Dwa bieguny europejskiej kultury: Karpiński i Leibniz. Próby badań nad dociekaniami filozoficznymi Franciszka Karpińskiego w odniesieniu do filozofii Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibniza

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 44-67
Author(s):  
Jarosław Jarszak

The author seeks an answer to the following question: can we relate the work of Franciszek Karpiński to the philosophical achievements of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz? The article proposes to treat Karpiński’s work as a philosophical inquiry and notices in it a clearly defined metaphysical and axiological principle, which can be treated as an independently constructed version of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. The notes in the diary confirm the assumption that painful life experiences did not stop the poet’s efforts to build a vision of the world that we have reasons to call the “philosophy of optimism”.

Author(s):  
Frank Griffel

This chapter deals with the method of philosophical books during the sixth/twelfth century. It begins with an analysis of Abu l-Barakat al-Baghdadi’s method of i’tibar (careful consideration) and highlights its departure from al-Farabi’s and Avicenna’s (Ibn Sina’s) demonstrative method as the ideal of philosophical inquiry. The chapter looks at how Fakhr al-Din al-Razi describes his own method in his philosophical books and it analyzes the method of “probing and dividing” (sabr wa-taqsim) used therein. Finally, the chapter zooms in on the methodical differences between Fakhr al-Din’s philosophical books and his books of kalam and focuses on the principle of sufficient reason. This philosophical principle requires that every event must have a rational explanation of its cause(s). The principle is universally valid in al-Razi’s philosophical books, yet in his books on kalam only insofar as God’s will is excluded from this requirement. This difference has far-reaching effects on the teachings put forward in these two genres of books.


Author(s):  
Gregory Brown

The correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke—mediated by Leibniz’s erstwhile friend and disciple at the electoral court in Hanover, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, princess of Wales—is arguably the most famous and influential of philosophical correspondences. In this chapter, I begin by tracing the background of the correspondence and the role that Caroline played in its inception and development. I then turn to a discussion of the main themes of the correspondence, paying particular attention to the importance of Caroline’s presence in shaping the themes of the debate: the principle of sufficient reason, the identity of indiscernibles, God’s choice in creating this world, space and time, God’s presence and activity in the world, miracles, and gravity.


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner

AbstractSchopenhauer's claim that the essence of the world consists in Wille encounters well-known difficulties. Of particular importance is the conflict of this metaphysical claim with his restrictive account of conceptuality. This paper attempts to make sense of Schopenhauer's position by restoring him to the context of post-Kantian debate, with special attention to the early notebooks and Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the reconstruction suggested here, Schopenhauer's philosophical project should be understood in light of his rejection of post-Kantian metaphilosophy and his opposition to German Idealism.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 852-874
Author(s):  
Jure Simoniti

The article attempts to reconstruct the logical space within which, at the beginning of Hegel?s Logic, ?being? and ?nothing? are entitled to emerge and receive their names. In German Idealism, the concept of ?being? is linked to the form of a proposition; Fichte grounds a new truth-value on the absolute thesis of the ?thetical judgement?. And the article?s first thesis claims that Hegel couldn?t have placed ?being? at the beginning of this great system, if the ground of its logical space had not been laid out by precisely those shifts of German Idealism that posited the ontological function of the judgement. At the same time, the abstract negation, the absence of a relation and sufficient reason between ?being? and ?nothing?, reveals a structure of an irreducibly dual beginning. The logical background of this original duality could be constituted by the invention of the ?transcendental inter-subjectivity? in German Idealism, manifested, for instance, in Hegel?s life-and-death struggle of two self-consciousnesses. The second thesis therefore suggests that ?being? and ?nothing? are elements of the logical space, established in concreto in a social situation of (at least) two subjects one of whom poses an affirmative statement and the other negates it abstractly. From here, one could draw out the coordinates of a sphere by the name of ?public? whose structure is defined by the invalidation of two basic laws of thought, the law of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. The article shows how only the statements capable of absorbing negation, of sustaining a co-existence of affirmation and its symmetrical, abstract negation, can climb the ladder of public perceptibility and social impact.


Author(s):  
Brandon C. Look

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (b. 1646–d. 1716) was one of the greatest of the early modern “rationalist” philosophers. He is perhaps best known to students of philosophy as an advocate of the principle of sufficient reason, the preestablished harmony of mind and body, philosophical optimism, and the doctrine of monads. While many if not all of these ideas have fallen out of favor, it is nevertheless the case that Leibniz’s arguments are deep and important and worth taking very seriously. Leibniz was an eclectic philosopher; he sought to draw out views that he thought were close to the truth and combine them in new ways to arrive at the most plausible picture of the world. It is for this reason that, while he is sympathetic to parts of the “modern” philosophy of René Descartes (b. 1596–d. 1650), Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588–d. 1679), and Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza (b. 1633–d. 1677), he offers criticisms of it at the same time through the language and ideas of ancient and medieval philosophy. He was not just a philosopher, however, but was also a mathematician, natural philosopher, engineer, historian, lawyer, and diplomat of the first rank. As this bibliography is intended principally for students of philosophy, his other work will largely be ignored, as well as scholarship on it.


Author(s):  
Bruce L. Gordon

There is an argument for the existence of God from the incompleteness of nature that is vaguely present in Plantinga’s recent work. This argument, which rests on the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the philosophical deficiency of necessitarian conceptions of physical law, deserves to be given a clear formulation. The goal is to demonstrate, via a suitably articulated principle of sufficient reason, that divine action in an occasionalist mode is needed (and hence God’s existence is required) to bring causal closure to nature and render it ontologically functional. The best explanation for quantum phenomena and the most adequate understanding of general providence turns out to rest on an ontic structural realism in physics that is grounded in the immaterialist metaphysics of theistic idealism.


Author(s):  
Gerald Vision

Unlike brute ‘entities’, if conscious states (c-states) are brute, it will be a consequence of their primitive—viz., not admitting further elaboration—connection to their material base, what is commonly known as emergence. One might suppose the chief challenge to emergence comes from various materialist counter-proposals. However, given the distinctive character of c-states, a class of critics describe even materialist reductions as objectionable forms of emergentism. Instead, their fallback position is a reinvigorated panpsychism: consciousness is the intrinsic nature of the most fundamental particles. In this chapter the author examines that form of panpsychism, tracing its roots to a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and to suggestions aired in Bertrand Russell’s struggles with the issue. He concludes that this panpsychism fails, leaving the field to materialism and emergentist dualism.


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