Search Results (13)

From the Christian heartland of Europe emerged the techno-scientific culture borne from the Enlightenment movement. Prior to this cultural outlook that severed culture from its foundational roots in religion, it was the case that religion was not only a crucial agent in the shaping of culture, but in many ways, the heart of culture. With secular rationality and its underscoring of the techno-scientific mindset, a growing privatization of religion has become the acceptable ethos of contemporary Western culture. Secularism, largely understood in terms of a naked public sphere, is increasingly perceived to be the only form of rationality that can guarantee societal cohesion and the democratic spirit. But as Ratzinger pointed out in his 1993 Hong Kong Address to the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops Conferences of Asia, this Western understanding of culture that is governed by a hermeneutic of suspicion towards religion, and which seeks to replace the heart of culture with autonomous reason a la Kant, ends up leaving culture in a winter land of existential frostiness. By depriving culture of its roots in the transcendental dimensions of human experience, much of the wisdom and riches that have been accumulated in the pre-techno-scientific cultures—regarding fundamental questions such as “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What happens when I die?”, “Does life make sense?”, “Do I have a destiny?” and more—are now left to the manufactured logic of the techno-scientific with its anthropological reductionism that fails to offer the big picture of the cultural outlook that did not construe the scientific and the technological as antithetical to religion. This essay seeks to unpack the arguments Ratzinger made in this Address at Hong Kong, with the hope that this theological exegesis of the Hong Kong lecture could once again offer an invitation to the world of the techno-scientific, the world of secular rationality, to open up to the world of faith, so that together, the breadth and depth of the human culture would once again flourish in its greatness. Full article

This article proposes a reading of Marion’s phenomenology from an early text, arguing that the various phenomenological innovations which are introduced in this work are subordinated to the central concept of transcendence. This concept in Marion’s work names the relation between revelation and experience and makes possible the disclosure of a revelatory phenomenon of radical alterity and asymmetry. Reliant on this concept, Marion’s phenomenology dramatically reconfigures the transcendental subject, the phenomenal object, and the horizon as well as their relation to certain phenomena. While Marion’s early text undergoes numerous revisions and reappears in different versions at several junctures in the development of his intervention in phenomenology, this article maintains that his central concept of transcendence retains its primacy in the structural arrangement of his other phenomenological innovations. Additionally, it will be argued that while the concept of transcendence in Marion has often been treated with suspicion by interpreters as obliquely allowing for a theological incursion into Marion’s phenomenology, such discussions generally miss how Marion’s particular construal of transcendence, as the relation between revelation and experience, necessarily allows for an a priori best explained as a theological judgement. Lastly, several questions attendant to this argument will be suggested for further development and investigation. Full article

The intention of this paper is to develop an original notion of self-as-mediation, where a reimagining of the function of art as a phenomenological/epistemological praxis will be the methodological vehicle. The argument here will unfold over four moments. Firstly, I argue that through the elevation of art into a valid form of inquiry—one that engages our collective and individual being-in—a relation coupling art with science can be established. Secondly, by means of a further reflection on the linguistic aspects of the complementary domains of science and art—in part inspired by the standpoint of Carl Otto Apel—a unified transcendental–pragmatic interpretation of this art–science relationship will be determined. In the third moment, I make the argument that through a phenomenological reflection derived from the apodictic assertion of self-as-mediation, a trifold relation situating self-as-mediation is revealed as dynamically engaged in a continual exchange, or interchange, between what can be considered to be an “attitude” and a “doing”, referred to here as relation and action. Thus, the fourth moment is revealed as a weird dynamic relational movement, out of which a radical ethic may be developed. It is argued that along with an implied recasting of religious consciousness, a complementary and positive vision for humanity at this time of ecological and social tragedy may also be offered by this approach. Full article

In the Appendix to his dissertation, with respect to Kant, Marx provided an in-depth analysis of the ontological proof of the existence of God. Here, we explore this analysis in detail. Firstly, we argue that “faith” (Glaube) is the foundation of Marx’s interpretation of the ontological proof of God and its difference from that of Kant. On one hand, Marx’s understanding of the ontological argument can be called the “Realization of Belief” (RB). The object of faith is, for the believer, endowed with some kind of real power; that is to say, the object is real for the believer who has faith in it. This line of argument differs from the Kantian Hypostatization of Idea (HI), which attempts to prove the transcendental God as an a priori concept that implies itself as an empirical being or a posteriori phenomenon. On the other hand, “faith” was also the foundation upon which Marx based his interpretation of Kant. Subsequently, in the context of Marx’s dissertation, we clarify the connotations of “reality”, “belief”, and “faith”. “Reality” refers to objects exerting a real force that works on those with faith in their imagination while not necessarily entailing that the imagined object of belief is an empirical one. “Belief” refers either to an opinion (doxa) based on “faith” or to an idea without necessity in the sense of David Hume’s philosophy. As for “faith”, Marx uses this term in the Protestant sense, meaning obedience to the object one believes in, where obedience refers to the absence of self-righteousness. In a state of “faith”, the faithful one possesses “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Finally, on the basis of these two considerations, we reflect on the existing academic interpretations of the theme of this article and highlight some differences between these interpretations and the present article. We show that existing interpretations of Marx’s summary either conflate the two theories of the HI and RB or miss the importance of “faith” in Marx’s arguments. We conclude that Marx, at the time of his dissertation, interpreted the ontological argument by way of the RB, which was based on the concept of “faith”, and that his critical understanding of Kant’s refutation of the ontological proof was founded on the same interpretation. Full article

The nature and practice of Christianity is a major, if not the primary, topic in Kierkegaard’s authorship. What it means to live a Christian life is a persistent topic in many of his major works, and yet, he spends most of his authorship criticizing traditional ways of practicing Christianity. While his critique of institutionalized Christianity and merciless unmasking of the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed Christians is rather clear, namely that they are not actually Christian, it is more difficult to get a clear idea of Kierkegaard’s alternative. What is a true and sincere Christian life for Kierkegaard? The argument of this article is that Kierkegaard’s famous existential approach to Christianity amounts to a secularization of Christianity and as such can be seen as a critical development of and not a rejection of the Enlightenment critique of religion. The article uses Kant as an advocate of the Enlightenment critique of religion that Kierkegaard inherits and develops critically, and after having examined Kierkegaard’s existential dialectics, an outline of Kant’s transcendental approach is, presented against which Kierkegaard’s existential alternative is examined in more detail. Kierkegaard’s existential approach is radical with its insistence on “that single individual” and on the existential challenges of human freedom that Kant banned from his analysis of both morality and faith. While Kant presents us with the transcendental possibility of faith, Kierkegaard is concerned with the existential reality of faith. It is argued that Kierkegaard’s existential analysis of faith helps us to find the connection between radical individual choice and the rational morality that is not always evident in Enlightenment—and especially Kantian—accounts of morality. Full article

Sacrifice (yajña) is considered to be one of the most mentioned words in the Hindu texts, and Panikkar understands it in relation to the preservation, continuation, and regeneration of the universe in existence. While Panikkar’s interpretation of sacrifice focuses mainly on creation, this article extends his arguments to interpret the Hindu apocalypse as a yajña from four major angles, including the end of a kalpa and the concept of declining dharma in the successive yugas, the journey from the cosmological to the transcendental brahman, entire creation being the food of sacrifice, and the apocalypse as a reflection of the yajña. This study incorporates both śruti and smriti texts. Full article

This paper considers polynomial characteristics useful for a better understanding of the behaviour of these functions. Taylor series for the polynomials are described by the items with even and odd derivatives and powered changes in the argument, which leads to more specific studying of their properties. Connections between the derivative and antiderivative of the polynomial functions are defined. The structure of polynomial functions reveals their specific characteristic that the mean value of their roots equals the mean value of the locations of the critical points such as the extrema and inflection points. Derivatives of the quadratic exponent in relation to an interesting connection of two transcendental numbers are also described. The discussed properties of the polynomials can be helpful for practical implementations and educational purposes. Full article

John Hare argues that Kant, in his Third Critique, offers an aesthetic argument for God’s existence that shares premises with his famous moral argument. Karl Ameriks demurs, expressing skepticism that this is so. In this paper, I stake out an intermediate position, arguing that the resources of Kant provide ingredients for an aesthetic argument, but one distinctly less than a transcendental argument for God or an entailment relation. Whether the argument is best thought of as abductive in nature, a C-inductive argument, or a Pascalian natural sign, prospects for its formulation are strong. And such an argument, for its resonances with the moral argument(s), can work well in tandem with it (them), a fact not surprising at all if Kant was right that beauty—in accordance with an ancient Greek tradition—exists in close organic relation to the good. More generally, along the way, I argue that the sea change in Kant’s studies over the last decade or so should help us see that Kant is an ally, rather than foe, to aesthetic theodicists. Full article

Contemporary scholarship has significantly advanced our understanding of the grammarian Bhartṛhari’s influence on the Pratyabhijñā Śaivism of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. One area that has been somewhat neglected, however, is the subject of relation (sambandha). Here, I examine the influence of Bhartṛhari’s sambandha-vāda on the Pratyabhijñā school. As I see it, Bhartṛhari’s understanding of the holistic movement of sphoṭa—the practical process of ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ linguistic information—leads to a necessary reevaluation of the general logical form of sambandha, i.e., ‘relationality-as-such.’ On this account, Bhartṛhari articulates a basically transcendental conception of sambandha as a ‘śakti-of-śaktis’ in his ‘Exposition of Relation’ (Sambandhasamuddeśa [SSam]). This effectively means that one cannot designate the general logical form of sambandha in linguistic terms without also thereby changing its essential nature as such (cf. Houben: 170–4). I maintain that Utpaladeva’s ‘Proof of Relation’ (Sambandhasiddhi [SS]) leverages this insight into a series of pragmatic arguments to demonstrate that vimarśa, or recognitive judgment, is the true locus of relational action—i.e., unity-in-diversity (bhedābheda). In doing so, he effectively salvages a coherent understanding of relation as necessarily real (satya) from the deconstructive agenda of the Buddhist eliminativist, even though the referent may indeed appear paradoxical from the perspective of theoretical reason alone. Full article

The author combines Walter Benjamin’s speculations on language, naming, and horror with Jean Laplanche’s general theory of seduction and his notion of the enigmatic signifier in order to reconstruct what he identifies as the primal scene of initiation into language. Further, the author develops this construction by linking it to a similar structure which he extracts by means of interpretation from Jacques Derrida’s commentaries to the Biblical stories of the Tower of Babel and of the Binding of Isaac. Finally, the author shows how the primal scene thus reconstructed should be seen as the transcendental condition of being in language as described by Derrida in his seminal essay on Monolingualism of the Other and how this very condition should be understood as a universalized form of the Marrano condition. The most far-reaching conclusion of the argument is, then, that at least for Jacques Derrida, every subject of language is a Marrano. Full article

While metaphors for the human mind have been intensively discussed across multiple disciplines, there remains a gap on how Buddhism deals with the mind metaphorically. This study explores how Mahāyāna Buddhist discourse resorts to embodied and discursive metaphors in describing and explaining the mind. Buddhist texts analyzed are the Treatise on the Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna and its two commentaries by Wŏnhyo. The Awakening of Faith discourse abounds in metaphors for the sentient being’s mind in two aspects: the ordinary phenomenal mind and the transcendental essential mind. The focus of this study is on the relationship between the seemingly opposing two minds, and the ways in which these two opposites are unified metaphorically. To do so, I first examine how the essential mind, which is said to transcend ordinary experience and verbal expression, is made speakable through primary metaphors and NON-CONTAINER (unboundedness) image schema, and how the phenomenal mind is metaphorically understood according to the covarying scalar properties in primary metaphors. With respect to the argument for harmonizing the two minds, in which introducing more apt analogical metaphors is important, two representative discursive metaphors (a mirror metaphor and an ocean metaphor) are compared and discussed. Full article

This paper compares three twentieth-century examples of antitheodicist thought in the philosophy of religion (and, more generally, ethics): William James’s pragmatism, D.Z. Phillips’s Wittgensteinianism, and Emmanuel Levinas’s post-Holocaust ethical reflection on suffering. It is argued that all three—despite their enormous differences, given that the three thinkers discussed come from distinct philosophical traditions—share the fundamental antitheodicist argument according to which theodicies seeking to justify God’s reasons for allowing the world to contain horrible evil and suffering amount to morally problematic, or even immoral, failures to acknowledge other human beings and their meaningless suffering. Furthermore, it is suggested that this antitheodicist line of thought shared by all three is based on a Kantian transcendental analysis of the necessary conditions for the possibility of occupying a moral perspective on the world. Full article

We revisit an important exchange on the problem of radical skepticism between Richard Rorty and Michael Williams. In his contribution to this exchange, Rorty defended the kind of transcendental approach to radical skepticism that is offered by Donald Davidson, in contrast to Williams’s Wittgenstein-inspired view. It is argued that the key to evaluating this debate is to understand the particular conception of the radical skeptical problem that is offered in influential work by Barry Stroud, a conception of the skeptical problem which generates metaepistemological ramifications for anti-skeptical theories. In particular, we argue that, contra Williams, Rorty’s view that Davidson was offering a theoretical diagnosis of radical skepticism can be consistently maintained with his transcendental approach. Full article