What are the relationships between philosophy and the history of philosophy, the history of science and the philosophy of science? This selection of essays by Lorenz Krüger (1932-1994) presents exemplary studies on the philosophy of John Locke and Immanuel Kant, on the history of physics and on the scope and limitations of scientific explanation, and a realistic understanding of science and truth. In his treatment of leading currents in 20th century philosophy, Krüger presents new and original arguments for a deeper (...) understanding of the continuity and dynamics of the development of scientific theory. These result in significant consequences for the claim of the sciences that they understand reality in a rational manner. The case studies are complemented by fundamental thoughts on the relationship between philosophy, science, and their common history. (shrink)

In this book, linguists and philosophers combine to offer a unique insight not only into Grice's contribution to philosophy of language, but on his theories of natural and non-natural meaning, implicatures and the semantic-pragmatic distinction.

Within a literary ontology, YHWH in the Hebrew Bible is technically also a fictional entity or object. In Hebrew Bible scholarship, a variety of philosophical issues surrounding fiction have received sustained and in-depth attention. However, the mainstream research on these matters tends to focus on the philosophical foundations of or backgrounds to a particular literary theory, rather than on metaphysical puzzles as encountered in the philosophy of fiction proper. To fill this gap, the present article seeks to provide a meta-theoretical (...) overview of the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on the metaphysics of fictional objects. Three views are discussed, namely possibilism, Meinongianism and creationism. Each view's theory is introduced and critically appropriated with reference to what is implied to be an answer to the question of what exactly the biblical character YHWH can meaningfully be said to be in the context of the metaphysics of fictional objects. In this way, the present study also goes beyond the traditional concern with the nature of God in Old Testament theology. (shrink)

In the ancient world, precious stones (valuable stones and hard substances excluding gold, silver and copper) were distinguished in terms of appearance (beauty, colour), function (durability) and cost (rarity). As a result, there is considerable difficulty in determining how to correlate the inventory of lexical terms referring to precious stones in the ancient Near East with modern mineralogical identifications. In this article, the etymology and identification of precious stones in the Bible are revisited using editorial theory and complexity thinking. The (...) starting point for lexicographical identification is the breastpiece of the high priest (Ex 28:17–20; 39:10–14) with its 12 precious stones and the translation of the Hebrew terms in the Septuagint. In the light of the considerable writings in the Hellenistic world on precious stones, especially Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and Theophrastus’ On Stones, the Septuagint provides the key for the etymology and identification of the precious stones in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Contribution: The Septuagint translation of the precious stones in the high priest’s breastpiece is the Rosetta Stone for the identification all of the precious stones in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. The subsequent translations of the terms indicate changes or substitutions of referents and their meanings. (shrink)

The first Ukrainian translation of J. Thomasius’ work “Nucleus disputationis de plagio literario maxime theoreticus, thesibus paucis & brevibus comprehensus”.

An architect and architectural philosopher, Berlage created a series of buildings and a body of writings that probed the problems and possibilities of Modernism. His principal texts, given here in English for the first time, present a vital chapter in the history of European Modernism.

The intuitive notion of a statistical explanation has been explicated in different ways; recently it has even been claimed that there are no statistical explanations at all. In an attempt to clarify the disputed issue, the approaches adopted by Hempel, by Jeffrey, Salmon and Greeno, and by Stegmuller are analyzed critically, as far as they are concerned with the explanation of particular events. A solution of the controversy is proposed on the basis of a concept of explanation which refers essentially (...) to a causal analysis of the explanandum. The possibility of statistical explanations, then, becomes contingent upon the existence of indeterministic causation. In conclusion, therefore, a conception of causality is sketched which shows that indeterminism and causal connection are compatible, at least from an epistemological point of view, so that statistical explanation can be seen to represent a specific and possibly irreducible scientific activity. (shrink)

This book offers a discussion of the kalām cosmological argument, and presents a defence of a version of that argument after critically evaluating three of the most important versions of the argument. It argues that, since the versions of the kalām cosmological argument defended by Philoponus (c. 490–c. 570), al-Ghazālī (1058– 1111), and the contemporary philosopher, William Lane Craig, all deny the possibility of the existence of an actual infinite, these arguments are incompatible with Platonism and the view that God (...) foreknows an endless future. This conclusion, however, is not a problem for the proponents of the kalām cosmological argument, for the book shows how the argument can be defended without denying the possibility of the actual infinite. -/- In order to offer a comprehensive analysis of Philoponus and al-Ghazālī’s cosmological arguments, the book draws on recent English translations of some of their works. Next, the book advances a detailed argument against the popular argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite. Finally, the book offers a unique defence of the kalām cosmological argument by defending philosophical arguments for a beginning of time that do not deny the actual infinite, evaluating which hypothesis best explains the discoveries of modern cosmology, and offering an argument in support of the premise that, if the universe came into existence, then God brought it into existence. (shrink)

Mitchell: Could we begin by discussing the problem of public art? When we spoke a few weeks ago, you expressed some uneasiness with the notion of public art, and I wonder if you could expand on that a bit.Kruger: Well, you yourself lodged it as the “problem” of public art and I don’t really find it problematic inasmuch as I really don’t give it very much thought. I think on a broader level I could say that my “problem” is (...) with categorization and naming: how does one constitute art and how does one constitute a public? Sometimes I think that if architecture is a slab of meat, then so-called public art is a piece of garnish laying next to it. It has a kind of decorative function. Now I’m not saying that it always has to be that way—at all—and I think perhaps that many of my colleagues are working to change that now. But all too often, it seems the case.Mitchell: Do you think of your own art, insofar as it’s engaged with the commercial public sphere—that is, with advertising, publicity, mass media, and other technologies for influencing a consumer public—that it is automatically a form of public art? Or does it stand in opposition to public art?Kruger: I have a question for you: what is a public sphere which is an uncommercial public sphere? Barbara Kruger is an artist who works with words and pictures. W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry, is Gaylord Donnelly Distinguished Professor of English and art at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Gerhard Krüger s’interroge sur la genèse, le sens – tout autant philosophique qu’historique – et les résultats de la philosophie romantique. Il s’efforce de démontrer que le romantisme est une réaction à une décision antérieure qui avait fondé l’ Aufklärung : le retrait de la pensée dans le for intérieur de la conscience réflexive, la séparation entre le Selbst pensant et le corps propre, la communauté politique et Dieu. Le romantisme part du constat d’une douloureuse absence de contenu dans l’existence (...) moderne. L’intention qui anime la philosophie romantique dans son ensemble – chez Fichte, Schelling et Hegel est de soulager cette douleur en rendant par divers moyens à l’homme moderne ce dont la fondation de l’ Aufklärung avait exigé qu’il se sépare. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 196-209, March 2022.

Dans ce texte, Gerhard Krüger cherche à déterminer la nature du problème philosophique de l’histoire et/ou de l’historicité. L’histoire est-elle devenue – comme beaucoup de contemporains de Krüger le prétendent, s’affligeant de leur propre impuissance à surmonter une crise de l’historicisme qui met selon eux en danger l’être-homme de la manière la plus radicale – notre problème philosophique le plus urgent, le plus compréhensif et le plus difficile? Et si, comme le suspecte Krüger, le problème de l’histoire n’est pas aussi (...) urgent, compréhensif et obscur qu’on le croit, qu’est-ce qui a conduit la philosophie contemporaine à lui accorder ce statut? (shrink)

In the first part the text specifies Hannah Arendt's philosophical approach in three dimensions: a) She used Max Scheler's new phenomenology of living beings . b) She transformed Karl Jaspers' extraordinary limit situations of human conduct into anthropological conditions. c) Such conditions are questions that do need answers in forms of "vita active" and of "vita contemplative". Arendt moved from Max Scheler's Philosophical Anthropology to her own historical conception of the human condition inside the heterogeneity of our Occidental tradition. The (...) second part of this paper gives an overview about her network of concepts that enables a comparison of Occidental cultures via the change of dominance in relations of vita active and vita contemplative. The third part situates her approach between those of Michel Foucault and Charles Taylor in a debate that is needed at present. Her historic-phenomenological anthropology allows her a critique of modernity without a hermeneutic circle and without an anthropological circle. (shrink)

In this essay, we demonstrate that in addition to the Revised Standard Version and its revisions as part of the linear emergence of the Tyndale–King James Version tradition in the 20th and 21st centuries, there are also alternative revisions and retranslations of the King James Version (KJV) of 1611 as literal or word-for-word translations, which emerge as divergent branches. The revisions of the American Standard Version (ASV) (1901) emerged in the following branches, namely the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and (...) its revisions, The Amplified Bible (AB) and its revisions, as well as The Living Bible, Paraphrased and its retranslation, the New Living Translation (NLT). Then there are revisions that emerged as alternatives to the Revised Standard Version (1946–1952/1971) by reverting to the King James Revised (Blayney) Edition (1769) as their incipient text rather than the ASV, namely The Modern King James Version (MKJV) (and similar revisions), The New King James Version (NKJV) and the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. Finally, there are retranslations within the Tyndale–King James Version tradition, namely the Contemporary English Version (CEV), and the Common English Bible (CEB). The diversity reflects the search for individual identity to satisfy particular reader expectations in an age of digital-media interpretive culture featuring broad universal values.Contribution: Instead of viewing the revisions and retranslations within the Tyndale–King James Version tradition since the second half of the 20th century as new and independent, it is demonstrated that the various branches and their versions rather continue the emergence of the pre-20th century translation complex within this tradition to satisfy particular reader expectations. (shrink)

In this essay, it is demonstrated that the inception of the English Bible tradition began with the oral–aural Bible in Old English translated from Latin incipient texts and emerged through a continuous tradition of revision and retranslation in interaction with contemporary social reality. Each subsequent translation achieved a more complex state by adapting to the emergence of incipient text knowledge (rediscovery of Hebrew and Greek texts), emergence of the (meaning-making) knowledge of the incipient languages (Latin, Hebrew and Greek), language change (...) (Old, Middle and Modern English), mode of communication (hearing-dominant and text-dominant), style (literal or word-for-word) and products (oral-aural Bible, handwritten manuscript Bible and printed Bible). Historical sources indicate that there were translations of portions of the English Bible since 700 CE as handwritten manuscript Bibles in Old and Middle English and in print in Modern English – even before the retranslation associated with Tyndale (1526) and despite ecclesiastical opposition since 1408. This version and its revisions (1530–1531, 1534) are followed by subsequent revisions (Coverdale Bible, Matthew’s Bible, Great Bible, Geneva Bible and Bishop’s Bible). The next revision was the King James Version (1611), which replaced all its predecessors, and which was never replaced for the next four centuries – not even by its revisions.Contribution: Contrary to the fragmentation caused by ordering individual English Bibles either by period (e.g. 20th century) or according to their features (e.g. literal), it is demonstrated that the history of English Bible translation emerged rather as a translation complex, and its history must be understood in this way. (shrink)

In this article we examine how Qumran Hebrew can contribute to our knowledge of historical Hebrew linguistics. The premise of this paper is that Qumran Hebrew reflects a distinct stage in the development of Hebrew which sets it apart from Biblical Hebrew. It is further assumed that these unique features are able to assist us to understand the nature of the development of Biblical Hebrew in a more precise way. Evidence from the syntax of participial negation at Qumran as opposed (...) to Biblical Hebrew provides evidence for this claim. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 17-21 [Access article in PDF] Self-Injury:Symbolic Sacrifice/Self-Assertion Renders Clinicians Helpless Christa Krüger Keywords feminism, iconic communication, moral conflict, oppression, psychiatrist/psychologist roles, societal norms. POTTER'S PAPER CONSIDERS self-injury in women diagnosed with borderline person ality disorder (BPD) to be a form of body modification where the body is used to communicate meaning. She touches on symbolism as a possible explanatory theory for this sort (...) of self-injury. She also refers to the culture of body commodification as underlying self-injury. She then argues that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own interpretations about the meaning of the self-injury. Giving uptake is a virtuous approach for ethical interactions with people diagnosed with BPD who self-injure, and it aims to preserve the communicator's integrity, along with other benefits. Potter offers five maxims for giving uptake properly. However, I shall argue that giving uptake can be very difficult for clinicians, and that an appreciation of this difficulty depends on an expansion and linkage of some of the theories that she touched on. Self-injury is revisited experimentally as a double-edged sword of symbolic sacrifice and iconic-symbolic self-assertion. This revisiting aims to illustrate how clinicians might be caught in a double bind, where giving uptake properly might be very difficult if not more or less doomed to fail.Potter's paper starts by situating self-injury in a broader discourse of body modifications. In this discourse the body is being used as a text, a tool to communicate meaning. The meaning that is communicated might be difficult or impossible to articulate otherwise (by using words, for example). The meaning of the communication is embedded in a context of social, cultural, religious, political, and other norms. Potter explores possible interpretations of the meaning of self-injury in women with BPD, including an interpretation of self-injury as symbolic sacrifice. She suggests that a cultural understanding/nonunderstanding of the meaning of a particular instance of self-injury is an important determinant of whether such self-injury is considered pathological/nonpathological. She then shifts the focus to the present-day culture in which women's bodies are commodified and objectified, and where women become alienated from their bodies. Self-injury might then be interpreted as an attempt to re-own one's body as a part of oneself. This re-owning is a socially transgressive act that violates repressive norms for the bodies of women. [End Page 17]Notwithstanding these possible significations of self-injury, Potter then argues that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own interpretations, instead of jumping to conclusions (my oversimplification) about the meaning of the self-injury. Giving uptake, then, constitutes a framework for ethical interactions with people diagnosed with BPD who self-injure, and it aims to preserve the communicator's integrity. Potter offers five maxims for giving uptake properly.At the risk of losing their essence, I translate the five maxims for practicing psychiatrists as involving the following: critical self-reflection about one's own conceptual framework and cultural context; being receptive to the patient's conceptual framework and cultural context; giving the patient the benefit of the doubt; being open to the emergence of new meanings of self-injury; and keeping a range of possible interpretative options open, rather than insisting on having the final word. We should try to understand what the world looks like from the patient's position. All of this requires some moral effort.Potter describes a number of benefits that result from giving uptake. Giving uptake is a crucial corrective to the human tendencies of becoming overly committed to prevailing societal norms and conceptual schemes (stuck in our ways), of imposing our views on others, and of silencing or distorting the communications of our patients. Giving uptake allows clinicians to be dialogically responsive and to treat patients with respect and dignity. Giving uptake fosters trust in a therapeutic relationship where clinicians do not exploit their patients' vulnerabilities. Giving... (shrink)

Duhem is commonly held to have founded his view of history of science as continuous on the ‘metaphsical assertion’ of natural classification. With the help of a strict distinction between formal and material characterization of natural classification I try to show that this imputation is problematic, if not simply incorrect. My analysis opens alternative perspectives on Duhem's talk of continuity, the ideal form of theories, and the rôle of ‘bon sens’; moreover it emphasizes some aspects of Duhem's realism that play (...) an important part in his philosophy of science. (shrink)

Evolutionary Life History Theory (LHT) is a powerful framework that can be used for understanding behavioral strategies as contingent adaptations to environmental conditions. Del Giudice uses LHT as a foundation for describing the attachment process as an evolved psychological system which evaluates life conditions and chooses reproductive strategies appropriate in the developmental environment, integrating findings across several literatures.

This paper intends to explore the prospects of a realistic view of scientific explanation, according to which the objects and structures occurring in the explanation must have real referents. Theories involving probability either lose their explanatory function or become counter-examples to this view, if real referents of probabilistic notions do not exist. It is argued that such referents can be found for statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics: the overall structure of mass phenomena that renders them capable of irreversible developments and (...) equilibrium states, and the inherent propensities of elementary systems. The present lack of a theoretical connection between these two referents impedes the recognition of the reality of probability in nature. (shrink)

In this article, we evaluate various responses to a noteworthy objection, namely, the infinite God objection to the kalām cosmological argument. As regards this objection, the proponents of the kalām argument face a dilemma—either an actual infinite cannot exist or God cannot be infinite. More precisely, this objection claims that God’s omniscience entails the existence of an actual infinite with God knowing an actually infinite number of future events or abstract objects, such as mathematical truths. We argue, however, that the (...) infinite God objection is based on two questionable assumptions, namely, that it is possible for an omniscient being to know an actually infinite number of things and that there exist an actually infinite number of abstract objects for God to know. (shrink)

Editio princeps of Peter Thomae's De ente. It is generally acknowledged by historians of philosophy that medieval philosophers made key contributions to the discussion of the problem of being and the fundamental issues of metaphysics. The Quaestiones de ente of Peter Thomae, composed at Barcelona ca. 1325, is the longest medieval work devoted to the problem of being as well as the most systematic. The work is divided into three parts: the concept of being, the attributes of being, and the (...) descent of being. Many of the philosophical tools that Peter pioneered in this work, such as the distinction between objective being and subjective being, and various modes of quiddities and abstraction, were adopted by later thinkers and discussed up to the eighteenth century. Apart from defending and further extending Scotistic doctrine, one of Peter's achievements in the De ente is to fully reconcile Scotistic univocity with the traditional doctrine of the analogy of being. In addition to the critical edition, the present volume also contains a detailed introduction and study of the philosophy and the manuscripts of the De ente, with an appendix containing the Question on univocity by Francis Marbres (John the Canon), who copied extensively from the De ente. (shrink)

In a recent article, Andrew Ter Ern Loke raises several objections to Jacobus Erasmus and Anné Hendrik Verhoef’s exposition and response to the so-called ‘Infinite God Objection’ to the kalām cosmological argument. According to this objection, the argument against the possibility of an actual infinite brings into question the view that God’s knowledge is infinite. Erasmus and Verhoef’s solution to this objection, which Loke criticises, depends on an unusual account of omniscience. In this article, I respond to Loke and (...) show that his objections are unsuccessful. (shrink)

In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu demonstrates how queer Marxist critics in China use queer theory as a non-liberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation, and in doing so, he revises current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 2. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 341 Petrus Liu Thinking Gender in the Age of the Beijing Consensus Originally formulated to dispute biologically deterministic explanations of women’s subordination, the analytical distinction between sex and gender has developed in unexpected ways in transitions from one language to another. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from John Money’s sexological writings to Simone de Beauvoir’s (...) dictum, “One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one,” Anglophone feminists in the 1970s developed the distinction between sex (understood as anatomy) and gender (understood as social identity) to argue that a woman’s biological sex ought not dictate the kind of work she should do or the kind of life she should live.1 In her landmark 1975 essay, “The Traffic in Women,” Gayle Rubin coined the phrase “sex/gender system” to examine “the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.”2 In more recent years, however, the distinction 1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Paris: Gallimard, 1949; New York: Knopf, 1993), 281. Citations refer to the Knopf edition. For an account of feminist reformulations of John Money and Robert Stoller, see Jennifer Germon, Gender: A Genealogy of an Idea (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 2. Gayle S. Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 34. It is worth mentioning that sex in Rubin’s sex/gender system refers to sexual practice rather than the distinction between male and female. This understanding forms the basis of her theoretical disagreements with Judith Butler, who preserves the semantic ambiguity of sex (as 342 Petrus Liu between sex and gender has taken on an entirely different meaning as it comes to inform transgender movements and politics seeking to decouple a person’s sex assignment at birth from their future gender identity. At the same time, theories of intersectionality, women-of-color feminisms, and transnational feminisms have all developed their own theses of gender variability to contest the myth of the universal woman. The life of gender—in academic theory, politics, and social movements— has confounded the original intentions of its American theorists. It is clear that there is no singular or stable account of gender; rather, gender is always in a state of flux, incessantly rethought and reforged by the demands of an increasingly complex and asymmetric world.3 Gender is always a translation—from one discipline, context, or language to another—ineluctably intertwined with the geopolitical problems created by the violences of imperialism, colonialism, and transnational capitalism. The translation of gender into non-European languages, such as Chinese, raises questions about whether spaces previously resistant or exterior to world capitalism are now being assimilated and enfolded into the structure of neoliberal globalization defined by the Washington Consensus. Against this view, some critics maintain that China’s precipitous ascent presents an alternative model of development for the Global South called the Beijing Consensus. Considering how gender has entered different languages, including Chinese, to create new coinages that may at times appear as instruments of an imperial takeover, Judith Butler argues that the translation of gender actually offers a path of linguistic humility for English, a reminder that we cohabit a multilingual world in which no one ever owned the term.4 But how exactly do we describe that complex, multilingual world and how does gender both gender and sexuality) as the point of departure for a different kind of feminist inquiry. See Gayle Rubin with Judith Butler, “Interview: Sexual Traffic,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6, nos. 2–3 (1994): 67. 3. See Heather Love, ed. “Rethinking Sex.” Special issue, GLQ 17, no. 2 (2011): 1–221. This collection of essays conveys a sense of how Rubin’s methodological distinction between sex and gender has given rise to new ways of thinking across different disciplines about sex radicalism, crip sexuality, Black feminism, and sex trafficking. 4. Judith Butler, “Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism,” philoSOPHIA 9, no. 1 (Winter 2019). Petrus Liu 343 transform it? How is the translation of gender inflected by the material conditions... (shrink)

In The Specter of Materialism Petrus Liu examines what "materialism" means for progressive queer theory and Marxist approaches to China's postsocialist economy. Liu recasts the history of queer theory in light of the Beijing Consensus, arguing that North American queer theory's inability to sustain a materialist analysis is the result of its positioning of the United States, rather than China, as the focal point of contemporary global capitalism. Analyzing relations of gender and sexuality that have been reconfigured by China's (...) global capitalist accumulation-such as dagongmei (female migrant laborers in China's export-oriented sunbelt) and money boys (rural-to-urban sex workers)-Liu argues for a materialist queer theory that positions China at the center. (shrink)

Divine determinism, though affirmed by many Calvinists, implicates God in the decisions people make that ultimately damn them to the terrible destiny of hell. In this paper, the authors argue that this scenario is a problem for divine determinism. The article contends that determinism is inconsistent with God’s love and the Scriptures that explicitly state that God does not ‘desire’ anyone to go to hell. Even human love for others strongly suggests that God, who is ‘love’, will not determine anyone (...) to hell. On the other extreme, those who argue for universalism, though appealing to Scripture, often do so with questionable exegesis. (shrink)

Sex differences in mortality rates stem from genetic, physiological, behavioral, and social causes that are best understood when integrated in an evolutionary life history framework. This paper investigates the Male-to-Female Mortality Ratio (M:F MR) from external and internal causes and across contexts to illustrate how sex differences shaped by sexual selection interact with the environment to yield a pattern with some consistency, but also with expected variations due to socioeconomic and other factors.

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

In this article, I would like to clarify Austin's thesis that illocutionary acts are essentially conventional and to show, how this idea is connected with his concept of securing uptake. Contrary to what most critics believe, I will show that Austin provides a criterion characterising the nature of all illocutionary acts and allowing to distinguish them from perlocutionary acts.

METAPHYSICAL RESEARCH Herausgegeben von 1 Edited hv Uwe Meixner • Johanna Seibt Barry Smith • Daniel von Wachter Band I 1 Volume I ...