Subject collection: Philosophy (254 titles, 1969–2015)

In this reader, 19 articles have been collected that bring out the central position of John Wilkins and his Essay Toward a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668) in the history of ideas in 17th-century Britain.

Reprint of the original Latin text Tentamina semiologica, sive quaedam generalem theoriam signorum spectantia (1789), edited, translated and with an Introduction by Robert E. Innis The 33 sections of this classic text by Hoffbauer have a twofold focus: a descriptive inventory of signs, and a comparison of the expressive and cognitive powers of different sign systems. Using his sign typology as a point of departure, Hoffbauer inquires into the elements of matter and form both necessary and adequate to arrive at a definition of the sign. His purpose in doing so is to present his own version of a general sign theory after pointing out significant errors and weaknesses in the characteristicae universalis of Leibniz, Becher, Toennis, Kalmar, etc. Against the background of criticism of the contemporary deductive sign theories of Lambert, Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Daries, Wilkins, Kircher and others, Hoffbauer's general semiology gives shape to an outline of a deductive-hypothetical theory of signs. In this historical perspective, Hoffbauer's semiology is of outstanding importance and provides the opportunity to think through once again central and permanent problems of the general science of signs.

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) is een invloedrijke Amerikaanse wetenschapsfilosoof. Hij is de grondlegger het van semiotisch pragmatisme, een tegenhanger van het structuralisme van Ferdinand de Saussure.De filosofie van Peirce gaat er vanuit dat kennis over de werkelijkheid niet anders kan worden verkregen dan via tekens: de kenleer of semiotiek. Van daaruit onderzoekt hij hoe verschijnselen beschreven kunnen worden om de waarheid zo dicht mogelijk te benaderen: pragmatisme. Daarbij ontwikkelt hij een logica die de werkelijkheid beschrijft als een netwerk van relaties: semotisch pragmatisme.

In deze bundel introduceren Nederlanse filsosofen, theologen en literatuurwetenschappers het gedachtengoed van Peirce. Met bijdragen van J. F. Glastra van Loon, D. Nauta, H. van Driel, B. van Heusden, E. J. van Wolde en W. Staat.

Die Protestbewegungen und gesellschaftlichen Umwälzungen unserer Zeit haben dazu beigetragen, das Interesse an den antiken Kynikern und ihrer Lehre von der Umwertung aller Werte neu zu wecken. Geprägt durch Diogenes von Sinope und Krates von Theben, seinen markantesten Vertretern, war der Kynismus zu einem wichtigen Bestandteil der griechischrömanischen Popularphilosophie geworden. Zweck dieses Sammelbandes ist es, durch Wiederabdruck wegweisender Beiträge zu Persönlichkeiten, Aspekten und einzelnen Begriffen dieser geistigen Bewegung sowie durch eine kritische Einleitung und eine ausführliche Bibliographie einen Überblick über 150 Jahre Kynikerforschung zu geben, die seit Eduard Zellers griechischer Philosophiegeschichte bemüht war aufzuzeigen, wie nachhaltig kynisches Gedankengut bis ins ausgehende Altertum die Literatur beeinfluîte und selbst bei frühchristlichen Autoren seine deutlichen Spuren hinterließ .

The philosophy of Plotinus is usually depicted as a quest for the absolute, outside and beyond the world of human knowledge and experience. Yet in the late treatise Ennead 5.3 [49], Plotinus shows himself a philosopher of the transcendental, rather than of the transcendent. Starting from a critical analysis of the idea of self-knowledge, he develops a world-view in which central notions of his metaphysics are represented, not as different “hypostases” or transcendent beings, but as limiting cases of reality as we human beings know it. Fundamental to this world-view is Plotinus' assumption that a close analogy can be established between the psychological and the physical description of man.

This work defines its course in reference to Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra. The author uses Zarathustra to reflect how our understanding is wedded to affective modes, thematizing especially laughter, fear, awe and hope. The book invites us to rethink how to overcome some relevant impasses of contemporary analytic, hermeneutic and (post)deconstructionist thought. The author seeks the dialogue with the texts and the reader and gradually brings to the fore the ethical. In the words of the author: Most works on Nietzsche talk about him, few address him, much less invite the reader to walk with him. It is time for a dialogical itinerary.

The Danish scholar Jan Pinborg (1937-1982) made outstanding contributions to our understanding of medieval language study. The papers in this volume clearly demonstrate the wealth of Pinborg's scholarly interests and the extent of his influence.Though centered on medieval theories of grammar and language, the collection ranges in time from the fourth century B.C. to the seventeenth century A.D.; theories of the pronoun, of mental language, of supposition, of figurative expressions and of mereology are among the topics discussed; and the papers deal with both humble anonymous teachers of grammar and with such well-known men as Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Peter of Spain, Roger Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, William of Ockham, Domingo de Soto, and Suárez. The papers are in English, German, or French.

Metaphor, though not now the scholarly “mania” it once was, remains a topic of great interest in many disciplines albeit with interesting shifts in emphasis. Warren Shibles' Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and History (Bloomington, Ind. 1971) recorded the initial interest. Then Metaphor: A Bibliography of Post-1970 Publications, published by John Benjamins, continued the record through the mania years up to 1985 when writings proliferated as metaphor was seen to be a fundamental category in human thought and language. Five years later, there is a need for a report on the newest thinking and tendencies in the field. This need is fulfilled by Metaphor II which offers a comprehensive view of information which would otherwise remain scattered throughout a numbing plethora of resources, including many sometimes-hard-to-find publications from Eastern Europe. Metaphor II systematically collects references of books, articles and papers published between 1985 and May 1990, and includes for completeness corrections and additions to the earlier bibliographies. Abstracts are given for many of the titles, while four indices (disciplines, semantic fields, metaphor theory and names) multiply the number of access points to the information.

Karl Bühler (1879-1963) was one of the leading theoreticians of language of this century. His masterwork Sprachtheorie (1934) has been praised widely and gained considerable recognition in the fields of linguistics, semiotics, the philosophy of language and the psychology of language. The work has, however, resisted translation into English partly because of its spirited and vivid style, partly because of the depth and range of analysis, partly because of the great erudition of the author, who displays a thorough command of both the linguistic and the philosophical traditions. With this translation, Bühler's ideas on many problems that are still controversial and others only recently rediscovered, are now accessible to the English-speaking world.Contents: The work is divided into four parts. Part I discusses the four “axioms” or principles of language research, the most famous of which is the first, the “organon model”, the base of Bühler's instrumental view of language. Part II treats the role of indexicality in language and discusses deixis as one determinant of speech. Part III examines the symbolic field, dealing with context, onomatopoeia and the function of case. Part IV deals with the elements of language and their organization (syllabification, the definition of the word, metaphor, anaphora, etc).The text is accompanied by: Translator's preface; Introduction (by Achim Eschbach); Glossary of terms and Bibliography of cited works (both compiled by the translator); Index of names, Index of topics.