This paper discusses the role that the personal history plays in a patient’s perception of his or her own illness in the light of the patient’s own personal history. It demonstrates the regrettable modern tendency to regards the patient as the “bearer of a disease” rather than as a human being with personal values and experiences into which their current illness needs to be integrated. I illustrate my point by an exchange between a student and an “attending” and the “attending” (...) and the patient. It represents only one out of unfortunately many such instances in which the pressures of “managed care” and “efficiency” have made truly knowing the patient as an individual with life experiences and personal values much more difficult. (shrink)

Although clinical ethicists are becoming more prevalent in healthcare settings, their required training and education have not been clearly delineated. Most agree that training and education are important, but their nature and delivery remain topics of debate. One option is through completion of a clinical ethics fellowship. In this paper, the first four fellows to complete a newly developed fellowship program discuss their experiences. They describe the goals, structure, participants and activities of the fellowship. They identify key elements for succeeding (...) as a clinical ethicist and sustaining a clinical ethics program. They critically reflect upon the challenges faced in the program. The one-year fellowship provided real-time clinical opportunities that helped them to develop the necessary knowledge and skills, gain insight into the role and scope of practice of clinical ethicists and hone valuable character traits. The fellowship enabled each of the fellows to assume confidently and competently a position as a clinical ethicist upon completion. (shrink)

Narrative inquiry in a nursing practicum One approach to creating research‐based nursing education is to think and write narratively about the daily life of a BScN program student and her teacher in diverse settings and over time. Gail, as a nurse‐teacher, and Faith, as a nursing student and now Public Health Nurse, reconstruct their teaching–learning experiences in an integrated practicum in maternal–child health services as a narrative inquiry. After presenting this reconstruction of experience at a conference on maternal (...) scholarship, further inquiry into their experiences shows how narrative inquiry matters to construction of nursing praxis and to life‐long learning as a nurse. Teaching–learning relationships are seen as a template for a student's connections to people experiencing nursing care and to other clinicians. Construction of stories to live by that take into account becoming a nurse, constructing knowledge and enacting caring–healing nursing practices is illuminated through narrative inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science by Rudi A. te VeldeO.P. Philip-Neri ReeseVELDE, Rudi A. te. Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2021. vii + 246 pp. 38,00€In the opening chapter of Metaphysics 4, Aristotle states not only that there is a science of (...) being as being and its per se properties but also that it is the task of the metaphysician to investigate the principles and causes of such being. Does this mean that metaphysics comes in two parts—namely, an ontology that investigates being and its properties, followed by a theology that investigates the first principle of being? Or does it mean that the very investigation into being and its properties involves an investigation into the first principle of being—that is, that ontology in some sense is theology? The central purpose of Rudi A. te Velde's newest book is to show that, at least for Thomas Aquinas and those who would follow him, the answer is emphatically the latter: Thomistic metaphysics is essentially the resolutio, or tracing-back, of common being (ens commune) to divine being (ens divinum). This process of resolution situates Aquinas's metaphysics "between experience and transcendence." Unlike natural philosophy, metaphysics is not focused on reality as it is given to us in and through sensory experience. Unlike Christian theology, metaphysics is not focused on God as revealed to us in and through supernatural faith. Rather, it is focused on what both of these—experience and transcendence—presuppose, namely, the fundamental truth that all of reality comes from, and points back to, God as its principle and source. For te Velde, Aquinas's metaphysics is etiology or, as he puts it, "the science of presuppositions."Chapter 1 offers the reader a synoptic view of the basic outlines and contours of Aquinas's metaphysics, both positively and negatively. Positively, te Velde points out that Aquinas understands metaphysics to be an Aristotelian science, that is, a discipline unified around its subject. For the properties of a subject are what we aim to demonstrate when we engage in Aristotelian science, and its principles are what we appeal to when doing so. Negatively, te Velde contrasts Aquinas's view of metaphysics with that of his contemporary, Siger of Brabant, and that of our contemporary, John Haldane. Unlike the former, Aquinas's metaphysics takes common being, which is participated and created (and so does not include God), as its subject. Unlike the latter, Aquinas's [End Page 162] metaphysics is unified by the intelligibility of being in light of its principles.In chapters 2 through 5, te Velde focuses in on particular themes that are of central importance to Aquinas's account of metaphysics. Chapter 2 examines the role of separatio in distinguishing metaphysics from physics and mathematics. Where physics considers things that require matter both to be and to be understood, and mathematics considers things that require matter to be but not to be understood, metaphysics considers things that require matter neither to be nor to be understood. It does so by means of a judgment of separation—a judgment that something (for example, substance, form, and so on) can be without matter. Chapter 3 turns to the topic of resolutio, wherein the mind moves "from the concrete particular to its intelligible ground." Aquinas's metaphysics is marked by a twofold resolution: one in which being and its attributes are grasped as the intrinsic principles of all things, and a second in which God and separate substances are grasped as the extrinsic principles of all things. Chapter 4 then investigates the notion of transcendentality, which arises in the first of those two resolutive processes—for insofar as being and its attributes are common to all things, they are not limited to just one of the ten categories (that is, they are transcendental). Nevertheless, the way in which predicates like "one," "true," and "good" cut across the categories that divide common being is different from the way that they cut across the divide between God and creatures. This difference ushers in chapter 5's discussion... (shrink)

The field of bioethics is calling for a new generation of scholars equipped with the normative, empirical, and practical knowledge and expertise to prioritize equity concerns largely underrepresent...

Religious and atheistic belief are presented anew in a volume of essays from leading phenomenologists in both France and the UK. Atheism, often presented as the negation of religious belief, is here engaged with from a phenomenologically informed notion of experience. The focus on experience, sparks new debates in readings of belief, faith and atheism as they relate to and complicate each other. What unites the contributors is their relationship to phenomenology as it has developed in France (...) in the wake of Heidegger and Husserl. Leading French intellectuals from this context, Jean-Luc Nancy, Quentin Meillassoux, and Catherine Malabou, amongst others, contribute arresting ideas on atheistic faith, the death of God, and anarchic faith, opening up new areas of understanding in a field whose parameters and core concepts are ever shifting. Revealing the extent to which religious and atheistic belief must be seen to influence, and on a fundamental level, to co-create one another, the pluralistic society in which religious belief is counted as one option amongst many is given primacy. The fact that religious faith has become not only optional but also, in many contexts, strangely alienated from society, deeply modifies the experience of the believer as much as that of the non-believer. A focus on 'experience', over and above 'belief', moves us towards a mode of experiential knowledge which refuses to privilege the atheistic believer and deride the reality of religious belief. (shrink)

This paper discusses Kant’s prospect of ‘hope’ that entangles with interrelated epistemic terms like belief, faith, knowledge, etc. The first part of the paper illustrates the boundary of knowing in the light of a Platonic analysis to highlight the distinction between empiricism and rationalism. Kant’s notion of ‘transcendent metaphysical knowledge’, a path-breaking way to look at the metaphysical thought, can fit with the regulative principle that seems favoruable to the experience-centric knowledge. The second part of (...) the paper defines ‘hope’ as an interwoven part of belief, besides ‘hope’ as a component of ‘happiness' can persuade the future behaviours of the individuals. Revisiting Kant’s three categorizations of hopes (eschatological hope, political hope, and hope for the kingdom of ends), the paper traces out Kant’s good will as a ‘hope’ and his conception of humanity. (shrink)

Since William of Ockham has never made a systematic and thorough analysis of the anthropological issue, the author reconstructs the theme on the basis of considerations taken from his several physical and theological works. The Ockhamist methodological approach is the same used to study the natural world: experience-based knowledge, individual- based terminist logic and the principle of economy. However, Ockham stresses the individual against the deterministic universe of matter. It is a privileged entity: with its nature of material (...) being, it takes part of the features and perfections of the natural world- both inanimate and animate beings; and with its freedom, it infinitely transcends the deterministic universe of physics. Taking the above as a starting point, the author considers, firstly, the physical and metaphysical definitions given by the philosopher; and she shows the consequences resulting from them and the specific limitations established by Ockham. Then, she analyzes the main constituent of both definitions: the spiritual soul; she does so by examining the main features is a central point in the Ockhamist anthropology where the mere reason is insufficient to reach the truth; it is the faith the one that should complete the scope of this knowledge. (shrink)

There is an evident lack of rigorous frameworks for making sense of the role and status of spirituality and religion in organizations and organizing, in particular from the perspective of spiritual philosophies of the social. This paper suggests that the philosophy of Plato and his modern follower, political theorist Eric Voegelin could offer a viable perspective for understanding organizational spirituality in its metaphysical, political and ethical contexts. Essential for such a philosophical reflection is the postulation of the transcendental realm as (...) the ultimate reality that provides the fullest templates for order, knowledge and ethicality. It is argued, in the footsteps of Voegelin, that modern organizations and modern organization theory should seek to re-awaken the lost experiences of the divine Beyond by re-animating religious symbols and myths of transcendence as devices for a spiritually opened consciousness. (shrink)

Erich Frank is chiefly known for two works. In Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer, 1923, Frank published the results of research to determine who the Pythagoreans actually were and what part they played in Plato's conception of nature. In 1945 he published Philosophical Understanding and Religious Truth. It had been the hope of his friends that Frank would present a more comprehensive and systematic exposition of his thought. Frank's sudden death in 1948 put an end to this hope. In (...) class='Hi'>Knowledge, Will and Belief Ludwig Edelstein has collected together twenty of Frank's papers and has appended an account of Frank's life and work. Until 1939 Frank was professor at Marburg. After that he was attached to universities in the United States. Half of the papers in this collection are in English, the others are in German. Readers in the English speaking world will find Frank's German quite readable. Half of the papers have not hitherto been published; of those which have been, many are hidden in unfamiliar journals. (shrink)

According to Timothy Williamson, philosophy is not a mere conceptual investigation and does not involve a specific cognitive ability, different in nature from those involved in acquiring scientific or ordinary knowledge of the world. The author holds that Williamson does not succeed in explaining how it is possible for us to acquire, through thought experiments, the type of knowledge that, according to him, philosophy predominantly aims to acquire—namely, knowledge of metaphysical modality. More specifically, the author considers in (...) detail Russell’s stopped clock and Locke’s prince and the cobbler thought experiments, and argues that Williamson has not shown how the kind of thought experiment of which they are instances, and which is typically encountered in philosophy, can be the instrument of knowledge of metaphysical modality that he takes this kind of thought experiment to be. More positively, the author advances that the modal conclusions of such thought experiments are drawn through conceptual investigation. (shrink)

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s (...) knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

_From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great faiths_ Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic (...) faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

Purpose. The author will show that metaphysical concepts and the concepts of empirical sciences derive from experience. The only difference is that metaphysical concepts derive from unusual experience, i.e. out-of-body experience, while empirical sciences – from usual one. The example set metaphysical concept of pure being. Methodology. In order to obtain this goal the author uses two methods. The first one is comparative method. With the help of this method the stories of men who experienced clinical death (...) and returned to life are compared with the famous philosophers’ metaphysical statements (Plato, Descartes, and Bonaventura). The second one is transpersonal method. It helps to study the peculiarities of the extraordinary experience in the state of clinical death or mystical ecstasy. Such experience lies in experience of transcendence, pure being as light, ultimate awareness of truth, which are identical to the metaphysical statements of philosophers and mystics. These ultimate experiences belong to different people, who lived and grown in different cultures, but nevertheless metaphysical statements of philosophers or mystics and statements of the ordinary people who experienced clinical death are the same. Therefore we can say that out-of-body experience is transpersonal. Originality. Metaphysics is neither speculative nor withdrawn from experience of a human being sphere. It arises from out-of-body experience while empirical sciences – from usual experience. Therefore, metaphysical concepts, in particular, pure being, are empirical, because they are based also on (extraordinary) experience. In general, metaphysics becomes possible on the basis of out-of-body experience. Conclusions. In this article the author argues that the concepts of metaphysics are not a priori because they originate from out-of-body experience that is from the experience of the distinction between body and soul or body and mind. As a result of such experience appear, for instance, Plato’s metaphysics, Descartes’ metaphysics, and the Christian mysticism of Bonaventure, which theoretical constructs are deriving from experience of pure being (light). In this context metaphysics is seen as the path of gradual separation of a human being from his or her physical body, i.e. “the art of dying” (Plato). Therefore, the author proves that there are no a priori concepts. All concepts are aposteriori, in empirical sciences and in metaphysics as well. We simply talk about two different experiences: usual and unusual experience. The author also argues that there is direct connection between out of body experience and metaphysics, mystics. In the case of out-of-body experience, the temporary death of a human being is the cause of his/her change in perception of himself/herself and the world; it is the cause of metaphysical knowledge. (shrink)

AT MID-CENTURY, MOST PHILOSOPHICAL ROUTES to transcendence appeared closed. Philosophers and theologians often cooperated in associating transcendence with dubious metaphysics, the otherworldly and the supernatural. This attitude towards transcendence was captured most sharply perhaps, in the work of the logical positivists, but it was shared for different reasons by the positivists of revelation. The rebirth of idealism in British and American philosophy of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had been widely succeeded by (...) realism and naturalism of the kind that, with some exceptions, tended to be indifferent, if not openly hostile to philosophical and theological talk of transcendent reality. Between the wars, metaphysical utterances were condemned by the logical positivists and their immediate successors to the scrap heap of the non-cognitive. Kerygmatic theologians, with their emphasis upon the ontological difference of transcendence and their appeal to the authority of revelation and faith, joined hands with the philosophers in ruling out any connecting point between transcendence and immanence, between the sacred and the secular in the ordinary experience of persons. The positivists of revelation no less than the logical positivists conferred an independence upon the world. Transcendent reality was reduced either to the non-cognitive, or to the miracle of faith and revelation. (shrink)

Introduction -- Undermining the hermeneutics of suspicion -- The historical emergence of psychological man -- The "religious" therapeutics -- Rieff on Jung's "language of faith" -- Rieff and the hermeneutics of suspicion -- An alternative hermeneutic -- Applying this hermeneutic to depth psychology -- Concluding remarks -- The historical sources of Jung's psychology -- The young metaphysician -- Tempering metaphysical inclinations with a pragmatic standpoint -- The resurgence of metaphysics in Jung's psychology -- Jung's subjectivist argument -- The (...) influence of vitalism -- Individuation and the prospective method -- From the prospective method to a metaphysics of archetypes -- Jung and the Paracelsian theory of knowledge -- The persistence of metaphysical questions -- Hermeneutics and Jung's psychology -- The re-discovery of the psychogenic -- Towards a more adequate understanding of the psychogenic -- The methodological problems facing depth psychology -- The symbolic life -- The "realism of the East" -- The symbol of the self -- The "two kinds of thinking" -- "The transcendent function" -- From signs to symbols -- The practice of the transcendent function -- Definitions from psychological types (1921) -- The symbolic attitude -- Transcendent presence -- Alignment with the self -- Projective psychology and divine transcendence -- The relevance of the dispute between Jung and Buber -- The still point -- The beyond -- Contemporary psychoanalysis and the still point -- Ogden on potential space. (shrink)

Today's ethical theory , both utilitarian and non-ontological theories dominated. However, we found that many of its subsequent development in the evolution of those who encourage virtue ethics, feminist care theory, social contract theory and the theory of rights-based build. But usually lacking in this discussion - the teaching of ethics by the majority of it seems - is the natural law theory. Natural law theory has its very long history, starting from the Stoic school, it had occupied in the (...) outside world, a strong Anglo-American influence . But today it is still a strong defender of its existence , Joseph Bauer , and Yue Hanfen Jonas ). But in any case it does absent in most contemporary research into ethics, even when it was put in time, is often quickly oppose the theory. Why this theory is often ignored or opposed? We can give a lot of reasons. Some will mention the problem with it ought to. That is contrary to natural law where the basic claim that a person who can not be on the moral statements of a person's actual state is. Some of the attacks this theory is the theory because it is a natural, stable together on it called) natural fallacy, moral assets is a "simple "and do not be a natural thing to be defined . Some critics oppose the natural law theory because they believe that all laws are based is only the ordinary and customs, so it does not matter the existence of any universal moral law. Others argue that natural law theory assumption that there exists, but there is no reason to believe the world for such a presence. Again, some people think that today there is a widespread skepticism that regardless of this objective, universal the existence of moral standards - in other words, a standard applied to all human beings, regardless of their cultural origin or its existence in time and space. In any case, even if this standard exists, we may still ask where they come from? Can we know what they are? And we can determine their legitimacy? In this paper, Maritain's natural law philosophy as a theoretical basis for showing this philosophy of good reasons to lies. Natural law and moral philosophy to provide the philosophy of the relationship and differences between the lies. Thus natural law is natural, because it - especially its first principles, "can be as good, evil can be avoided." - The content is naturally knowable. The first principle is not innate, but it still is not wrong with the talent. We can through all of the knowledge and understanding, to explain the different knowledge of natural law, natural law is the knowledge of the process. The world as we know more, we also know more of their own; we found congenital beyond time. But the fact of moral knowledge needs to transcend time, it does not make a relationship of knowledge, and scientific knowledge that is required is some, as it is relevant. It concluded that the object of this essay have been presented in Maritain's study of natural law. Of Maritain, natural law is "a tendency to order, one can find it, and it will have to act in accordance to meet the person and the nature of the purpose of the inevitable." Considerations of such a proposal is not only a description of human behavior, also on the basis of moral action and human rights standards. Maritain accepted the idea that this law is not only associated with the human and natural to be known. He believed that his theory of knowledge and to give arguments for metaphysics, we can have a human experience consistent with natural law theory of historical perception, as is should be a bridge, and explain why the differences in the nature of moral knowledge not against natural law of reason. If we can take this route - Maritain from the plant into the road on St. Thomas Aquinas - Maritain believe we can at least respond to the majority of the criticism of natural law theory. Of course, natural law theory, there are more than epistemology and metaphysics considerations. Obviously, there are many other kinds of law related to the demand . We also need to indicate whether we know something of natural law. How can we compare Maritain's theory of natural law and other laws of nature? In particular, once popular in the eighteenth century rationalist ideas. Nevertheless, it is obvious that a complete discussion of this article, we should not totally against Maritain's theory - it should be included in today's major moral theories. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Focusing mainly on a number of unpublished texts by Collingwood, especially his “Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God,” the study examines the English philosopher’s innovative interpretation of the Anselm’s main contribution to the philosophical-theological tradition. Collingwood insightfully shows how the ontological argument can be used in (...) analyzing and discussing the religious experience, not in trying to formulate a logical proof of God’s existence. When abstracted from the individual’s practical religious life, that is, from the experience of prayer, worship, and the like, mind’s awareness of God cannot be understood. Resorting mainly to Anselm, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, Collingwood argues that the externality of the Platonic absolute is that of an absolute transcendent whereas the Christian God is not only conceived as the transcendent cause of all things, but also as the immanent spirit in them. By asserting the unity of the mind—regarded as identical with its acts—this interpretation is meant to serve both as a means towards self-knowledge, and as a starting point for a future conceptual unification of religion and philosophy. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates that which can only be known with the following criteria of knowledge: (i) it is unchangeable; (ii) it cannot be mistaken; (iii) it is identical with its object. It begins by addressing the following questions: what can and cannot exist in solely this sense? Can anything exist in this sense? A further thesis it explores is that the split between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge which has given rise to the (...) unexplained and inexplicable residues in the solutions to epistemological problems which have been propounded by Western philosophers. These residues have been a breeding ground for a skepticism which casts doubt on the validity of the philosophic enterprise. It is hoped that this thesis might play some role in indicating a pathway through which faith in the philosophic enterprise may be restored. The approach taken is multi-leveled, at once transcen¬dental, metaphysical, phenomenological and empirical. It is transcendental in that the question is always ‘how is knowledge possible?’ It is metaphysical in that the focal point is always that which is, and not that which seems to be. It is phenomenological in that it is confined to the data of consciousness and makes no attempt to go beyond consciousness. It is empirical in that the final court of appeal for any argument is always pure experience. It is demonstrated that, given the separation of the subject knower from the object of knowledge, knowledge is an impossibility. Separatist views of knowledge are taken up and analyzed, among which are: knowledge as caused by objects; knowledge as the knowledge of an object; knowledge as the correspondence between ideas and objects; knowledge as an act; knowledge as a possession. All these views leave untouched the basic questions: what is knowledge? How is the object of knowledge known? How can knowledge arise in the first place? The existence of the object is then shown to be purely dependent on the existence of the subject, and vice versa. An analysis of experience reveals that no difference between subject and object is ever detected and detectable. The breakdown of experience into subjects and objects is shown to be a purely theoretical interpretation of experience, unjustified and unjustifiable in actual experience. It is finally shown that it is impossible to legitimize ideas of difference, either from the world of objects or from the mind of the subject knower. That there can be an appearance of plurality is demonstrated to rest upon the reality of space and time, existences which prove to be purely ideal. A re-integration of subject and object into the experience from which they have been dirempted provides an explanation of the possibility of know¬ledge, knowledge which is at once certain and of the real. An application of the perspective of non-dualism is suggested to offer philosophic solutions to such epistemological impasses as the relation of language and meaning and the universal and the particular. The relevance of an epistemological inquiry for action is indicated in such a way as to bring knowledge and existence into harmony with each other. The broader aim of the dissertation is to legitimize the philosophic enterprise as a pathway to unchangeable, unmistakable, and unitary knowledge. (shrink)

This compact and somewhat dense study seeks to probe several root ideas in Tillich’s thought, in the conviction that Tillich "is pre-eminent as ‘healer’ of rankling modern wounds—mental, moral, spiritual." In pursuing his aim, Professor Anderson views Tillich ironically, though not uncritically, from the standpoint of existential Thomism. Five pairs of ideas in Tillich’s thought provide the outline of the book. Symbol and faith as ultimate concern: "Tillichian symbols are objectively grounded analogies, revalatory of aspects of reality otherwise opaque (...) to us." Faith, a total act "wherein all the elements of one’s personality are ’synthesized’ and ‘transcended'," is expressible only in terms of revelatory analogies. The philosophy-theology duality: Both philosophy and theology are concerned with the meaning of Being, but they differ in three ways: philosophy probes the meaning of Being in itself, while theology considers its meaning for us; the attitude of the philosopher is intellectually detached, whereas that of the theologian is "personally committed in virtue of loving concern"; the content expressed by philosophy is "intelligible structure," whereas that of theology is "spiritual significance." Tillich’s conception of the philosophy of religion is dealt with in this context. Reason and Revelation: Ontological reason is a faculty for apprehending actual existence; technical reason is concerned with discovering means for ends. The divorce of these two functions of reason during the last one hundred years has been disastrous. By giving a truth which is both certain and of ultimate concern, revelation can reconcile the conflicts which reason experiences. Revelation is the unveiling of man’s personal ultimate concern in terms of symbols and myths. Anything can be the conveyor of revelation, since every being participates in Being-itself. Being and God: Being-itself is the Ground of Being, the Power of Being, the ineffable God. Though no thinker can avoid making God an object of knowledge, God transcends the subject-object structure. Being and Love: For Tillich, life is "being in actuality," and "love is the moving power of life," "the drive towards the unity of the separated." The highest form of love is agape, love of persons, and above all of God, for their own sake. All of this is well-trodden ground. However, Professor Anderson’s synthesis is careful, and his critical remarks are often helpful. His emphasis on the pervasiveness of love in Tillich’s understanding of being, reason, and faith, adds a dimension to which other commentators have paid less attention.—H. F. (shrink)

Regarding the relation of Plato’s early and middle period dialogues, scholars have been divided to two opposing groups: unitarists and developmentalists. While developmentalists try to prove that there are some noticeable and even fundamental differences between Plato’s early and middle period dialogues, the unitarists assert that there is no essential difference in there. The main goal of this article is to suggest that some of Plato’s ontological as well as epistemological principles change, both radically and fundamentally, between the early and (...) middle period dialogues. Though this is a kind of strengthening the developmentalistic approach corresponding the relation of the early and middle period dialogues, based on the fact that what is to be proved here is a essential development in Plato’ ontology and his epistemology, by expanding the grounds of development to the ontological and epistemological principles, it hints to a more profound development. The fact that the bipolar and split knowledge and being of the early period dialogues give way to the tripartite and bound knowledge and benig of the middle period dialogues indicates the development of the notions of being and knowledge in Plato’s philosophy before the dialogues of the middle period. -/- Keywords Plato; early dialogues; middle dialogues; being; knowledge; development -/- Introduction The differences between two groups of the early and middle period dialogues have always been a matter of dispute. Whereas the developmentalists like Vlastos, Silverman (2002), Teloh (1981), Dancy (2004) and Rickless (2007) think that from the early to the middle dialogues Plato’s philosophy changes, at least in some essential points, the unitarists like Kahn, Cherniss and Shorey believe that there happens no development and the differences must be taken as natural, ignorable and even pedagogic. In his well-known article, Socrates contra Socrates in PLATO, Vlastos lists ten theses of difference between two groups of dialogues. The first group which includes Plato’s early dialogues he divides to 'elenctic' (Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Protagoras and Republic I) and 'transitional' (Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus and Meno) dialogues. These transitional come after all the elenctic dialogues and before all the dialogues of the second group which compose Plato’s middle period dialogues, including (with Vlastos' chronological order) Cratylus, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic II-X, Phaedrus, Parmenides and Theaetetus (1991, 46-49). Vlastos asserts strictly that his list of differences are 'so diverse in content and method that they contrast as sharply with one another as with any third philosophy you care to mention, beginning with Aristotole’s' (ibid, 46). Vlastos’ list of differences between two Socrateses is considered a view breaking sharply between the early and the middle dialogues. Besides all ten differences between the two Socrateses in Vlastos’ list that can be supportive for our doctrine here, we intend to focus on some ontological as well as epistemological distinctions that have not completely been discussed hitherto. Contrary to the developmentalist theory of Vlastos, unitarian theory of Charles Kahn wishes to eliminate any substantial difference between the early and the middle dialogues. He distinguishes seven 'pre-middle' or 'threshold' dialogues including Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Protagoras, Meno, Lysis and Euthydemus from the other Socratic dialogues which he calls 'earliest group' (1996, 41). The threshold dialogues, Kahn thinks, 'embarke upon a sustained project' that is to reach to its climax in the middle period dialogues, namely Phaedo, Symposium and Republic. Believing in that there is no 'fundamental shift'between the early and middle dialogues (ibid, 40), Kahn thinks the Socratic dialogues are just the 'first stage' with a 'deliberate silence' towards the theories of later periods (ibid, 339). One of the reasons of the surprising fact that Plato gives no hint of the metaphysics and epistemology of the Forms in the early dialogues, he thinks, is the pedagogical advantages of aporia. He thinks that Plato 'obscurely', and mostly because of education, hinted to some doctrines and conceptions in his early dialogues and with the aim of clarifying them only in the later ones (ibid, 66). The seven threshold dialogues, Kahn asserts, 'had been designed from the first' to prepare the pupils and readers for the views expounded in the middle period dialogues (ibid, 59-60). To show that the differences of the two Socrateses of the early and middle period dialogue are in their onto-epistemological grounds and thence cannot be explained by a unitaristic view, we try to draw the ontological and epistemological principles of the early dialogues in the first part below in order to show, in the second part, that those principles have been developed in the middle period dialogues. -/- A. The Onto-Epistemologic Principles of the Early Dialogues Socratic dialogues are paradoxical about knowledge because while being knowledge-oriented always searching for knowledge, they deny it and even never discuss it directly. Three elements of Socrates’ way of searching Knowledge throughout the early dialogues, i.e. Socratic 'what is X?' question, his disavowal of knowledge and his elenctic method combined together produce something like a circle which works, more or less, in the same way in these dialogues. Though this circle is an embaressing inquiry always resulting in ignorance instead of knowledge, its motivation is surprisingly Socrates’ passionate enthusiasm for knowledge, an intensive love of wisdom. The starting point of this circle is Socrates’ confession of having no knowledge which might be explicitly asserted or presupposed, maybe because it was one of the famous characteristics of Socrates; a confession always paradoxically accompanied with his intense longing for knowledge (e.g., Gorgias 505e4-5). Every time Socrates encounters with someone who thinks he knows something (οἴεταί τι εἰδέναι) (Apology 21d5) and tries to examine him. This examination seems to be the simplest one asking just what it is that he knows. Socrates’ elenchus, therefore, is always connected with 'what is X?' (τίς ποτέ ἐστιν) question, a question that most of the early dialogues of Plato are concerned with; 'what is courage?' in the Laches, 'what is piety?' in Euthydemus, 'what is temperance?' in Charmides and 'what is beauty?' in Hippias Major. This question we call here 'Socratic question' and probably is the very question the historical Socrates used to employ, is tightly interrelated with both his disavowal and his elenchus. He disclaims knowledge because he cannot find the answer to the question himself and he rejects others’ since they cannot offer the correct answer too. Every interlocutor can claim he knows X, if and only if he can answer the Socratic question. Otherwise, he is more of an ignorant than of a knower of τί ποτέ ἐστι X. Knowing the answer to this question is, thus, knowledge’s criterion for Socrates. Having found out that he cannot answer what it is which he would claim to know, the interlocutor comes to the point Socrates was there at the beginning. The least advantage of this circle is that he becomes as wise as Socrates does about the subject, becoming aware that he does not know it. At the end of the circle they are both still at the beginning, not knowing what X is. So let us first take a glance at these three elements. Socratic disavowal of knowledge is strictly asserted in some passages. At Apology 21b4-5, Socrates says: -/- I do not know of myself being wise at all (οὔτε μέγα οὔτε σμικρὸν σύνοιδα ἐμαυτῷ σοφὸς ὤν) -/- Moreover, at 21d4-6: -/- None of us knows anything worthwhile (καλὸν κἀγαθὸν εἰδέναι) …. I do not know (οἶδα) neither do I think I know. -/- In Charmides Socrates speaks about a fear about his probable mistake of thinking that he knows (εἰδέναι) something when he does not (166d1-2). The somehow generalization of this disavowal can be seen in Gorgias. After calling his disavowal 'an account that is always the same' (509a4-5), Socrates continues (a5-7): -/- I say that I do not know (οἶδα) how these things are, but no one I have ever met, like now, who can say anything else without being absurd. -/- At the end of Hippias Major (304d7-8), Socrates affirms his disavowal of knowledge of 'what is X?' this time about the fine: -/- I do not know (οἶδα) what that is itself (αὐτὸ τοῦτο ὅτι ποτέ ἐστιν). Some other passages, however, made a number of scholars dubious about Socrates’ disavowal. Vlastos mentions Apology 29b6-7 as an evidence : 'that to do wrong and to disobey one’s master, both god and men, I know (οἶδα) to be evil and shameful'. He thinks that if we give this single text 'its full weight' it can suffice to show that Socrates does claim knowledge of a moral truth (1985, 7). Vlastos’ claim is not admittable since it would be too strange, I think, for a man like Socrates to violate his disavowal claim just after emphasizing it. We can see his claim just before the already mentioned passage: -/- And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know. It is perhaps on this point and in this respect, gentlemen, that I differ from the majority of men and if I were to claim that I am wiser than anyone in anything it world be in this, that, as I have no adequate knowledge (οὐκ εἰδὼς ἱκανῶς) of things in the underworld, so I do not think I have (οὐκ εἰδέναι) (Apology 29b1-6) Vlastos tries to solve what he calls the 'paradox' of Socrates’ disavowal of knowledge distinguishing the 'certain' knowledge from 'elenctic' knowledge (1985, 11) and thinking that when Socrates avows knowledge, we must perceive it as an elenctic knowledge, a knowledge its content 'must be propositions he thinks elenctically justifiable' (ibid, 18). Irwin’s solution is the distinction of knowledge and belief. He approves that Socrates does not 'explicitly' make such a distinction, but still thinks that Socrates’ 'test for knowledge would make it reasonable for him to recognize true belief without knowledge, and his own claims are easily understood if they are claims to true belief alone' (1977, 40). While I agree with Vlastos up to a point, I strongly disagree with Irwin about the early dialogues. As I will try to show below, we are not permitted to consider any kind of distinction within knowledge in Socratic dialogues because only one category of knowledge is alluded to there and the distinction of knowledge and belief thoroughly belongs to the second Sorcates. Although no kind of distinction can be admittable here, I think Vlastos’ distinction can be accepted only if we regard it as a distinction between knowledge, which is unique and without any, even incomparable, rival, and a semi-idiomatic and ordinary one that is a necessary requirement for any argument, and thus, unavoidable even for someone who does not claim any kind of knowledge. An apparent evidence of this is Gorgias 505e6-506a4: -/- I go through the discussion as I think it is (ὡς ἄν μοι δοκῇ ἔχειν), if any of you do not agree with admissions I am making to myself, you must object and refute me. For I do not say what I say as I know (οὐδὲ γάρ τοι ἔγωγε εἰδὼς λέγω ἃ λέγω) but as searching jointly with you (ζητῶ κοινῇ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν). -/- The minimal degree of knowledge everyone must have to take part in an argument, conduct it and use the phrase "I know" when it is necessary is what Socrates cannot deny. We can call it elenctic knowledge only if we agree that it is not the kind of knowledge that Socrates has always been searching, the one that can be accepted as the answer of Socratic 'what is X?' question. His disavowal of knowledge is applied only to the knowledge which can truly be the answer of Socratic question and pass the elenctic exam; a knowledge that, I believe, is never claimed by first Socrates. Socrates conducts his method of examining his interlocutors’ knowledge, our second element here, by almost the same method repeated in Socratic dialogues. That whether we are allowed to regard all the examinations of Socrates in the early dialogues as based on the same or not has been a matter of dispute. Vlastos himself (1994, 31) distinguished Euthydemas, Lysis, Menexenns and Hippias Major from the other Socratic dialogues because he thinks Socrates has lost his faith to elenchus in there. Irwin (1977, 38) distinguishes Apology and Crito where Socrates’ own convictions is present. Contrary to some scholars like Benson (2002, 107) who take elenchus in all the Socratic dialogues as a unique method, Michelle Carpenter and Ronald M. Polansky (2002, 89-100) argue pro the variety of methods of elenchus. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith (2002, 145-160) even reject such a thing as Socratic elenchus which can gather all of the Socrates’ various arguments under such a heading. There can be no solution for the problem of elenchus, they think, is due to 'the simple reason that there is no such thing as 'the Socratic elenchos"'(p.147). Though we consider elenchus a somehow determined process and a part of Socratic circle in the early dialogues, all we assume is that whatever differences it might have in different dialogues, it has the same onto-epistemological principles and, thus, we are not going to take it necessarily as a unique method. This method sets out to prove that the interlocutors are as ignorant as Socrates himself is. That whether elenchus is constructive, capable of establishing doctrines as Vlastos (1994) or Brickhouse and Smith (1994, 20-21) believe or not is another issue to which this paper is not to claim anything. What is crucial for our discussion here is that elenchus does not reach to the very knowledge Socrates is looking for. This is strictly against Irwin who thinks that not only elenchus leads to positive results, 'it should even yield knowledge to match Socrates’ conditions'(1977, 68, cf. 48). He does not explain where and how they really yield to that kind of knowledge. He explains his elenctic method in his apology in the court (Apology 21-22), that how he used to examine wise men, politicians, poets and all those who had the highest reputation for their knowledge and every time found that they have no knowledge. If we accept, as I strongly do, that Socrates’ disavowal of his knowledge is not irony, it might seem more reasonable to agree that the process that has that disavowal as its first step cannot be irony as well. The key of the circle which can explain why Socrates disclaims knowledge and how he can reject others’ claim of having any kind of knowledge lies in the third element, Socratic question. In Hippias Major (287c1-2), Socrates asks: 'Is it not by Justice that just people are Just? (ἆρ᾽ οὐ δικαιοσύνῃ δίκαιοί εἰσιν οἱ δίκαιοι). He insists at 294b1 that they were searching for that by which (ᾧ) all beautiful things are beautiful (cf. b4-5, 8). At Euthyphro 6d10-11 it is said that the Socratic question is waiting for 'the form itself (αὐτὸ τὸ εἶδος) by which (ᾧ) all the pious actions are pious; and at 6d11-e1: -/- Through one form (που μιᾷ ἰδέᾳ) impious actions are impious and pious actions pious. -/- Since the X itself is that by which X is X, knowing 'X itself' is the only way of knowing X. It is probably because of this that Socrates makes the distinction between the ousia as a right answer to the question and effect as a wrong one: -/- I am afraid, Euthyphro, that when you were asked what piety is (τὸ ὅσιον ὅτι ποτ᾽ ἐστίν) you did not wish to make clear its nature itself (οὐσίαν … αὐτοῦ) to me, but you said some effect (πάθος) about it. (Euthp. 11a6-9) -/- 1. Knowledge of what X is Now it is time to look for the onto-epistemological principles of Socratic circle and its three elements. It cannot reasonably be expected from the first Socrates to present us explicitly and clearly formulated principles of his onto-epistemology when such explications cannot be found even in the second Socrates who has some obviously positive theoris. Since there must be some principles underlying this first systematic inqury of knowledge, we must seek to them and be satisfied with elicitation of the first Socratas’ principle. What will be drawn out as his principles cannot and must not, thus, be taken as very fix and dogmatic principles. Some very slightest principles and grounds suffice for our purposes here. The first principle that is the prima facie significance of the Socratic question and his implementation of all those elenctic arguments I call the principle of 'Knowledge of What X is' (KWX): -/- KWX To know X, it is required to know what X is. -/- Aristotle (Metaphysics 1078b23-25, 27-29, 987b4-8) takes Plato’s τί ἐστι question as seeking the definition of a thing that is the same as historical Socrates’ search but applying to a different field. That Plato’s 'what is X?' question was a search for definition became the prevailed understanding of this question up to now. I am going neither to discuss the answer of Socratic question nor to challenge taking it as definition. What I am to insist is that knowledge is attached firmly to the answer of the question: Knowledge of X is not anything but the knowledge of what X is. It entails, certainly, the priority of this knowledge to any other kind of knowledge about X but it also has something more fundamental about the relation of knowledge and Socratic question. Socrates’ exclusive focus on the answer of his question can authorize the consideration of such an essential role for KWX in his epistemolgoy. The total rejection of his interlocutors’ knowledge when they are unable to answer the question can be regarded as a strong evidence for it. Socrates’ elenctic method and his rejection of others’ knowledge in the early dialogues, which all end aporetically with no one accepted as knower and nothing as knowledge, prevent us from finding any positive evidence for this. We have to be content, therefore, of negative evidences which, I think, can be found wherever Socrates rejects his interlocutors’ knowledge when they are not able to give an acceptable answer to his 'what is X?' question. 2. Bipolar Epistemology Socrates’ rejection of his interlocutors’ knowledge has another epistemological principle as its basis. Let me call this principle Bipolar Epistemology' (BE): BE There is no third way besides knowledge and Ignorance. -/- BE says that about every object of knowledge there are only two subjective statuses: knowledge and Ignorance. Socrates’ disavowal, however, says nothing but that he is ignorant of knowledge of X because he does not know what X is. This means that BE is presupposed here. Socrates’ elenchus and his rejection of interlocutors’ having any kind of knowledge are the necessary results of the fact that he does not let any third way besides knowledge and ignorance. The first Socrates never let anyone partly know X or have a true opinion about it, as he would not let anyone know anything about X when he did not know what X is. -/- 3. Bipolar Ontology The principle of BE in first Socrates’ epistemology is parallel to another principle in his ontology. Plato’s bipolar distinction between being and not being is as strict and perfect as his distinction between knowledge and ignorance. This principle I shall call the principle of 'Bipolar Ontology' (BO): BO Being is and not being is not. BO is apparently the same with the well-known Parmenidean Principle of being and not being (cf. Diels-Kranz (DK) Fr. 2.2-5). Euthydemus’ statement against the possibility of false knowledge can be good evidence for this principle: -/- The things which are not surely do not exist (τὰ δὲ μὴ ὄντα … ἄλλο τι ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν). (Euthydemus 284b3-4) -/- He continues (b4-5): -/- There is nowhere for not being to be there (οὖν οὐδαμοῦ τά γε μὴ ὄντα ὄντα ἐστίν). -/- That BE does not let true opinion as a third option besides knowledge and ignorance seems to be related to BO’s rejecting a third option besides being and not being, which is itself the basis of the impossibility of false belief. Socrates’ elaborate discussion of the problem of false belief in Theatetus that leads to a more decisive discussion and finally to some solutions in Sophist can make our consideration of BO for the first group of dialogues authentive. -/- 4. &5. Split Knowledge and Split Being The fourth principle I shall call the principle of 'Split Knowledge' (SK): -/- SK Knowledge of X is separated from any other knowledge (of anything else) as if the whole knowledge is split to various parts. -/- This Principle is hinted and criticized as Socrates’ way of treating with knowledge in Hippias Major: -/- But Socrates, you do not contemplate the entireties of things, nor do people you have used to talk with (τὰ μὲν ὅλα τῶν πραγμάτων οὐ σκοπεῖς, οὐδ᾽ ἐκεῖνοι οἷς σὺ εἴωθας διαλέγεσθαι). (301b2-4) -/- Contrary to Rankin who regards the passage as 'antilogical, almost eristic in tone rather than presenting a serious philosophy of being' (1983, 54), I think it can be taken as serious. Hippias criticizes Sorcates that he does not contemplate (σκοπεῖς) the entireties of things (ὅλα τῶν πραγμάτων), a critique which Socrates is not its only subject but all those whom Socrates accustomed to talk with (ἐκεῖνοι οἷς σὺ εἴωθας διαλέγεσθαι). This last phrase, I think, extends this critic beyond this dialogue to other Socratic dialogues. Hippias’ use of the perfect tense of the verb ἔθω (to be accustomed) is a good evidence of this extension. We can get, thus, these ἐκεῖνοι as Socrates’ interlocutors in his other dialogues that hints that this criticism has the epistemological groundings of the previous dialogues as its subject. What ἐκεῖνοι οἷς σὺ εἴωθας διαλέγεσθαι points to is that Hippias does not have in mind Socrates’ way of treating things only in this dialogue, but he is also criticizing Socrates’ way throughout his dialogues. At 301b4-5, Socrates and his interlocutors’ way of beholding things is described as such: -/- You people knock (κρούετε) at the fine and each of the beings (ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων) by taking each being cut up in pieces (κατατέμνοντες) in words (ἐν τοῖς λόγοις). This leads us to our next principle that is parallel to, and the ontological side of, SK, the principle of 'Split Being'(SB): -/- SB Everything (being) is separated from any other thing as if the whole being is split to many beings. -/- Socrates and his interlocutors and thus, as we saw, the Socratic dialogues are accused to regard everything as it is separated from all other things. This separation is en tois logois that, I think, can reasonably be taken as saying that Socratic dialogues (it refers of course to the dialogues before Hippias Major) cut up all things which have the same name/definition from all other things and try to understand them separately, without considering other things that are not in their logos. They, for example in Hippias Major, are cutting up to kalon and try to understand what it and all others inside this logos are by separating it from all other things. This is directed straightly against Socratic question and the way Socratic dialogues follow to find its answer, every time separating one logos. As Meyer (1995, 85) points out, every question 'presupposes that the X in question in a logos is something' and 'every answer to every question aims at unity' (84). The critique of Hippias Major is, therefore, at the same time a critique of SK and SB. It is also a critique of KWX because it is only based on KWX that Socratic dialogues could search for the answer of 'what is X' question supposing that knowing what X is is enough for the knowledge of X. SK and KWX are absolutely interdependent. What Socrates and all his previous interlocutors have neglected in Socratic dialogues, Hippias says, was 'continuous bodies of being' (διανεκῆ σώματα τῆς οὐσίας) (301b6). Either this theory actually belongs to the historical Hippias as it is being said or not, it is strictly criticizing SB. We have the same phrase with changing sūma to logos some lines later at 301e3-4: διανεκεῖ λόγῳ τῆς οὐσίας. Although this theory that can be observed as both an ontological and an epistemological theory is rejected by Socrates (301cff.), it is still against first Socrates’ onto-epistemological principles and might let us look at what is rejected as Socratic prineple. -/- 6. Knowledge is of Being The sixth principle that I think is presupposed by the first Socrates, is the 'Knowledge of Being' Principle (KB): -/- KB Knowledge is of Being. -/- This principle is obviously the source of the problem of false knowledge, a very important problem throughout Plato’s philosophy. We face this problem maybe for the first time in Euthydemus. In less than 20 Stephanus’ pages, 276-295, we are encountered with different interwoven problems about knowledge , all grounded in the problem of false opinion. Having challenged the obvious possibility of telling lies at 283e, at 284 Euthydemus discusses it saying that the man who speaks is speaking about 'one of those things that are (ἓν μὴν κἀκεῖνό γ᾽ ἐστὶν τῶν ὄντων)' (284a3) and thus speaks what is (λέγων τὸ ὄν) (a5). He must necessarily be saying truth when he is speaking what is because he who speaks what is (τὸ ὄν) and the things that are (τὰ ὄντα) speaks truth (τἀληθῆ λέγει) (a5-6). This is based on Parmenidean principle of the impossibility of being of not being which Euthydemus restates (284b3-4) and we mentioned discussing BO principle above. The things that are not are nowhere (οὐδαμοῦ) and there is no possibility for anyone to do (πράξειεν) anything with them because they must be made as being before anything else can be done, which is impossible (b5-7). The words, then, are of things that exist (εἰσὶν ἑκάστῳ τῶν ὄντων λόγοι) (285e9) and as they are (ὡς ἔστιν) (e10). The result is that no one can speak of things as they are not. It is this impossibility of false speach that is extended to thinking (δοξάζειν) at 286d1 and leads to the impossibility of false opinion (ψευδής … δόξα) (286d4). The general conclusion is asserted at 287a extending this impossibility to actions and making any kind of mistake. Not only knowledge is of being but speech, thought and action are of being simply because of the fact that nothing can be of not being. -/- B. First Socrates’ Principles in the Middle Period Dialogues Out of what were presupposed or criticized mostly in five dialogues, Euthyphro, Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Laches and Charmides, we tried to draw the first Socrates’ principles. Our inquiry here is directed to find out the fate of these principles in the three dialogues of the middle period, Meno, Phaedo and Republic. To do this, first we ought to check the situation of Socratic circle in these dialogues. The Socratic circle that was predominant in the early dialogues, does not look like a circle here anymore though they certainly have some features in common. Meno, Phaedo and Republic II-X are not committed to the principles of the circle and the whole circle in disrupted in them. The difference of the two Socrateses towards acquiring knowledge is obvious. The Socrates of Meno, Phaedo and Republic is evidently more self-confident that he can get to some truths during his arguments as he does. They are in their first appearance, as almost all other dialogues, committed to Socrates’ disavowal. All of them try to keep the shape of the Socratikoi Logoi genre, which is committed to the historical Socrates’ way of discussion; a dramatic personage who is to challenge his interlocutors, ask them and refuse the answers. Nevertheless, the fact is that what we have in common between two groups of dialogues is mostly a dramatic structure. Whereas the first group’s arguments are based on Socrates’ disavowal and lead to no positive results, the second group is decisively going to achieve some positive results. The aim of the first Socrates was to show others that they are ignorant of what they thought they knew. The new Socrates of Meno, on the opposite, makes so much efforts to show that the slave boy has within himself true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) about the things that he does not know (οἶδε) (85c6-7). Despite his lack of knowledge, he has true opinions nevertheless. The way from these true opinions to knowledge, as Socrates states, is not so long. These true opinions are now like a dream but 'can become knowledge of the same things not less accurate than anyone’s' (οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἀκριβῶς ἐπιστήσεται περὶ τούτων) (c11-d1), if they be repeated by asking the same questions. The most outstanding text regarding Socrates’ disavowal is Meno 98b where he explicitly claims knowledge: -/- And indeed I also speak as (ὡς) one who does not know (εἰδὼς) but is guessing (εἰκάζων). However, [about the fact] that true opinion and knowledge are different, I do not altogether expect (δοκῶ) myself to be guessing (εἰκάζειν), but if I say about anything that I know (εἰδέναι) -which about few things I say- this is one of the things that I know (οἶδα). (98b1-5) This passage is very significant about Plato’s disavowal of knowledge. There can hardly be found, I think, anywhere else in Plato’s corpus where Socrates speaks about his knowledge of something as such. He says first that he speaks as someone who does not know. This ὡς οὐκ εἰδὼς λέγω comparing with what he used to say in the first group, οὐκ οἶδα, has this added ὡς. Socrates does not claim strongly anymore that he does not know anything but speaks only as someone who does not know. He needs this ὡς not only because he is going to accept that he does know some, though few, things immediately after this sentence, but also because he needs his previous disavowal to be loosened from Meno on. He does not merely say here that he knows something. It is then different from the examples mentioned before which could be taken as idiomatic or at least not emphatic. Socrates’ remarkable emphasis on distinguishing εἰδέναι from εἰκάζειν departs it from all other passages where he says only he knows something. Moreover, he claims definitely that he has knowledge about few (ὀλίγα) things. From the early to the middle dialogues, Socrates’ attitude to knowledge has totally renewed its face. He brings forth a new concept, true opinion, and he does not speak of knowledge as he used to before; the rough, perfect and unachievable knowledge of the first group has turned to something more smooth, realistic and achievable. Comparing with the early dialogues that did not set out from the first to reach positive results, the middle ones are extraordinarily and surprisingly positive and hence destroy the basis of the Socratic circle. The questions and answers are purposely directed to some specific new theories; most of them are not directly related to the topics or the main questions of the dialogues. They are suggested when Socrates draws the attention of the interlocutor away from the main question because of the necessity of another discussion. Even if the main question remains unanswered, we have still many positive theories, prominently of metaphysical type. These theories are so abundant and dominant in these dialogues, especially Phaedo and Republic, that one might think that they may appear to be arbitrarily sandwiched in there. This helps dialogues to keep their original Socratic structure while they are suggesting new theories. Hence, the Socratic question of 'what is X?', though is still used to launch the discussion, is loosened and is forgotten for most part of the dialogues. Meno that has first a differently formulated question, 'can virtue be taught?', leads finally to the Socratic question of 'What is virtue?'. Phaedo is dedicated to the demonstration of the immortality of soul and the life after death without having a central Socratic question. The case of Republic is more complicated. The first book, on the one hand, has all the criteria of a Socratic circle: its 'what is justice?' question, Socrates’ strong disavowal (e.g. 337d-e), his rejection of all answers and coming back to the first point without finding out any answer. This Book, considered alone, is a perfect Socratic dialogue, as many scholars regard it as early and separated from other books. The books II-X are, on the other hand, far from implementing a Socratic circle. They have still the 'what is justice?' question as their incentive leading question, but they are, in most of the positive doctrines and methods that encompass the main parts, ignoring the question. Even these books that, I believe, are the farthest discussions from the Socratic circle are so cautious not to break the Socratic structure of the dialogue as long as it is possible. What is changed is not the structure of the dialogue but the ontological and epistemological grounds based on which new theories are suggested. -/- 1. Knowledge of the Good We can clearly see in the second group of dialogues that the KWX principle loses the place it had before in our first group. It is not, of course, rejected, but still we cannot say that it has the same situation. KWX that was based on Socratic question, as we discussed before, was the leading principle of the first Socrates’ epistemology and of the highest position. Other epistemological principles, SK directly and BE indirectly, were relying on Socratic question and therefore on KWX. Such a position does not belong to KWX from Meno on. What makes it different in the second Socrates is another principle that is needed it not only as its complementary principle but also as what is more fundamental. Plato, then, does not reject KWX in this period, but, it seems, he transcends to another more basic principle; a principle we shall call the principle of 'Knowledge of the Good' (KG): -/- KG Knowledge of X requires knowledge of the Good. -/- Whereas all the dialogues of our first group are free from any discuscon about KG, it bears a very important role in the second group so as becomes the superior principle of knowledge in Republic. Trying to solve the problem of teachability of virtue, Socrates says that it can be teachable only if it is a kind of knowledge because nothing can be taught to human beings but knowledge (ἐπιστήμην) (Meno 87c2). The dilemma will be, then, whether virtue is knowledge or not (c11-12) and since virtue is good, we can change the question to: whether is there anything good separate from knowledge (εἰ μέν τί ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἄλλο χωριζόμενον ἐπιστήμης) (d4-5). Therefore, the conclusion will be that if there is nothing good which knowledge does not encompass, virtue can be nothing but knowledge (d6-8). What let us discuss KG as an epistemological principle for the second Secrates is the relation he tries to establish between knowledge and the Good which, though is alongside with the mentioned thesis and the idea of virtue as knowledge, goes much deeper inside epistemology asking to regard the Good as the basis of knowledge. The effort of Phaedo cannot succeed in establishing the Good as the criterion of explanation and knowledge since, I think, it needs a far more complicated ontology of Republic where Socrates can finally announce KG. What is said in Republic is totally compatible with Phaedo 99d–e and the metaphor of watching an eclipse of the sun. In spite of the fact that we do not have adequate knowledge of the Idea of the Good, it is necessary for every kind of knowledge: 'If we do not know it, even if we know all other things, it is of no benefit to us without it' (505a6-7). The problem of our not having sufficient knowledge of the Idea of Good is tried to be solved by the same method of Phaedo 99d-e, that is to say, by looking at what is like instead of looking at thing itself (506d8-e4). It is this solution that leads to the comparison of the Good with sun in the allegory of Sun (508b12-13). What the Good is in the intelligible realm corresponds to what the sun is in the visible realm; as sun is not sight, but is its cause and is seen by it (b9-10), the Good is so regarding knowledge. It has, then, the same role for knowledge that the sun has for sight. Socrates draws our attention to the function of sun in our seeing. The eyes can see everything only in the light of the day being unable to see the same things in the gloom of night (508c4-6). Without the sun, our eyes are dimmed and blind as if they do not have clear vision any longer (c6-7). That the Good must have the same role about knowledge based on the analogy means that it must be considered as a required condition of any kind of knowledge: -/- The soul, then, thinks (νόει) in the same way: whenever it focuses on what is shined upon by truth and being, understands (ἐνόησέν), knows (ἔγνω) and apparently possesses understanding (νοῦν ἔχειν). (508d4-6) -/- Socrates does not use agathon in this paragraph and substitutes it with both aletheia and to on. He links them with the Idea of the Good when he is to assert the conclusion of the analogy: -/- That which gives truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say, is the Idea of the Good: being the cause of knowledge and truth (αἰτίαν δ᾽ ἐπιστήμης οὖσαν καὶ ἀληθείας) so far as it is known (ὡς γιγνωσκομένης μὲν διανοοῦ). (508e1-4) Knowledge and truth are called goodlike (ἀγαθοειδῆ) since they are not the same as the Good but more honoured (508e6-509a5). KG, which had been implicitly contemplated and searched in Phaedo, is now explicitly being asserted in Republic. As what was quoted clearly proves, this principle is the very one which we can observe as the most fundamental principle of the second Socrates in Republic, corresponding to the role KWX had in the first Socrates. The Form of the Good in Republic, of which Santas speaks as 'the centerpiece of the canonical Platonism of the middle dialogues, the centerpiece of Plato’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and …' (1983, 256) much more can be said. Plato’s Cave allegory in Book VIII dedicates a similar role to the Idea of the Good. The Idea of the Good is there as the last thing to be seen in the knowable realm, something so important that its seeing equals to understanding the fact that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful (517b). Producing both light and its source in visible realm, it controls and provides truth and understanding in the intelligible realm (517c). -/- 2. Tripartite Epistemology BE is thoroughy rejected in the second Socrates and substituted by its opposite, the principle of 'Tripartite Epistemolgy' (TE): -/- TE Opinion is an epistemological status between knowledge and ignorance. BE of the first Socrates was denying any third way besides knowledge and ignorance which was the foundation of Socratic circle without which Socrates could not reject his interlocutors’ possessing any kind of knowledge. We cannot say, however, that the first Socrates had a third epistemological status in mind but rejected it. Such a status was unacceptable for him so that one can say that he would reject any kind of such status if suggested. There were only two possibilities about knowledge: either one knows something or he does not know it. TE, thus, was not the first Socrates’ discovery and, I think it is not the second Socrates’discovery. All we can see in our second group of dialouges is that he uses this principle as an already demonstrated one. Having examined the slave boy in Meno for the prupose of showing the working of recollection, it truns out that he has some opinions in him while he still does not know. Without trying to prove it, Socrates takes this as the distinction between knowledge and opinion: -/- So, he who does not know (οὐκ εἰδότι) about what he does not know (περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ) has within himself true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) about the same things he did not know (περὶ τούτων ὧν οὐκ οἶδε) (85c6-7). -/- The same distinction is set between ὀρθὴν δόξαν and ἐπιστήμην at 97b5-6 ff. (also cf. 97b1-2: ὀρθῶς μὲν δοξάζων … ἐπιστάμενος). He connects then their difference to the myth of Daedalus, the statue that would run away and escape. So are true opinions, not willing to remain long in mind and thus not worthy until one ties them down by αἰτίας λογισμῷ (98a3-4). Socrates says that this tying down is anamnesis. We face, in Phaedo, the same relation is settled between knowledge as the process of being tied down and getting the capability to give an account, on the one hand, and anamnesis, on the other hand. When a man knows, he must be able to give an account of what he knows (Phaedo 76b5-6) and since not all people are able to give such an account, those who recollect, recollect what once they learned (76c4). Although the distinction between knowledge and opinion is not explicitly used in Phaedo, referring to the parallel link between knowledge plus account and anamnesis in Phaedo and Meno, one can say that those who cannot recollect are not able to give account and, thus, are in a state of opinion. What is said at Phaedo 84a, though not yet a definite distinction between knowledge and opinion, makes a distinction between their objects so as we can agree that it is presupposed. The soul of the philosopher, Socrates says, follows reason, stays with it forever and contemplates the divine, which is not the object of opinoin (ἀδόξαστον) (84a8, cf. Meno 98b2-5). The distinction of knowledge and belief in Republic has a significant difference with what we discussed in Meno and Phaedo since the distinction of Meno was based on anamnesis and thus more an epistemological distinction. Even in Phaedo that we do not have any elaborate discussion about the distinction, the only hint to the matter at 76 is bound to the theory of anamnesis. In addition to the relation of the distinction with this theory, there is another evidence that does not permit us to consider the distinction as an ontological distinction. Let’s see Meno 85c6-7: -/- So, he who does not know about what he does not know has within himself true opinions about the same things he did not know (τῷ οὐκ εἰδότι ἄρα περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ ἔνεισιν ἀληθεῖς δόξαι περὶ τούτων ὧν οὐκ οἶδε). (85c6-7) -/- This last sentence persists that the objects of knowledge and true opinion are the same. What Socrates is to say here is that whereas he does not know X he has true opinion about the same X. I think Socrates’ sentence that the slave boy οὐκ εἰδότι ἄρα περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ and his restatement of it by saying περὶ τούτων ὧν οὐκ οἶδε is because he wants to emphasize that the slave boy who does not know, has true opinion about the same thing. Socrates could say this just with using τούτων and there would be no necessity to bring περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ for οὐκ εἰδότι if he did not want to emphasize. -/- 3. Tripartite Ontology The distinction between knowledge and true opinion in Republic, on other side, has nothing to do with recollection, but is based on an ontological principle, 'Tripartite Ontology' (TO): -/- TO There are things that both are and are not. -/- This principle I confine, among our three dialogues of the second group, to Republic not extended to Meno and Phaedo, is obviously the opposite of BO. Speaking about the lovers of sights and sounds in the fifth book, Socrates distinguishes them from philosophers because their thought is unable to understand the nature of beautiful itself besides beautiful things (476a6-8) and hence they can only have opinions. The philosopher who, on the contrary, believes in beautiful itself and can distinguish it from beautiful things (476c9-d3), has knowledge because he knows, contrasting others who have opinion because they only opine (d5-6). Since those whose knowledge were degraded as opinion will complain about Socrates’ such calling their thought, he provides them the following argument (476e7-477b1): -/- - Does the person who knows, knows (γιγνώσκει) something (τὶ) or nothing (οὐδέν)? - He knows something (τί). - Something that is (ὂν) or is not (οὐκ ὄν)? - Something that is (ὂν) for how could something that is not be known (πῶς γὰρ ἂν μὴ ὄν γέ τι γνωσθείη)? - Then we have an adequate grasp of this: No matter how many ways we examine it, what completely is (παντελῶς ὂν) is completely knowable (παντελῶς γνωστόν) and what is in no way (μὴ ὂν δὲ μηδαμῇ) is in every way unknowable (πάντῃ ἄγνωστον). - A most adequate one. - Good. Now, if anything is such as to be and also not to be (ὡς εἶναί τε καὶ μὴ εἶναι), won’t it be intermediate (μεταξὺ) between what purely is (εἰλικρινῶς ὄντος) and what in no way is (μηδαμῇ ὄντος)? - Yes, it’s intermediate. - Then as knowledge (γνῶσις) is set over what is (τῷ ὄντι), while ignorance (ἀγνωσία) is of necessity set over what is not (μὴ ὄντι) mustn’t we find an intermediate between ignorance (ἀγνοίας) and knowledge (ἐπιστήμης) to be set over the intermediate, if there is such a thing? -/- From the third status of being we must reach to the third status of knowledge. The simple reading of this text can be an existential reading, taking the "is" of the mentioned sentences as existence. The problem is that when it is said that there is something that both is and is not reading "is" existentially, it sounds too bizarre to be acceptable. It cannot easily be understandable to have something as both existent and non-existent at the same time. This problem arose so many debates and led many scholars to reject the existential reading of "is" and suggest some other readings like predicative or veridical readings. I think though Plato’s complicated ontology of Republic cannot be correctly understood by a simple existential reading, this "is" cannot be free from existential sense of being and, thus, cannot be reduced to just a predicative or veridical sense of being. -/- 4. Bound Knowledges In addition to KG, the Good is also the basis of another principle in the second Socrates, namely the principle of 'Bound Knowledge' (BK): -/- BK Knowledge of everything is bound to the knowledge of the Good. -/- We distinguished BK from KG because we want to insist, in BK, on what had not been insisted upon in KG, that is, the binding role that the Good plays in the second Socrates, contrasting the absence of such a role in the first Socrates. Socrates remembers, in Phaedo, his wonderful keen on natural philosophers' wisdom when he was young. The origin of this enthusiasm was Socrates’ hope to know the cause of everything as they used to claim. When he was searching the matters of his interest on their basis, Socrates says, he became convinced he can get no acceptable answer from them and found himself blind even to the things he thought he knew before. One day he hears Anaxagoras’ theory that 'it is Mind that arranges and is the cause of everything (ὡς ἄρα νοῦς ἐστιν ὁ διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων αἴτιος)' (Phd. 97c1-2 cf. DK, Fr.15.8-9, 11-12, 12-14) and thinks that he can finally find what he has always expected, i.e. something which can explain all things. What I intend to show here is that what makes Socrates hopeful is that Anaxagoras’ theory tries 1) to explain all things by one thing and 2) this explanation is understood by Socrates as if it is based on the concept of the Good. That Socrates was searching for one explanation for all things can be proved even from what he has been expecting from natural philosophers. The case is, nonetheless, more clearly asserted when he speaks about Anaxagoras’ theory. In addition to διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων αἴτιος of 97c2 mentioned above, we have τὸ τὸν νοῦν εἶναι πάντων αἴτιον (c3-4) and τόν γε νοῦν κοσμοῦντα πάντα κοσμεῖν (c4-5) all emphasizing on the cause of all things (πάντα) which can clearly prove that one of the reasons which caused Socrates to embrace it delightfully was its claim to provide the cause of all things by one thing. Another reason was that Anaxagoras’ Mind, at least in Socrates’ view, was attempting to explain everything by the concept of the Good. This connection between Mind and Good belongs more to the essential relation they have in Socrates’ thinking than Anaxagoras’ theory because there are almost nothing about such a relation in Anaxagoras. The reason for Socrates’ reading can be that Mind is substantially compatible with Socrates’ idea of the relation between good and knowledge. Both the thesis 'no one does wrong willingly' and the theory of virtue as knowledge we pointed to above are evidences of this essential relation. Nobody who knows that something is bad can choose or do it as bad. The reason, when it is reason, that means when it is as it should be, when it is wise or when it knows, works only based on good-choosing. In this context, when Socrates hears that Mind is considered as the cause of everything, it sounds to him like this: good should be regarded as the basis of the explanation of all things. We see him, thus, passing from the former to the latter without any proof. This is done in the second sentence after introducing Mind: -/- I thought that if this were so, the arranging Mind would arrange all things and put each thing in the way that was Best (ὅπῃ ἂν βέλτιστα ἔχῃ). If one then wished to find the cause of each thing by which it either perishes or exists, one needs to find what is the best way (βέλτιστον αὐτῷ ἐστιν) for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is the most excellent (ἄριστον) and best (βέλτιστον). The same man must inevitably also know what is worse (χεῖρον), for that is part of the same knowledge. (97c4-d5) This passage is a good evidence of Socrates’ leap from Anaxagoras’ Mind to his own concept of the Good that can explain why Socrates found Anaxagoras theory after his own heart (97d7). Mind is welcomed because of its capability for explanation on the basis of good to 'explain why it is so of necessity, saying which is better (ἄμεινον), and that it was better (ἄμεινον) to be so' (97e1-3). What Socrates thought he had found in Anaxagoras can indicate what he had been expecting from natural scientists before. Socrates could not be satisfied with their explanations because they were unable to explain how it is the best for everything to be as it is. It can probably be said, then, that it was the lack of the unifying Good in their explanation that had disappointed him. We must insist that we are discussing what Socrates thought that Anaxagoras’ theory of Mind should have been, not about Anaxagoras’ actual way of using Mind. Phaedo 97c-98b, is not about what Socrates found in Anaxagoras but what he thought he could find in it. On the contrary, it should also be noted that it was not this that was dashed at 98b, but Anaxagoras’ actual way of using Mind. It was Anaxagoras’ fault not to find out how to use such an excellent thesis (98b8-c2, cf. 98e-99b). Socrates gives an example to show how not believing in 'good' as the basis of explanation makes people be wanderers between different unreal explanations of a thing. His words δέον συνδεῖν (binding that binds together) as a description for the Good we chose as the name of BK principle: They do not believe that the truly good and binding binds and holds them together (ὡς ἀληθῶς τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δέον συνδεῖν καὶ συνέχειν οὐδὲν οἴονται). (99c5-6) -/- Having in mind Plato’s well-known analogy of the sun and the Good at Republic 508-509, we can dare to say that his warning of the danger of seeing the truth directly like one watching an eclipse of the sun in Phaedo (99d-e) is more about the difficulty of so-called good-based explanation than its insufficiency, a difficulty which is precisely confirmed in Republic (504e-505a, 506d-e). Moreover, BK is asserted in a more explicit way in the Republic, where the Good is considered not only as a condition for the knowledge of X, as was noted above discussing KG, but also as what binds all the objects of knowledge and also the soul in its knowing them. At Republic VI, 508e1-3, when Socrates says that the Form of the Good 'gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower (τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ τὴν ἀλήθειαν παρέχον τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις καὶ τῷ γιγνώσκοντι τὴν δύναμιν ἀποδιδὸν)', he wants to set the Good at the highest point of his epistemological structure by which all the elements of this structure are bound. This binding aspect of the Good is by no means a simple binding of all knowledges or all the objects of knowledge, but the most complicated kind of binding as it is expected from the author of the Republic. The kind of unity the Good gives to the different knowledges of different things is comparable with the unity which each Form gives to its participants in Republic: as all the participants of a Form are united by referring to the ideas, all different kinds of knowledge are united by referring to the Good. If we observe Aristotle's assertion that for Plato and the believers of Forms, the causative relation of the One with the Forms is the same as that of the Forms with particulars (e.g. Metaphysics 988a10-11, 988b4), that is to say the One is the essence (e.g., ibid, 988a10-11: τοῦ τί ἐστὶν, 988b4-6: τὸ τί ἢν εἶναί) of the Forms besides his statement that for them One is the Good (e.g., ibid, 988b11-13) the relation between the Good and unity may become more understandable. Since the quiddity of the Good (τί ποτ᾽ ἐστὶ τἀγαθὸν) is more than discussion (506d8-e2), we cannot await Socrates to tell us how this binding role is played. All we can expect is to hear from him an analogy by which this unifying role is envisaged, the sun. The kind of unity that the Good gives to the knowledge and its objects in the intelligible realm is comparable to the unity that the sun gives to the sight and its objects in the visible realm (508b-c). The allegory of Line (Republic VI, 509d-511), like that of the Sun, tries to bind all various kinds of knowledges. The hierarchical model of the Line which encompasses all kinds of knowledge from imagination to understanding can clearly be considered as Plato’s effort to bind all kinds of knowledges by a certain unhypothetical principle. The method of hypothesis starts, in the first subsection of the intelligible realm, with a hypothesis that is not directed firstly to a principle but a conclusion (510b4-6). It proceeds, in the other subsection, to a 'principle which is not a hypothesis' (b7) and is called the 'unhypothetical principle of all things' (ἀνυποθέτου ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν) (511b6-7). This παντὸς must refer not only to the objects of the intelligible realm but to the sensible objects as well. Plato does posit, therefore, an epistemological principle for all things, a principle that all things are, epistemologically, bound and, thus, unified by. -/- 5. Bound Beings The ontological aspect of BK we shall call the principle of 'Bound Beings' (BB): -/- BB Being of all things are bound by the Good. -/- We saw in our principle of Split Being (SB) how the first Socrates was criticized because of his approach to split being and separate each thing from other things. The principle of Bound Beings intends to make the things more related, a duty which is done again by the Good. In the allegory of Sun, there are two paragraphs that evidently and deliberately extend the binding role of the Good to the ontological scene: -/- You will say that the sun not only makes the visible things have the ability of being seen but also coming to be, growth and nourishment. (509b2-4) -/- This clearly intends to remind the ontological role the sun plays in bringing to being all the sensible things in order to display how its counterpart has the same role in the intelligible realm (b6-10): -/- Not only the objects of knowledge (γιγνωσκομένοις) owe their being known (γιγνώσκεσθαι) to the Good, but also their existence (τὸ εἶναί) and their being (οὐσίαν) are due to it, though the Good is not being but superior to it in rank and power. That the Good is here represented as responsible for being of things in addition to their being known means, in my opinion, that Plato wants to posit BB in addition to BK. The allegory of Cave at the very beginning of the seventh Book (514aff.) can be taken as another evidence. The role of the Good, one might say, is confined to the intelligible realm because it is asserted that the role the Good plays in this realm is corresponding to that of the sun in the visible realm. The fact that Plato wants to observe the Good also as the ontological cause of the sensible things is obvious from his saying, in the allegory of Cave, that the Form of the Good 'produces light and its source (τὸν τούτου κύριον) [i.e. the sun] in the visible realm' (517c3). We can conclude, then, that the ontological function of the Good is not confined to the intelligible realm in which it is the lord and provides truth and understanding (c3-4) because it is also responsible to produce τὸν κύριον of light. 6. Proportionality of Being and Knowledge Insofaras BE and BO principles of the first Socrates gave way to TE and TO principles of the second Socrates, we cannot expect him to preserve KB in the same way as it was in the first Socrates. The new tripartite ontology and epistemology necessitates some modifications in KB which results in the principle of 'Proportionality of Being and Knowledge' (PBK): -/- PBK To every class of being there is a proportionate category of knowledge. -/- This principle, of course, does not entail the refutation of KB and thus is not kind of rejecting PBK but only a more complicated version of it. Based on PBK, we can still agree that knowledge is of being (KB) but the issue is that since none of the concepts of knowledge and being in the second Socrates are as simple as they were for the first Socrates, we need a more complicated principle for their relation here. Although from Meno 97a where the distinction of knowledge and true opinion is drawn out in the second group of the dialogues, we can expect a new relation, it is articulated in its most complete way in Republic and specifically in the allegory of Line. All the beings are divided there hierarchically to four classes, to each of them belongs a class of knowledge: imagination to images, belief to the sensible things (more correctly: the things of which they[in previous class] were images (ᾧ τοῦτο ἔοικεν)), thought to mathematical objects (?) and understanding to the Forms and the first principle. The degree of clarity that each of the classes of knowledge shares in (σαφηνείας ἡγησάμενος μετέχειν) is proportionate to the degree that its object shares in truth (ἀληθείας μετέχει). (511e2-4) -/- Conclusion From the six onto-epistemilogical principles of the first Socrates, four principles turn to their opposite in the middle period dialogues. While bipolar epistemology and ontology of the early dialogues give place to tripartite epistemology in the middle period dialogues and tripartite ontology in Republic, the split knowledge and being of the first Socrates are inclined to be substituted by bound knowledges and bound beings in the second Socrates and specifically in Republic. Not all our system of principles in this article is necessarily determinative. Either they are rightly formulated or not, our result would not be vulnerable if we accept that 1) making the distinction of knowledge and belief, 2) accepting the being of not being and 3) trying to bind both being and knowledge by the concept of the Good happens only in middle period dialogues, having been absent in the early ones. These are the favourite results all those somehow arbitrary and even oversimplified principles were to illustrate; that there is kind of a development in the epistemological as well as the ontological grounds of Plato’s philosophy. -/- Notes . (shrink)

Common sense realism, by E. G. Bewkes.--Theology and religious experience, by Vergilius Ferm.--A reasoned faith, by G. F. Thomas.--Can religion become empirical? By J. S. Bixler.--Value theory and theology, by H. R. Niebuhr.--The truth in myths, by Reinhold Niebuhr.--Is subjectivism in value theory compatible with realism and meliorism? By Cornelius Krusé.--The semi-detached knower: a note on radical empiricism, by R. L. Calhoun.--The new scientific and metaphysical basis for epistemological theory, by F. S. C. Northrop.--A psychological approach to reality, (...) by Hugh Hartshorne.--A definition of religious liberalism, by D. S. Robinson. (shrink)

Common sense realism, by E. G. Bewkes.--Theology and religious experience, by V. Ferm.--A reasoned faith, by G. F. Thomas.--Can religion become empirical? By J. S. Bixler.--Value theory and theology, by H. R. Niebuhr.--The truth in myths, by R. Niebuhr.--Is subjectivism in value theory compatible with realism and meliorism? By C. Krusé.--The semi-detached knower: a note on radical empiricism, by R. L. Calhoun.--The new scientific and metaphysical basis for epistemological theory, by F. S. C. Northrop.--A psychological approach to reality, (...) by H. Hartshorne.--A definition of religious liberalism, by D. S. Robinson. (shrink)

This book illustrates the profound implications of Gabriel Marcel's unique existentialist approach to epistemology not only for traditional themes in his work concerning ethics and the transcendent, but also for epistemological issues, concerning the objectivity of knowledge, the problem of skepticism, and the nature of non-conceptual knowledge, among others. There are also chapters of dialogue with philosophers, Jacques Maritain and Martin Buber. In focusing on these themes, the book makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on Marcel.Brendan Sweetman, (...) a native of Dublin, Ireland, is Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, USA. His books include Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity, 2006) and Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum Books, 2007). He has coauthored or coedited several other books, including Truth and Religious Belief (M.E. Sharpe, 1998), and Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 1992). Professor Sweetman has published more than fifty articles and reviews in a variety of collections and journals, including International Philosophical Quarterly, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi, and Review of Metaphysics. He writes regularly in the areas of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, political philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

The difficulty about the naive realism which most people take for granted and which some empirical philosophers try to defend is that its proponents, in seeking to preserve the objective world of common sense, virtually read out of the picture the contribution of the perceiving subject and all that is involved in the relatedness of sense experience. The visual phenomena of perspective, distortion and hallucination, and the dependence of all other sense experience upon varying physiological factors in the (...) percipient make it well nigh impossible to believe that everything is just what we observe it to be; and the physicist's account of a world of electrical charges symbolized by mathematical formulae deals in conceptual terms which transcend sensual imagery. The resort to the sense-datum theory was but a desperate attempt on the part of philosophers to preserve the plain man's view of reality, though it left wholly obscure the relationship between the world of common sense experience and that of physical science, as well as positing a fantastic multiplication of entities corresponding to everything that could be observed under any circumstances. (shrink)

This essay tries to develop a thoroughly critical method of evaluating religious beliefs presented to us in classic texts, illustrating this method by critical interpretation of the Dao of the Daodejing and the God of the Gospel of Mark. -/- The essay treats religious beliefs "theologically," that is, as views about what finally matters in life. In its emphasis on critical reason, it departs from the dogmatism usually associated with theology. It is also historicist and pluralist, departing from the usual (...) association of theology with a focus on absolute truths transcending all culture. -/- In the first part, I trace modern difficulties in subjecting religious faith to rational critique, to the cognitive "imperialism" of traditional religious thought -- the tendency of believers to allow their religious beliefs to govern knowledge in many other areas we now recognize as non-religious, due to the modern development of physical and cultural sciences. This tendency has misled modern thinkers into regarding religious claims about literal facts and universal truths as the epistemological basis of religious faith, and therefore the claims that should be the focus of rational critique. I offer instead a pragmatist view, which focuses on the pragmatic implications believers draw from their beliefs, and tries to correlate these implications with contextually conditioned perceptions believers might plausibly have had that might support these implications. -/- The second part of the essay proposes a very revisionist version of Plato’s "Socratic" reasoning, as one way of subjecting theological beliefs to rational critique. This model of Socratic reasoning is broadly empiricist, regarding direct perceptions of what is admirable, illustrated in unproblematic concrete narratives, as the epistemological basis for moral knowledge. Platonic "Ideas" are the result of extracting the essence of what is admirable from these concrete perceptions, and gradually refining them through sustained questioning. This account differs fundamentally from "Platonism" as it is traditionally conceived, especially in that it allows for the existence of a very great many ways of leading a great human life, exemplified today in the many different cultures we have gained an appreciative awareness of. The multiplicity of these different ways prevents any one small set of concepts from being regarded as a singularly and exclusively authoritative norm for judging all people everywhere. At the same time, this approach to moral reasoning avoids nihilist relativism by providing a procedural way of distinguishing rationally between the essence of what is admirable, and mere concrete appearances that often accompany what is admirable, but which can exist separately and so mislead people into a focus on things that do not finally matter. -/- The final part of the article applies this approach to a critical interpretation of the Dao of the Daodejing and the God of the Gospel of Mark. In the case of Dao, for example, we must attend to the way that aphorisms in the Daodejing evoke life experiences in which we ourselves can perceive specific contrasts between what is admirable and what is not. Dao in the Daodejing should then be interpreted, following suggestions given in the Daodejing itself, as a summary reference to this kind of admirability in its most pure form, conceived of in contrast to accompanying appearances. Similarly, in the case of the Gospel of Mark, we must attend to the way that episodes in Mark’s Jesus-story evoke life experiences in which we can perceive specific contrasts between what is admirable and what is not. Mark’s God is a focus for personal commitment to this kind of admirability in its most pure form, conceived of in contrast to accompanying appearances. The historicist character of this critical method is evident in the fact that in the Daodejing the particular contrasts defining what is admirable differ so radically from the particular contrasts defining what devotion to God means in the Gospel of Mark. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Guide to Personal Knowledge: The Philosophy of Michael Polanyi: Tacit Knowledge, Emergence and the Fiduciary Program by Dániel Paksi and Mihály HéderAlessio TartaroPAKSI, Dániel and Mihály Héder. Guide to Personal Knowledge: The Philosophy of Michael Polanyi: Tacit Knowledge, Emergence and the Fiduciary Program. Wilmington, Del.: Vernon Press, 2022. xxiii + 209 pp. Cloth, $65.00Famous for the concept of "tacit knowledge," Polanyi is a (...) figure who looms over twentieth-century philosophy without ever establishing himself as one of its major protagonists. Yet, Polanyi tackled central problems in twentieth-century Western philosophy and offered [End Page 358] insightful and original analyses thereof. In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi articulates ideas about metaphysics, mathematics, evolution, philosophy and sociology of science, epistemology, philosophy of language, political theory, theology, and more. The richness of the contents, but also their deep unity, make Polanyi's work a unique piece in the philosophical landscape of his time, full of fruitful insights that are still relevant nowadays.Guide to Personal Knowledge, written by two of the leading experts on Polanyi's philosophy, deserves the merit of providing an accessible introduction to this complex work. The book is divided into thirteen chapters, each corresponding to the respective chapter of Personal Knowledge. In each chapter, Paksi and Héder clearly explain Polanyi's main ideas, presenting them in the same order as they appear in Personal Knowledge. The chapters are introduced by a "Goals of the chapter" section that provides a series of key points, where the authors summarize Polanyi's objectives in the corresponding chapter of Personal Knowledge.The Guide is interspersed with many direct quotations from Personal Knowledge that allow the reader to link the Guide to the original text. The use of figures and tables illuminates even the most complex concepts, such as "tacit integration" and the difference between "random and ordered systems." The Guide is enriched by twenty-five boxes that provide information on ideas, authors, and concepts directly or indirectly referenced by Polanyi in Personal Knowledge. These boxes are a valuable supplement. In some cases, they offer insight into contemporary events, theories, and scholars to which Polanyi alludes but that he does not elaborate on, for example, about the role of the Michelson-Morley experiments in Einstein's development of the theory of relativity. In other cases, boxes develop a comparison between Polanyi's ideas and related philosophical figures, such as Thomas Kuhn and Samuel Alexander. Thanks to the boxes, the reader gains a richer and more complete view of Polanyi's thought.In the preface, Paksi and Héder preliminarily introduce some key concepts for understanding Polanyi's work, including "objectivity," "trust" and "fiduciary program," "tacit knowledge," "intellectual passions," "deceptive substitution," "moral inversion," "operational principles," "logic of achievement," and "emergence." Their analysis always proves faithful to Polanyi's thought, and the authors show how these concepts are interrelated and constitute the pillars of Personal Knowledge's argumentative structure. Other equally crucial concepts in Polanyi's work, for example, "commitment," "indwelling," "tradition," "conviviality," "anthropogenesis," "ultrabiology," are not introduced in the preface, but they are explored in depth in the respective chapters.The thirteen chapters of the book recapitulate in detail the main thematic segments of Personal Knowledge. The critique of objectivism and positivist views of science is explained and analyzed in chapters 1 to 4. This critique is articulated on several levels. Polanyi first criticizes [End Page 359] objectivism because it attempts to remove the personal element from scientific knowledge in order to pursue ever higher degrees of formalism, neutrality, and impersonality. Polanyi asserts, however, that the personal element is irreducible, and then proceeds to demonstrate how it operates: in the evaluation of probability statements (chapter 2), in the appreciation of ordered patterns (chapter 3), and in the practice of skills (chapter 4). The ineliminability of the personal element shows that objectivism is false. Paksi and Héder brilliantly retrace the train of thought that leads Polanyi to this conclusion.The second theme that runs across Personal Knowledge concerns the tacit foundation of human intellectual abilities and, consequently, of science and society. In chapter 6, the authors follow Polanyi's disparate arguments about animal intelligence, human... (shrink)

Since God is a transcendent being, one cannot expect to encounter him in unmediated contact. However, the author argues, there is an analogy between our knowledge of other minds and our knowledge of God. Just as to come to the truth of the former knowledge requires some sophistication, so does the process of discovering the latter truth. Without ever being an apologist, Professor Lewis bases his case upon the uniqueness of religious experience, of which the book (...) as a whole is an analysis. He recognizes a role of reflection in religion and attempts to give some criteria for evaluating religious claims. --J. E. M. (shrink)

Early modern commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics contain a lively debate on whether experience is ‘rational’, so that it may count as ‘proto-knowledge’, or whether experience is ‘non-rational’, so that experience must be regarded as a primarily perceptual process. If experience is just a repetitive apprehension of sensory contents, the connection of terms in a scientific proposition can be known without any experiential input, as the ‘non-rational’ Scotists state. ‘Rational’ Thomists believe that all principles of (...) scientific knowledge must rely on experiential data, because experience consists in an apprehension of facts rather than objects. And it is only apprehension of facts that can justify knowledge of principles. In this context, the role of mathematical knowledge is special, because it is self-evident. So Thomists must either show that mathematical principles do rely on experience, or that they do not express knowledge claims. (shrink)

The book collects seventeen new research papers on themes in Indian philosophy, contributed by contemporary scholars from around the world. The principal themes are knowledge and logic, consciousness, existence, and the self. The editor explains that the studies discuss Indian sources in their own context, rather than trying to be comparative or make connections to other traditions. This unfortunate directive is fortunately ignored by the strongest papers. Claus Oetke shows that despite their investigations of inference and syntax, Indian analysts (...) had little interest in formal structure per se. They investigated ways to exploit the formal structure in ordinary cases for the establishment of metaphysical tenets. Metaphysical aspirations rather than sheer formal analysis were the overriding concern. Another contributor describes Indian thought as “relentlessly empiricist in orientation.” Scripture is acknowledged for transcendent things like Dharma and Brahman, “but it is the senses that hold sway over the natural world.” Logic is not enough for inference, which must be grounded in perception. The fourth-century Buddhist Vasubandhu defines inference in terms of perception. The basis of inference is the observation of an object not occurring without the inferred object for one who knows the connection. Eli Franco explains how skepticism invaded Indian thought with the Madhyamaka movement in latter Buddhism, beginning with the great founder Nagarjuna. He denies any means to knowledge, using arguments that often resemble those of Western skepticism. Skepticism about means to knowledge became associated with the later materialist Lokayata school, from ninth century. Indian materialism is an anomaly somewhat like the Chinese rationalism of the Mohists. Pradeep Gokhale provides an overview of the school, which he describes as “a rationalist philosophical movement which attempted to solve individual and social issues merely on empirical, rational, and practical grounds without taking recourse to religion.” Like Epicurus, this materialism is a physical theory demystifying traditional morality and religion, which are replaced by hedonism. Consciousness originates in body and does not exist independent of matter. It is not originally in the elements but arises from them, as intoxication, not originally in molasses, arises by fermentation. Religion is a human creation. Other worlds do not exist. Nothing that we do makes a difference to future lives, which do not exist. Fallacious ideas like life after death vitiate sacrifice and morality. The path to liberation is to follow natural pleasure. Joel Feldman discusses the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness. Things do not endure. The experience of enduring things is a delusive result of imagining things to have a universal character when actually they are merely grouped together according to our desires by means of their exclusion from things that do not fulfill our purposes. We impose this vast delusion on what are in truth momentary self-characterized particulars, each with its own self-nature, producing an effect and then annihilating in a moment by that very self-nature. Destruction is never the work of an external cause. If a thing can self-destruct, then it must be destroyed immediately by its own self-nature as soon as it begins to exist. Papers by Alex Watson and Roy Tzohar survey the spectrum of Indian views on the self. Consciousness as light is an ancient image in Indian thought described in a contribution by Matthew MacKenzie. Isabelle Ratié explains the metaphor of the mirror in Indian thought about consciousness. For Brahminical tradition mirror images are sheer illusion. For the later Buddhists the perceived universe is comparable to an optical refection. The characteristic of reflecting entities like a mirror is the capacity to manifest themselves as something else while remaining what they are, and this is exactly like consciousness, which manifests itself in all the images of phenomenal nature. In all of these papers Indian ideas are repeatedly compared with ideas in Sartre, McGinn, Dretske, Searle, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Sellars. (shrink)

Although there have been a number of important studies of Karl Jaspers by European scholars, until recently there were in English only the Schilpp volume on Jaspers, brief studies by Allen and Lichtigfield, and a few articles scattered in journals and books. In 1968 Eugene Long published Jaspers and Bultmann. This was followed by three studies published during 1970-71: Charles Wallraff, Karl Jaspers ; Oswald Schrag, Existence, Existenz and Transcendence ; and Sebastian Samay, Reason Revisited. Ehrlich’s book is a (...) welcome addition to the study of Jaspers. Ehrlich was a student of Jaspers in Basel and apparently is devoted to his thought. The book is characterized by a thorough knowledge of the sources. It is a clear-headed discussion of Jaspers’ understanding of faith which takes readers into the central spirit of Jaspers’ philosophy, a spirit characterized by combativeness and openness in communication with others in search for the meaning and truth of human existence. Jaspers’ position is developed in the context of political and religious orthodoxies showing clearly the spirit of freedom and openness which is characteristic of Jaspers’ work. This topic permits the author to explore in detail the themes of communication, authority and tradition, and cipher language which are at the heart of all of Jaspers’ work. (shrink)

The hypothetical approach to the supersensible developed by Kant in his three Critiques, exemplified by his analysis of the aesthetic and reflective judgment in his third Critique, with their principle fortuitous purposiveness, can be considered as the basis for a new foundation of metaphysics. According to Kant’s limitation of cognition to the realm of sense intuition, theoretical knowledge of God, the subject, things-in-themselves, transcendental ideas is impossible. This leads to a kind of “negative theology” of the highest principle (...) and the supersensible as a whole. The reasons are rooted in the character of propositional thought, which can only circumscribe a singular, supersensible reality by means of predicative sentences and discursive thought. Taking Kant’s lead, but in contrast to his terminology, I call really existent singularities, including the thinking, knowing, desiring, feeling unique individuals we know as human beings, spontaneities, in order to distinguish them from descriptive characteristics attributed to them by predicative thought. Kant’s “practico-dogmatic” account of the postulates of God and immortality of the soul, based on the “fact of freedom” and its connection to the moral imperative, ensure the possibility of the “highest good” as final aim of moral behaviour — but cannot satisfy our need for knowledge of the supersensible. To “lay the groundwork” for experience of our own self-conscious reality, the reality of others like ourselves, of things which transcend the boundaries of sense intuition, and of true reciprocity, a different method is needed, one which leads us “beyond being and thought” to the unconditional beginning of conditional reality. (shrink)

Working from a realist Thomistic epistemology, Ashley asserts that we must begin our search for wisdom in the natural sciences; only then, he believes, can we ensure that our claims about immaterial and invisible things are rooted in reliable experience of the material. Any attempt to share wisdom, he insists, must derive from a context that is both interdisciplinary and intercultural. Ashley offers an ambitious analysis and synthesis of major historical contributions to the unification of knowledge, including non-Western (...) traditions. Beginning with the question "Metaphysics: Nonsense or Wisdom?" Ashley moves from a critical examination of the foundations of modern science to quantum physics and the Big Bang; from Aristotle's theory of being and change, through Aquinas's five ways, to a critical analysis of modern and postmodern thought. Ashley is able to interweave the approaches of the great philosophers by demonstrating their contributions to philosophical thought in a concrete, specific manner. In the process, he accounts for a contemporary culture overwhelmed by the fragmentation of data and thirsting for an utterly transcendent yet personal God. "This is an impressive, well-researched book, of great value. It offers the wider philosophical community a point of entrance, by a proponent of a certain type of Thomism, into a domain that all philosophers think they already understand. The result is the creation of a 'big picture' of human knowledge." -- _Mark Johnson, Marquette University_. (shrink)

There is a long-Standing tradition in philosophy that certain metaphysical theories of perceptual experience, if true, would lead to scepticism about the external world, whereas other theories, if true, would develop a non-sceptkal epistemology. I investigate these claims in the context of current metaphysical theories of sense-perception and argue that choice of perceptual ontology is of very limited help in developing a non-sceptical epistemology. Theorists who hold that perception is an intentional state have some advantage in explaining how perceptual (...) experiences serve as justifying reasons for empirical beliefs. Alston and others have argued that a successful defence of a contemporary version of naïve realism would secure further epistemological advantages. I argue that this is not the case. A complete explanation of experience's reason-giving power involves factors beyond the metaphysical nature of experience. (shrink)

Both thinkings on Dao in Chinese philosophy and metaphysics in Western philosophy investigate things on a spiritual level that transcends experience, but there are incommensurable differences between them. The objective of “metaphysics” is ontological knowledge about nature from the perspective of epistemological “truth-pursuing”. Western metaphysics is thus a “metaphysics of nature”. Dao in Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, more often manifests itself in “good-pursuing” by means of the internal, experiential pursuit of moral stature (...) and spiritual security. Philosophy of Dao is thus a “metaphysics of ethics”. The cause of this difference can be traced back to the differences between the rational tradition of the West, characterized by the dualism of the subject and the object, and the moral tradition of China, characterized by the integration of man and nature. (shrink)

In this promising and well written book, the author struggles with the question of how basic religious beliefs can be groundless without being irrational. He notes that the axiomatic beliefs--philosophical, scientific, or religious--which ground all areas of human knowledge, are groundless in the sense of being unsupported by more primitive evidential considerations. He wishes to avoid purely non-cognitivist accounts of religious belief as purely subjective expressions of tastes, preferences, values, or arbitrary decisions, insisting that it makes sense to speak (...) of fundamental religious beliefs as being informative, true, and reasonable even though unsupported. They are not "hypotheses" whose truth value can be ascertained by identifying logically independent truth conditions. Rather, they closely resemble Wittgenstein's "certainties" in being unprovable beliefs that are so fundamental to our ways of thinking that even doubts about them would be groundless if doubts about them were well founded. Yet, basic religious beliefs are not quite certainties since they can be doubted intelligently "from outside" a given religious outlook, and since secular and religious alternatives to them are readily available. They are best classified as "principles," the author maintains, noting that contemporary philosophers seldom use this term any more even though it was part of our traditional stock-in-trade. Principles resemble certainties in being not grounded in other beliefs more basic than themselves and in sustaining, regulating, and informing other judgments and beliefs. The uniformity of nature, nothing vanishes without a trace, every event has a cause, the principle of sufficient reason, etc., are offered as examples of non-religious principles. Like these, religious principles "help believers to organize, to interpret, or to make sense out of their experience," and "their reasonableness depends on their power of illumination". Various religious principles are discussed which "vouch for a worthwhile ground or end in all that is, thereby enabling believers to pursue a meaningful existence". Belief in divine creation, and belief in predestination are discussed in some detail as examples of religious principles. It is reasonable to adopt principles if they are capacitating and to reject them if they are not, the author insists; so we are not irrational if we do not adopt every principle which comes our way. Basic religious beliefs such as belief in a Creator God, etc., are capacitating, we are told, in the sense that "they are discoveries of purpose and intimations of life's redeeming worth. If they are genuine, they show themselves in 'spiritual', inward capacities, such as the ability to consolidate one's selfhood, to resist despair, and to extend one's concern to others". (shrink)

O trabalho parte da investigação de Gadamer sobre o desdobramento do projeto iluminista e sua pretensão de envolver a totalidade do saber humano, condicionando seus caminhos e determinando seus meios a partir do sucesso e eficácia do horizonte físico-matemático. As repercussões dessa influência na própria autofundamentação das ciências humanas representam um grande risco, pois transcende as questões das diferenças entre métodos, dizendo respeito aos próprios objetivos do conhecimento humano. Trata-se, pois, da finalidade do conhecimento, isto é, das questões referentes à (...) dimensão ética e política. A hermenêutica filosófica vem justamente argumentar que é na impossibilidade de escapar dos pressupostos ontológicos e metafísicos do compreender que reside a abertura para tratar das ciências humanas como uma questão filosófica. É frente a essa abertura a uma tradição de conhecimento que a hermenêutica realiza uma reabilitação dos conceitos humanistas de Formação ; Sensus communis; Juízo e Gosto. Sua intenção é desvelar o quanto de experiência da verdade ficou fora da abordagem das ciências humanas ao se fundamentarem nos constrangimentos metodológicos impostos pela epistemologia moderna.: The work of the Gadamer researches on the deployment of the Enlightenment project and its wish to involve the whole of human knowledge, conditioning his ways and determining their means from the success and effectiveness of the physical-mathematical horizon. The repercussions of that influence in their own self-foundation the humanities represent a great risk, for it transcends the issues of differences between methods, saying about the own objectives of human knowledge. It is therefore the purpose of knowledge, that is, the issues of ethical and political dimension. The philosophical hermeneutics has rightly argued that it is impossible to escape the ontological and metaphysical assumptions of understanding is where lies on the opening to treat the human sciences as a philosophical issue. It is against this opening to a tradition of knowledge that hermeneutics performs a rehabilitation of humanistic concepts of Formation ; Sensuscommunis; Judgment and Taste. His intention is to reveal how much experience the truth got out of the approach of the human sciences when substantiating the methodological constraints imposed by modern epistemology. Keywords: human sciences, humanism, verity, hermeneutics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 312-314 [Access article in PDF] Shook, John R. Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality.The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 316. Cloth, $46.00; Paper, $22.95. The current renaissance of American pragmatism, and John Dewey's philosophy in particular, began two decades ago with Richard Rorty's refashioning of Dewey as a postmodernist who renounces (...) the "professional philosophy" of metaphysics and epistemology for the fluidity of conversation in the life and growth of a community. This depiction, though praised for rekindling Dewey's star, has been widely challenged by subsequent commentators. Ralph Sleeper's 1986 The Necessity of Pragmatism persuasively argues that Dewey reconfigures, rather than renounces, the logical and metaphysical grounds of knowledge. Despite an archaic Hegelian vocabulary that misleadingly suggests idealism and antirealism, Sleeper finds Dewey advancing a genuine metaphysics of existence, not merely a conversation about experience: a naturalistic realism of independent existences that enter into and are transformed by human interactions with them.This perspective is shared by most Dewey scholars, including Sandra Rosenthal, Raymond Boisvert, and J. E. Tiles. At least until now. In a profound and provocative exploration of his early philosophy, John R. Shook, presents a compelling case that Dewey's reconstruction of metaphysics and epistemology is deeper than even Sleeper imagined. Dewey did not merely abandon idealism under the influence of William James, as most assume; he transformed it in a original way that, while wholly naturalistic, [End Page 312] is a fusion of idealism and realism that overcomes both the former's "mind-stuff" and the latter's "in-itself reality."Dewey began his philosophical odyssey with the searing desire to eradicate the dualisms of mind versus world, phenomenal versus noumenal, perceptual versus conceptual. Post-Hegelian idealists agreed that this division is ultimately reconciled in the "absolute," though they disagreed about whether the absolute is psychological or cosmological, social or supernatural, knowable or unknowable. From the very beginning, Shook argues, Dewey accepted the psychological path as sketched by James Ward, and also Edward Caird's claim that the absolute must be knowable in some sense. Intriguingly, the missing link between perception and conceptual awareness is Wilhelm Wundt's notion of volition: percepts are neither mechanically attached to concepts nor are they overlaid by Kantian "faculties of mind." Instead, a disruption of perceptual or noncognitive experience generates a desire for reconciliation that calls forth ideas that diagnose the problem and suggest ways to resolve it. Achieved solutions, in turn, forge a background of habitual dispositions that shape interpretations within the noncognitive realm.While still an idealist, then, Shook finds the essential elements of the "method of inquiry" that later anchored Dewey's instrumentalism and pragmatism. Prior to 1890, however, he still construed this as individual "mental activity," and the problem of its relation to God's Absolute Mind remained. Upon relinquishing the supernatural for the social, however, this final obstacle was eliminated. The dispositional background extends beyond the individual to the customs, traditions, and values of a culture—indeed, even the barest notions of "self" and "reality" are inconceivable without reference to such a background. This is Dewey's broad conception of "experience"—a humanistic naturalism with no trace of mind-stuff or subjectivism. In this sense Dewey is a realist, though his affirmation of things-themselves (including things we have not or may never actually discover) avoids the things-in-themselves that is the bane of metaphysical realism. To claim that things exist without an experiential background of how we may find them to exist is at best empty verbiage, and at worst hypnosis by the dervishes of dualism.Scrupulous in research, penetrating in detail, Shook's presentation is so faithful to Dewey that it will undoubtedly draw many of the same criticisms once hurled at the master. Though careful readers will be able to identify "experience" in its broadly social and functional sense, others will be confused by applications as diverse as "mental activity," "soul," "reality," "the history of the... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

First published in 1949 expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. Reichenbach, with Rudolph Carnap, founded logical positivism, a form of epistemofogy that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths.

From the time of Plato’s proposed expulsion of the poets, tragedy has repeatedly proposed a challenge to philosophical and theological certainties. This is apparent already in early Christianity amongst leading figures during the patristic age. But this raises the question: Why was the theme of tragedy still accepted and deployed throughout the history of Christianity nevertheless? Is this merely an accident or is there something more substantial at play? Can Christian theology take the tragic seriously? Must Christianity ultimately deny the (...) tragic to be coherent, or might it be able to sustain its negativity? Some like George Steiner, David Bentley Hart, and John Milbank have doubts about such a coherency, but others think differently. This book aims to examine this debate, laying out the lines of disagreement and continuing tensions. Through a critical examination of the work of Donald MacKinnon and the eminent Christian thinker Rowan Williams, the book aims to show that there is a path for reconciling the claims of Christian orthodoxy and the experience of tragedy, one that is able to maintain a metaphysical foundation for both real transcendence and unfolding historicity, without denying either. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel's Account of Faith Kierkegaard's Criticism: The Separation of Faith and Knowledge Critical Evaluation Abbreviations of Hegel's Primary Texts Abbreviations of Works by Kierkegaard.