Clash of the Giants

2020 ◽  
pp. 267-284
Author(s):  
D. H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Argumentation

This chapter considers the work of Origen, whose one and only anti-pagan work elevated Christian standing in a culture that prized philosophical argumentation and intellectual attainment as among the higher goods. It was the first draft, as it were, “of a sustained Christian reflection of the evangelization of Hellenistic culture,” and the first one to survive. Origen had produced multivolume projects on a larger scale than Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), but it is this work that has come down to us, complete, in eight volumes. A great deal is known about both Origen and his literary efforts, including his work against the Christian critic Celsus. Although Celsus had been dead for seventy years or so, it is supposed that his arguments had been effectual enough to cause such severe Christian trepidation that Origen was asked by his patron, Ambrosius, to construct a refutation.

Rhetoric and philosophical argumentation

1962 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Natanson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Argumentation

scholarly journals A. Tarskiego kryterium monotoniczności operatora konsekwencji w międzykulturowych badaniach systemów wniskowań

2016 ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Sławomir Sikora
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Logical Consequence ◽  
Consequence Operator ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Argumentation Systems

In this article I refer to the issue of comparative research methodology and methods of philosophical argumentation systems with different cultural areas. In relation to that shown by A. Tarski logical consequence operator, will establish criteria for the comparative analysis of systems inferences different cultural areas of the property based on the operator monotonic consequences.

Plato, the Eristics, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction

Apeiron ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian J. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation

Abstract This paper considers the use that Plato makes of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in his engagements with eristic refutations. By examining Plato’s use of the principle in his most detailed engagements with eristic—in the Sophist, the discussion of “agonistic” argumentation in the Theaetetus, and especially the Euthydemus—I aim to show that the pressure exerted on Plato by eristic refutations played a crucial role in his development of the PNC, and that the principle provided him with a much more sophisticated means of demarcating philosophical argumentation from eristic than he is generally thought to have. In particular, I argue that Plato’s qualified formulation of the PNC restricts the class of genuine contradictions in such a way that reveals the contradictions that eristics produce through their refutations to be merely apparent and that Plato consistently appeals to his qualified conception of genuine contradiction in his encounters with eristics in order to demonstrate that their refutations are merely apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting that the conception of genuine contradiction afforded by the PNC did not just provide Plato with a way of demarcating genuine from eristic refutations, but also with an answer to substantive philosophical challenges that eristics raised through their refutations.

Language, ancient philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Shields
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Semantic Values ◽  
Independent Inquiry

The earliest interest in language during the ancient Greek period was largely instrumental: presumed facts about language and its features were pressed into service for the purpose of philosophical argumentation. Perhaps inevitably, this activity gave way to the analysis of language for its own sake. Claims, for example, about the relation between the semantic values of general terms and the existence of universals invited independent inquiry into the nature of the meanings of those general terms themselves. Language thus became an object of philosophical inquiry in its own right. Accordingly, philosophers at least from the time of Plato conducted inquiries proper to philosophy of language. They investigated: - how words acquire their semantic values; - how proper names and other singular terms refer; - how words combine to form larger semantic units; - the compositional principles necessary for language understanding; - how sentences, statements, or propositions come to be truth-evaluable; and, among later figures of the classical period, - (6) how propositions, as abstract, mind- and language-independent entities, are to be (a) characterized in terms of their constituents, (b) related to minds and the natural languages used to express them, and (c) related to the language-independent world.

A paradox in Locke's Theory of Natural Rights

Dialogue ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-271
Author(s):  
Jeffrie G. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation

There are certain recurring objections to Locke's theory of legitimate government and the conception of natural rights on which it is based. These objections generally take the form of showing that most of Locke's claims in the Second Treatise stand largely as ad hoc assertions, defended—if at all—not by philosophical argumentation but by appeals to theology or intuition. These criticisms might be called external criticisms of Locke's theory because they focus, not upon the coherence of the theory or the perplexities which prompted Locke to adopt it, but rather upon the justifications (or lack of them) for that theory. Important as these criticisms are to an ultimate evaluation of Locke's success, my purpose here is neither to reiterate them nor to defend Locke against them. Rather I want to develop a purely internal criticism of his view. For I shall argue that upon any acceptable interpretation of at least one of Locke's central natural rights claims, this claim will not be able to perform the crucial task envisioned for it by Locke—namely, provide a key premise for the moral justification for passing from a pre-civil society to a civil society that is responsible to its citizens.

Cicero and Divination: the Formation of a Latin Discourse

1986 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 33-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Beard
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Contrast Studies

This article is intended to be read in association with that of Schofield which follows. They share a common outlook—for we both believe that an understanding of the literary form of De Divinatione is integral to an understanding of its philosophical and historical point. But in detail our approaches are rather different. My own paper is the work of an historian and is concerned principally with the intellectual and cultural context of De Divinatione. My analysis of the text, highlighting its tensions and unresolved contradictions, follows from my analysis of that broader context. Schofield, by contrast, studies De Divinatione as an example of Hellenistic philosophical argumentation and explores the ways Cicero translates this not merely into Latin, but into a specifically Roman rhetorical mode. Other differences—in particular some disagreement as to how far it is possible to identify a ‘Ciceronian position’ on religion—are signalled in the text and notes of what follows.

Around Richard Münch’s Academic Capitalism Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Stanisław Czerniak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Academic Capitalism ◽  
Management Model ◽  
Academic Management ◽  
North American Indian ◽  
Indian Tribes ◽  
German Sociologist ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Psychological Sense ◽  
Modern Era

The author reviews the main elements of Richard Münch’s academic capitalism theory. By introducing categories like “audit university” or “entrepreneurial university,” the German sociologist critically sets today’s academic management model against the earlier, modern-era conception of academic work as an “exchange of gifts.” In the sociological and psychological sense, he sees the latter’s roots in traditional social lore, for instance the potlatch ceremonies celebrated by some North-American Indian tribes and described by Marcel Mauss. Münch shows the similarities between the old, “gift exchanging” model and the contemporary one with its focus on the psycho-social fundamentals of scientific praxis, and from this gradually derives the academic capitalism conception. He concludes with the critical claim that science possesses its own, inalienable axiological autonomy and anthropological dimension, which degenerate as capitalism proceeds to “colonise” science by means of state authority and money (here Münch mentions Jürgen Habermas and his philosophical argumentation).The author also offers a somewhat broader view of Münch’s analyses in the context of his own reflections on the problem.

The Cosmos of Imagination

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Claudia Baracchi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
As If

This essay raises the question of the character and status of imagination in ancient Greek philosophy. It is often said that neither Plato nor Aristotle conceived of imagination in genuinely productive terms. The point, however, is not approaching ancient thought while thinking with Kant, as if we were looking for proto-Kantian insights in antiquity. Ancient thought is not a series of ‘tentative steps’ destined to reach a full-blown articulation in modernity, let alone an anticipation of the first critique. On the contrary, it is essential to acknowledge the discontinuities that make the ancient discourse remote and, in many respects, opaque, hidden from us. On the ground of such assumptions, the essay addresses the understanding of imagination (eikasia, phantasia) in the Greek context, focusing in particular on Plato’s Timaeus. First, we consider how imagination, precisely in its creative aspect, operates at the very heart of philosophical argumentation. Plato’s emphatic awareness of this disallows the rhetoric of philosophy as the discipline of truth (of apodictic necessity, objectivity, and neutrality). In fact, it calls for a profound re-thinking of the relation between creativity and the philosophical turn to the ‘things themselves.’ Timaeus imagines the cosmos as a theatrical device: the place of seeing and being seen, of contemplation and the originary emergence of images. This evokes an understanding of imagination outside the order of subjectivity and its faculties, i.e., a meditation on the impersonal character of production and the force of images (of symbols) arising without being constituted by ‘me.’

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