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Full-Text Articles in Theory and Philosophy
The Foundation Of A Grand Unified Metaphysics, Jason R. Miller
The Foundation Of A Grand Unified Metaphysics, Jason R. Miller
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Philosophers from Leibniz to Parfit have tackled the problem of existence and the problem of arbitrarity. I divide the solutions to these two problems into three general categories: (1) infinite regress answers, (2) ex nihilo answers, and (3) self-caused cause answers. I show that the first two (infinite regress and ex nihilo) categories of answers either fail to answer the problem of existence or the problem of arbitrarity or fail to satisfy one or more reasonable assumptions about said problems. Believing it to be useful to a self-caused cause answer to the problem of existence and the problem of arbitrarily, …
Everything Is Flat: The Transcendence Of The One In Neoplatonic Ontology, Joshua Packwood
Everything Is Flat: The Transcendence Of The One In Neoplatonic Ontology, Joshua Packwood
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
My dissertation research addresses the relationship between the One and everything else in Neoplatonic metaphysics. Plato is vague in describing this distinction and thus much of late antiquity attempts to fill in the gaps, as it were. The potential difficulty, however, is that the hierarchy of existence in late antiquity is susceptible to being understood as postulating a being that is "beyond being." To avoid this difficulty, I propose an interpretation of Dionysius the Areopagite to show that being is, by definition, intelligible and thus finite and limited. Since the first principle is that which is infinite it therefore cannot …