Philo of Alexandria is a forerunner of both the union of philosophy and theology and the biblical hermeneutics of the text at various levels of deepening. Heir of a long tradition had his thinking rejected in Judaism after a break in the first century AD with Greek culture, but remained as a reference of Patristics and all Christian thinking, having a perennial influence. The hermeneutics in Philo is studied, its option for Platonism, its allegorical method and what our author (...) sought to contemplate through this method. The union of Greek, Jewish and Christian cultures is approached, seeking to analyze the complex reality that emerged from this encounter and the mark it left in the Bible, the works of Philo and the authors who were influenced by him. (shrink)

This collection of essays looks at the distinctively English intellectual, social and political phenomenon of Latitudinarianism, which emerged during the Civil War and Interregnum and came into its own after the Restoration, becoming a virtual orthodoxy after 1688. Dividing into two parts, it first examines the importance of the Cambridge Platonists, who sought to embrace the newest philosophical and scientific movements within Church of England orthodoxy, and then moves into the later seventeenth century, from the Restoration onwards, culminating in essays (...) on the philosopher John Locke. These new contributions establish a firmly interdisciplinary basis for the subject, while collectively gravitating towards the importance of discourse and language as the medium for cultural exchange. The variety of approaches serves to illuminate the cultural indeterminacy of the period, in which inherited models and vocabularies were forced to undergo revisions, coinciding with the formation of many cultural institutions still governing English society. (shrink)

Cinema is an effective medium for communicating the Platonist attitude toward Beauty as an attribute worthy of moral respect, as case studies can illustrate. Mine focuses on the work of the French actress Carole Bouquet, who launched her career in Buñuel’s Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire). Part 1 shows sins against Beauty to be a unifying theme of Bouquet’s films, which leave no doubt as to the appropriate response. Part 2 combines Plato’s distinction in (...) the Phaedrus between erotic and aesthetic vision with insights from Kant and Baudelaire to sketch a course of action that addresses the critical “What is to be done?” question. (shrink)

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was one of the luminaries of the Florentine Renaissance and the scholar responsible for the revival of Platonism. The translator and interpreter of the works of both Plato and Plotinus as well as of various Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts, Ficino was also a musician, priest, magus and psychotherapist, an original philosopher and the author of a vast and important correspondence with the intellectual figures of his day including Lorenzo the Magnificent. Professor Allen has become the foremost (...) interpreter of Ficino's metaphysics and mythology, and the ancient sources they draw upon; and this collection of essays assembles his work on Ficino's complex interrogation of Platonic 'theology' as not only a preparation for Christianity but as an enduring medium for intellectuals to explore and to express Christian truths. (shrink)

Pastoral seems a fairly accessible literary concept; most critics and readers seem to know what they mean by it, and they often seem to have certain works in mind that count as pastorals. But when we look at what has been written about pastoral in the last decades -- when it has become one of the flourishing light industries of academic criticism -- we find nothing like a coherent account of either its nature or its history. We are told that (...) pastoral "is a double longing after innocence and happiness"; that its universal idea is the Golden Age; that it is based on the antithesis of Art and Nature; that its fundamental motive is hostility to urban life; that its "central tenet" is "the pathetic fallacy"; that it expresses the ideal of otium; that it is "the poetic expression par excellence of the cult of aesthetic Platonism" in the Renaissance or of Epicureanism in the Hellenistic world; that it is "that mode of viewing common experience through the medium of the rural world."1 It sometimes seems as if there are as many versions of pastoral as there are critics who write about it.[…]A definition of pastoral must first give a coherent account of its various features—formal, expressive, and thematic—and second, provide for historical continuity or change within the form. The basis of such a definition is provided by what Kenneth Burke calls a "representative anecdote":Men seek for vocabularies that will be faithful reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality. Insofar as the vocabulary meets the needs of reflection, we can say that it has the necessary scope. In its selectivity, it is a reduction. Its scope and reduction become a deflection when the given terminology, or calculus, is not suited to the subject matter which it is designated to calculate.Dramatism suggests a procedure to be followed in the development of a given calculus, or terminology. It involves the search for a "representative anecdote," to be used as a form in conformity with which the vocabulary is constructed.6Burke uses "anecdote" and not a more philosophically respectable term in order to emphasize the contingencies inherent in all such intellectual choices. Anecdote implies that they are inseparable from the stuff of reality with which they deal and that of their selection does not escape the conditions of ordinary accounts of our lives. "Representative," as Burke uses it here, has a double meaning. An anecdote is representative in that it is a typical instance of an aspect of reality and by being typical it serves to generate specific depictions or representations of that reality.1. The allusions are to the following: "double longing" ; Golden Age ; Art and Nature ; hostility to urban life ; "pathetic fallacy" ; otium , "aesthetic Platonism" ; Epicureanism .6. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives , p. 59. This is the beginning of the section entitled "Scope and Reduction."Paul Alpers is professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of The Poetry of "The Faerie Queene" and The Singer of the Eclogues: A Study of Virgilian Pastoral. The present essay is part of a larger study entitled "Pastoral Poetics.". (shrink)

This book proposes to rethink the relationship between philosophy and literature through an engagement with Plato’s dialogues. The dialogues have been seen as the source of a long tradition that subordinates poetry to philosophy, but they may also be approached as a medium for understanding how to overcome this opposition. Paradoxically, Plato then becomes an ally in the attempt “to overturn Platonism,” which Gilles Deleuze famously defined as the task of modern philosophy. Max Statkiewicz identifies a “rhapsodic mode” (...) initiated by Plato in the dialogues and pursued by many of his modern European commentators, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Irigaray, Derrida, and Nancy. The book articulates this rhapsodic mode as a way of entering into true dialogue _, which splits any univocal meaning and opens up a serious play of signification both within and between texts. This mode, he asserts, employs a reading of Plato that is distinguished from interpretations emphasizing the dialogues as a form of dogmatic treatise, as well as from the dramatic interpretations that have been explored in recent Plato scholarship—both of which take for granted the modern notion of the subject. Statkiewicz emphasizes the importance of the dialogic nature of the rhapsodic mode in the play of philosophy and poetry, of Platonic and modern thought—and, indeed, of seriousness and play. This highly original study of Plato explores the inherent possibilities of Platonic thought to rebound upon itself and engender further dialogues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Welcome To The Pharmacy: Addiction, Transcendence, and Virtual RealityAnn Weinstone (bio)1. The Question of Addiction and TranscendenceIt has become a truism to say that virtual reality (VR) is addictive. Case, the protagonist of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, dreams of connection to the net like a junkie jonesing for a fix. In Jeff Noon’s novel Vurt, you get to cyberspace by tickling the back of your throat with addictive, government-produced feathers. (...) Verity of Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Queen City Jazz sports nanotechnology implants that compel her to enter virtual worlds into which she sinks with feelings of deep bliss. As in Vurt, in Pat Cadigan’s Synners, everything’s an addiction: cyberspace, people, rock and roll.But let’s move away from fiction. Graphic cyberartist Nicole Stenger, a self-professed neo-Platonist, writes, “[a]nd what if the passage to a new level of humanity actually meant abolishing indeed the natural one, or at least some part of it?... Will it not require immense effort to recover from this enhancement of the senses, from this habit of perfection? [Stenger 57]. Michael Benedikt, editor of Cyberspace: First Steps, deems VR “a new and irresistible development in the elaboration of human culture and business under the sign of technology” [1; my emphasis]. Ad copy for “Origin,” a VR game, reads, “You must die to learn how to live.... Death is not an option. It’s an addiction.” And an article in the New York Times titled “The Lure and Addiction of Life on Line” displays a graphic of a bespectacled male, tapping away at a computer located inside of a panopticon-sized rendering of a globe to which the avid user is happily chained [see Asciu]. From advertisements to scholarly texts, it is difficult to find any writing about VR that does not engage in and, as I will argue, rely upon the rhetorics of addiction. William Gibson dubbed cyberspace a “consensual hallucination.” That was 1984. In 1996, critic Robert Markley rechristened VR “a consensual cliché” [56]. Surely, the “addictiveness” of cyberspace contributes to the sense of tired familiarity. My question is this: Why does cyberspace have to be addictive? What work is addiction doing in discourses of virtual reality?In this essay, I’m concerned with the production of what might be called hyper-real transcendence. Jean Baudrillard, in his influential schema “three orders of simulacra,” identifies a first, “natural” order in which “a transcendent world, a radically different universe, is portrayed... in contrast to the continent of the real” [309]. I propose that a third-order, hyper-real, transcendence has survived the collapse of the distance between the model and the original. This transcendence relies on rhetorics of disembodiment, [End Page 77] immortality, and extra-human reproductive and generative powers within virtual spaces. Such spaces include scholarly and technical essays about VR or cyberspace, science fiction, advertisements for VR games, VR game narratives, and other advertising copy that borrows from current discourses of virtuality. My discussion takes place in a field crowded with talk of the death of logocentrism and the end of phonocentric culture. 1 Derrida has written that “scientific language [e.g. computer code] challenges intrinsically and with increasing profundity the ideal of phonetic writing” [Grammatology 10], the logocentric relation of voice to mental experiences. Baudrillard writes mournfully that the “third-order” world of simulated simulacra, of hyper-reality, leaves “no room for any kind of transcendentalism” [310]. Baudrillard and Derrida write with differing affects of the same effect—the waning or death of the foundation of Western notions of transcendence. In this tradition, transcendence commences with the penetration of the self by a supra-enlivened Other, whether that other be a king, a god, nature, the voice of logos, the Law, or an abstracted version of vitality itself. Particularly, I question the persistent coupling of rhetorics of transcendence with rhetorics of addiction. My initial point will be that following the established Western logocentric tradition, rhetorical relationships of addiction between VR users and VR narratives are the “software” with which hyper-real transcendence is produced and sustained. In other words, VR demands, as the price of transcendence, that the user become of the medium... (shrink)

Paul Elmer More's philosophy was self-styled ‘dualism’, and because developed initially from a student's enthusiasm instigated by a book on Manicheism, has often been misinterpreted. In this paper, on the basis of More's long development, I shall try to survey the nuances of his ‘dualism’ or ‘dualisms’, the various aspects of ‘dualism’ which he developed largely through case studies of thinkers of the past. In a significant way, to parody William James, the Shelburne Essays might well be called ‘The Varieties (...) of Dualistic Experience’, and of course for More ‘dualistic’ was virtually a synonym for ‘religious’. Out of these studies issued a Christian Platonism, or more precisely, a philosophy of the Incarnation, particularly in Christ the Word . The subsequent volume in a series called ‘The Greek Tradition: From the Death of Socrates to the Council of Chalcedon’ is The Catholic Faith . Although More called his dualism ‘absolute’, and it is sometimes presented as ‘absolute dualism’, the ‘sacramental idea’ at the heart of Christianity is said to rest ‘ultimately upon a dualistic conception of the world, in accordance with which matter and spirit are essentially distinct yet mutually interdependent. It implies on the one side that matter can be indefinitely adapted to spiritual uses, and on the other side that spirit requires now, and, so far as our knowledge and imagination reach, will always require the aid of some sort of corporeal instruments. It points to a divine purpose unfolding itself in a continuous process wherein the stuff of existence is…transmuted into an ever finer medium of order and beauty and righteousness and joy. (shrink)

Cet essai cherche à faire de la complémentarité entre énergie-idée, structure et fonction, et autres couples de concepts, la base d'une nouvelle ontologie qui puisse résoudre les conflits entre les pôles de description « mental » et « physique », entre la vérité mathématique et la vérité empirique et entre la mécanique quantique et la théorie de la relativité comme formes rivales d'explication scientifique. L'auteur y plaide en faveur de la fermeture déductive de l'univers à la lumière de la relation (...) logique entre le nombre et l'alphabet . Il y présente la réalité et l'autonomie conceptuelle des idées comme une alternative au platonisme et à d'autres idéologies. Il dispose de fausses interprétations, malentendus, et objections au moyen du dialogue.Conjugacy between energy-idea, structure and function, and other concept pairs is made the basis for a new ontology which resolves the conflicts between "mental" and "physical" poles of description, between mathematical and empirical truth, and between quantum mechanics and relativity theory as rival forms of scientific explanation. The deductive closure of the universe is argued for, in light of the logical connection between number and the alphabet . The reality and the conceptual autonomy of ideas are presented as an alternative to Platonism and other ideologies. Mistaken interpretations, misunderstandings and objections are handled through the medium of dialogue. (shrink)

This Tractatus’s engagement with the issue of the nature of truth and falsity emerged from engagement with Russell. This engagement reverberated through the Vienna Circle and in particular affected Gödel. The Tractatus’s “elementary sentences” must be seen against the backdrop of Russell’s “multiple relation theory of judgment”, his theory of truth in Principia Mathematica, which Wittgenstein discussed at length with Russell in 1912–1913 and Gödel studied in 1929–1932. Russell’s approach was directed against both Idealism and William James’s pragmatist view of (...) truth. It aimed at a direct treatment of the distinction between truth and falsity in terms of particular, logically simple beliefs (judgments lacking in truth-functional and quantification complexity). Schlick rejected Russell’s view in favor of his more holistic correspondence theory, one which, however, tipped easily into pragmatism, conventionalism and verificationism. The Tractatus begins, rather, with Russell’s bottom-up approach truth, and then draws in two further ideas: (1) The need for a medium of representation and (2) The importance of modality (possibility and necessity) to logic. This approach was developed further in his later work, i.e., Philosophical Investigations.Aware of the Tractatus and Russell’s engagement with Wittgenstein on truth, Gödel continued to engage with Russell’s multiple relation theory of truth and Principia philosophically up through 1944. The parallel yet distinct engagements of Gödel and Wittgenstein with Russell on truth (and Vienna positivism) show that each regarded Russell’s view as requiring amendment. However, their philosophical differences with one another are not merely to be understood in terms of the dichotomy between conventionalism (the usual view of Wittgenstein) and Platonism (the usual view of Gödel). They must rather be seen to emerge from the original approach to truth we find in Russell. (shrink)

This essay argues that what makes Michel Foucault’s oeuvre not only stand apart but also cohere is an assiduous philosophical practice taking the form of an ongoing yet concrete self-modification in the medium of thought. Part I gives an account of three essential aspects of Foucault’s conception of philosophical activity. Beginning with his famous characterization of philosophy in terms of ascēsis, it moves on to articulate his characterization of philosophical practice as a distinct form of meditation, differing from both (...) Cartesian meditation and Hegelian meditation, as it aims to stand vigil for the day to come and operates as a preface to transgression. Part II begins the articulation of crucial traits left implicit in this understanding of philosophy by turning to Foucault’s in-depth investigation of philosophy in Antiquity during his lectures at the Collège de France in the 1980s. First, it develops how philosophy here begins to constitute and distinguish itself by establishing itself as an activity that has a privileged relationship to truth and truth-telling as an unremitting, existentially determining challenge for the philosopher. Further, it instantiates how Platonism elaborates the need for a sustained ‘auto-ascetic’ ethical non-compliant differentiation as the condition of possibility for accessing and stating truth, and then describes how the assertion of an ethical differentiation and attitude in Cynicism takes the form of an insistent combat for another world in this world. Finally, it underlines how the ethical-practical philosophical work upon oneself in Antiquity is developed in an ongoing critical and political exchange with others. Part III indicates how ethical differentiation according to Foucault remains an essential precondition for the practice of philosophy and is further developed in the modern age. This is particularly perspicuous in Kant’s determination of the Enlightenment, in the attitude of modernity exemplified by Baudelaire, and in the history of revolt since the beginning of early Modernity. On this background, Part IV develops how philosophy as an ongoing meditative practice of self-modification leads to an affirmative critique, confirming the virtuality of this world in order to investigate the potentiality in the examined. In this manner, the essay presents Foucault’s philosophical practice as well as an outline of the history of ideas of a seemingly alternate, yet still agenda-setting conception of philosophical practice today. (shrink)

This essay argues that what makes Michel Foucault’s oeuvre not only stand apart but also cohere is an assiduous philosophical practice taking the form of an ongoing yet concrete self-modification in the medium of thought. Part I gives an account of three essential aspects of Foucault’s conception of philosophical activity. Beginning with his famous characterization of philosophy in terms of ascēsis, it moves on to articulate his characterization of philosophical practice as a distinct form of meditation, differing from both (...) Cartesian meditation and Hegelian meditation, as it aims to stand vigil for the day to come and operates as a preface to transgression. Part II begins the articulation of crucial traits left implicit in this understanding of philosophy by turning to Foucault’s in-depth investigation of philosophy in Antiquity during his lectures at the Collège de France in the 1980s. First, it develops how philosophy here begins to constitute and distinguish itself by establishing itself as an activity that has a privileged relationship to truth and truth-telling as an unremitting, existentially determining challenge for the philosopher. Further, it instantiates how Platonism elaborates the need for a sustained ‘auto-ascetic’ ethical non-compliant differentiation as the condition of possibility for accessing and stating truth, and then describes how the assertion of an ethical differentiation and attitude in Cynicism takes the form of an insistent combat for another world in this world. Finally, it underlines how the ethical-practical philosophical work upon oneself in Antiquity is developed in an ongoing critical and political exchange with others. Part III indicates how ethical differentiation according to Foucault remains an essential precondition for the practice of philosophy and is further developed in the modern age. This is particularly perspicuous in Kant’s determination of the Enlightenment, in the attitude of modernity exemplified by Baudelaire, and in the history of revolt since the beginning of early Modernity. On this background, Part IV develops how philosophy as an ongoing meditative practice of self-modification leads to an affirmative critique, confirming the virtuality of this world in order to investigate the potentiality in the examined. In this manner, the essay presents Foucault’s philosophical practice as well as an outline of the history of ideas of a seemingly alternate, yet still agenda-setting conception of philosophical practice today. (shrink)

(From editorial:) This volume aims to refute the disparaging image of scholastic philosophy as a rather homogeneous tradition of commentaries on Aristotle lacking in originality. Although Aristotelianism was, of course, a very important philosophical paradigm among the scholastics, their works also evince many features and tenets of Platonic or Augustinian origin. Several issues characteristic for Platonism and Augustinianism are discussed in this volume – for example, the role of attention in perception, the extramissionist theory of vision, the metaphysics of (...) light, the illumination theory, the fi rst-person perspective, and self-refl ection. The topics investigated primarily in Aristotelianism include the ontology of sensibles, their causal effi cacy, the role of the medium, and the distinction between the internal senses. (shrink)

One of the most striking features of the rhetoric of philosophy in the West has been its wide-scale employment of the dialogue form. The dialogues of Plato are normative not only in the sense Whitehead gave them, that they constitute the text of which our philosophical history is a series of footnotes. But they also provide the ideal of philosophical discourse. Philosophy ought to be public and spoken. I take it that this choice of dialogue is not some mere dramatic (...) artifice, chosen for aesthetic reasons. Rather I think the medium here is part of the message and that dialogue says something about philosophy itself. That is, once we have learned to dialogue and to think dialogically, we have taken a philosophical position, in advance of whatever the dialogue may be said to contain. But otherwise, we are Platonists once we dialogue, whatever degree of adherence we may claim to his metaphysics or to his theory of knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 311-312 [Access article in PDF] Hill, Claire Ortiz and Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock. Husserl or Frege? Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. Pp. xiv + 315. Cloth, $39.95. Analytic philosophy is rooted in Frege; phenomenology, in Husserl: or so goes the old, old story. Most philosophers now recognize that Husserl has a role to play in analysis' roots, and (...) Frege in phenomenology's. Hill and Haddock try to show that Husserl's role in analysis' roots is larger than is now recognized, and to show that Husserl has much of relevance to say about matters currently central in analysis.Hill and Haddock tag-team the topic. Chapters are written now by one, now by the other. A common theme is: "Look, Husserl's bested Frege here!" One chapter is entitled "To be a Fregean or To be a Husserlian?" and the book pushes vigorously in the Husserlian direction. There are several chapters devoted to sense and reference, Fregean and Husserlian. There are chapters on logical abstraction and on the philosophy (primarily Husserlian) of mathematics. Other figures, such as Cantor and Hilbert, also put in appearances.The book's primary merit is in revealing how much of interest Husserl has to say about matters currently central in analysis—particularly in the philosophy of logic/language and in the philosophy of mathematics. There are also interesting extensions of Husserl's views, carefully kept Husserlian, that are worthy of attention: extensions of his views on the philosophy of mathematics and his Platonism. The book's primary demerit is in the often flat-footed readings of Frege that are offered. (In this respect, the book returns the disfavor of the flat-footed readings of Husserl offered by more analytically-minded philosophers.) Nowhere are the names of Warren Goldfarb, Thomas Ricketts or Cora Diamond mentioned—the philosophers who have provided a reading of Frege that makes him a much more interesting foil for Husserl. On the reading I have in mind, Frege is not a Platonist, and he does not have a truth-conditional semantics. Further, on this reading, Frege's ontological categories supervene on logical ones, and his ontology does not ground or explain objectivity. Instead of offering a sematic theory, on this reading Frege is denying that there is any coign of vantage for the offering of such. But this Frege, or this reading of Frege, makes no appearance in the book. Another noteworthy omission—related, I think, to the omission of the alternative reading of Frege—is any extended discussion of a crucial difference in the ways that Frege and Husserl thought of language: Frege thought of language as the universal medium, Husserl of language as a calculus. (Jaakko Hintikka both popularized this distinction and suggested that Husserl had the [End Page 311] calculus conception.) Conceived as the universal language, language is inescapable. Husserl's conception leads him to think that he can escape language, step behind it and survey it. If this crucial difference is not kept in mind, it is difficult, I think, to see the various disagreements between Frege and Husserl at their proper depth.For example, neglecting this difference makes it hard to see the parallel difference between Frege and Husserl over the appropriate conception of logic. Since Frege thinks of logic as universal (first and foremost), he would reject Husserl project of providing a geneology for logic as deeply confused. For Frege, there can be no grounding of logic, no justifying of logic from behind. Logical investigation is, for Frege, investigating the mind. There is no other type of investigation—no matter how transcendentally phenomenological—that can subordinate logical investigation to it, or can usurp the title of the investigation of the mind. There is no experience—no matter how pre-predicative (what would Frege make of 'pre-predicative'?)—from which logic springs. Wittgenstein's Tractarian comment is thoroughly Fregean: "Logic precedes every experience—that something is so." (5.552)Still and all, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the issues it discusses, since... (shrink)

Problems concerning scientists’ uses of representations have received quite a bit of attention recently. The focus has been on how such representations get their contents and on just what those contents are. Less attention has been paid to what makes certain kinds of scientific representations different from one another and thus well suited to this or that epistemic end. This article considers the latter question with particular focus on the distinction between images and graphs on the one hand and descriptions (...) and related representations on the other. *Received January 2008; revised September 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper sees me clarify, elaborate, and defend the conclusions reached in my ‘Musical Works as Eternal Types’ in the wake of objections raised by Robert Howell, R. A. Sharpe, and Saam Trivedi. In particular, I claim that the thesis that musical works are discovered rather than created by their composers is obligatory once we commit ourselves to thinking of works of music as types, and once we properly understand the ontological nature of types and properties. The central argument of (...) the paper is ‘the argument from the eternal existence of properties’, its moral being that types are eternal entities because they inherit their existence conditions from their eternally existent property-associates. The two key premises in this argument—that properties exist eternally, and that a type exists just in case its property-associate exists—are motivated and then defended at length. (shrink)

Mark Balaguer's Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics presents an intriguing new brand of platonism, which he calls plenitudinous platonism, or more colourfully, full-blooded platonism. In this paper, I argue that Balaguer's attempts to characterise full-blooded platonism fail. They are either too strong, with untoward consequences we all reject, or too weak, not providing a distinctive brand of platonism strong enough to do the work Balaguer requires of it.

In this paper, I discuss the prospects of nominalistic scientific realism and show that it fails on many counts. In section 2, I discuss what is required for NSR to get off the ground. In section 3, I question the idea that theories have well-defined nominalistic content and the idea that causal activity is a necessary condition for commitment to the reality of an entity. In section 4, I challenge the notion of nominalistic adequacy of theories.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Discuter de leurs propres doctrines selon une méthode “scolaire”, qui consiste à retrouver les doctrines de Platon afin de construire par ce moyen leur propre pensée, est une caractéristique commune aux médio-platoniciens. Un tel procédé est donc conditionné par l’exégèse de Platon ; d’ailleurs, l’exégèse elle-même devient un objet de discussion durant le moyen-platonisme, où surgit le problème très controversé de la meilleure interprétation de Platon. Une enquête sur la présence du Phèdre – qui était l’un des dialogues les plus (...) lus de Platon – chez ces philosophes doit prendre en compte diverses méthodes d’interprétation mise en place, notamment l’interprétation grammaticale, l’interprétation physique et l’interprétation épistémologique, que cet article s’efforce de mettre en lumière. (shrink)

I introduce an argument for Platonism based on intra-mathematical explanation: the explanation of one mathematical fact by another. The argument is important for two reasons. First, if the argument succeeds then it provides a basis for Platonism that does not proceed via standard indispensability considerations. Second, if the argument fails it can only do so for one of three reasons: either because there are no intra-mathematical explanations, or because not all explanations are backed by dependence relations, or because (...) some form of noneism-the view according to which non-existent entities possess properties and stand in relations-is true. The argument thus forces a choice between nominalism without noneism, intra-mathematical explanation and a backing conception of explanation. You can have any two, but not all three. (shrink)

Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of (...) Platonism, as a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism. (shrink)

This article situates Roger Scruton in the tradition of Christian Platonism. It begins by revisiting Scruton’s reluctance to pursue theological speculation as it has been traditionally practised in...

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 197 Seiten: 203-231.

The aim of this paper is to deeply rethink the traditional notion of “ideological emendation”. By taking Taurus T27 as a test-case, I shall emphasise that Taurus’ intervention on Timaeus 27c5 is the result of a conjecture, and that such an emendation meets the requirements for a philological conjecture on Plato’s text. Indeed, Taurus’ fragment, which is usually taken as a typical example of “ideological emendation”, only reflects an effort to recover what Plato actually wrote, and is nothing but a (...) textual emendation. Accordingly, the ideological core of such an emendation is what must lie at the basis of any conjecture, that is an attempt to re-establish (what is assumed to be) Plato’s text in accordance with his consistent doctrine. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to draw attention to a conflict between two popular views about time: Arthur Prior’s proposal for treating tense on the model of modal logic, and the ‘Platonic’ thesis that some objects (God, forms, universals, or numbers) exist eternally.1 I will argue that anyone who accepts the former ought to reject the latter.

“The actual world” is a familiar term in possible-worlds discourse. A desirable account of the nature and structure of the actual world that coheres with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo will include a theory of truth-making, account for the dynamics of the universe in relation to the doctrine of creation, say how so-called abstract objects are related to God, and preclude the Russell Paradox. By emending Alvin Plantinga’s theistic modal realism, this paper recovers a view of the actual world (...) as God’s plan and briefly states how the metaphysical theory that results meets these desiderata. (shrink)