Metaphysical Thinking Research Articles

Свобода воли в синкретизме тувинской культуры

The article analyzes the problem of free will in the Tuvan culture, characterized by syncretism and traditionalism. It uncovers the worldview aspects of the Tuvan people, which reveal an organic unity with nature, thereby determining the range of alternative actions available. It is emphasized that individuals in traditional Tuvan culture operate through syncretic thinking, which occurs in the inseparable relationship not only between humans and nature but also between subject and object. The absence of metaphysical thinking in Tuvan culture is noted as a consequence of operating within a localized cognitive framework and the lack of necessity for supra-natural concepts within the cultural context. The dissolution of the individual in the surrounding space emerges as a natural phenomenon in the context of their livelihood within a specific culture that has arisen under certain conditions. Furthermore, the article delineates a unique understanding of human responsibility and the concept of personal freedom. This understanding does not create contradictions in the realization of one’s free will and the necessity for the development of nature. Additionally, the contours of the transformation of Tuvan culture and the formation of personality concepts influenced by European models are outlined. This analysis contributes to the broader discourse on the interplay between cultural context and the conception of free will, highlighting how deeply embedded traditional beliefs and practices shape the Tuvan understanding of individual agency within the world.

Valid and invalid causal arguments for physicalism

In “A Causal Argument for Physicalism”, Lei Zhong presents an argument for physicalism in general, that is, for the disjunction of reductive physicalism and non-reductive physicalism. Zhong’s argument attempts to show that mental properties are physically acceptable, that is, physical in a wide sense. The crucial assumption of the argument is that physically acceptable effects do not have both sufficient causes that are physically acceptable and simultaneous sufficient causes that are not physically acceptable. I argue that Zhong’s argument is invalid, because the mental can be causally relevant to physically acceptable effects while being neither physically acceptable nor causally sufficient for these effects. I present an alternative argument in the spirit of Zhong’s argument that omits the notion of sufficient causation. I argue that non-physicalists can also resist the alternative argument if they fine-tune their metaphysics of mind.

Nothing: The Gift of Anxiety. Derrida, Heidegger, Lacan

Derrida’s reading of Heidegger’s 1962 lecture On Time and Being concludes the last session of the 1978–79 seminar published in Donner le temp II. There, Heidegger suggests that the task of thinking consists of thinking Being without regard to metaphysics, while ceasing all overcoming of metaphysics as such. What is given as the task for thought is that which onto-theology makes impossible to think, that is, the constitutive aporetic remainder of metaphysical thinking. This essay contends that for both Heidegger and Derrida the task of thought consists in this same matter of thinking, with which the question of the gift primarily deals. It maintains that in order to think the giving of the gift without regard to metaphysics, the gift could be thought in terms of anxiety. In this perspective, anxiety emerges as a thoughtful affect that gives an access to thinking the impossible, cutting through the onto-theological order of metaphysics. Finally, bringing together Heidegger and Lacan’s accounts of anxiety allows us to creep deeper into this liminal dimension of what is to be thought.

A very brief history of colour metaphysics

Abstract These are five playfully pessimistic meditations on the metaphysics of colour, arguing that metaphysical thinking does not fit well with the beautiful universe of colours: Neither Platonism nor relativism nor reductionism nor the distinction between primary and secondary qualities nor the denial of the existence of some colours at the expense of others offers convincing ways of dealing with the phenomena of colour. In the final, sixth meditation the standard analysis of magenta is challenged with some unorthodox ideas that can be traced back to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s colour research.

Medieval treatise on the metaphysics of mind

U radu je iznesen povijesni prikaz metafizika uma od Aristotela do svetog Tome Akvinskog. Sve te metafizike uma predstavljaju, kako je nedvojbeno pokazano, razradu općih metafizičkih počela dotičnih autora primijenjenu na ljudsku dušu, a čija je bitna vlastitost sposobnost umnog spoznavanja koja ne može biti plod samo tjelesnih organa, kao što je Aristotel ustvrdio.Budući da u svih autora opća metafizička počela u bitnome izražavaju njihove svjetonazore, posljedično je i poimanje uma i duše ovisno o dotičnim svjetonazorima. Tako, filozofi antike čiji svjetonazor nije uključivao pojam stvaranja nisu uspjeli objasniti nastajanje i osobnu besmrtnost duše. Nadalje, filozofi islama čiji svjetonazor pripisuje svako djelovanje u kategorijalnom redu Bogu, nisu uspjeli objasniti kako je ljudsko umno shvaćanje vlastiti umni čin svakog pojedinog čovjeka, a što je nužno kako slijedi iz Aristotelovih argumenata. Konačno, kršćanski filozofi čiji je svjetonazor baštinio pojam stvaranja i priznavao relativnu autonomiju stvorenja, uspjeli su filozofski objasniti kako porijeklo i besmrtnost svake pojedinačne duše, tako i njeno individualno umno djelovanje.Dvije kršćanske metafizike trinaestog stoljeća, jedna metafizika bîti svetoga Bonaventure i druga metafizika bitka svetog Tome Akvinskog, posljedično su formirale i dvije kršćanske metafizike duše i uma: onu Serafskog naučitelja koja zbog univerzalnog hilemorfizma nije uspjela opisati nematerijalnost uma, koju je nužno potvrditi slijedom Aristotelovih argumenata, te onu Anđeoskog naučitelja, jedinu do početka četrnaestog stoljeća, koja je u skladu s Aristotelovim argumentima za nematerijalnost uma uspjela argumentirano opisati individualno porijeklo i nepropadljivost duše.

The Perception of Socrates' Ethics in F. Nietzsche's Moral Philosophy: Overcoming Metaphysics and its "Eternal Recurrence"

The subject of the study is to consider the perception of Socrates' ethics in Nietzsche's philosophy as a theoretical basis for the formation of the key provisions of Nietzsche's philosophy of morality, in particular, possible elements of metaphysical thinking in these provisions. Nietzsche's critical argumentation in relation to the philosophical views of Socrates was considered as the basis for the key provisions of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, particularly in the aspect of its connection with the question of metaphysics. The focus of the author's research is the analysis of the perception of Socratic ideas in the context of criticism of Nietzsche's project of metaphysics through the prism of morality: the idea of self-overcoming and the increasing will to power turn out to be the basis for understanding Nietzsche's new project in moral philosophy. The research methodology includes theoretical methods, historical-philosophical and ethical-philosophical analysis of the consideration of Socrates’ ethics by Nietzsche, and the influence of this consideration on the ethical position of the latter. As a research basis, the article uses the approaches of J. Deleuze, L. Klages, A.F. Losev, L. Shestova, V.M. Bakuseva. The novelty of the article lies in tracing the influence of Socratic ethics on Friedrich Nietzsche's formulation of the moral problem, especially in the aspect of the question of metaphysics in Nietzsche's ethical thought (both criticism of metaphysics and the continuation of some lines of the metaphysical tradition). The first line of Nietzsche's criticism of Socratic philosophy was to identify the influence of Socrates on the emergence of European nihilism. Nietzsche's second thought, in relation to Socrates, concerned the "theoretical man".The third idea, which can be designated as one of the most important features of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, was the idea of self-overcoming.

Trübe (Turbidity, Cloudiness, Gloominess)

The lexeme Trübe (turbidity, cloudiness, gloominess), which plays a major conceptual role in Goethe’s discourse on colors and their perception, exhibits a diverse range of meaning across a variety of textual practices. As the “zarteste Materie” (most delicate form of matter), or the first membrane of corporeality, turbidity manifests itself in the atmosphere as metamorphosing aggregates of particulates such as fog and haze, which at times can also surround the mind metaphorically in acts of perception. In Goethe’s optical and chromatic studies, Trübe mediates the polarity of light and darkness in the physiological formation of colors on the retina, while also serving as an attribute of the semi-opaque experimental media that are used to study physical and entoptic colors. Color’s physical properties and its experimental stagings, moreover, translate into such conceptual problems as the mediation of subject and object or—as with Goethe’s Urphänomen—the relation of the universal to the particular, as well as the mind to matter. And when introduced into a poetics of the self, Trübe challenges the linearity of experience by facilitating an optically sophisticated means of refracting the subject and its depths. Ultimately, these uses together align Goethe with key shifts in metaphysical thinking during the period around 1800. While Goethean Trübe softened epistemological distinctions, as a philosophical concept it also attributed ontological complexity to nature and rethought the world of appearances, thereby articulating challenges for representation.

Исполнять технонауку: Art & Science с точки зрения современной метафизики

In the article the assumptions, strategies and possibilities of Art & Science (A&S) are considered through the prism of three types of metaphysical thinking. These types are defined by the answers to the question: why is there something rather than nothing. Thus, the analysis of classical metaphysics makes it possible to identify the basic assumptions of many A&S projects. These assumptions are borrowed by art from the public self-presentation of science and from Western common sense: there is an autonomous and definite nature, it is successfully known and mastered by science. So nature is nature, and nothing more. These assumptions are disputed by post-Kantian transcendental ontology. It opens up for A&S the opportunity to reflect upon the givenness of nature in the experience mediated by science, namely the constitution of science’s own objectivity, the social and political factors involved, as well as naturalization processes that turn scientific objects into nature things by way of erasing their origin. Nature is in the eye of the beholder. Empirical metaphysics (a number of projects from STS) sheds light on laboratory practices of nature enactment and the role of non-human actors in these processes. Nature is not only in the eye of the beholder, but also in the hands of the doer. It is assembled gathers, among other things, from the tissues of society, politics, culture, so does not oppose them from the outside. Among other things, this move allows us to define Art & Science as the enactment or performance of technoscience, since the laboratory-technical aesthetics inherent in this art is a reenactment of the part of the technoscientific network of practices and actors. In conclusion, by means of Pierre Bourdieu’s critical sociology, a hypothesis is formulated explaining why an alliance with STS may be problematic for A&S artists, and why posthumanism and new materialism are assimilated in this art in a cliched form. The technoscientifically formed world requires technoscientific enlightenment based on STS and philosophy, and A&S in alliance with them can be its art.

Crossing Paths: The Case for an Eco-Critical Posthumanism

In this paper, as a response to some of the recent attempts to promote a “post-critical” approach to the humanities, I propose an eco-critical posthumanism as a research program that analyzes the historical nexus between humanism and capitalism, thus attempting to reconcile several traditions and interventions in an intersectional framework. For this purpose, I look at the essential theoretical developments from the 1970s (eco-feminism, ecological economics) that have contributed to a critique of both humanism and capitalism as precursors of critical posthumanism. Instead of inventing new forms of ontological and metaphysical thinking, I argue that we still need, in the words of Marx, “a ruthless criticism of all that exists” that may lead to an alternative to capitalist humanism.

Seeing life steadily: Dorothy Emmet’s philosophy of perception and the crisis in metaphysics

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to outline Dorothy Emmet's (1904–2000) account of perception in The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (published in 1945). Emmet's account of perception is part of a wider attempt to rehabilitate metaphysics in the face of logical positivism and verificationism (of the kind espoused most famously by A. J. Ayer). It is thus part of an attempt to stem the tide of anti-metaphysical thought that had become widespread in British philosophy by the middle of the twentieth century. Emmet does not fit neatly into the traditional story of twentieth-century British philosophy. She draws on figures like A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson much more extensively than figures like Russell or Moore – and thus straddles the so-called ‘analytic-continental divide.’ My aim in this paper is to put Emmet on the map of twentieth-century British thought by outlining her philosophy of perception, highlighting her proposals for a way forward for metaphysics in a time of crisis, and identifying the ways she preempts movements in contemporary philosophy of perception.

Трансформация мышления в контексте преодоления метафизики в философии Мартина Хайдеггера

Criticism of metaphysics in the philosophy of M. Heidegger occupies a central place in his attempt to re-pose the question of being. In this work, such criticism is considered by the philosopher through the relationship between metaphysics and thinking. This involves revealing the intimate connection that, according to Heidegger, exists between philosophy and metaphysics. An analysis of Heidegger's criticism of this connection is carried out and his main idea is discussed that philosophy was so damaged by its connection with metaphysics that it should be replaced by meditative thinking. However, it is not entirely clear how the overcoming of metaphysical thinking should take place, especially given that Heidegger insists that relying on the human will to bring about changes in thinking simply reasserts the metaphysical perspective that needs to be overcome. And to overcome means to open an alternative way for thought and human being. This revelation, according to the thinker, will overcome the limitations inherent in metaphysics, and will open thought and human being to being, and this discovery will be comprehensively creative, since it will lead thought to previously hidden aspects of being. History has shown that while many claim to know what philosophy is, Heidegger argued, these thinkers did not really think through the subject properly, resulting in their statements being either superficial or based on unexplored assumptions.

Bog, Bothy, Zen: Introducing Sydney Scroggie's Environmental and Metaphysical Thought

Dundee poet and disabled hillwalker Sydney Scroggie is less well-known today than Nan Shepherd, Aberdeen’s spiritually and environmentally aware Scottish poet and mountaineer. Thanks both to Robert Macfarlane and Samantha Walton, there has been a recent revival in Shepherd studies, and this article, the first to consider Scroggie’s life and his writings, seeks to introduce Scroggie and his works to this conversation. While research into Shepherd has challenged traditional ideas of hillwalking as the sport of the lonely male mountaineer, Scroggie challenges any preconceived notions that hillwalking is an essentially abled activity. A nature writer, Scroggie’s writing presents an ecosystem of the senses where the physical and the metaphysical interact. By considering his environmental and metaphysical thought, this article presents Scroggie as a figure hitherto unfairly neglected by studies of both Scottish and British environmental thought, as well as Scottish literature. In similar ways to Shepherd and Frank Fraser Darling, Scroggie viewed humans and environment as intimately connected, and the Cairngorms as a landscape that should be respected and protected.

Penegakan Hukum HAM di Indonesia dalam Perspektif Paradigma Keadilan Hukum Transendental

This research discusses how law enforcement is in Indonesia, and how does the law enforcement is in the perspective of a transcendental justice paradigm. This research is a library research using secondary data sources, namely primary and secondary legal materials. This research includes normative research with a synthetic analytic approach. Based on the results of the analysis, law enforcement in Indonesia, both criminal and civil, is still fixated on legal certainty, thus ignoring substantive justice. This is where a shift is needed from the law enforcement paradigm based on legal certainty to transcendent justice. This condition can be seen from several decisions that are very formalistic and based on laws, where legal certainty is at the forefront compared to substantive justice so that justice is not felt by the community. This condition is also strongly influenced by the legal paradigm adopted in Indonesia, namely positivist law or known as the systemic legal paradigm. Transcendental starts from irrational and metaphysical thoughts such as emotions, feelings, instincts, moral spirituality and as part of the science of building. In this context, law enforcement. The perspective of the paradigm of transcendental legal justice highlights how the objectives of Islamic law are beneficial to justice and human welfare. Where law is based on ethics (moral) so that it can produce substantive justice, not mere formalistic justice, which encapsulates human attitudes to be fair to God as the creator, fair to fellow human beings and fair to the universe.

The Fragmented Mind

<i>The Fragmented Mind</i>

Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III by John F. Wippel

Reviewed by: Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III by John F. Wippel Cecilia Trifogli Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III. By John F. Wippel. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. Pp. 317. $65.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3555-0. This volume is the third collection of essays on Aquinas’s metaphysical thought by John Wippel, an eminent scholar of Aquinas. It consists of nine substantial essays, which Wippel completed after the publication of his monumental work, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (2000), and which were originally published as journal articles or book chapters. In a forty-page Introduction, Wippel offers a detailed outline of each of the essays, which provides a helpful guide to their reading. The essays cover topics central to Aquinas’s metaphysical thought: the subject of metaphysics (chap. 1), the preambles of faith (chaps. 2 and 5), the distinction of essence and esse (chap. 3), the Fourth Way (chap. 4), the unity of substantial form (chap. 6), the cognitive status of the separated soul (chap. 7), the metaphysics of evil (chap. 8), and the composition of angels (chap. 9). In the essay on the subject of metaphysics Wippel first draws an important distinction between a prephilosophical notion of being and the metaphysical notion of being as being, that is, being as the subject of the metaphysics. He points out that, according to Aquinas, there is a corresponding distinction between the intellectual processes by which we discover these two notions. Wippel then devotes special attention to the most difficult side of this distinction: the discovery of the metaphysical notion of being. He argues that the negative judgement Aquinas refers to as separatio and contrasts with abstractio is the relevant cognitive process. Wippel is well aware that his interpretation is not universally accepted, and he takes into account alternative views on this controversial topic. He offers a convincing defense of his interpretation by providing an accurate assessment of the textual evidence in support of it. The general issue addressed in the two essays about the preambles of faith is that of the harmony between faith and philosophy or reason. Wippel’s crucial concern in the first essay is to reach an accurate understanding of what Aquinas means by a preamble of faith. According to Wippel’s careful reconstruction of Aquinas’s scattered remarks on this topic, a preamble of faith is a truth about [End Page 343] God that can be discovered by natural reason and is logically presupposed by articles of faith. In other words, preambles of faith provide the rational foundation that Aquinas thinks is required for faith. Wippel also points out that, while Aquinas’s standard examples of preambles of faith are the claims that God exists and that he is one, there is textual evidence for the inclusion of eleven other theological truths in this category. In the second essay on this topic Wippel investigates Aquinas’s view about the preambles of faith as applied to the specific case of creation. The question addressed here is, which parts of Aquinas’s account of creation are preambles of faith and which are articles of faith? This is indeed a question of crucial importance. Wippel points out that in order to answer this question we need to be clear about what Aquinas means by creation. Aquinas’s discussion of creation ex nihilo indicates that he distinguishes two meanings of creation. According to both meanings, creation is a production of something from no preexisting subject and involves the priority of nonexistence to existence. The difference between the two meanings is in the notion of priority involved: according to the first meaning, the priority is in order of nature, not necessarily in the order of time, whereas according to the second meaning, the priority is in the order of time. The distinction is approximately that between the possibility of eternal creation and temporal creation. Aquinas maintains that creation in the first sense can be proved philosophically, and it is indeed a preamble of faith. And the article of faith of which it constitutes the immediate rational foundation is temporal creation, which cannot be proved philosophically. Wippel then turns to the...

Transvaluation and The Practice of Metaphysics

This article aims to develop transvaluation as a practice of metaphysical thinking. Jesus, Anselm, Nietzsche, and Deleuze have been selected and juxtaposed, for all their contrasts, as paradigmatic thinkers of transvaluation. Jesus offers the best paradigm for transvaluing what matters, what is sincere, and what is trustworthy: his response to a dispute among his disciples poses the problem that changes the signification, value, and binding force of thought. The metaphysical purport of Jesus's problem is clarified by Anselm's restatement of it, set against the backdrop of the contemplative spirituality expressed in the first chapter of Anselm's Proslogion. Anselm leaves us with a pair of problems: what is that than which none greater can be conceived? What is that whose very thought involves existence? These problems provide a context for rethinking the paradigms of transvaluation presented in Nietzsche's writing. Yet it was Deleuze who first presented transvaluation as an explicit method in his interpretation of Nietzsche, describing a metaphysics arising in and through critique. His method may itself be given a transvalued significance oriented, in turn, by the problems presented by Jesus and Anselm.

Философские аспекты цифровизации образования: «антицифровизаторский» подход

The article is devoted to the analysis of digitalization of education from the perspective of the «antidigitalisation» approach. The aim of the study is to identify and discuss the problematic philosophical context specific to the «anti-digitalization» approach. The author believes that this approach should be based on the interpretation of digitalization as a tool for destroying the essence of man, as a result of which he can no longer reproduce either himself or the conditions of his existence. Intellectual labor is being replaced by gamification, entertainment, thinking is de-rationalized, and the phenomenon of «digital dementia» is spreading. In turn, speech activity, communication are reduced to interaction with and subordination to machine algorithms, which leads to desocialization. The paper shows the relationship between the contemporary form of digitalization and Neo-Malthusianism and transhumanism as well as the outdated approaches of mechanistic materialism and metaphysical thinking. What becomes the educational problem in the context of digitalization is the destruction of the traditional system of education and pedagogy, the turning of education into a simulacrum, and of its participants — into algorithm-driven objects. In the author’s opinion, the way out of this crisis situation is possible only with a new reception of the Soviet experience in the field of education and the humanistic heritage of the past.

Critique and Problematicity of Metaphysical Thought. A dialogue in the fold of Heidegger and Deleuze

Partiendo del mapa del problema de la “superación” de la metafísica en el texto Überwindung der Metaphysik de Martin Heidegger, querríamos dar voz a Leibniz a través de las interpretaciones del pliegue barroco de Gilles Deleuze, en lo que toca al campo problemático que atañe a la crítica de Kant a Leibniz en la Anfibología de los conceptos de la reflexión de KrV. Y ello, especialmente en torno a la noción de mónada, a través de un diálogo entre Heidegger y Deleuze. Si del primero señalaremos a algunos textos y cursos en referencia al problema del fundamento y a la propia comprensión henológica de la mónada, del segundo atenderemos principalmente al texto Le pli – Leibniz et le Barroque.

Modern Scepticism, Metaphysics, and Absolute Knowing in Hegel's Science of Logic

Abstract While there are good reasons to think that Hegel would not engage with modern scepticism in the Science of Logic, this article argues that he nevertheless does so in a way that informs the text's conception of logic as the latter pertains to metaphysics. Hegel engages with modern scepticism's general concerns that philosophy should begin without unexamined presuppositions and should come to attain not only knowledge of truth, but corresponding second-order knowledge: knowledge of knowing truth. These concerns inform two needs that Hegel formulates for first philosophy, which logic—by unifying with metaphysics, which is traditionally synonymous with first philosophy—is to satisfy. However, logic, for the Logic, is unified with metaphysics as a science of absolute knowing, the form of thinking involved in traditional metaphysics. As such, logic, for the Logic, is neither anti-metaphysical nor reducible to metaphysics, but is rather a science of metaphysical thinking, which, for Hegel, includes metaphysics. The article emphasizes how Hegel's construal of logic as a science of absolute knowing avoids running into the ‘swimming problem’ that Hegel raises against, broadly, epistemological forms of first philosophy.

Metaphysical Thinking as Transcendence

The article aims to substantiate the genesis of consciousness and self-consciousness through metaphysical thinking. Metaphysical thinking is explicated as a transcendence that a priori determines every possible object of consciousness. In this sense, metaphysical thinking determines a priori the unity of existence. Existence is explicated as a unity of the interpretive models of consciousness. Thus, metaphysical thinking is seen as a function of the transcendent unity that is the a priori truth of the consciousness’ genesis. The logical relation between metaphysical thinking and consciousness is expressed by asymmetric implication. In this way, existence in the language of consciousness is phenomenologized. Thus arises the ontological understanding of existence. In this sense, metaphysical thinking determines the transcendental form of consciousness and the ontological form of existence.