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101. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 15 > Issue: 2
Teresa Obolevitch All-Unity according to V. Soloviev and S. Frank. A Comparative Analysis
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In this article I will present and analyze the concept of all-unity of the two most famous Russian philosophers – Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) and Semyon Frank (1877-1958). As will be argued, the concept of all-unity is part of an old philosophical tradition. At the same time, it is an original idea of the Russian thought of the Silver Age (the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries).
102. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
George Karuvelil, S.J. Religious experience: reframing the question
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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.
103. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Józef Bremer, S.J. Aristotle on touch
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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.
104. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Heinrich Watzka, S.J. A new realistic spirit: the analytical and the existential approaches to ontology
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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.
105. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Louis Caruana, S.J. Introduction
106. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Louis Caruana, S.J. Universal claims
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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.
107. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Anthony J. Carroll Disenchantment, rationality and the modernity of Max Weber
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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.
108. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Terrance Walsh, S.J. Bonum est causa mali: a problem and an opportunity for metaphysics in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Hegel
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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”?
109. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Eric Baldwin On Buddhist and Taoist Morality
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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.
110. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Rob Lovering Does Ordinary Morality Imply Atheism? A Reply to Maitzen
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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.
111. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Mark Manolopoulos Today’s Truly Philosophical Philosopher of Religion
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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.
112. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 16 > Issue: 2
Zbigniew Jan Marczuk Dennett’s Account of Mind versus Kim’s Supervenience Argument
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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.
113. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Leslie Armour Morality and The Three-fold Existence of God
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Arguments about the existence of a being who is infinite and perfect involve claims about a being who must appear in all the orders and dimensions of reality.Anything else implies finitude. Ideas about goodness seem inseparable from arguments about the existence of God and Kant’s claim that such arguments ultimately belong to moral theology seems plausible. The claim that we can rely on the postulates of pure practical reason is stronger than many suppose. But one must show that a being who is infinite and perfect is even possible, and any such being must be present in the physical world as well as in what Pascal called the orders of the intellect and morality (which he called the order of charity). Indeed, locating God in the various orders without creating conflicts is problematic. Such arguments are necessarily difficult and sometimes self-defeating but I argue in this paper that there is a promising path.
114. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Yann Schmitt Hume on Miracles: The Issue of Question—Begging
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Hume’s chapter “Of Miracles” has been widely discussed, and one issue is that Hume seems to simply beg the question. Hume has a strong but implicit naturalist bias when he argues against the existence of reliable testimony for miracles. In this article, I explain that Hume begs the question, despite what he says about the possibility of miracles occurring. The main point is that he never describes a violation of the laws of nature that could not be explained by scientific theories.
115. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Mark McLeod-Harrison Relaxed Naturalism and Caring About the Truth
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Can our caring about truth be rooted in “relaxed” naturalism? I argue that it cannot. In order to care about truth we need the universe to be capable of providingnon-adventitious good, which relaxed naturalism cannot do. I use Michael Lynch’s work as a springboard to showing this claim.
116. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Hans Goller Mortal Body, Immortal Mind: Does the Brain Really Produce Consciousness?
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Neuroscientists keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness and consciousness does not survive brain death because it ceases when brain activityceases. Research findings on near-death-experiences during cardiac arrest contradict this widely held conviction. They raise perplexing questions with regardto our current understanding of the relationship between consciousness and brain functions. Reports on veridical perceptions during out-of-body experiences suggest that consciousness may be experienced independently of a functioning brain and that self-consciousness may continue even after the termination of brain activity. Data on studies of near-death-experiences could be an incentive to develop alternative theories of the body-mind relation as seen in contemporary neuroscience.
117. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Anna Tomaszewska McDowell and Perceptual Reasons
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John McDowell claims that perception provides reasons for empirical beliefs. Perceptual reasons, according to the author of Mind and World, can be identifiedwith passively “taken in” facts. Concepts figure in the acts of acquiring perceptual reasons, even though the acts themselves do not consist in judgments. Thus,on my reading, McDowell’s account of the acquisition of reasons can be likened to Descartes’ account of the acquisition of ideas, rather than to Kant’s theory ofjudgment as an act by means of which one’s cognition comes to be endowed with objective validity. However, unlike Descartes, McDowell does not acknowledgethe skeptical challenge which his conception of the acquisition of reasons might face. He contends that perception is factive without arguing for the backgroundassumption (about a “perfect match” between mind and world) on which it rests. Hence, as I suggest in my article, the McDowellian claim that perception provides reasons for empirical beliefs is not sufficiently warranted.
118. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 2
Tadeusz Grzesik Faith and Conscience—The Surest of Arguments for the Existence of God
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In the first part of my paper, I shall consider how Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called ontological argument has been misapprehended by those treating it as a proof for the existence of God. In the second part, I shall focus on Chapter One of the Proslogion and on the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi to show what Anselm’s real purpose was regarding the problem of the existence of God. I shall support my view by referring also to the thought of John Henry Newman and Henri de Lubac.
119. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 2
Anna Zhyrkova The Philosophical Originality of a Theologian: The Case of a Patristic Author Forgotten and Overlooked by History
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This paper explores possible reasons for the comparatively low estimation of the potential philosophical significance of Byzantine theological thought, which, in contemporary studies, is frequently viewed as lacking philosophical depth and originality. The ultimate question here, though, is whether we should grant that theology may, in fact, contain original and valuable philosophy. In order to subject the issues involved to scrutiny, I undertake an analysis of the important case of the legacy of John of Damascus, which, in my opinion, actually furnishes some answers to these questions.
120. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 17 > Issue: 2
Daniel Gustafsson The Beauty of Christian Art
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This paper deals with beauty as we encounter it in Christian works of art. Three main points are argued: (i) beauty, as it appears in the Christian work of art, is an invitation to delight and gratitude; (ii) beauty, as we encounter it in the Christian work of art, asks of us both the deepening of discernment and the cultivation of desire; (iii) beauty, as it is manifested in the Christian work of art, is not created by the artist but is bestowed as a gift of God. Firstly, beauty must be recognised as giving delight. In defending this claim, the paper argues against theories which identify beauty with pleasure, and which devalue or dismiss beauty based on this false identification. Further, beauty does not only give, but also—as a gift—makes a claim upon us. Gratitude is the appropriate response to beauty’s gift. Secondly, beauty as manifested in beautiful particulars embedded in the material and cultural world requires discernment. Moreover, we must embody a real receptiveness to beauty—by becoming beautiful ourselves—through the cultivation of desire. A full response to beauty entails the reorientation of our vision as well as our volition towards the infinite beauty of God. Thirdly, though beauty is manifestly present in made-made objects, it is so as a gift of God. This understanding is supported by emphasising the Trinitarian nature of beauty. It is proposed that beauty is best identified not with the Son but with the Holy Spirit.