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This paper examines the formation of the philosophical canon in the period immediately after Kant. After a general introduction to the "historiography of philosophy," it brings together three strands of contemporary scholarship in this area: a historical criticism of the empiricism/rationalism distinction that is often still used to understand early modern philosophy (Vanzo), histories of the exclusion of women from the history of philosophy in the late eighteenth century (O'Neill), and histories of the exclusion of non-European philosophy (Park). Though these scholars have different agendas, their studies share many conclusions, including the key claim that the little-known Kantian historian of philosophy Wilhelm Tennemann is the central figure in the formation of the standard story. The paper closes by comparing the main outline of Tennemann's surprisingly familiar narrative of the history of philosophy with the standard text from before the Kantian revolution in the historiography of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To step up the activity level of academic philosophizing, "Teaching World Philosophies" will propose that one first engage in a thorough housecleaning before teaching world-philosophical traditions today. In the path that will be sketched as an example in this regard, I will critically engage "the West," a concept that looms over an adequate academic engagement with world philosophies today. Bringing into the conversation Humayun Kabir's (1906–1969) analysis of philosophy as a space that can generate and foster critical independent thinking within a society, I will argue that a change in ingrained patterns of conducting a social activity like academic philosophy can be changed. This change might, in fact, be urgent especially in those locales in Europe in which academic philosophy as it is practiced today was crafted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No one who reads Derrida closely could accuse him of "technophobia." More than any other contemporary thinker, on the contrary, he has shown the limit of attempts to protect thinking and even being itself from technē. Yet, Derrida nevertheless insists that "deconstruction" is neither a "technique" nor the technology of thinking that modern philosophy calls "method." What allows Derrida to exclude "technique" and "method" when he himself shows, in relation to Heidegger above all, that a certain technicity and methodicity always remain irreducible? After outlining its stakes (§I), this article seeks to raise this question by reconstructing Derrida's engagement with Heidegger concerning the questions of technology (§II) and of method (§III) before turning to the techno-methodicity that Derrida attempts to dissociate from deconstruction in turn (§IV). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines various critiques of Aristotle's theory of form and substance. One critique argues that Aristotle fails to adequately explain the substantiality of a substance and that his notion of form is unclear. Another critique suggests that Aristotle's assumption of a substance as a related entity leads to a regress problem. However, the article also defends Aristotle's theory, arguing that his concept of form can be identified with essence or soul and that a substance is a unified whole composed of matter and form. The article acknowledges that there are unanswered questions and that the discussion only addresses specific arguments against Aristotle's theory. [Extracted from the article]

This paper is an investigation into the introduction of the term 'system' and its conceptual background in the writings of Bartholomew Keckermann. This includes a brief summary of the literature and evidence identifying Keckermann as the first to make significant usage of the term in logic, philosophy, and theology. Then, after a survey of his life, work and milieu, this paper will look closer at three of Keckermann's own 'systems'; Systema logicae (1600), Praecognitorum Logicorum (1606), and Systema SS. Theologiae (1602). Finally, I will touch on the influence Keckermann's innovation had on subsequent ideas of method in modern philosophy, especially how his innovative use of this term gives the logician the directing role as a technical expert in mining the truth of theology, philosophy, and other sciences. This, of course, flies in the face of the medieval view of the Church and its elders controlling that role, characterizing the discovery and refinement of knowledge as being a process of electing and using worthy passive subjects as conduits of divine knowledge. Thus Keckermann's systems can be considered an important step away from this, towards the early modern epistemology requiring an active thinking subject, best characterized in Descartes' Meditations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anscombe ends her seminal 1958 essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" with a presentation of five characters, each answering an ancient (and contemporary) question as to "whether one might ever need to commit injustice, or whether it won't be the best thing to do?" Her fifth character is the execrated consequentialist who "shows a corrupt mind." But who are the first four characters? Do they "show a mind"? And what precisely is the significance (if any) of her presenting those five just then? In this paper, we interpret Anscombe's essay with an eye to making sense of her character presentation. We argue that the first four characters can be seen to embody the chief negative and positive doctrines of the essay and to thereby represent and charter a pluralistic school of anti-consequentialist ethics. The upshot is something exegetically interesting yet of broader philosophical importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that, even though Husserl demonstrated that consciousness intends objects in the world rather than mental representations, he ultimately failed to provide a convincing account of how the ego constitutes itself and other egos. By reconfiguring consciousness as an operation rather than as a container, Husserl opened consciousness to the world and thereby overcame previous solipsistic frameworks. But despite his attention to the "things themselves," his fidelity to another maxim—that all sense-bestowing activity be traced back to the operations of the ego—prohibited him from fulfilling his goal of describing otherness accurately. This paper examines the tension between Husserl's desire to describe phenomena and his mandate to constitute phenomena, to show that both cannot be accomplished simultaneously. If phenomenology is to come to terms with the challenge of otherness and describe self and other adequately, the demand that self and other be constituted within the ego must be relinquished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descartes famously states that God could have made any and all of the "eternal truths" that are now in place (such as 1 + 2 = 3) false. This has led scholars to attribute to Descartes's God a radical sort of power: the power to do the logically impossible. While Descartes does claim that God could have made any of the eternal truths that are now in place false, I do not think that this commits him to the view that God could have made twice four equal to nine, or anything of that sort. In this paper I show how, by placing Descartes's doctrine of the eternal truths in its proper historical context, a new and more charitable interpretation of that doctrine becomes available. On this interpretation, Descartes's God could have made the eternal truths false by choosing not to create the eternal essences to which these truths refer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The culture of global society commonly associates the word animal with vertebrates. Paradoxically, most of animal diversity is composed of small organisms that remain invisible in the global culture and are underrepresented in philosophy, science, and education. Twenty-first century science has revealed that many invertebrates have consciousness and the capacity to feel pain. These discoveries urge animal ethicists to be more inclusive and to reevaluate the participation of invertebrates in the moral community. Science also has warned of the disappearance of small animal co-inhabitants that is occurring in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. This "invisible extinction" compels environmental philosophers to make visible invertebrates, whose existence is precious in itself and for the functioning of ecosystems on which biodiversity and human societies depend. With a biocultural approach that integrates the biophysical and cultural dimensions of biodiversity, I investigate the roots of taxonomic chauvinism associated with the under-representation and subordination of invertebrates in modern philosophy and science. The bad news is the confirmation of a marked vertebratism in animal imagery. The good news is that David Hume, Charles Darwin, and biocultural ethics provide conceptual foundations for cultivating an appreciation of the small co-inhabitants with whom we share our local habitats and the global biosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do advances in the natural sciences leave the followers of Aristotle and Aquinas without a cosmos? Is their natural philosophy irrelevant to modern cosmology and its Big Bang theory? The following essay answers these questions and argues that natural philosophy is perennially relevant to cosmology. It defends the idea that Aristotelian-Thomistic natural philosophy reaches a true, general definition of the universe: the unity of order of all mobile beings according to place, duration, and agent causality. The essay defends this conclusion while answering three opposing views, those of Jonathan Schaffer, Peter Simons, and Immanuel Kant. The true account is attained through reasoning about the nature of place, duration, and agent causality. Objections against these lines of argument are answered to clarify their continued relevance. Since it provides even our modern scientific cosmology with the necessarily assumed notion of the universe, Aristotelian-Thomistic natural philosophy is perennially relevant to cosmology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causation has troubled philosophers since the time of Aristotle, and they have sought to clarify the concept of causation because of its implications for other philosophical issues. The most radical change in the meaning of "cause" occurred during the late seventeenth, in which there emerged a strong tendency to understand causal relations as instantiations of deterministic laws. In this essay, I note how early modern philosophers, eminently apparent in Hume, reacted to the notion of vitalism and posited a conception of causation in which it and determinism became virtually equivalent, which thereby denied any sort of vitalistic impulse within matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue for a poetics of truth locatable in the thinking of Heidegger and Schelling. Truth is taken to be an event; the poetics of truth then developed is offered as a way of realizing a rethinking of truth which takes a phenomenological point of departure. Truth, as an event, takes place; this taking place opens a space to take place in and the work of art is offered as an example of just that. The overall argument for a poetics of truth follows Schelling in his assertion that the highest purpose of science is to return to the ocean of poetry; this return, I argue, can be routed through Heidegger's philosophy of dwelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the philosophy of death and mortality from a transcendental perspective. I first criticize the metaphysically realistic background assumptions of mainstream analytic approaches to the philosophy of death. Secondly, I defend a transcendentally idealistic approach, drawing attention to how the topic of death can be illuminated by means of the notion of the transcendental subject. Thirdly, I identify a problem in this approach: the transcendental subject needs to recognize its own mortality. Fourthly, I propose a pragmatist way out of this problem. This, however, is no way out of the general issue that mortality as a structural element of the human condition provides us with. Rather, pragmatism (joining forces with transcendental philosophy) can show us a way of living with this condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Modern Moral Philosophy" Anscombe argues that the distinction between intention of an end or means and foresight of a consequentially comparable outcome proves crucial in act-evaluation. The deontologist J. J. Thomson disagrees. She asserts that Anscombe mistakes the distinction's moral import; it bears on agent-evaluation, not act-evaluation. I map out the contours of this dispute. I show that it implicates other disagreements, some to be expected and others not to be expected. Amongst the expected, one finds the ethicists' accounts of action and understanding of how agent-assessment relates to act-assessment. Amongst the unexpected, one finds the moralists' views about the possibility of self-imposed moral dilemmas and allied positions concerning temporal aspects of "ought implies can." Anscombe's employment of the distinction in act-evaluation withstands close scrutiny; Thomson's denial of it does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I seek to consider the project of analytical Thomism with particular regard to Aquinas's metaphysics of esse. My overall conclusion is that Thomas's thought on esse is part and parcel of a way of philosophizing that is alien to analytical philosophy and is such that analytical philosophy is constitutionally unable to come to terms with it. In order to argue for such a conclusion, I begin with a presentation of Aquinas's metaphysics of esse. I then respond to the objection that arguably some analytical philosophers have already arrived at the same thought at which Aquinas arrived, thereby blocking the way to my denial of the possibility of an encounter between analytical philosophy and Thomist esse. Having removed that obstacle, I argue that analytical philosophy is constitutionally unable to come to terms with Thomist esse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the place of phenomenology within the Christian philosophical tradition. Contrary to common conceptions of phenomenology, and in spite of Husserl's own description of phenomenology as an "a-theistic" project, this paper will attempt to interpret the complex relationship of Husserl's understanding of phenomenology to the religious tradition ultimately as a function of that very tradition. In so doing, this paper will explore the philosophical concept of "vocation" in Husserl's usage, its application to the intended role of phenomenology as an agent of moral and religious "renewal," and the role played by the concept of tradition in Husserl's thought, which demands explicit reflection on Husserl's own relation to the tradition. This will allow the possibility of re-envisioning the overall sense of phenomenological discussion and its place within the tradition of philosophy, particularly in the relation of Husserlian phenomenology to the Anselmian project of "faith seeking understanding." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I consider the viability of what is perhaps one of the more "obscure" transcendentals in Aquinas's work--that is, the concept of multitudo transcendens. This strange notion is mentioned explicitly (as a member of the transcendentia, that is) on four occasions in Aquinas's oeuvre. Despite its apparent difficulties, i.e., the clear difficulties associated with claiming that ens is really convertible with both unum and multitudo, I suggest that Aquinas's affirmation of multitudo as a transcendental is a conceptually coherent way of providing a compelling answer to a perennial problem in both ancient and modern philosophy: namely, the logical and metaphysical problem of doing justice to the seemingly equiprimorcial notions of "the one" and "the many"--as harmonious perfections rather than competitive notions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents the challenges facing those preparing to teach the history of modern philosophy and proposes some solutions. I first discuss the goals for such a course, as well as the particular methodological challenges of teaching a history of modem philosophy course. Next a standard set of thinkers, readings, and themes is presented, followed by some alternatives. I then argue that one ought to diversify one's syllabus beyond the canonical set of six or seven white men. As a first step toward that goal, I propose several ways to include women philosophers in the syllabus. I then lay out assignments and in-class activities that aid students toward the course goals. I conclude with a consideration of the challenges and rewards of teaching modem philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Stirner pioneered a radically existentialist thinking in which the ego or the Unique One is able to appropriate its "predicates" or determinations as objects of consumption. In this sense the singular event is privileged over the intellectual "spooks" that express the predicate's independence from and mastery over its subject. Karl Marx's thinking was decisively altered by his encounter with Stirner, to whom he replied at length (with Engels) in The German Ideology. I propose that Marx and Engels's critique and appropriation of Stirner provides the basis for what I call "communist existentialism," and that this is the proper standpoint for radical philosophy today. After giving an account of this position, I briefly adopt it to critique two of the communist standpoints associated with "communization," those of Tiqqun and Theorie Communiste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I attempt here to draw parallels between ancient and modern sophistry -and ancient and modern philosophy. Plato at one point identified a sophist as a paid hunter of rich young men who 'lurks' in non-being: that is, has no concern for truth. In more modern times Elizabeth Anscombe, when asked what her philosophical colleagues did, remarked (note the ironic Platonic echo) that they spend most of their time corrupting the youth. And the present situation in many liberal universities encourages them to do so-and in the humanities more generally, not only in philosophy. By the time a PhD candidate has completed his doctorate, joined a department and eventually got tenure, he will in many cases have become a practised sophist, equipped with what often amounts to a PhD in rationalizing, that is, in sophistry. I wonder whether we ought not to do something to change some of that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leibniz sustains three arguments for spontaneity: the argument from the complete notion, the argument from substantial forms and the argument from monadic spontaneity. In order to see the nature of spontaneity and whether the spontaneity is an inferior value with respect to freedom, as it appears in the Theodicy, in the first part of the paper I will present spontaneity in connection with the theory of complete notion; in the second part, spontaneity and substantial forms; in the third part, spontaneity of monads; then I will finish with a more general view about spontaneity and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An argument found in the writings of the so-called "New Atheists" has it that the religious indoctrination of children is oppressive in and of itself, but this argument rests on what may be called an epidemiological orientation toward belief. While some forms of religious indoctrination may indeed be oppressive, any adequate phenomenology of religious belief must allow for various ways in which individuals relate themselves doxastically to the religion in which they were raised, and some of these ways could hardly be called "oppressive." Drawing on Wittgenstein's scattered writings on religion, this paper sketches out an account of religion as a form of ligature-in line with its etymology-whose binding-character lies in those life-regulating basic attitudes that are deeper, and more resistant to revision, than any opinion one happens to have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The charge of relativism is regularly leveled against pragmatists. The best response to this charge appears in the work of John Dewey. Contemporary pragmatists such as Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam frequently bear the brunt of that charge, although they do not rebut the charge as effectively as does Dewey himself. This essay brings focus to the charge of relativism against pragmatists and turns it aside by recourse to an essay of Dewey's from 1908 that specifically focuses on issues of knowledge. This essay also explains how what we think of as a priori arts--logic, mathematics, ethics, ontology, etc.--appear differently from the humanizing perspective of pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against a thinker like Martin Heidegger who takes restraints on individual freedom and the promotion of authoritarianism as implicit features in the ongoing development of technology, Andrew Feenberg argues for a "democratic rationalization" of modern technology whereby people effectively choose their own futures, not in spite of their tools, but increasingly because of them. Acknowledging the Web's democratic potential, I believe that a new threat--far different from authoritarian regimes or structures--has emerged: a rampant and multifarious narcissism that threatens to drown democratic ideals in a wave of self-obsession and self-promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism Larry Hickman argues that Classical Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead) shares common features with postmodern philosophies and provides a viable alternative to those philosophies. I agree with Hickman's argument, and this paper argues that there are further connections between pragmatism and postmodernism in light of Hickman's philosophy of technology. The paper explores the connections between postmodernism and technology, demonstrates how postmodern philosophy can be used to interpret contemporary postmodern technologies, and concludes by arguing that these interpretations fit well with Hickman's work on technology through analyzing technologies like the iPod. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years much attention has been devoted to Hegel's inter-pretation of Greek tragedy. To be sure, authors dealing with Hegel's understanding of tragedy have adopted different perspectives. However they do share one common basic assumption, namely, that tragedy plays a crucial role in shaping some key features of Hegel's philosophy. This article pursues along these lines, and dem-onstrates that tragedy, or some aspects of tragedy, reinterpreted and reformulated, inform Hegel's theory of ethical agency. It performs this task on the basis of a reading of Hegel's early essay The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Quante has successfully shown that the "Morality" section of Hegel's Philosophy of Right provides an account of the cognitive conditions that must be satisfied for the imputation of actions. In this essay, I argue that Quante's picture of these conditions is misleadingly cropped, obscuring the fact that the specific cognitive conditions Hegel places on agency are much stronger than has been recognized, and of a different kind. This suggests a much different interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of action, one that treats action not as a psychological matter, but as conceptually linked to responsibility in a juridical and moral sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]