Western Intellectual Tradition Research Articles

Persuading the emperors: a quantitative historical analysis of political rhetoric in traditional China

The study of rhetoric has a long history in the Western intellectual tradition. However, only minimal efforts have been made to rigorously examine the cultural evolution of various rhetorical strategies in argumentation over time. In this study, we harness the power of fully digitized Chinese dynastic history to systematically analyze how different rhetorical strategies were used to persuade superiors throughout the past two millennia. By leveraging existing literature on Chinese rhetoric and argumentation styles, as well as engaging in extensive consultation with historians of ancient China, we identify and classify rhetorical strategies into distinct categories. We then examine their recorded success in persuasion and any temporal changes in frequency. Our findings point to a cumulative payoff-biased cultural evolution where later dynasties tend to demonstrate higher recorded persuasion success, with the notable exception of the Ming dynasty. Additionally, we detect a temporal decline in the frequency of rhetorical strategies associated with persuasion failures, such as analogy and the use of auspicious/inauspicious signs.

Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes: 3. On Causes and the Noetic Triad by Dragos Calma

This is the third of a three-volume series of essay collections based on three conferences held in Paris at the École pratique des hautes études in 2015–2016. The papers delivered at the conferences have been arranged thematically for publication—with a few essays being moved and a few others commissioned for the printed version—by Dragos Calma as general editor, who planned and organized the original sessions together with the late Marc Geoffroy. The first volume deals with a wide range of topics in connection with the Western intellectual tradition from Antiquity to the Renaissance; the second is arranged geographically and deals with the Byzantium, the Caucasus, the Lands of Islam, the Latin West, and the Hebraic Tradition; while the third contains the essays having the most overtly philosophical character within the various traditions.

IMAGES OF JIHAD AND PROBLEMS OF LEGITIMATION OF RELIGIOUS PROTEST AS A FORM OF CLASS CONFLICT AND SOCIAL LIBERATION

Background. The author analyzes the texts of the Dune cycle in contexts of modern historiography, including its universal methods that allow analyzing “oriental” images in literature through the prism of constructing and deconstructing narratives that form the image of Jihad as a form of political, social and religious struggle of oppressed communities and minorities.
 Purpose. The purpose of the article is an “orientalist” reinterpretation of the images of Jihad in the novels belonging to the Dune cycle including the prequel text presented by Dune. Butlerian Jihad and Dune. Paul.
 Materials and methods. The author uses the methodological tools of intellectual history and studies of nationalism, including the concept of the invention of traditions, which allows to analyze the images of Jihad in science fiction as one of the invented traditions of mass US science fiction literature using the texts of the Dune cycle. Orientalism as a method is used to analyze Muslim motifs in the prose of F. Herbert, B. Herbert and K. Anderson, which, as the author of the article presumes, were inspired by political, ideological and religious stimuli. The author states that the orientalist approach can be an effective interpretative model for an interdisciplinary analysis of American science fiction as a cultural landscape for the development of Jihad images in the Western intellectual tradition of the consumer society.
 Results. The ideological and political foundations for the development of images of Jihad as a social concept of American science fiction are studied in the article. The article analyzes the ideological origins, as well as the political prototypes and archetypes of the Muslim radicals of the Dune cycle. The author analyzes the ideological discourse of radical Islamism, presented in American mass culture through the prism of religious war images as attempts to implement the doctrine and social liberation. The article analyzes the attempts of American writers to form a positive and attractive image of a radical political protest under religious Muslim slogans. Therefore, it is shown that American science fiction prose actualized the mobilization potential of Islamism, imagining and inventing it as a form of legitimate social and economic protest of the oppressed masses against discrimination. The author presumes that some American authors revised the images of Jihad, offering its interpretation as a radical social and class protest based on religious legitimation.

OTENTISITAS FILSAFAT ISLAM

Islamic philosophy is one of the fields of study whose existence has given rise to many pros and cons. Viewed from the point of view of the western intellectual tradition, islamic philosophy appears to be merely a Greco-Alexandrian philosophy in arabic 'clothes', a philosophy whose sole role is to channel certain important elements of ancient heritage to the Medieval West. The discussion of Islamic philosophy as a science must certainly refer to the existence of Islam itself with authentic sources that are derived from where a science originated and can develop and survive to the present day but in its course Islamic philosophy has received a lot of criticism from orientalists that Islamic Islamic philosophy does not exist and partly only a reduction from greek philosophical thought translated into arabic. And this also raises a big question for the author where the author got the question in 2020 during a comprehensive exam on islamic philosophy courses that the author still could not answer at that time. However, with the anxiety that is accused of Islamic philosophy the author describes in this paper. using the Library resech with the method of documentation studies finally the author finds the finding that Islamic philosophy is not true what is alleged by orintalism. From this paper, the author wants to see more about the authenticity of Islamic philosophy as a science in terms of terminology, sources, and figures of Islamic thought and how the roots of Islamic philosophy can be formed and survive, in the criticism of orientalism.
 Keywords, authenticity, urgensi, Islamic philosophy.

Climate Pessimism and Human Nature

This article builds on scholarship that understands climate change not only as a geophysical phenomenon, but also as a complex idea. It argues for a historicised analysis of what it terms “climate pessimism”: the belief that catastrophic global heating cannot be prevented. Focusing especially on nonfictional texts by Jonathan Franzen and Roy Scranton, it suggests that climate pessimism draws on a Western intellectual tradition that takes a sceptical view of human capacities and the possibility of progress. At the same time, climate pessimism tends to evoke an idea of atomised human nature associated with capitalistic modernity. Franzen draws on ideas from evolutionary psychology in a rather simplistic way. Scranton, a more complex thinker, engages not only with Buddhist thought but also with the philosophies of Benedict Spinoza and Arthur Schopenhauer. Although often criticised as a “doomer”, he sometimes moves towards an epistemological pluralism and sense of human potentiality. The concluding section brings in the concept of the pluriverse as both a corrective to climate pessimism’s tendency to Westerncentrism, and a point of connection to Scranton’s work.

“I Will Also Ask You a Question” (Luke 20:3): The Social and Rhetorical Function of Opposing-Turn Questions in the Gospel of Luke

In this essay, I argue that Jesus’s mastery of the use of questions as a method of public argumentation is a key component of his characterization in the Gospel of Luke. As Douglas Estes has argued convincingly, a bias against questions exists within the Western intellectual tradition, which tends to favor declarative propositions for the negotiation of truth claims. This bias has resulted in the general neglect of the logical, rhetorical, literary, and philosophical role that interrogatives play in agonistic discourse (Estes, 2–9). Reading the questions of Jesus in Luke through a socio-rhetorical lens, I argue that a proper understanding of the social function of questions in the first century reveals a key insight underlying Luke’s theology of the crucifixion, suffering, and death of Jesus that has until recently gone unnoticed: namely, that within an honor/shame social matrix, Jesus’s failure to respond to the questions of his interrogators constitutes a willful submission to the violent principalities and powers of this world.

PAUL FEYERABAND: THE RESTLESS ANARCHIST

The article provides a reflexive analysis of the autobiographical experience presented in the autobiography of Paul Feyerabend "Killing Time". The specificity of the genre and method of the author's work on his own biography is highlighted. It is shown that this experience is strikingly different both from that to which European continental thinkers or domestic philosophers are accustomed, and from that which is presented in the Western intellectual tradition. Feyerabend deliberately built his story as "light reading", comparable to comics, musical script and stand-up comedy genre. At the same time, it is shown that as the story progresses, the position of the narrator himself changes and his very intonation changes towards more personal and spiritual tones and topics related to personality changes. The author was least of all interested in his own intellectual pursuits, and most of all he was interested in emotional attachments and love for one's neighbor. For the sake of this love, he wrote, in essence, his autobiography, strangely similar to the genre of repentance of the restless atheist anarchist.

The Dialogue Between Believers and Atheists: the Platonic Model in the Laws

This paper examines the question concerning the right model of epistemically rational dialogue. First of all, the main, though not undisputed, principles of rational dialogue are defined according to the contemporary field of the epistemology of disagreement. It then explains why even these principles are not sufficient for making the disagreement between believers and atheists not only a rational discourse but also a fruitful dialogue. This paper defends a thesis that the latter aim can be achieved with a proper model of dialogue, which is found in Plato’s Laws – one of the first discussions between the believers and the atheists in the Western intellectual tradition. This model not only includes the contemporary principles of rational argument but also provides some new guidelines for the solution of problems that lead the believers and the atheists to the communicational dead end.

Introducing Solid Fluids

This issue opens an inquiry into the tension between solidity and fluidity. This tension is ingrained in the Western intellectual tradition and informs theoretical debates across the sciences and humanities. In physics, solid is one phase of matter, alongside liquid, gas and plasma. This, however, assumes all matter to be particulate. Reversing the relation between statics and dynamics, we argue to the contrary, that matter exists as continuous flux. It is both solid and fluid. What difference would it make were we to start from our inescapable participation in a world of solid fluids? Is solid fluidity a condition of being in the midst of things, or of intermediacy on a solid-fluid continuum? Does the world appear fluid in the process of its formation, but solid when you look back on things already formed? Here we open new paths for theorizing matter and meaning at a time of ecological crisis.

The polyphony of nature

The polyphony of nature

A female perspective on Christianity and modernity: Maude Petre (1863–1942) and the history of Catholic Modernism

ABSTRACT In spite of a large and diverse body of research on the topic, the relationship between Christianity and modernity is still an open question and a nodal point for our understanding of Western civilization. This paper aims at providing an original contribution to this debate by bringing into play the impact of gender-related views and practices. In particular, it focuses on Catholic Modernism, and analyzes this phenomenon and its repression by the Vatican hierarchy from the understudied perspective of female historiography by way of an exemplary case study: the life and work of Maude Petre. Maude Petre (1863–1942) was a British Roman Catholic, member of a female religious community, a leading figure of Catholic Modernism, and one of its first historians. Because of the long-term patterns of gender imbalance which shaped the Catholic establishment and milieu, Petre's position as an active female modernist intellectual gave her a truly unique perspective on the confrontation between tradition and change within Western Christianity. Her work offers an outstanding opportunity to revise existing definitions of Catholic Modernism, while also opening new avenues to interpret the religious entanglements of the Western intellectual tradition at large.

Study on Genealogy of Human Soul and Animal Voice in Modern Western Intellectual History

본 연구는 ‘동물의 죽음과 목소리’에 대해 서구 지성사가 가졌던 매혹, 문제의식들과 그 한계들, 그리고 윤리적 아포리아를 해결하기 위한 노력들을 계보학적으로 정리하고 논하려 한다. 이를 위해 이 문제를 상세하게 다룬 아감벤의 초기 저서인 『언어와 죽음』(Language and Death)을 해제하면서 이 책에서 주로 언급하는 헤겔(Georg Hegel)과 하이데거(Martin Heidegger)의 철학을 비판적으로 점검하려 한다. 그리고 동물과 목소리와 인간의 생명과 죽음을 다룬 이들 철학자의 관념론을 해체한 자끄 데리다(Jacque Derrida)와 가야트리아 스피박(Gayatri Spivak)의 접근법들을 비교 분석하고 비판적으로 해석하려 한다. 마지막으로 아감벤의 최근 저서이자 이 모든 논쟁들의 근원에 대한 새로운 접근법을 보인 『열린 공간』(The Open)을 해제하려 한다. 존재의 부정성에 대한 근대 서구 사상의 매혹과 그 안에 숨겨진 윤리적 문제를 계보학적으로 다루는 이 연구는 앞으로 있을 연구들의 토대를 세우는 기초연구로서 앞으로 있을 연구들의 초석이 될 것이라 기대한다.This essay purports to investigate the genealogy of inclusive exclusion between human soul and animal voice through Western intellectual history. In the Western intellectual tradition, humanity has been distinguished from animality, which genealogically begun with Aristotle who called human political animal (zoon politikon). The essay starts the genealogical deconstruction by critically perusing Giorgio Agamben’s Language and Death in which Agamben disinters the hidden core of Western intellectual secret: the voice of a dying animal. Agamben unfolds and deconstructs how both Hegel and Heidegger, despite their efforts to reveal ontological superiority of human language as full speech and Dasein, get immersed in the inquiries of ethos of voice and animality in the place of language and humanity. Pronouns such as ‘Da’ of Dasein and ‘This’ in Hegelian philosophy inevitably indicate the negativity of humanity. The essay in turn expounds how dialectics of voice and language as well as animality and humanity unveils the hidden supplementary relations in Heidegger’s division of environment for animals and world for Dasein by deconstructing Heidegger’s Fundamental Concept of Metaphysics. After following Derrida’s deconstruction of Heidegger’s division of animal and Dasein as well as his falling prey to German spirit and Spivak’s further deconstruction of Derrida’s deconstruction from Indian perspective, the essay moves to Agamben’s another book, The Open, where he collocates above-mentioned deconstructions on Western intellectual tradition. In The Open, Agmaben proposes the standstill of dialectics to render all anthropological machines inoperative utilizing Walter Benjamin’s theological-political ideas.

BIOPOLITICS AS AN ASPECT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN NON-LIBERAL POLITICAL REGIMES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE PRC)

The article focuses on the potential applicability of biopolitics to modern elements of public administration in non-liberal political regimes on the example of China. M. Foucault's biopolitics is a rather difficult concept to use for the analysis of modern countries of the East due to the initial connection of the concept to the Western intellectual tradition. Based on analysis of the various researches in biopolitics, we propose to look further into strategies for expanding the concept to determine the most suitable for the study of public administration in non-liberal political regimes on the example of the PRC. It is noted that modern China, being an example of a non-liberal political regime, has signs of biopolitical state governance. It is concluded that biopolitics as a technology of power over the population is not an exclusive part of liberal governance.

The Cosmology of Cognitive Science from Hesiod, Socrates, and Plato to Wittgenstein

Cognitive science, the attempt to provide an account of human intelligence and behavior by reference to physical “mechanisms” in the alleged neural control center of human beings, is one of the dominant philosophical projects of our time. The paper argues that Wittgenstein in para. 608 of Zettel develops an alternative to this almost universally accepted modern paradigm. However, his efforts have been widely misunderstood, in a fashion clarified by Kuhn, because scholars read competing paradigms in the light of their own cognitive science paradigm. In the present case, scholars have assumed that the words in Zettel (para. 608), especially “the center” and “chaos,” must have the same meanings that they would naturally be assigned in cognitive science. The result is, inevitably, that Zettel (para. 608) either looks like it anticipates one of the various cognitive science paradigms or it looks absurd. In opposition to this, the paper argues that the language in Zettel (para. 608) is not the language of modern cognitive science, but, rather, is the language of the emergence of order from chaos by virtue of a stabilizing center with which the Western intellectual tradition began in ancient Greek cosmology. When read against this background, it becomes clear that Zettel (para. 608) is an attempt to formulates an alternative to the cognitive science paradigm by retrieving a paradigm found in ancient Greek philosophy and literature. The idea that the brain is not the control center of the human organism is in Plato. The idea that the order in language and thought may arise out of “chaos” is prefigured in Hesiod. It is also argued that the core spirit of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is summed up in the ancient Socratic virtue, for which there is no precise modern equivalent, of sophrosyne. The “new” alternative to the paradigms of modern cognitive science that Wittgenstein sketches in Zettel (para. 608) is rooted in ancient Greek paradigms for thinking about the cosmos - and the human microcosm.

Toward Accessible Faith & Flourishing: Reconsidering Greek Intellectualism in Western Christian Theology

From its inception, the Western theological tradition exhibits a fascination with and appropriation of ancient Greek philosophy. This conceptual intertwining of philosophy and theology, as exemplified by Augustine and Aquinas, privileges rationality in the “natural order” and in the pursuit of virtue and human flourishing. Despite generative insights at the intersection of disability and theology in other aspects, the “enfolding” tendencies of a conceptual framework inherited from Plato and Aristotle relegate people with intellectual disabilities to the margins of human flourishing. Contemporary theologians vary in the extent of their adoption of these norms and ideals related to the natural order and human rationality. The future of disability theology must engage a “pastoral deconstruction” that questions these deep privileging tenants of the Western intellectual tradition if it is to welcome the richly embodied theological contribution of people with intellectual disabilities.

Review of Creative Nature (part 3)

The short monograph Creative Nature (Francisco Javier Novo, Rubén Pereda, and Javier Sánchez-Cañizares. 2018. Naturaleza Creativa. Madrid: Rialp. ISBN: 978-84-321-4916-0. 196 pp. Paperback, €14.25) is a welcome contribution to the philosophy of nature that arose from interdisciplinary conversations between authors who are both up-to-date in the scientific literature and deeply grounded in the Western intellectual tradition. In this third and final part of the review essay, I take Creative Nature as a point of departure and develop a theological synthesis of our relationship with the natural world. My approach to making sense of natural evil draws on the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition. I emphasize the wisdom of viewing nature as a whole and avoiding anthropomorphisms, in order to both come to peace with our common home and feel like we belong in a welcoming world. I draw from St. Paul’s teaching on cosmic redemption in his letters to the Colossians and Ephesians to shine the light of supernatural faith on our relationship with the natural world. This approach illustrates how a sound philosophy of nature and biblical interpretation are pivotal for faith–science dialogue.The short monograph Creative Nature (Francisco Javier Novo, Rubén Pereda, and Javier Sánchez-Cañizares. 2018. Naturaleza Creativa. Madrid: Rialp. ISBN: 978-84-321-4916-0. 196 pp. Paperback, €14.25) is a welcome contribution to the philosophy of nature that arose from interdisciplinary conversations between authors who are both up-to-date in the scientific literature and deeply grounded in the Western intellectual tradition. In this third and final part of the review essay, I take Creative Nature as a point of departure and develop a theological synthesis of our relationship with the natural world. My approach to making sense of natural evil draws on the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition. I emphasize the wisdom of viewing nature as a whole and avoiding anthropomorphisms, in order to both come to peace with our common home and feel like we belong in a welcoming world. I draw from St. Paul’s teaching on cosmic redemption in his letters to the Colossians and Ephesians to shine the light of supernatural faith on our relationship with the natural world. This approach illustrates how a sound philosophy of nature and biblical interpretation are pivotal for faith–science dialogue.

Husserl and the Greeks

ABSTRACT I document Husserl’s growing interest in the foundational character of Greek philosophy for Western culture and show what is unique about Husserl’s appropriation of certain Greek thinkers and concepts. Specifically, I explain Husserl’s idiosyncratic appropriation of key Greek terms as original building blocks to articulate his own intuitive insights and review critically Husserl’s original appropriation of the history of Greek philosophy as a way of situating his transcendental phenomenology within the Western (“European”) intellectual tradition. Husserl adopted a consistent view of Greek philosophy throughout his life but deepened his engagement in later years. Initially little interested in the history of philosophy as such, he came to see the “breakthrough” into the theoretical attitude as decisive for the development of Western culture. The Skeptics’ epoché is revitalized by Husserl as a permanent way of challenging the dogmatic naivete of life in the natural attitude, motivating the transformation to theoria.

Different Approaches to Chinese Aesthetics

The article introduces Fang Dongmei’s and Xu Fuguan’s ideas about aesthetics and examines their different methodological approaches. Fang Dongmei and Xu Fuguan are both representatives of the second generation of Modern Taiwanese Confucianism. The fundamental goal of this significant movement is to re-evaluate and re-examine the profound contents of Chinese thought in contemporary socio-political conditions through a dialogue with Western philosophy. The representatives of Modern Confucianism of the 20th century hoped that the encounter with the Western intellectual tradition would serve as a platform for modernization of Chinese culture on the one hand, and as a way to achieve the recognition of the West for the profound value of the Chinese intellectual tradition on the other. Fang Dongmei was one of the first representatives of this movement who was trained in Western and Chinese philosophy, and hence built his own philosophical theory on the encounter of both, while Xu Fuguan was one of the first who engaged in a dialogue with the West in the field of Chinese aesthetics. The present article illuminates the profound differences in their basic methods: while Fang Dongmei’s elaboration upon Chinese art and aesthetics is based on philosophical and poetic approaches, Xu Fuguan’s comprehension is grounded on philological, historical and cultural analyses. The author argues that such mutual differences between their ideas show their reciprocal complementarity, which in turn provides a more profound and clear understanding of the specific spirit of Chinese art.

Market Engagement and Indigenous People: Testing Hypotheses from the Western Intellectual Tradition

Autarkic indigenous societies are changing fast from increased engagement with markets. Western writers have ascribed a wide array of often contradictory effects to markets, including greater socia...

Review of Creative Nature (part 2)

The short monograph Creative Nature (Francisco Javier Novo, Ruben Pereda, and Javier Sanchez-Canizares. 2018. Naturaleza Creativa. Madrid: Rialp. ISBN: 978-84-321-4916-0. 196 pp. Paperback, €14.25) is a welcome contribution to the philosophy of nature that arose from interdisciplinary conversations between authors who are both up-to-date in the scientific literature and deeply grounded in the western intellectual tradition. In this second part of our review essay, we offer three themes for further reflection: (1) seeing the whole: synergy between philosophy of nature and empirical studies, (2) boundary questions: philosophy of nature as a mediator of dialogue between science and religion, and (3) whether the book helps defend a natural philosophy of form and finality. In conclusion, we recommend this book as a way to bridge science and philosophy and as a point of departure for theological reflection. The short monograph Creative Nature (Francisco Javier Novo, Ruben Pereda, and Javier Sanchez-Canizares. 2018. Naturaleza Creativa . Madrid: Rialp. ISBN: 978-84-321-4916-0. 196 pp. Paperback, €14.25) is a welcome contribution to the philosophy of nature that arose from interdisciplinary conversations between authors who are both up-to-date in the scientific literature and deeply grounded in the western intellectual tradition. In this second part of our review essay, we offer three themes for further reflection: (1) seeing the whole: synergy between philosophy of nature and empirical studies, (2) boundary questions: philosophy of nature as a mediator of dialogue between science and religion, and (3) whether the book helps defend a natural philosophy of form and finality. In conclusion, we recommend this book as a way to bridge science and philosophy and as a point of departure for theological reflection.