A Chronology of Levinas’s Metaphorics

Many readers of Emmanuel Levinas understand his thought as being oriented only by transcendence and therefore denigrate the immanent dimension of metaphor within his texts. Such readings reduce the complexities of Levinas’s text to a set of polemical, orthodox proclamations such as The Other is Most High and Ethics is First Philosophy. However, Levinas’s work invites us to contemplate not only transcendence, but also the way that immanence emerges though relationships with an infinitude of others, third persons whose voices murmur within the system of language, articulated in concrete elements such as metaphor. Levinas employs metaphor to converse with the inherited ways that temporal becoming has been articulated, recurrently reorienting them to expose a variety of ethical-phenomenological constellations. To expose the dynamics that remain clandestine to the orthodox interpretation, this paper will chronologically trace the development of various families of metaphors such as those of having and doing; those of dimensionality, those of orality, those of familiarity, and those of birth, gender, and death, thereby demonstrating the multitude of roles and perspectival positions assumed by the subject during its temporal becoming.

The Two Truths that Descartes Discovers in His Meditations on First Philosophy that Do Not Require the Divine Guarantee

In my paper, I show that there are two truths in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy that do not require the divine guarantee, despite Descartes’ claim in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph in the third meditation that he cannot be certain of anything unless he knows that God exists as Descartes’ creator and that God is not a deceiver.

Stanisław Kamiński’s Philosophy as Christian Philosophy

This article argues that Kaminski’s concept of philosophy meets the requirements for being a Christian philosophy as articulated by John Paul II. In the encyclical letter Fides et Ratio, John Paul II affirmed the possibility, existence, meaning, and need for a Christian philosophy. He distinguished three stances of philosophy concerning the Christian faith. First, philosophy should be completely independent of the Biblical Revelation but implicitly open to the supernatural. A second stance adopted by philosophy is often designated as Christian philosophy. Third, philosophy presents another stance that is closely related to theology. Kamiński constructed an understanding of philosophy that is original, universal, and autonomous. Such a notion of philosophy (and its methodology) was based on the classical theory of being, which fulfils the demand for the autonomy of philosophy through its relationship with faith. Kamiński’s doctrinal standpoints in philosophy are rational, objective, and universal. According to him, philosophy is also compatible with the Christian faith. In this sense, one can speak of his philosophy as a Christian philosophy. --------------- Received: 22/04/2021. Reviewed: 06/09/2021. Accepted: 23/10/2021.

ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNDERSTANDING OF METAPHYSICS IN THE HISTORY OF CULTURE

The article examines the evolution of the concept of “metaphysics” in the history of culture. Metaphysics as the “first philosophy” of Aristotle has gone through a historically variable path as a consequence of the pluralistic nature of the very nature of philosophical knowledge. Solidarizing in the main thing - metaphysics is an understanding of the fundamental, fundamental principles of being - each independently thinking philosopher takes as a basis as principles different understandings of substances and its attributes. Questions of the relationship between the concepts of “metaphysics” and “ontology” in various historical and philosophical discourses are discussed. Based on this, metaphysical concepts in specific philosophical teachings and doctrines are quite variable in the history of culture, up to the positivist desire to expel metaphysics from science. The modern understanding of metaphysics in collaboration with the philosophy of science makes it possible to reveal the dialectical connection between metaphysics and science and, in particular, metaphysics and fundamental physics.

Al-Kindī’s Two-Volume Compendium of Aristotelian Philosophy: Al-Falsafa al-Ūlā and al-Falsafa al-Dākhila

This study argues that the first two titles listed in the bibliography of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. ca. 259/873) presented in the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380/990) – his well-known work al-Falsafa al-ūlā (First Philosophy), on metaphysics, and a lost work entitled al-Falsafa al-dākhila (Internal Philosophy) – form an intentional pair. Together, they presented an epitome of Aristotle’s collective works on philosophy, including an outline of metaphysics in al-Falsafa al-ūlā and a discussion of detailed questions of logic, physics, psychology, and metaphysics in al-Falsafa al-dākhila. Drawing primarily on al-Kindī’s work On the Quantity of Aristotle’s Books, the study suggests several emendations to the full title of al-Falsafa al-dākhila as recorded in the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm.

Story as Self

What might be the basis of the temporal story linking a subject’s manifestations and transformations, if there is no stable core or substantial self “behind” or “before” our deeds, such that our selves lie within our deeds? So asks Robert Pippin in Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. I explore the ways in which a story can find its basis in both “the self” and “the world.” Noting that Nietzsche insists on the separation (lack of causality) between thoughts, deeds, and the image we have of a given deed, I suggest that stories, when wielded consciously, are themselves deeds that can serve to magnify, reduce, or alter the images of previous or future deeds, based on what the interactions between our environment and our "true need" allows us to do. I note that they are often themselves inventions, not needing to be the result of factual occurrences in the world. Seen in this way, stories are a powerful tool for self- and world-transformation, and can enable us to create beautiful versions of ourselves that may not always be or feel initially “true.”