opposed advocated a different philosophy of being. By expanding its meaning, Aristotle gave metaphysics its first dialectical movement and identified it as the study of being as being and ontology. Kantian criticism treats dogmatic metaphysics with disdain, and shows that all theories [End Page 189] of being must be preceded by a theory of knowledge: the first principles of philosophy would be those of epistemology and not those of ontology. Since Kant, and for more than a century, metaphysical debates would be about the primacy of ontology or epistemology, and the opposition to their variants, realism and idealism. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, the debate broadened. Under the influence of pragmatism, the philosophy of values, and Bergsonism, a strong current of philosophical thinking developed, which integrated the theory of knowledge into a general theory of action. It proclaimed the primacy of a philosophy of action, philosophy of life, and philosophy of values. It is within a metaphysics broadened by these various developments that different conceptions of metaphysics will struggle to establish the primacy of their principles. But, despite their differences, all of these metaphysics can be considered first philosophies.Aristotle wrote a treatise on first philosophy, the first to be called metaphysics. First philosophies refer to any metaphysics that purports to determine first principles such as the fundamentals of being (ontology), of knowledge (epistemology), or of action (axiology). First philosophies position first principles as absolute and that they underlie all philosophical questions. The word "first" informs the argumentation used to establish the primacy of first philosophies. A principle is first when it comes before all others in a temporal, logical, epistemological or ontological order; the insistence on this point serves to emphasize its primacy or axiologic pre-eminence. That which is first or basic, that which precedes or presupposes all the rest, is also first in order of importance.As systematic metaphysics, first philosophies establish an interdependence among ontology, epistemology, and axiology. The course taken by first philosophies is determined by a starting point constituted by a necessary reality, a self-evident concept, or an absolute value before which one can... (shrink)

Aristotle’s writings contain more direct statements about priorities and rankings among the various sciences, degrees of accuracy within them, routes to knowledge from first principles, “first philosophy” and its characteristics, and the relation between sciences and practical concerns than almost any other philosopher we know.Yet taken together, Aristotle’s statements on these matters belie the apparent systematicity of his philosophical temperament. Almost every devotee of Aristotle is compelled to choose certain texts as authoritative and relegate others to some specific (...) topic-context in which they have limited validity. An only slightly shaky consensus among Aristotle’s readers has emerged through this process over time: on that consensus, Aristotelian first philosophy equals what later came to be called metaphysics, and is characterized by its remoteness from particular human discourses and desires, and from the types of knowledge we connect most directly with perception. First principles are also divorced from perception and are known through an incompletely explained intuitive process, but remain indemonstrable. Theoretical wisdom or contemplation soars above the domain of the human struggle, providing a stabilizing but distanced and abstract mode of considering the highest and most divine matters of which we are capable of thinking. (shrink)

This article responds to Merold Westphal’s assertion that Paul Tillich suffers from “ontological xenophobia.” Westphal 1) subverts Tillich’s Augustinian/Thomistic typology into a Neoplatonist/Augustinian one and 2) critiques Tillich via Levinasian alterity. In response I show that 1) Westphal has misunderstood Tillich’s notion of Augustinianism insofar as he minimizes the role of estrangement in this viewpoint and that 2) Tillich’s notion of personhood and responsibility are anything but incompatible with Levinasian Ethics as First Philosophy. Tillich’s endorsement of theonomy in contradistinction (...) to autonomy and heteronomy overcomes both the arbitrariness of pure autonomy and the tyranny of pure heteronomy. (shrink)

In addition to the above Aquinas notes that there are other objects of theoretical knowledge that do not depend on matter for their being, since they can exist apart from matter. Some of these are never found in matter, such as God or an angel. Others, such as substance, quality, being, potency, act, the one and the many, etc., exist in matter in certain cases although not in others. The fact that such objects exist without matter in certain instances suffices (...) to establish Thomas’ point here, that they do not depend on matter in order to exist. Such objects, therefore, those that do not depend on matter for their being, will be treated by a third theoretical science, sometimes known as theology or divine science, sometimes as metaphysics, and sometimes as first philosophy. (shrink)

Reale's monumental work establishes the exact dimensions of Aristotle's concept of first philosophy and proves the profound unity of concept that exists in Aristotle's Metaphysics.

First Philosophy and the Kinds of Substance JOSEPH G. DEFILIPPO ON A CERTAIN INTERPRETATION Aristotle's Metaphysics contains two incompati- ble conceptions of metaphysics or, as he calls it, first philosophy. At two points in the treatise he identifies first philosophy with theology . Along with this identification comes a certain view about the nature and number of theoretical sciences. We are told in E. 1 that there are three: natural philosophy, mathematics, and theology. Natural philosophy deals with (...) nonseparate,' mutable substance, whereas the objects of mathematics are nonseparate but immutable. It is left to theology to study substance that is both separate and immutable . Hence it is prior to the other two theoretical sciences and more worthy of honor. But for Aristotle first philosophy is not merely a compartmentalized science concerned with a single genus or kind of substance; he means it to be a universal science of "being qua being." Indeed, it is the status of first philosophy as the primary theoretical science that is supposed to provide for its universal scope. As he says in E. 1, it is universal "in this way, because it is first" 0o26a3o-31). Large and well- known difficulties loom in the way of this tantalizing idea. First, it is not clear how theology's position of primacy is the cause of its universal scope; if anything, divine substance seems to be a special item within a more.. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as a (...) kind of psychology.Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash.Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

In the Metaphysics Aristotle explicitly identifies first philosophy, the science of "being qua being," with theology . But the treatise never explains how theology could also be a universal science of being. This dissertation will attempt to provide such an explanation. Its procedure will differ from past approaches by attempting to understand the programmatic remarks of VI.1 in the light of Aristotle's actual conception of god, his theology proper. ;Chapter two examines Aristotle's notion of god as a self-thinker. It (...) argues that the god of Metaphysics XII is not narcissistically engaged in self-contemplation. Rather, Aristotle's statements that god "thinks himself" are meant to express the fact that he is an essentially active mind and therefore a pure actuality. ;Chapter three examines what it means for something to be a pure actuality, and in particular, a purely actual mind. It argues, based on a comparison between god and the fullest actuality of human thought, that the content of the divine thinking is just the principles of "being qua being." ;Chapter four addresses directly Aristotle's conception of first philosophy. It argues that the conception of theology as a universal science of being is grounded in the application of two kinds of priority relations. Substance is the focal meaning ) of being, while god is the first of the series of three kinds of substance. ;In concluding, I first review Aristotle's conception of substance in Metaphysics VII. Following Frede , I contend that Aristotle understands sensible substance in its primary sense to be form. Accordingly, there are two grounds on which Aristotle may consistently and intelligently identify metaphysics with theology. As a pure form god is the first kind of substance. He is therefore the best example of a being, knowledge of which is necessary to understand being in general. As an essentially self-thinking, and therefore purely actual mind, god possesses the most universal knowledge. He is therefore the most appropriate object for a science of being qua being, for one comes to have knowledge of god by coming to know the principles of being qua being. (shrink)

There are several paradigms of 'first philosophy' (e.g. Aristotle, Descartes). A third paradigm of first philosophy is transcendental pragmatics or transcendental semiotics (exemplified by Peirce and Wittgenstein). Husserl correctly grasped that Descartes inaugurated first philosophy in the sense of a transcendental inquiry into the foundations of absolute knowledge. But Husserl's retrieval of Descartes remains within the second paradigm in that it ignores the role of language as a condition of the possibility of objectively constituted knowledge. I propose (...) to re-examine Descartes's conception of first philosophy to see if it can be read in the light of the third paradigm of transcendental philosophy, namely transcendental semiotics. I argue that Cartesian methodic doubt can be rehabilitated (against Wittgenstein's critique) as a kind of 'fallibilistic' approach to knowledge of a Peircean kind, and that the Cartesian cogito can be read (following Hintikka) as recognition of performative contradiction and of the necessity of speech acts, and hence of the transcendental communication community. (shrink)

This bilingual edition of Descartes' _Meditations on First Philosophy_ is aimed both specifically at serious students and professors of philosophy, and generally at anyone motivated by a strong philosophical interest.

First Philosophy : Knowledge and Reality brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Mindful of the intrinsic difficulty of much of the material, the editor has provided comprehensive introductions both to the central topics and to each individual selection. By providing a detailed discussion of the historical and intellectual background to each piece, he aims to enable readers to approach the material without unnecessary barriers to understanding. In an introductory chapter, the editor provides (...) a brief introduction to the nature of philosophical enquiry, to the nature of argument, and to the process of reading and writing within the academic discipline of philosophy. (shrink)

A epistemologia de Charles Sanders Peirce parece paradoxal quando comparada a de Rudolf Carnap e W.V. Quine. Como Carnap, mas diferentemente de Quine, Peirce considera que o conhecimento científico reside em princípios lógicos que devem se sustentar para que o discurso sobre o verdadeiro e o falso tenha sentido. Ele também compartilha a visão de Carnap de que esses princípios são anteriores à, e independentes das constatações nas ciências naturais, uma visão que Quine notoriamente rejeita. Todavia, como Quine, mas diferentemente (...) de Carnap, Peirce insiste que não há conhecimento além daquele que é obtido por meio de testes empíricos, que as verdades da lógica estão epistemologicamente a par das verdades descobertas nas ciências naturais, e que nos revelam algo sobre como as coisas são, em vez de carecerem de conteúdo fatual, como Carnap afirma. Um ar de paradoxo emerge no comprometimento simultâneo de Peirce às visões comumente consideradas próprias das teorias epistemológicas incompatíveis. A análise desse paradoxo pela comparação da concepção de conhecimento de Peirce ao de Quine e Carnap nos ajuda a apreciar melhor sua importância na tradição filosófica e na profundeza e originalidade de suas razões. (shrink)

In Aristotle's Ethics as First Philosophy Claudia Baracchi demonstrates the indissoluble links between practical and theoretical wisdom in Aristotle's thinking. Referring to a broad range of texts from the Aristotelian corpus, Baracchi shows how the theoretical is always informed by a set of practices, and specifically, how one's encounter with phenomena, the world, or nature in the broadest sense, is always a matter of ethos. Such a 'modern' intimation can, thus, be found at the heart of Greek thought. Baracchi's (...) book opens the way for a comprehensively reconfigured approach to classical Greek philosophy. (shrink)

Every thinker is related to the history of thought, but investigating this relationship is not always interesting or even profitable. In the case of Hegel, however, the philosopher’s relationship to the history of thought is one of the chief things that recommends his philosophy as a subject of study. But what makes Hegel interesting also makes him difficult, for Hegel was acutely conscious of his relation to the tradition. Perhaps Hegel had a broader and deeper awareness of this relationship than (...) any thinker before him. But this is not the important thing. What matters is that Hegel seized upon his relationship to the tradition as a problem, translating it from the language of dim, circumstantial connections into the language of philosophy’s essential vocation. For Hegel, philosophy’s relationship to the tradition is not in the first place a fact about the system of thought. It is rather the logical destiny that rules its genesis, development and perfection. The determination to put the problem of this relationship on philosophy’s agenda and so make it scientifically profitable for raising thought to maturity is the heart and soul of Hegel’s preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. This text celebrates phenomenological science as the “ladder” for leading consciousness upward into its true element, science, just at the moment when consciousness has been prepared by its historical experience to take this step. (shrink)

Juan Manuel Burgos presents his own version of personalism, which is nevertheless well rooted in the personalist tradition. He has been developing his project for years and is among a group of world-renowned personalists who study the complexity and mystery of the human person. His new book deals with the relationship between personalism and metaphysics. He poses the question of whether personalism can be considered a first philosophy. The answer is positive: it is indeed a sectorial first philosophy, (...) which may or may not be supported by traditional metaphysical projects, especially Thomistic ones. Not every personalist has to agree with its final thesis, although its position is well-founded and deserves much scholarly attention. It provokes further questions and opens up new areas of personalist discussion. This book confirms that personalism is a dynamic and growing school of thought that goes beyond describing the mere phenomena of the person and seeks deeper reasons for his being. I highly recommend this book as a new step to help us better understand the reality of the human person. (shrink)

Reale’s monumental work establishes the exact dimensions of Aristotle’s concept of first philosophy and proves the profound unity of concept that exists in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Reale’s opposition to the genetic interpretation of the Metaphysics is an updated return to a more traditional view of Aristotle’s work, one which runs counter to nearly all contemporary scholarship. Reale argues that Aristotle’s first philosophy includes a study of being, a study of substance, a study of divine substance, and a study of (...) principles and causes, all of which are integrated and dialectically reconciled. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as a (...) kind of psychology. Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash. Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, _Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy_ offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

The empiricist bent of philosophy of science and epistemology over the past four decades has recently been challenged, partly by arguments that exploit the uncertainty about what precisely the given is. It is claimed that this uncertainty stems from the fact that all observation is theory-laden; different "enities" [[sic]] are said to be observed as the theory constituting them is varied. Observations therefore do not test theories. So-called tests are really circular arguments, if they confirm the theory, or question-begging, if (...) they disconfirm it. Such is roughly the line of argument advanced by the new philosophy of science. (shrink)

Benardete reads Aristotle as Socratic dialectician writing in treatise form. The sciences of various subject matters appear at first separate (like Platonic eide) but they contain diverging accounts of being, nature, and the soul, which demand to be put together by the reader. De Anima abstracts from the soul as such in order to treat the soul “precisely.” This places limits on the unfolding of problems in phantasia and the heterogeneity of mind and being. As prelude to first (...) philosophy, De Anima raises but does not answer the question: how are the being of thinking and the being of beings related? (shrink)

Philosophy has sometimes been described as the discipline in which you can never be wrong, as the reserve of absentminded professors, aloof academics and purveyors of obscure ideas or interesting opinions. Quite the contrary. Philosophy answers the hard questions: Does everything happen by chance? Is there anything more than matter in the universe? Are humans in the same class as animals? Is there a God? Can we know the correct answer to these questions? The answers to these questions matter. We (...) are all philosophers even though we are not aware of the fact. We each have a set of ultimate priorities and principles, answers to these questions, a big picture that determines our everyday thoughts, decisions, and actions. In this book Brian Cronin uses the ideas of Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, to argue methodically towards a correct, critical, comprehensive worldview, an answer to those big questions which is the precise task of first philosophy. This book is an accessible and readable presentation of Lonergan's metaphysics, a somewhat neglected topic. Science and philosophy are complementary. Scientists answer the concrete, detailed questions about everything around us: the parts. Philosophy integrates all these into a correct worldview of the whole: of everything. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, Kant’s name has become closely associated with the “constitutivist” program within metaethics. But is Kant best read as pursuing a constitutivist approach to meta- normative questions? And if so, in what sense? In this essay, I’ll argue that we can best answer these questions by considering them in the context of a broader issue – namely, how Kant understands the proper methodology for philosophy in general. The result of this investigation will be that, while Kant (...) can indeed be read as a sort of constitutivist, his constitutivism is ultimately just one instance of a much more general approach to philosophy – which treats as fundamental our basic, self-conscious rational capacities. Thus, to truly understand why and how Kant is a constitutivist, we need to consider this question within the context of his more fundamental commitment to “capacities-first philosophy”. (shrink)

This essay argues for the philosophical standing of Walter Benjamin’s early work and posits a deeper continuity between this early work as a philosopher and the subsequent development of his work as a writer. When these fragments are read in proper relation to each other, they reveal for the first time many of the key innovations of Benjamin as a philosopher, as well as his points of influence on Horkheimer and Adorno. His early ‘Program’ critiques the Enlightenment conception of (...) experience as a means for gaining empirical knowledge, and announces the need for a new concept of experience. Benjamin follows through on this program with a method of philosophical enquiry that is by turns fragmentary and constellational, developing a series of provisional notions of experience, which form a constellation with one another: perception, mimesis, language as a medium of experience, observation and memory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 177-188 [Access article in PDF] Chaïm Perelman's "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy":Commentary and Translation David A. Frank Michelle K. Bolduc Chaïm Perelman's 1949 article, "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy," has remained unavailable to readers unable to read French. Our commentary and translation is intended to provide English readers access to the context, influences, and themes that make the article an extraordinarily important (...) work in the history of twentieth-century rhetoric. In this article, Perelman offers a powerful critique of first philosophies and anticipates the problems of radical postmodernity. "First Philosophies" remains a strikingly elegant attempt to foil what Foucault (1984, 41-42) has called the "Enlightenment blackmail of reason," the assumption held by logical positivists and radical skeptics that if reason does not yield absolute and eternal Enlightenment knowledge, there can be no knowledge.Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric project avoids Enlightenment blackmail by charting a third way between logical positivism and radical relativism, and "First Philosophies" sets forth the project's philosophical blueprint. Commencing in 1947 and culminating in 1958 with the publication of Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca sought, discovered, and developed a philosophical system designed as a rapprochement between dialectic (reason and logic) and rhetoric (the art of adapting arguments to audiences). Historians of rhetoric judge the work a "grand revolution" (Meyer 1999, 259), believing it marks a rhetorical renaissance in Europe, and suggest nothing like it will appear for another 100 years after its publication (Johnstone 1971). The New Rhetoric project influenced Gadamer and a host of post-war European and American thinkers (Mootz 1998). Michael Leff calls the 1970 English translation of Traité a "bombshell" (1994, 510). Beyond its historical importance, Crosswhite suggests that the New Rhetoric project is "the single most important event in contemporary rhetorical theory" (1996, 35)and "First Philosophies" marks Perelman's turn from logical [End Page 177] positivism to rhetoric, offering prescient answers to the post-World War II crises of reason, and the ideas in the article provide the Traité'sphilosophical glue (see in particular the English translation, 62).Perelman joined many post-war theorists, including Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in the resistance to the reign of a disembodied Enlightenment rationality. However, Perelman identified what Habermas (1987, 119) would later call the "performative contradiction" in the conclusion that radical skepticism was the only alternative to Enlightenment rationality. In "First Philosophies," Perelman responds directly to Sartre's 1943 Being and Nothingness (198; see translation below) by exposing the failure of radical skeptics to see that they had been held hostage by Enlightenment blackmail in accepting the Enlightenment criterion for truth, rejecting it, and then making skepticism an absolute. Indeed, "First Philosophies" navigates from this performative contradiction to chart a third way between Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism with an approach that he labels regressive philosophy. Regressive philosophy, Perelman argues, provides the human community with a mode of philosophical reasoning located between the extremes of Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism. In this space between extremes, Perelman identifies contingent truths and values dependent on a rhetorical mode of reasoning, one making moral judgments possible.To best understand "First Philosophies," we recognize the importance of historical context in the development of social theories of knowledge (see Delacampagne 1999; Kennedy 1999). The intellectual networks in which philosophers operate also influence the development of philosophical systems, as Randall Collins has aptly documented. In addition to historical context and intellectual networks, Frederick Beiser has recently noted: "[t] he best introduction to any philosophy is the biography of the person who created it" (1999, 5). He argues that textual analysis alone cannot illuminate the motivation or meaning of a philosophy. A sense of Perelman's biography and the cultural influences that gave rise to "First Philosophies" are necessary for a proper understanding of its themes. For Perelman, the primary intellectual exigencies of the post-war period were the interrelated crises of justice, philosophical reasoning, and responsibility to which "First Philosophies" is a... (shrink)

Descartes was both metaphysician and natural philosopher. He used his metaphysics to ground portions of his physics. However, as should be a commonplace but is not, he did not think he could spin all of his physics out of his metaphysics a priori, and in fact he both emphasized the need for appeals to experience in his methodological remarks on philosophizing about nature and constantly appealed to experience in describing his own philosophy of nature. During the 1630s, he offered empirical (...) support for the basic principles of his natural philosophy, while also promising to provide a metaphysical justification. He offered the metaphysical justification in the Meditations and Principles. and claimed absolute certainty for it. At the same time, he recognized that the particular postulated mechanisms of his natural philosophy did not reach that standard of certainty. These mechanisms were supported by empirical testing or confirming of causes through observed effects. (shrink)