Scholars are prone to emphasize A.G. Baumgarten’s foundation of aesthetics as a discipline in its own right and Kant’s use of Baumgarten’s Metaphysica as a handbook for his lectures on metaphysics. Nonetheless there are some further and deeper reasons for Baumgarten to mark a division between the so called Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition and the Kantian transcendental revolution. The goal of this paper is to take into account these reasons and to analyze them in order to show that they are rooted in psychology as it is treated in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica. The paper’s aim is to highlight Baumgarten’s methodological approach, that is, the use of Leibnizian doctrines, which are exposed through the Wolffian order. The radical originality of this procedure can be adequately assessed only by virtue of its Kantian development.

This paper defends the Principle of Sufficient Reason, taking Baumgarten as its guide. The primary aim is not to vindicate the principle, but rather to explore the kinds of resources Baumgarten originally thought sufficient to justify the PSR against its early opponents. The paper also considers Baumgarten’s possible responses to Kant’s pre-Critical objections to the proof of the PSR. The paper finds that Baumgarten possesses reasonable responses to all these objections. While the paper notes that in the absence of a response to Kant’s Critical discussion of the PSR (which is omitted here due to limitations of space), this result does not vindicate the principle, it shows how this discussion provides a deeper understanding of what, according to Baumgarten, the PSR really assumes and intends, and prepares the way for a more responsible discussion of Kant’s critical objections to Baumgarten’s supposed proof.

The article treats as significant the formal coincidence between Kant’s presentation of the science of metaphysics in the “Architectonic of Pure Reason” chapter of the first Critique and Alexander Baumgarten’s presentation of the same in the Metaphysica. From his comments on Baumgarten in the metaphysics lectures, the article shows that for Kant metaphysics in its traditional form lacked completeness and systematic order. Kant fits completeness into his architectonic plan of a scientific metaphysics by Converting Baumgartian ontology into an “analytic of the understanding”; Kant achieves the systematicity by modeling a rational “idea of the form of the whole” after Baumgarten’s tree-like ordering of the special sciences of metaphysics. Thus, Kant realizes the completeness and systematicity in a theoretical presentation of the science of metaphysics that he finds lacking in Baumgarten precisely by borrowing from the latter his scheme for metaphysics.

John Locke was one of the first modern thinkers to publish a work devoted entirely to the theme of tolerance in the late seventeenth century. In his work, however, Locke presents limits: atheists are not tolerated. Thus, the aim of this article is to think about this tension in the Lockean political thought.

This paper aims to analyze one of Nietzsche’s first successful attempts to genealogically understand himself and himself as a philosopher, in the book Morgenröthe published in 1881, based on the notions of distancing and questioning. The strategy of distancing, understood as differentiation of differentiation, consists of placing the ‘question of why?, what for?’, directed to the ‘confidence in the moral’, to the readers as well as, indirectly, to the whole of Nietzsche’s own questioning. Thus, the critical distancing is, simultaneously, the attempt of a genealogical understanding of himself. This critical procedure is conducted by the argumentative strategy of distancing from the ‘errors of reason’, inasmuch this confrontation plays the role of a magnifier to Nietzsche himself, whose confront in Morgenröthe can be understood through the aphorism 563, entitled “The illusion of the moral order of the world”. A figure of thought to this important genealogy was referred by Nietzsche as Don Juan of knowledge, which performs the function of a magnifier for Nietzsche as well.

Depois de situar o programa heideggeriano de desconstrução no contexto da sua fenomenologia hermenêutica e sublinhar a sua intenção positiva de purificação/desobstrução da tradição por contraste com o exercício destrutivo da mesma por parte de Derrida, o presente artigo atenta na sua intenção positiva e que é a de efectuar uma apropriação criadora da verdade da tradição tendo em vista a refundação do pensar e um novo início da história.

Despite recognizing the Other, particularly the needy person, as a prime location for a meaningful experience of God and the metaphysical nature of his interpretation of the fundamental ethical experience, a careful reading of Levinas’ corpus reveals the modulations of his rejection of the mystical phenomenon. This paper analyzes the main arguments that justify his « Lithuanian » distrust of mysticism and the consequent reduction of religion as ethics in his thought, as a result of forgetting that the perception of and adherence to the same transcendent principle present in the deep consciousness –conversio cordis – that directs one’s gaze towards the need and suffering of others –conversio morum – is common to the mystical experience, faith – as core of religious experience to Jewish-Christian tradition –, and ethical commitment.

Dieser Text geht von der Frage nach der Wahrheit, die durch die Rekonstruktion der Auseinandersetzung zwischen drei Vertreter des zeitgenössischen philosophischen Denkens dargelegt wird, nämlich: Edmund Husserl, Jean-Luc Marion und Jacques Derrida. Wenn bei Husserl das Problem der Wahrheit mit der Analyse der verschiedenen Modalitäten der Anschauung zusammengehört, in denen sich das Phänomen bewusst eintritt, wiederum mag Marion de Darstellungsweise des Phänomens mit dem Begriff „Gegebenheit“ (donation) umfassen: somit schließt diese nicht nur die Modalitäten der Anschauung ein, sondern auch die Intentionalität selbst, die sich irgendein etwas wendet. Nun weißt Derrida durch die Dekonstruktion der phänomenologischen Begriffe Anschauung und Gegebenheit darauf hin, dass die phänomenologische Betrachtung nicht ausreicht, um Zusammenhänge und Umstände nachzudenken, in denen sich die Wahrheit ohne anschaulichen Zug, ohne subjektive Intentionalität und in Widerstand gegenüber ihrer eigenen Sichtbarkeit anzeigt. Solche Nuancen hebt Derrida hervor, indem er die Gegebenheit und die „Gabe“ (don) kontrastiert, und schließlich, indem er der Wahrheit den Charakter des Zeugnisses (témoignage) zuschreibt.

This article describes the state of the art of the issue of the aesthetic in the work and thought of Søren Kierkegaard. It does not aim at being an exhaustive analysis of the reception of the aesthetic. Instead, it is conceived in order to show the main misunderstandings that have sentenced the idea of the aesthetic to secondary roles in face of the ethical and the religious. In addition, it presents an update of a sample of the most recent works which already take the aesthetic as a key category, and it draws attention to what still lies ahead to be done, namely to study the philosophical and theoretical sources that inspired Kierkegaard in order to be able to define the philosophical role of the aesthetic, in particular its pivotal role in the Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy.