scholarly journals What is Apophaticism? Ways of Talking About an Ineffable God

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Scott ◽  
Gabriel Citron
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Category Mistakes

Apophaticism – the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable – is one of the great medieval traditions of philosophical thought about God, but it is largely overlooked by analytic philosophers of religion. This paper attempts to rehabilitate apophaticism as a serious philosophical option. We provide a clear formulation of the position, examine what could appropriately be said and thought about God if apophaticism is true, and consider ways to address the charge that apophaticism is self-defeating. In so doing we draw on recent work in the philosophy of language, touching on issues such as the nature of negation, category mistakes, fictionalism, and reductionism.

The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
East Asian Studies

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.

scholarly journals Husserl's phenomenological philosophy in Russia

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Radomir Djordjevic
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
Intuitionistic Theory

The paper reviews phaenomenological influences on Russian philosophical thought. Before the bolyshevique revolution of 1917, Husserl's ideas had attracted the attention of many Russian theoreticians, and during the last two decades effects of this impact are closely investigated. First of all there were several philosophers under very direct influence of phenomenology: N. O. Lossky, the author of numerous books, in his work on logic; S. L. Frank, who had developed an intuitionistic theory of knowledge Gustav Spet, logician, aesthetician, linguist etc, who accepted Husserl's conceptions in his books on interpretation, philosophy of history and philosophy of language; Alexiy Lossev, who wrote some thirty books, and in his early period (works on ancient dialectics, philosophy of language and logics) was phenomenologically oriented; etc. Husserl's philosophy has traced or affected the ideas of several other Russian thinkers, so in USSR as in exile throughout Europe (for instance, Georges Gurvitch).

Balibar, citizenship, and the return of right populism

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-341
Author(s):  
Geoff Pfeifer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
State System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Third ◽  
Full Benefit ◽  
The Right

Arendt famously pointed out that only citizenship actually confers rights in the modern world. To be a citizen is to be one who has the ‘right to have rights’. Arendt’s analysis emerges out of her recognition that there is a contradiction between this way of conferring rights as tied to the nation-state system and the more philosophical and ethical conceptions of the ‘rights of man’ and notions of ‘human rights’ like those championed by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant who understands rights belonging universally to all humans as a result of facts having to do with what it means to be human. Étienne Balibar, in his recent work, adds to this by pointing out that there is a contradictory movement between this universalizing tendency in philosophical thought and the production of the citizen-subject out of the exclusionary acts of law and force. In this article, I put Balibar’s work in dialogue with the contemporary moment where we are witnessing the re-emergence of a nativist right populism. I use Balibar to help distinguish between three modes of political existence that we find today. Two of these three are more or less well understood. They are the non-citizen, who has no – or almost no – rights in a given nation-state and the citizen who enjoys the full benefit of the rights a given nation-state has to give. The third category is what I term the ‘nominal citizen’. This last category is somewhere in between full citizenship and non-citizenship. Individuals in this last category have rights in name but are largely unable to exercise them. Understanding this last category can, among other things, help us at least partially make sense of the return of right populism and also help us see the ways in which the modern category of citizenship, with its contradictions as elaborated by Balibar, can provide a means for resistance.

scholarly journals Authoritatively speaking : a speech pragmatic analysis of authority and power

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alek Willsey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Normative Status

A speaker needs authority to perform some speech acts, such as giving orders. A paradigm example of this is when a manager orders their employee to take out the trash; ordinarily, these words will give the employee a normative reason of considerable strength for them to take out the trash, and so they should take out the trash, all things considered. I will explore three related problems regarding a speaker's authority. First, there is the problem of defining how and within what scope a speaker has the capacity to set norms for others -- I will call this the Authority Problem. An answer to the Authority Problem would settle what constitutes a manager's capacity to change the normative status of their employee. Second, there is the problem of showing how a speaker uses their authority to produce felicitous authoritative speech -- I will call this the Illocutionary Authority Problem. An answer to this problem will show how a manager exercises their capacity to alter the normative status of their employee, assuming they have such a capacity. Third, there is the problem of explaining how a speaker's right to produce authoritative speech can be systematically infringed -- I will call this the Problem of Discursive Injustice. An answer to this problem will explain how a manager can have their orders systematically misfire despite exercising their capacity to alter the normative status of others in the usual way, such as when the employee routinely misapprehends their manager's orders as being requests. To answer each of these problems within the philosophy of language, I draw on recent work in social and political philosophy. I defend the view that a speaker's authority to alter what someone else ought to do (by giving them and taking away normative reasons for action) is constituted entirely by the respect their addressee(s) have for their use of power directed at them. Further, a speaker's powers are the linguistic tools by which they attempt to exert this normative influence over their addressee(s). Finally, a speaker may be discursively entitled to use their power in specific institutions because of the role they occupy, and this speech can systematically misfire despite this entitlement because they are wrongfully deprived of the respect they deserve.

From Non-Self-Representationalism to the Social Structure of Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 243-263
Author(s):  
Kristina Musholt ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Nonconceptual Content ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Content Of Experience

Why should we think that there is such a thing as pre-reflective self-awareness? And how is this kind of self-awareness to be characterized? This paper traces a theoretical and a phenomenological line of argument in favor of the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness and explores how this notion can be further illuminated by appealing to recent work in the analytical philosophy of language and mind. In particular, it argues that the self is not represented in the (nonconceptual) content of experience, but is rather implicit in the mode. Further, it argues that pre-reflective self-consciousness is best understood as a form of knowledge-how. Finally, it will be argued that our sense of self is thoroughly social, even at the basic, pre-reflective level.

Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Direct Reference ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Open Question Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Open Question

The prospects for moral realism and ethical naturalism have been important parts of recent debates within metaethics. As a first approximation,moral realismis the claim that there are facts or truths about moral matters that are objective in the sense that they obtain independently of the moral beliefs or attitudes of appraisers.Ethical naturalismis the claim that moral properties of people, actions, and institutions are natural, rather than occult or supernatural, features of the world. Though these metaethical debates remain unsettled, several people, myself included, have tried to defend the plausibility of both moral realism and ethical naturalism. I, among others, have appealed to recent work in the philosophy of language—in particular, to so-called theories of “direct reference” —to defend ethical naturalism against a variety of semantic worries, including G. E. Moore's “open question argument.” In response to these arguments, critics have expressed doubts about the compatibility of moral realism and direct reference. In this essay, I explain these doubts, and then sketch the beginnings of an answer—but understanding both the doubts and my answer requires some intellectual background.

scholarly journals The critique on individualistic submectivism in Marxism and philosophy of language

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiane Lenz
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Similar Investigation ◽  
Philosophical Thought

The work of Valentin Volochínov, Marxism and Philosophy of Language (2009), is fundamental for the studies of language in what concerns to the comprehension of language under a materialistic perspective, which takes into account its material and ideological nature. It is important to understand that the author starts from the critique on different theoretical tendencies to the development of their conception of language. Thus, he refl ects on two main trends of the linguistic philosophical thought, which he designates as abstract objectivism and idealistic subjectivism. Reading the critique on these trends is fundamental to the comprehension of the development of his conception of language, in relation with ideology. We consider that, to make a deep reading, it is necessary to seek the sources on which this critique lies. Therefore, we propose the reading of a representative philosopher of idealistic subjectivism. It is Karl Vossler, in The spirit of language in civilization (1932). In this limit of space, we will stand onlyon the investigation of the work of this representative of one trend of the linguistic philosophical thought, the idealistic subjectivism, not disregarding the importance of a similar investigation into the abstract objectivism.

The Role of Money in Plato’s Republic, Book i

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Noutsopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Real

Seaford’s recent work has revived and further substantiated a line of argument that had been developed by Marxist scholars claiming a central role for money in the genesis of philosophical thought. In a nutshell, this line of argument holds that beneath the abstractions in which philosophy breathes and with which philosophy works we can trace the real abstraction of the money form as embodiment of abstract social labour. Following this perspective, I will try to demonstrate the role money plays in Plato’s Republic, focusing on Book i.

scholarly journals Why Aboutness Matters: Meta-Fictionalism as a Case Study

Philosophia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Plebani
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Natural Question ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Stephen Yablo

Abstract Recent work in the philosophy of language attempts to elucidate the elusive notion of aboutness (Berto 2018; Lewis 1988; Fine 2017a, b; Hawke 2017; Moltmann 2018; Yablo 2014). A natural question concerning such a project has to do with its motivation: why is the notion of aboutness important? Stephen Yablo (2014) offers an interesting answer: taking into consideration not only the conditions under which a sentence is true, but also what a sentence is about opens the door to a new style of criticism of certain philosophical analyses. We might criticize the analysis of a given notion not because it fails to assign the right truth conditions to a class of sentences, but because it characterizes those sentences as being about something they are not about. In this paper, I apply Yablo’s suggestion to a case study. I consider meta-fictionalism, the view that the content of a mathematical claim S is ‘according to standard mathematics, S’. I argue, following Woodward (2013), that, on certain assumptions, meta-fictionalism assigns the right truth-conditions to typical assertoric utterances of mathematical statements. However, I also argue that meta-fictionalism assigns the wrong aboutness conditions to typical assertoric utterances of mathematical statements.

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