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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Darkness And Light: Absence And Presence In Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism, Steven Burik
Darkness And Light: Absence And Presence In Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The light metaphor is a perpetual favorite for philosophers, both East and West. I seek to revaluate its opposite, darkness. I claim that there are good reasons to favor darkness over light, or at least to not see them as mutually incompatible or in hierarchical fashion. In recent Western philosophy, both Heidegger and Derrida argue that what the light metaphor represents, the promise of clarity and objectivity, is exactly what makes Western metaphysics problematic. In Chinese philosophy, classical Daoism offers a thinking that does not favor the light metaphor over its opposite. Daoists have the good sense to acknowledge darkness …
Dialectical Methods And The Stoicheia Paradigm In Plato’S Trilogy And Philebus, Colin C. Smith
Dialectical Methods And The Stoicheia Paradigm In Plato’S Trilogy And Philebus, Colin C. Smith
Philosophy Graduate Research
Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman exhibit several related dialectical methods relevant to Platonic education: maieutic in Theaetetus, bifurcatory division in Sophist and Statesman, and non-bifurcatory division in Statesman, related to the ‘god-given’ method in Philebus. I consider the nature of each method through the letter or element (στοιχεῖον) paradigm, used to reflect on each method. At issue are the element’s appearances in given contexts, its fitness for communing with other elements like it in kind, and its own nature defined through its relations to others. These represent stages of inquiry for the Platonic student inquiring into the sources of knowledge.
Rampant Non‐Factualism: A Metaphysical Framework And Its Treatment Of Vagueness, Alexander Jackson
Rampant Non‐Factualism: A Metaphysical Framework And Its Treatment Of Vagueness, Alexander Jackson
Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations
Rampant non-factualism is the view that all non-fundamental matters are non-factual, in a sense inspired by Kit Fine (2001). The first half of this paper argues that if we take non-factualism seriously for any matters, such as morality, then we should take rampant non-factualism seriously. The second half of the paper argues that rampant non-factualism makes possible an attractive theory of vagueness. We can give non-factualist accounts of non-fundamental matters that nicely characterize the vagueness they manifest (if any). I suggest that such non-factualist theories dissolve philosophical puzzlement about vagueness. In particular, the approach implies that philosophers should not try …
The Singular Voice Of Being [Table Of Contents], Andrew Lazella
The Singular Voice Of Being [Table Of Contents], Andrew Lazella
Philosophy & Theory
The Singular Voice of Being reconsiders John Duns Scotus’s well-covered theory of the univocity of being in light of his less explored discussions of ultimate difference. Ultimate difference is a notion introduced by Aristotle and known by the Aristotelian tradition, but one that, the book argues, Scotus radically retrofits to buttress his doctrine of univocity. Ultimate difference for Aristotle meant the last difference in a line of specific differences whereby all the preceding differences would be united into a single substance rather than remain a heapish multiplicity. LaZella argues that Scotus both broadens and deepens the term such that, in …