scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2004"



Journal Article
TL;DR: In the last part of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith put his theory in a class with those of his contemporaries Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, namely, the systems that make sentiments the principle of approbation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: IN THE LAST PART of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, (1) Adam Smith puts his theory in a class with those of his contemporaries Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, namely, the systems that make sentiments the principle of approbation. (2) Despite recognizing important differences with both of them, he thinks that since he has placed the origin of moral sentiments in sympathy, and in particular the fact that we are able to enter into the motives of the agent and get pleasure from finding them appropriate (proportionate) to their cause, sentiments are the foundation of his theory of morals. Many of Smith's commentators, in fact almost all of the most important studies over the last few years, reaffirm the author's self-description. (3) However, my aim in this paper is to challenge this view by showing that Smith's system can also be plausibly seen as a theory of practical reasoning, and in some important aspects very similar to Aristotelian ethics. (4) Surprisingly few scholars have seen this parallel. Laurence Berns, Samuel Fleischacker, Charles Griswold, and Gloria Vivenza are the latest exceptions, (5) identifying several points of coincidence between Adam Smith and Aristotle's ethics. None of them, however, has tied all these similarities under a unified interpretation, such as the one I propose here: The basic analogy between these theories, and the source of those particular coincidences, is the operation (implicit in TMS) of practical reason. Moreover, and besides the common elements with Aristotle's ethics, Smith's reconstruction of practical reason simultaneously announces some of the main features of modern accounts of ethics, such as impartiality and universality as preconditions of moral judgment. The integration of these ancient and modern elements in a single coherent theory allows Smith's TMS to overcome the insufficiencies and paradoxes of both these traditions, (6) and it constitutes one of the most interesting and challenging proposals of modern ethics. The first obvious question to be raised, therefore, is why Smith and his commentators underestimate the role played by reason in this system. Although this will not be my topic, I would like to suggest that the problem is mainly a "wrong labeling" due, it seems, to historical and contextual reasons. In Smith's time the concept of practical reason was in complete disuse until Kant rehabilitated it, in a totally different form, at the end of the century. The classical Aristotelian concept of practical reason, though, had to wait until the twentieth century for its vindication. (7) Moreover, one of Smith's main motivations for articulating his theory, just like Hutcheson and Hume, was to refute Hobbes's and Mandeville's egoistic ethics. Therefore, discarding medieval theological systems and the implausible (for them) rationalistic theories of some of their modern predecessors (the Cambridge Platonists), sentiments were the natural alternative for these three philosophers, especially since they aimed to found morality on a naturalistic basis, rejecting metaphysical explanations. Hutcheson and Hume accomplished their goal, proposing two different sentimentalist accounts of ethics. Smith, however, mainly through the introduction of the supposed impartial spectator, (8) ended up constructing a system of practical reason. This paper will start by showing why the principle of approbation in TMS is neither theoretical reason nor sentiments, or, in other words, why we should reject both the rationalistic and the sentimentalist interpretation of Smith's ethics. In the second and third sections I will give a brief account of the theoretical framework of my argument: the general structure of the human faculty of practical reason (section 2), and three of its Aristotelian features that I want to highlight (section 3). The main thrust of my argument comes in section 4, where I interpret TMS as a system of practical reason, identifying the topics which I believe give enough evidence to support my thesis. …

27 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a formalization of Thomas Aquinas's account of the nature of human beings for the purpose of comparing it with other accounts in both the history of philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy.
Abstract: I IN THIS PAPER, I PROVIDE A FORMULATION of Thomas Aquinas's account of the nature of human beings for the purpose of comparing it with other accounts in both the history of philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy. (1) I discuss how his apparently dualistic understanding of the relationship between soul and body yields the conclusion that a human being exists as a unified substance composed of a rational soul informing, that is, serving as the specific organizing principle of, a physical body. I further address the issue of Aquinas's contention that a human rational soul can exist without being united to a body and show how this ability of a human soul. (2) does not contradict the thesis that a human being exists naturally as embodied. I will also respond to two related questions. First, what accounts for the individuation of human beings as distinct members of the human species? Second, what is the principle of identity by which a human being persists through time and change? II According to Aquinas, a human being is a person. Aquinas adopts the definition of person developed by Boethius: "an individual substance of a rational nature." (3) An example of an individual substance (4) is Bill Clinton. As an individual substance, Bill Clinton can be contrasted with humanity, which is not an individual substance, but is the nature in which many individual substances--including Bill Clinton, William Shakespeare, and myself--share. Being of a rational nature, that is, having an intellective mind, distinguishes human beings from other material substances: The form and species of a natural thing are known through their proper operations. Now the proper operation of a human being, insofar as he is a human being, is to understand and use reason. Hence the principle of this operation, namely the intellect, must be that by which a human being is categorized by species. (5) In general, a person is a being that exists on its own with a specific nature, shared with other beings of its kind, to be rational. (6) A human being is not simply a person, however. In addition to being rational, a human being is a sensitive, living, and corporeal substance. Human beings have a material nature: It belongs per se to a human being that there be found in him a rational soul and a body composed of the four elements. So without these parts a human being cannot be understood, and they must be placed in the definition of a human being; so they are parts of the species and form. (7) Aquinas further distinguishes human beings--from other types of persons--as rational animals: Animal indeed is predicated of a human being per se, and similarly rational of animal. Hence this expression, rational animal, is the definition of a human being. (8) Aquinas refers to human beings as essentially animal because, through their material bodies, human beings share certain essential qualities with other members of the animal genus. The primary exemplification of such similarity is the capacity for sense perception. A human body, though, is unique among other kinds of animal bodies in that it is organized to support not only the capacity for sense perception but also the capacity for rational thought. The disposition of a human body is determined by its having a rational soul as its substantial form. As a substantial form, a human rational soul is responsible for (1) the esse (being) of a human being, (2) the actualization of the matter composing a human being, and (3) the unity of existence and activity in a human being. (9) A human soul and the material body of which it is the substantial form are not two separately existing substances. A substantial form is the actualization of a material body. Aquinas asserts, Body and soul are not two actually existing substances, but from these two is made one actually existing substance. …

14 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that the teleology of De anima 2.9 does not imply a strong connection between the notion of "for the sake of which" and motion or change.
Abstract: IN GENERATION AND CORRUPTION 2.9, Aristotle sets out to give an account of "how many and what are the principles of all coming to be are like." (1) In doing so, he situates the cause "for the sake of which," [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], within a causal nexus familiar to readers of Physics 2. It is constituted by the end--that is, the form produced--by the matter in which it is produced, and by the agent that produces it. In Meteorology 4.12, moreover, he explains that form itself must be understood in terms of the species-typical activities that follow upon its presence and for the sake of which the composite substance exists. He thus recognizes two sorts of ends, form and activity, of which the latter seems to be ultimate. Although form is the immediate end of coming to be, a composite substance exists in the last analysis for the sake of its activity. In the following pages, I argue that the foregoing statements implicitly contain a simple yet complete account of Aristotle's teleology. In De anima 2.1, Aristotle states that the term "actuality" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) signifies both form, or first actuality, and activity, or second actuality. (2) Form is the actuality of a natural body, in other words, but this actuality brings with it a capacity for further actuality--that is, for activity of a certain kind. If, however, both form and activity are ends, then that for the sake of which seems to coincide perfectly with actuality. This conclusion entails that the roots of Aristotle's teleology are not bound up with his biology, as several contemporary writers have suggested. (3) They are not even to be found in his understanding of nature in general, but rather in his first philosophy or metaphysics. Although I am not primarily concerned with the theological dimensions of Aristotle's teleology, the question of God will appear early in the following discussion and reappear several times, reminding us of the need for a properly metaphysical analysis. As Metaphysics 6.1 tells us, it is the existence of an immovable substance or substances that distinguishes the science of nature from first philosophy. (4) Indeed, Aristotle's theological commitments reveal that an accurate account of his teleology cannot depend on the notion of change, even change for the sake of an end. As we shall see in a moment, he himself highlights the problematic relation between that for the sake of which and change when he asks, in the Metaphysics, how final causality can pertain to unchanging substances such as God. Our immediate point of departure, however, is the claim in Physics 2.2 that every outcome of a continuous change, provided that it be "what is best," is an end. In section 1, after briefly introducing this text, I lay out a serious challenge that any interpreter must face. This is Aristotle's suggestion, in the theological aporia just mentioned and in its later resolution, that there cannot be a strong, general connection between [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and motion or change. This section concludes with a brief clarification of Aristotle's use of the term "motion" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as opposed to "change" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the text from Physics 2.2. In section 2, I begin to address the challenge formulated in section one by showing that theology aside, Aristotle's account of natural substances precludes any account of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in terms of motion. This is because every composite substance is, simply as such, for the sake of its form. Then, having considered the inadequacy of motion as a context for understanding Aristotle's teleology, we shall turn to the more basic, metaphysical concept of actuality. It is in terms of actuality, I shall argue, that Aristotle provides a unified account of both being for the sake of an end, which need not involve motion, and the more familiar coming to be or change for the sake of an end, which obviously does. …

12 citations



Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that there is a connection between Darwin and Thomists through Darwin's use of the notion of secondary causes in his early essays and The Origin of Species.
Abstract: AT FIRST SIGHT IT WOULD SEEM INCONGRUOUS, even an oxymoron, to juxtapose the names of Charles Darwin and Thomas Aquinas. Darwin was a biologist of the nineteenth century whose theory of evolution demanded the mutability of natural species. Thomas Aquinas, the father of Thomism, was a theologian and philosopher of the thirteenth century who held that forms in themselves and the species they constitute are immutable. (1) Six centuries separated Darwin and Aquinas, centuries that witnessed the decline of Thomism and scholasticism in general, with Descartes's rejection of substantial forms (except in humans) and the advent of English empiricism and the positivism of Auguste Comte. Living in an antischolastic environment and convinced of the mutability of species, it would seem unlikely that Darwin would have any connection with Aquinas. This paper aims to show that there is a connection, though indirect, between Darwin and Thomists through Darwin's use of the notion of secondary causes in his early essays and The Origin of Species. The notion of secondary causes has a long history in medieval philosophy, and it plays an important role in Thomistic philosophy, in particular appealing to the notion of secondary causality and to the principle that it is better for God the creator to do by means of secondary causes what he can do by himself. Darwin himself accepts this principle when he contends that it is better that the creator produce species by secondary causes rather than by special creation. This essay examines Darwin's and the Thomists' understandings of the notion of secondary causes and their use of the principle, and it suggests that it was mainly through the Spanish Thomist Francisco Suarez that the notion of secondary causes and the allied principle were brought to the attention of Darwin and his circle of naturalists. At the same time the paper reveals an important side of Darwinism that is often neglected in popular accounts. The essay points out Darwin's interest in philosophy, even in metaphysics, and their influence on his scientific methodology and the theory of evolution. I Darwin. Throughout The Origin of Species Charles Darwin marshals evidence from biology, geology, and other sciences in support of his theory of evolution as "descent with modification," according to the law of natural selection. (2) In concluding his book, he acknowledges that some of the most eminent authors disagree with him on the origin of species and are "fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created." (3) No doubt Darwin had in mind contemporary naturalists like Richard Owen, Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir John Herschel. (4) Since these Christians and others at the time were not convinced by his scientific evidence and regarded evolution as incompatible with their religious beliefs, Darwin tried to persuade them to accept the evolution of species rather than their independent creation by appealing to the belief in a creator and the production of things by means of secondary causes: To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. (5) Darwin here contends that no special intervention of the creator is necessary to explain an individual's birth and death; these are accounted for by secondary causes according to the laws of nature. So too, in accordance with these laws (which include the laws of the struggle for life and natural selection), (6) the production and extinction of all individuals, past and present, can be more adequately explained by secondary causes than by special creation. …

9 citations



Journal Article
TL;DR: The notion of "connatural knowledge" was introduced by Thomas Aquinas as mentioned in this paper, who argued that there are two different ways to attain correct judgment: by perfect use of reason and by a kind of connaturality with the matter about which one has to judge.
Abstract: THOMAS AQUINAS INSISTS that there are two different ways to attain correct judgment. One is by way of "perfect use of reason," and another is by way of "connaturality" (connaturalitas): Wisdom denotes a certain rectitude of judgment according to the Divine ideas. Now rectitude of judgment is twofold: first, on account of perfect use of reason, secondly, on account of a kind of connaturality with the matter about which one has to judge. Thus, about matters of chastity, a man who has learnt the science of morals judges rightly through inquiry by reason, while he who has the habit of chastity judges rightly of such matters by a kind of connaturality. Accordingly it belongs to the wisdom that is an intellectual virtue to form a right judgment about divine things through inquiry by reason, but it belongs to wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit to form a right judgment about them on account of a kind of connaturality with them: thus Dionysius says, in Chapter Two of On the Divine Names, that Hierotheus is perfect in divine things, for he not only learns, but he also receives divine things. Now this sympathy or connaturality for divine things is the result of charity, which unites us to God, according to 1 Cor. vi. 17: He who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit. (1) Aquinas refers to the latter mode of cognition, that is, that by connaturality, by different names. Sometimes he calls it "judgment by inclination" (2) and other times "affective cognition" (cognitio affectiva) (3) or "experiential cognition" (cognitio experimentalis). (4) "Cognition" (cognitio) in Aquinas is a generic notion applicable to different cognitive activities and their results, comprising both apperehension and judgment. Based on the text quoted above, scholars often call this mode of cognition "connatural knowledge." As observed in the text, connatural knowledge is, to be exact, "judgment by connaturality." The modes of this cognition are twofold: (i) "He who has the habit of chastity judges rightly of such matters [of chastity] by a kind of connaturality." (5) (ii) "Because where there is the greater charity, there is the more desire; and desire in a certain degree makes the one desiring apt and prepared to receive the object desired. Hence he who possesses the more charity, will see God the more perfectly, and will be the more beatified." (6) These texts tell us that the virtues of the cognizer such as chastity (which is, according to Aquinas, a part of temperance, (7) namely one of the moral virtues) and charity (which is one of the theological virtues (8)) play a crucial role in our attainment of moral and religious cognition; only those who have particular virtues have dispositions for cognition of the things related to the virtues. Thanks to the dispositions, one can come to know these things rightly and more perfectly. Whether the cognizer has a connaturality brought by some virtue makes a difference in the mode of his cognition and, furthermore, according to Aquinas's account (9) (which I will explain later), this connaturality is a sort of love (amor). He also says that love brings desire (desiderium) to the thing loved and also joy (gaudium) when desire is fulfilled. (10) Moreover, connatural knowledge can be characterized as noninferential since it is contrasted with "the perfect use of reason" or "inquiry by reason." Aquinas distinguishes "reason" in the strict sense from "intellect" in its function of inference. (11) These features, namely, particularity, affectivity, and noninferentiality, are what virtue epistemology (12) has been recently trying to defend as components of human knowledge. Indeed, Linda Zagzebski, one of the major virtue epistemologists, pays much attention to Aquinas's notion of prudence (prudentia) (3) as well as to Aristotle's practical wisdom (phronesis) in her book Virtues of the Mind. …

8 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore some of the systematic connections between the concepts of identity, sameness, and difference in the dialogues of Plato and argue that it is the need to incorporate principles of identity and difference into the soul's very fabric that leads to the existence of separate forms.
Abstract: AMONG THE CONCEPTS CENTRAL to Plato's metaphysical vision are those of identity, sameness, and difference. For example, it is on the basis of a claim about putative cases of sameness among different things that Plato postulates the existence of separate forms. It is owing to the apparent sameness between instances of forms and the forms themselves that Plato is compelled somehow to take account of potentially destructive, vicious infinite regress arguments. Further, in reflecting on the forms and their relations among themselves, it is their self-identity that seems to be threatened or at least compromised. In providing an account of the possibility of cognition in Timaeus, Plato evidently sees the need to incorporate principles of identity and difference into the soul's very fabric. In this paper, I propose to explore some of the systematic connections between these concepts. Translators have sometimes obscured the fact that there are such connections. The Greek terms [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) are variously rendered, often in ways that obscure the metaphysics. For example, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] is most commonly rendered in English as "same," which, predictably, leads [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] to be translated as "like" or "similar." This has suggested to some that if two things are "like" or "similar," then they are not "the same." But "like" and "similar" are not, as I shall show, well-formed or perspicuous metaphysical concepts. There is no justification for foisting them on Plato; rendering the terms thus often leads scholars to miss the force of Plato's arguments. In addition, translating [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] as "same" threatens to trivialize a fundamental concept in Plato, leading to complaints that to say that something is "the same as itself" is to say nothing at all. Let us begin with the quasi-technical use of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]. (1) Consider this passage, part of the second regress argument in Parmenides: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] Mary Louise Gill, like most other English translators, translates this line: "But if like things are like by partaking of something, won't that be the form itself?" (3) The justification for "like things" is clear enough. When two things are large, to take the previous example in the dialogue, Socrates wants to posit a single form of Largeness. (4) The implication of the meaning of "like things" is that the things are like, in this case, large, with respect to the property of largeness. One avoids saying that the like things are "the same" because if there are two things, they cannot be, simply, the same. Yet they clearly are like, according to this way of thinking, because they have the identical property. If this were not so, that is, if two things were like because they each had a property that was "like" the other, then we could ask about what it is that makes each property like the other. Presumably, this would be because they are the same in some respect. In short, avoidance of a vicious infinite regress requires that likeness be functionally related to sameness. It requires that there be a fundamental sameness in virtue of which any claim about likeness can be made. Accordingly, it is sameness not likeness that needs to do all the work in the argument that is supposed to lead to the postulation of separate forms. It is owing to the fact that, say, one "largeness" in one thing is the same as another "largeness" in another that a form of Largeness is posited in the first place. (5) If it were only likeness and not sameness that is the fundamental datum, then, since anything can be held to be like anything else in some respect, it would be entirely opaque what the forms are that are supposed to explain this likeness. If we insist on the logical priority of the concept of sameness to the concept of likeness in the argument, we can see why Socrates' attempt to avoid the first regress argument in Parmenides, the so-called third man argument, by insisting that instances of forms are [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII. …

8 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: In the Transcendental Deduction in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, the B Deduction), a distinctive kind of transcendental synthesis has two subspecies: synthesis intellectualis (intellectual synthesis) and synthesis speciosa (figurative synthesis).
Abstract: KANT'S GOAL IN THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION was to demonstrate that the categories are applicable to objects of sensible intuition He carried out this task by disclosing the necessity of a transcendental synthesis In the Transcendental Deduction in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, the B Deduction) transcendental synthesis has two subspecies: synthesis intellectualis (intellectual synthesis) and synthesis speciosa (figurative synthesis) (1) The distinction between the two types of transcendental synthesis is also mirrored in the structure of the proof of the B Deduction (2) As several commentators have noted, the B Deduction in fact contains two parts (3) Each part seems to provide an account of a distinctive kind of transcendental synthesis The first part ([subsection] 15-21) provides an account of intellectual synthesis while the second part (24-26) provides an account of figurative synthesis (4) The importance of figurative synthesis to Kant's theory is widely recognized Nevertheless, this notion is notoriously obscure It seems as though Kant's text does not clearly specify why figurative synthesis is required A preliminary explication of figurative synthesis appears in [section] 24 Kant's first step there is to recapitulate the results of the first part of the B Deduction According to Kant, the synthesis established there is "purely intellectual" (5) Intellectual synthesis is a synthesis by means of which the categories are "related through the mere understanding to objects of intuition in general, without it being determined whether this intuition is our own or some other but still sensible one" (6) Intellectual synthesis apparently contains a gap that concerns the applicability of the categories to objects of intuition By means of this synthesis "no determined object is yet cognized" (7) But the nature of this gap is not clear This gap seems to be related to a distinction between "objects of intuition" and "objects of intuition in general" However, if "in general" means "all," then given that the first part of the B Deduction established the applicability of the categories to objects of intuition in general, it established the applicability of the categories to all objects of intuition, (8) In this case, why is the second part of the B Deduction indispensable for an account of the applicability of the categories to objects of intuition? One way out of this difficulty is to claim that in "in general" conveys in this context some negative implications that concern the possibility of knowing that the categories are applicable to objects of sensible intuition But Kant's text provides no clue as to what these negative implications might be One might try to point out these negative implications by analyzing the passage that introduces figurative synthesis: But since in us a certain form of sensible intuition a priori is fundamental, which rests on the receptivity of the capacity for representation (sensibility), the understanding, as spontaneity, can determine the manifold of given representations in accord with the synthetic unity of apperception, and thus think a priori synthetic unity of the apperception of the manifold of sensible intuition, as the condition under which all objects of our (human) intuition must necessarily stand, through which then the categories, as mere forms of thought, acquire objective reality, ie, application to objects that can be given to us in intuition, but only as appearances; for of these alone are we capable of intuition a priori This synthesis of the manifold of sensible intuition, which is possible and necessary a priori, can be called figurative synthesis (synthesis speciosa), as distinct from that which would be thought in the mere category in regard to the manifold of an intuition in general, and which is called combination of the understanding (synthesis intellectualis); both are transcendental, not merely because they themselves proceed a priori but also because they ground the possibility of other cognition a priori …

8 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: Aristotelian argument for nous poietikos can be found in the third book of the De anima as mentioned in this paper, where the potentiality-actuality doctrine of the productive or active intellect is discussed.
Abstract: DESPITE THE WELL-KNOWN historical significance of Aristotle's doctrine of the productive or active intellect (the nous poietikos or intellectus agens) it is not unusual to find contemporary discussions treating the doctrine as an excrescence on the text of the De anima, a work, it is frequently nowadays supposed, in which an otherwise securely naturalistic epistemology and rational psychology are developed Although the doctrine of the intellectus agens is found only in one place in Aristotle's extant texts, the third book of the De anima, I shall nonetheless maintain that an argument can be ferreted out of Aristotle's discussion that establishes that the doctrine can be seen to follow from principles that are fundamental to Aristotle's thought I shall call this an "Aristotelian" argument for nous poietikos because of the fact that the argument obviously is not found, as I state it, on the surface of Aristotle's text I claim that there is a significant sense in which it is there, but that one must dig for it or, as I just put it, ferret it out In a schematic form, the Aristotelian argument goes as follows: (1) (The potentiality-actuality doctrine) There must be, in the individual person, an intellective soul (psuche) that manifests an acquired state, the hexis or developed potentiality for knowing (2) (The causal principle) The preceding hexis of passive or receptive intellective psuche must be brought to full occurrent actualization (energeia, second entelechy) by something that already possesses this full actuality (3) (Epistemic nonnaturalism thesis) The actualizing cause cannot be external (exothen) to the intellect In particular, it cannot be resident in the knowing subject's natural environment; in the way, for example, that sensible forms are resident in corporeal objects in the natural environment of the sensing subject (4) The actualizing cause must be either external to intellective soul or internal to intellective soul (5) (Disjunctive syllogism) It follows that there must be a fully actualized state (identified by Aristotle as nous poietikos) that is "in the soul" (en tei psuchei) and causes the fully actualized, occurrent knowing of a human knower (1) While the principles on which this argument depends are deeply embedded in Aristotle's thought, its conclusion may appear to be paradoxical That is, the conclusion may seem to suggest that the knowledge (in the dispositional sense) that is gained by the knowing subject by his interaction with the natural world (as described, for example, in the Posterior Analytics) and that is subsequently rendered occurrent in the actual thinking of the knowing subject somehow already preexists in full actuality in that knowing subject This is the problem of the title of this essay Later in this essay I suggest that there are two rather obvious strategies for attempting to mitigate this problem One strategy is to distance nous poietikos (which is identified with fully actualized, occurrent knowledge/knowing) from the individual knowing subject in such a way that, while it is a knowing intellect (nous poietikos) that is the cause of the occurrent knowing of the human knower, the human knower is not already somehow in possession of the knowledge the acquisition of which Aristotle sets out to explain The second strategy is to transform the full actuality identified with nous poietikos into something other than fully actualized, occurrent knowing/knowledge but to keep that something other as a cause of the human knower's occurrent knowing within the soul of the individual knower I shall then quite briefly consider some developments of the doctrine of the intellectus agens in later ancient, medieval, and renaissance thought as illustrations of these two strategies First, however, I attempt to flesh in some of the details of the argument itself My first premise is the potentiality-actuality doctrine: There must be, in the individual person, an intellective psuche that manifests an acquired hexis (or habitus, in the later scholastic tradition), which is the developed potentiality for knowing …

Journal Article
Abstract: THERE ARE ANY NUMBER OF REASONS for wanting to know what Aristotle means by "good" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]). For students of Aristotle, understanding his conception of goodness would provide an authentic Nicomachean metaethics, so to speak, a clearer view of his natural teleology, and a great deal of help in making sense of his cosmology and his metaphysics, especially the theological bits. For the less historically minded, the rebirth of virtue ethics makes the relation between nature and norm an important problem, with implications not only for ethics proper but also for social philosophy and the foundations of the social sciences. Epistemology and the philosophy of science finally have begun to take questions of value more seriously, and therefore they ought also to be interested in possible connections between knowledge of nature and the apprehension of value. Aristotle's conception of goodness is relevant to all these questions. In the following pages I shall sketch, therefore, as concisely as possible while staying close to the texts, the most prominent outlines of Aristotle's understanding of goodness. My conclusion is that goodness for Aristotle is simply actuality, considered as a standard and goal for all being. Although I am not aware of any careful argument for this thesis, I should note that it was suggested in passing by Allan Gotthelf in an essay published almost fifteen years ago. (1) More recently, Edward Halper has implied the same conclusion by using the account of substance in Metaphysics 7-8, together with the distinction between first and second actuality, to illuminate Aristotle's account of the good for individuals and states. (2) Moving back a few centuries, Thomas Aquinas was clearly aware that Aristotle identified goodness with actuality, a position that he himself also adopted. (3) In any case, a more thorough and systematic investigation will improve not only the evidence in hand that this is, indeed, Aristotle's view, but also our understanding of the view itself. My argument proceeds in four stages. In section 1, I shall consider Aristotle's identification of the good with that for the sake of which. By the end of this section, we shall already have reason to think that Aristotle understands goodness in terms of actuality. In section 2, in order to enrich the conception of goodness with which the previous section leaves us, I shall turn briefly to the relations between goodness, beauty, order, and nature. Then, resuming in section 3 the main thread of the argument, we shall consider the texts in which Aristotle associates goodness with being. Finally, in section 4 we shall see that the identification of goodness with actuality gives us a unified account of Aristotle's claims about what counts as good and why. Through the use of pros hen homonymy and analogy, the various senses of "good" are united around a core meaning in typically Aristotelian fashion. I Many of Aristotle's best known statements concerning the good have to do with its causal role in nature as that for the sake of which ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]). In Metaphysics 12.10, criticizing previous treatments of the good's causal role, he indicates how seriously he takes this identification of end and good--not just in human action, as in Nicomachean Ethics 1, but across the board: "In all things the good, especially, is a principle." (4) In the following paragraphs I shall examine the good as a causal principle, beginning by considering it as an end or that for the sake of which. Because Aristotle holds that end and form often coincide, we shall next consider his identification of the good, in many cases at least, with form. Finally, returning to the good as that for the sake of which, we shall look at cases in which the good is something other than form by examining Aristotle's endorsement in Ethics 1.1 of the adage that "the good is that at which all things aim." (5) By the end of this section we shall have on the table, ready for further discussion, the thesis that Aristotle understands goodness in terms of actuality. …

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that Pippin's "nonmetaphysical" interpretation of the Science of Logic does not pertain to a reality existing independently of thought, but to thought's attempt to determine a priori what can be a possible thought of anything at all.
Abstract: I OVER THE PAST FEW DECADES many attempts have been made to defend Hegel's philosophy against those who denounce it as crypto-theological, dogmatic metaphysics. (1) This was done first of all by foregrounding Hegel's indebtedness to Kant, that is, by interpreting speculative science as a radicalization of Kant's critical project. This emphasis on Hegel's Kantian roots has resulted in a shift from the Phenomenology of Spirit to the Science of Logic. Robert Pippin's Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness can be considered as having made one of the most influential contributions to this shift. (2) Pippin's "nonmetaphysical" interpretation of Hegel rightly contends that the Science of Logic does not pertain to a reality existing independently of thought, but to "thought's attempt to determine a priori what can be a possible thought of anything at all." (3) For Pippin this entails that Hegel should be regarded as appropriating "Kant's claim about the 'self-conscious,' ultimately the 'spontaneously' self-conscious, character of all possible experience." (4) I agree with Pippin that one cannot understand Hegel unless "one understands the Hegelian investment, the original engagement with Kant's critical philosophy." (5) I would hold, however, that Pippin's interpretation of this engagement threatens to lose sight of the proper achievement of Hegel's philosophy. By arguing that the unity of self-consciousness constitutes the "original source of Hegel's hermetic claim about thought's self-determination," (6) Pippin to my mind ignores, first, that Hegel takes the Kantian notion of self-consciousness to be nothing more than the concrete manifestation of the pure concept and, second, that Kant's transcendental philosophy, though radically critical of the dogmatic metaphysics of his day, does all but abandon the possibility of a critical ontology. Defending Hegel against his antimetaphysical critics, Pippin is right in taking Hegel into the Kantian camp, but he does this by sacrificing the question as to the possibility of ontology, a question I believe to be pivotal for both Kant and Hegel. In his article "Ontologie nach Kant und Hegel," Hans Friedrich Fulda moves in the opposite direction. Fulda puts Kant's transcendental philosophy in perspective by pointing out that Kant himself saw the Critique of Pure Reason as preparing a new ontology. (7) He distinguishes, in line with Kant, between a precritical and a critical ontology and determines these modes of ontology as two different ways of investigating the conditions of possibility of any object of experience, (8) Arguing that Hegel in the Science of Logic adopts not only Kant's critique of dogmatic ontology but also his conception of a critical ontology, Fulda comprehends transcendental and speculative logic as two different postdogmatic modes of ontology. These modes do not pertain to reality as it is in itself but merely to the a priori concepts that constitute something as a knowable object at all. I fully endorse Fulda's claim that the basic difference between Kant and Hegel lies in the fact that Kant develops his critical ontology primarily by means of a transcendental examination of the human understanding, while Hegel examines the pure concepts as they are in themselves. (9) One might view Pippin and Fulda as interpreting Hegel with regard to two different tendencies in Kant's critical philosophy, tendencies which Kant himself sought to reconcile: on the one hand the tendency to conceive of transcendental apperception as the ultimate principle of any judgment, on the other, the tendency to develop an ontology pertaining to the pure concepts that constitute the whole of possible objects of experience. I agree with Fulda that Hegel reduces the first tendency to a subordinate moment while accomplishing the latter in a much more radical manner than Kant could have possibly done. It is quite understandable that interpreters who have argued for a nonmetaphysical interpretation of Hegel have tended to ignore the ontological intentions of Kant's transcendental and Hegel's speculative logic. …


Journal Article
TL;DR: For example, the authors argues that hope represents a store of raw resources both for philosophical reflection and, above all, for life itself, and that the role of philosophy was to facilitate the assimilation of these subjective resources for the purpose of a renewal of the Western world in the aftermath of the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century.
Abstract: But now that the creators of fear have been dealt with, a feeling that suits us better is overdue. (1) I ANYONE WHO DECIDES TO VENTURE FORTH AN ARGUMENT for the philosophical importance of hope owes a debt to Ernst Bloch. (2) His seminal The Principle of Hope is a remarkable attempt to situate the theme of hope at the very center of the philosophical enterprise. Yet, The Principle of Hope is cited here only in order to mark the distance that separates the inquiry presented below from the strategy and, to some extent, the purpose of Bloch's work. A basic conviction of Bloch's, however, will be affirmed here: the belief that hope represents a store of raw resources both for philosophical reflection and, above all, for life itself. For Bloch, these resources were ultimately political; their discovery makes possible for humans an experience of the primordial emergence of the future, that germinating presence of concrete possibility in subjective life that takes the form of what Bloch called the "not-yet-conscious." Bloch's purpose was to argue that political action can find a renewed inspiration and force in such subjective resources, and that the role of philosophy was to facilitate the assimilation of these subjective resources for the purpose of a renewal of the Western world in the aftermath of the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century. In what follows, however, the question of the resources of hope--their value, accessibility, and applicability--will be approached from a particular perspective, one in which the question of the political significance of hope will be left open, at least for the purposes of this study. Instead, the purpose will be to highlight the outlines of what I take to be its specifically philosophical significance, which can be brought to bear and established before the complicated tasks of a philosophically inspired politics are shouldered. Even so, again in homage to Bloch, that such tasks can and must be shouldered is not something that I wish to call into question. More specifically, the purpose of this essay is to suggest how these resources of hope point toward a particular aspect of the subject that, even once all the doubts about the legitimacy of a subject-centered philosophy have been given their due, nevertheless represents a potential basis for proposing a certain kind of recalibration of the contemporary philosophical appraisal of the rationalist conception of subjectivity. The goal is thus to reengage the problem of subjectivity, that is, the question of the potential contribution of the theme of the subjectivity of the subject to the formulation and establishment of philosophy, in order to suggest that there are elements of the subjectivist tradition of modern philosophy that are ripe for at least a limited renewal. The strategy will be to identify an undervalued but potentially significant aspect of the modern conception of the subject that found its most suggestive expression in late Renaissance and early modern philosophy, where the tension between theology and philosophy played a central role. Furthermore, it will be argued that something like a historical reflection on seventeenth-century philosophy is necessary because the philosophical significance of hope can be grasped only as the result of an attempt to reposition oneself, in order to reawaken or reexperience this peculiar but productive tension between philosophy and theology that was so important in the development of seventeenth-century thought. The philosophical significance of hope, which will lie in the sense in which the subject is able to provide a center and orientation for philosophical thinking, draws its vitality in part from a particular historical memory latent in contemporary philosophy--the memory, in short, of a tension with theology. What follows below, however, is not primarily a historical study. It is first and foremost an inquiry into a strictly delimited set of phenomenological concerns. …

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: This article pointed out that the problem of reasoning about logic, reasoning and the scientific method is not a Schelerian failure but a Collingwoodean one, and pointed out the need for non-necessitated answers in an interrogative inquiry.
Abstract: ARISTOTLE AS A DIALECTICIAN. Tom Nagel once wrote a paper on "What is it like to be a bat?" I am tempted to give this paper the somewhat less outlandish title "What would it be like to be Aristotle?" Notwithstanding the lip service some scholars have paid to the peculiarities of Aristotle's ways of thinking as compared with ours, I have seldom felt that a commentator has managed to get inside Aristotle's mind and made us grasp what made Aristotle tick--or, rather, think in the way he did. All too often Aristotle has been treated by twentieth century philosophers as if he were, to borrow an Oxonian phrase, just "a fellow of another college." The reason for such an alienation is not a lack of any intuitive Einfuhlung or intellectual sympathy in the eighteenth-century sense. It is not a Schelerian failure but a Collingwoodean one. It is typically a failure to grasp the problem context of Aristotle's thought and to grasp his ultimate presuppositions. In my earlier work, I have sought to identify some of his presuppositions and problems. Only some of them are relevant here. One interesting background feature of Aristotle's thinking about logic, reasoning and the scientific method is that he is considering such matters always in a dialectical context, in the sense of thinking of them on the model of question-answer dialogues not unlike the Socratic elenchus. That this was the model of Aristotle's methodology in the Topics is of course fairly obvious. Yet what is not usually noted is that Aristotle is still in the two Analytics thinking of the scientific method as an interrogative process, what constitutes the bridge between the overtly dialectical framework of the Topics and the syllogistic framework of the two Analytics is the idea that logical inferences are those answers to questions that are (as we would explain the matter) logically implied by the respondent's earlier answers. One example should be enough to show this. Right in the middle of explaining the nature of logically necessary inferences Aristotle suddenly catches himself and warns that such inferences are not the only steps of interrogative inquiry. Yet one might perhaps wonder what purpose there could be in asking [questions] about such items if it is not necessary for the conclusion to be the case--[apparently] you might as well ask an arbitrary question and then state the conclusion. Yet we should ask questions not on the grounds that the conclusion will be necessary because the [earlier] answers make the conclusion necessary, but rather because it is necessary for the person who accepts the proposals [that is, who answers the questions in the proposed way] to state the conclusion--and to state it truly if they hold truly.(3) I have modified Barnes' translation here in that I have taken the words [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in their most straightforward sense as meaning "because of what was asked earlier," that is, in effect, "because of the earlier answers." As far as Aristotle's "proposals" are concerned, according to him in a propositional question a preferred answer is proposed to the responder; see for example, Topics 1.4, especially 101b28-36. Most recent translators and commentators have had no inkling of what is going on in this passage. Out of desperation, some even try to insert a completely unsupported restriction to merely dialectical reasoning. Yet as soon as we realize that Aristotle is treating the entire inquiry, including deductive steps, as an interrogative process, what he says becomes crystal clear. What he is doing is to think of necessary inferences, too, as question-answer steps in an inquiry. They are the ones where the answer is necessitated by earlier answers. After all the attention he had lavished on such necessitated answers (alias conclusions of syllogisms) in the Prior Analytics and in the beginning of Posterior Analytics, he realized that he had to remind his audience of the framework in which he was operating, that is, to remind them of the truism that in an interrogative inquiry we also need non-necessitated answers. …

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the problem of philosophical blindness, which is the inability of philosophers to see beyond and behind what just meets the eye and to reveal the deep meanings and significance of what appears to us.
Abstract: I PHILOSOPHERS MAY BE ARMED with valid and logically faultless arguments and yet remain entirely blind to meaningful possibilities whose philosophical significance is immense. Philosophical blindness may also concern physical or psychical phenomena as well as their meanings and significance. Some entirely valid arguments should be considered blind. Argumentatively and logically, such arguments are deemed faultless or good enough. Hence, in this respect, blind arguments should not be bad ones. Yet, they have greatly misled philosophers by shutting their eyes to realize, understand, and see deeply into crucial philosophical matters. The question is, what makes philosophers blind despite their valid, logically faultless, or even overwhelming arguments? Analytic philosophy has greatly contributed to our philosophical thinking. Admirable analytic arguments have changed our thinking dramatically in all philosophical domains. In the name of the glorious tradition, arguably beginning with the Socratic elenchus, analytic philosophy has opened our eyes to realize, understand, and deepen innumerable philosophical possibilities of great importance. Most of all, analytic philosophy has provided us with excellent arguments as well as with subtle means to test the validity and soundness of arguments of whatever sort. Yet, as H. D. Price brilliantly showed already in the 1940s, "clarity is not enough," (1) and in addition to clear and sharp arguments we desperately need much more. Arguments are indispensable but by no means sufficient tools for philosophers. We may choose A rather than B for reasons that rest on an argument, yet arguments are not what makes us familiar with the possibilities of A and B from which we can choose. We must first realize or conceive of these possibilities in order to choose between them. Insights contribute greatly to this seeing or conceiving. Arguments may compel one to acknowledge a point of view but never to see or to experience what can be seen or experienced from it. Arguments may serve those who cannot experience or see something (for instance, to infer or to establish the existence of subatomic particles), but no argument can replace any experience or understanding. Some arguments may greatly mislead us. Philosophers may argue, perhaps quite convincingly and compellingly, for some ideas that are entirely incompatible with facts and experiences that should be beyond any reasonable doubt. Insight is the ability to see beyond and behind what just meets the eye and to reveal the deep meanings and significance of what appears to us. Insights alone can draw our attention and awareness to some possibilities as well as to some facts and reveal their meanings for us. (2) Yet arguments are needed to establish our ideas and theories and to make them less susceptible to deception. Indeed, some alleged insights have turned out to be mere illusions. Like some experiences, such insights may deceive or mislead us. Philosophy without arguments may mislead, deceive, or delude. Yet arguments in themselves, however formally or logically faultless, may turn out to be completely blind. Indeed, it is their brilliance that may blind or mislead us. II There are a number of enlightening examples of philosophical blindness which occur despite logically faultless arguments. Before analyzing these examples in detail, I would like to introduce them. Relying on valid and logically faultless arguments, Parmenides and the Eleatics were blind to the indispensable reality of plurality, change, and movement. Armed with brilliant arguments, idealists shut their eyes to the irreducible reality of material objects. When Jonathan Swift wished to refute the idealism held by his old friend George Berkeley, he did not attempt to refute his arguments. On one occasion when Berkeley came to pay him a friendly visit, all Swift did was to refuse to open his door and let Berkeley in. Swift thus attempted to open Berkeley's eyes to what must be wrong or "blind" with his idealistic arguments. …

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: Whitehead as discussed by the authors argues that philosophy is akin to poetry and offers Charles S. Peirce's categoreal scheme as a compelling articulation of what are, arguably, the most ubiquitous and indeed basic features (or traits) of being.
Abstract: I A. N. WHITEHEAD SUGGESTS philosophy is akin to poetry. (1) Let me count the ways or, more exactly, identify four facets of this kinship. After touching upon these facets, I will in the second part of this paper focus directly on the relationship between being and articulation, regardless of the form in which being comes to expression (or expresses itself). (2) Then, in the third section, I offer Charles S. Peirce's categoreal scheme as a compelling articulation of what are, arguably, the most ubiquitous and indeed basic features (or traits) of being. Finally, the last section of this paper considers human beings precisely in their ongoing efforts to give adequate expression to human experience in its broadest reach and deepest import. Philosophers and poets alike struggle to speak in an intelligible, arresting, and acute voice: they would have their utterances stop us, so that we might discern more sharply and attentively the meanings in which we are enmeshed. On the part of both, one observes countless "attempts to escape our humanness," (3) but one also hears deliberate endeavors "[t]o speak humanly from the height or from the depth" (4) of experience. The philosophical no less than the poetic voice has been a distinctively human voice in which a finite, fallible, and mortal animal has given arresting expression to the most telling disclosures of human experience. It is, accordingly, to the kinship between poetry and philosophy that I now turn. One aspect of this kinship concerns the sustained effort to articulate what has not yet been said and indeed what may be in principle unsayable. The language of philosophy is very rarely that of poetry; but the use of language by philosophers, no less than that by poets, characteristically involves what (at least) in effect involves an interrogation of the limits and resources of language) Frequently, some insight, discovery, or experience demands nothing less, and this is nowhere more evident in philosophy than in the writings of metaphysicians. Like poets, metaphysicians are driven seemingly by the very nature of their endeavor to stretch language to the point where it is likely to break, where our very efforts to make finer and fuller sense court the risk of lapsing into nonsense. (6) But the traditional and secure modes of description, explanation, and critique are, for most poets and many philosophers, unduly restrictive and mostly sterile. Like the poetic imagination, then, the philosophical imagination by its own inherent restlessness tends to explode the bounds of established usage and traditional tropes. This is the first sense of kinship. The philosophical imagination can engage in this unending struggle simply in the spirit of irresponsible iconoclasm, (7) but just as often does so in the spirit of deep fidelity to the animating sources of linguistic utterance. (8) Whatever spirit informs and guides this imagination, the outcome tends toward violating established usage and thereby generating novel conceptions. "Metaphor," as Justus Buchler notes, "cannot be avoided if philosophy is to be more than the formal prescription of symbols." (9) Some metaphors are more apt than others; and (what might amount to the same point) some are more fruitful and illuminating than others. Regarding this, Buehler helpfully suggests: "In large measure, what makes the difference between good and bad metaphor, as indeed the difference between satisfactory and unsatisfactory concepts generally speaking, is the relative power of the perspective with which they function." (10) Like concepts, metaphors prove themselves by their contribution to opening a perspective in which fruitful questions can be posed and unanticipated discoveries can be made. The meaning of metaphors is, to quote Buchler yet again, "determined by their role in the perspective consequent upon their articulation"; hence, "their full value in most instances cannot be antecedently determined or gratuitously assigned. …

Journal Article
TL;DR: Maritain's life and the evolution of his thinking was not a purely personal journey; it reflected important intellectual and social issues of that period not only for the discipline of philosophy in general but for Catholic thought in particular.
Abstract: THIS ARTICLE IS OCCASIONED BY THE RECENT APPEARANCE of three books focused on the life and thought of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973): Jude P. Dougherty, Jacques Maritain, An Intellectual Profile; John P. Hittinger, Liberty, Wisdom, and Grace, Thomism and Democratic Political Theory; and Ralph McInerny, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain. (1) It is at the same time an attempt to reassess the work of arguably the most influential and important Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century. The Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame is producing a 21-volume edition of his works in English. There are now a growing number both of national and international associations for the study of his thought. The unavoidable subtext is a reassessment of Catholic thought in general and some consideration of its future prospects. Life and Influence. There are several reasons for dwelling on the life of Jacques Maritain. To begin, to weave a narrative, as McInerny does, of the connection between Maritain's life and thought is to gain a deeper understanding of that thought. Moreover, Maritain's thought evolved; and regardless of whether one prefers the earlier Maritain or the later Maritain, we gain a better understanding of that evolution and therefore in an important sense what the mature Maritain position is when we see what events occasioned the important transitions in his thought. Given the coherent narrative that McInerny provides, it would be difficult to dismiss the later thought. Maritain's life and the evolution of his thinking was not a purely personal journey; it reflected important intellectual and social issues of that period not only for the discipline of philosophy in general but for Catholic thought in particular. As Dougherty puts it, "Maritain's long and varied career is a chronicle of his time as well as a personal journey." (2) To see how a first-rate mind grappled with those issues is again to gain a deeper understanding of those issues as well as of Maritain himself. Finally, we are the inheritors of the intellectual and social issues of that period, and to understand Maritain is to understand ourselves better. Maritain was born in France into a context of liberal Protestantism infused with scientism, the belief that science could explain everything and help solve every human problem. I dare say that this is still the dominant intellectual paradigm. We know it as secular humanism, but Maritain was familiar with it in Comte's "religion of humanity." Nevertheless, Maritain rejected that part of his intellectual inheritance because he came to see it as impoverished. Familiar as he was with the works of Emile Meyerson, Maritain recognized that positivism misrepresented even science itself. "Maritain's life work can be read as a rebuttal of contemporary claims that complex organic forms and the spiritual component of human nature are the result of material forces combining with random mutations, the result of necessity and chance, with no creative intelligence behind them. Cultural shifts, if not an outright hedonism, obviously flow from this line of reasoning." (3) For those of us who have had to make the same transition, or who are in the process of making that transition, Maritain's example becomes instructive. Maritain married a Jewess, Raissa Oumansoff, and they both converted to Catholicism in 1906. So the question is raised, did (and does) Catholic thought offer a viable alternative to the liberal, Protestant scientism of modernity? The Maritains came to Catholicism while it was still in the process of digesting the revival of St. Thomas endorsed by Leo XIII (Aeterni patris was promulgated in 1879) and the beginning of the articulation of contemporary Catholic Social Thought in Return Novarum (the "Condition of Labor") promulgated by Leo XIII in 1891. The agenda had been set: St. Thomas was recommended in an effort adequately to address the intellectual shortcomings of modernity and the social challenges of the endemic nineteenth century European conflict between capital and labor. …

Journal Article
TL;DR: A close reading of the Discourse on Method shows that the book is not about the creation of some anonymous epistemological subject called ego cogitans but is the autobiography of one real, historical individual, Rene Descartes as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: I IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT Rene Descartes is the founder of modern philosophy. (1) There is far less consensus on the question of what his modernity means. The majority of Descartes's readers have focused on the cogito, the "I think" that is the fons et origo of all knowledge. The method of doubt and the famous rules of evidence have played a crucial role in the formation of a distinctively modern search for foundations of truth. (2) Political theorists have frequently treated Descartes as the harbinger of a new age, but there is widespread disagreement over precisely what this means. Tocqueville regarded the Cartesian method as ideally suited to the new democratic age. "The philosophical method established by Descartes," he wrote, "is not only French but democratic, which explains why it was so easily accepted in all of Europe, whose face it has contributed so much to changing." (3) For Michael Oakeshott, Descartes, along with Bacon, created a new aggressive form of rationalism summarized in his expression "the sovereignty of technique." (4) For Sheldon Wolin, Descartes inaugurated a new form of "methodism" in the study of politics that became the forerunner of modern behavioral social science. (5) More recently, feminist theorists have chastised Cartesian epistemology with its mind-body distinction for contributing to the myth of the "Man of Reason." (6) Even more prominently, Descartes has become the universal whipping boy for postmodernists who regard his thought as being at the core of two distinctively modern pathologies: subjectivity and aggressiveness. The Cartesian paradigm of the solitary thinker, it is alleged, was said to make the monadic subject the sole basis for truth. Likewise, it was the very rootlessness of the Cartesian subject, unmoored from the restraining bonds of tradition, custom, and history, that has authorized a domineering and controlling posture toward nature and the environment. According to no less an authority than Martin Heidegger, Cartesianism carries the seed of totalitarianism characterized by the techniques of mastering nature and the full-scale domination of society. He has become a virtual poster child for every evil from genetic engineering to environmental devastation. (7) It is not just that the postmodern reading of Descartes borders on caricature (of course it does). Rather, the caricature depends on a specific misreading of Descartes as a thinker concerned with purely metaphysical and epistemological problems (what can I know?) at the expense of moral and ethical ones (what should I do?). A close reading of the Discourse on Method shows that the book is not about the creation of some anonymous epistemological subject called ego cogitans but is the autobiography of one real, historical individual, Rene Descartes. (8) The Discourse was published in 1637, when Descartes was 41 years of age. Here he tells the story of his background and education at the Jesuit college of La Fleche ("one of the most famous schools in Europe"); his disillusionment with his teachers and the books of ancient and modern philosophy on which he had been brought up; his discovery of his famous rules of method during a daylong confinement in a stove-heated room after having been called by the war then raging in Germany (the Thirty Years War); his elucidation of a "provisional moral code" by which to conduct himself during this period of intellectual experimentation; and his continued wanderings that led him finally to settle in Holland ("amidst this great mass of busy people who are more concerned with their own affairs than curious about those of others"). (9) The Discourse was not published as a stand-alone text but as an introduction to three essays on physical subjects including his treatise on optics. It has become common to view the work as a response to the crisis of skepticism provoked by the rehabilitation of ancient Pyrrhonism. Descartes was but the best known of the figures who were attached to the group around Marin Mersenne that included not only Gassendi but Hobbes. …

Journal Article
TL;DR: One of the most famous passages from the Darstellung of the System des transzendentalen idealismus as discussed by the authors is the passage from romantic idealism to absolute idealism.
Abstract: ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING EPISODES in Schelling's philosophical development is the transition from the System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800) to the Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie (1801), the starting point of the identity system. Looking back on that latter text, Schelling in 1805 declares that "then to me the light went on in philosophy." (1) This sounds as if the preceding years of philosophical investigation, including the System des transzendentalen Idealismus that was written one year earlier, had to be considered merely propaedeutic and that the Darstellung was his real entry into philosophy. Schelling maintained this view of his philosophical development and in the contemporary Schelling-Forschung scholars widely agree that the Darstellung, being the outset of the identity system, marks the birthplace of so-called absolute idealism--to which Hegel's system of philosophy probably still is the most spectacular and successful heir. But if this common interpretation is true--and I would not deny it in the generality in which it is stated--then the question inevitably arises: what happened in the transition from the System des transzendentalen Idealismus to the Darstellung, and above all, what made this transition possible? What, in other words, caused the constitution of absolute idealism? It is my conviction that this transition is the result of the transposition of the inner structure of the work of art, as it is conceived in the System des transzendentalen Idealismus, to the inner structure of absolute reason in the Darstellung. In the Darstellung, the features that until then privileged the work of art are now ascribed to absolute reason. This, I would like to argue below, is a major shift in Schelling's philosophical appreciation of the capacity of human reason to gain absolute self-knowledge. It documents the passage in the history of German idealism from what I would call romantic idealism to absolute idealism. The key texts at stake here are, on the one hand, the famous chapter on the work of art in the System des transzendentalen Idealismus, in which art and the meaning of the work of art are still conceived from the romantic point of view, and, on the other hand, the initial sections from the Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, in which Schelling defines the concept of absolute reason. Again, the essence of the whole argument is to point to the remarkable affinity between the romantic concept of the work of art and the concept of absolute reason as it is articulated in the Darstellung. Absolute reason is endowed with an aesthetic capacity that was restricted to art one year earlier, that is, to the artistic genius and its product, the work of art. I In the System des transzendentalen Idealismus the subject is striving after an adequate self-consciousness which is only reached, in the end, through aesthetic intuition, that is, through the intuition of a work of art. (2) This work of art is an external object that has the structure of an absolute identity of subjectivity and objectivity, that is, of nature and freedom, as Schelling would put it. (3) The adequate selfconsciousness aimed at is realized because the subject finally recognizes its own foundation and condition of possibility in the work of art. Put more precisely: in the subject-object identity of the work of art, the subject recognizes the revelation of its "primordial self." (4) This suggests that in order to realize adequate self-consciousness, the subject must rely on or is dependent on an aesthetic object outside itself. The features of that aesthetic object are: (1) it is an objective phenomenon, (2) that as such transcends the subject, (3) but in which the subject recognizes its own essence. (4) This essence transcends the subject not only because it appears in an external object but also because it represents precisely what the subject, by itself, is unable to bring to consciousness: the absolute identity of the "primordial self' (das Urselbst) as its most inner essence. …


Journal Article
TL;DR: For instance, Damasio and LeDoux as mentioned in this paper defined emotion as feeling "nothing but the feeling of the reflex bodily effects of what we call its object" and argued that feeling is a reflex, simply a trigger for the emotion into which it quickly disappears.
Abstract: THE PAST DECADE has seen a tidal wave of publications on emotion. The topic has engaged the energy and the imagination of the professionals to whose fields it belongs, and some of these have delivered it to the reading public in a series of highly successful books. Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux are probably the best known (1) among those whose writings have displayed the topic and driven the interest in it. I intend to analyze several of their works in order to make some judgments about what can be considered an important contemporary trend. Damasio and LeDoux are neurobiologists, that is, brain scientists who work in the tradition begun by William James. I will introduce James from time to time (as do both Damasio and LeDoux) for his historical importance and also because of the valuable schematization of the issues which his relatively uncomplicated view of the human organism allows. James considered what he was doing to be psychology, while Damasio and LeDoux regard themselves as biologists. James was also committed to understanding emotion strictly as a function of the nervous system. (2) Brain science still does, though this focus is distressed by the need, faced by any theory of emotion, to deal with feeling. Feeling--or consciousness generally--is something that brain science is still struggling to accommodate. William James defined emotion as feeling "emotion is nothing but the feeling of the reflex bodily effects of what we call its object." (3) More famously he said: If we fancy some strong emotion, and try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find that we have nothing left behind, no "mind stuff" out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. (4) The emotions that he has in mind are those characterized by a "wave of bodily disturbance," (5) and he names surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, lust, greed, and others without suggesting that the list is exhaustive and without attempting to distinguish among the items listed. The bodily symptoms, apparently taken as common to all, are the intensified actions of the heart, the circulatory system, bladder, bowels, glands of the mouth, throat, skin and liver, (6) activities which are today recognized as controlled by the autonomic nervous system. The latter concept had not yet emerged when James wrote. Speaking of the body in which this is going on, he says, "every one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs." (7) Consciousness in emotion is not only the feeling of the body, it is also the perception of what we are emotional about; for example, the bear in the woods which frightens us. For James, that is a reflex, simply a trigger for the emotion into which it quickly disappears. His physiology of emotion, however, is more than an account of visceral and muscular stirrings. His starting point was not gut or sinew but brain, as he makes clear in the summary remark with which the article concludes: To return now to our starting point, the physiology of the brain. If we suppose its cortex to contain centers for the perception of changes in each special sense organ, in each portion of the skin, in each muscle each joint and each viscus, and to contain absolutely nothing else, we still have a scheme perfectly capable of representing the process of the emotions. (8) Notice the simplicity of the patterns of location and connection. The later development of the discipline will reveal a nervous system far more complex than that indicated here. Later theorists will be challenged to do more than James did with the problem of how feeling, the consciousness of the body, combines with perception, the awareness of the triggering object. He was quite vague about this, saying only that the bodily changes, "apperceived like the original object in as many specific portions of the cortex, combine with it in consciousness and transform it from an object-simply-apprehended to an object-emotionally-felt. …