This article explores the tension between the antithetical philosophies of empiricism and innatism underlying Chomskyan linguistics. It first follows the trail of empiricism in North American linguistics, starting from the work of Leonard Bloomfield at the beginning of the Twentieth century, and its influence on the Chomskyan paradigm, after which the Kantian trail of innatism initiated by Chomsky himself is reconnoitered. It is argued that the Chomskyan approach to natural language represents a paradigmatic example of the unsavory consequences of the divorce between mind and matter instituted by Kant, in particular because human language involves an intimate relation between both types of reality. In Chomsky’s Generative Grammar, on the other hand, the material side of language is treated as completely autonomous from its mental correlate and analyzed in terms of a priori conceptual structures and computational operations; for its part, the mental side of language is treated as innate; the relation between the two is thus made utterly obscure and incomprehensible. The conclusion of the article argues in favour of a more balanced approach inspired by Aristotelianism and Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics.

From the literature on Schopenhauer, it seems that he suggested only three ways of life to contend with the Will. I argue for a fourth, which is intended for the common person. A way that Schopenhauer himself lived by. The fourth way of life is derived from a broader reading of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, that is, reading his philosophy as ways of life. The other three ways relate to the three plains on which life enfolds: relations between the individual and objects, the relations between the individual and other individuals, and the relations between the individual and herself. The fourth way involves all three.

My purpose here is to focus on an aspect of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy which has not yet been fully explored, namely the way in which his insights border on being as much aesthetic as they are philosophical. I am suggesting that his work can be seen as an effort to redirect our attention away from the usual issues of linguistic philosophy and towards a broader perspective on the task of thinking about the nature of the relationship between language and the world. I shall draw briefly on the writings of J. L. Austin in order to amplify this perspective.

This paper argues that we care especially about human health because of what we are and because of how we function properly. First, an argument is made against a mechanistic and for a holistic account of human nature. Second, it is argued that humans function properly when they are disposed to deliberate and decide easily and accurately about the means of health, deem that unrestraint pleasure hinders health as well as that combated disease furthers health, and judge it right to will what health others are due.

This paper discusses Avicenna’s concept of ambiguity/analogy and argues that while Avicenna doesn’t mention it explicitly there is an analogy of the predication of being between creatures and God, the Necessary of Existence. A consequence of this analogical predication is that for Avicenna, like Aquinas, God does not fall under the subject of metaphysics common being or being qua being. If the predication were univocal as some scholars contend such as Timothy Noone and Olga Lizzini, then God would fall under the subject of metaphysics, common being as he does according to Ramon Guerrero and John Wippel. This paper has three parts. First, it discusses the comparison between Avicenna and Aristotle on pros hen equivocation/analogy. Second, it discusses the texts within Avicenna which suggest an analogical predication and which can reasonably be seen as establishing a transcendental predication between God and creatures. Finally, it develops the consequences of Avicenna’s view for the relationship between God and the subject of metaphysics common being or being qua being and argues that God does not fall under common being.

Basing itself on the cognitive theory of the modern Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, the article conducts a critical appraisal of the notion of intuitive knowledge (ḥads in Arabic) as espoused by the famous medieval Islamic philosopher Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna). The article shows the ways in which Lonergan’s crucial distinction between the objectivity as the knower’s intelligent grasp of the real and the objectivity as the knower’s critical affirmation of the real, revises the epistemological primacy of intuitivism that is endemic not only to Avicennian thought in particular but also to Aristotelian tradition generally. At the same time, it shows various elements of continuity between Lonergan’s and Avicenna’s analyses of intentional consciousness. It argues that, while Lonergan’s thought revises Avicenna’s lack of attention to the role of one’s further rational affirmation of anything that one has gasped only intuitively, Lonergan’s cognitive theory might conceptually benefit from a number of original Avicennian insights when it comes to one’s experiential and intelligent grasp of the objects of one’s consciousness.