One of the most discussed problems in Dostoyevsky's work, at least in Western philosophy and especially in Existentialism, concerns the question of God, which has been received and interpreted in very different ways. This editorial introduction will refer to two readings - that of Sartre and that of Slavoj Žižek. The aim is to show that these two interpretations, although at first sight seemingly antithetical, are not mutually exclusive but complementary.

Expressions in a language, whether words, phrases, or sentences, have meanings. So it seems reasonable to suppose that there are meanings that expressions have. Of course, it is fashionable in some philosophical circles to deny this.

Now in a thoroughly revised and expanded third edition, this authoritative Handbook reviews current knowledge about all aspects of emotion and its role in human ...

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Møller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a natural right framework. Her study shows (...) that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity. (shrink)

That brings me to the crux of my disagreement with Hillis Miller. The central contention is not simply that I am sometimes, or always, wrong in my interpretation, but instead that I—like other traditional historians—can never be right in my interpretation. For Miller assents to Nietzsche's challenge of "the concept of 'rightness' in interpretation," and to Nietzsche's assertion that "the same text authorizes innumerable interpretations : there is no 'correct' interpretation."1 Nietzsche's views of interpretation, as Miller says, are relevant to (...) the recent deconstructive theorists, including Jacques Derrida and himself, who have "reinterpreted Nietzsche" or have written "directly or indirectly under his aegis." He goes on to quote a number of statements from Nietzsche's The Will to Power to the effect, as Miller puts it, "that reading is never the objective identifying of a sense but the importation of meaning into a text which had no meaning 'in itself.'" For example: "Ultimately, man finds in things nothing but what he himself has imported into them." "In fact interpretation is itself a means of becoming master of something."2 On the face of it, such sweeping deconstructive claims might suggest those of Lewis Carroll's linguistic philosopher, who asserted that meaning is imported into a text by the interpreter's will to power: "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things.""The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all." But of course I don't believe that such deconstructive claims are, in Humpty Dumpty fashion, simply dogmatic assertions. Instead, they are conclusions which are derived from particular linguistic premises. I want, in the time remaining, to present what I make out to be the elected linguistic premises, first of Jacques Derrida, then of Hillis Miller, in the confidence that if I misinterpret these theories, my errors will soon be challenged and corrected. Let me eliminate suspense by saying at the beginning that I don't think that their radically skeptical conclusions from these premises are wrong. On the contrary, I believe that their conclusions are right—in fact, they are infallibly right, and that's where the trouble lies. · 1. "Tradition and Difference," Diacritics 2 : 8, 12.· 2. Ibid. M. H. Abrams’s contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Rationality and Imagination in Cultural History: A Reply to Wayne Booth" and "Behaviorism and Deconstruction: A Comment on Morse Peckham's 'The Infinitude of Pluralism'". (shrink)

Originally published in 1988, M.C. Dillon's classic study of Merleau-Ponty is now available in a revised second edition containing a new preface and a new chapter on "Truth in Art." Dillon's thesis is that Merleau-Ponty has developed the first genuine alternative to ontological dualism seen in Western philosophy. From his early work on the philosophical significance of the human body to his later ontology of flesh, Merleau-Ponty shows that the perennial problems growing out of dualistic conceptions of mind and body, (...) subject and object, immanence and transcendence can be resolved within the framework of a new way of thinking based on the exemplar of the worldly embodiment of thought. (shrink)

Juan B. Justo en la historia y el pensamiento argentinos, por A. Solari.--Teoría y práctica de la historia, por M. H. Alberti.--La base biológica de la historia, por F. Escardó.--La técnica, por A. Justo.--La economía, por R. Bogliolo.--La guerra, por A. G. Rodríguez.--La política, por A. Ghioldi.--La lucha de ciases, por R. Mondolfo.--El salariado, por M. Palacín.--Las formas típicas del privilegio, por J. L. Pena.--El gremialismo proletario, por E. Frugoni.--La cooperación libre, por N. Repetto.--La democracia obrera, por L. Pan.--La religión, (...) la cilencia, el arte, por R. Rivière. (shrink)

Like the virtue it purports to explain, St Thomas Aquinas' treatment of modestia in the Summa Theologiae is something that can easily be overlooked. Such neglect is unfortunate, for it is liable to obscure the surprising character of Aquinas' account, departing as it does from many of his philosophical sources , to say nothing of our own contemporary assumptions. This novel treatment is especially significant given its potential value in addressing the social and political needs of the current age, for (...) rather than being the virtue least fitted for contemporary life, the modesty that emerges in Thomas' moral theology may have an enduring civic significance. This essay therefore begins with an exegesis of Aquinas' account of modestia and concludes with an analysis of its political dimensions. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect (delayed response due to interference) elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)