In his celebrated masterpiece, Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and, of course, Plato's mentor Socrates - each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness. And then into the party bursts the drunken Alcibiades, the (...) most popular and notorious Athenian of the time, who insists on praising Socrates himself rather than love, and gives us a brilliant sketch of this enigmatic character. The power, humour, and pathos of Plato's creation engages the reader on every page. This new translation is complemented by full explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction. (shrink)

One of the most remarkable features of mid-to-late twentieth century analytic philosophy is the revival of interest in the traditional problems of metaphysics. However, given the long period of neglect from which metaphysics in only now emerging, it is perhaps not surprising that philosophers in the analytic tradition are still finding their metaphysical feet, particularly on meta-metaphysical and methodological matters. Thus contemporary metaphysicians find themselves in an exciting but ultimately unstable position: We are convinced that metaphysical questions are worth pursing, (...) but we still lack a convincing story to offer our detractors about how we conduct our business qua metaphysicians. This essay is an attempt to provide such a story. The core recommendation is that we need not re-invent the discipline out of whole cloth if we are willing to learn from the past masters, particularly the Scholastics. What ultimately emerges is a defense of Scholastic metaphysical principles based on contemporary evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Kant's only aesthetic work apart from the Critique of Judgment , Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime gives the reader a sense of the personality and character of its author as he sifts through the range of human responses to the concept of beauty and human manifestations of the beautiful and sublime. Kant was fifty-eight when the first of his great Critical trilogy, the Critique of Pure Reason , was published. Observations offers a view into the mind (...) of the forty-year-old Kant. (shrink)

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Since heaven is the most perfect state or position possible – namely of loving God perfectly – and sinning is failing to love God, it will not be possible to sin in heaven. However, if freedom is a mark of perfection, and loving God is only possible when one freely loves God, will we be loving God at all if we are not free not to love him? Three cumulative arguments for an affirmative answer are developed. The first is to (...) distinguish the ability to love or sin from the opportunity to do so. In heaven we are loving God in an infinite variety of ways, so we are freely exercising our ability to love, even when God has taken away any opportunities for sinning. However, one might reply that our freedom will only be the freedom to love God in various ways, not the freedom to love God or not. Hence the second argument is that in heaven are only people who have freely chosen to love God while on earth, where there was a real opportunity not to love God. Since the free choice to love God was made before entering heaven, loving God in heaven remains a free choice. Moreover, since in heaven God takes away the opportunity to sin, and stopping to love God would be a sin, you will remain steadfast in that free choice. However, one might reply that also having the opportunity to sin would add an extra possibility for willing something, so one would be 'more free' in heaven, and heaven would be more perfect, if one would also have the opportunity to sin. Hence the third argument is that freedom is a perfection shared by both God and humans, and the freedom of God is in an important respect a freedom to create. Hence, our human freedom is also greater if our creative power is greater. We have no creative power but by participating in God’s creative power, which is necessarily directed towards the good. So by willing what is good we extend and perfect creation and thereby extend and perfect our possibilities for willing, hence we become more free. On the contrary, by sinning we destroy creation and possibilities for willing and we become less free, so an opportunity to sin is not a possibility that increases our freedom. (shrink)

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

This pioneering work in the history of science, which originated in a series of three Gauss Seminars given at Princeton University in 1984, demonstrated how the roots of the scientific revolution lay in medieval scholasticism.

The recent economic crisis has re-ignited the debate over the institution of fractional reserve banking (FRB) and its possible adverse economic effects. This paper brings a so far neglected aspect of the problem to the table, namely social ontology. After addressing the scope of social ontology in relation to social metaphysics, social science and FRB, a general ontological framework for money and banking is sketched and applied to the debate between Austrian opponents and proponents of FRB. It shows that the (...) oppositions reflect metaphysical and ontological positions on the reality of powers and dispositions, namely that a realist position in the metaphysics of powers and dispositions tends to a critical position toward FRB, whereas a sceptical position on powers and dispositions leads to a favorable position toward FRB. A final section gives further examples of how these ontological presuppositions shape other arguments in the debate. -/- . (shrink)

The central recommendation of this article is that philosophers trained in the analytic tradition ought to add the sensibilities and skills of the historian to their methodological toolkit. The value of an historical approach to strictly philosophical matters is illustrated by a case study focussing on the medieval origin of conceivability arguments and contemporary views of modality. It is shown that common metaphilosophical views about the nature of the philosophical enterprise as well as certain inference patterns found in thinkers from (...) Descartes to Chalmers have their origin in the theological concerns of the Scholastics. Since these assumptions and inference patterns are difficult to motivate when shorn of their original theological context, the upshot is that much post-Cartesian philosophy is cast in an altogether unfamiliar, and probably unwelcome, light. The methodological point, however, is that this philosophical gain is born of acquaintance with the history of ideas. (shrink)

This paper provides a metaphysical framework which enables the possibility of the hypostatic union. More specifically, social ontology will be used to philosophically ground the distinction between nature or substance on the one hand, and person on the other hand, which is crucial to that debate. There are some historical precedents for a juridical approach in christological debates, but the main sections develop a systematic metaphysical account. Relying on a generic version of dispositional realism, and the distinction between the ability (...) space and the liberty space of a person, a person is the locus or nexus of contingent activations of alternative possibilities. This is distinct from the set or range of alternative possibilities open to a person. Persons can therefore function as artificial persons, paradigmatically exemplified in sovereign states. Extending that framework to the supernatural level enables the possibility of a divine person uniting a divine and a human nature. (shrink)