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Abstract:This paper takes a new approach to understanding Hume's view on causality, taking ontological as well as semantic issues into account. It attempts to attain three different goals. In the first place, it dismisses the main arguments that were put forward by the New Humeans in order to show that Hume must be regarded as a sceptical realist with respect to causality. Secondly, by employing a genetic reading of Hume's two definitions of causality, the paper argues for an interpretation of Hume that takes his empirical criterion of meaning as seriously as possible. And thirdly, it presents a proposal to analyse the meaning of causal sentences from a Humean perspective. According to this approach, the meaning of causal sentences divides into a descriptive and a projective component. By taking advantage of Hume's general view on meaning, we can underpin the projectivist interpretation of Hume's theory of causality with exegetical evidence.

Abstract:The paper argues for a formal-causal account of Spinoza's metaphysics. Its basic claim is that neither relations of ideas alone nor efficient causality – especially if interpreted "mechanistically" – articulate the basic sense of the Spinozistic 'cause'. Instead it is formal causality, as understood by Descartes and other 17

Abstract:The Kantian concept of self-legislation plays a central role in Robert Pippin's influential interpretation of Hegel's theory of freedom. I isolate two competing notions of freedom present within Pippin's own specification of the concept: freedom as reflective transparency and freedom as self-identification with one's deeds. The former is compatible with Hegel's own quasi-Spinozist conception of freedom and allows for historical conceptual change. It is also consistent with Pippin's truly Hegelian contention that the justification of "modern ethical life" must assume the form of a historical, developmental account, and that a plurality of our moral and social attachments can be integral to our freedom. The ideal of self-identification. however, and Pippin's development of it in terms of self-legislation and a theory of the normative social conditions of rational agency, involves a dichotomous conception of freedom that is incompatible with Hegel's. Pippin's ultimate privileging of self-legislation thus introduces a tension into his account and prevents him from achieving his distinctly Hegelian ambitions.

Abstract:There is clear evidence in the

Abstract:Roman Jakobson praised a juvenile text by Husserl

Abstract:The present article explores the motives behind the so-called 'appropriation' of Aristotelian logic by the Syriac-speaking community in the Near East from the sixth to the ninth centuries. While it is often assumed that the Syrians adopted Greek logic for religious, and polemical, ends, we aim to show rather that the underlying reasons given for the study of logic and its propagation through educational institutions were much the same among Syriac as they were for Greek practitioners of philosophy in Late Antiquity. There was a marked continuity between the late ancient Greek centres of learning and the Syriac monasteries. Syriac theologians rarely, if ever, sought to use Aristotle as a crutch in sectarian religious debates. There are implications for our understanding of how and why the Arabic renaissance in logic came about.

Abstract:While Kant refutes the traditional proofs for the existence of God he uses the traditional monotheistic notion of God for his own moral teleological conception of rational religion. The essay discusses Kant's implicit claim that the monotheistic notion of God is an integral part of (moral) rational religion. Against Kant's strong approach the essay reveals monotheism as a mere possibility of representing the notion of God legitimately for rational religion – beside adjusted forms of nontheism and polytheism. Nonetheless, Kant's arguments for a monotheistic representation seem to be appropriate from a pragmatic point of view.

Abstract:In this essay I consider the relation between three portraits of the philosopher found in Plato: Socrates the intellectual midwife of the

Abstract:I offer here an account of the methodology, historical context, and content of Kant's so-called "Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Space" (MECS). Drawing on Critical and pre-Critical texts, I first argue that the arguments making up the MECS rest on a kind of conceptual analysis, one that yields (analytic) knowledge of the essence of space. Next, I situate Kant's MECS in what I take to be its proper historical context: the debate between the Wolffians and Crusius about the correct analysis of the concept of space. Finally, I draw on the results of previous sections to provide a reconstruction of Kant's so-called "first apriority argument." On my reconstruction, the key premise of the argument is a claim to the effect that space grounds the possibility of the co-existence of whatever things occupy it.

Abstract:Is Hobbes a normative egoist? That is: does Hobbes think that an agent's normative reasons are all grounded in her own good? A once-dominant tradition of Hobbes scholarship answers 'yes'. In an important recent work, however, S. A. Lloyd has argued that the answer to the question is 'no', and built an alternative non-egoistic interpretation of Hobbes that stresses reciprocity and mutual justifiability. My aim in this paper is to articulate and defend an original 'middle way' interpretation of Hobbes that steers a course between an excessively egoistic and what we might call an excessively 'moralistic' interpretation. According to the interpretation I defend, our obligations have their source in self-interest in the sense that they are all self-assumed results of covenants, our reasons for making which are solely self-interested. But the obligations that result from such covenants can sometimes require us to act against our self-interest.

Abstract:Modern scholars are puzzled by the Epicurean claim that all perceptions are true. They find it hard to make any sense of it and therefore often reject Epicurus' argument as 'simple minded'. However, a very similar claim can be found in Aristotle's