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.

The Concept of Understanding and its Idealistic Interpretation in the Theoretical Philosophy of V.V. Rozanov

The article is devoted to the analysis of the key provisions of Rozanov’s early theoretical treatise “On Understanding”, which is a model of Russian philosophical idealism. It shows that Rozanov’s work, which anticipated some ideas of hermeneutics and phenomenology in the 20th century, remained unnoticed within the Russian philosophical tradition. The purpose of this article is to reveal the basis of Rozanov’s thesis that the first idea of reason potentially contains all knowledge in unity. The author analyzes the following aspects of Rozanov’s work related to the problem of understanding: the motive and purpose of writing a treatise, the theme of innate ideas, the concept of vivacity of ideas, the theory of potential knowledge and its subject, the cyclical process of understanding, the difference between mind and reason, understanding from knowledge. Rozanov’s interpretation of the idea of reason, the scheme of reason, and the doctrine of number are also reconstructed. The paper concludes: the fundamental thesis of Rozanov about the embeddedness of all knowledge in the unity of the first idea of reason is justified by the primacy of the position of the idea in the taxonomy of cognitive acts. And also, by the fact that the purpose of the cognitive process pushes reason to itself.

Peter Zinkernagel and David Favrholdt: A Response to George Berkeley in Twentieth-Century Danish Philosophy

Berkeley’s criticism of Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities is a challenge to epistemologists. Do we experience a mind-independent reality, even though we do it with the help of senses bound to give us subjective experiences? Berkeley – or a straw man by that name (i.e. Berkeley without God) – played an important part as sparring partner for an influential development of Danish theoretical philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. The protagonists here are Peter Zinkernagel (1921–2003) and David Favrholdt (1931–2012). Zinkernagel held an extraordinary appointment as research fellow at the University of Copenhagen. Favrholdt was the founding father of the Philosophical Institute at Odense University (today: University of Southern Denmark). This essay focuses on the constructive moments in Zinkernagel’s alternative to immaterialism, being based on a distinction between perception and action, and on Favrholdt’s development of a reconstruction of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

Aristotle, Isocrates, and Philosophical Progress

In fragments of the lost Protrepticus, preserved in Iamblichus, Aristotle responds to Isocrates’ worries about the excessive demandingness of theoretical philosophy. Contrary to Isocrates, Aristotle holds that such philosophy is generally feasible for human beings. In defense of this claim, Aristotle offers the progress argument, which appeals to early Greek philosophers’ rapid success in attaining exact understanding. In this paper, I explore and evaluate this argument. After making clarificatory exegetical points, I examine the argument’s premises in light of pressing worries that the argument reasonably faces in its immediate intellectual context, the dispute between Isocrates and Aristotle. I also relate the argument to modern concerns about philosophical progress. I contend that the argument withstands these worries, and thereby constitutes a reasonable Aristotelian response to the Isocratean challenge.

A Postmodernist Critique of Michaelides' The Silent Patient

This critique endeavors to analyze Alex Michaelides' novel The Silent Patient (2019) in the light of Lyotard's theoretical philosophy of postmodernism. Postmodernism is a contemporary movement that poses significant challenges to conventional assumptions of knowledge, rationality, truth, and objectivity. The concept of postmodernity also involves the discussion of a complex set of ideas and theoretical discourses which resist a fixed definition and final closure. Jean Francois Lyotard's theory of postmodern metanarratives versus mininarratives was proposed and published in his The Postmodern Condition (1979). For this study, textual analysis as a research method has been used to trace the presence of postmodern characteristics in certain words, dialogues and conversations between the characters. The research ends with findings and recommendations for future research.

THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECT IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF I. KANT

Цель данной статьи - определить специфику кантовского трансцендентального субъекта в современном научном познании. Для этого производится, во-первых, выявление и раскрытие сущности основного значения понятия «трансцендентальный субъект» в философии Канта. Во-вторых, определяется релевантность понятия трансцендентального субъекта, как оно заявлено в теоретической философии И. Канта, тому или иному историко-философскому значению понятия «субъект». В печатных сочинениях мыслителя данное понятие употребляется, по всей видимости, только в «Критике чистого разума», достаточно редко встречается оно и в черновиках к первой «Критике», где составляет пару с понятием «трансцендентальный объект». Новизна проведенного при этом исследования заключается в демонстрации неочевидности распространенной гносеологической трактовки кантовского трансцендентального субъекта. В результате исследования заключается, что можно выявить следующие версии трактовки трансцендентального субъекта: онтологическую и гносеологическую. Определено, что трансцендентальный субъект, в тех выражениях, как о нем пишет И. Кант, более всего близок к онтологической трактовке и по отношению к области гносеологии представляется будто бы излишним. The purpose of this article is to determine the specifics of Kant’s transcendental subject in modern scientific knowledge. For this purpose, first of all, the identification and disclosure of the essence of the main meaning of the concept “transcendental subject” in Kant’s philosophy is made. Secondly, the relevance of the concept of a transcendental subject, as stated in the theoretical philosophy of I. Kant, to a particular historical and philosophical meaning of the concept of “subject”is determined. In the printed works of the thinker, this concept is used, apparently, only in the “Critique of pure reason”, and it is quite rare to find it in the drafts to the first “Critique”, where it is paired with the concept of”transcendental object”. The novelty of this research consists in demonstrating that the widespread epistemological interpretation of Kant’s transcendental subject is not obvious. As a result of the research, it is possible to identify the following versions of the interpretation of the transcendental subject: ontological and epistemological. It is determined that the transcendental subject, in the terms that I. Kant writes about It, is closest to the ontological interpretation and in relation to the field of epistemology seems to be superfluous.

A Postmodernist Critique of Michaelides' The Silent Patient

This critique endeavors to analyze Alex Michaelides' novel The Silent Patient (2019) in the light of Lyotard's theoretical philosophy of postmodernism. Postmodernism is a contemporary movement that poses significant challenges to conventional assumptions of knowledge, rationality, truth, and objectivity. The concept of postmodernity also involves the discussion of a complex set of ideas and theoretical discourses which resist a fixed definition and final closure. Jean Francois Lyotard's theory of postmodern metanarratives versus mininarratives was proposed and published in his The Postmodern Condition (1979). For this study, textual analysis as a research method has been used to trace the presence of postmodern characteristics in certain words, dialogues and conversations between the characters. The research ends with findings and recommendations for future research.

Fichte and Schopenhauer on Knowledge, Ethics, Right, and Religion

In 1811, Schopenhauer moved to Berlin, where he remained until 1813. During this time, he encountered J. G. Fichte, attending his lectures on The Facts of Consciousness (1812) and the Wissenschaftslehre (1812). Moreover, he read many of Fichte’s earlier works, including System of Ethics: According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798) and Foundations of Natural Right: According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796/97). In addition to these more academic lectures and writings, he read one of Fichte’s last popular works, Way to the Blessed Life: Or also, the Religionslehre (1806). Schopenhauer soon managed to familiarize himself with the main parts of the Wissenschaftslehre: theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, and philosophy of the postulates. He kept notes—found in his Manuscript Remains—of his sojourns in Fichte’s transcendental idealism, or Wissenschaftsleere as he deridingly called it. In later years, he returned to Fichte’s philosophy—sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly—in the Basis of Morality (1840) and the World as Will and Representation (1859). In this chapter, the author uses both Schopenhauer’s early notes in the Manuscript Remains and his later published writings to show how he understood Fichte’s transcendental idealism, where he disagreed with it, and where he (sometimes grudgingly) acknowledged its value. The author argues that while Fichte and Schopenhauer share many assumptions about philosophy and subjectivity, they arrive at quite different conclusions about the ultimate value of human striving.

Syntheticity and Recent Metaphysical Readings of Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason

Metaphysical readings of Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the Critical period are ascendant. But their possibility assumes the possibility of existence- and real-possibility-judgments about things in themselves. I argue that Kant denies the latter possibility, so metaphysical readings have dubious prospects. First, I show that Kant takes existence- and real-possibility-judgments, as necessarily synthetic, to require a relation to sensible intuition. Second, I show that the most promising metaphysical readings can ultimately neither satisfy nor explain away that requirement for existence- and real-possibility-judgments about things in themselves. I conclude with pessimistic reflections on the prospects for the metaphysical interpretive project.