•  3
    Dieser Aufsatz untersucht den Begriff der moralischen Exemplarität und geht davon aus, dass unsere Moral durch moralische Exemplare − paradigmatische Beispiele tugendhafter Personen oder Handlungen − untermauert wird. Theoretische Grundsätze der moralischen Exemplarität werden in historischen und zeitgenössischen Kontexten untersucht, darunter die Philosophien von Platon, Aristoteles, die stoische und christliche Ethik sowie neuere Arbeiten von Alexandro Ferrara und Linda Zagzebski. Der Aufsatz …Read more
  •  59
    This essay explores the notion of moral exemplarity, positing that our morality is underpinned by moral exemplars – paradigmatic examples of virtuous individuals or actions. Theoretical precepts of moral exemplarity are explored across historical and contemporary contexts, including the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Stoic and Christian ethics, and recent works of Alexandro Ferrara and Linda Zagzebski. This essay debates the necessity of moral exemplars, the intrinsic moral and epistemic exem…Read more
  •  68
    I argue that Kripke’s apparent disagreement with Wittgenstein’s claims about the Standard Meter is based on two different ways of fixing reference. Kripke proposes that “meter” rigidly refers to the length that the Standard Meter has at time t0. This length is an abstract object postulated by the theory of absolute space. Wittgenstein, in contrast, seems to presuppose that “meter” rigidly refers to the Standard Meter. Both ways of fixing reference have their advantages and disadvantages. Yet Wit…Read more
  •  6
    Česká filosofie, Wittgenstein a umělá inteligence
    Reflexe: Filosoficky Casopis 2023 (64): 133-148. 2023.
    Interview of David Rozen with Jakub Mácha.
  •  304
    This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, nece…Read more
  •  143
    Robert Saudek, a Czech graphologist, journalist, diplomat, playwright, and novelist, was heavily influenced in his youth by Fritz Mauthner’s critique of language. Saudek later became a pioneer in the field of psychological graphology. In this article, I examine the impact of Mauthner’s critique on Saudek’s work and evaluate whether Saudek’s approach to graphology aligns with Mauthner’s ideas. I argue that, although Saudek’s graphology is rooted in Mauthner’s critique of experimental psychology, …Read more
  •  2
    Language Meets and Measures Reality
    In Jesús Padilla Gálvez & Margit Gaffal (eds.), Doubtful Certainties: Language-Games, Forms of Life, Relativism, De Gruyter. pp. 121-128. 2012.
  •  2
    Art as Institution and Expression
    In Jesús Padilla Gálvez & Margit Gaffal (eds.), Forms of Life and Language Games, De Gruyter. pp. 197-208. 2011.
  •  274
    Hegel and Wittgenstein on God at the Beginning of the World
    Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofía 49 89-100. 2022.
    I argue that Hegel and Wittgenstein, each in their own specific way, used the idea of God at the beginning of creation as a complex analogy for other kinds of beginning, most notably the beginning of philosophical thought. Hegel’s Logic describes God’s mind before the creation of the world, i.e. God’s pure thinking. For a philosopher, beginning afresh means resolving to consider this kind of abstraction from the existence of the world. Wittgenstein, by contrast, says that the idea of a creator o…Read more
  •  345
    This book offers an original philosophical perspective on exemplarity. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s later work and Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, it argues that examples are not static entities but rather oscillate between singular and universal moments. There is a broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and universal concepts or norms. In the first part of the book, Mácha contends that there is a kind of différance between singular examples and general exempla…Read more
  •  543
    Both Hegel and the later Wittgenstein were concerned with the problem of how to begin speculation, or the problem of beginning. I argue that despite many differences, there are surprising similarities between their thinking about the beginning. They both consider different kinds of beginnings and combine them into complex analogies. The beginning has a subjective and an objective moment. The philosophizing subject has to begin with something, with an object. For Hegel, the objective moment is pu…Read more
  •  5
    Analytické teorie metafory: III. Nekognitivní teorie D. Davidsona
    Studia Philosophica 68 (1): 41-57. 2021.
  •  360
    Beispiel / By-Play in Hegel’s Writings
    Verifiche: Rivista Trimestrale di Scienze Umane 49 (1-2): 227-241. 2020.
    In the sense-certainty chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, we find one of Hegel’s famous puns, which utilizes homophonic affinities and differences between the verb beiherspielen and the noun Beispiel. I argue that the effect of this pun is that the word Beispiel acquires, beyond its usual meaning of ‘example’ or ‘instance’, the meaning of a play of something inessential, a play in passing. After reviewing all available translations into English, I suggest that, in order to preserve this wor…Read more
  •  326
    Understanding Hegel's account of particularity has proven to be anything but straightforward. Two main accounts of particularity have been advanced: the particular as an example or instance and the particular as a subjective perspective on a universal concept. The problem with these accounts is that they reduce particularity either to singularity or to universality. As Derrida's analyses make apparent, the ‘structure of exemplarity’ in Hegel is quite intricate. Hegel uses ‘example’ in three sens…Read more
  •  9
    Analytické teorie metafory
    Studia Philosophica 67 (1): 23-29. 2020.
    Předložená trojdílná série představuje základní teorie metafory v analytické filosofii: V první části v minulém čísle časopisu1 byly prezentovány počátky interakční teorie u I. A. Richardse, jak ji podal v knize The Philosophy of Rhetorics. Tato druhá část osvětluje dnes již klasické podání inter­akční teorie u M. Blacka. Třetí část představí kritiku interakční teorie od D. Davidsona a jeho kauzální teorii.
  •  621
    The Logic of Exemplarity
    Law and Literature (online first): 1-15. forthcoming.
    The topic of exemplarity has attracted considerable interest in philosophy, legal theory, literary studies and art recently. There is broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and general concepts or norms. The aim of this article is to provide an additional perspective on the logic of exemplarity. First, inspired by Jacques Derrida’s discussion of exemplarity, I shall argue that there is a kind of différance between (singular) examples and (general) exemplars. What…Read more
  •  3
    A paradox, according to Wittgenstein, is something surprising that is taken out of its context. Thus, one way of dealing with paradoxical sentences is to imagine the missing context of use. Wittgenstein formulates what I call the paradigm paradox: ‘one sentence can never describe the paradigm in another, unless it ceases to be a paradigm.’ There are several instances of this paradox scattered throughout Wittgenstein’s writings. I argue that this paradox is structurally equivalent to Russell’s pa…Read more
  •  487
    Slavoj Žižek, "Sex and the Failed Absolute" (review)
    Philosophy in Review 40 (2): 88-90. 2020.
    Review of Slavoj Žižek, "Sex and the Failed Absolute"
  •  423
    Zusammenfassung: Gegenstand der Arbeit ist das Konzept der metaphorischen Be-deutung, soweit dessen Ursprung in der analytischen Philosophie zu finden ist. In der Ein-leitung der Untersuchung werden jedoch auch ältere Theorien der Metapher vorgestellt, die aus der Perspektive der metaphorischen Bedeutung relevant sind oder als relevant be-trachtet werden können. Allen diesen Theorien liegt die Definition zugrunde, dass in der Metapher etwas als etwas anderes …Read more
  •  13
    Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 70 (279): 435-437. 2020.
    Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology. By Venturinha Nuno.
  •  531
    Arnošt Kolman’s Critique of Mathematical Fetishism
    with Jan Zouhar
    In Radek Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Springer. pp. 135-150. 2020.
    Arnošt Kolman (1892–1979) was a Czech mathematician, philosopher and Communist official. In this paper, we would like to look at Kolman’s arguments against logical positivism which revolve around the notion of the fetishization of mathematics. Kolman derives his notion of fetishism from Marx’s conception of commodity fetishism. Kolman is aiming to show the fact that an entity (system, structure, logical construction) acquires besides its real existence another formal existence. Fetishism means t…Read more
  •  15
    The present book has the following structure: it proceeds chronologically in its main outline. Part II summarizes the philosophical background against which the distinction between internal and external relations emerged. Hegel and Bradley are addressed in Chapter 4. Russell and Moore—Wittgenstein's direct teachers—are the subject of Chapter 5. Part III is devoted to Wittgenstein's early writings. Chapter 6 distills the definition of the notions of internal and external relations from these text…Read more
  •  1467
    Introduction: Hegel, Wittgenstein, Identity, Difference
    In Jakub Mácha & Alexander Berg (eds.), Wittgenstein and Hegel: Reevaluation of Difference, De Gruyter. pp. 1-21. 2019.
    We cannot but begin this volume with Wittgenstein’s famous remark that “Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different.” (MDC: p.157) This is, however, a casual remark, and it seems that we should not put too much emphasis on it. (For a discussion of how the remark should properly be understood, see Chapter 20.) In compiling this collection of essays we adop…Read more
  •  466
    I provide a distinctively Wittgensteinian interpretation of Hegel’s Subjective Logic, including the parts on the concept, the judgement and the syllogism. I argue that Wittgenstein implicitly recognised the moments of universality, particularity and individuality; moreover, he was sensitive to Hegel’s crucial distinction between abstract and concrete universals. More specifically, for Wittgenstein the moment of particularity has the status of a paradigmatic sample which mediates between a univer…Read more
  •  469
    A paradox, according to Wittgenstein, is something surprising that is taken out of its context. Thus, one way of dealing with paradoxical sentences is to imagine the missing context of use. Wittgenstein formulates what I call the paradigm paradox: ‘one sentence can never describe the paradigm in another, unless it ceases to be a paradigm.’ (PG, p.346) There are several instances of this paradox scattered throughout Wittgenstein’s writings. I argue that this paradox is structurally equivalent to …Read more
  •  882
    Metaphor in Analytic Philosophy and Cognitive Science
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 75 (4): 2247-2286. 2019.
    This article surveys theories of metaphor in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. In particular, it focuses on contemporary semantic, pragmatic and non-cognitivist theories of linguistic metaphor and on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory advanced by George Lakoff and his school. Special attention is given to the mechanisms that are shared by nearly all these approaches, i.e. mechanisms of interaction and mapping between conceptual domains. Finally, the article discusses several recent attempts…Read more
  •  24
    Wittgenstein and Hegel: Reevaluation of Difference (edited book)
    with Alexander Berg
    De Gruyter. 2019.
    This book brings together for the first time two philosophers from different traditions and different centuries. While Wittgenstein was a focal point of 20th century analytic philosophy, it was Hegel’s philosophy that brought the essential discourses of the 19th century together and developed into the continental tradition in 20th century. This now-outdated conflict took for granted Hegel’s and Wittgenstein’s opposing positions and is being replaced by a continuous progression and differentiatio…Read more
  •  11
    Review of Kuusela, Oskari. Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy: Re-examining the Roots and Development of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
  •  296
    Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language (edited book)
    with Sebastian Sunday Grève
    Palgrave Macmillan. 2016.
    This volume is the first to focus on a particular complex of questions that have troubled Wittgenstein scholarship since its very beginnings. The authors re-examine Wittgenstein’s fundamental insights into the workings of human linguistic behaviour, its creative extensions and its philosophical capabilities, as well as his creative use of language. It offers insight into a variety of topics including painting, politics, literature, poetry, literary theory, mathematics, philosophy of language, ae…Read more