EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY最新文献

{"title":"Anil Gomes's The Practical Self","authors":"Bill Brewer","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Gomes's rich and compelling book revolves around an extended line of argument for the thesis that a self-conscious subject must be one object amongst many in an objective world: self-consciousness entails objectivity. Others have offered arguments for the same conclusion; but, in contrast with his own, Gomes finds all of these wanting. After setting out my own understanding of Gomes's central argument, I will raise a series of concerns about each of its key moves.</p><p>This is an original and significant line of argument. In what follows, I raise five critical questions about it: two each about premises 1 and 2, and one about premise 3. I develop two of these in detail, into fully-formed objections to Gomes's argument; the others I leave almost to fend for themselves against his case for the thesis that self-consciousness entails objectivity.\u0000 </p><p>By way of clarification of the content of premise 1, Gomes contrasts the <i>cognitive agency</i> in question with a corresponding <i>passivity</i> in <i>perception</i>. Here is what I think he means in the perceptual case. We select and initiate projects, like counting the stripes on a zebra, discerning which chair seat is closest in colour to the carpet, and so on. We focus and modulate our attention appropriately over time in order to execute them as best we can, checking and going back if necessary as we proceed. But which specific experiences and beliefs we find ourselves with at the end of the day is entirely outside of our control; <i>and so it should be</i>, if the result is to be determined by how things really are rather than by our own preferences and prejudices. We set the question and direct our attention and capacities to pursue it; the facts settle the answer.</p><p>Isn't it just the same with paradigmatically intellectual projects too, though, such as counting the primes between 0 and 100, or working out how best to accommodate all a child's friends at a sleepover without provoking too much over-excitement or antagonism, and so on? We pursue the project and keep our attention on the relevant considerations, taking each stage in turn, checking and going back if necessary as we proceed. But, again, which beliefs we find ourselves with at the end of the day is entirely outside of our control; <i>and so it should be</i> if the result is to be determined by how things really are rather than by our own preferences and prejudices. Just as in the case of perception, we set the question and direct our attention and capacities to pursue it; the facts settle the answer.</p><p>Perceptually: ‘is there a dark blue chair in the room? … ‘yes'; and, analogously, intellectually: ‘is there a prime between 37 and 43?’ … ‘yes'. Realism about the domain of enquiry in both cases surely legislates in favour of our ultimate passivity with respect to the outcome. So it is unclear to me precisely what the cognitive activity that Gomes is interested in comes to. Certainly, the comparison with perce","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"757-761"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144117866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Departures from Lichtenberg","authors":"Rory Madden","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13040","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Lichtenberg's remarks are a driving force of <i>The Practical Self</i>. On Gomes's interpretation, Lichtenberg is presenting a challenge to theoretical knowledge of one's cognitive agency. Gomes argues that this challenge is insuperable, thereby making room instead for faith in one's cognitive agency. I question both the interpretation of Lichtenberg and the insuperability of the challenge, before explaining why a challenge which is more usually read into Lichtenberg's remarks is problematic for Gomes's project. I close by sketching on Gomes's behalf a response to this challenge.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"748-756"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13040","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144118172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Practical assent in The Practical Self by Anil Gomes†","authors":"Léa Salje","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13041","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Practical Self&lt;/i&gt; is a Kantian book three times over. First, it is, in many parts, a book &lt;i&gt;about&lt;/i&gt; Kant; the overarching aim of the book is to revive and if possible to complete the Kantian and Cartesian projects of moving from the resources available to the self-conscious thinker to the establishment of the existence of an objective external world — and to do this, Gomes must critically work through various moves from those earlier attempts. Secondly, Gomes takes, in several parts, key arguments and concepts from Kant's critical and practical philosophy as live argumentative tools for his own purposes. But even in the parts of the book not directly concerned with Kant's proprietary argumentative ends and means, this is a deeply Kantian book in flavour — that is the third Kantianism of the book. At every turn, we see unabashedly full-strength claims how things must be, given other ways things must in turn be, or the elimination of ways things cannot be, or ways in which we cannot but think of them as being.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put altogether, it's natural to think that the result of all of this will be a book that is aloof or inaccessible; beyond reach or regard by those of us who don't normally swim in Kantian waters. Nothing could be a less apt description of this book. In Gomes' hands, the Kantian and Cartesian grand projects find a tractably sober presentation; the selected moves from Kant and other historical figures are given lucid and unharried exposition; the active Kantian concepts and argumentative tools are deployed in ways that shed dependence on the more arcane aspects of the Kantian framework; and the fierce standards of argument make for an exceptionally exciting read — on every page, one feels, there is something to jump up and down about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of the many points in the book ripe for discussion, my response will focus on the first positive turn in the book – an argument that comes in the chapter on Faith (Chapter 4), in which Gomes argues that we have a distinctively practical reason to assent to the claim that we are the agents of our own thoughts. In what follows I'll first set out the context in which this argument comes up in the book, then I'll set out the argument itself, and I'll end by raising a number of critical questions for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, then, some stage-setting. In order to proceed in his project of moving from the resources available to the self-conscious thinker to the establishment of an objectively existing world, Gomes must address Lichtenberg's complaint that the most the self-conscious thinker can posit is that ‘there is thinking’, on the model of ‘there is lightning’; ‘One should say &lt;i&gt;it is thinking&lt;/i&gt;, just as one says, &lt;i&gt;it is lightning&lt;/i&gt;. To say &lt;i&gt;cogito&lt;/i&gt; is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking.’ (Lichtenberg K76, cited in Gomes p.131). What emerges from his insightful extended discussion of Lichtenberg in Chapter 3 is an original understanding of what it would take ","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"762-769"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13041","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144117943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The social dimension of practical assent","authors":"Carla Bagnoli","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13042","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Ordinarily, we consider ourselves agents and authors of our own thinking. We experience and conceive of thinking as an activity rather than a process occurring to us that happens to be located in our mind. Furthermore, we consider such activity as autonomous, generated by our own intellectual powers, rather than occasioned by the external environment or hetero-directed. What grounds can we offer to support the claim that we are “practical selves”—that is, the origin and authors of our thinking? Our claims cannot rest solely on agential awareness because there can be activity without an agent, “a deed without a doer” (Gomes 2024, 66). This is Lichtenberg's problem, which Anil Gomes sets out to solve in &lt;i&gt;The Practical Self&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The problem arises for epistemological theories such as Descartes's and Kant's, insofar as they endorse what Gomes calls the “isolationist methodology,” recommending that one start by characterizing thinking as a self-conscious activity to understand what thinking really is (Gomes 2024, 2, 68). As Gomes remarks, the isolationist methodology should not be seen as a sign of confidence but as a way to highlight the centrality of self-reflecting capacities in grounding knowledge of the world. By centering on agential awareness, this methodology brings to the fore the deliberative and first-personal aspect of thinking (Gomes 2024, 73). Thinking is doing—something more akin to action than to an event happening in our mind. Further tightly connected claims follow from this characterization. Firstly, to the extent that thinking is an activity in which we engage, thoughts are deliberations held first-personally: we can assess them in a variety of ways and exercise first-person authority over them.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Because we stand in a relation of first-person authority with our thoughts, our assessment of them directly impacts the way we keep, revise, or discard them.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; If we see no reason to believe that it is going to rain tonight, we should also think that recurrent thoughts that it is going to rain ought to be discounted and discarded. If we have previously asserted that it was about to rain, then we should stand corrected, take back the assertion, and acknowledge it as false. It is a sign of irrationality to resist one's own authority—and a kind of irrationality more akin to self-alienation than to incoherence. Failing to follow up our own thoughts that some belief should be discarded or revised radically differs from (reasonably or unreasonably) failing to concur with somebody else's view that we should do so. In contrast, we have no such authority over others' states of mind. While we can exercise some (epistemic, moral) authority on others, for instance, by correcting them, showing them that they are mistaken, or corroborating their thoughts with proof, such authority is indirect and may not have any effect on them. Correspondingly, we can resist the authority of others and reject what we provide as evidence:","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"770-778"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144117944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Practical Self: Replies","authors":"Anil Gomes","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13076","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Lichtenberg's enigmatic remarks on the &lt;i&gt;cogito&lt;/i&gt; form the backbone to &lt;i&gt;The Practical Self&lt;/i&gt;. Rory Madden raises a set of rich questions about their proper interpretation and the argumentative work to which they are put.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lichtenberg writes that to say &lt;i&gt;cogito&lt;/i&gt; is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. Madden contrasts two readings of this line. The traditional reading takes Lichtenberg to be raising a challenge to the claim that I am the subject of my episodes of thinking on which those episodes depend. The revisionary reading—and the one offered in &lt;i&gt;The Practical Self&lt;/i&gt;—takes Lichtenberg to be raising a challenge to the claim that I am the sometime agent of my thinking. The final sentence of the passage, on this reading, responds to the challenge by suggesting that we have practical grounds to accept that we are the agents of our thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Madden worries about the translation of this final line and, with it, the claim that it offers practical grounds for assuming the I. Lichtenberg writes: &lt;i&gt;Das Ich anzunehmen, zu postulieren, ist praktisches Bedürfnis&lt;/i&gt;. Günter Zöller translates the final word as ‘requirement’ (&lt;span&gt;1992&lt;/span&gt;, p.418); Stephen Tester as ‘necessity’ (&lt;span&gt;2012&lt;/span&gt;, p.152). Madden suggests that ‘need’ is a closer translation and that this deflates the suggestion that Lichtenberg is adverting to practical grounds. A practical need is not a necessary condition on some state of affairs but a pressing or basic impulse, like the need to stretch one's legs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;My account of the practical grounds available for our sense of ourselves as intellectual agents is modelled on Kant's account of the practical postulates. These are claims which Kant says must be assumed (&lt;i&gt;CPrR&lt;/i&gt; 5:121, 126) or postulated (5:122, 125) in virtue of their connection to the demands of practical reason. In particular, they must be assumed or postulated in virtue of a connection to what Kant calls ‘a need [&lt;i&gt;Bedürfnis&lt;/i&gt;] of pure practical reason’ (5:142). A need of pure practical reason—a practical need—contrasts with a need of inclination. It is a need based on duty. We might say, then, that to assume these claims about God, freedom, and immortality, to postulate them, is, for Kant, a practical need based on duty—a practical requirement. This is the context in which to understand Lichtenberg's final sentence. Madden's deflationary suggestion severs these connections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about the target of those sentences? Madden notes the difficulty of interpreting an aphoristic writer such as Lichtenberg. In &lt;i&gt;The Practical Self&lt;/i&gt; I made the case for the revisionary reading by appeal to other passages in his writings—including, crucially, a passage in the notebooks where Lichtenberg returns to the contrast between ‘I am thinking’ or ‘it is thinking’.1 Madden is right that these are not determinative—even if the later passages show a con","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"779-795"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13076","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144117978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Heideggerian Concealment: On Katherine Withy's Heidegger on Being Self-Concealing","authors":"Mark A. Wrathall","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13077","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;The project of &lt;i&gt;Being and Time&lt;/i&gt; was premised on the idea that being could be grasped in its truth. Heidegger maintained that “being can be something unconceptualized, but it never completely fails to be understood” (SZ 183). “Even if being may perhaps be hidden in its primordial grounds,” he maintained, nonetheless “there is a necessary connection between being and understanding” (SZ 183). Thus Heidegger pursued ontology through an inquiry into the conditions under which being could be manifest or disclosed to the understanding (SZ 183).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But if Heidegger was confident that being could be grasped or made intelligible through a phenomenological ontology (see SZ §44), the uncompleted second part of &lt;i&gt;Being and Time&lt;/i&gt; was premised on the idea that it might be quite difficult to bring being to manifestness – that a historical deconstruction was required to expose the concealments and confusions behind which the meaning of being has lain hidden throughout the history of metaphysics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;i&gt;Being and Time&lt;/i&gt;, and for several years after its publication, Heidegger focused on temporality as the primary horizon within which being could be made manifest. And so Heidegger took his project to involve making “temporality visible as the transcendental original structure,” thereby illuminating the “concealed projection of being on time as the innermost event in the understanding of being in ancient and subsequent metaphysics” (GA3: 241–2).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the subsequent decade or so, Heidegger developed in his lecture courses and unpublished manuscripts a conception of ontological concealment as something more pervasive and essential than he had previously supposed. For instance, in his 1931 lecture &lt;i&gt;On the Essence of Truth&lt;/i&gt;, Heidegger writes that “the entity in its being” has an “authentic, inner drive to remain concealed and, even if it has become unconcealed, a drive to go back into concealment again” (GA34: 14). And in 1942, with the publication of his essay “Plato's Doctrine of Truth,” Heidegger declares publicly that concealment “permeates the essence of being” (GA9: 223). He argues that the pre-Platonic philosophers were the first to have an inkling of the essentially concealed nature of being, and he saw this insight as implicit in the Greek word for truth itself – &lt;i&gt;alētheia&lt;/i&gt;. The alpha in &lt;i&gt;&lt;span&gt;a-&lt;/span&gt;lētheia&lt;/i&gt;, Heidegger emphasizes, is an alpha privative, so that truth is literally a privation of concealment. Consequently, Heidegger argues that for the Greek thinkers, it was concealment (&lt;i&gt;lēthe&lt;/i&gt;), not truth (&lt;i&gt;a-lētheia&lt;/i&gt;), that was the prior and most fundamental condition of being. Heidegger concludes the essay on Plato by insisting on the necessity of returning to the early Greek “appreciation of the ‘positive’ in the ‘privative’ essence of &lt;i&gt;alētheia&lt;/i&gt;. The positive [i.e., concealment] must first be experienced as the basic characteristic of being itself” (GA9: 144). This is a striking claim: to understand","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"803-820"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13077","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144117906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Limits of the Armchair: Boyle on Transparency and Reflection","authors":"Rory Madden","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13074","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This review article makes some critical points about Boyle's <i>Transparency and Reflection</i>. These focus on (1) ‘pre-reflective awareness’ of mental states, and (2) the existence and nature of ‘the subject’ of experience.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"796-802"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13074","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144118173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Walter Benjamin and the Idea of Natural History. by Eli Friendlander Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024, ISBN: 9781503636552","authors":"Alison Ross","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13065","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"827-831"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144118005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marx's Ethical Vision by Vanessa Christina Wills New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. 320 pp. ISBN: 9780197688144","authors":"Pascal Brixel","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13067","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 2","pages":"821-826"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144118013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Back Down","authors":"A. W. Moore","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13048","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Michael Della Rocca's project in his bold and iconoclastic book&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; is to reject all distinction and multiplicity: there is only being. He calls this view strict monism.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; And, as the title of his book indicates, he sees his project as Parmenidean. There are accordingly references to Parmenides throughout the book, as well as a more focused discussion of Parmenides' views in Chapter 1. This is in line with something on which Della Rocca insists in Chapter 7, in keeping with such monism, namely that we should reject any distinction between doing philosophy and doing its history.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I share Della Rocca's mistrust of that distinction. But I do not share it for the same reasons nor to the same extent. There seems to me a clear sense in which his project is more fundamentally philosophical than historical. Partly I have in mind the fact that his primary aim is simply to defend strict monism. And I think that the philosophical challenges that he thereby presents us with are more significant than any lessons that he has to teach us about where any given philosopher stands in relation to the view.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; My own focus in what follows will therefore likewise be on the issues themselves, though I too will engage with the work of other philosophers to the extent that I think it is relevant to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A preliminary before I proceed. Even the two short paragraphs that I have written so far contain material that is question-begging in this context. An obvious case in point is the very reference to ‘other philosophers’. That is illegitimate in strict monist terms. So too, come to that, are the references to ‘Chapter 1’ and ‘Chapter 7’. My excuse for begging questions in this way is something to which Della Rocca's book itself bears ample witness: anyone who wants to engage seriously with his views has no alternative. One of the issues that we shall need to confront is what this means as far as Della Rocca's own text is concerned. But there is no equivalent issue as far as my text is concerned. True, I would prefer not to beg questions. But, since I am not a strict monist, I feel no other compunction about writing in the way that I have; and I am reassured that I am at least not begging questions against myself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Della Rocca's starting point is the Principle of Sufficient Reason, or the PSR to use his own abbreviation. This is ‘the principle according to which each fact or each thing has an explanation’ (p. xiv). That this is his starting point straightway illustrates what I said in the previous section. For Della Rocca takes the PSR to serve as a basic principle for Parmenides too. As it happens, here already I have exegetical qualms: passages which, on Della Rocca's interpretation, show Parmenides to be rejecting distinctions that, if real, would involve things that could not be explained seem to me to show Parmenides to be rejecting distinctions that, if real, would involve things that could not so much as be.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"33 1","pages":"339-353"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143638968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}