This study presents a substantial revision to received ideas about the relationship between biblical and ancient Greek conceptions of human nature.

In Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Bernard Williams supplies an interpretation of Descartes's Meditations in which the meditator's clean sweep of initial beliefs is justified by a stance that abrogates all practical pressures: the stance of pure enquiry. Otherwise, Williams explains, it would not be reasonable to set many of the initial beliefs aside. Nowhere, however, does Descartes assert that his approach is in this sense ?pure?. It would of course be preferable if the meditator's rejection of all the (...) initial beliefs did not require an abrogation of the conditions that govern everyday belief-formation and assessment. I supply a reading that accomplishes this. The key to this reading is recognition that Descartes is a thinker of his time, a time when the pre-modern worldview was being systematically rejected. I show, in this regard, that when Descartes characterizes a belief as ?uncertain?, this has the implication that the belief is false. And, certainly, the rational policy, without need for any special stance, is to reject falsehoods. (shrink)

In what respect, if any, is Kant a distinctively “critical” thinker? How does Kant’s “transcendentalism” differentiate his practice in metaphysics from that of the philosophers of the Cartesian tradition? How much does the success of Kant’s enterprise depend on the viability of the idea of the synthetic a priori? The issues that these questions raise came to a head for Kant in the attack on his novelty by the Leibnizean Johann August Eberhard, an attack to which Kant responded at length (...) in the sarcastically titled On a discovery according to which any new critique of pure reason has been made superfluous by an earlier one. Unfortunately, Kant’s apology is quite inconclusive. In this discussion, in an effort to shed some light on the murk, I supply text-sensitive analyses of the various key notions. It emerges that while, as Eberhard complained, the “critical” turn is not at all a methodological novelty, Kant’s procedure does mark a departure from traditional metaphysics, though not one that he himself describes at all clearly. Kant’s “transcendentalism” ultimately constitutes an open-ended and ever-widening interrogation of logical possibility; hence an interrogation that, contrary to what Kant himself claims, can never furnish what legitimately counts as “proof.”. (shrink)

The typically dismissive treatment of Bradleian idealism, to the extent that it is based on philosophical criticism rather than historical bias, suffers from a failure to distinguish Bradley's negative views from his positive doctrines. But the intermingling of the two plays havoc in Bradley's own presentation, so that proper interpretation requires a particularly aggressive approach to the texts. Specifically, in denying a real multiplicity of facts, Bradley, though he may seem to be, is not attacking the commonsense belief that there (...) are many and disparate facts. His claim, as is confirmed by an examination of the analysis of judgement in The principles of logic, is that the facts ordinarily recognized are not those of the bona fide fact-pluralist, e.g. Mill. By getting Bradley's position straight, it becomes possible to tell an illuminating story about the early formation of ?analytic? philosophy, with its often bewildering faith in the ontological significance of logic. (shrink)

Il se peut du point de vue des etudiants qui s'approchent de la position contextuelle de Descartes, qu'il accepte la distinction reelle entre l'esprit et le corps parce qu'il n'a pas percu comment une forme d'explicarion mecanique-materialiste pourrait etre appropriee aux phenomenes psychologiques. Mais on pourrait demander la signification de cette proposition en ce qui concerne le raisonnement de Descartes pour Pactualite du dualisme. Je demontre que son raisonnement dans les Meditations est defectueux relatif a un probleme theorique emanant de (...) 1' argumentation du cogito. Sum est deduit de cogito. Si c'est le cas, pourquoi Descartes pretend-t-il que celui-la est la premiere certitude? Comme j'explique, cogito c'est clair, mais ce n'est pas distinct; mais sum, c'est Pun et l'autre-et, a cause de cela, possede les qualites necessaires. Mais le caractere particulier du sum possede une variete speciale, et le raisonnement subsequent de Descartes que le sujet reflechissant n'est pas materiel echoue de cette ambiguite. Le cartesianisme sans dualisme n'est pas done un cercle sans un centre. (shrink)

1. The distinction between the functions of sense and intellect in cognition is first given its modern form by Kant. According to one influential commentator, Jonathan Bennett, “Kant’s breakthrough” in fact consists precisely in liberating himself from his predecessors’ misconceptions in this regard. It is true that the categorial duality of receptivity and spontaneity—of intuition and concept—is not to be found in the major classical writings prior to Kant. In its place, one encounters a relativized distinction. The empiricist Hume, for (...) example, describes a conceptual element or “idea” as differing only in “vivacity” from an item of sensory intake or “impression,” and the rationalist Leibniz says of a state of “pure” intellection that it differs from a perceptual state in being clear of the residuum of cognitive “confusion” which taints the latter. (shrink)

Ever ramifying debate over the correct analysis of linguistic representation unfolds against the backdrop of uncontested acceptance as baseline datum, by those aiming to determine the nature of the cognizing subject’s contact with the world, of language as the vehicle of factual packaging of experience. Given the easy two-way traffic in the contemporary lexicon between “concept” and “ word,” the modern reader’s antennae are not attuned to detect doctrinal parti pris when he encounters the mention, in a classical text, of (...) concepts in the course of a treatment of cognition. Kant’s declaration that “[t]he knowledge yielded by understanding, or at least by the human understanding, must…be by means of concepts” will likely be glossed as an archaic variant of the baseline datum. While it does not go unnoticed by those acquainted with the major texts of the tradition that a Descartes and a Hume speak of ideas and not concepts, this is approached, more often than not, as a verbal variant on the common theme. Of course, closer attention to the sources reveals that Kant presents cognition-by-concepts as part of a theory of cognition supplanting the ideational accounts of his predecessors. But subject to a certain amount of textual reform—prophylactic and reconstructive—cognition-by-concepts and cognition-by-ideas continue to be regarded as functional equivalents. The superiority of Kant’s treatment is accordingly evaluated conservatively, as the superiority of a more penetrative analysis. (shrink)

Matter, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, plays a prototypical version of a rôle that recurs, refracted through the domestic preoccupations of each age, in metaphysical analyses of the constitution of the real. After identifying the rôle, I shall trace a developmental arc of philosophical treatment from Aristotle through the Cartesian period to Kant. The mature Kantian view of the rôle—the ‘critical’ view—is, I maintain, a reversion to the Aristotelian position. It is not however a simple reversion. It is reversion mediated through the (...) Cartesian view. Arguably, the mediation is more than merely historical. Arguably, the Kantian treatment is conceptually or theoretically indebted to the Cartesian. This ‘dialectical’ indebtedness, if it can be established, has important, and as I see them negative, implications for the integrity of the Kantian stand. (shrink)

“By transcendental idealism,” Kant explains, “I mean the doctrine that appearances are … representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition, not determinations given as existing by themselves, nor conditions of objects viewed as things in themselves” ; “… by our sensibility … we do not apprehend [things in themselves] in any fashion whatsoever”. The phenomenality of the objective realm, according to Kant, follows from the fact that the principles (...) of objective knowledge, which demarcate that realm, have validity only for us. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: The Bible illuminates Kant’s distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves. The two biblical creation stories, in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2, offer different ontological parsings, only the second of which, like Kant’s appearances, is relativized to the human case. But while Kant’s other region remains undercharacterized, the Bible articulates quite fully the world as it is before the advent of men and women. The Bible treats this realm from the sub-human standpoint. This broadly anthropological approach to the idea of (...) appearances clarifies transcendental idealism. RÉSUMÉ: La Bible éclaire la distinction kantienne entre les apparences et les choses en soi. Les deux récits bibliques de la création, dans Genèse 1 et 2, offrent différentes analyses ontologiques, et seule la deuxième est, comme les apparences de Kant, relative à la condition humaine. Mais, tandis que l’autre région dont Kant parle est sans caractérisation positive, la Bible décrit amplement le monde tel qu’il est avant l’avènement des hommes et des femmes. La Bible traite de ce domaine du point de vue de l’infra-humain. Cette approche essentiellement anthropologique de l’idée des apparences clarifie l’idéalisme transcendantal. (shrink)

In the book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor argues that: modern secularism carries in it more than a trace residue of the explicitly religious way of thinking that it supersedes, and the secular ensemble would not survive if the residue were filtered out. Modern secularism is not, in short, exclusively humanistic. Many who profess exclusive humanism, even perhaps the majority, are therefore—according to Taylor—exclusive humanists in name alone. My position is that Judeo-Christianity, in its teachings about men and women, is (...) humanism. Humanism is what Western religion is all about at its core. This I defend by close examination of Taylor’s argument and by exposing some of the philosophical core of the Bible. (shrink)

The theology of the (Hebrew) Bible, as set out in the Torah’s foundational parts, answers the question “What am I?” not the question “Why is there a world?” So the principle that the Bible’s deity, God, represents, the principle of a category of being not recognized in the pagan thinking whose basic elements Greek philosophy systematizes, first enters “In the day that . . . the Lord God formed [the] man,” not “In the beginning when God created the heavens and (...) the earth.” The admonition to place God first doesn’t therefore exclude the impersonal principles of being with which the other gods are associated, only denies their adequacy to making sense of your being and of mine, of his being and of hers. (shrink)

En soulignant la position ressemblante du Dieu dans le système de Descartes et de Berkeley comme sujet de connaissance optimale, c'est à dire ' certain', et le rôle de la notion cartésienne de ‛certitude’ en définissant la nature de la vérité scientifique, on peut nettement transformer la théorie réalistique cartésienne en théorie idéalistique berkelienne. L'élimination une équivoque dans la conception de certitude de Descartes est crucial à cette transformation. Sans cette équivoque, la distinction cartésienne non-berkelienne entre la sensation et la (...) perception ne peut être défendu. Cette interprétation est évidemment en conflict avec le point de vue standard sur l'attitude de Descartes, comme rationaliste, concernant les sens, mais malgré cela, le texte y apportent un sérieux soutien. (shrink)

Whence the Cartesian’s advantage over competing world investigators? Descartes’s answer is that those of his persuasion do not proceed by “resting [their] reasons on any other principle than the infinite perfections of God”. The claim’s considerable opacity does not prevent it from letting this much light filter through: only Cartesian scientists operate on the right metaphysical basis.

Examining Kant's critical philosophy, this study focusses upon its dialectical constitution and gauging its implications. It attempts to determine the meaning of the critical system more by determining the dialectical and rhetorical influences on Kant by focussing on its manifest reasoning. The volume begins by taking stock of meta-physical and meta-interpretive materials; then goes on to examine the major doctrines of the first Critique; and finally draws wider morals for Kant specifically and for philosophy generally.

Does the character called “God” make an essential contribution to the [Hebrew] Bible? So far as religion and religiosity are concerned, the Bible minus the character called “God” is not theoretically incomplete. In other words, the Bible is not at core a theological document. From this it does not however follow that the deity of the Bible is theoretically otiose. The character called “God” plays a role that is indispensable for anthropological reasons. The self-definition and self-understanding of men and women (...) who define and understand themselves as you and I do cannot be accomplished without at least implicit appeal to that role. The key to the theoretical disposition of the Bible is an appreciation of the fact that it is expressly designed to counteract pagan-type views about the nature of men and women and about their position in the wider scheme of things. (shrink)

The first "Critique", Kant states inaugurates a perfectly new science'. But this transcendental philosophy', for dealing in possibilities, not actualities, does not qualify as philosophy in the traditional sense. What Kant dubs transcendental idealism' "is" however an (ontological) doctrine about things. Kant's doctrinal stand is thus inconsistent with his description of transcendental enquiry. Since transcendental idealism gets its meaning from the contrast with Cartesian realism, it follows that Kant must implicitly be granting that in some measure at least the earlier (...) metaphysicians did what they said they were doing. Indeed, Kant must be relying on some part of what they did. It follows that if there is a "via media" between traditional Cartesian metaphysics and Hume's backgammon, Kant does not locate it. (shrink)

A potential proselyte asks the great rabbi Hillel to explain the Torah to him while he stands ‘on one leg.’ Hillel responds with, essentially, the Golden Rule. This Talmudic anecdote is invariably read as critical of anyone who wants a Torah for Dummies. I offer a different interpretation. The Torah-based position, theologically speaking, rests on one principle and one principle alone, God. ‘How can an account of the creation as a whole rest on one principle only? Won’t such a structure (...) stand unsteadily, like a person on one leg?’ Hillel’s response to the request for a distillation of the Torah does home in on the Bible’s novelty. It homes in on what God does and what pagan deities cannot do. But God’s contribution, while needed to account for the human sector of the creation, cannot manage the extra-human sector. For that, a principle that belongs to paganism is required. The whole can stand steadily, as can the proselyte, only on two legs. So his conversation must be with reservations. He might not be able to intone the main creedal profession of the Torah-based religion, the Shema. ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord [alone] is our God, the Lord is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Torah’s defenders have more of a case to make. (shrink)

Did Descartes make a revolutionary contribution to philosophy? Given the widespread application to him of the title ‘father of modem philosophy,’ the standard affirmative proves surprisingly difficult to justify. ln this paper I locate Descartes’s epoch-making philosophical shift. Descartes contributed a very strong idea of realism, an idea modelled in his cogito-argument. To grasp the contribution aright, it is however necessary to de-emphasise what is usually identified as his key contribution---an epistemological one. AIso, the theoretical connection between Descartes’s core philosophical (...) activity and the scientific revolution of his time has to be appreciated. ln the course of the discussion I explain, in a more philosophical vein, how the influence of Kant clouds the abiIity of post-Kantians to see what Descartes did. A route to an understanding of Descartes’s realism is an inconsistency in Kant’s modal views. The antirealism of Kant’s view---his transcendental idealism---yields up some of its mystery once the dialectical interplay with Cartesian realism is elicited. (shrink)

The notion of a particular is what makes the Bible (the reference is to the Hebrew Scriptures) an original position in philosophy. (Particulars are self-contained spatio-temporal entities, and hence, though present in the system that is nature, are not essentially parts of it.) The early chapters of Genesis develop a comprehensive (anti-pagan) conceptualization of reality that gives particularity its due. Whether particularity can be secured without a fully extra-natural anchorage (i.e., without God) is a live issue. As the case may (...) be, the philosophy of the Bible is not a footnote, not even a substantial footnote, to Plato. Plato’s metaphysical discourse cannot handle the particular. An irreducibly different, ontological, discourse is needed for that. Having conceived the new notion (the act of conception is dramatized in the theophany of Genesis 12), Abraham, the philosopher of the paper’s title, ‘called…on the name of the Lord’ (Genesis 21:33) to the men and women of the world. The particularity of God, I explain, not God’s numerical uniqueness, is the essence of monotheism. (shrink)

Unhappy with a recent submission of mine, a referee for a journal specialising in the history of philosophy wagged a finger at what he or she called my ‘hermeneutical principles’. Though I am no stranger to the collegial woodshed, my initial reaction was nonetheless one of surprise. For had I then been asked about interpretive methodology I would have scoffed. The construer’s best course, I would have said, is to nose about the texts until some rough shape begins to emerge (...) from the murk, and to inch forward in an effort to block in details, frequently doubling back for more nosing about. Isn’t this —fill, back, adjust, refill, back again, re-adjust—a counsel of anti-method? (shrink)

Registrants for the academic study of philosophy, expecting an encounter with special cognitive products, regal truths, are soon enough disabused. Philosophy, its supposedly special access to the structure of things exploded, is relegated to sundry tasks of intellectual hygiene. I track down the source of the unrealistic view, anatomising what has a strong claim to be regarded as the regal enterprise’s inau¬gural reasoning—in Plato. When professionals consider the successor activity that is called ‘philosophy,’ they should therefore wonder about the label. (...) The deposition of she who was once known as Queen of the Sciences is, I argue, really the end of philosophy. Does the prevail¬ing professional attitude attest to mere nostalgia? In fact, the view of philo¬sophy as (say) conceptual enquiry inherits some of the fantasy. To the extent that continued use of the label is internally justified, that signals a deeper mistake on the part of the users about the truth. (shrink)