CHAPTER I. Heidegger: The Reign of the Subject

1999 ◽  
pp. 3-28
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Yumiko Inukai

James contends that the rejection of conjunctive relations in experience leads Hume to the empirically groundless notion of discrete elements of experience, which James takes as the critical point that differentiates his empiricism from Hume’s. In this chapter, I argue that James is not right about this: Hume not only allows but employs experienced conjunctive relations in his explanations for the generation of our naturally held beliefs about the self and the world. There are indeed striking similarities between their accounts: they both use the relations of resemblance, temporal continuity, constancy, coherence, and regularity, and the self. Also, objects are constructed out of basic elements in their systems—pure experience and perceptions, respectively. Although collapsing the inner and outer worlds of the subject and object into one world (of pure experience for James and of perceptions for Hume) may seem unintuitive, this is exactly what allows them to preserve our ordinary sense of our experiences of objects.


1970 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 291-292
Author(s):  
Elzbieta Jastrzębska

The Elements of Logic is conceived as an academic textbook that includes mainly material for a basic course in logic for students. Based on his own reflections as well as national and foreign literature on the subject (authors such as K. Ajdukiewicz, J. Lukasiewicz, T. Kotarbihski, G. Frege, L. Wittgenstein). Dr. Józef Bremer, S.J., presents in the following four chapters systematized knowledge of the problems embraced by the titles of each part of the book. The main aim of the author is the presentation of the problem of deductive reasoning. Another aim of this book is not only to teach how to formalize, but also to show why we generally do formalize. The Elements of Logic is a successful attempt to answer this question. Chapter I contains material related to logic and its understanding. In this chapter the author presents some texts on the historical development of the question: „what is logic about?" He also presents short texts on three related sciences: syntax, semantics and pragmatics.


Author(s):  
Jacques Elfassi

Augustine of Hippo is the most quoted author by Isidore of Seville. Isidore uses Augustine in all his works, without exception, and he knows at least 53 of Augustine’s works. However, Augustine’s presence in Isidore has rarely been studied, probably because scholars were discouraged by the extent of the task. It was only in 2013 that J.C. Martín published two general surveys on the subject, but in spite of their richness they are very brief (four pages each). In this chapter, I outline some lines of research: I give some details about the works of Augustine known to Isidore and I examine some unexpected ways in which the Sevillian used the works of his predecessor.


Author(s):  
Eric R. Scerri

The question of the reduction of chemistry to quantum mechanics has been inextricably linked with the development of the philosophy of chemistry since the field began to develop in the early 1990s. In the present chapter I would like to describe how my own views on the subject have developed over a period of roughly 30 years. A good place to begin might be the frequently cited reductionist dictum that was penned in 1929 by Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. . . . The underlying laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a larger part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that exact applications of these laws lead to equations, which are too complicated to be soluble. (Dirac 1929) . . . These days most chemists would probably comment that Dirac had things backward. It is clear that nothing like “the whole of chemistry” has been mathematically understood. At the same time most would argue that the approximate solutions that are afforded by modern computers are so good as to overcome the fact that one cannot obtain exact or analytical solutions to the Schrödinger equation for many-electron systems. Be that as it may, Dirac’s famous quotation, coming from one of the creators of quantum mechanics, has convinced many people that chemistry has been more or less completely reduced to quantum mechanics. Another quotation of this sort (and one using more metaphorical language) comes from Walter Heitler who together with Fritz London was the first to give a quantum mechanical description of the chemical bond. . . . Let us assume for the moment that the two atomic systems ↑↑↑↑ . . . and ↓↓↓↓ . . . are always attracted in a homopolar manner. We can, then, eat Chemistry with a spoon. (Heitler 1927) . . . Philosophers of science eventually caught up with this climate of reductionism and chose to illustrate their views with the relationship with chemistry and quantum mechanics.


Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz

This chapter focuses on the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States adopted by the UN General Assembly on 12 December 1974. The Charter consists of a preamble and four chapters, the most important of which are Chapter I relating to the fundamentals of international economic relations, and Chapter II on the detailed economic rights and duties of States. Chapter I contains general principles such as the sovereignty and equality of states and other principles, the adoption of which presented few difficulties to members of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). On the other hand, the provisions of Chapter II, particularly article 2, were the subject of hard bargaining in which the negotiating states had to face some of the most controversial problems of international law in the economic field.


1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-406
Author(s):  
J. E. D. Williams

This paper is the first of a series on Air Navigation Systems during the fifty years from the early oceanic flights and the inception of commercial aviation to the introduction of INS in civil aircraft. These papers are intended as critical commentaries. A definitive history has yet to be written. The writer would be grateful to receive criticisms of the paper or comments on the subject.


Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe Bardout

The reception of Descartes in the second half of the seventeenth century took very different forms, which have been the subject of numerous and documented studies. On this subject, we cannot limit ourselves to categories that are too simplistic. Descartes had faithful disciples and resolute adversaries; he also had critical readers, combining admiration and the conviction that his philosophy, as revolutionary as it is, had to be both followed and reformed. The Oratorian Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), who passes for one of the greatest French Cartesians, surely counts among the number of readers who wants to be Cartesian, without however being understood as a disciple of Descartes. Malebranche himself has perfectly expressed the nature of his Cartesianism in declaring, at the end of his first work, the Search after Truth (Recherche de la vérité; 1674–5): “I admit however that I owe to Descartes or to his manner of doing philosophy the opinions that I oppose to his, and the boldness to criticize him.” In this chapter I attempt to clarify the sense of this remarkably ambivalent affirmation with some examples.


Author(s):  
Vlad Strukov

In the final chapter, I am concerned with the confirmation of the subject as a transcendent category in the moment of self-recognition whereby the finite identity is rejected in favour of the infinite Self. Zel’dovich’s The Target employs the sublime as a drama of subject-formation—both as a story of emergence and obliteration—whereby the limits of the self are conceived as a movement away from the self into the topography of solitary subjectivity confronted with open-ended being. The subject becomes an excess of discourse itself, that is, it centres on self-preservation which ensures infinity in stasis. The subject enters the divine state of amnesia after cataclysmic disruptions: the subject is no longer a tyrannous architect of the fallen world but a pre-eminent observer of the unfolding universe. I am particularly interested in the cinematic materiality of the sublime and the immateriality of subjectivity existing outside the temporal framework of history. I centre on issues of scale and amplification as matters of cultural vibration in a post-apocalyptic world. I conclude by demonstrating how Zel’dovich’s The Target with focuses on transient spaces and the epiphany of the universal monad. Thus, this chapter summates the key points presented in the book.


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