Although it is no longer the case that analytic philosophy is intrinsically hostile to metaphysics but most of this modern metaphysics can hardly be thought of as highly relevant to human existence or thought-provoking. The traditional questions are no longer being asked. The reason behind this is probably twofold: a) science is thought to supply the answers; b) and beyond that our irreconcilable views of the world are accepted to be parts of our private lives. But in fact physics does not say anything about God (does not prove nor refute His existence) nor is biology able or willing to address the question of a non-material soul. Returning to the classical agenda of metaphysics would enable us to be more serious in studying the history of philosophy: we could try to argue about ancient questions (not merely record them). We could really understand people with different views (not only tolerate them). And creating a coherent metaphysics could supply a background for experimentally inaccessible facts of life (like beauty), science (e.g. quanta) and perhaps of a more transcendental reality.
The author presents a criticism of the laws of metaphysics as were presented by Immanuel Kant in the so-called pre-critical phase of his activity. According to Kant, these laws constitute the so-called God's arrangement of the world.
The article deals with American Personalist Thomist, W. N. Clarke, and his theory of the foundation of metaphysics in interpersonal dialogue. Classical Thomist metaphysics is based on the philosophy of nature. Clarke does not reject this approach, but he prefers his theory as better and more useful. His theory has realist roots and tries to avoid the mistakes that are present, according to him, in Cartesian and Kantian approaches.
Scotus describes his conception of metaphysics as the transcendental science which subject is the trans-categorial concept of being together with other necessary attributes. This subject makes the philosophical knowing of God possible and constitutes the foundation for Scotus's metaphysics. The univocal concept of being in his modal explication is top of Scotus's metaphysics and also the bridge between natural and supernatural knowing of God.
Some philosophers believe that entities have essences. What are we to make of the view that essences are themselves entities? E.J. Lowe has put forward an infinite regress argument against it. In this paper the author challenges that argument. First, drawing on work by J.W. Wieland, he gives a general condition for the obtaining of a vicious infinite regress. He then argues that in Lowe’s case the condition is not met. In making his case, the author mainly (but not exclusively) considers definitionalist accounts of essence. He makes a requirement to which definitionalists such as Lowe are committed and which, he ventures, should also be palatable to non-naïve modalists. The author calls it the Relevance Principle. The defence trades on it, as well as on the distinction, due to K. Fine, between mediate and immediate essence.
The paper reflects about the dissertation work by Peter Volek and about the Husserl's Phenomenology and St. Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy by Edith Stein in the light of Luz González Umeres' thinking. It refers to contribution of some Edith Stein's epistemological observations into the theory of knowledge in the structure of real objects of the metaphysical realism as well as to signification of her independent thinking. At the same time it reveals the reasons, why that important nowadays philosopher looks back to the traditional theories with so resolute metaphysical attitude.
Metaphysics and Ethics as natural dispositions of the human being are - in a mutually opposite way - the expression of the transcendentality of human spirit. The transcendentality is, as such, not comprehendible by our conceptions. It can be demonstrated as unavoidable only by an indirect and negative argument, in that it is necessarily presupposed in each attempt of contesting it. But from this argument cannot be deducted any content of Metaphysics and Ethics. When we attempt a positive argument by the reflection of self-awareness or by the necessity of self-assertion, we fall in an endless regress. According to Kant, Ethics is grounded in the 'pure fact of reason'. But any fact itself requires a ground. Metaphysics cannot yield this ground, according to Hume's 'razor'. On the other hand, Metaphysics cannot be founded in Ethics, as Levinas thinks, for the relation to the 'face' of an Other has no theoretical evidence. Ethics as universally obligatory is nevertheless bounded on the principle of non-contradiction of thinking, and the principle of non-contradiction can be justified only by the ethical duty to participate in the dialogue concerning the existence of truth. This mutual necessity refers to the mutual foundation of Metaphysics and Ethics. In this mutual foundation of the unconditioned principles there is the 'utopian place' of the absolute truth of Metaphysics and the absolute validity of Ethics.
In the present text, we explore the idea of dialogue at the heart and roots of the Leibnizian philosophy and present show its connection with the doctrine of the continuum. We shall argue that a dialogue, political, religious as well as doctrinal, constitutes the starting point of the Leibnizian conciliatory "humanist metaphysical" method of his demonstrations catholicae. We shall see also that the idea of dialogue constitutes the metaphysical foundation as well as the practical goal of the most famous project by Leibniz, the caracteristica universalis, "Methode de la Certitude et de l'Art d'Inventer pour finir les disputes, et pour faire en peu de temps des grands progres". The connecting role of the dialogue within the Leibnizian thought is explained on three levels. First, on the level of metaphysics, we shall analyse from the metaphysical perspective the possibilities and limits of the dialogue in the horizon of human knowledge. Next, on the level of method, we shall discover the function of dialogue in the dynamics of the human invention. Finally, on the level of the drawing on Leibnizian writings, we shall document the virtues of the dialogue, as compared to the geometrical method.
The contribution focuses on two significant motifs of Benjamin's philosophy of urbanism, developed especially in connection with his considerations of the 19th century Paris: the city scene and the world of notions of urbanism, unified into metaphysics. It turns out that Benjamin as a 'city-thinker' can be considered a follower of F. Nietzsche, and his follower, on the other hand, can be considered M. Foucault. All three of them stage for their philosophical utterances urban environments (Benjamin particularly as a thinker of luxury and urban 'landscape'), for which the arrangement not resulting in the general philosophical notions but in the intentions of 'metaphysics of locality' turning the city back to itself, is characteristic. The author shows how it is possible to follow this Benjaminian metaphysics of locality graphically in the example of his description of Paris panoramas of the 19th century
The paper gives a survey of the early volumes of the journal, issued in 1889 -1906. In this journal the changes the Catholic philosophy and theology underwent due to the publication of the Papal Encyclical 'Aeterni Patris' has found their reflection. The contributions fall under several fundamental philosophical disciplines of the Neo-Scholasticism, such as epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of religion. The paper also sheds light on the discussion, which at that time focused on the relationship between Neo-Scholasticism and positivism. The survey is given on the background of the Hungarian philosophy of that time.
The paper is an attempt to show how Patocka has come to the terms with Husserl on a critical basis. His metaphysical criticism concerns Husserl's system represented by his concept of the living world, as well as by his method, the phenomenological reduction. On one side Patocka's criticism discovers the less known side of Husserl, on the other side it shows Patocka's own limitations in appropriating the motifs found already in Husserl (the ontological limits of reduction, noematic phenomenology). Nevertheless, Patocka's criticism is at the same time a creative interpretation of the founding father of phenomenology.
In Heidegger's philosophical writings on science the problematic of science occupies an important place. There are several periods in Heidegger's articulating this problem. Among the most important are the 1930s, especially his lecture 'Modern Mathematical Natural Science', which is seen by the author of the article as one of the most fundamental Heidegger's works. Divided into two main parts it examines the relationship between the mathematical and metaphysics as well as Descartes' relationship to metaphysics. In his lecture Heidegger showed himself as an excellent analytical philosopher, whose focus is not on historical-philosophical reception of modern natural science (mainly of Descartes' theory), but on an original picture of the rise of modern science and its links with the origins of modern metaphysics as a metaphysics of subjectivity. For Heidegger understanding modern science means also a deep philosophical insight into Descartes' 'Rules for the Direction of Our Native Intelligence'. And with this we have but to agree.
Kant's denial of right of revolution has bewildered many Kant's scholars. Kant sympathizes with French, American, and Irish revolutionaries. But in his 'Metaphysics of Morals' he rejects the right of revolution. Apparently, his stance represents a tension or a contradiction. Kant believes that a legitimate government should be based on the consent of the citizens. Thus, logically he is expected to affirm the right of citizens to disobedience. However, he also holds the view that citizens' moral obligation to obey the law is absolute. The author believes that Kant's rejection of the right of revolution does not represent a contradiction. Rather, it is the necessary consequence of Kant's metaphysics of subject and the notion of transcendental subjectivity.
Physicalism demands an explication of what it means for something to be physical. But the most popular way of providing one—viz., characterizing the physical in terms of the postulates of a scientifically derived physical theory—is met with serious trouble. Proponents of physicalism can either appeal to current physical theory or to some future physical theory (preferably an ideal and complete one). Neither option is promising: currentism almost assuredly renders physicalism false and futurism appears to render it indeterminate or trivial. The purpose of this essay is to argue that attempts to characterize the mental encounter a similar dilemma: currentism with respect to the mental is likely to be inadequate or contain falsehoods and futurism leaves too many significant questions about the nature of mentality unanswered. This new dilemma, we show, threatens both sides of the current debate surrounding the metaphysical status of the mind.
Immanuel Kant was seen by Charles S. Peirce like his direct predecessor. In his projects of scientific philosophy or scientific metaphysics he drew upon Kant’s intellectual legacy. The architectonics of Peirce’s philosophy is closely connected with Kant’s Critique of pure reason. Yet, Peirce could preserve the autonomy of his own reasoning. The paper offers an analysis of Kant’s multifold influence upon Peirce’s philosophy.
his article refers to a philosophical idea of 'weak thought', grounded by a postmodern Italian philosopher - Gianni Vattimo, which can be seen as a hermeneutical interpretation of cultural facts, including educational ones. The abovementioned idea reveals the relationships of ethics and hermeneutics, in which the ethics of open continuation is privileged. It also underlines the possibility of weakening the colonizing power of the 'strong' (modern and scientific) discourse in the pedagogy. Toward the truth (the truth devoid of the metaphysics) one can reach also through the unscientific path, which stands against the scientism and leads though the area of interpretation.
There are two roads of contemporary metaphysics and two answers to the question about thinking: existential and non-existential interpretations of the thinking subject. The difference between these points of view is considered in the paper in the light of main metaphysical question Why is there something rather than nothing? At the same time, the paper constitutes an attempt to find a certain ontological order and - looking from such a perspective - it deals with our forgotten foundations of thinking.
In his influential series of lectures on Nietzsche in the 1930s and 1940s, Heidegger claimed that Nietzsche had failed to escape metaphysical thinking and had remained a metaphysician despite his own self-understanding. At the centre of Heidegger’s charge is his interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of “the will to power.” The argument in this paper is that Heidegger has misinterpreted what Nietzsche means by a “philosophy of the future,” and that Nietzsche’s revolution in philosophy is, somewhat ironically, much closer to Heidegger’s own attempt to recover the question of the meaning of being.
Two of the most fundamental distinctions in metaphysics are (1) that between reality (or things in themselves) and appearances, the R/A distinction, and (2) that between entities that are fundamental (or real, etcetera) and entities that are ontologically or existentially dependent, the F/D distinction. While these appear to be two very different distinctions, in Buddhist metaphysics they are combined, raising questions about how they are related. In this paper I argue that plausible versions of the R/A distinction are essentially a special kind of F/D distinction, and conversely, that many F/D distinctions imply an R/A distinction. Nevertheless, while this does suggest that the F/D distinction is more basic than the R/A distinction, it does not favour a particular understanding of the F/D distinction. There are many kinds of existential or ontological dependence that cannot be meaningfully combined into a single notion, and reality does not force us to accept any specific kind of dependence as more fundamental. Consequently, what we consider to be ‘real’, ‘fundamental’, or ‘really existing’ is not entirely given by reality, but partially up to us.
'Kwintet metafizyczny' (Metaphysical Quintet) includes five essays in which professor Barbara Skarga, the eminent researcher of modern and contemporary philosophy, and philosopher herself, confesses her philosophical credo. The leitmotif of the book is the key concept of the 'origin' in classical Western philosophy, and its main subject - metaphysicality and metaphysical thinking. By reflecting upon the origin and primordiality of thinking, upon the origin of time, evil, experience and metaphysicality itself, by discussing with witnesses of the deepest and crucial metaphysical experiences: Plato, Plotinus, Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas, B. Skarga shows her own way to the origin of thinking where metaphysicality is born. She discovers these origins not in the human finitude, as Heidegger, nor merely in infinity, as Levinas, but in the dialectic between finitude and infinity.
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