The aim of the paper is to address the main meta-metaphysical question i.e. whether is it possible to do metaphysics and, in the case of an affirmative answer, how should we do it? With such an aim in mind, we will sketch the broad context in which these meta-metaphysical questions arose in the philosophical literature (§ 1); Then, we will present what we take to be the three most widespread conceptions of metaphysics that are available in the analytic tradition: the neo-Quinean (§ 2), metaphysics as the science of possibilities (§ 3) and metaphysics as the study of the fundamental structures of reality (§ 4). Throughout these paragraphs we will criticize these positions, before cashing out our proposal (§ 5). Our interpretation seems to be a species of the recently proposed approach dubbed ‘naturalized metaphysics’; the difference that our proposal has with similar understanding of metaphysics will be clear in the last section.
The aim of this paper is to investigate some proposals about the possibility of metaphysics. In particular, we want to focus on the relationships between the justification procedures used in empirical sciences and in metaphysics. We develop three models of meta-metaphysics, that is Metaphysics Through Physics, (MTP); Metaphysics Through Physics or Logic, (MTPL); and Metaphysics Constrained by Physics or Logic, (MCPL) and we argue that the latter is able to guarantee an autonomous field of enquiry for metaphysics.
Elenchus is the argumentative method whereby human thought experiences the transcendentality of being and its aspects. This article seeks to revisit the classic method of argumentation, known as elenchus, in order to explicitly consider its pragmatic dimensions. Elenchus is the complete realization of performative contradiction, in which those who intend to deny transcendental structures simultaneously undermine themselves. Such dynamics is implicated in both the actual negation of the transcendental structures and the verbal denial of such structures. The position expressed in this article is subsequently compared with two authoritative positions: Emanuele Severino and Sergio Galvan. The first – in his more mature thought – tends to reduce elenchus to a simple case of reductio ad absurdum. The second establishes a «elenctic calculus» in order to demonstrate that elenchus does not permit a logical-formal argument. Both, however, do not consider the pragmatic aspect of elenchus – and, therefore, its fundamental peculiarity.
In the final stage of metaphysics, understood by Heidegger as the planetary reign of «cybernetics» and interpretable today as «digital ontotechnology», was precisely the ambiguous character of the booming modern technology (like a pharmakón), with its Entbergung character, that opened the way for him to think that in the implementation of the truth of being carried out by means of a téchne revolt against its own function of servitude, a historical «world» and the «earth» as the settlement of a people could be polemically joined together as a rejection of any utilitarian claim of dominion over the «things-as-objets». This conflict in the work of art can still be particularly helpful in understanding the current situation and the possible ways out of it.
In order to clarify the ‘poetic’ nature of man’s dwelling on Earth, we deem it urgent to reconsider the path that led Martin Heidegger to pay attention to the dialogue between art and thought. However, before allowing art to illuminate in advance the same understanding of the world thought has, it proves essential to grasp the meaning of the revolution the German thinker made within the history of philosophy. Thanks to the de-obstruction of modern philosophy, which is founded on the subject-object relationship, Heidegger makes us overcome the corresponding interpretation of art in aesthetic terms. Therefore, on the basis of a new foundation of thought, art is freed from the risk of being confined to the dimension of beauty and becomes a power capable of giving shape to the truth of the world and of the man who inhabits it.
With the intention of destroying Western metaphysics in order to get to its origin, Heidegger also encounters East Asian art, which is mainly influenced by Zen Buddhism. This art does not, like Western art, want to represent the essence of a being, but rather to be a way to reach the nothing that grants everything. Heidegger even goes so far as to cautiously ask the question whether, with this «granting nothing», one has not arrived at the point of indifference of East Asian and Western culture, indeed of culture in general. The treatise examines what everything Heidegger knew about «East Asian art» and whether such an assumption is justified or not. Heidegger’s presumption, according to the author, of being at the point of indifference of cultures is certainly fascinating and worthy of discussion. But one cannot answer this presumption in any other way than through Heidegger’s disapproved «aesthetic» analysis of individual works of art.
In this paper I will inquire the concepts of ἀνάγκη/Ἀνάγκη and πειθώ/Πειθώ in Parmenides’ lost Περὶ φύσεως. I will focus, in particular, on the fragments of the poem in which these words recur. I will focus, also, all the fragmets in which recur the substantive τὸ χρεών and the verb χράω. The aim is to verify if, before Plato’s Timaeus, in which we have the most important philosophical connection between ἀνάγκη and πειθώ, also in Parmenides is possible to found a philosophical treatment of these two concepts. I will try to show that the answer is affirmative. Πειθώ, according to Parmenides, is indissolubly tied to Ἀληθείη, therefore to Ἀνάγκη. According to Parmenides, to conclude, Πειθώ reveals and shows Ἀληθείη.
In the first part, we will expose the way in which Aristotle presents Pythagorean theory of musical harmony of the stars in movement, the logical structure of this exposition and the indications that lead to believe that he refers to Philolaus. In the second part, we will examine Aristotle’s two objections against that theory and we will indicate the doctrinal presuppositions on the basis of which it is formulated. In the last part, we will show that such assumptions would have allowed Aristotle to formulate other objections, but he limits himself to those two because they are functional to show the truth of his theory that the stars do not move by themselves, but just because heavens in which they are set are moving. It is also shown that a third objection is implicitly formulated in the context of Aristotle’s discourse.
The article aims to analyze how analogy and metaphor come into relationship in the essay on the metropolis by Georg Simmel. The definition of the two tropes has been taken from Siegfried Kracauer’s notes about Simmel, on the basis of a contrast between the man of analogies and the man of similitudes that the essay on the metropolis would seem deny.
Nowadays we can reread Eros and Civilization as the fresco or the mirror of the society and the postwar era, of which Marcuse was a passionate interpreter. But we can read it at the same time as the proposal of fruitful instances of emancipation, bearing in mind the relations of the Frankfurter philosopher with the culture of his time, with Psychoanalysis, Freudism, Marxian inspiration, Utopian Thought. A profile, albeit in broad outline, of the Wirkungsgeschichte of Eros and civilization – often associated with Marcuse’s other great work, One-Dimensional Man –, cannot ignore the reference to both Hannah Arendt, another ‘spurious’ student of Martin Heidegger, and to a ‘Theological-political’ movement – which arose in the same years – known with the name of ‘Liberation Theology’. Furthermore, the fact that, behind some new theological orientations of the 1960s, in particular behind the ‘Political’ Theology of Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann, some researchers have identified the influence exercised by Marcuse and the exponents of the Frankfurt School, as well as by Walter Benjamin.
The essay celebrates the work of Paolo Gregoretti, professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Trieste, who recently passed away. In particular, this paper discusses the role of religion in the encounter of faith and reason. Focusing on the main authors whom Gregoretti discussed in his work, the essay starts with an analysis of the relationship between philosophy and life. Then the focus shifts to three distinct pairs of concepts: philosophy and religion, reason and will, truth and faith. In the closing section, the essay questions the possibilities of arguing a rigorously founded rational theology. The general objective of this study is to demonstrate that a fertile dialogue between philosophy and religion is possible. In this dialogue, philosophy opens up and protects a space for religious experience. Indeed, religious choice stems both from the possibility allowed by philosophy of making meta-empirical inference and from the incapacity of metaphysical speculation to say, in positive terms, what the absolute is.
This contribution aims at distinguishing between simplifying narratives and narratives of complexity and at showing their links with empathy and compassion, in order to make it easier to use narratives in a constructive, respectful of human vulnerability, and supportive direction. Such purpose is reached through three steps, each of them corresponding to a section. In the first section the distinction between simplifying narratives and narratives of complexity is pointed out by hypothesizing that simplifying narratives do not grasp the polyphony and the complexity of history, do not accept diversity and take advantage of immediacy. In the second section the Kantian duty of sympathy and the distinction between humanitas aesthetica and humanitas practica, respectively immediate and mediate ways of participating in the others’ feelings, are analyzed and connected with the two kinds of narratives. In the third section the narratives of complexity are explicitly linked to an ethics of vulnerability.
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