Place of Virtue Ethics within the Post-Classical Discourse on ḥikma

Preserved in what seems to be a unique manuscript at the Bodleian Library, al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā (The Soul and the Spirit together with an Explanation of Their Faculties) of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) is a curious book. At the beginning, the author decribes the text as part of the philosophical sciences (as opposed to the religious ones) and clarifies that it deals with ʿilm al-akhlāq, meaning Aristotelian virtue ethics. The text is divided into two parts, the first explaining subjects of philosophical psychology, such as the nature of the soul, its faculties, and its survival after the death of the body. The second part explains how one can “treat” or “heal” the soul from certain negative character traits or vices. In both parts, the book makes liberal use of quotations from the Qur’an, from prophetical ḥadīth, and from sayings by other prophets and sages. This is quite unlike any other “book on philosophy” that Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī wrote.The article explains the distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical books in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and what it means for a book to belong to the former group. Al-Rāzī’s works in the theoretical fields of philosophy (logic, the natural sciences, metaphysics, and theology) do not use evidence derived from revelation and hardly ever refer to it. The relationship between revelation and the practical disciplines of philosophy (among them ethics), however, is different from the relation between revelation and theoretical philosophy. This difference leads in Avicenna to an almost complete abandonment of the practical disciplines. In authors who follow Avicenna in his Farabian approach to the relationship between philosophy and revelation, it leads to hybrid works such as al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā that follow a philosophical agenda but employ means and strategies that mimic and imitate revelation.

Avicennian reсeption of Aristotle’s philosophical psychology: the definition of the soul

In the encyclopedic treatise, the ash-Shifā’ (“The Healing”), the most prominent philosopher of classical Islam Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037) has substantially revised the Aristotelian teaching about the soul. In the first instance, this revision is evident in terms of orientation to a strictly apodictic epistemology and to a synthesis of the Aristotelian teaching with Islamic monotheism. Following this second trend, Ibn Sina supplies the psychology with new dimensions – cosmological, angelological, prophetological and eschatological (more precisely, soteriological). The first book of the “Psychology” (an-Nafs) mainly deals with the notion of the soul. Ibn Sina comments on the traditional peripatetic definition of the soul with relation to the doctrine of the souls of the celestial spheres. In this context is highlighted the operational rather than the essential nature of this qualification and is also given its other modification. While analyzing the three classical characteristics of the soul (i.e. “potency”, “form” and “entelechy” – the realization of potentia), the philosopher justifies the “entelechy” as the most adequate term for it.

A History of Philosophy and Psychology in Finland, 1809-1917

Includes:PART ONEAN OUTLINE OF FINNISH PHILOSOPHY BEFORE 18091.1. Prehistory1.2. Christianity Arrives1.3. The Academy of TurkuPART TWOFROM IDEALISM TO NATIONALISTIC AND LIBERAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE STATE2. 1. Varieties of ldealism: Franzén, Lagus, and Hartman2.2. Romanticism in Turku: Bergbom, Ottelin, Arwidsson, and Hwasser2.3. J. J. Tengström's Teaching of Hegel's Philosophy of Right2.4. J. V. Snellman's Career: Philosopher, Journalist, Senator2.5. Academic Freedom and Bildung2.6. Personality, Spirit, and Nation2.7. Snellman’s Doctrine of the State2.8. Fight for Enlightenment: Wilhelm Bolin2.9. Ways out of HegelPART THREEENTANGLEMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH3.1. From Philosophical Psychology to Experimental Psychology3.2. Logic and Psychology in Lotze's Spirit: Thiodolf Rein3.3. Psychological Laboratory: Hjalmar Neiglick3.4. Philosophy of History: Arvi Grotenfelt3.5. Psychological Ethics and Social Anthropology: Edward 'Westermarck3.6. A Promethean Philosopher and Psychologist: Rolf Lagerborg3.7. Logical Paradoxes: Hjalmar Magnus Eklund3.8. Modern Philosophical Currents: Eino Kaila3.9. Debates on Mach3.10. New Trends in Psychology in the 1910s3.11. Philosophy and Public Affairs: The Philosophical Society

Philosophy and the Moving Image

Philosophy and the Moving image is a collection of articles by Noël Carroll involving many of the ways in which the moving image – including cinema, television, video, and computer generated imagery – can intersect with philosophy. These intersections can include discussions of movies that do philosophy outright, and movies that illustrate philosophical themes as well as discussions various philosophical issues that moving-image practices can provoke. The book shows that movies make contact with many of the established branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of the arts, specifically music and dance. The book also includes essays on the history of the philosophy of motion pictures, discussing the work of Balász, Eisenstein, Cavell, and Danto.

Introduction

Chapter 1 clarifies which parts of Nietzsche’s thought belong to his philosophical psychology and what role his philosophical psychology plays within his overall project, in particular, his critique of morality. Whereas some scholars have been primarily interested in Nietzsche’s specific claims about moral psychology, this book is primarily interested in Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology understood as a body of claims about more basic and more general psychological phenomena. The chapter also discusses methodological issues regarding the use of Nietzsche’s unpublished notes, and argues that unpublished materials may be an essential tool when one is interested in investigating how Nietzsche came to adopt a certain concept or formulate a certain view. The chapter ends by offering a brief overview of the book’s content.

Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology

The book offers a systematic account of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology. The main theme is the nature of and relation between unconscious and conscious mind. Whereas Nietzsche takes consciousness to be a mere ‘surface’—as he writes in Ecce Homo—that evolved in the course of human socialization, he sees the bedrock of human psychology as constituted by unconscious drives and affects. But how does he conceive of such basic psychological items and what does he mean exactly when he talks about consciousness and says it is a ‘surface’? And how does such a conception of human psychology inform his views about self, self-knowledge, and will? These are some of the questions that are addressed in this book. This is done by combining a historical approach with conceptual analysis. On the one hand, Nietzsche’s claims are carefully reconstructed by taking into account the intellectual context in which they emerged. On the other hand, in order to work out their philosophical significance, the claims are discussed in the light of contemporary debates such as those about higher-order theories of consciousness and mind-reading.

Conclusions

This chapter offers a concluding perspective by considering how Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology compares to the belief–desire psychology widely adopted by contemporary philosophers, on the one hand, and by contrasting (some of) Nietzsche’s most distinctive claims with (some of) those put forward by Kant and Hegel, on the other hand. The comparison with Kant and Hegel focuses in particular on the different claims these three thinkers put forward concerning the social dimension of the human mind, appreciation of that dimension being among the most original and substantial achievements of post-Kantian philosophy. Viewing Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology from that angle helps us to better appreciate its distinctive contribution to that tradition.