Jean Buridan

Aquinas, Ockham, and Burdan all claim that a person can be numerically identical over time, despite changes in size, shape, and color. How can we reconcile this with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, the principle that numerical identity implies indiscernibility across time? Almost all contemporary metaphysicians regard the Indiscernibility of Identicals as axiomatic. But I will argue that Aquinas, Ockham, and Burdan would reject it, perhaps in favor of a principle restricted to indiscernibility at a time.

Many things can be other than they are. Many other things cannot. But what are statements like these about? One answer to this question is that we are speaking of possible worlds: if something can be other than it is, then it actually is that way in some possible world. If something cannot be otherwise, it is not otherwise in any world. This answer is presently dominant in analytical philosophy of language and logic. What are these worlds? David Lewis famously (...) claimed that every world exists, just like ours does: there is no difference between the other worlds and ours. In contrast, the medieval thinker John Buridan understands modal logic in terms of objects and causal powers in this world: if something can be other than it is, then there is a causal power that can make it that way. If it cannot, then no causal power—not even God—can alter it, at least without destroying its nature. As we’ll see, the Lewisian plurality is not possible on Buridan’s account; accordingly, a basic tenet of classical theism is untenable on Lewis’s metaphysics. In short, either the Lewisian plurality is incoherent, or a core monotheistic tenet is impossible. (shrink)

If an argument is valid, it is impossible for its premises to be true, and its conclusion false. But how should we understand these notions of truth and impossibility? Here, I present the answers given by John Buridan (ca. 1300-60), showing (i) how he understands truth in his anti-realist metaphysics, and (ii) how he understands modality in connection with causal powers. In short: if an argument exists and is valid, there does not exist a power capable of making the premises (...) true and, at the same time, making the conclusion false. (shrink)

Over the last several years, democratic citizens and theorists have been grappling with an upsurge in political commentary on the crisis and decline of democratic legitimacy around the world. Increasingly, theoretical attention is turning from the philosophical justification of ambitious moral ideals of democracy, to the interpretation of potentials within existing political practice for democratic renewal and repair. This review article examines three new books at the forefront of this theoretical turn towards engagement with the real-world political dynamics of democratic (...) crisis and revival: Open Democracy by Hélène Landemore; Hope for Democracy by John Gastil and Katherine Knobloch; and Mending Democracy by Carolyn Hendriks, Selen Ercan and John Boswell. It begins by surveying the new contributions of these books – highlighting the importance all attribute to creative political agency as a source of revival in democratic practice. It then discusses several questions left unresolved by these books – concerning the problem of democratic legitimacy, the normativity of democratic standards and the power dynamics undergirding democratic agency – which jointly mark out an important agenda for future theoretical work on pathways out of democratic crisis. (shrink)

Democratic elections pose an immense challenge to any government during an emergency crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. More so for a country like India, with close to 18% of the world's population comprising an equally daunting and eager voter base of around 911 million in the time of a raging virus, both in the urban and rural areas of the nation. The first democratic large-scale election during the pandemic was successfully held in the state of Bihar in North India with (...) more than 90 million voters, which was an astonishing feat by itself. The model followed by South Korea with the highest voter turnout provided an insight to the Indian authorities on conducting the elections. The Indian Election Commission, an independent statutory body which is entrusted with the task of conducting free and fair elections, allowed for the virtual mode of campaigning, and specific guidelines for polling were recommended. The rule changes have profound implications in significantly reducing crowded campaigns, which was synonymous with Indian democracy. The traditional lens through which the administration of elections was perceived has undergone a paradigm shift during the pandemic. New insights might surface if the electoral administration is reviewed in this study on an argumentative basis against the background of the big steps taken by the Indian election machinery. The aspects on which the research debates include: the pros and cons of the action taken by the regulators; positive and negative responses from the political parties; and health and safety of the voters. The study concludes by affirming with data on the success of the Bihar Election and the wise choice of the Indian government in seizing the opportunity by taking the cues from South Korea. (shrink)

The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are far (...) more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory. (shrink)

In recent years modal syllogistic provided by 14th century logician John Buridan has attracted increasing attention of historians of medieval logic. The widespread use of quantified modal logic with the apparatus of possible worlds semantics in current analytic philosophy has encouraged the investigation of the relation of Buridan’s theory of modality with the modern developments of symbolic modal logic. We focus on the semantics of and the inferential relations among the propositions that underlie Buridan’s theory of modal syllogism. First, we (...) review all inferences between propositions of necessity, possibility, contingency, and non-contingency, with or without quod est locution, that are valid in Buridan’s semantics, and offer a comprehensive diagrammatic representation that includes them all. We then ask the question if there is a way to model those results in first order modal logic. Three ways of formalizing Buridan’s propositions in quantified modal logic are considered. Comparison of inferences between the quantified formulas and Buridan’s propositions reveals that, when supplied with a suitable formalization, Buridan’s semantics of categorical statements and immediate inferences among them can be fully captured by the quantified modal system T. (shrink)

Scholastic philosophers can be quite funny. What’s more, they have good reason to be: Aristotle himself lists ready wit (eutrapelia) among the virtues, as a mean between excessive humor and its defect. Here, I assess Scholastic discussions of humor in theory, before turning to examples of it in practice. The last and finest of these is a joke, hitherto unacknowledged, which Aquinas makes in his famous Five Ways. Along the way, we’ll see (i) that the history of philosophy is not (...) so hostile to humor as is commonly supposed; and (ii) that the competing theories of humor like the Incongruity Theory and the Release Theory are not altogether incompatible. We’ll also see at least one example of an apparent attempt by modern translators to excise humor from a medieval text. Our considerations will open a window into what oral discussion and debate at medieval universities was actually like, and how we should understand the relationship between the texts we have now and the exchanges that actually occurred then. (shrink)

Aristotle normally used historical notations to support his arguments. This is somewhat true for all the works of the corpus, but above all for Politics: the nature, objectives, and methodology of the investigations in this treatise present the strongest links with actual and concrete data, and therefore with historia. Obviously even the Aristotle of Politics is not a historian who wants to report known historiographical traditions; however, regardless of his intentions, there is no doubt that the work in question contains (...) precious ‘fragments’ of history which, in general, confirm or supplement our knowledge. There are, however, cases in which the Aristotelian exempla end up filling in the omissions and gaps of the available sources, such as the cursory reference to the nomos of the Aphytaians, which appears in the section of book 6 dedicated to the so-called agricultural democracy. (shrink)

Formalizing categorical propositions of traditional logic in the language of quantifiers and propositional functions is no straightforward matter, especially when modalities get involved. Starting...

Jean Buridan developed his theory of consequence within a semantical framework compatible with what we now call token-based semantics. In his Treatise on Consequences and Sophismata, Buridan showed...

This book offers a critical analysis of the European colonial heritage in the Arab countries and highlights the way this legacy is still with us today, informing the current state of relations between Europe and the formerly colonized states. The work analyses the fraught relationship between the Western powers and the Arab countries that have been subject to their colonial rule. It does so by looking at this relationship from two vantage points. On the one hand is that of humanitarian (...) intervention--a paradigm under which colonial rule coexisted alongside "humanitarian" policies pursued on the dual assumption that the colonized were "barbarous" peoples who wanted to be civilized and that the West could lay a claim of superiority over an inferior humanity. On the other hand is the Arab view, from which the humanitarian paradigm does not hold up, and which accordingly offers its own insights into the processes through which the Arab countries have sought to wrest themselves from colonial rule. In unpacking this analysis the book traces a history of international and colonial law, to this end also using the tools offered by the history of political thought. The book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers working in legal history, international law, international relations, the history of political thought, and colonial studies. (shrink)

Introduction. The actuality of the topic is determined by the emergence of a new institution for Russia – the all-Russian voting, regarding which there is no single interpretation of the scientific community. The reform of the Constitution – amendments in 2020 – solved the urgent questions concerning the value-ideological sphere and also the socio-economic and political ones. The purpose of the article is to determine the justification, effects and perspectives of all-Russian voting as an institution of democracy and a legal (...) institution. We made an attempt to systematically analyze the phenomenon of all-Russian voting and determine its meaning and prospects on the basis of existing regulatory legal acts, scientific developments of sociologists and lawyers. It provides the novelty of the work presented.Methodology and sources. The empirical base of the study is the data of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center poll on the awareness of Russians about the nationwide voting on amendments to the Constitution, as well as the results of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center electoral forecast on 06.23.2020, materials of the official website of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation on the results of the all-Russian vote in 2020. In our work we used the concepts and developments of Russian scientists: Dzidoev R. M., Ilyin V. A., Morev M. V., Khorunzhiy S. N., Khristoforova E. I., Sokolova E. A., Chebotarev G. N. and others. We also used M. Weber’s theory of plebiscite democracy and the theory of social institution. The study used the method of systems analysis and general logical methods.Results and discussion. In connection with the conduct of the all-Russian vote on the approval of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020, new regulatory legal acts were adopted. The emergence of the phenomenon of all-Russian voting has caused discussions in the scientific community and in society about the legitimacy and consequences of this political and legal phenomenon. In the article the author examines the sociological aspects of the all-Russian vote as an institution of democracy regarding the validity, nature, causes, consequences and perspectives. Namely, the forecasts of the institutionalization of the all-Russian vote, the features of this manifestation of democracy in relation to other forms of democracy in Russia, its significance for society are touched upon.Conclusion. Russia is a democratic state, and the forms of manifestation of democracy are enshrined in legislation. The all-Russian voting was held in accordance with the regulatory legal acts specially created for its implementation. A new institution of democracy has been formed. The result of voting for amendments to the Constitution showed the level and dynamics of interaction between the state and society, the timeliness of the questions put to the voting. Withal, the introduction of the all-Russian voting in the legal system of Russia and the question of the final institutionalization of the relevant relationship seems unlikely. (shrink)

Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies (...) this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice. (shrink)

Scholarship on the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages has tended to overlook certain subject matters, especially some pertaining to ethics and political philosophy. My object of study in this paper is one of these overlooked notions, the idea of craft as an intellectual virtue. While recent publications have focused on sapientia, and scientia, this paper aims to rehabilitate ars as a virtue, in particular John Buridan’s understanding of craft as an intellectual virtue in his Quaestiones super decem libros Ethicorum (...) Aristotelis ad Nicomachum. My goal is to examine Buridan’s analysis of craft as expounded in this commentary. Once the Picardian master’s theses have been presented, and the objections he raises have been reviewed along with the solutions proposed to those objections, I briefly suggest why craft might have been overlooked as a virtue. (shrink)

O filósofo medieval João Buridan (século XIV) desenvolve uma semântica complexa, baseada na distinção entre contexto de enunciação e contexto de avaliação, para determinar as condições de verdade de uma proposição. O objetivo do presente artigo é analisar essa semântica e, mais precisamente, compreender suas implicações relativas às proposições de futuro contingente. Propõe-se aqui que a distinção entre contexto de enunciação e contexto de avaliação permite uma abordagem satisfatória das condições de verdade de proposições de futuro contingente. Defende-se que essa (...) abordagem é satisfatória porque ela evita tanto as consequências desagradáveis advindas da negação do Princípio da Bivalência quanto a adesão ao determinismo.. (shrink)

Scholarship on the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages has tended to overlook certain subject matters, especially some pertaining to ethics and political philosophy. My object of study in this paper is one of these overlooked notions, the idea of craft (ars) as an intellectual virtue. While recent publications have focused on sapientia and scientia, this paper aims to rehabilitate ars as a virtue, in particular John Buridan’s understanding of craft as an intellectual virtue in his Quaestiones super decem libros (...) Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum. My goal is to examine Buridan’s analysis of craft as expounded in this commentary. Once the Picardian master’s theses have been presented, and the objections he raises have been reviewed along with the solutions proposed to those objections, I briefly suggest why craft might have been overlooked as a virtue. (shrink)

What makes a valid argument valid? Generally speaking, in a valid argument, if the premisses are true, then the conclusion must necessarily also be true. But on its own, this doesn’t tell us all that much. What is truth? And what is necessity? In what follows, I consider answers to these questions proposed by the fourteenth century logician John Buridan († ca. 1358). My central claim is that Buridan’s logic is downstream from his metaphysics. Accordingly, I treat his metaphysical discussions (...) as the key to his logic. As has been often noted, Buridan’s metaphysics are radically anti-realist about universals, though I think the depth and scope of his anti-realism has at times been papered over. Buridan constructs his logic on an amazingly spartan ontology, and this accomplishment is overdue for reconsideration. To the foregoing questions: truth is a feature of propositions, and of propositions only—not of proposition-like states of affairs, or anything like that. It is a function of the reference or supposition (suppositio) of their terms, which depends on predication in a propositional context. And necessary truth is grounded in causation: a predication is necessary if it cannot be falsified by any power, natural or supernatural, without ii annihilating what its terms stand for. “Socrates is a human”, for instance, can only be falsified by annihilating Socrates, and so it is a necessary truth. -/- These considerations provide an ample theoretical basis for a thorough examination of Buridan’s modal logic. This is what the thesis culminates with. In the final chapter, I set forth some novel and surprising findings, chief of which is this: Buridan’s modal syntax and semantics are nothing like Kripke’s—and indeed are incompatible with them. This has significant implications not only for modal logic and metaphysics, but for how we think about medieval logic and philosophy more generally. -/- Throughout the thesis, I advocate a methodology of emphasising the differences, rather than the similarities, between past and present thought. Buridan is wildly unlike what we’re used to, and we should let him speak for himself. (shrink)

This Commentary investigates ethical issues surrounding the US government’s attempt to partner with a private company to produce a new low-cost ventilator as part of its pandemic preparation plans. I argue that firms have distinct duties with respect to such public-private partnerships. In contrast to approaches that analyze these duties in terms of an “implicit morality” of the market, I analyze them in terms of democratically authorized plans regarding how to structure the market.

The premise of Darkened Enlightenment is to highlight the fact that there currently exist a number of socio-political forces that have the design, or ultimate consequence, of trying to extinguish the light of reason and rationality. The book presents a critique of modernity and provides a socio-political and cultural analysis of world society in the early twenty-first century. Specifically, this analysis examines the deterioration of democracy, human rights, and rational thought. Key features include a combination of academic analysis that draws (...) on numerous and specific examples of the growing darkness that surrounds us along with a balanced practical, everyday-life approach to the study of the socio-political world we live in through the use of popular culture references and featured boxes. The general audience will also be intrigued by these same topics that concern academics including: a discussion on the meaning of "fake news;" attacks on the media and a declaration of the news media as the "enemy of the people;" the rise of populism and nationalism around the world; the deterioration of freedom and human rights globally; the growing economic disparity between the rich and the poor; attempts to devalue education; a growing disbelief in science; attacks on the environment; pseudoscience as a by-product of unreasoned and irrational thinking; the political sw& the power elites and the deep state; and the variations of Big Business that impact our daily lives. This book will make a great contribution to such fields as sociology, philosophy, political science, environmental science, public administration, economics, psychology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

The United States is ‘the first modern democracy.’ Unfortunately, Trumpism has increasingly become an imminent threat to democracy, national unity, security and sovereignty. For years, the American exceptionalism has allowed U.S. presidents to be leaders of the free world. Unfortunately and sadly, through southern strategy, abuse of power, and isolationism, President Trump has proven that he is “unfit to lead” domestically and globally, especially during the current coronavirus pandemic crisis. The general elections 2020 are about keeping the U.S. as a (...) republic by rescuing its democracy from 'Trumpocracy' and 'tweetocracy,' protecting and defending its national security and sovereignty. Unfortunately, Congressional ‘Trumpublicans’ have put party before country and failed to patriotically carry out their oversight duty. Consequently, it is imperative that Democrats understand and use the power of demographics in the 21st-century USA, transform the midterms 2018 ‘blue wave’ into a ‘blue tsunami.’ That is the best possible way to restore sanity, decency, law and order in Washington. (shrink)

A number of devastating disasters have occurred in Japan since 2017, including heavy rains, wide ranging floods, a large typhoon, earthquakes, and landslides. Such disasters are beyond our imagination and our scientific assumptions. All of these come from global warming, which comes from human economic activities with CO2 emissions. There are interdependencies around the globe, between sea and land, ocean and air currents, and so on. In the twentieth century, we pushed technological innovation to conquer nature, but it only partly (...) succeeded—and was actually almost in vain. We must recognize that human beings are a part of nature and must rethink our attitude towards nature. As citizens of the world, human beings must have a keen sensibility to find new virtue, “living together on the same globe.” It is the new ideal beyond boundaries and beyond differences between the rich and the poor, looking for the possibility of democracy. (shrink)

"This book examines in detail some of John Dewey's most influential writings by connecting them with contemporary issues, perspectives, controversies and debates. Bringing together scholars from the US and Germany, this volume offers an international perspective on current implications, challenges, and risks of democracy and education in the contemporary world. Written for students and scholars in the fields of education and philosophy, New Studies in Deweyan Education, represents a new, unique and innovative way to of approaching the problems and opportunities (...) of democracy and education then and now"--. (shrink)

Is democracy, in its neoliberalized form, responsible in part for bringing us to the brink of self-destruction and the policy inertia that is doing away with our chances of survival? Surviving Democracy probes the way democracy became neoliberalized and the role neoliberalized democracy plays in our dealings with--causing, understanding, denying, and mitigating--climate change. Defining neoliberalism as the art of exclusion through inclusion, Chien-Yi Lu treats climate change as collateral damage of the neoliberal order established to ensure upward power and wealth (...) redistribution. Highlighting the role money played in the "free" competition of ideas between Keynes and Hayek, she investigates the resulting global structure, wherein the wealthy and powerful sit above the market and democracy, and the way this structure fundamentally contradicts with honest climate mitigation. Central to the structure is neoliberal elites' leveraging of the fluid relationship between the market and the state. Merging citizen power with consumer and investor powers is therefore imperative to the success of climate action. While expediting the bursting of the carbon bubble is an obvious answer, it is the discussion of the meat bubble that brings the book full circle, linking our survival to neoliberalism, inclusion, and democracy. Surviving Democracy probes the role democracy plays in our dealings with--causing, understanding, denying, and hopefully, mitigating--climate change. (shrink)

When money equates to power and the system is rigged in favor of wealthy elites, why do we still pretend we are living in a democracy? In Living under Post-Democracy, Caleb R. Miller challenges us to admit what we already know: that most of us are effectively powerless over the political decisions that govern our lives. Instead, we should embrace a 'post-democratic' view of politics, one which recognizes the way in which our political institutions fail--both systematically and historically--to live up (...) to our democratic ideals, while also acknowledging our tragic, yet enduring attachment to them both. Offering a new framework for conceptualizing contemporary citizenship, Miller explores how a post-democratic perspective can help us begin to reorient ourselves in our paradoxical, fractured political landscape. This model of citizenship opens the possibility for a distinctly post-democratic approach to both political participation and political philosophy, treating them not as ways of affecting politics, but as opportunities for therapeutically engaging with the ongoing challenges and inevitable frustrations of post-democratic life. This book is an excellent addition to courses on democratic theory, as well as introductory courses to political theory. (shrink)

Democracy is often used as shorthand for liberal democracy. Despite such casual conflation, the two concepts remain importantly distinct. I argue that democracy unfettered by the constraints of liberal institutions and commitments gives rise to the proliferation of disinformation and to xenophobic populism. I draw upon Plato and the democracy of ancient Athens to illustrate the history of association between disinformation and democracy. Moving on to our more contemporary treatments of liberalism, specifically to the ideal theory of John Rawls, I (...) show that in order to address disinformation and the reactionary politics in which it thrives, we must attend to a robust defense of liberalism against non-liberal and illiberal democracy. (shrink)

Raccolta di saggi sulla storia della filosofia rinascimentale e moderna.

Raccolta di saggi sulla storia della filosofia rinascimentale e moderna.

This volume purports to explore the legal and political issues triggered by the new wave of secessionism. More specifically, those issues concern the interplay between notions of democracy and law. Against this background, the editors use amorality in order to escape the terrain of the justification of secession by making a distinction between the democratic theory of secession and the theory of democratic secession. In the first section, the theoretical nexus democracy-secession has been approached both from a legal and political (...) theory perspective. The second section of the book examines the instruments that the theory of democratic secession invokes in order to justify secession and presents both legal and political science contributions. The third section focuses on social movements and political actors. The fourth section focuses on two case studies due to the awareness of the importance of the difference between secession in a democratic occidental context and separations in a non-democratic context. (shrink)

Ist der menschliche Intellekt materiell? Oder können wir mit Verweis auf seine intentionalen Tätigkeiten wie allgemeine Erkenntnis oder Selbsterkenntnis zeigen, dass er immateriell ist? Besteht also ein Zusammenhang zwischen Intentionalität und Immaterialität? Mit Philosophie des Geistes im Spätmittelalter bietet Martin Klein eine umfassende Darstellung der Philosophie des Geistes von Johannes Buridan im Zusammenhang seiner Erkenntnistheorie, Metaphysik und Naturphilosophie. Vor dem Hintergrund neuester Editionen wird Buridan im Kontext der spätmittelalterlichen Debatte über die Natur des menschlichen Intellekts und seine kognitiven Vermögen prätsentiert. (...) In this volume, Martin Klein offers a comprehensive account of John Buridan's philosophy of mind in the context of the late medieval debate about the nature of the human intellect and how this influences its cognitive functioning. (shrink)

Discussions about singular cognition, and its linguistic counterpart, are by no means exclusive to contemporary philosophy. In fact, a strikingly similar discussion, to which several medieval texts bear witness, took place in the late Middle Ages. The aim of this article is to partly reconstruct this medieval discussion, as it took place in Parisian question-commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, so as to show the progression from the rejection of singular intellection in Siger of Brabant to the descriptivist positions of John (...) Duns Scotus and John of Jandun, and finally to the singularism of John Buridan. All these authors accept some kind of intellectual access to individuals. Therefore, the conundrum is not whether we have some kind of intellectual knowledge of individuals, but rather whether we can know them singularly. This article begins by presenting the crucial obstacle to singular intellection in Siger. Thereafter, the author shows that Jandun and Scotus depart in fundamental ways from Siger’s account, but that for them the intellection of individuals is of a general character. Finally, she proposes that Buridan is a genuine singularist. (shrink)

This book poses the question: How can we organize society in such a way that our disagreement about facts and norms works to the benefit of everyone? In response, it makes the argument for polycentric democracy, a political arrangement consisting of various political units that enjoy different degrees of independence. It is argued that to progress towards justice, we first need to change our attitude towards reasonable disagreement. Theorists have always viewed reasonable disagreement as nuisance, if not as a threat. (...) However, this work puts forward that the diversity of perspectives which underlie reasonable disagreement should be viewed as a resource to be harvested rather than a threat to be tamed. Resting on two key arguments, the author proposes the idea of polycentric democracy as the most capable method of making pluralism productive. The book explores what such a political order might look like and concludes that only an institutional system which is capable of profiting from diversity, such as polycentric democracy, might reasonably be expected to generate an overlapping consensus. Continuing in the tradition of Karl Popper and Friedrich August von Hayek, this book lies at the intersection of philosophy, political economy and political theory. It will be of great interest to academics and scholars working in philosophy, politics and economics. (shrink)

Fraternity is a feeling, and a moral virtue, but fraternity is also a political concept. The French Revolution proclaimed an ethical and political ideal with its three principles: liberty, equality and fraternity. Since then, western political philosophy has gone to great lengths to analyse the liberty and equality, but has ignored, and even disdained, the third part of the revolutionary triad: fraternity. Forgetting or underestimating fraternity as a political category is unjustifiable. Political fraternity can help us to overcome some of (...) the main problems with liberal egalitarianism and theories of liberty in current social and political thought, and it contributes to a better understanding of the real significance of justice and democracy. In this book, Angel Puyol examines the theoretical and normative challenges of the political idea of fraternity, its history and meanings, its role in current political philosophy, its distinction regarding related concepts - such as relational equality, solidarity or civic friendship - the place that political fraternity should occupy in feminist criticism, and its relationship to social justice, global justice and democracy in modern-day politics. (shrink)

Till just few decades ago, scholars used to use the label ‘Ockhamism’ to mark a turning-point in the history of mediaeval philosophy, above all in the history of natural philosophy. That turning-point was exemplified by the once so-called ‘Buridanian school’, today known simply as ‘Parisian school of natural philosophy’, whose leading representative was for sure John Buridan. But looking carefully at some crucial points of the Picard master’s idea of ‘nature’, concerning specifically the relationship between God and secondary causes on (...) one side, and the role played by free will, both the divine and the human one, on the other side, one will find out that Buridan’s ‘Ockhamism’ is at least questionable: Scotus’ modal logic is the conceptual framework, within which he redetermines the boundaries of natural laws, but the ‘pure ockhamist’ idea of the prevalence of the will on the intellect in God’s nature is the source of an image of the world in which voluntary behaviours and natural laws are intertwined. Therefore, Buridan’s natural philosophy results as a peculiar synthesis of two of the main divergent lines of thinking of late mediaeval philosophy. (shrink)

According to Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382), human beings, unlike all other animals, consist of two substances: a thinking substance and a sensing substance. This paper presents and explores the arguments Oresme uses to arrive at this position, which is unusual in medieval philosophical psychology and which at least superficially – though their methods are completely different – resembles what Descartes concluded about the nature of the human soul and body two and a half centuries later. The paper also considers some (...) moments of ambivalence in Oresme’s presentation, as well as unresolved difficulties, several of which have theological as well as philosophical implications. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 56, Issue 3-4, pp 201 - 221 This paper summarizes medieval definitions and divisions of consequences and explains the import of the medieval development of the theory of consequence for logic today. It then introduces the various contributions to this special issue of _Vivarium_ on consequences in medieval logic.

In Designing Social Equality, Mark Foster Gage proposes a dramatic realignment between aesthetic thought, politics, social equality, and the design of our physical world. By reconsidering historic concepts from aesthetic philosophy and weaving them with emerging intellectual positions from a variety of disciplines, he sets out to design a more encompassing social theory for how humanity perceives its very reality, and how it might begin to more justly define that reality through new ways of reconsidering the built environment.

This book unravels the role of democracy after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and reflects important debates surrounding the security of Muslim communities in the years to come. It looks at the problems of torture, violence and the legal resources available to contemporary democracies to confront terrorism. While terrorism is often regarded as one of the major threats to the West and the nation-state, this book explores the notion that a disciplined sense of terror is what keeps society working. The strengths (...) and limitations of liberalism are examined, as well as the ethical dilemma of torture and human right violations in the struggle against terrorism. This book carefully dissects the origin of the nation-state and how it keeps society united. The author offers a creative and unique approach to democracy and worldwide terrorism, exploring the consequences for the nation-state. This book looks at the connections between terrorism, mobility, consumption, torture and fear. It will be of interest to researchers as well as postgraduate and postdoctoral students within the fields of Human Geography, Politics, Media and International Relations. (shrink)

The return to public assemblies and direct democratic methods in the wave of the global "squares movements" since 2011 has rejuvenated interest in forms of council organisation and action. The European council movements, which developed in the immediate post-First World War era, were the most impressive of a number of attempts to develop workers' councils throughout the twentieth century. However, in spite of the recent challenges to liberal democracy, the question of council democracy has so far been neglected within democratic (...) theory. This book seeks to interrogate contemporary democratic institutions from the perspective of the resources that can be drawn from a revival and re-evaluation of the forgotten ideal of council democracy. This collection brings together democratic theorists, socialists and labour historians on the question of the relevance of council democracy for contemporary democratic practices. Historical reflection on the councils opens our political imagination to an expanded scope of the possibilities for political transformation by drawing from debates and events at an important historical juncture before the dominance of current forms of liberal democracy. It offers a critical perspective on the limits of current democratic regimes for enabling widespread political participation and holding elites accountable. This timely read provides students and scholars with innovative analyses of the councils on the 100th anniversary of their development. It offers new analytic frameworks for conceptualising the relationship between politics and the economy and contributes to emerging debates within political theory on workplace, economic and council democracy. (shrink)

John Buridan uses the concepts of actus and habitus in his psychology to explain the difference between actual or occurrent thoughts and the dispositions to think those same thoughts. But since mental qualities are immaterial, Buridan must finesse his account of material qualities to save the psychological phenomena. He argues that thoughts and dispositions are really distinct from the human soul and from each other, and that because a thought and its corresponding disposition are different kinds of quality, we cannot (...) say that they differ merely in terms of intensity. This leaves him with the unresolved problem of explaining how one kind of psychological quality can be caused by another that is qualitatively distinct from it. (shrink)

The current political climate of uncompromising neoliberalism means that the need to study the logic of our culture that is, the logic of the capitalist system is compelling. Providing a rich philosophical analysis of democracy from a negative, non-identity, dialectical perspective, Vasilis Grollios encourages the reader not to think of democracy as a call for a more effective domination of the people or as a demand for the replacement of the elite that currently holds power. In doing so, he aspires (...) to fill in a gap in the literature by offering an out of the mainstream overview of the key concepts of totality, negativity, fetishization, contradiction, identity thinking, dialectics and corporeal materialism as they have been employed by the major thinkers of the critical theory tradition Marx, Engels, Horkheimer, Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse, Bloch and Holloway. The concepts of the spell and all its implications, contradiction and of fetishism as a process played in them a common defining role. The author makes an innovative attempt to bring these concepts to light in terms of their practical relevance for contemporary democratic theory. (shrink)

As we now know, most, if not all, philosophers in the High Middle Ages agreed that what we immediately perceive are external objects and that the immediate object of perception must not be some image present to the mind. Yet most — but not all — philosophers in the High Middle Ages also held, following Aristotle, that perception is a process wherein the percipient takes on the likeness of the external object. This likeness — called a species — is a (...) representation (of some sort) by means of which we immediately perceive external objects. But how can perception be at once direct — or immediate — and at the same time by way of representations? The usual answer here was that the species represents the external object to some percipient even though the species itself is not at all perceived: the species is that by which I perceive and not that which I perceive. John Buridan defends this traditional view — call it direct realism with representations. However, just a couple of decades before Buridan, one of the more important philosophers at Paris, Durand of St.-Pourçain, had already rejected direct realism with representation. Durand defends what I will call direct realism without representations. On his view, a species is not at all necessary during overtly direct forms of perception, neither as cause nor as representation. This paper has two parts. In the first part, I will discuss some of the more interesting arguments that Durand makes against direct realism with representations. In the second part, I will look at Buridan's defense of the view. -/- . (shrink)

Introduction -- Democracy, discourse and the public sphere: The deliberative approach -- Methods and measures of deliberation -- The media and the deliberative quality of public spheres -- Democratic conflict and deliberative coalitions -- Conclusion.

The focus of the article is the self-predication principle, according to which the/a such-and-such is such-and-such. We consider contemporary approaches (Frege, Russell, Meinong) to the self-predication principle, as well as fourteenth-century approaches (Burley, Ockham, Buridan). In crucial ways, the Ockham-Buridan view prefigures Russell’s view, and Burley’s view shows a striking resemblance to Meinong’s view. In short the Russell-Ockham-Buridan view holds: no existence, no truth. The Burley-Meinong view holds, in short: intelligibility suffices for truth. Both views approach self-predication in a uniform (...) way. We were unable to find a medieval philosopher who, like Frege, approaches self-predication in a non-uniform way. We do not want to dispute that there are also considerable differences between the contemporary and the fourteenth-century approach to self-predication. Importantly, fourteenth-century accounts of self-predication rely strongly on the identity theory of predication, and this theory is not endorsed by contemporary philosophers of language. Nevertheless, some basic tenets seem to us to be clearly shared between fourteenth-century and contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the (...) geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science. (shrink)