The article introduces an idea of practical philosophy, a philosophy which is aimed at changing a philosopher, not at developing philosophical knowledge. Philosophy is not another theory of being or knowledge, but a way of holding oneself in the state of being open. It is stated that this philosophy is based on differentiating the experience of the encounter and its conceptualization, that they are not equal. A philosophical concept not only points at the source of the philosophical thinking, but also (...) eclipses it. The main obstacle for a philosopher is his/her own self, tempted by his/her own philosophy. (shrink)

Summary In a noteworthy new study, Richard Velkley brings together Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss as part of a reexamination of the foundations and nature of philosophical questioning. In what follows, I critically reflect on this shared search for foundations, and particularly on the role of Plato in Strauss's effort to forge a new path for philosophy which moves away from Heidegger without losing sight of him.

Platonic Production presents Prof. Stanley Rosen's Etienne Gilson Lectures, delivered at the Institut Catholique de Paris and now available in English for first time. His lectures bring Heidegger and Plato into a conversation around a basic philosophical question: Does the acquisition of truth resemble discovery or production? While Rosen undertakes a close examination of Heidegger's engagement with Plato, exposing some ways in which that engagement constitutes a misreading, the goals of his study are not exclusively critical. In arguing against the (...) claim that Plato stands at the beginning of Western metaphysical history which culminates in late modern nihilism, Rosen also points out how close Plato is to some characteristically Heideggerean themes and formulations. Heidegger is critiqued from the standpoint of Plato, but it is equally true that Platonic themes (such as the hypothesis of the Forms) are read anew in light of the questions raised by Heidegger. In keeping with the overarching theme of the Gilson Lectures, Rosen's six talks, and the introduction by the volume's editor aim to demon-strate that metaphysics is always possible, indeed inescapable, by meditating on the two philosophers whose thinking, especially where it diverges, centers on that very point. While Platonic Production takes up some of the most contentious issues in the Heidegger-Plato relationship, issues which are addressed in the always expanding scholarly literature and in Rosen's own earlier work, it is not at all intended exclusively for specialists in Plato or Heidegger. Rather, it is hoped that this volume will appeal to all who are interested in Greek and German thought and in the foundational questions which underlie the history of philosophy as a whole, both ancient and modern. (shrink)

In the discussion of global ethics, philosophical ethics risks losing its distinct theoretical horizons. This predicament arises primarily from philosophy's failure to anchor its own object and to provide a rational basis for global justice from within its current confined theoretical paradigm. Against this background, this paper will first prioritize global co-existence as the primary concern of global ethics, then propose ontological co-existence justice as its foundational principle, and finally argue that the normative validity of co-existence justice is predicated on (...) the nations fulfilling the critical requirements of modern civilization, namely, the advancement of individual freedom. (shrink)

In this paper we portray the epistemological proposals of Descartes, Spinoza and Bateson as epistemological reforms that imply deep transformations in the way human beings are and behave in the world by changing their habits. We also suggest that rejecting the theological explanation and understanding of human beings as part of a systemic whole, as proposed by Bateson and Spinoza, is required in order to face the current environmental crisis.

Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy is the first volume of essays dedicated to the whole question of self-knowledge and its role in Platonic philosophy. It brings together established and rising scholars from every interpretative school of Plato studies, and a variety of texts from across Plato's corpus - including the classic discussions of self-knowledge in the Charmides and Alcibiades I, and dialogues such as the Republic, Theaetetus, and Theages, which are not often enough mined for insights about (...) this crucial philosophical topic. The rich variety of readings and hermeneutical methods allows for an encompassing view of the relevant scholarly debates. The volume is intended to serve as a standard resource for further research on Plato's treatment of self-knowledge, and will highlight the relevance of Plato's thought to contemporary debates on selfhood, self-reflection and subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and (...) Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophizing is deeply ontological, and can be defined as a reflexive gesture of keeping silent. The silence secured by reflexing is an essential part of a philosophy. A philosopher has to use language, but things that pass over in silence must influence things he or she says. The speech manifests not only in the spoken, but also in the unspoken. How is it possible? Through understanding a reflexive speech as an action or gesture of annihilation of speech. The (...) expressed words in philosophy and expressed philosophical concepts are just means of referring to the ultimate value which should be thrown away immediately because it cannot say anything about the inexpressible. The philosophy as a gesture of keeping silent is an attempt to meaningfully keep silent through the constantly evolving reflexive annihilation of your own speech. The philosophizing which takes into account the importance of silence becomes a minimalistic gesture. (shrink)

With the publication of The Use of Bodies (2016) Agamben's multi-volume Homo Sacer project has come to an end, or to paraphrase Agamben, has been abandoned. We now have a new vantage point from which to reread Agamben's corpus; not only his method but his political and philosophical thought can been seen in a clearer light. This timely book both assesses and contributes to the debates on the Homo Sacer project in its entirety. Rethinking the notions of life and power (...) - two of the central themes in Agamben's work - through a reconstruction of his philosophical method and the examination of his critique of Western metaphysics, this book argues that Agamben's thought cannot be fully grasped if we do not account for the intertwining of politics and ontology. This book argues that it is only by revisiting Agamben's critique of signification and metaphysics and examining his reconstruction of the archaeological method that we can understand his notions of life and power. By bringing together the two parts of the Homo Sacer project, the archaeology of the signature of Sovereignty and the archaeology of governmentality, this book provides an analysis of the production of Agambenian 'bare life'. In this sense this project re-articulates Agamben's works on signification, language and ontology with his archaeology of power. Offering an original examination of Agamben's notion of resistance, this is essential reading for any thoughtful consideration of his philosophical legacy. (shrink)

This text shows how the Socratic activity can be seen as a game activity, and mostly as a boasting game, mainly based upon the Homo Ludens by Johann Huizinga’s text. In a second part, the text illustrates Socrates’ role in such a game activity by exploring what it may be revealed from the nature of philosophy when revising it sub specie ludi.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of SpiritAndy R. GermanRobert B. Pippin. Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. Pp. viii + 103. Cloth, $29.95.If Hegel's system cannot be understood without the Phenomenology of Spirit, it is certainly impossible to understand the Phenomenology without understanding its famous transition, in chapter 4, to self-consciousness and the (perhaps (...) all-too-famous) master-slave dialectic. In these published lectures, then, Robert Pippin has compelling reasons for seeking the heart of the Phenomenology in two of its crucial assertions: that "Self-Consciousness is desire itself" and that "Self-Consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness" (¶¶167 and 175 in Miller's translation).Pippin's Hegel is essentially Kantian, concerned with the apperceptive nature of self-consciousness, i.e. not as mere receptivity to sensory or intellectual form, but as an activity, a judging or "taking" the world to be such and so. For Kant, this activity is transcendental or purely formal, the unification of the spatio-temporal manifold by a continuous, apperceptive "I" (31). Pippin argues that Hegel jettisons Kantian formality in favor of a broader question: how, rather than being subject to my desires, am I the subject of my desires? (32). An answer is possible only if self-consciousness is neither observational nor an immediate self-presence but instead (i) a practical achievement (15) that (ii) requires other self-conscious subjects (19). Unlike Platonic erōs, then, which points away from human life, self-conscious desire is constant self-examination of the reasons for our actions or beliefs. This is Hegel's version of Kant's insight that reason is the desire for justification, ultimately before "all others" (56–57).Thus we pivot to the claim that the successful or "satisfying" achievement of self-consciousness involves recognition by others. "Our answerability to the world," as Pippin writes, "is inextricably bound up with... our answerability to each other" (61). Unlike John McDowell's interpretation of the master-slave dialectic as an analogy for the struggle between the passive and active elements within one mind (42), Pippin argues that self-consciousness is social all the way down. It is "something like having a position," i.e. avowing a practical commitment or making a normative claim (65), which implies the presence of another self-conscious subject who recognizes my right to such claims, or challenges that right, even to the outermost—a struggle to the death over recognition and authority. Self-consciousness, then, is "not... a reflection of some substantive or metaphysical nature but... a social achievement... bound up with... social conflict" (75). On the decisive point, Pippin agrees with Brandom's neo-pragmatism: "[S]elf-conscious beings do not have natures, they have histories" (68), specifically, the history of struggle and reconciliation among rational, mutually recognizing subjects.But what, then, does recognition mean and how does it "satisfy"? And in what does our "answerability to others" consist if there is no "non-question begging... standard" (83) by which to judge our answers? Hegel, Pippin writes, "has a ‘pragmatic' or a ‘historicized' or ‘dialogical' view of what counts as the appeal to reasons.... He understands practical reason as a kind of interchange of attempts at justification among persons... " (84). Justification, however, cannot mean an appeal to nature. Indeed, in the struggle for recognition, self-conscious freedom means indifference to mere natural life or desire. Nature no longer points to philosophical wholeness, as our love of seeing does in Aristotle's Metaphysics. To paraphrase Pippin's titles, he shows with superior clarity that Hegel's idealism really is modernism: i.e. the most thoroughgoing rejection of the Greek link between eleutheria and eudaimonia.But when Hegel writes of "the point where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself... where Concept corresponds to object and object to Concept" as the necessary "goal" of knowledge (¶80), this suggests that the "interchange of justifications" reaches an end. Even if this end is the socio-political order of mutual recognition among rational persons, it is surely not the mere fact of recognition that satisfies us... (shrink)

Most scholars agree that Plato’s concept of freedom, to the extent he has one, is ‘intellectualist’: true freedom is submission to the rule of reason through philosophical knowledge of rational order. Surprisingly, though, there are few explicit linkages of philosophy and freedom in Plato. Socrates is called many things in the dialogues, but not ‘free’. I aim to understand why by studying the Theaetetus, heretofore ignored in discussions of Platonic freedom. By examining the Digression and Socrates’ ‘dream’ about wholes and (...) parts, I show that describing freedom as ‘rule of reason’ simplifies what, for Plato, is a more tangled skein. In the Digression, philosophers are free in occupying a comprehensive standpoint transcending all limited and partial perspectives. Socrates’ dream, however, shows that logos cannot completely account for the knowledge of complex wholes or for itself as such a whole. Philosophical freedom cannot mean comprehensive discursive knowledge, then, since reason lacks a comprehensive grasp of itself. Socrates dreams of the rational whole, but is aware of why it remains only a dream, rather than wakeful knowledge. This awareness constitutes a freedom attained, not in total liberation from the confines of the partial human perspective, but within those confines. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in the “Great Speech” of the Protagoras, Plato investigates the consequences of a view of history as progress away from nature, as expressed in Protagoras’ account of humanity’s origin and development. Socrates’ hedonistic calculus, in the dialogue’s second half, confronts Protagoras with the full implications of his view - showing how, absent a doctrine of natural human perfections, progress necessarily devours its own tail.

I argue that Plato’s deployment of the resumptive phrase πάλιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς illuminates the philosophical significance of his art of transition in Socratic dialogues. These explicit calls for a new beginning often appear when a conversation fails to account for two particular elements of ordinary experience: assumptions about whole-part relations and about the interlocutor’s self-conception as a being responsive to basic rational and normative distinctions. Returning to the archē is a form of ἀνάμνησις, reminding us that these assumptions constitute true, (...) but inarticulate, opinions of a fundamental kind. They are the preconditions for discourse that philosophical διαλέγεσθαι must preserve and ground. (shrink)

This article studies the unrestraint in beliefs associated with the overemphasizing of our beliefs. The author argues that the intolerance for other points of view appears (among other factors) because of a naively-objectivist understanding of philosophy, one which is based on two assumptions: first, philosophy is considered only as a theory and not an individual practice, not an experience, and second, the truth is considered as identical to a certain ideal-objective content that can be in one’s possession.There are true ideas (...) and proper words. If we learn these ideas, we will definitely seize the truth. The author opposes this understanding the notion of philosophy which is based on the experience of the encounter and upon reflexive comprehension of this experience. It is possible to minimize unrestraint in beliefs if we assume that all the points of view including our own are considered as belonging to the incomprehensible Absolute. (shrink)

This article is devoted to understanding the worldview expressed in Vladimir Bibikhin’s Leo Tolstoy’s Diaries. The most important feature of this worldview is its practical nature: Bibikhin focuses on changing one’s view of things instead of trying to develop a doctrine. Practical phenomenology is extremely vulnerable to criticism because of its pre-philosophical nature. Therefore, at this stage, I try to explicate some of the features of this peculiar thought while avoiding trying to find its faults. I draw a connection between (...) Bibikhin’s ontological interpretation of the phenomenon with Heidegger’s concept of detachment (Gelassenheit) as a form of behavior, and illustrate that practical phenomenology turns out to be an ontology of contact. It thematizes the philosopher’s own being and focuses on the problems of the contact made in the “change of view,” in which thought, word, and deed converge. Bibikhin’s practical phenomenology is on the outskirts of modern academic philosophy, gravitating towards understanding philosophy as a way of life, in which the contemplative attitude takes the leading place, paradoxically combining experiment with their perception of “first things,” trust in them, and the ability to describe the indescribable, the “change of view.” This makes practical phenomenology related to the experimental phenomenology of Michel Henry. (shrink)

En este artículo se busca comprender la naturaleza de la escritura académica y comprender también por qué a veces fracasa. Para ello se utiliza la distinción de Lonergan entre la inteligencia del sentido común y la de la teoría, sus ideas acerca de la dinámica inmanente del conocimiento y su noción de autenticidad. Utilizando estas ideas de Lonergan, se concibe a la escritura académica bajo dos aspectos, como proceso de aprendizaje y como proceso de enseñanza. Con esta idea de la (...) escritura académica se refutan cinco falacias comunes acerca de la naturaleza del trabajo académico. (shrink)

Trump’s election renewed discussion about the Electoral College, mostly centered on its disparity with the popular vote. Yet much commentary about the Electoral College neglects its original purpose grounded in the Founders’ concern to provide for indirect election to many important offices. The Founders’ project entailed determining the people’s aptitude to elect the types of individuals desirable for high office, in an attempt to harmonize their dual commitments to political right and political legitimacy. The Electoral College’s function was soon frustrated (...) by the rise of political parties, yet parties came to serve at least part of that function, with party leaders standing as a moderating force between the people and the presidency. However, the 2016 elections suggest that parties no longer play this intermediary role effectively. Examining the steps that led to this result, we seek to provide a reminder of the enduring thesis that the dangers inherent in republicanism require creative republican remedies. (shrink)

In her 2014 monograph, Sarah Broadie argues that Timaeus’s cosmology points to a radical Platonic insight: the full rationality of the cosmos requires the existence of individualized, autonomous, and finite beings like us. Only human life makes the cosmos truly complete. But can Timaeus do full justice to the uniquely human way of being and hence to his own insight? My paper argues that he cannot and that Plato means for us to see that he cannot, by showing how Timaeus (...) treats a famous Platonic theme: eros. Timaeus describes human perfection as assimilation to the mathematical proportions of the cosmos, but by comparing Timaeus with the Symposium I show that, given his deeply mathematized conception of reason, Timaeus cannot provide what Diotima can: a phenomenologically satisfactory account of how we come to identify ourselves with this perfection. Such identification is a transformation in our self-understanding explicable only because of the desirous and reflexive character of the soul. Expressing this character, however, requires combining the mathematical with a poetic, or even mantic, register. Only these sensibilities together grant access to Plato’s cosmology in its fullness. (shrink)

Se analiza en este estudio, las implicaciones que para el campo de la ética filosófica comporta el desarrollo de algunas de las investigaciones científicas en el campo de las neurociencias. El organismo humano nunca disocia de manera tajante la razón práctica de la teórica y, por tanto, las dimensio..

In this paper we propose the exam of one of the key points in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis: autonomy, as individual and collective project. Our purpose is to review the development in his view of the subject that motorizes social transformation. For this, we start from Castoriadis' critics to the role that Marxist theory assigns to the proletariat as a revolutionary class to reach an idea of human subjectivity with reflection and deliberation capacities. We will highlight the contributions of (...) the Freudian psychoanalytic perspective in this conception, as well as the distances with the Marxist perspectives than think the transformation of the individual as an awareness process. (shrink)

Resumen El concepto de “quiasmo” es fundamental en la filosofía del “último” Merleau-Ponty. Me interesa retomar este concepto para mostrar que, en la nueva ontología esbozada en Le visible et l’invisible y en las notas de la misma época, su función guarda correspondencia con la tarea que, a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía, ha desempeñado la imaginación. En este sentido, una ontología del quiasmo supone por necesidad pensar una ontología de la imaginación. Además, este concepto permite arrojar (...) una luz nueva sobre el problema de la subjetividad.The concept of “chiasm” is central to the philosophy of the “late” Merleau-Ponty. My aim is to retrieve this concept in order to show that, within the framework of the new ontology outlined in Le visible et l’invisible and the notes written during the same period, its function corresponds to the function that imagination has performed throughout the history of philosophy. Thus, an ontology of chiasm necessarily involves reflecting upon an ontology of imagination. Furthermore, the concept of chiasm enables us to shed new light on the problem of subjectivity. (shrink)

Can the Euthydemus illuminate the philosophical significance of sophistry? In answering this question, I ask why the most direct and sustained confrontations between Socrates and the two brothers should all center on time and the soul. The Euthydemus, I argue, is a not primarily a polemic against eristic manipulation of language, but a diagnosis of the soul’s ambiguous unity. It shows that sophistic speech emerges from the soul’s way of relating to its own temporal character and to logos. Stated differently, (...) a central theme of this dialogue is one which, we are repeatedly told, the Greeks had not yet thematized--the nature of interiority. (shrink)

The article focuses on understanding some of the self-evident premises of the philosophy of the 17th–19th centuries that make up the horizon of the Enlightenment. One of these premises is Immanuel Kant’s idea of independent thinking. Based on the analysis of the polemics of Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about the “extrasensible abilities” of the reason, the question is raised about the possibility of understanding someone else’s concept based on other existential preferences. Answering this question, we distinguish between the concept (...) of the Enlightenment and the practical principle of the Enlightenment and show that the supporter of the ideology of the Enlightenment (Kant) and his critic (Jacobi) appear in the light of the principle of independent thinking as the spokesmen of the spirit, not the letter of the Enlightenment. A condition for understanding someone else’s concept is a productive misunderstanding, which is one of the aspects of the principle of independent thinking: the acceptance of the self-evident as incomprehensible, the shift of one’s attention to one’s own how-being and the perception of thought as a gift. (shrink)

What form can metaphysics still take in a philosophical modernity that has been decisively shaped by the impact of Kant’s critical project? This question has exercised Dieter Henrich, one of Kant’s greatest living interpreters. This paper focuses on Henrich’s intricate argument that metaphysical thinking, albeit of a new kind, remains indispensable especially in an age for which self-consciousness is a first principle. Henrich seeks a form of thought that can justify and preserve what he views as modernity’s greatest achievement, its (...) conception of the free, self-determining subject. Yet his description of this metaphysics for a new era reveals its surprisingly Platonic affinities. The paper focuses on those affinities, both in order critically to assess Henrich’s own work on subjectivity, but also because they reveal a fundamental and philosophically significant continuity that underlies all forms of comprehensive thinking, even in forms as divergent as those of Plato and Kant. (shrink)

The course of German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting and controversial in the history of human thought. In this outstanding and engaging introduction, a companion volume to his German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger, Julian Young examines and assesses the way in which some of the major German thinkers of the period reacted, often in starkly contrasting ways, to the challenges posed by the nature of modernity, the failure (...) of liberalism and the concept of decline. Divided into two parts exploring major intellectual figures of the left and right respectively, Young introduces and assesses the thought of the following figures: Georg Lukács: the critique of capitalism: alienation, reification, and false consciousness Ernst Bloch: the Marxist utopia Walter Benjamin: the confluence of phenomenology and left-wing thought: the Arcades Project, aura, and the technological reproduction of the artwork Oswald Spengler: the pessimistic right and the concept of Western decline Max Scheler: Catholic conservatism and the 'objective hierarchy of values' Carl Schmitt: the failure of liberalism, dictatorship, 'friends' versus 'enemies' Leo Strauss: the rejection of moral relativism and the return to classical philosophy. Highly relevant when the viability of liberal democracy is again called into question, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Lukacs to Strauss is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, religious studies, and political theory. (shrink)

This collection assembles a number of chapters engaging different strands of Martin Heidegger_s philosophy in order to explore issues relevant to contemporary media studies. Following the release of Heidegger_s controversial Black Notebooks and the subsequent calls to abandon the philosopher, this book seeks to demonstrate why Heidegger, rather than be pushed aside and shunned by media practitioners, ought to be embraced by and further incorporated into the discipline, as he offers unique and often innovative pathways to address, and ultimately understand, (...) our daily engagements with media-related phenomena. (shrink)

Neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethics applied to work and business theory have received increasing attention due to Alasdair MacIntyre's philosophy. At the same time, this approach has been accused of being inapplicable, a romantic nostalgia for an ideal world far from the reality of today's markets. Moreover, the more this theory evolves, the bigger the gap seems to become, as if good work were at odds with its economic dimension. This paper aims to address this gap by explaining how MacIntyre's neo‐Aristotelianism conceives (...) of the economic dimension of good work. In particular, we claim that it is consistent with MacIntyre's philosophy that said economic dimension of work can be defined in terms of excellence and virtue, particularly in accordance with the virtues of justice and unity of life. However, for these virtues of good work to be practicable, a reconsideration of market practices performed under the logic of giving and receiving is needed. Hence, defining and sustaining an economic dimension of good work in MacIntyre also depend on the possibility of market practices being defined as excellent. (shrink)

There are thirteen instances of the term schema throughout the chapter “Le panoptism”, from Surveiller et punir. We consider that the meaning of this technical term found in Foucault’s work refers to the philosophy of Kant. Gilles Deleuze is one of the few thinkers who noticed the connection between the issue of power and the Kantian schema. Considering that the diagram is analogous to the Kantian schema and the schema —as in Kritik der reinen Vernunft— is a product of imagination, (...) which is the Foucauldian term that corresponds to imagination? This question itself leads to an ontology. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Foucauldian archeology and genealogy require a political and historical ontology of imagination, which has been partially outlined by Deleuze, but never thought in connection with the imagination. (shrink)

I propose a few epistemological and methodological reflexions to account for intercultural daily communication. These reflexions emerged during a sociological research in Mendoza, Argentina, with Huarpes Indigenous students at the University of Cuyo. I observed that Indigenous people became quasi ethnographers of diverse environments. To make intelligible their classmates’ behavior, and to account for their own behavior, Huarpes follow, in diverse environments and interactions, public rules of meaning. The objective of this paper is twofold: (a) to stress the methodological scope (...) of ordinary communication and ordinary reasoning in order to study understanding between people from different groups and categories, and (b) to contest a kind of pessimist standpoint in social sciences and philosophy according to which the use of ordinary language reduces possibilities for understanding. Interviews, participant observation in natural situations, and a review of literature about language and understanding are the basis of this paper. (shrink)

What is the significance of the recurring link between tyranny and philosophy in Plato? Often, Plato’s treatment of tyranny is discussed either in the context of moral psychology—as a problem of agency, moral choice and akrasia — or political science, where it is the limit case of political decline. It is suggested, however, that a close inspection of the myth of Er and an elucidation of its neglected links, not just with the rest of the Republic but also with dialogues (...) such as the Philebus and the Symposium, shows that Socrates’ fascination with tyrannical characters points to a deeper theme — nature, and specifically the problem of its benevolence to our purposes and its very ambiguous relation to human excellence and degradation. Philosopher and tyrant, for all the radical differences between them, both illuminate the internal instability of the human being in Plato’s thought. (shrink)

Introduction: The one-world of Hitler's socialism.--German philosophy: the two worlds.--German moral and political philosophy.--The Germanic philosophy of history.

Alasdair MacIntyre´s criticism of Modernity essentially refers to the problem of compartmentalization, which restricts the possibility of achieving excellence in an integral lifestyle. Among other reasons, compartmentalization is especially derived from an insular valorization of the workplace based on a reductionist understanding of productivity in terms of mere efficiency. Aimed at overcoming the moral confusion derived from the overestimation of technical, skilled productivity and individualistic cooperation in private corporations, this article offers a thicker explanation of MacIntyre’s theory of productive work (...) in light of a narrative approach that opens up the possibility of achieving standards of excellence in modern production. To do so, it follows MacIntyre’s understanding of productivity in terms of craftsmanship by explaining what excellence in production is and the role it plays in achieving unity of life and excellence in modern corporations based on two criteria derived from a historical definition of production, namely, craftsmanship and collegiality. (shrink)

This comprehensive history of German philosophy from its medieval beginnings to near the end of the eighteenth century explores the spirit of German intellectual life and its distinctiveness from that of other countries. Beck devotes whole chapters to four great philosophers -- Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, Lessing, and Kant -- and extensively examines many others, including Albertus Magnus, Meister Eckhart, Paracelsus, Kepler, Mendelssohn, Wolff, and Herder. Questioning explanations of philosophy by the racial or ethnic character of its exponents, (...) Beck's conclusion is that German philosophy developed as a series of diverse responses to the historical experiences of the German people. The peculiarities of German philosophy must be viewed in the light of German political problems and educational structures. In particular he stresses the importance of the connections between philosophy and Germany's intellectual, literary, religious, and political history. (shrink)

This writing is part of a body of reflections about the ‘researching programs’ and ‘categories’ used in philosophy, philology and linguistics to explain human language. Within this framework, several categories like Modell, Vorbild and Paradigm are covered from a descriptive sense according to the ‘Wittgenstein’ research program. From Russell’s conception of language, there is a treatment to the prescriptive aspects of Plato’s ideas and their relation to universals. Then, the universal category in the predicament act and the denotation act are (...) linked proposing their relation with notions such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’. Therefore some concerns, shared by Russell and Wittgenstein about a philosophical grammar, are pointed out for the expression of human understanding. (shrink)