Armstrong famously argued in favour of introducing totality facts in our ontology. Contrary to fully negative (absence) facts, totality facts yield a theory of “moderate” or “partial” negativity, which allegedly provides an elegant solution to the truthmaking problem of negative claims and, at the same time, avoids postulating (many) first-order absences. Friends of totality facts argue that partial negativity is (i) tolerable vis-à-vis the Eleatic principle qua mark of the real, and (ii) achieves (...) a significant advantage in terms of ontological parsimony. But are totality facts, which are partially negative, really more ontologically acceptable than fully negative facts? In this paper, we argue that, comparatively, the case for totality facts is weaker than commonly assumed and that, ultimately, the answer is negative. (shrink)

Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, conceives the world as ‘the totality of facts’. Type-stratification threatens that conception : the totality of facts is an obvious example of an illegitimate totality. Wittgenstein’s notion of truthoperation evidently has some role to play in avoiding that threat, allowing propositions, and so facts, to constitute a single type. The paper seeks to explain that role in a way that integrates the ‘philosophical’ and ‘technical’ pressures on the notion of an (...) operation. (shrink)

John R. Searle claims that P.F. Strawson's well known objections to correspondence theories of truth can be side‐stepped, if we regard the correspondence theorist's facts as ‘conditions in the world’ rather than as complex objects. In response, I claim both that Searle's notion of a ‘condition in the world’ is obscure, and that such conditions cannot be the facts of a correspondence theorist on account of their being unsuited for truthmaking.The failure of Searle's attempt to come up with (...) a correspondence theory which evades Strawson's objections does not indicate that we should seek to formulate a correspondence theory in some other way. I argue that that the correspondence theorists's truthmaker axiom is improperly motivated, and, in the light of this, suggest that facts be treated as true propositions rather than as items which make propositions true. The article ends with a defence of this position against two recent objections. (shrink)

The paper offers a general critique of physicalism and of one variety of nonphysicalism, arguing that such theses are untenable. By distinguishing between the absolute conception of reality and the causal completeness of physics it shows that the 'explanatory gap' is not merely epistemic but metaphysical. It defends the essential subjectivity and unity of consciousness and its inseparability from a self-conscious autonomous rational and moral being. Casting a favourable light on dualism freed from misconceptions, it suggests that the only plausible (...) way forward in the search for an understanding of both physical and mental reality is a recognition of the mind as a metaphysically distinct entity. (shrink)

There has been a groundswell of interest in the account of modality that Kant sets forth in his pre-Critical Only Possible Argument. Andrew Chignell's reconstruction of Kant's theistic argument in terms of what he calls has a prima facie advantage in that it appears to be able to block the plurality objection (namely, that even if every modal fact presupposes some ground, this does not entail that all modal facts share the same ground). I argue that it is both (...) textually and philosophically problematic to interpret Kant's argument in terms of real harmony. Then, I set forth an alternative response to the plurality objection which does not require the adoption of the problematic notion of real harmony. Instead, I argue that the objection can be overcome by observing that the argument seeks to ground modal facts as a totality and that, according to Kant, such relations can be accounted for only by their schematization in a single intellect. (shrink)

In Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey offers a razor-sharp analysis of the split between public and private, fact and feelings.

The author argues for the existence of negative facts. The first section is devoted to an argument, grounded on truthmaker maximalism, that aims at demonstrating that negative facts must exist at least as false propositions’ falsemakers. In the second section, the author analyzes and criticizes several attempts to get rid of negative facts: the ones based on incompatibilities, absences, totality facts and polarities, as well as the ones based on various restrictions on truthmaker maximalism or (...) on the non-acceptance of facts as truthmakers. In particular, it is shown that an ontology that accepts negative facts is simpler than an ontology that denies their existence and that in general, many attempts to get rid of negative facts turn out to recognize the existence of such entities or of entities that are more mysterious than negative facts themselves. (shrink)

Pragmatic encroachment in epistemology is the idea that whether one knows some proposition depends on whether one can rely on it practically. Total pragmatic encroachment affirms that practical considerations of this sort encroach not just on knowledge but on all interesting normative epistemic statuses a belief might have. Ichikawa, Jarvis, and Rubin (2012) have argued that this stronger thesis conflicts with mainstream belief‐desire psychology. Worse still, they argue that attempting to defend the thesis gets one caught in vicious circularities. The (...) aim of this paper is to show that, if we are careful in how we understand the key idea of being sensitive to practical considerations, we can defend total pragmatic encroachment and avoid the circularities. In fact, depending on how it is understood, we can even square mainstream belief‐desire psychology with total pragmatic encroachment as well. (shrink)

Let us begin—as is fitting—with what is familiar. Now, familiar is by no means what ‘totalizing thinking’ is, but rather what ‘totalitarian’ means. Today this word rings in everyone’s ears, is common in public life—not so much as a descriptive, but more as a defamatory epithet. It brands political systems of our time which not only gave rise to horrifying consequences, but what is more spread terror through their form of domination. Now, rule by means of terror is in fact (...) no recent discovery; new here is rather the technique of the complete penetration of every expression of social life. Were the latter perhaps susceptible in a special way to such penetration? (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Marcel Mauss’s “Essay on the Gift” (1925) is not only intended to inaugurate a new paradigm on the terrain of ethnology and anthropology, but at the same time to make the gift a kind of novum organum of the social sciences and of moral and political philosophy itself. In the first part, I reconstructed the critique that M. Merleau-Ponty and C. Lefort have made to Lévi-Strauss’s “structuralist” reading of Mauss, and, in a second part, (...) I emphasised the importance that M. Hénaff assigned to the ceremonial gift of traditional societies as an intentional procedure of public mutual recognition between groups. But, using some of A. Caillé’s indications, I explain that this device of mutual recognition and alliance, characteristic of the gift cycle (giving/receiving/ reciprocating) also applies in modern societies whenever legal-political institutions become sclerotized and lose their legitimacy in the face of new actors in political action (newcomers or new arrivals, to use the Arendtian category of natality in a broad sense). (shrink)

Before the twentieth century, the Universe was usually imagined as a large spatially extended thing unfolding in time. The past was fixed and the future was open; unfolding was conceived as an asymmetric process of coming into being. Relativity introduced a new vision in which space and time are presented together as a single four-dimensional manifold of events. That, together with the fact that the fundamental laws of our classical theories are symmetric in time, made understanding why the past and (...) future present themselves so differently in our experience one of the central challenges of physics. The last two centuries have seen a great deal of progress in understanding various of the so-called arrows of time: the thermodynamic arrow, the cosmological arrow, the arrow of knowledge or information. There remains an outstanding piece of this puzzle that has seen little progress, one that Roger Penrose described in his beautiful paper Singularities and Time-Asymmetry in 1979 as: “The arrow most difficult to comprehend … namely the feeling of relentless forward temporal progression, according to which potentialities seem to be transformed into actualities.”I will propose that the insight needed to resolve the problem involves taking into account that we are part of the universe and that any attempt to model it as a totality involves self-reference. I will argue specifically that self-reference, against the background of a thermodynamic gradient, creates an instability in an embedded agent’s ability to know the future or even treat it as a potential object of knowledge. That instability captures the sense in which the future remains for her perpetually open and the passage of time resolves openness into the fixity of fact. (shrink)

In The Principles of Art, R. G. Collingwood pursues, on the one hand, a ‘definition’ of art, and, on the other, a ‘metaphysics’. The Principles is divided into three Books. Book I is devoted mostly to craft, while Book II pertains largely to metaphysics. The fact that Book II is twice the size of Book III, where the discussion of ‘art proper’ takes place, is proof enough that the metaphysical part of the Principles is not a mere excursus. Collingwood’s ontology (...) is indispensable for understanding his aesthetics, and vice versa. The crucial link is the imagination. What Collingwood calls ‘total imaginative experience’ is described in the Principles as the sine qua non of both thought and sensibility. The aim of this article is to examine the ontological import of Collingwood’s conception of the total imagination. (shrink)

The paper justifies the following theses: The totality can found time if the latter is axiomatically represented by its “arrow” as a well-ordering. Time can found choice and thus information in turn. Quantum information and its units, the quantum bits, can be interpreted as their generalization as to infinity and underlying the physical world as well as the ultimate substance of the world both subjective and objective. Thus a pathway of interpretation between the totality via time, order, choice, (...) and information to the substance of the world is constructed. The article is based only on the well-known facts and definitions and is with no premises in this sense. Nevertheless it is naturally situated among works and ideas of Husserl and Heidegger, linked to the foundation of mathematics by the axiom of choice, to the philosophy of quantum mechanics and information. (shrink)

A unifying feature of the most prominent social movements that emerged in the 2010s is their dissatisfaction with explaining injustices on a case-by-case basis. In Canada, movements against settler colonialism express a similar orientation. This elicits a return of totality thinking, which enables one to grasp the connections between what appears as isolated or fragmented moments that in fact constitute and are constituted by a larger whole. Drawing on Marxist and Indigenous theorists, we reconstruct an approach to totality (...) and a conceptualization of settler colonialism as a totality. Through an immanent reading of John Borrows’ approach to decolonization, we justify the importance of this concept for politicizing the persistence of unfree forms of interdependence. Finally, just as individual struggles point toward the totality, totality thinking draws attention to the unity-in-separation of different struggles, enabling a politics of “immanent universalism” as an alternative to both abstract universalism and particularism. (shrink)

Three remarks, which are sometimes made about Freud's distiction between Ego and Id are discussed: 1. This distinction would have no analogy in other psychological concepts. 2. The essence of the "I" would be misjudged here. 3. It would be the rest of an atomising psychology, not yet arriving at the modern views of totality. Although the common parlance concerning psychic "parts" has indeed analogies in the old atomistic-psychological conceptions, these instances, as well as the conflicting drives are and (...) have been always considered in psychoanalysis as expressions of which the person himself is the subject. Especially the concept "Id" must be looked at as equivalent to the biological total, to the concept: Person-Stern. The concept I or Ego, as a special structure of "figure" within this whole, means no split-off part, but is equivalent to what is called elsewhere "durchstrukturiertes Unterganze". Freud entitles a certain intern organisation with the word "Ich". He that thinks the essence of "the" I herewith misjudged, confuses word and concept -- the word I contains a lot of equivocations. That there are conflicts within the person is a basic matter of fact, which is not to be pushed aside in favour of totalitarian dogmatics, this conflict must be expressed in our terminology in some way or other. Terms, by way of comparison borrowed from material situations cannot always be avoided, and need not give any inconvenience, provided reflecting over the import of the terms is practised sufficiently. (shrink)

In both editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, and in the Prolegomena, the table of the logical functions of the understanding in judgments lists under “quantity of judgments”: universal, particular, and singular; and the table of categories lists under “categories of quantity”: unity, plurality, and totality. As Kant regarded the forms of judgments as giving “the clue” to the derivation of categories and held that the two lists are “in complete agreement”, one would conclude from the tables that (...) the category of unity is derived from the universal form of judgment and the category of totality from the singular form. But this view of the derivations seems wrong. As a universal judgment pertains to all objects of a given sort and a singular judgment pertains to but one object, one would expect unity to be derived from the singular and totality from the universal form of judgment. That this second view of the derivations is what Kant really intended seems confirmed by the fact that at several places in his writings, including a passage in the Critique and one in the Prolegomena, when he is speaking of quantitative determinations, he explicitly associates the singular judgment with unity. But if this second view is what he intended, one wonders why he failed to correct the order in the tables in the Prolegomena and in the second edition of the Critique. Is this failure merely, as Jonathan Bennett has suggested, “a slip”? (shrink)

Metaphysics relies on the presupposition of the non-being of the world: since the world has once not existed it is necessary to postulate a cause for its existence, i.e. an extrinsic principle to explain the absolute beginning of the causal series of all things that constitute the world. After the critique of theologizing metaphysics by authors like Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, the notion of an absolute beginning still persists though in a field in which it often goes as such unnoticed, (...) while it factually enjoys wide acceptance, namely in epistemology. It sounds as a truism that knowledge begins: personal inexistence (birth-death cycle) and the phenomenon of unconsciousness (sleep-wake cycle) seem to endorse the obviousness of that statement. Now, to link the beginning of the phenomenal series of subjective acts of knowledge with the existence of an external world that causes the specific content of our temporary cognitive acts relies, however, on two presuppositions, namely on the thesis of a complete non-being or nothingness of knowledge and, intrinsically related to this first presupposition, on the thesis of an absolute beginning of cognitive activity. If knowledge begins from its own nothingness, there must be a cause that is external to the totality of acts of knowledge, a cause that it doesn´t belong to the series of cognitive acts and, therefore, that it is not caused by any of them: this uncaused cause of contentful knowledge is supposed to be the real world external to the knowing subject. In my paper I make explicit the relation between realist-empiricist approachs to epistemology and the double presupposition of the nothingness and absolute beginning of knowledge, I explain the difficulties implied by these two presuppositions and, finally, I propose as a plausible solution to those difficulties some key theoretical claims of absolute idealism. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus has always been and remains a puzzle and that from its first page onwards. According to its initial assertions, the totality of facts constitutes the world and the totality of states of affairs defines the space of logical possibilities. But what are facts? What are possible states of affairs? And why do we need to consider their totality? Frege and Russell were the first to grapple with these interpretational questions. The ever-growing secondary literature (...) on the Tractatus shows how easy it is to become absorbed in its hermeneutics. More important, however, is the question what substantively philosophical lessons we can extract from Wittgenstein’s words. There are, it turns out, at least, three of them. The first is, that the concept of fact, on which Russell and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus relied so much, is philosophically brittle and that we must turn our attention, instead, to the broader notion of the factuality of the world. The second lesson is that we can and must think about the world in both factual and modal terms but that in doing so we must treat the idea of possibility, not that of necessity, as primary and we must conceive of possibilities as merely virtual, not as factual. The third is that we must consider the world as a whole, if we are to make sense of logic, science, and ethics. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problems involved in the concept of knowledge in the sphere of law. Traditionally, the idea of knowledge has dealt with the presumption of given objects of information. According to this approach, knowing means finding these objects. This is the natural and understandable foundation of metaphysical or philosophical realism. Cognition and cognitive interest are directed outside the sentences by which they are described. This is the point of departure of legal positivism as well. However, it is (...) not possible to see valid law as totally independent of language and concepts. This makes the idea of legal facts as institutional facts vague. From a practical viewpoint, the sentences of judges and legal scholars, when they present valid law, justify rather than describe. Their crucial function is interpretation. Hence, the objectivity of these sentences cannot be based on the presumption of separate objects either. Instead, it has to be based on the principles of acceptable reasoning. Moreover, the author claims that this kind of approach, united with the utilization of human rights and substantial legal principles, leads one to acknowledge objective values. (shrink)

Background theories in science are used both to prove and to disprove that theory choice is underdetermined by data. The alleged proof appeals to the fact that experiments to decide between theories typically require auxiliary assumptions from other theories. If this generates a kind of underdetermination, it shows that standards of scientific inference are fallible and must be appropriately contextualized. The alleged disproof appeals to the possibility of suitable background theories to show that no theory choice can be timelessly or (...) noncontextually underdetermined: Foreground theories might be distinguished against different backgrounds. Philosophers have often replied to such a disproof by focussing their attention not on theories but on Total Sciences. If empirically equivalent Total Sciences were at stake, then there would be no background against which they could be differentiated. I offer several reasons to think that Total Science is a philosophers' fiction. No respectable underdetermination can be based on it. (shrink)

Substantial metaphysical theory has long struggled with the question of negative facts, facts capable of making it true that Valerie isn’t vigorous. This paper argues that there is an elegant solution to these problems available to anyone who thinks that there are positive facts. Bradley’s regress and considerations of ontological parsimony show that an object’s having a property is an affair internal to the object and the property, just as numerical identity and distinctness are internal to the (...) entities that are numerically identical or distinct. For the same reasons, an object’s lacking a property must be an affair internal to the object and the property. Negative facts will thus be part of any ontology of positive facts. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish between conscious mental episodes and standing mental states — those mental features like beliefs, desires or intentions, which a subject can have even if she is not conscious, or when her consciousness is occupied with something else. This paper presents a view of standing mental states according to which these states are less real than episodes of consciousness. It starts from the usual view that states like beliefs and desires are not directly present to the (...) mind, but are posited to explain thought and behaviour. Ascriptions of these states are attempts to model a subject’s “Worldview”: the totality of their cognitive, conative and affective dispositions. When ascribing standing states, we often significantly simplify the complexity of the Worldview. This simplification is a feature of models in general. The Worldview is also distinguished from the “Habitus” — the totality of dispositions that are associated with character traits. As with the Worldview, modelling the Habitus should be treated as a useful simplification of a very complex reality. It is argued that although these models have some similarities with fictions, these similarities are outweighed by the dissimilarities. (shrink)

I defend an interpretation of the first Critique’s category of totality based on Kant’s analysis of totality in the third Critique’s Analytic of the mathematical sublime. I show, firstly, that in the latter Kant delineates the category of totality — however general it may be — in relation to the essentially singular standpoint of the subject. Despite the fact that sublime and categorial totality have a significantly different scope and function, they do share such a singular (...) baseline. Secondly, I argue that Kant’s note (in the first Critique’s metaphysical deduction) that deriving the category of totality requires a special act of the understanding can be seen as a ‘mark’ of that singular baseline. This way, my aesthetical ‘detour’ has the potential of revealing how the subjective aspects of object-constitution might be accounted for in the very system of the categories (of quantity) itself. (shrink)

The linguistic resources used by academic writers to adopt a position and engage with readers, variously described as evaluation, stance and metadiscourse, have attracted considerable attention in recent years. A relatively overlooked means of expressing a stance, however, is through a Noun Complement structure, where a stance head noun takes a nominal complement clause. This pattern allows a writer to front-load attitude meanings and offers an explicit statement of evaluation of the proposition which follows. In this article, we explore the (...) frequencies, forms and functions of this structure in a corpus of 160 research articles across eight disciplines totalling 1.7 million words. Developing a new rhetorically based classification of stance nouns, we show that the structure is not only widely used to express author comment and evaluation, but that it exhibits considerable variation in the way that it is used to build knowledge across different disciplines. (shrink)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an overall management philosophy that includes a set of principles whose application is increasing. In fact, the business world and public institutions, such as hospitals, universities or city councils, are implementing quality programs. However, despite the wide diffusion of TQM, the success rate of this type of initiative is limited and the results, heterogeneous. Academics and professionals are therefore trying to identify the keys that explain the success or failure of this kind of initiative. Different (...) explanations have been given, but most of the literature agrees that managerial commitment, implication and leadership are indispensable elements in a successful implementation of TQM.Nevertheless, a study on the specialised literature shows a terminological confusion between managerial commitment and managerial leadership. Is it the same to have a committed manager in the implementation process as to have a leader of the implementation process? The author of this paper defends the thesis that "commitment" and "leadership" are not synonymous, and states that only managerial leadership is able to promote and sustain profound organisational changes. (shrink)

If propositions are made true in virtue of corresponding to facts, then what are the truth-makers of true negative propositions such as ‘The apple is not red’? Russell argued that there must be negative facts to account for what makes true negative propositions true and false positive propositions false. Others, more parsimonious in their ontological commitments, have attempted to avoid them. Wittgenstein rejected them since he was loath to think that the sign for negation referred to a negative (...) element in a fact. A contemporary of Russell’s, Raphael Demos, attempted to eliminate them by appealing to ‘incompatibility’ facts. More recently, Armstrong has appealed to the totality of positive facts as the ground of the truth of true negative propositions. Oaklander and Miracchi have suggested that the absence or non-existence of the positive fact (which is not itself a further fact) is the basis of a positive proposition being false and therefore of the truth of its negation. (shrink)

The problem of the existence of negative facts as truthmakers for negative propositions was introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1918. In the debate since then, most writers have tended to reject their existence, Russell himself being the most conspicuous exception. Two other strategies have been offered. The first, usually called incompatibilism, actually goes back to Plato, whereas the second, the totality fact theory, was introduced by D. M. Armstrong in 1997. The aim of this paper is to show (...) the problematic character of some of the presuppositions shared by all three of the strategies mentioned above – presuppositions that figure in most of the current discourse on the subject. First, the concept of a negative proposition is not clear: one needs to make a distinction between grammatically negative propositions and “ontologically” negative ones. Second, it turns out that propositions may be ontologically negative in many ways, each of which may call for a different specific analysis with respect to the question of the existence of what would be the corresponding negative facts. Third, at the bottomline, it is shown that we need a concept of the existence or reality of facts that is not derived solely from their function as truthmakers. Such a concept, it is argued, is furnished by a theory that I shall call “ontological consequentialism”. (shrink)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an overall management philosophy that includes a set of principles whose application is increasing. In fact, the business world and public institutions, such as hospitals, universities or city councils, are implementing quality programs. However, despite the wide diffusion of TQM, the success rate of this type of initiative is limited and the results, heterogeneous. Academics and professionals are therefore trying to identify the keys that explain the success or failure of this kind of initiative. Different (...) explanations have been given, but most of the literature agrees that managerial commitment, implication and leadership are indispensable elements in a successful implementation of TQM. Nevertheless, a study on the specialised literature shows a terminological confusion between managerial commitment and managerial leadership. Is it the same to have a committed manager in the implementation process as to have a leader of the implementation process? The author of this paper defends the thesis that "commitment" and "leadership" are not synonymous, and states that only managerial leadership is able to promote and sustain profound organisational changes. The paper will show that, to understand the previous distinction, it is necessary to consider the ethical dimension of leadership. While committed managers may lead the process by using exclusively their power (with the necessary resource assignment), those who are leaders need authority. Authority goes further than power by generating a kind of confidence (trust) that is able to influence the members of the organisation and bring about profound changes, more than power alone can do. (shrink)

In various European countries, the relation between `the left' and `the right' presents itself today in paradoxical form: the attenuation of the differences at the level of policy making is accompanied by the persistence, if not even strengthening, of the polarisation in terms of verbal position taking and of partisan self-description. To understand this situation, one needs to return to that which constitutes the ideological core of the opposition between left and right. The left remains marked, though not necessarily in (...) an explicit fashion, by the heritage of the quest for `total revolution'. Such quest presupposes a radical critique of the world in the form in which it presents itself, namely as an obstacle to the full realisation of humanity. In this sense, the left is intrinsically connected to critique, and left and right stand opposed to each other in the same way that critique is opposed to celebration. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, the critique of the left was elaborated in particular in the form of a social critique of capitalism. Since the 1970s and 1980s, and since the end of communism in particular, the theme of total revolution, however, dissociates itself more and more from the idea of social revolution to focus instead on the idea of sexual revolution. Certain problems that the left encounters today stem from the fact that it amalgamates two highly different kinds of expectation and of critiques. On the one hand, there are the social concerns and the critiques of capitalism, which, however, are no longer oriented towards total revolution. On the other hand, there are expectations that are still turned towards total revolution, but have been shifted towards the exigency of a revolution in the order of reproduction and of sexuality and, thus, have dissociated themselves from the critique of capitalism. (shrink)

This paper begins by isolating the reductive component of Brandom's inferentialism. In order to assess to what extent that reductive component is supported by the considerations Brandom marshals in its defense, I assess the comparative degree of support those considerations provide a non-reductive counterpart of Brandom's original, reductive theory. One of the central claims here is that once the reductive and non-reductive theories are placed side-by-side, it is clear that, save one, all of the considerations Brandom marshals in defense of (...) inferentialism equally well support its non-reductive counterpart. This shows that those considerations offer no support for the reductions at inferentialism's heart. -/- What the considerations raised here ultimately show is that Brandom's defense of the reductive core of his theory ultimately rests on the simple fact that it has a certain feature, namely, that it is reductive in the sense reserved here. I close with a brief discussion of some advantages that some reductive theories have over non-reductive ones, but show how none of these advantages are had by Brandom's theory in particular. (shrink)

Albert Camus’s 1947 novel La Peste and 1948 drama L’État de Siège, allegories of totalitarian power using the figure of the plague, remarkably anticipate Foucault’s celebrated genealogical analyses of modern power. Indeed, reading Foucault after Camus highlights a fact little-remarked in Discipline and Punish: namely, that the famous chapter on the ‘Panopticon’ begins by analysing the measures taken in early modern Vincennes following the advent of plague. Part III argues that, although Camus was cited as an inspiration by the nouveaux (...) philosophes, he does not accept the reactionary motif of the total bankruptcy of the modern cultural and political worlds as hopelessly implicated in the totalitarian crimes. Indeed, Part IV highlights how Camus defends modern, descriptive scientific rationality against its totalitarian appropriations, alongside ‘the power of passion, doubt, happiness, and imaginative invention’ – positions which Part V suggests as Camus’s continuing poignancy and relevance in the period after post-structuralism. (shrink)

Hal Luft’s new book, Total Cure: The Antidote to the Health Care Crisis, ‘‘focuses on how the [health care] system should be restructured to improve care for everyone’’. As he warns at the outset, he does not address the issue that has been the focus of so many other health system reformers– expanding health insurance coverage and finding financing so care can be delivered to everyone. Instead, Luft has concentrated on how we might improve health care—and he is explicit about (...) the fact that his proposal is not about cost containment, but rather about obtaining value for the money we currently spend on health care. (shrink)

There are two seemingly opposed descriptions of the subject in Totality and Infinity : the separate and autonomous I and the self that is ready to respond to the Other’s suffering and need. This paper points out that there is in fact another way Levinas speaks of the subject, which reinforces and reconciles the other two accounts. Throughout his first major work, Levinas explains how the ego is allowed to emerge as such by the Other who constantly confronts it. (...) At certain points in that work Levinas comes to describe the self as a creature given to itself by another. The notion of the created ego allows for both freedom and responsibility as Levinas understands the creature as capable of thinking critically, becoming an independent individual, and turning to the Other in responsibility. (shrink)

As Pierre Kerszberg retraces Kant’s critical account of the human being’s confounded, if not tortured, attempts to grasp totality, the reader may occasionally lose sight of the general objectives of the book. In fact, my main criticism of the book concerns Kerszberg’s somewhat cavalier approach to presenting a clear structure of thought. Yet, regardless of the occasional confusion, Critique and Totality is rich with insight and fresh historical perspectives.

It strikes many as obvious that negative facts—such as that Justin Trudeau is not the prime minister of Australia—are not fundamental: negative facts must ultimately be explained in terms of positive facts (for instance, that Justin Trudeau is the prime minister of Canada). I focus on a particular class of negative facts: contingent negative existentials (such as that there are no 10ft tall humans). If contingent negative existentials are not fundamental, then they must be explained. But (...) the claim that contingent negative existentials are explained is in tension with the widely held view that any universal generalization can be explained by its instances together with a totality fact (i.e. a fact to the effect that the instances exhaust the relevant domain). This is because a totality fact is itself a negative existential, and equivalent to a universal generalization. If the explanation for any contingent negative existential must appeal to another contingent negative existential, then—unless there are no fundamental facts—not all contingent negative existentials can be non-fundamental. I argue that we should give up the age-old mantra that only positive facts can be fundamental. I show that at least some contingent negative existentials are fundamental. I first make the case for including a totality fact in the explanans for a contingent negative existential and show that alternative accounts for explaining such facts are inadequate. I then undermine the standard arguments for subscribing to the view that there are no negative facts—including negative existentials—at the fundamental level. (shrink)

‘Fake news’ has become an increasingly common refrain in public discourse, though the term itself has several uses, at least one of which constitutes Frankfurtian bullshit. After examining what sorts of fake news appeals do and do not count as bullshit, I discuss strategies for overcoming our openness to such bullshit. I do so by drawing a parallel between openness to bullshit and naïve skepticism—one’s willingness to reject the concept of truth on unsupported or ill-considered grounds—and suggest that this parallel (...) indicates three principles for how we ought to combat our openness to fake news and other bullshit. First, the root causes of bullshit openness are not monolithic; we should adopt anti-bullshit strategies in recognition of this fact. Second, our efforts to overcome bullshit openness should be collaborative efforts to create an environment that allows for sustained interrogation of our bullshit openness, rather than a confrontational provision of contrary evidence, despite the fact that such strategies are more time-intensive. Third, social media is unlikely to be a fertile ground on which we will make meaningful progress in the fight against bullshit because of the inherent nature of social media platforms as spaces for short, declarative, confrontational claims. (shrink)

The analysis of approaches to understanding of jural facts is accomplished in the article. The definition of right depriving jural facts in civil law is brought. It’s researched the classical for Roman-Germany legal system reasons for deprivation of right of property and the concrete actions or events that deprive such a right are analyzed. All examined facts of property rights deprivation could be classified and arranged into four basic groups: cessation of the property existance (destruction of property), (...) cessation of the owner existance (death of a natural person, liquidation of the legal entity), transaction on alienation (alienation of the property by the owner, requisition), administrative act (abandonement of the property by the owner, foreclosure on the property for the owner obligations, seizure). Such deprivation of property rights as termination of the right to property, which can not belong to the person, and the compulsory acquisition may occur through jural facts like seizure or administrative act. In the case of requisition termination of right takes place directly at the moment the relevant administrative act comes into force. In other words only destruction of property, death of a natural person or legal entity liquidation can be regarded totally as depriving jural facts. All jural facts of right of property deprivation can be grouped but can not be reduced to basic groups. The law model must determine the circumstances under which the model will lead to the desired legal result, otherwise the legal facts were too extensive and could take place even in undesirable cases. In this context these circumstances are conditions of jural fact o occurence. That is why, for example, "termination of the right to property, which can not belong to the person" is only a general name of right-depriving jural fact or even a specific mechanism of depriving the right itself, and therefore includes in its content as well as the actual jural fact and conditions of its occurence. In conclusion all the right-depriving jural facts are divided into unconditional, those which occurence is not associated with additional conditions established by rule of law (death of natural person, destruction of property) and conditional, the result of which is achieved only under certain circumstances (conditions). (shrink)

There is widespread belief among realists that it is consistent to think of the world as a totality of absolute facts and of our representation of the world as perspectival. As a pluralist Michael Lynch has challenged this view by arguing that relativism about representational content en tails relativism about facts. Lynch's 'T-argument' is presented and discussed in detail. It is argued not only that the 'T-argument' fails and that content relativism and fact absolutism are compatible, but (...) also that content absolutism entails fact absolutism. These two points add up to a serious challenge of pluralists in committing them to the view that there are many actual worlds. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to characterize clearly the early Wittgenstein’s position in context of the contemporary discussions between the adherers of classical ontology, based on the notion of substance, and its detractors. The Aristotle’s ousiology is usually regarded as a locus classicus of substantial ontology. A noticeable tendency in the contemporary philosophy is the rejective stance towards the notion of substance and towards the vision of the reality as the ‘totality of things’ ( summa rerum ). This (...) trend goes through the 20th century (B. Russell, etc.) and is prominent in the philosophy of the 21th century. Wittgenstein, who calls the world the totality of facts, not of things, is sustainably regarded in the secondary literature as a herald of a non-classical way of thought, presented in his ontology of facts - a radical alternative to substantial ontology. However, how can this claim cohere with the active usage of the classical substantialism terms, going back to Aristotle, in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”? In order to answer this question, it’s advisably to address, as the starting point of the analysis, the work of B. Wolniewicz comparing Wittgensteinian ontology to Aristotelian ontology and pointing out not only difference, but also parallelism between them. In the present paper, it’s shown that some of Wolniewicz’s remarks are valuable, but the overall view of the problem should be corrected and supplemented taking into account nuances of both Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian ontologies. Having in mind the results of this analysis, one can read the early Wittgenstein’s philosophy as a statement about the role of the classical forms of thought for a philosopher proposing a non-classical worldview, which helps to elucidate the structure of the contemporary ontological discussions. (shrink)

. The relation of religion and science is presented in terms of the interrelationship of domains generated within a reflexive real world concept by status assignment. The domain of religion is articulated by the concepts of ultimacy, totality, and eternity, which are boundary conditions on all status assignments. The domain of science is a status assignment, that of determining the facts and constraints of the real world, and is articulated by the concepts of empiricism, objectivity, and order. The (...) interrelationship of domains is illustrated by examining the concepts of order, disorder, entropy, evil, freedom, creation, and resurrection. (shrink)

Introduction. The article is focused on analyzing the aesthetic aspect of A. Kojève’s philosophy, the ability of his philosophy, from an aesthetic point of view, to clarify a number of key problems of the modern political and cultural environment. The purpose of the study is to determine the epistemological attitude of A. Kojève’s philosophy able to clarify the way in which his philosophy problematizes the current cultural and political reality. Methods. Hermeneutics, comparative analysis and deconstruction are used as research methods. (...) Comparative analysis allows us to demarcate A. Kojève’s own line of reasoning, in the context of aesthetic and epistemological theories, as well as Hegelian themes themselves. Hermeneutics is the central method in the work, since the philosophy of A. Kojeve requires interpretation as an aesthetic theory. Deconstruction, formalized to the status of a method according to P. de Man, allows us to detect inconsistencies, the principle of mutual problematization of Kojeve’s philosophy and the current political and epistemological agenda. Scientific novelty of the research. The standard way of interpreting the work of A. Kojève is to evaluate him as an interpreter of G. Hegel. The author analyzes some meaning of A. Kojève’s philosophy, separate from G. Hegel’s explanation of the text. The novelty lies not only in the fact that A. Kojève’s philosophy is defined as theorizing that goes beyond technical hermeneutics (clear presentation), but also as a specific representation of such theorizing as epistemological aesthetic theory. The latter is a rather rare interpretation of the philosophy of A. Kojeve. This allows us to expand the traditional assumption that post-Hegelian epistemesthetics is the property of an extremely limited number of authors (for example, B. Croce). Moreover, such an interpretation of A. Kojève’s theories is a new element in the emerging trend of considering political issues within the framework of epistemological aesthetics. Results. The specific mode of interpreting G. Hegel, which is carried out by A. Kojève, turns the philosophy of the former into a unique aesthetic project. In this project, the category of aesthetic experience comes to the foreground, indicating the empty, formal nature of any discourse. In this regard, any claim to knowledge of reality, to a correct idea of the subject is replaced by the idea of creating the subject of discourse. Consistent treatment of this idea is symptomatic of the philosophy of A. Kojève. This philosophy is a reflection of those historical changes that gave rise to the culture of “aesthetic rationality”: empty and formal. In A. Kojève’s philosophy, one can see how such a culture of the End of History is, contrary to Hegelian ideas, not the era of the struggle decline, but the era of its strange transformation, a symptom of increasing political violence. Conclusions. A. Kojève’s philosophy is considered not as a utopian political project, but as a problematization of the modern cultural and political sphere. The latter is understood as an indication of the inconsistency of ontological discourses of Truth, the discovery in the very essence of discursive practices of an empty, formal principle, and therefore primarily of interest to aesthetics. The modern era of the End of History and the end of the era of persuasive speech gives an idea of the main political paradox (at least for the philosophy of A. Kojève, and at most for the modern political environment). The era of disappointment in discourse should become an era of refusal to fight for discourses, but it becomes an era of maximizing violence, since it is in a situation of disappointment that discourses can only be supported by force. We move from unconvincing speech to convincing violence, but it is possible to understand the origins and specifics of this transition only by considering A. Kojève’s philosophy in the light of such a discipline as aesthetics. (shrink)