Displaying: 1-20 of 49 documents

0.18 sec

1. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 22
Sofia Guedes Vaz The Tragedy of the Commons and Leviathan: A Small Insight into Environmental Political Philosophy
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The type of authority needed for a good environmental public policy is discussed. We looked at some authors who saw in Leviathan, a type of authority possibly compatible with a model for environmental policy and to some others who refuted it. The need for a Leviathan, what type of Leviathan and could Hobbes’s arguments be used in environmental policy is then discussed. The tragedy of the commons, a rich metaphor for environmental policy is used as the main drive. This small essay will, even though very modestly, contribute for an almost absent environmental political philosophy, where traditional concepts such as authority, sovereignty or state are being challenged and need discussion.
2. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 15 > Issue: 29
Adriana Veríssimo Serrão Editorial
3. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 16 > Issue: 31
Carlos João Correia The Feeling of What Happens and Animal Minds: A Critical Analysis of Hauser’s Wild Minds
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What Animals Really Think (2000), that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.
4. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 19 > Issue: 37
Theofanis Tassis Human Creation, Imagination and Autonomy: A Brief Introduction to Castoriadis’ Social and Psychoanalytical Philosophy
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
During the last decade Castoriadis’ questioning has become a reference point in contemporary social theory. In this article I examine some of the key notions in Castoriadis’ work and explore how he strives to develop a theory on the irreducible creativity in the radical imagination of the individual and in the institution of the social-historical sphere. Firstly, I briefly discuss his conception of modem capitalism as bureaucratic capitalism, a view initiated by his criticism of the USSR regime. The following break up with Marxist theory and his psychoanalytic interests empowered him to criticize Lacan and read Freud in an imaginative, though unorthodox, fashion. I argue that this criticai enterprise assisted greatly Castoriadis in his conception of the radical imaginary and in his unveiling of the political aspects of psychoanalysis. On the issue of the radical imaginary and its methodological repercussions, I’m focusing mainly on the radical imagination o f the subject and its importance in the transition from the “psychic” to the “subject”. Taking up the notion of “Being” as a starting point, I examine the notion of autonomy, seeking its roots in the ancient Greek world. By looking at notions such as “praxis”, “doing”, “project” and “elucidation”, I show how Castoriadis sought to redefine revolution as a means for social and individual autonomy. Finally I attempt to clarify the meaning of “democracy” and “democratic society” in the context of the social imaginary and its creations, the social imaginary significations.
5. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 19 > Issue: 38
Giampaolo Abbate Aristotelian Predicables, Universality and Realism: The Logic of Comparison in Topics as Denying the View That Aristotle Was a Realist
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Aristotle is reportedly held to have been a Moderate Realist in that he would maintain that a concept derives from an act of grasping a mind-independent universal object that exists somehow inside of the many different things which the concept is predicated of. As far as a universal is independent of mind, it would stand for the proper object of a concept that subsumes a given number of things as its own instantiations. But we claim that Aristotle rejected such a view and instead did perceive and comprehend universality as a feature of thought rather than as a feature of reality in its own right. As showed in the chapters of Topics regarding the so-called logic of comparison (with the support of Albert the Great’s commentary), each predicate can be more or less consistent with the attribute of the subject of which it may be predicated. Both essential and accidental attributes assume a definite degree of being related to the degree of belonging to substance. Unlike particular things, the universality of a concept is to be understood always in comparison with another concept according to a hierarchy of predicates in terms of universality degree arranged by comparative terms such as ‘more’ (μἂλλον), ‘less’ (ἧττον), and ‘likewise ’ (όμοίως). What is really mind-independent are the truth conditions which make a universal true when exclusively referring to a set of things identically meant by the same predicate whose universality is given by the place occupied in the hierarchy of predicates.
6. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 20 > Issue: 40
Viriato Soromenho-Marques “Walden”: The «Art of Living»
7. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 41
Maurice Schuhmann Max Stirner’s Critiques of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Very early on, the works and ideas of the French socialist P.J.-Proudhon were discussed in the circle of the German young Hegelians. Also, Max Stimer mentioned him several times in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. His critique of Proudhon’s thoughts is very important for his own définition and confrontation with the concept of property. The article analyses the different levels of his examination with this concept.
8. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 41
Beate Kramer Stirner - On the Brink of Scientific Thought
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Stimer and Feyerabend, despite being historically a hundred and fifty years apart, seem to have been of the same mind in revolting against the methodological explaining of what cannot methodologically be explained. Stirner attempted an explanation in a more intuitive version, Feyerabend in a more sophisticated one. For both thinkers it is obviously important to sustain dissent with the assumption that method is the one and only vital promoter of scientific progress. They equally voice the opinion that, despite science itself producing inconsistencies as well as results, its proceedings nonetheless follow a certain rationale. But to codify a definite approach to phenomena or matter i.e. to establish a definite method for taking a look into things turns science into religion and scientists into believers. As a resuit no new insights are to be gained.
9. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 44
Bengerd Juul Thorsen Baumgarten’s Meditationes as a Commentary on Horace’s Ars Poetica
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In his first work, the poetics Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus. Baumgarten frequently cites Horace’s Ars Poetica. Horace was highly esteemed by Baumgarten and his contemporaries, especially in the fields of poetics and art theory. Baumgarten uses Ars Poetica throughout Meditationes. but it is especially in the paragraphs introducing some of the key concepts of his philosophy that there is a significant amount of excerpts from Horace’s poetics. In this article, I examine if and how contemporary scholarly interpretations may have influenced these uses of Horace’s text and maybe even Baumgarten’s theory. Following a brief account of relevant commentaries as well as Horace’s position in contemporary art theory, I explore the implied interpretations of Ars Poetica in Baumgarten’s excerpts, focusing on his three key terms, phantasia. heterocosmica and methodum lucidam. Compared to the conception of Horace as expressed in the commentaries, this study suggests a complex interaction between those and Baumgarten’s art theory.
10. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 44
Tomoe Nakamura The Cognitive and Ethical Scope of “Confusion” in Baumgarten’s Aesthetics
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This article explores the genealogical and metaphysical grounds for the positive re-evaluation of the concept of “confusion”, which played a vital role in Baumgarten’s foundation of aesthetics as scientia cognitionis sensitivae. First, a reconsideration of Descartes’ and Leibniz’ conceptualisations of “confusion” attempts to identify the place of Baumgarten’s aesthetics within the rationalistic dilemma of evaluating moral and art-related thinking. Secondly, the way in which Baumgarten attempted to resolve the dilemma is explored by a close examination of his concept of “the aesthetic” and of how the concept changed in the course of his writings. The ultimate purpose of this article lies in illuminating an aspect of Baumgarten’s aesthetics, that is, an attempt to synthesize the cognitive and the ethical by means of a re-configuration o f the concept of “confusion”.
11. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 44
J. Colin McQuillan Baumgarten on Sensible Perfection
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
One of the most important concepts Baumgarten introduces in his Reflections on Poetry is the concept of sensible perfection. It is surprising that Baumgarten does not elaborate upon this concept in his Metaphysics, since it plays such an important role in the new science of aesthetics that he proposes at the end of the Reflections on Poetry and then further develops in the Aesthetics. This article considers the significance of the absence of sensible perfection from the Metaphysics and its implications for Baumgarten’s aesthetics, before tuming to the use Meier and Kant make of Baumgarten’s concept. In the end, this article shows that Baumgarten did not abandon his conception of sensible perfection in the Metaphysics, though its influence declined significantly after Kant rejected the idea that sensibility and the understanding could be distinguished by the perfections of their cognition.
12. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 44
Gualtiero Lorini The Origins of the Transcendental Subjectivity: On Baumgarten’s Psychology
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
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.
13. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 44
Courtney D. Fugate Alexander Baumgarten on the Principle of Sufficient Reason
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
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.
14. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 44
Adrian Switzer The Traditional Form of a Complete Science: Baumgarten's Metaphysica in Kant's “Architectonic of Pure Reason”
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
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.
15. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 23 > Issue: 46
Noel Boulting ‘Scale Relative Ontology’ and Scientism: Must Every Thing Go?
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Ladyman and Ross’s Every Thing Must Go is a challenging text. In order to ascertain its significance, attention will be focused on their idea of Scale Relative Ontology. To do this their conception of Ontic Structural Realism will require elucidation. Its implications for Scale Relative Ontology will be explored before considering the way Scale Relative Ontology can be cast through three possible dimensions: the cosmological, the ordinary middle-sized, and scientific perspectives. In exploring the latter perspective, and applying insights derived from Peirce’s philosophy, their defence of Scientism will then be considered. In this way three different senses can be distinguished through which this doctrine can be presented, before examining what kind of Scientism they advocate and thereby its adequacy.
16. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 24 > Issue: 47
Tina Röck The Concept of Nature – From Pre-Socratic Physis to the Natural Κόσμοσ of the Timaeus
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
It is a puzzling fact that the Greek term for Nature ‘physis’ could be used to refer to (inter alia) i) reality as a whole, ii) the nature (essence) of something, iii) to individual material beings or materiality and iv) all things that are self-generating. In order to understand and tie together this wide array of possible meanings, I will consider the thesis that ‘physis’ was in fact used as a concept of being, a term naming the fundamental property of all of reality in the early pre-Socratics, poets and scientists before 500 BCE. Investigating ‘physis’ in this way can give us a way of thinking about Nature as a dynamic and creative but material process that goes far beyond the classical understanding of Nature as the sum of things that self-generate or the modern mathematical understanding of Nature born with Galileo, dominant to this day.
17. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 24 > Issue: 47
Diana Khamis Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In the Lectures on the Method of Academic Study in 1802, F.W.J. Schelling warned his listeners against the annihilation of nature. The annihilation he had in mind was not ecological in the usual sense of the word, but an annihilation caused by a certain way of looking at nature – a philosophical annihilation. The issue Schelling had in mind was that of understanding nature as mechanical, or as merely a domain of things, and of understanding humans as somehow more than natural. This paper is set to describe and argue for a Schellingian alternative to the “annihilation” of nature, to demonstrate why, on such an understanding of nature, the only thing which could undermine it is abstraction and to see how a philosophy should approach abstract thinking in order to deal with this apparent problem. For that, different ways to apply the “knife” of abstraction will be then discussed – some murderous, some surgical.
18. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 24 > Issue: 47
Christopher C. Kirby The Live Creature and the Crooked Tree: Thinking Nature in Dewey and Zhuangzi
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper will compare the concept of nature as it appears in the philosophies of the American pragmatist John Dewey and the Chinese text known as the Zhuangzi, with an aim towards mapping out a heuristic program which might be used to correct various interpretive difficulties in reading each figure. I shall argue that Dewey and Zhuangzi both held more complex and comprehensive philosophies of nature than for which either is typically credited. Such a view of nature turns on the notion of continuity, particularly that between an experiencing organism [Dewey’s “live creature”] and the conditioning environment [Zhuangzi’s “crooked tree”]. Where Dewey’s and Zhuangzi’s ideas about nature converge, one finds similarities in prescriptions made for human action, and in the few places where they differ, one finds mutually complementary insights.
19. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 24 > Issue: 47
Jean-Pierre Llored How Philosophy of Nature Needs Philosophy of Chemistry
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper aims to highlight how the philosophy of chemistry could be of help for rethinking Nature today. To do so, we will point out: (1) the co-definition of chemical relations (transformations) and chemical relata (bodies) within chemical activities; (2) the constitutive role of the modes of intervention in the definition, always open and provisional, of “active” chemical bodies; and (3) the mutual dependence of the levels of organization in chemistry. We will insist on the way chemists tailor networks of interdependencies within which chemical bodies and properties are context-sensitive and mutually determined by means of particular chemical operations or transformations. To conclude, we will show how the specific action of bodies upon the Earth at different scales of space and time, and how the relational definition of a chemical body, pave the way for a new understanding of Nature.
20. Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy: Volume > 24 > Issue: 47
Massimiliano Simons The End and Rebirth of Nature?: From Politics of Nature to Synthetic Biology
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In this article, two different claims about nature are discussed. On the one hand, environmental philosophy has forced us to reflect on our position within nature. We are not the masters of nature as was claimed before. On the other hand there are the recent developments within synthetic biology. It claims that, now at last, we can be the masters of nature we have never been before. The question is then raised how these two claims must be related to one another. Rather than stating that they are completely irreconcilable, I will argue for a dialogue aimed to discuss the differences and similarities. The claim is that we should not see it as two successive temporal phases of our relation to nature, but two tendencies that can coexist.