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articles

1. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
Kai Hauser

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In explaining his concept of set Cantor intimates a connection with the metaphysical scheme put forward in Plato’s Philebus to determine the place of pleasure. We argue that these determinations capture key ideas of Cantorian set theory and, moreover, extend to intuitions which continue to play a central role in the modern mathematics of infinity.
2. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
David Atkinson, Jeanne Peijnenburg

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A common objection to coherentism is that it cannot account for truth: it gives us no reason to prefer a true theory over a false one, if both theories are equally coherent.  By extending Susan Haack's crossword metaphor, the authors argue that there could be circumstances under which this objection is untenable. Although these circumstances are remote, they are in full accordance with the most ambitious modern theories in physics. Coherence may perhaps be truth conducive.
3. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
Abraham P. Bos

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Why do all animals possess sense perception while plants don’t? And should the difference in quality of life between human beings and wolves be explained by supposing that wolves have degenerated souls? This paper argues that for Aristotle differences in quality of life among living beings are based on differences in the quality of their soul-principle together with the body that receives the soul.  The paper proposes a new interpretation of On the Soul 2.4.415b18: “For all the natural bodies are instruments of the soul,” against all current interpretations. Aristotle there means that each of the four sublunary elements can be a part of the instrumental body of a soul. The paper continues with discussing the way in which Aristotle connects the several sublunar elements with different levels of life activity, and the troublesome passage in Generation of Animals 3.11.761b22, where Aristotle speaks about a fourth category of living creatures related to the fourth sublunary element, Fire, and the region of the Moon.
4. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
Mark K. Spencer

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5. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.

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book reviews

6. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
Kenneth J. Rolling, Staff

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7. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4

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8. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4
Kenneth J. Rolling, Staff

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9. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4

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10. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4

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11. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 4

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articles

12. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
David James

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In his early Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, J. G. Fichte developed an account of the social role of the scholar.  This role concerns the task of furthering human culture and progress, which Fichte considers to be a moral duty for the scholar.  In these lectures, Fichte also outlined the capabilities and knowledge that the scholar needs in order to be able to fulfill the task in question, including the possession of historical knowledge.   The article argues that the later Addresses to the German Nation represent an attempt on Fichte’s part to realize his earlier conception of the scholar’s vocation, because these addresses aim to help usher in a new, superior epoch in human history.  Particular attention is paid to the use that Fichte makes of history in them.  In effect, he instrumentalizes history, and justifies his doing this in terms of a higher purpose and the ‘merely’ empirical status of historical fact and evidence.  This use of history is compared to some things that Nietzsche has to say about history in his essay On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life; and it invites questions concerning the possible dangers of such a use of history and its compatibility with Fichte’s idea that the vocation of the scholar is a moral one.
13. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
François Jaran

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During the decade of the 1920s, Martin Heidegger tried to show that a series of unsolved problems was to be found in Aristotle. Besides the problem of being, Heidegger also highlighted the traditional misinterpretations of Aristotle’s problem of the world, which had always understood it as an antecedent of a religious question. Heidegger believed it was still possible to ‘retrieve’ this basic metaphysical problem and sought help from Kant’s concept of a ‘transcendental ideal’ to show that Aristotle’s concept of the divine was the basis of a reflection on the world and not of a theological science. Interpreting Aristotle’s Metaphysics from this Kantian perspective, Heidegger brought new insights into the history of metaphysics and revealed an untapped field of questions for contemporary metaphysics.
14. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
Hugo Eduardo Herrera

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The article approaches Salomon Maimon’s reinterpretation of the notions of the thing in itself and the given within the framework of criticism. For Maimon they do not refer to a transcendence that is directly unattainable by knowledge. In this attempt, he tries to explain the given on the basis of the action of constitutive understanding. With this, he triggers the passage from transcendental Kantian philosophy to the idealism of Fichte. Nonetheless, his position faces the subsequent problem of explaining how the constitution of the given from understanding (infinite) can become compatible with the criticism it takes on. On affirming that an uncognoscible item is the basis of knowledge, namely, infinite understanding, he set aside the explanation of knowledge in terms of what is revealed in it and in doing so would be resorting to external uncognoscible conditions.
15. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
Alexander S. Duff

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16. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
Michael Pakaluk

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book reviews

17. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
Kenneth J. Rolling, Staff

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18. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3

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19. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3

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20. The Review of Metaphysics: Volume > 63 > Issue: 3
V. Bradley Lewis

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