The author provides an original reflection on the notion of selfhood as intersubjective, taking the form of phenomenological reflections on the building blocks of the perennial philosophy, recasting Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics from the perspective of a phenomenology.

Metaphysics is not often spoken of as a venue for dialogue about anything, let alone culture or religion, which are more readily associated with phenomenology or hermeneutics in contemporary thinking. This collection of essays, however, by the late Boston College philosopher Oliva Blanchette, maintains the absolute necessity of metaphysics as a prerequisite for examining any particular 'realm of being,' in all areas of human inquiry, from the particular sciences to historical cultures and religions. Blanchette proposes metaphysics as (...) a fundamental and necessary level of intelligence presupposed in any exercise of judgment, discourse, or dialogue, among rational beings. At the same time, he defends the idea that dialogue is the first and most fundamental form in which such reasoning takes place in human experience, on a radically intersubjective level through language. (shrink)

Pt. 1. The journey inward. Breaking into the intellectual scene -- Awakening to the divine light in human action -- The original philosophy of the supernatural -- The vocation to philosophy -- Discourse on method for philosophy of religion -- Crisis of modernity for Catholic apologetics -- The broader social involvement -- The philosopher of Aix -- The philosophical itinerary -- The question of a Catholic philosophy -- Pt. 2. The systematic summation. The question of thought -- The responsibilities of (...) thought -- Ontology of consolidation in being in, through, and of itself -- Action as cooperation with the first cause -- The original philosophy of action revisited -- The expanded philosophy of the supernatural -- Symbiosis of the human and the divine in history -- Christian spirit and historical civilization. (shrink)

IN THE FOREWORD of Zur Seinsfrage Heidegger distinguishes two questions of being. One he speaks of in the form of the participle, die Frage nach dem Seiendem als Seiendem, the question about being as being. This he identifies with the tradition of metaphysics which he repudiates as forgetful of the real question of being. "The answering of this question," he adds, "refers at the same time to an interpretation of be [des Seins] which remains in what is unasked [im Fraglosen] (...) and provides the ground and the basis for metaphysics." What is unasked in this first question of metaphysics has to be thought of as a second question which is spoken of in the form of the infinitive: die Frage nach dem Sein als Sein, the question about be as be. This is the question which Heidegger tried to raise at the beginning of Sein und Zeit and which remains for him as the task of thinking at the end of philosophy. It is a question which Heidegger was ultimately unable to answer but which he was also unable to put to rest. It is a question in which we are still floundering, caught up in what remains for us the question of metaphysics. It is time perhaps to see if the question has been rightly framed. (shrink)

IT HAS BEEN SHOWN THAT SUÁREZ WAS THE WATERSHED for much of modern metaphysics understood as the science or the philosophy of being, or as ontology. Not only was he the first to write a systematic treatise in metaphysics that broke with the centuries-long tradition of commenting on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, but he also set metaphysics on a new course that was to define the parameters for ontology as the modern version of the ancient science of being as being. (...) Heidegger himself recognized this significance of Suárez for modern metaphysics, as he was beginning to work out his own reconstruction of a philosophy of being in terms of an ontological difference between be and being, when he wrote of Suárez as “putting the ontological problems into a systematic form for the first time, a form which determined a classification of metaphysics that lasted through subsequent centuries down to Hegel.” I would argue that Heidegger should have included himself in that classification, along with Wolff, Kant, and Hegel, even though he was trying to break out of it by positing the ontological difference as the basis for raising anew the modern question of being. (shrink)

This is another in the growing list of studies on Hegel’s Phenomenology. More specifically, it is designed for “the beginning student” and purports “to offer a reading which is less confusing than Hegel’s own text” and therefore uses “very little of Hegel’s terminology or style of writing”. After a brief introduction in which the general nature of Hegelian philosophy and some of its key ideas are presented, it goes on to discuss both the Preface and Hegel’s “Introduction” somewhat more critically (...) before going on to deal with the successive sections of the Phenomenology from “Sense Certainty” to “Absolute Knowledge” somewhat more exegetically, as the author herself puts it. After the section on Reason and before that on Spirit, a special chapter on “The State” is inserted, which discusses a number of topics from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by way of introduction to subsequent parts of the Phenomenology. Three chapters are then devoted to the section on Spirit, followed by two relatively short chapters on “Religion in General” and “Absolute Knowledge.” A brief bibliography is added which includes only a few of the better known works on Hegel, but none of these sources seems to have influenced Dudeck much in her reading. This is very much her own work on the Phenomenology and it has to be viewed as such. Whether one likes it or not, agrees with it or not, will depend on one’s own reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology and one’s own interpretation of its method. (shrink)

This is another in the growing list of studies on Hegel’s Phenomenology. More specifically, it is designed for “the beginning student” and purports “to offer a reading which is less confusing than Hegel’s own text” and therefore uses “very little of Hegel’s terminology or style of writing”. After a brief introduction in which the general nature of Hegelian philosophy and some of its key ideas are presented, it goes on to discuss both the Preface and Hegel’s “Introduction” somewhat more critically (...) before going on to deal with the successive sections of the Phenomenology from “Sense Certainty” to “Absolute Knowledge” somewhat more exegetically, as the author herself puts it. After the section on Reason and before that on Spirit, a special chapter on “The State” is inserted, which discusses a number of topics from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by way of introduction to subsequent parts of the Phenomenology. Three chapters are then devoted to the section on Spirit, followed by two relatively short chapters on “Religion in General” and “Absolute Knowledge.” A brief bibliography is added which includes only a few of the better known works on Hegel, but none of these sources seems to have influenced Dudeck much in her reading. This is very much her own work on the Phenomenology and it has to be viewed as such. Whether one likes it or not, agrees with it or not, will depend on one’s own reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology and one’s own interpretation of its method. (shrink)

Two kinds of remarks can be made on Kainz’s book on the Phenomenology of Spirit. First, there are those that pertain to it as an instrument to help in the reading of the Phenomenology itself and, second, there are those that pertain to the questions that Kainz’s interpretation of the Phenomenology raises. Both of these issues deserve some attention in approaching Kainz’s book and, in a sense, they cannot be separated, since any reading of a philosophical work is already an (...) interpretation and this is especially true of a work like Hegel’s Phenomenology. Indeed, the peculiarity of the Phenomenology as a philosophical work, which Kainz remarks upon along with many others, makes it very susceptible to a variety of interpretations, all of which could be called into question. In this regard the Phenomenology might be likened, not just to a novel, as Kainz suggests, but also to a poem, whose meaning cannot be strictly paraphrased but stands and falls with the language and structure of the work itself. This may be why, apart from the inherent difficulty and complexity of the Phenomenology, we have had so few commentaries on it, in comparison say to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which itself is surely not lacking in difficulty. But it is not to say that the Phenomenology should not be analysed and commented upon. We do that even with the best of poems. It is only to say that there is no substitute for reading the Phenomenology itself, for its meaning grows out of the very creation of language which it represents and, in a sense, there is no other way of getting at its meaning than through its very movement leading to Absolute Knowing. If an analysis or a commentary can help to enter into this movement, so much the better. If they stand in the way or impede the movement, they must be set aside. For I am convinced that Hegel himself knew better than anyone else what he was up to in the Phenomenology and the way that he did it may well be the only way of doing what he wanted to do. This being said, however, in what follows I shall try to make comments on both the issue of instrument and the issue of interpretation in succession. (shrink)

Two kinds of remarks can be made on Kainz’s book on the Phenomenology of Spirit. First, there are those that pertain to it as an instrument to help in the reading of the Phenomenology itself and, second, there are those that pertain to the questions that Kainz’s interpretation of the Phenomenology raises. Both of these issues deserve some attention in approaching Kainz’s book and, in a sense, they cannot be separated, since any reading of a philosophical work is already an (...) interpretation and this is especially true of a work like Hegel’s Phenomenology. Indeed, the peculiarity of the Phenomenology as a philosophical work, which Kainz remarks upon along with many others, makes it very susceptible to a variety of interpretations, all of which could be called into question. In this regard the Phenomenology might be likened, not just to a novel, as Kainz suggests, but also to a poem, whose meaning cannot be strictly paraphrased but stands and falls with the language and structure of the work itself. This may be why, apart from the inherent difficulty and complexity of the Phenomenology, we have had so few commentaries on it, in comparison say to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which itself is surely not lacking in difficulty. But it is not to say that the Phenomenology should not be analysed and commented upon. We do that even with the best of poems. It is only to say that there is no substitute for reading the Phenomenology itself, for its meaning grows out of the very creation of language which it represents and, in a sense, there is no other way of getting at its meaning than through its very movement leading to Absolute Knowing. If an analysis or a commentary can help to enter into this movement, so much the better. If they stand in the way or impede the movement, they must be set aside. For I am convinced that Hegel himself knew better than anyone else what he was up to in the Phenomenology and the way that he did it may well be the only way of doing what he wanted to do. This being said, however, in what follows I shall try to make comments on both the issue of instrument and the issue of interpretation in succession. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue by Oliva BlanchetteMatthew MinerdBLANCHETTE, Oliva. Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xi + 133 pp. Cloth, $75.00In this text, the author presents a personal synthesis of metaphysics using a lexicon of scholastic and Blondelian-Hegelian thought. The first chapter, "From Questions of Being to the Question of Being as Being," presents a quasi-phenomenological account of the (...) emergence of the analogical conception of order of various degrees of perfection of being as such, concretized in various domains that are physical/natural and human/cultural. In this first chapter, an important theme that emerges and becomes a golden thread throughout the text is the claim that the primary analogate of being is, within our experience, the human person and the human mode of activity in culture and religion. [End Page 538]The second chapter, "Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue of the Crossroads of Intersubjective, Intercultural, and Interreligious Communication," is perhaps the densest, covering a number of points handled in the remainder of the book. In this chapter, Blanchette is concerned with showing how intercommunication takes place within discourse concerning both the shared principles of intelligent agents and ultimately in view of an orientation toward what he later will call the vertical transcendence of culture in relation to God. Both of these tasks are of critical importance for constituting the necessary background for a philosophy of culture and a philosophy of religion that can mediate among the various actualities of human existence amid the objective and subjective aspects of art, science, and moral mutual recognition of intelligent agents in community.The third chapter, "The Necessity of Metaphysics in the Struggle for World Peace and Justice," opens with an arguably theological observation that the rational agent has two ends, one of which is not attainable in this life involving some kind of "more direct relation with God" in the hereafter, and the other pertaining to the struggle toward the establishment of a "historical communal peace." The framework for this terminology is a scholastically aware engagement with Blondelian (and partly Hegelian) thought. This chapter is concerned with articulating the way that rational agents engage in the historical task of establishing a kind of universal spirit of intersubjective recognition, at least as an asymptotic goal within history, even if contention ultimately prevents the formation of such a single, unified, intrahistorical community. Blanchette argues that this project is possible only within the dual transcendence of the human person, namely, as cultural and as religious, the latter being the condition for the former. Metaphysics has the role of articulating such transcendence.The fourth chapter, "Metaphysics as the Way from Phenomenology to Theology," engages with some of the questions related to the "theological turn" in Continental phenomenology. Phenomenological inquiry, Blanchette argues, must acknowledge that it investigates only one order of being in the universe, the human-intentional (or "historico-social"), and therefore stands in need of metaphysics to mediate its subject material with other kinds of being (as is true, similarly, of other disciplines). However, he also contends that phenomenology offers a very important preamble for a "first-person ontology" that is sensitive to the specific cultural and historical being of spiritual beings, but ultimately, Blanchette argues, it does so as "part of the way up from the bottom" and as opening up to metaphysical speculation, which itself prevents theology from degenerating into a kind of superstition.In chapters 5 through 7, Blanchette traces out the kind of mediation that occurs between metaphysics and theology. In chapter 5, he briefly develops his stated conviction regarding the human person's role as primary analogate in metaphysics and connects to a more Aristotelian [End Page 539] language of a transcendent cause that is pure act, though also immanent creatively and, upon theological supposition, through divine incarnation.The reviewer found chapter 6, "Metaphysics and the Transcendence of Cultures in Religion," to be the most interesting. In it, Blanchette develops earlier themes concerning the metaphysics of culture and its relationship to nature, as well as the constitution of subjectivity precisely as intersubjectivity among rational selves in the order of culture. Developing themes from chapter 3, he... (shrink)

In the early years of the twentieth century, Gottlob Frege and David Hilbert, two titans of mathematical logic, engaged in a controversy regarding the correct understanding of the role of axioms in mathematical theories, and the correct way to demonstrate consistency and independence results for such axioms. The controversy touches on a number of difficult questions in logic and the philosophy of logic, and marks an important turning-point in the development of modern logic. This entry gives an overview of that (...) controversy and of its philosophical underpinnings. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda la recepción temprana del filósofo esloveno Slavoj Žižek en el debate teórico chileno entre los años 1998-2013. El interés de este articulo no consiste meramente en enlistar las menciones a Žižek en el contexto local, sino problematizar los intereses históricos de las escenas teóricas locales y el alcance político de la teoría materialista dialéctica de Žižek, considerando que esta recepción se masifica al aproximarse el movimiento estudiantil del 2011 bajo la necesidad de acudir a nuevos referentes teóricos (...) para entender la realidad contingente. (shrink)