Search results for "rationalism"

Abraham Bids Farewell to Hagar and Ishmael: Continuity and Variation of the Iconographic Type

2021

In traditional Christian artistic visualization, the episode of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert has given rise to various iconographic types: “The feast for the weaning of Isaac and Sara’s protests,” “Abraham bids farewell to Hagar and Ishmael,” “Hagar and Ishmael in the desert” and “Divine salvation for Hagar and Ishmael”. This study looks into the continuity and variation over time of the second of these types: “Abraham bids farewell to Hagar and Ishmael,” the one most depicted out of this entire biblical topic or episode. Since the Byzantine Octateuch in the East (11th century.) and the Canterbury Hexateuch (ca. 1025&ndash…

Kant and the Starry Heavens or the Splendor and Misery of Speculative Rationalism

2013

Kant stresses that scientific cognition can only materialize in conjunction with experience. Leaving the sphere of experience takes one into the world of fantasy. From the point of view of Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy his description of the inhabitants of other planets in the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens should also be viewed as unfounded wanderings of the mind. Such wanderings of the mind never occur in Kant’s philosophy of mature years.

The Anti-Samaritan Attitude as Reflected in Rabbinic Midrashim

2021

Samaritans, as a group within the ranges of ancient ‘Judaisms’, are often mentioned in Talmud and Midrash. As comparable social–religious entities, they are regarded ambivalently by the rabbis. First, they were viewed as Jews, but from the end of the Tannaitic times, and especially after the Bar Kokhba revolt, they were perceived as non-Jews, not reliable about different fields of Halakhic concern. Rabbinic writings reflect on this change in attitude and describe a long ongoing conflict and a growing anti-Samaritan attitude. This article analyzes several dialogues between rabbis and Samaritans transmitted in the Midrash on the book of Genesis, Bereshit Rabbah. In four larger sections, the f…

Humility: Virgin or Virtue?

2021

Este trabajo considera la iconografía mariana en la que se representa a la Virgen sentada en el suelo, conocida como la Virgen de la Humildad. La creación de este tipo mariano coincide con la sistematización de las virtudes de Santo Tomás, que dio lugar a una disminución en la importancia de la virtud de la humildad. La combinación de ambas tradiciones culturales ha llevado a una correspondencia entre la virtud de la Humildad y las imágenes de la Virgen de la Humildad. La génesis de este último tipo se basa en las fuentes textuales y parte de la representación visual de la Humildad, que fue sustituida durante los siglos XIV y XV. GV/2021/123 This paper considers Marian iconography in which …

Avicenna’s Outsourced Rationalism

2020

This paper refutes the claim that Avicenna's theory of science is empiricist in the robust, Lockean sense. I argue that his denial of innatism notwithstanding, the theory of formal identity, together with the metaphysical idea that the ontological structure of the sublunary world is grounded in the active intellect, commits Avicenna to a peculiar kind of rationalism in which the ultimate source of knowledge is an intellect, albeit one extraneous to the human mind. I then introduce two hitherto insufficiently discussed texts to challenge this conclusion. In the end, I claim that although this new material may provide some evidence for a robust empiricism in Avicenna, its consequences remaine…

Anmerkungen zum Religionsverstaendnis des Lukian

2006

Lukian kann nicht als ein Atheist tout court bezeichnet werden . Er zeigt ein bestimmtes Interesse fuer die Religion und ist ein aufmerksamer Beobachter der religioesen Ereignissen seiner Zeit.

Universal Gravitation and the (Un)Intelligibility of Natural Philosophy

2019

This article centers on Hume's position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. To that end, the controversy surrounding universal gravitation shall be scrutinized. It is very well known that Hume sides with the Newtonian experimentalist approach rather than with the Leibnizian demand for intelligibility. However, what is not clear is Hume's overall position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. It shall be argued that Hume declines Leibniz's principle of intelligibility. However, Hume does not eschew intelligibility altogether; his concept of causation itself stipulates mechanical intelligibility. peerReviewed

A lack of meaning?

2020

This article explores the ‘lack of meaning’ in contemporary society as a consequence of Western dualist thought paradigms and ontologies, via Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘reactive nihilism’ following the colloquial murder of God. The article then explores processual and new materialist approaches in the understanding of the lived and carnal self, arguing for immanent and senseful materiality as an ethical platform for religious, environmental, and societal solidarity for tomorrow. For the theoretical justification of the processual approach in understanding the enfleshed self, the article employs John Dupré’s processual approach in the philosophy of biology, as well as Astrida Neimani’s cri…

Avicenna's Outsourced Rationalism

2020

Dumb Animals: A Short History of Classical Logocentrism

2021

Among the most common and influential stereotypes of Greco-Roman literature is the idea that animals are ‘dumb’ (ἄλογα/muta), that is, mute and devoid of reason. In recent years, several explorations of what Stephen Newmyer has aptly called the ‘man alone of animals’ topos have pointed out that in asserting the privileged status of humans the ancients attached special importance to articulate language. Yet, most of these explorations have adopted a thematic rather than historical approach in an attempt to provide a comparative assessment of ancient and modern paradigms. In the present paper, I follow a historical line through the literary representations of animals as ‘dumb’, focusing on tw…