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This paper suggests studies on genetically engineering nonhuman animal genes have globalized over the last 30 years. The results unveil maps that give a global overview of universities' studies into engineering animal genes, by purpose and by species, at a state scale. A network map also shows how studies on engineering animal genes are co-constituted internationally, at a state scale. Some of the more notable map findings are developed using a novel ontological approach. This ontology relates the being of an animal, a constitutive lack, to power relations. The beings of animals are trapped into serving capital through the engineering of their genes. This reconfiguration allows the ensnaring of the body in agricultural, or other, power relations. The scale of this carceral archipelago is positioned as a global risk. Life energy, by nature, resists capture. Therefore, the paper concludes that the clock is ticking on genetic scientists' Faustian bargain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars usually understand Κύρια Δόξα (ΚΔ) 33 as an antiplatonic polemic. This paper denies the communis opinio. First, it argues for an ontological reading of the maxim according to which justice (understood as virtue) is not a body but a property. Second, it shows that the Stoics hold the very thesis disputed in ΚΔ 33, namely that virtue is a body. This makes the Stoa the natural target of the maxim. Finally, the paper deals with De rerum natura I.464-482: here Lucretius criticizes nameless opponents with regard to the thesis that events are to be understood as bodies. If these opponents can be identified with the Stoics, as is usually assumed, there is further evidence besides ΚΔ 33 that the Epicureans engaged with the Stoic thesis of corporealism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical development from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being as a self-critique and revised understanding of Martin Heidegger. It focuses on later Levinas's analysis of language in terms of the difference between Saying and Said. For Levinas, the Said represents the betrayal of ethical Saying into ontological essence. This echoes Heidegger's notion of the forgetfulness of Being in beings. However, Levinas critiques Heidegger's own philosophy as remaining within the Said. The paper explores three strategies of "unsaying" that Levinas discerns in Western philosophy to disrupt ontological Said: ontology itself, skepticism, and philosophical conversation. It argues that Levinas ultimately seeks an alternative "prophetic" mode of language beyond philosophy that enacts difference, which the paper relates to Talmud. The paper claims that the later Levinas no longer simply opposes Greek to Jewish thought, but rather seeks to deploy a specifically Jewish form of language to interrupt Western metaphysics from within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop a phenomenological account of community which would not be pervaded by Eurocentric assumptions. Such Eurocentrism is what Husserl's phenomenological framework has been accused of. I first reconstruct Husserl's phenomenology of community in his late transcendental phenomenology by examining the Vienna Lecture. I show that Husserl's Eurocentrism is encapsulated in his account of corporeity, which simultaneously recognizes the importance of corporeity and its necessary overcoming in theoria , which originates in the European philosopher. I then argue that Merleau-Ponty, through his rigorously embodied phenomenology, can offer a non-Eurocentric phenomenology of community. Elaborating on the Husserlian insight of corporeity, notably the perceptual experience and the écart at stake in the encounter with other bodies, allows Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the flesh to recast community from and with the body as an open, situated, and non-archeo-teleological structure, allowing phenomenology to reimagine inter-cultural encounters away from tropes of European exemplarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from Andean cosmological, mythological and aesthetic lineages, this paper is about the possibility of a phenomenology of things at catastrophic ends. In this regard, I approach things under the sway of a (de)formative emptiness. In the first part, I develop a relational ontology on the basis of the Andean notion of pacha or cosmos, which provides a phenomenological frame for a determination of "place," "world" and "topology." I also contrast an elemental topology of the cosmos configured by ouranic sunlight with an elemental catastrophism that overturns it. In the second part, I study a chronological series of artifacts in an Andean aesthetic lineage in order to attempt a phenomenology of "things" (utensils, buildings, mountains) that "spectrally" hover in overturns of the cosmos (pachakuti). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of ontological commitment in Plato's Hippias Major has been important in disputes over the dialogue's place in the corpus, its meaning, and its authenticity. But this question seems to have been settled—the Hippias Major is not committed to the 'forms.' Such an ontological conclusion has been vigorously defended, but its defenses rest on a problematic meta-ontological framework. This paper suggests a more adequate framework and brings more evidence to the evaluation of the question of ontological commitment in the Hippias Major. It concludes that the dialogue is indeed committed to some kind of form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate productive research on institutions from within cultural evolutionary science and, especially, philosophy of science. It aims to achieve this goal by distinguishing between three types of question a theory of institutions ought to answer; by comparing and analyzing three theories of institutions; and by raising, for each theory, potential challenges and questions. Theories analyzed include a cognitive psychological theory, an ecological theory, and self-interested enforcement theory. Common features of the theories are identified where possible. Emphasis is placed on stating constructive criticisms and research questions. The paper concludes with comments about the uncertain ontology of institutions and about consequences of building cultural evolutionary theories of institutions on formal models of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been argued that Jung failed to explain and ground his theory of the archetypes sufficiently, as he remained caught between a psychological, a biological, and a transcendent model of explanation. Inspired by Martin Heidegger's methodology in Being and Time , this paper will combine an ontological inquiry with a phenomenological analysis of the archetype, to re-interpret it beyond the Jungian psychology and its inherent paradoxes. I will outline a distinction between a psychological appropriation of the archetype, and one that approaches its numinosity as such. According to my argument, this twofold phenomenology of the archetype reveals it to be a form through which we become aware of an ontological difference within our being. The argument will mainly be unfolded through an interpretation of the nymph-maiden in Lucas Cranach's 16th century painting series Nymph of the Spring , followed by an assessment of our contemporary relation to the same archetype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows the ongoing discussion with philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills (2020) regarding the nature, origin, and essence of the archetype and psyche, in which my approach that incorporates key features of the philosophy of mind is being compared and contrasted with Mills' onto-phenomenal approach. Both Mills and I come at this question from very different backgrounds, making interdisciplinary work challenging but rewarding. In this paper I will attempt to start from Mills' foundational position to bridge the two frameworks together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than 40 years the relationships that exist between divination and knowledge have become central to anthropology's understanding of African religious practice. This paper deemphasizes the commonly mobilized 'divination as knowledge' trope in favor of highlighting its role in achieving well-being. Indeed, I argue that by focusing on divination as a way of knowing ethnographers have inadvertently ignored what happens after said knowledge is acquired. It is these moments that I find to be at the heart of divination's enduring value. Through an analysis of divination rituals, initiations, and material objects, alternative ways to examining divination in the West African rain forest are considered and explored. Looking to Fá divination, one of the major oracular systems employed by Fon speakers in the Republic of Bénin, I turn my attention to the ways in which divination helps individuals fulfill their destinies and achieve goodness in the world. In this way I argue that West African systems of divination are only secondarily about knowledge and first and foremost about achieving a sense of balance (coolness) and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Avicennian distinction between quiddity and existence opens the way to several derivative issues concerning the quiddity of existence (what existence is) and the ontological status of existence (whether and how existence is). This paper presents a fine-grained account of the positions and arguments developed by post-Avicennian authors on these matters, showing how the debates on states (aḥwāl) and grounding (taʿlīl) feed into the picture. The discussions on the quiddity of existence revolve around the features of its knowability and its connection to a ground (ʿilla), or lack thereof. As for the ontological status of existence, the standard idea of a clash between realism (existence is an extramental existent) and conceptualism (existence is a purely mental existent) calls for further refinement. First, realism itself encompasses two distinct positions when it comes to the relation between the second-order existence of existence and existence itself (sameness, additionality). Second, the tradition presents other doctrines not easily classifiable within the realism-conceptualism framework (the existential non-assertability of existence, the non-existence of existence). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that we should reject G. E. Moore's anti-skeptical argument as it is presented in "Proof of an External World." However, the reason I offer is different from traditional objections. A proper understanding of Moore's "proof" requires paying attention to an important distinction between two forms of skepticism. I call these Ontological Skepticism and Epistemic Skepticism. The former is skepticism about the ontological status of fundamental reality, while the latter is skepticism about our empirical knowledge. Philosophers often assume that Moore's response to "external world skepticism" deals exclusively with the former, not the latter. But this is a mistake. I shall argue that Moore's anti-skeptical argument targets an ontological form of skepticism. Thus, the conclusion is an ontological claim about fundamental reality, while the premises are epistemic claims. If this is correct, then the conclusion outstrips the scope of its premises and proves too much. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a recently articulated, emergentist conception of ethical naturalism and its commitment to causal efficacy, or the idea that moral properties have causal powers, along with its supporting commitment to moral causation. After I reconstruct the theory, I explain how it offers some interesting theoretical benefits to moral realists in virtue of its commitment to causal efficacy. Then, after locating some examples of moral causation in support of this commitment, I present and respond to five objections to such causation, which all threaten to undermine this support. Lastly, I consider a very serious problem that the theory faces in virtue of positing emergent moral properties as responsible for moral causation – namely, the problem of downward moral causation. I describe this problem in detail and argue that, as it stands, it does not spell doom for the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies two central modes of discourse in contemporary pragmatist aesthetics: Cultural Emergentism and Experiential Somaesthetics. Whereas Cultural Emergentism focuses on developing a non-reductive ontology of culture, Experiential Somaesthetics preserves the traditional pragmatist emphasis on embodied experience and examines the place that the care and cultivation of the living soma has in improving our aesthetic transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reading of texts—of Adūnīs, al-Maʿarrī, and al-Fārābī—and argues that for each, however differently, language declines the Bildungs-centric terms and reading practices into which it has been conscripted in literary and colonial modernity. The article opens with Adūnīs and considers the reflection on the singular and the plural given in his poem Mufrad bi-ṣīghat al-jamʿ, framing the reflection on language and interpretation on which the remainder of the paper turns. I then offer readings of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s Risālat al-ghufrān (Epistle of Forgiveness), and several of the philosophical writings of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, to argue that what takes place with language in these texts is recalcitrant to the understandings and practices of language privileged in the modern state form and its fallout. Because of this recalcitrance, these texts interrupt the historical and hermeneutic terms privileged in reading practices in the literary humanities. Language, in the texts I consider, becomes an event that militates against its own interpretive domestication, a form of reading that declines its coercive stabilization as a coherent temporal form—what I call philologesis. In this sense, this is also a paper about philology and its ongoing consequences—for language, for reading, and for poetics—in the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs and analyzes Thomas Aquinas’ intriguing views on transeunt causal activity, which have been the subject of an interpretive debate spanning from the fifteenth century up until the present. In his Physics commentary, Aquinas defends the Aristotelian positions that (i) the actualization of an agent’s active potential is the motion that it causes in its patient and (ii) action and passion are the same motion. Yet, in other texts, Aquinas claims that (iii) action differs from passion and (iv) “action is in the agent” as subject. This paper proposes a solution for how to reconcile Aquinas’ varying claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality. In addition to advancing understanding of Aquinas’ views on causal activity, the paper also offers insights into more general topics in his thought, such as the relationship between actualities and accidents and the nature of extrinsic accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of world literature, questions about the temporal versus spatial nature of worlding persist. One reason is the problematic nature of this dichotomy. Taking up Pheng Cheah's calls for the temporal worlding of indeterminate becoming, my paper complicates the fate of spatiality in this move toward ontological open-endedness. With discussion of the vanishing point, I postulate that imaginative distancing in its relation to memory involves a spatialization that need not be circumscribed by global flattening of the humanist ethos central to the worldliness of world literature. In response to the connection Cheah draws between literature and worldliness, I claim that the latter is characterized by a spatiotemporal elasticity born from the proliferation of meaning in the former. At the extreme, this movement gestures toward the infinite held by the vanishing point, and there, indeterminacy appears absurdly paradoxical in our search for world value, as consciousness loses itself in the repeated and necessary attempt to transcend distance that cannot be measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapport between religion and film is not only historical but also ontological. The Abrahamic faiths specifically (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) and the audio-visual medium of cinema share a complex affiliation with reference to two of their foundational elements: image and word. Building on the constitutive kernels of the Abrahamic religion of Islam (image and word), this paper will locate and define its formal manifestations in cinema; in other words, the way in which the conception of image and word at Islam marks film form. This endeavor will be sustained by calling upon some distinctive film cases of the so-called New Iranian Cinema. In particular, Offside (2006) and This Is Not a Film (2011) by Jafar Panahi, and Close-up (1990) by Abbas Kiarostami, as well as other films, will be utilized for analysis in order to delineate the qualities of the claimed religious film form in question. These films are selected as they foreground and thus play out the dialectic of image and word, their absence and their presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defining nonreligion has raised conceptual uncertainties about its substantive ontology and its relational distinctions from religion, secularity, secularization, and the secular. The field's early development has deployed the religious/secular binary as a methodological tool, rendering secularity and nonreligion visible through its discursive positioning of being in-relation to religion. Although this has proven productive in substantiating such concepts, it has also constrained the field by identifying its objects of study indirectly. This paper argues for a proximal distinction between secularity and nonreligion using the development of secular Alcoholics Anonymous groups in Toronto, Canada, as an example, locating them between borders that constitute a third space. Within this space, secularity and nonreligion operate, identifying locations of proximity, border phenomena, and religious/secular entanglements that have otherwise remained interstitial and have precluded analysis. In turn, borders are retained for methodological utility, while the third space opens new analytical possibilities to advance the field forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although an ontological approach to musical works has dominated analytic aesthetics for almost fifty years, criticisms have recently started to spread in the philosophical literature. Contestants blame mainstream musical ontology for lacking historical awareness, questioning the cogency of metaphysical proposals that are substantially essentialist with regard to our musical concepts. My aim in this paper is to address this accusation by engaging the historicist critics in a sustained debate. I argue that even if the arguments based on history and sociology turn out to be accurate, this may not be enough of a reason to abandon the ontological project altogether. Ontology and history do not necessarily clash. Moreover, historical-sociological examinations do not fulfil our philosophical interest in music. I conclude by making a plea to "historical ontology," a perspective that does not reject ontology but closely connects it to the dialectic between historical research and aesthetic interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper addresses itself to the question of ontology in the work of Jean- Luc Nancy. In so doing it attempts to read Nancy's ontological project as a project of the deconstruction of structural forms of political violence. To this end, Nancy's notion of "inoperative community" is brought into dialogue with Benjamin in order to show how, in Nancy's work, ontology operates not as the refusal of critique, but as its very condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, using ethnographic field data from three indigenous Akan communities, we show that Akan religious ontology about the natural world provides a formidable resource and framework for managing the environmentally destructive tendencies of the human being. We further prove that while these ontologies about the natural world emerge from the intense religiosity of the Akan and the metaphysical worldview of the indigenous Akan, they contain strong environmental ethical norms and values worth resourcing for environmental sustainability in Ghana. We, consequently, argue that significant attention ought to be paid to these religious ontologies—beliefs, norms and practices—of the indigenous Akan, as an effective means of achieving environmental sustainability. We, therefore, propose the resourcing and adoption of indigenous religious ontologies on the natural world that have the potential of informing and enhancing environmental policies and initiatives towards environmental sustainability in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that focusing on Aristotle's theory of generation as primarily 'hylomorphic' can lead to difficulties. This is especially evident when interpreting the association between the male and sentient soul at GA 2.5. If the focus is on the male's contribution as form and the female's as matter, then soul becomes divided into nutritive from female and sentient from male which makes little sense in Aristotle's biological ontology. In contrast, by seeing Aristotle's theory as 'archēkinētic', a process initiated by the male, the development of nutritive and sentient capacities emerges as intertwined, neither capacity originating in only one sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrine of the pregivenness of the world features prominently in Husserl's numerous phenomenological analyses and descriptions of the role the world plays in our experience. Properly evaluating its function within the overall system of transcendental phenomenology is, however, by no means a straightforward task, as evidenced by many manuscripts from the 1930s. These detail various epistemological and metaphysical difficulties and potential paradoxes encumbering the notion of the pre-given world. This paper contends that some of these difficulties can be alleviated by revisiting Husserl's late concept of the earth and, more specifically, disclosing its transcendental function in the constitution of pregivenness. To test this claim, I turn to Husserl's 1931 manuscript describing the paradox of "the originary acquisition of the world." I argue that the paradox is dissolved by introducing the transcendental-phenomenological concept of the earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a review essay of Christoforos Bouzanis's Social Imaginary and the Metaphysical Discourse: On the Fundamental Predicament of Contemporary Philosophy and Social Sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idea, action, and outcome are identified as the three key objects of social sciences and are also explained as the key tasks of social sciences. Our failure to grasp the ontological differences between these three objects is shown and the fact that explaining them may require different epistemological stands and methodological tools has been a key cause of the sterility of many epistemological and methodological debates. Explicitly differentiating the three objects and understanding that an explanation is required for these different stands and tools therefore provides us with a better picture of the empirical challenges of social sciences and paves the way toward more scientific progress. This discussion also holds important pedagogical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the ontology and the meteorology of Hippocrates' On Regimen. The first part presents the elemental theory of fire and water which is based on the elemental powers movement and nutrition, and on the elemental properties warm, cold, wet, and dry. The main claim in this part is that the dualist theory of elements was meant by the Hippocratic author as a comprehensive explanation of the world. The second part presents the metaphysical foundations of meteorology. In On Regimen , natural environment has a considerable impact on human health; the theoretical basis of this interaction is given by the power of nature to transfer its elemental properties to living beings and man. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper examines a puzzling sequence of verb tenses at Phaedo ioob3-g. It rejects the idea, almost universal among commentators, that the puzzle is to be solved by construing the first verbal expression as if it were equivalent to a future. The paper then offers another solution and explores its implications for understanding the broader philosophical context of the passage. What emerges is that the new solution provides a valuable clue to figuring out what precisely Socrates has in mind when he speaks at ioob4 of the 'mode of explanation' with which he is presently engaged. Hence, the tightly focused linguistic discussion at the paper's outset ultimately takes on a good deal of significance for the interpretation of this difficult but important section of the dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a paper entitled "Computer Composition and Works of Music: Variation on a Th eme of Ingarden" (1988), Peter Simons explores some ontological problems that ensue from the use of certain forms of composition software, where the final outcome (the score) is the product of random processes within the computer. Such a method of composition raises, among others, the following questions: What kind of work (if any) has been created? Is it a work of music in the first place? Who is the composer/author? Is it the software programmer, the user, the one who selects a particular score for public performance, the computer? What is the relationship of distinct products of the same programme? Are they instances of the same work? In this paper, I shall re-examine these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement of New Realism, which in Italy has been launched by Maurizio Ferraris, is conceived explicitly in opposition to Kant. In his defense of the distinction between ontology and epistemology, Ferraris starts from the presupposition that it is Kant himself who is responsible for their confusion because of his transcendental philosophy and its consequent constructionism. In this paper I will defend Kant’s perspective, explaining his reasons (or his concept of reason), even against Meillasoux’s “speculative realism.” The basic idea is that Kant’s transcendental philosophy requires a new philosophical attitude, which implies a shift from reality to possibility as the fundamental philosophical category, since only possibility enables a critical perspective on reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyppolite stresses his proximity to Merleau-Ponty, but the received interpretation of his “anti-humanist” reading of Hegel suggests a greater distance between their projects. This paper focuses on an under-explored dimension of their philosophical relationship. I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Hyppolite are both committed to formulating a mode of philosophical expression that can avoid the pitfalls of purely formal or literal and purely aesthetic or creative modes of expression. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to navigate this dichotomy, I suggest, closely resembles Hyppolite’s interpretation of Hegel’s “speculative” mode of expression. In particular, his emphasis on the “mediating” character of philosophical language, which moves between descriptive and creative expression, suggests a debt to Hyppolite. This reading provides more evidence to think that Hyppolite cannot be straightforwardly understood as an anti-humanist or post-phenomenological thinker, and paves the way for a rapprochement between his work and the broader phenomenological tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that we can understand key aspects of the metaphysics of consciousness by understanding conscious states as having a presentational character plays an essential role in the phenomenological tradition beginning with Brentano and Husserl. In this paper, the author explores some potential consequences of this connection for contemporary discussions of the ontology of consciousness in the world. Drawing on Hintikka's analysis of epistemic modality, the author argues that the essential presentational character of consciousness can be seen as accounting for the familiar failure of substitutivity of identicals in intensional contexts of conscious presentation and further provides for an ontology of conscious presentation that avoids metaphysically problematic commitments to "special" intentional objects. The author next considers how the irreducibility of intensional contexts, if grounded in the presentational character of consciousness, also may provide for a kind of irreducibility of the "first-person" perspective to third-person or objective description across possible worlds. Finally, drawing on Chalmers' "two-dimensionalist" semantic framework, the author argues that attention to the presentational aspect of consciousness as thus understood, while it provides significant motivation for the existence of the "hard problem" of the irreducibility of consciousness to physical and structural description, is nevertheless consistent with a globally monist, rather than dualist, ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpretations of the so-called Black Notebooks have emphasized the interaction between Heidegger's philosophy, particularly his notion of a "history of being" (Seinsgeschichte), on the one hand, and his affiliation with National Socialism and his anti-Semitic views on the other. The paper proposes to understand this interaction as in part determined by the inherent logic of Heidegger's ontological reasoning: Heidegger takes power (Macht), violence (Gewalt) and brutality (Brutalität) as the key for understanding his present day and turns to these phenomena as confirmation of the ontology he envisages at the time. But the notes published so far, ranging from 1931 to 1948 (Gesamtausgabe vols. 94-97), document Heidegger's incapacity to assign to the events of these years a plausible position in his ontology. This failure deepens a trauma both personal and philosophical. Rather than reject the notion of a history of being altogether, I propose an alternative understanding of its logic motivated by Heidegger's failure to bring his ontological project to the anticipated completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little attention is given to Richard Rorty's metaethical views. No doubt this stems from the fact that most commentators are more interested in his metaphilosophical views; most see his metaethical views, offered in scattered passages, as just the downstream runoff from higher-level reflection. This article considers Rorty's metaethics on their own merits, quite apart from whether his global picture works. I ultimately argue that Rorty's metaethical outlook is attractive but beset by internal difficulties. Specifically, I contend that Rorty does not and cannot remain faithful to the methodological approach to metaethics for which he advocates. At the paper's close, I gesture at a nearby methodological approach that best approximates Rorty's metaethical methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I attempt to develop several ways Merleau-Ponty's ontology might contribute to an environmental ethic through a redefinition of his concept of flesh in terms of a general theory of affectivity. Currently accepted interpretations of the concept such as those in Abram, Toadvine, Barbaras, and Dastur rely upon conceiving flesh as a perceptual experience. I contest this interpretation and argue that a more productive conception of flesh emerges when understood in terms of Heidegger's philosophy. The paper concludes with a consideration of the normative significance of flesh by examining the role of 'wildness' within a place-based ethic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the dimensions of this paper's twofold purpose is to examine the validity of John Zizioulas' definition of personhood as communion, and whether or not this produces a coherent understanding of the ontological relation of 'being' and 'communion.' The second dimension of this paper's purpose points to Colin Gunton's similar attempt at understanding personhood by emphasizing unity-in-particularity, rather than communion alone, in the Trinity. In Gunton's contribution to this issue, I find both a correction to Zizioulas' reduction of personhood into mere communion, as well as an invitation for understanding personhood from the angle of an understanding of the notion of 'hypostasis' that takes personhood beyond 'in-communion' into 'freedom-in-trans-communion,' making this last as constitutive of personhood as the first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present concisely the Islamic kalām atomism as an alternative philosophy to Hellenizing falsafa. Kalām is a theological-philosophical discourse which, first (in the third/ninth century) ventured to rival the falsafa represented early by al-Kindī (d.ca. 252/866), then by al-Fārābī and Avicenna in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, and which eventually (in the sixth/twelfth century and after) appeared to be inclined to propose a mingling of the kalām discourse with falsafa in a series of varied "syntheses".—Focusing on the simple ontology of the basic kalām atomism, and noting the hybrid character of kalām, the aim of this paper is to help to clarify the inevitable problematic consequences of those late ventures of Islamic intellectualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an examination of the theory of materia prima of the fifteenth century Platonist Marsilio Ficino. It limits its discussion of Ficino's theory to the ontological and epistemic status of prime matter in his Platonic Theology. Ficino holds a "robust" theory of prime matter that makes two fundamental assertions: First, prime matter exists independent of form, and second, it is, at least in principle, intelligible. Ficino's theory of prime matter is framed in this paper with a discussion of the divergence among Scholastic philosophers over the nature of prime matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide a general reconstruction of Francis of Marchia's doctrine of accidental being. The paper is divided into two parts. (1) In the first part, I begin by reconstructing the debate on the nature of accidents held before Marchia, showing that such a debate is characterised by a progressive shift concerning the way to understand accidents. While the first Aristotelian interpreters regard accidents especially as inhering modes of being of substances, the majority of theologians and philosophers in the second half of the thirteenth century regard accidents as absolute beings. For them, the problem is no longer to explain if and, if so, how accidents can be distinct from substances, but how accidents and substances can make some one thing. Metaphysically, their primary focus is on explaining what the ontological status of inherence is. Although it is especially the consideration of the Eucharistic case that induces this change, I point out that many philosophers and theologians find in Aristotle's texts the philosophical support for taking this step. (2) In the second part, I focus more closely on Marchia's doctrine, arguing that Marchia's position is a slightly revised version of Scotus's. Unlike Aquinas and Bonaventure, Marchia explains Aristotle's metaphysics of accidents by way of the metaphysics of the Eucharist and not vice versa. So, in order to explain the philosophical consistency of this miraculous case, Marchia maintains that one does not need to modify the notion of inherence by distinguishing actual from potential inherence and including the latter in the accident's essence; rather it is necessary to take the case of the Eucharist seriously and, on this basis, to remove inherence totally from an accident's essence. In conclusion, the Eucharist shows that accidents are absolute beings to which actual inherence pertains contingently, potential inherence necessarily. But like Scotus's, Marchia's doctrine faces some difficulties that remain unresolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to marshall some of the evidence of the transcendental character of Heidegger's later thinking, despite his repudiation of any form of transcendental thinking, including that of his own earlier project of fundamental ontology. The transcendental significance of that early project is first outlined through comparison and contrast with the diverse transcendental turns in the philosophies of Kant and Husserl. The paper then turns to Heidegger's account of the historical source of the notion of transcendence in Plato's thinking, its legacy in various forms of transcendental philosophy, and his reasons for attempting to think in a post-transcendental way. The paper concludes by identifying four vestiges of the transcendental turn in Heidegger's later thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns a basic ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty's ontology between the reversibility of flesh and its écart. Where the former suggests continuity between the sensing and the sensible, the latter suggests their separation. It is difficult to know from reading The Visible and the Invisible which is to be prioritized or how one is to be read alongside the other. I argue that such a relation comes to light by thinking through the negation that is, for Merleau-Ponty, always constellated with being. This becomes more explicitly an ontology of differentiation or difference itself which does not prioritize identity. Such an ontology is, I argue, prefigured in Merleau-Ponty's work on passivity and its symbolic formation. The idea is that the dynamic between negation and being and of symbolic formation happens at the level of, or even in, the body. The final section is thus a consideration of "the implex," a term Merleau-Ponty borrows from Paul Valéry along with "chiasm." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to all christological models are concepts of agency, identity, and divinity, but few scholars have directly addressed these frameworks within their ancient West Asian contexts. Rather, the proclivity has been to retroject modern, Eurocentric, and binary frameworks onto the ancient texts, resulting in christological models that inevitably reflect modern orthodoxies and ontological categories. The future of christological research will depend on moving beyond this tendentiousness. In an effort to begin this process, this paper will apply findings from the cognitive sciences - which examine the way the human brain structures its perception of the world around it - to the reconstruction of ancient frameworks of agency, identity, and divinity. Applying these findings to early Jewish literature reveals the intuitive conceptualization of God's agency, reified as the divine name, as a communicable vehicle of divine presence and authority. These observations support the conclusion that early Jewish conceptualizations of divine agency provided a conceptual template for the development of early christology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jung, a self-proclaimed empiricist, resisted all metaphysical claims. Nevertheless his depth psychology hypothesized an unconscious agent, which we can never know directly. As a means of healing he implores us to loosen our resistance to the unconscious, for when ego-consciousness develops and maintains a relationship to the unconscious, human beings make the Creator conscious of His creation. Although not explicit in his theories, both the ego and the unconscious are more than psychological concepts for Jung; they are ontically real. Looking at Jung through the lens of Classical Yoga this paper invites a reconsideration of the Jungian ontic reality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, a number of philosophers have defended a novel, materialist view on the nature of musical works—musical perdurantism. According to this view, musical works are a peculiar kind of concreta, namely perduring mereological sums of performances and/or other concrete entities. One problem facing musical perdurantism stems from the thought that if this view is correct, then virtually no musical work can exist in a continuous, non-intermittent fashion. The aim of this paper is to expound this problem and show that it cannot be plausibly solved by a musical perdurantist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How hard is it to answer an ontological question? Ontological trivialism, (OT), inspired by Carnap’s internal-external distinction among “questions of existence”, replies “very easy.” According to (OT), almost every ontologically disputed entity trivially exists. (OT) has been defended by many, including Schiffer (1996; 2003; 2006) and Schaffer (2009). In this paper, I will take issue with (OT). After introducing the view in the context of Carnap-Quine dispute and presenting two arguments for it, I will discuss Hofweber’s (2005a; 2007) argument against (OT) and explain why it fails. Next, I will introduce a modified version of ontological trivialism, i.e. negative ontological trivialism, (NOT), defended by Hofweber (2005a), according to which some ontologically disputed entities, e.g. properties, (almost) trivially do not exist. I will show that (NOT) fails too. Then I will outline a Meinongian answer to the original question, namely, ‘How hard is it to answer an ontological question?’ The Carnapian intuition of the triviality of internal questions can be saved by the Meinongian proposal that quantification and reference are not ontologically committing and the Quinean intuition of the legitimacy of interesting ontological questions can be respected by the Meinongian distinction between being and so-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author offers an introduction to Marsilius of Inghen's treatment of expositiones of sentences de incipit and de desinit in his treatise on Consequentiae, with an analysis of the various modi exponendi presented by Marsilius and an edition of the text. The author argues that, in the split between physical and logical approaches to the issues arising in analyses of incipit and desinit, Marsilius' theory presents some hybrid features, but tends towards the logical end of the spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uniting of qurʾanic exegesis and Islamic philosophy reached its high point in the works of the great Muslim philosopher Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Širāzī, known as Mulla Sadra (979/1571-1045/1635), who, through the use of transcendental philosophy, brought the Qurʾān into wider philosophical discussions. This paper discusses his ontological notion of the Qurʾān as an integral part of his grand narration on existence (wuğūd). According to him, existence is one single reality but one whose nature is equivocal, which leads to the notion of modes of existence being seen in terms of strength and weakness. In this case, Mulla Sadra viewed the Qurʾān as a mode of existence. The qurʾanic text is an archetype (amṯila) that contains illustrations (amṯāl) of the multiple realities that lie in the higher realm of existence. This view has implications for all Sadra’s ideas related to the Qurʾān and leads to unique notions within the qurʾanic sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]