Cover of Forum Philosophicum
Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-20 of 856 documents


articles
1. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Ruud Welten “Man is always a Sorcerer to Man.”: Sartre and Leiris on the Magic of the Social
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article sets out to reinterpret Sartre’s famous analysis of the look in Being and Nothingness from the cultural-anthropological perspective developed in the posthumous Notebooks for an Ethics. In the latter, he comments on some passages by Michel Leiris on the cult of the zar, a North-African belief and practice involving spirit possession. The article also seeks to show the influence of cultural-anthropological thought on Sartre, asking about what new light these rather unexpected analyses may shed on his thinking about the relationship to the Other. I start with the doctrine of the look as we know it from Being and Nothingness. Then I examine how, in Sartre’s Notebooks, his account takes some new directions. The link with possession, already present—though underdeveloped—in Being and Nothingness, becomes clear. I briefly introduce Michel Leiris in order to interpret Sartre’s comments on the zar cult as described by Leiris. This opens up a new perspective on religion and the social. Finally, I offer some concluding considerations.
2. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Małgorzata Kowalska Un irréductible rien: Réflexions sur le concept sartrien de la conscience
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
By defining consciousness as nothingness or simply as “nothing,” Sartre plays with several meanings of these terms: negativity and negation, distance, indetermination, irreducibility. The nothingness of consciousness takes on an ontological meaning: it is a “tearing away” from being-in-itself, a transcendence understood as the capacity to transcend what is, while retaining an epistemological meaning: it is what cannot be positively determined as “something” or as a property of being. Still, on the epistemological level as well as on the ontological level, it is indeed from “something,” from physical and social being, that the nothingness of consciousness draws its existence and its capacities. In my article, I examine different meanings that can be given to the “nothing” of consciousness in the light of the thought of Sartre himself, emphasizing the difference between two major meanings of negation: as opposition and as indetermination. Then I confront Sartre’s concept of consciousness with more recent considerations of different inspiration, notably from researchers like Chalmers, Damasio, Gallagher, and Zahavi. My thesis is that the Sartrean concept, semi-transcendental and semi-naturalist, does admit the search for a naturalist explanation of consciousness, but assigns its limit precisely through the concept of nothingness.
3. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Matías Ignacio Pizzi The Phenomenological Counter-intentionality of the Icon: Jean-Luc Marion’s Reception of Nicholas of Cusa’s Eicona Dei
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The main goal of this paper is to show Nicholas de Cusa’s influence on the notion of Icon (icône) as counter-intentionality in Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. In order to do this, first, we offer a study of the early conception of Icon in Marion, as it appears in L’Idole et la distance (1977) and Dieu sans l’être (1982), showing the passage from an early conception of the icon to its first phenomenological formulation. As we will see, in this early period there is already an influence of the christian neoplatonic tradition (Dionysius the Areopagite). Secondly, we analyze the reception practiced by Marion of the Nicholas of Cusa’s thought. In this case, we indicate specifically how the Cusanian notion of eicona dei appears as a fundamental historical antecedent of the Icon as a saturated phenomenon, thus revealing the importance of Christian Neoplatonism in the phenomenology of givenness.
4. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Jorge Luis Roggero The Aesthetic Path to Hermeneutics in J.-L. Marion’s Phenomenology
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Recently, Jean-Luc Marion has developed the role of hermeneutics within his phenomenology of givenness. This paper aims to demonstrate that there is an aesthetic path to accessing hermeneutic engagement of a basic kind in his previous work. The Marionian hermeneutic management of the gap between what gives itself and what shows itself finds its heuristic model in the artist’s task of making the unseen visible, as becomes clear in his studies of painting.
5. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Małgorzata Hołda From Where Does She Speak?: Women’s Artistic (Self)manifestations in Modernism: A Hermeneutics of Female Creativity
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article investigates the rise of the feminine creative voice in the age of modernism through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s fictional and nonfictional writings. Her invaluable insights into the long history of women’s subjugation, as well as the fortunes of her contemporaries, provide a framework for an examination of how women established their position as capable members of society in the changing modern milieu. This essay examines Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, and her polemical essay A Room of One’s Own, with a view to demonstrating modern women’s path to creating their artistic identity. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, I investigate women’s unique way of (re) gaining their confidence and articulating their own voice during the process of self-formation. Following Woolf’s lead, I consider their double status: as both an object of fascination in works of literature and a source of oppression in real life. I also use Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy of historically effected consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichtes Bewusstsein) to reveal the productive interpretative distance that can help us unravel the complexities of the historical and contingent nature of the development of the female artistic genius. An interrogation of women’s imaginative self-manifestations opens the way to the discovery of crucial truths that pertain to the hermeneutics of female creativity.
6. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Jan Wawrzyniak Elucidating the Role of Truth-Expressions: Some Wittgensteinian Grammatical Investigations
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The aim of this text is to elucidate certain aspects of the use of expressions such as “is true” and “it is true that” (henceforth “truth-expressions”) and, through this, some features of the concept of truth. It focuses on addressing the question of whether truth-expressions play the role of a predicate or an operator. The investigations pursued are intended to be grammatical—in Wittgenstein’s sense of the term. I begin with a short presentation of a widely held view about the role played by truth-expressions. I then contrast the Wittgensteinian concep­tion of grammar with that of linguistics. I sketch Frege’s, Wittgenstein’s, Prior’s and Brandom’s central ideas regarding the issue under consideration. As a further step, I investigate the role of truth-expressions by examining several sentences in which they occur, and discuss objections to the proposed analysis. On my approach, truth expressions play the role of a predicate only when applied to sentences, and in all other cases function as operators. One advantage of such a position is that it enables a dissolution of the problem of truth-bearers: where truth-expressions are operators, the issue simply does not arise, and where they are predicates, it is sentences that are the truth-bearers.
7. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Andrzej Słowikowski The Dialectic of Christian Politics: The Kierkegaard-Maritain Model
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article suggests that the problem of Christianity’s involvement in the world of politics may be described as taking the form of a dialectic of Christian politics. This means that while the transcendent essence of Christianity is apolitical, the presence of the Christian message in the immanent world always brings with it political consequences and makes Christendom a part of political life. The dialectic is presented with reference to the thought of two key contemporary Chris­tian thinkers: Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). Both recognized the dialectical tension inherent in Christianity, but each found a different solution to this problem: whereas Kierkegaard denies Christianity any possibility of political involvement, Maritain concludes that such involvement is necessary for proper Christian existence in the world. The goal of this article is to uncover, on the basis of their considerations, a third, positive solution to the dialectic of Christian politics—a model that would demonstrate how the elements of the Christian ideal (transcendence) could be transferred to the temporal world (immanence), morally improving the latter without becoming falsified in it.
8. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Grzegorz Hołub Struggling with the Reality of the Person and Its Interpretation: On the Method of Karol Wojtyła’s Philosophy
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article is about the method of philosophizing employed by Karol Wojtyła. He worked out his main ideas concerning the human person within a Thomistic framework, but at the same time made extensive use of the method typical of phenomenology. The article sets out to demonstrate that these two approaches do not exclude each other, but can instead be considered complementary. Phenomenology, in the version employed by Wojtyła, aims to do justice to the experience of the person, and its analysis helps us understand the richness of the latter. At the same time, all of the phenomena that pertain to the person demand further explanation, and this can be supplied by Thomistic metaphysics. The method devised by Wojtyła can be expressed in the formula “from phenomenon to foundation.”
discussions
9. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Marius van Hoogstraten Caputo in Europe (If There Is Such a Thing): How Does “Radical Theology” Look from Over Here?
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
10. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Dariusz Bęben What New Can We Learn from the Philosophical Journals of Jan Patočka?
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
11. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Reviewers of Articles Submitted in 2023
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
12. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 2
Note about Forum Philosophicum
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
13. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Jarosław Kucharski, Jakub Pruś Editors’ Note
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
14. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Richard Swinburne A Christian Theodicy
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
articles
15. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Juan Manuel Burgos Velasco Christian Philosophy, Christian Philosophers, or Christians Making Philosophy?
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The objective of this paper is to reflect on the proper way for Christians to do philosophy, in respect of which I have been inspired by a!phrase attributed to Cardinal Newman: “We do not need Christian philosophy. We need Christians making good philosophy.” This sentence can appear controversial, but I believe it is not, if its content is made explicit in an appropriate way. To better develop what I understand Newman to be proposing here, I have added another category to his statement, with the consequence that my own text falls into three sections: 1) on Christian philosophy; 2) on Christian philosophers; 3) on Christians who do philosophy. This is the scheme that we will use to position ourselves as regards the complex issue of the relationship between philosophy and Christianity.
16. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Jon Kelly Demarcating the Foundations of Analytic Theology and Philosophical Theology
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Analytic theology is a thriving research program at the intersection of theology and analytic philosophy. Prior to Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea’s launch of “analytic theology” in 2009, the discipline functioned under the moniker “philosophical theology.” Considerable ink has been spilled on what is analytic theology in the past decade, and most recently by William Wood (2021). Some theologians (e.g., Abraham 2009) have argued that it is systematic theology while others (e.g., Coakley 2013) have been content to remain in a family resemblance class rooted in philosophical theology. At the same time, analytic theology has welcomed Christian philosophers (e.g., Beall 2021) who have migrated into Christian doctrine via philosophy of religion. These philosophers are not systematic theologians, but, rather, philosophical theologians. This essay analyzes the relation between analytic theology, philosophical theology, and philosophy by examining their starting points and how they perceive and access truth, and then proposes a spectrum to graph their overlapping zones of research. I conclude that philosophical theology stands at the heart of the disciplines and thus remains an appropriate term for analytic theologians and Christian philosophers working somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
17. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Marcin Będkowski, Jakub Pruś How Can Christian Philosophers Improve Their Arguments?: Logical Culture and Critical Thinking
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare two concepts which tend to be treated as synonymous, and to show the difference between them: these are critical thinking and logical culture. Firstly, we try to show that these cannot be considered identical or strictly equivalent: i.e. that the concept of logical culture includes more than just critical thinking skills. Secondly, we try to show that Christian philosophers, when arguing about philosophical matters and teaching philosophy to students, should not focus only on critical thinking skills, but rather also consider logical culture. This, as we argue, may help to improve debate both within and outside of Christian philosophy.
18. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
James Bernard Murphy Greek Philosophy as a Religious Quest for the Divine
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Philosophy has always been parasitic on other bodies of knowledge, especially religious thought. Greek philosophy in Italy emerged as a purification of Orphic religious traditions. Orphic votaries adopted various disciplines in the attempt to become divine, which led Pythagoras and Empedocles to define philosophy as a path to divinity. According to Plato and Aristotle, the goal of philosophy is to become “as much like a god as is humanly possible.” Classical Greek philosophy is not the study of the divine but the project of becoming divine, a!project which it shares with Christianity. Greek philosophy and Christianity have different paths to the divine, but they share a common aspiration.
19. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Daniel H. Spencer Athens and Jerusalem Redux: Monastic Mystical Discourse and the Rule of Faith
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In this essay, I evaluate the extent to which some currents in classical Christian mysticism might count as properly “Christian” against the rules of faith and theological methodology of thinkers like Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr. I begin by expounding this methodology as it relates to non-Christian philosophical traditions, and from there explore the rules these thinkers offer, suggesting that the beating heart of these rules is not a string of propositions to affirm so much as it is a commitment to a certain rendition of biblical narrative grammar. After exploring this grammar, I turn to a brief discussion of the foundations of Christian mysticism and the thought of Evagrius Ponticus. The aim here is to illustrate the theoretical foundations of much Christian mysticism, as well as to provide a test case to evaluate how far some prominent elements of this discourse might, or might not, cohere with the biblical narrative grammar elucidated above. I argue that there is ample room to question the legitimacy of Evagrius’s claim to properly Christian theorizing, and suggest this has serious implications for future Christian work in the philosophy of mysticism.
20. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Jason Hyde Kim and the Pairing Problem for Dualism: In Defense of a Thomistic Dualist Substance Ontology of Agent Causation
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Jaegwon Kim’s pairing problem argument asserts that causal intersections require two pairing entities. Mental properties of souls being distinct are causally irrelevant since they are not reducible to physical properties. Because souls are non-spatial physical entities, they do not enter into paired causal relations. Thus, souls or irreducible mental causal interaction, is false. The author assesses and argues against Kim’s pairing problem for substance dualism. Kim assumes that reality is fundamentally a physical one. Thus, the metaphysics of persons and causality is a strict physical one. The author argues from a Thomistic dualists view and a powers ontology perspective to show that agentive causality is fundamental. Lastly, physicalists have not given an adequate account of various mental states and its properties such as knowledge, phenomenal properties and free will which are subjective in nature and therefore known by the first-person point of view. Since physicalism fails to give an adequate account of the nature of consciousness and its possessor, it follows that physicalism is false. Since physicalism is false, Kim’s argument against substance dualism is also false. The paper concludes that one is justified in holding to substance dualism and the coherence of mental causation.