Online research in philosophy

Ancient philosophical theories of soul are in many respects sensitive to ways of speaking and thinking about the soul psuchê] that are not specifically philosophical or theoretical. We therefore begin with what the word ‘soul’ meant to speakers of Classical Greek, and what it would have been natural to think about and associate with the soul. We then turn to various Presocratic thinkers, and to the philosophical theories that are our primary concern, those of Plato (first in the Phaedo, then in the Republic), Aristotle (in the De Anima or On the Soul ), Epicurus, and the Stoics. These are by far the most carefully worked out theories of soul in ancient philosophy. Later theoretical developments — for instance, in the writings of Plotinus and other Platonists, as well as the Church Fathers — are best studied against the background of the classical theories, from which, in large part, they derive.

The turn to the subject, heralded by Kant as the transcendental turn has influenced subsequent modes of philosophizing. For Hegel, this turn has meant a shift from substance to subject. A shift from talk about substance or soul to talk about subject has brought about a new perspective in the approach to thinking about person. So instead of speaking about a soul, its acts and its objects, we speak about a subject and its conscious acts.

Introduction -- The attack on aristotelian-scholastic metaphysics -- The analysis of things : substance, quality, and the tree of porphyry -- Thing and word : a critique of transcendental terms -- From a grammatical point of view : the reduction of the categories -- Soul, nature, morality, and God -- Soul and nature : a critique of aristotelian psychology and natural philosophy -- The virtues and the road to heavenly pleasure -- Speaking about the ineffable : the Trinity -- Towards a humanist dialectic -- Dialectic I : propositions, the square of contraries, proof, and argument -- Dialectic II : forms of argumentation -- Conclusion: Valla and "ordinary language philosophy".

In “Human Freedom and the Self”, Roderick Chisholm defends a form of libertarianism, and defends it from objections. Your assignment is to discuss a certain one of those objections. Specifically, you must i) briefly formulate Chisholm’s Libertarianism, and then ii) present, explain and evaluate the argument against Chisholm’s Libertarianism that Chisholm discusses in section 7 of his paper (pp. 360-361).

Roderick M. Chisholm (1916-1999) was one of the most important philosophical thinkers of the 20th century. His influence on epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and metaphysics cannot be understated; indeed, it is difficult to conceive of what these fields would be like today without the impact of Chisholm. Were there a Nobel Prize in philosophy, Chisholm surely would have won it.