Diogenes vs. Demonax

Author(s):  
Inger N. I. Kuin

Lucian of Samosata is an invaluable source for the activities of the philosophical schools in the 2nd century CE and their attitudes to laughter. But he can also be understood as a philosopher in his own right, especially for his views on the value of laughter in philosophy and on the potential of laughter as philosophy. This chapter analyzes these views in order to show that Lucian’s writings form a key stage in the history of laughter’s place in philosophical thought. Two prominent forms of philosophical laughter in Lucian are analyzed side by side: the improvisational, inclusive laughter of Demonax, and the exhibitionist, exclusive laughter of the Cynics, (Lucian’s) Diogenes in particular. This chapter argues that Demonax’s laughter ultimately comes closer to Lucian’s own mode of philosophical laughter than Diogenes’ laughter.

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saverio Ricci

Abstract The relation between Garin and Cassirer is still an insufficiently investigated topic, here proposed also in light of their personal connections and documents. This relation represents an important episode in the Nachwirkung of Cassirer in Italy. Garin was deeply influenced by Cassirer’s historical research and philosophical thought, in the shaping of his own research fields and in the methodological debates about the history of philosophy.


Author(s):  
Roberto Luquín Guerra

Apart from his political and educational work, and from his controversial autobiography, José Vasconcelos is known for his Ibero-Americanist thought. The Cosmic Race, Indology and Bolivarism and Monroeism gather all the ideas that are attributed to his theoretical point of view. His philosophy is what we know less of and what is most criticized. Nonetheless, is there a connection between his philosophical thought and his Ibero-Americanist ideas? Abelardo Villegas says that Vasconcelos’s philosophy is the product of a racial and cultural message. Therefore, according to Villegas, his philosophy is subordinated to his Ibero-Americanist ideas. Patrick Romanell, on the other hand, states that the Ibero-Americanist ideas make up the popular and illusory side and, hence, must be separated from the philosophical thought. The aim of this paper is to elucidate this problem. In order to clarify it, we will follow Villegas viewpoint to the bitter end. His reasoning invites us to look closely at the history of Ibero-American thought as well as at Vasconcelos’s first works. Precisely by analyzing these two aspects and the point where they meet, we might be able to find an answer.


Author(s):  
Klaus Jacobi

Gilbert’s most important work is his commentary on the theological treatises of Boethius. His contemporaries valued him not only as a theologian but also as a philosopher, especially as a logician. Their estimation was well-founded. Although today we possess only theological writings from his own hand, these allow us to reconstruct a body of rich and independent philosophical thought. The most salient characteristic of Gilbert’s thought is the precise, analytical reflection that he brought to bear on the linguistic and conceptual means by which we think about whatever exists. In Gilbert’s thought, two things go hand in hand: a philosophy of the concrete and the particular and an intellectual viewpoint whose conceptual resources are manifestly Platonist. In the history of philosophy, these two things are not usually found together.


1981 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
David Farrell Krell

AbstractThe following paper, delivered as a lecture to the philosophy departments of a number of American universities in 1979, traces a parallel between Hegelian phenomenology and Freudian psychoanalysis. It stems from a project I have been working on for several years now entitled Erinnerungsversuch or "Essay in Remembrance. " In my studies of Freud and Hegel for that project I was struck by the importance of memory for their work, not only as a field of investigation but also as a method of the investigation itself. Remembering and forgetting are the crucial events for both psychoanalysis and phenomenology, crucial yet maddeningly intertwined, so that while memory seems eminently subject to malfunction and even illness it remains the sole source of insight and cure. I therefore determined to extend the parallel as far as it would go-perhaps even farther-and the present paper is the result. I am of course aware that Hegel was not a psychotherapist, Freud not a systematic philosopher, and realize that if essays like this one may be excused at all it is only because they eventually grow silent and allow irreconcilable differences to reassert themselves. Yet there is a sense in which Hegel's creative recapitulation of the history of philosophy, seeking as it does to liberate philosophical thought from a crippling self-ignorance, amounts to therapy of spirit; and there is a sense in which Freudian therapy must shatter traditional prejudices in our thoughts about what the psyche or spirit is, by letting psychological phenomena show themselves as they are. I have tried to make the parallel as concrete as possible, shunning Freud's metapsychology and turning instead to one of his earliest accounts of psychoanalytic praxis, eschewing sweeping remarks about Hegel's "system" and concentrating on just a few pages from the Phenomenology. Readers trained in philosophy will know that a few pages of Hegel are bound to contain labyrinths. I hope that my psychologist-readers will overlook the oversimplified presentation of Freud-which results partly from the lecture form-and will forgive my unwillingness to make Hegel's thought seem less demanding than it is. Finally, if I am right, the Freud-Hegel parallel with respect to memory tells us a good deal not only about this fascinating faculty but also about that singular creature who is so ardent to remember and so prone to forget.


Japanese philosophy is now a flourishing field with thriving societies, journals, and conferences dedicated to it around the world, made possible by an ever-increasing library of translations, books, and articles. The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy is a foundation-laying reference work that covers, in detail and depth, the entire span of this philosophical tradition, from ancient times to the present. It introduces and examines the most important topics, figures, schools, and texts from the history of philosophical thinking in premodern and modern Japan. Each chapter, written by a leading scholar in the field, clearly elucidates and critically engages with its topic in a manner that demonstrates its contemporary philosophical relevance. The Handbook opens with an extensive introductory chapter that addresses the multifaceted question, “What Is Japanese Philosophy?” The first fourteen chapters cover the premodern history of Japanese philosophy, with sections dedicated to Shintō and the Synthetic Nature of Japanese Philosophical Thought, Philosophies of Japanese Buddhism, and Philosophies of Japanese Confucianism and Bushidō. Next, seventeen chapters are devoted to Modern Japanese Philosophies. After a chapter on the initial encounter with and appropriation of Western philosophy in the late nineteenth-century, this large section is divided into one subsection on the most well-known group of twentieth-century Japanese philosophers, The Kyoto School, and a second subsection on the no less significant array of Other Modern Japanese Philosophies. Rounding out the volume is a section on Pervasive Topics in Japanese Philosophical Thought, which covers areas such as philosophy of language, philosophy of nature, ethics, and aesthetics, spanning a range of schools and time periods. This volume will be an invaluable resource specifically to students and scholars of Japanese philosophy, as well as more generally to those interested in Asian and comparative philosophy and East Asian studies.


2006 ◽  
pp. 38-42
Author(s):  
Georgii D. Pankov

An important place in the creative work of thinkers of the Orthodox tradition in the broad occupied the philosophical understanding of religion. However, the national religious and philosophical heritage of Orthodoxy of the past is mainly studied in the history of philosophy, but not in religious studies. Therefore, according to the author, for modern academic religious studies one of the urgent tasks is to study the philosophy of religion in its theological paradigm, which is expressed in its various confessional variants. While there are still no fundamental works in this field, but to create them it is necessary to take into account the experience of theological-philosophical thought and to critically revise it


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
SeyedAmir Asghari

If the universe is defined as a manifestation of the Divine in the Alevi-Bektashi and other Sufi thoughts, what are their responses to modern dominant philosophy and science that is fundamentally secular and leaves no space for the Sacred? Sufism is a broad and diverse movement within the history of Islam. It nevertheless represents a Divine-centric cosmology in which God -through His creation- is invisibly visible, and He is at the same time, the eternal and inward reality of the external and visible world. In other words, God is the eternal meaning of everything. This paper will study the question of philosophical assessment of modern philosophy and scientific world-view from a Sufi perspective. In particular, it will examine the phenomenon of modern science and technology from the perspective of the Sufi and traditionalist school of Islam. Thereupon, this paper aims to outline and examine the question of Sacred in confrontation of Secular in the context of Sufism and philosophy. For a Sufi-philosophical thought, this work will assess the idea of reviving sacred or religious science mostly elaborated in the works of Nasr.


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