Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy

In this article we shall try to explore the ethical aspects of the Dao De Jing and the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus based on the symbolism of the infant that they both use. At first a very short introduction needs to be made concerning the basis of morality and the difference between China and Greece. Needless to say we must take into account the general ethical context in the civilizations of ancient China and ancient Greece and indicate (if possible) whether the DDJ is to be seen as a strictly ethical/political text as well as whether Heraclitus’ fragments work as an ethical map for the people of his time and place. I intent to structure this article in two chapters each one dedicated to each of the philosophers along with a short introduction in the beginning. As far as the main chapters are concerned the Lao-Zi’s DDJ will be analyzed at first from the perspective of ethics in connection to the symbol of the infant not rarely used by Lao-Zi. Secondly I shall deal with the ethical thought of Heraclitus and his perspective of the infant found in some of his fragments. Let us keep in mind that apart from the fragments themselves, the witnesses (i.e. stories about his life) play a not less important role in our extracting his philosophical opinions. Lastly we shall try to come to a conclusion concerning the similarities and dissimilarities between Lao-Zi and Heraclitus regarding their views on ethics and especially regarding the use of the infant as a symbol or a pattern.

This article offers a reading of David Hume’s skeptical “dangerous dilemma”, comparing it with the thought of authors of the seventeenth century as Descartes, Pascal and Huet with regard to the wavering between our natural sentiment and skeptical doubt. Based on this, we propose a different reading of the relationship between sentiment and reason in the Treatise of Human Nature, often taken only negatively and stressed by the interpreters of Hume’s skepticism.

In 1781, prior to any Kantian reference in favor of the epigenesis – a direct, nominal reference, published in life –, two comparative passages of the “Architectonic of Pure Reason” will have drawn no attention from his readers. But, despite omitting that “augmentation” [Vermehrung], such passages shall lead, both on its own and jointly, to the possibility of a retrospective conflict regarding that theory; a conflict of a conceptual nature which may have repercussions on Kant’s position on the epigenesis, be it directly, on a metaphorical-speculative level, be it indirectly, on an embryological level. The present, ongoing study shall deal with the collocation of the problem, the presentation of some elements in view of its analysis and, finally, a possible solution for the difficulties which the two passages of both editions of the Critique indirectly raise.

This paper analyses which are the great cultural cosmogonic models of creation in mythology; so it will be an essay of comparative mythology about the origin of the world, a study marked by the concern to detect philosophical principles that guide this area of thought.

In this didactic article several perspectives of the philosophical anthropology are presented, showing at the same time the difficulties in delimiting “the question of Man” as an autonomous discipline. Starting from the ambivalence contained in the expression “philosophical anthropology”, we present some data about the history of the word “anthropology”. Next, the typologies elaborated by Max Scheler and Ernst Cassirer illustrate large explanatory models of what “human-being” means, concluding at the same time by the failure of a historical path leading to uncertainty. Finally, the identification of philosophy with anthropology is referred in Kant and in Ludwig Feuerbach.

The major goal of Rousseau’s Discours sur L’Origine et les Fondements de L’Inégalité Parmi les Hommes is the distinction between primary and secondary qualities of human nature, the former being the most representative of the human species and the latter those that cause variations between individuals. Having this distinction as a basic tool, Rousseau searches, in his political works, for a foundation of a social condition in conformity to those essential qualities. Therefore, it’s important to understand how human beings can keep under control the less beneficial characteristics of their nature, that is, the ones that may lead to endless conflicts when stimulated. Having in mind that the community is founded by a permanent exercise of giving priority to the essential qualities of human nature over the secondary ones, we shall also understand whether Rousseau’s community is meant to have an organizational structure, distinct from the existence of particular human beings.

This article analyses – in a necessarily summarized and incomplete way – the antithetical configurations of Fichte’s, Schelling’s and Hegel’s concepts of freedom, taking them as attempts to resolve the fundamental dualism of modern thought, namely: the opposition of spirit and nature.

This paper explores some of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the phenomenologist provides a description of childhood or the child image that reports relevant aspects to his theory. The description of ‘childhood’ as a place inhabited by many places, as a primary silence or as that unspeakable, shows us childhood as the opening of a new field of experience and the institution of a new sense. Childhood will not only be a methodological object of interest in his psychology studies, but also a primal advancement of experience – the mere potentiality yet not thrown (or rather, having not yet been thrown) into the world where everything will, necessarily, have sense.

Initially, the Great War was received euphorically by many writers and philosophers, including Max Weber, Martin Buber and Max Scheler along with Georg Simmel. For Simmel, the war was synonimous with a greater pace of life, a form of dealing with / overcoming the levelling of society caused by the worshipping of money (´Mammonismus`). This exaltation of the war on the part of intellectuals was not common to all – the harsh criticisms of Simmel´s enthusiasm for the war on the part of Georg Lucácz and Ernst Bloch are well-known. Regarding Stefan George, in 1901 Simmel had written: ´His art has been known since its beginning for the wish to act exclusively like an art (...) the fundamental change is complete: that on the contrary, all content is merely the means for forming values that are purely aesthetics.` Therefore, in the aesthetic of Stefan George, Simmel acknowledges the reason that George will reject the war – contrary to many members of George´s circle (George-Kreis) and has its expression in the poem ´The War`, first published in 1917. This contribution seeks to demonstrate the philosophical and aesthetical reasons for enthusiasm for the war and its rejection by Simmel and George, attitudes that are not able to be explained by the opposition to militarism/pacifism that is normally deployed to distinguish between supporters and critics of the war.

Rehabilitation and palliative care are increasingly playing a major role in medicine, surgery, nursing, physiotherapy and related professions. We believe that the same value should still characterize observation and palpation. Accordingly, the gains in the Medical Humanities from the analysis of themes related to the touching/touched experience are documented here and the features of two outstanding works (Borges’s Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and Derrida’s Le Toucher) are called into question. We will try to explore the meaning of the senses as well as the sensibilia as natural kinds of clinical phenomenology, thereupon the intelligibility and the supremacy of corporeality, contact, touching and haptic perception are stressed.

Recent work in the ethics of care is used as a point of departure for thought about the kinds of social conditions that lead to terrorism. Allusion is made to the work of Bayoumi, Held and others, and it is concluded that political acts of terror are often a response to a climate of hostility, including microaggression.

This paper explores central themes of Duncan Pritchard’s epistemology intimately related to the Wittgensteinian idea of a “hinge epistemology”. The first section calls attention to the eminently empirical character of our “hinges”. The second section focuses on Pritchard’s notion of “arational hinge commitments”, more specifically his distinction between the pair “über hinge commitments”/“über hinge propositions” and the pair “personal hinge commitments”/“personal hinge propositions”. The third section brings to the discussion Timothy Williamson’s view of “inexact knowledge” and examines another pair of notions introduced by Pritchard, namely “antiskeptical hinge commitments”/“antiskeptical hinge propositions”. I conclude with a reevaluation of the diagnosis made by Pritchard that, confronted with a sceptical scenario, our “epistemic angst” can be surpassed if we follow Wittgenstein’s teaching in On Certainty about the “structure of rational evaluation”, but that an “epistemic vertigo” can never be ultimately dispelled. My argument is that in a moral scenario there is no room for vertigo.

Monroe Beardsley presents an aesthetic definition of art in “An Aesthetic Definition of Art” (1983), in which he claims that there is a necessary connection between art and aesthetics. Beardsley proposes that a work of art is something made with the intention of having the capacity to satisfy an aesthetic interest. Noël Carroll claims that there are artworks created without aesthetic intentions and that some artworks do not have the capacity to provide aesthetic experiences. In addition, Carroll argues that there are artworks whose status of art is prior to the appreciation of these works as art. The aim of this paper is to present Beardsley’s aesthetic definition of art and analyze how objections to it can be answered.