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1. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Zbigniew Jan Marczuk

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This paper challenges Daniel Dennett’s attempt to reconcile the performance of mind and brain within a physicalist framework with Jaegwon Kim’s argument that a coherent physicalist framework entails the epiphenomenalism of mental events. Dennett offers a materialist explanation of consciousness and arguesthat his model of mind does not imply reductive physicalism. I argue that Dennett’s explanation of mind clashes with Jaegwon Kim’s mind-body supervenienceargument. Kim contends that non-reductive physicalism either voids the causal powers of mental properties, or it violates physicalist framework. I concludethat Dennett’s account of mind does not escape or overcome Kim’s mind/body supervenience problem. If Kim’s argument does not prove Dennett’s explanationof mind to be either a form of reductive materialism, or a logically inconsistent view, it is due to the ambiguity of concepts involved in Dennett’s theory.
2. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Jarosław Jagiełło

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3. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Mark Manolopoulos

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What does it mean to be a truly philosophical philosopher of religion today? The paper proposes that the thinker of faith should pursue the following passions: (1) a passion for wonder and epistemic openness; (2) the desire for a rationality that exceeds narrow-minded hyper-rationalism; (3) an ecological pathosi.e. loving the Earth; (4) a passion for self-development; and (5) thinking and participating in ethical political-economic transformation, a revolutionary passion.And so, today’s truly philosophical philosopher of religion would pursue a cognitively rigorous, engaged, and experientially adventurous venture in thinking.
4. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Kazimierz Rynkiewicz

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In this paper I seek to analyse the following question: How is it that I am able, today, to succeed in fulfilling my goals? My analysis will, I hope, demonstratethat virtues are important because they facilitate this sort of fulfilment. An examination of the classical notion of virtue is thus called for, and this in turn suggests that, at least in certain cases, virtue is connected with luck – that these two belong together. This points towards a new form of contemporary virtue ethics,whose distinctive character will be reflected in the particular significance it invests in the concepts of “qualification” and “competence”. Finally, we are ledto Wittgenstein’s assertion that “The world of the happy person is other than the world of the hapless person”.
5. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Rob Lovering

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Stephen Maitzen has recently argued that ordinary morality implies atheism. In the following, I argue that the soundness of Maitzen’s argument depends ona principle that is implausible, what I call the Recipient’s Benefit Principle: All else being equal, if an act A produces a net benefit for the individual on the receiving end of A, then one cannot have a moral obligation to prevent A. Specifically, the Recipient’s Benefit Principle (RBP) must be true if premise (2) of Maitzen’s argument is to be true. But, RBP is likely false, as it generates counterintuitive implications as well as conflicts with another principle both plausible and seemingly adopted by most of us, what I call the Preventing Immorality Principle: All else being equal, if an act A is seriously immoral, then one has a moral obligation to prevent A.
6. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Eric Baldwin

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Arthur Danto argues that all Eastern philosophies – except Confucianism – fail to accept necessary conditions on genuine morality: a robust notionof agency and that actions are praiseworthy only if performed voluntarily, in accordance with rules, and from motives based on the moral worth and well-beingof others. But Danto’s arguments fail: Neo-Taoism and Mohism satisfy these allegedly necessary constraints and Taoism and Buddhism both posit moral reasons that fall outside the scope of Danto’s allegedly necessary conditions on genuine morality. Thus, our initial reaction, that these Eastern philosophies offer genuine moral reasons for action, is sustained rather than overturned.
7. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Maria Kłańska

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The German-Jewish writer and poetess, Rose Ausländer (1901-1988), who came from Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), capital of Bukovina, one of the formerprovinces of the Hapsburg Empire, is one of the most+ highly acclaimed lyric poets to have written in German in the 20th century. Throughout her whole life shewas an adherent of the philosophy of Spinoza, first becoming acquainted with it in the so-called “ethics seminar” of the secondary-school teacher Friedrich Kettner. In the wake of the First World War the youth of Chernivtsi were in need of new sources of intellectual stimulation, so he set out to introduce them to the philosophy of Spinoza, as well as to that of Constantin Brunner, a contemporary German philosopher influenced by him.Rose Ausländer remained a follower of Spinoza right up to the end of her life. This is confirmed by her two very different poems of the same name, “Spinoza”– the first composed before 1939, the second in 1979 – as well as by her many explorations of topics drawn from his ethics, ranging from her very first printedpoem, “Amor Dei”, up to her lyrics written in old age, in the 1970s and 1980s. In this short paper I will attempt to chart the course of, and analyze, her interest inSpinoza´s philosophical system and life.

book reviews and notices

8. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Rafał Kupczak

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9. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Kazimierz Rynkiewicz

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10. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Louis Caruana, S.J.

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11. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Heinrich Watzka, S.J.

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I shall distinguish between two periods of analytic ontology, one semi-idealistic, the other post-idealistic. The former fostered the very idea of a conceptual scheme within which questions of ontology could be formulated and answered in the first place; the latter rejected this idea in favour of the view that ontological inquiry neither presupposes a framework, nor provides the framework for science or everyday speech. Since then, ontology is what it always have been, the systematic study of the most fundamental categories of being, not of thought. Unfortunately, such a category theory becomes aporetic in its search for a solutionof the problem of the ‘temporary intrinsics’ (D. Lewis). Experience cannot tell us, whether entities persist by ‘perduring’ or by ‘enduring.’ One can take an alternative route and seek to broaden the conceptual basis of ontology by focussing on ‘Being’ (Sein) in contrast to entities, or being (Seiendes). The controversy on perdurantism and endurantism emerges as a dispute over two conflicting ways of being in time, not of Being itself.

12. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Paul Gilbert, S.J.

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The word ‘ontology’ has no meaning outside the context in which it was created. When it was invented, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, theword ‘metaphysics’ already existed. So the creation of ‘ontology’ had to express a distance with respect to tradition. ‘Metaphysics’ had its roots in Aristotle and his search, his impossible search, for a first principle. This project is taken up again by ‘ontology’ but this time by limiting the Aristotelian intention to the area of univocal formality, while Aristotle had situated himself within the order of dialectical investigation. Current phenomenology tries to re-actualize the Aristotelian intention by emphasizing ontological difference and analogy, while analytic philosophy remains firmly within the tradition of modern ontology.

13. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Paul Favraux, S.J.

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Ontology is still relevant for the reception of Christian revelation. Transcendental subjectivity, whose main role is to constitute, calls out for a deeper foundation. It is this deeper foundation that supplies an ontology of participation of all beings in Being and in God, as found in St Thomas and in some interpretations of his work (those of E. Gilson, A. Chapelle, A. Léonard). God’s immanence in humanity and in creation, and human participation in Being and ultimately in God, enable us to conceive of a causal action upon the whole of humanity and upon the whole of creation, a causal action issuing from the death-resurrection of Christ. In the context of contemporary philosophy, marked too unilaterally by finitude and historicity, this ontology needs to be supplemented by an anthropological reflection on liberty – liberty donated to itself (C. Bruaire) rather than liberty uniquely devoted to an indefinite search of itself. This is the main point behind A. Chapelle’s anthropology. Moreover, it is this sense of liberty that underlies at the same time a genuine pathway to ethics.

14. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Eric Charmetant, S.J.

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Contemporary naturalism, especially through ethology, neuroscience and cognitive science, challenges the traditional ontological points of referencefor determining the specificity of human beings. After illustrating the full measure of this upheaval, I will show the inadequacy of a return to traditional essentialismand will then defend the relevance of a different type of essentialism: an approach to human specificity in terms of a homeostatic property cluster.

15. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Józef Bremer, S.J.

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According Aristotle’s On the Soul, the first and most important form of sensation which we human beings share with other animals is a sense of touch.Without touch animals cannot exist. The first part of my article presents Aristotle’s teaching about the internal connection between the soul and the sensory powers, especially as regards the sense of touch. The second part consists of a collection of the classical considerations about this subject. The third part then deals with the actuality of some Aristotle’s thesis about touch with reference to current research in neurophysiology on kinesthesia and haptic perception.

16. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Terrance Walsh, S.J.

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How to explain the existence of evil if being by its very nature is good? My paper examines an interesting and perhaps significant parallel between twoexponents of the metaphysical tradition usually thought to stand widely apart, Thomas Aquinas and Hegel. I argue that Hegel’s system shares certain features ofAquinas’ convertibility thesis (S.T. I, 5, 1), that upon closer inspection will yield a set of interesting reflections not only about the problem of evil, but also aboutthe limits and possibilities of metaphysical method. I discuss Aquinas’ thesis of the convertibility of being and good and how it determines his treatment of evil.I then construct a Hegelian version of convertibility and argue that Hegel’s system fails for similar reasons to provide a satisfactory account of the problem of evil.This leads to my central question: should the inadequacy of traditional approaches to evil call for a reversal or abandonment of metaphysics, or invite a deeperreflection about reality that would not subsume the world’s darkness under what Hans Blumenberg once called “metaphysics of light”?

17. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Anthony J. Carroll

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Following Aristotle’s distinction between theoretical and practical rationality, Max Weber holds that beliefs about the world and actions within the world must follow procedures consistently and be appropriately formed if they are to count as rational. Here, I argue that Weber’s account of theoretical and practicalrationality, as disclosed through his conception of the disenchantment of the world, displays a confessional architecture consistently structured by a nineteenthcentury German Protestant outlook. I develop this thesis through a review of the concepts of rationality and disenchantment in Weber’s major works and concludethat this conceptual framework depicts a Protestant account of modernity.

18. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
George Karuvelil, S.J.

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It is thought that Schleiermacher used religious experience as a new kind of argument to safeguard Christian faith when he was faced with the failure oftraditional arguments for the existence of God. This paper argues that such a view does not do justice to the newness of his approach in constructing a propaedeutic to Christian theology. It is further argued that, irrespective of whether one agrees with what Schleiermacher was trying to do, if religious experience is to become a contemporary preambula fidei to Christian theology, the focus should be on communicating a positive experience rather than on arguing for God’s existence.

19. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Louis Caruana, S.J.

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Claims are universal when they are not dependent on when and where they are made. Mathematics and the natural sciences are the typical disciplinesthat allow such claims to be made. Is the striving for universal claims in other disciplines justified? Those who attempt to answer this question in the affirmativeoften argue that it is justified when mathematics and the natural sciences are taken as the model for other disciplines. In this paper I challenge this position andanalyze the issue by looking at it from a new angle, a perspective that involves two key concepts: violence and loyalty. The result of this analysis throws light on thebroader question concerning what the search for truth might mean in a pluralistic world.