The fifth volume of the Universal Encyclopaedia of Philosophy [Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii] has been edited in September 2004 by the St. Thomas Aquinas Society in Poland under the auspices of the Department of Metaphysics at the Catholic University in Lublin. The grand volume of 934 pages contains entries beginning with the letters Iq-J-Ko. The Universal Encyclopaedia of Philosophy [UEP] has been out since 2000 in Lublin. It is the first philosophical encyclopaedia in the whole history of Polish academic activity, and (...) the fifth such publication world-wide. (shrink)

Quentin Smith contends that modern science provides enough evidence ‘to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so.’There was a time when such a claim would have been dismissed because it conflicts with a principle absolutely fundamental to all human thought, including science itself. As Thomas Reid expressed the matter:That neither existence, nor any mode of existence, can begin without an efficient cause is a principle that appears very early in the mind of (...) man; and it is so universal, and so firmly rooted in human nature, that the most determined scepticism cannot eradicate it. (shrink)

What does it mean for an individual (a one) to come to be? This question has been close to the center of attention throughout the history of metaphysics. St. Thomas Aquinas’s contributions to a defensible response to this question (in terms of esse) are well documented. Not as well known are the responses to this question offered in the past decade by two learned Jesuit Thomists who have also been heavily influenced by the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead: James (...) Felt and Norris Clarke. It is the purpose of this article to examine carefully and criticize their responses to the above question. (shrink)

What does it mean for an individual (a one) to come to be? This question has been close to the center of attention throughout the history of metaphysics. St. Thomas Aquinas’s contributions to a defensible response to this question (in terms of esse) are well documented. Not as well known are the responses to this question offered in the past decade by two learned Jesuit Thomists who have also been heavily influenced by the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead: James (...) Felt and Norris Clarke. It is the purpose of this article to examine carefully and criticize their responses to the above question. (shrink)

Since the last decades of the 20th century the meaning and content of knowledge has dramatically changed. This necessitates adopting a historical perspective in ap­proa­ching the questions of knowledge. But so far all the efforts of putting knowledge in a historical perspective since Hegel’s historization of Spirit either suffer from the limitations of the presupposition of the One or fail to ground the historicity of knowledge on the history of coming-to-be and passing-away. Moving from Heidegger’s ‘history of Being’ toward (...) the Aristotelian understanding of coming-to-be and passing away as a process of becoming has the potential to open up new avenues in approaching the historical question of knowledge as well as establishing its relation with the never com­plete ground of the entities as its historical a priori condition of possibility. (shrink)

Quentin Smith contends that modern science provides enough evidence ‘to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so.’ There was a time when such a claim would have been dismissed because it conflicts with a principle absolutely fundamental to all human thought, including science itself. As Thomas Reid expressed the matter: That neither existence, nor any mode of existence, can begin without an efficient cause is a principle that appears very early in the (...) mind of man; and it is so universal, and so firmly rooted in human nature, that the most determined scepticism cannot eradicate it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The following are purported to be common-sense features of the world: time’s passage, the unreality of the future, the existence of ‘genuine’ change. All of these common-sense features are accommodated by accepting the phenomenon of absolute becoming, a view of temporal passage in which the unreal future comes into existence in the present. Indeed, most philosophers who lay claim to common-sense views of time accept absolute becoming. I argue that absolute becoming has deeply unintuitive consequences. Specifically, proponents of absolute (...) becoming face what I call the coordination problem: in the absence of a connection between the existing present and the unreal future, one must, but cannot, explain how whatever comes into existence preserves the continuing regularity of the world. The standard options to explain the continuing regularity of the world take the form of appealing to enforcers—causation, laws of nature, and dispositions—to guarantee that what comes into existence preserves these regularities. I show that the very nature of a world in which there is no future means that enforcers cannot guarantee this regular nature of the world. Absolute becoming should therefore be rejected: the future does not come into existence; it already exists. (shrink)

This article by Curtis Wilson is an account of the origin of Hansen’s powerful systematic method for finding contributions of higher order perturbations in celestial mechanics. Hansen’s method was developed in the course of improving on Laplace’s treatment of the mutual perturbations of Jupiter and Saturn. This method, an entirely new way of doing celestial mechanics when it first appeared, later made possible the successful treatment of the complicated motions of our moon (see Wilson 2010). In this paper Wilson gives (...) a brief historical introduction followed by an account of relevant technical details of the Laplacian background, an account illustrating technical details in Hansen’s initial development in his Disquisitions of 1829, and a treatment illustrating details contributing to the achievement of Hansen’s more refined development in his Untersuchung of 1831. These details include conditional equations Hansen provides for checking the accuracy of calculations. Wilson also includes a detailed assessment showing the extraordinary improvement in empirical accuracy of Hansen’s treatment over the best earlier treatment of the Jupiter-Saturn interactions. (shrink)

Synthesizes Thomistic and Whiteheadian metaphysics.

In some quarters, it is held that Anscombe proved that a zygote is not a human being on the basis of an argument involving the possibility of identical twins, but there is surprisingly little agreement on what her argument is supposed to be. I criticize several extant interpretations, both as interpretations of Anscombe and as self-standing arguments, and offer a different understanding of her conclusion on which the non-specificity of creation processes and their goals is at issue.

This new translation of _On Coming to Be and Passing Away _and_ Meteorology 1 and 4_ fits seamlessly with the other volumes in the New Hackett Aristotle Series, enabling Anglophone readers to study these works in a way previously not possible. The Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what it is about, what it is trying to do, how it goes about doing it, and what sort of audience it presupposes. Sequentially numbered, cross-referenced endnotes provide the information (...) most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index indicates the places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. (shrink)

Lane Craig, for example, asserts, that it is "intuitively obvious." 1 This approach is not promising since this principle is not self evident. A principle p is self evident if and only if everybody who understands p believes p, but many philosophers and cosmologists not only believe it possible.

This paper considers Aristotle’s distinction between the cause of being and the cause of coming to be. It is intended to show that Aristotle is able to unify both kinds of causes on the basis of the idea that a thing’s substance is its end. He is not confused about the cause of being and of coming to be, as it might seem in several passages. The paper’s focus is on Metaphysics Zeta 17. In contrast to David Charles’ (...) interpretation, my reading of this chapter puts weight on the fact that the end is said to explain both coming to be and being. According to this reading, Zeta 17 is a clue to understanding the unification of both causes in Aristotle. (shrink)

In Physica I,8 Aristotle endeavors to show that a long-term Eleatic puzzle about coming-to-be can be resolved by appealing to his own ontological principles of change (substratum, privation, and form). In this paper, I posit that the key to Aristotle’s resolution lies in the introduction of aspectual distinctions within numerical unities. These distinctions within the terminus a quo and the terminus as quem of coming-to-be made it possible for Aristotle to maintain, while answering the puzzle, that there is (...) no coming-to-be ex nihilo and, at the same time, that the product of coming-to-be is something that did not exist before; i.e. that there is coming-to-be. Finally, I suggest that this resolution could be seen as an interesting case of the application of conceptual tools developed in the Sophistici Elenchi, and I analyze the advantages of this resolution over the Platonic resolution of a similar sort of Eleatic problem. (shrink)

Depictions of children in British science fiction and horror films in the early 1960s introduced a new but dominant trope: the ‘extraordinary’ child. Extraordinary children, I suggest, are disturbing because they violate expected developmental norms, drawing on discourses from both the ‘psy’ sciences and early neuroscience. This post-war trope has been considered by film and literature scholars in the past five years, but this existing work tends to present the extraordinary child as an American phenomenon, and links these depictions to (...) adults’ psychoanalytical anxieties about parenthood and the family. This article, considering Village of the Damned (1960), Children of the Damned (1963), The Damned (1963), and Lord of the Flies (1963), will contend that the extraordinary child was British before it was American, and tapped as much into nuclear anxieties generated by the early Cold War as fears about the ‘permissive society’, especially given that many of these films preceded the peak of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and were based on British science fiction of the 1950s. The ‘psy science’ that was dominant in these films was developmental psychology, not psychoanalysis. Moreover, adolescents as well as adults were key audiences for these films. Drawing on self-narrative essays written by English adolescents aged 14 to 16 between 1962 and 1966, I will demonstrate that this age group employed their own fears of nuclear war and their knowledge of psychological language to challenge adult authority, presenting a counter-narrative to adult conceptions of the abnormal and irresponsible ‘rising generation’. (shrink)

This chapter argues that it is possible to identify, in the coming to be of knowledge, the three elements that Aristotle says are involved in any kind of coming to be whatsoever (viz., matter, form, and the generated composite object). Specifically, it is argued that in this schema the passive intellect (pathetikos nous) corresponds to the matter, the active intellect (poetikos nous) corresponds to the form, and the composite object corresponds to the mind as actually knowing.

The following is an examination of two possible interpretations of the meaning of the “existence” of God. By using two different Danishterms—the word existence (Existents) and the concept “coming to be” (Tilværelse)—found in Kierkegaard’s writing, I hope to show that two very different theological outcomes arise depending upon which idea or term is used. Moreover, I posit which of these twooutcomes is closer in nature to the more famously used German term Dasein.

This article has attempted to clarify two of the models that depict the system in which the Universe came into existence. Within the domain of Islamic thought, Avicennian and Ishraqi models are more popular than others and deserve adequate attention. Although the very relationship between God and the Universe, after the question of “God', is the next most crucial question to philosophers, specifically to divine philosophers, especially where it concerns the occurrence rather than mere manipulation of such relationship, the authors (...) of this article have attempted to show that the failure of philosophers in handling this question has been even more intense than their failure in dealing with any other questions. In order to verify this hypothesis, the authors have focused on the thoughts of the two great Muslim philosophers, Avicenna and Sheikh Ishraq, who endeavored to present a consistent model of Creation. Finally, a content analysis was conducted. Then, within the limits of an article such as this, some criticisms that might render the views of these two great philosophers vulnerable were offered and judgment was left to readers. (shrink)

Women's Power To Be Loud: The Authority of the Discourse and Authority of the Text in Mary Dorcey's Irish Lesbian Poetic Manifesto "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" The following article aims to examine Mary Dorcey's poem "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear," included in the 1991 volume Moving into the Space Cleared by Our Mothers. Apart from being a well-known and critically acclaimed Irish poet and fiction writer, the author of the poem has been, from its beginnings, (...) actively involved in lesbian rights movement. Dorcey's poem "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" is to be construed from a perspective of lesbian and feminist discourse, as well as a cultural, sociological and political context in which it was created. While analyzing the poem, the emphasis is being paid to the intertwining of various ideological and subversive assumptions, their competing for importance and asserting authority over one another, in line with, and sometimes, against the grain of the textual framework. In other words, Dorcey's poem introduces a multilayered framework that draws heavily on various sources: the popular culture idiom, religious discourse, the text even employs, in some parts, crime and legal jargon, but, above all, it relies upon sensuous lesbian experience where desire and respect for the other woman opens the emancipating space allowing for redefining of one's personal and textual location. As a result of such a multifarious interaction, unrepresented and unacknowledged Irish women's standpoints may come to the surface and become articulated, disrupting their enforced muteness that the controlling heteronormative discourse has attempted to ensure. In Dorcey's poem, the operating metaphor of women's silence, conceived of, at first, as the need to conceal one's sexual identity in fear of social ostracism and contempt of the "neighbours," is further equated with the noiseless, solitary and violent death of the anonymous woman, the finding of whose body was reported on the news. In both cases, the unwanted Irish women's voices of either agony, during the unregistered by anybody misogynist bloodshed that took place inside the flat, or the forbidden sounds of lesbian sexual excitement, need to be censored and stifled, not to disrupt an idealized image of the well-established family and heteronormative patterns. In the light of the aforementioned parallel, empowered by the shared bodily and emotional closeness with her female lover, and already bitterly aware that silence in discourse is synonymous with textual, or even, actual death, the speaker in "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" comes to claim her own agency and makes her voice heard by others and taken into account. (shrink)

In 1849, Kierkegaard published The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Devotional Discourses, which were closely followed by two discourses on the woman who was a sinner, published in 1849 and 1850. I argue that these discourses are intended to set the stage to learn how to embody Christian love from the woman. Kierkegaard’s claims about what is required to teach Christian virtue imply that the woman becomes more than loving, she becomes love. I explore (...) his notion of acquired originality and how applied philosophical concepts such as automaticity and skillful coping elucidate this notion. (shrink)

When it comes to name-calling, structural realists have heard pretty much all of it. Among the many insults, they have been called ‘empiricist anti-realists’ but also ‘traditional scientific realists’. Obviously the collapse accusations that motivate these two insults cannot both be true at the same time. The aim of this paper is to defend the epistemic variety of structural realism against the accusation of collapse to traditional scientific realism. In so doing, I turn the tables on traditional scientific realists by (...) presenting them with a dilemma. They can either opt for a construal of their view that permits epistemic access to non-structural features of unobservables but then face the daunting task of substantiating a claim that seems to have little hope of being true or they can drop the requirement of epistemic access to non-structural features but then face a collapse to epistemic structural realism. There is thus only one well supported way to be a realist. No wonder then that many traditional scientific realists have over the years expressed views that are strikingly similar to epistemic structural realism. It is high time to let these epistemic structural realists out of the closet. (shrink)

_Coming to Our Senses_ positions affect, or feeling, as our new cultural compass, ordering the parameters and possibilities of what can be known. From Facebook "likes" to Coca-Cola "loves," from "emotional intelligence" in business to "emotional contagion" in social media, affect has become the primary catalyst of global culture, displacing reason as the dominant force guiding global culture. Through examples of feeling in the books, film, music, advertising, cultural criticism, and political discourse of the United States and Latin America, Reber (...) shows how affect encourages the public to "reason" on the strength of sentiment alone. Well-being, represented by happiness and health, and ill-being, embodied by unhappiness and disease, form the two poles of our social judgment, whether in affirmation or critique. We must then re-envision contemporary politics as operating at the level of the feeling body, so we can better understand the physiological and epistemological conditions affirming our cultural status quo and contestatory strategies for emancipation. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question of what it means to be an American today. In the first half, I respond to Samuel P. Huntington’s claim that America’s national identity is fundamentally Anglo-Protestant by rehearsing Jacques Derrida’s argument that the founding of a nation whose self-understanding is based on the idea of a social contract, such as the United States, implies an “originating violence” governed by extralegal considerations. In the second half, I discuss the “melting pot” and “salad bowl” concepts of (...) American identity and show how deconstruction does not force us to choose between them. However, I suggest that the dynamic nature of the melting pot is more consonant with the deconstructionist idea of the American people “to come” presented in the first half. (shrink)

In his best-selling The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light , William Irwin Thompson intrigued readers with his thoughts on mythology and sexuality. In his newest book, Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness , he takes the reader on a journey through the evolution of consciousness from the preverbal communications of early stone carvings, to the writings of Marcel Proust, around the monumental wrappings of Christo and up to the rebirth of interest in the (...) Taoist philosophy of Lao Tzu. Owing as much to the rhythmic constructions of jazz as to established methods of scholarship, Thompson plays a riff on biology and culture seeing the birth of the mind in Proust’s Madeleine, the displacement of humanity in Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstag and, in Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching , the path forward to a new planetary culture. In Coming Into Being , William Irwin Thompson presents a fascinating vision of our past, our present, and our future that no one will want to miss. (shrink)

In this chapter, I delineate the central trajectories of Sloterdijk’s creative reappropriation of certain Heideggerian motives. Essentially, Sloterdijk wagers that the Heideggerian climate that weighs on our contemporary thinking is not adequate for grasping the globalised, technological world. In order to show how Sloterdijk is lead to abandon or overcome the understanding of globalisation influenced by Heidegger, I first present what could be called Sloterdijk’s onto-anthropology, that is, his story of the pro-duction or the coming-to-the-world, of the human animal. (...) There, Sloterdijk shows how the “radical openness” of the human is predicated upon an act of insulation, the building of protective spaces, called greenhouses, incubators or spheres. Understanding this interplay between distance and nearness is crucial to understanding Sloterdijk’s onto-kinetics or his description of the ontological movement of existence. While Heidegger thinks existence according to the vertical movements of falling and gathering, Sloterdijk emphasises lateral movement, an expansion on the same plane [Ausbreitung in der Ebene]. Sloterdijk’s insight into the lateral spatiality of human existence sheds light onto his interpretation of the history of humankind as history of globalisation. Here, I concentrate on the transition between the second and third of these phases of globalisation because it is this third phase which, according to Sloterdijk, is no longer explicable in terms of Heideggerian enframing and the will to will. This inevitably leads us to ask whether the globalised world requires a response different from a Heideggerian meditative thinking and poetic dwelling and what form(s) our inhabitation of the globalised world might take. (shrink)