Way Of Philosophy Research Articles

Lógica de la idea y comprensión especulativa del Estado

The notion of «speculative individual» represents, for Hegel, the philosophical way of apprehending the modern principle of the individual, but reserving for it an ethical perspective, i.e. socially mediated.

The brain and mind as a system.

The aim of this paper is to provide a sketch for how to look at the nervous system and its byproducts of mind and feelings and how they function in a general philosophical way as a system with consciousness and with purpose. We identify a diversity of situations and challenges of performance. Our goal in doing it is to give to the reader the tools needed to be able to combine the more technical mathematical study of the nervous system with its major functions and purposes.

"Formation" of Chiari "malformation:" Nature's philosophical way of adaptation.

"Formation" of Chiari "malformation:" Nature's philosophical way of adaptation.

ФІЛОСОФ У ПРОСТОРІ І ЧАСІ КУЛЬТУРИ (ХРОНОТОП ЖИТТЄВЧЕННЯ). ЧАСТИНА І

The paper deals with the research of philosophic way of life as an invariant of the Western culture. The author tries to revealthe answers to the questions: What is the influence of the time and place of life on a thinking person? Is it possible to put a question in such away? The first part of the paper gives methodological explanation for such putting the questions. Two conceptual strategies of thinking in the contemporary history of philosophy are mentioned – compartmentalismand biographical method. The latter one allows to understand philosophizing through research of maître à penser. Such approach makes possible cultural studies prospect for the life of a philosopher in the context of unique time and space. To designate the uniqueness of time and space, the category of chronotope (M. Bakhtin) is introduced in the paper. Chronotope sets condensed signs in a definite period at the result of which a unique image of a thinker is born in a definite cultural space. The Antiquity image of philosopher is Socrates. Not a biographical person but a mythologized image, Socrates entered the great time of culture and influenced on the Western civilization. Since Socrates, the philosophizing of Antiquity is considered as the spiritual exercises (P.Hadot), in which the spirit of publicity is combined with the inner dialoguewith oneself. Late Antiquity changed practical orientation ofphilosophy by contemplative one. Plotinus is considered as the example of such life style. Medieval culture transmits philosophizing from agora to the monastery, and since the 13thcentury, philosophizing came back to the city space again – tomedieval university. Two opposite images of medieval philosophers are considered, Thomas Aquinas and Siger de Brabant, who were didactic examples, full of moral content. Stories about Siger’s life were spread at once after his death as the warning from inheritance; later on hewas forgotten. Thomas Aquinas’ life is known as hagiography, didactic story free from details of private life.

On the divine in Husserl

The paper deals with the ways in which Edmund Husserl develops the question of God. Six ways to reach God are shown as present in Husserl’s writings, some of them seem to be very close to the traditional philosophical ways to go as far as God (the objective and the subjective ways) others are very original, in particular the way that starts from the analysis of the hyletic sphere of the human being, a sphere which is present in all the reality too. At last it is possible to notice Husserl’s interest in the mystical approach to God.

Blurring Boundaries: Carnap, Quine, and the Internal\u2013External Distinction

Quine is routinely perceived as saving metaphysics from Carnapian positivism. Where Carnap rejects metaphysical existence claims as meaningless, Quine is taken to restore their intelligibility by dismantling the former’s internal–external distinction. The problem with this picture, however, is that it does not sit well with the fact that Quine, on many occasions, has argued that metaphysical existence claims ought to be dismissed. Setting aside the hypothesis that Quine’s metaphysical position is incoherent, one has to conclude that his views on metaphysics are subtler than is often presupposed; both the received view that Quine saved metaphysics and the opposite view that Carnap and Quine are on the same anti-metaphysical team seem too one-sided if we take seriously Quine’s own pronouncements on the issue. In this paper, I offer a detailed reconstruction of Quine’s perspective on metaphysical existence claims. Scrutinizing his published work as well as unpublished papers, letters, and notebooks, I show how Quine is able to both blur the boundary between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense and to argue that we cannot ask what reality is really like in a distinctively philosophical way. I argue that although Quine’s position is much closer to Carnap’s than the received view suggests, it still differs in two crucial respects.

STUDI ISLAM: KONSEPSI, KEMUNCULAN POLEMIK-IDEOLOGIS DAN FILSAFAT ILMU PENGEMBANGANNYA

Islamic studies have developed from its birth time of the early Islam to nowadays time. Unfortunately, the phenomena of ideological polemics of epistemological groups of Islamic thought can still be strongly found in today’s moslim’s life. The polemics, of course, limit the human freedom of thought in order to progressively develop the Islamic knowledge. The article intends to study causes of the emergence of ideological polemics and conflicts of Islamic epistemological groups. And then it tries to give the philosophical way to make the Islamic studies continuously in the progress. The writing uses the analysis method of philosophy of science to answer the problems. The writing found that the causes of the ideological polemics are the political dominance, the idolization, and truth claim of Islamic thought or the product of Islamic studies, and to have the progressiveness of Islamic studies, the only way is to change the logic of dominance, idolization, and truth claim become that of mutually discursive communication.

Philosophical Way of Life as “Cura Sui”

Philosophical Way of Life as “Cura Sui”

Philosophy: history and theory

The article discusses the role and place of the history of philosophy within the philosophical discipline. It shows that the history of philosophy is the main source and the medium of theoretical quests in all the areas of philosophical knowledge, and as such cannot be the exclusive domain for professional historians of philosophy. Being a specialized area of knowledge with its unique subject, it is an intellectual laboratory for all philosophical specialties, a place where, by the study of the philosophy of the past, we discover new ideas and find the solutions to the pressing problems of the day. Thus, this branch of philosophical investigation cannot be merely perceived as philosophical history proper, but should be rather viewed as a contemporary way of philosophizing.

A retomada da tese de Trasímaco no segundo livro de A República

This text intends to analyse the new version of Trasymachus’ thesis proposed by Glaucon and Adimantus in Republic II . Its aim is to understand its philosophical intentions and main aspects. We attempt to show that there is an important methodological change, related to a new terminology adopted to express Trasymachus’ thesis, and, most significantly, a new attitude of both interlocutors, especially Glaucon, towards the investigation, as we now find interlocutors presenting a philosophical way of understanding and investigating a philosophical problem.

The Dynamic Association of Being and Non-Being: Heidegger’s Thoughts on Plato’s Sophist Beyond Platonism

This article examines Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato’s Sophist, focusing on his attempts to grasp Plato’s original thinking of being and non-being. Some contemporary thinkers and commentators argue that Heidegger’s view of Plato is simply based on his criticism against the traditional metaphysics of Platonism and its language. But a close reading of his lecture on the Sophist reveals that his view of Plato is grounded in Plato’s questioning struggle with the ambiguous nature of human speech or language (logos). For Heidegger, Plato’s way of philosophizing is deeper than the metaphysical understanding of Platonism which sees only fixed ideas of being. In the Sophist, dialectical thinking of Plato constantly confronts the questionable force of the logos which betrays the natural possibility of non-being based on the tension between movement and rest. Thus, from Plato’s original insight Heidegger uncovers the dynamic association (koinōnia) of being and non-being as a natural ground of everyday living with others. However, although Heidegger’s understanding of the Sophist powerfully demonstrates the lively possibility (dunamis) of being beyond the customary perspective of Platonic metaphysics, his interpretation fails to further disclose Plato’s political question of being emerging in the Sophist, which seeks the true associative ground of human beings.

Challenging a tendency to finish before starting: A processed-based visual/material methodology

Abstract Students tend to over-conceptualize their interests/intentions at the starting point of any given or self-set project, foreclosing the movement and process of their thinking through projects’ time frames. The article introduces the author’s self-developed visual/material thinking methodology, and proposes a means of addressing a difficulty that educator-readers working in undergraduate contexts may themselves have experienced. The context of the article, a project with Thai university students, is presented as image and text inserts. The questions raised by the methodology are therefore presented as a parallel narrative of students’ responsive material. The article is written in tandem with the unfolding of a student group’s project. As the author moves to a track of the methodology that foregrounds movement, the presentational material shifts to the work of one student who critiques the methodology’s end-point in conceptualization, but supports the alternative track: the idea of Development as a more philosophical way forward.

The ‘Neoplatonic’ Interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides

In his highly influential 1928 article ‘TheParmenidesof Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic “One”,’ E.R. Dodds argued,inter alia, that among the so-called Neoplatonists Plotinus was the first to interpret Plato’sParmenidesin terms of the distinctive three ‘hypostases’, One, Intellect, and Soul. Dodds argued that this interpretation was embraced and extensively developed by Proclus, among others. In this paper, I argue that although Plotinus tookParmenidesto contain a sort of outline of the true metaphysical principles, he understood the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of the dialogue in a way importantly different from the way that Proclus understood it. The characterization of this One, especially its identity with the Idea of the Good ofRepublic, has significant ramification for Plotinus’ philosophy that set it apart from Proclus’ philosophy in ways hitherto infrequently noted. The widely accepted reasons for rejecting Proclus’ interpretation do not apply to the interpretation of Plotinus. The two different interpretations help explain why Proclus’ notorious proliferation of entities in the intelligible realm is not found in Plotinus.

Wozu dient der Monotheismus in der jüdischen Religion angesichts der Zehnfaltigkeitslehre der Kabbala

AbstractJudaism is seen as the archetypal monotheistic religion. And yet, the history of the Jewish faith seems to contradict this view: there were other gods besides the God of Israel, later superior angels, Metatron; in speaking of a tenfold deity the Kabbala goes against the philosophical doctrine of oneness to which it also adheres. These seeming contradictions can only be explained if one considers that the various creeds of oneness stem from very different religious and philosophical ways of thinking and concerns, which do not always endeavour to describe God’s existence, but are rooted in a human longing for happiness, the wish to refer to a God, to liturgical accessibility etc. The creed of the one God is ontology for some, for others it is epistemology, liturgical performance, emotional expression or sociological or historical reflection. Monotheism figures in various »linguistic games« and with various meanings.

The Institution of Philosophy: Escaping Disciplinary Capture

AbstractPhilosophers view themselves as critical thinkers par excellence. But they have overlooked the institutional arrangements that govern their lives. The early twentieth‐century research university disciplined philosophers, placing them in departments, where they wrote for and were judged by their disciplinary (and now increasingly subdisciplinary) peers. Oddly, this change has been unremarked upon, or has been treated as simply part of the necessary professionalization of an academic field of research. The department has been tacitly assumed to be a neutral space from which thought germinates; it is not itself an object of reflection. We find no explorations of the effects that departmentalization might have on philosophical theorizing, or speculations about where else philosophers could be housed, or how, by being located elsewhere, they might develop alternative accounts of the world or have come up with new ways of philosophizing.

The issue of a responsible agent in technological civilization

In our days, responsibility has become the most problematic aspect of almost all human actions, including influencing nature, scientific prognostication, and simulation of the future. The problem of responsibility is a sign of the crisis which we experience now, resulting from the gap between activities and knowledge about their consequences. Human activity has a mediated and collective nature, which makes it difficult to name the subject of responsibility. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the subjective aspect of responsibility related to the technological activity and conditions in which such liability may be plausibly attributed to any subject. Scientific and technological rationality is not a sufficient approach to face new problems ahead of us. Technological progress and moral crisis make us realize that we need a new moral system. Particularly, the idea of moral responsibility can be represented as a filter for technological innovations. However, the notion of moral responsibility has some restrictions when we attempt to apply it for technological activities. Analyzing the functions of multiform subjects of responsibility is a prerequisite to our understanding of the way in which scientific and technological progress shapes the contemporary society. We are trying to focus on the complicated notion of Collective Responsibility, which is, on the one hand, needs some philosophical implications due to appearance of new social changes and, on the other hand, analyzes the idea which allows reconstructing the whole discussion context. First of all, the authors attempt to show the main issues, which appear when researchers use this idea in their investigations. Simultaneously, the article describes the state of moral responsibility in Philosophy on the whole, where the authors define the Individual notion of responsibility, which is deeply rooted in the Western philosophical way of thinking.

On Heidegger’s Actuality

In my reply to the commentaries by Babette Babich and Robert C. Scharff I make a distinction between critical remarks and additions that are relevant for my view on philosophy for substantive reasons and others that relate to a style or way of philosophizing. My reply to Scharff concerns the latter. I continue to defend an updated version of Heidegger’s thinking about technology, which I bring together with elements from the work of Don Ihde and Andrew Feenberg. I read all this from the perspective of a neo-pragmatist way of philosophizing, explicitly inspired by Richard Rorty.

Modern Versus Tradition: Are there two different approaches to reading of the Confucian classics?

How to read the Confucian Classics today? Scholars with philosophical training usually emphasize that the philosophical approach, in comparison with the classicist and historical ones, is the best way to read the Confucian Classics, for it can dig out as much intellectual resources as possible from the classical texts in order to show their modern relevance. Briefly, the philosophical approach runs as follows: (1) first, to discover or identify the philosophical question inhered in the text; (2) then to reconstruct the line of thinking, reasoning, and argumentation revealed in the text, which will lead to the answer of the question; and (3) finally evaluate the effectiveness of the answer by any possible criticism. In spite of the fact that the philosophical approach does help showing the Confucian classics are of great significance to modern people, some scholars seriously caution that this theorization would alienate Confucianism from its very practical concern about self-cultivation. Accordingly, traditional Confucian scholars adopted an existential approach to reading, that is using their personal experience to read, question, understand, and comprehend the meanings of the text, making their comprehension as something they find in themselves and thus will be at ease in it. So there seems to be a dichotomy between the modern philosophical approach and the traditional existential approach to reading of the Confucian Classics. In this paper, I shall argue that the dichotomy has never existed. In fact, traditional Confucian scholars read the Confucian canon in both the philosophical and existential ways. Song Confucian Zhu Xi’s ‘Method of Reading’ is a case in point. I shall then argue that these two approaches should be irreducible and inseparable so as to form a proper way of reading as well as teaching the Confucian Classics today.

Marx et l’élaboration du concept de nature dans la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty

This paper aims at exploring the field of relations between Merleau-Ponty and Marx. Re-reading the unpublished texts from the 1940s and 1950s, the intention is to demonstrate that Merleau-Ponty uses The Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844 not only in a political way, but also in a philosophical way. In an original interpretive approach concerning the question of Nature, the paper seeks to demonstrate that this conception suggests that Marx takes on a new place in the development leading from a phenomenology of perception to an ontology of Nature, particularly in the lectures at the College de France in 1956. At the end of this paper, the emphasis is placed on Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to build a new philosophy of action and History, based upon this analysis of Nature.

Il contributo di Alfonso Ingegno agli studi su filosofia e religione tra rinascimento ed Etá Moderna

The Author presents the intellectual profile of Alfonso Ingegno (1942-2013) showing the coherent development of his research. From the outset, Alfonso analyses the dialectical relationship between metaphysics, cosmology and religion in the Renaissance period and the early Modern Age, trying to overcome any unilateral vision. His historical-philosophical and moral studies range from Humanism and the Aristotelian tradition of the 15th century to the philosophical way of thinking in the 17th century. But his most important contributions concern the interplay between anti-Aristotelian and anti-Christian polemics in Bruno’s philosophy. The essay on Cardano, the first comprehensive monograph on this late Renaissance philosopher, is also essential because it opened the way to many investigations and subsequent projects. In his last years, Ingegno concentrated mainly on Valla’s ethics and its relationship to Augustinian theology.