Time and narratice technique compared. Two novelists, Heliodorus, 3rd century author of the novel Aethiopica and Sigrid Combüchen, contemporary Swedish novelist using a dystopian Europe around 2050 as a scenic setting. In both stories girls and women are captured and killed by soldiers. Both narrators are external to the story being told, presented in the past tense. But Combüchen´s narrator adopts it as a confession, and a turning point in his career as a commanding general, characterized by"double-bind".

Whether the justification at stake is ethical or juridical, all attempts to argue for the welfare principle in Kant’s metaphysics of morals are unsuccessful. This principle cannot be justified a priori in Kant’s context. However, it is not only possible but also necessary to argue for a certain degree of social welfare in politics as the practice of right; otherwise, Kant’s project of political practice, with enlightenment as its core concept, will inevitably fail. Enlightenment requires that the state be committed (...) to reducing the impact of an unequal social structure on individuals so as to preserve the possibility of their enlightenment. However, it also imposes limits on state-sponsored social welfare because excessive social welfare could lead to a general minority. (shrink)

table ronde du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris, 27-29 mars 1979. Huygens et la France (Paris, Vrin, 1981, p. 99-114) CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS VU PAR LEIBNIZ par Albert HEINEKAMP (*) (Leibniz-Archiv, Hannover) Les ...

Dem Absurden ins Auge sehen - das ist eine Herausforderung, die mit Entzweiung, Entfremdung und demzufolge mit großer Anspannung und Anstrengung einhergeht. In solchen Momenten entgleitet uns die Welt und wir stehen, so Albert Camus, vor der alles entscheidenden Frage: Selbstmord oder Freiheit. Der vorliegende Band verhandelt Bedrohungen und Gefahren ebenso wie Potenziale und Freiheiten des Absurden. Stimmen aus Philosophie, Erziehungswissenschaft, Literatur, Kunst, Medizin und Wirtschaftswissenschaft machen dabei deutlich: Das Absurde betrifft uns alle.

We investigate the class of those algebras in which is a de Morgan algebra, is a quasi-Stone algebra, and the operations \ and \ are linked by the identity x**º = x*º*. We show that such an algebra is subdirectly irreducible if and only if its congruence lattice is either a 2-element chain or a 3-element chain. In particular, there are precisely eight non-isomorphic subdirectly irreducible Stone de Morgan algebras.

Proposes an innovative rethinking of Aristotle’s work as a system that integrates his theology with his doctrine of reproduction and life. In this deep rethinking of Aristotle’s work, Abraham P. Bos argues that scholarship on Aristotle’s philosophy has erred since antiquity in denying the connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the earthly sphere. Beginning with an analysis of God’s role in the Aristotelian system, Bos explores how this relates to other elements of his philosophy, (...) especially to his theory of reproduction. The argument he develops is that in talking about the cosmos, Aristotle rejected Plato’s metaphor of artisanal production by a divine Demiurge in favor of a biotic metaphor based on the transmission of life in reproduction, in which pneuma—not breath as it is often interpreted but the life-bearing spirit in animals and plants—plays a key and sustaining role as the vital principle in all that lives. In making this case, he defends the authenticity of the treatises De Mundo and De Spiritu as Aristotle’s, and demonstrates Aristotle’s works as a unified system that sharply and comprehensively refutes Plato’s, and in particular replaces Plato’s doctrine of the soul with a theory in which the soul is clearly distinguished from the intellect. “Bos offers a fresh, interesting, and important perspective. His interpretation will be very controversial, but if he is right, the standard Anglo-American interpretation of Aristotle will have to change radically.” — Malcolm Wilson, author of Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica: A More Disorderly Nature. (shrink)

Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'.

Alan Gewirth’s Reason and Morality justifies certain fundamental moral principles and develops morality out of the basic structure of action. Contemporary literature exposes a critical flaw in the second stage of Gewirth’s argument contending that Gewirth fails to create agent-neutral moral claims. In order to provide a transfer of interests between agents, the solution to Gewirth’s problem, I argue that certain Rawlsian concepts buttress and are consistent with Gewirth’s argument for the normative structure of action.

In this article, I argue that Kant’s real reason for rejecting a world state in practice is that a world state would be in greater danger of despotism than individual states. Kant hopes that public participation and self-enlightenment of the people in the public sphere could counter the despotic danger in individual states. However, in a world state, state affairs are too distant from the lives of individuals, making it difficult for individuals to maintain enthusiasm for public discourse and political (...) enlightenment. Moreover, the absence of external competition and the risk of war would eliminate the incentive of the ruler to preserve freedom for the development of industry and commerce and, consequently, for the enlightenment of the people. These defects make it more difficult for a world state to resist despotic danger. (shrink)

This book addresses the metaphysics of Armstrongian states of affairs, i.e. instantiations of naturalist universals by particulars. The author argues that states of affairs are the best candidate for truthmakers and, in the spirit of logical atomism, that we need no molecular truthmakers for positive truths. In the book's context, this has the pleasing result that there are no molecular states of affairs. Following this account of truthmaking, the author first shows that the particulars in (first-order) states of affairs are (...) bare particulars. He then argues that the properties in states of affairs are simple, non-relational and concrete universals. Next, he argues that (material) relations in states of affairs are external relations. Lastly, he argues that a state of affairs is unified by a distinctive formal relation without giving rise to Bradley’s regress. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE A 'DREAMING KRONOS' IN A LOST WORK BY ARISTOTLE In the following study we shall be concerned with the interpretation of dreams. ...

In this paper, I suggest an approach to the alleged problem with the Tarskian formal definition of truth: its enumerative character seems to make it unable to capture our pretheoretic general understanding of truth. For this purpose, after spelling out two requirements for extending an enumerative definition to new cases, I examine to what extent Tarski's Convention T provides what are needed for extending the Tarski's enumerative definition. I conclude that, though not explicitly providing what are needed, Convention T does (...) implicitly suggest something quite promising and provide necessary conceptual resources for its further modifications. Then I suggest a Tarskian explicitly general definition of what it is to be a truth-definition on the basis of some theoretical and conceptual resources within Tarski's semantic theory, and I explain how it would make the Tarskian seemingly enumerative formal definition have a general character in accord with our pretheoretic understanding of truth. Finally, I examine the current proposal in comparison with Davidson's approach and in the light of Hintikka's new perspective. (shrink)

What I call Mellor’s Question is the problem of whether determinables are properties of their determinates or properties of the particulars that possess these determinates. One can distinguish two basic competing theories of determinables that address the issue, implicitly if not explicitly. On the second-order theory, determinables are second-order properties of determinate properties; on the second-level theory, determinables are first-order properties of the particulars with these determinate properties. Higher-order properties are prima facie ontologically uneconomical, and in line with my general (...) view that ontological parsimony is vital to metaphysics, I consider it highly important which of the two theories is true. Firstly, I argue that the second-level theory offers the best explanation of the explananda (though the race is close), including the important but neglected phenomenon of ‘intermediate determinables’. Secondly, by paying attention to intermediate determinables and instantiation of higher-order properties, I argue that the second-level theory also is more ontologically economical. For these two reasons, this theory is preferable. (shrink)

A series of papers in Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine (PEHM) have recently disputed whether non-heart beating organ donors are alive and whether non-heart beating organ donation (NHBD) contravenes the dead donor rule. Several authors who argue that NHBD involves harvesting organs from live patients appeal to.

For Hegel, modern selfhood is an implicitly poetic, normative capacity for actions that could not be empirically explained. Thus it eludes the “clarification” offered by classical tragedy, but modernity’s apparent loss of tragedy conceals the dialectical refinement of tragic into comic form that most defines modern selfhood. If Aristotle contrasted poetry and history, Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit derives a modern, comic ethical poetics from the form of historical contingency itself. Focusing on Hegel’s reading of Antigone, I solicit Gillian Rose (...) and Dieter Henrich to defend this account against tragic assessments of modern selfhood by J. M. Bernstein, Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, and Judith Butler. (shrink)

This book presents a systematic unifying-pluralist account--a "constructive-engagement" account--of how cross-tradition engagement in philosophy is possible. The goal of this "constructive-engagement" account is, by way of reflective criticism, argumentation, and methodological guiding principles, to inquire into how distinct approaches from different philosophical traditions can talk to and learn from each other for the sake of making joint contributions to the contemporary development of philosophy. In Part I of the book, Bo Mou explores a range of fundamental theoretic and methodological issues (...) in cross-tradition philosophical engagement and philosophical interpretation. In Part II, he analyzes several representative case studies that demonstrate how relevant resources in the Western and Chinese philosophical traditions can constructively engage with each other. These studies cover issues in philosophical methodology, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics. The book's theoretical and practical approaches expand the vision, coverage, and agenda of doing philosophy comparatively, and promote worldwide joint efforts of cross-tradition philosophical inquiries. Cross-Tradition Engagement in Philosophy will be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in comparative philosophy and the intersection of Chinese and Western philosophy. It will also appeal to those who are interested in the ways in which cross-tradition philosophical engagement can enhance contemporary philosophical debates in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics. (shrink)

With mathematical reconstructions and philosophical arguments I show that Toomer's 1973 paper never contained any conclusive evidence for his claims that Hipparchus had a 3438'-based chord table, and that the Indians used that table to compute their sine tables. Recalculating Toomer's reconstructions with a 3600' radius -- i.e. the radius of the chord table in Ptolemy's Almagest, expressed in 'minutes' instead of 'degrees' -- generates Hipparchan-like ratios similar to those produced by a 3438' radius. It is therefore possible that the (...) radius of Hipparchus's chord table was 3600', and that the Indians independently constructed their 3438'-based sine table. (shrink)

The historiographical concept "Enlightenment" has for a long time wavered between the idea of a single unified Enlightenment and the notion of multiple competing enlightenments. This volume revisits this seeming contradiction by asserting that the Enlightenment should be understood as a shared process of communication, seeking ways to accommodate and mediate rival ideologies and orient enlightenment projects towards the betterment of humankind. Taking the work of the eminent Enlightenment scholar Hans Erich Bödeker as their point of departure, the different chapters (...) seek to explore this perspective through specific case studies of political communication. Readers are offered a selection of Bödeker's texts never previously translated into English, along with a series of contributions from his former colleagues, students, and collaborators. In doing so the book displays the broad scope of Bödeker's own work, as well as the multiplicity of themes captured within the framework of the Enlightenment. Genres, modes, and strategies of communication are contrasted with the institutions and cultural practices underpinning them. In exploring the depth and scope of Bödeker's work, the volume pays tribute to a German tradition rooted in historical semantics, while at the same time querying its present state and its future. (shrink)