(Realism and Relativism)

Table of Contents

The book tracks the tensions between realism and constructivism in the works of Willard Quine, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Nelson Goodman and Richard Rorty. Although the author favors realism, the arguments of the aforementioned philosophers provoke him to take anti-realist stance seriously, though he ultimately rejects it. As the book unfolds, the following questions, amongst others, are raised: Depends the existence of giraffes on people? Created Goodman the "worst argument in the world"? Can we observe the world from the perspective of the God's eye? Can we put off all concepts and words? Is one capable of mapping the surrounding world exactly?

(The "Middle" Wittgenstein: the way to phenomenology and back again.)

Table of Contents

The book examines some of the key issues which exercised Wittgenstein during his 'transitory period', and tracks their transformation so as to find the roots of the pragmatic and holistic turning away from the Tractarian philosophy of language.

(Freedom and Cultivation in Hegel)

Table of Contents

Chotaš co-edited the volume and prepared it for publication. Karásek contributed to it.

For Hegel, the term 'Bildung' (culture/cultivation) refers to the formative self-develop ment of mind or spirit (Geist), regarded as a social and historical process. Bildung is part of the life process of a spiritual entity: a human being, a society, a historical tradition. As such it is therefore also a process of liberation, in which the freedom of spirit is vindicated over the mere positivity of what is given in nature.

("„Practical" Being: On Heidegger's Complete Concept of Being in Being and Time"). In: Lang, S. - Ulrichs, L. (eds.), Subjektivität und Autonomie. Praktische Selbstverhältnisse in der klassischen deutschen Philosophie.

Table of Contents

The study focuses on Heidegger's notion of being and ontology at the time of Being and Time. It is based primarily on Heidegger's lectures in the years 1927–1929, in which he developed the topics which he originally planned for, but in the end left unpublished in Being and Time, such as the part "Time and being", which came to form the systematic core of his ontology.

("Heidegger and Kant's Concept of World". In: Bacin, S. (ed.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. Vol. 5.

The article deals with Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's concept of the world, developed in the period after Being and Time. It argues that one can demonstrate the extent to which Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's philosophy is systematically influenced by the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. The article hopes to determine more precisely the focus of Heidegger's philosophy in the period after Being and Time.

(David Hume: Dialogues on Natural Religion)

Table of Contents

Dialogues on natural religion are Hume's most important contribution to the philosophy of religion and one of the key modern texts in this field. The theme of the book are the theses of the so-called natural religion, which complement the principles and precepts of "revealed" religion. Through the medium of envisaged conversations between three educated friends, Hume examines the foundations of religious belief and the extent of its rational justification. He develops a critique of some of the traditional arguments for God's existence, especially of the argument from design, the detailed analysis of which takes up a large part of the text. In the work Hume also deals with other important traditional issues in philosophy of religion, among them the problem of evil in the world. Translation of the work is accompanied by a study of the translator ("Hume on God and religion"), explanatory notes.

Table of Contents

This book argues that the Cartesian mind has been widely misunderstood, in being typically treated as simply the subject of phenomenal consciousness, and ignoring its fundamentally intellectual character. The author argues that this interpretation has gone hand in hand with a misreading of Descartes' method of doubt which treats it as all-inclusive and universal in scope. In fact, the sceptical arguments of the First Meditation aim to lead the mind away from the senses and towards the intellectual 'notions' that the mind has within it, and which are never the subject of doubt. The author also places Descartes' concept of mind into the wider setting of his science of nature, arguing that Descartes wished to reveal a mental subject that would able to comprehend the new physics necessitated by Copernicus' heliocentrism.

In the paper I question some of the claims made by Professor Searle about external realism, a position I accept. I briefly sum up Searle's position, and then proceed to the mentioned critique. The particular target of my paper is Searle's claim that external realist is to shun commitment to any particular ontology. I also point out that Searle's external realism is in some respects difficult to disentangle from ontological constructivism, a position incompatible with external realism. The paper concludes with an apology for the idea of a "Privileged Conceptual Scheme" that Searle views as misguided.

Searle's reply online

The articles argues that with respect to the issue of causality we should distinguish between an 'early Hume' and a 'mature Hume'. In his early period, represented by The Treatise, Hume had not yet adopted the Newtonian active principles. In the mature period, however, represented in particular by The First Enquiry, his theory of causation has been transformed by a reception of Newton. This leads Hume to drop the condition of contiguity, which had excluded action-at-a-distance in The Treatise. It also leads him to allow real necessary connexions in nature though they are inaccessible to us, just as the real cause of gravitation was thought by the Newtonians to be unknowable for the human mind.