Metaphysical Problems Research Articles

Thanh Tâm Tuyền and the literature of freedom

Thanh Tâm Tuyền (1936–2006) was a great writer of South Vietnamese literature in the 1954–1975 period. His works are extremely diverse in genres, having made remarkable contributions to the modernization of Vietnamese literature in many aspects. However, in general, critics have drawn more attention to Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s unique innovations in poetry rather than his prose fictions whose achievements are also very notable in fact. On the basis of reading Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s short stories and novels from the perspective of narratology, poetics and existentialism, the paper contributes to analyzing, explicating and interpreting his narrative art. Specifically, we argue that freedom is an important core in Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s fictions and even in his entire writing career. Firstly, Thanh Tâm Tuyền had a special narrative style, with which he did not create narrative worlds, situations and characters as the mediums of his ideological statements and conclusions, but very discrete ones, sometimes full of structural flaws and incompletedness, which, however, can stimulate his readers to freely figure out and contemplate various metaphysical problems in their own way. Second, the article presents an understanding of the nature of life suggested by Thanh Tâm Tuyền’s prose fictions, which is also related to the concept of freedom: his short stories and novels, to some extent, indicate human suffering of living without freedom, with the term understood as being honest with oneself to escape from illusions and invisible impositions.

От логики к бессмысленности: философия языка Людвига Витгенштейна в повести Томаса Бернхарда «Хождение»

The article attempts to reveal the scale of influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on the subject matter and writing method of Thomas Bernhard. On the basis of the novella Walking, published in 1970, we demonstrate that the issues raised by Wittgenstein at the beginning of the 20th century were of primary importance for Bernhard. The Austrian writer was interested not only in establishing the relationship between the world and language, but also in extrapolating this metaphysical problem to an understanding of the nature of literary creativity. Wittgenstein in his work asked the critical question about the possibility of adequate transmission of events by means of language and sought to explore its ontological and logical foundations. However, this idea of the philosopher receives an unusual refraction in the novella Walking. On the one hand, Bernhard casts doubt on Wittgenstein’s assumption about the initial isomorphism of words and objects and condemns his characters to endless wandering in the closed space of speech. On the other hand, in such a negative way he confirms the ideological core of the “linguistic turn”, and, in fact, that human existence is determined by language. Thus, literary exploration of themes of madness, suicide, the deceptiveness of reality, which in the logical continuum of the Tractatus are declared nonsensical, leads Bernhard’s narrative to an existential level.

The Metaphysical Path: Lev P. Karsavin’s Philosophical Experience

ABSTRACT In this article dedicated to Lev P. Karsavin’s creative path, I focus mainly on the evolution of the thinker’s religious–philosophical ideas. I consider the reasons that prompted the professional historian to choose the path of a free philosopher, defending an argument about the interrelation of Karsavin’s historiosophical ideas and the key provisions of his metaphysics. The article assesses the philosopher’s legacy in the context of the problem of Russian religious metaphysics as an independent and significant intellectual tradition that has shaped Russian cultural history among other spiritual–intellectual practices. In denoting the perspective of Karsavin’s activity, the author suggests key tasks in studying the philosopher’s work. These include, on the one hand, revising the corpus of Karsavin studies, and on the other hand, polemicizing with already existing interpretations of his work in Karsavin studies both in Russia and abroad. This strategy allows the author to conduct reinterpretations of Karsavin’s personological, onto-epistemological, and cultural–historical understandings that constitute the theoretical core of his religious metaphysics.

Folk Psychological Models and the Metaphysics of Belief. A Reply to Curry

The aim of this paper is to show that Curry’s recent defence of the interpretivist approach to beliefs is unsuccessful. Curry tries to argue that his version of interpretivism, which is based on the model-theoretic approach to folk-psychological attributions, is well-suited to resisting the epistemological argument that is directed at interpretivism. In this paper, I argue that even if Curry’s defence is successful in this case, his theory does not have enough resources to solve the metaphysical problems of interpretivism. In particular, I argue that the model-theoretic version of interpretivism that Curry espouses does not explain the claim that beliefs are constituted by the process of attribution, which is central to the interpretivist project. In the final parts of the paper, I discuss the issue of the relation between interpretivism and other forms of the broadly superficial/deflationary approach to beliefs, especially dispositionalism. I contend that if one wants to adopt a superficial/deflationary approach, it is best not to adopt interpretivism as it is an unnecessarily complex and problematic version of this broad view.

The Materialisation of “torrential languages” within the Avant-Garde: Mina Loy, James Joyce, and Aesthetic Modernism

Abstract Modernist literature was obsessed with a metaphysical problem regarding the word. A series of formal and material experiments started to address the word’s self-referentiality and aesthetic autonomy, against the backdrop of a new sociocultural milieu in the early twentieth century. To discover how this materialisation of language explored the interplay of literary and artistic modernisms, this paper will critically scrutinise Mina Loy’s and James Joyce’s radical reforms of writing and try to answer the following questions: how did Loy’s multifarious artisthood and poem-writing exchange, interact with, and reinforce each other? As both were closely associated with avant-garde art movements between Europe and America, how did Joyce influence Loy’s refashioning of “torrential languages” (LoLB 88) as a creative model of linguistic experimentation? How did their visual aesthetics and experimental poetics help to declare the independence of language and the shape of aesthetic modernism in a new historical epoch?

Between Rationalism and Romanticism: Blanckenburg'sVersuch über den Romanand the Transformation of Rationalist Metaphysics

This essay examines Blanckenburg's theory of the novel in relation to Leibniz's metaphysics. It argues that Blanckenburg theorizes the novel as uniquely suited to respond to the problem in Leibniz's metaphysics of how to bridge the gap between the apparent contingency of first‐person experience and the promise that the world is actually a well‐ordered whole. Whereas Leibniz must appeal to the Principle of Sufficient Reason to bridge this gap, Blanckenburg suggests that the novel can aid philosophical cognition by doing what philosophical thought cannot: create a world depicting the development of a human life in its totality. However, freed from its ontological basis, Blanckenburg's theory provides an important starting point for early Romantic aesthetic theory. Following Blanckenburg, the novel becomes a privileged medium not for copying life, but for offering a model for it, thereby providing an important impulse in Romanticism's reversal of rationalist hierarchies of philosophy and aesthetics.

Compositionalism, Nestorianism, and the principle of no co-member parts

AbstractCompositionalists hold that God the Son became human by acquiring all the parts that ordinarily compose a human being (his ‘human nature’). To be orthodox, though, they must deny that Christ's human nature is a person, even though it has all the parts that human persons ordinarily have. One way to do this is by appealing to the principle that no member of a natural kind can have another member of the same kind as a proper part. Since Christ is a person, he cannot have another person as a part, so if his human nature is a part of him, it cannot be a person. This principle is defended on the grounds that it can resolve metaphysical problems involving apparently multiple individuals of the same natural kind that share the same space. I argue that this is a weak strategy. First, it leaves unanswered key questions about how and why the principle applies to the incarnation. Second, counter-examples to the principle exist, suggesting that it is not true. Third, there is a better solution to the kinds of metaphysical paradoxes for which this principle is usually invoked, but this solution cannot be applied to the case of Christ. Consequently, compositionalists should not rely on this principle as a means of avoiding Nestorianism.

Biological Individuality and the Foetus Problem

The Problem of Biological Individuality is the problem of how to count organisms. Whilst counting organisms may seem easy, the biological world is full of difficult cases such as colonial siphonophores and aspen tree groves. One of the main solutions to the Problem of Biological Individuality is the Physiological Approach. Drawing on an argument made by Eric Olson in the personal identity debate, I argue that the Physiological Approach faces a metaphysical problem - the ‘Foetus Problem’. This paper illustrates how metaphysics can contribute to debates about organisms in the philosophy of biology.

Blackness Before Race and Race as Reoccupation: Reading Sylvia Wynter with Hans Blumenberg

ABSTRACT This essay explores Sylvia Wynter’s appropriation of German philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s “reoccupation thesis” to clarify a number of key metaphysical moves in Wynter’s oeuvre with respect to her sociogenic method. We are motivated by the sense that attending to Wynter’s reading of Blumenberg will afford appreciation of her return to Scholastic questions, including 1) how this return activates the problem of race in the longue durée and 2) what this means for her excavation of cautionary parallels for our present predicament. The diffusion of Blumenberg’s concept-metaphor “reoccupation” into Wynter’s linguistic tool-kit responds to political-theological questions, we argue, by configuring race as the reoccupation of long-standing metaphysical problems. After first providing an overview of Blumenberg’s reoccupation thesis, we navigate how Blumenberg and Wynter address transformations to our social field through their differently configured analytics—counter-exertion and sociogeny. Following Wynter’s articulation of sociogeny as the generative principle of our mode of existence, we access the payoff in Wynter’s retrieval of reoccupation’s rejection of historical substantialism, particularly in the ways her theory of blackness becomes the firmament for her reworking of theology and materialism. Taking race as the grounding of being, our heretical approach to the political theology of race reads Wynter’s sociogenic principle in order to rethink the centrality of race to philosophies of history that undergird secularization stories. As an apparently natural (“extra-human”) form of social objectivity, race succeeds, at great cost, in stabilizing tensions emergent from the reoccupation of persisting theological questions. In part, Wynter’s social history of the Latin-Christian order works as a necessary historiographical description of what comes before race, with divisions between the spirit and the flesh manifesting new forms of hierarchy with every iteration. While this orientation, which we call “blackness-before-race,” seems to butt up against our other proposition—“race-as-reoccupation”—we activate this tension to elaborate the differentia specifica of modernity and index its aporetic foundations. The precedence of blackness-before-race elaborates race’s emergence and intractability, the way race-as-reoccupation exceeds empirical decipherability, for it is the substrate through which the world is rendered intelligible. Wynter’s elliptical approach to these questions eclipses those criticisms that take her to be a secret historical substantialist by providing an explanatory field for the past that is attentive to its fraught political purchase in the present.

Bradley’s Relation Regress and the Inadequacy of the Relata-Specific Answer

F. H. Bradley’s relation regress poses a difficult problem for metaphysics of relations. In this paper, we reconstruct this regress argument systematically and make its presuppositions explicit in order to see where the possibility of its solution or resolution lies. We show that it cannot be answered by claiming that it is not vicious. Neither is one of the most promising resolutions, the relata-specific answer adequate in its present form. It attempts to explain adherence (relating), which is a crucial component of the explanandum of Bradley’s relation regress, in terms of specific adherence of a relational trope to its relata. Nevertheless, since we do not know the consequences and constituents of a trope adhering to its specific relata, it remains unclear what specific adherence is. It is left as a constitutively inexplicable primitive. The relata-specific answer only asserts against Bradley. This negative conclusion highlights the need for a metaphysical account of the constitution of the holding of adherence.

A Neo-Lockean Theory of the Trinity and Incarnation

I present two problems: the logical problem of the Trinity and the metaphysical problem of Incarnation. I propose a solution to both problems: a Neo-Lockean theory of the Trinity and Incarnation, which applies a Neo-Lockean theory of personal identity to the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation.

Wittgenstein's Theory of Metaphysical Expression and Meaning - Analytical Research

The problem of metaphysics is one of the philosophical issues of the current era, especially for the analytic philosopher (Ludwig Wittgenstein), who clearly defends phrases with meanings against phrases without meanings in his book (Tractatus) . Metaphysical expressions are one of the issue that Wittgenstein considered as a reason for the absence of an analogue and images of its components in the external world, describing it as meaningless and at the same time describing it as without sign and significance. An attempt was made to resolve this problem through a logical analysis of language and expressions, so that the phrase with meaning is the one of that is subject to conjugation and has an analogy in the external world and speaks directly about facts and phenomena within this world , otherwise all expressions are meaningless if these conditions are not met. At the same time , the values of correctness and error of expressions were linked to their ability to conjugate .Any expression and expression that is not subject to recognition of its value as true or false is unscientific and falls outside the meaning. Metaphysical expressions do not meet this condition, so they are considered meaningless and without reference.

Figurative and stylistic features of judicial thinking in Leonid Andreev’s prose

The paper aims to describe the impact of judicial thinking on the style and imagery of L. Andreev’s prose. The research provides a theoretical interpretation of such central symbol-metaphors related to judicial issues as court, sentence, defence, and prosecution. The study draws parallels between the writer’s biography and the existential themes which L. Andreev reproduces in his writings by applying specialised terminology to metaphysical problems. To identify the above-mentioned parallels, traditional literary analysis is employed. It aims to generalise the writer’s aesthetic views on literature in the light of the judicial peculiarities of his thinking. Particular attention is directed to the influence of judicial stylistics on the poetics of L. Andreev’s writings. As a result, the application of linguostylistic analysis (aimed mainly at examining the lexical and syntactic structure of L. Andreev’s texts) enables the author of the paper to conclude that there is a sudden reorientation of the writer’s artistic strategy. L. Andreev replaced the rhetorical expressionist impact on the reader’s mind with the sharp, abrupt syntax of the story "The Seven Who Were Hanged". The form of judicial rhetoric manifestation also changed. The author substituted the deliberately monotonous stringing of "formulae-sentences" for the ornamental suggestion of the previously used techniques. The concise and compressed bare phrase became the method of conveying the author’s marked tendency that is indicative of the enormity of executions. The methods of statistical calculation and the linguostylistic analysis of excerpts from the short story "The Seven Who Were Hanged" were used to reinforce the derived conclusions. Additionally, theoretical material which helps to comprehend the specific features of courtroom prosecution speeches with regard to L. Andreev’s texts is analysed. The literary generalisations provided in the paper can be used in Russian language and literature lessons.

Consciousness: Removing the Hardness and Solving the Problem

The ‘hard’ problem of consciousness is the seemingly intractable one of explaining the properties of consciousness in terms of the properties of physical objects. This is often seen mistakenly as a metaphysical problem, whereby the properties of physical things are of such a nature and so unlike mental properties that it is difficult to understand how the physical could ever explain consciousness. This view of the physical is not however the true reason for the hardness of the problem, rather it is epistemic, that of defining the physical as those features of the world that may be known objectively, coupled with the contention that only those objectively known properties are real. This makes the explanation of subjective consciousness in terms physical properties not just hard but impossible. The answer is to hold that the world is indeed all physical, but have the physical no longer defined as what may be known only objectively, and hold that some physical properties may be known subjectively. This eliminates the hard problem of consciousness as it is no longer required that the explanation of subjective properties of physical things be in terms of the objective properties of physical things.

Объективное время и перспективы современной метафизики

One of the features of modern philosophy is the revival of interest in clas­sical metaphysical problems (the nature of the mental, free will, time) and their active discussion. However, the state of affairs in modern metaphysics is rather ambiguous. While some researchers try to solve metaphysical problems within a certain tradition, others seek alternative ways, and others deny the very possibility of metaphysics as a positive knowledge, or at least to focus on discussing the question of its methods and actual possibilities. Strictly speaking, taking into account the difficulties that the thesis about the possibility of obtaining knowledge about objective reality has faced over the past centuries, there is nothing fundamentally new in this state of affairs. There are still two main questions that remain relevant, without an answer to which it is impos­sible to say that the solution to any metaphysical problem is coherent. Is metaphysics even possible as a positive knowledge of reality? If possible, how? The author be­lieves that the arguments from the side of transcendentalism against naturalism are quite effective, and it is necessary to abandon the search for solutions to metaphysi­cal problems that are compatible with naturalism. But this does not mean that meta­physical problems cannot be solved at all. According to the author, the perspectives of metaphysics can be associated with the search for other points of reference than those that are usually used in modern discussions. As such, we can take the idea of the objectivity of time, which is of crucial importance in modern metaphysics.

Heidegger as a delusion of XXth century philosophy

The author presents the basic idea of fundamental ontology through a critique of Heidegger in Being and Time (1927), the lecture ?What is Metaphysics? (1929) and the book Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), including the stances after the turn (Kehre) wen is needed,. The elaboration was carried out concretely by overcoming Heidegger?s strategic shortcomings, due to which Being and Time is a conceptually and methodologicaly unsuccessful book. This is explained by presenting four theses: first, that existential analysis in Being and Time is made impossible by the determination of authenticity; secondly, that the elaboration of fundamental ontology is not possible with the meaning of being as the goal. This one must be temporarily abandoned, in order for it to be possible as an ?ontology of all ontologies?. Thirdly, the fundamental ontology is the ontology of the meaningful-existential foundation of human existence, that elaborates how the world in which a man can exist is constituted. And fourth, further elaboration of fundamental ontology of existential variant is not possible by linking it to the Critique of Pure Mind, what Heidegger attempted in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929). Thus it is explained why Heidegger was unable to provide full explication of fundamental ontology. If he had done so, it would be enough to recognitize him as an important and original philosopher, because fundamental ontology as the ?metaphysics of metaphysics? woul be only possible ?first philosophy? (prote philosophia) in the age of late modernity and the situation of the decline of transcendence.

ШЛЯХЕТНІСТЬ І ВІЙНА: ПОСТАВАННЯ СУБ’ЄКТА ГЕРОЇЧНОЇ ДІЇ

The article presents the results of the study of problem of relationship between the phenomena of heroism and nobility in conditions of war, as well as the understanding of the process of formation of the subject of heroic action. A just defensive war is considered as an ethical and existential challenge for a person, which provides a tragic opportunity to reveal moral qualities, leads to an extraordinary elevation of the spirit, helps to realize one's devotion to the highest values – truth, kindness and beauty, in conditions when the aggressor brutally destroying them. It is emphasized that war is a breaking point for society, which also leads to a test of morality and nobility of spirit. It is noted that the concept of «nobility» is used in two meanings: as a high origin and as the internal qualities of a person. Nobility in the ethical sense includes such characteristics of a person as philanthropy and sincerity, honor and generosity, dignity and respect for one's people. An example of nobility is a hero who realizes his high calling is to make the world suitable for a dignified human existence. The article presents several leading approaches to understanding the subject of heroic action: classical, socio-philosophical, intersubjective, existentially-anthropological and constructivist.It is emphasized that the hero exceeds limits of an ordinary person, he is unexpected even for himself, because as a rule, a heroic act cannot be programmed. A feat is defined as an accomplished, manifested possibility of an impossible, the affirmation of values higher than one's own life, which occurs under conditions created by a metaphysical problem, an existential threat. A heroic act is seen as nondeterministic and teleological. In addition to the ethical prerequisites of readiness for a feat, certain psychological qualities of the subject are also highlighted, which contribute to his appearance as a hero. It is claimed that, despite positive propaganda and patriotic education, the experience of Russian-Ukrainian war and the example of modern Ukrainian heroes, nobility will never be widespread, but we can have more noble people, and the attitude towards heroes will become more respectful. It is especially emphasized that heroism expands the horizons of the vital world, it is asserted as a necessary and justified strategy of social behavior in the modus of maximum existential tension and existential threats, therefore today it is extremely important to study the outlined problems, which will allow a comprehensive understanding and a deeper grasp of their essence.

Проблема неопределенности в аналитической метафизике

The article is devoted to vagueness as a problem of analytical metaphysics. The specificity of the consideration of vagueness by philosophers-analysts lies in the appeal to the ancient sources of this problem and in the explication of its essential characteristics from the aporias of Eubulides. Modern metaphysical theories consider vagueness as a general term for those phenomena that: a) either demonstrate borderline cases, b) either do not have clear boundaries, c) or do not have strictly defined identity conditions. In modern metaphysics ontological, semantic and epistemic types of vagueness are distinguished. However, not all of them are equally valid. All cases of “ontological vagueness” ultimately come down either to the limitations of our cognitive tools, or to a language that is unable to unam­biguously “grasp” the essence of an object. Therefore, the ontological type of vague­ness seems to be insufficiently substantiated. Semantic vagueness is considered as a phenomenon that belongs only to the sphere of semantics (language) or concepts and is not a characteristic feature of the ontology of the world. Epistemic vagueness is thematicized as a kind of “ignorance”.

СТРАННАЯ АСЯ И.С. ТУРГЕНЕВА: АПОФАТИКА РУССКОГО ЭРОСА. КУЛЬТУРОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ ПОВЕСТИ

The object of the article is apophaticism of Russian verbal culture. The apophaticism of love, of Russian Eros serves as the subject. This article is based on Turgenev’s well-known short novel “Asya”. The hermeneutic reconstruction core is represented by the symbolic space of the 19th century novel. Much attention is paid to the problem of love metaphysics, its apophatic aspect in the Russian cosmo-psycho-logos, which is essential for understanding the philosophical nature of the writer’s creative work. The research methodology is mainly represented by the holistic ontohermeneutic analysis aimed at highlighting the cultural potential of the literary work in question, which makes it possible to approach the specificity of the writer’s creative process ontologically and delve into the wordsmith’s treatment of genesis. Much attention is paid to the comparison of Pushkin’s Tatiana from the novel “Eugene Onegin” and Turgenev’s story protagonist. The notions of “imagination”, “apophaticism”, “cosmo-psycho-logos” are introduced for profound culturological analysis of the work. The research results are represented by identification of cultural and philosophical potential of the novel “Asya” for further study of the problems of Russian artistic culture apophaticism, metaphysics of Russian Eros, national style of life. The results may be of interest for literary historians incorporating literature in the extensive dialogue of cultural space, and may be also used in teaching courses on cultural studies and philosophy.

Heidegger's understanding of philosophy in secondary literature of his first, second, and third periods of thought

In this paper, aligning with the focus international researchers have dedicated to Heidegger's major works in order to contribute to the elucidation of his teachings, our intention is to establish a hypothesis grounded in Heidegger's secondary literature spanning his first, second, and third periods of thought. This will be accomplished through an examination of his speeches, presentations, lectures, correspondences, notes, interviews, and the like. Thus, the hypothesis of this paper is aimed at demonstrating that Heidegger's body of work does not constitute a static and definitive delineation of philosophy that commences and concludes in a prescribed manner: instead, it represents a contemplation of the concept of philosophy throughout his entire oeuvre, achieved by engaging in the discourse of philosophy, problematizing metaphysics, and scrutinizing ontology. In this vein, this essay delves into Heidegger's understanding of the relationship between philosophy and metaphysics during his first period of thought, his comprehension of the problem of metaphysics in his second period of thought, and his interpretation of the interplay between ontology and theology/teologics in his third period of thought. The ultimate objective is to shed light on Heidegger's methodology, which underpins both his initial phenomenology and subsequent thought: the method of posing questions. Specifically, the act of questioning has led to a critique of the obscuring of the ontological difference between Sein and Dasein, a critique that delivers an essential disruption to philosophical thought. Consequently, this underscores the necessity of establishing the foundations for the task of thinking.