Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

Studie pomocí segmentové analýzy pěti existujících zlomků Anaximandrovy zoogonie a antropogonie ukazuje, že Aetiův zlomek o zoogonii, dosud téměř všeobecně považovaný za nejspolehlivější, je složený ze segmentů spadajících do oblasti antropogonie – tj. že ve skutečnosti o Anaximandrově zoogonii nepřináší téměř žádné informace. Komplikovaný problém vztahu Anaximandrovy zoogonie a antropogonie je tím paradoxně vyřešen: o zoogonii bez Aetiova zlomku máme naprostý nedostatek zpráv.

Řecké sloveso metabiónai, objevující se v Aetiově zprávě o Anaximandrově zoogonii, bylo dosud považováno za ojedinělé a předpokládalo se, že může mít význam „změnit způsob života“, nebo „přežít“. Tato studie nachází dosud neznámé výskyty daného slovesa, které svědčí pro význam „změnit způsob života“, současně však upozorňuje na syntaktickou problematičnost tohoto významu v Aetiově textu.keywords: Anaximandros; zoogonie; metabiónai; řecký aorist; Aetios; Pseudo-Plútarchos; Placita.

The history of concepts is relevant in philosophy because conceptual distinctions fundamentally shape cognition. Because these conceptual distinctions are deeply entrenched in our way of thinking, we are not usually aware of this influence. How we view the world depends crucially on the concepts we have. These concepts, however, are the products of their history. Following Herbart, Gustav Teichmüller viewed philosophy as the systematic analysis and refinement of concepts. Refining concepts in such a way allows us to make new distinctions, (...) or to transform or abandon old ones. In contrast to Herbart, Teichmüller emphasized that this process presupposes detailed historical studies. This does not mean, however, that Teichmüller embraced a kind of historicism---the view that philosophy and its history are one and the same thing. On the contrary, he derogatorily referred to such a view as "historical psychology". Rather, the history of concepts in Teichmüller's sense has to be understood as a history of problems which are reflected in conceptual distinctions. This means that the history of concepts, which brings to light explicit and implicit distinctions, can be applied as a kind of hermeneutics of world views---as the basis on which we can systematically reconstruct concepts in a new light. It is the aim of this presentation to unfold such an understanding of the history of concepts in view of Teichmüller's contribution to it. (shrink)