Leemon B. McHenry
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474400343
- eISBN:
- 9781474416108
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400343.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
What kinds of things are events? Battles, explosions, accidents, crashes, rock concerts would be typical examples of events and these would be reinforced in the way we speak about the world. Events ...
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What kinds of things are events? Battles, explosions, accidents, crashes, rock concerts would be typical examples of events and these would be reinforced in the way we speak about the world. Events or actions function linguistically as verbs and adverbs. Philosophers following Aristotle have claimed that events are dependent on substances such as physical objects and persons. But with the advances of modern physics, some philosophers and physicists have argued that events are the basic entities of reality and what we perceive as physical bodies are just very long events spread out in space-time. In other words, everything turns out to be events. This view, no doubt, radically revises our ordinary common sense view of reality, but as our event theorists argue common sense is out of touch with advancing science. In The Event Universe: The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Leemon McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a more adequate basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead’s theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as another key proponent of this theory, W. V. Quine. In this manner, McHenry defends the naturalized and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century.Less
What kinds of things are events? Battles, explosions, accidents, crashes, rock concerts would be typical examples of events and these would be reinforced in the way we speak about the world. Events or actions function linguistically as verbs and adverbs. Philosophers following Aristotle have claimed that events are dependent on substances such as physical objects and persons. But with the advances of modern physics, some philosophers and physicists have argued that events are the basic entities of reality and what we perceive as physical bodies are just very long events spread out in space-time. In other words, everything turns out to be events. This view, no doubt, radically revises our ordinary common sense view of reality, but as our event theorists argue common sense is out of touch with advancing science. In The Event Universe: The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Leemon McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a more adequate basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead’s theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as another key proponent of this theory, W. V. Quine. In this manner, McHenry defends the naturalized and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century.
John Llewelyn
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474408943
- eISBN:
- 9781474416030
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408943.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
The Early Mediaeval Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus shook traditional doctrines of logical universality and logical particularity by arguing for a metaphysics of ‘formal ...
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The Early Mediaeval Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus shook traditional doctrines of logical universality and logical particularity by arguing for a metaphysics of ‘formal distinction’. Why did the Nineteenth Century poet and self-styled philosopher Gerard Manley Hopkins find this revolutionary teaching so appealing?
John Llewelyn answers this question by casting light on various neologisms introduced by Hopkins and reveals how Hopkins endorses Scotus’s claim that being and existence are grounded in doing and willing.
Drawing on modern respon
ses to Scotus made by Heidegger, Peirce, Arendt, Leibniz, Hume, Reid, Derrida and Deleuze, Llewelyn’s own response shows by way of bonus why it would be a pity to suppose that the rewards of reading Scotus and Hopkins are available only to those who share their theological presuppositionsLess
The Early Mediaeval Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus shook traditional doctrines of logical universality and logical particularity by arguing for a metaphysics of ‘formal distinction’. Why did the Nineteenth Century poet and self-styled philosopher Gerard Manley Hopkins find this revolutionary teaching so appealing?
John Llewelyn answers this question by casting light on various neologisms introduced by Hopkins and reveals how Hopkins endorses Scotus’s claim that being and existence are grounded in doing and willing.
Drawing on modern respon
ses to Scotus made by Heidegger, Peirce, Arendt, Leibniz, Hume, Reid, Derrida and Deleuze, Llewelyn’s own response shows by way of bonus why it would be a pity to suppose that the rewards of reading Scotus and Hopkins are available only to those who share their theological presuppositions
Ridvan Askin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474414562
- eISBN:
- 9781474426947
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474414562.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
What is narrative? Ridvan Askin answers this question by bringing together aesthetics, contemporary North American fiction, Gilles Deleuze, narrative theory and the recent speculative turn. Through ...
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What is narrative? Ridvan Askin answers this question by bringing together aesthetics, contemporary North American fiction, Gilles Deleuze, narrative theory and the recent speculative turn. Through this process he develops a transcendental empiricist concept of narrative. Against the established consensus of narrative theory he argues for an understanding of narrative as fundamentally nonhuman, unconscious and expressive. Narrative and Becoming provides close readings of a number of contemporary North American fictions, most prominently Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986), Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (1999) and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), showcasing their genuine metaphysical quality.Less
What is narrative? Ridvan Askin answers this question by bringing together aesthetics, contemporary North American fiction, Gilles Deleuze, narrative theory and the recent speculative turn. Through this process he develops a transcendental empiricist concept of narrative. Against the established consensus of narrative theory he argues for an understanding of narrative as fundamentally nonhuman, unconscious and expressive. Narrative and Becoming provides close readings of a number of contemporary North American fictions, most prominently Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986), Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (1999) and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), showcasing their genuine metaphysical quality.
Kant's Aesthetic Epistemology
Julia Kristeva and Feminist Thought
Deleuze and History
Difficult Atheism
The Myth of Evil
The Lesser Evil
The Inner Life of a Rational Agent
The World, the Flesh and the Subject
Deleuze and Cinema
