In this paper, I offer an analysis of evil in Friedrich W. J. Schelling’s Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809). Schelling develops an account of the sui-genesis of God out of the two principles. These principles are 1) the dark ground (dunkler Grund) that belongs to God and 2) the self-revelation of God, who actualizes the dark ground, which grounds God antecedently. These two principles also contain in themselves the possibility and the intelligibility of the human world. (...) In order to elucidate the ontological account of the possibility of evil in Schelling, I turn to Martin Heidegger’s analyses of Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift and especially to Heidegger’s account of self-will (Eigenwille) and put these analyses in conversation with Heidegger’s own thinking about αλήθεια. I establish a conceptual affinity between Schelling’s presentation of the dark ground, which for him is the ground of selfhood, and Heidegger’s insights into the prioricity of concealment (Verborgenheit). (shrink)

This paper elucidates how the thinking about opposition that we find in the surviving passages of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and in the fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus informs discussions of the separability of the body and the soul in the Phaedo. I offer a reconstruction of the way in which these pre-Socratic ideas of opposition are appropriated and refracted in Plato’s Phaedo (especially at 85e–86e, 92a–95a, 102c–e, 102b–107a). I treat Anaxagoras first, in order to explicate how his ideas make up (...) the background of the dialogical study of the separation of the soul from the body (102b–107a). My analysis of Heraclitus comes second and shows how his ideas inform the interlocutors’ assessment of the unity characteristic of the body and the soul (92a–95a). I set the stage for the discussion of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus by relating these thinkers to the broader Pythagorean background that is apparent in the dialogue. (shrink)

New technologies provide great opportunities for cultural heritage to become more widely accessible and for cultural experience to be more meaningful. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strengths and vulnerabilities of the cultural heritage sector and the need to accelerate its digital transformation to make the most of the opportunities it provides. The Commission Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation (2011/711/EU) concluded that there is an urgent need to protect and preserve European cultural (...) heritage, and, in particular, endangered cultural heritage is still present. However, the diversity of legal approaches to cultural heritage by the Member States discourages the creation of a common European data space for cultural heritage as the European Commission recently proclaimed. In Greece, there have been significant efforts in recent decades to digitise and digitally preserve cultural heritage goods. However, the attention was not drew upon the accessibility and reuse of the digitized cultural heritage content. According to the relevant regulatory framework the existing rules on the use of digital technologies for the reproduction, use and preservation of cultural heritage content is obviously outdated. According to the paragraphs 4 and 5 of article 46 of the Greek Code for the protection of antiquities and cultural heritage in general (Law 4858/2021), a previous permission granted by the Ministry of Culture is required for the production, reproduction and dissemination to the public of impressions, copies or depictions of monuments belonging to the Public Sector, or immovable monuments that are located within archaeological sites and historical places or are isolated, or movable monuments that are kept in museums or public collections, in any way and by any means whatsoever, including Information Communication Technologies. Such permission is granted to natural or legal persons for a fee paid to the Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (HOCRED) upon the decision of the Minister of Culture, while the decision also specifies the temporal validity of the permission, the terms on which the permission is granted and the fee that must be paid. The production, reproduction and use of the aforementioned goods for other purposes, such as artistic, educational or scientific purposes, is again allowed for a fee paid to HOCRED, however, the fee can be waived upon the decision of the Minister of Culture. This Paper will examine the existing Greek legal framework and will attempt to propose an appropriate framework that will ensure open access to the digitized cultural heritage assets, enhance the recovery and transformation of the cultural heritage sector and support cultural heritage institutions in becoming more empowered and more resilient in the future. (shrink)

In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict the value (...) of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical RefutationsMarina Berzins McCoyAristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations. Scott Schreiber. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. pp. 240. $68.50, hardcover; $22.95, paperback.Scott Schreiber's Aristotle on False Reasoning is the first full-length English commentary on Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations in the last century. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations is a text that has received relatively little attention (...) in the last century of scholarship, despite a revival of interest in other aspects of Aristotle's work concerned with the nature of good argument and rhetoric. (The 1995 French translation and commentary by Loius-Andre Dorion is a notable exception.) Schreiber finds the primary reason [End Page 92] for inattention to this text to lie in the tendency of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy to resolve problems in reasoning through linguistic clarification (xiv). Aristotle's claim that some errors are due to language while others lie outside the realm of linguistic error is not one to which contemporary analytic philosophy has been particularly sympathetic. The Sophistical Refutations has been neglected in light of contemporary logic. Schreiber's book attempts to return to Aristotle's project on his own philosophical terms, in order to better understand why Aristotle classified errors in reasoning as he did. Schreiber's approach is to examine each of the twelve types of false reasoning that Aristotle lays out in the Sophistical Refutations, with particular attention to Aristotle's examples, in order to understand the principles behind the overall system.Schreiber argues that Aristotle had good reason for separating errors due to language from those outside of language: Aristotle's classification of error is tied to his notion of the resolution of false arguments. To understand how to resolve a sophistical argument, we must first understand how it could have been believed to be true. Since Aristotle's aim in the Sophistical Refutations is to show why certain sorts of arguments are deceptive to some who hear them, his method of explaining errors is less a pure examination of their logical errors than of how such erroneous arguments can deceive. Aristotle is concerned with two types of problems with sophistical argument: first, why such an argument is false; and second, why it might appear to be true. Schreiber shows that most commentators have not given sufficient attention to the second of these concerns in their attempts to understand Aristotle's taxonomy. As Schreiber puts it, "Examples of false reasoning are unified into groups and differentiated into subgroups not by the nature of the confusions that they engender but by the different ways that confusion is cleared up" (54). False reasoning is due not only to mistakes in logic, but also to mistaken beliefs about language and reality. Careful examination of Aristotle's thinking allows us to see the importance of beliefs about the world in good and bad argument.For the most part, Schreiber's examinations of Aristotle's examples are lucid and helpful in understanding both the particular example at hand as well as the general picture of Aristotle's classifications. Schreiber continually returns to the importance of Aristotle's own view of language and argument in contrast to the approaches of contemporary linguistics and logic. For example, while some twentieth-century scholars have attempted to explain Aristotle's distinction between homonymy and amphiboly in terms of the contemporary distinction between semantics and syntax, [End Page 93] Aristotle seems to distinguish the two according to whether a general predicate signifies many particulars regardless of context, or in a propositional context (31). In the end, Schreiber does not think that the categories of homonymy and amphiboly can be completely distinct, even on Aristotle's own grounds, but still finds the categories useful. Schreiber is also careful to provide criticism of Aristotle's categories when warranted, both defending Aristotle against his contemporary critics when he thinks they have misunderstood him, and pointing out genuine weaknesses in Aristotle's arguments.Schreiber's book is clearly intended as a response to the contemporary Anglo-American reading of Aristotle. Much of the book assumes at least some familiarity with the ways in... (shrink)

Science studies have long been concerned with the complex interrelationship between scienti?c research and popular culture’s interpretations and reconstructions of scienti?c ?ndings (Kember 2003; Lancaster 2003; Penley 1997, among others). Disparities between the two are often presented as popular culture’s misinterpretation or misrepresentation of scienti?c facts; however, in this essay I argue that a more theoretically lucrative approach understands these con?icts as complex social and cultural negotiations over epistemological boundaries between scienti?c and popular cultures. Understanding such differences is tremendously important (...) in mediated societies where scienti?c research is mostly understood through its representation in the popular culture. In this paper, I examine what is at stake in popular representations of scienti?c research and how the popular culture is often seen as threatening to the epistemic boundaries of scienti?c culture. Using the recent controversy over The Oprah Winfrey Show’ s presentation of controversial medical practices as a case study, this essay examines how distinctions between scienti?c and popular ways of knowing are constructed, represented and managed. I argue that scienti?c knowledge should be viewed as a complex and often con?icted cultural discursive practice that signi?es boundary negotiations between scienti?c and popular cultures. (shrink)

In order to clarify the relationship between morality and law, it is necessary to define both concepts precisely. Cultural realities refer to concepts which are more specifically defined if we focus towards the genealogy of those realities, that is to say, their motivation, function and aim. Should we start from legal anthropology, comparative law and history of law, law arises as a social technique which coactively imposes ways of solving conflicts, protecting fundamental values for a society's co-existence. Values subject to (...) being protected are proposed by morality, the latter making subordination of law to morality inevitable. This explains that a great number of modern constitutions include a reference to fundamental moral values, that is to say, they have explicitly positivised moral contents. Legal reasoning, at all levels and expressions, needs to appeal to the aforementioned values. Constitutional reasoning, international law, legislative activity and judicial practice are studied to verify the latter. This subordination of law to morality sets out a serious problem: moralities are cultural realities which are only valid for a specific society. In order for law not to fall in a not very rational legal relativism, law should not be subordinated to morality, but to ethics, the latter understood as cross-cultural morality. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a step forward in this sense. (shrink)

Explores the problems posed by identity politics and the possibilities for non-exclusive cultural and gendered positions. The essays are by feminist theorists from several disciplines from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

Spatial models dominated memory research throughout much of the 20th century, but in recent decades, the concept of memory as a form of mental time travel (MTT) to the past has gained prominence. Initially introduced as a metaphor, the MTT perspective shifted the focus from internal memory processes to the subjective conscious experience of remembering. Despite its significant impact on empirical and theoretical memory research, there has been limited discussion regarding the meaning and adequacy of the MTT metaphor in accounting (...) for memory. While previous work has addressed the general limitations of the MTT metaphor in explaining memory (Trakas, 2022), the objective of this article is more focused and modest: to gain a better understanding of what constitutes MTT to the past. To achieve this objective, a detailed analysis of the characteristics of MTT to the past is presented through a comparison with time travel (TT) to the past. Although acknowledging that TT does not refer to an existing physical phenomenon, it is an older concept extensively discussed in the philosophical literature and provides commonly accepted grounds, particularly within orthodox theories of time, that can offer insights into the nature of MTT. Six specific characteristics serve as points of comparison: (1) a destination distinct from the present, (2) the distinction between subjective time and objective time, (3) the subjective experience of the time traveler, (4) their differentiation from the past self, (5) the existence of the past, and (6) its unchangeability. Through this research, a detailed exploration of the phenomenal and metaphysical aspects of MTT to the past is undertaken, shedding light on the distinct features that mental time travel to the past acquires when it occurs within the realm of the mind rather than as a physical phenomenon. By examining these characteristics, a deeper understanding of the nature of mental time travel is achieved, offering insights into how it operates in relation to memory and the past. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against two prevailing views of Kant’s Religion. Against commentators such as Michalson and Quinn, who have argued that Kant’s project in Religion is riddled with inconsistencies and circularities, I show that a proper understanding of Kant’s views on grace reveals these do not exist. And contra commentators that attribute to Kant at best a minimalist conception of grace, I show that Kant’s view of it is remarkably robust. I argue that Kant works with three different (...) conceptions of grace. These are: a) grace and the God within, b) grace and the transformation of the fundamental orientation, and c) grace that can be laid hold of; the first and the last play a significant role in his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

A collection of essays written in the field of feminist theory, this book reflects the social consequences of biological research and the political struggles waged by socialist and radical feminists. The contributors suggest that there is a pervasive racism within the feminist movement.

This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the individuals (...) comprising a community; (3) Kant cannot give an account of why members of a community should value the individual qua individual in relation to the community. In this paper I discuss these criticisms and their validity in detail. I show that understood properly, Kant has the resources to answer Schleiermacher's first criticism, and I show how Schleiermacher's own system sought to avoid the second and third problems. (shrink)

Kant’s aim in the Refutation of Idealism is to show that the temporal determination of inner experience presupposes outer experience. Commentators have rightly noted the extraordinarily compressed character of Kant's argument, and numerous gaps in the argument have been pointed out. In this paper I focus on two of these gaps and provide a reconstruction of Kant's argument that closes them.

This essay analyzes the category of “the holy” as developed by Rudolf Otto, examining his division of the holy into rational and non-rational elements. While rational elements of the holy are closely tied to ethics, another aspect of the holy can only be apprehended through sui generis feelings irreducible to other mental states. But how do non-rational elements relate to rational, ethical categories? I trace the distinction between rational and non-rational elements in Otto’s analysis to Kant’s two faculty psychology: the (...) holy is apprehended in one way through feeling, in another way through thought, but a single ultimate reality is experienced. (shrink)

Kant’s aim in the Refutation of Idealism is to show that the temporal determination of inner experience presupposes outer experience. Commentators have rightly noted the extraordinarily compressed character of Kant's argument, and numerous gaps in the argument have been pointed out. In this paper I focus on two of these gaps and provide a reconstruction of Kant's argument that closes them.

This is my introduction as editor to The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher.

Drawing on texts in psychology, philosophy, and literature the paper argues that art avails us of a distance from ourselves. Art has a potential to change our perspective on monstrosity and to make us question our moral categories and presuppositions. The study focuses on a single painting by Paul Gavarni, Two Pierrots Looking into a Box (1852), which I have discovered holds two images in one representation. I turn to Gavarni's work in order to prompt a literal gestalt shift in (...) my readers. I direct the readers' viewing so that, at first, Gavarni's pierrots appear as handsome, albeit licentious youths, but then, through a shift in focus, I reveal their hideous, monstrous profiles. At this point, I argue that if we treat Gavarni's pierrots and the sorts of desires that they represent with single-minded opprobrium, then we run the risk of perpetuating the ugliness we scorn. There is, then, a double change in vision, which I seek to effect. The first one is the alteration of the visual, and the second, of the ethical perspective. The latter has to do with a realization that Gavarni's Pierrots can elicit from us — depending on how we see them — either complicity or reprehension, which is not so much a commentary on the drawing, as it is a reflection on ourselves (our biases, opinions, desires, values, etc.). The phenomenon that underlies the change in how we see what Gavarni portrays and how we, thereafter, relate to what we notice — the malleability of the human psyche — is what allows for and calls the many masking images we, ourselves, wear and perceive. The final question that I address in the paper is whether we can claim mastery over those images, which mask the monstrous or whether, if we do, then far from getting rid of the callous, the cruel, and the inhumane, we stand the risk of giving these expressions a freer playground? (shrink)

This is a fairly detailed philosophical and theological attempt to defend Kant's position that faith must be interpreted through pure practical reason if it is to remain a free and moral one. One of its primary aims is to demonstrate the intrinsic connections existing between Kant's critical ethics and his philosophy of religion. The main texts analyzed are the Foundations, the second Critique, and the Religion. ;The first and second chapters of the dissertation are intended to show that if an (...) individual is to possess a good will, she must first of all rationally understand in what it is that goodness consists, and second, she must do the good because she understands it to be such. I discuss the connections between Kant's understanding of a categorical imperative and autonomy, and use the conclusions to demonstrate the impossibility of a theological foundation for ethics. ;The third chapter shows that since only a categorical imperative can provide a universally valid concept of the good, such an imperative is a precondition of our ability to transcend our subjective desires and to value that which is objectively good. The unconditioned moral law, confronting us absolutely and without regard to subjective incentives, grounds the possibility of self-transcendence and of a real communication between all rational wills. ;Chapters four and five contain a critical account of Kant's understanding of the highest good and the conditions requisite for its attainment. Kant's rational understanding of the Christian faith is discussed as the result of a moral existential posture already adopted: it is a faith descriptive of the journey towards holiness, through which the propensity to value merely subjective inclinations over the objective good is eradicated, thereby making transcendence of the self possible. The historical revelation given in the person of Jesus Christ is interpreted in terms of the self-transcendence made possible by the universal moral law witnessing to God's care for all his sons and daughters. This unconditioned law is understood as the call to grace witnessing to God's grace, through which the positive revelation given in the person of Christ must be understood. (shrink)

How are we to understand religion? It is undeniable that religion, and religious motivations, have played a very large role in shaping world events. As such, the question of how to understand religion has become increasingly urgent. At one extreme are those who adopt a comprehensive scientific naturalism. They approach religious beliefs and practices in such a way as to reduce them to nonreligious social or psychological factors; for them religion is part of an ideology or an infantile wish projection (...) that must be outgrown. At the other extreme are many of the religious believers themselves, who take their own religion as absolute truth and take themselves to be in a privileged epistemic position to apprehend it. Both extremes are dangerous: the first because it fails to take both religion and the religious drive seriously, and so ignores an integral facet of human life; the second because it is exemplary of the dangers of religion itself, which can take absolutist and Manichean forms. When religion does take such a form, it degenerates into idolatry, for it mistakes what must always remain a finite and conditioned apprehension of the transcendent for the transcendent ground itself. Often coupled with such a mistake comes a failure to recognize the validity of other perspectives, as well as a violent exclusion of everything that is other or unfamiliar. (shrink)

This is a new attempt at an analysis of classical Chinese (Confucian) ethics which is still inappropriately explained by Western philosophy as a traditional normative ethical system. Special conditions of ancient Chinese anthropogeny and social and economic development gave rise in this cultural region to an original theory of being, which in modern terminology can be referred to as an ontological model of a fundamental Yin‐Yang dialectic of a bipolar and non‐homogeneous synergy of being. This theory of being became a (...) cornerstone for the whole complex of ancient Chinese philosophy, socio‐anthropology and ethics. Its most leading representatives—several ancient Taoist philosophers as well as the whole ancient Confucian ethical philosophy—proposed an original approach to issues which could be, for the modem world of philosophical research, a very suggestive source of inspiration. (shrink)

Pred televizijskim zaslonom se gledalec skorajda fizično veže na podobo, ki se mu zaradi tehnično-elektronskih postopkov kaže kot sočasna predstavitev dogodkov - kot da bi se dogajali tukaj in zdaj, pred našimi očmi in ne morda tisoč kilometrov stran, v drugih časovnih in prostorskih koordinatah. Da se bodo televizijski gledalci spremenili v aktivne oblikovalce taistega sveta, računajoč na skorajda fizični stik med gledalcem in televizijo, seje ob dogodkih v BiH izkazalo za izjemen teoretični konstrukt, a zmotni empirični neksus. Ko pravzaprav (...) apeliramo na vest televizijskega gledalca morda preveč neposredno računamo, kot nas počuje Baudrillard z nekim privilegiranim položajem in razumevanjem družbenega kot pozitivnega. Toda to, kar nam kaže funkcioniranje televizije v odnosu do vojne v BiH, je baudrillardovsko povedano natanko zlom normalnega in pozitivnega procesa družbenega v svoje nasprotje: implozivni in strukturalni red znakov, kar je hkrati zaton vsake resnične in pristne družbene solidarnosti. (shrink)

Simulacija je nova oblika figuracije, ki je prelomila z reprezentacijskimi in prezentacijskimi načini. Čas, ki ga diktira aktivni simulacijski program, ni več memorični čas fotografije, filma ali televizije, za vedno shranjen in pripravljen za to, da ga uporabimo. Čas sinteze je čas, ki nič več ne pripada realnemu času. To je ahroničen čas. Lahko ga pospešimo, upočasnimo, obračamo, pošiljamo nazaj k izviru, da ga še enkrat preberemo. To je hibridni čas, ki združuje čas stroja/ naprave in subjekta.

The commentary on Ionescu’s presentation agrees with her main claim that pleasure is developed dialectically, and then departs from her ideas at two points. First, I argue that there are still good reasons to say that pleasure belongs in the class of the unlimited, and ordinary experiences of pleasure bear out this claim. Second, Ionescu’s interpretation makes the Philebus’s concept of a “false pleasure” difficult to understand. I suggest further consideration of whether the difference between the mixed and unlimited is (...) better located in different objects or in different experiences of pleasure. (shrink)

This is a review of Gordon Michalson's book on Kant and religion.

A review of James Di Censo's book on Kant, religion, and politics.

A. G. Long’s slender but significant volume traces a line in the Platonic dialogues from Socratic conversation to dialogical thought. Long’s broader project is to explore the concept that conversation is relevant to philosophy. However, the book’s main focus is more restricted to two ideas: first, whether one needs others to do philosophy, and if so, why; and second, how Socratic conversation connects to the self-sufficient exploration of ideas. Implicit in the book is perhaps also an exploration of how the (...) form of Platonic dialogue fits with contemporary academic philosophy, in which we still pursue critical thinking but rarely write in the form of dramatic dialogue.Long’s main line of argument shows that while .. (shrink)

Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it (...) uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing ideas about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women--scientists and philosophers--who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times. (shrink)

The speculative direction that Fink in the ’30s had imprinted on phenomenology finds its development – distant in many ways from its theoretical premises in Husserl’s thought – in the first university lectures of the post-war period, among which Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1947) is of peculiar relevance. Some common threads connect Fink’s early phenomenological reflections with his following attempt to develop a philosophical cosmology and anthropology. In the course of lectures here examined we can see the revival of (...) the theme that considers philosophy – understood as a radical inquiring, open to the world and at the same time to the self of the human being – the primary place of freedom. In connection with this theme Fink theorizes a concept of freedom that does not confine freedom to a subjective polar opposite to nature, but focuses on the exposure of the human being to the world. Fink, indeed, starts a discussion on the question of freedom through a comparison between two opposite patterns of thought, namely the philosophies of Kant and Nietzsche, read with a perspective that puts both these philosophies in contrast to the absolutization of subjectivity in the systems of German idealism. (shrink)