Back to 'Things in Themselves': A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism

Politics & Social Sciences

Seifert, Josef

Philosophy

Routledge

In an enlightening dialogue with Descartes, Kant, Husserl and Gadamer, Professor Seifert argues that the original inspiration of phenomenology was nothing other than the primordial insight of philosophy itself, the foundation of philosophia perennis. His radical rethinking of the phenomenological method results in a universal, objectivist philosophy in direct continuity with Plato, Aristotle and Augustine.  In order to validate the classical claim to know autonomous being, the author defends Husserl's methodological principle "Back to things themselves" from empiricist and idealist critics, including the later Husserl, and replies to the arguments of Kant which attempt to discredit the knowability of things in themselves. Originally published in 1982, this book culminates in a phenomenological and critical unfolding of the Augustinian cogito, as giving access to immutable truth about necessary essences and the real existence of personal being.

Back to 'Things in Themselves': A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism (Studies in Phenomenological and Classical Realism)

Routledge& Kegan Paul

Back to 'Things in Themselves' (Routledge Library Editions: Phenomenology)

<p>At all times physicians were bound to pursue not only medical tasks, but to reflect also on the many anthropological and metaphysical aspects of their discipline, such as on the nature of life and death, of health and sickness, and above all on the vital ethical dimensions of their practice. For centuries, almost for two millennia, how ever, those who practiced medicine lived in a relatively clearly defined ethical and implicitly philosophical or religious 'world-order' within which they could safely turn to medical practice, knowing right from wrong, or at least being told what to do and what not to do. Today, however, the situation has radically changed, mainly due to three quite different reasons: First and most obviously, physicians today are faced with a tremendous development of new possibilities and techniques which allow previously unheard of medical interventions (such as cloning, cryo-conservation, ge netic interference, etc. ) which call out for ethical reflection and wise judgment but regarding which there is no legal and medical ethical tradition. Traditional medical education did not prepare physicians for coping with this new brave world of mod em medicine. Secondly, there are the deep philosophical crises and the philosophical diseases of medicine mentioned in the preface that lead to a break-down of firm and formative legal and ethical norms for medical actions.</p>

The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and their Cure: Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Vol. 1: Foundations (Philosophy and Medicine, 82)

Springer

<p>Following an ardent debate in the 1930s on the question over whether something like a “Christian philosophy” exists, as Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and others held, the term was used by many thinkers and rejected by many others, not only by Heidegger who called it a contradiction in terms, an “iron wood,” but also by Thomists who wanted to see philosophy and Christian faith strictly separated. Seifert analyses five understandings of the term “Christian philosophy” which have never been expounded with such clarity and which he rejects for different, partly for opposite, reasons. He presents these senses of Christian philosophy, and his reasons for rejecting them, in clear, straight-forward language. He presents for the first time a series of eleven wholly different and thoroughly positive and fruitful ways of understanding the (rather misleading) term “Christian philosophy.” Identifying and distinguishing these legitimate ways to speak of “Christian philosophy” shed light on the manifold fruitful relations between reason and faith. In a second part of the book, Seifert gives an example of Christian philosophy in the sense of a philosophy of religion that shows the absolute presupposedness and necessity of the existence of human, divine, and angelic free will to make any sense of divine revelation and of Christian (but also of Muslim and Jewish) religion. In a third part, he presents a penetrating analysis of seven indubitable evidences that demonstrate the nature and real existence of human free will (in a so-called “libertarian” sense that rejects the thesis of the compatibility between free will and determinism). The book is introduced by the eminent Thomist philosopher, John Finnis.</p>

Christian Philosophy and Free Will

Religion & Spirituality

St. Augustines Press

From Plato and Aristotle and on to the present, many great philosophers have dealt with the nature of love, which is the most central and profound act of the person. Particularly the philosophy of the twentieth century excelled in this regard, most often inspired by the methods of essential (eidetic) analysis developed and practiced by phenomenology, particularly by realist phenomenology as represented by Max Scheler, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose masterwork, The Nature of Love (St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), was recently published in an excellent English translation, and by Karol Wojtyìa in his profound analysis of love in Love and Responsibility and in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (1987 in Italian, 2006 in a recent translation). One of the key topics of a philosophy of love regards the question whether love is a self-centered act in the service of what Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas regarded as the supreme goal of human life, happiness, to which the beloved person and love would be means, or whether true love is verily an other-centered and other-directed act motivated by the intrinsic value of a person, such that love can truly be called a “value response” – a response to the beloved person for her own sake. According to this last understanding of true love defended in the present work, any hedonistic interpretation of love as springing from a mere desire for pleasure, and also any eudemonistic interpretation of love according to which love would be a mere means to true self-fulfillment and happiness, turn out to be serious misunderstandings of true love. Instead, happiness, however ardently desired by man, is a superabundant fruit of a true love that first turns to the beloved person for her own sake (propter seipsam), and only through a sincere self-donation can reach authentic happiness. The book answers many objections that have been and could be raised against this central thesis about the self-giving and value responding gesture of true love, for example some profound objections raised by Nygren and by Josef Pieper. The book shows the multiple and complex mysterious root of that value and intrinsic goodness of the person that motivates love. He shows that the genuinely self-transcending and self-sacrificing gesture of love is fully compatible with a motivating role, but only with a subordinated and co-motivating role, of happiness in love, while happiness always remains principally and primarily a fruit of true love and self-donation, rather than its motive.

True Love

Discours des Méthodes: The Methods of Philosophy and Realist Phenomenology (Realistische Phänomenologie / Realist Phenomenology, 2)

de Gruyter

Der erste Band des Über die Wahrheit bietet eine philosophische Untersuchung: (1) der intrinischen und extrinsischen Bedeutungen von ""Wahrheit des Seins"" - etwa Seinsautonomie, Realität, Wesensentsprechung, Entsprechung im Verhältnis zur Idee, Intelligibilität, absolut umfassende ""innere Seinswahrheit"". (2) der Wahrheit des Erkennens: Erkenntniswahrheit ist eine eigentümliche seinsentdeckende ""Entsprechung"" von Akten mit allen Arten von Seiendem und Sachverhalten. (3) der logischen Wahrheit als präziser Korrespondenz zwischen Urteil (Satz) und Sachverhalt. (4) Wahrheit ist nicht nur Eigenschaft der von Menschen gedachten Urteile, sondern setzt ideale, zeitlose, unendlich viele und perfekte Begriffe und Urteilsinhalte voraus. (5) Die Beziehung zwischen Wahrheit und Person gipfelt in dem letzten metaphysischen Zusammenfallen der Wahrheit selbst in allen ihren Dimensionen ontologischer, epistemologischer, axiologischer und logischer Dimensionen mit dem absoluten, personalen Sein.: ""Ich bin die Wahrheit"". Dieses ""personale Gesicht"" der Wahrheit kann aber unmöglich das eines bloßen Menschen sein.

Wahrheit und Person: Vom Wesen der Seinswahrheit, Erkenntniswahrheit und Urteilswahrheit (Realistische Phänomenologie / Realist Phenomenology, 4) (German Edition)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Walter de Gruyter

Der Streit um die Wahrheit richtet sich vor allem gegen die Fassung der Urteilswahrheit als einer ""Übereinstimmung mit den Sachen"". Eine kritische Analyse der Einwände verschiedenster alternativer Wahrheitstheorien (Evidenztheorie, Kohärenztheorie, Konsens- und Diskurstheorie, pragmatische Wahrheitstheorien, existentialistisch-heideggerianische, Jasper'sche, wittgensteinianische und andere) überwindet die Einwände gegen die klassische Korrespondenztheorie durch einen vertieften Begriff des Sachverhalts. Auch in der Verteidigung der Korrespondenztheorie durch Tarski, Popper, Albert und andere neuere Verfechter müssen diverse Mängel überwunden werden, um zu erkennen, daß sich jene schlichte Urgegebenheit der Urteilswahrheit aus keinem Teilbereich der nicht-formalisierten Sprache und des unermeßlichen Reiches des Seins, ja nicht einmal aus der Sphäre des Nichts verdrängen oder durch etwas von Korrespondenz (Adäquatio) Verschiedenes ersetzen läßt.

Der Streit um die Wahrheit: Wahrheit und Wahrheitstheorien (Realistische Phänomenologie / Realist Phenomenology, 5) (German Edition)

Reference

Heitere Philosophie: Philosophieren mit Johann Nestroy - dem witzigsten österreichischen Philosophen

Patrimonium Aachen

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