![Czy rzeczywistość posiada strukturę? Część II: Realizm i hierarchizm ontologiczny](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2017_33976.jpg)
We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Whiteheadova filozofija je najobuhvatnija i najradikalnija filozofija vremena koje imamo i to vremena u dvostrukom smislu, vremena uopće i vremena 20. stoljeća. Time mu pripada sličan rang kao i Heideggeru. Obojica su bili suvremenici, Whitehead (1861. – 1947.) osamnaest godina stariji. Svoje glavno djelo, »Proces i realnost « izdao je, međutim, tek relativno kasno, 1927. – 1928., kad je već izašao Heideggerov »Bitak i vrijeme «, koji je desetljećima dominirao diskusijom, dok je Whiteheadovo djelo ostalo gotovo zaboravljeno.
More...
The article analyzes the thomistic concepts of universals and existence (esse). In the Middle Ages, the question of universals was one of the most relevant problems of scholasticism. Theologians and philosophers debated over cognition of eternal forms and their existence in human understanding. They used asking: did universals exist in reality or in the intellect alone. Aquinas treated universals in three ways: as forms abstracted from matter, as forms in the divine intellect, and as forms which are the essences of intellectual substances. He was convinced that human cognition is grounded on sense perceptions and imagination without which the cognition is not possible: no body – no cognition. This attitude of the Angelic Doctor was very important for the development of philosophical anthropology. He claimed that being and essence are the first things to be conceived by our understanding, that being (ens) is understood through substantial forms thanks to which all beings have existence (esse). Existence was one of the most important parts of Aquinas’s metaphysics used in explanation of general development of the material world, nature of universals and modes of their existence.
More...
The article analyzes the concept of intellectual soul as it was understood by Albertus Magnus, who developed it on the background of Christian tradition, relaying on the texts of Ancient Greek and Arab thinkers. While inquiring the nature of intellect, Albertus Magnus proves that the essence of the soul consists in the cognitive ability, which it obtains from the first cause. He uses the term “soul” equivocally, relating it to being and acting, but the term “cause” he uses univocally. When created soul acquires the ability to know, it becomes intellectual and desires to approach the first cause as the source of knowledge. The image of the soul is like that of the first cause but it is not exact because of the remoteness of the soul from that cause. In some way, human intellectual soul is the perfection of the body but at the same tame it is a separate soul, therefore it functions as nature as well as potency. The intellectual nature of the soul reveals itself by the actualization of potential ideas.
More...
The article deals with the problems of recollection and self-identity in the Platonic tradition, especially in Neoplatonism. Various peculiarities of the Platonic dialectic are interpreted and understood in the context of the ancient Orphic myths and Egyptian cult practices aimed at the noetic ascent of the soul and her reintegration within the realm of the noetic cosmos (or the Demiurge, tantamount to the divine Intellect). In this respect, philosophy may be regarded as the guide to the transcendent realities, though certain Neoplatonists (especially, Iamblichus) emphasized the role of theurgy in the process of „anagogic homecoming“, that is, the soul’s return to the One.
More...
This paper investigates the similarities and differences of existential and mystical experience. The Knight of Faith, a main figure of Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, is compared with the concept of a man of faith in mysticism (Zhuangzi, The Cloud of Unknowing, the texts of Meister Eckhart and Teresa of Avila). The article estimates critically Kierkegaard’s relation to “mysticism”, reveals the ambiguity of the concept and draws an analogy between Kierkegaard’s and mystics’ style. The analogy between existentialism and mysticism is found in the central role of experience. Experience influences the person’s whole existence, manifests itself in everyday life and generates an experiential knowledge. The main differences between existentialism and mysticism are highlighted in an analysis of individual consciousness and its importance before an experience and after it. The research will show that the mystical experience neither contradicts nor negates existential experience, but embraces and transcends it as existential experience embraces and transcends the everyday experience.
More...
This work focuses on the relation between theory and truth in the context of scientific realism debate. How far can the science go exploring unobservable entities? What should we think about modern scientific theories? Do they reveal the truth about the world's structure? These are the main questions that this work tries to answer. As it is well known, scientific realists and their opponents - antirealists – are also concerned about these questions. Therefore, the two most popular philosophical views of antirealists are discussed in this work. The first view is known as instrumentalism, while the second – constructive empiricism. Both of them oppose the position of scientific realism. This work also presents the main arguments of the debate - the distinction between the observable and unobservable entities, underdetermination thesis, Putnam's non-miracles argument and pessimistic induction.
More...
The paper investigates directly and indirectly preserved views of Pythagoras and Pythagoreans who, according to the author, represent the antecedents of deviations from the mainstream Western philosophy and anticipate the majority of later modalities of non-anthropocentric approaches. Fragments of italic thinkers, in other words can serve almost as guidelines for today highly actual (bio)ethical requirements for a new and different resolution of the relation between humans and so called non-human living beings. The Pythagorean idea that all forms of life are kindred brought into connection not only humans with animals and plants, but also indicated that human soul, however only after purification, can achieve melding with eternal and divine soul, to which it belongs by its own nature. The link and analogy that may be established between a man and universe is referred to in Aristotle’s statement that, according to Pythagoreans it is possible for any soul to enter any body. This kinship of all varieties of life, eventually, was a necessary prerequisite for the well-known Pythagorean doctrine on immortality and the transmigration of souls (παλιγγενεσία).
More...
Modern scholarship on Late Antique philosophy seems to be more interested than ever before in examining in depth convergences and divergences between Platonism and Early Christian thought. Plotinus is a key figure in such an examination. This paper aims at shedding light to certain aspects of Plotinian metaphysics that bring Plotinus into dialogue with the thought of Church fathers by means either of similarities or differences between Neoplatonist and Christian thought. It proposes a preliminary study of the Plotinian concept of aptitude, as it emerges throughout the Enneads, and seeks to argue that this concept is crucial as it involves the relation between the One and the many, the reality of participation, the relation of the cosmos with, and its dependence on, the superior spheres of being, the bestowal of divine gifts upon beings, and the possibility of the deification of the human being.
More...
The paper attempts to present the fundamental perspectives which are necessary to understand Aquinas’s position on contingency, freedom and individuation in order to compare his thinking with Duns Scotus’s. The author wants to take into account Gilson’s warning: it is useless to compare chosen details of the aforementioned philosophical proposals, if there is no understanding of the deep difference between the metaphysical systems of the two philosophers.The first section presents the difference in the understanding of the relationship between nature and will. Duns Scotus interprets the will as opposed to nature and sees a truly free and Christian person acting as opposed to the deterministic operations of nature. For Aquinas the truly personal acting may be inscribed in nature as its free fulfilment. The difference is based on the different readings of Aristotle’s philosophy. The second section describes the difference in the understanding of the transcendence of the divine actions. Thomas uses a very strong concept of transcendence that allows him to accept the thesis that God’s immutable (= necessary) will achieves its purposes through the necessary and free (sic!) actions of the creatures (cf. De veritate, q. 6, a. 3, ad 3). Duns Scotus looks for a more intuitive understanding of the relationship between divine and human acting. Because of that he describes the divine actions as contingent, undertaken in the eternal “now”. The third section deals with the doctrine of individuation. Duns Scotus’s proposed solution to this problem is his famous form haecceitas. Although the form as the source of substantiality is the sign of individuality for Thomas, as well, in his case this has been achieved through individuation, and although he must have been aware of some difficulties in the classical Aristotelian position (matter as the main factor in individuation), he sticks to the Aristotelian solution, only slightly reformulating it (materia quantitate signata). There are two reasons for his fidelity to Aristotle in spite of doubts expressed by Albert the Great and Bonaventure: the stress on the hylemorphic structure of being and the attempt to articulate the consistency of the conceptual genera. The last problem leads to the main metaphysical difference of the analysed proposals. Duns Scotus as an essentialist has to inscribe everything that is real within the order of essence; Thomas articulates reality by taking into account essence and existence. His position opens wider possibilities for the understanding of being.
More...
The aim of the paper is to show the main differences between the concepts of contingency, free will and individuality in John Duns Scotus and in the Aristotelian tradition. I outline the parts of Scotus’s view, which constitute a clear departure from the traditional Aristotelian outlook: (a) the rejection of the principle of plenitude; (b) the construal of the present as contingent; (c) the development of the notion of synchronic contingency; and (d) the separation between immutability and necessity. In his anthropology Scotus emphasizes: (1) the notion of free will as autonomous and self-determining; (2) the rationality of the will, which consists in its dependence on the intellect or knowledge; and (3) the rejection of Aristotelian eudaimonism. God is treated by Scotus as capable of knowing and loving individual, contingent beings. In his axiology Scotus stresses positive aspects of the individuality, plurality and uniqueness of each individual being.
More...
In the article, I examine whether an analysis of facts of existence is possible. A fact of existence is a specific variety of a state of affairs. States of affairs are ontological correlates of propositions. Facts of existence are counterparts of existential propositions. States of affairs, in contrast to facts of existence, can be analyzed as compositions of simpler ingredients, e.g. of subject and properties. There are philosophers who think the analogical analysis is possible in the case of facts of existence. According to such an analysis, facts of existence consist in having an existence but conceived as an inseparable inner principle called an act of existence or esse. I argue against the possibility of such an analysis. If we consequently analyze a fact of existence in terms of alleged ingredients, we are finally obliged to accept the thesis that esse is entirely external to the thing. I also show that inseparability of esse blocks the function ascribed to it: the function of making real. I maintain facts of existence are non-analyzable and I refute the validity of the real difference between essence and esse.
More...
In the paper, I put forward my views on the topic of existence. I do it by focusing on three distinctions: between static conceptions of existence and dynamic ones; between existence (of something) as a fact and as a principle of being; and between the limited existence of contingent beings and the Divine existence itself. I try to defend the cognitive value of the second parts of these distinctions in ontological and theological contexts. In my opinion, existence as a dynamic factor of being makes the difference between real and intentional objects, as well as between real (actual) and potential states of the world. Existence is also a necessary condition of proper activities of beings. In the final parts of the article I discuss some objections stated by Marek Piwowarczyk in his essay “Troubles with an Analysis of Facts of Existence.” I maintain that most of these (or similar) difficulties can be resolved by means of tools present in Barry Miller’s conception of existence.
More...
The subject of the paper is the ontological status of actual and non-actual worlds. According to one version of contemporary Meinongianism, while the actual world exists, merely possible and impossible worlds are nonexistent objects. Moreover, they do not have any other form of being.The aim of the paper is to indicate some problematic consequences of this kind of Meinongianism, and to sketch an alternative view, which is based on ontological pluralism—the view according to which there are many kinds of being.
More...
The present article was my attempt to present the natural theology (scientia divina) of St Thomas Aquinas in a more analytical and metaphilosophical way. The collected material allows us to distinguish Aquinas’s two approaches, the categorical and beyond-categorical, both in the demonstration of God’s existence and the procedure for establishing His attributes. This distinction becomes apparent in the five ways. I interpreted the first, second and fifth as simple modifications of Aristotle, whereas the third and the fourth represented, to me, original conceptual speculation. The speculation takes us to an interesting concept of God as ipsum esse. This concept, which constitutes an exceptionally mature synthesis of perfect-being theology and creation theology, is greater than the concepts of his predecessors and can be used as a tool for expressing essential elements of the Christian doctrine. The most interesting component of this concept is the idea of God’s simplicity, which requires us to get rid of any categorical-anthropomorphic habit in our way of thinking. According to it, we can state that God is a person, but not in the sense of being such-or-such a person (as some being among other beings), but in the sense of being a mysterious source and principle of existence and perfection of persons.
More...
If we speak about the sublimity of financial markets nowadays, this is mostly because we can already gaze into the contemporary version of ruins of (ambiguous) crises of capitalism and crisis politics, that left behind themselves desolated (social) landscapes, in which the absence of the human and of labor (read: gazing into the posthuman and at the emancipation within nonhuman terrain) once again testifies to a kind of sublimity. And from the historical point of view the revitalization of the discourse of (Cassius Longinus) sublime is situated precisely into a genealogy of treatises drawing the border between human and nonhuman, between society and nature. Thus, the sublime could only rise over not (yet) cultivated nature (while sovereignty could only rise over the cultivated one). Following from Longinus' most efficient sublime effect, when it functions as a hidden figure of speech, my field of interest will be predominantly a genealogy of race within the regime of aesthetics, from Edmund Burke's and Immanuel Kant's conceptualizations of aesthetics of the sublime, up until recent debates within contemporary aesthetics about subject-less experience and experience-less subject. This genealogy will serve as a display of procedure by which and since then the content (unrepresentable, race, terror) could be represented only in a certain way (as necessity), which led to a kind of asceticism (i.e. to formalism and immaterial), even more, to a return to objectnessless, which once again testifies to an encounter with the figure of silence, and with contingency.
More...
Different traces of the living world, reveal the intentionality that we can call the play. Metaphorically, it could be even called a dimensional play, which always opens the transcendental consciousness and the genesis of intentions, found in the realities chosen by the living worlds, which form the traces of transcendental dimensions and the play of transcendental ability that opens them. What would be the perception if we could conceive such a game without any dimensions? We would lose not only permanence and change, but also, time and eternity, past, present and future, here and there. Everything would be together – always and everywhere. Such perception would go away without memory, without any identity and name. This is clear, since in passive genesis, in the primordial sense of the mind, there is not yet any egological implementation, nor other living world, nor the man-made identities such as the king, the ploughman, the pope or the bandit. Phenomena does not appear as a consequence of any subjectivity – they are just experienced, they reveal themselves as present. Moreover, passive synthesis as a trace of permanence or change, actively implementing any phenomena, also does not yet present itself as an egologic or generally speaking as meaningful activity: it also reveals phenomena as given, and all that is given is given in absolute terms, what is present. In other words, in the absence of any egological being, the only thing remaining is the desire to „passively“ engage in to anything that appears.
More...