Diverse voices explore the possibility of doing metaphysics in light of contemporary critiques.

H. G. Gadamer’s “philosophical hermeneutics” elicited a controversial response in contemporary philosophy. R. Rorty and G. Vattimo tried to impart a more relativistic shade to H. G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics. In contrast, J. Derrida was inclined to consider H. G. Gadamer hermeneutics more dependent on the previous epoch of “metaphysics of presence”. This article purposes to reveal the points of contact and division between the thinking strategies employed by hermeneutics and deconstruction, providing theoretical arguments why H. G. Gadamer hermeneutics (...) should not be reduced to the so-called “metaphysics of presence”. The question whether H. G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics belongs to “metaphysics of presence” or not is closely intertwined with the problem of dogmatism of meaning and relativism of meaning. J. Derrida was inclined to regard H. G. Gadamer’s hermeneutic as a theory of a search for and discovery of a pre-existing or objective meaning which accounts for the theory’s persistent belonging with metaphysical dogmatism. In opposition to such judgement, this article seeks to substantiate the following thesis: in H. G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics which is based on the “good will” to understand, the problem of dogmatism of meaning (there is one universal objective meaning or truth) and relativism of meaning (there is a multitude of meanings open to interpretation without reference to the primary signified) can be solved by taking into consideration the way offered by E. Husserl phenomenology, i.e. by understanding any possible “thing” (die Sache) as a “thing-in-itself” only in different perceptual perspectives (die perspektivischen Abschattungen). (shrink)

This article aims to bring some work in contemporary analytic metaphysics to discussions of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I will show that some unusual claims of the Real Presence doctrine exactly parallel what would be happening in the world if objects were to time-travel in certain ways. Such time-travel would make ordinary objects multiply located, and in the relevantly analogous respects. If it is conceptually coherent that objects behave in this way, we have (...) a model for the behaviour of the Eucharist which shows the doctrine to be coherent, at least with respect to the issues discussed. (shrink)

I argue that the most common interpretation of experiential transparency’s significance is laden with substantive and ultimately extraneous metaphysical commitments. I divest this inflated interpretation of its unwarranted encumbrances and consolidate the precipitate into a position I call core transparency. Core Transparency is a thesis about experience’s presentational character. The objects of perceptual experience are there, present to us, in a way that the objects of most beliefs and judgments are not. According to core transparency, it is in the disclosure (...) of that which is central to experience’s presentational character, an intrinsic and irreducibly phenomenal aspect of experience I call phenomenal presence, that transparency’s significance principally consists. Phenomenal presence is uniquely positioned to illuminate the relationship between perceptual experience’s most important features: its intentionality and its phenomenality. The position I defend comprises two main claims. (1) The representational features of experience, understood in isolation from experiential phenomenality, neither constitute nor explain phenomenal presence. Consequently, the representational features of experience neither determine completely nor explain exhaustively experiential phenomenality. (2) Phenomenal presence is not representational, but is nevertheless the minimal realization of experiential intentionality. (shrink)

S. A. Erickson's recent book continues several of the themes introduced in Language and Being, especially that of the question of meaning. Erickson's approach to this question develops further his presupposition that to ask what entities mean is to inquire into their functions within the context of human presence. A shift in Erickson's focus is indicated, however, by his claim that human presence, a term used by Erickson to refer to human being, is even more fundamental to the (...) question of meaning than he had thought previously. Hence, this study which articulates the notion of human presence and analyzes the experience of its interconnected moments: interpretation, self-deception, and time-consciousness. Interpretation is presented as the prime cognitive relation that connects linguistic and extralinguistic items, the former interpreting the latter within the situation of human presence. Self-deception, the ground of interpretation, is understood in light of the tenuous human capacity to come to terms with mortality. One of the most interesting sections of the book is a psychoanalytic and an existential account of ways of dealing with the experience of time, without which human action would be unintelligible. "Existential time" is identified as that which is ingredient both in the direct experiencing of time and in time as it is experienced. An original concept of "timing" is set forth as the ways in which existential time is structured and lived, the manner in which time is used and the way in which items dealt with "in time" are reacted to and acted upon. Erickson claims as the goal of his account a conceptually restructured philosophy of mind and a propaedeutic to a new psychiatry of human being. Philosophy must, Erickson argues, change its direction, for the separation of philosophy from psychology, in both the phenomenological and the analytic traditions, has resulted in the loss to philosophy of empirical content. The prize of saving the integrity of logic as an a priori discipline and isolating the conceptual has been the increasing absence of the direct relevance of philosophy to the human situation. Erickson proposes that philosophy should return to the domain of psychology, not, as is the current practice, by pointing out instances of conceptual confusion and clarifying terms, but by recognizing the valuable experiential base that psychiatry provides for the examination of conceptual problems involved in understanding the human. Perhaps the most debatable aspect of the book is its study of 'presence' in the recent history of philosophy and its claim that philosophical problems, such as presence, have been ignored in recent times rather than resolved. For Erickson, the substitution of the term 'presence' for 'experience' or 'consciousness' indicates the direction in which an existentially enriched phenomenology must move. For this reader, however, contemporary continental philosophy has not so much ignored, as endeavored to think through the issue of presence. The critique of the metaphysics of presence, made by some phenomenologists and deconstructionists, suggests that the thematics of presence cannot be resolved, but must be abandoned. Erickson's statement, "Experience is experience. Though capable of being disliked or transformed, it makes no conceptual sense to speak of refuting, much less ignoring it," may appear to some readers as unduly assertorical. Nevertheless, Erick Erickson's "conversational" methodology, expressly developed to foster the reader in a point of view, impels an active rethinking of the grounds for rejecting philosophical anthropology and a positive demonstration of the philosophical accomplishments that can be effected within that domain.--Jeffner Allen, California State University. (shrink)

THESE are difficult days in which to philosophize, and not only for institutional, historical, or political reasons. Nor is it a matter mainly of a disconcertingly eclectic pluralism of possible ways of doing philosophy; this has been a problem, or at least a temptation, ever since the disciples of Plato clustered into competing sects. More alarming, and more challenging, is the fact that the very idea of thinking and writing reflectively in various ways hitherto acknowledged by a broad consensus as (...) "philosophical" has come into serious question. The particular form in which such doubting has emerged is itself various. In Europe, it has taken the shape of undermining the self-assurance of the "metaphysics of presence" by attempting to show that the notion of determinate presence is constricting and groundless, or self-deceptive and self-deconstructing, or relative to historical epistemes or epochs of Being. In Anglophone countries, strikingly complementary efforts have been made to dissolve traditional philosophical concerns with knowledge and reality, mind and other persons, into a tenuous tissue of language, of word-play and word-use: all becomes "wordwork" in Joyce's prophetic term. Or else--in a move that expressly conjoins continental and analytic tendencies--all becomes "conversation" of an unending and self-reabsorbing sort. (shrink)

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood in this way it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ where the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according (...) to which Christ is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. According to the proposed account, which draws upon Searle’s discussion of “social ontology” in The Construction of Social Reality and The Making of the Social World, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an institutional fact. I argue that such an account satisfies the requirements for a real presence doctrine. (shrink)

The relationship between history and justice traditionally has been dominated by the idea of the past as distant or absent . This ambiguous ontological status makes it very difficult to situate the often-felt “duty to remember” or obligation to “do justice to the past” in that past itself, and this has led philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Keith Jenkins to plead against an “obsession” with history in favor of an ethics aimed at the present. History’s ability to contribute to the (...) quest for justice, as a result, often seems very restricted or even nonexistent. The introduction of the “presence”-paradigm in historiography can potentially alter this relation between history and justice. However, to do so it should be conceived in such a way that it offers a fundamental critique of the metaphysical dichotomy between the present and the absent and the underlying concept of time that supports this dichotomy. The “presence”-paradigm can be emancipatory and productive only if presence and absence are not perceived as absolute dichotomies. In the first part of this article I elaborate on the influence that the present/absent dichotomy has on the notion of justice by introducing a conceptual contrast between what I will call the “time of jurisdiction” and the “time of history.” The second part of the article focuses on the way certain aspects of the dominant Western chronosophy reinforce the present/absent dichotomy and thereby prevent us from thoroughly exploring the ambiguous but often very problematic presence of the past. Throughout the article I refer to the relatively recent phenomenon of truth commissions and the context of transitional justice to discuss some challenges for the “presence”-paradigm. (shrink)

Theology after Heidegger must take into account history and language as constitutive elements in the pursuit of meaning. Quite often, this prompts a hurried flight from metaphysics to an embrace of an absence at the center of Christian narrativity. In this book, Conor Sweeney explores the "postmodern" critique of presence in the context of sacramental theology, engaging the thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet and Lieven Boeve. Chauvet is an influential postmodern theologian whose critique of the perceived onto-theological constitution of (...) presence in traditional sacramental theology has made big waves, while Boeve is part of a more recent generation of theologians who even more wholeheartedly embrace postmodern consequences for theology. Sweeney considers the extent to which postmodernism a la Heidegger upsets the hermeneutics of sacramentality, asking whether this requires us to renounce the search for a presence that by definition transcends us. Against both the fetishization of presence and absence, Sweeney argues that metaphysics has a properly sacramental basis, and that it is only through this reality that the dialectic of presence and absence can be transcended. The case is made for the full but restless signification of the mother's smile as the paradigm for genuine sacramental presence. (shrink)

As I tried to show in my earlier works (An Endeavor of New Concept of Being and Non-Being, Non-Being and Nothingness and Reality as Being and Nothingness), the environment in which the human being is finding itself should be characterized by being and nothingness, and any non-metaphysical philosophy must consider such an understanding of Reality as the utmost category which is above being, Universe, etc. In this article, I will try to shed light on the place and role of the (...) human being or the presence or this-being in Reality as being and nothingness. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's extensive early writings devoted considerable attention to "being as presence," the reality underlying the history of metaphysics. In Derrida on Being as Presence: Questions and Quests, David A. White develops the intricate conceptual structure of this notion by close exegetical readings drawn from these writings. White discusses cardinal concepts in Derrida's revamping of theoretical considerations pertaining to language--signification, context, negation, iterability--as these considerations depend on the structure of being as presence and also as they (...) ground "deconstructive" reading. White's appraisal raises questions invoking a range of problems. He deploys these questions in conjunction with thematically related quests that arise given Derrida's conviction that the history of metaphysics, as variations on being as presence, has concealed and skewed vital elements of reality. White inflects this critical apparatus concerning being as presence with texts drawn from that history--e.g., by Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Hume, Kant, Whitehead. The essay concludes with a speculative ensemble of provisional categories, or zones of specificity. Implementing these categories will ground the possibility that philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular can be pursued in ways which acknowledge the relevance of Derrida's thought when integrated with the philosophical enterprise as traditionally understood. (shrink)

This article focuses on the question of whether the doctrine of the real presence of Christ's body and blood, and likewise the doctrine of the real absence of bread and wine, can be defended philosophically. It argues for an affirmative answer, and does so by considering a variety of metaphysical models, including that of Aquinas. It will appear, thus, that transubstantiation is a philosophical possibility. If it is possible for two substances to be in the same place at the (...) same time, consubstantiation will be a philosophical possibility as well. Of course, the question of actuality is a theological one. (shrink)

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis (...) but rather to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.@free.kindle.com@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

English metaphysical poetry, from Donne to Marvell, is conspicuously witty. A. J. Smith seeks the central importance of wit in the thinking of the metaphysical poets, and argues that metaphysical wit is essentially different from other modes of wit current in Renaissance Europe. Formal theories and rhetorics of wit are considered both for their theoretical import and their appraisals of wit in practice. Prevailing fashions of witty invention are scrutinized in Italian, French, and Spanish writings, so as to bring out (...) the nature and effect of various forms of wit: conceited, hieroglyphic, transformational, and others from which the metaphysical mode is distinguished. He locates the basis of Renaissance wit in the received conception of the created order and a theory of literary innovation inherent in Humanist belief, which led to novel couplings of time and eternity, body and soul, man and God. Yet, he finds that metaphysical wit distinctively works to discover a spiritual presence in sensible events; and he traces its demise in the 1660s to changes in the understanding of the natural world associated with the rise of empirical science. (shrink)

The paper discusses the question as to whether, and in which way, Nietzsche is present in Derrida’s readings of Heidegger in the Geschlecht texts, and in the newly edited Geschlecht III specifically. In order to unfold the background of this question, the first part turns to earlier texts from the 1960s and 1970s and shows that Nietzsche is a key figure in Derrida’s takes on Heidegger, especially as regards the issue of Heidegger’s “belonging” to metaphysics. The second part then (...) addresses the Geschlecht texts and makes the case that, despite their brevity and seeming marginality, the remarks on Nietzsche, most of all in Geschlecht III, are indeed illuminating, in mainly two regards: on the one hand, they shed some light on how Derrida reads and “dislocates” Heidegger in these texts overall, and on the other hand, they contribute to the question of a “continuity” in Derrida’s relations to Heidegger. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the divide that separates Heidegger and Sartre from Husserl. At issue is what Derrida calls the “metaphysics of presence.” From Heidegger onward this has been characterized as an interpretation of both being and knowing in terms of presence. To exist is to be now, and to know is to make present the evidence for something’s existence. Husserl’s account of constitution assumes this interpretation. By contrast, Heidegger and Sartre see constitution in terms of (...) our pragmatic engagements with the world, engagements that they trace to the essential nothingness at our core. Who is correct: Husserl or those who give his phenomenology a negative basis? At issue is the nature of transcendence. Do we transcend ourselves toward the world by constituting both our own and the world’s presence or do we do so by virtue of an inner nothingness that allows us to assume various identities as a consequence of our pragmatic engagements? Husserl claims that to argue against presence is to argue... (shrink)

The present paper is based on an assumption that M. Merleau-Ponty and J. Patočka penetrate by their proper ways into a specific domain constituted by the mutual relations between the me and all the beings which are given to it where a fundamental ontological reciprocity between the me and the world appears. In our first part, we try to ensure an access to this domain by using the phenomenological method, namely, the analysis of experience. We start from the elementary phenomenological (...) fact that what is given in experience transcends its actual empirical donation, then we proceed to determine the content of this transcendence and propose the concept of the transempirical nature of beings: the being transcends every single actual experience, but not every possible experience. On this ground, we try to reconstruct the general ontological basis that leads us inevitably to the limits of phenomenology. Nevertheless, in our second part, we try to demonstrate – in the form of a hypothesis in progress – that we can probably avoid trespassing on the limits of metaphysics if we agree to trespass on the borders between phenomenology and structuralism, in the sense of a structural ontology of possibilities. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy seems devoted to a fundamental task, knowing how to grasp what he calls a “mutation within the relations of man and Being.” Such a mutation concerns, in the first instance, Merleau-Ponty’s time, knowing the era in which he lives and writes: it is a mutation that is given in history, and thus generated by historical events. At the same time, this mutation has to do with the very essence of time, as the ontological counterpart of being itself. (...) It is, in this later instance, a mutation of the temporality of being: of an intimate being, the being of self, of the unconscious; but also of a communal and shared being—assumed universal—the being of history.An oblique reflection on a temporality thus conceived emerges in his course notes, “Institution in Personal and Public History.” Temporality, here considered as the transcendental of institution, the condition of its possibility, reveals itself as antichronological and anti-metaphysical: it escapes the linearity of successive presents, the retrograde movement of the real, the dialectical movement of history according to Hegel.Indirectly, Merleau-Ponty develops a complex temporal figure—from the structural point of view—where “the past […] takes on the outline of a preparation or premeditation of a present that exceeds it in meaning although it recognizes itself in it.” The past is thus not a former present, but—as mythical past—it is simultaneously in the present itself.This revolution of the temporality of being also affects our time. From the ontological discontinuity emphasized by Merleau-Ponty, the mutation within the relations of man and being happening today seems to be characterized by the loss of all dimensions of time: there is only a present, which, nevertheless, is never present. This is true first of all from a personal point of view: desire no longer pursues its fulfillment—although imaginary and impossible—in the mythical horizon of the past, but rather looks for enjoyment, just as impossible and imaginary, in an elusive present that always exceeds us. This desertification of time also reveals itself in history, where, with and after the postmodern, the present seems to stand out as the only possible temporal dimension, depriving history of its sense and its universality.It seems to us that the philosophy of the later Merleau-Ponty prefigures, or, at least, allows us to think, this subsequent mutation. This is a minor figure, but the subject of significant studies, such as that of “precession,” that can help us not only to understand, but also to re-signify, this mythical present and never present that haunts our time. (shrink)

Marcel Conche nous livre ici une approche simple de philosopher. D'ailleurs, selon lui le philosophe n'est qu'un chercheur de vérité. C'est en cela que la philosophie est un moyen pour s'approcher de la sagesse. Marcel Conche nous invite ici à recouvrer, afin de penser la nature, une essence grecque. Le philosophe, dit naturaliste, remet entre autres plusieurs idées en place: critique du platonisme, absurdité de la philosophie chrétienne de Descartes à Hegel tout en n'oubliant pas Kant.

The object of the paper is the attempt at retracing Heidegger’s conception of the relation of time and being from his major work “Being and Time” to the lecture he gave in 1962 on “Time and Being.” In order to explain the transformation of Heidegger’s thinking between 1927 and 1962, the emphasis is put on the new understanding of the oblivion of Being as belonging to the essence of Being itself, as well as on the analysis of the double meaning, (...) temporal and ontological of presence and on Ereignis, the “event of appropriation,” which is the new name given of the relation between man and Being. (shrink)

Basically, the author places Heidegger's Sein and Seiende in a theological context; l'être is God, both present in the relations between les étants and absent as the Being of all beings. The task of ontology as a "topique de l'être" is to start with the "phenomenal situation" and dialectically make explicit the meaning of l'être in related "places", i.e., temporal consciousness, world, self, other, and love. The book suffers from scanty exposition and unacknowledged debts to Heidegger and to Merleau-Ponty--A. B.

The essay brings a summation of human efforts seeking to understand our existence. Plato and Kant & cognitive science complete reduction of philosophy to a neural mechanism, evolved along elementary Darwinian principles. Plato in his famous Cave Allegory explains that between reality and our experience of it there exists a great chasm, a metaphysical gap, fully confirmed through particle-wave duality of quantum physics. Kant found that we have two kinds of perception, two senses: By the spatial outer sense we perceive (...) phenomena, objects in space. Our temporal inner sense lets us perceive our inner state, noumena . Kant's two senses are fully confirmed through bilateral brain duality of cognitive science. The bilateral brain serves inner, temporal sense, logic & noumena in the left hemisphere. The right brain half is for the outer, spatial sense, geometry & phenomena. We form a whole system, a bilateral interior cosmos, a kind of world model, expressing what may lie beyond the metaphysical gap. In the right brain we build a phenomenal cosmos, to resemble the outer environment. In the brain's left hemisphere a noumenal cosmos, a model of our private world including Saint Teresa of Avila's castillo interior. The cosmos is regularly updated with novel sense data integrated into our memory banks. This was recognized early by Helmholtz (1860s). Our lives, health & well-being depend on us keeping our interior cosmos in good order. This used to be seen as saving one's precious soul from perdition. While we endeavour to keep our phenomenal cosmos neat & orderly by protecting the environment from harm, our noumenal cosmos to be livable requires us to engage in ethical conduct. This bilateral cosmos is responsible for our common sense judgment power, that we depend on for being able to lead a good & benign life. The 200 million neurons of BA10 in the prefrontal lobe have global access to the interior cosmos, & apply massive feedback to identify environmental conditions rapidly. The global access also gives conscious presence of the individual to itself, all that is present in the interior cosmos, for total freedom of action. In the left brain private ego, we are guarded by faith in divine mercy, & guided to choose the best course of action, able to survive under the most adverse conditions. For this, we receive directions from the Holy Ghost in Saint Teresa's castillo interior. (shrink)

Purpose. To consider the personal nature of Cartesian metaphysics. Its implementation involves: a) outlining methodological changes in the philosophy of the twentieth century; b) analysis of ways to interpret anthropological component of philosophizing in Descartes studies; c) appeal to Descartes’ texts to clarify the authentic form of his interpretation of metaphysics. Theoretical basis. I base my view of Descartes’ legacy on the conceptual positions of phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics. Originality. Based on Descartes’ own concept of teaching, the author (...) substantiates the personal nature of Cartesian metaphysics. Important prerequisites for its comprehension are attention to the ethical motive as the driving force of philosophizing and recognition of the importance of the poetic worldview. The idea of the basic role of poetics finds its meaningful confirmation in the texts of the philosopher, who interprets the main areas of philosophy as the forms of art. Conclusions. Based on his own vision of anthropology and metaphysics as the forms of completion of the revolution initiated by Copernicus, the author defends the idea of the constitutive presence of personality in Descartes’ metaphysics. In the process of studying the research literature, methodological guidelines are outlined in the form of the importance of personal determination of the search for truth, the key role of ethical motive and art as components of philosophizing. The thesis about the poetic form of presentation of metaphysics by Descartes as a form of fixation of its personal dimension is substantiated. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with metaphysical issues surrounding the doctrines of transubstantiation and the real presence. In particular, I am concerned with the nature of the eucharistic change, and with the manner in which Christ is believed to be present in the Blessed Sacrament. My primary goal is to give an account of these doctrines (i) which does not involve the thesis that upon consecration one substance has become identical with another, previously existing substance, (ii) which is consistent with (...) a particulate account of matter and material substances, and (iii) which explains why Christ—in his institution of the Lord’s Supper—is not enjoining us to become cannibals. More generally, my goal is to locate the irreducibly mysterious aspects of these doctrines, and to respond to some intuitively plausible reasons for thinking them to be incoherent, metaphysically impossible, or morally repugnant. (shrink)

Our increasingly sophisticated medical technological interventions yield numerous benefits. At the same time, there are dangerous trade-offs, particularly in the domain of digitized health communication and electronic medical records. These have become the rule of thumb, the default posture, in place of interpersonal, embodied, face-to-face interaction. This foremost stumbling block in our healthcare system generates an urgent moral imperative to resuscitate embodied presence in healthcare. Through applying a phenomenological lens, focusing particularly on insights from Emmanuel Levinas, this essay examines (...) his metaphysic of ethics that occurs through encountering the face of the Other, le visage. This encounter evokes an epiphany, a “rupture of being,” that constitutes a moral invitation, a beckoning that offers further ground for an ethics of embodied presence as a path to re-establish genuine communication with our patients. (shrink)

Taylor Carman has argued that the passages I submitted to him as proof that Heidegger identifies being with presence are really just his characterizations of a metaphysical conception of being that he repudiates. I show that he has misread these passages and has misunderstood the nature of the continuity that Heidegger himself recognizes between the views of Kant which are under discussion in the texts from which these passages are drawn and his own (Heidegger's) position which finds expression in (...) them. I then cite other passages from another work by Heidegger that make the same point about being and presence just as emphatically and quite independently of any account of any other philosopher's views. Finally, I explain the difference between the ways Heidegger uses the word Anwesenheit ? his word for presence. One of these is as a translation of the Greek ousia which he interprets as a concept of being as presence sans temporality; the other is the radicalized concept of being as presence toward which Heidegger was working in Being and Time. (shrink)

The Infinite Presence.--The biologic basis of ethics and religion.--The role of maternal love in organic evolution.--Immortality.--Back to the old ways.

The metaphysical possibility of agency at the phenomenal level, given the truth of a nomological and binding causal force, has long been a moot point in both Indian and western philosophical traditions. While an underlying implication of fatalistic resignation hangs over the possibility of phenomenal freedom within the ambit of the classical Indian interpretation of the Law of Karma, which forms the basis of the assumption that a fatalistic nexus of vāsanā (cravings for mundane achievements) and the ensuing karma (action-tendencies (...) to reach a mundane goal) circumscribes an agent’s choices, the western thought on the question of the freedom of choice has rather been preoccupied with the putative threat posed by the deterministic law of various nuances, such as theological determinism and logical determinism. A close analysis of the western philosophical debate surrounding free will reveals that the kind of linear causation that determinism supposedly entails is the primary reason for its being conflated with fatalism. The source of all the misgiving about determinism’s free will subduing influence is the oversight that it renders the agent’s rational endeavour a futile exercise in the same way as fatalism does. In this paper, therefore, an attempt has been made to disentangle determinism from fatalism. A key proposal advanced in this paper is that the causative force of the karmic law, admitted by most of the classical schools of Indian philosophy, may prima facie have a circumscriptive effect on agentic rational pursuits and choices. However, an intimate study reveals that this law does not preclude phenomenal freedom, although of a higher echelon. The classical Indian schools of philosophy admitting the undeniable presence of this karmic law allow the possibility of this seemingly inexorable causative force of the law being overridden by a more reason-guided pursuit, adopted by the agent, after an overhaul of his egoistic cravings. The model of agency developed in this paper is based on the claim that it is by way of undergoing self-determination that phenomenal freedom reaches its pinnacle. Drawing on the theories of volition and self advanced by some prominent classical Indian philosophical schools and the classical western philosophical theories of free will in the light of the deterministic threat, an attempt has been made to bring into harmony the rhetoric of both worlds, exploring the possibility whether phenomenal freedom can be salvaged through agentic self-determination and self-development. (shrink)

While Ingarden makes only infrequent reference to Aristotle, The Philosopher’s presence can be discerned throughout his published works. Perhaps mostsignificantly, when Ingarden returned to work on Controversy over the Existence of the World in 1938, he immersed himself in the study of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and the entire framework of Controversy appears to have been inspired by reflection on central Aristotelian concepts. Ingarden’s understanding of the Aristotelian conception of the relation between form and matter, and indeed the Aristotelian character (...) of Ingarden’s ontology as a whole, stands in sharp contrast not only to Husserl’s transcendental idealism, but also to the materialist orientation of current mainstream research in cognitive science. It is hoped that this brief examination might serve to introduce to this research a realist phenomenological orientation that is capable of embracing and elucidating insights from both materialist and idealist approaches to the study of cognition. (shrink)

What is the self? Does it exist? If it does exist, what is it like? It's not clear that we even know what we're asking about when we ask these large, metaphysical questions. The idea of the self comes very naturally to us, and it seems rather important, but it's also extremely puzzling. As for the word "self"--it's been taken in so many different ways that it seems that you can mean more or less what you like by it and (...) come up with almost any answer. Galen Strawson proposes to approach the (seeming) problem of the self by starting from the thing that makes it seem there is a problem in the first place: our experience of the self, our experience of having or being a self, a hidden, inner mental presence or locus of consciousness. He argues that we should consider the phenomenology (experience) of the self before we attempt its metaphysics (its existence and nature). And when we have considered what it's like for human beings (assuming we can generalize about ourselves), we need to consider what it might be like for other possible creatures: what's the very least that might count as experience of oneself as a self? This, he proposes, will give us a good idea of what we ought to be looking for when we go on to ask whether there is such a thing-an idea worth following wherever it leads. It leads Strawson to conclude that selves, inner subjects of experience, do indeed exist. But they bear little resemblance to traditional conceptions of the self. (shrink)

Descartes divides his treatment of the theology of the Eucharist into two closely related questions: the problem of real accidents and the problem of real presence. Scholarly work has tended to focus on the first question. Its overrepresentation in the secondary literature is understandable in light of Descartes’s preoccupation with real accidents and his reluctance to take a position on the Eucharistic presence. Despite this imbalance, I take a closer look at Descartes’s views on the second question by (...) collecting some scattered evidence from his published and (in his lifetime) unpublished works. I argue for two related points. First, I show that, read against the theological requirements of his time, Descartes’s explanations of real presence were doomed to failure not because he was unable to cope with the miracle, but because his physics, hampered by necessitarian constraints, lacked the resources to deal with ordinary objects (such as bread and wine and human bodies). Second, Descartes’s sustained attempt to explain the problem of the Eucharist in the face of difficulties is indicative of an important facet of his philosophy. Rather than declaring, as many of his followers would cautiously do, that nothing is impossible for the Almighty, he endeavored to bridge the principles of his new physics with the ordinary perception of the world around us in our daily life. (shrink)

Despite periods of resurgence over the last decades, it is safe to say that transcendental arguments no longer enjoy a prominent presence in the philosophical landscape. One reason for their declining prominence is the sustained suspicion that despite their self‐proclaimed metaphysical neutrality, transcendental arguments are, in fact, metaphysically committed. This paper aims to revive the discussion of transcendental considerations by offering a metaphysically neutral account of transcendental arguments. I argue that a metaphysically neutral conception of transcendental arguments requires a (...) revision of two concepts constitutive of transcendental claims, namely, transcendental necessity and the a priori. I propose a transcendental reading of Wittgenstein's On Certainty, which, I maintain, provides us with an alternative, metaphysically neutral understanding of these concepts. Thus revised, transcendental claims are suitable for what Mark Sacks once described as the “post‐metaphysical” orientation of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This paper studies the theories defended by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme on the presence of the soul in the body, with a special focus on the interpretation of the Augustinian principle – or ‘holenmeric’ principle – according to which the soul is in the whole body and is wholly present in every part of it. The first part of the paper introduces the different types of composition involved in the medieval discussions over the soul and its parts and (...) shows how different psychological theories prior to 1350 employed this typology of part/whole relations to clarify the soul’s presence in the body. The next part of the paper presents how the theories designed by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme were motivated by problems raised by these earlier accounts of the soul’s presence and undertook to solve them from the perspective of a reductionist conception of parthood. It is argued that, despite their common commitment to a reductionist stance, the solutions endorsed by Buridan and Oresme represent two opposite ways of applying a nominalist metaphysics of parts to psychological matters. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHERS have a patrimony of ninety generations or so of philosophical experience. Collingwood's plea that we take this cumulative legacy seriously I am disposed to repeat. Philosophical experience rewards the labor of philosophic thought quite as geological experience rewards the labor of geological thought, and mathematical experience that of mathematical thought. Philosophical experience brings to light the categories and categorial order. It thus makes its contribution to interscientific meaning, which is the distinction and mark of philosophy among the sciences. Think (...) of it as a hard-won richesse, a communal fund, to which multitudes of our predecessors have added and upon which they have drawn, as we now are professionally qualified to do. So viewed, philosophical experience records a communal venture, an itinerarium mentis, towards system and categorial coherence. (shrink)

The works of Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank argue that consciousness is fundamentally a self-awareness antecedent to reflection. This essay picks up the suggestion that consciousness itself is a field or medium of manifestation. As such it is a “metafact,” the anonymity of which transcendental philosophy seeks to overcome. This is required because the “facts” of the light of the mind and the intelligibility of what the mind discloses elude philosophical investigation as long as the anonymity reigns. Clarifying self-consciousness illuminates (...) what essentially must elude normal categorial and predicative investigation which presuppose the light of the mind and intelligibility. The seemingly esoteric issue of the discovery of the primacy of the pre- or non-reflective self-presence at the foundation of first-person reference may be said to found metaphysics in so far as this requires evidence for the inseparability of being from manifestation. (shrink)

Although a certain mature historicism in contemporary philosophy takes dialogue with past writers to be the “ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood,” the problem of truth must persist for it—if only in the form of the question concerning the validity of interpretation. If there is no progress in philosophy toward a more precise and established body of true propositions, still there must be some sort of movement to conversation and some reference point by means of which the (...) movement can be gauged. The reference point for traditional metaphysics is presence and presentation —both as method and as subject matter. But our goal now is simply to understand the special philosophical senses of truth and presence in their historical reality. (shrink)

Résumé — 1 / Par « métaphysique » j’entends, d’accord avec la tradition, la réflexion philosophique sur l’être en tant que tel, sur la totalité de ce qui est, et, par suite éventuellement, sur ce qui est au-delà de l’être – à savoir, le divin. 2 / C’est dans le domaine du rapport quotidien qui relie l’homme avec le monde qu’on trouve les manifestations les plus riches de l’être, à condition que la réflexion soit capable de les déceler. 3 / (...) L’essence de ce rapport dans son unité intégrale et originaire est ce que j’appelle présence, qui est à la fois présence du monde pour l’homme et présence de l’homme dans le monde dont il est une partie – rapport réciproque ontologique et gnoséologique. 4 / Les structures de la présence sont celles de l’espace et du temps vécus avec leurs perspectives et horizons, et centrées dans le hic et nunc du corps humain. 5 / La fonction ontologique de la mémoire consiste en une représentification du passé dont le souvenir fait directement partie du présent vécu. 6 / Parallèlement à cette antériorité temporelle, il y a une antériorité de l’apriori eidétique par rapport à l’apparaître du phénomène ; celui-ci est déterminé dans son essence par le quid qui le transcende d’une manière atemporelle . 7 / Le problème du sens de l’être se pose à partir de la finalité de l’action humaine, qui est l’élément proprement intégratif de la présence. L’aspect contingent de l’action signale une absence de signification, tandis que c’est de la part de la détermination eidétique du but de l’action que lui accroît un supplément de sens relatif et provisoire. 8 / Dans la présence même il y a toujours de l’absence. C’est là qu’est enraciné le dynamisme de la réalité relationnelle aussi bien que la transcendance de l’absolu. 9 / En suivant d’une certaine manière le principe de la théologie négative , il est – sous réserve du paradoxe – philosophiquement possible d’affirmer la transcendance absolue du divin qui est de même immanence absolue.10 / Repenser la dimension religieuse de l’existence humaine pourrait être une tâche importante pour la philosophie contemporaine.— 1 / By « metaphysics » I mean, in accordance with tradition, the philosophical thought on the being as such, on the totality of what is and eventually as well on what is beyond the being, that is the divine. 2 / We can find the richest demonstrations of the being in the daily relationship that links man to the world, providing that the mind is open to finding. 3 / The essence of this relationship in its integral and innate unity is what I call presence, which is at the same time presence of the world for man and presence of man in the world, of which he is a part – a mutually ontological and gnoseological relationship. 4 / The structures of the presence are those of the lived space and time with their viewpoints and horizons and they are centered in the hic et nunc of the human body. 5 / The ontological function of memory lays in the representation of the past, of which recollections directly belong to the lived present. 6 / In parallel with this worldly precedence there is a precedence of the eidetical apriori linked with the coming appearance of the phenomenon which is determined in its essence by the quid that transcends it timelessly . 7 / The problem of the meaning of the being is linked with the end of human action, that is the properly integrating element of the presence. The contingent aspect of action shows an absence of meaning while the eidetical determination of the aim of action gives it an increasing supplement of relative and temporary meaning. 8 / In the very presence there is always absence. It is there that the roots of the dynamism of the relational reality as well as the transcendence of the absolute can be found. 9 / Following in a certain way the principle of the negative theology , it is philosophically possible – subject to paradox – to assert the absolute transcendence of the divine which is at the same time absolute immanence.10 / A rethinking of the religious dimension of human life could be an important task assigned to contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Gordon P. Barnes has recently argued that presence by power is inadequate as an explanation of the way elements are present in complex bodies, and that it would be better to explain the elements’ presence by claiming that simpler substances—carbon atoms, for example—are actually and substantially present in living things. In order to address his arguments, this paper begins by briefly presenting St. Thomas’s understanding of presence by power, and then argues that Barnes’s proposal—that there is a (...) multiplicity of substantial forms in one matter—is unsatisfactory. First, the paper explains why the scientific facts do not require a plurality of substantial forms. Second, it shows how Barnes’s theory does not adequately explain living things. Third, it argues against Barnes’s claim that St. Thomas’s explanation is insufficient because it denies "the universal causality of nature.". (shrink)

As so many have observed, ours is an anti-metaphysical age. Seldom in Western history have so many forces with so many weapons gathered to challenge the authority and rule of the queen of the sciences, metaphysics. This queen has not only been placed under the severest of limitations but has in many quarters been deposed. Both her dignity and authority have been lost. One may, of course, wonder whether her deposition in the presence of these hostile forces was (...) not premature and unwarranted—whether indeed her rule might not have been clarified and strengthened by healthful response to them. Neither queens nor philosophy are the same after the shock of forceful men; but the question remains, should they continue their reigns? (shrink)

This little volume, using a combined approach of phenomenology, history, philosophy, and theology probes deeply into questions of belief and commitment. The book is valuable for scholars who possess the background and sensitivity to appreciate the three essays which constitute it. The first of these, "The Structure of Jewish Experience," takes up the epistemological problem of belief in a God who is present in history and who can consequently be the object of worship by modern man just as he was (...) thousands of years ago. The second essay, "The Challenge of Modern Secularity," deals with current theological issues, including the Subjectivist Reductionism, the "Death" of God, and faith as "immediacy after reflection." The third and most impassioned essay, "The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz," deals with themes which have been the preoccupation of Elie Wiesel, to whom the book is dedicated. There have not been many Jewish writers since the holocaust, who have been willing to write about their faith. Fackenheim speculates that it must be difficult to justify such faith to oneself in light of the fate of the Jews in recent history. In this book, and particularly in the last essay, the author attempts to justify such faith, and he does it intelligently and eloquently.--S. J. B. (shrink)

God and the City, based on the Aquinas Lecture delivered at the University of Dallas in 2022, aims to think about politics ontologically. In other words, it seeks to reflect on, not some political theory or other, nor on the legitimacy of political action or the distinctiveness of particular regimes, but on the nature of political order as such, and how this order implicates the fundamental questions of existence, those concerning man, being, and God. Aristotle, and Aquinas after him, identified (...) metaphysics and politics as "architectonic" sciences, since each concerns in some respect the whole of reality, of which the particular sciences study a part. Chapter one of this book argues that, just as metaphysics, in studying being as a whole, cannot but address the question of God in some respect, so too does politics, the ordering of human life as a whole, necessarily implicate the existence of God. In this regard, the modern liberal project has deluded itself in attempting to render religion a private, rather than a genuinely political, matter. We cannot organize human existence without making some claim, whether implicitly or explicitly, about the nature of God and God's relation to the world. The second chapter approaches this theme from the anthropological dimension. As Plato affirmed, the "city is the soul writ large": if man is religious by nature, he cannot be properly understood, and the human good cannot be properly secured and fostered, if the "God question" is "bracketed out" of the properly political order. Moreover, if we fail to recognize the essentially political dimension of relation to God, we will be unable properly to grasp the presence of God in the (ecclesial and sacramental) Body of Christ: God cannot be real in the Church as Church unless he is also real in the city as city (and vice versa). In his De regno, Aquinas famously affirms that "the king is to be in the kingdom what the soul is in the body and what God is in the world." Chapter three offers a careful study of the body-soul relationship in order to illuminate, on the one hand, the nature of political authority, and, on the other, the precise way that God is present in human community. (shrink)

In the current mood of disenchantment with Marxism, why is it that one-day headliners like the French "new philosophers" receive instant popularization and translation abroad? These men, B.-H. Levy and A. Glucksmann, say little that is new and are hardly philosophers. And why is it that Henri Lefebvre, who since World War II has sorted out what is alive in Marxism from what is dead, remains all but unknown in this country?

On a cold Sunday afternoon in February, the fifty-eighth Aquinas Lecture was presented at Marquette University by Louis Dupré. His unassuming gentle manner coupled with his expert command of philosophy, theology, science, and literature left no doubt that those assembled were in the presence of greatness. Following his presentation, an expanded version of this lecture was made available in print. This small volume takes its well-deserved place as Dupré's twelfth book, in addition to the five he has edited.