Since the early 1980s, actor-network theory has contested the status of “context” as an explanatory resource. Expressions and concepts such as “transformations of social worlds,” “enactments,” and “ontological politics” provide resources for grasping the ways in which agents actively transform the world and add something new. This has been of immense importance and serves as a warning against reducing events and actors to a given context. But a side effect of this forward looking move is that not enough attention is (...) given to that which enables issues and situations to emerge in the first place. Moreover, the focus on that which is constantly being enacted seems to have privileged the contemporary as the object of study and ethnography as the method of inquiry. History and the study of texts—from the past—seem, increasingly, to get lost in Science and Technology Studies. The aim of this article is instead to use actor-network theory resources as a historicizing method. The article explores the tense concern for the animal in political debates at the turn of the twentieth century. The article argues that contexts should not be seen as something external, but rather integral to the relevant text and situation, thus the very issue at stake. (shrink)

Summary Historians of all kinds are beginning to return to temporally expansive studies after decades of aversion and neglect. There are even signs that intellectual historians are returning to the longue durée. What are the reasons for this revival of long-range intellectual history? And how might it be rendered methodologically robust as well as historically compelling? This article proposes a model of transtemporal history, proceeding via serial contextualism to create a history in ideas spanning centuries, even millennia: key examples come (...) from work in progress on ideas of civil war from ancient Rome to the present. The article concludes with brief reflections on the potential impact of the digital humanities on the practice of long-range intellectual history. Summary Historians of all kinds are beginning to return to temporally expansive studies after decades of aversion and neglect. There are even signs that intellectual historians are returning to the longue durée. What are the reasons for this revival of long-range intellectual history? And how might it be rendered methodologically robust as well as historically compelling? This article proposes a model of transtemporal history, proceeding via serial contextualism to create a history in ideas spanning centuries, even millennia: key examples come from work in progress on ideas of civil war from ancient Rome to the present. The article concludes with brief reflections on the potential impact of the digital humanities on the practice of long-range intellectual history. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the value of philosophy of science for history of science. I start by introducing a distinction between two ways of integrating history and philosophy of science: historical philosophy of science and philosophical history of science. I then offer a critical discussion of Imre Lakatos’s project to bring philosophy of science to bear on historical interpretation. I point out certain flaws in Lakatos’s project, which I consider indicative of what went wrong with PHS in the past. (...) Finally, I put forward my own attempt to bring out the historiographical potential of philosophy of science. Starting from Norwood Russell Hanson’s insight that historical studies of science involve metascientific concepts, I argue that philosophical reflection on those concepts can be historiographically fruitful. I focus on four issues and discuss their significance and utility for historiographical practice. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several (...) of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence. (shrink)

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far from imprisoning its students in (...) outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history. (shrink)

The west-centrism in approaching the knowledge systems of east has been sufficiently highlighted and problematized. This paper argues that the attempts have often been restricted to a framework of colonial gaze that prevents the Indian classical philosophy from gaining a vantage of its own. The approach to the classical traditions have been largely fragmented, catering to the pressure of proving its “relevance” either as a knowledge system or as texts with useful resources and answers to contemporary problems. This “problem solving” (...) framework at the very outset de-recognizes the capacity of an entire philosophical tradition of problem identification and formulation, unsettling terrains of knowledge by asking new questions. The article presents a case for theorizing relevance as a prerequisite to resolving some of these issues. (shrink)

Considering the case of Juan de Vilanova y Piera, often celebrated as the first scientist to accept the prehistoric antiquity of palaeolithic paintings, we explore some of the problems related to the concept of ‘precursor’ in the field of the history of science. In the first section, we propose a brief history of this notion focusing on those authors who have reflected critically on the meaning of predecessors. In the second section, the example of Vilanova illustrates the ways in which (...) historians of science have created precursors. From the vantage of modern science, precursors have traditionally been defined as those who first indicated or announced ideas or theories later accepted by the scientific community. As a result, they have been represented as ‘heroes’ struggling hard to defeat the ignorance of their time. As the case of Juan de Vilanova illustrates, this traditional view is unsatisfactory in many ways. For this reason we consider in the third section a number of methodological strategies to promote a more adequate approach to pioneers. In particular, we suggest that the best way to surmount hagiographical approaches to past scientists is to put them in their own intellectual and historical contexts. (shrink)

This paper studies five approaches on the future of alterity that awaits ideas and doctrines. According to these predictions, embedded in texts by Weber, Meinecke, Butterfield, Merleau-Ponty and Koselleck, the coming forms of thinking shall endure the same destiny affecting the ideas of the past because they will evolve without relying on historical sameness. The future of Western thought, in short, is bound to an unpredictable “destiny of otherness”. These claims, taken together, outline a redirection of the genealogical untangling to (...) the future. While they persist on linking present phenomena to realities deemed historically “other”, they also foresee that this fate of alterity will prevail in future times, an enlargement of scope that results in a symmetrically expanded genealogy. This universalized “discourse of historical otherness” makes evident that genealogy, in addition to its involvement with past vicissitudes of ideas and beliefs, is also bound to explore their future emmeshing with alterity. Its “forward-looking inflection” will proscribe historiographic prolepsis, contending that the destiny of otherness awaiting ideas and doctrines excludes any surmise about the meaning they will be given in the future. (shrink)

This chapter presents the reception of Leo Strauss by analytic philosophers after Strauss’s emigration to the United States. It gives a brief survey of the polemics against Strauss and his school by analytic philosophers, which aided in the self-constitution of analytic philosophy as a rival school of thought in philosophy. But most of the chapter is devoted to recovering the significance and influence of a criticism of Strauss by Ernest Nagel. The chapter argues that this response is of intrinsic interest (...) because it involves the relationship between science and values. Nagel’s response was foundational to Felix Oppenheim’s political philosophy or what Oppenheim called his project of ‘conceptual reconstruction.’ Lurking in Oppenheim’s response to Strauss are questions about the role of the principle of sufficient reason in philosophy. Rge chapter argues that an opportunity was missed to clarify questions pertaining to the inductive risk of philosophy more than a half century before these issues became fashionable again. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Despite the recent proliferation of scholarship on anarchism, very little attention has been paid to the historical and theoretical relationship between anarchism and philosophy. Seeking to fill this void, Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy draws upon the combined expertise of several top scholars to provide a broad thematic overview of the various ways anarchism and philosophy have intersected. Each of its 18 chapters adopts a self-consciously inventive approach to its subject matter, examining anarchism's relation to other philosophical theories and (...) systems within the Western intellectual tradition as well as specific philosophical topics, subdisciplines and methodological tendencies. (shrink)

Certain contemporary Nietzsche scholars claim to have discovered Nietzsche’s position on metaethics through a careful reading and interpretation of his texts. Whose account is most accurate? Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s texts underdetermine his views on metaethics; we lack the textual evidence to settle these debates decisively. Does this mean that the historical Nietzsche’s metaethical beliefs, ultimately inaccessable, are of little use to contemporary metaethical study? Or instead, must metaethicists interested in Nietzsche fundamentally change how Nietzsche’s works are to be understood? While I (...) present scholars who argue that Nietzsche’s corpus as a whole should be understood in radically different ways, I ultimately argue that we can avoid both of the above questions if scholars working in the history of philosophy tradition pivot their focus from attempting to offer a descriptive account of Nietzsche’s metaethical view and instead embrace appropriation. (shrink)

Apocalypse, it seems, is everywhere. Preachers with vast followings proclaim the world's end and apocalyptic fears grip even the non-religious amid climate change, pandemics, and threats of nuclear war. But as these ideas pervade popular discourse, grasping their logic remains elusive. Ben Jones argues that we can gain insight into apocalyptic thought through secular thinkers. He starts with a puzzle: Why would secular thinkers draw on Christian apocalyptic beliefs--often dismissed as bizarre--to interpret politics? The apocalyptic tradition proves appealing in part (...) because it theorizes a special relation between crisis and utopia. Apocalyptic thought points to crisis as the vehicle to bring the previously impossible within reach, thus offering apparent resources for navigating challenges in ideal theory, which tries to imagine the best and most just society. By examining apocalyptic thought's appeal and risks, this study arrives at new insights on the limits of ideal theory and utopian hope. (shrink)

Pe parcursul anului trecut, la Institutul de Cercetări Economice şi Sociale „Gheorghe Zane” din Iaşi, a avut loc workshopul „Concepte şi argumente în filosofia social-politică. Interpretări şi dezbateri”. Workshopul s-a desfăşurat în cadrul proiectului POSDRU „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere: cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”. Cartea de faţă este principalul rezultat al acestui workshop. Ea a fost gândită şi propusă spre publicare în primul rând din speranţa că va fi utilă celor care doresc să se iniţieze – sau celor care încearcă să-i iniţieze (...) pe alţii – în teoria şi filosofia social-politică (mai ales cea contemporană). Aceasta cu atât mai mult cu cât, la noi, lucrările de acest tip (fie semnate de autori români, fie traduceri) sunt încă destul de rare. Mă refer aici la lucrările care acordă o atenţie specială (şi) filosofiei politice (teoriei politice normative), nu doar ştiinţei politice sau politologiei (teoriei politice empirice). Dacă cele din urmă apar din ce în ce mai frecvent în ultima vreme, cele dintâi rămân, din păcate, foarte puţine, chiar insuficiente. Cartea nu este nici pe departe una exhaustivă. În ciuda acestui „defect”, cred că ea îşi poate îndeplini totuşi obiectivul fundamental, fie şi numai pentru că oferă analize, prezentări şi comentarii despre câteva dintre cele mai importante concepte şi teorii din teoria socială şi politică recentă. Mai mult, în cadrul ei sunt discutate inclusiv unele concepte sau/şi teorii încă puţin analizate la noi (precum „multiculturalismul”, „dreptatea socială”, „genul” sau „democraţia deliberativă”). Se obişnuieşte uneori ca autorul introducerii unui volum de acest tip să prezinte în rezumat şi principalele idei apărate sau/şi metodologii utilizate de autorii fiecăruia dintre capitole. Eu nu voi face acest lucru. Motivul? Aş risca să fiu redundant, de vreme ce astfel de precizări şi rezumate au fost deja realizate de autorii volumului, chiar în debutul capitolelor pe care le semnează. Acestea fiind spuse, ţin să mai evidenţiez doar un singur lucru: aşa cum se va observa cu siguranţă, multe dintre capitolele lucrării nu sunt simple texte introductive (deşi au, fără îndoială, şi o astfel de dimensiune). Altfel spus, autorii acestor capitole nu s-au mulţumit să prezinte doar ideile, argumentele sau teoriile altor autori (şi în special ale celor consideraţi de referinţă) în problemele pe care le analizează. De multe ori, ei prezintă, dimpotrivă, şi idei, opinii, interpretări, argumente, perspective sau chiar teorii ori măcar „semiteorii” proprii asupra conceptelor şi problemelor pe care le abordează. Acest lucru nu ar trebui să fie surprinzător. Pentru fiecare dintre autorii capitolelor din acest volum, conceptele şi problemele pe care le prezintă aici constituie o preocupare sistematică şi constantă, dacă nu chiar preocuparea lor fundamentală, cel puţin în ultimii ani. De altfel, cel puţin în România, preocupările şi contribuţiile în domeniu ale multora dintre ei sunt deja cunoscute şi comentate, fie şi doar în cercul restrâns al specialiştilor şi al celor interesaţi de teoria social-politică. (shrink)

Euclid’s Elements inspired a number of foundationalist accounts of mathematics, which dominated the epistemology of the discipline for many centuries in the West. Yet surprisingly little has been written by recent philosophers about this conception of mathematical knowledge. The great exception is Imre Lakatos, whose characterisation of the Euclidean Programme in the philosophy of mathematics counts as one of his central contributions. In this essay, we examine Lakatos’s account of the Euclidean Programme with a critical eye, and suggest an alternative (...) picture which builds on his work, but differs in a number of important respects. (shrink)

Plato’s theory of virtue in the Laws could be striking for someone who is more familiar with Aristotle’s ethics for conceptual complementarity between the two positions (contrary emotions, the ordering element of reason, virtue as a mean which lies between two forms of vice, typically linked to excessive actions, etc.). Plato’s theory, however, still differs from that of Aristotle in two crutial points. First, the source of emotional dynamism is, according to Plato, supraindividual as far as the psyche is a (...) cosmological principle. Only if it comes to be formed and ordered, it separates from the universal cosmic context and make up the emotional nature of an individual soul. But the soul is not, and this is the second point of difference, ordered by some external element (training or education, organized by a rational agent). Plato counts on a pre-arranged order of emotions at a particular ontological topos of the individual soul into which reason eventually descends. Emotions, on their part, seem to include a nexus between formable and forming that is chronologically and methodocally prior to that between the biological substratum and its rational organization, as assumed by Aristotle. (shrink)

El artículo se propone analizar la perspectiva que aparece sobre el concepto de “Estado” en las obras del pensador piamontés del siglo XVI Giovanni Botero. Se estudiará especialmente su conceptualización sobre la idea de “razón de Estado”, junto a ciertos tratamientos sobre los problemas de la imposición del orden, la relación de la política con otras disciplinas, la guerra y los ejércitos. El objetivo será entrever si en este publicista tan leído en su época se pueden apreciar los procesos que (...) la teoría política asocia a la formación del Estado Moderno Soberano o si se vislumbran desarrollos que no congenian necesariamente con la supuesta consolidación ineludible de esta entidad política, brindando de esta manera una perspectiva distinta sobre las ideas que dieron origen a varios de los conceptos y procesos políticos de la Modernidad. This article analyzes the perspective around the concept of “State” along the work of the sixteenth–century Piedmontese thinker Giovanni Botero. The task will be centered specially around his conceptualization of the idea of “reason of State”, together with the treatment of issues related to the imposition of order, the relationship between politics and other disciplines, the study of war and armies. The article aims at studying if in this political thinker, who attained an important fame at his time, some of the processes that modern political theory links to the formation of Modern Sovereign State can be seen, or if developments that do not necessarily merge with the supposed unavoidable consolidation of that political entity can be discerned, bringing in this way a different perspective around the ideas which gave rise to many of modern political concepts and processes. (shrink)

This is a book of interpretation, not of fact. It studies the major discourses in African political thought throughout the last one and a half centuries, rendering new interpretations of a number of important theorists. Subsequently, this book analyzes paradigmatic models of thought that recur in pre-colonial, colonial, as well as post-colonial political discourses. This in depth analysis allows for a critical inventory of African political thought at the close of the twentieth century.

The immediate occasion for this special issue was Christia Mercer’s influential paper “The Contextualist Revolution in Early Modern Philosophy”. In her paper, Mercer clearly demarcates two methodologies of the history of early modern philosophy. She argues that there has been a silent contextualist revolution in the past decades, and the reconstructivist methodology has been abandoned. One can easily get the impression that ‘reconstructivist’ has become a pejorative label that everyone outright rejects. Mercer’s examples of reconstructivist historians of philosophy are deceased (...) (P. F. Strawson, Margaret J. Osler, Richard Watson, and Bernard Williams), anonymous (the fans of philosopher* mentioned by Lisa Downing), or authors whose more recent work followed a contextualist methodology (Jonathan Bennett). The reconstructivist camp seems to have turned into a shadowy group, largely extinct by now, not unlike the Death Eaters in the fictional universe of Harry Potter. There are some figures who previously belonged to this group, but they have since reformed their ways – or so it seems. Sometimes it is rumoured that certain people may still have secret allegiance to it, but no one dares to fly its banner openly. We decided to create this special issue because we believe that reconstructivist methodology does not deserve this shadowy existence. (shrink)

Ideas will always resist single-statement definitions, but in a rough attempt at generalization one can say that they either play or are attributed a very special role in thinking and expressive processes, in perhaps all domains of human culture. People who specialize in creating, receiving, transforming, and disseminating them are usually called “intellectuals”—even if they do not monopolize those social practices. The constitution and circulation of ideas as structures of thinking and expression, the settings in which they originate and to (...) which they respond, the material supports in which they are conveyed as well as the intellectual agents specialized in dealing with them are studied by the history of ideas and its neighboring fields. These include intellectual history, history of concepts, histoire des mentalités, Geistesgeschichte, history of books, and even cultural history, sociology of knowledge, and the histories of science, philosophy, literature, and the humanities. As it is obvious, such labels do not support a clear-cut division of labor, nor can they be lined up in an organogram that would fix constant hierarchical relations between them. They show up with incommensurable frequency, displaying different connotations within different academic cultures. This explains why in some cases—as in Geistesgeschichte, Begriffsgeschichte, or histoire des mentalités—equivalent English terms are considered problematic or unnecessary. Having flourished, spread, and sometimes also decayed within different national, disciplinary, and generational contexts, the fields designated by them can only have intricate and overlapping limits. A good way to understand the traditions connected to the history of ideas is hence to look closely to their messy border zones. The closest and most intricate connections are those between “history of ideas” and “intellectual history,” which is reflected in the fact that these terms are often employed interchangeably—a use that will be noted also in the remainder of the present text. Even so, “intellectual history” clearly emerged as preferential designation in the English-speaking world in the final decades of the twentieth century. A reason for this is the spread of the suspicion that “ideas” are burdened by essentialist traits that would render us insensitive to historical discontinuity. The notion of ideas is also sometimes regarded as much too oblivious of the way language conditions thought, and accordingly some analysts suggest that it would be out of line with the best theoretical intelligence established since the so-called linguistic turn (see Kelley 2002a: 310–14). However, others claim that ideas should not be equaled to expressed words, as they refer to occurrences that are best described with psychological terms such as beliefs and attitudes, and, further, that there would be non-essentialist ways of addressing them . What seems more uncontroversial is that, in comparison to “history of ideas,” “intellectual history” opens up an enlarged space of ambivalence as regards the analytical focus, which can then toggle from intellectual products to intellectual producers, consumers, and the cultural frameworks in which they interact. There are also important crossroads between the history of ideas and conceptual history (or Begriffsgeschichte), as both terms signal to the historical study of basic structures of thought. Conceptual history, however, at least in its most well-known variety, which was very much inspired by social-historical approaches, tends to be less centered on biographical and psychological issues and to introduce concepts as more depersonalized linguistic entities. Such and other connections and disconnections between the various ways of attending to “the reflective communal life of human beings in the past” (Burrow) will be further discussed in the following from the perspective of a geographically multicentered historical synopsis. Hopefully, its many limitations will be compensated by the possibilty of bringing to the fore relations that otherwise would not become so salient. (shrink)

The goal of the article is to propose a different approach to – and therefore a new concept of – the history of thinking. Reflecting on the history of philosophy, it suggests a broader understanding of the latter. Yet traditional studies in the history of philosophy are not to be rejected; they need to be reformed, and such a reform could be performed basing on the experiences of the discipline of historiography. Thus conceived, the history of thinking could open us (...) to a different future. (shrink)

The rich have two defining capabilities: independence from and command over others. These make being wealthy very pleasant indeed, but they are also toxic to democracy. First, I analyse the mechanisms by which the presence of very wealthy individuals undermines the two pillars of liberal democracy, equality of citizenship and legitimate social choice. Second, I make a radical proposal. If we value the preservation of democracy we must limit the amount of wealth any individual can have and still be a (...) citizen of our polity. (shrink)

The present essay is the first part of an analysis regarding aspects of Aristotle’s ontology. Aristotle’s ontology is, in my opinion, a formal ontology that examines the fundamental structures of reality and that investigates the features belonging to entities such as substance, quantity, quality, universals. Aristotle’s ontology investigates, moreover, the reciprocal relations existing between these entities. Aristotle’s interpretation of universals is not, in my opinion, a nominalist interpretation of universals: I do not think Aristotle regards universals as being only mental (...) entities. Aristotle, rather, aims at the differentiation between the realms of reality to which individuals and universals belong. In this part of my investigation, I first expose my interpretation of the fundaments of Aristotle’s ontology. Thereafter, I concentrate my attention on chapter Metaphysics Zeta 13: I comment on Aristotle’s investigation regarding the ontological features belonging to the universal qua universal and to the substance qua substance. I analyse the ontological laws that Aristotle finds about universal and substance: substance and universals are considered by Aristotle as mutually incompatible entities. The analysis shows that a false interpretation of the features of the universals endangers the whole ontology. Moreover, the Third-Man-Regress, which is one of the consequences of the misunderstanding of the position of universals in the reality, is regarded as the key to the interpretation of one of Aristotle’s aims: Aristotle aims at the foundation of a typological ontology putting individual entities and universal entities on different levels of reality. The danger of the Third-Man-Regress is avoided through the introduction of a new ontology, that is, through the introduction of the typological ontology of the entities. (shrink)

One of the main issues that dominates Neoplatonism in late antique philosophy of the 3rd–6th centuries A.D. is the nature of the first principle, called the ‘One’. From Plotinus onward, the principle is characterized as the cause of all things, since it produces the plurality of intelligible Forms, which in turn constitute the world’s rational and material structure. Given this, the tension that faces Neoplatonists is that the One, as the first cause, must transcend all things that are characterized by (...) plurality—yet because it causes plurality, the One must anticipate plurality within itself. This becomes the main mo- tivation for this study’s focus on two late Neoplatonists, Proclus (5th cent. A.D.) and Damascius (late 5th–early 6th cent. A.D.): both attempt to address this tension in two rather different ways. Proclus’ attempted solution is to posit intermediate principles (the ‘henads’) that mirror the One’s nature, as ‘one’, but directly cause plurality. This makes the One only a cause of unity, while its production of plurality is mediated by the henads that it produces. Damascius, while appropriating Proclus’ framework, thinks that this is not enough: if the One is posed as a cause of all things, it must be directly related to plurality, even if its causality is mediated through the henads. Damascius then splits Proclus’ One into two entities: (1) the Ineffable as the first ‘principle’, which is absolutely transcendent and has no causal relation; and (2) the One as the first ‘cause’ of all things, which is only relatively transcendent under the Ineffable. -/- Previous studies that compare Proclus and Damascius tend to focus either on the Ineffable or a skeptical shift in epistemology, but little work has been done on the causal framework which underlies both figures’ positions. Thus, this study proposes to focus on the causal frameworks behind each figure: why and how does Proclus propose to assert that the One is a cause, at the same time that it transcends its final effect? And what leads Damascius to propose a notion of the One’s causality that no longer makes it transcendent in the way that a higher principle, like the Ineffable, is? The present work will answer these questions in two parts. In the first, Proclus’ and Damascius’ notions of causality will be examined, insofar as they apply to all levels of being. In the second part, the One’s causality will be examined for both figures: for Proclus, the One’s causality in itself and the causality of its intermediate principles; for Damascius, the One’s causality, and how the Ineffable is needed to explain the One. The outcome of this study will show that Proclus’ framework results in an inner tension that Damascius is responding to with his notion of the One. While Damascius’ own solution implies its own tension, he at least solves a difficulty in Proclus—and in so doing, partially returns to a notion of the One much like Iamblichus’ and Plotinus’ One. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues concerning experimental practice and scientific realism can enrich the historical investigation of the careers of "hidden entities", entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. My overall aim is to illustrate the possibility of a fruitful two-way traffic between history and philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

In this thesis I will examine the philosophy of the physicist Max Born. As well as his scientific work, Born wrote on a number of philosophical topics: causation, realism, determinism, and probability. They appear as an interest throughout his career, but he particularly concentrates on them from the 1940s onwards. Born is a significant figure in the development of quantum mechanics whose philosophical work has been left largely unexamined. It is the aim of this thesis to elucidate and to critically (...) examine that work. I will give a defence of presentist historiography in the history and philosophy of science and a brief biography of Born. With regards to causation, the thesis will argue that he holds that there exist principles regarding causal relations that have guided the development of physics and have, in the modern formulation of the subject, been confirmed as having an empirical status. I will argue that he is a selective realist, initially with regards to invariant properties and, later on, a structural realist. With regards to determinism, I will argue that Born has produced an argument, compatible with modern philosophical definitions of determinism, that we were never entitled to conclude from the success of classical mechanics that the world was deterministic. Finally, I will argue that Born holds an objective interpretation of probabilities in quantum mechanics which, due to his strong belief in the physical reality of quantum-mechanical probabilities and his apparent disbelief in the superposition of the wave-function, is most likely a long-run propensity theory. (shrink)

This paper will analyze three historical cases (Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei and Margaret Cavendish) that exemplify the complexity of the interaction between science and religion in the Scientific Revolution and confirm the interpretation of J. H. Brooke, according to which, in this historical context –rather than a separation- a differentiation took hold between them. We will hold that although these authors agreed in proposing the separation of science and religion as an ideal, each in their own way made an articulation (...) between the two that in the long run prevented a complete separation. This articulation was due to both epistemic and extra-epistemic reasons and manifests a tension that was characteristic of the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

: The study of perfection, progress and evolution is a central theme in the history of ideas. This thesis explores this theme seen and understood as part of a discourse in the new fields of anthropology, sociology and psychology in the nineteenth century. A particular focus is on the stance taken by philosophers, scientists and writers in the discussion of theories of human physical and mental evolution, as well as on their views concerning the nature of social progress and historical (...) change. The wisdom and feasibility of improving the human species is discussed alongside an analysis of new methods of investigating and measuring physical and mental attributes of the human organism.The instruments used to assess the development of mind, body and society are described, and are viewed as part of an increased emphasis on the use of technology as an integral part of modern life, and as a means toward the ordered gathering of information in social-scientific practice. An international perspective is taken by observing the way in which ideas about the physical and mental development of humankind was discussed in light and consequence of English and European scientific exploration in the Southern Hemisphere. Further, an evaluation is made of the manner of the spread of new thought in the social sciences from the intellectual and cultural 'centre' of England and Europe to the Anglo-European community located at the 'periphery' in Australia in the late nineteenth century. In particular the educative role played by the non-professional enthusiast as a pivotal conduit for the dissemination of these ideas is highlighted and linked back to a significant tradition of amateur scholarship as a central phenomenon in the study of the history of ideas. (shrink)

Understanding the semantics of theoretical terms from past science involves determining what, if anything, they referred to. Some ways of assigning referents to such terms are Whiggish, in the sense that they introduce anachronisms that distort the past, while others are not. My aim in this paper is to develop a non-Whiggish semantic theory, one that avoids Whiggish reference assignments. In order to do so, I make use of the example of 'phlogiston.' I argue that it would be Whiggish to (...) maintain that 'phlogiston' sometimes referred to free electrons, but not Whiggish to maintain that it sometimes referred to hydrogen. And I argue that we can avoid Whiggish reference assignments by focusing on the operations that scientists perform. On the theory I defend, theoretical terms refer by means of the operations scientists use to identity their putative referents. (shrink)

La primera parte de este artículo discute el poder persuasivo de las narrativas, especialmente en historia de la filosofía, ligándolas con la oposición entre razón y emoción y también con el conocido tema rortiano de las redescripciones. Además, presenta brevemente las líneas generales de la reconstrucción histórica hecha por Rorty y la tipología de géneros historiográficos que establece. La segunda parte muestra ejemplos del modo en que Rorty usa la persuasión al elaborar dos de tales géneros: las reconstrucciones históricas y (...) las reconstrucciones racionales. The first part of this paper discusses the persuasive power of narratives, especially when applied to history of philosophy, linking it with the opposition between reasons and emotions, and with the well-known rortyan theme of redescriptions. It also presents briefly the outlines of the historical reconstruction made by Rorty and the typology of historiographical genres established by him. The second part shows some examples of the way Rorty uses persuasion to develop two such genres: historical reconstructions and rational reconstructions. (shrink)

This thesis is about the way aesthetic thought changed or developed in Germany in the years immediately after the publication of Immanuel Kant's third critique - A Critique of the Power of Judgement. Besides many comparatively minor developments, it identifies three important changes in aesthetic thinking after Kant. Firstly, there was an increased emphasis on the integrated and interdependent nature of the human thinking that Kant had been more concerned to classify and analyse. Secondly, the change in aesthetics marks the (...) change from Enlightenment classicism to Early German Romanticism. Thirdly, the role of aesthetics itself changed, from attempting to define the concept of beauty and explain how we perceive it, to claiming that aesthetics is concerned with humanity's search for meaning in the work of art. This last development amounts to a suggestion that the hermeneutic strand in philosophy grew out of early post-Kantian aesthetics. Three thinkers have been selected as a means of showing these changes. They are Friedrich Schiller, the poet and dramatist, Friedrich Holderlin, the poet, and Friedrich Schlegel, the literary theorist and essayist. Chronologically, our period begins in 1793 and ends about 1800, just before the death of Kant, the death of Schiller, the mental collapse of Holderlin, and with the final editions of Schlegel's literary journal, Athendum. This timespan allows a fairly close study of Schiller's influential series of essays on philosophical aesthetics, which he wrote in direct response to the Third Critique, re-examining Kant's claim that the judgement of taste is subjective, and expanding Kant's account of how it is possible to create works of art and also of Friedrich Holderlin's and Friedrich Schlegel's most productive years, when both worked out aesthetic theories that moved onwards from Schiller, but nevertheless remained indebted to Kant in several respects. (shrink)

The culture-economy dialectic (CED) – the opposition of the concepts and phenomena of culture and economy – is one of the most important ideas in the modern history of ideas. Both disciplinary boundaries and much theoretical thought in social science are strongly influenced or even determined by the CED. For that reason, a thorough analysis and evaluation of the CED is needed to improve understanding of the history of ideas in social science and the currently fashionable research on the cultural (...) influences on economic differences between countries and regions. This thesis is an attempt to do just that. The concepts of “culture” and “economy” (and related concepts) and the (assumed) relations therebetween are compared and analyzed. Empirical results from earlier studies are summarized and some new test are presented. These new tests are partly based on a measurement of Dutch regional culture. However, most theories of the CED are (nearly) impossible to verify (empirically). There appears to be some influence of wealth on specific cultural phenomena (such as individualism and post-materialism), but the often assumed influence of culture on entrepreneurship and economic growth remains unconfirmed. Moreover, from an analysis of the theories themselves, it appears that most of these cannot be falsified and are, therefore, hardly 'scientific'. Many of the theories of the CED and, in fact, many theories of social science in general are of a conceptual rather than a causal nature. These theories cannot be falsified (or verified) by empirical means alone, but must be studied by means of conceptual analysis. In the final conclusions, this thesis, therefore, argues for conceptual analysis in – and a more anarchist approach to – social science. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the aesthetic strategy of the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, by considering the relation between the "artificial infinite" of the Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, and the "immemorial custom" of the Reflections on the Revolution in France. The argument addresses misreadings of Burke found in recent critical theories on the "aestheticism" of "bourgeois ideology.".