Books in the Berner Reihe Philosophischer Studien series

This book proposes to identify three long-term structures in causal reasoning - in particular, in terms of the relationship between cause and identity - that appear to be of value in categorizing and organizing various trends in philosophical thought. Such conceptual schemes involve a host of philosophical dilemmas (such as the problem of relativism), which are examined in the first chapter. A number of naturalistic and transcendental approaches to this problem are also analysed. In particular, the book attempts to construct a theoretical basis for Foucault's tripartite classification of epistemological structures in European thought. The final chapter attempts to buttress the above schema by extending the analysis from cause and identity to growth, change, and stability, critiquing certain ideas of Foucault and Heidegger, as well as examining the contemporary thought of process philosophy and complexity theory.

Through a collection of essays in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, this book explores the evolution of the idea of the One and Many. Since Parmenides' dichotomy of One and Many, the One of the ancient cosmogonies has been reduced to a pole of our thought, a sterile identity which has been identified with truth but cannot bring forth nor give order to the Many. The author reflects on how the Parmenidean dichotomy has led, for many centuries after Parmenides, to the metaphysical attempts to reduce the Many to the One, causing unsolvable epistemological problems, and to the metaphysical dissolution of the One in the Many of time, causing the moral crisis of the West. Further, this study analyses the epistemic and spiritual impasse of the West and shows a possible solution to this problem: to unearth the forgotten dichotomy, the key to understand millenarian philosophical problems, such as consciousness, movement and causality, which are deadlocked because they all stem from the reduction of temporal phenomena within the framework of a rational thought which is unable to account for the non-identical.

This book is an attempt to provide a systematic interpretation of Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics in light of one of the most important, interesting and debated questions of the present age: the question concerning the role played by science and technology in shaping our civilization. The author argues that this question lies at the heart of Gadamer's thought, and that such an approach to his philosophy might help to overcome some inveterate interpretive prejudices, like, for example, the idea of Gadamer as an anti-scientific and politically authoritarian thinker. In order to clarify these points, the author closely examines not only Gadamer's 1960 masterpiece, Wahrheit und Methode, or his main writings (later gathered in ten volumes of collected papers), but most of the works he published in his more than centenarian life, including many short essays, lectures and interviews. Gadamer's hermeneutics is seen as offering both an intriguing description of the main pathologies of the Western modern civilization, and a challenging proposal for healing the uneasiness and malaise of modernity by revaluating all forms of unmethodical, i.e. non-scientific, experience and knowledge.

This book addresses the theme of what nature is and humans' obligations toward the natural world. It demonstrates that an approach based in metaphysics can help us to understand better what nature is and our obligations to the natural world. Beginning with ideas traced from Aristotle through some of the signifcant figures in European philosophy, the author shows that each living thing is a unique source of value. He then argues that this value puts humans under an obligation and that adopting an attitude of responsibility to living things is an essential part of what it means to be human.

Many philosophers adopt methods that emulate those of the natural sciences. They call such an overall approach naturalism, and consider it indispensable for fruitful philosophical debate in various areas. In spite of this consensus however, little is ever said about how naturalism depends on the underlying idea of nature, which we often endorse unconsciously. If we can determine how naturalism reflects an underlying account of nature, we would be in a better position to distinguish between different kinds of naturalism and to assess the merits of each. This book undertakes a sustained study of the concept of nature to answer this need. It examines in detail how conceptual, historical, and scientific constraints affect the concept of nature in various domains of philosophy, and how, in the opposite sense, these constraints are themselves affected by the concept of nature. In so doing, this book relates the conceptual framework of scientific inquiry back to the lived experience that is proper to everyday self-understanding.

Heritier d'une longue tradition pour laquelle la nature est un etre vivant en devenir (natura naturans), Stephane Mallarme est l'auteur d'une physiologie des lettres qui le mene a concevoir la litterature comme un organisme. Nous inscrivons le poete dans une histoire des idees qui remonte par-dela Poe et Baudelaire a Mme de Stael et au philosophe de la nature Friedrich Schelling, qui voyait dans le concept d'organisme un infini immanent au fini, un infini actuel. S'exprime, des lors, de Schelling a Mallarme, un pantheisme organique qui prend tour-a-tour la forme d'un pantheisme de la nature puis d'un pantheisme litteraire qui s'affranchit de la substance fixe du spinozisme. La premiere partie de cet ouvrage examine les fondements philosophiques et theologiques de ce pantheisme ainsi que son transfert en France chez des auteurs tels que Cousin, Renan, Vacherot, Seailles et Littre. La seconde partie presente cet organicisme en tant qu'il est, chez Mallarme, le produit d'une doctrine du mot comme depositaire de la vie (Les Mots anglais).

Wie ist es möglich zu verstehen, dass ein anderer Schmerzen hat? Eine begriffliche Analyse im Anschluss an Wittgenstein zeigt: dazu ist so etwas wie eine Simulation der fremden Schmerzen durch eigene Schmerzen erforderlich. Der Autor setzt sich mit den Fragen auseinander, die ein solcher Ansatz aufwirft, und präsentiert für das Problem des Fremdseelischen eine neuartige Lösung.Das Problem führt in zentrale Bereiche der Philosophie des Geistes hinein. Die fremden Schmerzen sind in verschiedener Weise mit den eigenen Schmerzen begrifflich verknüpft; im Beispiel des Schmerzes entfaltet sich die «Logik» eines mentalen Zustands. Mit der Simulation verbindet sich zudem eine Identifikation mit dem andern. Ein wichtiger Teil der Überlegungen befasst sich daher mit einem Begriff der synchronen Identität, welche wiederum in einer engen Beziehung zu bestimmten Formen der Intentionalität steht.