This paper is an investigation of the condition of ressentiment. It reviews the two most prominent philosophic accounts of ressentiment: Nietzsche's genealogy of ressentiment as the moral perversion resulting from the ancient Roman/Palestinian cultural conflict and giving birth to the ascetic ideal; and Scheler's phenomenology of ressentiment as a complex affective unit generative of its own affects and values. A single sketch of the typical elements of ressentiment is drawn from the review of these two accounts. One element in particular, the exigency of rationality, is highlighted. The rationality of ressentiment is found to be essential to the phenomenon as a whole and to its constitutive parts. Curiously, while their accounts imply and suggest the role of rationality, neither Nietzsche or Scheler make the centrality of rationality to ressentiment implicit.

The task of philosophy in the modern world consists in the construction of a methodology of self-consciousness and self-development in the person-the method of human knowledge. I suggest a binary approach to the development of human reason which is able to understand both the world and the place of the person in the world. This allocates two spheres and two forms of consciousness: 'day time' (practical) and 'night' (spiritual). The basic functions of the former are: cognitive-explanatory; service of the practical, economic, and industrial activity; praxis; methodological for engineering and technology; critical-reflecting control of mind; the blocking of 'night' consciousness and the curbing of irrational instincts; safety and preservation; establishment of norms. Functions of the former include elements related to axiology, teleology, creativity, understanding and mythology. Both forms of consciousnesses differ yet supplement each other and should therefore cooperate systematically through a shared educational dialogue.

I argue that the modernist notion of a human self (or subject) cannot easily be post-modernistically rejected because the need to view an individual life as a unified 'narrative' with a beginning and an end (death) is a condition for asking humanly important questions about its meaningfulness (or meaninglessness). Such questions are central to philosophical anthropology. However, not only modern ways of making sense of life, such as linear narration in literature, but also premodern ones such as tragedy, ought to be taken seriously in reflecting on these questions. The tradition of pragmatism has tolerated this plurality of the frameworks in terms of which we can interpret or 'structure' the world and our lives as parts of it. It is argued that pragmatism is potentially able to accommodate both the plurality of such interpretive frameworks-premodern, modern, postmodern — and the need to evaluate those frameworks normatively. We cannot allow any premodern source of human meaningfulness whatsoever (say, astrology) to be taken seriously. Avoiding relativism is, then, a most important challenge for the pragmatist.

In this essay, philosophical anthropology is considered from the viewpoint of biblical exegesis. Our summons to self-knowledge is discussed in the light of immanence of the Kingdom of God in the human being. Humanity is argued to consist of a three-fold structure: outer, inner, and divine.

Philosophische Anthropologie teilt sich in Europa seit der Zeit der alten Griechen in zwei Richtungen: die theologische (deus mensura) und die anthropologisch-medizinische (homo mensura)-Platon und Demokrit, Kant und La Mettrie. Für beide Richtungen steht Paideia (Lernen, Formen, Bilden, Kultur, Humanität) in Zentrum der Philosophie. Für homo-mensura-Philosophie entscheidend ist Analepse (ungefiltertes Aufnehmen) im Gegensatz zur Paralipse (filterndes Auslassen). La Mettrie ist ein wichtiger Vertreter der homo-mensura-Philosopphie (l'homme machine-l'homme mesure). Als 'Darwinist' (100 Jahre vor Darwin), für den das Gehirn die mabsetzende lebendige 'Maschine' ist, ist er Vorläufer einer evolutionären Philosophie. Homo-mensura-Philosophie ist (wie Thukydides, einer ihrer Vertreter, sagt) ein ‘Besitz für immer.'

This article critically examines the way in which Sartre dealt with the problem of alterity in his early works, proposing that Sartre presented an unsatisfactory account of alterity in his first philosophical work entitled The Transcendence of the Ego, though his study of imagination offers ample opportunities to re-examine the question of alterity and to arrive at a more adequate formulation of the way in which the self relates to the other. I therefore begin by demonstrating that the Transcendence of the Ego perpetuates the Cartesian tradition where the self is defined primarily in terms of thinking-that is, self-consciousness and immanence. Next, I turn to the Sartrean Psychology of Imagination to find another way of conceptualizing the problem. I inquire into his general theory of the imaginary consciousness defined as a 'picture consciousness' and argue that it reduces the alterity of the imaginary object to sheer absence. As such, the theory of imagination does not allow us to bring the fundamental character of alterity to light. Still, we uncover a more adequate way of dealing with alterity in the context of the imaginary life. I show that the notion of the 'picture itself' allows us to conceptualize alterity as the radical withdrawal of the other. Finally, I make evident that the imaginary subject is necessarily divided between itself and itself as another and due to that internal split, can grasp the alterity of another person.

This approach holds that the problem of humanity determines the history of culture. On the basis of theory developed by Max Scheler, I try to work out the main characteristics of cultural process, the typology of culture, and the periodization of culture. The humanities in Russia are in the midst of a methodological crisis now, and I hope that this approach will help us obtain a fuller understanding of culture.

There are good reasons for determinism — the option for pure freedom of will proves to be a non-tenable position. However, this collides with the everyday experience of autonomy. The following argument will attempt to show that determinism and autonomy are compatible. (1) A first consideration going back to MacKay makes clear that I myself cannot foresee in principle my own determination; hence fatalism has lost its grounds. (2) From the perspective of physical determination, I show that quantum-physical indetermination is not at all in a position to explain autonomy, while from the perspective of systems theory physical determination and autonomy is well-compatible. (3) The possibility of knowledge denotes a further increase of such autonomy. From this perspective, acting is something like designing-oneself or choice-of-oneself. (4) Consciousness of not being fixed in principle now becomes a determining condition of my acting, which appears to be determined by autonomy. This explains the ineradicable conviction that freedom of will is essential for human beings. (5) I conclude that the autonomy of acting is greater the more that rational self-determination takes the place of stupid arbitrariness.

As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness, but he characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and points to the advancement of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as the development of Life becoming "for-itself." This paper seeks to delineate this often overlooked thread of dialectical insight as it unfolds in the Master/Slave dialectic. Hegel articulates a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and throws light on the role of death as an essential ingredient in the epic drama of life's struggle and Spirit's birth.

Within contemporary Western philosophy, the issues of human nature and our place in the cosmos have largely been ignored. In the resulting vacuum, the various subcultures that have grown up around the digital computer (the so-called "digital culture") have been actively defining and shaping popular conceptions of what it means to be human and the place of humanity in the digital era. Here one finds an implicit view of human nature that includes recurrent themes such as: an emphasis on mind as information independent of the physical body, the obsolescence of the human body, the elimination of human particularity, the malleability of human nature, and the logic and orderliness of the computer as a metaphor for the cosmos. This view of human nature shares important characteristics with Cartesian and Christian views of human nature long rejected by philosophers. A renewal of the philosophical anthropology movement — devoted to the issues of human nature and humanity's place in the cosmos — permits us to see the inadequacy of the conception of human nature implicit in the digital culture.

Any philosophical work is not only the aggregate of ideas, but is also the work of literature. The myth, used for the transmission of philosophical ideas, has a particular importance. Take for example the Homeric cycle. Philosophers often use topics bound up with the adventures of Odysseus: the salutation from Sirens, from Scylla and Haribdis, from Cyclop, from the witchcraft of Circe and the lotus-eaters. This paper will explore these issues.

In a famous passage, Kant claimed that controversy and the lack of agreement in metaphysics — here understood as philosophy as a whole — was a ‘scandal.’ Attempting to motivate his critique of pure reason, a project aimed at both ending the scandal and setting philosophy on the ‘secure path of science,’ Kant endorsed the view that for as long as disagreement reigned sovereign in philosophy, there would be little to be learned from it as a science. The success of philosophy begins when controversy ends and culminates when the discipline itself as it has been known disappears. On the other hand, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, many have despaired of the very possibility of philosophy constituting the search for truth, that is to say, a cognitive human activity, and constituting thus a source of knowledge. This paper seeks to sketch a research program that is motivated by an intuition that opposes both of these views.

With the possible exception of completely formal exercises in logic, philosophy is thoroughly metaphorical and largely conditional. Moreover, the purposes served by metaphors and conditionals in it are similar. Metaphors ask us to imagine the world in a new way, while conditionals may ask to imagine a new world. Yet some conditionals and metaphors are incompatible. There are limits to how metaphors can occur in conditionals, and how conditionals can themselves be metaphors. Specifically, only certain kinds of metaphors can be accommodated in the antecedents of conditionals, and even then only within a restricted class of conditionals. This paper focuses on the linguistic tension between metaphors and conditionals. I argue that this echoes a tension at the heart of philosophy between two modes of philosophizing: a speculative-revisionary mode that is metaphorical and an analytic-explanatory mode that is conditional. The tasks are generally complementary so that the difference can be ignored with impunity. However, if we do not respect that difference, we may find ourselves analyzing metaphors and seeing logical analyses as metaphorical, and thus missing the point on both fronts.

This paper examines two attempts to justify the way in which intuitions about specific cases are used as evidence for and against philosophical theories. According to the concept model, intuitions about cases are trustworthy applications of one’s typically tacit grasp of certain concepts. We argue that regardless of whether externalist or internalist accounts of conceptual content are correct, the concept model flounders. The second justification rests on the less familiar belief model, which has it that intuitions in philosophy derive from one’s (often tacit) beliefs. Although more promising than the concept model, the belief model fails to justify traditional philosophical use of intuitions because it is not clear a priori that the beliefs at issue are true. The latter model may, however, legitimize a less a prioristic approach to intuitions.

Both Husserl and Popper share the sentiment that philosophy should model itself after something called "science," despite their differing attitudes toward the Galilean tradition. I begin by describing their respective approaches to the problem of objectivity by examining their accounts of the origins of science in Husserl's Vienna Lecture and Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. Each of them explicitly takes up the problem of objectivity in The Origin of Geometry and Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject, respectively, and it is here that they develop their notions of the role played by subjectivity in science. I argue that Popper suffers from a commitment to subjectivism even in the course of renouncing the subject as irrelevant for science. Husserl, on the other hand, sees in the possibility of crisis the need to reinstate subjectivist concerns in order for any discourse to be capable of saying something about the world. Husserl thus proposes a scientism which takes account of the fact that the world is, first and foremost, experienced by subjects. I contend that Popper can ultimately be held to the same position, and thus be forced to qualify his strong dismissal of subjectivity.

The principle of universal significance of the creative process is promoted in this thesis. The principles of the ecology of creation and of the subject's humanistic orientation of the cognitive and practical activity, will also be investigated.

In a radical and philosophical sense, technique is the way of rationally and systematically putting forward an ultimate cause of humanity in the world. Due to the increasing development of techniques in the last two centuries, technique has moved into the limelight of contemporary philosophy. A technological outlook favors some philosophical positions, but it raises perennial questions in a new fashion. Likewise the technique of philosophy is also considered. Philosophy has its own way or method of rational and systematic doing. Of course, there are varied methods in philosophy, but they must share some basic identity in order not to be confused with those not being philosophic. Also, since philosophy cannot examine techniques used by other domains, there cannot be a philosophy of technique without a self-examination of philosophy concerning its own techniques. What is more, our vision both of philosophy of technique and of technique itself corresponds to a vision both of the technique of philosophy and of philosophy itself. In terms of the limits of our human nature in its historical environment, technique can be understood as the historical way that human reason overcomes its limits. Nature and technique can merge and live together, provided that we are open to integrating them within ourselves.

This paper deals with the question of whether metaphors are sufficient for the fulfillment of philosophical tasks, and, if they are, which cognitive or methodological place metaphors can have within philosophical discourse. We can distinguish three attitudes toward metaphors. First is the general rejection of metaphors in philosophy. Second is the unrestricted affirmation of metaphors as ‘absolute’ and as compensating for metaphysics. This conception will be analyzed critically and shown to be self-contradictory. The third position can be described as the restricted affirmation of using metaphors. According to this view, metaphors can be characterized as-strictly speaking-non-philosophical but extrinsic to constitutive forms in constructing theories. In this view, their function is not to explain, and they cannot be used as arguments. But, often they contain numerous implications with value for innovation, as they can anticipate holistic projections which are not yet fulfilled by theoretical analysis.

The power of paradigm in science is ascendant, as exemplified in the growing debate over the role of DNA in natural selection, which Dennett (1995, 1996) has sustained with opponents like Gould (1996) and Fodor (1996). Here I focus on Dennett's quest for a dominating theory of natural selection and the ways in which two key issues of scientific method escape the notice of all debaters. In a scientific report or expository book a summary is an essential component of method — work which authors should do, not readers. Experience demonstrates its superiority in research analysis, reporting and conclusions. The second omission in Dennett's DNA model is any summary admission of limitations and of types of potential confounding factors which might be overlooked. In Dennett's case, the force of his material object reductionism and his rejection of Penrose's suggestions on quantum effects apparently prevents him from recognizing other field effects on DNA molecular dynamics, such as EMF and other radiation sources. I then introduce an amended version of the DNA paradigm in evolutionary causation, based on a range of evidence that researchers need to address. There are reports of certain types of adverse health effects of EMF proximity that have not, to my knowledge, been denied. But given DNA components of complex atoms bonded into a dynamic structure, it is prima facie implausible that proximate EMF fields have no influence on DNA dynamics, whether or not influence can be proved negative.

This paper reports a procedure which I employed with two computational research instruments, the Index Thomisticus and its companion St. Thomas CD-ROM, in order to research the Thomistic axiom, ‘whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.’ My procedure extends to the lexicological methods developed by the pioneering creator of the Index, Roberto Busa, from single terms to a proposition. More importantly, the paper shows how the emerging results of the lexicological searches guided my formation of a philosophical thesis about the axiom’s import for Aquinas’s existential metaphysics.