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1. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 10
Türker Aksun Three Counter-arguments against Divine Command Theory
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The relation between morality and the existence of God is explicitly or implicitly presupposed not only in the ethical theories of different philosophers and thinkers but also in many politicians’ addresses to public, in the interviews of famous authors and columnists, in the sermons of priests or even in the most well-known masterpieces of world literature. We are often told by these social leaders that the idea of God and that of immortality are indispensable for morality, and that in an atheistic or naturalistic world there can be no ethics at all. What underlies this widespread conviction is actually the great debate on the foundation of morality, which has been a major issue in ethics for a long time. This paper aims first of all to examine the relation between morality and the existence of God within the framework of Divine Command Theory (contrary to the common confusion, not of belief in God); and then to criticize that claim based on William Craig’s arguments (Craig being one of the most influential Christian moralists). The arguments for the Divine Command Theory will be intentionally restricted to Craig’s ideas because, although he attacks humanism and naturalism in his debates with Kurtz, Nielsen, Harris and Taylor, he does not have to defend his position. This paper mostly targets his ideas based on religious terms, not philosophy.
Emanuele Antonelli Mimesis and the Trace: Ancient Perspectives on Social Ontology and Religion
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Recovering an ancient debate on the meaning of the Latin word pomoerium, I will show that if John Searle has offered the standard version of social ontology, Maurizio Ferraris has good reasons to claim that his ‘Theory of Documentality’ can go further. Nonetheless, his anti-post-modernism and his blindness about the religious origins of the social objects he deals with, reduce the width of his argument. Complementing his hasty analysis of mimesis with the mimetic theory of religion, violence and the sacred, put forward by René Girard, I will try to show that social objects always hide a scapegoating event and not just a document, as Ferraris would say. Recovering the underlying Derridean paradigm and adding a Girardian reading, such an investigation would turn Ferraris’ static and insufficient analysis into a dynamic ontology of actuality. Thus my aims are: 1) to verify to what extend Ferraris’ theory holds ground, 2) point out, through the application of mimetic theory, certain limits of the theory pertaining to the origins of the social objects investigated, and 3) hint at a new paradigm based on the graft of Derridean thought with the trace of Girardian thoughts on mimesis.
Javier Agüero–Águila Derrida: Heidegger and Sartre’s Anthropological Limits
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This article represents an interpretation of Jacques Derrida’s work Les fins de l’homme (The ends of the man). The first part of the article is an analysis of the implications of Derridian criticism to a kind of human-ism present in France after the Second World War. This humanism, called by Derrida “Philosophical Anthropologism”, is mainly expressed through the figure of Jean Paul Sartre, for whom, according to Derrida, the notion of man is a descriptive and structural one, and as such different from Heidegger’s metaphysical notion that involved an examination of the being in its ontolog-ical dimension. Thus, it is important to scrutinize Derrida’s interpretations of Heidegger’s thought. The second part of the article emphasizes the analysis of the metaphysical deficiencies of “Sartrean humanism”, which implies the division between the ontic and onto-logic, favoring the historicity of the first one. That is why the concept of “neighborhood” between the man and the being has been introduced, which sees everyone as the aim of the other. One’s aims, in this way, appear as defined by the impossibility of thinking about the being beyond the man himself and vice versa. Finally, some ideas related to the Derridian project and its Heideggerian inspirations are discussed. They represent a criticism of logocentricism in its latest version. They are consid-ered, according to Derrida, as Sartrean ones.
Andreia Margarida Pires Carvalho Deconstructing the Privilege of the Voice: The Thought of Archi-writing of Jacques Derrida
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This brief presentation, guided by the thought of archi-writing of Jacques Derrida, has the double purpose of, on the one hand, showing how the Greco-Western philosophical tradition is based on the irreducible privilege of a supposed living word (phoné) – logo-phono-centrism – and, on the other hand, showing how the thought of archi-writing deconstructs this privilege, pointing out that every mark, spoken or written, occurs already in a scene that makes it, in advance, a response. With this in mind, it becomes essential, in a first moment, to elucidate the concept of logo-phono-centrism, assuming it as the fundament of the privilege of the living word (phoné) and consequent secondarization of the writing, under its traditional conceptual-ization. In a second moment, deconstructing the logo-phono-centric orien-tation enunciated before, the way in which the thought of archi-writing is highlighted, leading to the impossibility of any originary fullness of sense reveals a singular notion of response that shows a deconstruction already operating in every mark, written or spoken.
Elena Bolotnikova Philosophy as Self-care
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The paper states that an individual, once it has discovered the problem of meaning of its own existence, uses solutions offered by the cultur-al experience of civilization: religion or philosophy. The study of philosophy is understood, along with religious choice, as a way of self-care. Religion and philosophy are compared according to structural elements of self-care marked by Michel Foucault, such as: telos, ethical substance, mode of subjection and ascetic practices. The differences are confirmed by historical examples. In this paper I criticize the current state of social reality, that, due to the development of technology and communication strategies, complicate the interpretation of the individual’s own being. By facilitating transfer of any knowledge of the self and the world as a discursive mode, network tech-nology multiplies the hum of everyday life, making society the “silent ma-jority.” The original self-care isn’t focused on collecting “likes” and reposts on the net, but assumes motion in discursive/non-discursive knowledge area, thus creating the space where an individual realizes himself and his being.
Nikolay Biryukovv Varieties of Determinism: Spinozist Meditations
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The paper distinguishes between two varieties of determinism: a strong one and a weak one. Weak determinism asserts that whatever happens is caused and that cause necessitates the effect; strong determinism is not satisfied with this assertion, but goes further stating that whatever happens can be traced to just one universal cause. If we define freedom as a capacity to start a new causal chain, strong determinism would allow only one properly free agent; it is thus indistinguishable from fatalism. Weak de-terminism, allowing a plurality of free agents, preserves whatever we need to account for our possession of scientific knowledge (the notion of necessity), but evades fatalism with its characteristic identification of determination and predestination. The discourse on freedom and necessity is often presented as controversy between compatibilism and incompatibilism. The above argument would normally fall under the former category; I prefer, however, an incompatibislm, albeit of a different kind, viz. that free will is incompatible with indeterminism. For free will, if it is seen as real ability, is not mere intention to do something on one’s own; it is only feasible in a deterministic world.
Boris Chendov The Interdisciplinary Positivism: Third Stage of Development of Positivistic Philosophy
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The most distinctive feature of the third period of the history of science (since Wiener’s “Cybernetics”, 1948) is the essential role of the inter-disciplinary investigations which represent a specific form of manifestation of the integrative tendency in the history of science. The result was a cardinal re-organization of the system of science: together with the further development of the canonical sciences, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. as well as of their branches of various degrees. What also took place is a pro-cess of formation of complex theories, or even of complex sciences, involving in a new synthesis problems of various canonical sciences. They became rel-evant problems of philosophy of science. This process of peculiar solution of the philosophical problems in different complex fields of investigation resulted into disintegration of the united system of philosophy into various fragments, seen in a close connection with relevant problems from special sciences. This tendencies lead to different forms of positivistic philosophy.This disintegration of the system of philosophy is not a rough rejection of the united system of philosophy of science, nor does it represent the united positivism.
María del Carmen Dolby Múgica Simone Weil and the Critique of Marxism through her Conception of the Work
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Simone Weil undertakes the critique of Marxism, particularly in her work: “Reflections on the causes of freedom and social oppression,” and she raises what I would call her utopia of work, where she elaborates the ways of eliminating oppression characteristic not only of a capitalist state but also of a socialist one. Weil discusses what she calls the dogma of scientific socialism, i.e., the strong belief that oppression will end when the capitalist society disappears definitively. Simone says that it is quite illusory to think that the oppression will disappear along with capitalism. This is because the key of oppression is in the total subordination of workers to the company and its leaders. The human being is a “thinking entity” and only a form of production that implies and admits the thought of individual workers, can be the basis on which to build a free society. Thought and action are the authentic hinges of her philosophy. Weil’s ideal is based on a spiritual conception of human being that should pay attention to the work not just to develop his higher faculties, but also to elevate himself to the transcendent values and ultimately, to God.
Jude Raymund Festin Thinking in Overlap: Collingwood and Wittgenstein on Words, Concepts, and Propositions
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It is theoretically risky to juxtapose Collingwood with Wittgenstein. The former is a metaphysician who has deep sense of history, while the latter is a logician who is celebrated for his unorthodox way of doing philosophy. Collingwood sees things in their interconnected whole, while Wittgenstein grasps them in minute detail. The former approaches a philosophical problem always from a historical standpoint in an orderly and holistic fashion, ever mindful of how things hang together. The latter examines a philosophical question in a diagnostic manner. Given their different intellectual backgrounds and tempers of mind, it may seem that Collingwood and Wittgenstein have little in common, if any at all. There are, however, significant similarities in their philosophical ideas, as have been noted by a good number of Collingwoodian scholars. Wittgentein’s notion of certitudes in “On Certainty”, for instance, bear striking resemblance to Collingwood’s idea of absolute presuppositions in “Essay on Metaphysics”. Their views on the phenomenon of magic intersect at some interesting points. And their respective insights on the nature of language also show salient affinities. How does one account and explain such convergences from two philosophers from contrasting backgrounds, with different tempers of mind? This paper intends to show that Collingwood’s conception of philosophical overlap and Wittgenstein’s notion of family-resemblances converge at some interesting points. This suggests that, despite the stark differences in personalities and philosophical interests, Collingwood and Wittgenstein are philosophers cast in the same mold of thought.
Alla G. Glinchikova European Modernity: Two Forms of Individualization
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The main idea of this paper is a reflection on two types of individualization, “ascending” and “descending”, a classification done in accordance to two basic forms of Christian Modernity: the Russian and the European one. Christian and post-Christian Modernity were initially based on two types of Antique-Christian synthesis: western, associated with the name of Saint Augustine; and Eastern, associated with the name of Dionysius Areopagita. Therefore, this paper is particularly focused on the phenomenon of “ascending individualization”, which is considered to be a basic one in the Eastern Antique-Christian synthesis. It shows the role of this kind of individuation in the development of the European and of the Russian types of Modernity. As a conclusion we can suggest a possible way out of the crisis of Modernity through the synergy of the two types of individualization.