An interview with Ed Casey where we discuss the intersections of his philosophical work with current political issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Wissen wir, wer oder was unseren Lebensgang bestimmt? Wissen wir überhaupt, was in uns und ausserhalb von uns abläuft? Das einzig Gewisse ist unser Tod, doch was hilft die Gewissheit unseres Todes, wenn ungewiss bleibt, wann er kommt? Unsere Bedürfnisse kennen wir, aber wo sind die Grenzen der Befriedigung? Wenn unsicher geworden ist, wer oder was das bestimmt, was faktisch geschieht, wenn die Welt uns körperlich und seelisch bedrängt und die einzige Gewissheit in der Zukunft unser Tod ist, wenn uns (...) unsere Bedürfnisse und die Grenzen ihrer Befriedigung unklar geworden sind, dann hilft nichts mehr als das Nachdenken – das Nachdenken über unsere Natur und ihren Platz in der Welt, über die Hierarchie unserer Bedürfnisse, darüber, wie wir das Gelingen unseres Lebens mit Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit in Einklang bringen. Kurz, es hilft nichts als der Epikureismus. ********** Do we know who or what determines the course of our lives? Do we even know what is going on inside and outside of us? The only certain thing is our death, but what good is the certainty of our death if it remains uncertain when it will come? We know our needs, but where are the limits to their fulfilment? When it has become uncertain who or what determines what actually happens, when the world oppresses us physically and emotionally and the only certainty in the future is our death, when our needs and the limits of their fulfilment have become unclear to us, then nothing helps more than reflection - reflection on our nature and its place in the world, thinking about the hierarchy of our needs, about how we can harmonise the success of our lives with reason and justice. In short, nothing helps but Epicureanism. (shrink)

This paper identifies three positions on the relationship between language and experience, the third of which I was not acquainted with before from my reading. It seems absurd.

Schrödinger discusses what an elementary particle is. This essay originally appeared in the journal Endeavour.

Is reality the basis of everything or has reality itself an other basis? What makes reality – not the real things – to be active, to exist? The question of what is real seems to be an easy question, because in our daily lives we are and must be naive realists. We ourselves, the things around us, the world, the facts, all that is real. there must be several concepts of reality if we want to say that not only physical (...) or material things of everyday life are real, e. g. numbers, π, Dr. Faustus, thoughts, emotions and other things. On the other hand, given the difference of classical physics and modern physics, we see that even that form of knowledge, which seems to be most responsible for reality, natural science, cannot give the desired uniqueness in terms of what itself wants or needs to understand as real. Alternatively, when we see that nothing can be and nothing can be real without being in a world, and when we understand the world as the order of things, which I call worldI , then this leads us to the speculative answer that it is exactly the “unreal” worldI which is the reason why the everyday reality, worldI I , is real. The worldI is the basis for the reality of our empirical worldI I . The considerations presented here have nothing to do with the idealistic conception of possibility, founded in the power of the subject, nor with the existential concept of potentiality, founded in the Entwurf des Daseins. (shrink)

This document gathers together, in summary form, objections scattered across many papers and multiple online databases. Nevertheless, it omits some objections, notably complicated ones.

Foucault’s disciplinary society and his notion of panopticism are often invoked in discussions regarding electronic surveillance. Against this use of Foucault, I argue that contemporary trends in surveillance technology abstract human bodies from their territorial settings, separating them into a series of discrete flows through what Deleuze will term, the surveillant assemblage. The surveillant assemblage and its product, the socially sorted body, aim less at molding, punishing and controlling the body and more at triggering events of in- and ex-clusion from (...) life opportunities. The meaning of the body as monitored by latest generation vision technologies formed from machine only surveillance has been transformed. Such a body is no longer disciplinary in the Foucauldian sense. It is a virtual/flesh interface broken into discrete data flows whose comparison and breakage generate bodies as both legible and eligible (or illegible). (shrink)

Der hier vorliegende Text befasst sich mit der Rezeption von Aristoteles’ Metaphysik Λ bei Albertus Magnus und Thomas von Aquin. Er stellt das Material bereit für die Auswertung, die als Band 61 der Bochumer Studien zur Philosophie unter dem Titel Zur mittelalterlichen Herkunft einiger Theoreme in der modernen Aristoteles-Interpretation Eine Fallstudie anhand der Kommentare von Albertus Magnus und Thomas von Aquin zu Aristoteles’ Metaphysik Λ, bei John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2024, erscheinen wird. **************************** This text deals with (...) the reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. It provides the material for the analysis, which will be published as volume 61 of the BochumerStudien zur Philosophie under the title "Zur mittelalterlichenHerkunft einiger Theoreme in der modernenAristoteles-Interpretation. Eine Fallstudie anhand derKommentare von Albertus Magnus und Thomas vonAquin zu Aristoteles' Metaphysik Λ," by John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam / Philadelphia, 2024. (shrink)

Jeanette Edwards observes a pattern of questions of the form “Why do anthropology fieldwork in location X?” - she only hears the question posed of some places - and she explains this pattern by saying that some places are taken to be obviously legitimate for anthropology fieldwork whereas others are not. I draw distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate, obviously legitimate and not obviously legitimate, and better and worse. The distinctions lead to a different explanation.

The leading question of our lecture series is in which areas and in which sense fractures and incompleteness are relevant for us. Are brokenness and incompleteness only accidental and singular, or do they belong to the style of things in general? Is wholeness and perfection the rule, and fracture the exception? The same question must be applied to the distinction between our knowledge of the world and the world itself. Is brokenness and incompleteness due to the things themselves, or only (...) to our perception and knowledge of them? - For the time being, the term "world" will be used in the sense of the "whole of things", which is usual, later this term of the world will be supplemented by a second one. (shrink)

Jeanette Edwards did fieldwork in the English town of Bacup. Why do fieldwork there? She writes that she is often asked this, whereas the question is unlikely to be asked of an anthropologist who does fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, because it is “axiomatically” an acceptable place for fieldwork. I present two responses to Edwards’ thinking, one of which concerns an asymmetry in how “skeptics” present their questions.

The aim of this article is to free Aristotle's Metaphysics, especially book XII (Lambda), frome some metaphysical and theological presuppositions by detecting their inappropriate conceptual framwork, which once was progressive, but now holds an obsolete position. Ousia, being (not substance, a much later concept, construed to solve other problems than Aristotle's), stand for a question, not for an answer. Book Lambda develops a highly speculative argument for this queston. The famous noesis noeseos says that empirical being and knowledge is the (...) realization of a noetic structure (noesis), laid down in our most fundamental opinioons about being. (shrink)

Today, there are many natural sciences, one of which is physics, but there is no science in the sense of a Theory of Nature. In our everyday life, the opinion is rightly held that there is only one nature, but whether this opinion stands up to reflection is questionable. When we apply the speculation that Aristotle developed in Metaphysics Λ to his Physics, we will see, that Aristotle has developed a Theory of Nature that consists in posing the question of (...) the being of the natural being (Frage nach dem Sein des Naturseienden). The standardinterpretation wants us to believe that Aristotle founded a substance metaphysics with a corresponding theology, and that he practised natural science. But, our hermeneutical situation could lead us to an "Aristotle today" and free us from old beliefs so that we, like Thomas Aquinas and others, could learn from a contemporary Aristotle as an immediate interlocutor. One of the learning points, for example, would be that questions are more crucial than new assertions, even if they are sophisticated, and that unassertive thinking (unbehauptendes Denken) in a topical attitude can lead us to insight into the multiplicity of worlds. This insight would have immediate consequences for our behaviour towards our co-inhabitants of our planet and towards our environment. (shrink)

Discussions about the content of Plato’s Gorgias mostly follow the structure of this dialogue given by the change of the interlocutors. As plain as this change is, as little does it correspond with the development of the subject. This becomes obvious if we compare the division of the dialogue by the interlocutors with the division of the leading questions. New themes do not start with a new person, but only in the course of the conversation with Gorgias, Polos, and Callicles (...) respectively Socrates gets a more fundamental niveau for an old question or introduces a new subject. (shrink)

Proclus' Stoicheiosis Theologike has had an enormous impact on Christian theological and philosophical thought; it has had a decisive influence on the theological interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. However, the impact was less on the text itself than on the 'excerpt' translated from Arabic into Latin with the title Liber de Causis, which, like the Theologia Aristotelis (a compilation of Plotinian texts), was considered authentically Aristotelian. It was only Thomas, thanks to Moerbeke's translation of the Stoicheiosis Theologike, who realised that the (...) Liber de Causis was not a genuine Aristotelian text; nevertheless, he considered it to be fully compatible in meaning and intention with what Aristotle had thought and also used it accordingly in his argumentations. Although this was not the beginning of the theological reading of Aristotle's Metaphysics, this circumstance has completely cemented this conviction until today. -/- The conviction that Proclus' text is primarily a theological treatise has also persisted to this day (see the recent anthologies and monographs on Proclus, most recently Relire les Éléments de Théologie de Proclus, 2021). With my translation and commentary, I would like to counteract this limitation of Proclusian thought. Already the literary form of the text, 211 general propositions, shows that Proclus has something different in mind here than, for example, in his Platonic theology. I would like to make the philosophical content, the philosophical question of Proclus speak. In this text, Proclus poses the question of being and answers it by saying that being is to be understood as the unity of {staying-emerging-returning}. (shrink)

Aristotle’s De Interpretatione opens with some norms designed to guide philosophical discour- se. One of these norms–of greatest importance for the discourse about being–is the distinction between the affirmation and the content of a proposition. No verb, not even the verb to be, will by itself state the existence of its content. – The oppositon to the traditional interpretation of the text in this article is primarily founded on observations of ordinary Greek speech. ”A verb uttered just by itself“ doesn’t (...) mean ”the verb without a subject noun“ as normaly assumed, but it means ”the verb without the intention to affirm what it means.“ – Some glances at Platon and Kant conclude the article. (shrink)

For those familiar with Machiavelli’s texts, Foucault’s interpretation of Macchiavelli in his 1978 lecture series Sécurité, Territoire, Population1 is surprising. Although Machiavelli figures prominently in five of the thirteen lectures,2 Foucault treats Machiavelli as if he were the author of only one book—The Prince—and his reading treats this complex text as if it covered only one topic: how to guarantee the security of the Prince. Clearly Foucault did not intend his interpretation of Machiavelli as a close exegesis. Other discussions of (...) Foucault’s treatment of Machiavelli have acknowledged the role Machiavelli plays in these lectures and even note the inadequacy of the interpretation given by Foucault, but most commentators do not pursue Foucault’s reading further.3 This investigation is not concerned with whether Foucault got Machiavelli right. Rather, Foucault’s reading of Machiavelli is noteworthy because it is partial and incomplete in a way reminiscent of Foucault’s reading of Hobbes in, Il faut défendre la société. This fragmentary character of Foucault’s inscription of Machiavelli as a forerunner of the history of biopolitique allows an innovative reading of the Florentine that connects Machiavelli’s thinking, however indirectly, on a trajectory that encounters, for instance, Foucault’s analysis of populations, the police state, and even his reading of liberalism during the 1978-­‐ 1979 lectures. My argument here is that the specific way Foucault’s inscribes Machiavelli in the history of gouvernementalité, while seeming to reject him, in fact acts to resuscitate, and thereby relay, a reading of Machiavelli as a thinker who articulates encounters among political practices engaged within a horizon of radical immanence. (shrink)

This is a one page handout reconstructing the paradox and identifying four solutions in the literature, as well as some concerns about them.

In the past Boethius was primarily considered to be the author of the Consolatio, or a theologician or logician. But as a philosopher he was the first to reflect on the concept of person, while Augustinus and others only made use of this concept. It is the purpose of this article to show that it was exactly Boethius’ situation in the late antiquity with its many differing traditions that urged and enabled him to ask himself what person essentially is. His (...) new concept of person (: naturae rationabilis individua substantia) puts person first and strengthens - problematically - the position of substance. (shrink)

Is there a possible profit from the loss of the sense of reality? The loss of the sense of reality is a mental disorder that needs treatment, otherwise the person concerned will suffer harm in the short term. We cannot imagine that therefrom a profit could result. Don Quixote gives an example of a loss of reality in a slightly different sense. He is no longer committed to the banal, everyday reality, in this area he fails completely. But he has (...) another field, as it were, a higher reality, where he wins. A similar case is told to us by Plato in the story of Thales, who falls into the well while observing the stars, and is therefore laughed at by a Thracian maid. But for Plato, Thales is a positive example. The philosopher is less concerned with the reality that lies just before his feet than with what is generally true and real. Plato himself devalues what can be experienced around us in favour of the ideas. These are not perceptible, but nevertheless they are what actually exists. (shrink)

Jeanette Edwards sounds as if she wishes to reject the question “Why did you do fieldwork there?” I propose a metaphysical route to this, which is to say, “The self before fieldwork is not my self,” but this conflicts with the traditional Lockean account of personal identity.

What is the origin and goal of man? In this lecture to a small audience I will pursue this question by comparing passages from Platonic Philebus with those from Aristotle's Nicomachian Ethics and comparing both together with a passage from the Letter to Menoikeus. It turns out that the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia (happiness) is not so far removed from Epicurus, since eudaimonia also includes hedone, lust.

This paper examines the notion of the biopolitical body from the standpoint of Foucault’s logic of the security mechanism and the history he tells of vaccine technology. It then investigates how the increasing importance of the genetic code for determining the meaning and limits of the human in the field of 20th century cell biology has been a cause for ongoing transformation in the practices that currently extend vaccine research and development. I argue that these transformations mark the emergence of (...) a new kind of medical subject – the stabilized and infinitely reproducible human cell line – and that the practices and markets exploiting this new form of organism have had a destabilizing effect on the very biopolitical structures that engendered them and, in fact, mark a new way of conceiving the possibilities of cellular life. I call these new ways of organizing power that intervene in the logic of the security measure by mediating the relationship between populations and persons the microbiopolitical. (shrink)

Different reasons give rise to the question, what philosophy really is, and by tradition we know many answers. Plato’s answer can be found by examining his explicit statements about philosophy in his dialogues, or by analyzing his representation of Socrates – philosophy become fl esh. But an other way to fi nd an answer to the question lies in examining the things which – according to Plato – we cannot do without. There are three of them, namely the idea, logos (...) and aporia. These three taken together – the insight that we orient ourselves according to some unity in our different fi elds of life; that we cannot dismiss dialogue and debate; and questions outlive answers – paint a picture of philosophy as «unbehauptendes Denken»1 [undogmatic thought]. Such «unbehauptendes Denken» does not aim to insist on new claims against old ones, but instead seeks to analyze and to refl ect upon old views. (shrink)

Abstract Most histories of philosophy make us believe, that there is a line of thought from the Greeks on until today. This impression should be checked by this article. At first we contrast some pros and cons of the view that philosophy in general has a history. Then we come back to the question, if Plato or / and Aristotle are really the founders of historiography in philosophy. As test-piece we take the passage in the centre of Plato's Sophist, which (...) shows that the references to past thinkers don't have the purpose to inform us historically, but, first, to continue the current dialogue about being, second, to lead us to the aporie about being, which allows a fresh start for this question. A glance at the doxographies of Aristotle shows (we have a look at that of De Anima), that they have the same target in view, namely to reveal the fundamental opinions of being in a respective world. This way the “history of philosophy” becomes an account of succeeding worlds and the related reflection on it. – This article is an extended version of a short lecture held in Geneva, 15. sept. 2016, within the scope of the Symposium of the Schweizerische Philosophische Gesellschaft. Unfortunately it was not accepted for publication. (shrink)

In almost every handbook and in almost every history of philosophy you will find the thesis that Aristotle in Metaphysics Z has developed a theory about substance – an imperfect one unfortunately. From the Middle Ages until now this has been the most widely accepted claim about this book. Because the basis for this claim is not so easy to find in the text, there is a dispute about the question what a substance really is and ”which things“ are substances. (...) But the theory itself remains. If you engage to clear the field of problems in which this book has its roots, you will see apories developed by Plato in his dialogue Sophistes, mainly the apory in the middle of the dialogue. Here the guest from Elea is led to the question ”What in the world do we have to understand by the term ’to be’?“ ”...For you evidently understood the matter long ago; we, on the contrary, before thought we understood, but now are in trouble about it.“ Aristotle repeats this question, the question about being, on a new level and with new conceptual tools. In the Topics he develops what I call the ”topical approach.“ The use of it is suppported by a new type of concepts, the quotations (e. g. to ti estin: ”Say what you mean, if you ask 'What is this?'“ The standard translation ”essence“ makes impossible to see the genuine meaning of the term.) In Metaphysics Z he puts in concrete terms what in Metaphysics Λ was just a sketch of his speculation about ”to be.“ Seeing this background, it becomes clear that Metaphysics Z never contains the expected theory, which many allege that Aristotle is defending. This is no more than the remains of the pastristic and medieval interpretation. The German translation with commentary which I submit with this book, and an extensive introduction to these questions, should contribute to the destruction of this part of metaphysics. (shrink)

One of the most famous and most important commentaries of the Neoplatonist Simplicius treats the Physics of Aristotle. Several times, having commented the text within the Aristotelian frame, Simplicius treats the same subject again but now under a Neoplatonist perspective. These texts are called corollaries and one of them is about time. Discussing other Neoplatonist views about time (esp. Pseudo-Archytas, Plotinus, Damascius, Jamblichus), he tries to clarify the nature of our physical time arising from and differentiating (diakrisis) a ”first“ unmoving (...) time. What Simplicius calls ”first time“ is the very first difference in being, identical with the fact that the soul (psyche) contains the structure of the totality of things in itself before they exist materially (vorweg-bei-anderem-Sein der Seele), which makes possible the original synthesis of becoming. Following this line, our physical time brings unity to the ever changing nature. (shrink)

Apparently the Western philosophical tradition has (wrongly) preferred speech over writing – so claims Jacques Derrida. In this paper, I consider whether utilitarianism involves such a preference. There are at least two arguments against the claim.

Moral naturalists are often said to have trouble making sense of inter-communal moral disagreements. The culprit is typically thought to be the naturalist’s metasemantics and its implications for sameness of meaning across communities. The most familiar incarnation of this metasemantic challenge is the Moral Twin Earth argument. We address the challenge from the perspective of analytic naturalism, and argue that making sense of inter-communal moral disagreement creates no special issues for this view.

With overwhelming conviction the standard-interpretation of the Aristotelian philosophy translates the Greek ousia with the Latin substantia. There are many reasons, that this translation and equation is false, in a short overview I name six of them.

This document briefly summarizes several objections to Thomas Kuhn on science, including by Feyerabend, Davidson, and Fodor.

Imprecise probabilities are often modelled with representors, or sets of probability functions. In the recent literature, two ways of interpreting representors have emerged as especially prominent: vagueness interpretations, according to which each probability function in the set represents how the agent's beliefs would be if any vagueness were precisified away; and comparativist interpretations, according to which the set represents those comparative confidence relations that are common to all probability functions therein. I argue that these interpretations have some important limitations. I (...) also propose an alternative—the functional interpretation—according to which representors are best interpreted by reference to the roles they play in the theories that make use of them. (shrink)

This article shows the origin of the famous Aristotelian expression τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι in everyday language. The expression is analysable in τὸ εἶναι and τί ἦν, and this part is the core of the common language question τουτὶ τί ἦν; or τουτὶ τί ἦν τὸ πρᾶγμα; always in imperfect form. This question is often found in Aristophanes’ comedies, which represent common Attic language. The imperfect ἦν is noted as a common Attic form indicating the present already by early comentators (...) of Aristotle as Alexander of Aphrodisias, the scholia to Aristophanes, later by Budaeus, but also in the modern Greek Lexikon of D. Demetrakos. Therefore not the imperfect is the problem, by mere embarrassement it was called "philosophic." The situations in the Aristophanean comedies, in which the question occurs, show that the thing about which somebody asks, is present, in front of the speaker, that it is an individual thing and something absolutly unexspected. The questioner will ask "What on the whole is this?" He asks about the first ground of being of the thing. The term τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι quotes only the use of εἶναι in this question in common language (like many other terms are quotations as τὸ τί ἐστίν; τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα etc.) and may be paraphrased by "Think of ’to be’ as you use it in the question ’What at all is this?’ " See also my article: Sonderegger (2001). Zur Sprachform des Ausdrucks to ti en einai. Rheinisches Museum Für Philologie 144:113–122. -/- The consequences of this linguistic finding can be found in my comments on Metaphysik Z and Metaphysics Λ (English version from 2020). (shrink)

The present text is the revised and corrected English translation of the book published in German by the Lang Verlag, Bern 2008. Unfortunately the text still has some minor flaws (especially in the Index Locorum) but they do not concern the main thesis or the arguments. It will still be the final version, especially considering my age. It is among the most widespread and the least questioned convictions that in Metaphysics Lambda Aristotle presents a theology which has its basis in (...) a metaphysics of substance. Doubts about theological interpretation are beginning to stir in a growing number of publications, but nevertheless the majority of research literature, compendiums and histories of philosophy argues within this frame. A closer look at the facts reveals that this conviction has no basis in the text. Quite the contrary it is based on a reception with theological interests. It arised over centuries, starting from Patristic times and the Middle Ages; it was influenced by Neoplatonic texts as the Liber de Causis or the Theologia Aristotelis, texts for a long time considered as original Aristotelian books. And, if you read not translations but the Greek text, you see that the word 'god' occurs much less than in a theological book should be. In some translations we find more occurences of that word, and especially in French, Italian, English translations some words as le Bien, l'Intelligence etc. are written with capitals to inticate that it is about god. To make it even more clear, we read often the term 'First Mover' or 'Unmoved Mover' as an other name for god, but this expression is never used by Aristotle. So the reader has the impression that Aristotle speaks continuously about god. In addition, in the present book you will find arguments which clean up with the outdated concept of substance in the Aristotelian text, a concept which was developed for quite other problems than Aristotle had, namely theolgical ones. And, if there is no substance, there is no corresponding metaphysics of substance and no theology or onto-theology. If substance, metyphysics, theology play no role in Metaphysics Lambda, what else is its content and aim? That is not so difficult to say because Aristotle says it sufficiently clear in his first sentence, περὶ οὐσίας ἡ θεωρία: our inquiry is about being; its aim is to develop the Frage nach dem Sein and to state a speculative answer: being is noesis, Sein ist Gewahren. (shrink)

Globalisation Considering the Multitude of Worlds This book deals with globalisation, its foundations, its rise and fall and the question of its future. It discusses the conditions that have led, each in its own way, to the reduction of the many worlds to one. The first foundations were laid in the time of the discoveries, the earth was recognised and measured as a unified space. Missionary work and colonisation have made the geographical unit into a unity of fundamental beliefs, values (...) and Western European languages. The brisk trade with the colonies also unified the financial and economic situation of the conquered foreign worlds, which were managed according to Western patterns. The small gain of the political independence of the states achieved in the decolonisation movement was unfortunately destroyed by the great losses already suffered in the area of the fundamental values of the original worlds, their languages, their ways of living, their faith. In the new situation it became apparent that the economic dependence on the former colonial states was increasing rather than decreasing, the way of doing politics had remained by habit that of the colonial powers. Decolonisation was not a way back to the old world. Two metaphysical assumptions of globalisation are discussed in more detail. One is the assumption of realism that the world is one. This assumption justifies missionary and colonialist action. On the other hand, there is the thesis of liberalism that the being of the beings is its economic value. Against the realistic assumption of the one world, arguments are put forward which justify and make plausible the opposite assumption of a multitude of worlds. Now that the world is de facto one thanks to globalisation, and now that it is suffering from problems that affect all people, a new kind of globalisation is needed, one that recognises and respects different worlds on the one hand, but is nevertheless capable of tackling environmental, financial and social problems together. Depending on the subject, two very different ways of reasoning are used. In the preparatory historical part, the arguments are empirical and stick to details; in the part dealing with the justification of the multiplicity of worlds, the argumentation is theoretical, not to say speculative. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to an essay by Tatyana Tolstaya, which describes a contrast between the Russian and the Western perspective on words. Her contrast may generally be true, but I know of a counterexample: a tale about a Western philosopher and his followers and what happened to them.

In his review of Chris Daly’s book Philosophical Methods, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa debates with Daly over the value of using the word “tension,” which Daly describes as a weasel word. Ichikawa disagrees. I raise a worry that Ichikawa’s response will not convince Daly and try to help Ichikawa out. Then I outline a traditional empiricist objection to Daly.

This is my response to a premise-by-premise argument in Anca Gheaus’s “Biological Parenthood: Gestational, Not Genetic.”.

Are brokenness and incompleteness only accidental and singular, or do they belong to the style of things in general? Is wholeness and perfection the rule, and breakage the exception? The same question must also be related to the distinction between our knowledge of the world and the world itself. Is brokenness and incompleteness due to the things themselves, or only to our perception and our knowledge of them?

This paper offers a cheap solution to Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory. An ideal theory cannot be sound by definition, since in the relevant sense of “ideal theory” it involves false propositions.

I present an argument Marilyn Strathern makes against characterizing Elmdon villagers as innately lazy. It looks as if the eventual direction of this material is going to be a rational actor model.

This paper responds to an essay by Elena Ferrante on male literary figures acknowledging the influence of female ones. She poses a question about her reception by males which I address.

There are philosophers and literary figures who write on a variety of topics. I suppose I do as well. Here I present two personal worries about the advice to become a narrow specialist.

Cusanus, Abstract As a rule Cusanus is interpreted in a theological way, under strong theological presuppositions and within the range of religion. This may be quite understandable since he was a cardinal and had important functions in the Papal States. But, what are the results, when we read his texts under pure philosophical conditions? We may see then that some of his texts are meant neither to assert a belief nor to search for reasons for it, but only to reflect (...) upon the presuppositions of this belief and its different traditions. Instead of asserting his belief Cusanus is beginning to reflect upon his presupositions. We try to give an exemple for this shift with the first proposition in the collection of propositions that follow the dialog De non aliud: „definitio quae se et omnia definit, ea est, quae per omnem mentem quaeritur.“ We will see a quite another Cusanus. Cusanus picks up „definitio“ in the sense of self-determination, developped in the dialog. He begins in quite a traditional manner and ends in a supremely abstract and speculative intuition. The 'Not-other' determines itself in a vision; this vision is an order in which every thing gets its proper place; we as human beings aspire to repeat this vision in our mental life in contact with the world. In this way Cusanus does what all great philosophers do: he reflects in a given set of opinions what is the meaning of „to be“. (shrink)

This paper proposes a solution to a puzzle regarding when people switch from one skilled area of specialization to another, in which they have had little training. Certain analogies between the previous area and the area switched to enable this. I use Susan Carey as an example.

This is a two page handout specifying approaches, or methods, used in interpreting Judith Butler. The methods of various analytic philosophers are identified.

Adversarial philosophy is under attack (!), but I speculate that it is useful for working out the level of a philosopher and sometimes for increasing the respect awarded to some individuals and groups. There may be no alternative to it when you have an excess of philosophers of around the same level.

An explanation for why the Bisa do not perform a traditional dance to express their identity is all-or-nothing reasoning: “We would have to water it down for this audience and that is not a Bisa dance.”.