"Metafizičke spekulacije" u etnologiji. Pred 150-godišnjicu rođenja, odnosno uz 70-godišnjicu smrti Adolfa Bastiana (Bremen 1826 - Port of Spain 1905)

Author(s): Vitomir Belaj / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 4/1974

Als Ausgangspungt wurde hier die Kontoverse Bastian-Haekel über die Evolutionslehre gewählt, in der Bastian Uber d ie methodisch unzulässigen Auslegungen auf Grund voreiliger Verallgemeinerungen mit recht spottete. Weiter wurde gezeigt, wie in jeder ethnologischen "Schule" zu solchen "metaphysischen" Trugschlüssen kommen kann. Das geschieht immer, wenn auf Grund ungenügender (oder gar falsch gemachter) Beobachtungen Schlüsse gezogen werden, in dessen "Gesetzm ässigkeit" dann geglaubt wird; in solchen Fällen wird in eine Fiktion geglaubt, in eine nicht vorhandene Gesetzmässigkeit (die eine gewisse Macht ausüben soll) , in etwas aussernatürliches, "uber-natürliches, meta-physisches, ganz egal was für "fortschrittliche" Ideen sonst der Gelehrte zu folgen meint. Solche Abschweifungen stehen nicht nur der richtigen wissenschaftlichen Arbeit im Wege, sondern können auch schwerwiegende politische Folgen haben. Gerade deshalb ist es wichtig, noch zu rechter Zeit die Unwissenschaftlichkeit einzelner "wissenschaftlichen" Versuche als solche zu erkennen und public zu machen.

"One" and "Many" in Islam - The Path (Sirat) and the Ways (Subul) in the Qur'an

Author(s): Habibollah Babaei / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

The Qur'an considers both one path (sirat) and many ways (subul) simultaneously as a direction to righteousness and religiosity. The same kind of one and many has been revealed about wickedness and unrighteousness as well. Now, the question arises here, what is the relationship between plurality and unity in both righteousness and unrighteousness? I think considering these questions will offer a new perspective in regard to 'unity and plurality' which is an important issue in a pluralistic world such as ours. In order to respond to these questions, it would be significant to illuminate the relationship between many divine ways and the one divine path on the one hand, and to clarify the distinction between divine ways and devil ways on the other.

(Mis)reading Matters in Titus Andronicus: Ekphrastic Displacements and the Aemulatio Game on the Renaissance Stage

Author(s): Carmen Florescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

This essay studies Titus Andronicus‘s (mis)reading of the classics in order to tease out certain displacements which Shakespeare‘s play effects relative to its sources. Arguably, aemulatio in Titus can also suggest concerns with theatrical issues, such as the presencing onstage of characters and acts inspired by classical texts, as well as constituting an aemulatio of other Elizabethan playwrights, however problematic with respect to the object of emulation: escalating violence to (re)map gender hierarchy through multiple instantiations of the playwright persona. While, as Shakespeareans agree, the Philomela myth in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses is central to shaping, even scripting, the plot of Titus, I find a particular detail in Ovid worth re-reading, namely the tapestries woven by female characters such as Philomela, which no longer make sense onstage and which Shakespeare therefore dispenses with, or rather transmutes. I argue that Shakespeare‘s multiple displacements of the Ovidian tapestry – and generally the repurposing of ekphrasis – render visible the silent assumptions of patriarchy as encoded by Ovid, through ekphrasis, in a male-authored text cross-voicing female plight: that women can/should be and have been objectified under patriarchy, and that their reified condition may at times recall an aesthetic artefact which arrests the gaze and may (or may not) move to pity, but cannot challenge the foundational violence of patriarchy

(rec). Paweł Gondek, Projekt autonomicznej filozofii realistycznej. Mieczysława A. Krąpca i Stanisława Kamińskiego teoria bytu, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu i Wydawnictwo KUL, Lublin 2015

Author(s): Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

(rec.) Dawid Lipski, Jan Peckham i Tomasz z Akwinu. Spór o jedność formy substancjalnej w człowieku, seria: Opera philosophorum medii aevi (textus et studia), tom 15, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, Warszawa 2015

Author(s): Jacek Grzybowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2016

(rec.) Vittorio Possenti, Il realismo e la fine della filosofia moderna („Realizm i koniec filozofii nowożytnej”), Armando Editore, Roma 2016

Author(s): Andrzej Kobylinski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2017

A COMMENTARY UPON GADAMER’S INTERPRETATION OF HEGEL

Author(s): Anton Crisan / Language(s): English / Issue: Sp.Iss./2015

A Commentary upon Gadamer’s Interpretation of Hegel. In light of a renewed scholarly undertaking of the Hegel‒Gadamer connection, the purpose of the present paper is to carry further this much needed re-approach of the issue by stressing yet another one of its aspects. I am referring to the scholarly insights that Gadamer himself provides us with in his interpretation of Hegel. Since many of Gadamer’s essays on Hegel are actually studies originally meant as contributions to major journals dealing with Hegel’s work, my claim is that we can retrieve from them answers to many ongoing debates in the Hegel scholarship. I will insist on only one of these issues, namely Gadamer’s account of Hegel’s relation to metaphysics.

A Comparative Analysis of the Concept of Implication in Some Contemporary Logical Systems and Their Origins in Antiquity

Author(s): Doroteya Angelova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2017

This article examines the main characteristics of the concepts of implication in relevant, connexive and paraconsistent logics and discusses the origins of these concepts in Antiquity. It is made a comparative analysis between the meaning of this connective in the three logics in regard to their correspondence to the conditional “if…., then….” used in natural language and presents arguments that the notion of implication, proposed by relevant logic, provides the most adequate formal explication of the conditional connective in the mentioned sense.

A Contextual and Philosophical Analysis of Aquinas’ Fourth Way

Author(s): Matthew W. Knotts / Language(s): English / Issue: 59/2014

The task of this essay is a reconsideration and rehabilitation of the fourth way of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. The argument ex gradibus is first presented with attention to the philosophical-theological context of the five ways, in addition to matters of historical context. It will become clear that the arguments are enthymematic and should thus be read charitably in connection with other aspects of Aquinas’ philosophy (cf. Copleston 1976; Fogelin 1990; Kerr 2001). Moreover, in contrast to the prevailing sentiment that the fourth way should be read primarily in a Platonic light (cf., e.g., Van Steenberghen 1980), I argue that the fourth way should rather be read in connection with other crucial aspects of Aquinas’ metaphysics of being (cf. Urban 1984). Finally, I reconsider some of the fundamental aspects of the argument, e.g., the ‘principle of the maximum’ (cf. Flew 1966, Kenny 1969, Van Steenberghen 1980, Doolan 2008). The upshot is a clearer understanding of what Aquinas actually means in the fourth way, which in turn enables a more informed evaluation of the argument itself.

A Critical Analysis of Avicenna’s Proofs of the Impossibility of Human Reincarnation

Author(s): Husain Agha Shiraz / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

The topic of reincarnation is one that has been discussed in a number of different fields, under different headings and with different methodes. For example, this topic has been discussed in philosophy in relation to the soul. This is because reincarnation implies that a soul is transferred from one body to another. When philosophers discuss reincarnation, they do so by using reason. However, this topic has also been discussed in theology, in the section concerned with the Afterlife. This is because sometimes reincarnation is presented as an alternative to the concept of Ma'ad - the reattachment of human souls to their bodies in another world, with the purpose of being judged and recompensed for the actions they did in this world. When theologians treat this topic, they do so from a rational-religious perspective. For the most part, Muslim scholars have denied the possibility of reincarnation. However, some of them say that it is something that is rationally impossible. Other say that it is rationally possible but does not occur - as religion tells us. Generally, philosophers were of the opinion that reincarnation is something that is rationally impossible. They have presented many philosophical proofs to substantiate this claim. One of the philosophers who discussed this subject at length was Avicenna. He was adamant about the impossibility of reincarnation and presented some complicated rational proofs for this matter. One of the proofs provided by Avicenna was one in which he presented a number of different scenarios in which this phenomenon might occur. Avicenna proved that all of these scenarios are impossible. In another proof, Avicenna said that reincarnation is something that goes against intuition and would lead to one persons's being two people. There are numerous problems with both of Avicenna's proofs and therefore they must be rejected or reconstructed. This article seeks to present these proofs in a structured manner and then to critique them.

A fiktív karakterek és a lehetséges világok metafizikája

Author(s): Dombrovszki Áron / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3-4/2016

A Japanese-American Sam Spade: The Metaphysical Detective in Death in Little Tokyo, by Dale Furutani

Author(s): Carla Portilho / Language(s): English / Issue: 28/2017

The aim of this essay is to discuss the legacy of the roman noir in contemporary detective fiction produced outside the hegemonic center of power, here represented by the novel Death in Little Tokyo (1996), written by Japanese-American author Dale Furutani. Starting from the concept of the metaphysical detective (Haycraft 76; Holquist 153-156), characterized by deep questioning about narrative, interpretation, subjectivity, the nature of reality and the limits of knowledge, this article proposes a discussion about how these literary works, which at first sight represent a traditionally Anglo-American genre, constitute narratives that aim to rescue the memory, history and culture of marginalized communities. Typical of late modernity detective fiction, the metaphysical detective has none of the positivistic detective’s certainties, as he does not share in his Cartesian notion of totality, being presented instead as a successor of the hardboiled detective of the roman noir. In this article I intend to analyze the paths chosen by the author and discuss how his re-reading of the roman noir dialogues with the texts of hegemonic noire detective fiction, inscribing them in literary tradition and subverting them at the same time.

A less simplistic metaphysics: Peirce’s layered theory of meaning as a layered theory of being

Author(s): Marc Champagne / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2015

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual signaction (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this asymmetric subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing uninterpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced.

A Mythic-Symbolic Perspective on Politics

Author(s): Sandu Frunza / Language(s): English / Issue: 40/2015

In an era of generalized communication, democratic societies cannot escape the radical changes that the development of different types of communication claims. Political communication determines new types of political practice and adhesion. As in the case of postmodern communication in general, in political communication, expressions of symbolic communication characteristic for traditional societies are still being used, even if those expressions are presented as contemporary symbolic constructs, as for example the construct of “postmodern tribes”. This text focuses on how these elements are highlighted in the socio-analysis of Vasile Sebastian Dâncu, one of the most renowned experts in the Romanian political culture. The public space, shaped in the past by the intellectual elite, bearer of values and symbolic conscience, is being seized by television stars, by the online communication specialists. This leads to new fragmentations in and coagulation of political space, and to a prevalence of sentimentalities, mythical stories, and mystical experiences at the expense of rationality, civic involvement and ideologies. The new configuration of political groups of interest and the new ways of adhesion typical for “political followers” belonging to the Facebook generation are regarded from a mythic– symbolic mentality which links them to a behavior and a kind of solidarity characterizing tribal groups which are acting on a postmodern political scene.

A Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Miracle as a “Supernatural Event”

Author(s): Adam Swiezynski / Language(s): English / Issue: 49/2017

The notion of the supernaturality of an event may be understood in various ways. Most frequently ‘supernatural’ means ‘separated from nature’, i.e. different from nature. Thus, what is meant here is the difference in ontological character. The definitions of miracle, present in literature, emphasize the fact that we may talk about a miracle only when the phenomenon takes place beyond the natural order or stands in opposition to it. The description of a miracle as a ‘supernatural event’ contains in itself the reference to that which is natural. The supernaturality of an event means that it surpasses (transcends) naturality. Additionally, this transcendence contains a kind of opposition to that which is natural. However, the miracle as a supernatural event takes place within the scope of that which is natural, although it takes place in a different way from natural events. It seems that this supernaturality may involve two things: (1) the course of the miraculous event; (2) the cause of the miraculous event. We should consider each of them separately and specify what we understand by the supernatural course of the event and by the supernatural cause of the event. If we could prove that we can talk about supernatural events at least in one of the two signaled aspects of supernaturality, then we would be able to define the miraculous event as a supernatural one. The analyses proposed in the paper allow us to formulate the following statement concerning the miraculous event, which is, to a great extent, a critical correction of the traditional way of understanding it: the miracle may be correctly understood as a supernatural event, only when this supernaturality concerns the personal cause of the event and not its course.

A Posthumanist Microethnography of Multiculture: Olfactory Assemblages in Rome’s Banglatown

Author(s): Elisa Fiore / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

The present article draws from a wider research project conducted in the months of February and May 2015 in Tor Pignattara, one of the twelve urban zones constituting the V Municipality of the city of Rome. The project, which takes the shape of a multisensory, posthumanist microethnography of multiculture, mainly attempts to investigate how affective urban materialities are capable of organizing and co-participating in the iterative reconfigurings of everyday experience with/in the locale. In particular, it looks at how material social practices such as racialization, gendering and classing intra-act (Barad 2007) in the production of constitutive in/exclusion(s) with/in it. After a brief introduction about the context of the research and the process of gendered racialization by which it is currently invested, this article proposes feminist new materialism as a theoretico-methodological framework that counters the epistemological identity politics responsible for the essentialization and reification of constituencies in the locale. By conceiving identity structurations as more-than-human assemblages given by the intra-action of human and nonhuman actants, feminist materialism challenges their assumed discreteness and poses them as co-constitutive, dynamic and overlapping historical formations rather than as pre-existing givens. In fact, it accounts for the enactment of the nonhuman in the materialization of what there is. This article proposes a feminist new materialist reading of food and kitchen odors in Tor Pignattara as a tool to denounce the arbitrariness of the dichotomous thinking that structures life in late western modernity.

A Reply to “The Antinomy of Future Contingent Events”

Author(s): Timothy Pawl / Language(s): English / Issue: 4EOV/2018

In this brief reply I discuss Fr. Marcin Tkaczyk’s excellent article, “The Antinomy of Future Contingent Events.” I first raise some concerns about his understanding of representation. I then raise three concerns about his preferred solution to the antinomy: first, that a part of his theory of representation itself motivates a rejection of proposition 1 of the antinomy; second, that one needn’t employ retroactive causal connections to weaken 1 as he does; and third, that it is difficult to make sense of the sort of backward efficient causation that Tkaczyk requires for his solution to work.

A semmi nevei

Author(s): István Király V. / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 10/2014

A Spiritual Philosophy of Recovery: Aquinas and Alcoholics Anonymous

Author(s): A. William McVey / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The article is an attempt to formulate a Thomistic spiritual philosophy of recovery. The author faces two issues. One, what do recovering alcoholics mean when they say: “I am spiritual, but not religious?” He comes to the conclusion that it means recovering alcoholics are experiencing spiritual healing in their willingness to trust a loving God who has performed a miracle of recovery from alcoholism in their life. As a result of this experience, they are prepared to live a life of virtuous habit. Two, recovering alcoholics have discovered a spiritual second nature of moral character. The author explains why there are many in A.A. who discover that as God comes into their life and they turn to the path of virtue they rediscover religious worship and devotion is essential to the one day at a time journey.

A TOUCHY SUBJECT: THE TACTILE METAPHOR OF TOUCH

Author(s): Mirt Komel / Language(s): English / Issue: 82/2016

The article proposes an interpretation of metaphors and metaphoric discourse through the perspective of touch. The article first deals with metaphors of touch in the history of western philosophy (especially traditional metaphysics from Plato to Hegel) in order to produce an operative category of touch that will allow, in the second step, to grasp the tactile quality of the metaphors. If metaphors are usually (rhetorics, politics, literature) regarded as a specific form of language able to not only touch the subject matter in the most suitable way but also touch on the target subject (listener/reader), then it is precisely because there is a certain haptic quality involved in language itself, discernible especially in the discourse of those who know how to best exploit metaphors in their endeavours.