EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY最新文献

{"title":"Robert Stern on Presuppositionlessness, Freedom and Willkür in Hegel's Philosophy","authors":"Stephen Houlgate","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70037","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Bob Stern and I were friends for over forty years, having met as students in the early 1980s.<sup>1</sup> We were also close allies philosophically, in particular sharing many views about Hegel. We agree, for example, that Hegel is a conceptual realist and that his philosophical method involves an important moment of <i>passivity</i> — of letting thought determine itself. We also agree that in this latter respect Hegel comes close to Martin Luther.<sup>2</sup></p><p>Yet, unsurprisingly, we disagree on some issues too: I have always been interested in the transitions in Hegel's system from one concept to another, but Stern showed little interest in them and was not convinced they always work. In this essay, I will revisit two other disagreements between us. I will first consider the different justifications we provide for the “presuppositionless” character of Hegel's logic. This will then lead into a discussion of Hegel's concept of <i>Willkür</i> (often translated as “arbitrariness”).<sup>3</sup></p><p>In a review of my book, <i>Hegel on Being</i> (2022), Stern writes: “I am happy to agree with Houlgate that Hegel does intend his method to be presuppositionless, and we also broadly agree about what this means” (Stern, <span>2023b</span>, p. 321). We agree, too, that “some prior commitments are compatible with presuppositionlessness”. Hegel's logic presupposes, for example, that we are committed to investigating <i>thought</i>, rather than, say, perception.<sup>4</sup> Yet Stern and I both insist that such logic “cannot assume anything about the methods of thinking, because these are part of what an investigation of thought should inquire into” (Stern, <span>2009</span>, p. 230). Indeed, Stern notes, the Hegelian logician needs to give up “a lot that other philosophers might think they can take for granted” — for example, “that various logical laws hold” (Stern, <span>2023b</span>, p. 321). For both of us, therefore, although Hegel's logic has hermeneutic preconditions, it rests on no <i>systematic</i> assumptions about thought — no governing principles, not even dialectic.<sup>5</sup></p><p>Stern and I also agree that Hegel's <i>phenomenology</i> justifies the presuppositionless study of thought by undermining our basic assumptions about ourselves and the world — by “bringing about a despair regarding the so-called natural conceptions, thoughts, and opinions” (PhS, p. 53). Hans Friedrich Fulda argues, however, that there is another way into Hegel's logic. Phenomenology justifies the science of logic to “unscientific consciousness”; but it is not the prerequisite for all entry into that science, “for it is supposed to be possible to begin science in subjective cognition with the immediate resolve [<i>Entschluß</i>] to think purely” (Fulda, <span>1975</span>, pp. 52–3, my translation).</p><p>I share Fulda's view that this “resolve”, or decision, provides a second, more direct, way into Hegel's logic.<sup>6</sup> It does so by fulfilling a demand","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 3","pages":"848-858"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70037","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149258847","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":"Where Are You in the Conduct of Your Life as a Rational Agent?","authors":"A.W. Moore","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70059","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In Robert Stern's Presidential Address for the Aristotelian Society he exploits some of Iris Murdoch's work to address an aporia connected to the idea of free benevolent agency: benevolence seems to preclude choice about what to do, whereas free agency seems to require it. This is related to a more general aporia connected to the idea of rational agency: if you act rationally, the sheer rationality of what you do seems not to leave any room, or at least not the room that you might have wished for, for your own distinctive contribution to what you do. Stern's resolution of this aporia is to locate your distinctive contribution to what you do, not in your actually doing it, but in your attending to the reasons for doing it. I argue that there are problems with this resolution, one of which is that it is couched in ‘realist’ terms. I present an anti-realist alternative that draws on Bernard Williams' notion of a thick ethical concept. I explore similarities and dissimilarities between Stern's resolution and this alternative, and I counter an objection to the alternative, namely that it simply begs a critical question. I conclude that, while the alternative is not enough to refute Stern's position, it is a genuine alternative that deserves consideration.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 3","pages":"872-880"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70059","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149258848","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":"Descartes, Principal Attributes, and God","authors":"Eric Stencil","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70045","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Scholars generally agree that René Descartes's God has no principal attribute. In this paper, I argue against this consensus. More specifically, I argue that Descartes's God's principal attribute is infiniteness <i>qua</i> ontological independence. Descartes's God is a <i>res infinita</i> in very much the same way as a mind is a <i>res cogitans</i> and a body is a <i>res extensa</i>. In order to make my case, I begin in section 1 with Descartes's account of principal attributes and argue that nothing about this account precludes God's having one. In section 2, I offer a prima facie case for the view that God's principal attribute is infiniteness <i>qua</i> ontological independence. And in section 3, I consider several passages which reveal the central role ontological independence plays in Descartes's account of God's nature and other attributes. I conclude that Descartes's God's principal attribute is infiniteness <i>qua</i> ontological independence.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"576-598"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148202997","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":"Neo-Hegelian Idealism","authors":"Kevin Richardson","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70047","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In <i>Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality</i>, Thomas Hofweber argues for what he calls a reformed neo-Kantian approach to metaphysics. On this approach, we can make substantive conclusions about reality on the basis of reflections about language alone. He appeals to what he calls inescapable concepts, concepts that humans cannot rationally dispense of, for the purpose of rational inquiry. He argues that such concepts – like the concepts of TRUTH and FACT – must apply to reality, independently of further non-linguistic facts. In this paper, I argue that Hofweber's reformed neo-Kantianism faces a historicist objection: purportedly inescapable concepts are more plausibly understood as historically contingent concepts; they are neither timeless nor inescapable. If the historicist objection is correct, neo-Kantianism is infeasible. Nonetheless, I argue that a version of the idealist project is still worth pursuing. On the neo-Hegelian approach to metaphysics, there are inescapable conceptual functions, where different concepts satisfy these functions throughout history. Neo-Hegelians retain the basic idealist insight while making sense of the historical contingency of our conceptual repertoire.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"441-453"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148202981","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":"Questions Should Have Answers","authors":"Michael Deigan","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70042","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Making sense of the world often requires one to come up with new ideas, including ideas one had previously been unable to think of. How and when should this be done? I propose and defend a norm of rationality linking wondering, belief, and abilities to conceive: one must not both wonder a question and reject all answers to it that one can conceive. This norm explains judgements about an array of cases, some of which cannot be explained by appeal to more familiar doxastic norms or zetetic instrumental norms. It suggests that rationality governs not only the relations among our attitudes, but the relations among our attitudes and our abilities to have attitudes.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"423-440"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148203042","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 Appreciation Game: A Monist Ontology of Works of Art","authors":"Enrico Terrone","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70070","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A pluralist ontology of art states that works of art can belong to distinct ontological categories whereas a monist ontology states that all works of art belong to one ontological category. A monist ontology would be preferable since it is more informative about the nature of art, and may pave the way for a definition of art. Yet, monist conceptions struggle to deal with cultural practices of art appreciation. In the first part of the paper, I will discuss the main monist strategies in the ontology of art, and I will argue that all these strategies find it hard to deal with the relevant cultural practices. Then, I will propose a new monist ontology according to which all works of art are norm-constituted entities. Finally, I will show that this account deals better than its competitors with the relevant cultural practices.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"531-544"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70070","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148203063","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":"Mathematical Imaginings and Pictures","authors":"Jeremy Morris,&nbsp;Eva Morris","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70053","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper explores some of the ways that pictures embedded in the prose of mathematics may mislead the mathematician; in particular, the pictures surrounding Cantor's diagonal argument. This work takes up themes from Floyd and Mühlhölzer's recent work and aims to expand upon what it means to be a non-extensionalist within the context of Cantor's proof. The use of different pictures or conceptions are discussed in relation to Objects of Comparison in Kuusela's sense of the term and are then used to compare the different conceptions of the infinite involved in discussions of the differential calculus on the one hand and of the real numbers on the other, with particular reference to the continuum and the notion of ‘sizes’ of infinity.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"454-469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148203106","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":"The Immaterial Turn in Medieval Latin Theories of Sensation","authors":"Jordan Lavender","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70057","url":null,"abstract":"<p>According to a venerable historical narrative, a crucial step in the development of the modern picture of the mind occurred when Descartes argued that sensing occurs in the immaterial human mind, together with thought and volition. The mind, the story goes, had once been the home only of rational thought and volition, with sensations being embodied phenomena, much like digestion, growth, or weaving. However, I show in this article that the view that human sensations are immaterial, non-extended modifications of the immaterial human intellect rose to prominence in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. In Section 1, I examine the background for this fourteenth-century immaterial turn in the more familiar views of sensation prominent in the thirteenth century. In Section 2, I show how the view that human sensation is just as immaterial as thought emerged in the work of some of William of Ockham's associates in England. In Section 3, I bring to light two important developments in the way philosophers thought about the nature of sensation that led to the Immaterial Turn. In Section 4, I briefly discuss a puzzle about the way scholastics in the Immaterial Turn conceived of sensation.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"559-575"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148202972","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":"A Hole Within Being: Consciousness as Nothingness in Sartre's Being and Nothingness","authors":"Jacob McNulty","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Among Sartre's best-known theses in Being and Nothingness is his claim that the world of experience contains what he calls “négatités,” little pools or pockets of nothingness. The most famous example of a négatité is Pierre, the friend who is absent from the café. Sartre's conviction that there are négatités all around us has another side, often obscured from view: I mean his (apparent) conviction that we ourselves are a kind of non-being or nothingness. In this paper I try to shed some light on this Sartrean thesis by connecting it to perennial problem in metaphysics concerning the status of holes, shadows or absences — in short, non-beings. However I see more than mere analogy here. Sartre's view, as I understand it, is that we literally are a type of hole. We are holes in the sense that we are the kinds of nonbeings that require beings as our hosts. More accurately, it is being and not beings that host the holes that we are. Ordinary holes have some particular material thing as their hosts: cheese or fabric. Yet our “host” is not any particular being (cheese or fabric) but being itself: the in-itself [en soi].</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"703-716"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148203103","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":"Kierkegaard on the Reasons for Neighborly Love","authors":"Michael Au-Mullaney","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70043","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Some Kierkegaard scholars view him as endorsing a bestowal account of neighborly love. In this view, love is not grounded in the lovability of the neighbor but freely bestows value on the neighbor. Others interpret him as endorsing a qualities-responsive view, in which love is a response to the neighbor's intrinsic value. I argue both readings miss a distinction Kierkegaard makes between the normative justification for love and its motivation. I suggest Kierkegaard held that love was normatively justified by the intrinsic value of being human, but not motivated by perception of this value. This is because Kierkegaard held to a “principle of engaged observation,” i.e., that the perceiver always perceives others in light of her love or lack of love for them. In his view, only sincere love for the neighbor allows a person to perceive her value. Thus, Christian love cannot be motivated by perception of the neighbor's value. The motivation for love, for Kierkegaard, is an inchoate urge to love that is constitutive of being human. This urge is typically obstructed by false concepts of love, but can be directed toward the neighbor by adopting the mere belief that every human being is worthy of love.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 2","pages":"673-690"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148203100","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}