Philosophical Treatise Research Articles

Tradition and Epistemic Innovation in Understanding the Plague in the Medical and Philosophical Treatises of Marsilio Ficino

Tradition and Epistemic Innovation in Understanding the Plague in the Medical and Philosophical Treatises of Marsilio Ficino

COLLOQUE <em>PISTIS ET FIDES</em>. LE <em>DE OFFICIIS</em> CICÉRONIEN: UNE REFONDATION PHILOSOPHIQUE DE LA <em>FIDES</em>?

This study intends to follow the semantic evolution of the concept of fides in Cicero’s thought, from the rhetorical and oratorical works to the political ones till to the philosophical treatises of the latest years. One can generally say that before 54 b.C. , the date of publication of the De re publica, Cicero, a great user of the concept, at least in the rhetorical field, has a rather confused notion of it, founded on the search much less for its precise sense than for the effectiveness of its use. From this treaty he begins to wonder about its origin: if fides, as he believes, has a natural origin, how to explain its detachment from the world’s practices? It is, therefore, to understand what fides’ naturalness means; and this is what Cicero tries to do in the philosophical works of the latest period. First of all in the Academica he investigates the place fides occupies at the level of knowledge, in opposition to Lucullus’ dogmatic perspective. At the end of this reflection, permeating also the De Finibus and the De Natura Deorum, it comes out confirmed the natural origin of fides, on the condition that you rescue the concept of nature from the Epicurean reconstruction of axiology, founded on sensation and voluptas. This is what Cicero devotes himself to in his very last work, the De officiis, seeking to make of fides the very foundation of iustitia but also trying to reconcile its roots in nature with the variability of the circumstances: that is, giving a less intransigent interpretation of it, while maintaining its ideal value, which finds embodiment in the figure of Regulus.

Pan-African Pandemonium: Identities, Histories, and Constellations

ABSTRACTFiston Mujila’s Tram 83 provides a helpful point of departure for this philosophical treatment of pan-African subjectivity. His meditations on music resonate with continental and diasporic accounts of the musicality of African social organization. This in turn provides an opening into a discussion around the tension between conceptions of African identity tied to heritage and continuity on one hand, and considerations of the rupture brought about by the Middle Passage and colonialism on the other. Drawing on African philosophy and Black Studies more broadly, this article argues for a conception of African identity that, while taking seriously heritage and origins, ultimately emerges intersubjectively as a result of the movements and reverberations across the constellation of African worlds. Not only are these pan-African reverberations constitutive, the author argues that they are also key to our survival.

Рower and Knowledge of Wisdom

The Middle Ages were a period of rapid development of education and science in the Muslim world, including among the Turkic peoples. Along with the spread of religious teachings in the political and social spheres, many scientific ideas were born, including the art of governing the country. The article cites verses from the Qur'an and hadith concerning the government of the country and left an indelible mark on the Islamic era. Epos of Balasaguni «Kutty Bilik», epos of A. Yugneki «Hibat-ul Hakаik», the book of King Kaikawis «Qabusnama», philosophical treatises of al-Farabi, «Divani Hikmet» by Khoja Ahmed Yassawi and others. «Kutty Bilik» – a book of wisdom from the common people to the king, in which you can learn the subtleties of humanity, education, the art of governing the country, the way to the prosperity of the state. Herebouts the khan and his vizier, the palace leaders, the generals, the ambassadors, to the extent that they should be directly involved in the government of the country, correlate their behavior, intelligence, and knowledge. The poet sings of morality, humanity, spirituality. Comprehensively focuses on everything that is needed to achieve happiness. Whatever sphere of social society we take, the centuries-old activity of religion in regulating relations between people manifests itself. These relations, as well as the models of governance of the country that we are talking about, we consider it right to base on the principles of Islam, our thinkers believe.Into his works, they analyze the issues of governing the country and issues of intelligence and education that are directly related to this. Although many centuries have passed, the teachings of our ancestors, which have retained their value, are considered an inalienable legacy, and their significance today is discussed in different ways.

Socio-Semiotic Specificity of the Orthodox Joke and Its Impact on Religious Identity

Recently, the genre of Orthodox joke has become especially popular in the Russian Internet virtual space, in social networks that unite people of the Orthodox faith. This genre is at the intersection of philosophical and mythological discourses, basing on discursive research. It combines the features of a biblical parable and a fable. The rational component is a strong feature in the Orthodox joke, which brings it closer to the genres of philosophical treatises, although the anecdote as a more emotional and psychological orientation characterizes a genre. The combination of rational and emotionally expressive semantics forms a special pragmatics of the Orthodox joke, which makes it attractive among young and middle-aged Orthodox educated men. The purpose of the study is to identify the socio-semiotic specifics of the Orthodox joke as a genre that strengthens the modern form of urban rationalized normative-confessional religious identity. In the course of the discursive study of Christian humor, the authors carried out the structural, discursive, conceptual analyzes of the texts of the Orthodox joke. Also, they made in-depth and expert interviews, surveys of Orthodox believers, pilgrims and religious tourists in the traditional centers of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, the research revealed a pragmatic potential of the Orthodox anecdote, and it determined the comic verbalized in the joke based on the analysis of the morphological structure of the genre.

Guarino Guarini and the Understanding of Space and Place in Early Modern Architectural Theory

Abstract The philosophical treatise Placita philosophica, composed by the seventeenth-century architect Guarino Guarini, presents a comprehensive discussion of the concepts of space, place, ubication (location), and infinity, drawing upon the Aristotelian tradition and formulated within the arguments defined by a series of Counter-Reformation authors identified as the second (or baroque) scholasticism. This study analyzes the significance of these views for Guarini’s architectural theory.

Challenging adult-centrism: speaking speech and the possibility of intergenerational dialogue

This paper reflects on the role of philosophy in the school environment, paying special attention to the promise of intergenerational dialogue carried forward by philosophy programmes associated with Lipman’s Philosophy for Children (P4C) curriculum and its current transformation into Philosophy with Children (PwC). There are two basic ideas that constitute the guiding thread of my reflections. Firstly, that philosophical interventions of that kind challenge adult-centric views of education and philosophy. Secondly, that such initiatives carry with them the promise of acknowledging children as equal participants in the process of philosophical questioning and meaning creation. In the first part of the paper, I argue for the importance of understanding the act of philosophizing with children as a disruption of adult-centrism.First, I reflect on a narrow future-directedness that seems to characterize the temporality of school. I suggest that Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) interventions interrupt such a future-directedness inviting the students to immerse themselves into a dilated ‘now’ of multiple possibilities. Then, I reflect on the ways in which P4wC interventions challenge the assumption that philosophy is an adult preoccupation. Special attention is paid to the work of scholars who challenge our restrictive assumptions about what qualifies as philosophical thinking.In the second part of my paper, I turn to the work of Merleau-Ponty with the aim of sketching out some requirements for the possibility of a dialogue between childhood and adulthood. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on childhood and expressive speech are invaluable in the context of P4wC because they invite us 1) to appreciate the alterity of children without reducing them to inferior ‘others’ and 2) to remain alert to the expressivity of children’s speech.

Le culte de sainte Agathe entre Catane et Constantinople

AbstractThis paper aims to examine some aspects of the history of the official cult of Saint Agatha in Sicily and Constantinople, starting with the Greco-Roman cults of Isis, and then focusing in particular on the unofficial or the initiatory women's festival, celebrated in Constantinople, attested by only one literary source from the 11th century AD. This source, consisting of a short philosophical treatise ascribed to Michael Psellos, informs us about some interesting aspects of the religious and social life of women in Constantinople in the mid-Byzantine era.

A Stoic Reading of Internal Obedience in Romans 1:18–2:29

Romans 1:18-2:29 connects with Stoic philosophy in a way that would be unmistakable to a Gentile audience. While acknowledging the Hellenistic tone of the passage, this paper focuses on the Stoic elements of natural law that were broadly recognized in Rome. Particularly, Cicero’s speeches, rhetorical handbooks, and philosophical treatises provide a comprehensive account of the connections between Hellenistic philosophy and Roman law and declamation. Although no direct evidence exists to show that Paul had read Cicero, these texts reveal the culture of the Roman Christians to whom Paul was writing. Key concepts of natural law appear in Romans that contextualize Paul’s message on internal obedience in 2:27-29, although he reworks them. Paul emphasizes spirit ‘πνεῦμα’ as the generating force of obedience. Two interpretations of πνεῦμα echo Stoic perspectives as the intent opposed to the letter of the law and as the inward motivation of the person obeying the law. The third interpretation as a foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit would be new for Paul’s Roman audience. This paper demonstrates that by incorporating Stoic elements on natural law, Paul presents the central significance of internal obedience in a way that would be understandable to his Christ-believing auditors and readers in Rome.

Decentralised Finance’s timocratic governance: The distribution and exercise of tokenised voting rights

Ethereum’s public distributed ledger can issue tokenised voting rights that are tradable on crypto-asset exchanges by potentially anyone. Ethereum thus enables global, unincorporated associations to conduct governance experiments. Such experiments are crucial to Decentralised Finance (DeFi). DeFi is a nascent field of unlicensed, unregulated, and non-custodial financial services that utilise public distributed ledgers and crypto-assets rather than corporate structures and sovereign currencies. The inaugural Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index, launched in August 2021, included nine Ethereum-based projects – non-custodial exchanges as well as lending and derivatives platforms. Each project is governed, at least in part, by unregistered holders of tokenised voting rights (also known as governance tokens). Token-holders typically vote for or against coders’ improvement proposals that pertain to anything from the allocation of treasury funds to a collateral’s risk parameters. DeFi’s governance thus depends on the distribution and exercise of tokenised voting rights. Since archetypal DeFi projects are not managed by companies or public institutions, not much is known about DeFi’s governance. Regulators and law-makers from the United States recently asked if DeFi’s governance entails a new class of “shadowy” elites. In response, we conducted an exploratory multiple-case study that focused on the tokenised voting rights issued by the nine projects from Bloomberg’s inaugural Galaxy DeFi index. Our mixed methods approach drew on Ethereum-based data about the distribution, trading, staking, and delegation of voting rights tokens, as well as project documentation and archival records. We discovered that DeFi projects’ voting rights are highly concentrated, and the exercise of these rights is very low. Our theoretical contribution is a philosophical intervention: minority rule, not “democracy”, is the probable outcome of token-tradable voting rights and a lack of applicable anti-concentration laws. We interpret DeFi’s minority rule as timocratic.

Origins and evolution of biological novelty.

Understanding the origins and impacts of novel traits has been a perennial interest in many realms of ecology and evolutionary biology. Here, we build on previous evolutionary and philosophical treatments of this subject to encompass novelties across biological scales and eco-evolutionary perspectives. By defining novelties as new features at one biological scale that have emergent effects at other biological scales, we incorporate many forms of novelty that have previously been treated in isolation (such as novelty from genetic mutations, new developmental pathways, new morphological features, and new species). Our perspective is based on the fundamental idea that the emergence of a novelty, at any biological scale, depends on its environmental and genetic context. Through this lens, we outline a broad array of generative mechanisms underlying novelty and highlight how genomic tools are transforming our understanding of the origins of novelty. Lastly, we present several case studies to illustrate how novelties across biological scales and systems can be understood based on common mechanisms of change and their environmental and genetic contexts. Specifically, we highlight how gene duplication contributes to the evolution of new complex structures in visual systems; how genetic exchange in symbiosis alters functions of both host and symbiont, resulting in a novel organism; and how hybridisation between species can generate new species with new niches.

The Boundaries of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal from Plato to Haraway

The Boundaries of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal from Plato to Haraway

The Result of Consistent Physicalism. The Illusionism of Keith Frankish

In the Margins of Philosophical Treatises: Frankish, K., ed. 2017. Illusionism: As a Theory of Consciousness. Luton, Bedfordshire: Andrews UK.

The way of discursive cognition of the ancient Chinese treatise Tao Te Ching in Russia

The authors study the problem of the spread and influential power of the ancient Chinese philosophical treatise by Laozi Tao Te Ching into Russian. The academic value is determined by the deep research interest of Russian Sinologists to the ancient Chinese literary masterpiece. A predetermined cognition of the depth of philosophical discourse and figurativeness of the treatise's language is presented. Its status as a classic work of world literature is confirmed by the number of translations, second only to the Bible. The authors highlight the main stages of interaction between linguocultures on the example of the history of translations of the ancient Chinese treatise Tao Te Ching into Russian, the reasons for the depression and boom of translation activity in connection with a particular historical period, and the significance and relevance of the discursive knowledge of Laozi philosophy in Russia. A positive trend is depicted in increasing the number of studies of Tao Te Ching through the identified research vectors in modern Russian Sinology. The types and features of Tao Te Ching translations into Russian are described and arranged. The openness of philosophical discourse of Tao Te Ching and the importance of academic and popularized translations for discursive study of the ancient Chinese philosophical text in the socio-cultural context by Russian readers are noted. The representation of the profound knowledge of discursive meanings of traditional Chinese culture in the numerous studies of Tao Te Ching by Russian Sinologists is discussed, resulting in the original way of translating this ancient Chinese philosophical treatise into Russian.

Hryhorii Skovoroda in English-Language Studies and Translations

In the context of Ukraine’s further European integration, the issue of popularizing our culture and understanding its achievements in terms of the world’s civilization progress is gaining particular relevance. The purpose of this research is to find out whether Hryhorii Skovoroda’s name is well-known to the readers and scholars in the USA, Canada, and the UK, and how his ideas and works were popularized in the English-speaking world. The present study shows that the research into Skovoroda’s philosophy and literary works in English-speaking countries began in the second half of the 20th century, primarily in the United States and Canada, as evidenced by the studies of Karen L. Black, Richard Hantula, Taras Zakydalskyi, George Kline, Natalia Pylypiuk, Stephen Scherer and others.
 In 1994 “An Anthology of Critical Articles” dealing with various aspects of H. Skovoroda’s work was published by Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. This volume is a collection of symposium papers that focus on the unique figure of the Ukrainian writer from different perspectives: historical, social, literary, theological, philosophical, pedagogical, and linguistic. The book of papers also includes a vast bibliography of Skovoroda studies compiled by R. Hantula.
 In 1997 a special issue of the “Journal of Ukrainian Studies” was devoted to Hryhorii Skovoroda’s creative work, its sources, basic ideas, and the influence on further development of Slavic philosophy and literature.
 Translations of the philosopher’s texts into English, which also began to appear in the 1960–1970s, are an important factor contributing to the growing interest in H. Skovoroda’s work and the significant expansion of the circle of its researchers. To date, the writer's fables, some of his philosophical treatises, letters, as well as poetic works were translated. A breakthrough in the popularization of Skovoroda’s name in the English-speaking world is the translation of his collection of verses “The Garden of Divine Songs” and collected poetry (translated by Michael M. Naydan) as well as his complete correspondence (translated by Eleonora Adams and Michael M. Naydan), which were published in London in 2016.
 The overview of English-language studies and translations of Hryhorii Skovoroda’s works proves that Western scholars made a valuable contribution to the research on the philosopher’s legacy as well as popularization of his works by translating them into English.

Слово как событие в буддийской и даосской культурах

The article is devoted to a special attitude to the word as a corpuscle of a cultural event which not only forms the ancient Eastern traditions, but is also one of the mechanisms of the system of non-local connections that create a philosophical understanding of a particular text, event and culture in general. The paper discusses the problem of interpretation and understanding of texts which is inextricably linked with the reach of the fundamental principles of the Eastern philosophy, focuses on the attitude to the word in Taoist and various directions of Buddhist cultures, and also describes the differences in the comprehension and perception of ancient Eastern philosophy between European researchers and Buddhist scholars. The author notes that the discrepancy in the meanings of understanding Buddhist texts lies much deeper and comes not only from the difference in mentalities, since the semantic load of a philosophical treatise correlates with the concept of ‘spiritual integrity’, but is also significantly related to differences in understanding and comprehension of the alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing systems. The question is raised that a holistic perception of the text for a European researcher will inevitably slip away, since he/she tries to reveal the meaning of the canon only by the categories of rational presentation. The influence of the Taoist terminological apparatus in the translation of Buddhist canonical texts into Chinese is shown. It is emphasized that the main principle of the translation of the early texts of the Mahayana is the selection of a Taoist term that is suitable in meaning. In this context, attention is focused on the fact that the relationship between the semantic and stylistic content of Buddhist and Taoist canonical texts is one of the basic elements necessary for a deep understanding of the primary sources of ancient Eastern philosophy. The text pays special attention to the teachings of the Madhyamika, notes its role in the history of Buddhism as well as the certain mechanisms of deprofanation of the word developed by this philosophical school are considered that they contribute to a high ‘inclusion’ in the natural world and are based on the Mahayana postulate of the primacy of personal spiritual experience over all other epistemological strategies. Attention is paid to the fact that focusing on nature itself is basic among Buddhist ideas that came from China in the philosophy of Zen Buddhism in Japan. As a result of the study, the author notes that the obvious semantic load of the word led the Buddhist and Taoist cultures not only to the formation of a strong immunity to the profaning of the word itself, but also to the practice of limiting the written and verbal activity of representatives of these cultures.

Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions, by Rob Goodman

Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions, by Rob Goodman

Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination, by Vincent W. Lloyd

Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination, by Vincent W. Lloyd

Ecological problematic under socio-technological transformations: conceptualization by example of lithium use

Socio-technological transformations are conjugated with ecological problematic. Particularly, an increase in lithium use (also for the purposes of ecologization) facilitates strengthening its importance as metal polluting environment. This work aims at conceptualization of the relevant problematic. Methodologically, it is based on systematization of literature data and their meta-analysis in the course of construction of conceptual model. The results imply that ecological problems are related to as lithium extraction (also from salars), as utilization of batteries using this metal; pollutants can be rather diverse. The complexity is created by insufficient ecological investigations of lithium. The attention is paid to diversification of pollutants and extending geography of pollution. Complication of technologies linked to lithium cycling itself is a challenge because it increases the risk of technological failures. Evidently, research interests and their shifts have also direct relation to the considered problematic. The obtained results can be interpreted so that science development “delays” to ecological problematic in the course of socio-technological transformation. Eco-technological foresight demonstrates evident deficiencies. However, the questions of this kind raised during the others, earlier transformations; and it remains unclear whether they have been solved successfully and the relative ecological problems have been minimized. Generally, the undertaken conceptualization should receive philosophical treatment. These are epistemological investigations that can facilitate formulating practical recommendations (also for the contemporary research community).

Vilém Flusser’s Brazilian cities

ABSTRACT This essay proposes that the motif of cities has a decisive role in the operation and articulation of Flusser's thinking of exile. Crossing the most diverse moments and types of Flusser's writing, cities appear as a nodule that interlinks and connects it. By focusing particularly on Flusser's texts on Brazilian cities, this study looks at some of the ways in which this crossing occurs to suggest the necessity of reorganizing the whole Flusserian corpus, by reconsidering its phases and movements and by reexamining the assumption that Flusser questions Zweig’s concept of “country of the future”. Then, by analyzing the philosophical treatment of “Grandfather” in Bom Retiro, in São Paulo, and in two undated “urban” poems by Flusser, this paper finally considers the relations between thought, exile, being Jewish, cities, and Brazilian-ness.