Doing, Knowing, and Getting it Right

Plato, Technē, and Philosophy as a Profession

Who has a legitimate claim to wisdom? Emily Hulme argues that Plato's response to this question was shaped by the concept of technē (art, craft, expertise, profession) and that he developed the notion of philosophy as a genuine profession in the dialogues against the rival claims of practices like sophistry The first part of the book concerns technē in general, drawing on literary, epigraphic, and art historical evidence to discuss this concept in Greek thought and culture and explaining the position of this term in Plato's epistemological vocabulary. The second part offers close readings of a handful of key dialogues: philosophy defined against sophistry in Euthydemus, Hippias Minor, Protagoras, and Gorgias; the profession of philosopher-rulers in the Republic; and philosophy versus politics in the Sophist and Statesman

Interpreting Philosophical Preconceptions

This paper examines the interpretation of philosophical preconceptions as a central activity of teaching philosophy. Complementing approaches that focus primarily on learners’ preconceptions as starting points of inquiry, it develops an account of the epistemic structure of the teacher’s interpretive activity. Drawing on Plato’s dialogues as a systematic resource, the paper argues that interpreting preconceptions is a structured practice through which learners’ views are articulated, related, and made explicit in their semantic, logical, and epistemic dimensions. The analysis reconstructs key features of dialectical inquiry, including the elenchus, the dialectical requirement, and the role of agreement (homology). It is shown that interpretation not only reveals the structure of preconceptions but contributes to their progressive differentiation and epistemic grounding. In this sense, interpretation itself constitutes a form of philosophical teaching.

The Problem of "The World"

Contemporary analytic philosophy abounds with invocations of something called ‘the world’ (or ‘reality’); but it is none too clear what is meant by ‘the world’ in those invocations. This book shows that in case after case—ranging from the metaphysics of magnitudes, through cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of language, all the way to metaethics—those making invocations of ‘the world’ take themselves to be talking about the world as captured or reflected in our objective representations, when those representations are true. At the same time, however, they take that world—as thus captured or reflected—to be altogether independent of our representations of it, and hence independent as well of the conditions under which those representations have whatever sense they have for us. These philosophers thus reveal themselves as transcendental realists, in Kant’s sense. Drawing on Kant, but revising and expanding his ideas under the inspiration of (the Later) Wittgenstein, Cora Diamond, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell, this book argues that transcendental realism ultimately amounts to no more than an empty gesture; and it argues for a form of transcendental idealism, which, in a way, is just the recognition and acknowledgement of transcendental realism’s emptiness, but also has a positive upshot: in bringing out the emptiness of transcendental realism, it reveals our sense-making as conditioned, and shows that, and how, philosophers get themselves in philosophical trouble when they try to hold on to sense apart from its (worldly-historical) conditions.

Reframing Dynamism

In the first book to explore the philosophy of dynamism from classical India, Sthaneshwar Timalsina interrogates central metaphysical questions about the nature of reality. Timalsina argues for change and time as intrinsic to being. Exploring instances from Yaska to Abhinavagupta, and reading philosophical and cultural texts in a comparative light, he reveals the absolute being as inherently dynamic. Alongside Bergson and Husserl, his study directs attention to the importance of the arguments of classical Sanskrit grammarians such as Yaska, Bhartthari, and Kauna Bhatta. By engaging with schools and other Sakta philosophies that have not received serious engagement, Timalsina reinvigorates the conversation on creativity, freedom, dynamism, temporality, and the dynamism of being. His cutting-edge view of time as a fundamental element of reality is necessary reading for scholars of classical Sanskrit traditions, consciousness and the philosophy of life.

Functionalist Intuitions, Uncertainty, and Ontological Politics: Religious Studies for the Anthropocene

Following Hanegraaff’s (2020: 73) claim that pioneers in our field considered it “to be no less than essential for any adequate understanding of the history of human culture and society as such,” this text answers Schilbrack’s (2013) question: “After we deconstruct ‘religion’, then what?” The answer is formulated within the debate over the diplomacy of common world face-to-face challenges of the Anthropocene. Within the functionalist tradition, uncertainty and lack of control defined the situation from which religion and magic ought to originate. They constitute the key characteristic of the Anthropocene as a specific historical condition, too. Their practical handling unleashes the full range of world-making activities and processes that shape ways of inhabiting the environment and thus provides an excellent point of analytical focus that can efficiently do without concepts of both religion and belief.

and Plato