scholarly journals Theological question in a philosophical perspective: Nikolai Berdyaev’s theory of a lie

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-479
Author(s):  
Evgenii E. Nesmeyanov ◽  

The article considers the conception of a lie established in the work of Nikolai Berdyaev during the first half of the 20th century. The socially organized lie was at the center Berdyaev’s attention. In the middle of the 20th century, new theoretical perceptions of necessity, legality and even value of a lie emerge. A lie is declared to be a norm of European culture, an inevitable component of economic, political and scientific practice, an essential component of people’s ordinary and family life. Criticizing these ideas, Berdyaev puts forward a number of counterarguments relevant both during his time and at the beginning of the 21st century, which makes this article significant. The fundamental originality of the study of a lie by the Russian philosopher consists in changing the main cause of the phenomenon, from the personal moral and psychological characteristics of a person to the ontological cause. Berdyaev creates a philosophical-religious theory of “Tragic theodicy”, where he links the origin of the free will of a person (including the freedom to lie) with the peculiarities of the origin of Space from two sources. These sources are the will of God and from voluntary consent to become the existence of some primordium — “Meon (abyss)”, “Abyss”, “Baselessness”: human free will is not a gift from God. A person’s freedom to act comes before the act itself, its roots are in Meon. For this reason, it is impossible to make God responsible for cosmic disasters and for the irrational destructive behavior of man. God is all-merciful, but not almighty, and He cannot prevent the negative consequences of a person’s free will. A lie on a worldwide scale is “a lie of the world”, which produces horrendous consequences and creates “a false existence”, it is related to Meon and it is produced by people. The article is intended to attract the attention of the scientific community to the creative heritage of Nikolai Berdyaev.

Sententiae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Oleh Bondar ◽  

In the book “Freedom of the Will”, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) put forward a strong ar-gument for theological fatalism. This argument, I suppose, can be considered as the universal basis for discussion between Fatalists and Anti-Fatalists in the 20th century, especially in the context of the most powerful argument for fatalism, introduced by Nelson Pike. The argument of Edwards rests upon the following principles: (a) if something has been the case in the past, it has been the case necessarily (Necessity of the past); (b) if God knows something (say A), it is not the case that ~A is possible (Infallibility of God`s knowledge). Hence, Edwards infers that if God had foreknowledge that A, then A is necessary, and it is not the case that someone could voluntarily choose ~A. The article argues that (i) the Edwards` inference Kgp → □p rests upon the modal fallacy; (ii) the inference „God had a knowledge that p will happen, therefore „God had a knowledge that p will happen” is the proposition about the past, and hence, the necessarily true proposition“ is ambiguous; thus, it is not the case that this proposition necessarily entails the impossibility of ~p; (iii) it is not the case that p, being known by God, turns out to be necessary. Thus, we can avoid the inference of Edwards that if Kgp is a fact of the past, then we cannot freely choose ~p. It has also been shown that the main provisions of the argument of Edwards remain significant in the context of contemporary debates about free will and foreknowledge (Theories of soft facts, Anti-Ockhamism, theories of temporal modal asymmetry, „Timeless solution”). Additionally, I introduce a new challenge for fatalism – argument from Brouwerian axiom.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Klaus Vieweg

Abstract Can one speak philosophically of a justified limitation of freedom? Hegel’s logically founded definition of free will and his understanding of right and duty can contribute to a clarification of the concept of freedom. Important is a precise differentiation between freedom and caprice (Willkür) – the latter being a necessary but one-sided element of the free will. In caprice, the will is not yet in the form of reason. Rational rights and duties are not a restriction of freedom. Insofar as individual rights can collide (e. g. in emergency situations), there can be a temporary and proportionate restriction of certain rights in favour of higher rights, such as the right to life. Dictatorships are instances of capricious rule which restrict freedom; the rationally designed state, by contrast, restricts only caprice. What is tobe defined are the duties and the rights of the state and the duties and the rights of the citizens.


2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Hoff

AbstractThis paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Yeni Mulyani Supriatin

Penelitian ini bertujuan mengungkap peristiwa Perang Bubat yang terjadi pada abad ke-14 atau tahun 1357 M dan resepsi sastranya. Masalah yang dibahas adalah bagaimana latar belakang terjadinya Perang Bubat, reaksi, dan tanggapannya. Teori yang digunakan adalah resepsi sastra. Metode untuk pengumpulan data adalah kualitatif dengan menerapkan prinsip resepsi sastra. Hasil penelitian menggambarkan bahwa terjadinya Perang Bubat adalah Raja Sunda tidak tunduk pada kehendak Gajah Mada dan Gajah Mada ingin menyatukan Nusantara. Resepsi sastra terhadap Perang Bubat dapat dikelompokkan menjadi 3, yaitu resepsi dari aspek kesejarahannya, resepsi pengaruhnya terhadap penciptaan karya baru, dan resepsi terhadap struktur sastra.  Simpulan penelitian ini adalah peristiwa Bubat diresepsi setelah dua abad berlalu, yaitu pada abad ke-16  dan peristiwa tersebut diresepsi ulang pada abad ke-20-an. Hasil resepsi sastra  dari abad ke-18 sampai dengan abad ke-20 cukup beragam. Keberagaman resepsi itu menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan horizon harapan pembaca.  This study aims to reveal the events of the Bubat War that occurred in the 14th century or the year 1357 AD and literary receptions that emerged after the incident occurred. The issue discussed is how the background of the Bubat War and the reactions and responses to the event through literary receptions. The theory used in analyzing data is literary receptions. The method used for data collection is qualitative by applying the principle of literary receptions. The results of this study illustrate that the background of the Bubat War have two versions and both controversial, the first version because the King of Sunda entourage do not obey to the will of Gajah Mada, on the other hand, the second version is that Gajah Mada tactics in unifying the archipelago while the Kingdom of Sunda is a state that has not been submitted. Literary receptions to the War of Bubat can be grouped into three, they are the reception of its historical aspect, the reception of its influence on the creation of new works, and the reception of the literary structure. The conclusion of this research is  Bubat event was perceived after two centuries passed, in the 16th century and the event was redrawn in the 20th century. Results of literary receptions in the 18th century until the 20th century quite diverse. The diversity of the receptions shows the difference in the horizon of readers' expectations.    


Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Vasiljeva ◽  

The study is devoted to the analysis of methods and techniques of mythologization in the novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet written by the British author of Indian origin S. Rushdie. The paper explores the narrative organization of the novel, in which images and motifs of ancient mythology are used as a special code for artistic interpretation of European culture of the second half of the 20th century. The article examines the artistic reality of the novel, which combines the modern history of rock culture and classical mythology of Ancient Greece. S. Rushdie addresses problems related to the nature of creativity using as the main plot-forming motifs such mythologemes as the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the myth of alldevouring Tartarus, twin myths. The study shows that a typical technique for creating expressive threedimensional multivocal images in Rushdie's novel is a combination of real facts from the world of rock culture and mythological allusions, intertwining, overlapping and collision of various motifs and plots of Greek mythology, which, taken all together, generates the original artistic reality. The article analyzes how the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice acquires a cultural dimension in the novel and what techniques are used by the author to activate the extensive cultural memory of the Orphic myth. The concentration and interpretation of iconic images and motifs of ancient mythology are used in the novel for artistic analysis of the state of culture in the second half of the 20th century and of its attempts to counter the catastrophic tendencies of destruction and death of the modern civilization.


2020 ◽  
Vol IV (4) ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Igor Gasparov

The article considers contemporary free will defences, proposed by A. Plantinga, R. Swinburne, according to which the existence of a world in which there is free will is something more valuable than the existence of a world in which there is no free will. It is shown that contemporary forms of free will defences share with atheistic arguments from evil an anthropomorphic model of God, in which God is thought as an individual among other individuals, although endowed with attributes such as omniscience and omnipotence to an excellent degree. It has also been shown that another important point of similarity between contemporary free will defences and atheistic arguments from evil is that both attempt to assess what our world would be like if created by such an individual. In contrast to atheistic arguments from evil, contemporary free will defences argue that divine omnipotence and omniscience are subject to some greater restrictions, as usually assumed, especially due to God's desire to give some of his creations the ability of free choice, which logically implies the possibility and even necessity of the existence of evil. It is demonstrated that classical theism does not share the anthropomorphic model of deity typical for many contemporary philosophers of religion. Classical theism rejects both the anthropomorphic model of deity and the unaccountability of free will to God as the supreme good. On the contrary, it assumes that free decision was initially an opportunity for the voluntary consent of man which had an innate aspiration towards God as his supreme good. Nevertheless, due to the creation of man out of nothing, this consent could not be automatic but implied forming a virtuous character, and man's transition from a state in which he was able not to sin, to a state in which he would be not able to sin.


Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien

The cluster of problems around freedom, determinism, and moral responsibility is one of those themes in philosophy that are fascinating in both their complexity and their seemingly direct relevance to human life. Historians of ideas often assume that in Western philosophy this cluster of problems was the subject of an ongoing discourse from antiquity to the present day. This is, however, an illusion. Much of my research on ancient theories of determinism and freedom is devoted to showing that what commonly counts as this problem cluster today (often labelled as ‘the problem of free will and determinism’) is noticeably distinct from the issues that the ancients discussed—at least prior to the second century CE. It is true that one main component of the ancient discussion concerned the question of how moral accountability can be consistently combined with certain causal factors that impact human behaviour. However, it is not true that the ancient problems involved the questions of the compatibility of causal determinism with either our ability to do otherwise or a human faculty of a free will. Instead, we encounter questions about human autonomous agency and its compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood—nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, to blame and praise. All these questions were discussed without reference to freedom to do otherwise or a faculty of the will—at least in Classical and Hellenistic philosophy. This volume of essays considers all of these questions to some extent....


2020 ◽  
pp. 421-433
Author(s):  
Ryan Cummings ◽  
Adina L. Roskies

Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of free will considers an individual to be free when her first- and second-order volitions align. This structural account of the will, this chapter argues, fails to engage with the dynamics of will, resulting in two shortcomings: (1) the problem of directionality, or that Frankfurtian freedom obtains whenever first- and second-order volitions align, regardless of which desire was made to change, and (2) the potential for infinite regress of higher-order desires. The authors propose that a satisfying account of the genesis of second-order volitions can resolve these issues. To provide this they draw from George Ainslie’s mechanistic account of self-control, which relies on intertemporal bargaining wherein an individual’s self-predictions about future decisions affect the value of her current choices. They suggest that second-order volitions emerge from precisely this sort of process, and that a Frankfurt-Ainslie account of free will avoids the objections previously raised.


Author(s):  
Derk Pereboom ◽  
Gregg D. Caruso

Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso’s chapter on hard-incompatibilist existentialism explores the practical and existential implications of free will skepticism, focusing on punishment, morality, and meaning in life. They consider two different routes to free will skepticism: the route that denies the causal efficacy of the types of willing required for free will, which receives impetus from pioneering work in neuroscience, and the route that does not deny the causal efficacy of the will but instead claims that, whether deterministic or indeterministic, it does not achieve the level of control to count as free will. They argue that while there are compelling objections to the first route, the second remains intact and that free will skepticism allows for adequate ways of responding to criminal behavior—in particular, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alternation of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justified and sufficient for good social policy.


1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Vlahakis

Although oceanography in Greece reached international standards only recently, it has its origins as an independent scientific practice in the late 19th century due to the work of Andreas Miaoulis, a brilliant officer of the Hellenic Navy who cooperated with the English admiral Arthur Mansel for the solution of the Euripus problem. During the early 20th century oceanographic studies took a more systematic character under the supervision of the Hellenic Thalassographic Committee and several reports and books were published before World War II, which interrupted the evolution of oceanography in Greece.


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