Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2007"

The Importance and Relevance of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature

Abstract: I INTRODUCTION. There can be no doubt that interest in Hegel among Anglo-American philosophers is greater now than it has been at any point in the past 100 years. This interest has happily taken the form of increased attention to his major published works, primarily the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right. (1) While the more systematically central Science of Logic remains largely the domain of Hegel specialists, non-specialists, particularly those interested in Hegel's relation to Kant, are turning to that text as well. And given the influence of Hegel on some contemporary philosophers of mind, it seems inevitable that the Philosophy of Spirit will soon come in for detailed treatment. (2) But amidst all this increased interest in Hegel, a major part of his mature system has been almost completely ignored: the Philosophy of Nature. (3) The Anglo-American tradition in philosophy, and the Austrian tradition from which it in part stems, have always harbored deep suspicions about this area of Hegel's thought. Bolzano, a contemporary of Hegel's whom Dummett has called "the great-grandfather of analytic philosophy" (4) devoted considerable time and ink to attacks on Hegel generally and on the Philosophy of Nature in particular; he repeatedly uses the heading "Hegel's Ignorance" for his notebook entries on that text. (5) Helmholtz, the sober-minded scientist and prominent member of the "back to Kant" movement that eventually led to 20th-century neo-Kantianism and positivism, also singles out this part of Hegel's system for scorn, saying that upon its release it "appeared to natural scientists to be, at the very least, absolutely senseless." (6) He did not think time had improved its intelligibility, either. Similar, and well-known, comments are to be found in the writings of Popper and Russell. (7) Yet it would be wrong to single out Anglo-American philosophers for their eagerness to condemn the Philosophy of Nature. Perhaps predictably, some Hegel partisans, recognizing a chance to gain an audience for one part of the system by disavowing another, have attacked the Philosophy of Nature in the process of advocating a Hegelian approach to some other area of inquiry. (8) Indeed, this strategy appears particularly popular among Hegelians whose primary interest is in developing a Hegelian approach to the sciences of nature. So we can find Meyerson, an otherwise dedicated Hegelian, attacking the philosophy of nature even as he advocates a "Hegelian" historical treatment of the natural sciences themselves. (9) On the whole, then, both passionate anti-Hegelians and passionate Hegelians are united in their rejection of the Philosophy of Nature. (10) Are they wrong? The purpose of this paper is to indicate, if only briefly and in sketch form, the basis for a new understanding and evaluation of the Philosophy of Nature. The central task in carrying out this project is to show that Hegel's philosophy of nature is entirely intelligible within the context of a straightforward understanding of modern, mathematized natural science, its goals, and its values. Since many of these goals and values are intimately bound up with conceptions of experiment, empirical responsiveness, and responsibility to the deliverances of the senses and their technological proxies, I can carry out this task only if I can overcome the central obstacle blocking virtually every reading of the Philosophy of Nature to date: namely, the conviction that Hegel claims a priori status for his system, and for the part dealing with nature in particular. Beyond merely arguing that the Philosophy of Nature is not "at the very least, absolutely senseless," I have another goal: to show that Hegel's Philosophy of Nature is both important and relevant to contemporary philosophical concerns beyond the areas of history of philosophy and Hegel scholarship. (11) In particular, an adequate study of the Philosophy of Nature yields results for the problem of the rationality of scientific theory change, as well as yielding results in philosophy of mind and epistemology. …

Philosophy and Jihad: Al-Farabi on Compulsion to Happiness

Abstract: ABU NASR MUHAMMAD AL-FARABI (870-950 A.D.), arguably the most important political philosopher in medieval Islam, discusses at some length in his writings the value of offensive war for the purpose of bringing the conquered to virtue, and thus to happiness, and on occasion even uses the term "jihad" or derivatives from it. (1) Although there are remarkably few studies devoted to al-Farabi's understanding of jihad, one can identify three distinct positions among scholars. The first is, prima facie, the most literal reading: al-Farabi is supporting the Islamic notion of jihad with philosophy. The methodology of philosophy independently justifies the Islamic call to jihad: one can start with either philosophy or religion, for each confirms the other. Ann Lambton and Charles Butterworth see al-Farabi arguing for a harmony or synthesis between philosophy and Islamic religion with respect to jihad. (2) Joel Kraemer represents the second position in which al Farabi is seen as supporting philosophy with the Islamic notion of jihad. (3) The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is al-Farabi's sole starting point, and he uses it to transform the Islamic notion of jihad into the philosophical understanding of just war so that only the linguistic term "jihad" remains. Al-Farabi accommodates the term but not the meaning of Islamic jihad, and so he writes esoterically as he quietly substitutes a philosophical meaning for jihad. In this reading, philosophy is "jihadist," inasmuch as it advocates a universal virtuous regime, but this regime is ruled by a philosopher for philosophy and not by shari'a for a divinely revealed doctrine. The most recent and extensive analysis of al-Farabi's understanding of jihad is Joshua Parens's An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Regimes: Introducing Alfarabi (Albany: State University of New York, 2006), which provides the third interpretation: al-Farabi is using philosophy to criticize the religious notion of jihad. This position differs from the second because Parens does not see al-Farabi as substituting a philosophical for a religious meaning to jihad; rather, he is using philosophy to show the impossibility of establishing a universal virtuous regime through religious warfare. Philosophy, as demonstrated by Plato's Republic, is skeptical of the possibility of the ideally virtuous regime on any scale, (4) and al-Farabi brings this skepticism to bear on the question of offensive war in the name of a universal religion. (5) Plato's Republic is esoteric, since the argument for the virtuous regime shows its impossibility, and likewise al-Farabi's argument for jihad shows its impossibility. This article will argue for a fourth interpretation as superior to and more comprehensive than the other three: al-Farabi is criticizing philosophy with the religious notion of jihad. In spite of their differences, Kraemer and Parens both believe that, according to al-Farabi, the fundamental problem is religion and that philosophy is the solution. In fact, however, the fundamental political problem for Plato, Aristotle and al-Farabi is that virtue ethics is necessarily coercive. For al-Farabi, religion provides at least a partial solution to the philosophical problem of compulsion to happiness. He argues that the limitations that the Greek philosophers themselves place on this compulsion to happiness are arbitrary and that one must look outside philosophy to religion for a more natural limitation to ethical and political coercion. The principal difference between the third and fourth interpretation concerns the question with which al-Farabi is wrestling. According to Parens, the fundamental problem is the necessity to unite in the ruler of the virtuous regime theoretical, deliberative, and warlike virtues. (6) The extreme unlikelihood of uniting these qualities in a ruler or even in a rule restricts the virtuous regime to the realm of speech. The fundamental problem is not compulsion to virtue, because Parens thinks that Plato, Aristotle, and al-Farabi see compulsion as punishment of the wicked: that is, only the wicked need compulsion, and those who are not vicious (or perhaps not incontinent) can be persuaded. …

Herder's Critique of Pure Reason

Abstract: JG HERDER WROTE in 1799 a lengthy and stridently polemical work attacking Kant's Critique of Pure Reason This work, entitled A Metacritique of the Critique of Pure Reason, complains, among other things, that "to make oneself independent of oneself, ie to place oneself beyond all original, inner and outer experience, to think beyond oneself, entirely free of the empirical: this no one can do" (1) While plausible in itself, such a claim at first seems odd as an objection to the Critique of Pure Reason, given that the latter expressly denies that concepts can function independently of sensuous content Herder's Metacritique has been criticized for overlooking this essential point, as well as for failing to understand that Kant's treatment of the a priori in the first Critique constitutes an attempt to isolate the necessary conditions for experience in general, conditions which--being conditions--cannot themselves be derived from experience or reduced to it (2) The suspicion arises here that Herder's Metacritique actually represents a precritical position, especially since it appeals to empiricists like Bacon, Locke, and Hume in articulating its counterposition (3) At the same time, one cannot so easily dismiss as "precritical" Herder's insistence on the dependence of thought upon language With respect to the nature and status of reason, Herder's view that "from childhood onwards we receive and expand our thought through language," and that "the human soul thinks with words," (4) has two interrelated consequences: 1) we can never separate ourselves from the particularity of our received ideas to inspect the functioning of a "pure" reason; 2) no ideas exist in the mind prior to their acquisition through a language Thus, whereas Kant's rejection of metaphysics is directed only at the possibility of gaining knowledge of things beyond the perceptible world, Herder also rules out the possibility of achieving a position from which one could speak, as Kant does, of the universal structure of our experience and its objects (5) Yet it is true that Herder's own position on knowledge, formulated in opposition to Kant's transcendental idealism, involves some sort of empiricism, combined with some sort of realism I believe the most fruitful way of understanding this position is to see it as offering a variant critique of pure reason, a critique that has some parallels with Kant's version (and perhaps stronger ones than Herder himself recognized), but that reaches quite different conclusions I will explicate this thesis in the following pages, pointing out, first, that Herder does indeed espouse a brand of empiricism, for which the "given" consists not of immediate and neutral sense data, but of experiences shaped by specifically human powers and interests and already conditioned by the complex and shifting a priori of language While several features of Herder's analysis of language are strikingly similar to claims later made by Nietzsche, Herder nonetheless eschews both skepticism and subjectivism He manages to do this because his empiricism is accompanied by a rather peculiar brand of realism Herder does not suggest that human faculties deliver knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality, nor does he think our representations correspond to things as they are independently of all observation Knowledge, for Herder, is decidedly perspectival Herder remains a realist, however, because of the relation he posits between the human subject and being Here, I will argue, Herder's account anticipates that of Heidegger, and one can see in Heidegger's critical revision of Husserl a certain repetition of Herder's position vis-a-vis Kant I Herder's Empiricism Herder is an empiricist insofar as he clearly believes that all ideas are derived, originally, from experience In his early work, "An Inquiry into Being," he states, in explicit agreement with Locke, that "all our concepts are sensuous …

Hegel's Realism: The Implicit Metaphysics of Self-Knowledge

Abstract: THIS PAPER ADDRESSES A READING OF HEGEL'S METAPHYSICS made by Tom Rockmore in Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy, (1) and in doing so offers an alternative. As Rockmore's argument aims to present Hegel in a way relevant to contemporary philosophical work, I hope this supplement to Rockmore's discussion may do the same. Rockmore's book, composed in three sections, begins with an insightful treatment of the analytic turn away from idealism at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the second section he provides a discussion of the more recent interest in Hegel expressed by some inheritors of the analytic tradition in the second half of the twentieth century. In developing his critique of analytic philosophy's engagement with idealism and specifically Hegel, Rockmore contends that Hegel rejects any commitment to metaphysical realism, emphasizing his historicism as the center of his philosophical enterprise. Rockmore thus sees Hegel squarely at odds with the projects most contemporary philosophers, as metaphysical realists, hope to use him for. (2) The final third of the book is then devoted to Rockmore's own reading of Hegel, for whom a rejection of metaphysical realism is combined with a commitment to a Kantian empirical realism instead. (3) While Rockmore's book is a timely and discerning assessment of the state of recent and historical analytic concern for both idealism in general and Hegel in particular, the empirical element of Hegel's realism contains a metaphysical component unaddressed in Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy. Indeed, pace Rockmore, when Hegel's project is seen in proper relief against its Kantian backdrop (and to a certain extent against Hegel's reaction to Fichte and Schelling), the metaphysically realist position in Hegel's thought emerges as a matter of necessity, required to overcome the Kantian problem of an unknowable thing-in-itself. (4) As this paper will indicate, a metaphysically realist reading of Hegel does much to clarify the intentions of some of the more puzzling sections of his writing--particularly in the Preface, Introduction, and closing section to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Further, the metaphysically realist dimension of Hegel's thought offers insight into the structure of Hegel's philosophy writ large--principally in the relationship of the Phenomenology's closing section on Absolute Knowing to Hegel's views on the metaphysics of logic, the natural world, and society. Since Rockmore's reading of Hegel is not uncommon, in that it both downplays the importance of Absolute Knowing and shows a tendency to demystify Spirit in his philosophy, by addressing these elements of Hegel's thought I hope this paper will also serve to broaden the perspectives of others interested in Hegel. In the end this reading of Hegel's realism, while offering a metaphysical component intended both to supplement Rockmore's empirical account and to provide insight into Hegelian philosophy itself, will also suggest ways in which Hegel's metaphysical realism can contribute a schema for contemporary approaches toward metaphysical realism. (5) The last thirty years especially have seen a wealth of competent secondary literature examining some of the issues discussed here, and many of the positions we will examine are still undergoing rather vociferous debate in the field. Footnotes throughout this paper will indicate where a particular point can be followed up in other sources, also sketching briefly some contours of agreement and disagreement. To keep our discussion to a manageable length, however, I have forgone directly addressing all of the relevant material. Instead, I am primarily concerned with Rockmore's view as he expressed it in Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy, with my own reading of Hegel, and with how these may be squared with what Hegel left us in his published works. This paper's analysis of the relationship between self-knowledge and knowledge of the world intends to accurately represent a theme central to Hegel's philosophy and integral to his position on metaphysics. …

Heidegger's Hidden Path: From Philosophy to Politics

Abstract: MARTIN HEIDEGGER IS WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the twentieth century, while remaining one of the most controversial. His thinking has contributed to such diverse fields as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, aesthetics, literary criticism, and theology. His critique of traditional metaphysics and his opposition to positivism and technological world domination have been embraced by leading theorists of post-modernity. He influenced such prominent thinkers as Gadamer, Arendt, Habermas, Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard. (1) On the other hand, his involvement in the Nazi movement has invoked a stormy debate. Although he never claimed that his philosophy was concerned with politics, political considerations have come to overshadow his philosophical work. Especially after the publication of Victor Farias's Heidegger et le Nazisme in 1987 and Hugo Ott's Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu einer Biographie in 1988, it becomes difficult to treat Heidegger's political stance as irrelevant to his philosophical opus. (2) In the first edition, published in 1963, of his comprehensive and detailed study of the development of Heidegger's thought, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Martin Heidegger's Path of Thinking), Otto Poggeler did not raise any political issues. Yet, in light of the controversy that gained a new momentum in the late 1980's such an approach seems no longer possible. (3) The distinction between "two Heideggers"--one a philosopher and one a politician--is no longer tenable. (4) Questions must be raised concerning Heidegger's philosophy and his political involvement, and vice versa. One serious defect of the polemical writings that straightforwardly charge Heidegger with Nazism is that they mostly represent a poor knowledge of his philosophy. Heidegger's writings are painfully difficult, even to specialists, and his concepts can be easily misinterpreted, especially by those who, instead of searching for truth, embrace a prosecutor's zeal. For example, in his influential book, Farias completely avoids asking philosophical questions. His work, as many commentators agree, is "a jumble of truths, half-truths, insinuations, and innuendos--all presented with the same conviction and endowed with the same unquestioned authority." (5) On the internet, one can easily find hundreds of articles by authors who claim that Heidegger's guilt has already been decided. My objective is not to blame or to exonerate Heidegger before investigating the relationship between his philosophy and politics in depth. Obviously, given the limited nature of my presentation, I cannot consider Heidegger's entire philosophical opus. I intend to concentrate chiefly on his critique of the Western metaphysical tradition and on an interpretation of his most controversial statement from An Introduction to Metaphysics about the "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism. (6) I will begin my investigation by considering a notorious episode in Heidegger's life, namely his service as Rector of the University of Freiburg from April 1933 to February 1934. Then I move to the essence of his philosophy, the quest for the meaning of Being, deduce a political theory from his ontology, and arrive at his politics. This way I attempt to throw some new light on the Heidegger controversy and to disclose the Heideggerian hidden path. I The Controversial Stage in Heidegger's Life. Heidegger's life entered a problematic and controversial stage with Hitler's rise to power. In September 1930, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) became the second largest party in Germany, and on January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Up to then virtually apolitical, Heidegger now became politically involved. On April 21, 1933, he was elected rector of the University of Freiburg by the faculty. He was apparently urged by his colleagues to become a candidate for this politically sensitive post, as he later claimed in an interview with Der Spiegel, to avoid the danger that a party functionary would be named rector. …

Justice and the Banning of the Poets: The Way of Hermeneutics in Plato's Republic

Abstract: This article focuses on the episode of the banning of the poets and argues that Plato did not dismiss poetry at all. Rather the episode serves to demonstrate the nature of justice as poetic, as opposed to what today we would call scientific and systematic. What links poetry and an understanding of justice is how sacrifice and antidote work as themes indicating how we should approach poetic meaning and the question of justice.

Thomas Aquinas on the Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything At All Rather Than Nothing Whatsoever?

Abstract: transplantation led to an authentic development in the Church’s theology (chap. 14). Smith reasons that “the contours of the debate about the morality of [living organ transplantation] suggest how theologians may serve the Church in assessing various bioethical issues” (304). Though I have limited myself here to summarizing and responding to a handful of the essays in this volume, each of the essays was stimulating and thought provoking. The book raises all the right questions in the field and provides reasonable responses to them from the wealth of the Catholic moral tradition.

The Relation between Logic and Ontology in the Metaphysics

Abstract: THE QUESTION CONCERNING THE RELATION between logic and ontology in Aristotle's thought has recently attracted renewed attention, as several scholars have found reason to reconsider the argumentative structure of the seventh book of the Metaphysics. What initially provoked discussion was Myles Burnyeat's study A Map of Metaphysics Zeta and its suggestion that, in order to understand the aim and direction of that particular book, we should distinguish between two different levels of discourse within it, the one "logical" and the other "metaphysical" in kind. (1) Whereas the logical level of discourse explores such concepts and principles that must be assumed by any ontology whatsoever, the metaphysical level conveys precisely Aristotle's ontology with its specific assumptions as regards the nature of reality. Burnyeat's proposal has been met with approval by many scholars, who, though they sometimes prefer a different terminology from his, in general agree that the suggested distinction provides us with a useful tool for the interpretation of this notoriously difficult book. (2) For example, if part of Aristotle's discussion here is "logical" in the sense of not presupposing any specific metaphysical notion of substance, then this may explain why he refrains from drawing upon his own concept of form in what seem to be pivotal passages as regards the inquiry into substance, but instead speaks with a more or less Platonic tongue. (3) Accordingly, recognizing two distinct levels of argument in the discussion of substance might also enable us to shed new light on Aristotle's attitude toward Plato, and perhaps even toward the tradition in general, in ontological matters. This approach toward Aristotle's logic has found several proponents in the recent literature. More precisely, it is a rather common belief today that Aristotle's logic can be regarded as a kind of prolegomenon to his ontology, providing a "general essentialism" (4) which serves as a basis for the metaphysical inquiry into substance. One apparent consequence of this belief is the recurrent attempt to come to grips with the problems facing the discussion of substance in the Metaphysics, not least that of deciding whether substance as form is to be understood as a particular or universal entity, by means of distinguishing between different kinds of predication, so that form is allowed to be predicated of matter but not of its object. (5) In this way, one assumes that the question of ousia, at least in important respects, may profitably be treated as a question of logic. (6) In this article, I will elaborate a different view of the so-called logical level of discourse in the Metaphysics as well as of its relation to ontology. While not denying that Aristotle refrains from introducing his own ontological theory in his logical discussion, I will nevertheless suggest that the latter, far from being free from metaphysical presuppositions, is on the contrary in conflict with the ontology presented at the metaphysical level, in such a way that it has implications for the nature of substance which Aristotle cannot accept straight off. More precisely, the idea is that Aristotle himself discovers problems that emerge out of the logical perspective, so that a major task of the inquiry at the ontological level is precisely to come to grips with these problems. In the first part of the article, which seeks to determine the aim and nature of "logical" discussions, I suggest that the conflict between different levels of discourse should be understood as a conflict between different approaches to ontology pursued by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, all of which are not of his own making but primarily retrieved from the tradition. This means that a major problem Aristotle is facing in the Metaphysics, notably in Book 7, is that of reconciling different extant discourses on reality within his own project, so that each of them is granted its proper, delimited place. The difficulty of this task is what makes this book so difficult to understand. …

Deconstructing Dasein: Heidegger's Earliest Interpretations of Aristotle's De Anima

Abstract: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is no psychology in the modern sense, but rather deals with the being of the human being (or of living beings in general) in the world.--Heidegger, Introduction to Phenomenological Research (1) Of all beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think about are living creatures, because on the one hand, they are in a certain way most closely akin to us, and on the other they are at the same time separated from our ek-sistent essence by an abyss.--Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism" (2) I THROUGHOUT THE EARLY FREIBURG AND MARBURG SEMINARS and lectures leading to the composition of Sein und Zeit (1927), Heidegger was consistently preoccupied with the guiding question of Aristotle's Metaphysics, "What is being? ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])." (3) This question which determined the path of Heidegger's thinking does not stand alone in the course of his philosophical development. Rather, Heidegger's investigation into the meaning of being was guided by his introduction to phenomenology beginning with Husserl's Logical Investigations. From his earliest interpretations of Aristotle to his later writings, Heidegger's thinking is illuminated by a fundamental phenomenological insight: What occurs for the phenomenology of the acts of consciousness as the self-manifestation of phenomena is thought more originally by Aristotle and in all Greek thinking and existence as ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), as the unconcealedness of what is present, its being revealed, its showing itself. That which phenomenological investigations rediscovered as the supporting attitude of thought proves to be the fundamental trait of Greek thinking, if not indeed of philosophy as such. (4) Heidegger was never to stray far from this originary method of "seeing." Beginning with a 1921 seminar devoted to De Anima, Heidegger embarks upon his first attempt to interpret Aristotle phenomenologically. (5) While the seminar begins by investigating Aristotle's definition of the soul ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) as the principle of life, we are left with an enigma (ein Ratsel) regarding how the soul contributes to Heidegger's account of facticity. For Heidegger, the relationship between facticity (facticia) and the soul (anima) is not unique to Aristotle, he first discovered the problem in Augustine's claim that facticia est anima. The human soul is literally "created" or "made" by God. (6) The soul is an artifice and therefore nonoriginary, unnatural, and separate from the eternity of God. This separation from the absolute fullness or plenitude of being is what opens up the possibility for the soul to strive towards the infinite perfection of God. For Augustine, it is also possible to apply this schema to the originary finitude or imperfection of all created things: For these lovely things would be nothing at all unless they were from Him. They rise and set: in their rising they begin to be, and they grow towards perfection, and once come to perfection they grow old, and they die: not all grow old but all die. Therefore when they rise and tend toward being, the more haste they make toward fullness of being, the more haste they make towards ceasing to be. That is their law. (7) When accounting for the transience of all those things created by God, Augustine turns to the corporeality of the senses and the destructive impulse of temptation which leads living things toward their fullness of being and their ceasing to be. Heidegger's 1921 lecture course devoted to Book 10 of Augustine's Confessions develops a reading of facticity that is marked by this troublesome burden of existence (molestia) which develops out of this temptation (tenatio) to experience the pleasures (delectatio) of life. This burden leads to the dispersion (Zerstreuung) of the individuated existence of the soul among the many, "For 'in multa defluximus' [we are scattered into the many], we are dissolving into the manifold and absorbed in the dispersion. …

The actual infinite as a day or the games

Abstract: THE TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO MEDIEVAL philosophical theology is not a simple matter of substituting monotheism for pantheism, of replacing a divine that admits of multiple manifestations with a God who is one person (who is someone). Rather, it entails a deeper transformation of the concept of being. For the medievals, the claim, "God is," entails that being applies to God in a distinctive and exclusive sense. When characterizing this mutation, historians frequently stress that the Greeks could only conceive being as what maintains itself within its own limits. The ancient concept of "infinity" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] would thus have designated a purely negative term. The infinite cannot truly be something; at best, infinity is a mere potency. For many historians, it is this limited conception that will eventually be overcome with the later emergence of a truly positive concept of infinity in the form of ens infinitum. No doubt Aristotle uses [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to qualify--among other things--the indetermination of matter (a quasi-nothing that can become almost anything) or the incompleteness of mathematical series. These senses, which betray a lack of determination, seem utterly incompatible with the subsequent medieval and Christian proclamation of ens infinitum as perfection. Yet Aristotle's thought also admits a concept of actual infinity. Indeed, the significance of the transformation from ancient to medieval thought remains veiled as long as it is understood simply as a matter of changing the "value" attributed to the idea of infinity from a negative to a positive pole. For Aristotle, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the particular sense of infinity by addition is not that outside of which there is nothing, but on the contrary that "outside of which there is always something." (1) By contrast to any definite magnitude, such an infinite fails to ever reach completion. When, however, in the medieval context, God is said to be infinite being, "infinity" does not designate a failure nora lack of determination; rather it names a perfection that excludes nothingness. The apparent difference between the Greek and the Christian conceptions could not be stronger. Aquinas, for instance, can explain that the true name of God is "being" because this name does not signify anything determinate (non significat formam aliquam). But for Aquinas, "not to be a determinate form" (that is, not to be the form of this or that entity) is equivalent to being an infinite form or perfection. The negation of all determinations anal limitations is tantamount to the affirmation of "unlimited form," a phrase Aristotle would have found unintelligible. In Aquinas's view, God is appropriately called being because the concept of being does not entail any particular form. God can be understood both as "form" and as "unlimited being" if the esse signifies the perfection of being itself, for, in such a case, the plenitude of pure activity grants being a positive infinity. "His infinity applies to the sum of his perfections." (2) if divine infinity indicates a sum, that sum cannot signify a final number but is rather the number that ends all calculation. (3) The idea of omnipotence (a power that extends to everything that does not include a contradiction) led medieval thinkers to the discovery of a new concept of infinity. Like omnipotence and omniscience, infinity belongs to the essence of God, because the plenitude of activity (that is, the supreme sense of being) does not admit limits. Such an infinity is not beneath any determination; rather, it is beyond it. By contrast, it is often stressed that the mathematical sense of infinity in Aristotle or his inquiry about matter can only lead to the concept of a merely potential infinity. Greek infinity would then be a potentiality that excludes the possibility of actuality. (4) The traditional interpretation finds here a proof that Aristotle rejected the hypothesis of an infinity in act and admitted only a potential infinite. …

Is Aristotelian Science Possible? A Commentary on MacIntyre and McMullin

Abstract: IN THEIR AQUINAS LECTURES, given at Marquette University in 1990 and 1992 respectively, Alasdair MacIntyre and Ernan McMullin offer a defense and a critique of Aristotle's theory of science in the Posterior Analytics (1) McMullin's interpretation, informed by a lifetime of accomplishment in contemporary philosophy of science, is negative about the treatise as either an adequate description of natural science or a normative account of it MacIntyre's engaging and penetrating essay deals generously with the picture of science in the treatise I shall argue, however, that the two philosophers share an incorrect interpretation of the science of the Posterior Analytics as deductivist and perfectionist Both miss the true focus of Aristotle's treatise on science, namely, distinguishing the necessary and accidental in things themselves They share twentieth-century presuppositions about the proposition that obscure the import of the theory of demonstration, especially with respect to the role of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in an Aristotelian science MacIntyre sets as his aim to render plausible the classical belief in first principles, but an underlying and more important aim seems to be to lay out a strategy by which Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy may enter contemporary philosophical discussion in a way that contemporary philosophers cannot refuse Accordingly, he highlights the teleological implications of philosophical language about knowledge, arguing that thinkers like Rorty have failed to banish from their own discourse a claim of truth that presupposes principles MacIntyre explains Aristotle's conception of science in terms of science's own [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as knowledge, placing the requirement for first principles in a context of the growth of knowledge as guided by its final end The end of knowledge includes unmiddled first principles that ground demonstrated conclusions about what cannot be otherwise Nevertheless, while science grows, candidates for first principles remain subject to change One task of Thomistic philosophy of science is to provide genealogies of scientific change written from a perspective of the growth of knowledge toward its [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (2) MacIntyre is implicitly responding to a charge that McMullin makes very explicit, namely that Aristotle's picture of science has no place for the fallibilism, which, as we have learned in modernity, is a constant feature of the practice of science (3) This charge originates in interpretations of AP 12-3 In these chapters, Aristotle presents what seem to be logical requirements for the structure of science He presents an axiomatic system in which there are principles taken by the knower as prior and primary, embodying what is first in nature (4) He says: If, then, scientific knowing is as we hold it to be, demonstrative knowledge must be from [premises that are] true, first, unmiddled, more known, prior to, and causes of the conclusion [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (5) These first principles must be capable of generating by deduction all truths dependent on causes From the modern standpoint, of course, the logical structure of an axiomatic system precludes any proof of first principles, and hence any unchangeable [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (6) conviction in the knower concerning them Following upon this logical feature of deduction, there is persistent indeterminacy accompanying any first principles in science, because empirical results are never enough to decide between competing theories Following Kosman and Burnyeat, (7) most interpreters of the Posterior Analytics parry the fallibilist objection by saying that Aristotle's treatment of the structure of science is never purely logical anyway but is always embedded in an account of what constitutes a good explanation Science [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], is a normative term, and theory of science brings out implicit criteria for knowing by means of causes …

Philosophy as Science: "Function" and "Energy" in Cassirer's "Complex System" of Symbolic Forms

Abstract: Leibniz geht von dem Funktionsbegriff der neuen Mathematik aus, den er als Erster in seiner vollen Allgemeinheit fasst und den er schon in der ersten Konzeption von aller Einschrankung auf das Gebiet der Zahl und der Grosse befreit. Mit diese neuen Instrument der Erkenntnis ausgeriistet, tritt er an die Grundfragen der Philosophie heran. (1) Wenn in der Schriften zur Logik und zur Mathematik ... die allgemeine Methode der Leibnizischen Philosophie sich bestimmte und ausbildete, wenn in ihnen das abstrakte begriffliche Fundament des Systems abgesteckt wurde, so tritt uns beim Ubergang zu den Problemen der Biologie die Leibnizische Metaphysik zuerst in ihrer konkreten Gestaltung mit der Eigenart ihrer besonderes Prinzipien entgegen. Der Entwurf der ,,allgemeinen Charakteristik," das Bemuhen um eine allgemeingultige Methodik der Forschung und der Beweisfuhrung hatte den Ausgangspunkt des Leibnizischen Denkens gebildet. (2) ********** THIS PAPER EXAMINES Ernst Cassirer's specific proposal for the solution to the classic problem: how can philosophy fulfill its ideal of reaching the status of scientific knowledge and become a science? By answering this question, the present study endeavors to fill an important gap in the Cassirerian studies, where that problem was never addressed. It also brings new material to our understanding of the longstanding tradition of Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. (3) The exposition of Cassirer's solution will open new research in this field, in particular through a discussion with, first, the solutions offered at the same time by other neo-Kantian schools (Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert for Bade, Leonard Nelson for the physiological trend) as well as by Husserlian phenomenology, and second, with the contemporary trend of "scientific philosophy" (the Vienna and Berlin Circles or more generally the fathers--and uncles--of analytical philosophy). Such a comparative study goes beyond the explicit scope of the present paper and Cassirer's achievement is where we should start. This ideal of scientificity is almost as ancient as philosophy itself, since we already find it in Plato's fight against the Sophists. But the problem's articulation as well as the solutions offered took very different guises in the course of history. The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the rise of novel figures of science, inaugurated a new period of knowledge, and Kant's claim to bring metaphysics to the status of science, being indissociable from the success of the Newtonian physics, inaugurated another one. From then on, this problem can be accurately regarded as the inner force commanding the theoretical development of philosophy. In that perspective, the history of post-Kantianism can be considered as the history of a struggle to gain for philosophy a scientificity of its own. Fichte had no other aim than to achieve Kant's unfinished methodological accomplishment and soon suggested replacing the name "philosophy" by "science." "Transcendental idealism" and "speculative thinking" were the names for Schelling's and Hegel's methodological proposals to reach the same scientific status. Herbart and Fries both acknowledged their debts to Kant but shaped their philosophical identity with specific solutions to the problem of the scientific status of philosophical knowledge. Not only the shining stars of philosophy, but also authors of a lesser magnitude in these constellations participate in this extraordinary expansion of a new philosophical universe; for instance Salomon Maimon's skepticism is indeed a claim for philosophy as a science. (4) The numerous and quite diverse neo-Kantian philosophers--such as Hermann yon Helmholtz, Eduard Zeller, Albert Lange, and Alois Riehl--and schools--the neo-Herbartian and their journal, the Zeitschrift fur exacte Philosophie, (5) the neo-Freisean like Nelson, the Southwest (Windelband, Rickert), Marbourg (Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, Albert Gorland, and Rudolf Stammler)--understood the "Back to Kant! …

Hyacinth Gerdil's Anti-Emile: A Prophetic Moment in the Philosophy of Education

Abstract: The past is never dead. It's not even past. --William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (1951) TO SAY THAT THE PUBLICATION IN 1762 of Rousseau's Emile or On Education was controversial would be an understatement. Published in Paris, it was immediately denounced at the Sorbonne. The French Parliament condemned the book, had it confiscated, and ordered its author arrested. In Rousseau's native city of Geneva the Emile was burned. It is in the context of such controversy that one of the most accomplished philosophers in Northern Italy, Hyacinth Sigismond Gerdil (1718-1802), was asked to review Rousseau's book to determine whether there was to be found in it anything "contrary to the principles of religion and sound morality." (1) In the process of devising what was originally intended as a modest evaluation of Rousseau's work, Gerdil found himself articulating the elements of his own philosophy of education. The result is a work, first published in Turin in 1763, which he entitled Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Education against the Principles of Rousseau. The little book, much reprinted and translated, soon picked up the popular title, Anti-Emile, by which it largely has been known ever since. It is reported that Rousseau himself considered Gerdil's critique of his book to be principled and thorough, traits that he found rare among the wide-spread criticism of his works. (2) Gerdil's rhetorical style is marked by a tone of elevated civility; despite its polemical intent, his tone never strays far from the detachment of philosophical inquiry. Apart from historical considerations of its contribution to the hot polemics over Rousseau's book, Gerdil's Anti-Emile has contemporary relevance. Emile's principles of education are still with us. They have, however, become conventional instead of controversial. Gerdil's Anti-Emile is a book for anyone who would like to cast back the mind's eye to a moment in history when the profound potential of Rousseau's book for transforming Western culture and casting the minds and hearts of men in a revolutionary spirit was seen for precisely what it proved to be. Despite the efforts of Allan Bloom to elevate Rousseau's treatise to the status of "a book comparable to Plato's Republic," (3) the Emile is not well known outside of limited academic circles. This neglect, however, should not be taken as a sign of its minimal importance or weak influence. One hundred years ago the French educationalist, Gabriel Compayre wrote about Rousseau's influence in America: Without our suspecting it, Rousseau's pedagogical spirit has insinuated itself into and penetrated the methods of teaching and the educational practices.... Wherever discipline has become more liberal, where active methods are supreme, and where the child is kept constantly in a state of interest, lively curiosity, and sustained attention, his dignity being at the same time respected, there we may say Rousseau has passed by. (4) John Dewey's progressive, child-centered theory of education was a major conduit of these ideas in American schools. (5) Their influence continues today in pedagogical practices such as discovery methods, group projects, interactive and manipulative methodologies, and the appeal to different learning styles, which are staples in contemporary teacher training programs and the practice of their graduates. Rousseau's Emile is the prototype student. If, as a matter of principle, the rationale behind pedagogical practice follows from an understanding of the nature of the human person, we might wonder about the philosophical presuppositions at the Rousseauan origins of today's liberal, progressive movements in education. Allan Bloom identifies the fundamental issue: Rousseau is at the source of the tradition which replaces virtue and vice as the cause of man's being good or bad, happy or miserable, with such pairs of opposites as sincere/insincere, authentic/inauthentic, inner-directed/other-directed, real self/alienated self . …