This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Necessity and Contingency as Degrees of Stability Necessity (Contingency) and Description Cleopatra's Nose and Other Category Mistakes Making a Difference Emplotment Prophets of Contingency References.

We consider a version of so called T x W logic for historical necessity in the sense of R.H. Thomason (1984), which is somewhat special in three respects: (i) it is explicitly based on two-dimensional modal logic in the sense of Segerberg (1973); (ii) for reasons of applicability to interesting fields of philosophical logic, it conceives of time as being discrete and finite in the sense of having a beginning and an end; and (iii) it utilizes the technique (...) of systematic frame constants in order to handle the problem of irreflexivity in tense logics, well known since Gabbay (1981). Axiomatizations are given for two infinite hierarchies of two-dimensional modal tense logics, one without and one with the characteristic operators for historical necessity and possibility. Strong and weak completeness results are obtained for both hierarchies as well as a result to the effect that two approaches to their semantics are equivalent, much in the spirit of Di Maio and Zanardo (1996) and von Kutschera (1997). (shrink)

In an earlier paper by the author, Åqvist , I presented an approach to the logic of historical necessity, or inevitability, in the sense of a “two-dimensional” combination of tense and modal logic for worlds, or histories, with the same time order, known as T × W logic. Distinctive features of that approach were, apart from its two-dimensionality, its being based on discrete and finite time, and its use of so-called systematic frame constants in order to enable us (...) to indicate longitudes and latitudes of any points in the co-ordinate systems under consideration. This led us to study and axiomatize an infinite hierarchy HTWxy of two-dimensional modal tense logics with the characteristic operators for historical necessity and possibility added to the original basic vocabulary. The main purpose of the present paper is then twofold: to extend the logics HTWxy to the interesting branch of philosophical logic constituted by deontic logic as combined with tense logic; and to deal with a curious puzzle known as the so-called epistemic obligation paradox – a well known stumbling-block in this area of research in philosophical logic. We argue for a solution to both these problems, which appeals to a new infinite hierarchy DHTWxym of extensions of the HTWxy in the sense of logics combining dyadic deontic modalities with temporal ones such as those for historical necessity and other two-dimensional modalities. (shrink)

The problem of ‘applicability’ of mathematics to modern physical sciences has been labeled as an ‘unreasonably effective’ and unexplainable ‘miracle’ by prominent physicists such as Eugene Wigner a...

The principle of necessity as applied to self-defence requires the use of the least harmful defensively effective means of thwarting a wrongful threat. Yet –so I argue – a harm can be excessive even when it is the least harmful way of dealing with the threat at the time of the attack. I therefore propose a historical view of the requirement of necessity. Historical necessity requires the selection of the least harmful means to thwart a (...) future attack at the point in time at which we have a solid presumption that the future attack will take place. This may happen considerably before the time of the attack. Once you fail to acquire or preserve the least harmful defensive option for thwarting a future attack you may come to be irrevocably in breach of necessity. The paper tackles a number of objections to the view proposed. (shrink)

Marxists are committed to the elimination of exploitation of man by man. But they also believe that, for long stretches of history, exploitation is historically necessary. These two claims are in practical tension. As Engels would have it, this tension causes 'the leader of an extreme party' attempting premature revolution to be 'irrevocably lost'. This brief note argues against a Marxist attempt to alleviate this tension and sketches the moral predicament of revolutionists faced with it. Historical materialism entails a (...) pantragic view of history. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the turning that occurs within the work of Martin Heidegger. In particular it seeks to reveal it as a turning that takes place within the notion of history as it is ela...

근대 시민 사회의 역사철학적 의미는 근대인들이 인간의 보편적인 자유를 자각하고 이를 인간의 보편적 권리로 인식하였고 또한 스스로 역사의 주체가 되어 인간의 보편적 자유를 현실화하려고 노력했다는 점이다. 루소의 일반의지가 계기가 되어 자유를 의식하였고 그리고 인간불평등 기원에 관한 이론에서 나타난 자연과 자유의 분리를 인식하여 보편적 자유의 실현을 실천하였다. 그러나 추상적 자유를 현실에서 실현하려는 시민혁명은 공포의 정치가 되었고 보편적 자유를 실현하고자하는 시민사회는 실패하였다. 반면에 영국사회는 프랑스 시민사회와는 정반대로 자연의 필연성에서 내재된 과도한 인간의 욕망을 조정하는 차원에서 시민사회를 형성하였고 그 결과 과도한 욕망의 경쟁으로 형식적인 (...) 자유와 불평등으로 끝났다. 칸트와 헤겔을 중심으로 형성된 독일의 사상에서 시민사회의 근원인 자유와 자연적 필연성의 대립을 지양하여 통일하려는 철학이 나타났다. 칸트의 선험적 관념론의 제3이율배반으로 구체화된 자유와 자연적 필연성의 대립은 헤겔의 사변적 변증법에서 통일된다. 헤겔은 자유와 자연적 필연성의 통일이 학적인 기반위에서 해결되어야 한다고 생각하였고 이를 역사적이고 정치 사회적 현실에서 해결하기 위한 토대를 찾게 되는 데 그것이 이상적인 공동체인 인륜국가이다. (shrink)

Philosophers have offered many arguments to explain why historical injustices require reparations. This paper raises an unnoticed challenge for almost all of them. Most theories of reparations attempt to meet two intuitions: (1) Reparations are owed for a past wrong and (2) the content of reparations must reflect the historical injustice. I argue that necessarily no monistic theory can meet both intuitions. I do this by showing that any theory that can meet intuition (1) necessarily cannot also meet (...) intuition (2). This result suggests that a theory of reparations must either sacrifice one of the two intuitions or be pluralist. I argue that we ought to prefer the pluralist over the monistic theory. I sketch the pluralist theory and I defend it by considering an objection about the way it can resolve conflicts. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 51 - 75 History occupies a somewhat awkward position in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Although they often criticise history as a practice and advance alternatives that are explicitly anti-historical, such as ‘nomadology’ and ‘geophilosophy’, their scholarship is nevertheless littered with historical encounters and deeply influenced by historians such as Fernand Braudel. One of Deleuze and Guattari’s more significant engagements with history occurs through their reading and theory of (...) universal history. In this paper I will explicate and critically analyse the nature of this universal history vis-à-vis its most pertinent counterpoint: Hegel’s philosophy of world history. In contrast to Hegel’s form of historicism, which universalizes by virtue of a unitary and totalizing force, Deleuze and Guattari develop a universalizing mechanism that is strictly devoid of any privileged essence. Following, Deleuze and Guattari’s form of universal history is marked above all by contingency as opposed to necessity. In this paper I will show precisely how. I will also go on to demonstrate how Deleuze and Guattari’s universal history offers the promise of an historical ontology commensurate with the processes of creativity and becoming, provided that appropriate steps are taken to reaffirm the radical contingency at its heart. (shrink)

The Master Argument, recorded by Epictetus, indicates that Diodorus had deduced a contradiction from the conjoint assertion of three propositions. The Argument, which has to do with necessity and contingency and therefore with freedom, has attracted the attention of logicians above all. There have been many attempts at reconstructing it in logical terms, without excessive worry about historical plausibility and with the foregone conclusion that it was sophistic since it directly imperilled our common sense notion of freedom. This (...) text takes exception to recent tradition, translating the propositions into logical terms. The propositions figuring in The Master Argument are interpreted in terms of temporal modal logic where both the modalities and the statements they govern have chronological indices. This means that the force of the argument comes not from purely logical or modal considerations, but from our experience of time. (shrink)

By means of careful analysis of relevant writings by Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, David James argues that the concept of practical necessity is key to understanding the nature and extent of human freedom. Practical necessity means being, or believing oneself to be, constrained to perform certain actions in the absence of other, more attractive options, or by the high costs involved in pursuing other options. Agents become subject to practical necessity as a result of economic, (...) social, and historical forces over which they have, or appear to have, no effective control, and the extent to which they are subject to it varies according to the amount of economic and social power that one agent possesses relative to other agents. The concept of practical necessity is also shown to take into account how the beliefs and attitudes of social agents are in large part determined by social and historical processes in which they are caught up, and that the type of motivation that we attribute to agents must recognize this. Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History: From Hobbes to Marx shows how Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, in contrast to Hobbes, explain the emergence of the conditions of a free society in terms of a historical process that is initially governed by practical necessity. The role that this form of necessity plays in explaining history necessity invites the following question: to what extent are historical agents genuinely subject to both practical and historical necessity? (shrink)

Necessity is a notoriously dangerous and slippery concept-dangerous because it contemplates virtually unrestrained killing in warfare and slippery when used in conflicting ways in different areas of international law. Jens David Ohlin and Larry May untangle these confusing strands and perform a descriptive mapping of the ways that necessity operates in legal and philosophical arguments in jus ad bellum, jus in bello, human rights, and criminal law. Although the term "necessity" is ever-present in discussions regarding the law (...) and ethics of killing, its meaning changes subtly depending on the context. It is sometimes an exception, at other times a constraint on government action, and most frequently a broad license in war that countenances the wholesale killing of enemy soldiers in battle. Is this legal status quo in war morally acceptable? Ohlin and May offer a normative and philosophical critique of international law's prevailing notion of jus in bello necessity and suggest ways that killing in warfare could be made more humane-not just against civilians but soldiers as well. Along the way, the authors apply their analysis to modern asymmetric conflicts with non-state actors and the military techniques most likely to be used against them. Presenting a rich tapestry of arguments from both contemporary and historical Just War theory, Necessity in International Law is the first full-length study of necessity as a legal and philosophical concept in international affairs. (shrink)

In this systematic historical analysis, Nino Langiulli focuses on a key philosophical issue, possibility, as it is refracted through the thought of the Italian ...

A discussion of Aristotle’s thought on determinism and culpability, Necessity, Cause, and Blame also reveals Richard Sorabji’s own philosophical commitments. He makes the original argument here that Aristotle separates the notions of necessity and cause, rejecting both the idea that all events are necessarily determined as well as the idea that a non-necessitated event must also be non-caused. In support of this argument, Sorabji engages in a wide-ranging discussion of explanation, time, free will, essence, and purpose in nature. (...) He also provides historical perspective, arguing that these problems remain intimately bound up with modern controversies. “ Necessity, Cause and Blame would be counted by all as one of Sorabji’s finest. The book is essential for philosophers—both specialists on the Greeks and modern thinkers about free will—and also compelling for non-specialists.”—Martha Nussbaum “Original and important . . . The book relates Aristotle’s discussions to both the contemporary debates on determinism and causation and the ancient ones. It is especially detailed on Stoic arguments about necessity . . . and on the social and legal background to Aristotle’s thought.”— Choice “It is difficult to convey the extraordinary richness of this book. . . . A Greekless philosopher could read it with pleasure . . . At the same time, its learning and scholarship are enormous.”—G. E. M. Anscombe, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

In his book Welt und Unendlichkeit, László Tengelyi has enquired into the possibility of a phenomenological metaphysics. Among the many issues addressed in his book, he thematized a real necessity of a non-apriori kind at Aristotle and Husserl, a necessity which he called „a necessity of the fact“. His research settled the basis for the present enquiry, which will examine the relationship between the absolute and the conditional necessity of a fact as well as the contingent (...) or accidental features involved therein at Aristotle and Husserl, insofar as facticity is concerned. I intend to show that although both authors share the view that worldly beings are characterized by their contingency, they differ as to their necessity: Aristotle attributes a contingent necessity to the factual being i.e. to reality, a necessity characterized by its being temporarily conditioned by actuality and which can therefore be defined as the ,conditional necessity of a fact‘. As to Husserl, transcendental phenomenology must, upon the basis of the eidetic method, determine the possibilities out of which the ego constitutes the factual world. He states the necessity of the fact as an eidetic necessity, which has to be grounded on eidetic laws. Later on, enquiries into a „metaphysics in new sense“ lead to a revision of the meaning of „fact“ and to an inversion of the order of foundation as well: the original givenness of the world, the primal I, intersubjectivity and historicity as primal and absolute facts carry the eidetic necessities. Accidental causes, on the other hand, account not only for the contingency of the real but, at Husserl, for the ego‘s ,essential openness‘ and its core of primal contingency. In this context, I shall argue that facticity paired with the accidental allows for the irruption of something new that overwhelms us – an event as Ereignis. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 I explore the role of practical necessity in Kant’s essay _Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim_. This form of necessity arises on the basis of social and interstate antagonism and Kant appeals to it with the aim of avoiding the introduction of a standpoint that is external to the agents whose attitudes and actions are being described. In connection with the role that Kant accords to practical necessity in the (...) establishment of the legal and political conditions required to fulfil the ‘plan of nature’ in the course of history, I argue that in this essay he fails to identify a mechanism that would explain a fundamental moral change in that which motivates human beings once these conditions have been established. This in turn invites questions concerning the kind of universal history that Kant proposes. In particular, I argue that the choice of historical material that it demands could, in certain circumstances, be regarded as counterpurposive in relation to the aim of nature of which Kant speaks in the same essay. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explore to some extent the relationship between identity and necessity in logic and metaphysics. First, I provide a historically-based summary of proofs of the necessity of identity, highlighting the importance of the role that self-identity plays. Second, I introduce two examples of metaphysical topics where the necessity of identity has played a pivotal role: the necessary a posteriori, and the coincidence of material objects. I argue that important aspects of these (...) debates rest on how we represent identity. Third, I consider some recent work on generalized identity. This opens up new prospects for explaining why identity is necessary. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for a revival of Adorno and Horkheimer’s critical philosophy of history on account of the fact that their construction articulates both the necessity of various aspects of our current socio-political conditions given the past tendencies of rationality and domination, and the contingency of the present miseries by problematizing the continuous historical narratives that justify a certain version of the present. After demonstrating that the accomplishment of critical philosophy of history has to be located (...) in the dialectic of the necessary as well as the contingent elements of historical developments, I turn to the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a particular constellation that exemplifies this accomplishment. I show that in this book we find a critical philosophy of history that narrates a story that both makes fascism the necessary corollary and conclusion of instrumental rationality and shows its contingent entanglement with domination. In this way, the initial question of how reason and rationality can lead to domination is now transformed into one that asks how we can we reinterpret and re-animate them such that they are no longer complicit with domination. (shrink)

Given his emphasis on deontological ethics, Kant is rarely regarded as a friend of prudence. For example, he is often interpreted as an opponent of so-called “historical faiths”. What typically goes unnoticed is that in explaining the legitimate role of historical faiths in the moral development of the human race, Kant appeals explicitly to their prudential status. A careful examination of Kant’s main references to prudence demonstrates that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to (...) understanding both its limitations and its real value. The wise person adopts some form of historical faith, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life virtually impossible for embodied beings to achieve. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 370 - 381 The argument of this paper is that counterfactuals are indispensable in reasoning in general and historical reasoning in particular. It illustrates the role of counterfactuals in the study of history and explores the connection between counterfactuals and the notions of historical necessity and contingency. Entertaining alternatives to the actual course of events is conducive to the assessment of the relative weight and impact of the various factors that (...) combine to bring about a certain result. Counterfactuals are essentially involved in understanding what it means for an event, an action, or an individual to make a difference. Making a difference, in turn, is shown to be a central category of historical reasoning. Counterfactuals, though sensitive to the description they use, make objective claims that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence. (shrink)

As John Bellamy Foster writes in his foreword to the present book, “István Mészáros is one of the greatest philosophers that the historical materialist tradition has yet produced. His work stands practically alone today in the depth of its analysis of Marx’s theory of alienation, the structural crisis of capital, the demise of Soviet-style post-revolutionary societies, and the necessary conditions of the transition to socialism. His dialectical inquiry into social structure and forms of consciousness—a systematic critique of the prevailing (...) forms of thought—is unequaled in our time.” Mészáros is the author of magisterial works like Beyond Capital and Social Structures of Forms of Consciousness, but his work can seem daunting to those unacquainted with his thought. Here, for the first time, is a concise and accessible overview of Mészáros’s ideas, designed by the author himself and covering the broad scope of his work, from the shortcomings of bourgeois economics to the degeneration of the capital system to the transition to socialism. (shrink)

This Article makes three moves. First it suggests and elaborates a distinction—already implicit in the literature—between what I will call the first and second order of arguments for justice (hereinafter FOAJ and SOAJ). In part, it is a distinction somewhat similar to that between just war and justice in war. SOAJ are akin to the rules governing justice in war or rules of engagement, while bracketing the reasons and causes of the conflict. FOAJ on the hand are those principles of (...) justice and arguments that derive their power from the distribution of entitlements, rights and duties of the parties prior to the conflict they are supposed to adjudicate. FOAJ aim in many ways to restore the distribution of entitlements that existed on the eve of the conflict. Thus, all arguments for corrective or historical justice could be viewed as FOAJ. The second move in the paper associates FOAJ with the Palestinians and SOAJ with Zionism first and Israel later on. The more the settler Zionist project became a reality, the more the Palestinian population felt a threat to their national project and exercised resistance, including violent resistance. The more Palestinians showed resistance, the more appealing and more relevant SOAJ of self-defense, security, and emergency. The third move in the paper is to ask questions regarding the relation between FOAJ and SOAJ offer a critique of the distinction itself, and offers a critique of the way the distinction is being deployed in the case of Israel-Palestine. The Israeli claims for self-defense and security(SOAJ) are becoming so pervasive that they threaten to suspend the claims for historical justice forever (FOAJ), to the point that everything, even the regime that is crystallizing in front of our eyes as an Apartheid regime, is being justified as a temporal necessity. Israel deployment of SOAJ is done in bad faith. (shrink)

SummaryThis article argues that Archibald Campbell's Necessity of Revelation can be viewed as the first application of the ‘science of human nature’, a characteristic branch of the Scottish Enlightenment, to the study of religious belief. Adopting Baconian and Newtonian methodological principles, Campbell set hypotheses, collected historical data, and inferred conclusions about the capabilities of human nature to come to fundamental religious ideas without the aid of revelation. He did so not only to reject the ‘deist’ position on the (...) powers of unassisted human reason, associated with Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation, but also to refute Campbell's conservative critics within the Church of Scotland who had earlier tried him for heresy. Campbell's example is that of a university professor using the experimental study of religion to defeat both radical freethinking and Calvinist orthodoxy. His work is another instance of the complicated relationship between science and religion within eighteenth-century Scotland. (shrink)

This study considers Newton's views on space and time with respect to some important ontologies of substance in his period. Specifically, it deals in a philosophico-historical manner with his conception of substance, attribute, existence, to actuality and necessity. I show how Newton links these “features” of things to his conception of God's existence with respect of infinite space and time. Moreover, I argue that his ontology of space and time cannot be understood without fully appreciating how it relates (...) to the nature of Divine existence. In order to establish this, the ontology embodied in Newton's theory of predication is analysed, and shown to be different from the presuppositions of the ontological argument. From the historical point of view Gassendi's influence is stressed, via the mediation of Walter Charleton. Furthermore, Newton's thought on these matters is contrasted with Descartes's and Spinoza's. In point of fact, in his earliest notebook Newton recorded observations on Descartes's version of the ontological argument. Soon, however, he was to oppose the Cartesian conception of the actuality of Divine existence by means of arguments similar to those of Gassendi. Lastly, I suggest that the nature and extent of Henry More's influence on Newton's conception of how God relates to absolute space and time bears further examination. (shrink)

In this paper Whewell’s concept of necessity is scrutinized and its historical development is outlined (ca. 1833-1860). Particular attention will be paid to how Whewell interpreted the laws of the inductive sciences as being necessary since the laws of nature are concretizations of the Fundamental Ideas which can be partially described by Axioms.

In this paper, I argue that taking basic human rights seriously—and the basic right to subsistence in particular—requires acknowledging that, given certain conditions, people in need have a right of necessity to take, use and/or occupy the property of others in order to get out of their plight. I explore the implications of this for the phenomenon of illegalized migration for subsistence reasons, and suggest that receiving countries ought not to deny entry to these migrants. On the contrary, those (...) seeking to enter should be morally permitted to do it. The reason is that, just as basic rights should serve as internal limits to any minimally reasonable system of property rights, so should they serve as limits to any minimally reasonable system of territorial rights. After developing this idea, I address some objections to the principle and its application, and conclude by pointing to the immediate, mediate and final duties that this principle gives rise to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History: From Hobbes to Marx by David JamesMeghan RobisonDavid James. Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History: From Hobbes to Marx. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 256. Hardback, $70.00.In his newest monograph, David James offers an elaborate, well-wrought reflection on human freedom and its limits by considering five canonical modern philosophers: Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Judging from the table of contents, (...) the book appears to be a work in the history of philosophy: each of the chronologically organized chapters examines a different aspect of necessity, history, and freedom in one of the five philosophers just mentioned. By focusing on those thinkers, James tracks a progression in the modern reflection on the nature of freedom and its relation to constraint. Specifically, he argues that such a progression culminates, with Marx, in finally getting the right understanding of the relation between freedom and two kinds of necessity—one practical, the other historical. This is an extremely ambitious book, and its scope is extensive: by its end, James has considered more than thirty philosophical works spanning nearly two hundred years. Yet, even though it makes several contributions to various longstanding scholarly debates, Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History is not a work of intellectual history. Its main seven chapters—each of which offers a richly complex interpretative analysis that is sure to challenge any reader, even a specialist—are preceded by an introduction that explains that the book's aim is to contribute to a vision of society where necessity and freedom are reconciled. This aim is not a mere framing device but structures the book's contents as well its interpretive method.On James's account, the project of reconciling freedom with necessity—which was initiated by Rousseau in the eighteenth century and then developed by each of the modern philosophers examined in this book (with the exception of Hobbes [9])—remains incomplete. James explains this incompleteness as in part due to the success of the "two-liberties" conception of freedom outlined by Isaiah Berlin which he understands as the "liberal" idea according to which liberty begins and ends where others are prohibited from interfering in one's freedom and the "neo-republican" idea according to which the mere threat of domination is a constraint on freedom. Both views of liberty are essentially negative, James argues, and also deficient because they entail an impoverished and incorrect idea of constraint. To get beyond this viewpoint, James proposes to augment the idea of constraint that such a viewpoint entails by including both additional forms of practical constraint and a positive idea of freedom as self-determination (1). James explains the importance of the concept of self-determination by stressing the role it played in "gaining control over social and historical conditions and forces that generate avoidable practical constraints on human agency that may or may not interfere in people's lives" (2). To this end, he locates a productive tension between freedom as self-determination and practical constraint: the former is limited by the latter which, at the same time, it seeks to abolish. The "two-liberties" view cannot grasp this tension, James argues, because, in tying agency back to a "clearly identifiable agent," it overlooks the plural nature of freedom (2). In short, freedom and necessity remain unreconciled because we have not understood the nature of constraint and its relation to freedom as self-determination.James seeks to fill this "knowledge gap" by returning to what Kant, Hegel, and Marx said on freedom and necessity (both practical and historical) when they reflected on the transition to a society in which freedom and necessity are eventually reconciled. Specifically, James tries to identify new possibilities implicit in those three thinkers' accounts and to "kick the tires," so to speak, by looking for holes in their understanding of practical necessity. In particular, he focuses on what Kant's, Hegel's, and Marx's understanding of freedom and necessity might entail about the role of suffering in the transition toward a society in which freedom and necessity are reconciled. In combing through those three thinkers' arguments for inconsistencies, contradictions, and pregnant loose threads, James strives to... (shrink)

Quite often, for one or the other purpose, the fact (or phenomenon) that does not exist is presented to the society or individuals as the real, really existing although it (the fact or phenomenon) simply does not exist in the real life. And often the term “fiction” is used to describe such phenomena. Although fiction is considered an inseparable companion of a social life, the question arises what the actual (true) fiction is and whether the use of it in criminal (...) proceeding does not mean an intentional law maker’s (or the person’s applying the law) fraud, deceit directed towards the addressee of the applicable law. Fiction and its impact on criminal proceedings is analyzed in this article. Features, characterizing fiction are discussed here as well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 503 Possibility, Necessity, and Existence: Abbagnarw and His Predecessors. By NINO LANGIULLI. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Pp. xv + 205. $44.95 (cloth). Although Nicola Abbagnano would agree in some sense with the currently fashionable claim that metaphysics is dead, Nino Langiulli's treatment of Abbagnano's thought constitutes a challenge to that claim. The aim, of Possibility, Necessity, and Existence is "to expound and elucidate historically (...) and analytically the concepts of possibility, necessity, and existence as they are refracted through the thought of the twentieth-century Italian philosopher Nicola Abbagnano." Langiulli characterizes Abbagnano as a bold and original thinker whose defense of "possibility" as the fundamental sense of being is understood by Abbagnano himself as an anti-metaphysical position. In his critical reflections, however, especially in the last chapter, Langiulli shows that Abbagnano is indeed engaged in an inquiry that can only be called metaphysical. Parts I and II are preparatory to the third part in which the concept of possibility and its relation to existence are most directly addressed. Part I provides a historical overview of four phases of the movement of Abbagnano's thought "from a positive existentialism to a radical empiricism." Abbagnano's version of existentialism is "positive" in that it sees in human finitude the very possibility of man's relationship with being. Here Abbagnano is distinguished from other existentialists such as Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, and Sartre. His criticisms of these positions are among the most important and interesting parts of the book. Heidegger and Jaspers both begin by apprehending human existence as a structure of possibilities but then reduce human existence to a structure of impossibilities. Christian existentialists such as Marcel really treat possibilities as potentialities to be inevitably realized. For Sartre all possibilities are equivalent, but for Abbagnano "the complete arbitrariness of choice among human possibilities does not imply freedom at all, but the impossibility of choice" (18). Here also Langiulli's comparison of Abbagnano with Quine, Sellars, and Rorty is pertinent and illuminating: Abbagnano would share Rorty's criticism of Quine and Sellars for holding on to vestiges of the old empiricism, but Abbagnano would not accept Rorty's "emptying" of philosophy itself. The influence of Abbagnano on his student Umberto Eco and on Gianni Vattimo and the differences between Abbagnano and Derrida's views of possibility are spelled out by Langiulli. In a section entitled "Dumping Philosophy and the Madness of It That Is Also Folly," Langiulli locates Abbagnano clearly and precisely within the debate over the legitimacy of reason. Abbagnano finds the basis of philosophical madness in the persistent tendency to take one aspect of human life as an absolute determinant, thus marginalizing or ignoring all others. "This privileged status has even been attributed to reason, but only when it 504 BOOK REVIEWS is absolutized or divinized as a superhuman force regulating the whole of nature, humanity included, according to necessary and necessitating laws" (39). So, for example, the order of mathematics or the techniques of verification and control employed in physics are transferred to the human world. But Abbagnano's rejection of absolutized reason is not a rejection of reason as such. He sees the current favoring of the nonrational and irrational aspects of life as a kind of folly and madness, "the vertigo of absurdity." The deliberate and crass ignorance of history and the search for novelty are also forms of madness. Part II consists of four chapters that trace the sources for Abbagnano's concept of possibility. The first of these sources is Plato's treatment of existence and possibility in the Sophist, where Abbagnano finds what he takes to be the antecedent for his own thought and for existentialism in general: the idea that possibility is both the structure and the ground of existing things. The two persistent themes of Greek metaphysics that Abbagnano is concerned to overcome are found most explicitly in Aristotle: the priority of actuality over possibility and the primacy of necessity over possibility. Kant is credited with opening the path for contemporary thought with his concept of real possibility (as distinguished from merely logical possibility). Finally, Abbagnano is indebted to Kierkegaard's criticisms of Aristotle and Hegel in the Philosophical... (shrink)

Identity: The Necessity of a Modern Idea is the first comprehensive history of the concept that answers the question, "who, or what, am I?" Gerald Izenberg contends that our most important identities, while historically conditioned, are rooted in permanent categories of human existence, such as sexuality, sociality, and labor.

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process (...) Physics [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence. (shrink)

Interest in the relationship between race and the expanded reproduction of capitalism has exploded across the social sciences and humanities over the past several years. Despite this widespread appreciation and interest, profound disagreement, debate, and analytical impression persists, not least regarding the relationship between race and the necessary ‘laws of motion’ of capitalist society. This article begins by tracing the core approaches to the race and capitalism conversation, paying particular attention to their understanding of the necessity/contingency distinction. It then (...) proceeds to make the case for race as a contingent – which, emphatically, does not mean local or insignificant – relatively autonomous, and historically path-dependent terrain of struggle in capitalist society, which has largely functioned to maintain capital’s necessary disequilibrium between the value form and its value relations, but need not do so. It closes by exploring the implications of this claim in relation to recent historical-geographical research on post-1898 US imperialism. (shrink)

How is it possible to speak of structuralism at the end of the millennium, except in the past tense—historically? But has structuralism really sung its swan song? It is hard not to fall prey to the historicism that has been so pervasive in Western thought in the last two hundred years. Yet this is a congress of philosophy, not history nor sociology. What philosophy looks for in structuralism is quite different from what history, or sociology, or even anthropology may find. (...) Therefore, I begin from an avowedly ahistoricist stance since I am not interested in structuralism as a movement, but as a position, and I intend to discuss it as such. (shrink)

Argues that that all necessity is consequent, and that reason and God are contingent, albeit eternal, necessitiesFocusing on the central striking claim that there is something rather than nothing - that all necessity is consequent - Tritten engages with a wide range of ancient as well as contemporary philosophers including Quentin Meillassoux, Richard Kearney, Friedrich Schelling, Émile Boutroux and Markus Gabriel. He examines the ramifications of this truth arguing that even reason and God, while necessary according to essence, (...) are utterly contingent with respect to existence.Key FeaturesShows how all necessary truths are products of an epistemic framework that is itself historically contingentExplains the nature of contingency as something that stems from the facticity of being itself Explains the emergence and ontological status of reason, particularly the principle of sufficient reasonArgues for the contingency of God's existence while maintaining the necessity of his essenceProvides an alternative to Quentin Meillassoux's thesis for the necessity of contingency". (shrink)