Death and the Maiden in Philostratus, About Apollonius of Tyana 4.45

The Vita Apollonii leaves much open to interpretation. In 4.45 Philostratus tells us about a young woman who was thought dead by her family and the whole of Rome. Apollonius whispers something in her ear and the maiden starts talking again. The narrator comments it was impossible for the bystanders and still is impossible for him to say whether the girl was really dead or not: whether it was a case of Scheintod which proved Apollonius’s extraordinary powers of observation or whether it was a resurrection-miracle which would signal a special ontological status for ‘the man’ from Tyana. In his suspension of judgment, Philostratus uses the words arrhêtos hê katalêpsis combining a technical term from Stoic epistemology (katalêpsis) with a concept related to the Mysteries (arrhêtos). We discuss the Philostratean interpretative strategies, link them to the Pythagorean tradition of selective communication, and read the reference in this chapter to the story of Alcestis to the epistemological debates between Stoics and Skeptics about the limits of human wisdom.

Sexing the Archive

Despite being a widely consumed genre of visual culture, pornography remains a touchy subject in contemporary queer historiography. Queer archives overflow with it, but queer histories don’t. Historically associated with low culture and distrusted by value systems that have tended to privilege the “high” faculties of reason to the detriment of the “base” materiality of the body, its affects and appetites, porn is too rarely approached as a legitimate source with which to think cultural, affective, intellectual, and sexual histories. This article draws from porn studies and queer historiographies to draw some methodological considerations about the value, benefits, and challenges posed by porn archives to the writing of queer subcultural histories. Rather than trying to solve porn’s double ontological status as both documentary and fantasy, the authors locate in that defining feature of the genre porn’s value as a historical source. Simultaneously a document of sex cultures and of the edges of morality, and a historically and culturally situated speculation on what bodies and sex may become, porn offers both cultural critics and historians a rich archive for deepening their knowledge of the intersections of culture, morality, pleasure, community, embodiment, and the politics of belonging.

Ontological Motives of Home-Antihome in the Novel Demons by F.M. Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky realizes the motive of home in an inseparable antinomical connection with the motive of homelessness, which is opposite to it, artistically embodied in the idea of familylessness, wandering, Chaos, and Entropy. The relevance of the study of the motives of home and homelessness lies in the gradual reconstruction of the author's concept of the saving future. In this article, the motives of home and homelessness are considered in several aspects, including toponymic, functional, archetypal and ontological. We tried to demonstrate the implementation of the stated motives at the level of such categories as faith-unbelief, Heaven and Hell, brotherhood and isolation. In the novel Demons , the idea of national soil and separation from it, the possible salvation of a person and the consequences that await society in the event of the dominance of demons and the loss of the primordial brotherhood - the intimate connection between people, is consistently developed. From this point of view, the motives of home and homelessness become significant for the novel space. The archetype of home contains the idea of a saving own circle, which is opposed to the outside world with its hostility, spontaneity, and disaster. Everything that is located outside this circle are elements belonging to the anti-world, and therefore their effect on the microcosm of home is destructive. Analysis of the text confirms that the archetype of Dostoevsky's home is destabilized. Its tightness is broken; the boundaries protecting the interior are permeable. The motive of the home is typically supplanted by the motive of homelessness, and therefore it is natural to consider this motive couple in its antinomical continuity. In the above study, the motives of home and homelessness are considered as ontological: they are associated with the existential level of the work, due to which it is possible to establish the ontological status of the actants and determine the relationship with the so-called initial idea.

(Anty)bohaterowie w gąszczu aluzji. Poetyka powieści fantastycznej w "Słowodzicielce" Anny Szumacher

In the article, I analyze Anna Szumacher’s novel Słowodzicielka as a metatextual work, talking about the conventions and traditions of fantastic literature. I begin by discussing the ontological status of the novel’s characters, their mismatch with the heroic pattern established in the tradition, and I define them as anti-heroes. Then I go on to discuss the intertextual strategies presented in the novel. I end my analysis with a discussion of the morphology of genres change in Słowodzicielka.

Truthmaking and the world-time parallel

<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>

Truthmaking and the world-time parallel

<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>

methodological conflict between theory and philosophy of law

The subject of this research is the recently intensified competition in modern jurisprudence of two equally respectable scientific disciplines: philosophy of law and theory of law. The goal is to demarcate the meaning of these concepts. Their ontological status (essential significance) in relation to the existence of the law, the reflection of which they are, is also considered. Based on analysis of the existential criticism of the dominant forms of modern ideology, it is proved that the existing theories of law depend on these forms. A stable tendency in modern philosophy to return legal science to the origins of philosophical knowledge of legal reality is stated.

TRANSFORMATION OF RELIGIOUS VALUES: DIMENSIONS OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND SOCIOLOGY

The article is devoted to rethinking methodological approaches in understanding of religion as a value by religious studies. A critical attitude to the previous experience of interpreting a religious phenomenon allows us to perceive religion as a value equal with other types of human self-awareness. This is prompted by the very status of religion in the modern world, which is changing under the influence of globalization and secularization. One of the trends of these processes is the departure from the restrictions of “sectarianism” and “nationalism” in religion to the expansion of the boundaries of understanding spirituality as a universal religious value.The article determines the value of religion in its ontological status, its existentiality, vitality, epistemological meaning, praxeological questionability, in eschatological perspective and hierarchical priority of spirituality, goodness and humanity. Based on this understanding of religion, the authors explicate it in the system of religious values that are implemented in the daily lives of adherents of a particular religion and entire society. The article presents materials of sociological surveys of both international, all-Ukrainian and local levels. The comparative analysis of the received results allows to draw a conclusion about universalization of religious values, to define features of youth perception of religion as a value.

When Is Cultural Input Central? The Development of Ontological Beliefs About Religious and Scientific Unobservables

Across diverse cultural contexts, children and adults believe in the existence of religious and supernatural unobservables (e.g., gods, angels) as well as scientific and natural unobservables (e.g., germs, oxygen). In this article, we explore the role of cultural input and testimony in children’s developing beliefs in supernatural and natural unobservables as real. We review cross-cultural research with children and adults on their beliefs about the ontological status of religious and scientific unobservables and the epistemic patterns associated with these beliefs. Based on the evidence, we argue that cultural input plays a central role in the development of belief about supernatural unobservables as real, whereas it plays a less critical role in the development of belief about natural unobservables as real. In the latter case, we argue that direct experiences with the natural world combine with children’s naive theories to generate beliefs about natural unobservable entities and processes as real.

The vector subject in the factual ontology of Q. Meillassoux

The concepts of contingency, factuality, and correlationism introduced by Meillassoux are clarified in the article. The question of the contingency of the forms of correlation is revealed in the context of the functioning of post-Kantian philosophy. The contingency of the correlationist theories of a subject is established. The article substantiates the thesis about the dual position of the subject in the factual ontology: Meillassoux reaches the antisubjectivist contingency through a radical overcoming of the various paradigms of the subject, then, the philosopher recovers the position of a strong subject from the non-human contingency. Basically, the article deals with the ontological status, characteristics and factual ethics of the vector subject. It reveals the way in which Meillassoux thinks of the subject in the context of the radical unreasonableness: this is the simultaneous holding, on the one hand, the order of the actual given and, on the other, the contingency of the given and the subject. The factual character of the subject-object dichotomy restored by Meillassoux is clarified. It’s established that non-Hegelian dialectics is the main manner of navigating the subject in the contingent universe. The key property of the subject, its “vectorness”, is determined. The main characteristics of the actual and virtual World are highlighted. Furthermore, it’s investigated how the subject is activated in the direction of the virtual World. It’s noted that the thinking of the vector subject is more focused on temporality than on space. The ontological foundations of the “spiritual exercises” prescribed to the vector subject are analyzed.