Since it can reasonably be taken for granted that the Gods of pagan mythology have been products of human cognitive activities, there is an obvious relation between our most general concepts of consciousness and the possibility of an understanding of mythology. In order to hint at the insuffiency of the modern idea of an autonomous subject, which is devoid of any content that cannot be construed as a moment of self-conscious reflection, it is necessary to go back to both ancient greek metaphysics and mythology. Ancient metaphysics does not yet fully articulate the idea of an autonomous subjectivity (even though the latter would not have been possible without the former). Therefore, it is better understood in terms of ontonomy, i.e. metaphysical thought of what there ultimately is. In the paper it is argued that metaphysical ontonomy has its origin in mythological theonomy. The very idea of an emancipation of logos from myth is itself mythological. Hence, self-consciousness may be interpreted as a self-explication of mythology. In the very act of reflecting itself in human consciousness, the “Being” hides its mythological, artistic nature. However, this could not be made intelligible without the help of mythology itself because it is impossible to talk about Ontonomy let alone Theonomy in theoretical propositions.

The colors are one of the most expressive examples of social and personal construction of meanings (if not of the reality itself). The diverse cultures have seen different colors in the rainbow, they have organized differently their sequence in it, but, overall, they have loaded them with different symbolic contents. Frequently, colors are markers of the social and political hierarchies and, therefore, “matter of law”. In the second half of the 18th Century, a disciple of Christian Thomasius summarizes, in a university dissertation, the common legal prescriptions on the use of the colors. Old literal genealogies still stand, entangled with scientific opinions of the time. On the basis of this intertext, legal doctrine fixes and multiplies meanings over space and time, as a huge space of industrial symbolic production. In such a way that, in spite of the changes brought by romantic imagery and by the emergent industrial revolution in the techniques of coloring, we can still recognize some glimpses of the shattered world of colors of traditional Europe.

Marcel Proust is not known as a philosopher. Nevertheless, his monumental masterpiece, In Search for Lost Time, must be understood as a System - not a «philosophical System», but a System sustained and moved by a philosophy of existence: «System of existence itself»; «System of time» in its mere occurrence. Memory becomes here, in face of time, an almost sacred way of revealing sense: and sense - the sense that one can see and understand by this work of memory - somehow emerges like a perfect, platonical form, that brings happiness and is wisdom, not as if we have already seen it in a previous life of the soul, but in the process of making its own rememberance and comprehension.

This paper analyses (1) the power of metaphor which is central to Bonaventure’s literary expression, his spirituality, his philosophical and theological speculation; (2) Considers which human language is ultimately a participation in divine expressionism; (3) Analyses the notion of metaphor in Bonaventure’s treatment of human language; (4) Expose his contribution for the «linguistic turn». All of this will support the thesis of this paper: that language as expression is the most fundamental metaphysical/ontological/poetic notion in Bonaventure’s vision.

As in other domains of art, the assessment of performances or interpretations of musical works is largely considered as a matter of personal taste. In Evaluating Musical Performance, Jerrold Levinson argues that relativism, in this matter, depends on the many interests with which a performance can be faced, and, consequently, evaluated and assessed. My thesis in this article is that not all interests have the same importance and that there is a “purely musical” perspective that must prevail over the other interests. This way I try to diminish the so called relativism.

This article is about the influence of Georg Simmel on Siegfried Kracauer’s thought and analysis method, and also on the difference between the two. Kracauer was Simmel’s pupil at Berlin in 1907, and exposed his thought and method in an essay (Georg Simmel) published for the first time in 1963, forty-two years after being written, in a collection of papers intituled Das Ornament der Masse. Starting from a heuristic principle - which could be put like this: all expressions of spiritual/intellectual life are interrelated in countless ways; no single one can be extricated from this web of relations, since each is enmeshed in the web with all other such expressions - , Kracauer distinguished, in Simmel’s method, two different ways of linking the different phenomena: discovering its essential congruence [Wesenszusammengehörigkeit] or by analogy [Analogie]. The first method shows how disparate phenomena could have the same source. The second tries to demonstrate similitudes between phenomena, and it is, in a certain degree, an abstract construction. This double approach of reality synchronizes Kracauer’s worries on the culture fragmentation and his attempt to overcome it. This is most clear when he criticizes Simmel, in a forward step, of being in default of metaphor [Gleichnis]. Metaphor is, in Kracauer’s point of view, not only a relation between objects, like Simmel tries, but a relation between subject and object, and the representation by a particular image of individual things as much as of the entire world. Metaphor carries in it itself the philosophical intuition that is lacking in Simmel’s oeuvre.

Dans la plus grande oeuvre de Benedictus de Espinosa, son Éthique, la délimitation de l’univers ontologique, outre le fait de discerner les éléments constitutifs de sa Philosophia en général, résulte entre autre d’un cadre conceptuel pour le principal sujet de son éthique: la liberté. Ayant l’intention d’expliciter les relations entre l’ontologie spinoziste et le concept de liberté, en so ulignant l’importance de ce concept au sein du système de Espinosa en général et sa spécificité à l’intérieur de l'Éthique en particulier, nous expliciterons le concept de liberté dans cette oeuvre: la Définition 7 de la Partie 1. Dans cette définition composée de deux parties distinctes, Espinosa ira opposer “chose libre” (res libera) et “contrainte” (coacta), la première consistant à celle qui “existe exclusivement par nécessité de sa nature et est par soi-même déterminé à agir”, et la seconde à “ce qui est déterminé par autre chose à exister et à opérer de certaine manière déterminée”. Ensuite, nous procéderons à l’analyse critique du concept traditionnel de liberté mise en relation avec la volonté et la contingence, que ce soit comme un pouvoir de choisir ou comme un pouvoir de décision ou d’être régia par un modèle, vis-à-vis des causes qui détermineraient la liberté de la volonté ou absoluto beneplacito, ou encore, de ce qui la régit, en visant la caractérisation de la liberté comme autonomie nécessaire à l’existence et à l’action, ou comme nécessité intrinsèque attachée à l’essence et à ce dont elle découle. En outre, nous analyserons aussi les dédoublements de cette définition initiale suivant leurs relations avec la volonté (finie ou infinie) comme faculté et avec l’accord (fini ou infini), en tant qu’absents de l’e ssence divine, et, finalement, avec la nécessité même.

La dimension culturelle de l’humain ne s’épuise jamais dans les étud es culturelles. Elle demande une réflexion radicale sur le phénomène culturel total dont la tâche appartient à la philosophie de la culture. L’oeuvre de Manuel Antunes (1918-1985) esquisse une approche stimulante et réussie de cette discipline nettement inscrite sous l’horizon de l’ontologie.

Based on the ethic formalism, Kant develops a rigorist interpretation of political and juridical philosophy that leads both to the unconditional condemnation of lies, for which there are no possible cases of exception, such as the lie to support philanthropy, or the lie to support needs, and to the total negation of the subjects’ right to resistance, even against the sovereign’s unfair decisions, although the realization of morality in the history of philosophy explains his enthusiasm regarding successful revolutions.

The aim of this essay is to critically compare ancient ethics with modern ethics, considering them both under one particular aspect, namely, the relationship between ethics and intelligence. In fact, one of the most significant differences between ancient and modern ethics is precisely the divergence in how this relationship is conceived. With this in mind, an appendix is added, dedicated to the philosophy of the 20th Century, the time when the modern conception reaches a crisis point. In the conclusion, I also intend to speak about Christian ethics, which, while not exactly a philosophical ethic, occupies its own peculiar place, so to speak, in the way the relationship between ethics and intelligence is conceived.

The aim of this paper is to clarify and support the following hypothesis: the four propositional forms of Aristotelian syllogistics (AaB, AeB, AiB, AoB) state relations between universals, or are primarily conceptual. We characterize as “conceptual” those propositions which deal only with concepts and ignore any reference to objects. In a conceptual proposition, therefore, the reference is tacitly present in the simple occurrence of the terms, but is neutralised or cancelled out, because it is only the intension of these terms, that is, the concepts, which are dealt with in the proposition. On the other hand, we characterize as “objectual” those propositions (whether extensional or intensional in modem terms) which deal directly or indirectly of objects, even when, as it is often the case, a concept has to be assumed in the determination of these objects. In the present paper we try to confirm this hypothesis, by answering the following questions: (i) how to interpret the kind of predication present in each type of syllogistic proposition; (ii) if these predications really express relations between universals in the given sense and, therefore, if the propositions that express them are conceptual propositions in this sense; and to what measure can these propositions serve to introduce, also, objectual propositions.

Pour Spinoza, le désir, autant que «l’appétit dont on a conscience», définit l’essence de l’homme, puisqu’il est une modalité spécifiquement humaine du «conatus», interdite à tous les êtres sans capacité réflexive, en nous concédant un statut privilégié par rapport aux autres modes. Étant donn é le désir comme essence de l’homme, la raison permet l’orientation du désir vers la direction d’une augmentation d’être. La rationalité consiste dans un changement d’attitude, celle de la rationalisation et de l’explication du désir, en permettant la substitution des affections négatives par des affections positives, bien qu’on n’arrive pas à une libération complète des passions. Elle soulève le désir à l’exposant maximum, conduisant vers la connaissance, connaissance qui mène à la libération. Cependant, la raison ne supprime pas les désirs, parce qu’elle ne se constitue pas comme une instance séparée, supérieure et imposante, elle permet seulement l’autonomie devant le désir.

Leibniz rédige sa Théodicée afin de répondre au cepticisme presenté par Pierre Bayle, dans son Dictionnaire historique et critique, à propos de la légitimité des réponses de la philosophie, d’un côté au problème essentiel de la liberté humaine et son incompatibilité avec l’omnipotence et l’omniscience divines, et de l’autre côté à l’inadéquation entre une bonté suprême en Dieu et l’existence du mal. En même temps que Leibniz essaie de donner des réponses à ses contemporains Spinoza et Hobbes, il reprend et actualise des thèses augustiniennes déjà acceptées par la tradition théologique chrétienne.

Dans l’oeuvre de Kant il y a un ensemble de text es sur l’histoire, écrits tout au long de quinze années, où on peut trouver trois moments de thématisation de l’histoire. Pourra-t-on parler d’une théorie de l’histoire chez Kant ? L’auteur veut montrer qu’il n’y a pas proprement dit une théorie de l’histoire en Kant mais un chemin pour une théorie des possibilités des propositions de l’histoire.

This essay intends to discuss the starting point of Hegel’s criticism of Spinoza. According to Hegel, Spinoza’s idea doesn’t manage, even though it wants to, to give an absolute foundation to difference and self-conscious singularity; that is why the Dutch thinker didn’t reach the specificity of the modem conception of freedom, as it is represented by Christianity and effectively developed in modernity by the mediation of the particularity in the civil-bourgeois society. Hegel hopes to demonstrate his thesis analyzing Spinoza’s concepts of substance, attributes and modes: there is not between them, according to Hegel’s criticism, an immanent negative development. Consequently, Spinoza’s thought ends up in an impasse: or the finite modes keep a juxtaposed existence to substance or they annihilate themselves because of it. To Hegel, it is the second alternative that characterizes Spinoza’s thought.

Individualism is one of the fundamental traits of our time, based on an emphatic and recurrent defence of individual freedom, as experienced by consciousness. This point of view seems to entail a refuse of all kinds of transcendence, cosmological or onto-theological, characterized by an authoritarian and undisputed heteronomy. However, this perspective does not take into account a third type of transcendence, one that occurs in that radical immanence, in the core of individual freedom and autonomy. This type of transcendence takes shape as an ethical and aesthetical relationship carved in the heart of each individual human being, each one of his particular conscious States and the simultaneous consciousness of his Humanity. The aim of this essay is to give an understanding of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity and its philosophy of Revelation, as a reflection on religion and its anthropological origins. In our viewpoint, The Essence of Christianity is an effort to ascertain the genetic elements of human religiosity and clarify its meaning as a movement of reconnecting the human individual with a transcendence that is his own Humanity, given in the immanence of his conscious life. Religion remains a law of transcendence, as the feeling that binds the individual to his Humanity, an everlasting commandment coming from an Otherness that projects itself as a horizon to his free actions.

Il s’agit d’analyser les différences entre Cousin e Jouffroy à propos du rôle de l’histoire de la philosophie et aussi bien de la psychologie dans la sphère de l’éclectisme spiritualiste, dont l’hégémonie était contestée au sein même de l’école.

Symbolism is a basic synthetic activity required by human enterprise in order to be able to produce an occasion of actual existence. Whitehead regards perception as the most frequent and fundamental kind of symbolism. Language is another essential sort of symbolism. Immediacy and abstraction are two intersecting phases in the process of symbolism; we need both for the occasions of perception and the emergence of language. Whitehead unites various kinds of experience under the notion of symbolism and enhances the founding roles of perception and language. His doctrine is an outstanding insight into the wholeness of reality.

This article consists of a number of initial reflections on concepts inherent to the theoretical paths traced by J. Habermas and N. Luhmann. It was developed with the intention of showing how a confrontation between their ideas allows us to offer contrasts to specific elements of Habermas’s arguments. The understanding of these divergences is necessary for an accurate interpretation of their respective theories of law.