In this paper I propose a reading of Plotinus Enneads VI.1-3 [41-43] On the genera of being which regards this treatise as a coherent whole in which Aristotle's Categories is explored in a way that turns it into a decisive contribution to Plotinus' Platonic ontology. In addition, I claim that Porphyry's Isagoge and commentaries on the Categories start by adopting Plotinus' point of view, including his notion of genus, and proceed by explaining its consequences for a more detailed reading of (...) the Categories. After Plotinus' integration of the Categories into the Platonic frame of thought Porphyry saw the possibilities of exploiting the Peripatetic tradition both as a means to support the Platonic interpretation of the Categories and as a source for solutions to traditional questions. His allegiance to a division of being into ten, and his emphasis on semantics rather than ontology can be explained from this orientation. In the light of our investigation the alleged disagreement between Plotinus and Porphyry on the Categories changes its appearance completely. There are differences, but these can be best explained as confirmation and extension of Plotinus' perspective on the Categories and its role in Platonism. (shrink)

Introduction : facets of the alien -- The human as a liminal being -- Between pathos and response -- Response to the alien -- Corporeal experience between selfhood and otherness -- Thresholds of attention -- Between cultures.

The essay reexamines the famous scene from Proust’s ›In Search of Lost Time‹ about the death of the writer Bergotte. In pointing out that the notorious ›patch of yellow wall‹ Bergotte claims to have discovered in Vermeer’s ›View of Delft‹ does not exist in the real painting, the article’s aim is to show that the scene is not to be read as an autobiographical recollection, but rather as a reflection on ›mimesis‹, i.e. on the transcendental conditions of perception and representation. (...) As such, it can be considered to have in large measure inspired the reorientation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later phenomenological oeuvre towards a new ontology. On the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s recently published lecture notes, the essay locates the common concern of the writer and the philosopher in the idea of remembrance not as a derivative phenomenon, but as an originary mode of givenness. (shrink)

Wiederkehr des Raumes?. Topologisches Paradigmen ; Rückkehr zum gelebten Raum ; Raumkonzepte und Raumpraktiken ; Regionale oder fundamentale Räumlichkeit ; Zweideutigkeiten und Paradoxien der Lebenswelt -- Polarität von Ort und Raum. Phänomenologische Topik ; Wo-Frage im Schatten der Was-Frage ; Ortsbestimmung als Antwort auf eine Wo-Frage ; Fremde und eigene Wo-Frage ; Hier als Standort : Grund und Boden ; Woher und Wohin : Wegstrecken ; Worin : offene und geschlossene Räume ; Ringsum : Umgebung, Umwelt und Welt ; Wie (...) weit : Vermessene Räume -- Leibliches Wohnen im Raum. Vielfalt des Raumes ; Verankerung im Hier ; Raumachsen ; Durchmessung, Dehnung und Schrumpfung des Raumes ; Nähe und Ferne ; Drinnen und Draußen ; Interieur und Exterieur im Blickfield der Malerei ; Raumanlage und Raumbühne ; Raumtechniken und Ortskarten ; Lokale Räume und globaler Raum -- Ortsverschiebungen. Hier und Anderswo ; Aktualität, Habitualität und Virtualität der räumlichen Bewegung ; Spuren der Zeit im Raum ; Zersprengter Raum ; Telepräsenz ; Fremdorte und andere Räume ; Gemeinorte und globaler Raum ; Gastlichkeit ; Coda : Topos : Atopie : Heterotopien -- Zeitverdoppelung und Zeitverschiebung. Zwischen Mythos und Logos ; Frage nach der Zeit ; Zeitverdoppelung in der Rede und Zeitverkörperung ; Zeitverschiebung zwischen Pathos und Respons ; Zeitverschiebung und Reaktionszeit ; Der entrückte Anfang im Roman und auf der Bühne ; Zeit der Sinne ; Jenseits von Erinnerung und Erwartung ; Rhythmen und Tempi ; Zwischen Leere und Erfüllung ; Coda : Anderswo enden -- Die verändernde Kraft der Wiederholung. Wiederholungsexperiment ; Sich wiederholdende Erfahrung ; Widerholung als Rettung aus der Zeit ; Altes und Neues im Widerstreit ; Unwiederholbares in der Zeit -- Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Zukünftigem im Anschluß an Aristoteles. Handlungsperspektive ; Die drohende Seeschlacht ; Wahrscheinlichkeit und Häufigkeit ; Zwischen Gewißheit und Ungewißheit ; Rückzug auf pratische Gewißheit ; Zwischen Entwurf und Erwartung ; Unwahrscheinliche Zukunft -- Kommen und Gehen in der Zeit im Anschluß an Merleau-Ponty. Frühe dialektik der Zeit ; Zeit als bloßes Nacheinander ; Totalität der Zeit : Präsenzfeld ; Riß der Zeit : Selbstaffektion ; Bewegung der Zeit : Vor- und Rückläufigkeit ; Wahrnehmung zwischen Vor- und Rückblick ; Handeln zwischen Vorsatz und Vorschlag ; Kommen und Gehen ; Chiasmus der Zeit -- Epilog : Verquickung von Ort, Raum und Zeit. (shrink)

An ambitious work that endorses a broad approach, it argues strongly against the roles both of truth theory and of radical interpretation. Weiss discusses a range of relevant themes relating to language, including translation, interpretation, normativity, community, and rules in order to reshape our understanding of language. A rigorous and systematic analysis, How to Understand Language advances the work of key thinkers in the area.

Wahrheit und Überlieferung -- Wahrheit und Geschichtlichkeit.

In his critique of rational choice theory, Amartya Sen claims that committed agents do not (or not exclusively) pursue their own goals. This claim appears to be nonsensical since even strongly heteronomous or altruistic agents cannot pursue other people's goals without making them their own. It seems that self-goal choice is constitutive of any kind of agency. In this paper, Sen's radical claim is defended. It is argued that the objection raised against Sen's claim holds only with respect to individual (...) goals. Not all goals, however, are individual goals; there are shared goals, too. Shared goals are irreducible to individual goals, as the argument from we-derivativeness and the argument from normativity show. It is further claimed that an adequate account of committed action defies both internalism and externalism about practical reason. (shrink)

Free-variable semantic tableaux are a well-established technique for first-order theorem proving where free variables act as a meta-linguistic device for tracking the eigenvariables used during proof search. We present the theoretical foundations to extend this technique to propositional modal logics, including non-trivial rigorous proofs of soundness and completeness, and also present various techniques that improve the efficiency of the basic naive method for such tableaux.

Antirealism about the past is apparently in conflict with our acceptance of a set of systematic linkages between the truth-values of differently tensed sentences made at different times. Arguments based on acceptance of these so-called truth-value links seem to show that fully accounting for our use of the past and future tenses will involve use of a notion of truth which is not epistemically constrained and is thus antirealistically unacceptable. I elaborate these difficulties through an examination of work by Dummett (...) and Wright. I agree with Wright's rejection of Dummett's proposal but go on to argue that Wright's account fares no better. Building on what I take to be the failure of Wright's account, I offer a solution for the antirealist which diagnoses the problem as stemming from an equivocation in the meanings assigned to the tensed truth predicates. I close by raising a different problem for antirealist accounts of the past, one which is, however, related to more general difficulties for antirealist theories of meaning. (shrink)

La phénoménologie de Husserl est tenue pour descriptive dans la mesure où elle montre comment les choses apparaissent. Cela commence avec la visée de toute chose comme quelque chose. Voir et « voir comme », montrer et dire, sont profondément entrelacés. Toutefois, la description indirecte va plus loin. Elle se réfère à quelque chose en renvoyant à quelque chose d’autre – nous le savons depuis le concept de communication indirecte de Kierkegaard et l’analyse bakhtinienne de la parole indirecte et de (...) la citation. Une approche indirecte est requise aussitôt que notre expérience dépasse le royaume du sens et de l’intentionnalité, car nous sommes alors confrontés à quelque chose qui nous affecte et à quoi nous répondons. Les principales figures de l’indirectivité vont au-delà du sens sous la forme de l’excès, de la déviance, ou du retrait. La voie de la description indirecte sera illustrée en référence à quelques phénomènes cruciaux : la dimension passive de l’attention, le caractère responsif de la liberté, le fait de porter témoignage de la violence, et la scission entre le dire et le dit.Husserl’s phenomenology turns out to be descriptive as far as it shows how things appear. It starts with taking everything as something. Seeing and seeing as, showing and saying are deeply interconnected. But indirect description goes further. It refers to something by referring to something else, as we know it from Kierkegaard’s concept of indirect communication or from Bakhtin’s analysis of indirect speech and of quotation. An indirect approach is required as soon as our experience surpasses the realm of meaning and intentionality, being confronted with something we are affected by and with something we respond to. Main figures of indirectness are going beyond by excess, deviating from, or withdrawing from. The way of indirect description will be illustrated by referring to some crucial phenomena : the passive part of attention, the responsive character of liberty, bearing witness of violence and the split between saying and what is said. (shrink)

The Europe of many voices is founded on a balance between me and us. Even if persons, regions and countries communicate with their own voices, each voice is imbued with its inner and outer alienness, which can be represented but not replaced by others. There is no single European language, there is a variety of European languages. Interregional, international and intercultural experiences are characterized by the interweaving of one’s own and the foreign. We can be more or less close to (...) one another. Humanity can be understood only as an open horizon. Europe is not a stop on the path to a worldwide state, but a specific answer to global challenges. When the struggle for economic and military survival prevails, alienness turns into enmity. And the enemy is voiceless, just like the Barbarians. (shrink)

À contre-courant des querelles fratricides qui opposèrent structuralistes et phénoménologues, l'auteur rappelle, tout d'abord, les motifs centraux qui dominent le débat entre les deux courants, avant de dégager une problématique nouvelle dans laquelle les perspectives phénoménologiques et structuralistes s'entrecroisent. Il s'agit de la problématique de la normalisation, entendue comme processus d'incarnation et de genèse des normes, qui thématise de façon centrale la différence entre l'Ordinaire et l'extraordinaire.

The author calls phenomenological intentionality, into question while taking it, nevertheless, as a starting point. From the analysis of the meaning of phenomena he goes back to a pathic dimension which precedes them. What happens to us or affects us and to what we respond in different ways cannot be reduced to previous horizons. Between pathos and response, there is an irreducible cleft which constitutes a special sort of time-lag. What happens to us comes is always too early; our responses (...) always come too late. Our experience is never completely up to date. In order to explore this pre-semantic and pre-pragmatic depth of experience we need a sort of responsive reduction, which guides all meaning toward something we respond to. In conclusion, the author evokes some areas in which such a revision of phenomenology shows its effects, namely the genesis of life in bioethics, the historical elaboration of memory and the experience of the Other. (shrink)

Kritisiert wird gegenwärtig viel - und auch Kritik wird kritisiert. In dieser Situation sucht dieser Sammelband auszuweisen, wie in einer christlichen Sozialethik Kritik betrieben wird: Sie zielt auf die Kritik der Unvernunft der die Menschen bestimmenden, zugleich von Menschen geschaffenen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft- und dies im Interesse an vernünftigeren Ordnungen ihres Zusammenlebens. Gesellschaftskritik als Vollzug praktischer Rationalität gibt es freilich nicht ohne Herrschaftskritik und nicht ohne Kritik von Ausschluss und Subalternität. Ausdrücklich wird in diesem Band der neutrale Vollzug »der Vernunft« (...) ausgeschlossen; stattdessen wird die in der eigenen Gesellschaftskritik vollzogene praktische Rationalität normativ grundiert.Mit Beiträgen vonMichelle Becka, Bernhard Emunds, Johannes Eurich, Gisela Kubon-Gilke, Torsten Meireis, Matthias Möhring-Hesse. (shrink)

A good commentary will protect against arbitrary interpretation by exposing its user to the larger community of interpretation where private views are checked, enriched, corrected, and deepened.