Florea Lucaci, Creatie si fiintare. Un temei in ontologia umanului Editura Dacia, Cluj Napoca, 2002.

The present study proposes a valorization of the work of professor and philosopher Ioan Biriş. The statistics of his books and studies, their distribution by areas of interest, and especially the ideas in his work confirm the need for philosophy in the Romanian cultural life. As a whole, his philosophical endeavor is based on the concept of totality. Thus in the Hegelian spirit, Ioan Biriş successfully convinces us that the logical may exceed the limits of formal exercise and become the (...) organon of philosophy. In this capacity, the logical may operate on the real and valorize the multiple relationships between identity and difference. His books Filosofia și logica științelor sociale, Totalitate, sistem, holon, Rolul imaginarului în cunoașterea științifică, Istorie şi cultură, as well as a series of studies among which let me mention: “L’identité symbolique et la logique partitive des valeurs spirituelles”, “On the logic of religious terms”, “Le rapport identite-difference et la conjonction collective. Aspects logiques”, clearly prove the author’s capacity to integrate existential, religious, cognitive and axiological issues into a unitary vision. As Noica would say, he succeeded to enter the spirit’s life thorough the intellect’s gate. (shrink)

The theoretical background of the analysis of the creatio ex nihilo syntagm is constituted by the re- quirements of the semantics of possible worlds. Here the philosophical and logical research is implicitly valued in the modal reconstruction of the ontological argument. In the relations between concept, language, and object, several changes which are controlled by universally valid meth- ods are possible. These are the following: 1. The antinomy given as a mystery of the world’s ori- gin is reduced to a (...) non-contradictory logical structure, to a concept. 2. It can be proved that to this concept - creatio ex nihilo - several things correspond. The idea of a possible world grants subject-object unity to nihil, as an absolute determination and ontological cor- relation of creatio, as a possible determination of the existence. 3. A system that grants possibility to the idea of creation has its basis in the dialectic game between ontological identity and difference. (shrink)

This study departs from the premises that the idea of freedom determines a paradoxical condition of the relation between art and politics. The author uses the concept of freedom in a Kantian manner, as a transcendental condition of the co-ordination of the historically constituted values in the fields of art and politics. Metaphorically speaking, the experience of freedom can be understood as a temptation to existence. Analytically speaking, from the perspective of the practical reason, one can observe that freedom (...) funds the paradoxical relations between the competences of a certain field of culture and the creative performances of the art- ists. More exactly, political persuasion can be rediscovered in what recent history calls “the Manicheist spirit of the artist”. (shrink)

Claudiu Mesaros, Filosofii cerului (The philosophers of the sky above) Ed. Universitãtii de Vest, Timiooara, 2005.

Florea Lucaci, Creatie si fiintare. Un temei în ontologia umanului Editura Dacia, Cluj Napoca, 2002.

The study attempts to survey the way in which the rationalist spirit (especially Aristotle’s philosophy) was assimilated by Christian thinking in the patristic and scholastic periods. This shows that the great schism is the outcome not only of dogmatic controversies, but also of accepting and promoting distinctive-argumentative methodologies to justify these dogmas. If in the West theory was viewed as contemplation and as method for conceptual construction, in the East the emphasis was laid exclusively on contemplation and revelation. Furthermore, the (...) West accepted the autonomy of sciences by creating the “seven liberal arts” - an unacceptable concept for the Orthodox world, where logic was considered a mere organon, and philosophy, an ancilla theologiae. Among the main consequences detectable to this day are the varied cultural moulds that exist in the Christian world, as well as the scientific and civilizational lagging behind of the Orthodox East. (shrink)

The idea inspiring the eco-phenomenological movement is that phenomenology can help remedy our environmental crisis by uprooting and replacing environmentally-destructive ethical and metaphysical presuppositions inherited from modern philosophy. Eco-phenomenology's critiques of subject/object dualism and the fact/value divide are sketched and its positive alternatives examined. Two competing approaches are discerned within the eco-phenomenological movement: Nietzscheans and Husserlians propose a naturalistic ethical realism in which good and bad are ultimately matters of fact, and values should be grounded in these proto-ethical facts; (...) Heideggerians and Levinasians articulate a transcendental ethical realism according to which we discover what really matters when we are appropriately open to the environment, but what we thereby discover is a transcendental source of meaning that cannot be reduced to facts, values, or entities of any kind. These two species of ethical realism generate different kinds of ethical perfectionism: naturalistic ethical realism yields an eco-centric perfectionism which stresses the flourishing of life in general; transcendental ethical realism leads to a more 'humanistic' perfectionism which emphasizes the cultivation of distinctive traits of Dasein. Both approaches are examined, and the Heideggerian strand of the humanistic approach defended, since it approaches the best elements of the eco-centric view while avoiding its problematic ontological assumptions and anti-humanistic implications. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has recently become recognised as a self-standing philosophical sub-discipline. Still, metaphysics has remained largely dismissive of feminist insights. Here I make the case for the value of feminist insights in metaphysics: taking them seriously makes a difference to our ontological theory choice and feminist philosophy can provide helpful methodological tools to regiment ontological theories. My examination goes as follows. Contemporary ontology is not done via conceptual analysis, but via quasi-scientific means. This takes different ontological positions to be competing (...) hypotheses about reality’s fundamental structure that are then assessed with a loose battery of criteria for theory choice. Such criteria make up the constitutive values of ontology. These values are distinguished from contextual values of a practice: the political and moral values embedded in the social context of inquiry.. (shrink)

The most important sources of contemporary American literary theory are neither the linguistics-based movement of French structuralism, as the term 'poststructuralism' implies, nor a 'modernity' that has been superseded, as the term 'postmodernism' implies, but rather a modernist tradition of aesthetics shaped by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German romanticism and idealism, movements that culminated in the work of Heidegger during the Weimar period between the World Wars and afterward, exercising an increasingly dominant influence on French theorists after World War II, (...) from Sartre through Derrida, and subsequently on the development of poststructuralism and postmodernism during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. This essay strives to put well-accepted facts and issues within what Wittgenstein called a 'perspicuous' perspective. Although it is common to observe that deconstruction shares with Romanticism certain very general features, the same judgment is not often applied to deconstruction's semiotic account of language as a system of arbitrary signs without positive values. The essay's claim, by contrast, is that romanticist, especially German influences, operating in complementary relation with influences from the English and French Enlightenments, provided the cultural and conceptual milieu in which literary theory's distinctively modern, characteristically ontological, and anti-metaphysical view of language developed. (shrink)

Memory technologies are cultural artifacts that scaffold, transform, and are interwoven with human biological memory systems. The goal of this article is to provide a systematic and integrative survey of their philosophical dimensions, including their metaphysical, epistemological and ethical dimensions, drawing together debates across the humanities, cognitive sciences, and social sciences. Metaphysical dimensions of memory technologies include their function, the nature of their informational properties, ways of classifying them, and their ontological status. Epistemological dimensions include the truth-conduciveness of external memory, (...) the conditions under which external memory counts as knowledge, and the metacognitive monitoring of external memory processes. And lastly, ethical and normative dimensions include the desirability of the effects memory technologies have on biological memory, their effects on self and culture, and their moral status. Whilst the focus in the article is largely philosophical and conceptual, empirical issues such as the way we interact with memory technologies in various contexts are also discussed. We thus take a naturalistic approach in which philosophical and empirical concepts and approaches are seen as continuous. (shrink)

Pragmatist Metaphysics proposes a pragmatist re-articulation of the nature, aims and methods of metaphysics. Rather than regarding metaphysics as a ‘first philosophy’, an inquiry into the world independent of human perspectives, the pragmatist views metaphysics as an inquiry into categorizations of reality laden with human practices. Insofar as our categorizations of reality are practice-laden, they are also, inevitably, value-laden. Sami Pihlström argues that metaphysics does not, then, study the world’s ‘own’ categorial structure, but a structure we, through our conceptual and (...) practical activities, impose on the reality we experience and interact with. Engaging with the classical American pragmatists, in particular William James, and neopragmatists, including Hilary Putnam, the author seeks to correct long-held misconceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between metaphysics and pragmatism. He argues that a coherent metaphysical alternative to the currently fashionable realist metaphysics emerges from pragmatism and that pragmatism itself should be reinterpreted in a metaphysically serious manner. Moreover, the book argues that, from a pragmatist perspective, metaphysics must be inextricably linked with ethics. (shrink)

My argument is that poststructuralist and postmodernist theory carries on and intensifies the main lines of a characteristically modern tradition of aesthetics whose most important point of reference is not French structuralism – as the term, ‘poststructuralism’, implies – but the tradition of 18th-century German romanticism and idealism that culminated in the work of Heidegger during the Weimar period in Germany between the world wars and afterward. What characterizes this modernist tradition of aesthetics is its valorization of language as a (...) mode of being possessed of an ‘ontological’ status. I place the term ‘ontology’ in quotes in order to highlight the distinction between ‘metaphysics’, with its Aristotelian and neo-Platonic connotations of a ‘chain of being’, and the more modern term ‘ontology’, which was coined in the 17th century and which became widely used during the 18th century by Leibnizian philosophers Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten ; the latter, not incidentally, also helped to establish modern usage of the term ‘aesthetics’. ‘Metaphysics’ and ‘ontology’ have their roots, respectively, in those two most major currents of our western heritage, the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian. These currents, although inextricably linked to one another in innumerable ways, have nonetheless been engaged, as Nietzsche put it, ‘in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years’ that has been obscured by Heidegger’s and Derrida’s accounts of the history of western philosophy. Such accounts have projected what is basically a romanticist critique of Enlightenment values and thought on to a totalizing account of the history of Western thought since Plato. My purpose in emphasizing the distinction between metaphysics and ontology is to provide a conceptual framework within which our understanding of the development of modern aesthetics, and the concept of language that informed that development, can be related to the larger philosophical issues at hand. Literary theorists in the United States, by endorsing Heidegger’s and Derrida’s self-serving accounts of their writings as assaults on the entire history of Western philosophy, and by failing to judge them critically as outgrowths of that history, have not only obscured these developments. They have also sustained the central tenet of American literary theory since the 1960s: that there is such a thing as a ‘Western philosophical tradition’ on the ‘other’ side of which, through an endless series of linguistic coinages and ‘erasures’, we may maneuver ourselves. My claim is that to the extent that there is such an other side, we are already on it, and that we fundamentally misunderstand our situation if we regard it as ‘other’ to the Western philosophical tradition. Key Words: Derrida • Heidegger • language • ontology • theory. (shrink)

The emergence of analytic philosophy has often been seen as inaugurating a linguistic turn in philosophy, a turn with profound anti-metaphysical implications. Metaphysics and epistemology, on this view, were replaced by logic and philosophy of language as forming the basis of philosophy. But if we look at the work of the four founders of analytic philosophy, Frege, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, we find metaphysical conceptions at the heart of their endeavours. Frege, for example, regarded numbers and the truth-values as (...) logical objects, and the ontological distinction between concept and object was fundamental to his philosophy. Both Russell and Moore in their early work developed a realist view of propositions, and even when Russell abandoned the metaphysics of propositions in his later work, this was simply replaced by a metaphysics of facts. Wittgenstein, too, in the Tractatus, articulated a raft of theses that seem paradigmatically metaphysical, though their precise status has been controversial. In this paper I outline some of the key metaphysical conceptions of Frege, Russell, Moore and the early Wittgenstein, and explore the connections with their logical views, taking as my main example the problem of relational propositions. I end by addressing the question of the status of the metaphysical statements that Frege and Wittgenstein, in particular, found themselves making. (shrink)

Thomas Langan's latest work, Being and Truth, sets as its object of inquiry the possibility of a genuine and meaningful intersubjectivity wherein both self and other come fully to nurture one another. The very condition for the possibility of such a significant onto-poetic relation is grounded and intertwined within a metaphysical Fundierung of Being illumined by Truth. In order to answer the aforementioned philosophical question, Langan maintains that the philosophical question must be cast as an ontological question. In other words, (...) the key to understanding and responding to the possibility of a genuine intersubjective relationship where both self and other come to fully interact with one another lies within the framework of a serious attempt to comprehend reflectively the constitutive dynamic between being, esse and Sein. Central to a genuine understanding and "holy" living out of self, other and the communal relationship which exists between the two is responsibility--the ability to respond to the exigencies and gifts of being. Hence, the need for our question to be cast in an ontological light. (shrink)

The 'Metaphysics of Dasein ' is the name which Heidegger gave to a new philosophical project developed immediately after the partial publication of his masterwork Being and Time. As Heidegger was later to recall, an 'overturning' took place at that moment, more precisely right in the middle of the 1929 treatise On the Essence of Ground. Between the fundamental-ontological formulation of the question of being and its metaphysical rephrasing, Heidegger discovered that a 'metaphysical freedom' stood at the root of Dasein (...) 's relation to his world and, thus, at the basis of his whole ontological questioning. This article will show how the very structure of the 1929 essay clearly illustrates the path Heidegger followed between Being and Time and the new philosophical beginning of the mid 1930s. It will conclude with a few critical remarks concerning Heidegger 's attempt to free his thinking from traditional philosophy and to overcome metaphysics. (shrink)

My argument is that poststructuralist and postmodernist theory carries on and intensifies the main lines of a characteristically modern tradition of aesthetics whose most important point of reference is not French structuralism – as the term, ‘poststructuralism’, implies – but the tradition of 18th-century German romanticism and idealism that culminated in the work of Heidegger during the Weimar period in Germany between the world wars and afterward. What characterizes this modernist tradition of aesthetics is its valorization of language as a (...) mode of being possessed of an ‘ontological’ status. I place the term ‘ontology’ in quotes in order to highlight the distinction between ‘metaphysics’, with its Aristotelian and neo-Platonic connotations of a ‘chain of being’, and the more modern term ‘ontology’, which was coined in the 17th century and which became widely used during the 18th century by Leibnizian philosophers Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten; the latter, not incidentally, also helped to establish modern usage of the term ‘aesthetics’. ‘Metaphysics’ and ‘ontology’ have their roots, respectively, in those two most major currents of our western heritage, the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian. These currents, although inextricably linked to one another in innumerable ways, have nonetheless been engaged, as Nietzsche put it, ‘in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years’ that has been obscured by Heidegger’s and Derrida’s accounts of the history of western philosophy. Such accounts have projected what is basically a romanticist critique of Enlightenment values and thought on to a totalizing account of the history of Western thought since Plato. My purpose in emphasizing the distinction between metaphysics and ontology is to provide a conceptual framework within which our understanding of the development of modern aesthetics, and the concept of language that informed that development, can be related to the larger philosophical issues at hand. Literary theorists in the United States, by endorsing Heidegger’s and Derrida’s self-serving accounts of their writings as assaults on the entire history of Western philosophy, and by failing to judge them critically as outgrowths of that history, have not only obscured these developments. They have also sustained the central tenet of American literary theory since the 1960s: that there is such a thing as a ‘Western philosophical tradition’ on the ‘other’ side of which, through an endless series of linguistic coinages and ‘erasures’, we may maneuver ourselves. My claim is that to the extent that there is such an other side, we are already on it, and that we fundamentally misunderstand our situation if we regard it as ‘other’ to the Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is Heidegger’s understanding of world and world-formation [Weltbildung] in his lecture The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (GA 29/30) and his references to the idealistic philosophy of Schelling, the ancient thought of Aristotle and Heraclitus. I will put forward the following thesis: World is prevailing [Walten] and, as this prevailing, it is the being of beings as such as a whole in the projection of world that lets it prevail. In this paper, I will clarify how (...) the world prevails, how Dasein forms the world, and the significance of physis, logos and as-structure [als-Struktur] in this context. I will also show that Heidegger’s concept of world-formation can be thought together with his concepts of being-in-the-world and worldhood. Finally, I will discuss some of the difficulties in Heidegger’s understanding of the world and propose some solutions. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a (...) series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

This book addresses five main topics of metaphysics in its first section: formal objects and truth-makers; tropes; properties and predicates; varieties of relations; and the notion of explanation in metaphysics. The second part of this volume focuses on the history of philosophy with an emphasis on Austrian philosophy: the ideas of Bolzano, Wittgenstein, Locke and Bergson, amongst others, are explored in the papers presented here. This is the first volume in a two-volume set that originates from papers presented to Professor (...) Kevin Mulligan, covering the subjects that he contributed to during his career including ontology, mind and value, history and philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. This volume contains thirty two chapters, written by researchers from across Europe, North America and North Africa. These papers cover topics in metaphysics ranging from Lehrer and Tolliver’s discussion of truth and tropes, to Johansson’s defence of the distinction between thick and thin relations and Persson and Sahlin’s presentation of the difficulties inherent in applying the concept of explanation in metaphysics. Papers on the history of philosophy include a look at Bolzano’s formative years and his conception of mathematics. De Libera examines Brentano’s adverbial theory of judgment and Fisette traces the history of the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century. Marion contests the trendy pragmatist accounts that lump Wittgenstein and Heidegger together and there are analyses of Locke and Bergson’s work, amongst the many papers presented here. This volume contains three chapters in French and one in Spanish. The second volume of this set looks at ethics, values and emotions, epistemology, perception and consciousness, as well as philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. (shrink)

In accordance with the general title, Ricœur's main concern is to develop a philosophy of the will. The overall character of this philosophy is quickly ascertained: as the Introduction makes abundantly clear, Ricœur's thought is firmly rooted in phenomenology. Indeed one might wish to regard this partisanship as Ricœur's motive for choosing the will as his central topic: could his work be an attempt to cope with a problem that has to date resisted satisfactory phenomenological treatment? Husserl's phenomenology is geared (...) to a theoretical, receptive, and perceptual type of subject, and doubts arise as to the practicability of his methodological devices when extended to the will. Although, for a philosopher like Ricœur, Husserl's phenomenological discipline of inspection and description remains an indispensable asset of philosophical method, it seems that, in studying the will, we cannot practice phenomenological reduction, since this would eliminate what is constitutive for willing: an Other opposed to me, something not reducible to mere meaning as posited by consciousness. When Husserl tries to account for willing, he accordingly transforms the phenomenon into an account of value predicates correlated to acts of the subject. (shrink)

The prevailing view about the history of early modern philosophy, which the author dubs “the early modern tale” and wants to convince us is really a fairy tale, has it that the focus on ideas as a solution to various epistemological puzzles, first introduced by Descartes, created difficulties for the traditional ontological scheme of substance and mode. The early modern tale depicts the development of “the way of ideas” as abandoning ontology at least by the time of Berkeley. This, in (...) turn, fostered an antimetaphysical bias as modern philosophy developed further, elevating epistemology to its current primary status in the field. Marc Hight challenges this account by showing how, though the conception of ideas changed over time, the ontological status of ideas remained a central part of the discussion about ideas and influenced how even later thinkers like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume thought about them. By his reading of important texts in early modern philosophy, Hight aims not only to provide a more accurate history of philosophy for this period but also to resuscitate the value of metaphysics for philosophical analysis today.��. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discover an important contribution of classical Chinese ontological conceptions for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung in the process of its globalization. Through a brief mosaic of a development of mutual Euro-Chinese encounters, from the Middle Ages to the present, the paper presents the view that both Chinese and European philosophical complexes were quite indispensable parts of the history of world philosophy; and in the future, perhaps, they will be the (...) leading factors that decide (in their serious confrontation) the basic determination of the roots of the global world metaphilosophy. At the same time the author, long having carried out scholarly research and published translations of Laozi 's Dao De Jing, Confucius' Lunyu, the Books of Xunii, Huang Lao, Huang di si jing, etc., wants to demonstrate, on the basis of specific examples of original Chinese dialectical metaphysics, their unique philosophical value for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discover an important contribution of classical Chinese ontological conceptions for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung in the process of its globalization. Through a brief mosaic of a development of mutual Euro-Chinese encounters, from the Middle Ages to the present, the paper presents the view that both Chinese and European philosophical complexes were quite indispensable parts of the history of world philosophy; and in the future, perhaps, they will be the (...) leading factors that decide (in their serious confrontation) the basic determination of the roots of the global world metaphilosophy. At the same time the author, long having carried out scholarly research and published translations of Laozi 's Dao De Jing, Confucius' Lunyu, the Books of Xunii, Huang Lao, Huang di si jing, etc., wants to demonstrate, on the basis of specific examples of original Chinese dialectical metaphysics, their unique philosophical value for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung. (shrink)

This book provides a unique approach to some of philosophy’s fundamental issues. It points to music as a model for exploring such questions as, “What does it mean to value?” This is not a musical study, per se, but a philosophical text that uses music as a vehicle for investigating these and other metaphysical, axiological, and aesthetic matters.

This paper develops Wittgenstein’s view of how experiences of ethical value contribute to our understanding of the world. Such experiences occur when we perceive certain intrinsic attributes of a particular being, object, or location as valuable irrespective of any concern for personal gain. It is shown that experiences of ethical value essentially involve a characteristic ‘listening’ to the ongoing transformations and actualizations of a given form of life—literally or metaphorically speaking. Such immediate impressions of spontaneous sympathy and agreement reveal ethics (...) and aesthetics as transcendental. Ultimately, I will attempt to show that from this point of view, forms of life are transcendental determinants of meaning and, as such, the principal objects of ethical value. Descriptive ontological grounding is thereby provided for the ethical value of species, languages, and cultures. (shrink)

Already in his earlier works Levinas proposes a distinct phenomenological project which takes into consideration the radicality of the other and otherness by questioning intentionality and the validity of intersubjectivity within intentional consciousness. His move “towards Heidegger and against Husserl” was due primarily to Heidegger’s Dasein analysis, understanding of Being and being-with. However, in his major work, Totality and Infinity, Levinas proposes a new perspective on reading intersubjective relations with the Other which strongly contrasts with the Heideggerian concept of intersubjectivity. (...) This paper addresses the question of the Other, intersubjectivity and ethics in the writings of Levinas and Heidegger respectively. It considers Levinas’s critique of intersubjectivity as provoked and developed by Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, and concentrates on Levinas’s specific understanding of intentionality in his account of metaphysics, metaphysical desire and the Other. It also takes up the question of temporality as a necessary condition for intersubjective relation and explores its implication for the self and the Other in Levinas’s and Heidegger’s respective philosophies. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 10, Edition 2, October 2010: 23-32. (shrink)

It is no exaggeration to say that of the early 20th century German philosophers who claimed to establish a new ontology, former neo-Kantian turned realist Nicolai Hartmann is the only one to have actually followed through. "Ontology: Laying the Foundations" deals with "what is insofar as it is," and its four parts tackle traditional ontological assumptions and prejudices and traditional categories such as substance, thing, individual, whole, object, and phenomenon; a novel redefinition of existence and essence in terms of the (...) ontological factors Dasein and Sosein and their interrelations; an analysis of modes of "givenness" and the ontological embeddedness of cognition in affective transcendent acts; and a discussion of the status of ideal being, including mathematical being, phenomenological essences, logical laws, values, and the interconnections between the ideal and real spheres. Hartmann’s work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. Hartmann’s work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. (shrink)

MARTIN HEIDEGGER’S FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY – REALITY ENCLOSED IN DASEIN Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology was supposed to divert philosophy towards the absolutely fundamental issue, which in the history of philosophy, unfortunately, as the author claimed, had been neglected. It was an attempt to designate the real foundation, which western metaphysics – while forgetting about being – had never touched. Thus, Heidegger focused on being. He asked about its sense, the way in which it can be described and explained. The answer was (...) to be found in the analysis of some special being – the human being. Only man, who exists in such a way (Heidegger uses the concept of Dasein) that by his very nature refers to being, is “open” to being. This article shows Heidegger’s explanation based on the analysis of man’s being, connecting the existence of reality with human existence, in its essence making the world thoroughly dependent on man, enclosing the world in Dasein. The world ceases to be the whole reality consisting of particular essences existing independently of man. It becomes “the condition”, the way of being. In the first part, the author presents how the fundamental ontology, while placing being at the centre of the discourse and using the phenomenological method, directs the attention to man. When asking about being, it asks about Dasein, about the way of man’s being. Then, the paper presents the existential analytics, the hermeneutics of Dasein, which is crucial from the point of view of Heidegger’s philosophy. The author explains what Heidegger’s existentials are and what it means that man exists as “being-in-the world”, that he exists in a way of “care”. Finally, it is shown that such an understanding of human being, the way in which he cares about the world and understands the world, i.e. designs it, results in enclosing the world in Dasein. The very sense of reality becomes thus the sense of human existence. Keywords: FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY, MARTIN HEIDEGGER, REALITY, DASEIN. (shrink)

Philosophers frequently struggle with the relation of metaphysics to the everyday world, with its practical value, and with its relation to empirical science. This paper distinguishes several different models of the relation between philosophical ontology and applied (scientific) ontology that have been advanced in the history of philosopy. Adoption of a strong participation model for the philosophical ontologist in science is urged, and requirements and consequences of the participation model are explored. This approach provides both a principled view and justification (...) of the role of the philosophical ontologist in contemporary empirical science as well as guidelines for integrating philosophers and philosophical contributions into the practice of science. (shrink)

Agriculture is defined normatively and, as such, is an area of research and practice where values are an inextricable constituent of research, where facts and values elide, and normative constraints generate new ethical categories. While discussions of normativity are part and parcel within agricultural ethics and play a prominent role in ethical discussions, I suggest that other areas of agricultural philosophy such as agricultural metaphysics or ontologies present valuable case studies for philosophical discussion. A series of case studies (...) focusing on how products are classified, graded, and measured illustrate conceptions of existence, causal relationships, and practice-oriented notions of category-making distinctive of agricultural practice. The first of these case studies shines a light on the process of knowledge integration in agriculture. I show how innovative integration, a process discussed within socially sustainable egg production, is an ineliminably normative process. The second case study, and the main focus of the chapter, concerns the normative role of agricultural standards. I discuss how standards and classes in use within egg production systems and the development and measuring techniques make AA eggs and transformed a highly toxic oilseed rape (used as a machine lubricant) into the non-toxic food-grade agricultural commodity, canola. I contend agricultural products like eggs, peanut butter, and canola oil are constituted by prescribed standards (like AA eggs and double-zero canola) that define not only the product, but also the activities related to its production and the practices that producers perform. Because standards and standardization define the categories of not only agricultural products but also agricultural practices, I suggest standards and standardization are best understood as “ontologizing activities.”. (shrink)

Levinas subverts the traditional "ontology-epistemology," and creates a "realm of difference," the realm of "value," "ethic," and "religion," maintaining that ethics is real metaphysics. According to him, it is not that "being" contains the "other" but the other way round. In this way, the issues of ethics are promoted greatly in the realm of philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not intend to deny "ontology" completely, but reversed the relationship between "ontology (theory of truth)" and "ethics (axiology)," placing the former under the (...) "constraint" of the latter. Different from general empirical science, philosophy focuses more on issues irrelevant to ordinary empirical objects; it does have "objects," though. More often than not, the issues of philosophy cannot be conceptualized into "propositions"; nevertheless, it absolutely has its "theme." As a discipline, philosophy continuously takes "being" as its "theme" and "object" of thinking. The point is that this "being" should not be understood as an "object" completely. Rather, it is still a "theme-subject." In addition to an "object," "being" also manifests itself in an "attribute" and a kind of "meaning" as well. In a word, it is the temporal, historical, and free "being" rather than "various beings" that is the "theme-subject" of philosophy. /// 列维纳斯颠覆了传统的 "存在论一知识论" 开创了一个 "异域", 即 "价 值"、"伦理" 和 "宗教" 的领域，强调伦理学才是形而上学。不是 "存在" 包容 了 "他者" 而是 "他者" 包容了"存在"。伦理学问题得到了哲学上大幅度的提 升。他不是完全否定 "存在论" 而是把 "存在论一真理论" 和 "价值论→仓理学" 的关系颠倒了过来，将前者置于后者的 "制约" 之下。哲学作为一门学科，仍以 "存 在" 为研究主题与思考 "对象", 只是这个 "存在" 作为 "对象" 并非完全在 "客 体" 意义上来理解，而仍是一个 "主题一主体", 该存在不仅展示为一物，展示为 一 "属性", 而且展示为一种 "意义"。作为哲学 "主题一对象" 的不是 "诸存在 者", 而是 "时间性的一历史性的一自由的" "存在"。. (shrink)

A book whose primary concern is to show the possibility of making objective value judgments within a context that acknowledges the inescapable historicity of the human situation. Mr. Stern discusses problems such as the nature of historical reality, the difference between past and present history, the questionable presuppositions of a teleological philosophy of history, and the confrontation in modernity between a doctrine of natural right and that of historicism. While accepting a kind of relativism consequent upon an historicist position, the (...) author finds a locus for objective moral evaluation in the universality of the human project. That men of all times are born, live, suffer, die, and welcome that which conduces to human well-being, enables us to condemn civilizations that have thwarted the human endeavor to conserve life. Although the means at the disposal of men to carry out the human project differ in different historical periods, what remains unalterable, according to Mr. Stern, is that at all times men praise what conduces to health and relieves suffering. While the author gives many cogent arguments in favor of his position, the "ontological status" of the universal human project remains, in the last analysis, problematic. To overcome historicism in the way that Mr. Stern sets out to do requires a more rigorous theory of knowledge and being than he offers us.—L. W. W. (shrink)

If these realignments in philosophy are to produce an understanding of man and his world, three main areas must be reexamined. Philosophers must offer an account of the context of human action, an account of the cognitive processes of man, and an account of the evaluative reaches of man's reactions to his context. Contemporary phenomenology constitutes the only concerted effort to cover all three of these domains, although even it is stronger on ontology and epistemology than on value theory. Sartre (...) has tried to see the evaluative reaches of man in the context of ontology, and Gabriel Marcel has been much concerned with the emergence of ethical and value attitudes from action. H. G. Bugbee seeks to survey the alternatives to the traditional empirical approaches; he does so from a point of view markedly phenomenological, influenced somewhat by Marcel but developed independently under dissatisfaction with the current modes of philosophizing. (shrink)

Heidegger’s thinking of the human way to be unavoidably concerns itself with a distinctive human possibility of being. It is argued here that the early Heidegger, who engaged Aristotle’s philosophy via what Heidegger calls “phenomenological interpretations,” learns from Aristotle’s method of definition but goes beyond it to conceive the idea of possibility—Dasein’s being-possible (Seinkönnen)—differently. It is reasonable to argue that the early Heidegger accomplishes a productive interpretation of Aristotle in this case while being indebted to Aristotle’s understanding of ‘definition’ as (...) both “genuinely indicative” and “indeterminate.” Despite Aristotle’s ontological commitment to a metaphysics of presence (Anwesenheit) with its linkage of “possibility-actuality” (“dunamis-energeia/entelecheia”), Heidegger appreciates that there remains an important possibility of phenomenological interpretation in both Aristotle’s concept of zóon lógon echon and the expression ‘tò tí en einai’. This interpretive move is discussed here. (shrink)

Some forms of analytic reconstructivism take natural language (and common sense at large) to be ontologically opaque: ordinary sentences must be suitably rewritten or paraphrased before questions of ontological commitment may be raised. Other forms of reconstructivism take the commitment of ordinary language at face value, but regard it as metaphysically misleading: common-sense objects exist, but they are not what we normally think they are. This paper is an attempt to clarify and critically assess some common limits of these two (...) reconstructivist strategies. (shrink)

We must therefore begin again from the metaphysical end of the main problem. We find in Whitehead's thought a picture of the kind of world in which value is possible, in which organic relatedness and continuity between diverse elements are made possible through "participation", through the agency of God. But we find that there is contradiction between his theory of value as atomic feeling and his whole metaphysics. True to our acceptance of "objectivity", we rather conceive value to be the (...) source and goal of feeling, the "participation of reality in ideality, of individuality in community". Both the nature and function of God in the world suggest that he is the absolute value in terms of which and because of which all "relative values" are achieved. ;The problem of the relation of value and existence is one of the special problems of value-theory in general. But it is particularly central not only to axiology but also to ontology, and the relation of these two fields to one another. It is the problem of a contrast between "realms" of Being; we are asking ourselves in what ways the contrast arises and is felt, and whether it can be metaphysically overcome. ;We must begin with an analysis of the value-situation in empirical terms. Ethics, as a field of thought concerned with value-factors, may serve to present the typical problems of the relation of value to existence: the objectivity of value, arising from a consideration of the judgment and definition of value and also from the normative character of ethical principles; the apprehension of value, following upon our admission, with Hartmann, of "objectivity" to value; the realization of value, introduced by the previous two problems taken together and by the further conception of the place and function of man the subject-agent. Thus, though we begin with the "phenomena" we find we must go beyond them to the metaphysical reference which they themselves presuppose. We agree with Hartmann that value has "objectivity" and is genuinely given in and for knowledge; we do not however concur that "objectivity" necessarily implies "essentiality" in value. (shrink)

Based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger the article presents the possibility of actualizing Heidegger’s main question about the meaning of Being in the context of the analysis of so-called “a priori perfect.” During the development of fundamental ontology in the second half of the 1920s, Heidegger ponders the approach to Being in the history of philosophy and identifies such a feature of Being as a priori, a kind of antecedence of Being in relation to being. Although tradition invariably understands (...) Being in this way, in it, according to Heidegger, the question is no longer raised either about the sense of such antecedence, or about the temporal basis of this sense, and therefore a priori as the essential character of Being is left in total oblivion. We suggest that it is the problematization of apriority in its temporal origin that can contribute to resolving Heidegger’s fundamental philosophical question of time as the transcendental horizon of any concept of Being that precedes being. In this precedence there is a cherished temporal moment, the comprehension of which allows us to develop the “basic question of metaphysics” about the relationship of Being and time in a more concrete way than Heidegger’s four main themes of the question of Being: the ontological difference; the basic articulation of Being ); the truth-character of Being; the possible modifications of Being and the unity of Being’s variety. Revealing a priori question as the central question of all Heideggers thinking before the “Turn” we attempt to update this question and justify the need for its renewal on the basis of a fundamental ontology. With this task we relate the question of the essence of philosophy in general in its existential-temporal concept since philosophy appears as a temporality-based possible of the questioning return to the “earlier”: to the essential structures of being, knowledge, Being, Dasein. Our analysis is based on the following decisions: Being in relation to being is always pre-understood as “earlier,” and in this understanding a temporal definition operates, hence the main question of fundamental ontology about the relation of Being and time can be developed or at least clarified through the problem of meaning of a priori. The question of the meaning of the “earlier” and of the temporal basis for understanding Being as “earlier,” a priori, is concretized into the question of the conditions for the possibility of any ontology, including the fundamental ontology, which raises the question of the earlier in relation to Being and therefore “lives” in the light of the understanding of the “earlier” as such. This reflexive foundation of the fundamental ontology from itself is a necessary stage on the way of developing its project, if we remember that the main “duty” of the philosopher is to clarify “our inner nature” for the sake of opening the boundaries and conditions of the possibility of philosophy. The conclusion is that the possibilities of fundamental ontology in making sense of Being, time, and philosophy in general are far from exhausted, but await the questions that actualize them and new readings that allow to see the hidden richness of Heidegger’s thought. (shrink)

This collection of essays, first published two decades ago, presents central feminist critiques and analyses of natural and social sciences and their philosophies. Unfortunately, in spite of the brilliant body of research and scholarship in these fields in subsequent decades, the insights of these essays remain as timely now as they were then: philosophy and the sciences still presume kinds of social innocence to which they are not entitled. The essays focus on Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx; on (...) the 'adversary method' model of philosophic reasoning; on principles of individuation on philosophical ontology and philosophy of language; on individualistic assumptions in psychology; functionalism in sociological and biological theory; evolutionary theory; the methodology of political science; and conceptions of objective inquiry in the sciences. In taking insights of both Liberal and Marxian women's movements into the purportedly most abstract and value-free areas of Western thought, these essays chart sexist and androcentric assumptions, claims and practices in the cognitive, technical cores of Western sciences and their philosophies. They begin to identify the distinctive aspects of women's experiences and locations in male-supremacist social structures which can provide resources needed for the creation of post-androcentric thinking in research, scholarship, and public policy. Such uses of feminist insights remain controversial today, and even among some feminists. These authors were all junior researchers and scholars two decades ago; today many are among the most distinguished senior scholars in their fields. Their work here provides a splendid opportunity for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy and the social sciences to explore some of the most intriguing and controversial challenges to disciplinary projects and to public policy today. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in the (...) divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

Introduction -- The univocity of being -- The modern predicament -- The problem of univocity in ancient and medieval philosophy -- From Heidegger to Aristotle -- Medieval philosophy -- Scholasticism -- Heidegger, Scotus, and univocity -- The question of being -- Analogy, the medieval experience of life -- Univocity and phenomenology -- Destruction and tradition -- Metaphysics -- Phenomenological philosophy and aletheia -- Descartes, scholasticism, and time -- The presupposition of the tradition -- Scholasticism, analogy, and the interpretation of Heidegger (...) -- The phenomena of beingness and time -- Beyond being -- The analogical interpretation of Heidegger's text -- Univocity and phenomenological philosophy -- Being and some other key terms -- The phenomenology of being and the question of Dasein -- Transcendental philosophy -- Univocity from 1916 to 1927 -- Cartesian connections and the medieval ontology -- Dasein, univocity, and the question of analogy -- Univocity and fundamental ontology -- Husserl and Heidegger -- Phenomenology, being, and univocity -- Univocity and analogy -- Univocity and Heidegger's later thought -- Mysticism -- The present age -- The later Heidegger -- A-letheia, ereignis, and epochal immanence -- A history of being -- The tradition -- The history of metaphysics -- The medieval and the modern -- A history of the modern : subjectivity -- Univocity and the problem of history -- History and civilization -- Art and history -- Fractured history -- Language and poetry -- The fate of univocity -- The re-enchanted forest -- Being mortal. (shrink)

How ontologically committal is common sense? Is the common-sense philosopher beholden to a florid ontology in which all manner of objects, substances, and processes exist and are as they appear to be to common sense, or can she remain neutral on questions about the existence and nature of many things because common sense is largely non-committal? This chapter explores and tentatively evaluates three different approaches to answering these questions. The first applies standard accounts of ontological commitment to common-sense claims. This (...) leads to the surprising and counter-intuitive result that common sense has metaphysically heavyweight commitments. The second approach emphasizes the superficiality and locality of common-sense claims. On this approach, however, common sense comes out as almost entirely non-committal. The third approach questions the seriousness of ontological commitment as such. If ontological commitment is cheap, it becomes possible both to accept the commitments of common sense at face value and to avoid the counter-intuitive consequences of heavyweight metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

Es sei an dieser Stelle Frau Maria Scheler für die von ihr er­ laubten Einblicke in den Nachlass ihres Mannes gedankt, ins­ besondere für die langen und eingehenden Gespräche, die mir für die Erkenntnis der wahren Intentionen Max Schelers unerlässlich gewesen sind. Ich danke nochmals Herrn Professor Dr. Martin Heidegger für die wertvollen Hinsweise bezüglich Max Schelers Aufnahme von Sein und Zeit. Für einige Berichtigungen in der deutschen Ausdrucksweise, die dem Verfasser durch seine langjährige Tätigkeit in Amerika einerseits, und durch (...) den deutschen Sprachgebrauch Max Schelers und Martin Heideggers andererseits, erschwert wurde, danke ich Herrn Professor Dr. Wilhelm Dupre, De Paul University, Chicago, und Frau Dr. Ingeborg Schüssler von der Universität Köln. Für einige technische Hilfe danke ich Herrn Professor Dr. Henry J. Koren, St. Leo College, Florida, und Herrn Professor Dr. K. H. Volkmann-Schluck, Universität Köln. Chicago, im Februar rg6g M.S.F. EINLEITUNG Das Nichtgesagte eines Fragmentes gehört zu dem, was es sagt. Zu dem, was das Fragment Sein und Zeit (SZ) sagt, gehört das Offenbleiben einer Reihe von Fragen. Eine dieser Fragen lautet: "Was besagt ontologisch Wert"? Auf dem Boden der materialen Wertethik versteht sich diese Frage als eine nach der sittlichen Seinsweise der Person. Dies nicht nur, weil die Person ein aus­ gezeichneter Träger von bestimmten Wertarten ist, sondern weil zum Menschen überhaupt - gleich wie man ihn ontologisch freilegt - personales Wertsein gehört. Jede Ontologie vom Menschen muss deshalb dem Personsein und seiner sittlichen Seinsart Rechnung tragen. (shrink)

In the recent literature on all things metaontological, discussion of a notorious Meinongian doctrine—the thesis that some objects have no kind of being at all—has been conspicuous by its absence. And this is despite the fact that this thesis is the central element of the noneist metaphysics of Richard Routley (1980) and Graham Priest (2005). In this paper, we therefore examine the metaontological foundations of noneism, with a view to seeing exactly how the noneist's approach to ontological inquiry differs from (...) the orthodox Quinean one. We proceed by arguing that the core anti-Quinean element in noneism has routinely been misidentified: rather than concerning Quine's thesis that to be is to be the value of a variable, the real difference is that the noneist rejects what we identify as Quine's “translate-and-deflate” methodology. In rejecting this aspect of Quinean orthodoxy, the noneist is in good company: many of those who think that questions of fundamentality should be the proper focus of ontological inquiry can be read as rejecting it too. Accordingly, we then examine the differences between the noneist's conception of ontology and that offered by the fundamentalist. We argue that these two anti-Quinean approaches differ in terms of their respective conceptions of the theoretical role associated with the notion of being. And the contrast that emerges between them is, in the end, an explanatory one. (shrink)

Levinas subverts the traditional “ontology-epistemology,” and creates a “realm of difference,” the realm of “value,” “ethic,” and “religion,” maintaining that ethics is real metaphysics. According to him, it is not that “being” contains the “other” but the other way round. In this way, the issues of ethics are promoted greatly in the realm of philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not intend to deny “ontology” completely, but reversed the relationship between “ontology (theory of truth)” and “ethics (axiology),” placing the former under the (...) “constraint” of the latter. Different from general empirical science, philosophy focuses more on issues irrelevant to ordinary empirical objects; it does have “objects,” though. More often than not, the issues of philosophy cannot be conceptualized into “propositions”; nevertheless, it absolutely has its “theme.” As a discipline, philosophy continuously takes “being” as its “theme” and “object” of thinking. The point is that this “being” should not be understood as an “object” completely. Rather, it is still a “theme-subject.” In addition to an “object,” “being” also manifests itself in an “attribute” and a kind of “meaning” as well. In a word, it is the temporal, historical, and free “being” rather than “various beings” that is the “theme-subject” of philosophy. (shrink)

Since last year, major initiatives have been undertaken by the chair of theoretical philosophy at the University of Tübingen in order to enhance the reception of analytic metaphysics in the European landscape. Here we review the 2013 summer workshop, intended to be the first of an annual series, on “Existence, Truth and Fundamentality”, the invited speakers being Graham Priest (Melbourne), Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow), Dan López de Sa (Barcelona), Francesco Berto (Aberdeen), Friederike Moltmann (Paris – Pantheon Sorbonne) and Jason Turner (Leeds). (...) The workshop’s scope is fairly large, focusing on three different aspects of contemporary research in metaphysics. However, the underlying idea of organizers Thomas Sattig and Alessandro Torza consisted in exploring their interconnections and even new areas which possibly share the same problem spectrum. Also, they thought of bringing together both young and senior protagonists of the contemporary debate. In this sense, the main thread followed by the speakers consisted in enquiring the ideas of fundamentality, dependence and grounding with respect to ontology (Berto, López de Sa, Turner) and the truthmaking debate (Priest, Moltmann, Leuenberger), thus pretty much in line with some latest tendencies in metaphysics, such as, prima inter paria, the works of Kit Fine. When we say that something is more fundamental than something else, we move into a non-conventional (for the standards of 20 th century philosophy) metodological framework, hardly focusing on the question about what there is, and rather tackling the issue of how fundamentally there is what there is, or how the existence of something is required as a ground for the existence of other things. Here is how Jonathan Schaffer explains the methodological transition in his influential “On What Grounds What” (2009): -/- Among the many assumptions Quine and Carnap share is that metaphysical questions are existence questions, such as whether numbers exist. They only disagree on the further issue of whether such questions are meaningful (at least as the metaphysician might pose them). But why think that metaphysical questions are existence question of this sort? Return to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There are virtually no existence question posed. The whole discussion is about substances (fundamental units of being). At one point Aristotle pauses to ask if numbers exist, and his answer is a brief and dismissive yes. [. . . ] For Aristotle, the question about numbers is whether they are transcendent substances or grounded in concreta. The question is not whether numbers exist, but how. (Schaffer, 2009, p. 347) -/- The conference opened with Graham Priest’s intriguing and peculiar review of Buddhist cornerstone “The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way” (Mūlamadhyakamakārikā) by Nāgārjuna (ca. 150-ca. 250 AD), seen as a unrecognized forerunner of multi-valued semantics and dialetheism. Priest shows that Nagarjuna’s thought indeed has valuable analytic grip (contrary to the traditional mystical dismiss of his works altogether) and is even in accord to some formal schemas rejecting both the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction. Dan López de Sa was interested in the topic of grounding, raising concerns about how to explain the kind of “reality” exemplified by what is not fundamental, but rather derivative on something else. He proposes a conceptual and non-primitive analysis of grounding as linked to fundamentality and derivation, and argues that the view can be advocated along with the acceptance that at least something is not fundamental. Subsequently, he illustrates an impressive range of applications linked to contemporary debates in meta-ontology, truthmaking and philosophy of time. Stephan Leuenberger discussed a semantics for “total logic”, a variant of first order logic which is claimed to have several applications with respect to the issue of excluding negative existentials from the scope of theories accounting for a given ’totality’ of facts. For example, materialism is the claim that everything there is can be traced back to physical facts or to truth implied by those facts. What about the claim that “There are no angels”? According to Leuenberger, ordinary logic falls prey of modal arguments (if it is possible that there are angels, by modus tollens, that it is not metaphysically necessary that everything there is is physical). So, there is space for the introduction of a new operator, the totality operator, claiming of what enters its scope that “that’s the whole truth”. Consequently, total logic’s semantics tackles David Chalmers’ well-known conceivability-based argument in favour of zombie’s (subjects producing behaviour but experiencing no qualia) possible existence. Friederike Moltmann presented a massive array of natural language-based examples on the role played by case-constructions, such as “it is the case that Caesar crossed the Rubicon”, “the case of the stolen statue”, “the case in which it might rain”, and so forth. She suggests that we should take surface phenomena of our language very seriously with regard to the determination of ontological categories and truth-makers. Cases are provided by many natural languages with their own existence predicates (“to occur” and “to present itself ”), and these do not apply to other kind of entities, such as objects and events. Trying to derive a substantive thesis on their nature, she claims that they are filtered entities, a structure taking into account some features of the corresponding objects and events and preserving their relational pattern. Jason Turner discussed meta-ontological concerns against the claim that ontological debates are defective. Analysed the structure of a metaphysical theory and identified two different forms of defectiveness that can occur in ontological questions, the defection from without and the defection from within, the author provided an original solution in order to avoid such difficulties. He argued thus in favor of a logical constancy, a translation principle thanks to it would be possible reconceive an ontological defection. Lastly, Francesco Berto’s talk closed the workshop with a sagacious discussion of meinongian quantification. He substains that Meinongians and Quineans experience no conceptual equivocation. Even if the former claims that “There are things that do not exist”, something that the latter contrasts with the interpretation of existential quantifiers as all-including, they still rely upon the same concept of “existence” and they understand each other when they are outside the ontology room, so that it cannot be that they lack competence. Subsequently, Berto deals with the objection that Meinongians commit analytic falsehood in separating the meaning of “to be” from that of “exists”. The Quinean has no independent evidence for analytic equivalence aside from her emphatic stress on the “is” in “there is”. Meinongians, however, can retort to linguistic considerations and claim that existence predicates display fairly different functions. -/- As for what regards our internal division of the “philosophical labor”, Fabio Ceravolo reviewed Moltmann and Berto’s talks; whereas Mattia Cozzi took care of Priest’s and Leuenberger’s, and Mattia Sorgon of those given by López de Sa and Turner. Conclusively, we would like to thank Thomas Sattig and Alessandro Torza for all of their organizational efforts and the kind welcome they reserved to us. We hope we will have further opportunities to collaborate with Tübingen in supporting similarly innovative and valiant european initiatives. (shrink)

When one undertakes research on Nietzsche, a confrontation with Heidegger’s interpretation of his philosophy is almost unavoidable. Widely known, particular and influent, this interpretation is nevertheless problematic and its analysis, particularly of its occurence in Holzwege, leads to a questionning of the generally admitted notions of ontology, metaphysics, ethics, and nihilism. These notions are an integral part of the philosophical vocabulary and never seem to pose a problem. I am claiming here that, although they might seem quite univoqual and clear, (...) these terms do pose a problem, at least when one wants to analyse Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche. I will divide this paper according to the following plan. I will begin by presenting Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche as it appears in Holzwege. This interpretation will lead us to the first question: how to define “ontology”, “metaphysics”, and “ethics” and how to relate them. From this question, and its tentative answer, I will move to the question of Heidegger’s possible nihilism. This discussion will lead us to another question: what is nihilism exactly? With my answer to this question, the circle will be closed and I will determine whether there is nihilism in Nietzsche, as Heidegger claims. (shrink)

The prominent Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky and his ex-student Nicolai Hartmann shared many metaphysical and epistemological views, and Lossky is likely to have influenced Hartmann in adopting several of them. But, in the case of axiological issues, it appears that Lossky also borrowed from the axiologies of Hartmann and the latter's Cologne colleague, Max Scheler. The links between the theories of values of Scheler and Hartmann have been studied abundantly, but never in relation to Lossky. In this paper, I (...) examine the manifold relationships – similarities, differences, borrowings, criticisms, and possible influences – between Lossky's axiology and those of Scheler and Hartmann on four key interweaving issues: (1) their ontological realism with regards to the objectivity of values, (2) their epistemological theories of the intuition of values, (3) their ontological definitions of "value", i.e., whether values are relations, qualities, essences, powers, meanings, etc., and (4) their theories of the stratification of values. (shrink)

I share with all the other authors the view that conceptual metaphysics without close ties to science is of minimal value, that this holds for much of current work on social ontology, and that if there is value in social ontology, it has to be in contributing to empirical social science. I do perhaps disagree with all three authors about making any blanket statements concerning either instrumentalism or realism about the social sciences and their ontologies. I argue and try to (...) show instead that if there are fruitful questions of social ontology, they are probably mostly local empirical issues raised by specific pieces of social science. Certain kinds of pluralism and instrumentalism may well make sense in some situations. I illustrate with debates over the need for psychological realism and revealed preference theory in economics. (shrink)

This study of axiology explores the axiocentricity of being human. Human beings dwell in the realm of value. Values are not simply what persons have; values in large part are what persons are. The mystique of values is analyzed here in terms of their cultural, phenomenological, and ontological status. The relationship between science and values is debated. Values should not be submitted to reductionism. Postmodernism raises new problems for the future of a philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>values. Yet, we may direct our hopes toward happiness, universalism, and humanism as inseparable from value-life. (shrink)