PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-28DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9050135
Federico Divino
{"title":"What Dawned First: Early Buddhist Philosophy on the Problem of Phenomenon and Origin in a Comparative Perspective","authors":"Federico Divino","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9050135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050135","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the issues of phenomenon and genesis in Early Buddhist thought through a comparative analysis with the Eleatic tradition, aiming to enrich the understanding and dialogue between these philosophical and religious traditions. By examining the comparability of Buddhist thought and Parmenidean philosophy, the study challenges the notion that these traditions are fundamentally alien to each other. The focus is on the concept of genesis, not as creation from nothingness—rejected by both the Buddha and Parmenides—but as the manifestation of the world to the human observer. The article argues that the world reveals itself in particular forms and appearances, which are intimately linked to the phenomenon and its perception by humans. This process is not solely a domain of rigid logical propositions but can be expressed through mythological and religious narratives. The study posits that the poetic expressiveness found in archaic philosophies of both India and Greece provides a valid medium for engaging in philosophical discourse. By adopting this comparative and dialogical perspective, the article aims to generate new philosophical insights and inspire future philosophical inquiry. The reflection on phenomenon and genesis, framed through this comparative lens, highlights the nuanced ways in which different traditions address the nature of reality and human perception, ultimately advocating for a broader, more inclusive understanding of philosophy that transcends conventional boundaries.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-28DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9050134
Agata Bielik-Robson
{"title":"“Humbled onto Death”: Kenosis and Tsimtsum as the Two Models of Divine Self-Negation","authors":"Agata Bielik-Robson","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9050134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050134","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reflects on the concept of the death of God as part and parcel of modern philosophical theology: a genre of thinking that came into existence with Hegel’s announcement of the “speculative Good Friday” as the most natural expression of die Religion der neuen Zeiten, “the religion of modern times”. In my interpretation, the death of God not only does not spell the end of the era of atheism but, on the contrary, inaugurates a new era of characteristically modern theism that steers away from theological absolutism. The new theos is no longer conceived as the eternal omnipotent Absolute but as the Derridean diminished Infinite: contracted and self-negated—even “unto death”. Such God, however, although coming to the foremost visibly in modernity, is not completely new to the monotheistic religions, which from the beginning are engaged in the heated debate concerning the status of the divine power: is it absolute and unlimited or rather self-restricted and conditioned? I will enter this debate by conducting a comparison between the two traditional models of divine self-restriction—Christian kenosis and Jewish-kabbalistic tsimtsum—and then present their modernised philosophical variants, most of all in the thought of Hegel.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"159 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-27DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9050133
Anthony J. Leggett
{"title":"The EPR-Bell Experiments: The Role of Counterfactuality and Probability in the Context of Actually Conducted Experiments","authors":"Anthony J. Leggett","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9050133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050133","url":null,"abstract":"Some aspects of the concepts of counterfactuality and probability are explored as they apply to the specific example of the famous “EPR-Bell” experiments realized by physicists over the last half-century. In particular the question is raised: what hypotheses about actually conducted experiments do the results exclude? It is argued that the answer depends on both whether these hypotheses are deterministic or stochastic, and on the “cardinality” of the experiment relative to the theory.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-23DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9050132
Danelle Fourie, Mark Rathbone
{"title":"Capabilities, Development, and Communitarianism in the African Context","authors":"Danelle Fourie, Mark Rathbone","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9050132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050132","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides a critical reflection and exploration of African development with reference to enhancing human flourishing in Amartya Sen’s capability theory. However, we identify some core limitations to Sen’s theory of development due to its reliance on neoliberal principles. These principles can be discouraging for African self-directed emancipatory development projects. We argue that the notion of communitarianism in Africa can provide alternative perspectives that can counter the influence of neoliberalism. We first delve into the philosophical understanding of development and the unique elements associated with the African context for human flourishing. From this understanding of development, we look into the work of Amartya Sen, whose capability approach is widely regarded as the optimal development project for human flourishing. However, the enhancement of capabilities has had some significant critique. We discuss three critiques of Sen’s development project, namely, Martha Nussbaum’s critique, which focuses on the vagueness of basic capabilities; Patrica Northover’s critique, which argues that Western ideals of development compromise Sen’s development project; and Richard Sandbrook’s critique, which refers to Sen’s approach as a “pragmatic neoliberalism”. Finally, building on these three critiques, we propose elements that enhance the unique characteristics of the African context for human flourishing.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-22DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9040131
Justin Clemens
{"title":"“Yet Once More”: John Milton’s Lycidas as an Assault on the Ordinary","authors":"Justin Clemens","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9040131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040131","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines a problematic of the ordinary as it emerges in the poetical theology of an early poem of John Milton. This poem, Lycidas, has captured the attention of every major critic from the 18th century to the present, who has minutely examined its odd formal and generic character, its peculiar mix of personal grief and political outrage, and its role in Milton’s own personal development at a particularly decisive moment in English history. Yet, despite this extensive interpretive history, ‘the ordinary’ has never become an extended object of critical analysis. This article accordingly seeks to uncover and examine the importance of a certain set of contemporaneous significations of the ordinary in Lycidas, which implicate the institutions of Church, state, and university in perhaps surprising ways.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-21DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9040130
Charles Champe Taliaferro
{"title":"The Virtues and Vices of Agnosticism","authors":"Charles Champe Taliaferro","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9040130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040130","url":null,"abstract":"This essay begins with preliminary observations about the nature of agnosticism. Based on the term’s etymology, in this essay an agnostic about some proposition (e.g., God exists) is someone who does not know whether the proposition is true. Being an agnostic about the truth of a proposition is compatible with the proposition appearing to be true or the state of affairs obtains but incompatible with an agnostic knowing its truth or that the state of affairs obtains. (Reference to propositions and states of affairs is intended to be inclusive, rather than a controversial metaphysical distinction.) Based on apparent virtues and vices, reasons are offered about when agnosticism (or the profession of agnosticism) is virtuous or philosophically desirable and when either actual agnosticism or its profession seems to be a vice or undesirable. The essay concludes with challenging Anthony Kenny’s case for agnosticism about theism based on the virtue of humility. The central claims about apparent virtues and vices rest on the positive epistemic standing of appearances as defended by many so-called “common sense philosophers” Thomas Reid, Roderick Chisholm, and, more recently, Thomas Nagel’s thesis about the justified status of the appearance of values.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-19DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9040129
Peter Zhang
{"title":"Serres’s Philosophy of Media","authors":"Peter Zhang","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9040129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040129","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary French philosopher Michel Serres has out-of-the-rut thoughts about many things, including media. This article focuses on his understanding of the genealogy of media, the notion of exo-Darwinism, and his forward-looking attitude toward new technologies. An alternative, counterintuitive take on human nature is revealed as the discussion proceeds. This article also touches upon what is irreplaceable about humans in an age when artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-18DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9040128
David Macarthur
{"title":"Wittgenstein and Poetry: A Reading of Czeslaw Milosz’s “Realism”","authors":"David Macarthur","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9040128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040128","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I hope to cast light on Wittgenstein enigmatic remark, “one should really only create philosophy poetically”. I discuss Wittgenstein’s ambition to overcome metaphysics by way of an appeal to ordinary language. For this purpose I contrast “realism” in philosophy (i.e., metaphysical realism, particularly its modern scientific version) with “realism” in poetry. My theme is the capacity of poetry to provide a model for Wittgenstein’s resistance to the inhumanity unleashed in metaphysics—exemplified by two distinct forms of skepticism—which obliterates the ordinary world under the guise of discovering its true nature. The poem I shall use to illustrate the difficulty in maintaining our grip on reality, hence our grip on our humanity, is Czeslaw Milosz’s poem “Realism”.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-16DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9040127
Ilya Dvorkin
{"title":"The Interaction of Continental and Analytical Philosophy in the Development of the Philosophy of Dialogue","authors":"Ilya Dvorkin","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9040127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040127","url":null,"abstract":"In continental and analytical philosophy, which developed in parallel in the 20th century, there was a turn to language, which in particular was marked by the creation of a philosophy of dialogue in continental philosophy and dialogical logic in analytical. Despite their significant differences, these two directions have much in common and can significantly complement each other. The philosophy of dialogue considers reality as the subject of dialogue between persons—I, Thou, He/She, We. World, activity and culture are dialogic and interpersonal in nature. Languages and texts are the basis for understanding reality and activity. Dialogical logic describes reality as an object of a dialogical game. This allows us to consider rationality, activity and communication from a unified perspective. The article compares these two directions of dialogical thought with each other and examines the aspects in which they can complement each other.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PhilosophiesPub Date : 2024-08-15DOI: 10.3390/philosophies9040126
Sophie Grace Chappell
{"title":"The Riddle of Oedipus","authors":"Sophie Grace Chappell","doi":"10.3390/philosophies9040126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040126","url":null,"abstract":"What is the riddle of Oedipus? This paper is an exploration of the philosophy involved in Sophocles’ famous play Oedipus Tyrannus. The play involves a riddler who becomes king, a man who is famously good at understanding what others find obscure, and yet is unable to see it when he is confronted by an obvious set of uncomfortable truths about himself. As well as for Oedipus, the play poses a number of different riddles for us: in particular it is a study of responsibility and shame, and of deliberation and choice. Like any work of art, the play does not tell us what conclusions we should reach; but it does show us some questions that need asking, and indeed some riddles that we face.","PeriodicalId":31446,"journal":{"name":"Philosophies","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}