History of Western Philosophy

The object of this study is to examine the way in which the later Fichte handles Kantian ideas. In the first part Kant’s theory of principles will be investigated in order to find out how many types of ideas he uses. In the second part the ideas will be assigned to the basic moments of Fichte’s Outlines 1810. Not only the transcendental concepts and postulates play a key role in the Science of Knowledge, but also the methodological ideas of a (...) theoretical and practical reason. While the latter are mentioned by Kant only in passing, in Fichte’s later works they constitute a pivotal part in the reflexions about the faculty of reason.Es soll untersucht werden, wie der späte Fichte mit den Kantischen Ideen umgeht. Der erste Teil widmet sich der Kantischen Prinzipienlehre und prüft, wie viele Arten sich überhaupt unterscheiden lassen. Im zweiten Teil folgt die Zuordnung der einzelnen Ideen zu den Grundmomentenin Fichtes Umriss von 1810. Dort werden sich nicht nur die transzendentalen Vernunftbegriffe und Postulate wiederfinden, sondern auch die methodologischen Ideen einer theoretischen und praktischen Vernunft. Während die letzteren bei Kant eher am Rande erwähnt werden, sind sie bei Fichte ein expliziter Bestandteil der Reflexion über das Vernunftvermögen. (shrink)

It is among the most widespread and the least questioned convictions that in Metaphysics Lambda Aristotle presents a theology which has its basis in a metaphysics of substance. The majority of research literature, compendiums and histories of philosophy argues within this frame. -/- A closer look at the facts reveals that this conviction has no basis in the text. Quite the contrary it is based on a reception with theological interests. It arised over centuries, starting from Patristic times and the (...) Middle Ages; it was influenced by Neoplatonic texts as the Liber de Causis or the Theologia Aristotelis, texts for a long time considered as original Aristotelian books. -/- And, if you read not translations but the Greek text, you see that the word 'god' occurs much less than in a theological book should be. In some translations we find more occurences of that word, and especially in French, Italian, English translations some words as le Bien, l'Intelligence etc. are written with capitals to inticate that it is about god. To make it even more clear, we read often the term 'First Mover' or 'Unmoved Mover' as an other name for god, but this expression is never used by Aristotle. So the reader has the impression that Aristotle speaks continuously about god. -/- In the present book you will find arguments which clean up with the outdated concept of substance in the Aristotelian text, a concept which was developed for quite other problems than Aristotle had, namely theolgical ones. And, if there is no substance, there is no corresponding metaphysics of substance and no theology or onto-theology. -/- If substance, metyphysics, theology play no role in Metaphysics Lambda, what else is its content and aim? That is not so difficult to say because Aristotle says it sufficiently clear in his first sentence, περὶ οὐσίας ἡ θεωρία: our inquiry is about being; its aim is to develop the Frage nach dem Sein and to state a speculative answer. -/- The present text in German is a slightly corrected version of the book published 2008 by the Lang Verlag, Bern. In the meantime I am translating it in English correcting many faults of the German edition, that will be the final version which will be finished 2019 as I hope. (Still I am looking for a corrector of my imperfect English. Please contact me if you are interested to help me: erwinso@sunrise.ch). (shrink)

The concept and the logic of the political, the most notable Schmittian ideas, based on the friend/enemy distinction and his thought on political theology have been widely and critically discussed and actively appropriated with various interpretations. On the other hand, we find that there is certain definite momentum piercing through the theoretical structure of Husserl’s phenomenology in general both as a form of metaphysics and as a philosophical movement, which can also be called the political. In this circumstance, we find (...) the Schmittian logic of the political together with his idea of political theology specifically serviceable for an effective visualization of the political characteristically structured in Husserl’s system, particularly in the concepts of transcendental subjectivity and universal critique. This paper argues that Husserl’s phenomenological critical subject is fundamentally a politico-theological subject and is an attempt to show to what extent and in what way Schmitt can be strategically utilized to make manifest the politicality that we discover as something that structurally inheres in Husserlian notion of subjectivity and critique. (shrink)

LES APPARENCES: ANALYSES PREALABLES L'ontologie des apparences I : questions terminologiques L'ontologie des apparences II : les entia apparentia La sémantique des apparences DES APPARENCES AUX FONDEMENTS Aspects catégoriels : la substance La simplicité comme condition de la substance L'activité comme condition de la substance DES FONDEMENTS AUX APPARENCES La production des apparences I : l'étendue La production des apparences II : la diffusion La production des qualités sensibles I BILAN Dire ce qu'il en est du corps Les propositions réduplicatives.

Table des Matières: -/- Introduction; -/- Chapitre Premier: La conception de la philosophie chez Thomas Reid; -/- Chapitre 2: Le Rôle épistémologique du sens commun; -/- Chapitre 3: La justification des principes du sens commun; -/- Chapitre 4: La perception sensible; -/- Chapitre 5: La perception sensible (suite); -/- Chapitre 6: Les facultés intellectuelles autres que la perception sensible; -/- Chapitre 7: Les facultés actives; -/- Chapitre 8: Le "common sense" chez Reid et quelques conceptions antérieures de la raison naturelle; (...) -/- Conclusion. (shrink)

Psychological eudaimonism (PE) is the view that we are constituted by a desire to avoid the harmful. This entails that coming to see a prospective or actual object of pursuit as harmful to us will unseat our positive evaluative belief about (and coinstantiated desire for) that object (§I). There is more than one way that such an 'unseating' of desire may be caused on an intellectualist picture (§II). This paper arbitrates between two readings of Socrates' 'attack on laziness' in the (...) Meno, with the aim of constructing a model of moral education based on PE's implied moral psychology. In particular, we argue against the view that when we come to see – through prudential reasoning – that our blatant evaluative beliefs and desires disserve eudaimonism, we will no longer perceive their intentional objects as choiceworthy. We suggest, instead, that it is by experiencing shame that we cease to see the intentional objects of our evaluative beliefs and desires as worthy of pursuit (§III). This form of 'hydraulic education' bypasses reason-responsiveness altogether. As such, it only allows for practical norms to be derived from the nature of agency indirectly, namely by enabling the use of discursive practical reasoning. (shrink)

Ernst Mach (1838-1916) è stato una figura di riferimento per la cultura scientifica e filosofica tardo-ottocentesca e dei primi decenni del Novecento. Le sue ricerche in fisica e psicologia, così come il lavoro epistemologico che emerge dalle pagine di opere quali La meccanica nel suo sviluppo storico-critico e Conoscenza ed errore, hanno influito notevolmente su molti autori a lui contemporanei. In questi testi, Mach delinea una concezione antimetafisica del pensiero scientifico e una concezione biologico-evolutiva della conoscenza umana che si ritrovano (...) elaborate in vario modo nella teoria della relatività di A. Einstein, nell’epistemologia evoluzionistica di K. Popper e D. Campbell, nel pragmatismo di W. James e, più in generale, nelle idee che animarono il primo Circolo di Vienna. I saggi raccolti nel presente volume si propongono di commemorarne la figura e l’opera, guardando a Mach come figura di confine tra prospettive di indagine che la storia della filosofia dell’ultimo secolo ha spesso visto contrapposte. (shrink)

Nel suo "Il canone minore", Rocco Ronchi descrive il tentativo compiuto da quelle figure, sovente eretiche del pensiero rispetto a quello che l’autore individua come canone maggiore, che nel corso della storia della filosofia hanno pensato davvero l'immanenza dell’assoluto o, che è lo stesso, l’univocità dell’essere sul piano degli enti di natura. Nell’esigenza fondamentalmente speculativa e per ciò stesso anti-moderna della filosofia, ciò che si dà a vedere quale dato immediato dell’intuizione è un'equivalenza solo apparentemente innocua, ma in realtà profondamente (...) perturbante e traumatica: immanenza assoluta = natura. (shrink)

Discussione a partire dal libro di Giorgio Agamben "Karman. Breve trattato sull'azione, la colpa e il gesto", Bollati Boringhieri, 2017.

In this paper I argue that we find in Kant a more plausible alternative to his transcendental conception of freedom. In the Metaphysics of Morals in particular, we find a naturalistic conception of freedom premised upon a theory of rational self-cultivation. The motivation for a naturalising reading of Kant is two-fold. On the one hand, a naturalistic conception of freedom avoids the charges levelled against Kant’s 'panicky metaphysics', which both forces us to accept an ontologically extravagant picture of the world (...) and the self, and also commits us to understanding freedom in nonspatiotemporal terms, thus excluding the possibility that the process of becoming free is progressive. And second, on a naturalistic reading we can repackage normativity back into Kant’s account of freedom, which has seemed to scholars unacceptably absent. I explain how the process of becoming free, on the naturalistic view, involves cultivating certain 'aesthetic preconditions of the mind’s receptivity to concepts of duty'.1 Happily, these conditions incur no unpalatable ontological penalties; rather, they constitute an achievement of the rational aspect of the self. Pointedly, this is not a self who is free only in virtue of having membership in the noumenal realm. Rather, effortful self-development entails a battle to become practically free, and thereby moral. The primary attraction to this reading of Kant is that it describes freedom as a naturalistic achievement, rather than a metaphysical given. Thus I show that by jettisoning, or at least naturalising, the picture of noumenal selfhood we not only find a theory that is poorer in panicky metaphysics, but much richer in normative force. (shrink)

In his final works, Foucault explains his overall project as a “history of truth” centered on the relations between subjectivity and truth. While the early archaeology focuses primarily on the formation of new objects and discourses of knowledge, and later, genealogy on techniques of power, the problematic of truth is the overriding framework through which Foucault develops these analyses. Throughout all of his work, in fact, Foucault’s question is how discourse, institutions, politics, and subjects are established within regimes of truth.

The purpose of this essay is to make the case for a heterodox reading of Leibniz’s The Monadology (published 1720) through the lens of Professor John Wheeler’s hypothesis of the one-electron universe (proposed in 1940). My conjecture is this: That there exists in the knowable universe only one monad; that this monad traverses time in both directions, eventually criss-crossing the entire past and future history of the universe; and that this singular monad interacts with itself countless times, thereby filling the (...) universe with simultaneous appearances of itself. In the course of this article I will consider the possibility that our solitary monad is synonymous with Leibniz’s God, or if the monad in question is rather a created substance that is alone with God, a notion that gains some traction thanks to Leibniz’s admiration for the solipsism of Saint Teresa of Avila. I will also consider whether the one-monad hypothesis is consistent with Leibniz’s own views on harmony, simplicity and perfection. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the traditional interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature from recent attacks leveled by Faviola Rivera-Castro, James Furner, Ido Geiger, Pauline Kleingeld and Sven Nyholm. After a short introduction, the paper is divided into four main sections. In the first, I set out the basics of the three traditional interpretations, the Logical Contradiction Interpretation, the Practical Contradiction Interpretation and the Teleological Contradiction Interpretation. In the second, I examine the work of Geiger, Kleingeld and (...) Nyholm: these three commentators reject the traditional interpretations entirely, but I argue that this rejection is ill-founded. In the third and fourth, I take a detailed look at Furner’s work, work in which he seeks to revise (rather than reject) the traditional interpretations. I argue that, despite his more modest aims, Furner’s revision is also ill-founded. (shrink)

Proclus, an early figure in the tradition ascribing mathematical intermediates to Plato, has been neglected by more recent proponents of this interpretation. We argue that Proclus’ position should be reconsidered, for he anticipated significant problems arising from what has come to be the typical view of intermediates. To address these concerns, Proclus distinguishes between the intermediates studied in mathematics and the objects described by mathematical theorems.

Fred D. Miller, Jr.'s stated goal for his new translation for the Oxford World's Classics series is, 'to provide a clear and accessible translation of Aristotle's psychological works while . . . conveying something of his distinctive style'. Not only does Miller achieve these goals in spades, but he also provides something more. His translation of Aristotle's De Anima and Parva Naturalia (the 'short works concerning nature'), along with twenty-three selected fragments from Aristotle's lost works and his 'Hymn to Hermias', (...) is elegant, philosophically sensitive, and informed by some of the best recent scholarly work on Aristotle's psychology and biology. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen made a distinction between the logic of science and the ideal of ethics, and noted that the natural world and the world of ethics are perceived very differently. This is because the order of the physical world is unchangeable (e.g, the sun sets in the west, night follows day, etc), while in the ideal world ethical rules can be accepted or rejected. It seems there should be one explanation for science, which is empirically self-evident, and another for ethics, (...) which is something that is open to debate. Cohen reasoned there must be something that allows science and ethics to coexist and interrelate. (shrink)

La pregunta si Wittgenstein fue un filósofo liberal ha recibido menos atención que la de si fue un filósofo conservador, pero, como Robert Greenleaf Brice ha defendido recientemente, hay muchos indicios de liberalismo en algumas de sus observaciones, y algunos filósofos, como Richard Eldridge, han sostenido que hay un cierto tipo de liberalismo que se sigue de la filosofía de su última etapa. Richard Rorty ha sacado también conclusiones liberales a partir de la perspectiva filosófica que se basa en la (...) obra de Wittgenstein y Alice Crary ha sugerido que las lecciones aprendidas de su propria interpretación de Wittgenstein "reflejan en formas de vida social que incorporan los ideales de la democracia liberal". (shrink)

This article discusses the vice of self-centeredness, argues that it inhibits our ability to treat humanity as an end in itself, and that Kantian moral theory cannot account for this fact. After in this way arguing that Kantian theory fails to provide a fully adequate account of agents who live up to the formula of humanity, I discuss Buddhist resources for developing a better account.

L'articolo si propone di accostarsi alla figura di Ernst Mach seguendo la stessa metodologia storico-critica da lui utilizzata. Essa permette di contestualizzarne la figura e l'opera in un momento significativo della storia della filosofia occidentale, ma anche di ridefinire alcuni concetti fondamentali del suo pensiero. Scopo ulteriore della ricerca è di osservare da una diversa prospettiva la questione relativa al valore filosofico del lavoro epistemologico di Mach, mostrando come esso possa essere affermato senza bisogno di uscire dai confini da lui (...) stesso tracciati. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Hermann Cohen agreed with Immanuel Kant that ethics must be directed towards the well-being of humanity. The essential feature of this is its universality. As Cohen saw it, progress was (or at least ought to be) moving towards universal suffrage and democratic socialism. Following Kant, Cohen defended the so-called categorical imperative; that we should treat humanity in other persons always as an end and never as a means only. (Kant’s famous definition of the categorical imperative is to “act only according (...) to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”). (shrink)

The author asks whether there was a “scientific ‘68”, and focuses on aspects of two specific methodological proposals defined in the 1940s and 50s by the terms “action research” and “mixing methods”, applied particularly to social sciences. In the first, the climate surrounding the events of 1968 contributed to heightening the participative element to be found –by definition– in “action research”; that is: the importance of making the research subjects themselves participants in the design, execution and application of the study (...) of which they are the focus. This approach captured the democratic and anti-authoritarian spirit at the heart of the proposal, which was part of the prevailing climate in those days. The repercussions of 1968 on “mixing methods” focused on studying what had actually occurred, especially between the youth and workers, and therefore, particularly from the point of view of sociology and social psychology, using a “mixed methods” approach. The author explores the proposal of Norman Denzin; but traces the recent origins of both “mixing methods” and “action research” back to the proposals of mainly Kurt Lewin and the Chicago School. (shrink)

After having given in the Essay a definition of freedom which straightforwardly entails its compatibility with – among other things – God's foreknowledge, Locke surprisingly writes in a 1693 letter to Molyneux that he does not see how human liberty can coexist with divine prescience. I argue that the confession to Molyneux can be made consistent with the Essay's definition by embracing the view that the problem Locke had in mind when he drafted it was not a problem concerning the (...) reality of human freedom but, rather, its value. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of the role of the associative function of the imagination in causal cognition for Kant. I consider, first, Kant’s treatment of the imaginative faculty in the student notes to Kant’s lectures on anthropology in the 1770s, with the aim of working up a more-or-less comprehensive taxonomy of its various sub-faculties. I then turn to Kant’s account of the activity of the imagination, particularly in accordance with the law of association, in the theory of (...) cognition presented in the notes, and show that Kant, apparently in spite of Hume, takes the result of this activity as the basis for causal cognition. I then contend that Kant’s treatment of affinity in the A edition Deduction is animated precisely by his concern to shore up his previous account of causal cognition against Hume’s sceptical challenge. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionalist') nor straightforwardly realist. It is instead ‘constructivist’. On (...) the ‘Scaffolding View’ I defend, reactive attitudes play an essential role in developing, supporting, and thereby maintaining the capacities that make for responsible agency. While this view has relatively novel implications for a metaphysical understanding of capacities, its chief virtue, in contrast with more standard views, is providing a plausibly defensible account of how so-called responsible agents genuinely deserve to be treated as such. (shrink)

[English] It is well known the number of problems that arise from the distinction between "judgments of perception" and "judgments of experience" delivered in the Prolegomena. This article focuses on the impossibility of assigning truth value to judgments of perception since it seems counterintuitive to indicate that judgments such as "I am cold" or "sugar tastes sweet" cannot be true. To solve this difficulty, it is proposed here to distinguish between true judgments of perception (true subjective judgments) and "judgments about (...) subjects". The latter would be those that, despite referring in a certain sense to a subject, do so using categorical links and, therefore, are judgments of experience with claims of objective validity and with truth value. However, there is another reason for this distinction besides solving the difficulty posed. Above all, it is important to offer a key to understand the true nature of judgments of perception, showing the impossibility of understanding them as judgments that describe subjective mental states, and trying to distinguish the way in which we enunciate them from the merely subjective unit that, according to Kant, characterizes them. To carry out these objectives, we will first analyze the basis of the distinction between perception judgments and experience judgments; secondly, a distinction between subjective judgments and judgments about subjects is proposed and explained, while the role of truth in the empirical illusion is examined; and finally, we will underline the impossibility of formulating judgments (including those of perceptions) independently of any objective link. [Español] Es moneda común la diversidad de problemas que plantea la introducción de la distinción entre “juicios de percepción” y “juicios de experiencia” en los Prolegómenos. Este trabajo centra su atención en la imposibilidad de asignar valor de verdad a juicios de percepción —dada su carencia de pretensión de validez objetiva— pues parece contraintuitivo indicar que juicios como “tengo calor” o “el azúcar me sabe dulce” no pueden ser verdaderos. Para solucionar esta dificultad, se propone aquí distinguir entre los verdaderos juicios de percepción (verdaderos juicios subjetivos) y “juicios sobre sujetos”. Estos últimos serían aquellos que, a pesar de referirse en cierto sentido a un sujeto, lo hacen con enlaces categoriales y, por tanto, son en realidad juicios de experiencia con pretensión de validez objetiva y con valor de verdad. Sin embargo, a esta distinción subyace otro motivo además de solucionar la dificultad planteada. Interesa, sobre todo, ofrecer una clave para comprender la verdadera naturaleza de los juicios de percepción, mostrando la imposibilidad de entenderlos como juicios que describen estados mentales subjetivos, e intentando distinguir la forma en que los enunciamos de la unidad meramente subjetiva que, según Kant, los caracteriza. Para llevar a cabo estos objetivos se analiza, primero, el fundamento de la distinción entre juicios de percepción y juicios de experiencia; en segundo lugar, se propone y explica la distinción entre juicios subjetivos y juicios sobre sujetos, a la par que se examina el papel de la verdad en la ilusión empírica; y por último se subraya la imposibilidad de formular juicios (incluso de percepción) independientemente de cualquier enlace objetivo. (shrink)