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1. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Andreja Novakovic Human Beings as Ends-in-Themselves in Hegel’s Philosophy of History
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In this paper the author asks why Hegel considers history’s “slaughter bench” to be one its redeemable features and how this is compatible with his conception of human value, specifically his simultaneous insistence that human beings are not to be regarded as ever mere means for historical development, but as ends-in-themselves. The author answers these questions by comparing his conception of human value to that in Kant’s formula of humanity, to which Hegel clearly alludes, and situating Hegel’s conception inside his philosophy of history. The argument is that Hegel thinks human beings are never mere means because they aim at freedom simply in virtue of holding convictions, however misguided these may be, in this way sharing in the aim of history’s own development. The article concludes by bringing Hegel’s account of human sacrifice to bear on W. G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction.
2. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
William Tullius Time, Eternity, and the Transition from Phenomenology to Metaphysics in Edith Stein, Edmund Husserl, and Eric Voegelin
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Eric Voegelin criticized phenomenology for its failure to move beyond analysis in the mode of immanent temporality to the examination of God and eternity. However, in chapter 2 of Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being, where analysis of time-consciousness terminates in “eternal being,” and, likewise, in select manuscripts where Husserl uses a Platonic symbolism of anamnesis as a temporal irruption of the eternal into time, we have two phenomenologists whose analysis of time-consciousness leads precisely to meditation upon God and the eternal. Nonetheless, both Stein and Husserl are frequently criticized as violating phenomenology in that respect. The author argues that, while both thinkers do transgress the limits of phenomenological methodology, this is not problematic, but instead fulfills the teleological aims of phenomenological inquiry itself in transition into metaphysics. However, the methodological problems of accounting for the transition to metaphysics itself benefit from a Voegelinian, rather than Husserlian or Steinian, analysis.
3. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Alberto Ghibellini The “Second Cave” and Historical Consciousness in the Correspondence of Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger
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The correspondence of Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger is an invaluable document for the interpretation of their thought. By focusing on such themes as the “second cave” and historical consciousness, this article explores their views – as these unfold in the correspondence – concerning the possibility of philosophy and its search for a standard (Massstab). In doing so, it shows that, unlike Krüger’s ultimate acceptance of historicism and fideism, Strauss seeks to recover a more genuine, natural kind of philosophizing, whose precondition is regaining the Platonic “first, natural cave.” This, however, is possible for Strauss only if one adopts the tools of Heideggerian Destruktion, albeit with an opposite aim in view: not so much the indictment of the metaphysical and logocentric tradition, as its rehabilitation (at least of its original, “naïve” approach) through the destabilization of that indictment’s foundation, which is a historical consciousness that considers itself to be the last word.
4. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Mark K. Spencer Beauty and Being in von Hildebrand and the Aristotelian Tradition
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In his Aesthetics, Dietrich von Hildebrand makes a number of metaphysical claims, which are important especially insofar as they develop scholastic metaphysics and further its antireductionistic tendencies. In this paper, the author synthesizes what Hildebrand says in various places about the metaphysics of aesthetic entities, aesthetic values, appearances, atmospheres, and the overall beauty of a being. Each of these is irreducible to the items posited by traditional scholastic and Aristotelian metaphysics, such as natural substance, moral substance, accident, essence, act of existence, form, matter, and so forth. The author then argues that Hildebrand’s novel metaphysics of aesthetic items can be used to help recover the full meaning of certain ideas put forward by Aristotle, and developed by later thinkers like Gregory Palamas, especially the ideas of the kalon and of energeiai.
5. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Matias Slavov Time as an Empirical Concept in Special Relativity
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According to a widespread view, Einstein’s definition of time in his special relativity is founded on the positivist verification principle. The present paper challenges this received outlook. It argues that Einstein’s position on the concept of time, to wit, simultaneity, is best understood as a mitigated version of concept empiricism. He contrasts his position to Newton’s absolutist and Kant’s transcendental arguments, and in part sides with Hume’s and Mach’s empiricist arguments. Nevertheless, Einstein worked out a concept empiricism that is considerably more moderate than what we find in the preceding empiricist tradition and early logical positivism. He did not think that the origin of concepts is in observations, but in conventions, and he also maintained a realist ontology of physical events, which he thought is necessary for his theory. Consequently, his philosophy of time in special relativity is not couched in terms of an antimetaphysical verificationism.
book reviews
6. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Karen Detlefsen The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish
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7. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Michael W. Tkacz Aristotle’s Science of Matter and Motion
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8. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Jeffrey L. Kosky Levinas and the Trauma of Responsibility: The Ethical Significance of Time
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9. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Melissa Moschella Human Embryos, Human Beings: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach
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10. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Edward Feser Scientism: Prospects and Problems
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11. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Jude P. Dougherty How Theology Shaped Twentieth-Century Philosophy
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12. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Andrew J. Hayes The Metaphysical Foundations of Love: Aquinas on Participation, Unity, and Union
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13. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Carlo DaVia Aristotle’s Method in Ethics
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14. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Allegra de Laurentiis The Actual and the Rational. Hegel and Objective Spirit
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15. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Jennifer Marra Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals
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16. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Logan B. Weir Why Free Will Is Real
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17. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
J. Colin McQuillan Kant and the Science of Logic
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18. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
E. Christian Brugger Intention, Character, and Double Effect
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19. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
William Lane Craig Infinity, Causation, and Paradox
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20. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Joshua Parens Concepts of Nature: Ancient and Modern
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