Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2013"

Dominicus Gundissalinus and the Introduction of Metaphysics into the Latin West

Abstract: TWO REASONS EXPLAIN the paramount importance of Dominicus Gundissalinus (ca. 1110-1190) for the history of metaphysics on the eve of the Latin reception of Aristotle. First of all, in the mid-twelfth century, the scholar from Toledo translated a number of key texts on metaphysics from Arabic into Latin, namely, Ibn Gabirors Fons vitae, al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae, that is, his Maqasid al-falasifa, and above all Avicenna's Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, which forms part of his Kitab al-shifa'. In the second place, Gundissalinus discussed specific metaphysical problems in his own independent works such as his treatise De processione mundi, which offers an impressive description of cosmological principles in response to Latin and Arabic-Jewish authors, (1) and his De unitate et uno. In this short text, which for a long time had been attributed to Boethius, Gundissalinus developed his own solution to the problem of form and matter, following Ibn Gabirol. (2) It is in his influential encyclopedia De divisione philosophiae, (3) however, that Gundissalinus presents his most systematic discussion of metaphysics as a science. Here, he emphasizes the difference between theological and philosophical knowledge and then exclusively deals with the latter. (4) Arabic and Jewish authorities form the backdrop to this text as well, namely al-Farabi, Avicenna, and al-Ghazali, whose works the author combines with the relevant sources of the Latin tradition, above all Boethius's philosophy. In the history of philosophy, De divisione philosophiae constitutes a hallmark text, primarily because Gundissalinus introduced in this synthesis a number of new sciences into Latin philosophy. These include politics, for example, but above all metaphysics. Thus, Gundissalinus was the first Latin thinker who treated metaphysics as the name of a discipline rather than of a text. A characteristic feature of his account of the sciences, and in particular of that of metaphysics, is the great attention paid to reconciling the autonomy of the different sciences with the mutual connections amongst them. (5) Accordingly, the following discussion is divided into three parts: firstly, an exploration of the history of the relevant terminology will show how, for the first time, Gundissalinus interpreted metaphysics as the name of a discipline (1); in a second step, I will analyze the epistemological foundation of metaphysics as an autonomous science in the chapter on metaphysics in De divisione philosophiae, paying particular attention to Gundissalinus's criticism of twelfth-century philosophical theology (2); thirdly, I will examine a key text of the treatise on the division of the sciences, which has received little attention so far: Gundissalinus included a translation of a passage from Avicenna's Kitab al-burhan in his treatise, which discusses the difficult matter of the subordination of the philosophical disciplines under metaphysics (3). As is well known, Andronicus of Rhodes first introduced the title [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in his edition of the Corpus aristotelicum, which he prepared in the middle of the first century B.C. In this collection, the title refers to those books which Aristotle had associated with the term "wisdom," the first philosophy or philosophical theology. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] thus initially marked the bibliographical place of a collection of texts which in the edition of Andronicus of Rhodes followed the books of the Physics. The late antique Greek tradition, ranging from Alexander of Aphrodisias to Themistius and Ammonius, followed this bibliographical denomination. Furthermore, the expression [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] extended its influence beyond Greek literature. In Latin culture as well as among the Arabic falasifa, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] continued to refer to that which follows the Physics in the editorial tradition. …

Hegel's Ontological Pluralism: Rethinking the Distinction between Natur and Geist

Abstract: THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN a human social world and a natural world governed by immutable laws has been decisive for modern philosophy. Some have even suggested that this dichotomy is itself constitutive of what it means to be modern, or at least of modernity's self-understanding. (1) Of course, there are many important variations in how exactly we should think through this distinction--from Descartes's res cogitans and res extensa to Rousseau's nature and civil society to Kant's realm of freedom and realm of necessity--and these differences have significant repercussions. Nevertheless, most modern philosophers work within some form of differentiation between the world of nature which is the proper object of the natural sciences and the human, minded, and sociohistorical world, and Hegel is no exception. Hegel is distinctive, however, in his attempt to both articulate the truth of such a difference and simultaneously to overcome it by showing the continuity or unity between the human world and the natural world. The goal of this paper is to argue for how Hegel's account of the relationship between nature and spirit (Natur und Geist) is an attempt both to preserve and to overcome this modern dichotomy. This task is important because some of the recent secondary literature on Hegel appears to suggest a false alternative: either Hegel follows Kant's distinction between the natural realm of necessity and the realm of human freedom, or he returns to a precritical rationalist monism wherein nature is nothing but an emanation of the Idea. I will argue that if we are able to reconstruct Hegel's account of how to think both the difference and the unity between the natural and human world, not only do we move beyond this false dichotomy, but we also end up at the surprising conclusion that Hegel is an ontological pluralist who believes that entities exist in many different ways. Accounts of Hegel's idealism have wavered between two opposing interpretive poles for some time now. One general line of interpretation, historically the more traditional one, sees in Hegel's philosophy the expression of a robust metaphysical rationalism, while another draws his idealism closer to Kant's critical philosophy and its various restrictions. (2) While this is not always made explicit, these different readings have repercussions for how we interpret the relationship between the human historical world of spirit and the realm of nature within Hegel's philosophy. The metaphysical interpreters tend to see nature as a "manifestation" of Geist, and read the Natur/Geist distinction as somehow unified or overcome speculatively, while the nonmetaphysical readers emphasize the distinction until it almost becomes a Kantian dichotomy. In his classic study, for example, Charles Taylor describes Geist as an elaborate and historically mediated "cosmic spirit" (3) at work in and through everything, including nature. (4) On this reading, Hegel's rationalism implies that everything is somehow grounded in or an emanation of the Concept (der Begriff). What we end up with is a fairly exuberant form of monistic rationalism in which all of existence derives from the thinking activity of a cosmic substance, or in Taylor's words: "For the inner truth of things is that they flow from thought, that they are structured by rational necessity.., the Concept is an active principle underlying reality, making it what it is." (5) Even the supposedly contingent products of nature are expressions or emanations of Geist. Of course, Hegel is presented as having an elaborate defense of this position, and it does not have to be crude or cartoonish in the way I have just presented it. In fact, many commentators have successfully attempted to refine and defend this picture of Hegel as a monistic rationalist, sometimes by showing how this monism is actually quite epistemologically sophisticated, (6) or by demonstrating how it was historically motivated by the necessity of uniting Fichte's notion of freedom with Spinozistic naturalism and substance monism. …

Confucian Values and Human Rights

Abstract: TALK OF VALUES HAS been used by East Asian governments to argue for emphasizing economic, social, cultural and developmental rights over civil and political rights that are stressed by Western governments. Such discourse is neither restricted to politics nor uncontroversial. Scholarly articles defending and disputing "Asian values" peaked just before the 1997-98 financial crisis and have all but disappeared thereafter. (1) The historical antecedent of what we have come to call Asian values is the introduction of Confucian ethics into the Singapore secondary school program in the early 1980s, as an option in the compulsory religious knowledge course aimed at promoting moral education in the schools. (2) The nationwide concern with moral education was motivated by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's perception of the destabilizing effects of industrialization on Singaporeans. Instead of the cohesiveness of traditional communities, rapid economic growth led to increased crime, drug abuse, abortion, and divorce rates, which disorderly social behavior Lee identifies with Western individualism promoted by the emphasis on individual rights. (3) More cynical critics of Asian values maintain that such discourse not only justifies the paternalism of Asian governments with respect to personal behavior, but also enables them to restrict liberal democratic tendencies by being authoritarian and limiting political opposition. (4) Rather than attempt to adjudicate between these rivals in the Asian values/Confucian values debates, I wish to explore if Confucian values can contribute to the promotion of human rights. Instead of relying on prioritizing the communal over the individual which some defenders of Asian values have done--communal values which are not that distinct from the more conservative Western communitarians' emphasis--I inquire into the distinctive characteristics of Confucianism which can be used to justify the kind of human rights proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). (5) More specifically, I reexamine the resources put forth by some Confucian commentators which are, in my view, relevant to someone's being a rights bearer, such as, the role of the Confucian intellectual and the importance of education, and the potentiality for civic virtues in virtues like humaneness (ren), acting with appropriateness (yi), and ritual propriety (li). Examining these key philosophical concepts will enable us to get clear about Confucianism's compatibility with pluralistic values and ascertain if the kind of liberalism, so frequently associated with the ills of Western individualism by Asian governments, is necessary for possessing human rights, especially the first generation civil and political rights. If there are indeed Confucian values that support both the civil and political, as well as the economic, social, and cultural rights, then Asian governments who appeal to Confucian values to deemphasize civil and political rights and focus primarily on economic, social, cultural, and developmental rights are overstating their case. Moreover, if Confucian values can accommodate both the first and second generation rights without succumbing to a pluralism of values, especially those which glorify an individual's rights and freedoms without regard for the good of the community, then the value of individual liberalism prized by some Westerners is not a prerequisite for human rights, nor need it be embraced by Confucianism. If liberalism is not a prerequisite of human rights, then perhaps there is something about social order and moral values that the West can learn from Confucianism. The corollary for Asian governments who appeal to Confucian values is that the exercise of civil and political rights need not necessarily lead to excessive individualism. Consequently, these first generation rights do not need to be downplayed in a Confucian conception of human rights. There was no consciousness of human rights in early Confucian societies. …

Does Plotinus Present a Philosophical Account of Creation

Abstract: In his influential essay, "Plotinus's Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?" Lloyd Gerson raises the question of whether Plotinus's account of the procession of all things from the One is actually a type of creationist metaphysics rather than an alternative to it. (1) This paper is a reexamination of this question. As with most philosophical questions, much depends on how the terms are defined. Therefore, the first part of this paper will draw on Thomas Aquinas for a philosophical definition of creation and for the judgment that the philosophical understanding of creation can be and was achieved without the aid of divine revelation. The second part will argue that, according to Aquinas's definition, Plotinus presents a philosophical account of creation. (2) I seek to correct the thesis, advanced especially by twentieth century Catholic scholars, that creation is a uniquely Christian idea (3) and to further recent efforts in analyzing the congruities between Aquinas and Neoplatonism. While other scholars have indicated conceptual similarities between Plotinus and Aquinas, (4) a detailed presentation of how Plotinus's metaphysics aligns with Aquinas's philosophical understanding of creation has not yet been ventured. (5) It is almost certain that Plotinus's metaphysics indirectly influenced Aquinas quite early in his career through the mediation of Avicenna, Liber de Causis, Dionysius, and others; this paper, however, offers a comparative rather than a genetic treatment of the idea of creation. (6) Finally, this essay is a preliminary study of the question of whether Plotinus presents an account of creation, to which I hope to devote a book-length treatment. I Thomas on Creation. Aquinas stands out from the earlier Scholastic tradition by arguing that creatio ex nihilo can be defined philosophically entirely in terms of ontological dependence. (7) In book 2, distinction 1, question 1, article 2 of his Commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, Thomas writes that to create is "to produce a thing into being according to its entire substance." (8) Included in this idea are two points that explain what is meant by describing creation as from nothing (ex nihilo). First, unlike motion which presupposes a subject and generation which presupposes matter, creation "presupposes nothing in the thing which is said to be created." (9) "Nothing" is not some kind of substrate out of which creation is formed or void into which God creates, but it signifies that God is the origin of the totality of the creature. Second, nonbeing is prior to being in the thing which is said to be created. This is not a priority of time or of duration, such that what did not exist before does exist later, but a priority of nature, so that, if the created thing is left to itself, it would not exist because it only has its being from the causality of the higher cause. (10) Creation means that the creature is ever dependent on the Creator for its existence; its existence is always from another, such that nonexistence or nihil is, as it were, the natural state of a creature. In summary, created things are ex nihilo in that they come to be out of no preexisting subject and in that nonbeing belongs to a creature per se and being belongs to it ab alio. (11) According to Thomas, if these two notions are accepted "for the meaning of creation, creation can be demonstrated, and in this way philosophers have held [the doctrine of] creation." (12) If, however, the notion of duration is added to creation, such that creatures exist temporally after nothing, then creation becomes an article of faith and cannot be philosophically demonstrated. (13) Thomas argues in article five of this question that no argument based on the present state of the world can demonstrate either its eternity or its temporal origin and that both the eternity (understood as a beginningless and endless succession of time) (14) and the temporal finitude of the world are consistent with the nature of the world and the nature of divine action. …

Finocchiaro, Maurice., Meta-argumentation: An Approach to Logic and Argumentation Theory

Abstract: FINOCCHIARO, Maurice. Meta-argumentation: An Approach to Logic and Argumentation Theory. Studies in Logic, vol. 42. London: College Publications, 2013. vii + 279pp.--Argumentation is a burgeoning field, and in recent decades, argumentation theorists have produced a rich literature representing a wide variety of approaches, methods, styles, and conclusions. There are so many different voices in this conversation that it can appear cacophonous. In his latest book, Finocchiaro has undertaken an ambitious, even daunting project: mapping the role that meta-argumentative thinking plays in (ground-level) argument evaluation, thereby providing a comprehensive conceptual framework to that cacophony. But Finocchiaro has an extraordinary mastery of that field that is equal to his project. The result is an ambitious and substantial book that covers a lot of ground while offering a sustained argument for his emphasis on the importance of meta-argumentative thinking. There is an occasional downside to this: because there is often no consensus on the technical vocabulary in the field, a fair bit of preparatory work needs to be done to lay the terminological groundwork which cannot help but be insufficient for the uninitiated while seeming too pedantic for the others. Finocchiaro's careful style sometimes combines with his encyclopedic knowledge to exacerbate the problem. The benefits, however, far outweigh the costs. The book can be a valuable reference book for advanced researchers as a thorough compendium of the nuanced positions on such contemporary debates as: the role and nature of the dialectical aspects of argumentation; the possibility of deep disagreements and the possibility of progress in resolving them despite their logical intractability; the best way to distinguish and characterize closed-mindedness, open-mindedness, and fair-mindedness; fallacy analysis and the critical assessment of arguments; and a host of other important topics. The deeper the logical waters, the more important it is to follow Carnap's advice: tell the readers what you are going to do; tell them what you are doing; and then tell them what you have done. Finochiarro does Carnap one better because he not only makes it very clear what he is arguing about, but also how he is arguing. That is, he conscientiously and explicitly models the argumentation/meta-argumentation fluidity that is at the center of his project. The first stage in Finocchiaro's ambitious project is to negotiate the difference between dialectical and illative approaches to arguments, but what he ends up doing is effectively breaching the wall between them: everything proactively offered in support of a conclusion can be read as a response to possible or implicit opponents, while dialectical moves in response to explicit questions, objections, or counterarguments all can (and arguably ought to be) incorporated into the original illative justification for that conclusion. …

Francis Suárez on the Efficiency of Substantial Forms

Abstract: IN THE FIFTEENTH DISPUTATION of his Disputationae Metaphysicae, (1) Francis Suarez deals with the problem of the existence of substantial forms prior to defining them. After claiming that it is impossible to learn about the forms through experience, the Jesuit gives the following reasons to prove that substantial forms really exist: 1. at least one natural substance, namely the human being, is constituted by matter and form; 2. forms are necessary to explain the essential differences between beings; 3. forms are necessary to explain the return of a thing to its connatural state after being extrinsically affected; 4. forms are necessary to explain why the intense application of a power impedes the full application of another one; 5. without forms, substantial change lacks an adequate final term. (2) Let us first examine premise (3). According to it, it is possible to conclude that substantial forms exist through the observation of the accidents and operations of natural beings. Suarez uses a very simple example to build his case: water receives an accidental form, namely heat, when it is heated by the action of an extrinsic agent, namely fire. (3) When the fire's action stops, the water naturally tends to cool by a different action caused--presumably--by the water itself. The water's return to its original coolness must be taken as an essential and necessary action of water since it always cools after being affected by heat. Furthermore, since every action is caused by an agent, then the production of an accidental form such as coldness must be caused by an agent that acts permanently on water. Prima facie, this cause or principle can be either external or internal to the water itself. Nonetheless, the only external causes that always have an impact on water are the surrounding air and the celestial bodies, and none of them can be the real cause of water becoming cool again. Air cannot cool water because it is not as cold as water and because when the water is warmed by an external source, so is the air. Furthermore, celestial bodies cannot cool water, because they act on it remotely and they are not ordered to this kind of action. Thus, it is necessary to accept that an internal principle cools water and is therefore the reason why coldness is essential to it. What is the nature of this principle? Suarez answers straight-forwardly: it is a substantial form. First, he dismisses the possibility of identifying this principle with some unwarmed pockets of water that later cool the entire substance. Suarez thinks that water is uniformly heated, so there cannot be any pockets of water that remain cool. If there were, one would have to posit a cause that enables them to remain cool but that would turn out not to exist. Second, he rejects the suggestion that the internal principle might be some kind of active quality, such as the essence of coldness or some other higher quality that virtually contains coldness. Suarez rejects the former alternative because the essence of coldness does not remain in the water after it is heated, and even if it did, one could not explain how a diminished quality would increase in intensity, or how it could overcome a different and more intense quality all by itself. The principle also cannot be a higher quality because it would either lead to an infinite regress, since the virtual quality would need a higher one that contains it, or else it would be nothing other than a substantial form. (4) Coldness is a primary accident without which water cannot exist as water. The inseparability of this kind of accident can only be explained by its union with some intrinsic principle of substance. Nevertheless, if cold is a proper accident of water it is not because of its union with matter, since prime matter by definition is the first subject devoid of any accident, nor because of its union with another accident, since accidents do not exist by themselves. …

The Ontological Account of Self-Consicousness in Aristotle and Aquinas

Abstract: THE NOTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS and self-consciousness are typically modern. The equivalent in classical philosophers is, in some sense, the notion of self-knowledge. The semantic difference between these terms is that consciousness connotes more of a psychological state, while self-knowledge has a wider meaning and is related more to knowing the truth about one's being. My aim in this paper is to facilitate a bridge between the modern account of consciousness, which is mainly epistemological, psychological, and more recently neuro-psychological, and the ontological approach to the same subject in Aristotle and Aquinas. (1) The classical ontological approach to self-knowledge is not incompatible with modern discoveries in neuroscience and cognitive sciences touching on consciousness, nor even with certain correlative phenomenological accounts in the philosophy of mind, provided a materialistic or an idealistic interpretation is avoided, though I shall not consider this issue in this paper. (2) Here, I argue that self-consciousness in Aristotle and Aquinas is fundamentally viewed as a strong form of being, which means self-possession in an ontological sense. I do not intend to analyze the precise historical or exegetical problems of their writings, rather unwrap the theoretical problem. In this regard, I freely introduce my own insight and comparisons when I think it may be illuminating in the current philosophical inquiry. I begin by looking at consciousness at the level of both the sensitive and intellectual cognitive operations in Aristotle (I) and Aquinas (II). A greater ontological notion of self-consciousness can be seen in Aquinas in the context of the different degrees of being and living (III). Along the same lines, I consider the relation between immateriality and self-consciousness (IV). Then, I treat the anthropological meaning of self-consciousness and love of self in the context of friendship, understood as shared self-consciousness and conscious coexistence (V), and finish with the presentation of some conclusions (VI). I Perceiving and understanding one's own actions in Aristotle. According to the Greek philosopher, the senses of sight, hearing, and so forth, deal with the sensible objects of the external world, though the operations themselves of seeing, hearing, smelling, and so forth, can simultaneously be felt or perceived (Aristotle uses the term aisthesis) by the sentient subject through a capacity called "common sense." (3) In other words, some sensations refer to external objects, such as things illuminated, or sounds produced in the environment, but another kind of sensitive (nonintellectual) operation refers back to the operations themselves performed by the different external senses: to perceive or feel the acts of seeing, hearing, and the others. (4) This perception of the sensory operations could be called sensitive consciousness (Sihvola calls it perceptual consciousness). (5) We read in Aristotle: Now every sense has both a special function of its own and something shared with the rest. The special function, e.g., of the visual sense is seeing, that of the auditory, hearing, and similarly with the rest; but there is also a common faculty associated with them all, whereby one is conscious that one sees and hears (for it is not by sight that one is aware that one sees; and one judges and is capable of judging that sweet is different from white not by taste, nor by sight, nor by a combination of the two, but by some part which is common to all the sense organs ... (6) In current philosophical and scientific literature there is not any special distinction between sensitive and intellectual knowledge, perhaps because there is no clear distinction between the senses and the intellect. If we accept Aristotle's postulated common sense with its function of making possible the perception of sensitive intentional operations, then perceiving that one sees or hears is different from understanding that one sees or hears. …

Emotion and Evil in Kant

Abstract: KANT IS OFTEN REGARDED as a philosopher with a simplistic view of what emotions are, and as the proponent of an especially harsh view of the role emotions play in the moral life. On one common reading, the affective components of human nature that Kant calls feelings, desires, and inclinations are thoroughly noncognitive: that is, they neither include any form of judgment or perception, nor are they responses to judgments or perceptions. Rather, they are purely nonrational elements of our nature that assail us, as it were, from the outside--that is, outside of our reason--and threaten to cloud our judgment, to limit our freedom, to undermine prudence, and to overpower moral motivation. Therefore, on this common reading of Kant, emotions can play no positive role in the moral life, which is not about shaping the affective or sensible side of our nature into a harmonious relationship with reason, because that is not possible. The moral life is instead about subduing our sensible nature through a discipline of reason. There are some well-known texts that support this common reading. For example, in section one of the Groundwork, Kant claims that actions have moral worth only if they are done from the motive of duty alone; and he distinguishes between acting from the motive of duty and acting in order to satisfy some inclination, the latter of which cannot play any role in determining one's will if one's action is to have moral worth. To illustrate this, Kant gives a series of examples, including one in which he contrasts those who help others from the motive of sympathy with a grieving philanthropist who feels no sympathy but helps others from the motive of duty alone. The actions of sympathetic souls, Kant says, deserve "praise and encouragement but not esteem" because they have "no true moral worth," since sympathy is "on the same footing with other inclinations." By contrast, the actions of the grieving philanthropist do have moral worth, because they are not "incited ... by any inclination," but rather are motivated by duty alone. (1) What is it about inclinations, like sympathy, that prevents them from giving moral worth to actions motivated by them? In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant explains that "[i]nclination is blind and servile, whether it is kindly or not; and when morality is in question, reason must not play the part of mere guardian to inclination but, disregarding it altogether, must attend solely to its own interest as pure practical reason." (2) In the same paragraph (and also later in the Groundwork) Kant adds that inclinations are burdensome, even from the perspective of one's own happiness, because they "always leave behind a still greater void than one had thought to fill," and for this reason everyone "wish[es] to be rid of [inclinations]." (3) So it seems from these passages that sympathy cannot give actions moral worth because, like any inclination, it is blind or noncognitive, and therefore actions motivated by sympathy are not motivated by the rightness of the action but may simply happen to conform externally with what duty requires. Moreover, the blindness of inclinations may also explain why they are unreliable guides to one's own happiness. The solution in both cases, the moral and the prudential, is for reason alone to guide and motivate action, while subjecting inclinations to rational dominion as far as possible. (4) If this common reading of Kant on emotion and its role in the moral life were correct, then it would seem to make Kant's entire account of moral motivation depend on, and only as plausible as, a noncognitivist theory of emotion. It would depend, in other words, on characterizing sympathy, for example, as blind instead of potentially responsive to the reasons that make an action right. If sympathy even could involve or be a response to what makes an action right, then actions motivated by sympathy could, after all, have moral worth or at least could not be distinguished so cleanly from actions motivated by duty alone. …

Excellence as Completion in Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics

Abstract: ARISTOTLE TWICE STATES, as a general truth, that being is better than nonbeing. (1) Throughout his works, moreover, the goodness of beings frequently depends on their completeness. This is not surprising, given the prominence of the complete in Aristotelian ethics, where "the best appears to be something complete," and in particular "the human good is activity of the soul according to excellence; and if there are several excellences, according to the best and most complete; and further, in a complete life." (2) Now the crucial term in this last statement is "activity," not "complete," for both inside and outside his ethics Aristotle associates the good with being in the primary sense of activity ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) or fulfillment [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (3) Yet he seems to think that frequently, the genera] concepts of potency and act are neither necessary nor particularly appropriate for ethics or for natural science. As highly general terms of art, they tend to obscure the specific contours of the subject at hand. The complete ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) has a similar generality and flexibility--indeed, it is closely related to Aristotle's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--but even in translation it is somewhat less opaque. An ordinary, unpretentious notion, it can be applied helpfully to a variety of subjects without calling attention to itself. It is one of three central concepts--the determinate, the complete, and the self-sufficient--in terms of which he explores the goodness of the things that are. (4) Whether we wish to understand Aristotle's ethics, therefore, or to explore the idea of the good that animates his accounts of nature or of being as such, we may wish to have a synoptic view of what he means by the complete, and of what sorts of things qualify as complete and why. This would require: (1) surveying the completeness attained by natural substances--especially but not only living substances--in the normal course of their coming to be; (2) examining the contention that certain kinds of animal, and most likely of natural substance more generally, are more complete than others; (3) exploring his description of virtue or excellence as a completion; (4) investigating the claim that certain excellences are more complete than others; (5) understanding the completeness and incompleteness of various activities and motions. (5) Among these various tasks, the third has the advantage that it can be approached through the study of two key texts: the chapter on the complete in Metaphysics 5, Aristotle's philosophical lexicon, and a discussion of the ontology of excellence in Physics 7. In these texts Aristotle explores conceptual and ontological issues germane to a general concept of excellence; in both cases, the key premise is that excellence is best thought of as a completion. (6) His development of this claim draws on two larger themes. In Metaphysics 5, the concept of excellence as a completion belongs to a broad conceptual realm--explored in chapters 16-17 and 25-27--in which intelligible realities are presented metaphorically in terms of shape and size. Within this realm, excellence grows toward a limit set by the powers that make a substance what it is. (7) In the Physics, excellence belongs to a world structured by contraries and therefore also by coming to be and destruction. What it completes is a substance's power to negotiate such a world while maintaining and developing its own identity. (8) Having grown to full stature through its proper excellence, the substance can keep itself from being affected or altered in ways that would undermine its being; in so doing, it approximates the self-sufficient impassivity that Aristotle attributes to thought ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). The themes of alteration and identity are also pursued in On the Soul 2.5, which provides an important complement to Physics 7.3. That excellences of the body and certain excellences of the soul merely imitate a kind of being that [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] exemplifies--namely, self-sufficient freedom from the conditions of bodily existence, and so also from alteration and from change in general--suggests that there will be an asymmetry between the excellence of the soul's thinking part and other sorts of excellence. …

Kant’s Two Touchstones for Conviction: The Incommunicable Dimension of Moral Faith

Abstract: What does it mean to say, as Kant does, that morality inevitably (unumganglich) leads to religion? (1) This seems to be a curious inevitability, given Kant's formulation of morality in terms of autonomous human reason, a formulation often taken to preclude any legitimate role for the divine in our ethical experience (2) I take Kant to mean that earnest commitment to the demands of the moral law requires a certain disposition towards the project of morality itself, that is, a firm conviction that the ideal is not incompatible with the real, which is in turn identical to maintaining rational hope in a God whose justice secures the highest good (3) Rather than explore the content of Kant's rational faith, in this paper I will attempt to clarify the form this religious disposition takes by clarifying the nature of conviction and moral certainty and show why Kant thinks that solid conviction in divine providence is indivisible from a sincere character (4) This is a point of no small contention among Kant's readers, for whom the issue of whether religious faith rests upon objective grounds that are valid for all, or is superfluous wishful thinking prompted by subjective psychological history, is of obvious importance (5) Kant's own way of addressing this question is to delineate between valid belief and invalid belief, terming the former "conviction" (Uberzeugung) and the latter "persuasion" (Uberredung) Moreover, Kant attempts to find a "touchstone" (Probirstein)--in this context, an infallible method for discerning genuine instances of something from spurious ones--that will provide a consistent way to distinguish conviction from persuasion (6) Unfortunately, Kant's account of how one goes about making this distinction suffers from a significant ambiguity In this paper, I will suggest a solution to the ambiguity between persuasion and conviction in Kant's works in order to shed light on the indispensability of faith for Kant This ambiguity stems from seldom-noticed tensions within Kant's account of the subjective and objective conditions of faith as a form of holding something to be true (Furwahrhalten) (7) It is the difference between these conditions that is said to underlie the further difference between the chimerical sway of persuasion on the one hand, and the conviction necessary for a universally valid faith on the other (8) Although Kant does not appear to notice it, he has two touchstones for distinguishing persuasion from conviction, rather than one, and therefore he overlooks a serious ambiguity regarding their compatibility (9) I will endeavor to show that Kantian religion is consistent with Kantian morality provided that we see how the structure of his religion dovetails with the touchstone of betting, a testing procedure whose primacy Kant's texts imply without explicitly resolving its divergence from the other touchstone he lays out: that of communal agreement (10) The failure to notice that Kant has two touchstones for testing conviction can lead the reader to misconstrue the incommunicable dimension of Kantian faith--that is, the fact that faith is a practical attitude other people cannot talk me into adopting--as a sign of its incommensurability with the universal validity that makes Kantian morality compelling (11) Those few scholars who pay any sustained attention to Kant's conception of conviction do not realize that Kantian faith is an attitude that hinges on who one is, that is, the kind of character one chooses to have (12) Given the centrality of character to my interpretation, I will frame my discussion through Kant's treatment of two people: Spinoza and the biblical figure of Job Spinoza serves as a negative example of the existential insufficiency of atheism, and Job serves as a positive example of religious conviction as the pinnacle of consistent moral agency After using Kant's discussion of Spinoza's atheism to lay out the rationale informing the details of Kant's theory of valid belief, I will focus my attention upon Kant's two touchstones for distinguishing genuine conviction …

Aristotle on Deduction and Inferential Necessity

Abstract: Aristotle's Topics introduces a deductive argument as follows: "a deduction [sullogismos] is an account [logos] in which, some things being supposed, something other than that which is assumed results of necessity [ex anagkes sumbainei] in virtue of that which has been assumed." (1) The translation of sullogismos as "deduction," instead of "syllogism," is a matter for discussion, but the term "deduction" here exclusively pertains to Aristotle's conception of deduction in the same way as epagoge, translated as "induction," is confined to his view on induction. We then avoid Keyt's criticism that the word "deduction" fails to assert the difference between a syllogism and the modern notion of deduction. (2) As for logos, its translation as "account," instead of "argument," aims to stress the role of deduction in language. Indeed, the first meaning of logos is "sentence" in spoken language, as explained in De Interpretatione. (3) The Topics does not explain further the notion of deduction, as it immediately focuses on the distinction between demonstration and dialectical deduction, namely the contrast between knowledge and opinion. On the other hand, the Prior Analytics is concerned with deductions simpliciter, which are neither demonstrative nor dialectical. (4) Aristotle suggests a same formulation of deduction, despite the slightly different wording: "a deduction is an account in which, some things being supposed, something other than that which is assumed results of necessity [ex anagkes sumbanei] in virtue of these being so." (5) A deduction simpliciter is a necessary inference from given premises. Aristotle adds: "I mean by 'these being so' [toi tauta einai] that which results because of these, and I mean by 'that which results because of these' that which stands in need of no term outside in order for that which is necessary to be produced." (6) An inference is necessary when the conclusion is drawn from the terms of the premises alone, without referring to anything outside of them. Thus, a conclusion is deducible when it has been necessarily inferred from its premises. If two distinct conclusions were inferred from the same premises, the two inferences could not be necessary, since a necessary inference cannot be otherwise. If no conclusion "results of necessity" (ex anagkes sumbainei) from the premises, then the account cannot be a deduction. Modern logicians, in their logical reevaluation of Aristotle's deductive system, are very reluctant to speak of inferential necessity. Lukasiewicz is the first to suggest a modern reconstruction of Aristotelian logic by identifying a syllogism with a universalized conditional proposition, such that the logic of syllogisms amounts to a system of true propositions. (7) He understands "syllogistic necessity" as a universal quantifier: "the Aristotelian sign of syllogistic necessity represents a universal quantifier and may be omitted, since a universal quantifier may be omitted when it stands at the head of a true formula." (8) Lukasiewicz is not interested in Aristotle's inferential necessity and replaces it with a notion compatible with his own logical reconstruction. In contrast, Patzig attempts to underline the importance of necessity in Aristotle by distinguishing two kinds of necessity, that is, relative or absolute necessity. (9) His explanation, however, makes sense only in the context of Lukasiewicz's logical reconstruction, since Patzig understands Aristotle's syllogism as a true conditional proposition. Nowadays, it is standard to identify Aristotle's inferential necessity with logical validity. For instance, Keyt writes: "the conclusion of a syllogism follows 'of necessity' from its premises: only valid arguments are syllogisms." (10) An argument is valid if its premises logically entail its conclusion. This logical reconstruction is based on a criticism of Lukasiewicz, initiated by Corcoran and Smiley, such that the logical truth of a conditional proposition is replaced with the logical validity of a natural deduction. …

St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics

Abstract: THE PHYSICS IS A MOST remarkable work, which had a profound influence on the Arab and Western world and marked practically all studies of physical nature until the time of Galileo Galilei, but for many moderns it is only a historical document Jonathan Barnes asserts that the theories of Aristotle about physical nature do not provide any true knowledge (1) St Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, wrote a most detailed, profound, and impressive commentary, belying the words of Etienne Gilson and Joseph Pieper that he would not have had a connatural sympathy for this subject matter (2) Over the past decades the Aristotelian commentaries of Aquinas have attracted the attention of many scholars in the field This attention is a sign of a growing interest in the philosophical thought of Aquinas and an acknowledgment of its importance On the other hand, it is noteworthy that in the past several Thomists were less interested in the Aristotelian commentaries--Jacques Maritain, for instance, seldom mentioned them Their study is beset with difficulties, not only because of the fact that Aristotle's original text and way of arguing are sometimes far from clear, but also because St Thomas brings in an impressive number of analyses and relates the opinions of other philosophers Moreover, it is not always evident at first sight whether he agrees with the Philosopher or disengages himself from some particular conclusions For us, today, the most important question is whether Thomas is in substantial agreement with Aristotle's philosophy of nature, accepts theories which seem outdated and false to us, and invites us to consider these commentaries as containing his own philosophy of nature and of man, his own cosmology, metaphysics, and ethics In this essay I shall not deal extensively with the sources of Aquinas's Expositio in libros Physicorum nor with its relationship with the commentary by St Albert the Great or with that of Siger of Brabant For such an undertaking, we may have to wait until the new Leonine edition of the text is published, hoping that it will show the same level of research as Gauthier's editions of the commentaries on the De anima and the Ethica I propose to deal briefly with the following points: (1) The characteristics of the Expositio, its time of composition and Thomas's intention in writing it; (2) The structure of the Physics according to the ancient commentators and Thomas's view of its composition; (3) Aquinas on Aristotle's way of arguing, its varieties and occasional weaknesses; (4) Agreement with what Aristotle writes, corrections and additions introduced by St Thomas; (5) Aquinas and Averroes; (6) The case of Book VIII In the conclusion I will answer the question as to whether St Thomas accepts the substance of Aristotle's doctrine It would be presumptuous to claim to give definite solutions or answers to all these questions I only hope that this essay may help us make some steps forward, however small, in the study of the Aristotelian commentaries of St Thomas Aquinas (3) I The Expositio and its Time of Composition The commentary on Aristotle's Physics is a voluminous work It differs from the commentaries on the De caelo, the Metaphysics, the De generatione et corruption, and the Meteorologics in that it covers the entire text, practically line for line The Expositio seems to have been composed in Paris, during Thomas's second stay in the city Gauthier suggests 1268-1269 as a date (4) He points to a quotation in Physics VI, lesson 5, from the De sensu at sensato in the translation of the Nova, which had been completed shortly before that date According to Gerard Verbeke, who studied the Latin text at the basis of the Expositio, Thomas appears to have used the new translation by Van Moerbeke, called the Nova, made as it seems between 1260 and 1270 (5) The translation by James of Venice, the so-called Vetus, was at the basis of Van Moerbeke's revision and Aquinas kept referring to it …

De Magistro – Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus on Natural Conceptions

Abstract: THE LATER MEDIEVAL DEBATE that I present here under the title De magistro is the proper answer of Latin thinkers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to a paradox formulated in Plato's dialogue Meno, the so-called paradox of learning This medieval answer can only be understood from the frame that Augustine's treatise De magistro imposed De magistro, itself a solution to the Meno paradox, linked the paradox of learning to the necessity of illumination, a Neoplatonic doctrine that replaces the Platonic doctrine of anamnesis In the introduction, I will show that the solution formulated in the Latin Middle Ages goes back, via Arabic philosophy, to the early Stoa At the same time, however, the medieval solution assumes a separate identity, and in the main parts of this contribution, I aim to present this distinct character I The paradox of learning formulated in the Meno says that one can neither search for what one does not know, nor for what one does know, for in the former case one would not know what to look for, and in the latter case one would already know, which makes [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] superfluous (1) A wealth of alternative answers was formulated in classical antiquity, all aiming to replace the Platonic doctrine of recollection (2) The famous Plutarch fragment 215f records a series of such answers, as formulated in the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the Garden: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] The problem advanced in the Meno, namely, whether inquiry and discovery are possible, leads to a real impasse For we do not, on the one hand, try to find out things we know, [since this is] a futile proceeding; nor, on the other, things we do not know, since even if we come across them, we do not recognize them: they might be anything [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] The Peripatetics introduced the notion of potential intellect; but the origin of our difficulty was actual knowing and not knowing Even if we grant the existence of potential intellect, the difficulty remains unchanged How does this intellect operate? It must be either on what it knows or what it does not know [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] The Stoics make the natural conceptions [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] responsible If these are potential, we shall use the same argument as against the Peripatetics; and if they are actual, why do we search for what we know? And if we use them as a starting-point for the search for other things that we do not know, how do we search for what we do not know? [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] The Epicureans introduce prolepses; if they mean these to be articulated, search is unnecessary; if unarticulated, how do we extend our search beyond our prolepses, to look for something of which we do not possess even a prolepsis? The fragment introduces, in its condensed or even truncated Greek style, the notion of "natural conceptions" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) as the proper answer of the Stoa to the Meno paradox The Stoic answer is stretched on the rack of a distinction between potential and actual cognition, such that it is either said to succumb to the same pitfall as the Peripatetic solution of a potential intellect, or does not offer any solution at all The Stoic [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] are distinguished from the Epicurean "preconceptions" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which, in line with the fundamental procedure of "conceptual articulation" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), are subjected to an alternative pair of opposites, namely articulated-unarticulated ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) This is interesting, of course, since one might consider the distinction of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to express an authentic Stoic idea (4) The fragment's editor, Sandbach, considered it to be important evidence in the debate with Bonhoffer, who claimed [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], which are both called [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to be identical already in the older Stoa and who restricted this cognition a priori to the moral realm (5) (in line with Diogenes Laertius, VII 53: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]); (6) evidently, if the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] are to serve as a solution to the Meno paradox, their scope must exceed the range of moral conceptions …

Borg, Emma., Pursuing Meaning

Abstract: BORG, Emma. Pursuing Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xv + 234pp. Cloth, $65.00--Borg defends the traditional, albeit currently heterodox, view of minimal semantics. She defines the position in terms of four theses. (i) Declarative sentences express truth-evaluable contents (that is, propositions); (ii) such contents are determinately fixed by the syntax and lexical content of the constituents of a sentence; (iii) context-sensitive expressions are limited to a small overt set; and (iv) the contents as expressed by a speaker are graspable by a competent hearer without access to the intentions of the speaker. I say this position is traditional, for it more or less corresponds to the "Gricean" view that sentence meaning and speaker meaning are clearly separable, at least along certain dimensions. For Borg, semantics can be fruitfully pursued by targeting the contents of declarative sentences independently of an assessment of how the context or intentions of a speaker enter into what the speaker intends on a given occasion, save for the evaluation of the small set of context-sensitive items (he, that, and so forth). The position is also heterodox, for most current theorists of pragmatics and natural language semantics reject one or all of the above theses; in particular, some form of "pragmatism" is now orthodox, which has it that linguistic content alone is rarely, if ever, propositional. The expression of propositions requires the linguistic material of an utterance to be supplemented with contextual and intentional factors, which perforce make language rife with context-sensitivity. Borg, however, is not simply out of touch with current work. She mounts a sustained argument for the coherence and explanatory reach of her position in the face of a multitude of objections. Right or wrong, Borg articulates an interesting position that deserves, and will no doubt receive, much critical attention. Borg opens with a survey chapter that serves as an expert introduction to the varied positions within the debate. Borg does a very good job of effectively arguing that her theses (i)-(iv) should be a baseline, and that movement away from them requires substantial support, which is mostly absent. For instance, appeals to "hidden variables" to support the putative contextual parameters of content are common, but much less common is any kind of linguistic support for such variables. The next three chapters broach a range of empirical issues in psychology and linguistics. Rather than argue directly for minimalism, Borg judiciously assesses the problems that beset all semantic accounts, and concludes that minimalism is by no means worse off. The final two chapters of the book hold the greatest interest, I think, for they break some new ground in the semantic-pragmatics debate and raise fundamental issues for the field as a whole. …

Saarinen, Risto. Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought

Abstract: SAARINEN, Risto. Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. viii + 248pp. Cloth, $80.00--This book continues the author's earlier study Weakness of the Will in Medieval Thought: From Augustine to Buridan (New York: Brill, 1994), although it stands on its own. It aims to demonstrate that, contrary to the claims of some, "the classical problem of weakness of will was the source of lively debates and significant innovations during the Renaissance and the Reformation.... The study of these debates and innovations sheds light on the general understanding of the human condition during the formative period between medieval times and early modernity." The author is primarily concerned with the reception history of Aristotle's concept of akrasia and of St. Augustine. The book covers both philosophical and theological ground. The first chapter provides an overview of the prior history of the question, discussing Plato and Aristotle, Stoicism, St. Paul, and St. Augustine, the "Medieval Aristotelians" Thomas Aquinas and Walter Burley, the "Medieval Voluntarists" Walter of Bruges and Henry of Ghent, and the "Medieval Syntheses" of Albert the Great and John Buridan. At the end of this chapter the author categorizes various "models of akrasia," which he will use throughout the rest of the book to characterize the various authors studied. There are the two "Platonic models," namely the "Socratic-Platonic" model, which denies the existence of akrasia in favor of strong intellectualism, and the "commonplace Platonic" model, which emphasizes the conflict in the soul between reason and desire. Then there is the "Aristotelian" model, based on the notion of a practical syllogism. In akratic behavior there is a failure to reason properly in the presence of desire. Then there are "Stoic-Augustinian models." "Commonplace Augustinianism" holds that we inevitably experience disordered desires, and moral culpability only arises when we consent to these desires. "Voluntarism" holds that the will is the ultimate determining factor of behavior. The Stoic models hold that desires are in and of themselves already practical judgments assented to in some way, and disordered desires are thus something for which the agent can in some way be culpable. In the second chapter the author discusses various authors from the Renaissance: Petrarch, Donato Acciaiuoli, Versor, Wellendorffer, Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, Clichtove, John Mair (also known as John Major), and Piccolomini. An important example, which later becomes commonplace, is introduced by Clichtove, namely Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses, who, making a decision under the influence of strong passion, says that "I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse." This verse seems to exemplify "a non-Aristotelian 'clear-eyed akrasia'," and the author argues that its widespread use later in the Renaissance and Reformation periods is symptomatic of a partial trend away from an Aristotelian, syllogistic analysis of akrasia towards a "commonplace Platonic" analysis emphasizing the back and forth struggle between reason and passion. …

Philosophical Prayer in Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus

Abstract: Since the Pre-Socratics, philosophers have famously lambasted traditional portraits of the divine, decrying anthropomorphic and mercurial depictions of the gods, who need to be appeased with burnt offerings or swayed by flattery. Nevertheless, while transforming the common depiction of the divine into intelligible, absolute, and incorporeal realities, philosophers from the opening of the Academy to its close heralded the philosophical value of prayer. Primarily, Plato often depicts Socrates as one who prays in the Phaedo, Symposium, and the Phaedrus, while in the Theaetetus he insists that the philosopher should make hymns to the gods as this activity helps him "become like a god as far as possible." (1) Furthermore, in the Timaeus the suspected Pythagorean notably affirms the value of prayer just before narrating his [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], insisting that the temperate invoke the gods before all endeavors. (2) Even the Athenian Stranger claims that prayer is beneficial to the virtuous because these individuals become like the object of veneration. By contrast, prayer is pointless for the wicked since such individuals, due to their ignorance, have little chance of successfully petitioning the gods for truly good things. (3) In the Neoplatonic tradition many philosophers defended and elaborated upon the Platonic doctrine of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and its connection to the metaphysical value of prayer. For Plotinus, prayer is the reaching of the soul toward God, an activity which transforms one's inner being into a sanctuary for the divine, enabling individuals to become collected, self-gathered, and tranquil. (4) His student, Porphyry, as recorded by Proclus, believes that prayer is especially appropriate for the virtuous, as "like loves being connected to like" and in this way the "virtuous person is most like the gods." (5) In later Neoplatonism, Iamblichus further argues that prayer leads human souls to the highest levels of consciousness of which we are capable. We read: Extended practice of prayer nurtures our intellect, enlarges very greatly our soul's receptivity to the gods, reveals to men the life of the gods, accustoms their eyes to the brightness of divine light, and gradually brings to perfection the capacity of our faculties for contact with the gods, until it leads us up to the highest level of consciousness (of which we are capable); ... in a word, it renders those who employ prayers, if we may express it, the familiar consorts of the gods. (6) Ultimately, the "highest level of consciousness" for Iamblichus is not knowledge per se, that is, knowledge of a discursive or reflective type. As Iamblichus argues, "[k]nowledge, after all, is separated (from its object) by some degree of otherness" so it can never engender the "unitary connection with the gods that is natural."? Attempting to distance himself from Plotinus and Porphyry, Iamblichus believed that beyond the rationalistic work of the philosopher, who simply contemplates the divine in [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and thereby remains separated from the object of his veneration, true prayer is a type of theurgy or godwork that divinizes the soul or makes it like the divine and thereby generates the activity of union with the gods. (8) Following upon Iamblichus and responding to Timaeus's invocation of the gods at Timaeus 27c1-d4, Proclus discusses at length in his commentary on Timaeus the metaphysical value of prayer? Heralding the fact that prayer marks the soul's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or return to its causative principle, Proclus proceeds to exonerate individuals who "... observe the power of providence penetrating the whole of reality." (10) He further declares that individuals with even a modicum of "good sense" or [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], defined here not as self-control but as "an inspired activity of the soul," will invoke and pray to the gods. …

Beyond Kant and Hegel: In Answer to the Question, "How Are Synthetic Cognitions a Priori Possible?"

Abstract: KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY (1) is largely regarded as an indictment against speculative metaphysics. In this essay the argument is made that Kant aimed to put an end not to speculative metaphysics, but only to those approaches to metaphysics that could not be validated objectively. (2) It is also argued that the science of which Kant speaks in his critical philosophy does not point to those works that Kant undertook after his critical philosophy, but to an as yet nonexistent science of metaphysics directed at a positive solution to the cosmological problems. (3) This interpretation can therefore be called an open, as opposed to a closed, interpretation of Kant. It is also argued that the critical demands for a science of metaphysics stipulated in the Critique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics are so far-reaching in their scope that they cannot properly be understood from a closed, but only from an open perspective. Not only does a closed perspective make it impossible to understand these critical demands, but a closed perspective leads to an inevitable shortchanging of Kant with regard to his fundamental intention, which was to challenge and direct metaphysicians toward the end of a science of metaphysics. In what follows I will attempt to show what Kant meant by a science of metaphysics by citing his critical demand for objective validity. I will weigh this most difficult of all Kantian demands against the science Hegel advanced in response to Kant. Then I will propose a reformulation of Hegel's response to Kant so that it falls in line with Kant, and in so doing, not only show the continuing relevance of Kant's critical philosophy, but also offer speculative metaphysicians a possible first step that they can take toward the end of a science of metaphysics. While there are several critical demands imposed by Kant toward this end, it is this demand for objective validity that will help more than anything else to show why it is all too easy to shortchange Kant, and why this shortchanging of Kant inevitably leads to certain misconceptions. For instance, Mortimer J. Adler, remarking on what he thought was Kant's fundamental intention in his critical philosophy, offers the following: "To maintain that there are synthetic judgments a priori, as Kant does, is, perhaps, the single most revolutionary step that he took to overcome the conclusions reached by Hume that he found repugnant. What was his driving purpose in doing so? It was to establish Euclidean geometry and traditional arithmetic as sciences that not only have certitude, bur contain truths that are applicable to the world of our experience." Adler offers some valid criticisms in support of his evaluation, but in the course of his criticisms he denounces Kant's critical philosophy in its entirety by remarking: "How anyone in the twentieth century can take Kant's transcendental philosophy seriously is baffling, even though it may always remain admirable in certain respects as an extraordinarily elaborate and ingenious intellectual invention." (4) However, Kant states with respect to his inquiry into mathematics and the pure science of nature: "Both sciences, therefore, stood in need of this inquiry, not for themselves, but for the sake of another science: metaphysics." (5) Hence, if Kant did not undertake his inquiry into these other sciences for their sake, as Adler claims, but for the sake of metaphysics, the question arises: what connection can these other sciences have with metaphysics? Kant provides some clue with the following: "Does not this faculty [which produces mathematics], as it neither is nor can be based upon experience, presuppose some ground of knowledge a priori, which lies deeply hidden but which might reveal itself by these its effects if their first beginnings were but diligently ferreted out?" (6) Kant believed that since these other sciences exhibit a priori principles or propositions, thought out in the minds of their authors independently of what they could know through direct observation and experience, then the possibility that metaphysicians should be capable of advancing something similar could not be ruled out. …

Young, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

Abstract: YOUNG, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xxxii + 649pp. Cloth, $45.00--A massive effort that combines biographical narrative with textual interpretation, Julian Young's new work on Nietzsche demands attention. This is due partly to the importance of its subject, and partly to the impression of thoroughness conveyed by the book's length. Though not without its flaws, Young's biography is worth reading for anyone who wants to enter more deeply into Nietzsche's life and work. What makes Young's biography worth reading? It is written in an unpretentious style, refreshingly free from academic jargon. It contains a wealth of small but telling details about Nietzsche's life that, while not unattested by previous biographies, deserve to be better known than they are. For instance, after winning in 1885 a court settlement against his publisher and paying off his debts to bookstores, Nietzsche purchased and designed his father's tombstone, with a verse from 1 Corinthians inscribed on it ("Love never faileth"). This happened thirty six years after his father died. Young admirably brings out Nietzsche's dedication to teaching his students, his determination to become (as he put it in a letter to Erwin Rohde) a "really practical teacher." We learn that he even offered them five-course dinners at the end of the semester. One imagines that he cooked well; in 1876 or 1877, while living in Sorrento, he learned how to make risotto. Young's book is rich in such details. They serve to humanize the alternately forbidding and buffoonish figure that emerges from Nietzsche's autobiography. The chapter on "Nietzsche's Circle of Women" is among the most valuable in the book. Young spends due time on Nietzsche's problematic relationships with his mother, his sister, and Lou Salome. Going beyond these well-known figures in his life, Young shows that despite his antifeminism, Nietzsche surrounded himself with a number of "feminist friends." To one such friend, Resa von Schirnhofer, he chose to communicate orally, in a manner she found "alien" and "terrifying," the doctrine of the eternal return, before resuming (as she says) "his normal way of speaking and usual self." Beyond its amusement value, the vignette shows that in spite of his more notorious remarks, Nietzsche's emotions toward women were not confined to fear, anger and contempt. Well after he was rejected by Lou Salome, Nietzsche actively sought women as interlocutors. Young shows in admirable detail the importance of von Schirnhofer, Malwida von Meysenbug, Helen Zimmern, Meta von Salis, and Helene Druskowicz for Nietzsche's life. Perhaps most important, Young concludes, is Cosima Wagner, his "ideal woman" with whom "four-handed piano playing and long metaphysical conversations were major elements in their relationship." Given Nietzsche's love for Cosima to the very end, what explains his later tendency to emphasize his antifeminist side? Young concludes that while Nietzsche treasured the company of educated, intelligent women, "what terrified him was women's access to power." But why? Young's explanation seems less to solve the problem than to reinforce its difficulty. As a guide to the events and people in Nietzsche's life, Young's book is reliable. …

Belting, Hans., Florence and Baghdad, Renaissance Art and Arab Science

Abstract: BELTING, Hans. Florence and Baghdad, Renaissance Art and Arab Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011. 304pp. Cloth, $39.95--In this finely produced and handsomely illustrated book, Professor Hans Belting, professor of Art History and Media Theory at the Academy of design in Karlesruhe, Germany, presents a scholarly account of the influence of early studies on optics by the Arabian mathematician, Alhazen (965-1040 A.D.) and their later influence on Italian Renaissance art, as well as bearing on further Western concepts of human perception and epistemology. The book opens with an examination of the notion of "perspective" in the narrowest sense of the word. In general English usage, the word perspective is used to signify a particular point of view as in, "From an historical perspective ...," or as, "putting things in their proper perspective." Art Historians may speak of the "atmospheric perceptive" used by Leonardo DaVinci in which cooler colors are used to portray objects at a great distance, or "hieratic perspective" used in both Medieval and Oriental art where the more important personages are rendered larger than the rest, but Belting refers exclusively to the "mathematical perspective," described in Alhazen's original work on optics as titled in the Medieval Latin translation Perspectiva. In his work, Alhazen describes his experiments using a Camera Obscura, or darkened chamber with a small peep hole, and the aid of mirrors to prove that light traveled in straight lines (foreshadowing the work of Kepler and Descartes some 600 years later). From these studies he reversed the classical optical theory that the eye emitted energy in order to perceive objects, to a theory that physical light rays were reflected from a multitude of points on objects, and that these rays travelled in straight lines to the curvature of the eyeball and were thus transmitted to the brain. Alhazen had no interest in art, only the transmission and geometry of light. Given the Moslem prohibition of depicting images of living (breathing) creatures as counterfeits infringing on the unique prerogative of Allah, this neglect is understandable. Moslem art did, however, develop according to Alhazen's theories in the beautiful geometric patterns seen throughout the Arab world as in the manuscripts, painting, and the three dimensional stucco work called Muqarnas, found in the Middle and Far East, as well as in Granada and other sites in Andalusia. It was in Renaissance Italy that Alhazen's Perspectiva finally produced fruit as a theory of art. With the advent of Humanism, the author tells us, the "individual human gaze" triumphed over the static theocentric world view of the Middle ages as to how man perceives the world. The great Renaissance polymath, Leon Batista Alberti (1404-1472), was the first author to promote this transformation in his treatise on painting, Della Pittura. Alberti even used a winged human eye as his emblem. Based on the theories found in Alhazen's optics, Alberti stated that, "I will take from mathematics those things [of] which my subject is concerned. …

Theil, Udo. the Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume

Abstract: THEIL, Udo. The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011. 483pp.--The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity From Descartes to Hume is a rich and comprehensive book that deals with the philosophical discussion of self-consciousness and personal identity in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book is organized chronologically; it begins with Descartes and moves through Spinoza to Locke. Then it discusses a variety of responses to Locke's view, including Leibniz's. It then moves on to Berkeley, to Wolff and, ultimately, Hume. Along the way, many minor philosophers are discussed; Clauberg, Cuenz, Perronet, and Poley, to name a few. The Early Modern Subject is thus a great resource for those looking for a thorough itinerary of the philosophical thought on self-consciousness and personal identity in all of its rich detail during this period. Those looking for a grand overarching thesis on the topic of the history of self-consciousness and personal identity, however, will be disappointed. Thiel has no systematic claim to make, either with regard to contemporary discussions of personal identity, or with regard to the period of history he covers. Rather, he has the goal of showing that "contrary to what some scholars have claimed, philosophical theory about human subjectivity was alive and well long before the beginnings of German idealism around 1800." Thiel's aims, as he states them, are to provide an account of the theories of identity and self-consciousness in the early modem period, to evaluate critically their contributions, and also to explain the philosophical arguments in their historical context. In my view, Thiel succeeds in these aims, with the one qualification that by "historical context" we understand Thiel to mean the "intellectual-historical context," rather than the scientific or political context. Although Thiel gives the arguments of many philosophers their due, Locke's revolutionary account of personal identity, according to which consciousness is what constitutes our inseparable selves, is central to Thiel's narrative. Wolff's theory, according to which our consciousness of our selves is bound up with our consciousness of objects also receives special attention, as does Hume's "bundle theory" of the self, according to which there is properly no identity of the mind, rather it is just a bundle of perceptions. …