Our deeply visual culture today shows the fascination humanity has with the power of images. This paper intends to discuss the use and importance of images within the context of Byzantine art. The works produced in the service of the Eastern Orthodox Church still employed today, show a remarkable synthesis of doctrine, theology and aesthetics. The rigid program of Church decoration was meant as a didactic element to accompany the liturgy. The majesty of the images bespeaks of the Glory of God and the spiritual realities of the Christian faith. The images were intended to educated and provide contemplation of the invisible realm of the spirit. Byzantine aesthetics, therefore, is thoroughly in the service of theology.

In this paper I intend to present a philosophical account of what is commonly called verbal or literary art. Starting from the Hegelian conception of language and of the aesthetic experience, I shall argue that literary, and more specifically poetic, discourse can be defined as the verbal completion of an aesthetic experience, and that this distinctive feature marks off literary discourse from other types of discourse, such as scientific and philosophical discourse. In his phenomenological description of the growth of a subject's identity, Hegel situates the birth of language in the transition from consciousness (Verstand) to self-consciousness (Vernunft). In his Philosophy of Fine Art, this transition also marks the locus philosophicus of the artistic experience.

The terms 'metaphor' and 'metaphorical' are overused in art theory and criticism, specially when applied to pictures. In last years different authors have written theories that attempt to define and characterise visual metaphors. I shall analyse Carroll's approach to visual metaphors. I shall try to show, first, that requirements of homospatiality and non composibility of the elements in a figure are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for metaphorical effect, to perceive a thing under a new light. Second, that considering a visual metaphor as an invitation to mapping different categories onto each other does not take into account its specificity. As pictures, their relevance is just to provide the categories for the mapping, which is an imaginary task. On the contrary, there are examples of images, which directly provoke a metaphorical insight. Caricatures are the simplest and most ubiquitous case.

Outre l’éducation éthique, il existe aussi, selon le mot de Schiller, une ‘éducation esthétique de l’humanité’, à laquelle le philosophe peut contribuer. Selon la conception moderne (préparée en réalité dès la scolastique, par Saint Bonaventure notamment), la beauté est appréhendée par l’homme dans et par l’expérience esthétique. La présente étude a pour objet d’étudier une expérience esthétique particulière. La beauté d’un corps naturel ou celle d’un objet technique se révèle à nous dès lors qu’à l’organisation fonctionnelle de ses parties se subsiste un agencement formel de ses mêmes parties, constituées dès lors en parties esthétiques. C’est donc la face, ou plutôt la cause objective de l’expérience esthétique qui est étudiée ici. Mais la notion d’expérience soulève aussi deux autres problèmes qui ne peuvent être examinés faute de place, celui de la disponibilité subjective et celui de la communicativité (plutôt que la communicabilité) de l’expérience esthétique.

I argue for an interpretation of Kant's aesthetics whereby the experience of the beautiful plays the same functional role in the invisible church of natural religion as Scripture does for the visible churches of ecclesiastical religions. Thus, I contend, the links that Kant himself implies between the aesthetic and the moral (in the third Critique and the Religion) are much stronger than generally portrayed by commentators. Indeed, for Kant, experience of the beautiful may be necessary in order to found what Kant views as the final end of morality — the ethical community — since human moral psychology requires embodiments of moral ideas. Finally, I seek to modify Martha Nussbaums' argument in Poetic Justice (1995) for the increased use of the literary imagination as a means for improving public moral reasoning in this country, with the Kantian insight that aesthetic autonomy is the key to any aesthetic-moral link.

Some main postmodern ideas, such as the decay of totality or the dispersion of the subject, are too risky to introduce into the education of youth. However, there are some postmodern ideas — though not central ones — that could prove helpful in contemporary education. The hero of this paper is the prefix "inter-" which (especially in the French philosophers' writings) took a new and remarkable meaning by becoming one of the main metaphors of the human condition in the world of culture. The meaning of the prefix "inter-" can be successfully taught by art, for works of art have always exemplified means of oscillating in the sphere of the "inter-" between the concrete and abstraction, detail and generality, freedom and rules, spontaneity and discipline, between Rorty's conception of the "ironist" and the "strong poet."

The attempt to base a standard for assessing the value of works of art upon sentiment (the feeling of pleasure or displeasure) was famously made by David Hume in his essay "Of the Standard of Taste." Hume's attempt is generally regarded as fundamentally important in the project of explaining the nature of value judgements in the arts by means of an empirical, rather than a priori, relation. Recently, Hume's argument has been strongly criticized by Malcolm Budd in his book Values of Art. Budd contends that Hume utterly fails to show how any given value judgement in the arts can be more warranted or appropriate than any other if aesthetic judgements are determined by sentiment. This is a remarkable charge, since Hume explicitly sets out to introduce an aesthetic standard for "confirming one sentiment and condemning another." I examine Budd's arguments and conclude that Hume's position-and the empiricist tradition that it inaugurated-can withstand them.

Something extraordinary has happened to metaphysics. At the very moment when philosophy is focusing its efforts at bringing metaphysics to an ‘end,’ metaphysics finds itself flourishing in the theatre, which speaks of itself as ‘metaphysics-in-action’ and publishes treatises carrying such titles as The Act of Being: Toward a Theory of Acting. The irony of the situation appears to have been lost on postmodern philosophers. What this paper sets out to do is explore the potential consequences of the metaphysical weight that has been acquired by the theatre for the practice of philosophy. It argues that the theatrical performance is in fact an ‘enactment’ of the performance of being and that, as such, it is possible to extend our understanding of this performance from the theatrical stage to the ‘theatre of the world.’ Finally, in doing so, we can establish the context for a metaphysics that does not privilege presence.

There has yet to be a culture discovered which lacks music. Music is a part of our existence, but we do not fully understand it. In this paper, working in the tradition of Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Langer, I elucidate some of the connections between music and the emotions. Using contemporary philosophy of mind theories of emotion, I explain how we can have a better understanding of our emotive responses to music. I follow the pattern through representational painting and abstract painting to music, and show how each functions as an intentional object for the object of our emotions in response to each art form.

Metaphysics is the search for an ultimate principle by which all real things and relations are ordered. It formulates fundamental statements about existence and change. A reversible (absolute) causality is thought to be the ultimate of reality. It is argued that a real (causal) process relating changes of any nature (physical, mental) and any sort (quantitative, qualitative, and substantial) reverses the order of its agency (action, influence, operation, producing): real causation must run in the opposite direction, or change to the opposite effect. A reversible process is a cyclical process, and all cyclical processes are reversible. The world is becoming active because it produces reversible processes; reversible processes organize the world. The world is the totality of interrelated cyclic processes occurring with all kinds of agents (objects, substances, and things).

Pursuit of Ultimate Reality forms the foundation of philosophical inquiry. The present paper represents a pursuit of this sort. Here I make a humble effort at making philosophy scientific— an effort which is based on the revival of Atomism initially formulated by some ancient philosophers of the East and West: Jainas, Vaisesikas, Democritus, Beucippus and others. Every material particle, however minute, is composite and divisible; naturally, the original 'stuff' of the Universe is required to be 'nonparticular.' Modern physicists have reached the terminal point of the method of analysis and succeeded to transform a very little part of a nuclear mass into an enormous kinetic energy by way of fission and fusion. The 'energy' as such, being the 'power' of activity dormant in the nuclear mass of every atom, is obviously 'non-particular' and original. Thus 'mass' is continually being transformed into 'energy' and conversely, resulting in the evolution of everything that makes up the universe; so that the original power is amenable to transformation and alien to annihilation.

In the Facts of Causation (1995), D.H. Mellor includes, as a part of his theory of causation, an account of the chance that a cause gives its effect. He proposes that this chance can be analyzed as a certain kind of conditional, a closest world conditional with a chance consequent. I show that there are problems with Mellor’s account, but also attempt to show how these can be remedied. This analysis highlights important issues concerning the concept of components of single case objective chance.

Hume and Kant destroyed the belief in the apriori de re, i.e. the rationalist’s doctrine of direct awareness of necessary facts about the nature of being. Later on, analytical philosophy told us that there are only two general classes of statements, synthetics a posteriori and analytics a priori. Quine eventually rejected the a priori in general and advanced a radical empiricism. However, both moderate and radical empiricism has recently been challenged by realistic minded philosophers. They have argued that ontological topics such as the nature of properties, laws or causation remain strongly undetermined by semantic ascent and Quinean ontological commitment, and announced an ontological turn. Are not ontological or metaphysical explanations a priori explanations? Despite his preferred talk in terms of a posteriori realism and inference of the best explanation, Armstrong’s defence of universals looks very much like an apriori one. Others, such as Barry Smith, explicitly defend that there are synthetic propositions a priori de re. I believe in both: Kant was right in claiming that an understanding of what metaphysics can teach us is dependent upon a clear concept of the synthetic a priori, but—against Kant— synthetics a priori de re are legitimate. In this paper I will defend synthetics a priori de re. However, I will reject the rationalist’s appeal to direct awareness of necessary facts as well as undeniableness or infallibility as necessary conditions for a prioris. Instead I will claim that all synthetics a priori express hypothetical truths.

Recently, as I have become more computer-literate, I have noticed some interesting parallels between computer mechanisms and Aquinas’ metaphysics of angelic faculties. The present essay expands on some of the analogies which Aquinas himself, though no proponent of AI theory, might have found interesting.

Philosophy works with special types of objects: the totalities. The basic characteristics of this type of object are their metaphysical, transcendental, and total character. The character of these objects determines the specificity of language and the methods of philosophy. The language of philosophy represents symbolic language; speculation is the basic method of philosophy. On the one hand, objects of this type emphasis homo sapien as essences capable of constructing such objects, which in turn assumes the ability of human consciousness to make synthetic acts. On the basis of philosophy as metaphysics, an original approach is offered which divides the history of philosophy into periods as well as providing analysis of different philosophical systems.

Do classical, contemplative philosophies have anything to teach which is relevant to life here and now? In the case of Plotinus, yes. While Platonic metaphysics is most often summarized as dualistic, where one sensible world stands apart from and in tension with an intelligible (or mystical) world, in the case of Plotinus this interpretation is incorrect. He does distinguish between sensibles and sense-experience, on one hand, and intelligibles and intelligible experience, on the other; but the two belong together intimately: both are located in the same space, and the sensible is related to the intelligible as a shadow to its object or a reflection to what it reflects. Plotinus’ world is one. Given this picture, one rightly wonders at the status of the Plotinian exhortation for the soul to flee "alone to the Alone." Does not the journey of the soul to its source require a passing beyond of this world to some other? No, Plotinus exhortation should be understood as a reorientation, a reordering within the world here and now, not a rejection of one reality in favor of some other. This can be likened to Aesop’s fable, "The Dog and the Bone," where the dog had the choice between one real and one illusory bone, not two separate bones. Similarly, Plotinus’ world, though it can be perceived dualistically, is ontologically one; hence his metaphysics, far from otherworldly, offers a means of understanding life as it is to be lived here and now.

Many philosophers who support a four-dimensionalist metaphysics of things also conceive of experience as a state of a mind having temporal extension or existing as a momentary feature of the dimension of time. This essay shows that such a strict four-dimensionalism — suggested in works by D. M. Armstrong, Mark Heller, and David Lewis — cannot be correct, since it cannot allow for the passing of time that is essential to awareness. The argument demonstrates that the positing of any temporal process at all must compromise the strict four-dimensionalist view of the temporality of experience. This is not to say that the traditional endurantist view is left wholeheartedly endorsed. As I point out, this traditional view makes several questionable claims of its own that must be carefully scrutinized. Still, the criticism of the strict four-dimensionalist ontology indicates a direction to be followed in developing a successful metaphysics of experience.

This paper identifies a thesis held widely in contemporary empiricist and naturalist metaphysics, viz., causalism — the view that to be is to be part of the causal structure of the world. I argue against this thesis, defending what I call extra-causalism. Claims that entities with no obvious causal role, like unexemplified properties and points of space, are unreal, or, if they are accorded reality, that they must have some discoverable — perhaps merely counter-factual — causal significance, are dogmatic and ad hoc. Another view logically independent of causalism, but often held by its advocates, is what may be called the thesis of ontic levels, the idea that there is a primary or basic sort of being (usually accorded the entities of the natural sciences), and at least one derivative or non-basic kind of being. I argue against this as well, claiming that extra-causalism and the unity of being are compatible with a fully naturalist and empiricist view of the world. Metaphysical causalism appears to involve misunderstanding the actual character and aims of natural science.

In this paper I attempt to reassess the age-old problem of conflicting religious truth-claims by utilizing the fundamental metaphysical insights of William Desmond. I first outline and critique ways that philosophers have traditionally attempted to address this issue, focusing my critique on the standard model (viz., exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism) used to describe different ways of making claims about truth. I then develop Desmond’s "fourfold sense of being" (the univocal, equivocal, dialectical and metaxological) as an alternative approach. My conclusion is that Desmond’s metaphysics provides a constructive model for addressing conflicting truth-claims, while also avoiding the pitfalls inherent in the traditional typological approach.

The idea of spirit in its highest form takes a gathering character, where all is attracted by what Hegel called the world idea, an absolute spirit, and by what modern science understands as human psychological and social (consciousness) recognition. Included in this are unusual abilities like extrasensory perception, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. The sensibility of the pointed problems can be more fruitfully realized within a new phenomenology of the spirit. This is distinguished from Hegel by the fact that spirit is considered as non-destroyed attribute or matter’s property (quality). If Hegel considered the absolute idea as the outcoming principle or substantial base of being, then a new phenomenology of spirit must be abstracted from the question stated of the primary and secondary character of the material and ideal in a global plan. But this conception of the materialistic philosophy should be over comprehended, where spiritual is considered as the secondary phenomenon, so as the secondary in comparison with the material side of being. This new phenomenology of the spirit is based on the Hegelian and Marxist traditions’ overcomprehension in a quality of the main idea which takes up the subjective content and spiritual material base — its material-ideal nature.