Oded Balaban

The aim of craft-analogies in Plato's early dialogues is to put forward a theory of knowledge in which only the content of intentional processes can be known. I will argue that, with this goal in mind, Plato offers an idea of craft that differs from, and is even opposed to the views of his time, as well as to those of our own day, by changing the prevailing definition of craft—from the expertise of means to the expertise of ends. I will address the far-reaching consequences of this shift. Part 1 will expose what I understand by Plato's approach to craft. Part 2 will expose Plato's denial of the actual existence of the process of knowledge reducing it to its object or reference. Part 3 will address what I think are misinterpretations of Plato approach. Part 4 will present some textual evidence. And in Part 5 I will analyse Plato's shuttle-analogy, the more sophisticated of his craft-analogies. Finally, I will append a critical note on Terence Irwin's understanding of virtue as craft-knowledge.

This paper seeks to exhibit and explain, by way of comparison, two ideal kinds of knowledge: knowledge based on classifications according to genera and species, as in Aristotelianism and common sense, and scientific knowledge based on the application of laws of nature. I will proceed by attempting (1) to determine the role that presuppositions play in knowledge in general by means of the distinction between content and form; (2) to describe and explain the main features of both ideal forms of knowledge; and, finally, (3) to analyze the relation between these two forms of knowledge as it is presented in Eddington's celebrated discussion of the “two tables”. I will be critical of the widespread view that modern science is the correct form of knowledge, and that common sense is merely an illusion.

In the passage from the Enneads devoted to discussing and defining the nature of time, it is written that first one must experience eternity, which, as everyone knows, is the model and archetype of time. This initial warning, which is especially serious because we trust in its sincerity, appears to wipe out all hope of finding common ground with its author.Jorge Luis Borges, History of EternitySo let us leave the Platonists to wander off down a blind alley. Poor simpletons, they think they will find the secret of discourse about time in the link with eternity. Whereas I, who am powerless in the face of eternity, would prefer to ask: what link can be retained, in discourse about time, between past, present, and future? If there is some link, can the three kinds of time break free of their mutual bonds? Can predicting the future, a time that will be but has never existed before, be disconnected from what determines the future as a product of what already exists and what has already existed? Can the past be what it once was or will it always be what each age decides it should have been?

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?

Mind and World. By John McDowell. 191 pp. n.p.g. Art and the French Commune: Imagining Paris after War and Revolution. By Albert Boime The Princeton Series in Nineteenth‐Century Art, Culture and Society xv + 234 pp. $19.95, £14.95 paper. Individual Choice and the Structures of History: Alexis de Tocqueville as Historian Reappraised. By Harvey Mitchell 290 pp. $54.95, £35.00 cloth. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. By Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, 2d ed.. 190pp., $12.95 paper. The European Commission: Leadership, Organisation and Culture in the EU Administration. By Michelle Cini xii + 244 pp $24.95 cloth. The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations. By Barbara Abou‐El‐Haj, xviii + 456 pp. £18.95 paperback. Between Tradition and Modernity: Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, Ahad Ha‐Am, and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identity. By David H. Weinberg, x + 385 pp., n.p.g. Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth‐century England. By Kevin Gilmartin Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 21, pp. xiv and 274. $59.95/£35.00 cloth. Social Functions of Literature: Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture. By Paul Debreczeny xvi + 282 pp. £30. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945 By Mike Hawkins x + 344 pp. £19.95/$27.95 paper, £45.00/$69.95 cloth. Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan, The Veiled Woman in Jung's Circle. By Claire Douglas. 398 pp. $16.95, £11.95 paper. The Mammoth and the Mouse: Microhistory and Morphology. By Florike Egmond and Peter Mason. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). XIII + 245 pp. n.p.g. Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936. By Bruce L. McCormack, xviii + 499 pp. £19.99 paper. Four Neglected Essays by Immanuel Kant. By Stephen Palmquist,, 121 pp. paper, n.p.g. The Tree of Philosophy. By Stephen Palmquist 210 pp. $35.00 HK cloth, $4.50 HK paper. Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Poetry. By Theresa Tinkle Figurai, Reading Medieval Culture, 294 pp. $39.50, £35.00 cloth. Portals, Pilgrimage, and Crusade in Western Tuscany. By Dorothy F. Glass, xvii + 145 pp $39.50/£35.00 cloth. Psychoanalysis, Historiography, and Feminist Theory: The Search for Critical Method. By Katherine Kearns, xii + 171 pp. $54.95/£35.00 cloth $17.95/£12.95 paper. Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World. By Peter Brown, xiii + 91 pp. £6.95, $9.95 paper. Order in the Twilight. By Bernhard Waidenfels; translated and edited by David J. Parent, xxvi + 179 pp. $36.95/£34.95 cloth. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866. By Thomas Nipperdey. Translated by Daniel Nolan 760 pp. $69.95 hardcover. Proudhon and His Age. By John Ehrenberg,, ix + 184 p. $45.00 cloth. To Live Together: Shaping New Attitudes to Peace Through Education. Edited by Daniel S. Halpérin, Studies in Comparative Education, vii + 186 pp. n.p.g. paper. Trade Unions and Democratic Participation in Europe: A Scenario for the 21st Century. Edited by Gerard Kester and Henry Pinaud, xiv + 296 pp. £40.00 cloth. Ontological Arguments and Belief in God. By Graham Oppy, xvii + 376 pp. £40.00, $59.95 cloth. Modernité et morale. By Charles Larmore 257pp. 160 FF paper. Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought. By Annabel S. Brett, xii + 254 pp. $59.95/£35.00 cloth. Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge. By Maryanne Cline Horowitz xviii + 373 pp. $49.50, £37.50 cloth. Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. By Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. Translated and Edited by Albert Rabil, Jr. xxxii + 109 pp. $33.00/£26.50 cloth $10.00/£11.25 paper. The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800. By Conor Cruise O'Brien, xvii + 367 pp. $29.95/£23.95 cloth. Women in Russia and Ukraine. Edited by Rosalind Marsh xvii + 350pp. $69.95/£55.00 cloth $27.95/£19.95 paper. Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan. By Gilbert D. Chaitin xii + 278 pp. $54.95/£35.00 cloth $17.95/ £12.95 paper. White Heat: People and Technology. By Carroll Pursell, 224 pp. $18.00 paper. Isaiah Berlin. By John Gray 189 pp. $ 13.95 paper. Tory Radicalism: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and the Transformation of Modern Britain, 1979–1997. By Earl A. Reitan x + 222 pp. $23.95 paper. Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. By Maria Tatar 213 pp. $14.95, £12.50 paper. Crafting the Third World: Theorizing Underde‐velopment in Rumania and Brazil. By Joseph L. Love xvi + 348 pp. £50.00 cloth, £16.95 paper. The Austro‐Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866. By Geoffrey Wawro xiii + 313 pp. £40.00/$59.95 cloth. Harmonious Tensions: The Writings of Friedrich Schiller. By Steven D. Martinson 448 pp. $55.00. Early Modern Liberalism. By Annabel Patterson ix + 314 pp. $49.95/£35.00 cloth.

The ontological argument--first proposed by St. Anselm and subsequently deveIoped 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 seIected 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. In this paper we attempt 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

The ontological arguments (OA) discussion is about the relations between essence and existence, and between analytic and synthetic judgments. Rationalists asserts that essence determines existence. Empiricists assert that existence cannot be deduced from thought. However, both made the error of disconnecting the objective existence of God from subjective thought about Him. We propose to demonstrate two interconnected theses: A) In the course of its historical development, the OA did not manage to refute empiricist critiques. B) His existence is only partial, since a full existence needs two sources; an idea and a sense-datum.(edited)

Bentham argues that Nature has placed mankind under the governance of pain and pleasure. They determine what we ought to do, as well as what we shall do. Bentham tries to answer two different questions. The first is whether people are actually looking for pleasure. It is a cognitive question about human nature, formulated at a meta-ethical level. The second is whether people ought to look for pleasure. The question is formulated on the ethical level and Bentham asserts that people ought to look for pleasure. In the first case, Bentham is a partner in a non-normative meta-ethical discussion about the character of human values. In the second case, he is not a partner and he is not making statements about facts. Is Bentham aware that the answer to one question does not necessarily imply the answer to the other?

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.

THE aim of this paper is to explain a paradox in Plato's philosophy. On the one hand, Plato reduces virtue to knowledge; on the other, he rejects the possibility of knowledge or at least has serious doubts that it exists. I shall propose in this paper that the definition of virtue as knowledge is a logical outcome of Plato's denial of the particular aspect of knowledge as cognitive relation. This paper may also be considered as an attempt to resolve the Hintikka‐Santas polemic about whether there is a difference in Plato's philosophy between the function of knowledge and its object. ([3], [6] pp. 1–71). The first part of this paper consists in a critical exposition of Plato's rejection of cognitive relation as a function of knowledge. The second part is devoted to an account of Plato's assumptions in this regard. In the third section of the paper I shall show how, on the basis of these assumptions, Plato reduces virtue to knowledge. And finally, in the last section of the essay, I shall compare my interpretation of this issue with other modern interpretations, especially those of Gerasimos Santas and Jaakko Hintikka.