Dans ses Essais hérétiques sur la philosophie de l’histoire, Jan Patočka donne de la première guerre mondiale une interprétation située dans le sillage de l’interrogation historiale de Heidegger, dont il marque les limites et propose une radicalisation qui fait surgir la solidarité entre la technique et la guerre. Pour Patočka, qui s’appuie sur les récits de guerre de Jünger et de Teilhard de Chardin, la pensée historiale et les témoignages du front s’éclairent mutuellement : la saisie de la première guerre (...) comme « culmination du règne de la force » permet de rendre visibles un certain nombre d’expériences, dont celle du sacrifice. L’expérience du front contient le ferment d’un renversement, d’un « metanoein colossal et inouï », seul capable de miner les bases du système qui a conduit à la guerre et d’ouvrir ainsi une « paix véritable ». (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

It is usually taken for granted, in discussions about fiction, that real things or events can occur as referents of fictional names . In this paper, I take issue with this view, and provide several arguments to the effect that it is better to take the names in fiction to refer to fictional surrogates of real objects. Doing so allows us to solve a series of problems that arise on the reference-continuity view. I also show that the arguments philosophers usually (...) rely on in order to ban surrogates are not as serious as they have been taken to be. In the first part of the paper, I describe the two conflicting views. In the second part, I discuss several specific arguments in favor of surrogates. In the third part I take up the kind of reasons ordinarily offered against them. (shrink)

William D’Alessandro has recently argued that there are no implicit truths in fiction. According to the view defended by D’Alessandro, which he terms explicitism, the only truths in fiction are the ones explicitly expressed therein. In this essay, I argue that explicitism is incorrect on multiple counts. Not only is the argument D’Alessandro gives for it invalid, but explicitism as a theory of truth in fiction fails drastically to account for a number of phenomena that are crucial to our understanding (...) and interpretation of fiction, such as pragmatic implicatures and speech acts occurring in fiction, psychological profiles of fictional characters, and fictional truths determined by literary conventions. (shrink)

This paper proposes a model for an artificial autonomous moral agent (AAMA), which is parsimonious in its ontology and minimal in its ethical assumptions. Starting from a set of moral data, this AAMA is able to learn and develop a form of moral competency. It resembles an “optimizing predictive mind,” which uses moral data (describing typical behavior of humans) and a set of dispositional traits to learn how to classify different actions (given a given background knowledge) as morally right, wrong, (...) or neutral. When confronted with a new situation, this AAMA is supposedly able to predict a behavior consistent with the training set. This paper argues that a promising computational tool that fits our model is “neuroevolution,” i.e. evolving artificial neural networks. (shrink)

Close: Nearing the Future by Means of Symbiogenesis and Hyperobjectivity. At the beginning of the 21st century we find a call for philosophers to join a new alliance: with artists and architects rather than linguists or physicists. In order to see the ecosystem, we need to switch concepts, look away from nature and move towards ambiance and hyperobjects. Along with this rehabilitation of Aristotle (by speculative realism and, more specifically, object-oriented ontology) comes a call for a fresh start as post-humanistic (...) symbionts. These are proposals for alternatives to the catastrophic end of the short-lived drama of the Anthropocene. All this aids the here introduction of near-future hyperobjectivity. (shrink)

Book review: _Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond_, Brigitte Falkenburg and Gregor Schiemann, editors, _European Studies in Philosophy of Science_, Vol. 11, Springer International Publishing, Cham 2019, pp.220.

We argue that the concepts of mechanism and autonomy appear to be antagonistic when autonomy is conflated with agency. Once these concepts are disentangled, it becomes clearer how autonomy emerges from complex forms of control. Subsequently, current biomimetic strategies tend to focus on homeostatic regulatory systems; we propose that research in AI and robotics would do well to incorporate biomimetic strategies that instead invoke models of allostatic mechanisms as a way of understanding how to enhance autonomy in artificial systems.

The present study investigated the associations between social media use integration and Technological Intimate Partner Violence (TIPV) while also exploring the mediating role of the three dimensions of jealousy and the moderating role of moral absolutism. Our sample consisted of 404 adults aged 18 to 59. The results indicated a significant positive effect of social media use integration on cognitive jealousy and TIPV. Social media use integration was correlated with behavioral jealousy and TIPV, while TIPV was positively associated with all (...) three dimensions of jealousy. The moderated mediation analysis suggested that behavioral jealousy fully mediated the effect of social media use integration toward TIPV at all levels of moral absolutism, while cognitive jealousy had a partial mediating effect only at medium and high levels of moral absolutism. We discuss our findings by pointing out that (a) various dimensions of jealousy might be influenced differently by social media use integration, and (b) individuals with high levels of moral absolutism might be more prone to cognitive jealousy after being exposed to prolonged social media use. We acknowledge that our results may have limited generalizability as our sample was primarily female. Research involving larger portions of male participants would be important to pursue. (shrink)

If we want to define today's society in one word, trying to capture its meaning, it would be polarization. The interdependence between all social segments, articulated by globalization, has a double function: unpacking the identitary elements that enter in the structure of society and framing them in a relational dynamic. In this situation are Theology and Science, which, of course, maintain a number of components under their general names. Can we talk about a congruence between these two dimensions of human (...) knowledge? Or they are developing completely separately and antagonistic in social progress? According to Ian G. Barbour there are four types of relation between Science and Religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, integration. This article intends to highlight the congruence between Theology and Science in the paradigm of neo-patristic synthesis, which explores in a phenomenological, theological and philosophical way the relationship between these two. Neo-patristic synthesis is a theological movement from the 20th century, generated by the initiative of the orthodox theologian G. Florovsky. (shrink)

The task of my inquiry is to lay out the main lines of Eugen Fink’s reading of Kant, focusing on his interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic. In the first part, I explain Fink’s claim that the Transcendental Dialectic represents the very heart of the Kantian project, in as much it is in this section of the first Critique that the question of totality (on Fink’s account, the driving impetus of this work) first comes to the forefront. Secondly, I undertake an (...) examination of Fink’s argument regarding the proper outcome of the “Antinomies of Pure Reason,” according to which the failure of the attempts to determine the world with “innerworldly models” is not a sufficient reason to contend that the world is merely a subjective idea. Finally, I discuss Fink’s thesis concerning the construction of the “Transcendental Ideal” according to which the transition from the omnitudo realitatis to the ens realissimum is not necessary (neither objectively, nor subjectively). In this regard, Fink’s project can be understood as an attempt to think the omnitudo realitatis for itself, prior to and independent from any realization in a being (be it a supreme one). (shrink)

Il y a du vrai dans la vieille Naturphilosophie dont l’erreur fut essentiellement de prétendre remplacer la physique mécaniste objective, alors que son motif propre était ailleurs, dans le fait qu’il y a d’autres manières d’accéder à la nature, des manières plus originaires que la démarche objectivante et idéalisante des sciences mathématiques de la nature. Le défi majeur qu’une enquête phénoménologique doit relever dès lors qu’elle dirige son regard thématique sur la question de la nature ré...

The thesis I defend in this text is that Eugen Fink’s most original contribution to the phenomenological tradition consists in the rehabilitation of speculative thinking as a legitimate and compelling mode of approaching philosophical problems. Furthermore, I claim that this theoretical move is accomplished through a constant while critical dialogue with Hegel. I start by exposing the criticism Fink levelled against the canonical, Husserlian, understanding of phenomenology as a descriptive enterprise. Then, I delineate the interpretative strategy Fink puts in place (...) in his reading of Hegel and bring out its underlying commitments. As I will show, his interpretation of Hegel is determined by the concern of rescuing some deep-seated cosmological insights determining Hegel’s philosophy. I further show that his understanding of Hegel is worked out in reference to, but also in explicit contrast to, Heidegger’s reading of Hegel. Finally, I claim that Fink’s sustained attention toHegel does not amount to an endorsement of his position and examine the reasons he advances for “rejecting Hegel”. (shrink)

My paper aims to lay out the main tenets of the philosophical project Eugen Fink unfolded in his post-war writings and argues that his enterprise is situated at the crossroads between two compatible yet distinct lines of inquiry: a phenomenology of mediality and a philosophical cosmology. The twofold orientation followed byFink’s radicalization of classical phenomenology can best be grasped if we pay heed to the double critical strategy he put in place in order to overcome what he deemed to be (...) the shortcomings of Husserl’s phenomenology. In the first place, Fink undertakes a “phenomenological” critique of Husserl, showing that the paradigmatic models underlying Husserl’s analysis and, most notably, the preeminence granted to the “individuated thing”, drastically limit the field available for a phenomenological description. On this account, Fink’s critique aims at expanding the domain phenomenology can explore. However, in the second place, Fink points to the limits inherent to phenomenology as such, and advocates for the necessity of supplementing phenomenology’s descriptive analysis with a speculative approach. In this sense, his project of radicalizing phenomenology is tantamount to unveiling the speculative presuppositions undergirding and orienting any descriptive inquiry. (shrink)

The present study intends to demonstrate that there is no logical-formal inconsistency in the Christian Trinity. However, the demonstration requires specific tools, other than those of classical logic. There are many older or newer attempts that try to remove the thesis of the inconsistency of the Christian Trinity. There is often a call for mathematical tools. As far as we are concerned, we will appeal to co -inherence and the nesting relationships specific to the Christian Trinity, as they appear especially (...) in Augustine’s work. We advance the hypothesis that Augustine's metaphor "heaven of heavens" has a foundational role in the logical plane of explanation. In this sense, Augustine points out that in the "heaven of heavens", reason does not know "in part", but it knows everything suddenly, entirely, as in a totality. This totality with a founding role functions as a principle, which we can call the principle of free totality. But the co -belonging of entities in the free and founding totality also expresses co -inherence. Divine persons are an emanation of God. That is why we are talking about co -inherence. The "co" particle points out that the starting point is in the free totality of God, and that this totality logically precedes the rest of the process. Thus, we can consider the term "the Christian Trinity" as a nested term, as co -habitation. The totality of God is not a generalization in the spirit of the Aristotelian abstraction, but rather a particularity, a "personalization" that does not cancel the individual, but it highlights in instantiation. In this sense, the Christian God is not an abstraction, but a divine Being in three persons, in whom He instantiates. The logic of this process is the one of vagueness. (shrink)

This paper investigates Nietzsche’s reception of Spinoza in order to develop our understanding of the complex relations between their respective philosophies starting from their shared commitment to ontologies of power. The first three sections of this essay contain a diachronic analysis of Nietzsche’s engagement with Spinoza and a discussion of the major themes in play. The last section consists in an evaluation of Nietzsche’s explicit and implicit criticisms that helps us gain a sense of the coherence running through them, as (...) well of the core similarities and differences between two philosophies steeped in immanence and naturalism. Even if Nietzsche’s criticisms do not always do justice to Spinoza’s thinking, they nevertheless offer invaluable clues to guide our comparative project. (shrink)

Against much of the philosophical tradition, Spinoza and Nietzsche defend an understanding of freedom opposed to free will and formulated as an ethical ideal consisting in a transition from a smaller to a greater power of acting. Starting from a shared commitment to necessity and radical immanence, they present freedom as a passage to a greater power of self-determination and self-expression of the body. Nevertheless, the continuities between their power ontologies and their respective commitments to a life of knowledge break (...) down in their discussion of the various possible manifestations of power. I will argue that Nietzsche's distinctive formulation of power as struggle between wills to power enables him to formulate the question of the qualitative dimension of empowerment in a way that is foreign to Spinoza's rational determinism. While acknowledging the profound similarities, I will argue that we must see Nietzsche's discussion of affirmation as the culmination of his disagreement with his predecessor on the topic of freedom and empowerment. (shrink)

This paper attempts to upgrade Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of nomadism to the contemporary work- and war-driven displacement of peoples in/to Europe. Starting from Augustin Ioan and his 2005 book Poverism, where he brought up the concept of living along trajectories (of migration), the two authors of the paper question the all-powerful status of place as envisioned by Heidegger at the conjunction between dwelling and being at home in one place. Along such trajectories that unite a point of departure (...) and a tentative of arrival destination, contemporary migrants never leave their first home for good, nor do they ever arrive completely in a certain location. Even the alternative to displacement, the concept of homey feeling, was never studied outside the policies of major chain hotels, where it is provided a simulacra of arriving situations for frequent travelers. (shrink)

La question de l’histoire représente une thématique transversale dans l’œuvre de Patočka, le point de convergence d’un ensemble d’interrogations qui irriguent sa recherche philosophique. Dans la matrice théorique articulée autour de ce concept se trouvent imbriquées plusieurs orientations théoriques qui se prêtent difficilement à une lecture unitaire. En se penchant sur la question de l’histoire, Patočka cherche, tour à tour, à tracer la physionomie du présent et à porter à la lumière les ten...

It is customary for institutions that organize sporting competitions and events to exercise a considerable degree of authority over the participants. That authority is often manifested in the enforcement of penalties for infringements of fair play. This paper focuses on one concrete case from soccer, although I take the discussion to extend to other sports as well. I argue that not all fair play rules should be enforced by the respective organizing institutions, and that enforcing all of them indiscriminately is (...) a cause of injustice, rather than promoting fairness in sports. I propose a principled way of making the necessary distinction between those fair play rules that are enforceable and those that are not. (shrink)

The transformation of the relations between reflection and reality and between concepts and their correspondent objects into themes represents even in the present a field for most heated discussions. The joining of conceptual schemes corresponding to the intellect and reality represents a problem which is still to be solved. A solution to this problem was proposed by R. Carnap in his extremely ambitious project from Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928). Overlooked for a long time, this work has returned to (...) the philosophical spotlight in recent years, because philosophers finally realized that Carnap’s project comprises almost allthe major themes of contemporary epistemology, such as the relation between theory and reality, between concepts and experience, the major lines of a phenomenology and of a “logic of experience” or the status of language and of the concepts of science. Situated at the confluence of some philosophical traditions such as neo-kantian philosophy, the logical analysis of Russell and Wittgenstein, but also phenomenology, Carnap’s program in Aufbau starts from some premises such: the need to control experience (= major stake of any scientific knowledge); the orientation towards form of the modern concept of scientific knowledge (under Kant’s direct influence); the assertion of a concept of knowledge mostly relational or structural (issue resulted in the orientation towards form of modern knowledge); the need for a methodology engaged in a constructive way and modelled on mathematical thinking; our reporting to the instance of sensitivity in the formation of experience (under E. Mach’s influence). (shrink)

The aim of the article is to provide a Christian interpretation to the concept of tolerance. The idea of tolerance is strongly related to the religion revealed by Jesus Christ. Moreover, Christianity is a religion that opens through love, thus tolerant.Religious tolerance in our era should be examined, as it is pointed out in the article, strarting from a reconsideration of the term of "Christian Church". The consensus over these matters would generate a genuine ecclesiastic co- citizenship and place the (...) human person within the completeness of an anthropos liturgos. (shrink)

The zero-moment of an architectural undertaking precedes and the final one postpones the conventional moments of building and demolition. This pre-usage of the material and of the site turn the ‘birth’ of the house into a rather vague moment. In the numerous makings there exist prior makings, and sites often appear to be palimpsests, layer upon layer, erasure upon erasure. This manner of approaching the question of the temporal ‘sponginess’ of architecture recalls the question concerning the beginnings of architecture. In (...) this chain of fertile ‘blackouts’, the ‘origin’ of architecture ceases to be the inaugural moment still sought to this day: in a making there exist prior makings, and in an unmaking there endures the chance of future lives, at least in principle. Moreover, the question ‘when?’ deserves another, probably more fertile for the economy of this text: ‘For how long?’. (shrink)

This essay proposes a way of dealing with the strict liability of Internet sellers of other manufacturers’ products, such as Amazon under its ‘Fulfillment by Amazon’ program. I discuss and reject two approaches to the problem that have been proposed by the courts, and advance a view according to which the relevant inquiry is whether Internet intermediaries such as Amazon could have prevented a defective product from reaching the US market. This view accounts in a satisfactory manner for the notion (...) of responsibility that is at the core of US strict products liability law, and avoids the pitfalls of alternative policies. However, since this view also entails a de facto quasi-immunity to lawsuits for Internet intermediaries in many cases, safeguards to that quasi-immunity are also addressed. While the essay focuses on US law, the principles and policies under discussion should be applicable in other jurisdictions as well. (shrink)

In this article, I set out a theoretical framework for analyzing fictional copyright protection of fictional characters in literature. Using this framework, I argue that the two most prominent approaches that U.S. courts have adopted with respect to fictional character copyright (the Nichols test and the Sam Spade “Story Being Told” test) are unsustainable. The idea of distinct delineation that came out of Nichols may be understood in two ways: on one view, fictional characters are distinctly delineated if they deviate (...) from a literary type. On the other view, they are distinctly delineated if they are attributed a sufficient number of properties in the fictions where they appear. Both views succumb to serious objections, while the test in Sam Spade is no better. The failure of the two judicial tests suggests that, instead of asking questions about fictional character copyrightability, courts should instead focus on the substantial similarity question. In the last part of the paper, I draw a distinction between two types of fictional character copyright infringement cases (transformations and transfers), and suggest that a Nichols-type substantial similarity analysis is all that is required in transformation situations. Although the focus of this article is U.S. law, the issues discussed and the analyses proposed may prove helpful in addressing fictional copyright in other jurisdictions as well. (shrink)

Lors de son intervention au colloque Descartes de Paris en 1937, Jan Patočka affirmait que la philosophie, irréductible à un pur voir, peut être caractérisée plus justement comme un mouvement traversé par un nécessaire inachèvement. Loin d’être un défaut, c’est seulement grâce à ce non accomplissement constitutif qu’elle peut ménager un accès à son domaine propre, que Patočka déterminait un an plus tôt, au seuil de sa thèse d’habilitation, comme « le monde en totalité ». La monographie consac...

This paper represents a critical analysis of Eastern Orthodox perspective on Human Rights in two important official documents issued by some of the most prominent patriarchates: Moscow and Constantinople. They are compared and looked at from a public theology’s point of view as outlined by Max Stackhouse. At the same time, in this article it will be emphasized the fact that the same Eastern Orthodox theological tradition is to be credited for two significantly different approaches on the topic at hand. (...) The recorded differences are to be interpreted in such a manner as to account for a possible paradigm shift in Orthodox ‘rights talk’. But this shift is more evident in contact with Western environment where the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition is just one of the religious and public voices in a pluralist, globalized and secularized society. (shrink)

Si l’on s’en tient uniquement aux ouvrages publiés de son vivant, l’itinéraire philosophique de Fink semble marqué par une profonde césure. Après avoir été l’élève et l’assistant de Husserl, le collaborateur de ce dernier, dans les années 1930, au projet d’une refonte systématique de la phénoménologie – travail qui lui a valu la réputation d’être le porte-parole attitré de la phénoménologie husserlienne et dont le témoignage le plus éclatant est la 6e Méditation cartésienne –, Eugen Fink a dé...

My paper aims at laying out the main tenets of Patočka’s unusual and highly provocative position with regard to the question of history, drawing essentially on his Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, while also gathering insights from other works such as Eternity and Historicity and Europe and post-Europe. In the first part, I set in place the overall framework of this analysis, and show that three distinct, yet entwined concepts of history are operative in Patočka’s work: the understanding (...) of history as a specific regime of meaning, as an existential possibility of the human Dasein, and as a “epochal” dynamic. In the second part, I reconstruct the criticism Patočka mounts against the classical philosophies of history and indicate that his rejection of a teleological account of history is compatible with the attempt of establishing an intrinsic correlation between meaning and history. In the final part, I stress the importance acquired by the experience of the “shattering of meaning” for Patočka’s threefold understanding of history and argue for the possibility of crafting a unitary framework which would encompass his analysis. (shrink)

Le projet d’une «cosmologie philosophique» que Fink formule dans ses écrits de l’après-guerre est animé par l’exigence de «penser le monde lui-même». Je me propose de faire ressortir l’originalité de ce programme philosophique à travers un examen critique de deux conceptions du monde concurrentes. Ainsi, j’explicite les critiques que Fink adresse à la compréhension du monde comme «totalité de l’étant», centrale pour la tradition métaphysique, et à l’entente existentiale comme «horizon de la praxis humaine», déterminante pour l’ontologie fondamentale de Heidegger. (...) Au terme de cette enquête, il apparaît que la conception finkéenne du monde comme «processus d’individuation» représente une voie singulière, située par-delà l’alternative entre un concept chosique et un concept existential de monde. (shrink)

In what follows I intend to sketch the Hegelian project of the Philosophy of Religion (Religionsphilosophie) mainly by following two coordinates: on the one hand, my aim is to approach it starting from Hegel’s main “dialogue partners” – Christian Wolff and Kant – and from the critique of speculative philosophy on the scenarios of the Illuminist theologies. On the other hand, the first part completed, the discussion will pursue a different route, namely, that of a classical topic discussed by Hegel (...) in his lectures: the relation between philosophy and religion. I am trying to show how Hegel “solves” the tension between the two by lending it a hermeneutic dimension, thus opening up reflections on religion to the encyclopedic segment of the philosophy of spirit. (shrink)

Up to the present, there have not been any specific norms regarding medically assisted human reproduction in Romanian legislation. Due to this situation the general legislation regarding medical assistance, the Penal and Civil law and the provisions of the Code of Deontology of the Romanian College of Physicians are applied to the field of medically assisted human reproduction. By analysing the ethical and legal conflicts regarding medically assisted human reproduction in Romania, some characteristics cannot be set apart because they derive (...) from religious, cultural and socio-economic aspects. In this article the authors identify the development stages of medically assisted human reproduction in Romania, beginning from these characteristics and insisting upon the failure of the legal system in this specific field. The authors consider that the law regarding medically assisted human reproduction cannot be effective because it did not take into account the ethical and cultural aspects that might appear. Furthermore, in this framework of the legal process, no public debate involving the representatives of civil society was undertaken although the Council of Europe Oviedo Convention approved by our country according to law no. 17/2001 stipulated exactly this working method. Content Type Journal Article Pages 4-13 Authors Beatrice Ioan, PHD, MD, MA IN BIOETHICS, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, Romania Vasile Astarastoae, PHD, MD, JD, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, Romania Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 14 Journal Issue Volume 14, Number 2 / 2008. (shrink)