Introduction

Space ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Andrew Janiak

Space is ubiquitous. So are spatial concepts. Scholars in architecture, art history, mathematics, cosmology, ecology, neuroscience, sculpture, chemistry, and geography employ concepts of space and articulate concepts with spatial components. It would be hopeless to list them all, and equally fruitless to search for patterns among them, or for their common node. One needs a specific focal point. In our case, the history of philosophy—and the ways in which philosophers in different eras have pondered space—is our focus. We will also consider some of the myriad intersections between philosophical discussions of space and treatments in other disciplines and enterprises. Some of these intersections are obvious: philosophers and scientists in the nineteenth century were deeply influenced by and played important roles in articulating the new non-Euclidean geometry developed by mathematicians like Bolyai and Lobachevsky. The intertwining of ...

1919 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 196-198
Author(s):  
F. A. Foraker

Leibnitz and Descartes made remarkable contributions to both mathematics and philosophy. Newton obtains a high rank in the history of the former subject, but only a minor place in the history of philosophy, while Kant, who possessed a well-founded knowledge of the science and mathematics of his time, receives one of the foremost positions in the history of philosophy. Upon the basis of these facts, if we neglect a few of the lesser lights, the statement is often made that there is a relationship between the study of mathematics and the study of philosophy, and that he who studies one of them will also find himself a devotee in the pursuit of the other.


Prospects ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 293-320
Author(s):  
Michael Lopez

Recent literary theory has questioned the way we look at a text as the product of an individual “author.” But for William James—who was, like Emerson, a thoroughly nineteenth-century mind-any utterance, even the most complicated philosophical system, was at bottom the expression of the personality of the author. The history of philosophy, James believed, was in essence the “clash of human temperaments,” and temperament seems to gravitate to either the “idealistic” or what James denned as the “materialistic” pole:Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution, materialism by another.… [I]dealism gives to the nature of things such kinship with our personal selves. Our own thoughts are what we are most at home with, what we are least afraid of. To say then that the universe is essentially thought, is to say that I myself, potentially at least, am all. There is no radically alien corner, but an all-prevading intimacy. … That element in reality which every strong man of common-sense willingly feels there because it calls forth powers that he owns-the rough, harsh, sea-wave, north-wind element, the denier of persons, the democratizer-is banished because it jars too much on the desire for communication. Now, it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws many men upon the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic reaction against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life wholly constituted of intimacy. There is an overpowering desire at moments to escape personality, to revel in the action of forces that have no respect for our ego, to let the tides flow, even though they flow over us. The strife of these two kinds of mental temper will, I think, always be seen in philosophy. Some men will keep insisting on the reason, the atonement, that lies in the heart of things, and that we can act with; others, on the capacity of brute fact that we must react against.


Nature ◽  
1910 ◽  
Vol 84 (2128) ◽  
pp. 172-172
Author(s):  
D. M. Y. SOMMERVILLE

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-362
Author(s):  
M. T. Stepanyants

The Russian Oriental studies are rich and diverse in their disciplines. The focus of research activities conducted mainly at the university centres of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, and during Soviet times in the capitals of some republics (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, etc.), was largely determined by the domestic political and geopolitical interests of the Russian Empire. Thus, a philosophical aspect in oriental studies, as well as university philosophical education practical^ did not exist. The changes brought by the revolution of 1917 have greatly affected all fields of social life, including the academic milieu. The article examines a complex and contradictory path of development of the national philosophy, on the example of the Institute founded in 1921 by Gustav Gustavovich Speth (1879-1937), nowadays the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The latter has become the main focal point of the philosophical research activities in the former Soviet Union. Particular attention is paid to the liberation from the Eurocentrism inherited from imperial times concerning the spiritual heritage of the peoples of the East as a whole, and in philosophy in particular. The pivotal points of its activity became “History of Philosophy” in 3 Volumes (19411943) and “History of Philosophy” in 6 Volumes (1957-1966). The real breakthrough was the encyclopedias, such as: “The New Philosophical Encyclopedia” in 4 volumes (2001); “Indian philosophy. Encyclopedia” (2009); “The Philosophy of Buddhism: Encyclopedia” (2011). The Orientalist aspect in higher philosophical education nowadays becomes more visible. The recent international recognition of the achievements of the Russian Orientalist philosophical studies regardless of a relatively small number of specialists is largely due to their collective efforts and close cooperation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Stepan Ivanyk

This article ponders, for the first time, the question of whether Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917) influenced the development of the school of Ukrainian philosophy. It employs Anna Brożek’s methodology to identify philosophers’ influence on one another (distinctions between direct and indirect influence, active and passive contact, etc.); concepts of institutional and ideological conditions of this influence are also considered. The article establishes, first, that many Ukrainian academics had institutional bonds with Brentano’s students, especially Kazimierz Twardowski at the University of Lviv. Second, it identifies an ideological bond between Brentano and his hypothetical Ukrainian “academic grandsons.” Particularly, a comparative analysis of works on the history of philosophy of Brentano and the Ukrainian Ilarion Svientsits'kyi (1876-1956) reveals that the latter took over Brentano’sa posteriori constructive method. These results allow to draw a conclusion about the existence of Ukrainian Brentanism, that not only brings new arguments into the discussion about the tradition of and prospects for the development of analytic (scientific) philosophy on Ukrainian ground, but also opens new aspects of the modernization of Ukrainian society in general (from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day).


Author(s):  
James I. Porter

Epicurus marks a unique point of convergence for three unlikely bedfellows in the nineteenth century: Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. Each sees a different “Epicurus” in this fourth-century successor to Democritus, the fifth-century co-founder of atomism. Each renders Epicurus and his materialism into a symptom of modernity’s engagement with antiquity, a role that atomism increasingly played from the Enlightenment onwards. Fresh readings of each of these philosophers contribute to a better understanding of their ways of construing the history of ideas, and in particular their bold reinterpretations of Epicurus himself, in addition to correcting a number of misconceptions surrounding their individual readings of Epicurus, be this in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy and his Science of Logic, Marx’s dissertation, or Nietzsche’s sprawling corpus of published and unpublished writings.


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