Filozoficzna myśl Roberta Boyle’a a stanowisko chrześcijańskiego teizmu naturalistycznego

Author(s): Radosław Kazibut / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

Robert Boyle is the author of the original concept of mediation between the spheres of religious belief and scientific thought. This article presents Robert Boyle’s selected topics of philosophy that illustrate his points of view on the issue of the relationship between scientific knowledge and faith. In the literature, the views Boyle qualifies as an example of a conception of two books: the Book of Nature and The Scripture, or the conception "God-of-the-gaps." In this paper I dispute this view and demonstrate that Boyle’s conception the relationship between science and faith is similar but not identical to the contemporary theistic naturalism.

Mekkîzâde Mehmed Tâhir Efendi’nin (ö.1128/1716) Müstevcebu’l-Halâs fî Tefsîri Sûreti’l-İhlâs Adlı Eseri -Neşr-

Author(s): Ahmet Faruk Güney / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 2/2015

This paper contains the puplication of Turkish commentary of Surah al-Ikhlas. Its name is Müstevcebu’l-Halâs fî Tefsîri Sûreti’l-İhlâs and the author of this commentary Mekkîzâde Mehmed Tâhir. This commentary is one of the limited number of commentaries written in the Ottoman period. Also this article contained a brief introduction and evaluation.

KANTOV POJAM "TEHNIKA PRIRODE" U VEZI S NJEGOVIM POJMOM UMETNOST

Author(s): Milan Damnjanović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 253/1980

Pojam »umetnost« (Kunst) u Kantovoj Kritici moći suđenja ne može se razumeti polazeći od onog pregnantnog značenja tog pojma koje mi danas imamo u svesti, nakon razvoja koji je posle Kanta potekao u prošlom stoleću i posle iskustva moderne umetnosti.

The Highlights of Descartes’ Epistemology (An Introduction)

Author(s): Przemysław Gut,Arkadiusz Gut / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Descartes (and Spinoza) on Intellectual Experience and Skepticism

Author(s): John Carriero / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Descartes’s epistemology is rooted in his profound interest in and respect for what might be called intellectual experience, especially lucid intellectual experience. (Lucid intellectual experience is my term for what Descartes calls perceiving clearly and distinctly.) This interest, it seems to me, was shared by Descartes’s rationalist successors Spinoza and Leibniz. In the first part of this paper, I locate the phenomenon of lucid intellectual experience, focusing on Descartes and Spinoza. I try to show if we do not give enough attention to the character of such experience, we risk losing touch with a central motivation behind their respective epistemologies. In the second part of the paper, I consider intellectual experience in the context of skeptical doubt, particularly radical doubt. Although Descartes and Spinoza are often taken to be opposed here, I think they share more than is commonly appreciated.

Epistemic Functions of Intuition in Descartes

Author(s): Monika Walczak / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The topic of the paper is the notion of intuition in Descartes’ philosophy and its epistemic functions. Descartes introduces his notion of intuition in the context of a description of his method and process of knowing and doing science. Intuition is a significant component of this process. I intend to show that the main epistemic functions of intuition in Descartes’ philosophy are differentiated. Intuition is essential not only in the context of justification (the Cartesian synthetic method of proof) but also and especially in the context of discovery (the Cartesian analytic method of discovery). It plays not only a role in the foundation of the cogito but also on different stages of constructing the system of knowledge. Intuition has important functions in grasping simple natures, forming primary concepts, comprehending complex natures, forming primary propositions (including primary principles), and capturing relationships between them and building deductive reasoning (the role of intuition in deduction). Hence, intuition is the foundation for all primary stages of producing knowledge. It is active and important element of pure thinking (a priori) in human knowledge, and science. It fulfils these functions due to its specific epistemic properties. I also argue that intuition is not an autonomous and complete type of knowledge. Nor is it an intuitive thesis, but rather the basis of a justification for theses (including the cogito).

The Epistemic Significance of Current Clear and Distinct Perceptions in Descartes’ Epistemology

Author(s): Przemysław Gut / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In this article, I discuss the epistemic role that Descartes believed was played in knowledge construction by current clear and distinct perceptions (the ideas or propositions which appear most evident to us when we are attending to them). In recent literature, we can find two interpretations about the epistemic status and function of current clear and distinct perceptions in Descartes’ epistemology. The first may be called the psychological, the second normative. The latter states that current clear and distinct perceptions are utterly immune to all doubt, even before God’s existence is proven and the general rule of truth is established. Thus, their certainty is for Descartes not merely psychological, but normative. I endorse the normative interpretation for a number of what I believe to be cogent reasons. However, there are also some difficulties with it. Therefore, after presenting positive arguments for the interpretation (sections I–IV) I discuss the difficulties of textual and substantive nature that the normative interpretation needs to address if it is to be upheld (sections V–VI).

The Fourth Meditation and Cartesian Circles

Author(s): C.P. Ragland,Everett Fulmer / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

We offer a novel interpretation of the argumentative role that Meditation IV plays within the whole of the Meditations. This new interpretation clarifies several otherwise head-scratching claims that Descartes makes about Meditation IV, and it fully exonerates the Fourth Meditation from either raising or exacerbating Descartes’ circularity problems.

The Curious Sensations of Pain, Hunger and Thirst. Reliabilism in the Second Part of Descartes’ Sixth Meditation

Author(s): Stefaan E. Cuypers / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This paper discusses the epistemic status of bodily sensations—especially the sensations of pain, hunger and thirst—in the second part of Descartes’ Sixth Meditation. It is argued that this part is an integral component of Descartes overall purely epistemological project in the Meditations. Surprisingly perhaps, in contrast with his standardly taken infallible, internalist and foundationalist position, Descartes adopts a fallibilist, externalist and reliabilist position as regards the knowledge and beliefs based on bodily sensations. The argument for this conclusion is justified by an analysis of both the criterion of nature’s teachings and the concept of true errors of nature in terms of Wilfrid Sellars’ distinction between the logical space of reasons and the empirical space of causes.

Cartesian Social Epistemology? Contemporary Social Epistemology and Early Modern Philosophy

Author(s): Amy M. Schmitter / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Many contemporary social epistemologists take themselves to be combatting an individualist approach to knowledge typified by Descartes. Although I agree that Descartes presents an individualist picture of scientific knowledge, he does allow some practical roles for reliance on the testimony and beliefs of others. More importantly, however, his reasons for committing to individualism raise important issues for social epistemology, particularly about how reliance on mere testimony can propagate prejudices and inhibit genuine understanding. The implications of his views are worked out more fully by some of his immediate successors; I examine how François Poulain de la Barre, and (briefly) Mary Astell analyze the social conditions for epistemic agency in a Cartesian vein.

Thomas Hobbes’s Elements of Law and His Third Objections to Descartes’s Meditations

Author(s): Krzysztof Wawrzonkowski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In this article I endeavour to present the axis of the dispute between Hobbes and Descartes on the ground of Meditation, and its most important moments. I focus primarily on the analysis of the most important accusations made by Hobbes and the reconstruction of some of his views, which at the time could only be found in The Elements of Law, Nature, and Politics. This work was the first major and coherent attempt to speak out on cognitive-theory and social issues; I strive to defend the thesis that understanding the content of Objections requires knowledge of this work. The mature form of the work shows that the Englishman already had his views well thought-out and could feel quite confident in formulating from their perspective critical remarks on Descartes’s philosophy, to which, it seems, he may have owed quite a lot.

The Cartesianism and Anti-Cartesianism of Locke’s Concept of Personal Identity

Author(s): Adam Grzeliński / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This article focuses on the relationship between the conceptions of personal identity presented by Descartes and by Locke. Contrary to common readings, I claim that the difference between them cannot be reduced to a simple contrast between rational substantialism and genetic empiricism. Locke does not resign from the substantialist position but delimits the two spheres: natural cognition with its foundation in experience and philosophical speculations, in which he tries to present a rational interpretation of religious dogmas which is consistent with his epistemological programme. Locke’s criticism is directed against the Cartesian notion of a thinking thing as a substance independent of the body and his description of the differentiation of experience and his depiction of human subjectivity is expanded in relation to Cartesian philosophy: personal identity gains explication at four complementary levels: psychological, biological, socio-legal, and religious.

John Locke ve Thomas Hobbes’un Teorilerinde Özgürlük ve Otorite Sorunu Üzerine Bir İnceleme

Author(s): Aslıhan Çoban Balci / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 1/2020

This article tackles with the questions of freedom and authority in the thoughts of J. Locke and T. Hobbes. J. Locke is mostly known as the father of classical liberal thought whereas T. Hobbes is known with his famous work Leviathan within which he questions the source of sovereignty and made a focus on a strong sovereign. Both thinkers are social contract thinkers. However, their descriptions on state of nature are completely different. In this work, not only the mere concepts of freedom and authority but also legitimate power, law, despotism and consent will be discussed in their thought as such they are very related to the freedom and authority. To that end, first the relationship between state and individual will be addressed. Second the relationship between law and liberty will be mentioned. Then the concepts of political power and authority will be overviewed. Lastly the main questions associated with freedom and authority will be evaluated. At the end, it is supposed to delineate a general assessment about these two thinkers on their critical concepts, freedom and authority.

Stary i nowy reżim w badaniach rękopisów

Author(s): Nathalie Ferrand / Language(s): Polish Issue: 39/2019

The article attempts to outline the history of French genetic research upon 18th-century manuscript collections. Contrary to the stereotypical view of the 18th century as a period when manuscripts were allegedly destroyed in order to hide evidence of the painstaking execution of the final version of a work, this epoch did leave us manuscripts, frequently full of corrections, which suggest that the Enlightenment thought and literature kept searching and experimenting. The Enlightenment philosophical and political concepts had undergone many stages before they adopted the shape we are familiar with. Thanks to the existence of their preliminary, draft versions, enlightenment novels, theatrical plays and poems provide an opportunity to observe the whole process of creation. The fascinating workshop of enlightenment drafts and subsequent versions of written works shows an area of literary and philosophical work marked by aesthetic and ideological conflicts, which shook the authors in their process of artistic creation.

The Lion and the Fox: Montaigne, Lipsius and Post-Machiavellian Conservative Prudence

Author(s): Ferenc Hörcher / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

This essay deals with the post-Machiavellian phase of the history of prudence in Western political thought. After the sudden rise of Machiavellism, or the reason of state discourse, the second half of the 16th century saw an effort to turn back to a more traditional understanding of the virtue of prudence, or at least to try to combine prudence and reason of state in a way which would help to moderate its subversive power. Confronting the warlike events of their age, in their politically oriented writings the two hero of the present paper, Montaigne and Lipsius, expressed an interest in the question how a more tradition-based concept of prudence could and should find its place once again in politics. The paper is going to show how Montaigne’s prudence integrates much of Machiavelli’s insight, while Lipsius’s concept of prudence combines “reason of state” and Christian stoicism. Finally it will be argued that both thinkers represent varieties of early modern conservative prudence, or alternatively, of political realism.

Paradoxes in Jīva Gosvāmī’s concept of the soul, path to perfection and liberation

Author(s): Dagmara Wasilewska / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2019

This article is devoted to the role and significance of paradoxes in the philosophical thought and mysticism of the sixteenth-century Bengali Vaishnava theologian Jīva Gosvāmī. He situates his system within the Vedānta school, where the main category distinguishing its branches and deciding on their specific character is the relation between the Absolute, the phenomenal world and the human being. In Gosvāmī’s school, this relation involves identity and distinctness (bhedābheda) of those categories at the same time, referred to by the word acintya (“inaccessible to reason”), which further stresses this ontological paradox. Although doctrinally the most important, it is not the only paradox in Gosvāmī’s thought. Adopting this core metaphysical thesis engendered many other aporias, including those concerning the nature of the soul, the concept of bhakti (loving devotion to a deity) and the idea of liberation (mukti), which Goswāmī then attempts to solve in his most important philosophical treatise – Ṣaṭsandarbha.

Reconstructing Sylva sylvarum. Ralph Austen’s Observations and the Use of Experiment

Author(s): Oana Lidia Matei / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Bacon’s projects of natural history were extremely popular in the mid-seventeenth century, especially for a group of people devoted to experimental activities, namely the Hartlib Circle. Ralph Austen, one member of the Hartlib Circle, tried to construct his own project of natural history using Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum as a pattern and following the Baconian scheme with particular interest for the methodological aspects entailed by such an endeavor. This paper provides an account of Austen’s attempts at writing a natural history as found in his Observations upon some part of Sr Francis Bacon’s Naturall History. It discusses the methodology and aims served by such an enterprise, both practical and theoretical: the role of experimentation in the process of compiling a natural history as the most reliable activity able to provide accurate knowledge of the natural world and the determination to provide general rules and axioms about nature.

What is a World? Deception, Possibility, and the Uses of Fiction from Cervantes to Descartes

Author(s): Justin E. H. Smith / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

In this short essay I will aim to show that literary fiction is consistently at the vanguard of the exploration of philosophical problems relating to the concept of world, while what we think of as philosophy, in the narrower sense, typically arrives late on the scene, picking up themes that have already been explored in literary texts that are explicitly intended as exercises of the imagination. I will pursue this argument with a sustained investigation of the shared aims and methods of Miguel de Cervantes and René Descartes.

Leibniz and Calvino, Possible Worlds and Possible Cities, Philosophy and Fiction

Author(s): Ohad Nachtomy / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities presents a wide array of possible cities—cities whose composition turns on a productive ambiguity of their being described or invented by Marco Polo in his conversations with Kublai Khan. Implicit in this book is also a theory about how all possible cities are composed. The method turns on decompos¬ing a city down to its basic elements and recomposing it in different ways through the imagination. I argue that there is a close affinity between Calvino’s theory of fictional cities and Leibniz’s theory of possible worlds. The main similarity is that both theories are combinatorial—they suppose that possibilities are produced by combination and variation of basic elements. The paper presents Leibniz’s theory of possibility in its metaphysical context and explores the similarity (as well as some differences) with Calvino’s cities in their literary context. I suggest that there is a rather strong relation between the theory of literary fiction implicit in Invisible Cities and Leibniz’s theory of possibility, in that both define the possible in terms of the conceivable. Indeed, Leibniz often refers to literary examples to substantiate his position, and I argue that this reveals an essential feature of his theory.

Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, Dordrecht: Springer, 2013, 405 pp.

Author(s): Lucian Petrescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

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