Traditional Metaphysics Research Articles

Martinetti e Banfi tra teoria e prassi

The Martinetti-Banfi relationship was investigated by critics, who identified the point of origin of the Milan School in the Banfi work. Yet, if the texts are analyzed, it is not difficult to find a continuity between teacher and pupil. If this seems evident in the first Banfi writings, the more markedly theoretical ones, even the more mature Banfi production seems indebted to Martinetti's origins. Both in the confrontation with phenomenology and with Marxism, Banfi insists on Martinetti's attempt to reconcile the dualisms characteristic of the metaphysical tradition. In this continuity, elements of discontinuity also emerge, starting with a growing materialism absent in Martinetti's spiritualism

Symbolic Classification and The Emergence of a Metaphysics of Causality

Symbolic Classification and The Emergence of a Metaphysics of Causality Owen Goldin what is distinctive about metaphysics as a mode of thought that emerged in the fifth century before the Common Era? How did it emerge out of early ways of conceptualizing the world as a whole, and why? Many answers have been proposed. One common view is that earlier modes of thought personify natural agencies; once this is abandoned, the way is open for discerning more complex regularities among natural events.1 Another view is that the process of "rationalization" introduced by the Greeks involves an implicit appeal to the individual's natural intelligence, in contrast to a dependence on an "inherited stock of wisdom."2 A third view is that the first Greek philosophers introduced inference as a way of navigating conceptual relationships, independent of the sorts of personal interactions among divinities related in mythical narrative.3 According to a fourth account, the mode of rationality that allowed for the development of ancient Greek metaphysics was a social [End Page 3] practice with the aim of persuasion, brought on by more democratic involvement in societal deliberations concerning law and policy.4 To these I add a fifth way of answering the question. Crucial to the emergence of Greek metaphysics is explicit distinction of ontological/causal priority and posteriority. Ancient Greek scientific explanations developed out of older, archaic modes of conceptualization, which I maintain have deep parallels with modes of conceptualization shared by many nonliterate cultures. Such modes of thought rest on an implicit worldview which can be called a metaphysics, in a loose sense, and are still worthy of philosophical consideration. I begin with a red flag that will be raised for many as soon as we start talking about the metaphysical traditions of nonliterate cultures. What counts as a metaphysical tradition? I make some distinctions. In the loosest sense, an account or tradition is metaphysical if it reflects a coherent worldview concerning the kinds of beings that there are and how they are related to one another. According to a stricter sense of the term, a tradition is metaphysical if it involves working through this worldview in an explicit and systematic matter. In an even stricter sense, a tradition is metaphysical if, in addition to being explicit and systematic, it merits being classified as "philosophical," itself not an unproblematic term. I here stipulate that an account is philosophical if it does not rest on premises that are specific to certain cultural traditions and employs inferential arguments that are in principle subject to refutation. Generally speaking, there are two ways in which a tradition that is metaphysical in the strictest sense can listen to one that is metaphysical in a looser sense. First, a metaphysician might examine the latter tradition in order to explore how, historically, it served as the root for the former. An example is Aristotle's interest in Hesiod as expressing metaphysical intuitions that later philosophers unpacked.5 By studying [End Page 4] the ontological presuppositions of the sort of account from which our own metaphysics is derived, one learns more about our own ontological presuppositions and what we gain from them.6 This sort of dialogue carries with it the danger that the later thinker presupposes that—in the spirit of "you have to start somewhere"—the earlier thinkers were simply doing a bad job working through their own theories; Aristotle has often been accused of precisely this.7 Another sort of dialogue is possible as well. An alternative metaphysical tradition can reveal the possibility of a radically different way of conceptualizing the causal and ontological structure of the world, one with its own advantages. In such a case there is shared set of problems at issue, shared points of reference within the philosophical literature, and a shared understanding of what philosophical argument is. But philosophical insight might also emerge from the kind of dialogue in which a developed metaphysics that conforms to certain standards of inferential argument confronts a way of thinking that is metaphysical in a looser sense. A substance-based ontologist can be led to reflect on whether the world has to be cut up as she does by studying Aztec...

Self-Creation and Solidarity: Psychoanalysis as Self-Aesthetics Redescription in Richard Rorty

Abstract The article went deeper into Richard Rorty’s texts that address the self as “a set of beliefs and desires.” In an imbrication of philosophy with psychoanalysis, Rorty’s hermeneutics accompanies the critique of psychoanalysis regarding the self-centralization from Metaphysical tradition, one of the strategies of self-redescription. The other strategy is aesthetic redescription. This redescription is based on understanding the psychic world as an encounter of “beliefs and desires” as “quasi-people.” The thread of our argument is the articulation of psychoanalysis with the concept of “hegemony.” This reflexive line occurs due to the agonist and conflicting context of internal alterity from the “interpersonal” relationship between conscious and unconscious, rediscovering the self.

Being otherwise: On the possibility of a non-dualistic approach in feminist phenomenology

This article reflects on the current philosophical tendency to construct non-dualistic subjectivity models in response to the criticism of the traditional authoritarian human subject. Following thinkers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida, the literature has largely identified traditional metaphysics based on dualistic hierarchies as the major source of violence. Perceiving phenomenology as a method that focuses on the concepts of the lived experience and situatedness, I combine this approach with the feminist calls for dismantling the hierarchical relationship of subjectivity to the world. I draw on the concepts of Sonia Kruks, Linda Martin Alcoff, Sara Heinämaa, Judith Butler, Bonnie Mann and Johanna Oksala to inquire how dualism-overcoming phenomenology can be applied to feminist thought. I focus in particular on the approach that Oksala outlines in her book, Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations, where she proposes a transcendental view on feminist experience. Intriguingly, she understands transcendental as situated – historically, culturally and politically. Consequently, my final question concerns the possibility of combining the two usually conflicted approaches: transcendental and historical regarding the fundamental phenomenological distinction between the empirical and the transcendental.

IV—Wittgenstein, Anscombe and the Need for Metaphysical Thinking

AbstractMetaphysicians are in the business of making and defending modal claims—claims about how things must, or could or could not be. Wittgenstein’s opposition to necessity claims, along with his various negative remarks about ‘metaphysical’ uses of language, makes it seem almost a truism that Wittgenstein was opposed to metaphysics. In this paper I want to make a case for rejecting that apparent truism. My thesis is that it is illuminating to characterize what Wittgenstein and Anscombe are doing in their philosophical writing as metaphysics without manufactured necessities. Doing so helps to articulate a sharper, more interesting, critique of contemporary metaphysical practices than therapeutic or linguistic framings of Wittgenstein’s method make possible. It also allows us to place Anscombe in the context of a tradition of British metaphysics that emerged in the 1940s in an attempt to reverse the devastating impact on ethics of the new ‘analytical’ philosophy.

헤겔과 하이데거의 공간-시간성 비교 고찰

Hegel seek Time and Space in the relation to Geist through Kant, who prensents them as the “a priori” formal conditional. The reason why Hegel explore Time in the relation to Geist is because the time of the finite can not see the world being as the relative thing of the spiritual to he natural. Thus Hegel presupposes an dominant of Time over Space, overcomes the empirical-categorical definition of Being, analyzes the relation of Time to Space as the movement of a spiritual-categorical idea. But Heidegger insists that Hegel’s understanding conceals primordial Time created by Being. Because the Now is just the ordinary time in his point of view. Time should be able to be experienced as a ecstatic field in which the truth of being is manifested. In this context, this study elucidates Hegel and Heidegger’s concept of Time and Space, find out that Hegel’s dialectical time is the continuation of traditional metaphysics which fails to reflect the reality of human beings.

Nothingness without Reserve: Fred Moten contra Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling

ABSTRACT Contemporary critical theory and black studies have witnessed a surge in theoretical accounts of “blackness” as “nothingness”. Drawing on the work of the poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten, this article offers a reading of this recent postulation of blackness as “nothingness” in light of some of the similar theoretical endeavors in post-Kantian European philosophy. By comparing Moten’s “paraontological” conception of nothingness to Heidegger’s self-nihilating nothing, Sartre’s relative nothingness, as well as Schelling’s notion of absolute nothingness, this article argues that Moten’s paraontology presents a more robust and systematic conception of nothingness than those of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling. By way of this comparison with these “canonical” accounts from European philosophy, this article highlights not only the unique features of Moten’s sophisticated formulation of nothingness, but also some of unacknowledged presumptions and prejudices of traditional metaphysics which Moten’s work calls into question.

Wellbeing from a Yogic Perspective

In this article, I go beyond health and contemplate the Indian Yogic concept of wellbeing against the changing influences of different spiritual traditions in my life. I finally come full circle and consider what Indian metaphysical tradition best fits and throws light on Jesus’s affirmations “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind” and: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself “(Matthew 22:37-39); proclamations that have fascinated me since my childhood. The inquiry into these statements is a pointer to how we can live a most meaningful yogic life in full clarity and respect concerning all that exists around us.

Atemporal Temporality of the Transcendental Subject

Perhaps one of the main attributes of the subjectivity is temporality in the metaphysical tradition. Subject cannot be found in space, it only exists in time, so the substantial concept of mind originates in the notion of time. On the other side the subject perceives time as such; as Saint Augustine writes in Confessions, “It is in thee, my mind, that I measure times”. Temporality and subjectivity were closely related notions before the transcendental turn. In his explicit argumentation Immanuel Kant considers the subject as a temporal principle; as he writes in The End of All Things, “thinking contains a reflecting, which can occur only in time”. However, Kant does not affirm that the apperception of “ego cogito” can lead to the substantial existence of subject or mind. He regards this deduction as a paralogism. The Kantian disaffirmation of substantial mind enabled the timeless concept of subjectivity in the Early German Idealism.
 The subjectivity notion of Kant and the transcendental philosophy has a special, ambiguous character: in their explicit theories they argue that the subject is mainly a temporal entity, but some special forms of the general subject (transcendental subject, self, Gemüt etc.) are placed out of time in several texts. In the paper I analyse the temporal aspects of the idealist subject concept. The main thesis of the paper is that the subject of the transcendental philosophy is characterised by atemporal temporality.

Neoclassical Theism as Inherently Dialogical

The position usually called “process theism” is seldom called this by one of its most important defenders, Charles Hartshorne. The label he typically uses is “neoclassical theism”. It is important to notice that these two designations are not equivalent. To speak of process theism is to accentuate the differences between this metaphysical view and an opposing metaphysical stance, that of traditional or substantialist theism. By way of contrast, to speak of neoclassical theism is not to accentuate differences but rather the inclusion of one metaphysical tradition within another. That is, the neoclassical theism of Hartshorne (along with that of A.N. Whitehead, John Cobb, and David Ray Griffin, et al.) is both “neo” and “classical”. The compatibility between the best insights of classical theism and the best in neoclassical theism is evidenced in Hartshorne’s startling claim that he learned almost as much from St. Thomas Aquinas as he did from Whitehead! Although Hartshorne spent a good deal of his career pointing out that classical theism was shipwrecked on certain rocks of contradiction (neo), Thomas, more than anyone else, has provided us with an admirable chart showing the location of the rocks (classical). Three different topics will be emphasized in my defense of the thesis that “process theism” tends to be a polemical designation, in contrast to the more irenic “neoclassical theism”. The first of these is the contrast between monopolar and dipolar metaphysics. In the divine case, the neoclassical theist emphasizes the claim that, in partial contrast to the classical theistic God who does not in any way change, God always changes, and both of these words are important. The second topic is the commonplace in “process” thought that one of the most important passages in the history of metaphysical writing is in Plato’s Sophist (247e), where it is suggested that being is power or dynamis, specifically the power, however slight, both to affect other beings and to be affected by them. The third topic is Whiteheadian prehension, wherein a metaphysical thinker in the present can literally grasp and include the best insights from previous metaphysical traditions and partially transform them by bringing them into a larger whole.

Klaus Hemmerle on the Trinitarian Ontology of the Human Person

The 20th-century quest for a Trinitarian ontology was associated with a critical reconsideration of the modern philosophy of the subject. However, this reconsideration did not reject the question of subjectivity itself. It rather rejected any narrowed ontological assumptions that would identify the very ground of subjectivity with a univocal eidetic structure of being. In its most advanced forms, the modern and postmodern philosophy of the subject proved to be radically structuralist, relational, or even differentialist. While many attempts at Trinitarian ontology have faced this challenge either by adapting Christian dialogical personalism or reviving older metaphysical traditions and notions, e.g., the analogy, the participation, and the concept of the subsisting person, Klaus Hemmerle emphasised in his Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology (1976) above all the ontological primacy of the relational self-giving (Sich-Geben), explicated phenomenologically. Every subsisting being, including the human person, gains its concrete contour only from within this relational process. But does this relational reappearance of the human person mean its self-alienated completion, or rather its complete alienation? How can this relational account of the human person be related to older metaphysical, theological, and personalistic traditions? Does Hemmerle avoid the dangerous dissolution of the human person as a mere processual moment of the whole community and the world?

The Body and the Completion of Metaphysics: A Critical Analysis of Heidegger’s Nietzsche

Abstract In this essay, I examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, focusing centrally on his understanding of the Nietzschean “body.” Nietzsche’s status as the culminating figure of Western metaphysics depends on the notion that the body, in Nietzsche’s thought, is the last Western subject. I confirm Heidegger’s sense of the importance of the Nietzschean body, and, in particular, the centrality of the word “incorporation” (Einverleibung), to a proper understanding of Nietzsche. I argue, however, through a critique of Heidegger’s own understanding of “incorporation” in Nietzsche’s work, that an investigation of the body in Nietzsche does not reveal him to be an unwilling participant in the metaphysical tradition beyond which Heidegger seeks to move; rather, we should see in the Nietzschean body a human finitude that has more resonances in Heidegger’s own thought than Heidegger would care to admit. Ultimately, I show, an investigation of the actual dynamics of the Nietzschean body, as read through the careful tracing of the word “incorporation” to which Heidegger invites us, yields a fundamentally delimited body that operates according to what we might call a kind of physiological asceticism.

The Detour of Metaphor: Metaphor, Concept, and Strategy in Althusser and Derrida

Following some of the main arguments Derrida develops in ‘White Mythology’, in this article I propose an unexplored dialogue between Derrida and Althusser considering the use and the place that each of them gives to metaphor in their philosophical strategies. I give special attention to some rather isolated passages of ‘Elements of Self-Criticism’ and ‘Lenin and Philosophy’, where Althusser, against all evidence, seems to be quite aware of the importance of metaphor and mataphorization in every philosophical practice. As Balibar has argued, contrary to the metaphysical tradition, metaphor would not be the opposite but what anticipates the concept. In this sense, it is possible to observe how Althusser’s work has continuously put into practice – as the singular signature of his theoretical practice – something that I call the ‘detour of metaphor’ as a necessary ‘deviation’ for the production of new concepts. Without any evidence that Althusser may have known Derrida’s essay, I show how Althusser’s own theoretical work, one in which ‘metaphor’ as a philosophical theme appears to be rather anecdotic, is unexpectedly close to Derrida’s own positions concerning the margins of philosophy and its ‘outside’, the relation to the metaphysical tradition, and the importance of strategy in philosophy.

The Highest Good and Its Crisis in Kant’s Thought

Abstract The article has the aim to show that Kant’s “standard” conception of the highest good does not represent his last word about the problem. Kant moves from a conception of the highest good close connected with the metaphysical tradition and with the aim of a new, moral justification of traditional metahysical concepts such as God and immortality of the soul. This view does find many difficulties and oscillations in the Critiques, looking for different formulations of a moral “proof” for the metaphysical concepts, grounded upon the need of justice and of a rational solution to the question of theodicy. The failure of this project is apparent with the essay on theodicy (1791). In the last decade of Kant’s intellectual activity, the expression “highest good” occurs few times and the concept looses its systematic relevance, as shown by the last works up to the Opus postumum.

The origin of origins a metaphysical argument for the existence of god in the tradition of de ente et essentia

In current theology the possibility of conclusive arguments for the existence of God is largely rejected by reference to Hume or Kant. Purportedly post-metaphysical surrogates are put in place of a metaphysically founded theology, where either the existence of God may be believed in only as a rational possibility, or else a radical constructivism about the existence of God is fallen into. Nevertheless, in the following, a conclusive metaphysical argument for the existence of God in the tradition of scholastic metaphysics is formulated. It is shown that theological talk of creatio ex nihilo is only the other side of this metaphysical argument: Whoever accepts creatio ex nihilo cannot consistently deny the soundness of the argument.

ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ МЕТАФИЗИЧЕСКОЙ ТРАДИЦИИ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ФИЛОСОФИИ

The article is dedicated to analysis of different kinds of the research into the history of metaphysical tradition. The following major research strategies are pointed out: The standard historical philosophical paradigm; the tradition of «critique of metaphysics»; «post-metaphysical» philosophy. The article includes a characterization of these strategies and expositions of some theories as samples of their realization.

Everettian Quantum Mechanics and the Metaphysics of Modality

Abstract This article sits at a point of intersection between the philosophy of physics and the metaphysics of modality. There are clear similarities between Everettian quantum mechanics and various modal metaphysical theories, but there have hitherto been few attempts at exploring how the two topics relate. In this article, I build on a series of recent papers by Wilson ([2011], [2012], [2013]), who argues that Everettian quantum mechanics’ connections with traditional modal metaphysics are vital in defending it against objections. I show that Wilson’s preferred version of Everettian quantum mechanics has two problems. First, it is unable to account for the contingency of various intuitively contingent modal claims. Second, it fails to yield intuitive truth values on modal claims about the number of branches in a given Everettian multiverse. Since modal claims about branch number are instrumental in decision-theoretic solutions to Everettian quantum mechanics’ problem(s) with probability, this second problem has wider dialectical implications. I suggest amendments to the underlying metaphysics that overcome these problems. The result is a more robust version of Everettian quantum mechanics.

Freedom and Religious Worldview

The article, written in the form of a dialogue/discussion, examines the problem of freedom in the context of its interpretation in religious and philosophical thought. The starting point for considering freedom is the thesis that the concept of freedom, as it is presented in the metaphysical and spiritual traditions, hinders both the philosophical understanding of freedom and its implementation in practice since the status of the concept requires the identification of freedom with the knowledge of freedom. However, the knowledge, as it always implies being universal, excludes the possibility of a different understanding of freedom, which leads to the confusion of freedom and necessity. While criticizing this thesis, Mikhail Sergeev insists that the adoption of a particular system of beliefs, including religious faith, does not necessarily make other people understand freedom the same way, which leads to the elimination of freedom in real life and to the substitution of freedom by necessity on theoretical level: as the history of philosophy and religion shows, there have always been many different concepts of freedom, even within the same school or tradition. From the point of view of Aleksandr Rybas, the variety of interpretations of freedom is such only formally since each of these interpretations is aimed at formulating the only one, “true” concept of freedom, resulting from the chosen point of view and therefore making it necessary to characterize alternative views as false: the very idea of “true” freedom is rooted in the specifics of metaphysical thinking, which should be seen the reason for the rejection of freedom. As a result of the discussion, however, some common views on freedom were developed. In particular, freedom was defined as the inherent ability of man to consciously initiate his own changes and determine the parameters of his own existence. Moreover, it was argued that there could not be the only valid or universal form of human life.

Quentin Meillassoux. Speculative Realism and Narratives from the Contingency.

The objective of this work is to introduce Quentin Meillassoux's 'speculative materialist realism', establishing a critical stance against the metaphysical tradition of the 'absolute' that has prevailed in post-Kantian Western philosophy, based on the need for contingency that he proposes. This implies making a critique of what has been understood as realism, necessity and existing. To do this, key concepts of Meillassoux's philosophy are broken down, exemplifying its influence -and possible presence back in time- on other thinkers and artists in their respective narratives such as Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Nick Land, and Florian Hecker, who delve into issues that generate discomfort, amazement, nihilism and pessimism in contemporary societies, such as probability and prediction in financial markets, the Anthropocene and nature, the conflictive relationship between subject and object, truth and chaos, between other things, subtracting ourselves from the humanist discourse on which the scientific, financial and environmental paradigms of our time rest and which have ended up cracking the identity of man, with capitalist production being the most determining geological factor. Let us to reflect on the following questions. What narratives can give an account of the current condition of the world? What narratives emerge when we stop focusing our attention on man? What habits of thought force us to change the awareness that everything around us is contingent?

"ABYSS" BY YU. V. MAMLEEV: GENESIS, DYNAMICS OF DOCTRINE, ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

The article is devoted to the genesis, dynamics, and ontological problem of Mamleev`s doctrine of the Abyss. The author identifies five reasons for the emergence of such an extraordinary doctrine: the crisis of the 20th century and underground philosophizing, rootedness in Russian culture and Mamleev`s national self-identity, the influence of oriental metaphysics and integral traditionalism, artistic origins of Mamleev`s way of thinking and the connection between philosophy and literature, Mamleev`s mystical experience and his spiritual insights. Considering the dynamics of the doctrine of Abyss, the author of the article points out three stages of its development: formation of I-utrism as an opportunity to preserve the personality in the form of a higher I upon reaching the Absolute; enlightenment the depths of the invisible layers of space and creating the "Last Doctrine"; revealing the idea of Eternal Russia as a mediator between the Absolute and the Abyss. In addition, the author of the article examines the possibility of reconciling radicalism Mamleev's I-utrism with his own doctrine of Eternal Russia. Reconciliation becomes possible precisely within the context of the dynamics of Mamleev's doctrine of the Abyss. Studying the ontological problem of the ratio of the Absolute and the Abyss, the author notes, that at the metaphysical level, which is esoteric in nature, the Absolute and the Abyss are identical and cannot be conceived separately. However, at the religious level, which is exoteric in nature, they can be opposed to each other. Wherein, the transcendence of the Absolute is regarded as given to man and which can be attained, and the transcendence of the Abyss regarded as not given to man and as fundamentally unattainable. The author of the article concludes that consideration of the genesis and dynamics of Mamleev's doctrines can be helpful in understanding and solving the paradoxes, which arise when the Abyss is introduced into traditional metaphysics.