Metaphysical Principles Research Articles

Theology of Music and Hindu Religion: From Divine Origins to Classical Songs

As a subfield in the study of religion and music, the theology of music is generally understood in Western terms. Yet to fully encompass the rich heritage of music in world religions, the theology of music must welcome non-Western traditions. After introducing ancient Greek and Biblical narratives regarding the origins of music, including metaphysical concepts, narratives of music as Divine Gift, musical angels, and the sacred origin of the notes and scales, this article explores music in Hindu religion through the lens of theology. We find that Indian music is also ‘given by the gods’ (i.e., Brahmā, Vishnu, and Śiva), associated with ‘musical angels,’ and originally formed from metaphysical principles (i.e., OM and the concept of Nāda-Brahman). What is demonstrated here, representing a long continuity, is how these same ideas are viable in the performance of Indian classical music today. Citing examples of compositions of Dhrupad and Khayal from the standard repertoire, this article reveals how modern-day classical songs contain references to sacred sound principles and the divine origins of music, both in their lyrics and in the unfoldment of musical notes (Svaras) and melodic patterns (Rāgas).

Apologetics in V.N. Ilyin’s Works on Aesthetics

In the article the author tries to view the works of Russian philosopher V.N. Ilyin on aesthetics as apologetic. Ilyin’s philosophic system that he himself termed as general morphology is based on such categories as “form”, “image” and “icon” as key elements, and thus it has obvious aesthetic dimension. General metaphysical principles stated in Ilyin’s theoretic and philosophic works that were not published in his lifetime, were reflected in his publicistic works – on aesthetics and liturgics. According to Ilyin, “form” is something by way of which the invisible ousia (essence) of the thing manifests itself on the surface – the phenomenon of invisible in visible image. For Ilyin the illustration of that principle was icon-painting. Ilyin also called his morphological system materologism – the doctrine on Logos running through the substance. Through the prism of this statement Ilyin views the phenomenon of bell-ringing, the “metaphysical task” of which was in “spiritualization of inorganic substance”, in that case – metal. An important part in Ilyin’s morphology was the metaphysics of light: light was something that allowed initially to discern forms and was the prerequisite for beauty and for admiring the beautiful. The appeal to beauty as something that was perceived directly in inner experience and lead the thought out of the limits of abstract logical construct, according to Ilyin, was part of the ontological argument of the divine being. Not only it contained the logically necessary conclusion of the divine being as the Absolute, but also included as a condition the “fact and act” of the man’s personal religious experience, – the experience of the direct perception of the divine reality in prayer and in church service, that, in its turn, was connected with the perception of the beauty of liturgical forms and with the cult as the phenomenon of the Absolute in circumstantial. This is the reason of the importance of the works on aesthetics and liturgics of Ilyin as an apologist.

Spinoza on Melancholy and Cheerfulness

AbstractSpinoza's philosophy is often celebrated for its strong anti-normative current. Spinoza argues, for instance, that good and bad do not indicate anything positive in things, and that affects are always particular to the situation in which they arise. And yet Spinoza argues that melancholy is “always evil,” and cheerfulness “always good,” thus problematizing a key metaphysical principle of his system. Turning to select sections in the Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise, this article offers a reading of these two problematic affects before connecting Spinoza to recent work on early modern melancholy that conceptualizes it as an ‘assemblage.’

The Unity of Nature in Schelling’s World Soul

The Unity of Nature in Schelling’s World Soul Naomi Fisher I Written in the middle of Schelling’s early period in the philosophy of nature, his 1798 On the World Soul offers an account of nature that is both a response to Kant’s Critique of Teleological Judgment as well as an example of the emphasis on natural and philosophical unity that dominates the post-Kantian philosophy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This 1798 work impressed Goethe and was one reason for Schelling’s appointment to a professorship at Jena.1 It has not, however, been a focus of interpretive work on Schelling. 2 That Schelling attempts to offer an organically [End Page 527] unified conception of nature in his early philosophy of nature is well known, but the manner in which he does this is underexplored. Some have maintained that Schelling construes all organization organically, including mechanical systems; 3 others consider such unity to be posited [End Page 528] as a requirement of subjectivity, that is, established primarily through transcendental arguments.4 Rather, Schelling’s assertion of the organic [End Page 529] unity of nature as a whole—indicated by the term “world soul” (Weltseele)—must be understood in the context of the main claim of this work: There is an organizing principle of nature, operating at various levels and in various ways, that grounds every kind of organization in nature; the world soul is one manifestation of this principle. It is primarily this organizing principle that grants nature its unity. It is not obvious how to characterize organizational unity or how organic unities in nature relate to mechanical laws. In what follows I offer an account of the unity of nature as presented in Schelling’s World Soul. I will show that the unity of nature in this work is characterized by a principle of organization that operates in a reflexive and iterative way: The results of the principle at one level are operated on by that principle iteratively at a higher level to produce different levels of organization. The lowest such level is matter-as-such, and the laws governing matter-as-such are universal; the highest level in nature is nature as a whole, and is singular and all-encompassing. Crucially, for Schelling, the very same principle is productive both of the overarching unity of an object and the elements that comprise this unity. This implies that the principle that guarantees unity does not unite originally disparate or independent elements but is always, even in the case of mechanical laws, productive of those elements. Far from being an ad hoc metaphysical principle that constitutes a mere assertion of unity, the organizational principle not only unifies various elements or features of nature into a cooperative organic system but also provides a metaphysical ground and explanation of those various features. What emerges from this picture is a conception of natural organization that can be summed up in the following way: The distinct iterative operations of the principle of organization give rise to distinct levels of organization. Such levels increase in particularity with each iteration, from the most general mechanical laws to the singular unity of the world-whole. All organization in nature is grounded in the principle of organization, including both organic and mechanical organization. The principle of organization can be articulated as follows: It is characterized as the opposition of positive and negative forces or principles, the unity of which—both in the sense of that which brings them together and in the sense of that which grants them the status of a singular principle—can be given only in the undifferentiated Absolute, which cannot be [End Page 530] accessed discursively.5 In other words, one must keep distinct the unity conferred by the principle within nature, to mechanism and organism, and to the universal organism, on the one hand, and the unity of the principle of nature, which cannot be grasped discursively, on the other. I will explain this last point in the final section of the paper. I will first lay out the structure and explanatory framework of the World Soul (section 2), showing how the positive and negative...

Science, metaphysics and Calvinism: the God of James Croll

ABSTRACTScience, for James Croll, began and ended in metaphysics. Metaphysics, in turn, provided proof of a First and Final Cause of all things. This proof rested on two metaphysical principles: that every event must have a cause, and that the determination of a cause is distinct from its production. This argument emerged from his deeply held religious commitments. As a 17-year-old, he converted to a Calvinist and evangelical form of Christianity. After a period of questioning the Calvinist system, he embraced it again through reading the famous treatise on the will by the New England theologian, Jonathan Edwards. This determinedly metaphysical work, which engaged as much with Enlightenment thought as with Calvinism, defended the view that the will was not a self-determining cause of human action. This ‘hard case’ provided the basis for a larger claim that every act whatever has a cause, and that the production of an act was different from its determination. In part through reading Edwards, Croll remained a devout and convinced ‘moderate’ Calvinist for the rest of his life. He also developed a deep love of metaphysics and became convinced that without it, everything, including science, remained confused and in darkness. For Croll, even the most basic science could not be properly conducted without prior metaphysical principles. But this was more than just an argument about the philosophical foundations of scientific inquiry. It was also based on Croll's conviction that the cosmos, earth history and life (including his own) was fully determined by a supreme and perfect intellect. This conviction entered into the marrow of Croll's scientific theories and shaped his interpretation of the twists and turns of his own life. In short, to take seriously Croll's own self-understanding, we need to allow him to ‘do God’.

No ground to bridge the gap

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (Philos Impr 17:1–26, 2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold (e.g. Joseph Levine and David Chalmers), there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and that such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection.

The Process Philosophy for the Essence and the Future of Education

The review comments and analyses main topics, ideas and theses emphasized in Vesselin Petrov’s new book Elements of Contemporary Process Philosophical Theory of Education and Learning. Describing the structure of the book, the review outlines the author’s analysis of the Process philosophy’ s interpretation of the aims, tasks and elements of the education and learning within the innovative perspectives of internet, computers, the artificial intelligence. The metaphysical principles and notions of the Process Philosophy of A. Whitehead – holism, organism, dynamics, creativity – are applied to the education and learning problems and theories.

Диалектика творения и проективная структура пространства

The article considers creationism as a historically relevant principle in the scientific and philosophic aspects denoting the ontological structure of the world. Outside of the religious interpretation, the author speaks of the dialectics of creation, which is revealed as an implicative connection of the one and nothing. Logical inversion (logical turn), acting from within this implicative connection, is postulated as the principle of a fundamental negation, which, according to the author, forms the true and dramatic essence of the world as a creation. The author distances himself from the widespread discussion between evolutionism and scientific creationism, stating that it does not correspond to the very subject of creationism, understood as the implication of a real from nothing. The author focuses on considering ‘nothing’ as a purely dialectical / metaphysical principle and relies partly on the Hegel’s dialectic of ‘being’ and ‘nothing’, and partly on the neoplatonic concept of the one. Rejecting the medieval interpretation of the temporal beginning and the Hegel’s identity, he deduces a scheme of the logical connection between the one and the difference, which postulates the inversion (turnover) forming the creation - the one and the difference disjunctively change places, the one becomes the real, and the difference out of the one becomes nothing. It is argued that this postulate, in particular, refutes the thesis about the ‘fall into sin’. In the second part of the article, a spatial-phenomenological hypothesis is presented: the author provides a description of the space as a geometrical-semantic plane (projective structure). This hypothesis follows from the phenomenological problem of the duality of a geometric object, which results in the problem of ontological transition between a point and a line (in the aporia of the Eleats) and the related problem of spatial congruence / parallelism. According to the author, the potential for solving these not essentially mathematical, but metaphysical questions is the projective geometry, in which parallel lines intersect at ‘point at infinity’, and space is complemented by the ‘plane at infinity’. The essence of the solution consists, firstly, in the assumption of the single plane, which underlies the transition, and secondly, in the description of the perceived world as a result of a specific turn over and closure of this plane, forming the projective structure. The key in this part is the demonstration of the surface of a three-dimensional object as a phenomenon of perceptual-semantic unfolding, which can be imagined as an action of consciousness, consistently reducing the usual scheme. An important aspect of considering the projective structure is the correlation with ‘the Plane’ by G. Deleuze. The general idea of the article is that the dialectical scheme of creation and the projective structure of the space coincide: the logical inversion (logical turn), acting in connection of the one and nothing, and projective structural turnover – are the same things.

The Principle of Excluded Middle in Kant

The principle of excluded middle is more important than is commonly believed for understanding Kant's overall philosophical project. In the article, this principle is examined in the following contexts: (i) kinds of judgments, (ii) concepts of opposition, negation, and determination, and (iii) apagogic proof. It is first explained how the principle of excluded middle is employed by Kant in distinguishing between the kinds of judgment. Also called the principle of division, it is the principle of disjunctive and apodictic judgments in Kant's famous table of judgments. Next, the Author shows which kind of opposition is related to the principle of the excluded middle. As a merely logical criterion of truth, this principle grounds the logical necessity of a cognition and plays an important role in the use of apagogical proofs. Then Kant's account of logical negation will be investigated briefly. Negative judgment with a negative copula indicates that something is not contained within the sphere of a given concept. This process occurs in accordance with the principle of excluded middle. Finally, an analysis is made of how Kant presents the metaphysical principle of thoroughgoing determination and its differences from the logical principle of excluded middle.

Vagueness, Identity, and the Dangers of a General Metaphysics in Archaeology

AbstractArchaeology is currently bound to a series of metaphysical principles, one of which claims that reality is composed of a series of discrete objects. These discrete objects are fundamental metaphysical entities in archaeological science and posthumanist/New Materialist approaches and can be posited, assembled, counted, and consequently included in quantitative models (e.g. Big Data, Bayesian models) or network models (e.g. Actor-Network Theory). The work by Sørensen and Marila shows that archaeological reality is not that discrete, that some objects cannot be easily identified, and that perhaps reality is not always necessarily composed of discrete objects. The aim of this article is to take Sørensen and Marila’s arguments to their ultimate logical consequences: most archaeological theory today operates underthe illusion of a general metaphysics. This illusion dictates not only that all of reality is composed of discrete objects, but that since reality manifests in a certain way, there has to be a methodology that accurately represents that reality. A brief discussion on the notion of “conjecture,” as conceived in certain historical theories, is also presented.

IMPLICATIONS OF ARISTOTLE’S THEORY OF EDUCATION TO TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN KENYA

Since ancient civilizations, education and training has been regarded as the tool for individual and societal development. All developing nation thus have embraced education and training as part of state agenda in realizing better citizenry and societal growth. In Kenya various efforts in reforming Technical education and training in order to reorient training to the countries developmental agenda and empowering the youth for employability have been undertaken from time to time in order to review the relevance of education and training in Kenya. This paper attempts to analyze Aristotle’s metaphysical, ethical and epistemological principles with the view to render salient ideas that contribute to the formulation of worthwhile theories of education in the context of Kenya’s 21st century realities. In addition, Aristotle’s views “experiential learning” and “lifelong learning” are analyzed. Consequently, it is evident that contemporary education in Kenya is inadequate in several ways. It is therefore recommended that education in Kenya should embrace a multidimensional orientation that ensures the physical development, mental development and moral development for realization of individual empowerment. Article visualizations:

Metaphysical principles of causality and normativity in philosophy of education

The article is devoted to the metaphysical foundations of the philosophy of education, which are considered as sources of modeling the image of the future person, as well as the commission of certain actions. It investigates the evolution of these principles during the human civilization development. The principle of causality, considered as a fundamental ontological characteristic of being, suggests that a person can realize his desire for freedom only by subordinating his life to a universal objective law. Every phenomenon is seen in a causal perspective as a consequence of some cause and at the same time as the cause of some other effect.

ПРОБЛЕМА АНДРОГИННОГО ИДЕАЛА ЧЕЛОВЕКА В ФИЛОСОФИИ ПОЛА В.В. РОЗАНОВА

The purpose of this article is a philosophical and anthropological analysis of the ideal of androgyne in V.V. Rozanov’s metaphysics of sex. The main focus is on the comparison of the destructive and constructive forms of the androgyne in his philosophy. According to the philosopher, destructive forms include people of «moonlight» or «third sex», who are considered the founders of New Testament Christianity, denying the life of the flesh. Constructive forms are the natural androgyny of a child and the androgyny of a married couple, which reveals itself in love, dynamics, mutual complementarity of a man and a woman. The paper draws parallels between N.A. Berdyaev’s and V.V. Rozanov’s concepts of androgyne, which are antipodal in terms of direction of thought but have common meanings. It is concluded that thesimilarity between the concepts lies in the understanding of gender as a dynamic and metaphysical principle that penetrates through not only the bodily but also the spiritual life of a person, and therefore cannot be rejected. The concepts are also similar in that they draw a boundary between the androgyne and the hermaphrodite, of which the former is the ideal of the human wholeness, while the latter is an unsuccessful attempt to achieve it. The differences between these philosophers consist in the priority of spiritual love in Berdyaev’s system and worldly, bodily love in Rozanov’s, as well as in a different understanding of the process of an androgyne being generated in a person, which, in Berdyaev’s conception, is individual and arises in each of the persons who are in love with each other, while, according to Rozanov, it is exclusively achievable in couples. The paper also pays attention to Rozanov’s own theology, which renews the Old Testament family ideals, offering the concept of God as a «sexual» being and proposing to consider the act of love within marriage as a sacred mystery that unites a person with God in co-creation. The study allows us to rethink the modern problems of gender self-determination of a person, returning to the metaphysical foundations of the Russian philosophy of gender, the main task of which was the synthesis of the spiritual and bodily principles in a person.

Истоки учения о Шри (Лакшми) в вишишта-адвайта-веданте

The doctrine of Śrī-tattva (ontology of the goddess Lakṣmī) in the philosophy of viśiṣṭādvaita-vedānta is one of the most disputable. It raises a number of ques­tions within the tradition and from other philosophical schools. The Supreme Re­ality (Brahman) has its personified form, represented as Viṣṇu with his spouse Śrī. However, it is not always clear whether the goddess acts autonomously, or she is completely subordinate to God. Whether it is the potency of God, the metaphysical principle, or she is the Supreme deity along with Viṣṇu. This doc­trine became one of the most disputable between the Tengalai and Vadagalai śrī­vaiṣṇava schools of the South India in the 13th – 14th centuries. The ācāryas criticized various theories about Lakṣmī in the debates and in their works, as to her being the means of liberation (mokṣa), as to her being Paramātmā or just a part of Brahman, as to her being infinite etc. Viśiṣṭādvaita’s philosophers quote the Vedic texts and Pāñcarātra samhitas as the most authoritative sources of knowledge when they explain this doctrine. This article discusses references in these texts to Śrī-Lakṣmī, its nature, attributes and functions, as well as its sta­tus in relation to Nārāyaṇa and the Universe.

Violence and Abstraction

Violence and Abstraction Brad Evans (bio) and Chantal Meza (bio) Abstractions are everywhere. They fill the air. Abstractions can belong to the realm of the pure imagination. They can inspire wonderment. And yet they can also summon forth the most terrifying gods and empires of worldly destruction. Abstraction becomes apparent every single time an original thought is birthed. It is also apparent in the conceptual delivery of each and every philosophical claim. There are no metaphysical principles without the abstractions from which they emerge. We cannot think without them. They are the energy defining our existence. Without abstractions, we are reduced to the mere biological fact of being or sometimes in the darker moments of history even less so. Everything in these base-level terms is simplified and reduced to the question of pure survival. Hence, mindfully thwarting the attempted destruction of the human as abstractedly conceived, humanity has continually aspired to become worthy of the abstractions of its own devising. How often do we wish to live up to the expectations of our impossible dreams? And how often do we torment ourselves when the reality of the vision doesn't match expectations? We live through and are governed by the abstractions of our impositions and choosing. Belongings, borders, beliefs; they all appear as abstractions before they are consecrated in the corporeal realms of the symbolic real. Abstractions are in fact what purposefully separates us as humans. Only the human is capable of conceiving of the abstract in thought and deeds. It is the only life form we know that intentionally imagines beyond itself. That was what made us exceptional. That was until now. Ever since Plato ventured into the dark and illusionary metaphorical cave, political philosophers have debated the distinction between the abstract and the real. Plato for his part actively mobilized the shadows, recruiting their phantoms in his scathing attack on artistic pursuits.1 Often separated in thinking, these concepts have given rise to fundamental debates between fiction and truth, imagination and science, madness and civility, chaos and security, along with deeper questions concerning absence and presence. But the abstract offers not only answers and permits imaginative explorations [End Page 333] at the same time; it is also capable of merging the internal and external complex processes of life we humans have been exploiting throughout our existence—processes which we call "creation." Moreover, despite a brief moment in history where European abstract expressionism was brought into directly conflict with the forces of historical fascism, there has been an overriding tendency to see the abstract as either some dangerous distraction or the hidden force that makes all violence and oppression possible. But the abstract is not something modern or fashionable, much less simple. We see this in earlier debates concerning the abstract nature of religion and its demands for sacrifice, onto the theorisations of Karl Marx (1857) who in the Grundrisse declared, "individuals are now ruled by abstractions whereas earlier they had depended on one another. The abstraction, or idea, however, is nothing more than the theoretical expression of those material relations which are their lord and master."2 A concern that would later be addressed specifically in the terms of "violence" and its relation to historical materialism.3 This concern with the abstract has more recently been picked up by Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2002, 16) who defined racism as "a practice of abstraction, a death-dealing displacement of difference into hierarchies that organize relations within and between the planet's sovereign political territories." We don't deny the abstract can be appropriated and turned back upon itself by the ever-changing mechanics of calculative thinking and its modalities of control. Nor do we deny the abstract can become a formidable mythical excess capable of totalising claims over life and the future. Afterall, everybody is abstract, and all power is abstracting. But what matters politically and philosophically is the type of abstraction we are concerned with? Not all abstractions are the same. Indeed, since the dawn of philosophical time there has been a continued battle taking place over the meaning and the mastery of the abstract, which is inseparable from how we understand the value of life. Or to...

ДУХОВНО-АКАДЕМИЧЕСКАЯ ФИЛОСОФСКАЯ АНТРОПОЛОГИЯ В ПОИСКАХ ЦЕННОСТНЫХ ОСНОВАНИЙ

The article attempts to determine the value principles of the moral metaphysics of Orthodox academic theism of the late XIX – early XX centuries. The specificity of the Orthodox “ontological” and “teleological” interpretation of the category of moral law is revealed. The role of European moral teachings of the XVIII – early XIX centuries in the formation of Orthodox moral philosophy is shown. The role of the idea of “good” as the highest value in the system of spiritual-academic moral metaphysics is noted

Бесстрашие витальности: претворение Возвышенного в живописи 2000-х годов

The article is devoted to vitality in the art of the twentieth century, interpreted as the Sublime. Vitality manifests itself in art in a very diverse way. The dramatic attitude of the world, suffering, and pain are often synonymous with “vitality” today. But the art of oblivion is also permeated with vitality, “intoxicating”, helping to overcome the horror of existence; as well as art, attaching to the metaphysical source of being. It can be defined as sacred optimism and the ancient art and the art of the avant-garde are especially vividly evidence of it. In this case vitality is in direct contact with the Sublime. Seeking out the “other world”, overcoming the limitations of the mortal and suffering world is carried out through the transformation of the Sublime. Today the subject of the Sublime in art is at the peak of research interest. This is evidenced by the project The Art of the Sublime, launched in 2008 by the Tate Modern gallery (London, UK), dedicated to the study of this phenomenon from the Baroque era to the present day. It touches upon all types of visual art from painting to installation. Research shows how evolution goes from the natural Sublime, realized in the depiction of rare and impressive natural phenomena, to the technological Sublime, which declared itself in the second half of the twentieth century, to the distinction between the Sublime and the beautiful. In modern Moscow painting, we meet the implementation of the principle of the Sublime in the work of the artist Vladimir Matveev. Relying on the sacred art of Russian icons, and the avant-garde, the color discoveries of post-impressionism and the energetic abstraction of neo-expressionism, he creates his version of the Sublime in contemporary painting. In his large-format canvases, the artist expresses the essence of the vital as the Sublime, metaphysical and mental principles with the help of rich color and sharp juxtaposi- tion of abstract and natural forms.

Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann

Reviewed by: Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann Julie Fox-Horton Middle Ages, angels, free will, intellectualism, voluntarism, fallibility, agency, psychology, theology tobias hoffmann. Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 292. In Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy, Tobias Hoffmann thoroughly examines the height of the free will debate and the influence of Aristotle's action theory on theologians central to the dispute in the Latin West between the 1220s and the 1320s. The reception of Aristotle at this time caused a shift in the debate from a theologically centered reflection on the relationship between free will and sin, to a philosophical query exploring "how free agency is rooted in the powers of the soul" (1). Organized into three sections, Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy serves as an encyclopedia of medieval theologians and philosophical thinkers in the Latin West entrenched in the debate of free will as the theoretical evolution unfolds. Hoffmann's methodology for evaluating each thinker's position on the topic consists in looking at three fundamental components: their presuppositions of free will and the question of controlling one's actions, the agency of choice, and the discourse of outright evil. In Part I, "Free Will," Hoffmann begins with a brief introduction to the essential theories of free will before Aristotelian action theory entered the debate. Discussing Augustine's struggle over the issue of free will and then moving on to Peter Lombard's treatment of the issue in his Sentences, or [End Page 438] Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, which had a profound influence on theology for some time as "a principal reference text in the formation of Catholic theologians from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries," Hoffmann moves quickly on to the ideological shift (20). Beginning in the 1220s, two influential texts circulated among theologians, John of Damascus's De fide orthodoxa and portions of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, at which point Aristotle became the "principal authority in philosophy," and influential in the free will debate (22). Once medieval theologians began to reflect on Aristotle's ideas on the mechanics of decision-making, traditional notions that once focused on "the relation between free decision, sin, and grace" shifted, in what Hoffmann refers to as a psychological turn, to a "psychological foundation of free decision in reason and will" (31). During the early phases of the psychological turn in the free will debate, scholars like Thomas Aquinas—particularly through his ideas of "the will as a rational appetite" and his discourse on the relation of the intellect and will—created a divide among thinkers, characterized as either intellectualism or voluntarism (42). For voluntarism, Hoffmann points to several medieval thinkers but focuses on Henry of Ghent and his voluntarist conceptions of free will that both align with and deviate from Aquinas. Hoffmann then turns to thinkers whose theories lean toward intellectualism, focusing on Godfrey of Fontaines and his use of principles of metaphysics to address the cause of free will. During the first two decades of the fourteenth century, the free will debate evolved even further with theologians like John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, who either refined or radicalized free will theories (119). In Part II, "Whence Evil?", a theme central to medieval theologians and the debate of free will is evaluated—the origin of evil. As a premise on the origin of evil, Hoffmann turns to Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius. For Augustine, the question of the origin of evil developed from "a thorough reflection about the fall of angels" (163). In comparison, Augustine argued, according to Hoffman, "an evil will ultimately lacks an explanation," (169) while Pseudo-Dionysius argued, "evil cannot be a final cause" (173). The unifying principle for both thinkers is the belief that "evil does not have an efficient cause" (173). From Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius Hoffmann explores deeper the cause of evil according to other thinkers, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Lombard, William of Auxerre, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus. After a lengthy analysis of the influence on and the contributions of these...

An Anthropologico-Metaphysical Reflection on the Being of Man: A Philosophical Enquiry

<i>The contemporary man is gradually and systematically, though unknowingly becoming so mechanical and headstrongly wallowing deeply into the quagmire of a total oblivion of his own being. Consequently, the contemporary technolization and scientificalization of the present human society has necessarily estranged man from God and from his own very self. Invariably, life is becoming more mechanical and meaningless, and disjointedness of the contemporary man has equally affected his way of conceiving reality in general. It is this pitiable condition of man the present disjointed and fragmented society that has around the researcher's interest into reflecting on the anthropologico-metaphysical reflection on the being of man</i>. Man as being is a profound mystery. As a mystery, man cannot be fully and comprehensively understood. The knowledge of man is over and above man himself, even though the knowledge of man is not against human comprehension nor does it destroy human reasoning. It is in the anthropological question of the being of man that the metaphysics of God emerged. For man to comprehensively understand his very being, he has first to become God, for it is God alone who knows man through and through. Even man's unformed flame is known by him. Hence, it is only in relation to God that man can meaningfully discover himself understand his own very being. It is this mystery of the being of man that the writer attempts to unravel in this work. The researcher primarily employed the philosophical method of critical reflection as a means to achieve this goal. Man as a created being, on the basis of metaphysical principle of finality, is driving on as well as sustained by its metaphysical and meta-psychical desire to see God.

Or Abstractum

George Berkeley is famous for the metaphysical principle esse is percipi or percipere (“to be is to be perceived or to be a perceiver”). Many Berkeleyan idealists take this principle to be incompatible with Platonic realism about abstract objects, and thus opt either for nominalism or divine conceptualism on which they are construed as divine ideas. In this paper, I argue that Berkeleyan idealism is consistent with a Platonic realism in which abstracta exist outside the divine mind. This allows the Berkeleyan to expand Berkeley’s principle to read: esse is percipi or percipere or abstractum.