From young children, with their guileless, searching questions, to the recently bereaved, trying to make sense of tragic loss, humans wrestle with our relationship to God--and with God's essence, motivations, and power--throughout our lives: Why does God permit catastrophe and senseless tragedy, again and again? Is God's power limited in any way? Can He change the past? Does He know the future? Why does God require prayer? Why does He not provide stronger evidence of His presence? Whom does God (...) consign to hell, and why? Does God change? Suffer? What can we make of the conflicting diversity within world religions, of the many gods of different religious traditions? Such questions engage, confront, and perplex us on a daily basis. In this rich, concise volume, leading philosophers who have long pondered God's nature and ways take on these core problems and present their findings in a manner likely to engage believer and non-believer, general reader and specialist alike. (shrink)

I have been working on meta-philosophy for quite some time and was pleasantly surprised to encounter, mid-May 2017, someone who shares this commitment (apart from his many other interests and specializations) for very similar reasons as my own. He is Dr Desh Ray Sirswal from India and one of his numerous websites, blogs, journals, etc is - http://drsirswal.webs.com/ I let him speak for himself. “My objective is to achieve an intellectual detachment from all philosophical systems, and not to solve (...) specific philosophical problems but to become sensitively aware of what it is when we philosophize.” Copyright© Desh Raj Sirswal . I commence by dealing with the teaching of philosophy, because the contents of what is being taught at under-graduate level is for most people who are slightly informed about the subject what philosophy is about. This usually consists of the history of Ideas of Western Philosophy. Although an increasing number of faculties now broaden the scope to the ‘philosophies’ of Asia, the Far East and the Middle East. This international broadening of what is being included in curricula of or as philosophy is another index that Western Philosophy is in need of subject-matter as its traditional subject-matter have all but died out. Apart from the History of Philosophical ideas, the subject often is presented in terms of so-called branches, for example metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic, and so on. A number of authors suggest that both ways of teaching the discipline is very selective because of the departments adherence to some form of either ‘analytical’ or ‘continental’ philosophy. Apart from the traditional lecture-style the teaching of philosophy is dealt with by means of some variation on the Oxbridge ‘tutorial’-style. Tutorials are often acclaimed as being an amazing, to be highly regarded innovation. Some studies and research of it however revealed that is not at all very comprehensive but is restricted to a number of items concerning reasoning, argumentation and critical re-viewing and thinking. This approach forms part of the attempt by contemporary research universities to teach aspects of ‘research’. This brings us to my next section on methods of doing philosophy. I suggest that the doing of philosophy resembles certain aspects and contexts of some of the steps and stages of doing theorizing. This is the rationale for including the next section on theorizing, its steps, stages and other aspects such as the use of metaphors, imaginary experiments, heuristic devices, etc. The next section deals with the changing nature of traditional philosophy as it lost most of its subject-matter to other disciplines that have been socio-culturally differentiated. And the search for new philosophical subject-matter such as Experimental Philosophy or XPhi, the involvement of philosophers in inter-disciplinary studies, especially the latest fad of cognitive studies or sciences and of course the fabrication of philosophies of all areas of human behaviour and kinds of socio-cultural activities for example sport, the arts, sciences, cognition, sex, violence, gender, race, religion, etc etc. I then turn to the question about how, where and why one could perhaps do philosophy against the background of the above. In this investigation I make explicit some of the self-imposed limits of the discourse. Some of these restrictions have been created because of the absolute institutionalization of the discipline as just another subject of universities. This institutionalization of course requires that those involved in the discipline of institutionalized philosophy must be professionals. This absolute requirement lays down the condition that to be a philosopher one must be a professional and an academic. The conditions of institutionalization and professionalization have far reaching consequences for the philosophical discourse, its subject-matter, methods, principles, values, aims, purposes and norms. One of these is the need to publish and to publish often especially in peer-reviewed journals and in their required, institutionalized format. Because of these institutionalized restrictions of what philosophy is, what it must be like, what it may be like and what it may not be like I explore the lack of self-cognition of academically institutionalized philosophy and the associated absence of critical, meta-cognition and self-awareness of professional philosophers. I question the values of doing that type of philosophy, philosophy-on-demand and because of demand and suggest that it is preferable to engage with the more original, creative-thinking philosophers’ work. All of the above are of course intersubjectively determined and this is why I finally explore the nature and operation of different forms of intersubjectivity, for example of common sense, everyday existence, that of the different sciences, the arts, etc and the roles or functions of these things in the creation or constitution of alternative discourses, their realities, life-worlds or perspectives on ‘the world, reality, and existence’. This is the phantom, the ghost of the deceased discourse of philosophy that I chased, encountered and describe. -/- . (shrink)

Question: In Islamic philosophy, Active Intellect is Peripatetic tenth intellect. Also in Peripatetic epistemology, Potential human intellect, acts by unification or conjunction with active (agent) intellect. This intellective thrust has a wielder and more attractive role in Illuminative wisdom. Meted: The research methodology based on tradition Comparative studies to analyze and adapt votes Gazi Saeed Qummi and votes illuminated Suhrawardi.Results:1- Human’s archetype adjust with Gabriel, in religions and Active (agent) Intellect in Illuminative wisdom. 2-Human’s archetype appears as (...) “perfect nature” format during personal relation to every special individual.3 and also explains relation between Emam and believer in shiaa’s idea. (shrink)

Preface 9 PART I: RELIGIOUS, SCIENTIFIC, AND PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND Introduction to Part I 19 1. The Bible 27 2. Natural Theology 33 William Paley 3. On the Origin of Species 38 Charles Darwin 4. Objections to Mr. Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species 65 Adam Sedgwick 5. The Origin of Species 73 Thomas H. Huxley 6. What Is Darwinism? 82 Charles Hodge 7. Darwinism as a Metaphysical Research Program 105 Karl Popper 8. Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Biology 116 (...) Michael Ruse 9. Human Nature: One Evolutionist’s View 136 Francisco Ayala 10. Universal Darwinism 158 Richard Dawkins PART II: CREATION SCIENCE AND THE McLEAN CASE Introduction to Part II 187 11. The Creationists 192 Ronald L. Numbers 12. Creation, Evolution, and the Historical Evidence 231 Duane T. Gish 13. Witness Testimony Sheet: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 253 Michael Ruse 14. United States District Court Opinion: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 279 Judge William R. Overton 15. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem 312 Larry Laudan 16. Science at the BarùCauses for Concern 331 Larry Laudan 17. Pro Judice 337 Michael Ruse 18. More on Creationism 345 Larry Laudan 19. Commentary: Philosophers at the BarùSome Reasons for Restraint 350 Barry R. Gross PART III: INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND THE KITZMILLER CASE Introduction to Part III 369 20. But Isn’t It Creationism? The Beginnings of "Intelligent Design" in the Midst of the Arkansas and Louisiana Litigation 377 Nick Matzke 21. What Is Darwinism? 414 Phillip E. Johnson 22. Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design, Creationism, and the Constitution 426 Matthew Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey 23. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Expert Witness Testimony 434 Michael Behe 24. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Expert Report 456 Robert T. Pennock 25. A Step toward the Legalization of Science Studies 485 Steve Fuller 26. What Is Wrong with Intelligent Design? 495 Elliott Sober 27. United States District Court Memorandum Opinion: Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. 506 Judge John E. Jones II 28. Can’t Philosophers Tell the Difference between Science and Religion? Demarcation Revisited 536 Robert T. Pennock. (shrink)

This is a translation of three philosophical questions raised by Tusi (1201–1274) in his letter to Khusrawshahi (1184-1254). These critical questions are related to three main fields of philosophy: Philosophy of Nature, Philosophical Psychology (or Philosophy of the Soul) and Philosophical Theology which is traditionally subsumed as one of the proper subtopics of Metaphysics. Although Tusi did not receive any recorded response from Khusrawshahi, his short letter attracted considerable scholarly attention and received some (...) remarkable responses, in later Islamic philosophy and thus provided an exemplar of the traditional technique of debating by way of “question-answer” correspondence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue by Oliva BlanchetteMatthew MinerdBLANCHETTE, Oliva. Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xi + 133 pp. Cloth, $75.00In this text, the author presents a personal synthesis of metaphysics using a lexicon of scholastic and Blondelian-Hegelian thought. The first chapter, "From Questions of Being to the Question of Being as Being," presents a quasi-phenomenological account (...) of the emergence of the analogical conception of order of various degrees of perfection of being as such, concretized in various domains that are physical/natural and human/cultural. In this first chapter, an important theme that emerges and becomes a golden thread throughout the text is the claim that the primary analogate of being is, within our experience, the human person and the human mode of activity in culture and religion. [End Page 538]The second chapter, "Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue of the Crossroads of Intersubjective, Intercultural, and Interreligious Communication," is perhaps the densest, covering a number of points handled in the remainder of the book. In this chapter, Blanchette is concerned with showing how intercommunication takes place within discourse concerning both the shared principles of intelligent agents and ultimately in view of an orientation toward what he later will call the vertical transcendence of culture in relation to God. Both of these tasks are of critical importance for constituting the necessary background for a philosophy of culture and a philosophy of religion that can mediate among the various actualities of human existence amid the objective and subjective aspects of art, science, and moral mutual recognition of intelligent agents in community.The third chapter, "The Necessity of Metaphysics in the Struggle for World Peace and Justice," opens with an arguably theological observation that the rational agent has two ends, one of which is not attainable in this life involving some kind of "more direct relation with God" in the hereafter, and the other pertaining to the struggle toward the establishment of a "historical communal peace." The framework for this terminology is a scholastically aware engagement with Blondelian (and partly Hegelian) thought. This chapter is concerned with articulating the way that rational agents engage in the historical task of establishing a kind of universal spirit of intersubjective recognition, at least as an asymptotic goal within history, even if contention ultimately prevents the formation of such a single, unified, intrahistorical community. Blanchette argues that this project is possible only within the dual transcendence of the human person, namely, as cultural and as religious, the latter being the condition for the former. Metaphysics has the role of articulating such transcendence.The fourth chapter, "Metaphysics as the Way from Phenomenology to Theology," engages with some of the questions related to the "theological turn" in Continental phenomenology. Phenomenological inquiry, Blanchette argues, must acknowledge that it investigates only one order of being in the universe, the human-intentional (or "historico-social"), and therefore stands in need of metaphysics to mediate its subject material with other kinds of being (as is true, similarly, of other disciplines). However, he also contends that phenomenology offers a very important preamble for a "first-person ontology" that is sensitive to the specific cultural and historical being of spiritual beings, but ultimately, Blanchette argues, it does so as "part of the way up from the bottom" and as opening up to metaphysical speculation, which itself prevents theology from degenerating into a kind of superstition.In chapters 5 through 7, Blanchette traces out the kind of mediation that occurs between metaphysics and theology. In chapter 5, he briefly develops his stated conviction regarding the human person's role as primary analogate in metaphysics and connects to a more Aristotelian [End Page 539] language of a transcendent cause that is pure act, though also immanent creatively and, upon theological supposition, through divine incarnation.The reviewer found chapter 6, "Metaphysics and the Transcendence of Cultures in Religion," to be the most interesting. In it, Blanchette develops earlier themes concerning the metaphysics of culture and its relationship to nature, as well as the constitution of subjectivity precisely as intersubjectivity among rational selves in the order of culture. Developing themes from chapter 3, he... (shrink)

This book deals with the psychotherapeutic factor that permeates the whole Epicurean philosophical program. It is the aim of this study to research and to rehabilitate its healing function. Since the Garden’s philosophy is a very systematic one, the question about the natural reality, φύσις, had to be addressed firstly. Anti-nihilism, materialism, eternal atoms, infinite void, perpetual movement, clinamen and the plurality worlds are key notions of the axiomatic and scientific Epicurus’ physics. Once we had gained clarity about those (...) core concepts, the central role of human beings in the system was to be discussed. As natural, yet exceptional, atomic compounds, men and women do have flesh and soul and are, therefore, completely mortal. Nevertheless, they possess numerous qualities, originating in their ψυχή, which render them unique: freedom, rationality and even a material community with the gods. According to Epicurus, there is a fourth element constituting the souls of both people and deities, so that a physical continuity and material formation are preserved through the entire nature. -/- Gods are studied from a naturalistic physiologic perspective and at the very same time they act exemplary and, freed from any providential, governing tasks, they provide a regula uitae in order to achieve a pleasant, authentic happiness. In fact, this research tries to demonstrate that complete curation is not to be linked to an eternal extra-corporeal soul, but arises from the removal of pain and fear, aponia and ataraxia. These two are the paramount pleasures, far distant from a gross hedonism. Ethics are, then, presented as a soothing practice, having a nuclear medical purpose. Taking this into account, it was necessary to explore the historical connections between philosophy and rational Hellenic medicine before Epicurus. After that, multiple therapeutic forms conceived or applied by the Samian philosopher were analyzed. The λόγος proved to be the unifying element among them and involved not only human reason but also analogy. Epicurus’ diagnose is very sad: we are in pain. To reverse that, he presented exercises such as meditation, confession, self-examination, laugh therapy, emotional intelligence, intrusive thoughts control, companionship, solidarity and friendship. There are still two additional therapies completing the above mentioned: an Epicurean thanatology, because we miss the point when considering (im)mortality and forget about sensation as the ground of any life; and an ars desidrandi, because we should accept only natural and necessary desires, instead of chasing whimsy dreams with vain hopes. All this will help us regain our primal bodily and mental health and happiness, our essential, frugal and glad wellbeing. (shrink)

In the literature on African moral philosophy, it is common to find normative conclusions about the way we ought to act directly drawn from purported metaphysical facts about the nature of ourselves and the world. For example, Kwame Gyekye, the most influential sub-Saharan political philosopher, attempts to defend moderate communitarianism, roughly the view that agents have strong duties to support others in ways that do not violate human rights, by contending that it follows from the dual nature (...) of the self as both social and individual. In this article, I critically analyze this sort of rationale, and contend that it is unsound. I propose several reconstructions, but conclude that they cannot plausibly bridge the ‘is-ought gap’, and that similar arguments found in the field of African ethics, such as the frequent claim we must treat nature with respect since everything in the universe is interdependent, also fail to do so. (shrink)

In recent time there has been ample discussion concerning censorship of research conducted in two labs involved in avian influenza virus research. Much of the debate has centered on the question whether the methods and results should reach to open disclosure given the “dual use” nature of this research which can be used for nefarious purposes.

In the literature on African moral philosophy, it is common to find normative conclusions about the way we ought to act directly drawn from purported metaphysical facts about the nature of ourselves and the world. For example, Kwame Gyekye, the most influential sub-Saharan political philosopher, attempts to defend moderate communitarianism, roughly the view that agents have strong duties to support others in ways that do not violate human rights, by contending that it follows from the dual nature (...) of the self as both social and individual. In this article, I critically analyze this sort of rationale, and contend that it is unsound. I propose several reconstructions, but conclude that they cannot plausibly bridge the ‘is-ought gap’, and that similar arguments found in the field of African ethics, such as the frequent claim we must treat nature with respect since everything in the universe is interdependent, also fail to do so. (shrink)

Conversations in Metaphysics: Ever Ancient, Ever New introduces students to metaphysics through a set of contemporary readings based on classical metaphysical texts, thinkers, and concepts. It challenges readers to consider and seek possible answers to questions of metaphysics relative to human knowledge and the nature of reality. Organized historically, the readings endeavor to define and probe the concepts of metaphysics, existence, being, God, evil, and morality from antiquity to the present. The historical lens (...) provides students with deeper context for the contemporary readings and helps them establish a basic knowledge of metaphysics and its place within philosophical tradition. In later readings, students are invited to explore how metaphysics relates to religion, science, and technology in the modern world, as well as how metaphysics has shaped and continues to shape the reality of our universe. Rich with engaging material and endless opportunities for critical thought, Conversations in Metaphysics is an ideal ancillary text for courses in philosophy that call attention to metaphysics and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this review article, I situate Michela Massimi’s 2022 Perspectival Realism book in the broader state of the art of the contemporary philosophy of science by examining critically its contribution to the perspectival realism debate. Setting up a new agenda of philosophical problems for the perspectival realist, Massimi’s book is the most comprehensive assessment of perspectival realism since the publication of Giere’s 2006 Giere, Ronald. Ed. 2006. Scientific Perspectivism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar] Scientific Perspectivism (the (...) starting point of the debate). The author carries out a scrupulous analysis of the historical, epistemological, and metaphysical foundations of perspectival realism—while she engages critically with the existing literature, she does so by giving a generous homage to the previous contributions to the state of the art (the works of Giere, Morrison, van Fraassen and others). However, I raise a batterie of questions about Massimi’s (perspectival) commitments, to bring into question the reach and the ambitions of her global project, specifically the rising tension between her modest epistemological beliefs in a plurality of culturally and historically situated perspectives and her ambitious metaphysical commitments towards a primitivist view about laws of nature. (shrink)

This is the original Arabic text of three philosophical questions raised by Tusi (1201–1274) in his letter to Khusrawshahi (1184-1254). These critical questions are related to three main fields of philosophy: Philosophy of Nature, Philosophical Psychology (or Philosophy of the Soul) and Philosophical Theology which is traditionally subsumed as one of the proper subtopics of Metaphysics. Although Tusi did not receive any recorded response from Khusrawshahi, his short letter attracted considerable scholarly attention and (...) received some remarkable responses, in later Islamic philosophy and thus provided an exemplar of the traditional technique of debating by way of “question-answer” correspondence. (shrink)

Preview: This is the second volume of the double issue of Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture devoted to the relationship between science and religion. The contributions across these two volumes have mostly been concerned with, and argued for, various aspects of a non-reductive view of this relationship, according to which reality is not limited to what the natural sciences can tell us about it. That is the view that science and religion are not in conflict, or (...) that the advances made by the natural sciences do not undermine religion as an adequate means of addressing the big questions humanity faces. This is not only a very welcome but also exciting result confirming that after many decades of an almost complete monopoly of scientific naturalism in English language philosophy the field is beginning to open up to a more diverse range of views. This development has made it possible for philosophers in the analytic tradition to engage with topics of deep human importance in a serious and systematic way. (shrink)

An original and insightful account of nature and our place in it from one of France’s preeminent historians of philosophy. One of France’s preeminent historians of philosophy, Marcel Conche has written and translated more than thirty-five books and is recognized for his groundbreaking and authoritative work in Greek philosophy, as well as on Montaigne. In Philosophizing ad Infinitum, one of his most remarkable and daring books, Conche articulates a unique and powerful understanding of nature, inclusive of humanity, as (...) infinite in time and space—ever self-renewing, eternal, and beyond complete understanding or control. In today’s world the notion of infinity is at the core of the crisis humanity faces understanding nature. For the last two hundred years economies have been running at full speed, fueled by the implicit belief that natural resources are infinite; however, it is clear that they are not and that humanity needs to radically rethink the foundations of environmental and economic systems. Conche seeks to begin this rethinking, illustrating along the way insightful and sometimes unorthodox ideas about Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Bergson, and others. “Philosophizing ad Infinitum: this book paints a perfect picture of the life of Marcel Conche, a natural-born philosopher. His aptitude to question absolutely everything drove him to the pre-Socratics, even at an early age, in his relentless quest for the truth. With Montaigne, the thinker to whom he feels most akin, Marcel Conche stands tall as an exceptional figure in contemporary French philosophy, renewing and enriching a great philosophical tradition.” — Françoise Dastur, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy is no longer viable,‭ ‬relevant and acceptable.‭ ‬It might be possible to continue doing philosophizing in traditional ways.‭ ‬It is possible to continue fabricating fictional realities in the manner of the Pre-Socratics,‭ ‬Spinoza,‭ ‬Leibniz,‭ ‬Husserl,‭ ‬Hegel,‭ ‬Plato,‭ ‬et al.‭ ‬It is possible to devise pictures of realities and depictions of‭ ‬human consciousness and cognition like Descartes or in the Kantian manner. -/- One of the major issues with traditional philosophy is its lack of self-awareness,‭ ‬the absence of (...) meta-cognition.‭ ‬This lack of meta-cognition of traditional philosophers leads to the creation of all sorts of questionable phenomena and fake problems. -/- Traditional philosophy,‭ ‬metaphysics,‭ ‬ontology,‭ ‬epistemology,‭ ‬ethics,‭ ‬philosophy of sciences,‭ ‬religion,‭ ‬arts,‭ ‬etc are little more than the possibilities,‭ ‬limits and restrictions enabled and allowed by the philosopher's methodology,‭ ‬techniques and tools.‭ -/- It is most likely possible to envisage a project to devise a collection or synthesis of‭ ‬many alternative realities by means of the insights and theories of theoretical physics,‭ ‬mathematics,‭ ‬bio-chemistry,‭ ‬biology and other sciences,‭ ‬the depictions produced by the arts and pictures of realities presented by the humanities.‭ ‬If such a system of pictures of reality is philosophically relevant and meaningful is however another matter. -/- The original,‭ ‬creative thinking philosopher constitutes alternattive or new realities by his philosophizing.‭ ‬This philosophizing employs and resembles aspects and stages of the processes of theorizing. -/- The real goal of philosophizing is to increase ever greater wisdom.‭ ‬Not merely wisdom in an abstract sense,‭ ‬but different kinds of practical and applied wisdom in all areas of human,‭ ‬everyday existence.‭ ‬In other words,‭ ‬like spirituality and mysticism philosophizing attempts to embody or incarnate wisdom.‭ ‬While mysticism or the mystical paths and aspects of religions aspire to unity experience,‭ ‬to become one with THE ONE,‭ ‬to become the ONE,‭ ‬REAL SELF,‭ ‬to realize the Buddha mind or to be united or‭ '‬married‭' ‬to the Beloved of Sufism. (shrink)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to (...) his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities. Written near the end of Seneca’s life, _Natural Questions _is a work in which Seneca expounds and comments on the natural sciences of his day—rivers and earthquakes, wind and snow, meteors and comets—offering us a valuable look at the ancient scientific mind at work. The modern reader will find fascinating insights into ancient philosophical and scientific approaches to the physical world, and also vivid evocations of the grandeur, beauty, and terror of nature. (shrink)

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to (...) his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities. Written near the end of Seneca’s life, Natural Questions is a work in which Seneca expounds and comments on the natural sciences of his day—rivers and earthquakes, wind and snow, meteors and comets—offering us a valuable look at the ancient scientific mind at work. The modern reader will find fascinating insights into ancient philosophical and scientific approaches to the physical world and also vivid evocations of the grandeur, beauty, and terror of nature. (shrink)

This paper will pose the question of the future minoritization of the white, gentile, Christian European and EuroAmerican identity, which has dominated world history from colonization through the post-Cold War historical present. The question is not how this is coming to an end in the near future as empirical fact and in what manner, but an attempt to imagine another future, another identity than what has been proscribed in the past. In order to move into this alterity, we will engage (...) in a critical reading of Derrida’s essay “Abraham, The Other,” in the volume titled emJudeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida./em By examining the philosophical complexity of Derrida’s quasi-autobiographical reflection on his Jewish identity, we can prepare the conditions for how the future gentile white European identity could look when not grounded in its self-edifying monotheism of a white, Christiandominated political and cultural state. The relation between the future diversification of European identity is not just a matter of postcolonial immigration and multiculturalism. It has to do with the ontological problem of how to understand the origin and telos of gentile white European identity in its Christian heritage and metaphysics (from the ancient Greeks to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) when simple notions of origin and end are erased. This brings in the philosophical problem of historical time, movement, and epochal shifts between today’s Europe and another Europe, today’s future and what is other to that. Derrida’s text provides a guide into what is other to monotheism, unicity, oneness, and—by extension, we will argue—gentile whiteness, Christianness too, which is not simply the opposite of polytheism and today’s racial diversity, i.e., non-white and non-western Christian minorities in Europe, the United States, Canada, and the “west” in general. Having said that, this does have obvious implications regarding justice and equality as European and “western” societies in general diversify. Linking the most archaic, or the farthest in distance beyond the mythic origin of Abraham and therefore of Jewish biblical-historical identity, raises the prospects of “another” Abraham. This Other is not rooted in historical memory. This paper argues that Derrida’s reflections will help us understand an alternative future whose metaphysics is yet to be written, one that is not simply a repetition of the contents of the history of (gentile) religion and philosophy in Europe and its linear, successive, chronological historical time-frame, i.e., the Gregorian calendar./p. (shrink)

Consciousness is a natural and integral part of human beings that is at the core of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual functions throughout our lives. However, we tend to be too occupie...

Why is religion such a widespread human experience? In enlightenment Scotland, philosophers had already attempted to answer this question turning to natural histories of mankind, and to a careful analysis of the human mind and of those cognitive capacities responsible for religious-type beliefs and attitudes. This early approach is also echoed today, as scholars from the cognitive sciences seek to show how religious-type beliefs and practices are produced either directly or as a by-product of natural cognitive processes. (...) Others continue to study the dependence of religious beliefs on cultural traditions, symbolic meanings and ritualistic practices. The authors of this special issue continue this discussion, focusing on specific topics and challenges posed by current studies on religion as a natural phenomenon. (shrink)

Gardens provoke thought and engagement in ways that are often overlooked. This book shines new light on long-held assumptions about gardens and proposes novel ways in which we might reconsider them. The author challenges traditional views of how we experience gardens, how we might think of gardens as works of art, and how the everyday materials of gardens – plants, light, water, earth – may become artful. -/- The author provides a detailed analysis of Tupare, a garden in New Zealand, (...) and uses it as source material for his analysis of the philosophical issues art gardens raise. His new account of gardens highlights the polymodal, multi-sensual, and improvisatory character of the garden experience, it offers an ontological comparison between gardens and humans and other animals, and it explains how identical plants, and arrangements of plants, may be mundane when encountered beyond the garden but artful, meaningful, and aesthetically valuable when experienced within it. (shrink)

The politics of wellbeing and the new science of happiness have shot up the agenda since Martin Seligman coined the phrase "positive psychology". After all, who does not want to live the good life? So ten years on, why is it that much of this otherwise welcome debate sounds like as much apple-pie - "work less", "earn enough", "keep fit", "find meaning", "enjoy freedoms"? The reason is not, ultimately, cynicism. Rather, it is because a central, tricky question is being glossed (...) over: just what is wellbeing? Mark Vernon argues that positive psychology has overlooked and sidelined the ancient wisdom on wellbeing, notably from the Greek philosophers. Now is the time to pay it proper attention.Vernon shows, surprisingly, that wellbeing is not found in a focus on pleasure, or even the pursuit of happiness itself. Rather, it is a question of meaning and responding to the great challenge of our day: the search for transcendence. For at root, the life that is going well cultivates a way of life based upon love: it is that which draws you out of yourself - in friends, hopes and ultimately the contemplation of mystery - and orientates a life towards that which is good. (shrink)

Stakeholder maneuvers such as Internet media attacks or consumer boycotts can have devastating effects on companies. By contrary, vital relationships between companies and their stakeholders can be highly beneficial. A review of the existing stakeholder-management literature suggests to engage stakeholders in business activities in a positive manner. However, the types of successful engagement activities differ across industries. The purposes of this article are to develop an explanatory framework based on the literature findings, to introduce stakeholder-engagement literature to a segment of (...) the water sourcing industry, and to unfold industry’s stakeholder-engagement measures. Based on a content analysis of 11 cases, we investigate if and how companies in the natural mineral water bottling industry in Austria inform, communicate, and therefore engage with stakeholders. It became evident that fewer than three of eleven companies published information on sustainability or corporate social responsibility reports, open house days, workshops, or international community activities. Most companies maintained a website for their bottled natural mineral water or communicated quality consciousness. We conclude that most companies in the Austrian mineral water industry could increase their stakeholder-engagement activities to positively respond to challenging business environments. (shrink)

This fifty-page essay treats Marx's concept of action as the principle underlying his whole system. Activity for Marx is described as both a philosophical concept and an element of human experience demanded by his system. The principle of activity is present as early as in Marx's doctoral dissertation and its influence is traced on his materialism, epistemology, and conception of philosophy. In the process, some strong similarities are shown with Dewey's concept of action, despite the difference (...) in goals of the two philosophers. The concept of action was not original with Marx as the author demonstrates in his discussion of Kant's epistemology and Hegel's dialectics. What distinguishes Marx's concept of action is the unification of theory and practice, and the interrelationship of the two on a materialist foundation. To Marx, there was no meaningful theory without practice and no effective action without theory. Furthermore, the oft-quoted statement by Marx that philosophers have only interpreted the world whereas the point is to change it asserts only half of the case. Marx is not advocating change for the sake of change or change in accordance with any interpretation of the world. He is proposing change of a very specific kind and his concept of action cannot be separated from its content. This point does not emerge as clearly as it should in the essay under consideration because the author tends to treat the concept of activity in isolation and as an uninfluenced influence on the rest of Marx's thought. The author welcomes Marx's emphasis on practice as a much-needed antidote to the trend that makes philosophy a world apart. He also approves Marx's active personal role in society and his unhesitating entry into debate with the finest minds of his time. Of great value to those interested in the young Marx is the author's translation of Marx's doctoral dissertation on The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. This is the first complete translation to appear in English. It occupies half the space of the present volume.--H. B. (shrink)

This book is a collection of the selected proceedings of the 4th International Conference "Human Being in Contemporary Philosophical Conceptions," which was held under the patronage of UNESCO at Volgograd State University (Russia) on May 28-31, 2007. In the letter to the organizers, Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura wrote: "I should like to congratulate you on this important initiative to promote philosophical reflection, which is one of the central objectives of UNESCO's Intersectoral Strategy on Philosophy." There is an interesting (...) fact: the 19th World Congress of Philosophy in Moscow (1993) had no session on philosophical anthropology, the next Congress in Boston (1998) had one such session, the 21st Congress of Philosophy in Istanbul (2003) had already four sessions, and the 22nd World Congress of Philosophy in Seoul (2008) had six sessions on philosophical anthropology. Obviously, we may observe a new anthropological renaissance in contemporary thought. This book serves the philosophical anthropology becoming as well. Perhaps an idea of integral studies is the most attractive trend in the contemporary philosophy and science. The book presents an experience in integral philosophy of human being. Also, the development of philosophical anthropology is closely connected with practical tasks. Our political activities, welfare projects and educational programs can become really useful only when we are guided by knowledge of what human being is, what we are able to do, what are own needs, and what we must become. Philosophical anthropology could correctly define the research purposes of all human sciences. This volume includes various reflexions and styles of thinking. By this, all the papers demonstrate metaphysics of respect for human being. The contributors, scholars from the different countries, are open for free discussions and fresh ideas. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hegel’s Philosophical Outlines of Justice develops an incisive natural law theory by providing a comprehensive moral theory of a modern republic. Hegel’s Outlines adopt and augment a neglected species of moral constructivism which is altogether neutral about moral realism, moral motivation, and whether reasons for action are linked ‘internally’ or ‘externally’ to motives. Hegel shows that, even if basic moral norms and institutions are our artefacts, they are strictly objectively valid because for our very finite (...) form of semi-rational embodied agency they are necessary and because sufficient justifying grounds for these norms and institutions can be addressed to all persons. Hegel’s moral constructivism identifies and justifies the core content of a natural law theory, without invoking metaphysical issues of moral realism, anti-realism, irrealism or ‘truth makers’, etc. I begin with Socrates’ question to Euthyphro to distinguish between moral realism and moral irrealism. I then summarise basic points of constructivist method and how Hume’s theory of justice inaugurates this distinctive species of natural law constructivism. How this approach addresses issues of political legitimacy is highlighted by Rousseau’s juridical innovation. How this approach is better articulated and justified by Kant’s specifically Critical method is briefly considered in connection with his justification of rights to possession, so that we can then recognise Hegel’s natural law constructivism in his Outlines. Hegel’s account of rights to possession corresponds closely to Kant’s, and his account of juridical relations as human interrelations accords with natural law constructivism. This finding is corroborated by some central features of Hegel’s account of Sittlichkeit, including how Hegel adopts, undergirds and augments Rousseau’s and Kant’s Independence Requirement for political legitimacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Le doute en question: Parades pragmatistes au défi sceptiqueRobert AlmederClaudine Tiercelin Le doute en question: Parades pragmatistes au défi sceptique (Doubt in Question: Pragmatist Responses to the Challenge of Skepticism) Paris & Tel-Aviv: Editions de l'eclat, 2005. 332 pp.This book is a serious contribution to the highest standards of scholarship along with a masterful ability to re-deploy the results of that contribution in a striking display of (...) class='Hi'>philosophical acumen aimed at showing us how to set aside that vast body of contemporary literature devoted to taking seriously the challenge of contemporary skepticism in epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. It is not enough to say that this is an excellent book. Those who think that philosophy done well is a commanding esthetic experience will find Tiercelin's book a work of high art performed and executed with style, deep analytic insight, and grace.The author, who teaches American Philosophy, Contemporary Epistemology and Philosophy of Language at the University of Paris, is an outstanding scholar and an incisive philosopher. She is pre-eminently equipped to elucidate and advance philosophical discourse by carefully applying the best of pragmatic thought to enduring epistemological, metaphysical and ethical problems associated with strong global skepticism. She has a sensitive and broad command of the critical texts, and shows us why the usual objections to pragmatic epistemology, for example, are, in spite of continuing popularity, unacceptable in the light of those texts. She guides us back to Peirce's doubt-belief theory of inquiry and argues carefully not only that the purpose of all inquiry is to establish reliable beliefs that allow us to adapt successfully to the myriad demands of an independent world, but also that our explication of the nature of truth and knowledge must be made consistent with that fundamental point. That in itself would be enough for [End Page 282] a fine book. But she then goes further to delineate how pragmatic thought can be redeployed to discover the inadequacy of several responses to contemporary arguments for skepticism (including the argument from ignorance) and at the same time show how those very pragmatic theses deserve a place of honor in virtue of their demonstrable power to dissolve or undermine the main arguments for the skeptic's general story.After an introductory section outlining the new rise and nature of contemporary skepticism with its roots in ancient and modern philosophy, the book divides nicely into seven sections bearing the following titles:1. The nature and impact of the skeptical challenge in contemporary philosophy2. To what extent can we doubt?3. Two pragmatic strategies in the face of doubt: Peirce and Wittgenstein4. Pragmatism or the human logic of truth5. The ethical response to the skeptical challenge;6. Do we perceive the external world? and7. The risk of error and the presumption of knowledge.In the introduction and in the first two sections, Tiercelin shows in detail the continuity between the contemporary resurgence in skeptical thought affirming that knowledge that P requires the elimination of every possibility of error, and the Cartesian thesis to the effect that as long as one can imagine any universe of discourse in which one might be mistaken for any reason in what one believes, one's belief is not an item of knowledge. But, for Tiercelin, while knowledge may be a form of justified true belief, justification sufficient for knowledge simply does not require freedom from the logical possibility of error. Later, in the conclusion of the book (p. 253) she returns to this same issue and notes that, along with many others, even the late David Lewis accepted the unfortunate Cartesian thesis when he asserted in "Elusive Knowledge" (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74.4 [1996]: 549ff) that there is something fundamentally contradictory with sentences such as "I know that P, but I may be mistaken". After all, so the Lewis story goes, if you know that P, there can be no sense in which what you know could be mistaken. At any rate, in the first two sections, Tiercelin delineates different kinds of doubt, and argues from a Peircean perspective on the nature and origin of real doubt... (shrink)

Albert’s anthropology places the human being at the top of a hierarchy of living things in virtue of a unique feature – namely the intellect – that offers the possibility of transcending the changing realm of nature and of assimilating its possessor to their divine creator. Even though Albert, throughout his works, often defends the independence of the human intellect from matter and consequently from the body and senses, his works on natural philosophy seem to offer a (...) different perspective. InDe animalibus, Albert considers the brain to be the divine member of the body responsible for the operations of sensation and, to a certain degree, of intellection. Thus, the entire humoral activity of the human body has a direct influence on the activity of the intellect, his divine nature notwithstanding. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study is to point out how the classical humoral theory is integrated by Albert the Great in his physiological consideration for an explanation of the intellect placed between the murky boundaries of natural philosophy and metaphysics. (shrink)

The main objective of this 2-week RCT study was to test the efficacy of the previously developed Noticing Nature Intervention to boost wellbeing during winter months. The NNI consists of noticing the everyday nature encountered in one’s daily routine and making note of what emotions are evoked. Community adults were randomly assigned to engage in the NNI or were assigned to one of two control conditions. Paired t-tests revealed significant increases pre- to post-intervention in the NNI group for (...) positive affect, elevation, nature connectedness, and hope agency, and a marginally significant increase in transcendent connectedness. No significant pre-post difference emerged for any aspect of wellbeing in the control conditions. Analysis of qualitative findings revealed that negative emotion themes were 2.13 times more likely to be associated with built photos than with nature photos. Feelings of peace, awe, happiness, humbleness, and hope were more likely to be associated with nature photos, while feelings of annoyance, loneliness, curiosity, uncertainty, anger, yearning, and comfortableness were more likely to be associated with built photos. Overall, results indicated that engaging in the NNI can provide a wellbeing boost, even in the cold of winter. This study is the first to test any nature-based wellbeing intervention during colder, winter months, and to directly assess the impact of a nature-based wellbeing intervention on levels of hope. (shrink)

Are the characteristics and relationships among spatio-temporal entities "real" or are they simply conventional terms that note similarities among things in the world but lack any reality of their own? Or if they are real, what sort of reality do they have? Do we live in a world of causes and effects, or is this relation a useful contrivance for our convenience? What is the nature of this "I" that we invoke when referring to ourselves? Is it body? Mind? (...) Both? Neither? And once its nature is understood, what can be said of the choices it makes? Are they really ours, freely made by an independent will? Or is each choice determined more by the internal makeup of the "I" we happen to be and the social/environmental circumstances in which this "I" finds itself, rather than by any act of will? But if each of us "could not have chosen otherwise" than we have, are we no better than the machines we construct? Then again, maybe some of our more advanced machines should be considered conscious entities? Introduction to Metaphysics: The Fundamental Questions presents these and other intriguing questions, many of which have challenged philosophers from antiquity to the present in their efforts to speculate on the nature of what is real. Often filled with twists and turns, dark corners and hidden recesses, this journey of discovery is an exciting excursion into the depths of human understanding. As guides for this intellectual journey editor Andrew Schoedinger has chosen an impressive array of creative and thought-provoking philosophers: Peter Abelard, Aristotle, Renford Bambrough, George Berkeley, Joseph Butler, Rudolf Carnap, Roderick Chisholm, R.G. Collingwood, Arthur Danto, Donald Davidson, Rene Descartes, C.J. Ducasse, Alvin I. Goldman, Keith Gunderson, David Hume, John Locke, Alasdair MacIntyre, A.I. Melden, John Stuart Mill, D.F. Pears, Hilary Putnam, Anthony Quinton, Bertrand Russell, Michael Scriven, Sydney Shoemaker, P. F. Strawson, Richard Taylor, and others. This volume is a unique invitation to join a distinguished group of theorists as they tackle tough questions concerning the existence of universals, the nature of causation, understanding personal identity, the tangled web of free will, and the challenges posed by the advent of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The realism debate concerns the relationship of our beliefs, thoughts and language to the world or universe, and hence involves a number of fundamental questions ranging from metaphysics through epistemology to semantics and philosophy of language. While a few philosophers take it as an inevitable feature of the debate and try to advance it by coping simultaneously with all those questions, a number of others insists that the approach of this kind leads merely to confusions and misunderstandings. (...) They usually suggest that the metaphysical or ontological aspects of it should be kept separate from such epistemological and semantic issues as the possibility of absolute knowledge, the correspondence theory of truth, or the truth-conditional theory of meaning. In other words, there is such a thing as pure or simple metaphysical realism that may be endorsed and defended, or undermined and rejected. The aim of the paper is to raise some doubts about that metaphilosophical strategy, and to argue that the comprehensive approach to the realism debate, in which the metaphysical issues are combined with - at least - some epistemological matters, is not so much caused by confusions and misunderstandings, but forced, as it were, by its subject matter and the philosophical nature of the debate. (shrink)

Metaphysics: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to the philosophical study of the world and universe in which we live. Concerned with questions about reality, existence, time, identity and change, metaphysics has long fascinated people but to the uninitiated some of the issues and problems can appear very complex. In this lively and lucid book, Michael Rea examines and explains key questions in the study of metaphysics such as: • Can two (...) things be in the same place at the same time? • Do creatures of fiction exist? • Are human beings free? • Is time travel possible? • Is there just one world or many worlds? With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book considers key philosophical arguments around Metaphysics, making this an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to the debates both within and about metaphysics. (shrink)

By asking how well theological views of human nature stand up to the discoveries of modern science, Alan Olding re-opens the question of whether the "design" argument for the existence of God is fatally undermined. A distinctive feature of the work is its emphasis on the metaphysical implications of biology and how these at times conflict with other, more plausible metaphysical positions. Another is its close critical examination of the "design" argument and of the relation God has to (...) the world he creates. "Modern Biology and Natural Theology" takes up issues currently of concern to many thinkers and will provide fascinating reading for anyone interested in philosophical problems, particularly the impact of Darwinism on natural theology. (shrink)

Regarding the relation of Plato’s early and middle period dialogues, scholars have been divided to two opposing groups: unitarists and developmentalists. While developmentalists try to prove that there are some noticeable and even fundamental differences between Plato’s early and middle period dialogues, the unitarists assert that there is no essential difference in there. The main goal of this article is to suggest that some of Plato’s ontological as well as epistemological principles change, both radically and fundamentally, between the early and (...) middle period dialogues. Though this is a kind of strengthening the developmentalistic approach corresponding the relation of the early and middle period dialogues, based on the fact that what is to be proved here is a essential development in Plato’ ontology and his epistemology, by expanding the grounds of development to the ontological and epistemological principles, it hints to a more profound development. The fact that the bipolar and split knowledge and being of the early period dialogues give way to the tripartite and bound knowledge and benig of the middle period dialogues indicates the development of the notions of being and knowledge in Plato’s philosophy before the dialogues of the middle period. -/- Keywords Plato; early dialogues; middle dialogues; being; knowledge; development -/- Introduction The differences between two groups of the early and middle period dialogues have always been a matter of dispute. Whereas the developmentalists like Vlastos, Silverman (2002), Teloh (1981), Dancy (2004) and Rickless (2007) think that from the early to the middle dialogues Plato’s philosophy changes, at least in some essential points, the unitarists like Kahn, Cherniss and Shorey believe that there happens no development and the differences must be taken as natural, ignorable and even pedagogic. In his well-known article, Socrates contra Socrates in PLATO, Vlastos lists ten theses of difference between two groups of dialogues. The first group which includes Plato’s early dialogues he divides to 'elenctic' (Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Protagoras and Republic I) and 'transitional' (Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus and Meno) dialogues. These transitional come after all the elenctic dialogues and before all the dialogues of the second group which compose Plato’s middle period dialogues, including (with Vlastos' chronological order) Cratylus, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic II-X, Phaedrus, Parmenides and Theaetetus (1991, 46-49). Vlastos asserts strictly that his list of differences are 'so diverse in content and method that they contrast as sharply with one another as with any third philosophy you care to mention, beginning with Aristotole’s' (ibid, 46). Vlastos’ list of differences between two Socrateses is considered a view breaking sharply between the early and the middle dialogues. Besides all ten differences between the two Socrateses in Vlastos’ list that can be supportive for our doctrine here, we intend to focus on some ontological as well as epistemological distinctions that have not completely been discussed hitherto. Contrary to the developmentalist theory of Vlastos, unitarian theory of Charles Kahn wishes to eliminate any substantial difference between the early and the middle dialogues. He distinguishes seven 'pre-middle' or 'threshold' dialogues including Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Protagoras, Meno, Lysis and Euthydemus from the other Socratic dialogues which he calls 'earliest group' (1996, 41). The threshold dialogues, Kahn thinks, 'embarke upon a sustained project' that is to reach to its climax in the middle period dialogues, namely Phaedo, Symposium and Republic. Believing in that there is no 'fundamental shift'between the early and middle dialogues (ibid, 40), Kahn thinks the Socratic dialogues are just the 'first stage' with a 'deliberate silence' towards the theories of later periods (ibid, 339). One of the reasons of the surprising fact that Plato gives no hint of the metaphysics and epistemology of the Forms in the early dialogues, he thinks, is the pedagogical advantages of aporia. He thinks that Plato 'obscurely', and mostly because of education, hinted to some doctrines and conceptions in his early dialogues and with the aim of clarifying them only in the later ones (ibid, 66). The seven threshold dialogues, Kahn asserts, 'had been designed from the first' to prepare the pupils and readers for the views expounded in the middle period dialogues (ibid, 59-60). To show that the differences of the two Socrateses of the early and middle period dialogue are in their onto-epistemological grounds and thence cannot be explained by a unitaristic view, we try to draw the ontological and epistemological principles of the early dialogues in the first part below in order to show, in the second part, that those principles have been developed in the middle period dialogues. -/- A. The Onto-Epistemologic Principles of the Early Dialogues Socratic dialogues are paradoxical about knowledge because while being knowledge-oriented always searching for knowledge, they deny it and even never discuss it directly. Three elements of Socrates’ way of searching Knowledge throughout the early dialogues, i.e. Socratic 'what is X?' question, his disavowal of knowledge and his elenctic method combined together produce something like a circle which works, more or less, in the same way in these dialogues. Though this circle is an embaressing inquiry always resulting in ignorance instead of knowledge, its motivation is surprisingly Socrates’ passionate enthusiasm for knowledge, an intensive love of wisdom. The starting point of this circle is Socrates’ confession of having no knowledge which might be explicitly asserted or presupposed, maybe because it was one of the famous characteristics of Socrates; a confession always paradoxically accompanied with his intense longing for knowledge (e.g., Gorgias 505e4-5). Every time Socrates encounters with someone who thinks he knows something (οἴεταί τι εἰδέναι) (Apology 21d5) and tries to examine him. This examination seems to be the simplest one asking just what it is that he knows. Socrates’ elenchus, therefore, is always connected with 'what is X?' (τίς ποτέ ἐστιν) question, a question that most of the early dialogues of Plato are concerned with; 'what is courage?' in the Laches, 'what is piety?' in Euthydemus, 'what is temperance?' in Charmides and 'what is beauty?' in Hippias Major. This question we call here 'Socratic question' and probably is the very question the historical Socrates used to employ, is tightly interrelated with both his disavowal and his elenchus. He disclaims knowledge because he cannot find the answer to the question himself and he rejects others’ since they cannot offer the correct answer too. Every interlocutor can claim he knows X, if and only if he can answer the Socratic question. Otherwise, he is more of an ignorant than of a knower of τί ποτέ ἐστι X. Knowing the answer to this question is, thus, knowledge’s criterion for Socrates. Having found out that he cannot answer what it is which he would claim to know, the interlocutor comes to the point Socrates was there at the beginning. The least advantage of this circle is that he becomes as wise as Socrates does about the subject, becoming aware that he does not know it. At the end of the circle they are both still at the beginning, not knowing what X is. So let us first take a glance at these three elements. Socratic disavowal of knowledge is strictly asserted in some passages. At Apology 21b4-5, Socrates says: -/- I do not know of myself being wise at all (οὔτε μέγα οὔτε σμικρὸν σύνοιδα ἐμαυτῷ σοφὸς ὤν) -/- Moreover, at 21d4-6: -/- None of us knows anything worthwhile (καλὸν κἀγαθὸν εἰδέναι) …. I do not know (οἶδα) neither do I think I know. -/- In Charmides Socrates speaks about a fear about his probable mistake of thinking that he knows (εἰδέναι) something when he does not (166d1-2). The somehow generalization of this disavowal can be seen in Gorgias. After calling his disavowal 'an account that is always the same' (509a4-5), Socrates continues (a5-7): -/- I say that I do not know (οἶδα) how these things are, but no one I have ever met, like now, who can say anything else without being absurd. -/- At the end of Hippias Major (304d7-8), Socrates affirms his disavowal of knowledge of 'what is X?' this time about the fine: -/- I do not know (οἶδα) what that is itself (αὐτὸ τοῦτο ὅτι ποτέ ἐστιν). Some other passages, however, made a number of scholars dubious about Socrates’ disavowal. Vlastos mentions Apology 29b6-7 as an evidence : 'that to do wrong and to disobey one’s master, both god and men, I know (οἶδα) to be evil and shameful'. He thinks that if we give this single text 'its full weight' it can suffice to show that Socrates does claim knowledge of a moral truth (1985, 7). Vlastos’ claim is not admittable since it would be too strange, I think, for a man like Socrates to violate his disavowal claim just after emphasizing it. We can see his claim just before the already mentioned passage: -/- And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know. It is perhaps on this point and in this respect, gentlemen, that I differ from the majority of men and if I were to claim that I am wiser than anyone in anything it world be in this, that, as I have no adequate knowledge (οὐκ εἰδὼς ἱκανῶς) of things in the underworld, so I do not think I have (οὐκ εἰδέναι) (Apology 29b1-6) Vlastos tries to solve what he calls the 'paradox' of Socrates’ disavowal of knowledge distinguishing the 'certain' knowledge from 'elenctic' knowledge (1985, 11) and thinking that when Socrates avows knowledge, we must perceive it as an elenctic knowledge, a knowledge its content 'must be propositions he thinks elenctically justifiable' (ibid, 18). Irwin’s solution is the distinction of knowledge and belief. He approves that Socrates does not 'explicitly' make such a distinction, but still thinks that Socrates’ 'test for knowledge would make it reasonable for him to recognize true belief without knowledge, and his own claims are easily understood if they are claims to true belief alone' (1977, 40). While I agree with Vlastos up to a point, I strongly disagree with Irwin about the early dialogues. As I will try to show below, we are not permitted to consider any kind of distinction within knowledge in Socratic dialogues because only one category of knowledge is alluded to there and the distinction of knowledge and belief thoroughly belongs to the second Sorcates. Although no kind of distinction can be admittable here, I think Vlastos’ distinction can be accepted only if we regard it as a distinction between knowledge, which is unique and without any, even incomparable, rival, and a semi-idiomatic and ordinary one that is a necessary requirement for any argument, and thus, unavoidable even for someone who does not claim any kind of knowledge. An apparent evidence of this is Gorgias 505e6-506a4: -/- I go through the discussion as I think it is (ὡς ἄν μοι δοκῇ ἔχειν), if any of you do not agree with admissions I am making to myself, you must object and refute me. For I do not say what I say as I know (οὐδὲ γάρ τοι ἔγωγε εἰδὼς λέγω ἃ λέγω) but as searching jointly with you (ζητῶ κοινῇ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν). -/- The minimal degree of knowledge everyone must have to take part in an argument, conduct it and use the phrase "I know" when it is necessary is what Socrates cannot deny. We can call it elenctic knowledge only if we agree that it is not the kind of knowledge that Socrates has always been searching, the one that can be accepted as the answer of Socratic 'what is X?' question. His disavowal of knowledge is applied only to the knowledge which can truly be the answer of Socratic question and pass the elenctic exam; a knowledge that, I believe, is never claimed by first Socrates. Socrates conducts his method of examining his interlocutors’ knowledge, our second element here, by almost the same method repeated in Socratic dialogues. That whether we are allowed to regard all the examinations of Socrates in the early dialogues as based on the same or not has been a matter of dispute. Vlastos himself (1994, 31) distinguished Euthydemas, Lysis, Menexenns and Hippias Major from the other Socratic dialogues because he thinks Socrates has lost his faith to elenchus in there. Irwin (1977, 38) distinguishes Apology and Crito where Socrates’ own convictions is present. Contrary to some scholars like Benson (2002, 107) who take elenchus in all the Socratic dialogues as a unique method, Michelle Carpenter and Ronald M. Polansky (2002, 89-100) argue pro the variety of methods of elenchus. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith (2002, 145-160) even reject such a thing as Socratic elenchus which can gather all of the Socrates’ various arguments under such a heading. There can be no solution for the problem of elenchus, they think, is due to 'the simple reason that there is no such thing as 'the Socratic elenchos"'(p.147). Though we consider elenchus a somehow determined process and a part of Socratic circle in the early dialogues, all we assume is that whatever differences it might have in different dialogues, it has the same onto-epistemological principles and, thus, we are not going to take it necessarily as a unique method. This method sets out to prove that the interlocutors are as ignorant as Socrates himself is. That whether elenchus is constructive, capable of establishing doctrines as Vlastos (1994) or Brickhouse and Smith (1994, 20-21) believe or not is another issue to which this paper is not to claim anything. What is crucial for our discussion here is that elenchus does not reach to the very knowledge Socrates is looking for. This is strictly against Irwin who thinks that not only elenchus leads to positive results, 'it should even yield knowledge to match Socrates’ conditions'(1977, 68, cf. 48). He does not explain where and how they really yield to that kind of knowledge. He explains his elenctic method in his apology in the court (Apology 21-22), that how he used to examine wise men, politicians, poets and all those who had the highest reputation for their knowledge and every time found that they have no knowledge. If we accept, as I strongly do, that Socrates’ disavowal of his knowledge is not irony, it might seem more reasonable to agree that the process that has that disavowal as its first step cannot be irony as well. The key of the circle which can explain why Socrates disclaims knowledge and how he can reject others’ claim of having any kind of knowledge lies in the third element, Socratic question. In Hippias Major (287c1-2), Socrates asks: 'Is it not by Justice that just people are Just? (ἆρ᾽ οὐ δικαιοσύνῃ δίκαιοί εἰσιν οἱ δίκαιοι). He insists at 294b1 that they were searching for that by which (ᾧ) all beautiful things are beautiful (cf. b4-5, 8). At Euthyphro 6d10-11 it is said that the Socratic question is waiting for 'the form itself (αὐτὸ τὸ εἶδος) by which (ᾧ) all the pious actions are pious; and at 6d11-e1: -/- Through one form (που μιᾷ ἰδέᾳ) impious actions are impious and pious actions pious. -/- Since the X itself is that by which X is X, knowing 'X itself' is the only way of knowing X. It is probably because of this that Socrates makes the distinction between the ousia as a right answer to the question and effect as a wrong one: -/- I am afraid, Euthyphro, that when you were asked what piety is (τὸ ὅσιον ὅτι ποτ᾽ ἐστίν) you did not wish to make clear its nature itself (οὐσίαν … αὐτοῦ) to me, but you said some effect (πάθος) about it. (Euthp. 11a6-9) -/- 1. Knowledge of what X is Now it is time to look for the onto-epistemological principles of Socratic circle and its three elements. It cannot reasonably be expected from the first Socrates to present us explicitly and clearly formulated principles of his onto-epistemology when such explications cannot be found even in the second Socrates who has some obviously positive theoris. Since there must be some principles underlying this first systematic inqury of knowledge, we must seek to them and be satisfied with elicitation of the first Socratas’ principle. What will be drawn out as his principles cannot and must not, thus, be taken as very fix and dogmatic principles. Some very slightest principles and grounds suffice for our purposes here. The first principle that is the prima facie significance of the Socratic question and his implementation of all those elenctic arguments I call the principle of 'Knowledge of What X is' (KWX): -/- KWX To know X, it is required to know what X is. -/- Aristotle (Metaphysics 1078b23-25, 27-29, 987b4-8) takes Plato’s τί ἐστι question as seeking the definition of a thing that is the same as historical Socrates’ search but applying to a different field. That Plato’s 'what is X?' question was a search for definition became the prevailed understanding of this question up to now. I am going neither to discuss the answer of Socratic question nor to challenge taking it as definition. What I am to insist is that knowledge is attached firmly to the answer of the question: Knowledge of X is not anything but the knowledge of what X is. It entails, certainly, the priority of this knowledge to any other kind of knowledge about X but it also has something more fundamental about the relation of knowledge and Socratic question. Socrates’ exclusive focus on the answer of his question can authorize the consideration of such an essential role for KWX in his epistemolgoy. The total rejection of his interlocutors’ knowledge when they are unable to answer the question can be regarded as a strong evidence for it. Socrates’ elenctic method and his rejection of others’ knowledge in the early dialogues, which all end aporetically with no one accepted as knower and nothing as knowledge, prevent us from finding any positive evidence for this. We have to be content, therefore, of negative evidences which, I think, can be found wherever Socrates rejects his interlocutors’ knowledge when they are not able to give an acceptable answer to his 'what is X?' question. 2. Bipolar Epistemology Socrates’ rejection of his interlocutors’ knowledge has another epistemological principle as its basis. Let me call this principle Bipolar Epistemology' (BE): BE There is no third way besides knowledge and Ignorance. -/- BE says that about every object of knowledge there are only two subjective statuses: knowledge and Ignorance. Socrates’ disavowal, however, says nothing but that he is ignorant of knowledge of X because he does not know what X is. This means that BE is presupposed here. Socrates’ elenchus and his rejection of interlocutors’ having any kind of knowledge are the necessary results of the fact that he does not let any third way besides knowledge and ignorance. The first Socrates never let anyone partly know X or have a true opinion about it, as he would not let anyone know anything about X when he did not know what X is. -/- 3. Bipolar Ontology The principle of BE in first Socrates’ epistemology is parallel to another principle in his ontology. Plato’s bipolar distinction between being and not being is as strict and perfect as his distinction between knowledge and ignorance. This principle I shall call the principle of 'Bipolar Ontology' (BO): BO Being is and not being is not. BO is apparently the same with the well-known Parmenidean Principle of being and not being (cf. Diels-Kranz (DK) Fr. 2.2-5). Euthydemus’ statement against the possibility of false knowledge can be good evidence for this principle: -/- The things which are not surely do not exist (τὰ δὲ μὴ ὄντα … ἄλλο τι ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν). (Euthydemus 284b3-4) -/- He continues (b4-5): -/- There is nowhere for not being to be there (οὖν οὐδαμοῦ τά γε μὴ ὄντα ὄντα ἐστίν). -/- That BE does not let true opinion as a third option besides knowledge and ignorance seems to be related to BO’s rejecting a third option besides being and not being, which is itself the basis of the impossibility of false belief. Socrates’ elaborate discussion of the problem of false belief in Theatetus that leads to a more decisive discussion and finally to some solutions in Sophist can make our consideration of BO for the first group of dialogues authentive. -/- 4. &5. Split Knowledge and Split Being The fourth principle I shall call the principle of 'Split Knowledge' (SK): -/- SK Knowledge of X is separated from any other knowledge (of anything else) as if the whole knowledge is split to various parts. -/- This Principle is hinted and criticized as Socrates’ way of treating with knowledge in Hippias Major: -/- But Socrates, you do not contemplate the entireties of things, nor do people you have used to talk with (τὰ μὲν ὅλα τῶν πραγμάτων οὐ σκοπεῖς, οὐδ᾽ ἐκεῖνοι οἷς σὺ εἴωθας διαλέγεσθαι). (301b2-4) -/- Contrary to Rankin who regards the passage as 'antilogical, almost eristic in tone rather than presenting a serious philosophy of being' (1983, 54), I think it can be taken as serious. Hippias criticizes Sorcates that he does not contemplate (σκοπεῖς) the entireties of things (ὅλα τῶν πραγμάτων), a critique which Socrates is not its only subject but all those whom Socrates accustomed to talk with (ἐκεῖνοι οἷς σὺ εἴωθας διαλέγεσθαι). This last phrase, I think, extends this critic beyond this dialogue to other Socratic dialogues. Hippias’ use of the perfect tense of the verb ἔθω (to be accustomed) is a good evidence of this extension. We can get, thus, these ἐκεῖνοι as Socrates’ interlocutors in his other dialogues that hints that this criticism has the epistemological groundings of the previous dialogues as its subject. What ἐκεῖνοι οἷς σὺ εἴωθας διαλέγεσθαι points to is that Hippias does not have in mind Socrates’ way of treating things only in this dialogue, but he is also criticizing Socrates’ way throughout his dialogues. At 301b4-5, Socrates and his interlocutors’ way of beholding things is described as such: -/- You people knock (κρούετε) at the fine and each of the beings (ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων) by taking each being cut up in pieces (κατατέμνοντες) in words (ἐν τοῖς λόγοις). This leads us to our next principle that is parallel to, and the ontological side of, SK, the principle of 'Split Being'(SB): -/- SB Everything (being) is separated from any other thing as if the whole being is split to many beings. -/- Socrates and his interlocutors and thus, as we saw, the Socratic dialogues are accused to regard everything as it is separated from all other things. This separation is en tois logois that, I think, can reasonably be taken as saying that Socratic dialogues (it refers of course to the dialogues before Hippias Major) cut up all things which have the same name/definition from all other things and try to understand them separately, without considering other things that are not in their logos. They, for example in Hippias Major, are cutting up to kalon and try to understand what it and all others inside this logos are by separating it from all other things. This is directed straightly against Socratic question and the way Socratic dialogues follow to find its answer, every time separating one logos. As Meyer (1995, 85) points out, every question 'presupposes that the X in question in a logos is something' and 'every answer to every question aims at unity' (84). The critique of Hippias Major is, therefore, at the same time a critique of SK and SB. It is also a critique of KWX because it is only based on KWX that Socratic dialogues could search for the answer of 'what is X' question supposing that knowing what X is is enough for the knowledge of X. SK and KWX are absolutely interdependent. What Socrates and all his previous interlocutors have neglected in Socratic dialogues, Hippias says, was 'continuous bodies of being' (διανεκῆ σώματα τῆς οὐσίας) (301b6). Either this theory actually belongs to the historical Hippias as it is being said or not, it is strictly criticizing SB. We have the same phrase with changing sūma to logos some lines later at 301e3-4: διανεκεῖ λόγῳ τῆς οὐσίας. Although this theory that can be observed as both an ontological and an epistemological theory is rejected by Socrates (301cff.), it is still against first Socrates’ onto-epistemological principles and might let us look at what is rejected as Socratic prineple. -/- 6. Knowledge is of Being The sixth principle that I think is presupposed by the first Socrates, is the 'Knowledge of Being' Principle (KB): -/- KB Knowledge is of Being. -/- This principle is obviously the source of the problem of false knowledge, a very important problem throughout Plato’s philosophy. We face this problem maybe for the first time in Euthydemus. In less than 20 Stephanus’ pages, 276-295, we are encountered with different interwoven problems about knowledge , all grounded in the problem of false opinion. Having challenged the obvious possibility of telling lies at 283e, at 284 Euthydemus discusses it saying that the man who speaks is speaking about 'one of those things that are (ἓν μὴν κἀκεῖνό γ᾽ ἐστὶν τῶν ὄντων)' (284a3) and thus speaks what is (λέγων τὸ ὄν) (a5). He must necessarily be saying truth when he is speaking what is because he who speaks what is (τὸ ὄν) and the things that are (τὰ ὄντα) speaks truth (τἀληθῆ λέγει) (a5-6). This is based on Parmenidean principle of the impossibility of being of not being which Euthydemus restates (284b3-4) and we mentioned discussing BO principle above. The things that are not are nowhere (οὐδαμοῦ) and there is no possibility for anyone to do (πράξειεν) anything with them because they must be made as being before anything else can be done, which is impossible (b5-7). The words, then, are of things that exist (εἰσὶν ἑκάστῳ τῶν ὄντων λόγοι) (285e9) and as they are (ὡς ἔστιν) (e10). The result is that no one can speak of things as they are not. It is this impossibility of false speach that is extended to thinking (δοξάζειν) at 286d1 and leads to the impossibility of false opinion (ψευδής … δόξα) (286d4). The general conclusion is asserted at 287a extending this impossibility to actions and making any kind of mistake. Not only knowledge is of being but speech, thought and action are of being simply because of the fact that nothing can be of not being. -/- B. First Socrates’ Principles in the Middle Period Dialogues Out of what were presupposed or criticized mostly in five dialogues, Euthyphro, Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Laches and Charmides, we tried to draw the first Socrates’ principles. Our inquiry here is directed to find out the fate of these principles in the three dialogues of the middle period, Meno, Phaedo and Republic. To do this, first we ought to check the situation of Socratic circle in these dialogues. The Socratic circle that was predominant in the early dialogues, does not look like a circle here anymore though they certainly have some features in common. Meno, Phaedo and Republic II-X are not committed to the principles of the circle and the whole circle in disrupted in them. The difference of the two Socrateses towards acquiring knowledge is obvious. The Socrates of Meno, Phaedo and Republic is evidently more self-confident that he can get to some truths during his arguments as he does. They are in their first appearance, as almost all other dialogues, committed to Socrates’ disavowal. All of them try to keep the shape of the Socratikoi Logoi genre, which is committed to the historical Socrates’ way of discussion; a dramatic personage who is to challenge his interlocutors, ask them and refuse the answers. Nevertheless, the fact is that what we have in common between two groups of dialogues is mostly a dramatic structure. Whereas the first group’s arguments are based on Socrates’ disavowal and lead to no positive results, the second group is decisively going to achieve some positive results. The aim of the first Socrates was to show others that they are ignorant of what they thought they knew. The new Socrates of Meno, on the opposite, makes so much efforts to show that the slave boy has within himself true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) about the things that he does not know (οἶδε) (85c6-7). Despite his lack of knowledge, he has true opinions nevertheless. The way from these true opinions to knowledge, as Socrates states, is not so long. These true opinions are now like a dream but 'can become knowledge of the same things not less accurate than anyone’s' (οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἀκριβῶς ἐπιστήσεται περὶ τούτων) (c11-d1), if they be repeated by asking the same questions. The most outstanding text regarding Socrates’ disavowal is Meno 98b where he explicitly claims knowledge: -/- And indeed I also speak as (ὡς) one who does not know (εἰδὼς) but is guessing (εἰκάζων). However, [about the fact] that true opinion and knowledge are different, I do not altogether expect (δοκῶ) myself to be guessing (εἰκάζειν), but if I say about anything that I know (εἰδέναι) -which about few things I say- this is one of the things that I know (οἶδα). (98b1-5) This passage is very significant about Plato’s disavowal of knowledge. There can hardly be found, I think, anywhere else in Plato’s corpus where Socrates speaks about his knowledge of something as such. He says first that he speaks as someone who does not know. This ὡς οὐκ εἰδὼς λέγω comparing with what he used to say in the first group, οὐκ οἶδα, has this added ὡς. Socrates does not claim strongly anymore that he does not know anything but speaks only as someone who does not know. He needs this ὡς not only because he is going to accept that he does know some, though few, things immediately after this sentence, but also because he needs his previous disavowal to be loosened from Meno on. He does not merely say here that he knows something. It is then different from the examples mentioned before which could be taken as idiomatic or at least not emphatic. Socrates’ remarkable emphasis on distinguishing εἰδέναι from εἰκάζειν departs it from all other passages where he says only he knows something. Moreover, he claims definitely that he has knowledge about few (ὀλίγα) things. From the early to the middle dialogues, Socrates’ attitude to knowledge has totally renewed its face. He brings forth a new concept, true opinion, and he does not speak of knowledge as he used to before; the rough, perfect and unachievable knowledge of the first group has turned to something more smooth, realistic and achievable. Comparing with the early dialogues that did not set out from the first to reach positive results, the middle ones are extraordinarily and surprisingly positive and hence destroy the basis of the Socratic circle. The questions and answers are purposely directed to some specific new theories; most of them are not directly related to the topics or the main questions of the dialogues. They are suggested when Socrates draws the attention of the interlocutor away from the main question because of the necessity of another discussion. Even if the main question remains unanswered, we have still many positive theories, prominently of metaphysical type. These theories are so abundant and dominant in these dialogues, especially Phaedo and Republic, that one might think that they may appear to be arbitrarily sandwiched in there. This helps dialogues to keep their original Socratic structure while they are suggesting new theories. Hence, the Socratic question of 'what is X?', though is still used to launch the discussion, is loosened and is forgotten for most part of the dialogues. Meno that has first a differently formulated question, 'can virtue be taught?', leads finally to the Socratic question of 'What is virtue?'. Phaedo is dedicated to the demonstration of the immortality of soul and the life after death without having a central Socratic question. The case of Republic is more complicated. The first book, on the one hand, has all the criteria of a Socratic circle: its 'what is justice?' question, Socrates’ strong disavowal (e.g. 337d-e), his rejection of all answers and coming back to the first point without finding out any answer. This Book, considered alone, is a perfect Socratic dialogue, as many scholars regard it as early and separated from other books. The books II-X are, on the other hand, far from implementing a Socratic circle. They have still the 'what is justice?' question as their incentive leading question, but they are, in most of the positive doctrines and methods that encompass the main parts, ignoring the question. Even these books that, I believe, are the farthest discussions from the Socratic circle are so cautious not to break the Socratic structure of the dialogue as long as it is possible. What is changed is not the structure of the dialogue but the ontological and epistemological grounds based on which new theories are suggested. -/- 1. Knowledge of the Good We can clearly see in the second group of dialogues that the KWX principle loses the place it had before in our first group. It is not, of course, rejected, but still we cannot say that it has the same situation. KWX that was based on Socratic question, as we discussed before, was the leading principle of the first Socrates’ epistemology and of the highest position. Other epistemological principles, SK directly and BE indirectly, were relying on Socratic question and therefore on KWX. Such a position does not belong to KWX from Meno on. What makes it different in the second Socrates is another principle that is needed it not only as its complementary principle but also as what is more fundamental. Plato, then, does not reject KWX in this period, but, it seems, he transcends to another more basic principle; a principle we shall call the principle of 'Knowledge of the Good' (KG): -/- KG Knowledge of X requires knowledge of the Good. -/- Whereas all the dialogues of our first group are free from any discuscon about KG, it bears a very important role in the second group so as becomes the superior principle of knowledge in Republic. Trying to solve the problem of teachability of virtue, Socrates says that it can be teachable only if it is a kind of knowledge because nothing can be taught to human beings but knowledge (ἐπιστήμην) (Meno 87c2). The dilemma will be, then, whether virtue is knowledge or not (c11-12) and since virtue is good, we can change the question to: whether is there anything good separate from knowledge (εἰ μέν τί ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἄλλο χωριζόμενον ἐπιστήμης) (d4-5). Therefore, the conclusion will be that if there is nothing good which knowledge does not encompass, virtue can be nothing but knowledge (d6-8). What let us discuss KG as an epistemological principle for the second Secrates is the relation he tries to establish between knowledge and the Good which, though is alongside with the mentioned thesis and the idea of virtue as knowledge, goes much deeper inside epistemology asking to regard the Good as the basis of knowledge. The effort of Phaedo cannot succeed in establishing the Good as the criterion of explanation and knowledge since, I think, it needs a far more complicated ontology of Republic where Socrates can finally announce KG. What is said in Republic is totally compatible with Phaedo 99d–e and the metaphor of watching an eclipse of the sun. In spite of the fact that we do not have adequate knowledge of the Idea of the Good, it is necessary for every kind of knowledge: 'If we do not know it, even if we know all other things, it is of no benefit to us without it' (505a6-7). The problem of our not having sufficient knowledge of the Idea of Good is tried to be solved by the same method of Phaedo 99d-e, that is to say, by looking at what is like instead of looking at thing itself (506d8-e4). It is this solution that leads to the comparison of the Good with sun in the allegory of Sun (508b12-13). What the Good is in the intelligible realm corresponds to what the sun is in the visible realm; as sun is not sight, but is its cause and is seen by it (b9-10), the Good is so regarding knowledge. It has, then, the same role for knowledge that the sun has for sight. Socrates draws our attention to the function of sun in our seeing. The eyes can see everything only in the light of the day being unable to see the same things in the gloom of night (508c4-6). Without the sun, our eyes are dimmed and blind as if they do not have clear vision any longer (c6-7). That the Good must have the same role about knowledge based on the analogy means that it must be considered as a required condition of any kind of knowledge: -/- The soul, then, thinks (νόει) in the same way: whenever it focuses on what is shined upon by truth and being, understands (ἐνόησέν), knows (ἔγνω) and apparently possesses understanding (νοῦν ἔχειν). (508d4-6) -/- Socrates does not use agathon in this paragraph and substitutes it with both aletheia and to on. He links them with the Idea of the Good when he is to assert the conclusion of the analogy: -/- That which gives truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say, is the Idea of the Good: being the cause of knowledge and truth (αἰτίαν δ᾽ ἐπιστήμης οὖσαν καὶ ἀληθείας) so far as it is known (ὡς γιγνωσκομένης μὲν διανοοῦ). (508e1-4) Knowledge and truth are called goodlike (ἀγαθοειδῆ) since they are not the same as the Good but more honoured (508e6-509a5). KG, which had been implicitly contemplated and searched in Phaedo, is now explicitly being asserted in Republic. As what was quoted clearly proves, this principle is the very one which we can observe as the most fundamental principle of the second Socrates in Republic, corresponding to the role KWX had in the first Socrates. The Form of the Good in Republic, of which Santas speaks as 'the centerpiece of the canonical Platonism of the middle dialogues, the centerpiece of Plato’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and …' (1983, 256) much more can be said. Plato’s Cave allegory in Book VIII dedicates a similar role to the Idea of the Good. The Idea of the Good is there as the last thing to be seen in the knowable realm, something so important that its seeing equals to understanding the fact that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful (517b). Producing both light and its source in visible realm, it controls and provides truth and understanding in the intelligible realm (517c). -/- 2. Tripartite Epistemology BE is thoroughy rejected in the second Socrates and substituted by its opposite, the principle of 'Tripartite Epistemolgy' (TE): -/- TE Opinion is an epistemological status between knowledge and ignorance. BE of the first Socrates was denying any third way besides knowledge and ignorance which was the foundation of Socratic circle without which Socrates could not reject his interlocutors’ possessing any kind of knowledge. We cannot say, however, that the first Socrates had a third epistemological status in mind but rejected it. Such a status was unacceptable for him so that one can say that he would reject any kind of such status if suggested. There were only two possibilities about knowledge: either one knows something or he does not know it. TE, thus, was not the first Socrates’ discovery and, I think it is not the second Socrates’discovery. All we can see in our second group of dialouges is that he uses this principle as an already demonstrated one. Having examined the slave boy in Meno for the prupose of showing the working of recollection, it truns out that he has some opinions in him while he still does not know. Without trying to prove it, Socrates takes this as the distinction between knowledge and opinion: -/- So, he who does not know (οὐκ εἰδότι) about what he does not know (περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ) has within himself true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) about the same things he did not know (περὶ τούτων ὧν οὐκ οἶδε) (85c6-7). -/- The same distinction is set between ὀρθὴν δόξαν and ἐπιστήμην at 97b5-6 ff. (also cf. 97b1-2: ὀρθῶς μὲν δοξάζων … ἐπιστάμενος). He connects then their difference to the myth of Daedalus, the statue that would run away and escape. So are true opinions, not willing to remain long in mind and thus not worthy until one ties them down by αἰτίας λογισμῷ (98a3-4). Socrates says that this tying down is anamnesis. We face, in Phaedo, the same relation is settled between knowledge as the process of being tied down and getting the capability to give an account, on the one hand, and anamnesis, on the other hand. When a man knows, he must be able to give an account of what he knows (Phaedo 76b5-6) and since not all people are able to give such an account, those who recollect, recollect what once they learned (76c4). Although the distinction between knowledge and opinion is not explicitly used in Phaedo, referring to the parallel link between knowledge plus account and anamnesis in Phaedo and Meno, one can say that those who cannot recollect are not able to give account and, thus, are in a state of opinion. What is said at Phaedo 84a, though not yet a definite distinction between knowledge and opinion, makes a distinction between their objects so as we can agree that it is presupposed. The soul of the philosopher, Socrates says, follows reason, stays with it forever and contemplates the divine, which is not the object of opinoin (ἀδόξαστον) (84a8, cf. Meno 98b2-5). The distinction of knowledge and belief in Republic has a significant difference with what we discussed in Meno and Phaedo since the distinction of Meno was based on anamnesis and thus more an epistemological distinction. Even in Phaedo that we do not have any elaborate discussion about the distinction, the only hint to the matter at 76 is bound to the theory of anamnesis. In addition to the relation of the distinction with this theory, there is another evidence that does not permit us to consider the distinction as an ontological distinction. Let’s see Meno 85c6-7: -/- So, he who does not know about what he does not know has within himself true opinions about the same things he did not know (τῷ οὐκ εἰδότι ἄρα περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ ἔνεισιν ἀληθεῖς δόξαι περὶ τούτων ὧν οὐκ οἶδε). (85c6-7) -/- This last sentence persists that the objects of knowledge and true opinion are the same. What Socrates is to say here is that whereas he does not know X he has true opinion about the same X. I think Socrates’ sentence that the slave boy οὐκ εἰδότι ἄρα περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ and his restatement of it by saying περὶ τούτων ὧν οὐκ οἶδε is because he wants to emphasize that the slave boy who does not know, has true opinion about the same thing. Socrates could say this just with using τούτων and there would be no necessity to bring περὶ ὧν ἂν μὴ εἰδῇ for οὐκ εἰδότι if he did not want to emphasize. -/- 3. Tripartite Ontology The distinction between knowledge and true opinion in Republic, on other side, has nothing to do with recollection, but is based on an ontological principle, 'Tripartite Ontology' (TO): -/- TO There are things that both are and are not. -/- This principle I confine, among our three dialogues of the second group, to Republic not extended to Meno and Phaedo, is obviously the opposite of BO. Speaking about the lovers of sights and sounds in the fifth book, Socrates distinguishes them from philosophers because their thought is unable to understand the nature of beautiful itself besides beautiful things (476a6-8) and hence they can only have opinions. The philosopher who, on the contrary, believes in beautiful itself and can distinguish it from beautiful things (476c9-d3), has knowledge because he knows, contrasting others who have opinion because they only opine (d5-6). Since those whose knowledge were degraded as opinion will complain about Socrates’ such calling their thought, he provides them the following argument (476e7-477b1): -/- - Does the person who knows, knows (γιγνώσκει) something (τὶ) or nothing (οὐδέν)? - He knows something (τί). - Something that is (ὂν) or is not (οὐκ ὄν)? - Something that is (ὂν) for how could something that is not be known (πῶς γὰρ ἂν μὴ ὄν γέ τι γνωσθείη)? - Then we have an adequate grasp of this: No matter how many ways we examine it, what completely is (παντελῶς ὂν) is completely knowable (παντελῶς γνωστόν) and what is in no way (μὴ ὂν δὲ μηδαμῇ) is in every way unknowable (πάντῃ ἄγνωστον). - A most adequate one. - Good. Now, if anything is such as to be and also not to be (ὡς εἶναί τε καὶ μὴ εἶναι), won’t it be intermediate (μεταξὺ) between what purely is (εἰλικρινῶς ὄντος) and what in no way is (μηδαμῇ ὄντος)? - Yes, it’s intermediate. - Then as knowledge (γνῶσις) is set over what is (τῷ ὄντι), while ignorance (ἀγνωσία) is of necessity set over what is not (μὴ ὄντι) mustn’t we find an intermediate between ignorance (ἀγνοίας) and knowledge (ἐπιστήμης) to be set over the intermediate, if there is such a thing? -/- From the third status of being we must reach to the third status of knowledge. The simple reading of this text can be an existential reading, taking the "is" of the mentioned sentences as existence. The problem is that when it is said that there is something that both is and is not reading "is" existentially, it sounds too bizarre to be acceptable. It cannot easily be understandable to have something as both existent and non-existent at the same time. This problem arose so many debates and led many scholars to reject the existential reading of "is" and suggest some other readings like predicative or veridical readings. I think though Plato’s complicated ontology of Republic cannot be correctly understood by a simple existential reading, this "is" cannot be free from existential sense of being and, thus, cannot be reduced to just a predicative or veridical sense of being. -/- 4. Bound Knowledges In addition to KG, the Good is also the basis of another principle in the second Socrates, namely the principle of 'Bound Knowledge' (BK): -/- BK Knowledge of everything is bound to the knowledge of the Good. -/- We distinguished BK from KG because we want to insist, in BK, on what had not been insisted upon in KG, that is, the binding role that the Good plays in the second Socrates, contrasting the absence of such a role in the first Socrates. Socrates remembers, in Phaedo, his wonderful keen on natural philosophers' wisdom when he was young. The origin of this enthusiasm was Socrates’ hope to know the cause of everything as they used to claim. When he was searching the matters of his interest on their basis, Socrates says, he became convinced he can get no acceptable answer from them and found himself blind even to the things he thought he knew before. One day he hears Anaxagoras’ theory that 'it is Mind that arranges and is the cause of everything (ὡς ἄρα νοῦς ἐστιν ὁ διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων αἴτιος)' (Phd. 97c1-2 cf. DK, Fr.15.8-9, 11-12, 12-14) and thinks that he can finally find what he has always expected, i.e. something which can explain all things. What I intend to show here is that what makes Socrates hopeful is that Anaxagoras’ theory tries 1) to explain all things by one thing and 2) this explanation is understood by Socrates as if it is based on the concept of the Good. That Socrates was searching for one explanation for all things can be proved even from what he has been expecting from natural philosophers. The case is, nonetheless, more clearly asserted when he speaks about Anaxagoras’ theory. In addition to διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων αἴτιος of 97c2 mentioned above, we have τὸ τὸν νοῦν εἶναι πάντων αἴτιον (c3-4) and τόν γε νοῦν κοσμοῦντα πάντα κοσμεῖν (c4-5) all emphasizing on the cause of all things (πάντα) which can clearly prove that one of the reasons which caused Socrates to embrace it delightfully was its claim to provide the cause of all things by one thing. Another reason was that Anaxagoras’ Mind, at least in Socrates’ view, was attempting to explain everything by the concept of the Good. This connection between Mind and Good belongs more to the essential relation they have in Socrates’ thinking than Anaxagoras’ theory because there are almost nothing about such a relation in Anaxagoras. The reason for Socrates’ reading can be that Mind is substantially compatible with Socrates’ idea of the relation between good and knowledge. Both the thesis 'no one does wrong willingly' and the theory of virtue as knowledge we pointed to above are evidences of this essential relation. Nobody who knows that something is bad can choose or do it as bad. The reason, when it is reason, that means when it is as it should be, when it is wise or when it knows, works only based on good-choosing. In this context, when Socrates hears that Mind is considered as the cause of everything, it sounds to him like this: good should be regarded as the basis of the explanation of all things. We see him, thus, passing from the former to the latter without any proof. This is done in the second sentence after introducing Mind: -/- I thought that if this were so, the arranging Mind would arrange all things and put each thing in the way that was Best (ὅπῃ ἂν βέλτιστα ἔχῃ). If one then wished to find the cause of each thing by which it either perishes or exists, one needs to find what is the best way (βέλτιστον αὐτῷ ἐστιν) for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is the most excellent (ἄριστον) and best (βέλτιστον). The same man must inevitably also know what is worse (χεῖρον), for that is part of the same knowledge. (97c4-d5) This passage is a good evidence of Socrates’ leap from Anaxagoras’ Mind to his own concept of the Good that can explain why Socrates found Anaxagoras theory after his own heart (97d7). Mind is welcomed because of its capability for explanation on the basis of good to 'explain why it is so of necessity, saying which is better (ἄμεινον), and that it was better (ἄμεινον) to be so' (97e1-3). What Socrates thought he had found in Anaxagoras can indicate what he had been expecting from natural scientists before. Socrates could not be satisfied with their explanations because they were unable to explain how it is the best for everything to be as it is. It can probably be said, then, that it was the lack of the unifying Good in their explanation that had disappointed him. We must insist that we are discussing what Socrates thought that Anaxagoras’ theory of Mind should have been, not about Anaxagoras’ actual way of using Mind. Phaedo 97c-98b, is not about what Socrates found in Anaxagoras but what he thought he could find in it. On the contrary, it should also be noted that it was not this that was dashed at 98b, but Anaxagoras’ actual way of using Mind. It was Anaxagoras’ fault not to find out how to use such an excellent thesis (98b8-c2, cf. 98e-99b). Socrates gives an example to show how not believing in 'good' as the basis of explanation makes people be wanderers between different unreal explanations of a thing. His words δέον συνδεῖν (binding that binds together) as a description for the Good we chose as the name of BK principle: They do not believe that the truly good and binding binds and holds them together (ὡς ἀληθῶς τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δέον συνδεῖν καὶ συνέχειν οὐδὲν οἴονται). (99c5-6) -/- Having in mind Plato’s well-known analogy of the sun and the Good at Republic 508-509, we can dare to say that his warning of the danger of seeing the truth directly like one watching an eclipse of the sun in Phaedo (99d-e) is more about the difficulty of so-called good-based explanation than its insufficiency, a difficulty which is precisely confirmed in Republic (504e-505a, 506d-e). Moreover, BK is asserted in a more explicit way in the Republic, where the Good is considered not only as a condition for the knowledge of X, as was noted above discussing KG, but also as what binds all the objects of knowledge and also the soul in its knowing them. At Republic VI, 508e1-3, when Socrates says that the Form of the Good 'gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower (τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ τὴν ἀλήθειαν παρέχον τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις καὶ τῷ γιγνώσκοντι τὴν δύναμιν ἀποδιδὸν)', he wants to set the Good at the highest point of his epistemological structure by which all the elements of this structure are bound. This binding aspect of the Good is by no means a simple binding of all knowledges or all the objects of knowledge, but the most complicated kind of binding as it is expected from the author of the Republic. The kind of unity the Good gives to the different knowledges of different things is comparable with the unity which each Form gives to its participants in Republic: as all the participants of a Form are united by referring to the ideas, all different kinds of knowledge are united by referring to the Good. If we observe Aristotle's assertion that for Plato and the believers of Forms, the causative relation of the One with the Forms is the same as that of the Forms with particulars (e.g. Metaphysics 988a10-11, 988b4), that is to say the One is the essence (e.g., ibid, 988a10-11: τοῦ τί ἐστὶν, 988b4-6: τὸ τί ἢν εἶναί) of the Forms besides his statement that for them One is the Good (e.g., ibid, 988b11-13) the relation between the Good and unity may become more understandable. Since the quiddity of the Good (τί ποτ᾽ ἐστὶ τἀγαθὸν) is more than discussion (506d8-e2), we cannot await Socrates to tell us how this binding role is played. All we can expect is to hear from him an analogy by which this unifying role is envisaged, the sun. The kind of unity that the Good gives to the knowledge and its objects in the intelligible realm is comparable to the unity that the sun gives to the sight and its objects in the visible realm (508b-c). The allegory of Line (Republic VI, 509d-511), like that of the Sun, tries to bind all various kinds of knowledges. The hierarchical model of the Line which encompasses all kinds of knowledge from imagination to understanding can clearly be considered as Plato’s effort to bind all kinds of knowledges by a certain unhypothetical principle. The method of hypothesis starts, in the first subsection of the intelligible realm, with a hypothesis that is not directed firstly to a principle but a conclusion (510b4-6). It proceeds, in the other subsection, to a 'principle which is not a hypothesis' (b7) and is called the 'unhypothetical principle of all things' (ἀνυποθέτου ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν) (511b6-7). This παντὸς must refer not only to the objects of the intelligible realm but to the sensible objects as well. Plato does posit, therefore, an epistemological principle for all things, a principle that all things are, epistemologically, bound and, thus, unified by. -/- 5. Bound Beings The ontological aspect of BK we shall call the principle of 'Bound Beings' (BB): -/- BB Being of all things are bound by the Good. -/- We saw in our principle of Split Being (SB) how the first Socrates was criticized because of his approach to split being and separate each thing from other things. The principle of Bound Beings intends to make the things more related, a duty which is done again by the Good. In the allegory of Sun, there are two paragraphs that evidently and deliberately extend the binding role of the Good to the ontological scene: -/- You will say that the sun not only makes the visible things have the ability of being seen but also coming to be, growth and nourishment. (509b2-4) -/- This clearly intends to remind the ontological role the sun plays in bringing to being all the sensible things in order to display how its counterpart has the same role in the intelligible realm (b6-10): -/- Not only the objects of knowledge (γιγνωσκομένοις) owe their being known (γιγνώσκεσθαι) to the Good, but also their existence (τὸ εἶναί) and their being (οὐσίαν) are due to it, though the Good is not being but superior to it in rank and power. That the Good is here represented as responsible for being of things in addition to their being known means, in my opinion, that Plato wants to posit BB in addition to BK. The allegory of Cave at the very beginning of the seventh Book (514aff.) can be taken as another evidence. The role of the Good, one might say, is confined to the intelligible realm because it is asserted that the role the Good plays in this realm is corresponding to that of the sun in the visible realm. The fact that Plato wants to observe the Good also as the ontological cause of the sensible things is obvious from his saying, in the allegory of Cave, that the Form of the Good 'produces light and its source (τὸν τούτου κύριον) [i.e. the sun] in the visible realm' (517c3). We can conclude, then, that the ontological function of the Good is not confined to the intelligible realm in which it is the lord and provides truth and understanding (c3-4) because it is also responsible to produce τὸν κύριον of light. 6. Proportionality of Being and Knowledge Insofaras BE and BO principles of the first Socrates gave way to TE and TO principles of the second Socrates, we cannot expect him to preserve KB in the same way as it was in the first Socrates. The new tripartite ontology and epistemology necessitates some modifications in KB which results in the principle of 'Proportionality of Being and Knowledge' (PBK): -/- PBK To every class of being there is a proportionate category of knowledge. -/- This principle, of course, does not entail the refutation of KB and thus is not kind of rejecting PBK but only a more complicated version of it. Based on PBK, we can still agree that knowledge is of being (KB) but the issue is that since none of the concepts of knowledge and being in the second Socrates are as simple as they were for the first Socrates, we need a more complicated principle for their relation here. Although from Meno 97a where the distinction of knowledge and true opinion is drawn out in the second group of the dialogues, we can expect a new relation, it is articulated in its most complete way in Republic and specifically in the allegory of Line. All the beings are divided there hierarchically to four classes, to each of them belongs a class of knowledge: imagination to images, belief to the sensible things (more correctly: the things of which they[in previous class] were images (ᾧ τοῦτο ἔοικεν)), thought to mathematical objects (?) and understanding to the Forms and the first principle. The degree of clarity that each of the classes of knowledge shares in (σαφηνείας ἡγησάμενος μετέχειν) is proportionate to the degree that its object shares in truth (ἀληθείας μετέχει). (511e2-4) -/- Conclusion From the six onto-epistemilogical principles of the first Socrates, four principles turn to their opposite in the middle period dialogues. While bipolar epistemology and ontology of the early dialogues give place to tripartite epistemology in the middle period dialogues and tripartite ontology in Republic, the split knowledge and being of the first Socrates are inclined to be substituted by bound knowledges and bound beings in the second Socrates and specifically in Republic. Not all our system of principles in this article is necessarily determinative. Either they are rightly formulated or not, our result would not be vulnerable if we accept that 1) making the distinction of knowledge and belief, 2) accepting the being of not being and 3) trying to bind both being and knowledge by the concept of the Good happens only in middle period dialogues, having been absent in the early ones. These are the favourite results all those somehow arbitrary and even oversimplified principles were to illustrate; that there is kind of a development in the epistemological as well as the ontological grounds of Plato’s philosophy. -/- Notes . (shrink)

"Margaret Cavendish is a fascinating figure who is getting increasing attention by historians of philosophy these days, and for good reason.... She’s an interesting advocate of a vitalist tradition emphasizing the inherent activity of matter, as well as its inherent perceptive faculties. She’s also the perfect character to open students up to a different seventeenth century, and a different cast of philosophical characters. This is an ideal book to use in the classroom. The _Philosophical Letters_ gives us Cavendish’s (...) view of what was interesting and important in the philosophical world at that moment, a view of philosophy as it was at the time by an engaged participant. There are few documents like it in the history of philosophy. Deborah Boyle’s Introduction provides a very accessible summary of Cavendish’s natural philosophy, as well as good introductions to the other figures that Cavendish discusses in the book. Boyle’s annotations are not extensive, but they are a great help in guiding the student toward an informed reading of the texts." —Daniel Garber, Princeton University. (shrink)

Inquiry is a fundamental human practice. We have questions, and we want answers. These questions span numerous domains and range from the trivial to questions of the utmost importance. Without inquiry, and successful inquiry in particular, our fate is bleak. Inquiry is also familiar. Everyone engages in inquiry. In fact, inquiry (of some sort) is something that we engage in every day. -/- However, while inquiry is both fundamental and familiar, only recently have epistemologists turned to (...) focus explicitly on inquiry. The result is a growing literature concerning questions like the following: -/- Does inquiry have an aim? If so, what is the aim of inquiry? What norms govern inquiry? How are epistemic norms and norms of inquiry related? What does inquiry look like with an epistemic division of labor? Is it ever permissible to interfere with the inquiry of another person? What is the relationship between inquiry and belief? Knowledge? Wisdom? How do bias and prejudice affect inquiry? What is the nature and role of attitudes like curiosity and wonder? -/- The chapters of this volume build on the existing debates surrounding these questions, advancing them, and taking them in new directions. (shrink)

This introduction provides an overview to a special issue on Critical Healing, which draws on queer theory, disability studies, postcolonial theory, and literary studies to theorize productive engagements between the clinical and cultural aspects of biomedical knowledge and practice. The essays in this issue historicize and theorize diagnosis, particularly diagnosis that impacts trans health and sexuality, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS transmission. The essays also address racialization, disability, and colonialism through discussions of fiction, film, theoretical memoir, and comics, as well as biomedical (...) discourse and knowledge. (shrink)

Existence, the middle volume of Neville’s Philosophical Theology, offers a theological anthropology, and so deals with “religious dimensions of human nature, its conditions, and processes”. As such it contrasts with the mainly metaphysical concerns of the volume that precedes it, Ultimates, and the social scientific interests of the volume that follows, Religion. After a preface and introduction, the volume is arranged in four parts, each of four chapters. The parts deal respectively with “ultimate boundary conditions” of (...) human existence set by the metaphysics of determinateness developed in volume 1; “predicaments and deliverances” of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophistical Wisdom:Politikê Aretê and “Logosophia”Christopher Lyle JohnstoneThe pursuit of Wisdom is at the center of the Western intellectual tradition, its attainment the literal ideal and end of all philosophical inquiry. It is recognized by various religions and belief systems as the key to a meaningful, fulfilling, happy life. Yet for all this, its nature remains unclear and the means of its attainment uncertain. Is it one thing, (...) or are there different kinds of wisdom? How is it acquired? Can it be taught or communicated to others? How, if at all, do speech and language figure in the attainment and dissemination of wisdom?The relationship between wisdom and utterance, reflected in the connection between philosophy and rhetoric, has been a focus of intellectual interest in the West since at least the time of Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 500 BCE): Parmenides, Empedocles, Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Augustine, Bacon, Vico—all have been concerned, either directly or indirectly, with the interrelation of speech or eloquence and what they view as the highest form of knowledge. Recent scholarship has pursued this relationship along several related lines of inquiry, albeit sometimes obliquely. Some investigators have examined the role of speech in the creation of all human knowledge.1 Others have concentrated more particularly on the role of rhetoric in the creation or exercise of wisdom.2 In an effort to illuminate the ancient foundations of these connections, several scholars have lately studied the link between language and thought in Greek philosophy and rhetoric.3My present interest centers on the linkages between wisdom and speech—between sophia and logos—in the teachings of those pivotal thinkers of the fifth-century Greek "Enlightenment," the Older Sophists. Although the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Archelaus, and the Atomists took up moral and political topics, presocratic thinkers generally had concentrated on the origins and mechanical workings of the physical world in which human beings live. As contemporaries of Protagoras and Gorgias, the Atomists—Leucippus and Democritus—are particularly noteworthy for having initiated inquiry into [End Page 265] the relationship between custom or law (nomos) and nature or objective reality (physis), which became a central concern for many of the Older Sophists.4 Such moral and political themes were taken up in earnest by the thinkers and teachers who resided in or were drawn to Athens in the fifth century BCE. Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Antiphon, and others raised questions that were fundamentally political and moral: How should one live one's life? What are the values that should guide one's conduct? By what moral standards should our actions be judged, and how are these standards to be discovered? What legitimizes the laws that govern society? Are law and morality rooted in the nature of things, or are they merely matters of custom and convention? Such questions mark a shift in intellectual inquiry away from the sorts of naturalistic, metaphysical, and ontological problems that preoccupied presocratic thinkers and toward a primary concern with matters of praxis, politics, and morality.My aims in this essay are, first, to illuminate the conceptions of wisdom that can be reconstructed from our evidence for the teachings of the Older Sophists, and then to discern the role of speech in the attainment and exercise of this wisdom. The past half-century or so has witnessed a growing interest in the Sophists of fifth-century Athens. This interest is particularly noteworthy because it involves a determination to consider the Sophists on their own terms rather than through Plato's eyes, as had been customary in most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sophistical studies. Though an early precedent was set by Grote's (1846) effort to challenge the Platonist bias in historical treatments of the Sophists, it was such scholars as Untersteiner (1949, 1954), Cornford (1950), Kerferd (1950, 1981), and Guthrie (1968, 1971) who inspired more recent revisionist histories of sophistical ideas.5 More recent studies have sought to illuminate the philosophical foundations of such ideas and their implications for the theory and practice of rhetoric. J. Poulakos (1983a, 1983b, 1984, 1990, 1995), Schiappa (1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999), de Romilly (1992), Consigny (2001), McComisky (2002), Gagarin (2002... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Playful Metaphysics Greg Moses Let us revive the happy times, when Atticus and Cassius the Epicureans, Cicerothe Academic, andBrutus the Stoic, could, all of them, live in unreserved friendship together, and were unsensible to all those distinctions, except so far as they furnished agreeable matter to discourse and conversation.1 This paper argues, firstly, that contrary to appearances, the mature Hume allows for engagementin a certain style ofmetaphysical (...) reasoning in a rather strong sense of'metaphysics'. The proviso is that this be done in a carefully defined playful 'Pyrrhonian' spirit (sees. 1-5). It argues, secondly, that engagementinmetaphysics in such aHumean playful spirit might be available to us and of some value for us nowadays (sees. 6-7). The strategy ofthe argument in sections 1-5 is that the character Philo in Hume'sDialogues ConcerningNaturalReligion engages injust that kind ofmetaphysics that Hume rules out in the Treatise and the Enquiries, but that he does so in such a playful fashion as to be able to get away with it. (1) The word 'metaphysics' is used in the Hume text interpretation part of this paper (sees. 1-5) to refer to enquiry concerning 'ultimate principles/causes'. These ultimate causes are more than just very general constant conjunctions the reality of which is supposed, given habit, on the basis of experience. They are characterized in Hume by the fact that: 1) there is a relations of ideas connection between the 'essence' or 'nature' of whatever it is we are talking about, the soul/mind/human nature, or external bodies, such that 2) could we know the 'nature' or 'essence' we could come to know the principle without consulting experience, and, consequently, 3) they are such that if and when we came to know them we could give a reason for them, beyond our experience of their reality, namely by showing them to follow from the 'essence' or 'nature' ofthe object in question.2 The search for these ultimate springs and causes motivates our researches. "This is our aim in all our studies and reflections" (T 266), tofind the ultimate and operatingprinciple, which resides in the object. We are not satisfied, we would not willingly stop until acquainted with them, or until we are convinced that such a goal is beyond us human Volume XVII Number 2 63 GREG MOSES beings and despair has the same effect on us as enjoyment. Science, in fact, only "staves off our ignorance a little longer" (E 31). The most general and most refined principles we discover are as inexplicable to us as the phenomena themselves are to the vulgar; we have no idea even of what it is we are looking for when we search for them.3 There is thus a kind of natural desire for insight into causes, which natural and moral science does notfully satisfy,4 a sort ofnatural desire for the vision of, if possible, ultimate causes. (2) The attitude ofthe Treatiseand theEnquiries withrespect tothe search for ultimate principles is to stay away from it—as every first year philosophy student knows. This is Hume's position even antecedent to science and enquiry, taken over from the example of the natural philosophers whose empirical method he is adopting. Note that we are using the word 'metaphysics' here as a temporary convenience in a non-Humean sense: for Hume, 'metaphysics' = the more difficult parts of learning, profound reasonings of any kind (cf. E 11). Hume himself engages in such profound reasonings, for a variety of reasons (under five headings in E, sec. 1), including the idea that we "must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate" (E 12). One of Hume's purposes in book 1 of the Treatise and in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is to turn us away from "specious and agreeable" (T 272) hypotheses and towards those subjects where alone we can expect assurance and conviction (T 272-73), in order to Uve at ease ever after, having rejected, after deliberate enquiry, the most uncertain and disagreeable part of learning (E 12-13). This is accomplished by his investigation of belief inmattersoffactbeyond testimonyofsenses ormemory;thatis, relying on causal reasoning and... (shrink)

Complete 3 volume set available for special price: Philosophical Theology Set (Volumes 1, 2 and 3) The concluding volume in a trilogy advancing a systematic philosophical theology, this book presents a plausible sacred worldview for religious participation. Religion is the third and final volume in Robert Cummings Neville’s systematic development of a new philosophical theology. Unfolding through his earlier volumes, Ultimates and Existence, and now in Religion, philosophical theology considers first-order questions generally treated (...) by religious traditions through philosophical methods while reflecting Neville’s long engagement with philosophy, theology, and Eastern and Western religious traditions. In this capstone to the trilogy, Neville provides a theory of religion and presents a sacred worldview to guide religious participation. His philosophical theory of value enlightens religions’ approaches to ethics, spirituality, and religious institutional living and collaboration. With a detailed examination of plausibility conditions for sacred worldviews, the book concludes with an exploration of “religionless religion” for which institutions of religion are of penultimate value. Through the development of philosophical theology, Neville has built a unique, multidisciplinary, comparative, nonconfessional theological system, one that addresses concerns and provides tools for scientific and humanistic scholars of religion, postmodern thinkers, intellectuals from both secular and religious backgrounds, and those interested in the global state of religion today. (shrink)

_Engaging Bioethics: An Introduction with Case Studies_ draws students into this rapidly changing field, helping them to actively untangle the many issues at the intersection of medicine and moral concern. Presuming readers start with no background in philosophy, it offers balanced, philosophically based, and rigorous inquiry for undergraduates throughout the humanities and social sciences as well as for health care professionals-in-training, including students in medical school, pre-medicine, nursing, public health, and those studying to assist physicians in various capacities. Written by (...) an author team with more than three decades of combined experience teaching bioethics, this book offers Flexibility to the instructor, with chapters that can be read independently and in an order that fits the course structure Up-to-date coverage of current controversies on topics such as vaccination, access to health care, new reproductive technologies, genetics, biomedical research on human and animal subjects, medically assisted death, abortion, medical confidentiality, and disclosure Attention to issues of gender, race, cultural diversity, and justice in health care Integration with case studies and primary sources Pedagogical features to help instructors and students, including Chapter learning objectives Text boxes and figures to explain important terms, concepts, and cases End-of-chapter summaries, key words, and annotated further readings Discussion cases and questions Appendices on moral reasoning and the history of ethical issues at the end and beginning of life An index of cases discussed in the book and extensive glossary/index A companion website with a virtual anthology linking to key primary sources, a test bank, topics for papers, and PowerPoints for lectures and class discussion. (shrink)

The present work is a collection of research papers associated with divergent themes of philosophy. Philosophy is rightly considered to be a selfconscious reflective activity. To philosophize is to reflect upon our lived experiences and naturally it is to be a systematic reflection. It is an attempt to discuss the classical Indianepistemological issues of Pramāņyavāda, Pramāņa Samplava and Pramāņa Vyavasthä on the one hand and recent trends of Indian philosophy on the other. The series of research papers try to (...) explore the different dimensions and intricacies of Kantian and Husserlian philosophy. It encompassesa wide horizon right from the multifarious concept of justice, the project of modernity, the methodological approach towards comparative religion, recent debate on Purusārtha to the vexed issues of applied ethics related with environmental ethics, professional ethics, human cloning and euthanasia. The author has presented his work with conceptual clarity, lucid expression, systematic presentation and critical exposition of the subject matter. It is undoubtedly a valuable contribution which will evoke an enthusiastic response from the scholars and students of philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter presents a question closely related to the problem of vagueness, because it looks like a paradigm of a philosophical question that is implicitly but not explicitly about thought and language. It is useful to look at some proposals and arguments from the vagueness debate, for two reasons. First, they show why the original question is hard, when taken at face value. Second, they show how semantic considerations play a central role in the attempt to answer it, even (...) though it is not itself a semantic question. Some philosophers deny the relevance of formal semantic theories to vague natural languages. Some contemporary metaphysicians appear to believe that they can safely ignore formal semantics and the philosophy of language because their interest is in a largely extra‐mental reality. Conceptions of logic and mathematics as somehow trivial or non‐substantial have not been vindicated by any clear explanation of the relevant sense of “trivial” or “non‐substantial.”. (shrink)

It is unfortunate in this time when so little Scotus is available in English that Wolter uses the dear space of this volume to produce material available elsewhere: his own translation of "Man's Natural Knowledge of God", and McKeon's translation of "Concerning Human Knowledge". He also includes a long section from the Oxford Commentary on the existence of God, much of which is paralleled in De Primo Principio, available in English. But the selection Wolter does make, including material on (...) metaphysics, the unicity of God, and the soul, is well balanced and makes an excellent introduction to Scotus' thought. The fine, imaginative translation faces the Latin text. It is to be hoped that this useful volume will stimulate interest in translating Balic's critical edition, now in the making.--R. C. N. (shrink)

Isaac Newton wrote the manuscript Questiones quaedam philosophicae at the very beginning of his scientific career. This small notebook thus affords rare insight into the beginnings of Newton's thought and the foundations of his subsequent intellectual development. The Questiones contains a series of entries in Newton's hand that range over many topics in science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and the foundations of mathematics. These notes, written in English, provide a very detailed picture of Newton's early interests, and record his critical appraisal (...) of contemporary issues in natural philosophy. Written predominantly in 1664-5, they give a significant perspective on Newton's thought just prior to his annus mirabilis, 1666. This volume provides a complete transcription of the Questiones, together with an 'expansion' into modern English, and a full editorial commentary on the content and significance of the notebook in the development of Newton's thought. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Newton and the intellectual foundations of science. (shrink)