3,755 research outputs found
Transformation and Individuation in Giordano Bruno's Monadology
The essay explores the systematic relationship in the work of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) between his monadology, his metaphysics as presented in works such as De la causa, principio et uno, the mythopoeic cosmology of Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, and practical works like De vinculis in genere. Bruno subverts the conceptual regime of the Aristotelian substantial forms and its accompanying cosmology with a metaphysics of individuality that privileges individual unity (singularity) over formal unity and particulars over substantial forms without sacrificing a metaphysical perspective on the cosmos. The particular is individuated as a unique site of desire, continually transforming but able to entrain itself and others through phantasmatic âbondingâ, the new source of regularity in Brunoâs polycentric universe. Bruno thus tries to do justice to the demands of intelligibility as well as transformative eros. The essay concludes with a note on Brunoâs geometry as it relates to his general conception of form
Hard, Harder, and the Hardest Problem: The Society of Cognitive Selves
The hard problem of consciousness is explicating how moving matter becomes thinking matter. Harder yet is the problem of spelling out the mutual determinations of individual experiences and the experiencing self. Determining how the collective social consciousness influences and is influenced by the individual selves constituting the society is the hardest problem. Drawing parallels between individual cognition and the collective knowing of mathematical science, here we present a conceptualization of the cognitive dimension of the self. Our abstraction of the relations between the physical world, biological brain, mind, intuition, consciousness, cognitive self, and the society can facilitate the construction of the conceptual repertoire required for an explicit science of the self within human society
Monadic Conditionality
The problematic vagueness inherent to the study of being requires an approach that transcends the use of a methodology pertaining to solely one research area. In the following pages we will explore the categories of being, their metaphysical meaning and their interrelations, approaching them via heuristic methods that incorporate symbolic mathematical abstraction and music theory analogies. We will propose a monadic system for explicating how the modes of being interact with each other, also exposing a harmonic model of the universe derived from these hypotheses (Chapter I). The nature of consciousness and its properties will be investigated in Chapter II, followed by a research concerning possible internal self-adjustments of total-being-for-itself that might offer insights regarding the temporality and necessity of individual consciousnesses. The aim of this paper is to coalesce the categories of being (in-itself, for-itself, the Others) into a comprehensive system that could account as a unified ontological model compatible with inferences related to phenomenal manifestations
Plotinian Henadology
Plotinusâ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plotinusâ Gnostics âcontractâ divinity into a single God, they not only devalue the cosmos for its multiplicity and diversity, but also multiply intelligible principles unreasonably. This is because they have foreclosed the distinction, which is to become increasingly explicit in the later antique Platonists, between the intelligible and that which is given existentially, the domain belonging to Plotinusâ indeterminate multiplicity of âintelligible Godsâ, as opposed to the dialectically determinate number of intelligible principles. Plotinus is prescient in recognizing that incipient monotheism threatens to erase the distinction between philosophy and theology, and between both of these and psychology, the final outcome of which can only be solipsism or nihilism. The defense of polytheism is seen in this fashion to be essential to the preservation of the space for philosophical discourse
Emilie du Chatelet's Metaphysics of Substance
much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian..
On the divine in Husserl
The paper deals with the ways in which Edmund Husserl develops the question of God. Six ways to reach God are shown as present in Husserlâs writings, some of them seem to be very close to the traditional philosophical ways to go as far as God (the objective and the subjective ways) others are very original, in particular the way that starts from the analysis of the hyletic sphere of the human being, a sphere which is present in all the reality too. At last it is possible to notice Husserlâs interest in the mystical approach to God
âA Partâ of the World: Deleuze and the Logic of Creation
Is there a particular danger in following Deleuze's philosophy to its end result? According to Peter Hallward, Deleuze's philosophy has some rather severe conclusions. Deleuze has been portrayed by him as a theological and spiritual thinker of life. Hallward seeks to challenge the accepted view of Deleuze, showing that these accepted norms in Deleuzian scholarship should be challenged and that, initially, Deleuze calls for the evacuation of political action in order to remain firm in the realm of pure contemplation. This article intends to investigate and defend Deleuze's philosophy against the critical and theological accounts portrayed by Hallward, arguing that Deleuze's philosophy is not only creative and vital but also highly revolutionary and âa partâ of the given world. It then goes on to examine Hallward's distortion of the actual/virtual distinction in Deleuze because Hallward is not able to come to grips with the concept of life in Deleuze's philosophy. We live in an intensive and dynamic world and the main points of Deleuze's philosophy concern the transformation of the world. Deleuze is not seeking to escape the world, but rather to deal with inventive and creative methods to transform society
Husserlâs Concept of the âTranscendental Personâ: Another Look at the HusserlâHeidegger Relationship
This paper offers a further look at Husserlâs late thought on the transcendental subject and the HusserlâHeidegger relationship. It attempts a reconstruction of how Husserl hoped to assert his own thoughts on subjectivity vis-Ă -vis Heidegger, while also pointing out where Husserl did not reach the new level that Heidegger attained. In his late manuscripts, Husserl employs the term âtranscendental personâ to describe the transcendental ego in its fullest âconcretionâ. I maintain that although this concept is a consistent development of Husserlâs earlier analyses of constitution, Husserl was also defending himself against Heidegger, who criticized him for framing the subject in terms of transcendental ego rather than as Dasein. Husserl was convinced that he could successfully respond to Heideggerâs critique, but he did not grasp that Heideggerâs fundamental ontology was an immanent development, rather than a scathing criticism, of his own phenomenology
Husserl, the Monad and Immortality
In an Appendix to his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis dating from the early 1920s, Husserl makes the startling assertion that, unlike the mundane ego, the transcendental ego is immortal. The present paper argues that this claim is an ineluctable consequence of Husserlâs relentless pursuit of the ever deeper levels of time-constituting consciousness and, at the same time, of his increasing reliance on Leibnizâs model of monads as the true unifiers of all things, including minds. There are many structural and substantive parallels between Leibnizâs monadic scheme and Husserlâs later views on the primal ego, and these points of convergence are laid out step by step in this paper. For both theorists, the monad is a self-contained system of being, one âwithout windowsâ; a monadâs experiences unfold in harmonious concatenations; a monad is a mirror of its proximate environs and comprises multiple perspectives; the unconscious is a repository of potential activation; and, most importantly of all, a monad knows no birth and death and hence is immortal. In his very last years, Husserl proposed a third ego level, below (or beyond) the mundane ego and transcendental ego - the primal ego. It is neither psychical nor physical; it permits the transcendental ego to carry out its constitutive activities, including the mundane egoâs birth and death in time; it is always in a process of becoming, and so it can never be in a state of only âhaving-beenâ, that is, dead: and hence the primal egoâs enduring cannot itself ever come to an end.
Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 200
- âŚ