Some Remarks on Musical Symbolism of Philo’s Hermeneutics in “De Posteritate Caini”

Philo of Alexandria can hardly be called a philosopher, especially given a certain speculative or systematic philosophy. But also, contrary to the prevailing opinion in contemporary research, it could hardly be defined as an exegete, especially given the modern content of the term. At the same time, the impression remains that the most often associated concept with his name – allegory (allegorical interpretation) is usually perceived too narrowly, and not enough attention is paid to the actual literary and hermeneutical skills of the author. Modern translations of his works often do not reflect the symbolism used by Philo at all, as is the case with music imagery in the opening paragraph of De Posteritate Caini. The musical theme and symbolism in Philo's work undoubtedly deserve a special and thorough study, which would go far beyond the scope of this article.

Critical Remarks on the Question of a “Moscow School of Metaphysics”

The article analyzes the concept of the “Moscow School of Metaphysics,” an expression proposed by S.L. Frank in 1932 referring to the institutionalization of the initial advancement of Russian thought in the form of a “scientific metaphysics.” S.L. Frank held the rationalism of L.M. Lopatin and the transcendentalism of S.N. Trubetskoy to be the chief methodologies of this movement. S.L. Frank’s institutional identification is judged to be one episode in the search for a general developmental pattern within Russian thought – a movement toward a scientific and systematic philosophy. In his book Russian Philosophy around S.L. Frank. Selected articles (2020) the contemporary investigator of Russian philosophy, G.E. Alyaev turned his attention to the “Moscow School of Metaphysics” as a historical and philosophical concept. Agreeing with Frank, G.E. Alyaev names the alleged participants in the school, excluding V.S. Solovyov considering him a “religious thinker.” Referring to the material in the journal Problems of Philosophy and Psychology and to the speeches of N.Ya. Grot and V.S. Solovyov, the author shows that the philosophical education of Russian society, and in particular of professional philosophers, was not at a level that allowed for the emergence of the school as a scientometric unit. With the final two decades of the nineteenth century in mind, the author prefers to speak not about the school, but about the direction of the philosophical sympathies of Russian educated society toward either positivism or metaphysics. Within the bounds of the latter, there took place a selection of methodological techniques that allowed Russian thought to move toward a scientific metaphysics. The author mentions V.S. Solovyov, with his final articles, as among those who persistently sought the principles of theoretical philosophy. The author also shows that S.L. Frank, who proposed the concept of the “Moscow Metaphysical School,” is far from precise in its application

Mary Midgley

Mary Beatrice Midgley (née Scrutton; b. 13 September 1919–d. 10 October 2018) wrote twenty philosophical books that use an engaging style and surprisingly domestic metaphors to convey profound thought about a diverse range of topics, including human nature, animals, environmentalism, ethics, science, gender, and the practice of philosophy itself. Her first book was the influential Beast and Man, published in 1978, and her last was What Is Philosophy For?, a defense of the need for philosophical thinking, published just before her death at the age of ninety-nine. Midgley has recently garnered more philosophical attention and is now widely recognized as an original and incisive voice in philosophy. The daughter of a pacifist curate, Midgley was born in Dulwich, London, before moving to Cambridge, Greenford, and Kingston. A nature-loving child, with passions for drama and poetry, she was educated at Downe House School near Newbury, before reading Classics and Greats at Somerville College, Oxford, between 1938 and 1942. Here she met her fellow members of the wartime Quartet of women philosophers (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy articles on “G. E. M. Anscombe,” “Philippa Foot,” and “Iris Murdoch”). The four became great friends and influenced each other throughout their working lives. Their connections include a frustration with the narrowness of the systematic philosophy that was in vogue during their formative years, and the revival of virtue in moral philosophy. Unlike her contemporaries, Midgley published little work until her fifties, after she had raised children and left academic philosophy. As Midgley said, “I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I’m jolly glad because I didn’t know what I thought before then.” For this reason, Midgley’s writing is striking in its consistency. Articles of this kind often chart changes of mind and theoretical revisions. While Midgley’s thought undoubtedly developed and expanded, there are no early or late periods, marked by stark differences of view. One of Midgley’s criticisms of her predecessors concerned their neglect of the history of ideas. Midgley holds that to understand a philosophical system, we must understand the context in which it arose. Philosophy and culture are interconnected: the great thinkers of any era are influenced by their historical circumstances, and the patterns of thought within a culture are, whether we realize it or not, profoundly philosophical. Philosophy, she argues, is indispensable, because it allows us to make sense of our current predicaments and—where necessary—make changes to our patterns of thought.

Philosophy and Psychology in the Service of the Catholic Faith: Paweł Siwek, SJ and His Legacy

Fr. Paweł Siwek, SJ may be considered the only Polish Jesuit philosopher of the 20th century to have achieved worldwide recognition. This article surveys his work from a broad perspective reflecting philosophy, psychology and theology as pursued in Catholic circles in the 19th and 20th centuries. We review his achievements, while also offering an interpretation. We put forward the thesis that he found his own way of practising neo-Thomism in the spirit of Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris. To substantiate our claims, we first briefly sketch his biography, providing a synthetic overview of the relevant contexts for his philosophical oeuvre. We then identify his four main areas of interest: namely, the history of philosophy (combined with his translation activities), systematic philosophy (especially his work on the soul-body problem and Baruch Spinoza), the scientific psychology of religion and spirituality, and Christian apologetics in the face of world religions and spiritual movements. In our conclusion, we discuss the main traits of his intellectual work, along with its impact.

Begriff (Concept)

The lexeme Begriff marks Goethe’s ongoing reconstruction of the traditional philosophical concept across a variety of disciplinary practices. In its most developed articulations, it also works transcendentally to establish the conditions of possibility for thought and intelligibility on a dynamic plane of verbal experimentation and reinvention that cuts immanently through the world. Unlike the clear and distinct concepts of rationalist metaphysics, which function as fixed universals beyond the reach of the senses, Goethe’s extensive usages and ongoing conceptualizations of Begriff draw on an expressive power within language to generate sequences of cognitive moves and moments of transitional understanding that stand in close relation to each other and can be gathered in graded series to be saved for further observation, description, reflection, and reconfiguration. Through its successive linguistic manifestations, moreover, and in line with Goethe’s heterodox approach to systematic philosophy, Begriff lays out force fields of verbal and philosophical activity and discovery with fluid and permeable borders. In ways comparable to the power of reflective judgment in Kant’s third critique, which dispenses with the categories of the understanding and their determining judgments to work intuitively within the world of living forms (Gestalten), Goethe’s lebendiger Begriff (living concept) proves to be a more encompassing structure of thought and its processes than the conceptual machinery of orthodox metaphysical systems with their regulatory regimes of limit-setting terms. Redeployed as an experimental object of experience, Begriff is, therefore, also anschaulich (visual, accessible to intuition). By offering a dynamic perspective onto the fugitive things of the world—including its thought things—it continually reveals the hidden secrets of its own perpetual becomings.

Rasāsvāda: A Comparative Approach to Emotion and the Self

This paper explores the philosophy of emotion in classical India. Although some scholars have endeavored to develop a systematic philosophy of emotion based on rasa theory, no serious effort has been made to read the relationship between emotion and the self in light of rasa theory. This exclusion, I argue, is an outcome of a broader presupposition that the 'self' in classical Indian philosophies is outside the scope of emotion. A fresh reading of classical Sanskrit texts finds this premise baseless. With an underlying assumption that emotion and self are inherently linked, this paper explores similarities between the Indian and Chinese approaches.

O ceticismo, entre Maimon, Fichte e Hegel

This article provides an overview of some significant responses to scepticism in German classical philosophy. I start with the exposition of S. Maimon’s criticism to Kant about the applicability of pure concepts to the empirical reality and the influence of this problem on J. G. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. I expose the main theses of Fichte’s 1794/1795 Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, from the point of view of the possibility of a systematic philosophy built upon first principles. Next, I consider Hegel’s 1802 discussion of the meaning and relationship of ancient and modern scepticism. This will allow me to introduce Hegel’s response to scepticism in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the question about the grounds of knowledge in the Science of Logic. In addition to showing the relevance of Maimon for the development of classical German philosophy, three theses are defended in the article: first, that both the Fichtean and the Hegelian answers accept the terms of discussion set by scepticism; second, that both present internal refutations of scepticism; and finally, that scepticism and its internal refutation can be understood as a thread connecting different philosophical positions in German classical philosophy.

Introduction

Over the last forty-odd years, Kit Fine has been one of the most influential and original analytic philosophers. He has made provocative and innovative contributions to several areas of systematic philosophy, including philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as a number of topics in philosophical logic, such as modal logic, relevance logic, the logic of essence, and the logic of vagueness. These contributions have helped reshape the agendas of those fields and have given fresh impetus to a number of perennial debates. Fine’s work is distinguished by its great technical sophistication, philosophical breadth, and independence from current orthodoxy. A blend of philosophically sound common sense combined with a virtuosity of philosophical argumentation and construction, meant to back up the former, this seems to me to be the nature of Kit Fine’s lasting contributions to the current trends in analytic philosophy. The chapter gives a general overview of the groundbreaking work of Kit Fine and connects the contributed essays with Kit Fine’s work.

The Centrality of the Idea of the Good in the Platonic System (1)

This chapter analyzes the Idea of the Good, the “unhypothetical first principle of all.” All Platonists have acknowledged the need for a first unifying metaphysical principle of all. That the need for such a principle is recognized in Plato's dialogues, in Aristotle's testimony, and in the indirect tradition was never doubted. Indeed, the Idea of the Good, in Republic, is held by Plato to be the focus of his philosophy. And because of its unique, superordinate, and comprehensive causal scope, it is the focus of his systematic philosophy. The chapter then explores the first principles in Parmenides, Sophist, Philebus, and Timaeus. It also considers Aristotle's account of the nature of the first principles and the evidence of the indirect tradition.

Of Spiritual Failure: The Matter of Hegel's Pyramids

This article critically examines GWF Hegel's treatment of the Egyptian pyramids in his Aesthetics as an aporia at a crucial juncture of his systematic philosophy. For Hegel, the pyramids are the aesthetic and historical moment at which 'Spirit' begins to extricate itself from matter. However, this article claims that such a transition is only possible through a repression and a forgetting of the material situation upon which it is predicated. In forming this argument, this article will examine Hegel's dismissive treatment of the pyramids in six sections. In the first and second sections, the pyramids will be situated within Hegel's larger project. In the third section, the article will look at his writings on the pyramids themselves. The fourth section will examine Jacques Derrida's critique of 'Hegel's semiology' as a way to open up a critical perspective. The fifth section turns to Hegel's writing on geology in Philosophy of Nature as a way to focus on the materiality of the pyramids. And finally, the sixth section concludes by considering their labor and the construction. Each of these latter sections attempts attempts to highlight aspects of the pyramids that fundamentally challenge the Hegelian transition from matter to 'Spirit'.