Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 52

It has been discussed whether in his two definitions of nature in Physics II, Aristotle means a mover, a passive principle or both kinds of principles. I argue that he means a mover. I discuss several occurrences of the expression archê kinêseôs (›principle of motion‹) in particular in Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX and Physics (especially 255 b 29–31). Aristotle means most often a mover, sometimes »the time/site of the beginning of the motion« and never a passive principle. Finally, I briefly discuss the status and function of the two definitions of nature within the context of Physics II and the entire Physics.

Pροαρεσις is a central concept in Aristotle’s theory of practical reasoning and seems to represent a decision between two possibilities to act. Especially, it’s important to remark that προαρεσις doesn’t mean only the actual choice itself but rather a kind of dynamic intention over several contexts. There are three criteria of definition concerning this concept: (A) Pροαρεσις depends on an emotional forming of the actor’s character, that has the propensity to satisfy actual hedonistic desires but also aims to a reasonable kind of human existence in general. (B) General beliefs or customs about moral life need to be specialized by concrete practical ends, formed by practical reasoning. (C) Pροαρεσις represents a dual form of deliberation about means and about ends, that means context-sensible ends are only considered and evaluated in dependency with means and vice versa. Therefore we fi nd in Aristotle the idea of a specific human activity, which is displayed in the practical competence to fi nd autonomous decisions about the own life within a political and moral community. In this sense the sources of practical reason aren’t blind desires nor pure rationality but cultivated emotions, which serve as groundings of individual practical reasoning over means and ends.

The Tractatus de primo principio is a seminal work of Johannes Duns Scotus’ new approach to metaphysics which eventually became predominant up to the18th century. Its focus is on ontological analysis at its highest, transcendental or a priori level. In this regard it uses primary relations or disjunctions, the so-called ›ordines essentiales‹. The paper gives an overview of this medieval ›transcendental turn‹ and sketches its enormous impact on western philosophy. The essay then presents the top-level relations or ›ordines‹ and proceeds to discuss the basic tenets of the transcendental causal theory (›ordo dependentiae‹) in detail. A textual reconstruction endorses the understanding of the compact text and illustrates the causal theory’s line of argument that is at the core of the Tractatus.

The paper explores the figurative speeches in philosophical texts of the early Enlightenment and examines with a view to the concept of light the common metaphor fields. This process reveals the light imagery in the biblical genesis as a double aspect of ›light of nature‹, both as a physical and a moral concept. In addition to these biblical derivations there can also be found meanings, in which light sources are images of human orientation or exploration that finally received church- and state-critical importance through their absence in darkness.

In Kant’s philosophy pure sensible knowledge and pure rational knowledge are regarded as heterogeneous domains. At closer consideration, however, a structural analogy between these two types of knowledge can be discovered: in both cases, the representation of the whole takes precedence over the representation of the parts. This is manifest in Kant’s claim that the epistemic function of limitation is decisive for both domains. It can be shown, furthermore, that in both cases the acts of limitation are the work of the power of imagination and hence originate from one and the same source. The power of imagination thus grounds a structural affinity (Verwandtschaft) between pure sensible knowledge and pure rational knowledge.

The article analyses Hegel’s use of the expression ›das Logische‹ in the Encyclopaedia Logic and its origins in the Logic of Jena Systementwürfe II. My thesis is that the use of the expression reveals the typically Hegelian view of the identity of logic and metaphysics. As Hegel himself underlines in the Encyclopaedia, while the more canonical expression ›die Logik‹ primarily refers to the discipline and its methods, ›das Logische‹ refers to the object, to say the thematic field, of the discipline. This perfectly complies with Hegel’s conception according to which concepts are not only instruments and forms but also objects and contents. In the Jena fragments Hegel repeatedly uses a particular declination of the expression ›das Logische‹, namely: ›das Dialektische‹. This shows in my point of view that the Jena logic is already conceived as metaphysics, and that dialectics is the very core of the identity of logic and metaphysics.

The history of concepts should be grounded in a history of word use, which is now possible thanks to the creation of computer-readable corpora and text collections. The claim is substantiated in an illustrative analysis of the use of ›emotion‹ in the history of English and (to a less extent) French. After a brief discussion of the Anglo-Saxon reception of ›Begriffsgeschichte‹ some important text collections are described. Accepting Koselleck’s warning that »identical words taken by themselves are not sufficient evidence of identical facts [›Sachverhalte‹]« (Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Einleitung, p. XX), the analysis of the syntactic and situational micro-contexts of ›emotion‹ is used to trace the gradual emergence of the morally neutral category of ›emotion‹ alongside the moral category of ›passion‹. Against the wide-spread view that discourse is autonomous an important change in psychological discourse is shown to be embedded in general language use.

By his theory of meaning categories, Husserl made an important contribution to the philosophical discussion of grammar. The theory is of interest not only for the analysis of the relationship of phenomenology and logical syntax but also for the analysis of phenomenological grammar as it relates to structural linguistics and transformational generative grammar. The article discusses central concepts of the phenomenological theory of grammar and shows starting points for comparative studies.