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The aim of this paper is to show, through a precise commentary of Plato’s Phaedo, c 5–6, that the transcendent Idea of Good assumes the role of connecting altogether’ (sundein) the intelligible to the sensible. Th is argument proves, against the common point of view of the commentators, that this dialogue is not a ‘dualistic’ one. The paper insists also on the differences between the Good in the Phaedo and the Good in the Republic and the Philebus.
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Th e paper discusses the problem of the source of the a nalogies between philosophical outlook of the Sophists and the skeptical tradition of Pyrrho and his successors. Its main objective is to point out that the similarities in standpoints, arguments and methods between these philosophical phenomena result from the transmission of Plato’s Theaetetus. It is argued that main ideas (phenomenalism, subjectivism, relativity and indeterminacy of things, rejection of being and acceptance of becoming and constant fl ux, antilogical position consisting in opposing two contradictory statements etc.) which in Theaetetus constituted so called “Secret Doctrine” (attributed by Plato to Protagoras and disciples of Heraclitus), after being criticized by Aristotle in his discussion about the principle of contradiction in Metaphysics (books IV and XI), were acknowledged by Pyrrho and, revived by Aenesidemus, can be found incorporated into the skeptical tradition in the works of Sextus Empiricus.
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Aristoxenus Elements of Rhythm is the oldest preserved scientific treaty onrhythm. Till our times survived only the second book, but also this one is incomplete. Aristoxenus, as a devoted student of Aristotle, makes use of Aristotelian notions andmethods of inquiry extensively. He introduces the distinction between matter of rhythm (rhythmizomenon) and rhythmical form (rhythmos), as well as makes parallels between Aristotelian theory of time, creating, moreover, a new notion of the smallest time-unit, which he call protos chronos.
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Hegel was not a proponent of supremacy of the state and its unity with the church in the sense of the theocratic state model. Th is article presents in detail Hegel’s understanding of the state-church relation, which takes the form of “unity based on difference”. The unity may suggest a para-religious nature of the idea (sacralisation) of the state. Due to possible misunderstandings and interpretation ambiguities, the issue is thoroughly analysed. Reconstruction of Hegel’s view on the state-church relation brings forward Hegel’s ambivalent attitude to religion. It is a permanent element of the life of state, but also leads to many faults and threats. The article provides reasons for both criticism and affirmation of religion and recreates Hegel’s understanding of fanaticism, Catholicism, Reformation,unity and separation (a difference in Hegel’s terminology) of church and state, the idea of the state and freedom. The analysis results in emergence of some elements of Hegelianism which might surprise by their actual care for the value of religious freedom, toleration and a state understood as a mediator or arbiter in religious conflicts.
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The author of this paper discusses the source experience defined in terms of the ancient Indian philosophy. She focuses on two out of six mainstream Hindu philosophical schools, Sāṃkhya and Yoga. While doing so the author refers to the oldest preserved texts of this classical tradition, namely Yogasūtra c. 3rd CE and Sāṃkhyakārikā 5th CE, together with their most authoritative commentaries. First, three major connotations of darśana, the Sanskrit equivalent of φιλοσοφια, are introduced and contextualised appropriately for the comparative study of source experience. Then, three means of knowledge (pramāṇa-s) as well as the purpose of search for source experience are explained. Next, a specific understanding of source experience in the context of Sāṃkhya-Yoga is discussed to reveal both its contents and the reasons for apophatic formulation of the liberating insight. The self-knowledge and true knowledge both result from source experience based on distinguished discernment (vivekakhyāti) between “I”/ego and the self, gained during the multistage meditative absorption (samādhi). The analysis of discriminative cognition is followed by reconstruction of the arguments offered by the author of Sāṃkhyakārikā in favour of the existence of the self (puruṣa), immutable, inactive, and opposed to the domain of nature (prakṛti) characterized as spontaneously active and creative, which includes empirical consciousness, or “I”. The last section is devoted to the issue of the possible communication of achieved knowledge and its application in the everyday life practice. In conclusion, it is claimed that in Indian philosophy there has been no clear distinction between the practical value of subjective cognitive insight and theoretical ambitions of philosophy, which is why many authors of classical treatises are also recognised as eminent sapiential mentors. Oft en, especially in the texts of Yoga, Nyāyā and Buddhism philosophy is associated with therapy and philosophical exposition of the “cognitive ailments” is compared to medical treatment.
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This article presents the current state of discussion in contemporary interpretation and appropriation of Augustine’s social and political vision in City of God, attending particularly to Augustine’s two cities framework for conceiving the relation between Church and world. The two cities are trans-national, trans-historical communities distinguished by their different loves. While they are primarily eschatological communities, the earthly and heavenly cities are nevertheless manifest in empirical social realities and inextricably intermingled with each other during this earthly existence. It is precisely this dynamic that generates the ambiguities and interpretive diversity characteristic of current scholarly discussion of Augustine’s political theology. The two cities framework undergirds Augustine’s position on a variety of issues this article treats in turn: pagan virtue, Christian participation in non-Christian political orders, and the nature of politics. The final section provides a roadmap for contemporary proposals concerning Augustine’s political theology.
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The paper describes the main topics of Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotelian selected practical writings. It is focused on Rhetoric and Nikomachean Ethics. The aim of the article is to show how the practical ideas of Aristotle were theoretically introduced into the basic terms of Being and Time through an analysis of early Heidegger’s lectures. Within the Heidegger’s interpretation, Aristotelian practical concepts indicate the consistency of classical rules and principles of the communication and persuasion. Finally, Heidegger’s on to hermeneutics schould be viewed as practical philosophy based on ethics and rhetoric.
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The main aim of this paper is an analysis of a dispute between Anselm of Canterbury and Roscelin of Compiegne about the interpretation of the Trinity of God. Roscelin’s propositions were condemned at the synod in Soissons in the early 90s of the 11th century, but the first information about his teaching were put down by John, later cardinal-bishop in Tusculum. John wrote a letter to his former teacher Anselm of Canterbury and informed him about Roscellin’s very problematic thesis. Anselm responded with two letters and with the treatise Epistola de incarnatione verbi, a work he re-wrote several times. At the end of this treatise, he mentions (similarly like Roscelin in his later Epistola ad Abaelardum) the key point of the whole controversy: what the Greeks describe as one essence and three substances, the Latins call one substance and three persons; the difference between the Greeks and the Latins is only in words and not in faith. Roscelin and Anselm could read this statement in Augustin’s De trinitate. Anselm probably used also Boethius tract Contra Eutychen et Nestorium and Porphyry’s defi nition of the person (Isagoge 2) to his explanation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Roscelin applied Priscian’s assertion (Institutiones grammaticae 2, 18) concerning a noun: each of them (e.g. a person) signifies both a substance and a quality. Roscelin argued that there are no accidents in God; everything in God is a necessary part of the divine essence. Consequently, when we use the noun “person” to refer to God, it must signifies something substantial (and not accidental), in other words the noun “person” signifies the divine substance. If we say that there are three persons in God, together with it we say that there are three divine substances or if the noun “person” is another name for God, than the Father and the Holy Spirit must be incarnated with the Son. It follows that the grammatical and dialectical traditions are the key reasons for Roscelin’s propositions. Inasmuch as Anselm (and Lanfranc) was the most prominent thinkers of the second half of the 11th century who argued for the active use of late ancient grammar (especially Priscian) and logic (Aristotle, Porphyry, Boethius) in questions of doctrine, due to it Roscelin (erroneously) assumed that these teachers would support his theory.
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In chapter 1 of Book II of Theologia Platonis Proclus discusses three possibilities: 1. All beings constitute a multiplicity, excluding all unity; 2. All beings are one, excluding all unity; 3. Being is a mixture of unity and multiplicity. In the course of the discussion two possibilities are reduced ad absurdum. An analysis of the third approach (sc. being as a mixture of unity and multiplicity) leads to the distinction between two concepts of theOne, namely: 1. One in multiplicity; 2. One unparticipable, „which is the One absolutely”. The first cause and the absolute principle of the universum.
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Since Einfürung in die philosophische Hermeneutik by Jean Grondin published in 2001, a debate on verbum interius as an essential experience of philosophical hermeneutics has begun. A unique voice in it belongs to John Arthos’ book The Inner Word in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics published in 2009. The article presents an outline of the polemic discussion on the two books and their authors’ interpretation of verbum interius. The outline includes James Risser’s interpretation (from 1997) with which the author of the article shares the way of understanding Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The text can be treated as an introduction to the interpretation of hermeneutic ontology and dialectic. Both of them, on the one hand, use the wording “speaking from deep inside of language”, and on the other hand, both exceed, so to speak, the Christian thought perspective of verbum. The author comes to a conclusion that although the debate broadens – as Gadamer put it – a resonance of the text, a tendency to track a “theoretical base” of philosophical hermeneutics should not deafen its own “voice”, that is the experience which the hermeneutics not only wishes to bequeath, but the experience it wants to be.
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In the EE VII.2 Aristotle develops the typology of friendship and outlines the solution of several issues friendship stated in the EE VII.1. The author reveals the typological study elaborated by Aristotle and presents his response to three questions: a) what is friendship; b) what kind of person is a friend; c) in how many ways “friendship” is predicated.
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The paper examines Gregory Palmas’s metaphysics of light and its application to the hierarchical and symbolic structure of Dionysius world. For many researchers the hierarchical and symbolic structure in which Pseudo-Dionysius sees the opportunity to approach God, seems to be pagan, neo-Platonic construction, impossible to adopt to a Christocentric vision of the Palamas` world. The author of Triads extensively analyzes the importance and role hierarchy, an intricate structure of cognition through symbols and analogies, but in the words of J. Meyendorff, this is actually a Christian epistemology, oscillating around the dogma of the Incarnation with its historical (time) conditioning. Palamas found in the thought of the Areopagite conviction of the necessity to acquire knowledge through the hierarchy and symbol because of the weakness of human intellect, which must rotate in a circle of innate knowledge. On the other hand, according to the author of Corpus intellect has the ability to transcend itself. Doctor of hesychasm extends this capability to the whole human person, which is the composition of the body and soul. The Bishop of Thessaloniki presents the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius in the perspective of the remarks of Maximus the confessor about the nature and attributed to its energies, the humanity filled with the divine energies. He considers the theandric divine human nature of Christ as a foundation of the possibility that the man shares with Christ the same divine condition. Due to such possibility every human person is able to go beyond the hierarchy and to know God directly thanks to the operations of energies which transformed his nature.
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Aristoxenus of Tarentum (c. 360 - 300) was one of the most talented Aristotle’s students. He is known mainly as the greatest musicologist of Ancient Greece, author of Elementa harmonica and Elementa rhythmica, the oldest preserved treatises on music. The aim of this article is to reconstruct of his theory of the soul that survived to our times in the form of synoptic remarks of Cicero and Lactantius. In these fragments it is clearly stated that Aristoxenus considered soul as harmony. This vision seems to echo an old concept, mentioned already in Platonic dialogue Phaedo that soul is like harmony in the musical instrument and in consequence it is mortal. But it can be shown that the Aristoxenian theory of soul is different from the Platonic exposition. The misinterpretation of Aristoxenus’ thought by Cicero and then by Lactantius is based on a sort of simplification or/and misunderstanding of the vocabulary used by Aristoxenus, especially of the term harmony. Aristoxenus in his theory of music is not using the term ἁρμονία in the sense of a perfect joining of the opposites as was Plato, but applies it only for denoting a type of musical scale (next to the diatonic and chromatic one). The word that corresponds to the idea of harmony in music was τὸ ἡρμοσμένον, (to hermosmenon), i.e. what is harmonized. By showing the significance of this term it can be demonstrated that Aristoxenus, against the opinion of Cicero and Lactantius, developed a doctrine of the soul different from Plato.
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We present the third part of Pierre Hadot selection of Marius Victorinus’smetaphysical texts in Polish translation. Victorinus’s writings published in this volumefocus on the question “Why God has manifested himself as a form?”.
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The objective of the given research is to study the phenomenon of hybrid symbolism as both heuristic and counterproductive factor of a person’s self-identification in a transitional society. The article studies Ukrainian experience of national self-identification reconstruction taking place in the times of profound socio-cultural transformation and the phenomenon of hybrid symbols as an ambivalent factor of person’s self-identification. Complexity and variety of national self-identification realization in the space of the innovative symbols of the epoch is a relevant and not enough studied problem, which exists rather as a subject matter of publicistic writing than of scientific research. The research methodology is based on the use of analytical, comparative and hypothetical-deductive methods for revealing and explaining the symbolic nature of public protest. Scientific novelty of the results obtained in the course of the research consists in the use of the phenomenon of public protest as a problem field of formation of new cultural symbols of the era. Public protest as a reaction to social troubles, corruption dominance and dependence on other states becomes a powerful factor of making the process of national and ethnic self-identification more active. The symbols accompaning public protest remind an insight, and a certain public enlightenment that appears unconsciously, by impulse, and partly unwillingly. New symbols are not developed purposefully; they are a result of social crises and transformations. Conclusions. The creation of new national symbols is a long and complicated process, as the development of modern Ukrainian society itself, which cannot be based only on ethnic or national self-identification. Public protest is a ritual action, which presupposes national and ethnic self-identification, multicultural and multiethnic national character realization and political nation development. Ukrainian protest phenomenon has demonstrated that it is a symbolic action and an act of transgression, when the doer is being transformed and changed and when the transitional ritual, accompanied by the process of making its own history and modern identity, is taking place.
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The controversies related to John Taurek’s rescue case concern the importance of numbers in deciding about whom to help in situations in which there is a shortage of means. Taurek thinks that the number of the needy does not matter; we can save one person rather than many people. Since both common sense and the duty to responsibly administer help make us approve the decision to help those who are more in number, Taurek’s thesis seems counterintuitive. The majority of authors discussing Taurek’s thesis defend the importance of numbers in such decisions, and few are inclined to accept some of his intuitions, recognizing the counting of people who need help as morally problematic. However, the authors who defend the importance of numbers reject a simple utilitarian approach and try to justify the claim that the majority should have priority in such a way that no person involved in the conflict of distribution could charge the rescuer with not having taken his or her claims into account.
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This paper aims to discuss selected issues related to the effect exerted by the financial aspects of psychotherapy on a psychotherapeutic relationship. At the beginning, I consider the effect that remuneration received by the therapist directly from the customer can have on their therapeutic relationship. Then I discuss the issues related to the compensation for psychotherapy services and show the consequences which the criteria of compensating for specific therapeutic methods have for the quality of psychotherapeutic relationships, as well as the influence which the requirement to study the effectiveness of psychotherapy in the natural science paradigm has on psychotherapeutic services. The arguments I put forward lead to the conclusion that the criteria of the compensation for psychotherapeutic services can change the psychotherapeutic relationship into a business relationship and, as a result, the therapist can start to treat the customer instrumentally.
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Biomedical sciences cannot answer the question who should be saved from death if not everyone can be. This is an ethical issue. However, we face exactly this question when deliberating on the criteria for organ allocation. The main aim of this article is to formulate a pluralistic theory of just distribution of organs, which incorporates the tenets of utilitarianism, egalitarianism and sufficientarianism. Each constituent theory adopts a different value as a criterion for organ allocation. For utilitarianism it is a health benefit for the patient, for egalitarianism it is the ratio of deserts and health-related wellbeing, for suficientarianism what is important is that the candidate for a transplant be situated below the sufficientarian threshold. The article presents a proposal to reconcile these three competing theories.
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The results of empirical research show that people prefer to help identified individuals rather than unidentified ones. This preference has an important influence on many private and public decisions, for example concerning vaccination or the distribution of healthcare resources. The aim of this article is to define the terms: “identified”, “unidentified”, “statistical”, and then to analyze three philosophical arguments concerning the normative implications of this preference: 1) contractualism ex ante; 2) fair distribution of chances and risks; 3) principles regarding the concentration of good effects and the distribution of bad effects. I will demonstrate that these arguments, which are related to interesting philosophical problems, such as counterfactuals, are not convincing.
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The paper aims at presenting a coherent view of Plotinus’ concept of contemplation,based on a close reading of Enn. V 1,12. Most scholars believe that accordingto Plotinus the fallen human self still contemplates Intellect through its “unfallen”part, although this contemplation is somehow outside of our fallen awareness. Theidea that the Plotinian contemplation can be a sensu stricto unconscious activity ishighly controversial and the paper shows that a more plausible view is that in thefallen state contemplation of the spiritual realm is only potential and if it becomesactual, then it becomes fully conscious. However, the analysis of Enn. V 1,12 showsthat it is not “potential” in the Aristotelian sense (that is, not yet existent), but thatPlotinus develops an original idea of contemplation that is potential “from the sideof the subject”, and yet actual “from the side of the object”. This gives the Plotinianpotential contemplation an intermediary status between spiritual “sleep” and full“awakening”.
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