Russellian monism and neutral monism: scrutinizing inscrutables

REENCHANTMENT, INEFFABILITY, AND “THE DIALECTIC OF NOMINALISM”

Martin Jay's newest book, Magical Nominalism: The Historical Event, Aesthetic Reenchantment, and the Photograph , aims to reveal the presence of a third current of thought in modern thinking. This current, which he calls “magical nominalism,” does not fit the traditional dichotomies (voluntarism–determinism, subjectivism–realism, and so on) around which the field's prevailing narratives are organized. As he shows, magical nominalism participates in the process of destroying the Scholastic idea of a perfectly ordered cosmos (an idea that was initiated by nominalism in the fourteenth century) but introduces into the nominalist matrix of thought a reference to an ontological dimension of reality that was initially absent from it. However, as he insists, magical nominalism does not constitute a homogeneous current. This form of thinking resists definition in unequivocal terms. Studying it therefore requires an approach that is capable of articulating a plurality of views.

Husserl and Twardowski: Two Paths for the Reform of Logic

This paper reconstructs, in a historical and critical perspective, the Brentanian project of a reform of logic and the bifurcation that emerges between Twardowski and Husserl. Against the widespread tendency to frame the Austro-Polish debates through the metaphysical opposition realism/idealism, it argues that the decisive issue concerns the constitution and scope of a formally sound yet epistemologically relevant logic. Building on Brentano's reduction of judgment to existential acceptance or rejection, the paper highlights how "modification" becomes the operator through which predicative judgments are transformed into existential form. It then examines Twardowski's theory of logical modification—grounded in the distinction between attributive and modifying adjectives and in the thesis that representation does not posit existence—and shows how this framework motivates his account of intentional (in-)existence and his stance on general objects. Husserl's critique, by contrast, relocates modification within a phenomenological theory of meaning and intentionality: nominalization, suppositio materialis, and especially neutralization articulate a layered system of logical and intentional modifications. The paper concludes that Husserl's reform opens a systematic place for modalizations (possibility, necessity, probability) as constitutive features of meaning and noematic content.

Divine Simplicity and Analogy: Clarifying Some Conundrums

This paper defends a broadly Thomistic understanding of simplicity against a range of contemporary criticisms. Critics of divine simplicity argue that simplicity leads us to identify God with an abstract property and that it renders theological language semantically vacuous because divine simplicity cannot ground a plurality of true intrinsic predicates. I defuse these criticisms by employing some central Fregean distinctions – specifically, the distinctions between object and concept, predication and identification, and sense and reference. While these Fregean distinctions help to dissolve initial logical difficulties, they do not by themselves explain how theological predicates can have determinate content or truth-conditions. I therefore situate the relevant Fregean diagnostics within the Thomistic metaphysical framework of analogy. This framework supplies principled constraints on theological predication without reintroducing composition into God. I conclude by arguing that the Thomistic doctrine of analogy does not eliminate semantic openness but renders theological language sufficiently determinate for meaning and practice, grounding meaningful God-talk in both metaphysics and the formative practices of religious life.

Who Knows? On Schelling’s Monism

This article argues that when viewed as the culmination of an evolving project, Schelling’s monism ought to be understood as an existence monism as opposed to a priority monism. It makes this case through an analysis of the young Schelling’s relationship to Neoplatonism and Spinozism. After presenting Naomi Fisher’s case for reading Schelling as a priority monist inspired by the Neoplatonists it argues that the themes of eternity and duration in Spinoza’s Ethics provide Schelling the framework for defeating what he calls the “subjectivization” of reason in the 1804 System of Philosophy. This defeat is accomplished by the elimination of any ontological distinction between who knows, what is known, and knowledge itself. The elimination of these distinctions entails a form of existence monism without need for the Neoplatonic dynamics of procession and return. The article concludes with some implications of the defense of existence monism provided therein regarding the transition from Schelling’s system of identity to his system of freedom.

Introduction to Neo-Agnosticism: Ontological Reductio ad Absurdum and the Omniscient Drive

Pretension as Epistemic Performance: Madness, Genius, and the Verdict of Uptake in Don Quixote

Background: Readers of Don Quixote have long divided between two verdicts: the knight is mad, or the knight is a martyr to a disenchanted world. Both readings assume that the truth of his acts lies inside the acts themselves; this paper argues that it lies in the world’s answer. Methods: The paper develops pretension as an epistemic category and constructs a three-term reading grammar — frame, uptake, and aftermath — through Austin, Butler, Goffman, Schechner, and related theories of performance and recognition. It applies this grammar to two structurally opposed scenes in Cervantes’s novel: the inn where Quixote is dubbed a knight and the windmill plain where his wager is refused, and a third, where the verdict is neither granted nor refused but held in dispute. Analysis: At the inn, the keeper grants sanction without belief: the rite is completed, the designation acquires social currency, and Quixote leaves with a standing conferred by others. On the plain, Sancho refuses endorsement of the frame, and the same kind of wager returns to Quixote as error and madness. Conclusion: Madness and genius are not simply differences of content or psychology; they are also verdicts rendered by audiences before whom claims are staged. The paper extends this structure to scholarship itself, where knowledge is never ratified privately but waits on uptake. Novelty: The article reclaims pretension from its moral weight and proposes it as a technical term for performance with consciousness of performance, tested by social uptake.