This paper investigates the diversity of mediated parent networks from the perspective of communicative figurations, by focussing on what kinds of networks can be identified (RQ1) and what expectations parents hold towards these networks (RQ2). It draws upon a qualitative, exploratory study conducted in Austria, Denmark, Portugal and the UK, with interviews conducted with parents across 16 families in 2021. Different kinds of parent networks are described in terms of size, perceived publicness, frames of relevance, actors involved, communicative practices, and (...) media ensembles. Our analysis of parents’ expectations shows that disappointment seems to be closely connected to practical sense, social barriers and exclusion. (shrink)

The Lily's Tongue offers a nuanced, sustained reading of what Maughan-Brown calls the "Lily Discourses"--four discourses that Kierkegaard wrote about the instruction in the Gospel of Matthew to "consider the lilies." Kierkegaard suggests that the lilies are "authoritative" rather than merely "figural" or "metaphorical." The aim of this book is to explore what exactly Kierkegaard means by asking, How do texts speak with authority? In Maughan-Brown's reading, Kierkegaard argues that the key to a text's authority is in the act (...) of reading itself. No text can have authority unless the reader grants it that authority. That is because, paradoxically, no text can avoid or escape the use of figural language. If the lilies speak authoritatively it is precisely because they are also figural. Texts do not speak directly; their tongue is always the lily's tongue. Drawing on the work of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Derrida, The Lily's Tongue situates Kierkegaard's reading of Matthew at the intersection of theological, philosophical, political, and literary investigations of figural language. It uniquely contributes to the ongoing discussion of Kierkegaard's theory and practice of "indirect communication" by introducing four pivotal signed discourses into this debate. In so doing, Maughan-Brown reveals a groundbreaking theory of figure--one that ultimately requires a renewed reading of the major pseudonymous works. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the relation between Kant’s views on the foundations of syllogistic inference in ‘The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures’, the views of eighteenth-century German authors who wrote on syllogism, and the conception of metaphysics that Kant developed in 1762-1764. Kant’s positions are, on the whole, rather original, even though they are not as independent from the intellectual context as Kant’s later, Critical philosophy. Despite Kant’s polemical tone, his views on syllogism are not primarily motivated by (...) polemical purposes. They are strongly influenced by his views on the method of metaphysics. (shrink)

Michel Serres is a major twentieth-century thinker who has made decisive contributions to major debates across disciplines ranging from the history of science to literary studies and philosophy. This is the first monograph to offer a comprehensive assessment of Serres’ thought from his early work on Leibniz to his final publications in 2019. The first three chapters carefully explore Serres’ ‘global intuition’, how he understands and engages with the world, and his characteristic ‘figures of thought’, the repeated intellectual moves that (...) characterize his unique approach. Chapters Four to Six explore in detail Serres’ revolutionary contributions to three key areas: language, objects, and ecology. (shrink)

This paper considers how Kierkegaard self-reflexively portrays the tension between the boundary limit of discursive reason and mythic imagination in his classic analysis of Abrahamic faith. Following some reflections on the nature and philosophical implications of that tension, I examine its salient delineation in the Prelude of Fear and Trembling. Through four non-canonical renderings of the biblical Aqedah myth featured in the Prelude, Kierkegaard depicts the limits of ethical reasoning in the drama of Johannes de Silentio’s struggle to (...) class='Hi'>figure-forth Abraham’s “movements” in ethically intelligible terms. I conclude that, as dramatized by Kierkegaard, the tension between mythemic figuration and discursively articulated critical reasoning sets in relief one of the formative aporiai of modern Western culture, namely the conflictive interplay of vision and discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to discuss the role played by the figure of Apostel Paul inside several texts of four authors: Heidegger, Badiou, Agamben and Žižek. My hypothesis is that Heidegger and the contemporary philosophers do not turn to Apostle Paul guided primarily or exclusively by theological interest or perspectives, yet they pose a great challenge to the religious thought. Heidegger’s return to Saint Paul has a philosophical-phenomenological aim: highlighting the carrying structures of the temporality of factic (...) life. Badiou, Agamben and Žižek are interested in Paul as a political personality, a poet-thinker of an Event, who has to enforce a universal singularity both against the current legal abstractions and against communitarian and particularistic claims. They rely on Paul when confronting the postmodernism and when examining what constitutes the political. Against the postmodern doxa, Badiou, Agamben and Žižek aim at the revitalization of the politics of universal truth. (shrink)

The paper is a first attempt to analyse Greimas’ theory of the figurative from a “philological” perspective and discuss some hitherto unresolved issues. In particular, the paper will focus on four main topics: (1) the relation with Hjelmslev’s conception of the figure, showing that while Greimas’ conception of the figure is closely related to that of Hjelmslev’s – mainly in the fact that the figure is placed below the sign – it does, however, possess quite different (...) and peculiar features; (2) the problem of the significant nature of figures, that emerges in many writings of Greimas’ and those of his followers, in which figures are not considered elements of the content that are smaller than a sign, with no autonomous meaning, but as already significant entities; (3) the problematic distinction between the thematic and the figurative; (4) the nature and limits of a semiotics of the sensible, and the (im)possibility of redefining and studying figurativity, not as given in a text, but when first grasped at the moment of perception.Данная статья является первой попыткой проанализировать теорию фигуративности Греймаса с ≪филологической≫ точки зрения и обсудить некоторые нерешенные до настоящего времени проблемы. Работа сосредоточивается на четырех главных темах: (1) связь с концепцией фигуры у Ельмслева, где автор демонстрирует, что хотя концепт фигуры у Греймаса тесно связан с ельмслевским (главным образом тем, что фигура размещается ниже знака), концепция Греймаса, тем не менее, обладает своими специфическими особенностями; (2) проблема значимой природы фигуры, которая появляется во многих работах Греймаса и его последователей, где фигуры считаются значимыми сущностями (а не элементами плана содержания, не обладающими автономным значением); (3) проблематичное различение тематического и фигуративного; (4) природа и пределы семиотики чувственного, а также возможность пересмотра и изучения фигуративности не так, как она была представлена в тексте, но как она была впервые осознана в момент восприятия.Kaesolevas artiklis tehakse esimene katse analuusida Greimase fi guratiivsusteooriat “fi loloogilisest” perspektiivist ja arutleda monede varem lahenduseta jaanud kusimuste ule. Eelkoige keskendub artikkel neljale pohipunktile: (1) suhtele Hjelmslev’ fi guuri moistega, naidates, et kuigi Greimase arusaam fi guurist on tihedasti seotud Hjelmslev’ omaga – peamiselt toiga tottu, et fi guur on margist madalama staatusega – on neil samas mitmeid olulisi erinevusi; (2) probleem fi guuride tahendusliku loomusega, mis tuleb ilmsiks mitmetes Greimase ning tema jargijate kirjutistes, kus fi guure ei peeta mitte margi autonoomse tahenduseta sisuelementideks, vaid tahenduslikeks entiteetideks; (3) temaatilise ja fi guratiivse problemaatiline eristamine; (4) meelte semiootika olemus ja piirid ning fi guratiivsuse umbedefi neerimise ja uurimise voimalikkus mitte nii, nagu seda esitletakse tekstis, vaid nii, nagu seda algselt moistetakse tajumismomendil. (shrink)

Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years of dance experience, in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or “Moves” for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term “positure” most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; “gesture” similarly in Condillac, Mead and (...) Kristeva; “grace” in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and “resilience” in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze. With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility for a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue. The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and political ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing. (shrink)

Drawing on Lacoue-Labarthe's deconstruction of Oedipus as a figure of both desire and work in his tragic pursuit of knowledge, this paper maps Lacan's radical reorientation of the philosophical categories of desire, work, and knowledge in his theory of the four discourses. While all four discourses constitute libidinal and political economies, only the hysteric's discourse entails both the desire for and the production of knowledge – particularly mythical knowledge with its impossible truth of sexual difference. Returning to (...) Sophocles' Antigone in light of Seminar XVII, I argue that if Antigone has all but replaced Oedipus as a figure for modern subjectivity it is because she, like the hysteric, is a figure of not only desire but work under capitalism. (shrink)

We all intuitively know what a diagram is, and still it is surprisingly difficult to describe it as a semiotic function or type. In this article, we present four groups of hypotheses in view of a clarification. We hypothesize: (1) That diagrams are signs of a distinct type, unknown to classical semiotics; (2) That the elementary graphs of a diagram are all derived fromlines and pointsintopologicalmental spaces. The mind applies these diagrammatic spaces to referential spaces in many ways, but (...) basically through conceptual integration (blending). The mind blends topology and reference, which makes the topology unnoticeable; (3) That elementary diagrammatic graphs constitute a natural, phenomenological, spatiotemporal, figurative and dynamic but informal geometry in the embodied, thinking mind; (4) That diagrammatic signs are the active components of the abstract mental figuration in working memory that accompany perception and deliver the schematizing ideas which invest and connect our categories and construe proper descriptive, narrative, patterns of inferentialthoughtand programs of sensorimotor and social action. (shrink)

This article argues that present theoretical approaches within critical agri-food studies are inadequate for conceptualizing the role of non-humans in the shaping of farmer agency. While both political economy and actor-oriented approaches are significant in drawing attention to the broader social relations that construct and govern farmers as agents, the ordering and disordering influence of non-humans as part of these processes are neglected. Drawing upon a sociology of translation, located within actor network theory, the article explores how the ontological move (...) to recognize non-humans as actants contributes to a re-conceptualization of farmer agency. Through the application of four “moments” within a translation approach – problematization, interessement, enrollment, and mobilization – to a dairy planning workshop in Australia, it is concluded that non-humans are central in two key ways to programs governing the agency of farmers. First, they take the form of material artifacts and forms of inscription that are used by governing agencies to build durable actor networks. These inscriptions represent new ways of reflecting on farming practices and re-defining the scope for farmer action. Second, non-humans can take the form of material agents that, while crucial to the building of actor networks, are not always straightforward to enroll. The article demonstrates that problems enrolling these entities limit the efforts of governing agencies to “act at a distance” and shape farmer behavior. (shrink)

The longing for aerial flight has been one of mankind's most consuming preoccupations. A burning desire for lightness, verticality, and flight is opposed to the fatality of universal gravity. Jules Michelet, in his study of the subject, entitled L'Oiseau (The Bird), which he wrote toward the end of his life, deems this aspiration for upward motion to be characteristic of all nature. He writes: “It is the cry of all the earth, of the world and of all life… : ‘Wings! (...) We want wings, we want flight and movement.’” From ancient times, this basic element of physical experience has nourished human imagination and been a source of motivation for the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Mesopotamian civilization had its winged divinities and spirits; indeed the Western tradition of depicting winged persons has been linked to the influence of Mesopotamian art. As Jules Duhem has pointed out, four centuries before Jesus Christ, Aristotle himself was already exploring certain notions that have become part of the history of ideas of aeronautics and astronomy. Among these are the ideas of void, weight, the resistance of air, and the movement of birds and other flying creatures. Duhem has also demonstrated that Aristotle proposed an explanation, as imperfect as it was, for what causes projectiles to fall from the sky. Throughout the ages, humanity has continually expressed its desire to fly: “Man is proud of being free and of leaning on nothing,” Elias Canetti has written in regard to man's upright position. Striking examples of the impulse to fly are to be found not only in scientific discourse but in myths, literature, and works of art. (shrink)

In the French presidential election, both candidates tried to keep their domestic life separate from their campaign. Ségolène Royal is not married to François Hollande, the father of her four children. When asked whether they were a couple, Royal replied, “Our lives belong to us.†Similarly, in response to rumors that President-elect Nicholas Sarkozy’s wife had left him, a spokesman for Sarkozy said, “That’s a private matter.â€.

Since the 1980s, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have attracted great interest in Chinese society, and in parallel, the psychotherapist as a character has emerged in Chinese literature. Through four novels by three Chinese authors, namely, Xu Xiaobin 徐小斌, Ke Yunlu 柯云路, and Bi Shumin 毕淑敏, this article studies the evolution of the image of the psychotherapist in contemporary Chinese literature, which reflects the reception of psychoanalysis as well as the development of psychotherapy in China. In Xu Xiaobin’s novel, two psychology (...) students attempt to cure a psychotic patient through “transference therapy” based on a complete misunderstanding of the notion; Ke Yunlu features a “life counselor” who, like typical good counselors in Chinese classical novels, simply gives advice without caring about the patients’ needs and desires; and the two novels by Bi Shumin show a significant change in the writer’s understanding of the profession and therapeutic methods, as well as the current, unregulated situation of psychotherapy in China. (shrink)

We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The Afro-Latin dance known as ‘salsa’ is a fusion of multiple dances from West Africa, Muslim Spain, enslaved communities in the Caribbean, and the United States. In part due to its global origins, salsa was pivotal in the development of the Figuration philosophy of dance, and for ‘dancing with,’ the theoretical method for social justice derived therefrom. In the present article, I apply the completed theory Figuration exclusively to salsa for the first time, after situating the latter in the dance (...) studies literature. My first section explores Juliet McMains’ recent history, Spinning Mambo into Salsa, with an emphasis on the dynamics of class, race and sex therein. My second section explores a resonant Afro-Latin dance history, Marta E. Savigliano’s Tango and the Political Economy of Passion, where she deploys salsa’s sister-dance (tango) as a ‘counter-choreography’ to the choreography of postmodern neocolonialism. And my third section applies Figuration’s four central aspects of dance (or ‘Moves’) to salsa qua member of its ‘societal’ family of dance. In conclusion, through partnering with salsa, Figuration emerges as a member of its own ‘discursive’ family of dance, while salsa emerges as a gestural discourse capable of helping reconstruct a more socially-just world from the postmodern ruins of today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of AllusionMichael C. J. PutnamJeffrey Wills. Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xvi 1 506 pp. Cloth, $90.Wills offers the first fully systematic codification of repetition in Latin poetry. The introduction deals with the various means, such as morphological or lexical markings, word order, position and the like, that can help the reader distinguish allusion in an act (...) of repetition, and there follow several detailed examples of practice built on theory. But the main body of the book consists of a “grammar” of repetition.The first major segment is devoted to gemination, the repetition of identical forms within the same sense unit. This in turn is divided between a cataloguing of simple gemination, either in nominal form or of verbs and adverbs, and of expanded gemination, where one of the elements repeated is qualified with further detail. Four chapters are devoted to the next rubric, polyptoton and its elaborations, the repetitions of different forms within a simple clause. Then follow detailed discussions of the same phenomena but located across units, entitled “parallelism” where, as in the case of gemination, the forms are the same; and “modification,” akin to polyptoton in that the forms are different. The book concludes with three more general chapters devoted to a detailed analysis of the positional patterns repetition most regularly takes, of compounds as part of repetition, and to prosody and semantic variations in repetition.Such a bald summary does scant justice not only to the sheer quantity of material Wills gathers—a monumental accomplishment in itself—but also to the learning, intelligence and critical sophistication that characterize the undertaking. At the start Wills lays claim only to illustrating the process whereby allusion is generated through repetition, but throughout the whole enterprise, whether in theoretical discussions or in the practical criticism that emanates from his compendia, the results are equally valuable, for the investigation of individual poems and authors as well as for a deeper understanding of the development of Latin modes of imaginative expression, often as analyzed against their Greek intellectual background. If I were to focus on one single accomplishment beyond the mere careful, discrete amassing of material, it would be the stress not only on diction, that is, on the iteration of words, but on such categories [End Page 295] as form, syntax, and word placement in the creation of allusion through repetition. But the main value of this rich work will be as much in the detailed analyses of countless specific instances as in the manifold possibilities for referencing, and cross-referencing, across the history of classical poetry that now become readily available to its scholars.A good example of Wills’s methodology is his initial illustration (26–28), tracing how Virgil adopts and adapts Catullus’ repetitions of perfide, at the opening of Ariadne’s lament (64.132–33) and later (174), through the central reaches of Aeneid 4, from 305 to 421. But there are a myriad others of which I may single out only a few brief samples: on the connection of Cat. 62.20–24 and Vir. Ecl. 8.47–50 where chiasmus and parallel stanzaic structure reinforce repetition’s allusiveness (p. 181); on the repetition of acies at Aen. 10.360 in what Wills calls “battle polyptoton” (194); on the assumed communality of clashing horses (Aen. 11.614–15) and wrestling humans (Ov. Met. 6.243) that allusion from one text to another brings (199); on the connection between Aen. 3.156 and 10.670–72 and the resulting linkage of Aeneas and Turnus at moments of loss (267); on Virgil’s melding of Homeric syntax with Lucretian diction in the impressive phrase gravis graviterque (Aen. 5.447) (239); on the resulting combination of form as well as diction as Propertius borrows from both Ecl. 7.44 and Ecl. 6.55–58 to describe the cattle of Hercules (4.9.16–19) (101–2).From time to time Wills seems swept along by the fact of repetition to the neglect of counterevidence which would be useful to the reader in weighing the value of an exemplum. A case in point is the... (shrink)

It is well documented that training the rules employed in figural matrices tests enhances test performance. Previous studies only compare experimental conditions in which all or no rules were trained and therefore ignore the particular influence of knowledge about the easy and difficult rules. With the current study, we wanted to provide some first insights into this topic. Respondents were assigned to four groups that received training for no rules, only the easy rules, only the difficult rules, or for (...) all rules. The results show that a training only for the difficult rules was more effective than the other trainings. This applies also to performance in the easy rules that were actually not part of the training. A possible explanation for this finding is a facilitation of the solution process that is primarily driven by knowledge about the difficult rules. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that taking differences between the rules into account may provide a deeper understanding of the effects of trainings for figural matrices tests. (shrink)

Kant’s early work The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures is typically considered a narrow, technical work still embedded in the tradition of Wolffian logic. I argue instead that it needs to be considered in light of Kant’s developing theory of cognition and his corresponding criticism of the Wolffian single faculty theory. Whereas the mature Kant criticizes the rationalists for misrepresenting the nature of sensibility, the urgent task facing him at this stage seems to have been a proper (...) determination of the nature of the understanding. On the Wolffian framework, the latter is defined in a merely nominal manner, in terms of a generic cognitive task: the distinct representation of the possible. On Kant’s view, however, distinctness entails a capacity to relate representations, which only happens in the act of judgment. Thus, the stated aim of the False Subtlety notwithstanding, the work attempts to reorganize the logical operations around the capacity to judge. In turn, by defining the higher faculty of cognition in terms of an act of relating representations, Kant wants to show that this faculty cannot stem from a power of representation that we share with non-rational animals and must instead rest on a different fundamental power, which at the time he alternatively calls “inner sense” or “consciousness”. (shrink)

The processing of metaphors and idioms has been the subject of neuroscientific research for several decades. However, results are often contradictory, which can be traced back to inconsistent terminology and stimulus control. In this systematic review of research methods, we analyse linguistic aspects of 116 research papers which used EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, or NIRS to investigate the neural processing of the two figurative subtypes metaphor and idiom. We critically examine the theoretical foundations as well as stimulus control by performing (...) a systematic literature synthesis according to the PRISMA guidelines. We explicitly do not analyse the findings of the studies but instead focus on four primary aspects: definitions of figurative language and its subtypes, linguistic theory behind the studies, control for factors influencing figurative language processing, and the relationship between theoretical and operational definitions. We found both a lack and a broad variety in existing definitions and operationalisation, especially in regard to familiarity and conventionality. We identify severe obstacles in the comparability and validation potential of the results of the papers in our review corpus. We propose the development of a consensus in fundamental terminology and more transparency in the reporting of stimulus design in the research on figurative language processing. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende dejar de manifiesto la existencia de una figura o estructura teórica dentro de la obra del marxista latinoamericano Bolívar Echeverría, que muestre su organicidad interna y lógica argumental. A través de cuatro momentos, se recorre la totalidad de su producción teórica, siguiendo dos elementos estructurales; por un lado, el modo especifico en que el autor leyó la "crítica de la economía política" de Karl Marx, y, por el otro, su intento por desarrollar una crítica a la modernidad (...) capitalista desde la cultura política, a partir de los fundamentos de su lectura de Marx. This work tries to show the existence of a figure or theoretical structure within the work of the Latin American Marxist Bolívar Echeverría, which shows its internal organicity and logical argument. Through four moments, the entirety of its theoretical production is covered, following two structural elements; on the one hand, the specific way in which this author read Karl Marx's critique of political economy, and, on the other, his attempt to develop from it, a critique from political culture to capitalist modernity. (shrink)

Given that Nick Land is one of the central influences on certain strands of accelerationism, xenofeminism, and inhumanism, it is important to understand how he himself first developed and deployed the concepts of acceleration, the feminine, and the inhuman, which others would go on to appropriate for their own purposes. This article will trace the four feminine figures throughout Land's philosophical trajectory, which he sees as agents for accelerating the transcendental critique of both anthropocentrism and phallocentrism: the slave turned (...) lesbian; the sister; the sexborg; and the Sphinx. Having elucidated the importance of these figures for Land's thought, this article will conclude by drawing upon the younger Land's feminist resources to immanently critique the disappearance of women from his more recent neoreactionary philosophy in favor of concessions to patriarchal traditionalists. (shrink)

This book was put together over the course of the past three years and is the outcome of the author’s publications in the multimodal advertising rhetoric research field and projects that were undertaken with the employment of the //rhetor.dixit//© model. It features four chapters that span different, yet interlocking aspects of ad texts’ multimodal rhetorical configuration and culminates in a practical guide for the analysis of the verbo-visual rhetorical structure of TV ad texts, based on the unique methodology of (...) the //rhetor.dixit//© model on offer by //disruptiVesemiOtics//. //rhetor.dixit//: Understanding ad texts’ rhetorical structure for differential figurative advantage neither seeks to cover exhaustively issues in any of the traditional fields of concern to the discipline of rhetoric (an impossible endeavor, indeed, within the contours of a single book), nor to address all issues on top of the current agenda in multimodal advertising rhetoric. Its mission is to present key facets of current research in multimodal advertising discourse, largely dispersed and spread out in multiple disciplines, including semiotics, in such a manner as to enable the reader to get to grips with the benefits that stem from employing a content analytic approach for the ongoing management of the modes of rhetorical configuration of advertising texts. The combination of an interpretivist approach with the methodical outlook yielded by content analysis affords to transform multimodal rhetorical analysis of advertising texts from a theoretical enterprise geared towards making sense of how meaning emerges through the figurative language of advertising to a systematic method for managing advertising textuality, in such a manner as to enable practitioners in marketing related disciplines (e.g., account planning, marketing research, brand management) to actively manage how brand meaning is generated through distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration. The managerial orientation of the //rhetor.dixit//© model is intended to enhance understanding as to how a brand’s intellectual capital is configured and, moreover, to point to directions whereby what I call a brand’s figurative first mover advantage and differential figurative advantages may be furnished to a brand’s discourse. The systematic understanding of a brand’s distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration is not just a ‘nice-to-have’ add-on in a metrics dashboard, but a prerequisite for managing brands as constellations of figurative elements and modes of connectivity among figurative elements, which are part and parcel of a brand’s textual essence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:New Light from Arabic Sources on Galen and the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism NICHOLAS RESCHER The Problem of the Origin of the Fourth Figure FLYING IN THE FACE of the long-standing tradition--going back in Europe to Renaissance times--which credits Galen of Pergamon with the origination of the fourth syllogistic figure, recent authorities have almost to a man evinced doubt about Galen's claim to this innovation. (...) Heinrieh Scholz speaks of "the Galenian syllogistic figure which has been attributed to him, probably wrongly." i j. W. Stakelum concludes his careful discussion of the matter with the categorical assertion that "Galen did not teach the fourth figure." ~ I. M. Bochenski--following Lukasiewicz (see below)--says that the fourth figure "was only ascribed to Galen by a misunderstanding." : William Kneale (also following Lukasiewicz) writes that "it is easy to see how misunderstanding.., by some Arabian philosopher... could have given rise to the tradition that Galen added a fourth figure to Aristotle's syllogistic theory." 4 The currently received account of the matter is that of Jan Lukasiewicz who, in his book on Aristotle's Syllogistic (1951; 2d ed., 1957), presents the known reports about Galen and the fourth figure as follows (I list them in the order in which they came to light) : 1) Several passages in Averroes' (d. 1198) Middle Commentary on Prior Analytics credit Galen with introducing a fourth figure (ad Anal. Pr. I, 5; I, 8; I, 23). These passages, known in Europe through a Renaissance Latin translation of a Hebrew version, provided the basis upon which Zabarella in his work, De Quarta Syllogismorum Figura (in his Opera [Leiden: 1587], pp. 41-53), popularized the "Galenian figure" in European logic. 2) In 1844 Minoides Mynas published in the Preface to his edition of Galen's EisagSg~ dialektik~ an anonymous Greek fragment (late, perhaps 6th century) which states that certain "later scholars" transformed the indirect moods of the first figure added by Theophrastus and Eudeffms into a new fourth figure, citing Galen as the originator of this doctrine.~ 1Abriss der Geschichte der Logik (Miinster: 1931), trans, into English by K. F. Leidecker, ConciseHistory of Logic (NewYork: 1961);p. 38ofthe Englishversion. "Why 'Galenian' Figure?" The New Scholasticism, XVI (1942),289-296. s Formale Logik (Miinchen-Freiburg:1956; 2nd. ed., 1962), trans, into English by Ivo Thomas, A History of Formal Logic (Notre Dame: 1961);p. 142of the Englishversion. Williamand Martha Kneale, The Developmentof Logic (Oxford: 1962),p. 184. Alsoprinted in Karl Kalbfieisch, ~ber Galen s Einleitung in die Logik, 2~. Supplementband der Jahrbi~cherfi~r klassische Philologie (Leipzig:1897), p. 707. This datum casts some 28 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3) A Greek fragment was found around 1858 by Karl Prantl in a logical work of the Byzantine scholar Ioannes Italus (llth century) which says that Galen taught the existence of a fourth figure, adding sarcastically that he (Galen) thought thus to appear cleverer than the older logical commentators (presumably Theophrastus and Eudemus are intended), but fell far short.6 4) In 1899 Maximilian Wallies published7 an anonymous Greek scholium (of perhaps the 6th or the 7th century) on Ammonins' commentary on Prior Analytics which states that Galen "says in his Apodictic that there are four figures, because he looks at the compound syllogisms consisting of four terms (i.e., with three premisses )" rather than the simple (three-term, two-premiss) syllogisms of Aristotle. (The scholiast goes on to explain at some length how such compound syllogisms can be sorted into four groups.) It is readily seen that, given these data, two possibilities stand before us: a) Galen did actually invent the traditional fourth figure. Reports (1)-(3) are correct, and the anonymous scholiast of (4) was put on the wrong track by the fact that Galen also said that compound syllogisms of four terms can be classed into four groups. b) Galen did not invent the traditional fourth figure. Only after his time when once the indirect moods of the first figure had--somehow--become systematized into a separate "figure," was this credited to Galen by a mistake along the lines described by the anonymous scholiast. Thus (4) alone is right, and (1)-(3) are mistaken. Which of... (shrink)

E. J. Lowe, a prominent figure in contemporary metaphysics, sets out and defends his theory of what there is. His four-category ontology is a metaphysical system which recognizes four fundamental categories of beings: substantial and non-substantial particulars and substantial and non-substantial universals. Lowe argues that this system has an explanatory power which is unrivalled by more parsimonious theories and that this counts decisively in its favour. He shows that it provides a powerful explanatory framework for a unified (...) account of causation, dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity and many other related matters, thus constituting a full metaphysical foundation for natural science. (shrink)

In Prior Analytics A7 Aristotle points out that all valid syllogistic moods of the second and third figures as well as the two particular moods of the first figure can be reduced to the two universal first-figure moods Barbara and Celarent. As far as the third figure is concerned, it is argued that Aristotle does not want to say, as the transmitted text suggests, that only those two valid moods of this figure whose premisses are both (...) universal statements are directly reducible to Barbara and Celarent, but rather that it is those four valid moods of this figure whose respective minor premisses are universal statements of which this is true. It is shown that in order to carry this sense the transmitted text has to be corrected by inserting just one word, which seems to have dropped out. (shrink)

Background There have been different ethical approaches to the issues in the history of philosophy. Two American philosophers Beachump and Childress formulated some ethical principles namely 'respect to autonomy', 'justice', 'beneficence' and 'non-maleficence'. These 'Four Principles' were presented by the authors as universal and applicable to any culture and society. Mawlana, a great figure in Sufi tradition, had written many books which not only guide people how to worship God to be close to Him, but also advise people (...) how to lead a good life to enrich their personality, as well as to create a harmonious society and a peaceful world. Methods In this study we examined the major works of Mawlana to find out which of these 'Four Principles of Bioethics' exist in Mawlana's ethical understanding. Results We have found in our study that all these principles exist in Mawlana's writings and philosophy in one form or another. Conclusions We have concluded that, further to Beachump and Childress' claim that these principles are universal and applicable to any culture and society, these principles have always existed in different moral traditions in different ways, of which Mawlana's teaching might be presented as a good example. (shrink)

From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day, philosophy in Austria has progressed through four phases. Theparticularities of the first three of these phases have prompted a number of commentators rightly to distinguish a characteristic Austrian, as distinct from German, way of doing philosophy. The main figure of the second phase was Franz Brentano, and his distinctive theory of the four-phase cycle of philosophical development is outlined, and critically compared to other views of the (...) development of philosophy. In Austria itself the caesuras between the phases were marked as much by political as by philosophical events, and the paper shows how philosophy in Austria has been notable in all its phases for the high level and overwhelmingly negative effect of political interference in intellectual life, a doleful saga which continues to this day. (shrink)

William of Ockham’s discussion of which grammatical categories are relevant for describing the syntax of mental language occurs in two short and closely related passages: Quodlibeta V, 8 and Summa logicae I, 3. In the present paper, I discuss four riddles that are raised by these two texts: (1) I point to an apparent anomaly in the structure of Summa logicae I, 3 and I propose an amendment to the St. Bonaventure edition in this regard; (2) I argue that (...) Ockham’s main grammatical source in the two passages is the Latin grammarian Donatus rather than Priscian (as might have been thought) and I show why this is relevant; (3) I clarify what problem Ockham has in mind when saying that there is a special difficulty about whether distinctions of “quality” (qualitas) are found among mental names as they are among spoken names; (4) I explain what Ockham means by the “figure” (figura) of names and verbs and why he thinks that this grammatical category is of no relevance for the analysis of mental language. (shrink)

The present volume consists of the protocols of twenty séances held between 1966 and 1973 in which Heidegger was the central figure. They occurred as four seminars, the first three of which were given in Provence, the last one having taken place in Heidegger’s home in Zähringen, a suburb of Freiburg im Breisgau, three years before his death in 1976. Appended to the protocols are two brief texts, the first written in the winter of 1972–73 on part of (...) Parmenides’ Fragment 1 which Heidegger read during the last session of the fourth seminar, on 8 September 1973, and an introduction to the Parmenides interpretation called “The Provenance of Thinking”, which was written at some point between 1973 and the spring of 1976. The two texts were added by the editor of the Gesamtausgabe edition of Heidegger’s Seminare in 1986. The five pages on which they appear contain the only sentences composed by Heidegger himself and are therefore the only ones, in fact, from Heidegger’s own German in Four Seminars. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato's dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato's characterization of Socrates in Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is 'erotic', (...) not in a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates' art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erôs. Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater. (shrink)