In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ernst Cassirer, Historian of the WillDavid A. Wisner‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper, which must form a Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ‘tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and a Resolution which must compleate the real Philosopher. 1In order to possess the world of culture we must incessantly reconquer it by historical recollection. But recollection does not mean merely the act of reproduction. It (...) is a new intellectual synthesis—a constructive act.... History is not knowledge of external facts or events; it is a form... an organon of our self-knowledge, an indispensable instrument for building up our human universe. 2Ernst Cassirer is probably best known to historians of ideas for his work on the problem of knowledge, which began with a neo-Kantian historical analysis of epistemological questions and culminated in the philosophy of symbolic forms. As he himself always admitted, even in his last public writings, this focus on epistemology was the foundation of his philosophical interests. Yet by the last two decades of his life he had in true Socratic fashion endowed his investigations with heightened emphasis. “That self-knowledge is the highest aim of philosophical inquiry,” he wrote in the opening lines of An Essay on Man, “appears to be generally acknowledged.” 3 Cassirer perceived, however, [End Page 145] that the need for such an effort to be made had reached monumentally critical proportions: the early twentieth century had engendered grave historical and philosophical crises which threatened to reverse the progress of modern thought. Paradoxically, modern philosophy had many tools for attaining “knowledge of human nature” and yet stood farther from its goal than ever before. What Cassirer called “anthropological philosophy,” concerned as it was “with the whole destiny of man,” still required special consideration, in both its theoretical and its historical dimensions. 4 It was essentially to these twin domains that Cassirer would devote himself in his later years.The transformation of Cassirer’s philosophical perspectives thus had two facets. In order to outline his program Cassirer had first to consider a broader range of human activities than thought alone, from which he concluded that human culture consisted of a hierarchy of symbolic forms beginning with myth and culminating in science. However, he also felt compelled to elucidate the historical process by which these symbolic forms could progressively manifest themselves, and more specifically the individual human effort which was required for true self-knowledge. This he did principally in his historical works of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and with particularly profound results: from a historian of knowledge Cassirer became a historian of the will; from an epistemologist he became an ethical thinker; from an academic he became an exemplar of self-conscious moral action, a paragon of human autonomy and freedom. Indeed, in this endeavor he proved to be more thoroughly and fundamentally a Kantian than ever his theory of knowledge would reveal.I would go so far as to suggest that Cassirer’s history of the will was an integral part of his mature constructive philosophy. On the surface this history can be restated in the following terms. First, Cassirer insists on a fundamental opposition between the rationalism and intellectualism of ancient Greek philosophy and the voluntarism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, both of which represent in Cassirer’s view manifestations of a struggle in Western thought continuing well into the twentieth century. Second, he suggests that the historical task of Western philosophy since the first mature articulation of Latin Christian theology by Saint Augustine has been to liberate the individual human will from any and all forms of subservience. Such views are most forcefully expressed in The Myth of the State, Cassirer’s last book, but they actually constitute an essential and coherent element in all of Cassirer’s later work on the history of ideas and culture. Indeed, Cassirer’s history of the will provides us with a particularly keen and nuanced account of this essential Western legacy, while at the same time reading into it in Kantian manner a moral for the life of the individual human being. [End Page 146]In making such claims I am situating myself among... (shrink)

I propose an analysis of the metaphysically important distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties, and, in the process, provide a neglected model for the analysis of recalcitrant distinctions generally. First, I recap some difficulties with Kim's well-known (1982) proposal and its recent descendants. Then I define two independence relations among properties and state a ‘quasi-logical’ analysis of the distinction in terms of them. Unusually, my proposal is holistic, but I argue that it is in a certain kind of equilibrium and (...) so probably pins down the target distinction uniquely. Finally, I suggest diagnoses of the previous failed attempts to analyse the distinction. (shrink)

I present, motivate, and defend a theory of properties. Its novel feature is that it takes entire determinables-together-with-their-determinates as its units of analysis. This, I argue, captures the relations of entailment and exclusion among properties, solves the problem of extensionality, and points the way towards an actualist analysis of modality.

This paper addresses ethical issues surrounding global supply chains of multinational companies in developing countries. In particular, it considers the development and application of industry-wide ethical standards and codes of conduct for multinational supply chains in China. We describe and analyze the ethical norms and compliance components of such industry-wide regimes in the toy, textile, and consumer electronics industries. We argue that this development represents an positive attempt to institutionalize emergent international ethical standards and practices into this component of the (...) Chinese economy. (shrink)

Henrich et al. convincingly caution against the overgeneralization of findings from particular human populations, but fail to apply their own compelling reasoning to our nearest living relatives, the great apes. Here we argue that rearing history is every bit as important for understanding cognition in other species as it is in humans.

How Heidegger criticizes and "locates" science, and some problems with what he is trying to do.

Nishida Kitarô -- Tanabe Hajime -- Kuki Shûzô -- Watsuji Tetsurô -- Miki Kiyoshi -- Tosaka Jun -- Nishitani Keiji.

Philosophers and theologians from around the world and throughout history have grappled with such fundamental issues as the nature of the world and man's relation to it, as well as the optimal forms of human perception, language and behaviour. Yet it has always been difficult to compare the works of thinkers from different eras and cultures. In this work of systematic philosophy, David Dilworth places the major texts of ancient and modern, and Western and Oriental philosphy and religion into (...) one comparative framework. His study reveals affinities between thinkers who lived centuries and continents apart and produces numerous insights by bringing together the greatest philosophical texts into a single scheme. (shrink)

Review of Flamm and Skowronski (2007) Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana.

There is a very interesting phenomenon which takes place in philosophy. Theories which appeared ten or fifteen years ago in the literature of, say, the philosophy of language or the philosophy of mind, often make a reappearance in current discussions of problems in the philosophy of religion. As Yogi Berra once remarked, ‘It's déjà vu all over again’. However, there is always a possibility that the transition from the earlier context to the later one will be less than smooth. For (...) sometimes the theory reappears in a slightly distorted form, and, as a result, its bearing on the current discussion is somewhat misconceived. In this paper, an example of this phenomenon, and its potential problems, will be considered. Our purpose is not, of course, to discourage such intra-disciplinary dialogue in philosophy of religion, but rather to recommend that it be undertaken with a considerable measure of care. (shrink)

We propose in this paper to focus upon the de-ontological self concept discoverable in Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. In a larger study, we intend to contrast this “no self” paradigm with major pro-ontological formulations of the self concept. These pro-ontological definitions can be divided into three basic types, namely the absolute-universal self, the transcendental-constituting self, and the natural-organic self.

I. In “Whitehead’s Theory of Becoming," V.C. Chappell asserts that Whitehead’s “epochal theory of time or becoming is both untenable and unnecessary”. It is untenable, he argues, because “ … the theory itself is unintelligible, and … … the Zenonian argument on which the theory is founded, even in its amended, Whiteheadian version, is invalid”. Although it is not clear to me that Whitehead’s use of Zeno’s arguments is unsound, our concern here will be limited to the first of these (...) two claims. I will attempt to show that Chappell’s demonstration of the unintelligibility of Whitehead’s theory begs the question. His purpose is to present us with a reductio ad absurdum of the epochal theory of time, but he succeeds only in demonstrating that if we substitute other premises for Whitehead’s own, his conclusions will not be consistent with these substitute premises. (shrink)

Ethical reflection on the practice of war stands in a long tradition in Western philosophy and theology, a tradition which begins with the writings of Plato and Augustine and encompasses accounts of justified warfare offered by writers from the Medieval period to the present. Ethical reflection on nuclear war is of necessity a more recent theme. The past few years have seen an enormous increase in popular as well as scholarly concern with nuclear issues, and philosophers have joined theologians in (...) exploring the moral issues surrounding the harnessing of atomic forces in the service of war. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's extensive early writings devoted considerable attention to "being as presence," the reality underlying the history of metaphysics. In Derrida on Being as Presence: Questions and Quests, David A. White develops the intricate conceptual structure of this notion by close exegetical readings drawn from these writings. White discusses cardinal concepts in Derrida's revamping of theoretical considerations pertaining to language--signification, context, negation, iterability--as these considerations depend on the structure of being as presence and also as they ground "deconstructive" reading. (...) White's appraisal raises questions invoking a range of problems. He deploys these questions in conjunction with thematically related quests that arise given Derrida's conviction that the history of metaphysics, as variations on being as presence, has concealed and skewed vital elements of reality. White inflects this critical apparatus concerning being as presence with texts drawn from that history--e.g., by Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Hume, Kant, Whitehead. The essay concludes with a speculative ensemble of provisional categories, or zones of specificity. Implementing these categories will ground the possibility that philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular can be pursued in ways which acknowledge the relevance of Derrida's thought when integrated with the philosophical enterprise as traditionally understood. (shrink)

Professor MacKinnon, in an essay on Philosophy and Christology , remarks that Christology confronts theology with difficult but ‘inescapable problems’ because logically ‘it is unique; and yet it overlaps here, there and everywhere’. The complexity of the task, however, does not excuse the theologian from the need to determine the logical nature of the concept of ‘incarnation’ if he wishes to use it in his work—and, as I hope to show, any theology which attempts to describe the actual nature of (...) God probably cannot avoid using this concept in some form or other. Only by appreciating the logic of this concept can the theologian be confident that he understands its proper content and implications and that he offers appropriate justification for his claims about it. In this paper I want to suggest one possible way of viewing the logic of incarnational talk in theology which is based upon the attempt to treat such talk in terms of the notion of ‘revelation’. (shrink)