Franz Brentano as a precursor of analytic philosophy

Within contemporary, analytic philosophy, “Fictionalism”—broadly understood as a view that uses a notion of fiction in order to resolve certain philosophical problems that do not necessarily have anything to do with fiction—has been on the scene for some time. A well-known collection, Fictionalism in Metaphysics, provided a good indication of the scope of the view (and its problems) as things stood in the early 2000s. But more than a decade has passed since the appearance of that volume and much has happened in philosophy, including in the area of fictionalism. In addition to the fact that fictionalism in philosophy appears to be more popular than ever, there are now competing views about how to tackle some of the issues that fictionalists aim to address. Moreover, fictionalism has branched out into many more areas, and there is a continuing debate about what fictionalism in philosophy actually amounts to and about how precisely it ought to be pursued. There is thus a pressing need for a volume such as Fictionalism in Philosophy. After a detailed discussion in the book’s introductory chapter of how, in the light of these ongoing debates, philosophers should think of fictionalism and its connection to metaontology more generally, the remaining chapters provide readers with some of the most current and up-to-date work on fictionalism, both for and against. As such, the volume will be of interest to professional philosophers as well as to graduate students in philosophy and to advanced undergraduates.

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Beyond Perennialism and Constructivism

10.1093/oso/9780190868239.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ayon Maharaj

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Common Core ◽

Mystical Experience ◽

Philosophy Of Religion ◽

Analytic Philosophy ◽

Cultural Conditioning ◽

Mystical Experiences

This chapter draws upon Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings and mystical testimony in order to develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the nature of mystical experience. In recent analytic philosophy of religion, two approaches to mystical experience have been especially influential: perennialism and constructivism. While perennialists maintain that there is a common core of all mystical experiences across various cultures, constructivists claim that a mystic’s cultural conditioning plays a major role in shaping his or her mystical experiences. After identifying the strengths and limitations of these two positions, Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna champions a “manifestationist” approach to mystical experience that provides a powerful dialectical alternative to both perennialism and constructivism. According to Sri Ramakrishna, mystics in various traditions experience different real manifestations of one and the same impersonal-personal Infinite Reality. Sri Ramakrishna’s manifestationist paradigm shares the advantages of both perennialism and constructivism but avoids their respective weaknesses and limitations.

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Modern Thought and the Phenomenology of Film

10.1093/oso/9780198768913.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Cleo Hanaway-Oakley

Keyword(s):

William James ◽

Edmund Husserl ◽

Film Studies ◽

Historical Context ◽

Sergei Eisenstein ◽

Siegfried Kracauer ◽

Modern Thought ◽

Franz Brentano ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

Film Viewing

This chapter situates Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of film in its historical context through analysing its key insights—the reciprocal and embodied nature of film spectatorship—in the light of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century philosophy and psychology, charting Merleau-Ponty’s indebtedness to thinkers as diverse as Henri Bergson, Max Wertheimer, Hugo Münsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Victor Freeburg, Sergei Eisenstein, and Siegfried Kracauer. The historical Bergson is differentiated from the Deleuzian Bergson we ordinarily encounter in film studies, and Merleau-Ponty’s fondness for gestalt models of perception is outlined with reference to the competing ‘persistence of vision’ theory of film viewing. The chapter ends with a consideration of some of the ways in which James Joyce could have encountered early phenomenology, through the work of the aforementioned philosophers and psychologists and the ideas of Gabriel Marcel, Franz Brentano, William James, and Edmund Husserl.

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Moving Past the ABCs of Time

10.1093/oso/9780198797302.003.0013 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Craig Callender

Keyword(s):

Analytic Philosophy ◽

Philosophy Of Time ◽

Safety Zone ◽

History Of ◽

Traditional Work ◽

Scientific Results ◽

Analytic Metaphysics

How do the views developed in this book connect with traditional work in analytic metaphysics on time? After giving a potted history of the field, the chapter then displays many connections and modifications between that work and the present one. It highlights one major problem with traditional analytic philosophy of time, namely, its focus on bare existence, i.e., what events exist as of when. Almost by definition, existence will play no role in science, so philosophy of time will never be threatened by scientific results. The irony about this maneuver is that creating this safety zone around time leaves philosophers of time unable to do their original job, explaining the temporal phenomena.

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