2018-02Thematic Section
Recognition and Diagnosis from the Perspective of an Anthropological Philosophy of Culture

18/07/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/4718

Abstract: The aim of my article is to analyze the concepts and phenomena of diagnosis and recognition, often considered to be semantically identical. While in psychiatric practice such an identity does not necessarily have adverse effects, in the anthropological and cultural domains identification of diagnosis and recognition may cause stigmatization, or other undesirable consequences. The article attempts…

Jan Molina

2018-02Thematic Section
Consciousness, Culture, and the Brain

18/07/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/4719

Abstract: Human consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the brain but also in an external network, a symbolic system. This symbolic system is defined as an exocerebrum. The exocerebrum is a system of artificial cultural prostheses that substitute functions the brain cannot carry out through exclusively biological means. The exocerebrum is a symbolic system…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
Why We Are Not “Persons”

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3912

Abstract: To the question “What are we?”, the common-sense answer is “human beings”; but many philosophers prefer to say we are “persons”. This paper argues that the philosophical use of “person” (to mean, roughly, a conscious, rational agent) is problematic. It takes us away from the sound Aristotelian idea that our biological nature is essential…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
Finding Our Way Back to the Personal through Etymology

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3913

Abstract: Modernity has made “person” a problematic term. By tracing the etymology of several common words whose origin pre-dates the scientific revolution – “intend,” “know,” “moment,” “deliberate,” and “true” – we can discern some of the sensibilities upon which a systematic recovery of the personal might best be based. DOWNLOAD PDF Keywords: etymology, person, pre-scientific…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
From Mythology to Ethics: Seeking an Escape from Ontology in the Eschatologies of Berdyaev and Lévinas

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3914

Abstract: The radical reformulation of Western philosophy proposed by Emmanuel Lévinas is the move beyond knowledge and being to ethics as metaphysics. For Lévinas this is accomplished as an escape, an evasion of being. Lévinas saw the story of Western philosophy as a tale that Being emanated, created, etc. an illusory pluralism that it will eventually…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
Reflective Judgment and Symbolic Functions: On the Possibility of a Phenomenology of Person

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3915

Abstract: The following paper seeks to examine whether, from the standpoint of a transcendental idealist, it is possible to have a phenomenology that can adequately disclose the nature and activity of person. First I establish that symbols are intuitive concretizations of the activity of person/Geist, and thus symbols are available to phenom- enological description. Then I raise…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
Syntheses Solution: Untangling Bergson’s and Husserl’s Temporal Ontologies

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3916

Abstract: It seems uncontroversial that persons have a particular ontology, and a temporal ontology at that. Yet attempting to “unpack” the intimate relation between the being of a person and time often leaves one frustrated and perplexed. Both Edmund Husserl and Henri Bergson are explicitly concerned with the manner in which persons experience and understand time…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
John Macmurray on the “Personal” as Involving a “Practical Contradiction” and Why It Matters

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3917

Abstract: Macmurray replaces the traditional philosophical standpoint of subject-as-thinker with self-as-agent, and only persons are agents. The unit of the personal is “I-and-you”; I become “I” when I distinguish myself from “not-I”, namely, “you”. Awareness of the negative begins in babyhood, as I learns I am dependent on a relationship with an Other who can fail to fulfil my needs. The…

Jan Molina

2018-01Thematic Section
Scheler and the Very Existence of the Impersonal

27/04/2018  / 
DOI: 10.26319/3918

Abstract: Usually philosophers worry about the existence of mind, or consciousness, or persons, or other difficult-to-explain phenomena. Having posited matter or nature, or fields, they wonder where can person or consciousness originate? This kind of thinking is backward. Only persons ask such questions. Persons exist. I turn the tables on the traditional problem of person by asking whether anything…

Jan Molina

2017-02Thematic Section
Understanding the Concept of Gift in Economics: Contributions from Other Social Sciences

15/12/2017  / 
DOI: 10.26319/2911

Abstract: In putting forth a view of economic agents as autonomous individuals driven by self-interest, mainstream economics precludes the possibility of gift. Gift could be found in non-market, “collectivist”, societies, where “informal” norms would include gift-giving. In this context, the paper argues that mainstream views regarding the impossibility of the concept of gift are inaccurate, via an…

Przemysław Bursztyka