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Journal of Philosophical Research

Volume 37, Issue Supplement, 2012
Selected Papers from the XXII World Congress of Philosophy

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Displaying: 1-20 of 39 documents


1. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Myung-Hyun Lee

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2. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Peter Kemp

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3. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Seon-Wook Kim

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rethinking moral, social, and political philosophy: democracy, justice, and global responsibility

4. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Fred Dallmayr

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Liberalism and democracy are not identical. In the phrase “liberal democracy” the two terms are conflated—with the result that liberalism tends to trump democracy. My paper challenges this tendency. It first examines critically central features of “minimalist” liberal democracy as formulated by some leading theorists. The discussion then shifts to critical assessments in both the East and the West. Turning first to South Asia, the focus is placed on Gandhi’s teachings regarding popular self-rule (swaraj) where the latter does not mean “selfish rule” but rather the ability of people to rule themselves in an ethical manner. Moving to East Asia, I concentrate on Confucianism which emphasizes the basic ethical “relationality” of human life and stands opposed to both radical individualism and collectivism. The paper concludes by invoking the work of John Dewey who famously defined democracy as an ethical community.
5. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Nkolo Foé

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Relativism issues occur in a context characterised by the resurfacing of culturalism and attempts to substitute historical causality based on class struggles with a new causality based on great cycles of civilizations and culture clashes. Symptons include rejection of class struggle, biologisation and culturalisation of social inequalities, and denial of universal values—all linked to the delegitimisation of emancipatory reason, which supposes an ethical approach to social and global issues. In Europe, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, destruction of reason and the neglect of universal values by institutions of capitalism led to the barbaric conquest of non-European societies. In these societies, emancipatory reason and philosophies of freedom have an important role to play in social redemption. The major challenge they face is how to help man free himself from the intolerable universe of constraint (determined by relativism), and bring him to a level of consciousness where freedom of choice is possible. This entails the rehabilitation of universal values and the inscription of the ethics of responsibility at the core of any vision of an alternative modernity.
6. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Tong Shijun

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Many people show great interest in the idea of “overlapping consensus” proposed by John Rawls. On the basis of a careful reading of different understandings of this idea, or the “overlapping consensus” on the idea of “overlapping consensus,” we can say that there are three levels of “overlapping consensus.” At the first level, people with different positions treat each other in the same reasonable attitude. At the second level, people holding different values support the same norms on the basis of their respective values or by taking each other’s perspectives in the moral discourse. At the third level, people who currently hold different “moral sources” of the shared norms are never-the-less ready to be engaged in a common learning process that aims for a “fusion of horizons” in the future. Overlapping consensuses at all these levels should not only be discussed in political philosophy, or discovered in political culture, but also constructed in political practice.

rethinking metaphysics and aesthetics: reality, beauty, and the meaning of life

7. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Tanella Boni

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8. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Ken-ichi Sasaki

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This article looks at the past, present, and future of the study of aesthetics. The early modern period, during which aesthetics came into being, was a great historical turning point for civilization. So, too, is our own day. Looked at this way, aesthetics should show a different face than the one we are used to. Aesthetics is generally considered to be the philosophy of art, yet, with art regarded as an autonomous cultural field, aesthetics commonly gives the impression of being isolated from philosophy in general. This article explores a completely different aesthetics. When it was coming into existence, aesthetics was charged with the real and urgent philosophical problem of its time: how to construct a new world.
9. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jean-Luc Marion

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10. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Gerhard Seel

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As an introduction to the plenary session “Metaphysics and Aesthetics” in my article I try to describe the state of philosophy of art today and give an outlook to its future development. In the last century analytical philosophy of art has been occupied with the following four questions: What is the essence of art? What is the ontological status of works of art? What are aesthetic qualities and how do we come to know them? Have aesthetic value judgments objective validity? In the first step I explain why analytical philosophy of art failed to answer these questions and what this failure has to do with the end of art. In the second step I attempt to give a definition of art myself which allows to show that this failure and the end of art were inevitable. Finally I try—as a consequence—to define the general features of the art of the future.

rethinking epistemology, philosophy of science, and technology: knowledge and culture

11. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Evandro Agazzi

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Modern philosophy of science was, initially, an epistemology of science based on the logical analysis of the language of science. It was superseded by a “sociological epistemology,” according to which the acceptance of scientific statements and theories depends on conditioningscoming from the social context and powers, and this view has fueled anti-scientific attitudes.This happened because the sociological turn still expressed an epistemology of science. Science, however, is not only a system of knowledge, but also a complex human activity. Hence, ethical, political, social, religious issues appear legitimate if they concern “doing science.”Therefore, we must “rethink” philosophy of science, accepting in it also an axiology of science that could enable us to retain the cognitive value of science and at the same time to make techno-scientific activity compatible with the satisfaction of a great variety of values that inspire our societies.
12. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jaegwon Kim

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The traditional view of science holds that science is essentially nomothetic—that is, the defining characteristic of science is that it seeks to discover and formulate laws for the phenomena in its domain, and that laws are required for explanation and prediction. This paper advances the thesis that there are no laws in the special sciences, sciences other than fundamental physics, and that this does not impugn their status as sciences. Toward this end, two arguments are presented. The first begins with Donald Davidson’s argument against psychophysical laws and develops a more perspicacious general argument against special science laws. The second is a generalized and more explicitly motivated argument based on J. J. C. Smart’s claim that biology, unlike physics, has no laws.
13. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Bertrand Saint-Sernin

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The term “Renaissance” usually applies to a period in European history during which the Greco-Latin culture was rediscovered and modern science started. We show that “the Idea of Renaissance” indicates a universal process: a community (a nation, for example), identifying needs that it does not know how to satisfy by itself, and recognising that another community already satisfies them, tries first to acclimate the external process, and then becomes a creative entity. Several interpretations of this process have already been given: we study three of them: the law of the three states by Auguste Comte, the notion of “a single revolution” in Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason and Critic of Judgement, and the notion of “scientific revolution” by A. A. Cournot. Thus conceived, Renaissance means a challenge in which all cultures are equally involved: discovering, even elsewhere, the means of satisfy needs which are related to scientific knowledge and know-how; trying to assimilate them; and making them productive and indigenous by becoming creative.

rethinking history of philosophy and comparative philosophy: traditions, critique, and dialogue

14. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jean Greisch

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Si «penser» est d’abord un acte, «repenser» l’est aussi. On ne peut «repenser» que ce qui fut déjà pensé une fois. Ce que «repenser» veut dire, nous ne le comprenons que si nous nous demandons au préalable ce que «penser» veut dire. Pour Heidegger, cela revient à se demander ce qui nous appelle à penser, pour Kant, c’est se demander comment on peut s’orienter dans la pensée, pour Nietzsche, ce qui nous pousse à penser, à quoi j’ajouterai la question, moins connue et plus déconcertante, d’Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy dans son essai sur la «pensée dative»: «Cui cogitatur?», «À qui nos pensées sont-elles destinées?»À quoi nos pensées sont-elles dédiées?, à qui sont-elles destinées?: c’est la tension féconde entre ces deux questions qui nous met sur la voie d’une réflexion sur le sens que le verbe «repenser» peut revêtir dans la bouche d’un philosophe. À la différence de ceux qui s’imaginent que «repenser» veut dire simplement distribuer un peu différemment les cartes du savoir, les vrais «repenseurs» ne cessent de se demander à quel jeu ils jouent quand il s’efforcent de penser philosophiquement et ils cherchent à avoir une conscience plus nette des enjeux de ces jeux de la pensée.
15. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Enrique Dussel

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This paper argues the following points: (1) It is necessary to affirm that humanity has always sought to address certain “core universal problems” that are present in all cultures. (2) The rational responses to these “core problems” first appear as mythical narratives. (3) The formulation of categorical philosophical discourses is a subsequent development in human rationality, which does not however negate all mythical narratives. (4) Modern European philosophy confused its economic, political, and cultural domination, and the resulting crises in other philosophical traditions, with a Eurocentric universality claim, which must be questioned. (5) There are universal aspects in which all regional philosophies coincide, and which respond to the “core problems” at an abstract level. (6) All of this impels entry into a new age of inter-philosophical dialogue, respectful of differences and open to learning from other traditions. (7) A new philosophical project must be developed that is capable of going beyond Eurocentric philosophical modernity, by shaping a global transmodern pluriverse.
16. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Hwa Yol Jung

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This paper advances the concept of transversality by drawing philosophical insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Calvin O. Schrag, and the Martinicuan francophone Edouard Glissant. By so doing, it attempts to deconstruct the notion of universality in modern Western philosophy. It begins with a critique of the notion of Eurocentric universality which is founded on the fallacious premise that what is particular in the West is made universal, whereas whereas what is particular in the non-West remains particular forever. Eurocentric Universality has no place in the globalization of the multicultural world. It simply ignores the reality of interlacing of multiple life-worlds. The concept of transversality, whose icon is the Maitreyan Middle Way, is proposed to replace universality. It not only reduced ethnocentric particularism but also fosters a hybridity that in fact dissolves the binary opposition between particularism and universalism. In short, transversality is conceived of as a radically new paradigm in philosophical conceptualization or world philosophy.
17. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Tomonobu Imamichi

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The numbers of unfortunate deaths in the twentieth century were the highest compared with any previous century. Such an increase obviates any excuses The idea of technological possibility itself is one of the most basic causes of the destruction of nature in our new human milieu today, the technological conjuncture. But we human beings are also a part of nature. Therefore, without a new ethics understood as eco-ethica nature itself cannot fulfill the necessary conditions for the survival of human beings. For the first time owing to the technological conjuncture human beings bear full responsibility for all human beings tomorrow, for the future of humanity. Nature is no longer just a means to be exploited for the development of human civilization but also a model for how human civilization is to survive. The two great humanistic traditions, Western and Eastern, have developed the same content at the same level. People in the two worlds are really preparing a new cosmopolitanism.

conflict and tolerance

18. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Jean Grondin

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In a world allegedly lacking a moral compass, tolerance has become the major virtue of our time. All profess to be tolerant, but how tolerant are we in reality? As a case in point, how tolerant are philosophers themselves? A short overview of philosophy seems to suggest that they are less tolerant than one might imagine. A few reasons for this are provided : on the one hand, their commitment to issues of truth, logic and argument makes them perhaps intolerant of what they view as blatantly absurd or flawed views; on the other hand, the often very ideological nature of philosophy itself does its part to make philosophers less open to differing or opposite points of view.
19. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
Aloyse-Raymond Ndiaye

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L’intolérance religieuse qui alimente de nos jours de nombreux conflits contemporains nous conduit à repenser notre conception moderne de la tolérance, née des débats théologiques et philosophiques, qui ont accompagné ou qui ont été provoqués par les controverses doctrinales et les guerres politico-religieuses des XVIème et XVIIème siècles. Elle se définit par le respect des ordres distincts: celui de la conscience et celui de la loi, du privé et du public, celui de la foi et de la raison. Elle porte la marque de son origine, du religieux et du théologique, et renvoie à l’idée de dignité humaine à laquelle la doctrine de l’autonomie de Kant, au XVIIIème siècle, a apporté son fondement éthique. L’actualité nous apprend qu’aujourd’hui encore on tue, on persécute au nom de la foi, au nom de Dieu, au nom de la religion, pour avoir une opinion ou une croyance différente. Si la tolérance, fille des Lumières et de la raison critique, ne s’est pas imposée définitivement dans un monde rationnel et technique, il y a lieu de se demander si ce n’est pas pour avoir négligé la foi. Il ne suffit pas de déclarer la mort de Dieu pour faire disparaître la religion. Conclure de la distinction de la raison et de la foi à leur antagonisme n’a pas conduit à déraciner l’intolérance de l’esprit humain. Aurions-nous oublié que la paix est aussi l’affaire du religieux? Que faut-il attendre, que faut-il espérer du dialogue inter-religieux? La foi serait-elle l’antidote à l’intolérance? Que peut faire la foi?
20. Journal of Philosophical Research: Volume > 37 > Issue: Supplement
David M. Rasmussen

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This paper will begin by clarifying the kind of context, which requires toleration. My point of departure is a characterization of modernity that both departs from the classical modern theory of secularization and draws from the current research on multiple modernities. Because of the more or less recent resurgence of religion we can no longer characterize toleration on the basis of a theory of secularization. This will lead to the definition of conflict and tolerance within the confines of a post-secular society. The philosophical component of the concept of toleration will be taken from both Aristotle and Kant in the sense that toleration is not only a necessary virtue in modern society, it is also a normative notion based on respect for the law. Finally, the paper concludes that toleration must be conceived of as a principle of justice in a society that requires respect not only for the rights of others but for their cultures as well.