Great Philosopher Research Articles

Reforms and Reformers on the Question of the Causes, Features and Results of the State-Legal Transformation of Prussia at the Beginning of the 19th Century

This study aims to analyze and provide a historical and legal assessment of administrative, economic, and social transformations in Prussia in the first half of the 19th century to study the circumstances and conditions of the formation of a new political, legal, and economic reality of the country. Moreover, the role of specific personalities who made a mark in history during this period is explored to obtain an idea of what administrative, legal, and economic patterns they reshaped in the management system. The author focuses not on the transformations but on the personalities whose hands have produced those transformations (an objective series of events) in Prussian Germany. Reformers-researchers (first, Stein, Gardenberg, V. Humboldt) realized their own private interest, but the totality of personal interests was already of public interest, and they themselves acted as its subjects. The success of the reformation was also determined by the prevailing atmosphere in the country, which was filled with great philosophers, historians, and writers with their ideas and deeds. The author concludes that science in Germany was more than science. She actively participated in the process of transformation in the country.
 The author proves that the Prussian reformation, despite the different ideas of the participants about its goals, objectively contributed to the creation of the foundations of the bourgeois state on the basis of the monarchical form of government. As a legacy of the reformation stage, the Prussian statehood created in the second half of the 19th century was passed into the hands of Otto von Bismarck. Thus, it was not Bismarck who paved the way for Hitler. The reformers handed him a state building almost built according to their schemes which even the iron chancellor could not rebuild. In addition, we must consider that the modernization of Prussia developed in opposition to the counter-reformation, its legal expression was the so-called Carlsbad resolutions, which decelerated the dynamics of reforms.

The Introspective Model of Genuine Knowledge in Wang Yangming

This article presents a new interpretation of the great Ming dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming’s (1472–1529) celebrated doctrine of the “unity of knowledge and action” (知行合一). Wang held that action was not unified with all knowledge, but only with an elevated form of knowledge, which he sometimes called “genuine knowledge” (真知). I argue for a new interpretation of this notion, according to which genuine knowledge requires freedom from a form of doxastic conflict. I propose that, in Wang’s view, a person is free from this form of doxastic conflict if and only if they are acting virtuously.

Confucian Constitutionalism without Remedies

Confucian Constitutionalism without Remedies Justin Tiwald (bio) I. Introduction In his splendid and provocative book Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi, Sungmoon Kim proposes that we read the great classical Confucian philosophers Mencius (Mengzi 孟子, fourth century b.c.e.) and Xunzi 荀子 (third century b.c.e.) as constitutionalists. As I read Kim, he understands constitutionalism as [End Page 506] something like a commitment to creating durable institutions, one of whose primary aims is to constrain the exercise of legitimate political authority and facilitate its good and proper uses. Mencius’ constitutionalism appears primarily in his arguments for making it customary to appoint virtuous ministers or advisors. Insofar as a non-ideal ruler might be tempted or inclined to exercise his authority wrongly, the virtue of those ministers should help to minimize abuses, blunt the effects of bad or narrowly self-serving decisions, and incentivize decisions that provide for the material needs and moral development of the populace. Since the virtue of particular subordinates does much of the relevant work, Kim appropriately calls Mencius a “virtue constitutionalist” (Kim 2020, pp. 63–75). In contrast, Xunzi’s constitutionalism appears primarily in his remarks about the importance of fa 法 (institutional rules), chief among these being the ritual models or standards by which social distinctions are recognized and cemented and civic responsibilities are defined. Moreover, Xunzi has a great deal of concern for the continuity of a government’s fa from one regime to the next, perhaps suggesting that so long as the fa are stable and effective, one ruler can be replaced by another and the government for all intents and purposes will remain unchanged.1 Because rituals do much of the relevant work of constraining abuses of power and facilitating good governance, Kim terms Xunzi’s variant of constitutionalism “ritual constitutionalism.” “Constitutionalism” can be understood in many different ways. But when people nowadays use the term in their accounts of the history of political thought, they tend to have in mind a sense of “constitutionalism” that presupposes that constitutional constraints on political authority come with constitutional remedies. Roughly, a constitutional remedy is some sanctioned means of enforcing constraints or correcting political authorities who fail to abide by them. Moreover, it is often thought that the remedies should be entrenched—that is, widely recognized and regarded as beyond the legitimate power of the political authorities to change easily. Entrenched remedies are important for a number of reasons. First, constraints on political power would be relatively meaningless if the person that they are meant to constrain can easily amend or jettison them. If there is a rule or established custom that requires a monarch to be instructed on humane governance on the classics mat, or to perform a certain ritual before determining whether to go to war, or prohibiting him from issuing laws or policies that punish innocent people ex post facto, and if the monarch is free to modify a rule or custom at a whim, then the rule or custom will have very little bite. Second, constitutional remedies help to distinguish constitutional norms from other political norms. Most anyone with a minimal sense of decency believes that political authorities ought to provide ways of meeting the basic needs of their subjects, that they ought not to punish innocent people, and that they ought to deliberate carefully and solicit the views of an informed [End Page 507] commentariat or public before going to war. The difference between constitutionalist political thinkers and the other minimally decent ones is that the constitutionalists also say that vested parties have some sort of recourse available when their leaders fail to observe such norms. This is roughly the difference between a mere ideal of good governance and enforceable power or right. Finally, at least on many recent tellings of political history, constitutional regimes with entrenched remedies are the sorts of constitutional regimes that matter most. They were hard-fought and hard-won by peoples in all parts of the world, and it is by virtue of flouting or ignoring certain entrenched rules or customs that a merely imprudent or bad political leader becomes an autocrat. For ease of reference, I will refer to the...

Melodia and the “Disposition of the Soul”

In 1607 Claudio Monteverdi’s younger brother, Giulio Cesare, published his Dichiaratione, arguably the most significant document of the famous and influential polemic known as the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy. He there attempted to rebut Giovanni Maria Artusi’s criticism of the technical “licenses”—especially with regard to dissonance treatment—that the great composer had sought to justify as essential elements of the new approach to text setting that he called the seconda pratica. In support of his argument, Giulio Cesare quotes passages from Plato’s Republic in order to claim the great philosopher’s authority for his brother’s revolutionary musical poetics. As I show in this study, the Platonic pronouncements concerning what the Monteverdis call melodia, that is, song (melos), provide Giulio Cesare with virtually the whole of his implicit argument for the artistic validity of Claudio’s subversive compositional practices. The article’s principal aim, however, is to demonstrate that Giulio Cesare exploits a lexical peculiarity in Ficino’s Latin translation of the Republic to misrepresent Plato’s thought on a point of great importance to the philosopher: the power of song to influence a people’s ēthos, their ethical or moral character. Ficino’s idiosyncratic rendering in the crucial passage of ēthos tēs psychēs as affectio animi (“affection of the soul”) enables, and indeed invites, Giulio Cesare to elide the true object of Plato’s concern and instead implicitly associate the philosopher’s dicta regarding the ethical force of melos with what the Dichiaratione identifies as the goal of the seconda pratica: “moving the affections of the soul.”

The Educational Philosophy of Kant and Iqbal: A Comparative Study

The main purpose of this study is to compare the educational philosophies of two great philosophers namely, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) a German philosopher of the 18th century, and Allama Iqbal (1877-1938) 20th-century philosopher from the Indo-Pak subcontinent. Both came from two different periods with their respective social, cultural and educational background but occupy a unique place in their respective areas of influence in the modern, western, and eastern philosophical worlds. Kant’s worldview and educational thought are based on the ideas of rationalists and empiricists. While Iqbal’s educational ideas are based on idealism and spiritualism. Kant’s philosophy is known as critical philosophy and is blended with experience and reason. While Iqbal’s philosophy is based on the concept of self and is blended with oriental, western, and spiritual values. Both worked for the progress of humanity and considered education as the main weapon for the upliftment of the nation. They insisted that education should be imparted according to the needs of society. Kant believed that human beings are unique existence and need moral education but held the view that religion as a theology should not be taught to young people while on the other hand Iqbal also stresses moral education along with religious education. Hence through this paper, an attempt has been made to explore and analyze the educational philosophies of Kant and Iqbal and find out how much there are similarities and differences between them. The nature of the present research is qualitative and the researcher has analyzed both primary and secondary sources related to the theme through the approach of content analysis. Keywords: Transcendental, Rationalists, Art, Ego, creativity, moral duty, self-realization.

Development of Biology in the Passage of History

The aim of this research is to provide a wealth of information on the history of the development of biology in the passage of history. Beginning with the wizarding era and ending with heart and neurosurgery and hundreds of other developments in Biological Science based on scientific methods. This means that biology is one of the oldest sciences and human beings with intellect, logic, thought and will have drawn many dark corners of ambiguities and are still trying to use chemical, physical, technical, computer and other sciences.
 Biology was born in ancient Greece in the 6th-7th centuries BC and was developed by the great philosophers of the world such as Hippocrates, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. Famous Roman scientists have also done great service in the development of this science. With the advent of the holy religion of Islam, Islamic scholars in the field of medicine and other scientific sciences have done great service. The services of Abdul Malik Samael, Abul Hassan Ali bin Sahl Tabari and Abul Mohammad Zakaria Razi in the development of biology are unforgettable. The great scientists of the world of science have succeeded in discovering important biological problems since the seventeenth century.

Magritte et les Philosophes [Magritte and the Philosophers

Magritte et les Philosophes [Magritte and the Philosophers

The Return of Biblical Theology: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and the Theological-Literary Movement

Abstract Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, is probably the most important and well-known Jewish theologian of the twenty-first century. He believed passionately that Jewish values have relevance for all of mankind. What is somewhat surprising is the source of R. Sacks's theology. Orthodox Jewish theology has traditionally been anchored in either the perspective of Talmudic Rabbis as transmitted through the halacha and the aggadda, or based on the works of the great medieval Jewish philosophers such as the Rambam, Crescas and Yehuda Halevi. In contradistinction to these approaches, R. Sacks turned to the Bible as the primary source of his theology. This “returning to the bible” is consistent with other trends in orthodox Jewish scholarship which also emphasizes a return to intensive study of the biblical text using modern methodologies. However, since biblical theology is open to a myriad of differing and even contradictory opinions, the role of rabbinic tradition is of utmost importance. Thus, for Rabbi Sacks's theology to have lasting impact it needs to be based on, and a natural extension of, the timeless Jewish tradition. This essay will explore these issues.

Role of Dr. Ambedkar in upliftment of Dalits

Dr. Ambedkar is known as the architect of the Constitution of India. Apart from this, he is also known as a social reformer, legal scholar, great philosopher and Manu of the modern era. He had a lot of loyalty towards Buddhism, so he was also given the title of “BODHISATVA”. He was the follower of “KABEER PANTH”. He tried to bring legal provisions to bring equality to Dalits in the society and tried to create social awareness to remove untouchability. He believed that religin is common to all. The religion, in which there is discrimination, is not an relegion but an insult to the human society. Due to his influencive personality, he became national leader of untouchables and hnce known as MESSIAH OF DALITS.

The Taxonomy of the Mind: An African Visual

The image of Africa in the world at the moment does not fit into that of a dignifying and adequately humanised and humanising unit of mankind. The situation beats and challenges the philosophical and anthropological aphorisms that seem to commune all men in general. This philosophical reflection investigates the deep roots of the extant situation. It focuses more on inherent factors to the exclusion of all exterior sources and causes of the problems, which it considers as secondary even if important. It has employed philosophical anthropological categories maximally and has also engaged metaphysical concepts to an extent to explore the general human modus operandi. Against this backdrop, it has beamed its searchlight on the Africans, specifically as a species of the human to identify to what extent it fits into the generally accepted pattern. This has led to an identification of the mind as the seat of the albatross. The philosophical anthropological analysis of the specific African mind and how it has been functioning has been carried out amidst a larger spectrum of the experiential operations of the mental state of mind. This has led to an examination of key concepts like fascination, imitation, success and failure, the heart and hope. A specific sample of an African concept has been adopted from the Igbo cultural background of Nigeria. How these concepts in practice have affected the organisation of African society and development has been examined and has led to an identification of various types of intelligence operative among the majority of African leaders, thinkers and the masses and the vicious cycle that is provoked by this. The external factors that feed and nourish this status quo have not been examined herein. But the shamelessness of the generality of mankind in tolerating this de facto state, for whatever can be labelled a third world within the one world, is implicitly indicated. The essay is a tribute to Professor Richard Onwuanibe who spent decades teaching philosophical anthropology to several generations of Nigerian seminarians who have become great philosophers as well today. It is also a wake-up call to philosophers, Africans and all people of good will. By concentrating on the internal conditions that in turn, obfuscate the mind and keep Africa and by implication the world behind its fullest possibilities of growth, peace and a better home for all, it looks forward to the exposition and possible neutralization of the latent external factors which belie the entire matrix of the African mindset at the moment.

Натурализируя Канта

The third formulation of the Categorical Imperative rarely receives the attention devoted to its predecessors. This paper aims to develop a naturalistic approach to morality inspired by Kant’s conception of moral agents as legislating in a Kingdom of Ends. Positions derived from the third formulation, John Rawls’s Kantian Constructivism and T. M. Scanlon’s Contractualism, cleave closely to Kant in idealising the process of legislation. For Rawls, the citizens of the Kantian Reich can be reduced to one, a representative of all, who deliberates behind the veil of ignorance using minimax reasoning. Scanlon includes other lawmakers, but any potential diversity among them is overridden by trans­historical canons of reason. By contrast, I view morality as developing historically through the interactions among people with different views and conflicting aims. The task of moral theory is to construct an appropriate methodology to govern their deliberations. My naturalised Kant takes the first steps. Morality arises from the recognition of problematic situations, identified first by listening to the complaints of actual people, by judging whether they are warranted, and by seeking to amend them when the warrant is confirmed. Societies (and individuals) make moral progress when they deliberate (or simulate deliberations) in accordance with three norms. All those potentially affected should be included; the best available information should be used; and participants should aim for an outcome all can accept. How far is naturalised Kant from the great philosopher? I leave the answer to the scholars.

Deontology vs. utilitarianism: Understanding the basis for the moral theories in medicine

We live in a society that functions with a system of morals that seeks to determine what is right or wrong. Each society is ruled by moral codes that guide people’s action to minimize the risk of sliding into structural dysfunction. To understand the importance of human values within which the society can live and operate in a harmonious state, many great philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Bentham Jeremy have presented moral theories based on the principles of deontology and utilitarianism, respectively. These two ethical major streams of thought influence ethical decision-making. In utilitarian principles, outcomes justify the means or ways to achieve it and as such the focus is on the consequences of an action, whereas in deontological ethics, obligation to duty is what matters irrespective of the outcome. In medicine, deontology is patient centered, whereas utilitarianism is society centered. Practically, these two moral thoughts seem contradictory but each has its own advantages and disadvantages, which may occasionally intertwine to reach a midpoint level in a critical situation. In a well-resourced setting, the deontology approach to healthcare issues seems more practicable than the utilitarian approach because the duty of care is more focused on the individual and not necessarily on the society. As every rational being thinks of him- or herself as an end, doctors must act in such a way that they treat humanity and their patients always as an end and never simply as a means. The moral worth of a clinician’s action in patients’ management therefore depends exclusively on the moral acceptability of the rule of obligation to duty, that is, “cause no harm” irrespective of the consequences. This article highlights the fundamentals of deontology and utilitarian principles as moral theories in medicine with basic examples.

Парадоксы русского эроса в романе Ф.М. Достоевского «Идиот»

The article is devoted to the analysis of the love story line of F. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”. In the novel, the element of Russian eros found its artistic realization, that was comprehended by the great Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev in his essay “Reflection on Eros” (1940) as an existential category. The mutual love between Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna was the perfect embodiment of Russian eros: the erotic tension here is fertilized by compassion and mystical experience of soulmates. The tragic ending is predetermined by the fatal incompatibility of the true, rising eros with the reality of earthly world.

Определения и методологические принципы в теории познания = Russell B. Definitions and Methodological Principles in theory of knowledge / пер. с англ. Дидикина А. Б., Тринитка Д. Г.

A translation of an article by the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell on the conceptualisation of the philosophical foundations of epistemology is presented. It formulates key definitions and justifies the methodological principles on the basis of which will be possible to construct theories consistent with the ideas of empiricism and the concept of knowledge by acquaintance. Drawing on concrete examples as well as the theses on the logical conditioning of the methods of cognition, Russell lays the foundation for the theory of neutral monism, which became the basis of his epistemological ideas in the early period of his work.

Tradition and Transformation: A Discussion on Thirukkural in Indian Political Thought

The relationship between literature and politics is a reciprocal one. The core theme of literature makes a positive impact on individual and society. Literature was considered as a powerful tool to explore the moral, ethical and social values which brought notable changes in the socio – political sphere. In this context, Thirukkural is most important universally accepted literature as it reveals the ethical values of politics and administrative system found in the erstwhile Tamil society like elements of state,fortification, excellence of army, factors for good governance, qualities of a king, minister, avoidance of faults, etc. Thirukkural is a timeless Tamil Classic written approximately 2,000 years ago by the great thinker and philosopher – Saint Thiruvalluvar. Ethical and political principles of a very high standard are expressed in the Thirukkural in a lucid and precise manner which also applicable to the present-day democratic governance. Out of the three, the second part ‘Porul’, (Wealth) is a treatise on political philosophy and administrative practices as well as on economy. It is directly addressed to the leader or the Ruler. As such this paper attempts to highlight the administrative thoughts of Thiruvalluvar in the context of good governance and welfare politics that existed in ancient Tamil society.

Utopian state in Nizami Ganjavi’s views

The article deals with the social and political ideas of the great Azerbaijani philosopher and thinker of the XII century Nizami Ganjavi whose rich creative heritage was included in the golden fund of world literature; the evolutionary process of the development of his views on forms of state is characterized - from the preaching of an enlightened monarchy to democracy. The thinker’s views on the utopian state, Nizami’s vision of an ideal state, the life and activities of its citizens, characteristics of the social system are the focus of attention.

Of the Fourth Platonic Virtue, and: In Other Words

This poem explores the concept of “moderation,” drawing on the writings of Michel de Montaigne, the great French philosopher and essayist from the sixteenth century to frame our twenty-first century conceptualization of the term.

Andalus And Sefarad: On Philosophy and its History in Islamic Spain by Sarah Stroumsa

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 47, 3, 2022 © The Maghreb Review 2022 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU Books reviewed in The Maghreb Review can be ordered from The Maghreb Bookshop. Our catalogue is also available on our website: www.maghrebbookshop.com SARAH STROUMSA, ANDALUS AND SEFARAD: ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS HISTORY IN ISLAMIC SPAIN (PRINCETON, NJ; OXFORD: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2019) The traditional account of the history of philosophy in Muslim Spain begins in the late tenth century. According to the eleventh-century chronicler Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī, it was then that the Umayyad Emir of Cordoba al-Ḥakam II ordered that books on ‘the ancient sciences as well as the modern ones’ be brought from Baghdad, Egypt, ‘and other places in the East’, in the hope of reaping the fruits of the ‘Abbasid-sponsored translation movement for Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. This well-known episode from Islamic history, Sarah Stroumsa reveals in Andalus and Sefarad, her recent study of philosophy in Muslim Spain, has a lesser known yet equally important Jewish coda. When the prominent Jewish physician and political advisor Ḥasday ibn Shaprut ‘attached himself to al- Ḥakam’, the same Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī wrote, ‘he used his good offices to bring whatever he wanted of the writings of the Jews in the Orient’. As Stroumsa observes, ‘It requires little imagination to appreciate that the same ships that brought the books ordered by the caliph also carried those ordered by his vizier, and that when the ships arrived at the docks, for example in Seville, their literary cargo was not divided strictly according to religious affiliation.’ Stroumsa sees this story as emblematic of the history of Andalusian philosophy. Jewish and Muslim philosophy and theology in the Iberian Peninsula, she proposes, ought to be viewed ‘as components of a common intellectual history and as stages in a continuous trajectory’. Written with a clarity befitting a scholar of Stroumsa’s expertise, Andalus and Sefarad is a masterful demonstration of how to think about the history of Andalusian philosophy in this ‘integrative’ way. The influence of Islamic traditions on medieval Jewish thinkers living under Muslim rule and writing in Arabic is well-known. It has long been accepted, for instance, that Judah Halevi, the greatest Hebrew poet of medieval times and author of the famous Arabic theological treatise known as the Kuzari, drew on the Sunni Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī’s critique of Aristotelian philosophy and the Neoplatonic ideas of the Ismaili Shia. In her previous book, Maimonides and His World (2009), Stroumsa herself demonstrated that the 316 BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU great Jewish philosopher and legal authority Moses Maimonides, author of the Judeo-Arabic classic The Guide of the Perplexed, was influenced by the ideas of the Almohad dynasty that ruled North Africa and Spain in the twelfth century. If ‘Islamicate’ Jewish thought is fairly well-known (to use the concept coined by Marshall Hodgson for that which is culturally if not religiously Islamic), far less so is the impact of Jewish thought on Islamic philosophy, and it is here that Andalus and Sefarad comes into its own. In chapter one we learn that the tenthcentury Muslim Neoplatonist of Cordoba Ibn Masarra, the first Andalusian philosopher of note, was influenced by Jewish speculation on the mystical significance of the letters of the alphabet and the symbolism of the divine throne. In the following chapter, we discover that the books and ideas of the rationalist Mu‘tazilite school of Islamic theology were introduced into alAndalus by Jewish Karaites, scripturalists who rejected rabbinic authority, and who, unlike their opponents the Rabbanites, usually wrote their Arabic works in Arabic, rather than Hebrew, characters, making them accessible to Muslims as well as Jews. While this is all very interesting, Stroumsa’s aim is not merely to show that the direction of influence went from Jews to Muslims as well as Muslims to Jews. Nor is it to substantiate the romantic if rather anachronistic notion of medieval al-Andalus as a site of interfaith convivencia. Rather, Stroumsa aims to demonstrate how the same philosophical traditions and ideas continuously circulated among adherents of the two religions in what...

Historical-philosophical Strategy roots as a Fundamental Science

Motives of human behavior in socio-economic environment took up minds of the greatest philosophers and scientists during the entirety of the human history. Scientific-philosophical paradigm of artificial societies, based on methodological problems of cognition of real society functioning mechanisms, namely specific agents, exactly assumes studying human behavior in socio-economic environment, that is their different strategies. Strategy as a relatively new science, expects forecasting and strategizing of various kinds of strategizing objects, in fact – various kinds of agents and their activity. Such agent-based approach, based on using intellectual (rational) agents, implies using intelligence as a calculating part (planning) of ability to reach set goals, which is a strategizing in a strategy science. Social sciences, including strategy as a science, gradually become closer to natural sciences both in tools and methodology principles, relying on interdisciplinary of researches and defining necessity of creating artificial societies and virtual worlds as research models of real society and economy. New research terminology and tools that need conceptual elaboration appear. Practical orientation of strategy as a relatively new science is not doubted and is proved by series of historical and economical events. In this case, however, proof of its fundamentality is needed. In a cycle out of two articles, an attempt to substantiate strategy as a fundamental science, defining agents behavior as central units of modeling artificial societies, based on research of its philosophical roots is made, which is a goal of this research. The first work is presented.

(2021) Volume 2, Issue 4 Cultural Implications of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC Authors: Dr. Unsa Jamshed Amar Jahangir Anbrin Khawaja Abstract: This study is an attempt to highlight the cultural implication of CPEC on Pak-China relations, how it will align two nations culturally, and what steps were taken by the governments of two states to bring the people closer.

(2021) Volume 2, Issue 4 Cultural Implications of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC Authors: Dr. Unsa Jamshed Amar Jahangir Anbrin Khawaja Abstract: This study is an attempt to highlight the cultural implication of CPEC on Pak-China relations, how it will align two nations culturally, and what steps were taken by the governments of two states to bring the people closer.