Tag: logic

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All previous parts can be found here.

Being, Nothing, Becoming

In our last installment, we introduced Hegel’s Logic and made a few small steps in trying to comprehend the standpoint from which it begins. We have spent a good deal of time discussing Hegel’s concept of “absolute knowing,” and it is in the Logic that we see it in operation. (more…)

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Portrait of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Parts 1-3 here

Alpha and Omega

In the last installment, I introduced readers to Hegelian dialectic, to Hegel’s “objective idealism,” and to the major dialectical transitions in The Phenomenology of Spirit. The text consists of three principal divisions, which form a dialectical triad: “Consciousness,” “Self-Consciousness,” and “Reason.” (more…)

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The principle of verification is supposed to furnish a criterion by which it can be determined whether or not a sentence is literally meaningful. A simple way to formulate it would be to say that a sentence had literal meaning if and only if the proposition it expressed was either analytic or empirically verifiable.
-A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic
(more…)

Joos van Craesbeeck, The Temptation of St. Anthony (1650)

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The New York Times quoted French social critic Jacques Barzun when they defined decadence as the “economic stagnation, institutional decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development,” in a 2020 article entitled “The Age of Decadence.” (more…)

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[M]an has ascribed to all that exists a connection with morality and laid an ethical significance on the world’s back. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Everybody wants to rule the world. — Tears for Fears (more…)

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Few things are as mentally refreshing as looking at the world from a completely different perspective — to see things through the eyes of someone you don’t like and don’t agree with at all. If nothing else, it helps you sort out your own thoughts. (more…)

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One of the most common reasons people fail to communicate is that they use the same terms to mean different things. For instance, “bark” can refer to the voice of a dog or the skin of a tree, and a conversation between people who don’t know they are using the term in two different ways is the stuff of comedy. In logic, we call this error “equivocation,” meaning calling different things by the same name, and not knowing it.

The concept of “sovereignty” is often used equivocally, which causes immense confusion. (more…)

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English original here

Ben Novak
Hitler and Abductive Logic: The Strategy of a Tyrant
Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2014

„Nahlédni do své duše a uvidíš, že je to pravda.“

Kniha Hitler a abduktivní logika Bena Novaka je dost možná tím nejvíce strhujícím akademickým titulem, na jaký jsem kdy narazil. Přináší smělou a nápaditou syntézu filozofie, historie, životopisu i literárního umu. (more…)

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Nature is a temple, where the living
Columns sometimes breathe of confusing speech;
Man walks within these groves of symbols, each
Of which regards him as a kindred thing.

— Charles Baudelaire, “Correspondence” (more…)

Detail, Santi di Tito, Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli, ca. 1550.

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I had been aware for some time of the phrase “the engineer’s fallacy,” but unaware of its provenance and exact definition. I struck lucky on the ‘net, because this gentleman claims to have invented the phrase, and this short piece repays inspection. 

Mr. Kelly’s definition of the Engineer’s Fallacy is pleasingly simple: (more…)