Franciscus de Prato hat sich immer wieder mit der Philosophie Ockhams auseinandergesetzt. Diese Arbeit zeigt auf, wie bedeutsam fur beide Philosophen die Sprachtheorie ist. Der Angelpunkt ist dabei die Annahme entweder eines Satzes im Geiste oder einer Proposition, die aus Dingen besteht. Diese Entscheidung wirkt sich dann auf verschiedenste Gebiete der Philosophie aus. Am Beispiel der Kategorienlehre wird dies deutlich: Kategorien sind Aussagbares. In Satzen aussagbar sind aber fur Ockham nur mentale Begriffe, keine Dinge. Also ist fur ihn die Kategorienordnung (...) keine Ordnung von extramentalen Dingen, sondern nur von mentalen Zeichen. Anders Franciscus: Fur ihn sind Gegenstande, nicht Zeichen primar aussagbar. Also ist fur ihn die kategoriale Ordnung eine reale Hierarchie. Welches Licht wirft diese Auseinandersetzung auf das Verstandnis der Philosophie Ockhams und der des Franciscus? Weitaus wichtiger als der universalientheoretische Unterschied zwischen Nominalismus und Realismus ist fur beide Denker ihre satztheoretische Ausrichtung. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Preis an Studierende der Ruhr-Universitat Bochum. (shrink)

Een kenner op het gebied van de klassieke muziek - wie wil dat nou niet zijn? In dit boek legt André Klukhuhn de filosofie en oorsprong van de westerse klassieke muziek op een toegankelijke manier bloot. Hij geeft op even komische als boeiende wijze een overzicht van de belangrijkste stromingen en tijdperken en de bijbehorende westerse componisten: van rococo en romantiek tot postmodernisme, en van Keppler en Händel tot Wagner en Orff. De betekenis van de 'kosmische harmonie', het raakvlak tussen (...) muziek en wiskunde, loopt als een rode draad door het verhaal heen. Door het lezen van dit eerste Nederlandse overzichtswerk van de westerse klassieke muziek zal het luisteren ernaar nog boeiender - of troostrijker, verheffender of ontspannener - worden dan het altijd al was. (shrink)

This collective volume gives an exemplary overview over the philosophical reactions William of Ockham has provoked and also serves to better understand not only Ockham s thought in its historical context, but also the philosophy of the 14th century in general.".

The Meaning of Mourning brings perspectives from leading philosophers, psychologists, theologians, writers, and artists exploring different dimensions of death, loss, and grief. They together form a wide-ranging study of some of the most difficult and formative experiences in human life.

One of the core themes of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris is the encounter with radical otherness. The ocean planet being studied by scientists form earth is usually interpreted as a representation of radical otherness, which eludes human efforts of understanding. In this paper we argue that in Solaris Lem attempts to show not merely that the ocean is unknowable, but that the unknowability is itself impossible to adequately conceptualise and represent. However, we further argue that this impossibility is the (...) subject of an experience in which the presence of otherness is made available. We focus on the images of chaos which Kelvin discovers on Solaris to show that Lem presents the epistemic situation of the main protagonist as radically unstable. Contrary to most interpretations, however, we argue that the discursive narration in the novel engages with the presence of otherness only superficially. Rather, we suggest that the encounter with otherness is shown as something that manifests itself in bodily emotions, and is, therefore, only possible to convey non-discursively. The fear and dread inspired by the vastness and strangeness of the ocean are always presented by appeal to sensuality and bodily experience. These emotive reactions to encounters with otherness subvert its conceptual representations. We suggest that in this way Lem attempts to convey what cannot be discursively described, or even depicted. He presents radical otherness as something impossible to represent conceptually but offers a vision of the possibility of an encounter with otherness through bodily emotions. On this interpretation Solaris is not only a novel about the encounter with otherness, but also about the very possibility of representing such an encounter. (shrink)

I show that centered propositions—also called de se propositions, and usually modeled as sets of centered worlds—pose a serious problem for various versions of Lewis's Principal Principle. The problem, put roughly, is that in scenarios like Elga's `Sleeping Beauty' case, those principles imply that rational agents ought to have obviously irrational credences. To solve the problem, I propose a centered version of the Principal Principle. My version allows centered propositions to be objectively chancy.

In this paper, I give an argument for the view that non-fact entities – such as physical objects, abstract objects, events and so on – can ground other entities. Roughly put, the argument is as follows: those who accept this view can provide a more plausible account of the grounds of identity facts than those who deny this view.

This book is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the ...

Preview: This is the second volume of the double issue of Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture devoted to the relationship between science and religion. The contributions across these two volumes have mostly been concerned with, and argued for, various aspects of a non-reductive view of this relationship, according to which reality is not limited to what the natural sciences can tell us about it. That is the view that science and religion are not in conflict, or that the (...) advances made by the natural sciences do not undermine religion as an adequate means of addressing the big questions humanity faces. This is not only a very welcome but also exciting result confirming that after many decades of an almost complete monopoly of scientific naturalism in English language philosophy the field is beginning to open up to a more diverse range of views. This development has made it possible for philosophers in the analytic tradition to engage with topics of deep human importance in a serious and systematic way. (shrink)

Preview: Science and religion are complex cultural phenomena, which bear on our understanding of the world, life, consciousness, agency, morality, as well as all other fundamental issues human beings puzzle over. There exists a longstanding question about whether science and religion, and the responses they offer to these issues, are complementary or in conflict. The conflict narrative, championed for example by the New Atheists, emphasizes discrepancies between scientific and religious explanations and typically advances methodological, ethical, and ontological naturalism as providing (...) us with the only adequate means of addressing the big questions humanity faces. The complementarity narrative, without denying the advances of the natural sciences, tends to take the view that it is possible to retain elements of a religious worldview alongside the discoveries of natural science. A traditional focus in the European context has been on the viability of certain ethical ideas whose original justification was arguably based in Christianity, such as human dignity, moral equality, and the centrality of humility, compassion and sacrifice. (shrink)

This is an entirely new translation of one of the fundamental works in the development of the study of language. Published in 1836, it formed the general introduction to Wilhelm von Humboldt's three-volume treatise on the Kawi language of Java. It is the final statement of his lifelong study of the nature of language, and presents a survey of a great many languages, exploring ways in which their various grammatical structures make them more or less suitable as vehicles of (...) thought and cultural development. Empirically wide-ranging - von Humboldt goes far beyond the Indo-European family of languages - it remains one of the most interesting and important attempts to draw philosophical conclusions from comparative linguistics. (shrink)

It is uncommon for aestheticians to co-author books with artists, and very rare for philosophers of religion or metaphysicians to do so. As the longstanding col.

Rethinking Existentialism. By Webber Jonathan.

In this paper I revisit the debate concerning the distinction, which is sometimes made between “analytic” and “continental” philosophy. I look at the historical context in which the distinction came to prominence in the twentieth century, the reasons why it subsequently declined in popularity, and eventually had begun to be undermined. I argue that the distinction possesses intuitive content, which the recent attempts at exposing it as conceptually flawed fail to account for. I suggest that the intuitive content of the (...) distinction provides us with resources to usefully define two different ways philosophical reflection has been approached during the course of the twentieth century. I conclude by suggesting that we can bring these two ways of approaching philosophy into focus by appealing to the idea of philosophical temperament. (shrink)

I propose a `stage theory’ of groups: a group is a fusion of group-stages, where a group-stage is a plurality of individuals at a world and a time. The stage theory consists of existence conditions, identity conditions, and parthood conditions for groups.

Die Gründe, die C. I. Lewis [5], [6] bewogen haben, neben der gewöhnlichen Implikation eine strikte Implikation einzuführen, sind bekannt. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird aus ähnlichen Gründen eine strenge Implikation eingeführt, die jedoch einen engeren Begriff darstellt als die strikte Implikation. Mit einer Arbeit von Arnold Schmidt [7] hat meine nur geringe Berührungspunkte, da der Verfasser sich mit der strikten Implikation beschäftigt. Für diese wird ein relativ einfaches Axiomensystem angegeben und gezeigt, wie man durch geeignete Definitionen von Notwendigkeit und (...) Möglichkeit bei eventueller Hinzufügung von Zusatzaxiomen die bekannten Systeme des Modalitätenkalküls erhält. Den Hauptteil meiner Arbeit bildet die Einführung meines Implikationsbegriffs; im zweiten Teil der Arbeit komme ich dann auf dieser Basis auch zu einer Einführung der Modalitäten.Um die Art der Einführung des Kalküls zu motivieren, wollen wir kurz auf das eingehen, das uns mehr oder weniger deutlich vorschwebt, wenn wir von der strengen Implikation sprechen. Die strenge Implikation, die wir durchA → Bwiedergeben, soll ausdrücken, daß zwischenAundBein logischer Zusammenhang besteht, daß der Inhalt vonBein Teil des Inhaltes vonAist, oder wie wir es sonst ausdrücken wollen. Das hat mit der Richtigkeit oder Falschheit vonAundBnichts zu tun. So würde man die Allgemeingültigkeit einer FormelA→ (B → A) ablehnen, da sie den Schluß vonAaufB → Aeinschließt und da die Richtigkeit vonAnichts damit zu tun hat, ob zwischenBundAein logischer Zusammenhang besteht. (shrink)

Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God -- to which a large part of the book is devoted -- and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, (...) the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic. Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published. Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Pars 1. Philosophia generalis -- pars 2. Logica -- pars 3. Metaphysica -- pars 4. Ethica et politica -- pars 5. De anima -- pars 6. Philosophia naturalis -- pars 7. Doxoscopia -- pars 8. Theses academicae. T. 1. Index disputationum: Aagardus- Maes. T. 2. Maestlinus-Zyra. Opera anonyma. T. 3. Index respondentium -- Pars 9. Syllabus auctorum.

L’article présente l’édition critique du Traité sur l’être de raison de François de Prato, précédée d’une introduction historico-philosophique. Ce traité est une des premières réactions italiennes à la diffusion de la philosophie du langage et de la logique de Guillaume d’Occam. François y argumente contre la réduction occamiste de l’être de raison aux actes de connaissance, entendus comme des entités existant ‘subjectivement’ dans l’intellect. En suivant Thomas d’Aquin et Hervé de Nédellec, il développe au contraire une théorie relationnelle et ‘objective’ (...) de l’être de raison. (shrink)

Hegel's phenomenological method is meant to provide a pathway for a "finite consciousness" to the objective viewpoint of philosophical "science".

1. Bd. Wesen, Aufstieg, und Verfall der philosophischen Theologie -- 2. Bd. Abgrenzung und Grundlegung.

A work of Nietzsche's later years, The Antichrist was written after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and shortly before the mental collapse that incapacitated him for the rest of his life. The work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life." By contrast, Nietzsche defines good (...) as: "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?-All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power is increasing,-that resistance has been overcome." In attempting to redefine the basis of Western values by demolishing the formative influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, The Antichrist has proved to be highly controversial and continuously stimulating to later generations of philosophers. (shrink)