In this paper I take a closer look at Fr. Georges Florovsky’s original view on the relation between philosophy and theology. I argue that he tried to formulate an approach based on patristic experience and opposed to the dominating secular paradigm of philosophy. In some sense he wanted to reverse the traditional account. As Teresa Obolevitch aptly suggested, he wanted to replace the principle fides quaerens intellectum by the rule intellectus quaerens fidem. In that first default case the faith needs (...) to be justified or proved by the reason, in the second, unobvious one, the faith has an absolute priority and illuminates itself the natural thought. According to Florovsky, philosophy should not attempt to ground the theology, formulating arguments for the existence of God or proving the coherence of theism, but rather should accept theology as a fundamental premise and then develop a new, non-secular account for the old philosophical topics. (shrink)
Paweł Florenski starał się sformułować ontologiczną teorię miłości. Uważał on, że miłość jest nie tylko zjawiskiem psychicznym, lecz zakłada takżejakiegoś rodzaju rzeczywiste zjednoczenie. Florenski proponował, by rozumieć je jako współistotność. Dwa numerycznie różne podmioty mogą stać się czymś jednym dzięki swojej numerycznie tożsamej istocie. Prócz tego Florenski zarysował teorię ontologiczną opartą na odróżnieniu między rzeczami a osobami. Wydaje się, że uznawał on wiązkową teorię przedmiotów i nominalizm tropowy dla kategorii rzeczy i teorię substratu połączoną z realizmem dla kategorii osób. Pogląd (...) Florenskiego można więc uznać za jedno ze stanowisk w dyskusji o zasadzie identyczności nieodróżnialnych. Staram się także pokazać, że można przezwyciężyć pewne poważne problemy filozoficzne i teologiczne ontologii miłości Florenskiegojeśli doda się do niej patrystyczne rozróżnienie między istotą a energią. (shrink)
One of Darwin’s purposes in writing The Origin of Species was to rebut the doctrine of separate creations. Moreover, the argument he was chiefly concerned with—which was both his target and the model of his own argument—was the familiar argument from design.
This essential reference is a handy guide to the often confusing world of cultural theory. Its entries provide accessible introductions to the key cultural theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries, their central concepts and main arguments, and their major works and formative influences. An extensive introduction sets these figures in their appropriate intellectual and historical contexts, and the explanation for each thinker offers links to other seminal minds in the study of culture, as well as a guide to further (...) reading. (shrink)
Semen Frank was one of the first and most ardent advocates of the ontological argument in the twentieth century. He proposed an original interpretation of the ontological argument based on its analogy to Descartes’ Cogito. Frank believed that it is possible to develop Cogito ergo sum into Cogito ergo est ens absolutum. In this paper, I analyze his version of the ontological argument. First, I propose a simple reconstruction of his reasoning, paying attention to its hidden premise. Second, departing from (...) the classical logical interpretations of Descartes’ argument, I show that for Frank the claim that God exists had the same logical properties as Cogito. As a result, it seems that his argument was formally correct, though based on a premise which could hardly be convincing for a non-believer. This should not be surprising, however, since Frank, as most Russian religious philosophers, was not interested in the project of philosophical theology. His main concern was rather the development of philosophy based on religious premises, which might be called “theological philosophy”. (shrink)
. For a fixed q ℕ and a given Σ1 definition φ, where d is a parameter, we construct a model M of 1 Δ0 + ¬ exp and a non standard d M such that in M either φ has no witness smaller than d or phgr; is equivalent to a formula ϕ having no more than q alternations of blocks of quantifiers.
Universals are usually considered to be universal properties. Since tropes are particular properties, if there are only tropes, there are no universals. However, universals might be thought of not only as common properties, but also as common aspects (“determinable universals”) and common wholes (“concrete universals”). The existence of these two latter concepts of universals is fully compatible with the assumption that all properties are particular. This observation makes possible three different trope theories, which accept tropes and no universals, tropes and (...) determinable universals and tropes and concrete universals. (shrink)
Essential properties are usually thought as properties that things must always possess, whereas accidental properties are considered as changeable. In this paper, we challenge this traditional view. We argue that in some important cases, such as social or biological development, we face not only the change of accidents, but also the change of essences. To analyze this kind of change we propose an alternative view on the relations between the modalities and time. Some properties might be necessary or possible for (...) a thing in a classical sense throughout its existence, whereas others might be necessary or possible only for some restricted periods. We distinguish therefore absolute, prospective, retrospective, and relative modalities. As we argue, these non-classical concepts of modality are useful in analysis of some puzzling case of seemingly changing essences. (shrink)
Spengler’s The Decline of the West was a major publishing success in Weimar Germany. The study presents the end of Western civilization as an inevitable process of birth, maturity and death. Civilization is conceived as an inflexible ‘morphology’. Spengler’s thinking was influenced by a profound distaste with the optimism of the Belle Epoque, which he found to be complacent. The argument had a good deal of attraction to readers, especially German readers, who were suffering under the ‘Carthaginian Peace’ of the (...) Treaty of Versailles of 1919. Adorno and others were critical of Spengler’s thesis. The article examines Spengler’s thesis and its implications for the West today. (shrink)
In der Literatur tritt die Rede von Anerkennung als Kategorie oder Prinzip, als Konzeption, als Anerkennungstheorie oder als Name für eine Theoriefamilie unreguliert auf. In diesem Artikel werden die verschiedenen Verwendungsweisen von „Anerkennung“ inhaltlich bestimmt und es wird expliziert, worin die mit ihnen einhergehenden Geltungsansprüche jeweils bestehen.
Pavel Florensky, a Russian theologian, philosopher, and mathematician, argued that the religious discourse is essentially contradictory and put forward the idea of the logical theory of antinomies. Recently his views raised interesting discussions among logicians who consider him a forerunner of many non-classical logics. In this paper I discuss four interpretations of Florensky’s views: paraconsistent, L-contradictory, non-monotonic and rhetorical. In conclusion I argue for the integral interpretation which unites these four approaches.
In this paper, we try to confront Robert Audis moral epistemology, namely his intuitionism, based on the concept of a self-evident moral proposition, with two main problems: disagreement and dogmatism within moral discourse. Although Audi can meet those classical objections in his theory, we think that some problems remain. We proceed – after an introduction – in five sections in order to pursue this end. After a short introductory section, we first reconstruct the classical intuitionist moral epistemology. We then discuss (...) the dogmatism and the disagreement objection and, in doing so, introduce Audi’s own version of a moral epistemology. After having proposed that the disagreement objection concerns an explanatory problem, we discuss a second version, namely disagreement as a problem of rationality. In the fourth section we present a third version, disagreement as a problem of moral discourse, understood as an intersubjective enterprise. In the fifth section we propose a solution to disagreement situations of this kind. (shrink)
Our life in this broken world requires tools to own and express our grief in ways that are connected to our faith in God. We find that the biblical genre of lament is appropriate to the task. However, we do not come to lament without baggage, and we sometimes require additional help in the form of symbolic capital borrowed from stories and songs. In this case, The Chronicles of Narnia provide such capital. As we reflect on these stories, we can (...) see lament in a new way that helps us bring our pain to God. As we engage in the discipline of lament, we are spiritually formed into the image of Jesus. (shrink)
It has been widely recognized that Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblance solved the problem of universals. This theory may be considered in two ways, however. (1) Family resemblance may be understood in a manner of abstract universals theory. Most commentators accept this interpretation. Though in this case, I would argue, Wittgenstein's contribution to the problem of universals seems to be overestimated. (2) Wittgenstein's theory may also be considered, following one of contemporary Polish philosophers J. Szymura, as a view connected with (...) the Hegelian theory of concrete universals. The article is devoted to put forward some arguments for this interpretation. Firstly, it is coherent with all Wittgenstein's theses on family resemblance and states that there is literally nothing common in things. Secondly, it fits to Wittgenstein's language (terms such as "family", "Ähnlichkeit" and so on). Thirdly, there are some biographical pieces of evidence that Wittgenstein was inspired by Goethe's concept of "Urpflanze", which is very close to concrete universal. (shrink)
The author analyses conceptual metaphors characteristic of one of the literary theories, the theory of intertextuality, employing the methods of cognitive linguistics, i.e. the cognitive theory of metaphor. He claims that the tools of this conception enable one to describe the idea of paradigm-change; in this context author considers the role of metaphor in science. By interpreting synonyms as different realizations of various Idealized Cognitive Models, he shows that the change of metaphors employed in talking about ‘what happens between texts’ (...) leads to evolutionary change from ‘influentology’ to ‘intertextuality’, a transformation closely related to the change of the subject of history of literature. The change of metaphors transforms the focus of literary theory ; its focus moves from the author to the reader, and from the act of creation to the act of reception. Within this perspective writing is no longer a creatio ex nihilo but an innovative re-creation of ‘what has already been read’. This change enables one to capture some paradoxical inversions, like the one which demonstrates how a subsequent texts influence texts prior to them. (shrink)
The discussion about internal and external relations usually concerns what kind of relations exist. In this paper, I take up another question, namely whether external relations can become internal and internal relations become external. My starting point is the concept of a “relational collapse” formulated by the Soviet and Ukrainian philosopher Avenir Uemov. I try to develop his idea, distinguishing two senses of internal relation, based on the concepts of ground and essence. As I argue, internalisation may consist either on (...) groundation or essentialisation of relations. Contrary to Uemov, both of these processes seem to be reversible, so we should also introduce the concepts of ungroundation and accidentalisation of relations. These four concepts form a framework for the general theory of internalisation and externalisation of relations. This framework seems to be particularly useful in analysis of some problems in social ontology. (shrink)
Die vorliegende Monographie untersucht Hegels Philosophie der Weltgeschichte erstmals quellenkritisch reflektiert und ausführlich aus wissenschaftstheoretischer Perspektive. Anhand der Rekonstruktion von Hegels Wissenschaftssystematik wird gezeigt, wie sich seine materiale Geschichtsphilosophie zur nicht-philosophischen Geschichtswissenschaft verhält. Hegels formale Geschichtsphilosophie erlaubt es demgegenüber, die Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung und deren Geltungsansprüche zu explizieren und Kriterien für die materiale Geschichtsphilosophie zu etablieren. Letztere wird als spezifisch philosophische Begriffsgeschichte der ‚Freiheit‘ rekonstruiert, mit Blick auf praktische und theoretische philosophische Ansprüche systematisch verortet und als wichtiger Beitrag für eigenständiges (...) Philosophieren verteidigt. Die Arbeit weist Hegel als methodisch reflektierten Geschichtsphilosophen aus, der gerade hinsichtlich der wissenschaftssystematischen Grundlagen über eine attraktive Theorie der Geschichte verfügt, die nicht nur von historischem, sondern auch von systematischem Interesse für die Ausarbeitung einer modernen Geschichtsphilosophie ist. (shrink)
Jean-Francois Lyotard is often considered to be the father of postmodernism. Here leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies, including Barry Smart, John O' Neill and Victor J. Seidler, tackle many of the questions still being asked about this controversial figure.
The category of trope, i.e. an individual property, usually functions in theories that reject the existence of universals. It may, however, be argued that the acknowledgment of properties as individual need not entail the rejection of universals. It merely requires the rejection of a certain fairly extreme realist position. The existence of tropes can be reconciled with the position of determinative realism and with the theory of concrete universals.
American society was transformed by the expansion of capital Westward and the explosion in opportunities for land-grabbing and agricultural and industrial investment. F.J. Turner’s frontier thesis portrays this transformation as the fulfilment of American character. The tensions between character and personality are examined following the ideas of Carl Schmitt on the significance of ‘the occasion’ in acquiring competitive advantage. Schmitt indicated the significance of a ‘vertical’ frontier in challenging social conventions and this constitutes a counterpoint to the ‘horizontal’ frontier developed (...) in the frontier thesis of Turner. The importance of the occasion and personality in developing the American way of life is presented by an examination of the vaudeville and celebrity traditions in American entertainment. (shrink)
