Metaphysical Inquiry Research Articles

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The essay addresses two different senses of important “problems” for contemporary legal philosophy. In the first case, the “problem” is having forgotten things we learned from H.L.A. Hart, and, partly as a result, encouraging pointless metaphysical inquiries in other directions that take us very far from questions about the nature of law and legal reasoning. In the second case, the “problem” is to attend more carefully to Hart’s views and his philosophical context to think about the problem of theoretical disagreement, and to understand the way in which later commentators have misunderstood his behaviorist (Rylean) analysis of “accepting a rule from an internal point of view.”

Problems concerning metaphysical inquiry. F.H. Bradley’s concept of immediate experience

Problems concerning metaphysical inquiry. F.H. Bradley’s concept of immediate experience

Essence As A Modality: A Proof-Theoretic and Nominalist Analysis

Inquiry into the metaphysics of essence tends to be pursued in a realist and model-theoretic spirit, in the sense that metaphysical vocabulary is used in a metalanguage to model truth conditions for the object-language use of essentialist vocabulary. This essay adapts recent developments in proof-theoretic semantics to provide a nominalist analysis for a variety of essentialist vocabularies. A metalanguage employing explanatory inferences is used to individuate introduction and elimination rules for atomic sentences. The object-language assertions of sentences concerning essences are then interpreted as devices for marking off structural features of the explanatory inferences that, under a given interpretation, constitute the contents of the atoms of the language. On this proposal, object-language essentialist vocabulary is mentioned in a proof-theoretic metalanguage that uses a vocabulary of explanation. The result is a nominalist interpretation of essence as a modality, understood in the grammatical sense as a modification of the copula, and a view of metaphysical inquiry that is closely connected to the explanatory commitments present in first-order inquiry into things like sets, chemicals, and organisms. This result illustrates that some of the presuppositions that have animated analytic metaphysics over the last few decades can be profitably substituted with more practice-oriented conceptions of the forms of reasoning at work in different domains of human knowledge.

What Do Easy Inferences Get Us?

AbstractIn Ontology Made Easy (2015), I defend the idea that there are ‘easy’ inferences that begin from uncontroversial premises and end with answers to disputed ontological questions. But what do easy inferences really get us? Bueno and Cumpa (this journal, 2020) argue that easy inferences don’t tell us about the natures of properties—they don’t tell us what properties are. Moreover, they argue, by accepting an ontologically neutral quantifier we can also resist the conclusion that properties or numbers exist. Here I address these two issues in turn—in ways that help clarify both the scope and results of easy ontology.First, it is important to see that easy inferences were never intended to address modal questions. Modal questions are addressed by a different part of the total deflationary view—modal normativism. So understood, metaphysical modal questions nonetheless do not provide a remaining area for serious metaphysical inquiry. Second, I argue that we have reason to resist adopting an ontologically neutral quantifier, if we aim to answer ontological questions (without begging the question). Addressing these issues helps to clarify both what does (and does not) follow from easy inferences, and how they form part of a larger deflationary metametaphysical view.

On Physics, Metaphysics, and Metametaphysics

AbstractNonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM) works perfectly well for all practical purposes. Once one admits, however, that a successful scientific theory is supposed not only to make predictions but also to tell us a story about the world in which we live, a philosophical problem emerges: in the specific case of QM, it is not possible to associate with the theory a unique scientific image of the world; there are several images. The fact that the theory may be compatible with distinct ontologies, and that those ontologies may themselves be associated with a plurality of metaphysical approaches, gives rise to the problem of metaphysical underdetermination. This paper concludes that the available metametaphysical criteria fail to deliver objectivity in theory choice, and it puts forward its own criterion based on a tension between two methods of metaphysical inquiry: one that is closely related to science and another that is not.

I. Kant: perfection within the structure of the aesthetic field of metaphysics

The subject of this research is the interrelation between aesthetics and metaphysics as it is reflected in the Kantian transcendentalism. In the “Critique of Judgment”, Kant assumes that the representation of perfection does not correlate with such on the sense of delight; thus, in the first introduction to the “Critique of Judgment”, he is far from considering the solutions to the problem of interrelation between perfection and aesthetic sense of delight persuasive. However, the attitude towards perfection transforms in Kant's later works, the analysis of which demonstrates that the idea of perfection, in essence, is conceived as the method for founding the entire aesthetics, its initial category of the beautiful that coincides with the meaning of the aesthetic perfection the beauty is genuine. The metaphysics of perfection, contained in considered Kant’s work, offers a new perspective on the categorical apparatus of Kantian aesthetics, formed in the “Critique of Judgment”, and broadens the representation on Kantian aesthetics as part of transcendental metaphysics. The concept of perfection implies various aspects of metaphysical research, retaining its immanent qualities in the aesthetics. In predication as an act of modern aesthetic expression, it is difficult to determine any stages and structures that can correlate specifically to perfectionism. The question concerning the field of such correlations remains controversial, inclusive of modern Russian philosophy.

The Queer Gift of Black Folk Double Consciousness in W. E. B. Du Bois's Detective Story "The Case"

The Queer Gift of Black Folk Double Consciousness in W. E. B. Du Bois's Detective Story "The Case" Erika Renée Williams (bio) W. E. B. Du Bois's theory of double consciousness, which he defines as "a problem" in the Euro-American imaginary, has long been understood to denote an alienated black subjectivity and an American body politic divided by racial caste. The white gaze, Du Bois instructs, has the potential to restrict the parameters of black subjectivity by barring black subjects from fully accessing their citizenship and expressing their humanity. In the opening chapter of his 1903 The Souls of Black Folk, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," he recounts the childhood memory that perhaps occasioned his divided consciousness: that of a young white female classmate refusing the affection he offered with the gift of a "gorgeous" calling card.1 The incident leads him to realize that his blackness signals not approbation but abjection to many of his white compatriots and thus to see that they deem him a problem and not fully a person. Because he likens this experience of failed interpersonal, interracial affection to that of being cast out from his native land, Du Bois arguably suggests a parallel failed "romance," understood in its most capacious sense as any heightened exchange of intersubjective affect, between himself and the American nation writ large. In rendering the young white girl a symbol of an ungenerous and withholding white nation, Du Bois implicitly ties the development of individual states of black consciousness to the promise and pathos of black assimilation into a Euro-centrist American body politic, foregrounding the way interpersonal dynamics of intimacy shape collective processes of nation-building and implicitly rendering double consciousness a matter of misbegotten love. [End Page 27] Moreover, Du Bois's recounting of a childhood story of foreclosed "puppy love" to set up his theory of double consciousness in Souls marks his deployment of a literary trope that I term the "cross-caste romance." Drawing on Lisa L. Moore's work regarding the role of intercultural love in imagining and shaping the fabric of a nation, I define the cross-caste romance as an intimate relation between persons separated by differences (e.g., race, class, and gender) that are purportedly immutable but are in fact constructed, a relation that foregrounds the fragility of intersubjective exchange and the tenuousness of nation formation.2 Simultaneously a remainder of transatlantic slavery, a harbinger of antiracist and decolonial critique, and an object of metaphysical inquiry, double consciousness cannot be understood solely by way of history, politics, or philosophy. Rather, I argue that it must be approached through the framework of the story with which he introduces it and through its trope of failed interpersonal intimacy, which symbolizes not just the psycho-social alienation of black subjects but the broader material and sociopolitical divisions fracturing the United States. Indeed, Du Bois's various narrative projects, both fictional and nonfictional, describe the urgency of America's revaluation and acceptance of its ethnic others by using the language of intersubjective and intrasubjective intimacy—whether figured as romantic courtship or as other forms of love or eros. For Du Bois, the solution to the conundrum of the black subject's compulsory, divided consciousness is twofold: first, a robust process of black recovery and reclamation, premised partly on the recovery and reclamation of African ancestry and African folkways, and second, an attempt at some form of black assimilation, through which the black subject might "consent," with Motenian echoes, not to being reduced to a "single being" but rather to being incorporated into the American body politic while still maintaining some measure of cultural distinction.3 Du Bois suggests that black American subjects, once having taken sustenance from the legacy of "wasted, dispersed, or forgotten" African "genius," might then be freer to offer up the gifts—however conditional—of their affective labor.4 Like his anecdote in The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois's forgotten 1907 detective story "The Case" frames double consciousness as a form of misbegotten love and in terms of the challenge of placing black self-love on a parallel track with black assimilation in the form of affective, intersubjective...

Cartesian Shades: Gide's Les Caves du Vatican and Nabokov's Pale Fire

Abstract The novels of André Gide and Vladimir Nabokov consistently represent the world as a subjective (and sometimes solipsist) experience, relayed by imperfect senses and biased readings. Because perception cannot be separated from interpretation, the characters (and, implicitly, the readers) of these novels are either highly aware, or tragically unaware, of living not so much in the world as in their own representations of it. This would appear to sustain theories of literature as self-referential and self-contained. And yet, while Gide and Nabokov are clearly skeptical about the possibility of knowing the world as such, they do not simply retreat into a sphere of pure autonomous representation. However elusive physical reality may prove, they do not abandon what might be termed metaphysical enquiry. In their novels, especially in Gide's Les Caves du Vatican (The Vatican Cellars) and Nabokov's Pale Fire, this enquiry is bolstered by many allusions to Renaissance thinkers, painters, and playwrights who also highlight the uncertainty of knowledge, the elusiveness of reality and the artifice of representation. Such allusions, while they discourage characters and readers are alike from thinking that they might attain anything like truth, nonetheless encourage them to scrutinize their beliefs and actions in accordance with some form of philosophical, more specifically ethical, tenet.

La influencia de Pierre Bayle en la construcción de la segunda antinomia de la razón pura

This paper aims to establish precisely the scope of Pierre Bayle’s influence on the construction of Kant’s second antinomy of pure reason, since there is a remarkable parallelism between this second cosmological conflict and the argument against extension of the article “Zeno of Elea” of Bayle’s Dictionary. It is argued that Bayle, employing the skeptical method in metaphysical research, has a major influence on the construction of the main arguments of the second antinomy and sets a precedent for its logical solution.

Chancy Causation in Tort

This Essay demonstrates that the causation inquiry in tort law, at least where causation is chancy, is largely a normative inquiry. Chancy causation is where the cause of an event can only be attributed probabilistically. Contrary to the understanding popular in both tort theory and doctrine, scientific fact plays only a minimal role in chancy causation cases. Understanding this reality opens the door to considering what approach to causation is normatively desirable. The Essay proposes a change in the doctrine that effectuates this observation. Methodologically, the Essay utilizes a metaphysical inquiry into causation as a first step to understanding this legal concept. If it is true that causation cannot be pinned down deterministically, as chancy causation cannot, then what determines factual causation? The answer is policy. I call this approach “pragmatic” because like the pragmatists of the late 1800s, it evaluates the use of an idea rather than claims regarding its metaphysical truth. But there is a metaphysical piece here as well. We only get to the point of applying a pragmatic analysis by understanding something about the metaphysics of causation.

ГЕРМЕНЕВТИКА Х.-Г. ГАДАМЕРА ЯК ФІЛОСОФІЯ МОВИ

The sequential development of H.-G. Gadamer philosophical doctrine of language as the basis of its philosophical hermeneutics. The various stages of representations of the language are analyzed in connection with the criticism of the instrumental approach and understanding of the language as the foundation of historical discourse and poetic creativity. The latter is considered as the pre-reflexive basis of the language, a fundamental expression of its essence. Moreover, artistic experience is presented as a procedure for knowing the truth, to the extent that this experience contains understanding, it itself is a hermeneutical phenomenon.The linguistic turn, which marked one of the turning points in the development of modern philosophy, led to the formulation of a fundamentally new question about the essence of language. We are, of course, not talking about some kind of planned event or about any single process that coincides in its characteristics, or is something close to different philosophical directions. It is difficult to say how correctly it is to compare interest in language within the framework of linguistic philosophy and the phenomenological school, in the framework of which the development of hermeneutics took place.The latter, from a method that was essentially intended to serve historical-philological and religious discourse, hermeneutics has evolved into an independent philosophical discipline that reflects the very essence of metaphysical issues. First of all, this change is connected with the development of the phenomenological tradition, and especially with the works of M. Heidegger, who was able to free hermeneutics from the excessive influence of theories of language and to base it on metaphysical inquiry. This, of course, does not mean that the language itself has been given to philosophical oblivion; it is only a matter of changing the accents and research attitudes.This task, in our opinion, was set and largely solved by H.-G. Gadamer, in any case, if we accept his theoretical assumption about the transcendence of the meaning of the interpreter.Gadamer interprets the hermeneutic phenomenon very broadly, in which he sees the integral unity of the three aspects – understanding, interpretation and application. Gadamer argues for their inseparability, an actual identity: understanding is always an interpretation and always implies an application of what is to be understood. The concept of application in Gadamer outlines the limits of the phenomenon to be interpreted and establishes the fact that all phenomena of spiritual culture in a particular situation must be understood differently.

Phenomenology and the stratification of reality

AbstractPhenomenologists have no taste for desert landscapes. The early phenomenologists—Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Roman Ingarden—adopt stratified views of reality on which spiritual objects like artifacts and persons are distinct from their underlying matter. Call this view “pluralism.” After describing Scheler, Ingarden, and Husserl's pluralism about goods, literary artworks, and images, respectively, I reconstruct a phenomenological case for pluralism from Husserl's work and defend it against an objection. The phenomenological method reveals a special subset of objects' essential properties: modes of givenness. On Husserl's view, there are necessary correlations between types of objects and the types of intentional acts through which they are given. Spiritual objects, unlike their matter, can only be given in acts belonging to the “personalistic attitude,” which has a motivational and expressive structure. My broader claim is that Husserl's phenomenology is a sophisticated metametaphysical view about the methodology of first‐order metaphysical inquiry.

Death as Cataclysm or Catharsis: Yves Bonnefoy’s Douve

One of Bonnefoy’s best known poetic works, the 1953 Du mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve, is also one of his most elusive, a complex piece presenting subtle juxtapositions of metaphysical inquiry, linguistic experimentation, and artistic innovation. Of the many engaging aspects of this substantial poem, the motif of the human body represents a central tenet. Intricately related to Bonnefoy’s subtle notion of présence—the interiorization of external reality though the infinite dynamics of art—the human body emerges as a living incarnation of that exquisite, unnamable state to which Bonnefoy’s poetry aspires. The systems continually at work in a biological organism—and its constant movement towards the definitive gesture of death—present the writer’s holistic view of the complex human form.

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF JAMES MILL (1773–1836) IN THE INTERPRETATION OF FEDOR ZELENOGORSKII (1839–1908)

In the article, a little-studied question of the critical interpretation of the philosophical and psychological position of the representative of Scotland tradition James Mill (1773–1836) in the university philosophy, especially in the work of Kharkiv Professor Fedor Zelenogorskii (1839–1908) is presented. At first, the main periods of scientific and creative career of Fedor Zelenogorskii, including his studying at the Kazan Clerical Academy (1862–1864) and the historical-philosophical faculty at the Kazan University (1864–1868) are considered. Then his scientific internship from 1871 till 1873 in Germany and Switzerland is emphasized. During that period, he attended lectures of such famous Professors as Moritz Drobisch (Leipzig), Eduard Zeller (Heidelberg), Friedrich Albert Lange (Zurich, and Marburg), who was the author of the work “Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart” (1866). Then the features of the teaching and the publications of Fedor Zelenogroskii in his “Kharkiv period” (1874–1908) are pointed out, during which he was, at first, private docent, then extraordinary and ordinary professor of philosophy. Fedor Zelenogorskii’s works at this time comprise three areas: 1) Antique philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aristippus of Cyrene), 2) works in the history of philosophy, for instance, Kharkiv university philosophy and Ukrainian philosophy (J. B. Schad, A I. Dudrovich, M. N. Protopopov, G. S. Skovoroda, at al.), 3) logic, psychology and pedagogic. In the last group, his doctoral monograph “On mathematical, metaphysical, inductive and critical research and proof methods” (1877) was of great importance. Fedor Zelenogorskii’s very important work was his monograph “Essay of Development of Psychology from Descartes to our Time” (Kharkiv, 1885). The positions of well-known philosophers (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Berkley, Leibniz, Locke, and John Stewart Mill) and less-known thinkers (Glisson, Bonnet, and James Mill) were here analyzed. Fedor Zelenogorskii’s critical interpretation of the psychological viewpoint of James Mill in his two volumes work “Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind” (1829, 1869) occupies an important place in this analysis. According to him, Chapter III. “The Association of Ideas” of James Mill's work played a key role. James Mill appears here as a representative of associative psychology (David Hartley, Thomas Brown, J. F. Herbart, John Stewart Mill). The Kharkiv philosopher gave credit to James Mill for his contribution to the development of the causal law in Chapter “XXIV. The Will” of this work. In turn, Fedor Zelenogorskii’s important achievement was the popularization of the ideas of the Scotland philosopher and psychologist James Mill, in particular, because of his translation of extracts from the work “Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind”.

“Conscious Life” in the Existentialism of M. Mamardashvili

The article explores Merab Mamardashvili`s philosophy of consciousness focusing on its existentialist core. It is shown that Mamardashvili developed a special type of existentialism in which the main role was given to thinking and special state of conscious activity of human being. The similarities and differences in its version of existentialism with other known existentialist theories are also outlined. Unlike the French existentialism questioning the role of ratio, Mamardashvili directly links thinking and existence. However, this opposition must be understood with reservations as Mamardashvili's thinking is not understood as conceptual-discursive processes but as search of meaning, the nature of which according to Mamardashvili is purely existential. In what sense, existentialism of Mamardashvili can be called the doctrine of "conscious life" and special "existential eschatology" [11, p. 406]. Mamardashvili's idea of alternating human existence in two dimensions - living consciousness and its "dead double", in the clarification of which an essential role belongs to the "engagement" of consciousness, namely his interest in "his true position", is analyzed. Mamardavshvili's existentialism notes a special "Russianness" in which he develops a productive role of moral suffering and suggests considering it as the true beginning of "philosophical astonishment", interpreting any initial metaphysical inquiry as necessarily ethical, not epistemological. It is shown that despite of similarity of Mamardashville's existentialism with existentialism of Sartre, Camus and Heidegger, his reasoning is more close to existentialism of Pascal, as nontrivial combines post-metaphysical existentialism and metaphysical platonism.

The Notion of Love in the Early Twentieth-Century Russian Philosophical Tradition

This article presents the central paradigms of the understanding of love by early twentieth-century Russian philosophers. It shows that interpreting the meaning of erotic love as a way of overcoming death, as proposed by Vladimir Solovyov, largely determined not only the metaphysical inquiries, but also the personal life strategies of those who contributed to Russian Silver-Age culture. The author argues that familiarity with the autobiographies of philosophers and their lives is important for better understanding of the Russian philosophical tradition and appreciation of how this tradition was shaped by love-as-suffering, love-as-service, and love-as-friendship.

Renormalization scrutinized

In this paper, I propose a general framework for understanding renormalization by drawing on the distinction between effective and continuum Quantum Field Theories (QFTs), and offer a comprehensive account of perturbative renormalization on this basis. My central claim is that the effective approach to renormalization provides a more physically perspicuous, conceptually coherent and widely applicable framework to construct perturbative QFTs than the continuum approach. I also show how a careful comparison between the two approaches: (i) helps to dispel the mystery surrounding the success of the renormalization procedure; (ii) clarifies the various notions of renormalizability; and (iii) gives reasons to temper Butterfield and Bouatta's claim that some continuum QFTs are ripe for metaphysical inquiry (Butterfield & Bouatta, 2014).

Troubles with Theoretical Virtues: Resisting Theoretical Utility Arguments in Metaphysics

In this paper we examine theoretical utility arguments in metaphysics. While philosophers claim a procedural continuity with science when using such arguments, we argue that examining famous instances from the history of science expose their fundamental flaws. We find that arguments from theoretical utility invoke considerations that are not truth conducive and that justifications for claims that a theory possesses theoretical virtues often assume the truth of the theory such virtues are supposed to support. We conclude that theoretical utility arguments provide no epistemic grounds for metaphysical inquiry.

Night Unto Night by Martha Collins

Reviewed by: Night Unto Night by Martha Collins Walter Holland (bio) Martha Collins. Night Unto Night. Milkweed Editions, 2018. Martha Collins' elegiac book Night Unto Night consists of six separate parts or what I might call cantos. Each canto is subtitled and spread over six separate months and years in Collins' life, from 2010 to 2015. Furthermore, each canto reflects the emotional landscape, domestic circumstances, and political upheavals of those discrete dates, and the entire work is further subdivided into a series of short numbered stanzas. At root of Collins' work is a remarkable blend of the pastoral lyric with the fragmentary narrative impulses of contemporary American poetry. Her style in this collection is strongly reminiscent of Dickinson, whose short hymnal lyrics embraced the "common meter" of her youthful church-going days and the lyric beauty of the biblical psalms, all grafted to an idiosyncratic vocabulary and syntax. Dickinson's poems dwelled heavily on themes of death and immortality. In simple measured lines Dickinson struggled with her faith or doubt thereof. She observed the natural world and its transcendent qualities and seemed to pit it against the smallness and brevity of her own existence. Collins merges her strong socio-political and ethical conscience with love of the lyric, exhibiting an inherently Keatsian vision throughout, one reflective of the transient beauty of the natural world. This lyricism is evident in just an excerpt from one section of the longer canto "Out of Doors": 21 Water pinks, blues, geesestretch, ducks stir, green heronrises, slow, up to the dock— at last month's great blue, wingsover me, in the water, came down, like the come-down Dove 22 Mourning dove in the morning,geese, gulls working all day— until sun, gold through silveredclouds, through rose, rests [End Page 202] for a moment, then slipsinto the slot between water and sky These two stanzas are parsed into tercets, couplets and monostich, but on the page we see how Collins plays with various line combinations and breaks up her stanza by nonconventional spacing. All the stanzas, however, conform to a uniform five, six or seven-line length. Besides these formal considerations, Collins uses a highly elevated aesthetic diction, one classically rooted in the contemplation of living nature. In this regard Wordsworth comes to mind, as well as Louise Glück, W. S. Merwin, and Jane Kenyon. I am also aware that Collins has done many fine translations of Vietnamese poetry into English and shares knowledge of Asian cultures. Perhaps this vivid attention to the natural world and the lyric is influenced by this work. The lovely imagistic distillation of haiku or the delicate scroll paintings of China illuminate her poems. Also palpable is Collins' tranquility and serenity with its turn toward philosophic and metaphysical inquiry, which reminded me of Wallace Stevens, a poet whom Collins greatly admired, especially in his exquisite poem "Sunday Morning." There is a danger, of course, in the use of so highly an aestheticized poetic vision, and in a style, which draws so heavily from the language of the King James Bible, from the psalms and the sacred texts; however, like Muriel Rukeyser, that great activist poet who addressed equality, feminism, social injustice and Judaism, Collins includes in her verse the troubling complexities of political injustice and social conflict, be it global warming, the inhumane treatment of immigrants, racial injustice in the struggle of Black Lives Matter, or the incessant brutality of prolonged American wars in the Middle East. Drone attacks, targeted carpet-bombing, and mounting civilian fatalities—these realities disturb and interrupt her lyrics. This was most evidenced in her "Drawn In" canto, written in Sienna, Italy, where comparisons are discerned between the high artistry of Siennese works and history and the turmoil of the present era. Alberta Turner wrote of Rukeyser in her Dictionary of Literary Biography that she was devoted to the personal as well as to the political in her poetry, as I believe Collins is. In the canto "Broken Open" Collins writes: 12 High above the herring hiding their silver, gulls circled, shrieked,laboring like, but not— our drones our extended hungers for the kill [End Page 203] 13 Planes named...

Il sentimento della paura nell’immaginario collettivo: il caso Disney-Pixar = The feeling of fear in the collective imaginary: The Disney Pixar example

The feeling of fear in the collective imaginary: The Disney Pixar example. The contemporary scientific debate, in particular starting from the last decade of the last century, has been, often, about a rampant colonization of cognitive sciences. It’s known that the disciplines linked to this scientific field tend to explain the human behavior starting from the analysis of the process that happens in the brain. Thanks to the new techniques of brain studies (like fMRI) it’s possible to establish a material base, which lends itself to the empiric experimentation, to scientific studies of topics like awareness, feelings and emotions, traditionally associated to the purely metaphysical research. Between the basic emotions, or primary emotions, there is fear. In recent years there’s been huge publishing productions of scientific articles on this topic -And it’s easy to understand considering this big paradigmatic change happening- orienting the thoughts towards a different perspective of cognitive type. The object of this work is to comprehend in which terms the emotion of fear is been defined and told in the scientific contemporary debate, with a particular attention to the sociological approach. To be more specific, this work intend to analyze in which measure the way the sociological stories can be placed into an even bigger cultural movement in which the Mithological references that are feeding the contemporary imaginary are changing deeply. Additionally, once highlighted the strength and the limits of some of the proposals coming from the cognitive sciences, we propose a reading - and so an additional possible story telling alternative- of the feeling of fear open and amplified end and a more articulated inter-disciplinary approach. Between the objectives the proposals tends to, we would at the end try to stimulate a more intense opening between the different cognitive sciences and the Sociology of the cultural and communicative processes.