Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2002"

The Passions of the Wise: Phronêsis, Rhetoric, and Aristotle’s Passionate Practical Deliberation

Abstract: THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO REASONS WHY contemporary moral and political philosophers should be attentive to Aristotle's account of practical reason. First, in contradistinction with views that characterize the emotions primarily as a hindrance to practical reasoning, moral philosophers have become increasingly impressed with the revived Aristotelian insight that good practical reasoning systematically relies on the emotions. Second, accounts of practical reason have become increasingly important for political philosophers seeking to theorize the regulative principles governing democratic deliberation. My intention in this paper is to demonstrate that Aristotle shows how an account of practical reason and deliberation that constructively incorporates the emotions can illuminate key issues about deliberation at the political level. First, I argue that, according to Aristotle, character (ethos) and emotion (pathos) are constitutive features of the process of phronetic practical deliberation: in order to render a determinate action-specific judgment, practical deliberation cannot be simply reduced to logical demonstration (apodeixis). This can be seen, I argue, by uncovering an important structural parallel between the virtue of phronesis and the art of rhetoric. Second, this structural parallel helps to tease out the insights of Aristotle's account of practical deliberation for contemporary democratic theory--in particular, the ethical consequences that follow from the fact that passionate political deliberation and judgment are unavoidable in democracy and are always susceptible to straying from issuing forth properly ethical outcomes. I Aristotle's critique of democracy rests on his fears about demagoguery, a regime led by popular leaders who, by appealing to the people's passions, are capable of ingratiating themselves with a majority thereby led to tyrannize a helpless minority--even to the detriment of the majority itself. Of course, modern liberal democracies have developed various responses to alleviate some of the fears that Aristotle, and in other ways Plato, articulated so long ago. One of liberalism's most significant answers to the threat of the tyranny of the majority has been constitutional constraint on democratic decisionmaking. Yet Aristotle himself anticipates the limits of such an answer. Obviously, the application of abstract laws to particular circumstances cannot be carried out by the laws themselves. The problem this introduces is what we might call the "indeterminacy of written nomos." I say "written nomos" because Aristotle makes a fundamental distinction between written and unwritten homos: the former refers to the codified written laws legislated by a particular polis, the latter refers to the unwritten tacit norms that seem to be agreed upon by all and that invariably cannot be codified (as abstract rules). (1) The indeterminacy of written nomos refers to Aristotle's thought that the antecedently specified abstract rules that constitute the written laws are never sufficient to issue forth in a determinate injunction in the face of particular circumstances. Why? Because the answer to the practical question of what ought to be done in particular circumstances can never, for Aristotle, be fully codified in human speech or writing as a series of abstract antecedently specified rules--there is always a remainder not captured in or by abstract logos. In other words, the indeterminacy of written nomos is simply a political manifestation of a more general condition: the indeterminacy of universals when employed in practical reason, or what I shall call the "indeterminacy of abstract logos" (and here I mean to evoke connotations of both reason and speech). This indeterminacy refers both to (a) the fact that abstract reason is insufficient to issue in determinate normative injunctions in particular circumstances, and (b) the parallel fact that practical philosophy, whether ethical or political, can never be fully codified in language as a series of antecedently specified set of general practical principles. …

Herder’s Philosophy of Language, Interpretation, and Translation: Three Fundamental Principles

Abstract: A GOOD CASE COULD BE MADE that Herder is the founder not only of the modern philosophy of language but also of the modern philosophy of interpretation ("hermeneutics") and translation and that he has many things to say on these subjects from which we may still learn today. (1) This essay will not attempt to make such a case, but it will be concerned with some aspects of Herder's position that would be central to it: three fundamental principles in his philosophy of language which also play fundamental roles in his theory of interpretation and translation. The essay's aim is also threefold: first, to describe the principles in question and their roles in this theory; second, to explain their emergence in a way which helps to make clearer the nature of Herder's contribution (for example, I shall be making a case for Herder's priority over Hamann and for his indebtedness instead to some less familiar influences); and third, to give at least a sense of their philosophical subtlety and defensibility. (A companion essay to follow will discuss Herder's views concerning some prima facie problem cases. (2)) As is well known, a model of thought, meaning, and language which predominated during the Enlightenment, saliently among the British empiricists for example, conceived of thought and meaning in a sharply dualistic fashion as (at least in principle) separable and autonomous from whatever material, perceptible expressions they may happen to receive in language, and of language as merely a means to their communication which is quite inessential to their actual existence. Herder's first two fundamental principles in the philosophy of language contradict this model. The first of these principles asserts that thought is essentially dependent on and bounded by language--that is, that one cannot think unless one has a language and one can only think what one can express linguistically. This principle carries important consequences for interpretation. For example, in a certain and important sense it guarantees that a person's use of language is a reliable indicator of the nature of his thought (that the nature of his thought cannot radically transcend or be discrepant with his use of language). (3) It is well enough known that Herder commits himself to a version of this principle in later works such as A Metacritique on the Critique of Pure Reason (1799) (henceforth, Metacritique) and the Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity (1784-91) (henceforth, Ideas). For example, he writes in the latter work that "a people has no idea for which it has no word." (4) However, it is important to realize that he was already firmly committed to it much earlier. Thus, moving backward chronologically, versions of it are already to be found in On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul (1778) (henceforth, On the Cognition), (5) and in the Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772) (henceforth, On the Origin). (6) But even before that, it is already prominent in the Fragments on Recent German Literature (1767-68) (henceforth, Fragments), where Herder writes, for example, that language is "the form of cognition, not merely in which but also in accordance with which thoughts take shape, where in all parts of literature thought sticks [klebt] to expression, and forms itself in accordance with this.... Language sets limits and contour for all human cognition." (7) Indeed, Herder is already committed to a version of the principle as early as the essay On Diligence in Several Learned Languages (1764) (henceforth, On Diligence), where he writes: "What exactly is the connection between language and mode of thought? Whoever surveys the whole scope of a language surveys a field of thoughts and whoever learns to express himself with exactness precisely thereby gathers for himself a treasure of determinate concepts. The first words that we mumble are the most important foundation stones of the understanding, and our nursemaids are our first teachers of logic. …

How Concepts Both Structure the World and Abstract From It

Abstract: I TWO OPPOSING VIEWS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP between concepts and the world can be found in the history of philosophy. One view--deriving from Immanuel Kant and endorsed by Karl Popper, among many others--claims that in forming and using concepts we structure the world. Concepts produce or increase order. Hence, the world, insofar as it is knowable by human beings, is necessarily a conceptually structured world. The second, still older view--represented by the Aristotelian tradition and by John Locke, for example--holds that concepts are formed by abstracting from the particularities of the world. By leaving out the accidental or irrelevant features of particular entities, we abstract a concept as a general representative of a (natural) kind. In this paper, I claim that concepts both structure the world and abstract from it. At first sight, the claims that concepts structure the world and abstract from it appear to be incompatible. I argue, however, not only that they are compatible but also that both are necessary in order to obtain an adequate account of the relationship between concepts and the world. I do so by introducing a new account of abstraction that differs from the classical one advocated by Aristotelians and by Locke. The ontological implications of this account are discussed in detail. In addition, I make some claims about the meaning of concepts. The proposed account of abstraction is based on a specific analysis of the realization of the observational processes in which we apply our concepts. Consequently, it bears upon those concepts that are supposed to say something about the world, and not upon purely fictitious or exclusively formal concepts. Furthermore, the account is meant to apply both to everyday and to scientific observations and concepts. Quite a few contemporary views about the issues in question show a strong or even an exclusive emphasis on the philosophical significance of "local practices." This obviously applies to constructivist and postmodern approaches, (1) but it holds for certain naturalist views as well. (2) I have taken this point into account through the notion of the "local realization" of observational processes. If we confine ourselves to the locality perspective, however, we will lack an adequate philosophical account of the actual and possible connections between these separate local practices. The idea of extensible concepts and their nonlocal meanings, which I will introduce below, is meant to provide such an account for the case of the formation and use of concepts. Central to this account is the claim that, in a specific sense, concepts abstract from the world. I start the argument with a discussion of Herman Koningsveld's views of the formation of concepts (section 2). In particular, I explain an elementary but instructive experiment by which he illustrates his view that concepts structure the world. In section 3, I propose a possible replication of this experiment by means of a new observational process. On this basis, I introduce the idea of extensible concepts and their nonlocal meanings. This enables me to conclude that concepts do not just structure the world but abstract from it as well. Section 4 explains this notion of abstraction in detail and investigates its applicability to the ontological categories of extensible concepts and their referents, the nonlocals. Among other things, it results in a concise definition of the notion of extensible concepts. Finally, in section 5, I discuss some of the wider philosophical implications of the theory of extensible concepts, abstraction, and nonlocals. II How Concepts Structure the World. I begin my discussion of the relationship between (everyday and scientific) concepts and the world with an account and analysis of the views of Herman Koningsveld. He developed an interesting and detailed theory of how new concepts may be formed in the course of observing a class of novel entities. …

Phenomenology of Friendship

Abstract: C'est la haine qui est mal, jamais l'amour. Ester Rota Gasperoni, Orage sur le lac IN THIS ESSAY, WE WILL USE ARISTOTLE to bring out some important features of friendship and of moral action in general; we will show that friendship is the highest kind of moral excellence. (1) We will then make use of phenomenology to determine the kinds of intelligence that provide the substance of both moral conduct and friendship. Moral action and friendship are defined by special kinds of rational form, and it will be our goal to describe these forms. I Aristotle's description of the moral virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics is developed in a logical progression. His analysis, as it moves along, reaches three successive summits or crests, each higher than the previous one. (1) The first crest is the treatment of the virtue of pride or magnanimity, megalopsychia, in book 4 chapter 3. Magnanimity is the completion of what we could call our "internal" or "individual" virtues, such as courage, temperance, and generosity. It is moral virtue brought to self-awareness, the confidence that comes to us when we have achieved virtuous dispositions and know that we are able to act in a noble manner. Magnanimity consolidates the possession we take of our own emotions, our desires, aversions, and fears. (2) The second high point in Aristotle's treatment of moral virtue is found in the discussion of justice in book 5. Justice goes beyond the virtues treated in the earlier books because it deals with our relationships with other people and not just the control we have over ourselves and our impulses. What Aristotle calls particular justice, the subject of most of book 5, deals with the things we can exchange with other people, things that can be transferred from one person to another and that can be possessed in a greater or lesser amount. Such justice does not deal, say, with intelligence or with physical beauty, because these things cannot be transported from one person to another, but it does deal with wealth, money, honors, and offices, as well as with public burdens and obligations. "Distributive" justice deals with the allotment of benefits and burdens to various members of a community, while "corrective" justice deals with remedies that must be imposed when one person has been injured and hence deprived of some goods; corrective justice deals with the restitution that must be made in order to bring back the original and just condition. Distributive justice is proportional, corrective justice is arithmetical. (3) We might think that the treatment of justice is the culmination of Aristotle's discussion of moral excellence. Justice seems to be the highest moral virtue, and the classical listing of virtues, the "cardinal" virtues, comprised temperance, courage, prudence, and justice. But there is still another crest to be reached beyond justice in the study of moral virtue. It is reached in books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics, which discuss friendship. Friendship should not be taken as a mere appendix to ethics; it completes justice and the other moral virtues. Aristotle distinguishes between pleasant, useful, and perfect friendships, with the latter being the paradigm of human agency. In perfect friendships the friends must be virtuous and capable of working together to accomplish things in common. They wish the good of each other as their own good. The activity of each of the friends is intensified and made more perfect precisely because they are engaged in a corporate effort; each of the friends is "another self" to the others. The practice of friendship in its highest sense is a form of moral activity and the capacity to be a true friend is a virtue. It is an excellence of the soul that enables us to act in keeping with our nature. It perfects us as human beings, as rational animals, and it is the finest way in which we exercise practical reason. …

The Ethical and the Religious Dimensions of Li (Rites)

Abstract: THIS ESSAY PRESENTS A CONFUCIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LI (rites, ritual propriety). My main concern is the question, "How can a Confucian moral philosopher move from the ethical to the religious dimension of li?" Section 1 provides an analysis of the scope, evolution, functions, and a brief discussion of the question of justification of li. (1) Section 2 deals with the inner aspect of the foundation of conduct, the motivational aspect of li-performance. Section 3 discusses the outer aspect of the foundation of li, focusing on Hsun Tzu's vision of the triad of t'ien (heaven, nature), earth, and humanity (ts'an t'ien-ti), an interpretation of his use of t'ien, shen (spirits, gods) and shen-ming (spiritual or godlike enlightenment) as expressing a respect for established linguistic, religious practice without an endorsement of associated popular religious beliefs. This interpretation leaves open the question of the validity of reasoned religious beliefs, while presuming the religious dimension of li as extension of Confucian ethics. Section 4 centers on the ethical significance of the li of mourning and sacrifice and the more general question on the efficacy of li, and concludes with some remarks on the transformative significance of the religious dimension of li. I An Analysis of Li. For more than two millennia, traditional Chinese moral life and thought have been much preoccupied with li as a means for the realization of the Confucian ideal of tao (Way) or human excellence (shan). Implicit in this notion of li is an idea of rule-governed conduct. A rough indication of its scope may be gathered from a list of possible translations. Depending on the context of Confucian discourse, li can be translated as "religious rites, ceremony, deportment, decorum, propriety, formality, politeness, courtesy, etiquette, good form, good behavior, [or] good manners." (2) For convenience of reference it is sometimes desirable to use such terms as "propriety," "rules of propriety," or "rules of proper conduct." (3) For marking the pervasive feature of the members of this list, one might propose such terms as "rites," "rituals," "ritual propriety," or "ritual rules," especially if we think of "rites" in the broad sense as inclusive of any established practice or set of action-guides that stresses formal procedures for proper behavior. However, without explicit explanation, this usage is likely to be misleading, particularly in view of the different connotations of the term. For this reason, I shall retain the transliteration li in this essay and adopt Hsun Tzu's distinction between generic (kung-ming) and specific terms (pieh-ming). A generic term is a formal, general, abstract term amenable to specification by other terms in different contexts of discourse. These terms, used in practical or theoretical contexts, may be said to be specific terms in the sense that they specify the significance of the use of a generic term adapted to a current purpose of discourse. Li will be used as a generic notion subject to specification in context by such locution as "the li of x," where x may mean "mourning," "sacrifices," "marriage," "manners," and so forth. (4) In this sense, law, morality, religion, and other social institutions, insofar as they require compliance with formal procedures, may be said to be concerned with ritual propriety. However, as a term for a compendious description of the scope of li, "ritual propriety" or the like presupposes some understanding of the connection of li with other cardinal notions of Confucian ethics. Although we occasionally refer to the dependence of the ethical significance of li on jen (benevolence, humanity) and yi (rightness, righteousness), for present purposes we assume their conceptual connection without elaboration. (5) Our explication of li is based mainly on the works of Hsun Tzu and Li Chi (Record of Li). (6) The Li Chi is one of the three ancient texts on li: Chou Li, Yi Li, and Li Chi. …

Beyond Privation: Moral Evil in Aquinas's De Malo

Abstract: EVER SINCE PLOTINUS SOUGHT CLARITY in the notion of privation to dispel our human perplexity about evil, philosophers have debated whether this concept is adequate to the task. The intensity and scope of evil in the twentieth century--which has seen the horrors of world war and genocide--have added fuel to the debate. Can the idea of a falling away from the good, however refined, come anywhere close to capturing the calculation, the commitment, the energy, and the drive that underlie the most virulent projects in malfeasance? While the privation account might appear a reasonable strategy for explaining passive wrongdoing--indifference to people in grave need, or cooperation with injustice--the more active and dynamic forms of evil would nevertheless seem to elude its conceptual net. Against this objection, it can be said that the concept of privation was intended within the Thomistic tradition to provide principles for a metaphysical, yet not precisely a moral, analysis of wickedness. True with respect to the former, the privation account was credited with rendering an important service. In explaining how evil consists in the absence of a due good, this account exonerates God, the first cause, from any derivative responsibility for evil. Its theological utility notwithstanding, Thomas Aquinas nevertheless took particular care to indicate the limitations of privation as a tool for elucidating the special sort of evil that emerges within human freedom. This evil he designates by the names "sin" (peccatum), (1) "moral fault" (malum culpae), or moral evil (malum morale). (2) Aquinas's conceptualization of evil along positive lines as something done is most visible in his analysis of intentional wrongdoing (peccare ex industria aut ex certa scientia), also termed "sinning from malice" (peccare ex malitia). (3) In this essay I will examine the interplay of these two ideas--the negative concept of "privation," and the positive concept of malitia--within Thomas's treatment of moral evil. In so doing I will advert most especially to the argumentation of his Quaestiones disputatae de malo (most likely disputed in Paris during the academic years 1269-71), which represents his most detailed and systematic treatment of this theme. I "Within the domain of morals, `evil' is asserted in a positive way." (4) This statement from the opening article of the De malo gives succinct expression to the basic insight governing Thomas's conception of moral evil. To get at the special character of evil as it emerges in free actions, it is not enough to apprehend it as a mode of falling away from the good. While the evil that affects natural entities can indeed be adequately grasped under the heading of privation, the evil performed by human beings through the misuse of their freedom requires, for its proper conceptualization, something more than the idea of privation can give, namely, the notion of opposition to the good. To use the stock example, adultery consists not only in the absence of the fidelity incumbent on those who are married but also and especially in the violation of this commitment by engagement in acts that are directly opposed to the nuptial bond. (5) Likewise, cruelty consists not so much in failing to carry out the obligations of clemency but in deliberately inflicting pain outside the order of justice. Temperance and adultery, clemency and cruelty are thus situated vis-a-vis each other as contraries, not as the possession of a quality and its privation. (6) Thomas distinguishes between acts opposed to reason (contra rationem) on the one hand and acts that merely fall short of reason (preter eam) on the other. In the latter case, the acts in question are defective in relation to the means chosen yet not to the point where the will's ordination to its due end is excluded. Since intending the end is the most decisive element in moral goodness, only acts incompatible with the due end will properly be termed against reason. …

"Fabricating a World in Accordance with Mere Fantasy ..."? the Origins of Kant's Critical Theory of Matter

Abstract: IMMANUEL KANT GRADUATED IN 1755 from the University of Konigsberg on the basis of the dissertation On Fire (dissertatio pro gradu) and with the essay A New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysics (dissertatio pro receptione) written specifically for the occasion; he took up a position as lecturer in the same year. In 1756 he wrote a third Latin essay, the Physical Monadology (dissertatio pro loco), and applied for a professorship at the Albertina in Konigsberg. The application was unsuccessful and, more significantly, the work failed to attract the attention Kant had hoped. (1) He had to wait until 1770--some fourteen years later--for an appointment as full professor in Konigsberg, and it was not until the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 that he finally established his reputation as a philosopher. (2) Despite its poor reception at the time of publication, however, the Physical Monadology remains an important work for a full understanding of Kant's philosophy of nature. Although his earlier works on natural philosophy--his first book, Thoughts on the True Estimation of the Living Forces (1746), and his General History and Theory of the Heavens (1755)--both contain reflections on motion, force, and matter, it was only in the Physical Monadology that Kant developed an original theory of matter. In this later work, Kant aims to show that only a metaphysical, or nonmathematical and nonexperimental, theory of matter can effectively restrain pure speculation in the philosophy of nature and thus provide a foundation for the development of a mathematical and experimental physics. Physics alone, Kant argues, is unable to ground its own principles and, in particular, cannot provide criteria for deciding between contradictory theorems generated by geometry and metaphysics: finite versus infinite divisibility of space, for example, the necessity of an empty space for free motion, or the universal gravitation exerted by the internal force of bodies even in rest and at a distance. (3) The solution to such problems, Kant suggests, can come only when natural science is supplemented by an a priori metaphysics of nature. As he says, "Metaphysics, therefore, which many say may be properly absent from physics, is, in fact, its only support; it alone provides illumination." (4) With claims of this sort, Kant effectively outlined a research program that was to occupy him for some thirty years of his life, culminating in his main work on natural philosophy, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science; and he remained interested in the issues beyond that work until his death in 1804. In this mature philosophy, Kant argues that although they are means by which laws of nature are discovered, mathematics and experience by themselves form an inadequate basis for exploring the grounds of such laws themselves. Natural science, that is, has to be extended beyond the limits prescribed by Newton. Indeed, Newton explicitly denied that such an extension was possible: But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea. (5) Against this view, Kant claims that physics actually stands in need of metaphysical principles and that he himself is in a position to provide them. …

Epochal Time and the Continuity of Experience

Abstract: I SHOULD LIKE TO EXAMINE THE PLAUSIBILITY AND CONSEQUENCES of a particular view of the nature of metaphysics, especially in its relation to immediate human experience which it is designed to illuminate In order to make the consideration concrete I shall apply this interpretation to a familiar controversy about the nature of time One view, accepted by Whiteheadian process philosophers, is that time is actually episodic, atomic, epochal The contrasting view, that of Henri Bergson among others, is that time is continuous, even though it embodies temporal qualitative variations These contrasting opinions bring out, in their clarity and relative simplicity, important consequences of the interpretation of metaphysics that I shall propose My primary aim, therefore, is not so much to resolve that particular controversy as to show its dependence on divergent views of metaphysics, although I shall indeed draw some conclusions that tend to favor one of those views over the other I To start with I lay some metaphysical cards right on the table For one thing I assume that metaphysics is a philosophic enterprise that is neither futile nor meaningless This of course runs counter to a powerful philosophic tradition since Hume, as well as to popular conceptions (1) I agree with Etienne Gilson who held that failed metaphysics are instances of bad metaphysics, not exercises in a priori futility Second, I take for granted a certain form of epistemic realism It is not, I think, a naive realism, and certainly it is neither an idealism like that of Kant nor a representationalism like that of Locke and Hume It is a relational realism, and is a fundamentally Thomistic view put into a modern context Third, I assume that the more fundamental issue is not whether time itself is epochal or continuous, but whether becoming, especially the becoming that is immediate experience, is such For time, whether the time of bodies moving in space or the time of consciousness, is not itself a fundamental entity but a derivative one Bergson prefers to talk about duration--the duration of experiential becoming--and the Whiteheadian view of time as epochal is really the view that becoming is basically atomic or epochal Whitehead explicitly concluded that continuity belongs to the possible but atomicity to the actual--that is, to those acts of becoming that constitute actual entities (2) In whatever way we look at it, then, the question of the continuous or the epochal nature of time confronts us exactly with an inquiry into the metaphysics of immediate experience Before developing the viewpoint that I shall propose, it will be useful to attain further clarity concerning the philosophic controversy mentioned above With that in mind I first briefly sketch Bergson's and Whitehead's respective conceptions of metaphysical method Bergson distinguished between two extreme ways in which we can use our minds The more familiar is what he called "intelligence," though one might also call it conceptualization In it our mind approaches the real by means of concepts, intellectual snapshots that freeze for thought the intelligible patterns of reality This is what we do when we form those abstractions from the particularities of the flow of experience that enable us to develop sciences or even just to get along successfully in the world (3) The contrasting way of using the mind he called "intuition," by which we enter directly into an object or a process by immediate, reflective insight We grasp it for itself without the intervention of concepts or even of symbols The primary object of intuition, he wrote, is "our own person in its flowing through time, the self which endures," (4) and he took this intuitive reflection upon immediate experience to be the essence of metaphysics (5) In its perfection, intuition achieves an identity with its object …

Are Kant’s Categories Subjective?

Abstract: HEGEL INTERPRETS KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM as "subjective" idealism. In this paper I undertake to develop and clarify Hegel's interpretation and provide a limited defense of it. In one sense, Kant's idealism is indisputably subjectivist. According to Kant's doctrine of transcendental idealism, we can know objects only as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. Yet the dispute, so far as I will be interested in it in this paper, concerns the ground or the source of the Kantian relativization of our knowledge of objects to our human standpoint. Does this relativization have a source in Kant's conception of the nature of thinking (or of the role of our activity in knowledge), or is it strictly a function of the ideality of space and time as forms of our sensibility (hence, strictly a function of our passivity in knowledge)? The dispute for us resolves itself into the question of whether or in what respect Kant's categories, as forms of thought, are understood by him to be subjective. In the process of arguing that Kant is not the subjectivist that Hegel takes him to be, both Karl Ameriks and Paul Guyer, in their respective articles on Hegel's critique of Kant, claim that Hegel is mistaken in interpreting Kant's categories as subjective. (1) They both claim that the Kantian relativization of our knowledge to our human standpoint derives strictly from the ideality or subjectivity of space and time as forms of intuition, while Kant's categories, as forms of thought, are importantly free of any such relativization. I will argue that, on this interpretive question, Ameriks and Guyer are wrong and Hegel is correct. The significance of Hegel's view on this rather narrow interpretive point lies in the general orientation to Kantian philosophy that it bespeaks. Consequently, I will attempt to make that orientation as clear as possible while defending Hegel on this interpretive question. On the Hegelian interpretation, the Kantian restriction of our knowledge to our human standpoint is primarily a function of Kant's articulation of the structure of our epistemic agency and of its essential role in our knowledge in the Transcendental Deduction of the categories. Kant's argument for the objective validity of the categories relies on the recognition that knowing objects is a self-conscious, norm-governed activity that we ascribe to ourselves, in the sense that we are the agents of this norm-governed activity. In order to understand ourselves as the agents or the subjects of this norm-governed activity, we must understand the highest-level norms of the activity, the categories, to have their source in us. We cannot understand the norms to be externally imposed upon us. Subjectivism in Kant is a consequence not only or primarily of the argument in the Transcendental Aesthetic for the ideality of space and time, but also of the argument in the Transcendental Deduction, in which this normative structure is developed. I proceed in the paper as follows. In the first part, I present a Hegel-inspired sketch of the argument strategy of Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the categories. Though a full interpretation, fully defended, of the deduction is out of the question here, a sketch of the basic argument strategy is necessary in order to specify Hegel's interpretation of the source of Kant's subjectivism. In the second part of the paper, against the background of the sketch of the deduction, I discuss the important objection to Hegel's understanding raised by Ameriks and Guyer. I The sketch of the argument strategy of the Transcendental Deduction (in the second edition version) involves specifying: first, the general epistemological problem to which the deduction (or, more generally, the critique of reason) is addressed; second, the principle of apperception as the articulation of the standpoint of the thinking subject and as the starting point of Kant's solution of this problem; third, the main claim of the deduction; fourth, how this claim constitutes a solution of this epistemological problem; and last, subjectivism as the cost of this solution. …

On Contradictions, Rationality, Dialectics, and Esotericism in Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed

Abstract: I IN THE FOURTH AND FINAL SECTION of Maimonides's preface to his Guide of the Perplexed, in the section labeled "Introduction" (muqaddima), the author lists seven "causes ... for the contradictory or contrary statements in any book or composition." (1) The best known and most significant of these is the seventh cause. Its subject, according to most classical and modern interpreters of the Guide, is intentional contradictions the purpose of which is to hide the author's true opinion from the multitude. Maimonides tells us that contradictions of the seventh type are to be found in the Guide, and in fact he delivers on that promise: in many topics touched upon in that work, we find contradictory statements that give the reader a sense of entrapment and prevent him not only from understanding the issue at hand but also from being able to grasp related matters as well. (2) The problem posed by these contradictions combines with other intentional stumbling blocks delineated in the preface. Maimonides's practice of scattering the treatment of a single topic across the entire work, his division of the discussion of a given matter among chapters and even among different parts of the work, his occasional flight from systematic and thorough treatment of an issue, the unanticipated transitions from topic to topic, and the clouding of discussion--all these are likely to frustrate and dissuade the student of Maimonides's Guide. As if to ward off ill effect in advance, Maimonides warns us at the outset about the confusing character of his treatise: "A sensible man ... should not demand of me or hope that when we mention a subject, we shall make a complete exposition of it." (3) He notes that he will present his ideas in outline form, as "chapter headings," and even those "are not set down in order or arranged in coherent fashion in this Treatise, but rather are scattered and entangled with other subjects that are to be clarified." (4) If in his opening remarks Maimonides prepares the reader for an unsystematic presentation, his subsequent Introduction prepares him for a work rife with actual contradictions. Many commentators hold the opinion that his remarks in the Introduction, particularly his observations on the seventh cause, are the key to unraveling the contradictions in the Guide and revealing its hidden stratum. However, despite the frequency with which those remarks are cited by interpreters and scholars, very few of them if any have taken the trouble to examine Maimonides's words carefully and provide a thoroughgoing explication of them. Even though his language is far from being unequivocal, almost all of his readers have ascribed to him the meaning outlined above. In the following sections, I will offer a different reading of Maimonides's statements on intended contradictions and the underlying reasons for them. This reading will cast new light on the meaning and purpose of the contradictions in the Guide and consequently on the philosophical and theological views embedded in that treatise. My reading is based primarily on a close analysis of Maimonides's language and will be presented against the background of the common understanding of Maimonides's interpreters throughout the ages. Further on I will point out the connection between Maimonides's reasons for writing in contradictions and the reasons for his use of a concise, obfuscatory, and concealing style of writing. II In order to explain the nature of the contradictions in the Guide, Maimonides prefaces his work with a systematic discussion in which, as was stated earlier, he lists the causes of contradictions in various writings, providing examples of each by means of literary corpuses or genres, usually from the Jewish tradition. (5) The primary aim of this Introduction is to arrive at the following statement that appears just before its close: "Divergences that are to be found in this Treatise are due to the fifth cause and the seventh. …

Creativity and Life

Abstract: A "return to Bergson" does not only mean a renewed admiration for a great philosopher, but a renewal or an extension of his project today, in relation to the transformations of life and society, in parallel with the transformations of science. Deleuze, Bergsonism "Afterword" to English translation I DARWIN'S FUNDAMENTAL INSIGHT is that evolution consists in "descent with heritable variations that are sifted by natural selection to retain the adaptive changes." (1) Contemporary Darwinian biology tends to be restricted to an exclusively twofold focus: first, the gene, which is conceived as the basic element of biological reality, and hence of life, to the extent that it represents the fundamental unit of heredity; and second, selection, which is conceived as the sole source of order in biological organisms, to the extent that inherited genetic variations leading to a better adaptation of an organism to its environment are selected to survive within this environment. This focus is fundamentally reductionist and functional. The integrity of the organism is sacrificed for genes which, it is argued, simply make organisms as a vehicle for them to exploit varying environments, the better to enhance their own chances of survival. This is the position that has been proposed by Richard Dawkins, in such works as The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. In turn Daniel Dennett has sought, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to demonstrate that natural selection is itself merely a mechanical, algorithmic, process. (2) The position of Dennett and Dawkins represents what Stuart Kauffman has characterized as "the central, settled view of almost all contemporary biologists." (3) Nevertheless, a number of biologists, predominantly working within the emerging sciences of complexity, have begun to challenge this reductionist hegemony. Their challenge consists, on the one hand, in a critique of the viability of the thesis that random genetic mutations allied to selection are the sole contributory factors to evolution. On the other hand, there is an attempt to show that when the evolutionary perspective is shifted from genes in isolation to the organism of which the genes are a constituent part, and in particular to the relations that hold between the parts of the organism, it is possible to avoid the apparent nonviability that undermines the reductionist model. In briefly detailing the twin tracks of this challenge to the reductionist model, I will indicate how the position developed by the complexity theorists bears a striking resemblance to the critique leveled against the mechanist and finalist interpretations of neo-Darwinism by Bergson in Creative Evolution. I will also suggest that one of the most fundamental principles underpinning the complexity theorists' alternative to the reductionist model--namely, the logic of relations--is closely allied to a principle which can sustain a coherent development of the differential explication of Bergsonism advanced by Deleuze. In so doing, I hope to establish that such a relational ontology derived from Bergsonism could offer a metaphysics of the new sciences of life in much the same way as Bergson intended his reading of Einstein in Duration and Simultaneity to offer a metaphysics of special relativity. II At the outset of his most recent book, entitled Investigations, Stuart Kauffman, the preeminent complexity theorist, makes a series of provocative claims. Despite all the remarkable advances made in the field of molecular biology over the last few decades, it remains the case, Kauffman asserts, that "the core of life itself remains shrouded from view.... [W]hat makes a cell alive is still not clear to us." (4) Moreover, 130 years on from the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, we still "do not understand evolution." (5) These profound and interconnected shortcomings may well be a consequence, Kauffman argues, of the fact that the science of life does not fit into the dominant paradigm of enquiry of physics and the other natural sciences. …

The Absence of Analogy

Abstract: I SUPPOSE AN INQUIRER WERE TO ASK what analogy might best be taken to signify The new standard reference work for philosophy as an intellectual discipline today, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Edward Craig and published in 1998, is all but silent on the question proposed Volume I of the ten volume work runs from "Aposteriori" to "Bradwardine," but, on page 211, there is no entry titled "analogy" Even the entry for "Analogies in Science" is no more than a cross-reference: "see Inductive Inference; Models" If we look to the familiar slightly older standard, the superb Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Paul Edwards and published in 1967 by Macmillan, we find that the opening volume too has no entry on analogy simply, but only one titled "Analogy in Theology," (1) whose author informs us that the doctrine of analogy was "developed to satisfy certain systematic demands within Christian theology," which is hardly true if we consider that "theology," discourse about that upon which the changeable universe depends in its being as such, was (along with "first philosophy"), one of Aristotle's two names for what only much later came to be called "metaphysics" (2) Yet, that point aside, it remains that even the 1996 Supplement volume to the Edwards encyclopedia goes from "African Philosophy" (page 18) to "Analytic Feminism" (page 20) with nary a pause As one who grew up intellectually on the Latin writings of Aquinas, the relatively dismissive treatment given analogy as a subject matter of philosophical importance or interest in these standard contemporary works came as a surprise to me I better understood, after having consulted them in this particular, how Kant felt that consulting with Hume had awakened him from a dogmatic slumber For while I well knew that the doctrine of analogy was developed by and after Aquinas in relation to the understanding possible for human beings of the dependency of the physical universe on a source for its existence throughout, an idea among others abbreviated into the term "God," I was also well aware of the fact that "analogy" for Aquinas and after referred to a phenomenon all but universally at play in human discourse, a phenomenon already singled out early in philosophy's long history with Aristotle's identification of being as that which is "said in many ways" In fact, analogy names not so much a category of terms but a process whereby one term modifies the meaning of another term Analogy, in short, is a quintessential part of the human use of signs, so much so, we may say, that it needs to be understood as naming the most distinctive aspect of species-specifically human communication through linguistic signs Analogy, I think I can bring the reader to see, is but a name for the most distinctive aspect of the action of signs ("semiosis," as that action has come to be called) at play in human language Like the notion of sign itself, analogy is one of those philosophical doctrines that developed indigenously within the Latin Age of philosophy's history as the distinctive epoch of European intellectual development between the loss of familiarity with Greek writings after Augustine and the loss of familiarity with Latin writings after Poinsot and Galileo To judge from the status accorded the discussion of analogy within the encyclopedias of philosophy standard in today's English-speaking world, neither the central development of analogy as distinctive of the Latin Age nor the relevance of that development to the understanding of human language as a postmodern development are matters of common understanding today My aim in the present essay is to set the record straight on both counts, and my bet is that the reader who sees the essay through will come away agreeing that no fully self-respecting encyclopedia of philosophy in the future will again have "Analogy" as a blank among the entries of its first volume …

1. Why Political Philosophy

Abstract: In memoriam Seth Benardete WE ALL KNOW THE PICTURE OF THE PHILOSOPHER that Aristophanes drew in the Clouds for both philosophers and nonphilosophers. As he is shown to us in this most famous and thoughtworthy of comedies, the philosopher, consumed by a burning thirst for knowledge, lives for inquiry alone. In choosing his objects, he allows himself neither to be led by patriotic motives or social interests nor to be determined by the distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, useful and harmful. Religious prohibitions frighten him as little as do the power of the majority or the ridicule of the uncomprehending. His attention is fixed on questions of the philosophy of nature and of language, in particular on those of cosmology, biology, and logic. By the keenness of his mental powers, the intransigence of his scientific manner, and the superiority of his power of discourse, he casts a spell on his pupils and gains coworkers, who assist him in his zoological experiments, astronomical and meteorological observations, or geometrical measurements. His self-control and endurance enable him to withstand every deprivation that results from carrying out his scientific projects. By contrast, he lacks moderation. Piety and justice do not count among the qualities on which his reputation is based. Authority and tradition mean nothing to him. In making his innovations, he no more takes into consideration what is time-honored than in his teaching he takes account of the vital needs of the society on whose fringes he places himself along with his friends and pupils. The laboratory in which he pursues his studies is supported for the most part by voluntary donations and owes its existence, moreover, to its relative seclusion and inconspicuousness. It is similar to a bubble that is connected to its surroundings only by a modest exchange of air. However, the precautions taken by the school are so insufficient and the restrictions on entrance so slight that outsiders can be allowed in, if they so desire, without close scrutiny of their fitness and can thereby become witness to the most shocking statements and arguments, such as when the philosopher reveals to a neophyte in almost as many words that the supreme god who is honored in the political community not only does not exist but also does not deserve to be honored, and therefore is not a god. (1) The picture I have briefly sketched of the pre-Socratic philosopher in the Clouds stands with reason at the beginning of my attempt to answer the question concerning what political philosophy is and to what end it is needed. For pre-Socratic philosophy not only precedes the turn to political philosophy historically but at the same time is prior to it in substance. In view of that turn, the Clouds has to be accorded a key role, regardless of whether the philosopher with whose name it is most intimately linked and who embodies the pre-Socratic philosopher in Aristophanes' comedy, that is, regardless of whether Socrates himself made that turn in advanced years or whether the turn from the pre-Socratic Socrates to the Socrates of political philosophy was carried out by Plato and Xenophon. In either case one may justly attribute great importance to the catalytic effect the play had on a process of world-historical significance. (2) Here I am thinking primarily not of Socrates' conviction by the people of Athens in the year 399 B.C., although this event did contribute decisively to the unmistakable signature of political philosophy and although Aristophanes almost literally anticipates both of the later charges in his comedy: Socrates does not believe in the gods in whom the polis believes but instead has introduced new divinities, and he corrupts the youth. (3) Where the historian may above all have the death of Socrates in mind, it is fitting that the philosopher give thought to the birth of political philosophy. …

Kant and Aquinas on the Priority of the Good

Abstract: I THERE ARE SEVERAL STRIKING SIMILARITIES between the ethical views of Kant and Aquinas. Both attach great significance to the role of practical reason in ethical life; each believes that there is a fundamental principle of practical reason from which other principles or laws can be derived; both of them emphasize the importance of law in thinking about ethics; and each wants to claim that certain kinds of actions are good or evil in themselves. Yet in spite of these and other areas of similarity, there is one absolutely fundamental disagreement between them, a disagreement concerning the very foundations of ethics. Aquinas treats the concept of the good as the starting point for moral philosophy, holding that laws and principles are to be derived from it. In more contemporary language, Aquinas espouses the doctrine that the good has priority over the right. Kant, on the other hand, famously rejects that doctrine entirely, insisting instead that the fight must take precedence over the good. Kant offers several arguments in support of this claim. In this article, I wish to focus on the one he expounds in chapter 2 of the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason. (1) I shall refer to it as the nonteleology argument, taking as it does the form of a reductio purporting to demonstrate the unacceptable consequences attendant on assuming the priority of the good. Among the more important of these are that practical reason would have to play a purely instrumental, nonconstitutive role in ethics, and that no actions could be good or bad in themselves. I shall be considering how plausible Kant's argument is when brought to bear against the ethical theory presented by Aquinas. My aim is to show that the Kantian reductio fails to reveal anything incoherent in Aquinas's position. As a result, one can affirm the doctrine of the priority of good understood in the way that Aquinas does without being saddled with any of the unhappy consequences Kant adduces. My interest in this dispute is, however, not purely historical, for the doctrine of the priority of the right has been construed by some contemporary philosophers as a crucial component in any defensible alternative to consequentialism. (2) Philosophers who believe this tend to evidence deep sympathy with the Kantian approach to ethics. If their impression is wrong, as I shall suggest it is, then Aquinas's ethical theory will be revealed as an interesting alternative to the currently dominant, Kantian form of nonconsequentialism. The remainder of the article is arranged as follows. I begin by rehearsing the reductio Kant proposes in the Critique of Practical Reason as a refutation of the doctrine of the priority of the good. I shall present the argument in two versions: the first, in section 2, as it appears in Kant himself, the second, in section 3, in a more encompassing form in which the good is identified in broadly subjective terms. In sections 4-10, I expound the salient aspects of Aquinas's ethics, the major doctrines that, in my judgment, enable him to escape the corollaries Kant infers from affirming the priority of the good. I also indicate here the precise ways in which he is able to do so. In the final section, I close with some brief thoughts about the deeper philosophical roots of this dispute. II Kant's reductio runs as follows. Any concept of the good which is not derived from a prior practical law but is instead treated as the basis of the moral law has to be the concept of something whose attainment promises to bring us pleasure. For it is only in this way that the good could act upon us: the attraction of the anticipated enjoyment would lead us to do whatever would be necessary to secure it. This would mean, of course, that the concept of the immediately good could be applied only to what is accompanied by feelings of gratification, while the concept of that which is immediately evil would have to refer to what is joined by feelings of pain. …

Individual Narrative and Political Character

Abstract: CONSIDER THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRITY: we all aspire to be true to ourselves, to be today what we were yesterday, to fulfill our promises. One way of addressing the need for integrity, the need to be a whole person, is to think about what it would take to make an intelligible narrative out of one's experiences. As Charles Taylor writes, "It has often been remarked that making sense of one's life as a story is ... not an optional extra; that our lives exist also in this space of questions, which only a coherent narrative can answer." (1) What is intelligible about a human life, on this view, is its life story. Taylor's point is intended to seem commonsensical and even commonplace. The extent to which it is true, though, depends on how we take "our lives." Taylor is correct to point out that the modern self is a self that aspires to the unity of a narrative, that sees in a coherent life narrative the realization of the individual's authentic existence. Yet even the possibility of making sense of a life as a single, unified narrative is explicitly denied by Aristotle in his thematic treatment of narrative unity in the Poetics: A narrative (mythos) is not one, as some think, if it is about one. For many, even infinite things happen to one, from some of which there is no one. So even the actions of one are many, from which many no one action is brought about. For that reason it is likely that those poets err who compose a Heracleid, a Theseid, and these sorts of compositions. For they think that since Heracles is [one], it fits for the narrative [about him] to be one. (2) An epic or tragedy, in Aristotle's account, must have a kind of unity that a single life does not. A tragedy, he explains, portrays a single action, by showing us the kind of characters that make this action plausible or intelligible. One way to ensure that one's narrative fails to take a determinate form is to concern oneself with the entire life of an individual. (3) For Aristotle the problem of the unity of a life may be insoluble, since he posits no future state or final judgment to bring our multiple episodes of action and passion to a satisfactory conclusion. Instead, the problem of integrity becomes the problem of the unity of character through a life. The unity of character is the principle subject of political philosophy, and, as we shall see, of rhetoric. The self is to be made one as a self of a certain sort, of a certain character, and character is made in presenting oneself to others as a certain kind of human being. The speaker who would persuade the public must maintain a unity of himself at one time, a unity of thought, word, and deed. (4) He must maintain a unity of himself through time in order to maintain his reputation as an honest and competent speaker, what we in English might call "a man of character." This self is unified in political action, and the problem of presenting oneself as such a unity is described by Aristotle in the Art of Rhetoric as the problem of ethos or character. The narrative conception of the self, by contrast, cannot be separated from the modern valorization of individuality and society at the expense of citizenship and politics. Aristotle's concept of human integrity can be expounded simply by the customary translation of ethos as "character," a translation of one Greek word, seemingly, by another. In its original meaning in Greek, character is an impression, as in the impression of a seal, or of a die on a coin. Just as an impression is a "surface phenomenon," something superficial, so too character is a certain appearance. It is the impression that gives the pieces of metal that share it an equal value or makes all documents so impressed equally valid. Such an impression is a common quality that distinguishes a class at the expense of particularizing or individualizing features. The metaphor of character as an aspect of the self occurs in Greek also, though Liddell, Scott, and Jones give as one meaning of the Greek word in this metaphorical use "type or character (regarded as shared with others) of a thing or person, rarely of an individual nature. …

Singular and Universal in Suárez's Account of Cognition

Abstract: FRANCISCO SUAREZ, THE GREAT JESUIT PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN, has long been recognized as a pivotal figure in the development of Western philosophy. His thought is heavily indebted to the medieval philosophical tradition but also bears striking intimations of key themes in modern thought. (1) In this paper I address one of the most controversial questions related to the thought of Suarez, namely, his relationship to the nominalist tradition. However, I shall do so rather indirectly by focusing not on explicit metaphysical questions but rather on his account of our acquisition of universal concepts and its foundation in reality. By placing questions about the knowledge of singular and universal at the center of the discussion, I hope to shed new light on his account of the objectivity that we can have in our knowledge. Suarez is explicit that the intellect first forms a "proper" and "distinct" concept of the singular and only subsequently forms a concept of the universal. While this position clearly represents a departure from one strand of later medieval thought, for example, that of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, it is neither original with nor unique to Suarez. Indeed, many of his fellow Jesuit philosophers held the same view as did several earlier thinkers beginning in the thirteenth century. However, I think it is safe to say that the most famous proponent of the view that our intellect first knows singulars and knows them directly and distinctly is William of Ockham. (2) Indeed, this similarity between Ockham and Suarez has led some scholars to link the two authors together. (3) Now, it is not only concerning this issue of the priority of the knowledge of the singular that scholars have detected similarities between Suarez and Ockham. Both thinkers share a conviction that all the items in the world are singulars and that commonality is not a property of such items but is dependent on some activity of the mind. (4) As a result of this commitment to the priority of concrete individuals both authors commonly are classified as nominalists. This linking together of Suarez and Ockham is a tricky issue revolving around one's attitude toward nominalism as an ontological program and, more fundamentally, a presupposition that there is some noncontroversial definition of nominalism. In fact, the taxonomy of medieval positions on universals is such that Ockham might be called most accurately a "nominalistic realist." (5) While this may be a precise term for Ockham's position, it also suggests that the realist/ nominalist contrast is less than helpful as shorthand for a thinker's position on the question of the objectivity of our universal concepts. Instead, what is necessary is a clear exposition of the texts within the context of an author's problematic. In this paper I shall discuss the problematic present in Suarez's discussion of intellectual knowledge. It is a familiar enough problematic in some ways insofar as it is dependent on prior medieval discussions for both its central issues and its technical terminology, but in other ways it is, as I show, rather distinctive. It consists of three components: a metaphysical theory about the nature of items existing in the world, a theory of the soul and its relation to the body, and a theory of cognition by which humans come to know the world. These three components interrelate in Suarez's thought in such a way that rejection of any of the components is sufficient for the entire theory to collapse. However, if one accepts the three components, the theory fits together quite well and provides an account of our knowledge that ensures both its objectivity and certainty. In what follows I shall begin with a discussion of basic principles of cognition. In particular I shall show why it is that Suarez believes that we first and properly know singulars prior to knowing universals. It turns out that his commitment to this account of knowledge is grounded by a theory about the powers of the soul, and I shall explore several features of his view on the soul and its powers. …

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002). (in Memoriam)

Abstract: On March 14, 2002, Hans-Georg Gadamer died in Heidelberg, the city that feted him on his one hundredth birthday two years earlier and the site of the university where he was active for over forty years, from the time he succeeded to Karl Jaspers's chair in 1949 until long after formal retirement in 1968. Born in Marburg on February 11, 1900, the son of a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, Gadamer grew up in Breslau (today: Wroclaw). After a year at the University of Breslau where he was introduced to neo-Kantian transcendental philosophy by Richard Honigswald, Gadamer transferred to Marburg. At Marburg he experienced the ferment of current existentialist and phenomenological ideas, affecting even formerly idealistic and systematic thinkers like Nicolai Hartmann and Paul Natorp, under whom Gadamer completed his dissertation on Plato, Das Wesen der Lust nach den platonischen Dialogen [The Essence of Pleasure according to the Platonic Dialogues], in 1922. The following year he took part in a seminar on the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, conducted in Freiburg by Heidegger. Though Gadamer would not embrace what he regarded as the theological remnants in Heidegger's thinking or its counterpart, the endorsement of Nietzsche's nihilistic prognoses, Heidegger's influence upon him would prove to be profound. From Heidegger he learned, as he himself put it, "the fundamental experience in hermeneutics," namely, the experience of understanding the philosophical tradition's questions as real questions and, indeed, in such a way that they become our own questions. Heidegger's at once appreciative and critical stance toward Greek philosophy also presented challenges that Gadamer would endeavor to take up. A year after passing the state examination for classical philology in 1927, he submitted his habilitation, the basis for his first book, Platos dialektische Ethik. Phanomenologische Interpretationen zum > [Plato's Dialectical Ethics: Phenomenological Interpretations of Plato's "Philebus"] (1931). In the 1930s at Marburg, as an adjunct professor (to make a rough American parallel to the German position of Dozent), Gadamer continued his study of Plato, especially Plato's conceptions of mathematics and of the state. For reasons of self-preservation, Gadamer tells us, he largely abandoned the latter studies, with the exception of an interpretation of the Republic in the 1934 essay, "Plato and the Poets," where he argues that the Platonic ideal state has more in common with a Swiftian utopia than political science. ("Platos Staat der Erziehung" [Plato's Educational State], a 1942 piece for a volume on classical philology, is a continuation of the 1934 essay.) The only monograph that appeared during these years of attempting to behave in a politically unobtrusive way--as he put it--was a study of the concept of power in Herder's historical thinking, Volk und Geschichte im Denken Herders [People and History in the Thinking of Herder] (1942). In 1937 Gadamer attained the rank of professor at Marburg, followed a year later by the offer of a chair in classical philology at Halle, and acceptance of a position as full professor at the University of Leipzig in 1939. After the war Gadamer served as rector at the University of Leipzig (1946-47), before moving to Frankfurt (1947-49) and finally Heidelberg. In 1953, together with Helmut Kuhn, he founded a widely read journal, Philosophische Rundschau. Gadamer took particular pride in his dedication to teaching throughout his career. Not surprisingly, the list of his students reads like a "Who's Who" of German academic philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century, a list that includes such luminaries as Walter Schulz, Karlheinz Volkmann-Schluck, Dieter Henrich, Rudiger Bubner, Heinz Kimmerle, Wolfgang Wieland, and Reiner Wiehl (to name only a few). From the very outset of his career, Gadamer remained convinced that there is a truth in art and the humanities that, while not capable of complete conceptualization, also does not fall prey to a historical relativism as conceptual truth claims do. …

Principia Philosophiae: On the Nature of Philosophical Principles

Abstract: I FOR PLATO, PRINCIPLES WERE THE ROOT-SOURCE (archai) of being or of knowledge. (1) For Aristotle, they were the "first cause" of being, of becoming, or of being known (hothen he estin he gignetai he gignosketai). (2) Much the same conception is at issue in Thomas of Aquinas, for whom a principle (principium) was something primary in the being of a thing, or in its becoming, or in knowledge of it (quod est primum aut in esse rei ... aut in fieri rei, ... aut in rei cognitione). (3) As standard philosophical usage has evolved in the light of these ideas, a principle is as something basic--as a fundamentum (Latin) or arche (Greek). It either admits no proof (is axiomatic) or it needs not proof (is obvious and self-evident). Moreover, it must be abstract by way of applying to a broad range of cases. Thus, all concerned seem agreed that principles are fundamental generalities governing our understanding of the modus operandi of some knowledge-accessible domain. Against this background, a specifically philosophical principle, in the sense of the term that is to be at issue here, is a general instruction for cogent philosophizing, a maxim that lays down a methodological rule for philosophical practice. It is not a philosophical thesis or doctrine that purports to answer to some substantive philosophical question. Instead, it is a rule of practice that specifies a modus operandi, a way of proceeding in the course of philosophizing. A methodological principle of this sort is thus to philosophy what a maxim like "always keep your promises" is to morality. It represents a guideline to be followed if error is to be avoided. Such methodological principles are general rules of procedure, flamed in terms of maxims that prescribe the appropriateness or inappropriateness of different ways of proceeding in philosophizing. (4) Scientific theorists from G. W. Leibniz to Kurt Godel have maintained that a proper understanding of nature requires knowing not just its laws but also the underlying principles that characterize the operation of these laws and that such progress consists not just in having more laws but in extending our knowledge of the higher principles at issue. Now be this insistence on the primacy of principles as it may in the context of scientific knowledge, there is certainly good reason to think it correct in philosophy. Here our understanding clearly hinges not simply on the instruction of theses and doctrines, but on grasping the underlying principles within whose frame of reference such substantive dealings are articulated in the first place. To be sure, within philosophy one of course encounters a profusion of principles. In ethics there is the "principle of utility" holding that the rightness of an action lies in its capacity to conduce to the greatest good of the greatest number, or in natural philosophy we have the "principle of causality" holding that every event has a cause, or in epistemology the "principle of truth" that only what is true can be said to be known to someone: ([??]x)Kxp [right arrow] p. But such principles are principles in philosophy not principles of philosophy, that is, they are not procedural principles of philosophizing of the sort that concern us here. (5) Philosophical principles have long played a role in this discipline. Let us consider some examples, duly grouped into three categories according as the issue concerned is one of informative adequacy, rational cogency, or rational economy. II Principles of Informative Adequacy. The principles arising under this rubric address the problem of providing adequate information--of facilitating the business of understanding and enabling us to get a secure cognitive grip on the issues at hand. (1) Never bar the path of inquiry (C. S. Peirce). Peirce envisioned a correlative range of application for this principle which turns on the following line of thought: Never adopt a methodological stance that would systematically prevent the discovery of a certain fact if it should turn out to be true. …

If Everything Can Not-Be There Would Be Nothing: Another Look at the Third Way

Abstract: IN A DISCUSSION OF ARGUMENTS concerning the existence of God, James Ross comments that we know that the premises of such arguments "are infinitely analysable, that they can be subject to an illimitable series of questions and that every question can be answered in more than one way." (1) The record of disputes over the "third way" of Aquinas certainly confirms these statements. Those disputes revolve around issues about which questions are continually raised in spite of strenuous attempts made at settling them. An issue often raised on the contemporary scene is the logically simple and philosophically very serious claim that the third way commits a version of the fallacy of composition or a quantifier shift that undermines the legitimacy of the argument. I believe that many defenses of the argument against this objection, even though they draw on important historical and conceptual resources, do not succeed. But I also believe that the argument does not succumb to this objection. I want to try to find the proper balance between historical and philosophical considerations in discussing why this is so. I want to take account of the exact content of the third way so as to comment on the argument that Aquinas in fact does present. I also want to focus on this argument as one that is of interest for overarching philosophical reasons. Aquinas achieves something of very basic and enduring philosophical importance in the third way. It is important that a discussion that undertakes to defend the argument against a logically simple but potentially damning objection show how this is the case. On at least three occasions Aquinas presents arguments concerning the existence of God that one can call arguments from contingency. In chapter 4 of the De Ente et Essentia he argues that the being of everything whose nature or quiddity is distinct from its being must follow from an extrinsic principle, and that "because everything that exists through another is reduced to that which exists through itself as to its first cause, there must be a reality that is the cause of being for all other things, because it is pure being." (2) This argument belongs to a discussion of separate substances. Aquinas says that if the conclusion of the argument did not hold, then "we would go on to an infinity of causes, for everything that is not pure being has a cause of its being," (3) suggesting that going on to infinity is impermissible given the specific content of this argument. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, in a discussion of God as eternal, Aquinas presents an argument concerning the existence of God that proceeds from things that, because they are subject to generation and corruption, can be and also can not-be. He says of any such thing that, "since it is equally related to two contraries, namely being and non-being, it must be owing to some cause that being accrues to it." (4) We must hold that the cause in question is ultimately a necessary being since "as we have proved by the reasoning of Aristotle, one cannot proceed to infinity among causes." (5) We must hold that there is a necessary being that is first and that is necessary through itself because one "cannot proceed to infinity among necessary beings the cause of whose necessity lies in an outside source." (6) Each of these is clearly a different argument from the other. The third way differs from both of these arguments, although it resembles more closely the argument in the Summa Contra Gentiles. I reconstruct the argument of the third way as follows. (7) 1. We find among things some that both can be and can not-be (sunt possibilia esse et non esse). 2. These are things that come into being (generari) and pass out of being (corrumpi) and as a consequence both can be and can not-be. 3. It is impossible for everything to be like this. 3.1. Something that can not-be at some time (quandoque) does not exist. …