History Of Western Philosophy Research Articles

Research on the Theory of Power in Foucaults Mid-term Thoughts

Abstract: The concept of power is deeply rooted in everyday life, making it difficult to escape the dominant status assigned by the world. The issue of power is central to Foucaults field of study, where he innovatively proposed a productive view of power and explored its internal relationship with knowledge and subjectivity from a micro-power perspective. On one hand, Foucault posits that the subject is a product of power and primarily analyzes three ways in which power produces subjects, introducing the theory of the death of the subject in modernity. On the other hand, Foucault elucidates the relationship between power and knowledge, asserting that power produces knowledge, but it must also rely on the creation of discourse for its implementation and circulation. This paper then focuses on Foucaults theory of disciplinary power, analyzing how the technologies of discipline in the operation of modern micro-power tame the bodies of modern subjects, thereby forming a disciplinary society. The model of power over the body shifts from the harsh penal practices of the classical period to modern disciplinary training. Foucaults theory of power marks an important turning point in the history of Western philosophy, and his theory of biopolitics provides an innovative understanding of the concept of power from macro to micro levels.

The Three Postulate Idea: Between Limits and Metaphysical Beliefs in Immanuel Kant's System of Philosophy

In the history of Western philosophy, debates about truth and error have continued to develop, reflecting diverse views that have emerged over time. The question of human nature became the center of intellectual attention, expanding philosophical study from speculation to fundamental thinking. Amid this context, Immanuel Kant emerged as a key figure who brought a new approach to philosophical inquiry. Although he spent his life in Koningsberg, his ideas in epistemology, anthropology, ethics, and education gained global recognition and made him one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era. However, his views have also drawn criticism, especially for the inconsistencies that are perceived to support dogmatism, although he originally intended to criticize it. This research analyzes Kant's thought, especially about the limits of human knowledge, metaphysics, and criticism of dogmatism. The method used is qualitative text analysis, which examines Kant's main work, "Critique of Pure Reason," as well as the views of other philosophers. Primary and secondary literature is reviewed to identify inconsistencies in Kant's arguments. The results show that although Kant's philosophical system has made an outstanding contribution, there are significant areas for improvement in the handling of metaphysical concepts and the limits of knowledge, which ultimately has the potential to fall into dogmatism. This study concludes that Kant's thought remains relevant and essential, but it needs to be reread critically to fully understand its impact on modern philosophy.

Interpretations of Halal: A Comparative Analysis of Western and Eastern Ethical Frameworks

The concept of halal, deeply embedded in Islamic Sharia law, governs various aspects of daily life, including permissible foods, actions, and transactions. This paper conducts a comparative analysis of halal through Western and Eastern philosophical perspectives, drawing on Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy and L. Adams Beck’s The Story of Oriental Philosophy. By exploring the ethical and moral viewpoints of key Western philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, alongside Eastern thinkers like Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu, this study examines how these traditions interpret and evaluate halal. The analysis reveals that Western philosophy typically perceives halal as a context-specific moral rule lacking universal applicability, whereas Eastern philosophy regards it as a fundamental component of social harmony and balance. Additionally, the paper addresses critical considerations regarding the relevance and potential reductionism in interpreting halal through non-Islamic frameworks. The findings offer valuable insights into the application of ethical and moral values across diverse cultural contexts, highlighting the importance of cross-cultural understanding in contemporary global society.

From Mythos to Logos: Pre-Socratic Philosophers and the Birth of Rational Inquiry

This paper examines the important shift from mythological to philosophical thought instigated by pre-Socratic philosophers in ancient Greece by examining influential figures such as Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus in their pioneering efforts at rational analysis. The theories of these philosophers challenged the traditional mythical descriptions of the universe and man's existence, initiating the paradigm shift from mythos (myth) to logos (logic) that reshaped philosophical discourse and laid the foundations for Western philosophical traditions. This paper seeks to reveal the nature of pre-Socratic rational thought and its lasting impact on the history of Western philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of the contributions of pre-Socratic philosophers to the promotion of critical thinking, empiricism, and logical reasoning. Finally, the paper emphasizes the role of the pre-Socratic period in the development of Western philosophy and philosophical approaches to inquiry.

History of Western Philosophy and Quantum Language (Including Quantum Mechanics, Statistics, Fuzzy Logic, etc.)

History of Western Philosophy and Quantum Language (Including Quantum Mechanics, Statistics, Fuzzy Logic, etc.)

From the ‘History of Western Philosophy’ to entangled histories of philosophy: the Contribution of Ben Kies

ABSTRACT The idea of ‘Western Philosophy’ is the product of a legitimation project for European colonialism, through to post-second world war Pan-European identity formation and white supremacist projects. Thus argues Ben Kies (1917-1979), a South African public intellectual, schoolteacher, trade unionist, and activist-theorist. In his 1953 address to the Teachers’ League of South Africa, The Contribution of the Non-European Peoples to World Civilisation, Kies became one of the first people to argue explicitly that there is no such thing as ‘Western philosophy’. In this paper, I introduce Kies as a new figure in the historiography of philosophy with important insights, relevant today. I outline his three key arguments: that ‘Western Philosophy’ is the product of political mythmaking, that it is a recent, largely mid-twentieth century fabrication, and that there is an alternative to ‘Histories of Western Philosophy’, namely ‘mixed’ or entangled histories. I show that Kies’ claims are supported both by contemporary scholarship and bibliometric analysis. I thus argue that Kies is right to claim that the idea of a distinctive, hermetically sealed ‘Western Philosophy’ is a recent, political fabrication and should be abandoned. We should instead develop global, entangled historiography to make sense of philosophy and its history today.

An Art for Art's Sake or a Critical Concept of Art's Autonomy? Autonomy, Arm's Length Distance, and Art's Freedom

What is the relationship between the philosophical concept of the “autonomy of art” and the cultural policy-notion of “artistic freedom”? This article seeks to answer this question by taking the Swedish governmental report This Is How Free Art Is (Så fri är konsten 2021) and its reception in the Swedish main stream media as an emblematic example and by reading it symptomatically. Firstly, it traces the critical history of “artistic freedom” and the interrelated term “arm’s length distance”, primarily in the context of Great Britain. Secondly, it critically reconstructs the concept of the “autonomy of art” in the history of Western philosophy by making a critique of a fetishized notion of art’s autonomy in the name of l’art pour l’art. The main argument is that the idea about art’s autonomy, on which the Swedish report leans, resembles such philosophical and art historical idea of art’s autonomy. The claim is also that such an understanding of art does not tie up, either philosophically or historically, with the arm’s length principle, since they ultimately rely on different conceptions of art’s freedom.

The Influence of Renaissance Thought on Martin Luther’s View of Liberty

Abstract Scholars have long acknowledged the substantial influence of the Renaissance movement on Luther’s Reformation. However, due to the absence of comprehensive studies on Luther’s contexts, a thorough and detailed analysis of this influence in Luther’s thought and writings has been hindered. The aforementioned circumstance has resulted in the overall disregard of this contribution in the history of Western philosophy. This paper aims to analyze the distinct impact of Renaissance ideology on the evolution of Luther’s concept of liberty. The first section will discuss the background of Luther’s reform movement and the fundamental place of the humanist concept of liberty in its impact on the destruction of the religious power of the Catholic Church. The second section will examine the significant role played by humanists, such as Erasmus, in shaping Luther’s liberal ideas during his early years. The third section will examine how Luther’s understanding of liberty was developed through his polemical exchanges with Erasmus and other thinkers. This process ultimately resulted in Luther’s distinctive and paradoxical conception of freedom, which highlights Luther’s and humanists’ historical influence on the independence, emancipation, and autonomy of the individual personality in their age. The fourth section will examine the influence of Luther’s paradoxical ontological theory on the development of Western intellectual history. Additionally, it will address the misinterpretation of this intellectual history lineage by the mainstream of Western intellectual history that occurred concurrently. Finally, in the twentieth century, the revival of Luther’s thought, which was gradually revitalized by Heidegger, Karl Barth, and other contemporary scholars, also highlights the significant influence of Renaissance thought on Luther’s theory and the whole history of Western thought.

‘To be or not to be’ of Eco-Deconstruction

This paper aims to unravel a tension between the act of naming and ‘differential relationality’. Derrida has taught us that ‘naming’ is an essentialising, and thus metaphysical gesture that works to define and circumscribe a field of work (for instance, ‘Eco-Deconstruction’), the human, and ecology. ‘Naming’ entails the beginning of the institutionalisation and sedimentation of a field, despite a ‘field’s’ claim to the opposite. The danger of such sedimentation is that it perpetuates what Derrida calls ipseity that in the history of western philosophy and metaphysics has worked in contradistinction to the nonhuman (animals, environment, ecology).

Exploring the philosophical concept of my death in the context of biology: the scholarly significance of the unknown

Contemplating one’s own death is a core aspect in the history of Western philosophy. In the modern era, existential philosophy has inherited this tradition and established unique discussions on the concept of “my death,” resting on the premise that this concept is unapproachable via scientific inquiry. Conversely, biological research is essentially conducted within the scope of life phenomena, with death being referred to in the sense of lifespan; thus, death is not among its inherent themes, which automatically excludes the concept of my death from its scope. To establish a dialogue between the two fields, this study questions the widely held premise that my death is unrelated to science and is best examined by philosophy. I consider the movement between continuity and discontinuity as foundational to scientific development, and integrate it with the relationship between the unknown and known. Furthermore, I extend this to the concepts of consciousness and body, and subsequently clarify and define the unknown divisions. Finally, I examine the kinds of unknowns that science confronts to interpret philosophically how an aspect of reproductive theory has unwittingly revealed a completely new dimension of life: my death. Overall, I argue that my death is an essential point of contact between philosophy and biology that reveals the scholarly significance of the unknown.

Robert Greville on Sins, Privations, and Dialetheism

AbstractIn the history of Western philosophy, dialetheism – the view that some sentences are both true and false – has been unpopular. This paper recovers a previously overlooked episode in the history of dialetheism. Specifically, it reconstructs a section of Robert Greville's The Nature of Truth (1640) in order to show that he was a dialetheist. Greville's consideration of the view that evil is a privation led him to endorse the claim that sinful acts are contradictory; they are the subjects of both being and non‐being. The paper also explores responses to Greville from John Wallis and Nathaniel Culverwell.

Invention of the Visual Form: Reciprocal Alienation in Debord’s Society of the Spectacle

In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord describes the spectacle as a capitalist social formation that is at the same time reflective of the privileging of vision in the history of Western philosophy. This article highlights Debord’s appeal to the Hegelian-Marxist notion of reciprocal alienation in his discussion of how the spectacle invents the visual form. Reciprocal alienation produces a dialectical relation between concrete social activity and the spectacle, which I argue is key for understanding how the political subject is represented in the hyper-spectacularized societies of the 21st century.

THE PROBLEM OF LİFE AND THE MEANİNG OF LİFE İN WESTERN PHİLOSOPHY

In the article, we considered the issue of life and its meaning in the history of Western philosophy, i.e. within the framework of the philosophical teachings of the Antique period, European Christianity, the Renaissance, Modern times and beyond. Thoughts on life and its meaning vary with the times and paradigms of each era. In particular, given the individualistic nature of the Western mentality, these differences become more apparent. Despite some differences between these views, there is much in common that unites them. In the article, we tried to identify these differences and similarities through comparative analysis.

On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life by Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei

Reviewed by: On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life by Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei George Pattison (bio) Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life. Oxford UP, 2021. 320 pages. As Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei observes, the last few years have seen a significant resurgence of interest in existentialism, both in and beyond the academy. Authors and texts who were dismissed during the time when postmodernism was the rallying-cry of the progressive academy are being rediscovered and re-applied in a wide variety of ways. It almost goes without saying, however, that if a renewed existentialism is to become a significant contributor to the ongoing conversation that is philosophy, it will not and cannot be exactly the same as the old existentialism. Indeed, the flyleaf refers to the book as offering “a new vision of existentialism,” a claim that is, I think, fully justified by the contents. Gosetti-Ferencei’s version of existentialism shows a deep and extensive immersion in the relevant classic texts, but it also brings these into dialogue with our contemporary concerns while interpreting and applying them with a generosity and kindness that was notably absent from [End Page 1057] at least some of its original representatives, though not all (there’s not much kindness in Sartre, for example). An opening chapter establishes what will become a theme throughout the study: that whilst the “existentialist café” of 1940s Paris rightly plays a crucial part in the formation of existentialism, there is much more to existentialism than the cigarettes, roll-neck jumpers, and sexually adventurous lifestyles of the Left Bank intelligentsia. We are warned that existentialism is a diverse and difficult philosophy and that it would be a mistake to reduce it to one or other catchphrase. Indeed, in Part II, Gosetti-Ferencei takes us through the intellectual genealogy of existentialism, from ancient philosophy, through romanticism, and on into the twentieth century, a story that strongly supports the claim that existentialism was not just a momentary philosophical fad. Startling as its rhetoric and style were to many post-war Anglophone readers, its fundamental questions and concerns were deeply and extensively rooted in the history of Western philosophy, all the way back through Descartes’ “turn to the subject” and the Stoics’ culture of self-formation to Parmenides’ meditations on being. Due attention is given to existentialism’s immediate nineteenth-century predecessors (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche) and to the complex interrelationship between existentialist philosophy in the narrow sense and cultural forms such as literature and jazz that became closely associated with it. This not only brings in Kafka and Rilke but also persuasively argues for the creative role of African-American writers and musicians such as Miles Davis in shaping existentialism and, importantly, not merely adapting it to their specific intellectual, personal, and cultural needs. Franz Fanon is, of course, also represented as a significant existentialist voice in his own right. This inclusion should not surprise us, since the experience of affirming black identity in a world shaped by hegemonic white voices resonates powerfully with the existentialist theme of a chronic mismatch between the individual’s self-experience and the demands of the social environment. Having prepared the ground for an examination of the core themes of existentialism, a third section examines these thematically under the headings “The Self,” “Others,” “World,” “Earth,” and “Being.” As can already be inferred from these topics, Gosetti-Ferencei does not simply accept Sartre’s view that the subject’s relationship to the non-human world is a relationship of mutual exclusion but goes some distance with Heidegger in affirming our relation to the earth as a proper medium in which to develop an authentic relation to being. Sartre’s aversion is, of course, well known from the novel Nausea, referred to (and rightly) at several moments in the book, but we also learn that it went to such an extreme that he only liked fruit when it had been processed, as in jam. A final section offers ten short essays on how existentialism might be applied to, e.g., seeking authenticity and avoiding the lure of role models (even existentialist role models), how to take and...

뮈토스는 신화이고 로고스는 이성인가?

In my previous article, “Is Mythos Myth, and Logos Reason: Etymological and Philological Reflections”(2020), I observed the foundation of ancient Greek philosophy in its relationship with the notions of mythos and logos. I argued that the history of Western philosophy in its initiatory phase took the format of progress “from mythos to logos,” and that this framework holds Homeros and Hesiodos totally different from Socrates and Plato, giving rise to the bifurcation of mythos and logos, and further accounting for the concomitant conceptual differentiation between myth and reason/rationality which has gone around until recently without enough critical assessment. In this article, I seek to argue continuously that misunderstandings come to light when one reaches the conclusion that in the ancient Greek society the words mythos and logos referred respectively to established authoritative speech and emergent reasonable discourse or theory — that neither of them really had anything to do with the fictional properties, or the degree of fictionality, of the messages under consideration. The English translation of mythos into myth — or for that matter, into its later 19th-century Japanese rendering, “神話,” — may well be held responsible for the prevalent false notion of mythos. In our age when Reason no more seems to be reason, and Enlightenment no more enlightenment, everything strikes us as a myth, posing questions as to the real nature, or even the adequacy, of the mythos-logos dichotomy. Horkheimer and Adorno did this kind of job while questioning and emphasizing the need of both in the fascist Germany where logos-reason proved to be nothing but a madness.

A Critical Analysis on the Refutation of Innate Ideas in John Locke’s Philosophical Thoughts

Epistemology is an attempt to understand the role of knowledge, its origin, development and validity. The scientists, psychologists, educationalists, moral philosophers – all are analyzing the importance of epistemology in the knowledge process. Epistemology is considered one of the branches of knowledge, and it supports logic by emphasizing the interrelation between the two. While explaining the significance of epistemology R.M. Chisholm says that it deals with issues like the distinction between knowledge and true opinion and the relation between conditions of truth and criteria of evidence. Such issues constitute the subject matter of the theory of knowledge. In the history of Western philosophy, the modern period is significant because, during this period, there were two schools of thought regarding the validity of knowledge and emerged. One is Rationalism, and the other is Empiricism. Rationalism emphasizes that the source of knowledge is the reason. However, the Empiricism emphasizes experience as the basis for knowledge. In both movements, namely, rationalism and empiricism, epistemology has been attempting to find the answers to some questions: What do we know? How do we know? What are the sources of knowledge? What is the difference between belief and knowledge? Furthermore, is it possible to get valid knowledge? The prominent empiricist John Locke read the writings of Descartes. He rejected Descartes' innate ideas logically, and he has elaborately explained the source of knowledge, the limit of knowledge, validity of knowledge, and its kinds in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. His empiricism received much criticism from the latest philosophers because he adapted some philosophical ideas from the pioneers. This article aims to justify whether John Locke’s epistemology is neutral by explaining the basic characteristic of empiricism and its critiques. This study as a qualitative approach depends both on the primary as well as secondary sources related to the study as books. This study attempts to understand Locke from a critical standpoint. In the end, an attempt is made to show how Locke's central and bias philosophy has relevance even today.

Faith and Freedom: Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments

Faith and Freedom: Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments

A brief history of western philosophy in Thailand: mid seventeenth to the end of twentieth century

A brief history of western philosophy in Thailand: mid seventeenth to the end of twentieth century

Review: Knowledge, Ideology, and Civilization: An Attempt at Understanding History (Arabic Edition), by Ali Jarbawi

Review: <i>Knowledge, Ideology, and Civilization: An Attempt at Understanding History (Arabic Edition)</i>, by Ali Jarbawi

The Possibility of the Nobler (imkān al-ashraf) in Ṣadrā’s Philosophy and Its Historical Origins

Abstract The principle known as the possibility of the nobler (qāʿidat imkān al-ashraf) is arguably one of the most often employed principles in later Islamic philosophy. In its standard formulation it states that if something baser exists, a nobler thing must have existed prior to it. A similar argument from the degrees of perfections has had a long career in the history of Western philosophy as well, with its beginnings reaching Stoicism. In Christian theology and philosophy it serves most importantly as a proof for the existence of God in the so-called henological argument of Aquinas. In Islamic philosophy it directly derives from the ex uno non fit nisi unum principle. Since the formulation of its standard version by al-Suhrawardī, the validity of the principle has been conditioned on that it is only applicable to the intelligible beings, hence its main objective is to offer a proof for the existence of the intellects. The article analyzes the application of the principle in Ṣadrā’s philosophy and enquires about its historical roots.