Oded Balaban

Commentators do not take Socrates’ theses in the Hippias Minor seriously. They believe it is an aporetic dialogue and even that Socrates does not mean what he says. Hence they are unable to understand the presuppositions behind Socrates’ two interconnected theses: that those who do wrong and lie voluntarily are better than those who do wrong unintentionally, and that no one does wrong and lies voluntarily. Arguing that liars are better than the unenlightened, Socrates concludes that there are no liars. Instead, there are only those who know and those who don’t. The unenlightened cannot lie, and alien volitions, desires, or emotions are unlikely to mislead and deceive those who know, i. e., the wise. Why, then, is a thinker like Socrates ready to defy the experience and moral convictions of his contemporaries and even our own to such an extent?

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The ontological argument- proposed by St. Anselm and developed by Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Marx- furnishes a key to understanding the relationship between thought and reality. In this article, we shall focus on Hegel’s attitude towards the ontological argument as set out in his Science of Logic, where it appears as a paradigm of the relationship between thought and reality. It should be remarked, moreover, that our choice of the subject was not random and that it was selected for the reason that belief in God is a preeminent social reality, inasmuch as faith in God creates His existence. Therefore, an investigation of the concept of God is an inquiry into the most profound recesses of human consciousness. The great opponents of the ontological argument, from Hume down to our day--and even Kant--have based their arguments upon the fundamental empiricist assertion that existential judgments are not analytical. This paper attempts to defend the ontological argument against its opponents.

L’objet de cet article est double: 1) montrer que la Science de la logique de Hegel est incapable de rendre compte de la nature de la relation de causalité. Hegel explique plutôt la relation de causalité en la réduisant à une relation de conditionnalité. 2) Soutenir ensuite que cet échec n’est pas le propre de l’hégélianisme mais qu’il est le résultat inévitable de tout effort intellectuel pour comprendre la relation de causalité, quand on ne prend pas en compte la contribution de la perception sensible à la connaissance. L’analyse philosophique peut alors conclure que la causalité, bien qu’elle soit perceptible par les sens, n’est pas compréhensible, tandis que la conditionnalité qui s’y substitue est compréhensible bien qu’elle ne soit pas perceptible.

In the Physics, Aristotle defines motion as 'the actuality of what is potentially, qua potential' (Phys. 201b5). This definition has been interpreted countless times and has been the subject of heated controvery. At issue today is whether ὲντελέχεια refers to motions as a process or a state. Accordingly, if the idea of ὲντελέχεια is believed to refer to a process, it is translated to mean actualization. If on the other hand it is taken to refer to a state, it is translated as meaning actuality. In the first instance, known as the 'state-view', a change is defined as being the state of a changing object when it is actually potentially F, for some F. In the second, or 'process-view', a change is defined as the actualization of a potentially. It seems to me that both views mistakenly assume that Aristotle succeeded in defining motion as motion. As a consequence, the discussion has focused on a presumed content that the definition does not offer. Indeed, were it the case that Aristotle's definition was adequate, there would hardly be any point in even considering the question of whether he had intended to regard motion as being a state or a process. In this paper I examine both of these views and offer an alternative interpretation of my own that differs markedly from either. Additionally, I shall show that just as Aristotle's definition represents a projection of his particular attitude toward nature - so also recent interpretations of his definition represent a projection of the attitudes of modern thinker's toward Aristotle's philosophy.