Mark Glouberman

En soulignant la position ressemblante du Dieu dans le système de Descartes et de Berkeley comme sujet de connaissance optimale, c'est à dire ' certain', et le rôle de la notion cartésienne de ‛certitude’ en définissant la nature de la vérité scientifique, on peut nettement transformer la théorie réalistique cartésienne en théorie idéalistique berkelienne. L'élimination une équivoque dans la conception de certitude de Descartes est crucial à cette transformation. Sans cette équivoque, la distinction cartésienne non-berkelienne entre la sensation et la perception ne peut être défendu. Cette interprétation est évidemment en conflict avec le point de vue standard sur l'attitude de Descartes, comme rationaliste, concernant les sens, mais malgré cela, le texte y apportent un sérieux soutien

Throughout the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant locates his position relative to those of his predecessors and near contemporaries. Save for Spinoza, all the ‘greats’ of the early modern canon put in appearances. But while Kant’s idiom is respectful—Hume is referred to as ‘celebrated’ ; Berkeley is characterised as ‘good’ ; both Locke and Leibniz are called ‘illustrious’ —this ‘language of good will’ recalls Mark Antony’s ‘honourable man’. In fact, the debt Kant acknowledges to the prior toilers is largely negative: the earlier thinkers adhere to views whose correction or rejection enabled Kant to win through to the truth.

Ever ramifying debate over the correct analysis of linguistic representation unfolds against the backdrop of uncontested acceptance as baseline datum, by those aiming to determine the nature of the cognizing subject’s contact with the world, of language as the vehicle of factual packaging of experience. Given the easy two-way traffic in the contemporary lexicon between “concept” and “ word,” the modern reader’s antennae are not attuned to detect doctrinal parti pris when he encounters the mention, in a classical text, of concepts in the course of a treatment of cognition. Kant’s declaration that “[t]he knowledge yielded by understanding, or at least by the human understanding, must…be by means of concepts” will likely be glossed as an archaic variant of the baseline datum. While it does not go unnoticed by those acquainted with the major texts of the tradition that a Descartes and a Hume speak of ideas and not concepts, this is approached, more often than not, as a verbal variant on the common theme. Of course, closer attention to the sources reveals that Kant presents cognition-by-concepts as part of a theory of cognition supplanting the ideational accounts of his predecessors. But subject to a certain amount of textual reform—prophylactic and reconstructive—cognition-by-concepts and cognition-by-ideas continue to be regarded as functional equivalents. The superiority of Kant’s treatment is accordingly evaluated conservatively, as the superiority of a more penetrative analysis.

Does the character called “God” make an essential contribution to the [Hebrew] Bible? So far as religion and religiosity are concerned, the Bible minus the character called “God” is not theoretically incomplete. In other words, the Bible is not at core a theological document. From this it does not however follow that the deity of the Bible is theoretically otiose. The character called “God” plays a role that is indispensable for anthropological reasons. The self-definition and self-understanding of men and women who define and understand themselves as you and I do cannot be accomplished without at least implicit appeal to that role. The key to the theoretical disposition of the Bible is an appreciation of the fact that it is expressly designed to counteract pagan-type views about the nature of men and women and about their position in the wider scheme of things.

Il se peut du point de vue des etudiants qui s'approchent de la position contextuelle de Descartes, qu'il accepte la distinction reelle entre l'esprit et le corps parce qu'il n'a pas percu comment une forme d'explicarion mecanique-materialiste pourrait etre appropriee aux phenomenes psychologiques. Mais on pourrait demander la signification de cette proposition en ce qui concerne le raisonnement de Descartes pour Pactualite du dualisme. Je demontre que son raisonnement dans les Meditations est defectueux relatif a un probleme theorique emanant de 1' argumentation du cogito. Sum est deduit de cogito. Si c'est le cas, pourquoi Descartes pretend-t-il que celui-la est la premiere certitude? Comme j'explique, cogito c'est clair, mais ce n'est pas distinct; mais sum, c'est Pun et l'autre-et, a cause de cela, possede les qualites necessaires. Mais le caractere particulier du sum possede une variete speciale, et le raisonnement subsequent de Descartes que le sujet reflechissant n'est pas materiel echoue de cette ambiguite. Le cartesianisme sans dualisme n'est pas done un cercle sans un centre

Although Western culture draws substantively on Athens and Jerusalem, hostility tends to be shown towards Jerusalem from the philosophical wing. I attempt to correct the imbalance. Philosophy, I argue, arose in the Greek context because of a problem of self‐confidence. ‘Philosophical rationality’ cannot therefore be taken as normative for rationality generally. The contrast between the Jerusalemite and the Athenian views of self and of the contrasting estimates and explanations of the efficacy of the self’s agency is developed through an examination of the main documents of pre‐classical and classical Greece, and the Bible