Domesticating Descartes, Renovating Scholasticism: Johann Clauberg And The German Reception Of Cartesianism

This article studies the academic context in which Cartesianism was absorbed in Germany in the mid-seventeenth century. It focuses on the role of Johann Clauberg (1622-1665), first rector of the new University of Duisburg, in adjusting scholastic tradition to accommodate Descartes’ philosophy, thereby making the latter suitable for teaching in universities. It highlights contextual motivations behind Clauberg’s synthesis of Cartesianism with the existing framework such as a pedagogical interest in Descartes as offering a simpler method, and a systematic concern to disentangle philosophy from theological disputes. These motivations are brought into view by situating Clauberg in the closely-linked contexts of Protestant educational reforms in the seventeenth century, and debates around the proper relation between philosophy and theology. In this background, it argues that Clauberg nevertheless retains an Aristotelian conception of ontology for purely philosophical reasons, specifically, to give objective foundations to Descartes’s metaphysics of substance. In conclusion, Clauberg should not be assimilated either to Aristotelianism or to Cartesianism or, indeed, to syncretic labels such as ‘Cartesian Scholastic’. Instead, he should be read as transforming both schools by drawing on a variety of elements in order to address issues local to the academic milieu of his time

Death and History

The analyses in the book investigate the possibilities and foundations of a completely new philosophy of history, although outlined in dialogue with M. Heidegger. The fundamental questions the author asks are: Why, wherefrom is there history? Why are we humans historical? Why is there historiography? Primarily and ultimately, the response to each of these questions is: because we are MORTAL. Accordingly, the first chapter tackles the possibilities and lays the foundations of an ontology of history. Built upon these, the second chapter analyses the being of the PAST and its existential characteristics – as NOT-BEING-ANY-MORE, as HAD-BEEN-NESS. Chapter three turns towards the FUTURE and analyses its existential characteristics as NOT-YET-BEING. Chapter four is an explicit return to the dialogue with Heidegger, which surfaces the main aspects of the essential belonging together of the fundaments and origins of philosophy and history. The Appendix is an applied philosophical research related to the previous subjects which examines the interlacements of DEATH and SECRET in the phenomenon of TERRORISM

Why I Wrote Listening to Places

The book Listening to Places (Void Gallery, 2022) contains exercises designed to encourage self-reflexive listening. These activities are predicated on platial thinking, a philosophy that asserts the importance of places as responsive contexts that shape, and are shaped by, our being-in-the-world. This belief weaves an ontology of being with an ethos that’s literally grounded in the places we occupy. Despite the philosophical foundations, this is a practical handbook that will aid musicians, composers, sound designers, field recordists, producers,... anyone who wishes to enhance their experience of sound. These exercises are designed to facilitate workshops, soundwalks, and other activities

Ontological Investigations of a Pragmatic Kind? A Reply to Lauer

This paper is a reply to Richard Lauer’s “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?” (2019) and an attempt to contribute to the meta-social ontological discourse more broadly. In the first part, I will give a rough sketch of Lauer’s general project and confront his pragmatist approach with a fundamental problem. The second part of my reply will provide a solution for this problem rooted in a philosophy of the social sciences in practice

Barry Smith an sich

Festschrift in Honor of Barry Smith on the occasion of his 65th Birthday. Published as issue 4:4 of the journal Cosmos + Taxis: Studies in Emergent Order and Organization. Includes contributions by Wolfgang Grassl, Nicola Guarino, John T. Kearns, Rudolf Lüthe, Luc Schneider, Peter Simons, Wojciech Żełaniec, and Jan Woleński

Developing Ontological Theories for Conceptual Models using Qualitative Research

Conceptual modelling is believed to be at the core of the IS discipline. There have been attempts to develop theoretical foundations for conceptual models, in particular ontological models as axiomatic reference systems. Although the notion of ontology has become popular in modelling theories, criticism has risen as to its philosophical presuppositions. Taking on this criticism, we discuss the task of developing socially constructed ontologies for modelling domains and outline how to enhance the expressiveness of ontological modelling theories by developing them via qualitative research methods such as Grounded Theory

Being and Literature: The Disclosure of Place in Modernity

The dissertation develops an original ontology of place by reading Modernist literature (1864-1950) as a critical reaction to Modern philosophy (1641-1800), and builds a platform upon movements implicit in literature from which future metaphysical and epistemological inquiries can begin. Western metaphysics and epistemology have been conditioned by the Cartesian commitment to the ego cogito, primarily understood as a subject to which the world appears as represented in concepts or ideas. The postmodern and deconstructive criticisms of such philosophical foundations – and indeed, on the very notion of foundation itself – have become well worn, but have failed to offer a viable alternative, everywhere heralding the “end of metaphysics” while simultaneously carrying on metaphysical discourse as if unaware of their own dictum! Being and Literature: The Disclosure of Place in Modernity offers the ontology of place as an alternative to postmodern anti-realism, showing that Modernist literature prefigures the postmodern critical project and implicitly leads the way toward an ontology of place that would de-center the cogito subject from the heart of Western metaphysics and epistemology. We avoid anti-realism through the reading of Modernism, while developing the alternative placial ontology capable of responding the weaknesses of postmodern anti-realism