A Note on Evagrius’ Cosmological and Metaphysical Statements

Overall, contemporary scholars consider Evagrius’ Chapters on Knowledge a metaphysical work which proposes a fully fledged cosmology. This cosmology refers to the pre-existence of a spiritual universe and the final dematerialization of the cosmos. Recent scholars, however, challenge the metaphysical assumption, advocating a monastic interpretation. I apply to Chapters the monastic lens of Evagrius’ The Monk and The Gnostic, proposing that his metaphysical and cosmological narrative encodes a map of spiritual experience. My approach also relies on recent reinterpretations of Evagrius’ masters and intellectual heirs.

We Need to Recreate Natural Philosophy

Modern science began as natural philosophy, an admixture of philosophy and science. It was then killed off by Newton, as a result of his claim to have derived his law of gravitation from the phenomena by induction. But this post-Newtonian conception of science, which holds that theories are accepted on the basis of evidence, is untenable, as the long-standing insolubility of the problem of induction indicates. Persistent acceptance of unified theories only in physics, when endless equally empirically successful disunified rivals are available, means that physics makes a persistent, problematic metaphysical assumption about the universe: that all disunified theories are false. This assumption, precisely because it is problematic, needs to be explicitly articulated within physics, so that it can be critically assessed and, we may hope, improved. The outcome is a new conception of science—aim-oriented empiricism—that puts science and philosophy together again, and amounts to a modern version of natural philosophy. Furthermore, aim-oriented empiricism leads to the solution to the problem of induction. Natural philosophy pursued within the methodological framework of aim-oriented empiricism is shown to meet standards of intellectual rigour that science without metaphysics cannot meet.

The Interreligious Dialogue in De docta ignorantia of Nicholas of Cusa

This article explains the method followed by Nicolaus Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa, 1401–1464) to develop the theme of difference in relation to identity, and the way in which, following this perspective, Cusanus first comes to formulate a discourse of interreligious dialogue. We can interpret the theory on conjecturality expounded by Cusanus in De docta ignorantia as a system of thought that proves essential to understand the irenic model of De pace fidei, because it is in virtue of this metaphysical assumption that he affirms that absolute truth cannot be reached and infinity is incomprehensible to all. By developing the theme of concordantia differentiarum (concordance of differences), Cusanus elaborates in De docta ignorantia the theme of the coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites). In exploring this connection, I shall consider his work for the purpose of underlining the relevance of the themes of identity and difference to the focus on interreligious dialogue.

Is There a Shallow Logical Refutation of the Ontological Argument?

The beauty of Anselm’s ontological argument is, I believe, that no matter how one approaches it, one cannot refute it without making a significant metaphysical assumption, one that is likely to be contentious in its own right. Peter Millican (2004, 2007) disagrees. He introduces an objection according to which one can refute the argument merely by analysing its shallow logical details, without making any significant metaphysical assumption. He maintains, moreover, that his objection does not depend on a specific reading of the relevant Anselmian text; in fact, Millican claims that his objection is applicable to every version of the ontological argument. In this paper, I argue that millican’s objection does not succeed, because, contrary to what he says, in order to justify his objection he does have to make a deep metaphysical assumption and rely on a specific reading of Anselm’s text.

Privacy, Contingency, Identity, and the Group

The chapter argues that there is a way to justify privacy without relying on the metaphysical assumption of an independently existing self or person, which is normally taken to underlie personal identity. The topic of privacy is an important one in technoethics because advances in science and technology today have resulted in threats to privacy. I propose furthermore that privacy is a contingent matter, and that this conception is more convenient in helping us understand the complex issues surrounding deliberating thoughtfully about privacy in many dimensions. It is the very contingency of privacy that makes it malleable enough to serve our purposes. Basically, the argument is that it is possible for there to be a society where individuals there do not have any privacy at all, but they are still autonomous moral agents. This argument has some close affinities with the Buddhist perspective, though in this chapter I do not intend to presuppose it. Then I discuss the issue of group privacy. This is a rather neglected issue in the literature, but group privacy has become more important now that contemporary genomics and bioinformatics have the power to manipulate large amount of population data, which could lead to discrimination. The proposed conception of privacy is more suitable for justifying group privacy than the one that presupposes the inherently existing individual.

J.G. Herder on Language and the Metaphysics of National Community

The study of national communal feeling is often limited by the reluctance many theorists have to consider the manifest, affective meaning which so many discover and embrace through their nations. The writings of Johann Gottfried Herder suggest a way to theorize about that affectivity without treating it as either incidental to the real nature of national communities, or as a threat to the individuals who inhabit them. Herder's approach is based on language, and involves a metaphysical assumption about the aesthetic operation of human thought and collective belonging. Herder's linking of the history and nature of nation-building with a vision of linguistic revelation through one'sVolkpresents a fairly original take on the question of nationality, one which approaches communal affections with a moral (and ultimately theological) seriousness, but is also flexible enough to recognize (and even anticipate) contemporary critiques of metaphysics which have complicated our traditional assumptions about national identity.