Walter Burley on divine Ideas

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-75
Author(s):  
Chiara Paladini

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley (1275-1347). The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures (thereby reconciling the principle of God's unity with the multiplicity of ideas), and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents

Author(s):  
Neal Robinson

Ibn al-‘Arabi was a mystic who drew on the writings of Sufis, Islamic theologians and philosophers in order to elaborate a complex theosophical system akin to that of Plotinus. He was born in Murcia (in southeast Spain) in AH 560/ad 1164, and died in Damascus in AH 638/ad 1240. Of several hundred works attributed to him the most famous are al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (The Meccan Illuminations) and Fusus al-hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom). The Futuhat is an encyclopedic discussion of Islamic lore viewed from the perspective of the stages of the mystic path. It exists in two editions, both completed in Damascus – one in AH 629/ad 1231 and the other in AH 636/ad 1238 – but the work was conceived in Mecca many years earlier, in the course of a vision which Ibn al-‘Arabi experienced near the Kaaba, the cube-shaped House of God which Muslims visit on pilgrimage. Because of its length, this work has been relatively neglected. The Fusus, which is much shorter, comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who epitomize different spiritual types. Ibn al-‘Arabi claimed that he received it directly from Muhammad, who appeared to him in Damascus in AH 627/ad 1229. It has been the subject of over forty commentaries. Although Ibn al-‘Arabi was primarily a mystic who believed that he possessed superior divinely-bestowed knowledge, his work is of interest to the philosopher because of the way in which he used philosophical terminology in an attempt to explain his inner experience. He held that whereas the divine Essence is absolutely unknowable, the cosmos as a whole is the locus of manifestation of all God’s attributes. Moreover, since these attributes require the creation for their expression, the One is continually driven to transform itself into Many. The goal of spiritual realization is therefore to penetrate beyond the exterior multiplicity of phenomena to a consciousness of what subsequent writers have termed the ‘unity of existence’. This entails the abolition of the ego or ‘passing away from self’ (fana’) in which one becomes aware of absolute unity, followed by ‘perpetuation’ (baqa’) in which one sees the world as at once One and Many, and one is able to see God in the creature and the creature in God.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-149
Author(s):  
Sun Xiangcheng

AbstractOn the level of existential structure, “Shengsheng Buxi” unfolds an existential structure different from Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world”. This paper calls it “being-between-the-generations”. Through this existential structure, it reveals many aspects which Heidegger ignored in his existential analysis. The existence of “I” between generations is, first of all, a conjunction of generations, “this body” has its own origin. Its original facing the Other is to love his/her parents, and showing the structure of “being-together-with-the-generations” in filial piety; family implements the existence of “inheritance”, thus gaining its ontological status in this structure. The state of mood in generations shows the “Enjoyment-at-home” of this-body; at the same time, being-between-the-generations also makes “learning” and “teaching” indispensable and essential moments in the existential structure, and makes the “Project” of “trans-generations” possible. The “historicity” formed by “generations” has an impact on this. Ultimately, in the memorial ceremony of “death of parents and ancestors”, it builds the structure of “being-together-with-the-generations” within a family, and maintains the dimension of transcendence, in the way of filial piety, whose nature is revealed in The Analects as “Tribute to the death of parents and keeping memory of ancestors” (慎終追遠).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Gareth Leniston-Lee

<p>There is a close structural parallel between the way we talk about time and the way we talk about modality (i.e. matters of possibility, necessity, actuality etc.). A consequence of this is that whenever we construct a metaphysical argument within one of these domains, there is a parallel argument to be made in the other. On the face of it, this parallel between possible worlds and moments in time seems to commit us to holding corresponding attitudes to the ontological status of non-present and non-actual entities.  In this thesis I assess a claim made by Sider (2001: 41-42) that truthmaking – the idea that truth is grounded in existence – provides a way to avoid the commitment to ontological symmetry that this world-time parallel seems to foist upon us. Truthmaking challenges presentists, who deny the existence of past entities and actualists, who deny the existence of merely possible entities, to come up with a way of grounding truths that are ostensively about the events and entities that they deny exist. Sider’s claim can be broken down into three propositions:  1. Truthmaking provides reason to reject presentism. 2. Truthmaking does not provide reason to reject actualism. 3. Truthmaking breaks the ontological symmetry between time and modality.  In this thesis I argue that while 1 is false, 3 remains true. While I am not a presentist myself I do not think that truthmaking provides a sound basis for rejecting the position. Much of this thesis is dedicated to defending presentism against the challenge truthmaking poses. I also don’t believe that truthmaking undermines actualism, but do not commit myself to any particular actualist response to the truthmaking challenge in this thesis. My central aim is to show that the presentist has a viable response to the truthmaking challenge and that this response does not have a viable parallel in the modal case. So while I think that both presentists and actualists can provide adequate responses to the challenge truthmaking poses, truthmaking still breaks the symmetry because the arguments made in defence of each position are very different. So one might rationally accept one argument but not the other.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (spe) ◽  
pp. 39-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciara Fabiane Sebold ◽  
Silvana Silveira Kempfer ◽  
Juliana Balbinot Reis Girondi ◽  
Marta Lenise Prado

Objective To understand the perceptions of nursing teachers about care in the light of Heidegger’s framework. It was used as theoretical and methodological reference Hei- degger’s hermeneutics. Method To capture the meanings we used phenomenological interviews with 11 teachers. e data analysis is based on heideggerian hermeneutic. Results The way to be a nurse determines their way of life to the care that re ects the construction of experiences in the nursing worldliness. The existence of the nurse for nursing care is evidenced in care relations established between being careful and being caregiver, deciding the mode of being-there of the nurse who has before him and on the other the possibilities of care. Conclusions It is being in the world that the being-nurse is manifested in their subjectivity in care for sensitive, is the objectivity of scienti c care, and is in the interrelationship with being careful is that manifests the being of choices and existing decisions in his way of being.


Phainomenon ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Alexandre Franco de Sá

Abstract The Person and the Inpersonal: confronting Max Scheler’s phenomenological thought with Heidegger’s. This essay starts from a similarity between the thought of Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger in their correspondent approaches to the way the being of the human as non-substantial. Both Scheler’s notion of “Person” and Heidegger’s notion of “Dasein” are conceived of as acts, always already determined by their being-in-the-world, and not as substantial entities with a kind of identity previous to their “actuality”. Nonetheless, Scheler and Heidegger extract from that originally common thought divergent pathways of thinking: whereas the first one addresses the mode of being of the Person, the second derives to the “impersonal” (das Man). This text aims at showing precisely the way of that divergence.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Gareth Leniston-Lee

<p>There is a close structural parallel between the way we talk about time and the way we talk about modality (i.e. matters of possibility, necessity, actuality etc.). A consequence of this is that whenever we construct a metaphysical argument within one of these domains, there is a parallel argument to be made in the other. On the face of it, this parallel between possible worlds and moments in time seems to commit us to holding corresponding attitudes to the ontological status of non-present and non-actual entities.  In this thesis I assess a claim made by Sider (2001: 41-42) that truthmaking – the idea that truth is grounded in existence – provides a way to avoid the commitment to ontological symmetry that this world-time parallel seems to foist upon us. Truthmaking challenges presentists, who deny the existence of past entities and actualists, who deny the existence of merely possible entities, to come up with a way of grounding truths that are ostensively about the events and entities that they deny exist. Sider’s claim can be broken down into three propositions:  1. Truthmaking provides reason to reject presentism. 2. Truthmaking does not provide reason to reject actualism. 3. Truthmaking breaks the ontological symmetry between time and modality.  In this thesis I argue that while 1 is false, 3 remains true. While I am not a presentist myself I do not think that truthmaking provides a sound basis for rejecting the position. Much of this thesis is dedicated to defending presentism against the challenge truthmaking poses. I also don’t believe that truthmaking undermines actualism, but do not commit myself to any particular actualist response to the truthmaking challenge in this thesis. My central aim is to show that the presentist has a viable response to the truthmaking challenge and that this response does not have a viable parallel in the modal case. So while I think that both presentists and actualists can provide adequate responses to the challenge truthmaking poses, truthmaking still breaks the symmetry because the arguments made in defence of each position are very different. So one might rationally accept one argument but not the other.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.


The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.


Author(s):  
Adrián Bertorello

RESUMENEl trabajo examina críticamente la afirmación central de la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, a saber, que el soporte material de la escritura es el rasgo determinante para que una secuencia discursiva sea considerada como un texto. La escritura cancela las condiciones fácticas de la enunciación y crea, de este modo, un ámbito de sentido estable en el que se puede validar una concepción de la subjetividad que está implicada en las dos estrategias de lecturas (el análisis estructural y la apropiación), esto es, un sujeto pasivo que se constituye por la idealidad del significado. Asimismo, el trabajo intentará precisar una serie de ambigüedades en el uso que Ricoeur hace del «ser en el mundo» para sostener la referencialidad del discurso.PALABRAS CLAVETEXTO, ESCRITURA, REFERENCIA, SUBJETIVIDAD, MUNDOABSTRACTThis paper critically examines the main assertion of Paul Ricoeur´s hermeneutics, i.e., that the material base of writing is the determining feature to consider a discursive sequence as a text. Writing cancels the factual conditions of enunciation and creates, in this way, a background of stable meaning where it is possible to validate a conception of subjectivity implicated in the two reading strategies (the structural analysis and the appropriation), i.e., a passive subject constituted by the ideality of meaning. Likewise, this paper aims to clarify some ambiguities in the way Ricoeur uses the «beings in the world» to support the discourse referentiality.KEY WORDSTEXT, WRITING, REFERENCE, SUBJECTIVITY, WORLD


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