Transcendental Metaphysics Research Articles

A metaphysics of spiritual experience

AbstractA discussion of the metaphysics of spiritual experience requires that we are clear about the nature of metaphysics, and I take as my starting point the ‘transcendent metaphysics’ described and supposedly eliminated by A. J. Ayer. Most analytic philosophers agree with Ayer (and Kant) that transcendent metaphysics in the relevant sense is deeply problematic, and they associate it with platonism, theism, and religious thinking more generally. Assuming then that spiritual experience takes us into religious territory, and this territory is forbidden, a metaphysics of spiritual experience is going to involve transcendent metaphysics, and it will be similarly problematic. Ayer's conception of transcendent reality is itself deeply problematic, and I shall argue that his metaphysical framework helps to motivate atheistic spirituality by ruling out the possibility of an empirically grounded and hence defensible religious alternative. I shall challenge this framework, set out an alternative with the help of Arthur Schopenhauer, and spell out the implications for a metaphysics of spiritual experience.

Эстетика и метафизика: коллизии современности

The article deals with the topic of the relationship between aesthetics and meta­physics. It considers how this relation emerges in some areas of modern philoso­phizing – domestic and foreign. The author pays special attention to how it is read in the actual-sounding meanings of the classical tradition. Laying down the boundaries within transcendental metaphysics (it goes without saying that the boundaries themselves can change, reshape, be revised), Kant in the third “Critique” believes that the principles of the ability of aesthetic judgment are not part of metaphysics, but can only be adjacent to theoretical and practical philoso­phy. What, in fact, does this proximity to the parts of metaphysics imply, how adequate are the boundaries drawn if we consider them in the totality of ideas and attitudes of critical transcendentalism? Already in the first “Critique” aes­thetics, in fact, enters the metaphysical panorama when Kant uses the artistic technique of personification when discussing the question of the world concept of philosophy. The problem of modern understanding of metaphysics seems even more complicated: it is enough to recall the problem of metaphysical a posteriori analyzed in some works, which opens up significant prospects for the develop­ment of aesthetics. The author then refers to the position of M. Heidegger, which he defines as a skeptical denial of the aesthetic logos of metaphysics. The analy­sis of the works of the German philosopher shows that the connection between aesthetics and metaphysics in modern times becomes the subject of a separate problematization. The varieties of its understanding, which can be generalized as an articulation of the paradoxical character of a aesthetic consciousness, were pro­posed by Russian philosophers as well (V.A. Podoroga, M.K. Mamardashvili).

Ответ на вопрос: Что такое «критическая философия» Канта?

This paper answers the question, what is Kant’s ‘Critical Philosophy’? The an­swer is not provided by a bibliography of Kant’s main works, nor by his tran­scendental idealism. The answer consists in Kant’s critique of our human capa­city to judge and of those rational principles by which we can properly judge matters accurately and cogently. To show this, three key features of Kant’s cri­tique of rational judgment are examined: five constitutive characteristics of our human capacity to judge (§2), two basic theses of Kant’s Critical philosophy (§3) and a table of basic systematic questions and their Critical answers (§4). This conspectus is philosophically significant because it clearly identifies Kant’s Critical method and its key considerations, which continue to be widely neg­lected when considering philosophical method (§5). Key findings of this paper include: Kant’s comprehensive critique of rational judgment and justification suffices to justify his rejection of transcendent metaphysics and the sole innate right to freedom, without appeal to his transcendental idealism or to his account of ‘dignity’ as the incommensurable value of rational agency; Kant’s thesis of singular cognitive reference (specified herein) suffices to reject infallibilism and to justify fallibilism regarding our rational justification of both empirical and moral judgments.

Phenomenology and Transcendence: On Openness and Metaphysics in Husserl and Heidegger

In this paper I examine the relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics by reassessing the relationship between phenomenological and metaphysical transcendence. More specifically, I examine the notion of phenomenological transcendence in Husserl and the early Heidegger: Husserl defines transcendence primarily as the mode of givenness of phenomena that do not appear all at once, but must be given in partial profiles; Heidegger defines transcendence primarily as Dasein’s capacity to go beyond entities toward being. I argue that these divergent understandings of phenomenological transcendence have resulted in a significant difference in reception among French phenomenologists of religion. These thinkers assert that phenomenology, when properly conceived and utilized, can make room for the divine and its revelation, i.e., for a metaphysical transcendence. I further argue that these thinkers prefer Heidegger’s phenomenology to Husserl’s because they understand Heidegger’s transcendence as the subject’s openness to being, while they understand Husserl’s transcendence as a limit, as the inability to capture worldly objects. I take up Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness as a “case study” to illustrate this point. Finally, I argue that this preference for Heidegger over Husserl is misplaced and should be reversed. A close reading of Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religious Life shows that Dasein is confined to its own possibilities and cannot be open to a relationship with the divine. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenology provides the radical openness necessary to welcome revelation. While Husserl cannot envision a “worldly God,” the structures of horizonality and temporality characterize a subject capable of an authentic openness to revelation.

On Metaphysical Necessity: Essays on God, the World, Morality, and Democracy

On Metaphysical Necessity: Essays on God, the World, Morality, and Democracy

Plato's Essentialism: Reinterpreting the Theory of Forms by Vasilis Politis

Reviewed by: Plato's Essentialism: Reinterpreting the Theory of Forms by Vasilis Politis Travis Butler POLITIS, Vasilis. Plato's Essentialism: Reinterpreting the Theory of Forms. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. x + 251 pp. Cloth, $99.99 The reinterpretation of the theory of forms to which Politis refers in this book's subtitle is accomplished by foregrounding the conception of forms as essences—the kinds of beings we must countenance if we pose, pursue, and believe we can answer the "What is F?" question. Politis argues that some of Plato's arguments for introducing forms have been distorted by the assumption that he is primarily interested in the Aristotelian question about substance or a Parmenidean quest for stable objects of thought and knowledge. By focusing on forms as the targets of the "What is F?" [End Page 154] question, we can dispel these misconceptions and bring the Platonic theory more clearly into view. Chapter 1 includes the cornerstone of Politis' interpretation—an original reading of a brief passage in the Hippias Major. Hippias is an important interlocutor for the project because he holds that the "What is F?" question can be answered by asking instead, "Which things exemplify F?" Let's call the claim that "What is F?" can be answered by examples "The Exemplar Doctrine" (ED). Politis argues that Hippias' commitment to ED leads him to deny the existence of a single exemplar for all cases—a denial he is forced subsequently to rescind. Thus, by endorsing the search for exemplars over the search for essence, Hippias sows the seeds of his own refutation. Readers might wonder how an account of a brief passage in the Hippias Major, apparently innocent of transcendent metaphysics, could serve as the cornerstone of a reinterpretation of the theory of forms. The initial answer in chapter 2 is that the rejection of ED is taken to imply that forms are imperceptible. The implication follows because Politis takes the supposition that F is definable by example to be biconditionally related to the claim that the essence of F is perceivable by the senses. When Socrates gets Hippias to reject ED, then, he gets him (tacitly) to accept that the essence of F is not perceivable by the senses. A central tenet of Platonism, the imperceptibility of forms, thus follows from an initial point about the proper way to answer the "What is F?" question. Chapter 3 continues in a similar vein, arguing that many special features attributed to forms in the Phaedo and Republic, such as their unity, uniformity, and incompositeness, follow from facts about inquiry into essences. Politis argues that these features belong, in the first instance, to defining accounts of forms and only secondarily to the forms themselves. Skeptical readers might observe that the focus in the Phaedo is much more on the forms than on defining accounts of them. In addition, it should be noted that the list of special features on which Politis focuses is somewhat selective. Chapters 2 and 3 include no discussion of the divinity and purity of forms or their status as alone by themselves. The divinity of forms is crucial for their role in Plato's ethics, but it seems unlikely to be explained by anything related to the "What is F?" question. In chapter 4, Politis defends a novel account of the epistemology of the Phaedo. He argues that it should be viewed through the lens of the account of inquiry in that dialogue, though not the central notion of inquiring with the soul by itself. Instead, we should focus on the passage in which Socrates claims that sense perception of deficiently equal sticks puts us in mind (ennoēsai) of the equal itself (74c–75b). Politis takes this claim to imply that sense perception plays a justificatory and not merely causal role in acquiring knowledge, though the textual arguments of this chapter fall short of establishing that striking claim. Chapter 5 takes on arguments in the Phaedo and Republic that appear to distinguish forms from sensibles on the grounds that the latter but not the former suffer the compresence of opposites (for example, appearing [End Page 155] both equal and unequal). Politis argues that scholars...

Anthropological Specifics of Ukrainian Philosophy in the Perspective of Cultural-Predicative Analysis

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the statements of philosophical Ukrainian Studies about the anthropological specifics of Ukrainian philosophical thought by means of historical-philosophical cultural-predicative analysis. The research methodology was determined primarily by the concept of cultural attribution and translation in the dialogue of languages of historical cultures of the Poznań Methodological School (J. Topolski, W. Wrzosek, E. Domańska) and the culturological approach in historical-philosophical Ukrainian Studies (V. Horskyi, S. Rudenko). The statements of the language of historical and philosophical Ukrainian studies are analyzed by means of historical-philosophical cultural-predicative analysis. The latter is a specific humanities research strategy, which we propose as a means of studying the communicative specifics and syntactic correctness of the language of historical-philosophical theory. The study of communicative specifics takes place from the perspective of modernized versions of metaphysical, phenomenological, and dialectical logic. The first is understood as the logic of transcendental metaphysics, the second as the logic of immanent metaphysics, and the third as the logic of procedural metaphysics. Such an approach provides a qualitative and comprehensive understanding of the analyzed statements. The statements of the language of the historical-philosophical theory are generalized in its names, depending on the perspective of one of the three versions of the logic of philosophical reasoning. The offered historical-philosophical cultural-predicative analysis of communicative specifics and the syntactic correctness of the Ukrainian historical-philosophical theory statements opens new dimensions in research of the anthropological specifics of Ukrainian philosophy.

Nature, Work, and Transcendence

AbstractThis article analyzes the function of Christian intertexts in Selma Lagerlöf’sNils Holgersson’s Marvelous Journey Through Sweden(1906/7). The intertexts structure the story both narratively and ethically. For the most part, however, they are not explicitly used as Christian. The intention of the book is not to transmit these stories, but to translate them into the new, national discourse. They were stripped of their original religious context and placed in the service of what might be called a national religion. In this process, the loss of the Christian framework did not mean the abolition of central ethical elements that were significant for Protestant practice. In particular, the pietistic heritage of a work ethic, the necessity of learning and education in order to become a true Christian – or, in its secular version, a true human citizen of the world with respect for others, taking responsibility for one’s own life and that of others, being humble and industrious – are central to the propagated morality of Nils Holgersson’s travelling school. Moreover, the transition from vertically to horizontally ordered space in the course of nationalizing the organization of the imagined community of Sweden seems to demand that the location of metaphysical transcendence be moved from heaven to earth; nature takes the place of the divine.

Recursive Philosophy and Negative Machines

What has philosophy become after computation? Critical positions about what counts as intelligence, reason, and thinking have addressed this question by reenvisioning and pushing debates about the modern question of technology towards new radical visions. Artificial intelligence, it is argued, is replacing transcendental metaphysics with aggregates of data resulting in predictive modes of decision-making, replacing conceptual reflection with probabilities. This article discusses two main positions. While on the one hand, it is feared that philosophy has been replaced by cybernetic metaphysics, on the other hand it is claimed that only the coconstitution of philosophy and automation challenges modern transcendental reason and colonial capital. As Donna Haraway pointed out, cybernetic circuits of communication have constructed counterfactual ontologies against the master narrative of the human. This article addresses recent attempts at redeveloping a critique of natural philosophy that explains cybernetic metaphysics beyond the universal master narratives of mechanicism and vitalism. This article suggests that the recursive system of nature and technology also needs to account for the problem of philosophical decision, which will be explored in terms of mediatic thinking, instrumentality, and automation. This article follows insights from the movie Get Out (2017) to argue that the model of philosophical decision relies on a servomechanic understanding of the medium of thought, based on the colonial abstraction of value in the prosthetic extension of the slave-machine. It explores the nonphilosophical envisioning of automation in terms of a counterfactual theorisation of the negative negation of the medium and argues for a nonoptical darkness entering the space of thinking. Philosophy and automation are neither coupled nor set in opposition as if in a ceaseless mirroring. Instead, both philosophy and automation must transform their self-determining axiomatics in order to host the heretic activities of machine propositions.

От математической к критической метафизике природы. Ламберт и Кант

In the mid-1760s, Johann Heinrich Lambert wrote a letter to Kant who offered cooperation with a view to reforming metaphysics. Based on the short correspondence between the two philosophers, it can be shown that this cooperation could never really come about. Nevertheless the thesis was sometimes put forward in research that Lambert had a defining influence on Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, also, and above all, with regard to the Newton-critical moments of this natur­al theory. However, this thesis can only be confirmed in relation to individual theorems, such as the relationship between attraction and repulsion force, even though the reasons for Lambert and Kant’s deviation from Newton’s theory of gravity also differ. For in its main features the transcendental metaphysics of Kant’s nature is substantially different from the mathematical methodology of Lambert’s theory of nature. In addition, Lambert stuck throughout his life to a theonomous natural teleology in the succession of Wolff, which was fundamentally made impossible by the Critique of Pure Reason: because the wise “intention of the creator”, which Lambert’s empirical-rationalistic cosmology could not and did not want to do without, could no longer be referred to in a rational context according to the Critique of Pure Reason. Even if Lambert certainly had moments of the Kantian theory of matter or — as Kant himself admitted — elements of the spatial theory of the first Critique, there is no way from his mathematisation of metaphysics and his natural teleology to the fundamental innovation of the Metaphysical Foundations.

The Ethical and the Metaphysical Will in the Early Wittgenstein (and Beyond)

In the Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein engages himself in a dialogue with Schopenhauer’s project —one that Wittgenstein makes his own— of substituting an immanent metaphysics of human experience for the transcendent metaphysics discredited by Kant’s critique, and thus for finding a path that would be able both of capturing the reality of human agency and of staying away from the kind of self-alienation that appears to be the necessary consequence of philosophical reflection. Wittgenstein’s reflections on the ethical and the metaphysical will are instrumental to bring this project to successful completion. However, I will go well beyond Wittgenstein’s early work in order to elucidate what strikes me as the solution provided by the late Wittgenstein (mainly, in On Certainty) to two problems that the Notebooks and the Tractatus left unanswered. On the one hand, there is the question about whether the agreement between agency and passivity is possible—namely, about how to come to see the friction of the world not only as something that is, but rather as something that ought to be. On the other, there is the problem of how to make of ethical subjectivity and metaphysical subjectivity two constitutively co-related aspects of the same transcendental subjectivity.

К предпосылкам формирования экоцентрической картины мира: на стыке физики и метафизики

The article considers the most general prerequisites for creating a new model of the ecological picture of the world, which is characterized by the comprehensiveness and completeness of coverage of various aspects of the study of the relationships between man and nature. For its formation, it is proposed to use an ecological version of the worldview-methodological platform, called ‘postholism’ by the author, which is able to coordinate the one, whole, many and singular, unique in (among others) the environmental relations of man, society and nature. This allows us to eliminate the methodological shortcomings of the reduction to the individual (merism), to the whole (holism), to the one (onecentrism) of human worldview orientations in the nature of naturcentrism, anthropo(socio)centrism, technocentrism, theocentrism. Such categories of philosophy as ‘reality’, ‘being’, ‘otherness’, ‘non-existence’, ‘being’, ‘nature’, ‘matter’, ‘physical’, ‘metaphysical’, and ‘spiritual’ were important tools for constructing a picture of the world of ecocentrism. They were refined and correlated with the latest achievements in quantum physics, astrophysics, cosmology, as well as reflexed based on extra-scientific representations of ancient cultures and religions. Physical, as well as metaphysical features of nature and man are briefly discussed. Nature is represented at various levels of physical organization (micro-world, macro-world and mega-world) and outside of physical dimensions. These dimensions presumably contain the ‘metaphysical’ content of nature. In them, the objective ‘spiritual’ of the universe, deified by man, is allowed. This does not exclude the pantheistic presence of metaphysical transcendence, estimated as ‘nonexistence’, ‘nothing’ for the reality of man within nature. Man himself is positioned as one whole of physical and spiritual existence, serving as a semblance of a Single Whole of nature. In conclusion, a list of the main environmental invariants of the world picture is given in comparison with the proposed picture of the world of ecologized postholism − ecocentrism, the advantages of which are emphasized. The Universe and quantum-field reality, along with the Earth, become components of the All-unified Whole authentic home of the ‘ecos’ of man. Further conditions and prospects for the direct development of this model are discussed.

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.

From "Mandate of Heaven" to "Ru Zai"

“천(天)”은 유가관념 체계 가운데 궁극적 관념이다. 또한 대부분 철학연구자들은 “천”이 가리키는 것은 바로 세상을 창조하는 지상신, 혹은 궁극적 실체라고 잘못 이해하곤 한다. 사실 유가에서 말하는 천은 “천도”, “사람”, “만물” 이 서로 통일된 “유기적 전체 우주관”을 가리키는 것이다. 왜냐하면 유가가 말하는 천은 지상신으로 인격화될 수 있는 궁극적 실체를 공허하게 만들며, 아울러 그것을 우주 전체를 관통하는 “통성(通性)”으로 이해하기 때문이다. 그러나 만약 완전히 천의 궁극적 의미를 제거해버린다면, 우주 및 우주를 구성하는 인간과 만물의 생명을 완전히 타성적인 자연으로 타락시켜버리기 쉽다. 이때문에, 유가는 궁극적인 창조적 실체를 공허화시키는 동시에, 또한 천을 고양시킴으로써 형이상적 초월성을 드러내었다. 이것은 천에 대한 숭상과 인(人) 의 상승의 대조 속에서 독특한 천에 대한 이해를 형성하였는데, 이를 바로 “여재(如在)”라고 한다. 그것은 사실상 인간의 실존적 자아와 그 내재적 성명 덕의의 통일로 귀결된다. Heaven is the ultimate concept in the Confucian system of ideas. Philosophical researchers often mistakenly believe that heaven refers to the supreme god or ultimate entity of creation. In fact, the Confucian concept of heaven refers to an organic whole universe view unified by the way of Heaven , Humans and all things . Its remarkable point is that it dissolves the ultimate entity that could possibly be personified as the supreme God, and understands it as the c ommonness that permeates the whole universe. However, if the ultimate meaning of heaven is completely erased, it is very easy to make the universe, and the life of people and all things constituting the universe, completely degenerate into inert nature. Therefore, Confucianism not only blurs the ultimate c reation entity, but also exalts heaven to express the metaphysical transcendence. This formed a unique understanding of the form of heaven in the uplifting of heaven and man : Ru Zai . It is essentially realized through the unity of man s existential self and its essence of inner virtue. 『天』是儒家觀念系統中的終極觀念, 而哲學研究者往往誤以爲『天』所指的乃是那創世的至上神或終極實體。事實上, 儒家所言的『天』乃是一個『天道』、『人』、『萬物』相統一的『有機整體宇宙觀』, 其顯著之處就在於, 它把那個有可能人格化爲至上神的終極實體給虛化了, 將其理解爲貫通於宇宙整體之中的『通性』。但若完全消除『天』的終極性意義, 則極其容易使得宇宙以及構成著宇宙的人與萬物的生命完全墮落爲惰性的自然。於是, 儒家在虛化終極創生實體的同時, 又高揚『天』以表達形而上的超越性。這就在對『天』的抬舉和『人』的抬升之對舉中形成了獨特的理解『天』的形態：『如在』。它實質上著落爲人實存之自我與其內在誠明德義的統一。

The “Incongruous Move”: From Actuality to Possibility of Metaphysics in Kant

This paper illustrates how Kant’s demand for “systematicity” couches his metaphysics necessarily in a scientific idea of metaphysics. Though Kant’s take on metaphysics is induced by an urge for systematizing metaphysics along the contours of the “scientific” paradigm, this quest for systematization is, at the same time, meant as a scathing attack on, what Kant calls, “dogmatic” metaphysics. It is as an antidote to such “dogmatic” metaphysics that Kant articulates his transcendental metaphysics primarily as a “critical” and “scientific” enterprise. In this background, this paper takes a closer look at the methodological moves that are involved in making his case, in order to track the steps involved in the body of argument that constitute Kant’s critical metaphysics. The focus of the paper is to delineate the contingent and necessary methodological moves that come to define Kant’s championing for scientific metaphysics. Consequently, the paper will seek to illuminate the “incongruous” ground upon which Kant’s idea of “critical” metaphysics itself stands with respect to the distinction he makes between the actuality and the possibility of metaphysics.

ТРАНСЦЕНДЕНТАЛЬНАЯ МЕТАФИЗИКА ИММАНУИЛА КАНТА: ЗАМЫСЕЛ И ИТОГИ

The article is devoted to the analysis of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental metaphysics. It is shown that, according to his intention, such metaphysics can be created on the basis of critical attitude to dogmatic doctrines, inconsistency of which in their striving to know super-perceptional objects is obvious. It is noted that critical philosophy deals not with objects as such, perceptional or super-perceptional, but with the transcendental subject, and is an investigation of its abilities and their application limits. The authors emphasize that Kant opposed metaphysics of the transcendental to traditional metaphysics of the transcendent pretending to cognize super-experience and otherworldly “reality”. However, he never created an integral metaphysical system confining himself to considering contradictions, with which mind is dealing while trying to leave the ground of experience and to construct an integral and complete picture of the universe. The heuristic significance of this metaphysical project revealed later, in non-classical and post-non-classical doctrines.

Thomas Mann and F. M. Dostoyevsky: on the Essential Dialogue between Germany and Russia

This paper deals with the dialogue between East and West in the creative work of T. Mann and F. Dostoyevsky. The dialogue is focused on issues of essentialism: the truth and the simulacrum and the cultural and artistic activity of two different types (will to live and will to die). T. Mann’s prose is considered in the context of the author’s perception of Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre, which allows the authors to single out the main cultural codes and civilizational constants in the creative work of the two authors (the Western Faustian idea of rationality and the Russian idea of the soul). The article seeks to study T. Mann’s spiritual and creative antinomies, which manifest themselves in the writer’s motto “Dostoyevsky, but in moderation”. The complex interdisciplinary methodology of the research is based on the principle of dialogue between the artistic and the philosophical, the scholarly and the scientific, the religious and the irreligious, and academic and journalistic discourses. A hermeneutic study of literary text means considering it holistically in the context of culture. The authors refer to Dostoyevsky’s Diary of a Writer and Mann’s essays, along with other works by both writers. The main problematic contexts of the study include Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept God is dead and Oswald Spengler’s decline of Europe, along with the philosophical ideas of Western postmodernism (including the theory of simulacra by J. Baudrillard), Jung’s psychoanalytic studies, and the eschatological diagnoses and forecasts of Russian religious philosophy (V. S. Solovyov, N. A. Berdyaev, and I. A. Ilyin). The main results of the study are related to the opposing ideas of Dostoyevsky’s eschatological openness and Mann’s temporal dimension, associated respectively with metaphysical transcendence and humanistic immanence based on Kant’s philosophy of practical reason. A conclusion is drawn about the isomorphism of Dostoyevsky’s prose fiction and journalism and the anti-isomorphism of Mann’s fiction and essays. Choosing between the philosophy of the Nietzschean superman and Dostoyevsky’s Christ-centred ethics, Thomas Mann opts for Dostoyevsky. However, Mann’s perception of Dostoyevsky’s ideas retains a dialogical incompleteness, reflecting the insoluble contradiction between the rational and the irrational conceptions of the German classic.

Towards a Naturalistic Philosophy

Abstract This paper is an invitation to reflect on the advisability of analysing philosophy from a naturalistic perspective. That is, from a perspective that considers philosophy as if it was one more cultural object, which can be studied using the tools that we have available to us today and that are provided by disciplines such as evolutionary psychology or anthropology oriented by a distinctly cognitivist approach. A central concept in the analysis is that of “intuitive ontology” – closely linked to intuitive (or folk-) philosophy or the spontaneous, naïve (natural) way of thinking that is associated with common sense – which is a result of the evolutionary process and a source of metaphysical prejudices such as dualism. A metaphilosophical reflection, such as that proposed here, identifies the “natural” character of a transcendent metaphysics that is still too close to intuitive philosophy, and the interest of constituting a naturalistic philosophy that is fully conscious of its “unnatural” or “counterintuitive” character.

Nietzsche and Anaximander on Being and Becoming

This article investigates Nietzsche's engagement with the early Greek philosopher Anaximander from the early 1870s, with the aim of excavating the intimate connection between the evolution of Greek philosophy and Nietzsche's own philosophical development. We argue that Nietzsche interpreted Anaximander as a philosophy of metaphysical transcendence, excluding Becoming from Being, and that the moral structure of this philosophy served as the model for Nietzsche's later thought on asceticism.

Emerson’s Sublime Pastoralism, Parody, and Second Sight in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

James E. Caron Emerson’s Sublime Pastoralism, Parody, and Second Sight in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded ofthe flux of all things? —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” T aken by itself, the quote from Emersons essay conjures a moment in which the reader is asked to recall a memory of looking and meditat­ ing that resulted in a philosophical insight, yet without stipulating the emotional reaction to that insight. Once reminded of the flux of all things when viewing a river meditatively, the thoughtful observer might be pleased or displeased. Famously optimistic, Emerson ofcourse is pleased, even blissful, when we read further. The flux of things becomes rings radiating out from a stone thrown into the river, which should be read as the propagation of influences that symbolizes the intricate process of discovering the universal soul “within or behind . . . individual life,” that is, the metamorphosis of all form into the one form of Universal Being (Emerson 18). That insight ofonto­ logical oneness with the natural world is perhaps most famously emblemized in the little tale Emerson tells in another part of “Nature”: while walking in the woods, he suddenly experiences the transcendent vision of a transparent eye­ ball. However, the flux of things recalled in a meditative hour can also be read not as purposive propagation in an ascent from material reality to a spiritual realm but rather as mere motion—worse, as descent to dissolution. This essay will argue that, within his saga of the mythic Yoknapatawpha county, Faulkner dramatizes a variety of possible reactions to Emerson’s invi­ tation to draw philosophical conclusions from the natural world. More spe­ cifically, Anse and Dari Bundren in As I Lay Dying, as well as Ike McCaslin in Go Down, Moses and Ike Snopes in The Hamlet, together represent Faulkner’s hypertextual play with the sublime pastoralism implied in the transcendental metaphysics ofEmerson.1 The structure of iteration with a difference that characterizes hypertextuality operates as heuristic for understanding how Faulkners play with Emer­ sons vision of sublime pastoralism repurposes it, refracts it to suggest multiple angles of insight. Faulkner necessarily presents his revision in layers, given the multiple narratives that comprise the Yoknapatawpha saga. Like a palimpsest, ‘I want to thank my colleagues Tom Inge and Judith Lee for reading earlier versions of this essay and providing helpful comments for improving it. 71 72 James E. Caron Emersons Sublime Pastoralism, Parody, and Second Sight his narratives do not completely overwrite Emersons moment of transcendent vision as they recast it. In addition, the iteration of hypertextuality extends be­ yond Emerson. The sublime pastoralism in his little tale ofbecoming the trans­ parent eyeball is itself a new world retelling of the story embedded in the old world genre of the pastoral, one in which the locus of escape from the city to the pleasures ofa more natural world becomes woods, not farmland or grazing pastures. The traditional repose of pastoral shifts to the ecstasy of a pastoral sited in wilderness. Faulkner’s narrative iterations are thus a palimpsest of a palimpsest.2 Faulkner’s hypertextuality includes the effect of a parody. Parody as a spe­ cific kind of hypertextualitys structure of iteration with a difference makes visible his comic as well as tragic retellings of sublime pastoralism. While the stories of Ike McCaslin and Dari Bundren imitate Emerson’s finding Uni­ versal Being in the woods yet retell his visionary metaphysic in tragic tones, Faulkner’s sampling ofthe metaphysic also includes laughable iterations within the Yoknapatawpha saga: Ike Snopes can be read as a parody of Ike McCaslin, Anse Bundren as a parody ofhis son Dari. Parody understood as hypertextual­ ity underscores how Faulkner’s stories about Yoknapatawpha can be read as a saga, that is, as a meta-narrative ofmythic proportions that weaves themes and places characters within a specific locale, regardless of the publication dates of individual novels and short stories. The metaphysic of transcendental harmony with the natural world that informs Emerson’s sublime pastoralism has at its core the apprehension of a process of metamorphosis from the material to the spiritual, from the animal eye...