Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 1987"

Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality

Abstract: Aristotle's teleology is a central component of his philosophy, and interpretations of it often heavily influence evaluations of the significance of his thought, both in science and in philosophy. Much has been written about this aspect of his philosophy, but surprisingly little sustained attention has been directed to what is clearly the fundamental question: what, precisely, does Aristotle mean when he asserts that something is, or comes to he, for the sake of something? If we are to answer this question with both historical accuracy and philosophical precision, how must we proceed? The place to begin, of course, is with the text – ideally, with Aristotle's own statement of an answer. One would expect to find, somewhere in the vast Aristotelian corpus, a thorough analysis and explicit definition of this central notion. Surprisingly, it is not there to be found. Readers of the corpus will search in vain for a detailed analysis of what it is to be (or come to be) for the sake of something. The longest continuous passages on final causality, Physics 11.8 and (sections of) Parts of Animals 1.1, while containing much that eventually proves helpful, do not address themselves directly to this issue. In each case, the purpose is to argue for the applicability to nature of a conception of final causality whose precise meaning and statement is largely taken for granted.

Plato's Theory of Desire

Abstract: 1YJ.Y aim here is to make sense of Plato's account of desire in the middle dialogues. To do that I need to unify or reconcile what are at first sight two quite different accounts: the doctrine of eros in the Symposium and the tripartite theory of motivation in the Repub lic.1 It may be that the two theories are after all irreconcilable, that Plato simply changed his mind on the nature of human desire after writing the Symposium and before composing the Republic. But that conclusion can be justified only if attempts to reconcile the two theories end in failure. The attempt must be made first. This is primarily a historical project, but one with some con temporary interest. Plato, in the Republic, is the first philosopher to formulate a full-scale theory of the psyche, and hence the first to articulate the concept of desire in a systematic way. Furthermore, his view of the subject is sufficiently remote from today's view to provoke some critical reflection on our own assumptions. On the other hand, Plato is perhaps the only major philosopher to antici pate some of the central discoveries of twentieth-century depth psychology, that is, of Freud and his school; I shall end with some comparisons between Plato and Freud. But it will be more in structive to begin by presenting Plato's view within the context of the contemporary theory of action.

Idealism as Modernism: Blumenberg and the Modernity Problem]

Abstract: J. here IS A GREAT and confusing irony in what many regard as the culmination of the post-Enlightenment Western European tra dition, the culmination of "modernity." Sometime in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the story goes, the radically new rather suddenly seemed surprisingly old, "outdated" because self-deceived, unjustifiably self-satisfied, "really" an expression of an older, reli gious consciousness or of a premodern, even primitive will to power, or of an ancient forgetting of Being. In such a context, to be truly "modern" (here the confusion and the irony) was to be "modernist," to have seen modernity to its conclusion and to find it incapable of fulfilling its promise of a new beginning. As painter, or poet, or composer, or thinker, one could stand resolutely on the other side of a great historical abyss, across from which one could now see the continuity of say, Socrates and Bacon, or Augustine and Descartes, the historical collapse of the option they all represent, and could say goodbye to the whole territory. In the long aftermath of such modernist suspicions about the still dominant "official" Enlightenment culture, the very title of the recently translated book by Hans Blumenberg is a bluntly direct invitation to controversy?The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. For Blumenberg, when Giordano Bruno, condemned to burn at the stake

A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: Naming, Necessity and the Analytic a Posteriori

Abstract: An the first paper in this series1 I attempted to do away with some common misconceptions concerning Kant's doctrine of a priori knowledge. By using the approach of Philip Kitcher as a sounding-board, I was able not only to provide a Kantian response to Kitcher's criticisms of the apriorist understanding of mathemat ical knowledge, but also to sketch in the process some of the essen tial tenets of Kant's epistemological framework. In this sequel, I will begin by reviewing and expanding my discussion of Kant's terminology. In Section II, I will then discuss the epistemological framework developed by Saul Kripke.2 In Section III, I will demon strate that the two frameworks overlap to a large extent, but that because they define the same terms in different ways, one must be adjusted to correspond to the other before any intelligible debate between the two can be carried out. After adjusting Kripke's ter minology to fit Kant's framework, I will suggest a perspectival reconstruction of Kant's framework which takes into consideration Kripke's most important insights. Finally, in Section IV, I will provide a response to Kripke's unfair treatment of Kant, after which I will return to the subject of mathematical knowledge and

A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: Mathematics, Method and Pure Intuition

Abstract: Before Kant, the a priori-a posteriori distinction was assumed to be virtually synonymous with the analytic-synthetic distinction: a priori (or analytic) reasoning proceeds from a cause to its effect, or from a universal to a particular instantiation, while a posteriori (or synthetic) reasoning proceeds in the reverse direction (CPRy B2). Kant himself sometimes used these terms in their traditional sense, as referring to the logical methods of analysis and synthesis.2 But his genius was to have transposed these distinctions into the center of epistemology by differentiating between them and applying them to types of knowledge as well as to methods of reasoning. Ever

Contradiction In Hegel's Science of Logic

Abstract: An the course of his discussion of contradiction in the section of the Logic devoted to essence, Hegel makes two startling claims. First, he states that everything is inherently contradictory (WLII, 59:14-27 [SL 440]).1 Second, he states that speculative thought or philosophy is distinguished from ordinary thinking ( Vorstellen) by holding fast to contradiction (WL II, 59:39-60:3 [SL 440-41). Hegel was, of course, aware of the unorthodox nature of these remarks. However, even sympathetic readers of the Logic may be hard put to justify Hegel at this point. It is, to put the matter simply, very hard to see how to take the statements in question seriously. A self-contradictory thing would not be a thing at all. (Hegel's examples to the contrary are, as we shall see, astonish ingly weak.) And no self-contradictory ideation is thought, i.e., makes sense.2 Commentators who are inclined to regard the Logic and the rest of Hegel's philosophical work as a series of loose or independent conceptual analyses3 might, prompted by the fact that the state