Bogdan P Rusu | University of Bucharest (original) (raw)

Papers by Bogdan P Rusu

Dialogue and Universalism, 2024

The aim of this paper is to present Peirce’s semiotics as an important factor in the genesis of A... more The aim of this paper is to present Peirce’s semiotics as an important factor in the genesis of Alfred North Whitehead’s doctrine of symbolism. I argue that Peirce had a direct impact on Whitehead’s earliest reflections on symbolism generally and mathematical symbolism particularly. From his first encounter with Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic doctrine, contrasted to that of George F. Stout, Whitehead derived a general doctrine of signs which he never abandoned and which formed the basis of his mature doctrine of symbolism. While in the first years of his Harvard professorship, Whitehead suffered a second, indirect, influence from Peirce, through the American philosophers he interacted with. His mature philosophy of perception is both the development and application of the doctrine derived from Peirce and Stout thirty years before, and a reply to the realist doctrines which stressed the symbolic nature of perceptual knowledge, most importantly Santayana’s. Whitehead’s own brand of realism rests on the assumption of a pansemiotic principle, obscurely and mediately derived from Peirce.

Contradictions A Journal for Critical Thought, 2024

This paper highlights the activity and ideas of Nicolas Trifon (1949-2023), an anarchist of Roman... more This paper highlights the activity and ideas of Nicolas Trifon (1949-2023), an anarchist of Romanian birth and Aromanian ethnicity who lived and was politically active in France. Trifon contributed to the ideological debates of the 1970s and to the coordination of many autonomous militants and of several autonomous groups that did not fit in within the extant organisations, aligning then into an organisational structure of anarcho-communist orientation. He also represented the anarchist opposition to the so-called "communist" regime of Ceaușescu, and was one of the main representatives of the libertarian critique of the Eastern regimes generally. Lastly, he was an activist for the rights of Aromanians, and formulated an interesting hypothesis about their deliberate refusal to become a nation-a refusal that could point anarchists towards finding a solution to the tension between anti-statism and ethnic attachment.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei universale, 2023

Without ever becoming central, the refutation of scepticism constitutes one of the pervading them... more Without ever becoming central, the refutation of scepticism constitutes one of the pervading themes of Whitehead's philosophy of perception. His way of resisting scepticism about the external world was the doctrine of the two pure modes of perception, presentational immediacy and causal efficacy, and of the mixt mode of symbolic reference. In the present study, I try to evaluate Whitehead's theory of perception as a rampart against scepticism of the sort Santayana developped in Scepticism and Animal Faith. I argue that the doctrine of causal efficacy does not effectively counter the solipsism of the present moment, but Whitehead's doctrine of subjective forms works as a patch for the theory, and allows it to counter some varieties of scepticism.

Science and Mind in Contemporary Process Thought, 2019

Draft of a paper based on a talk delivered at the 9th International Whitehead Conference (Krakow,... more Draft of a paper based on a talk delivered at the 9th International Whitehead Conference (Krakow, 2013).

Draft of a paper published in PS 45.1, Spring/Summer 2016, pp. 58-85. In this paper I argue that ... more Draft of a paper published in PS 45.1, Spring/Summer 2016, pp. 58-85. In this paper I argue that the source of Whitehead's concept of feeling is to be found in the works of British psychologist-philosophers, most importantly in the psychological works of G. F. Stout.

La Perception, entre cognition et esthétique, 2016

Cette étude montre qu’A. N. Whitehead répond au réalisme de Cambridge par une théorie du symbolis... more Cette étude montre qu’A. N. Whitehead répond au réalisme de Cambridge par une théorie du symbolisme. Appliquée à la perception, elle signifie que l’immédiateté de présentation et l’efficacité causale sont deux donations entretenant un rapport symbolique, dont la structure commune correspond à celle des sense-data. Une part essentielle de la démonstration de Whitehead consiste à prouver que nous percevons l’efficacité causale des choses, et que ce mode de perception est le plus fondamental.

Noema, Journal of the Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the Romanian Academy, Nov 2015

In this paper I examine the connection between Kemp Smith’s theory of knowledge and Whitehead’s l... more In this paper I examine the connection between Kemp Smith’s theory of knowledge and Whitehead’s later theory of perception from Symbolism. Its Meaning and Effects. I aim to determine whether Kemp Smith influenced Whitehead or not. I conclude that there is a commonality of concerns between the two philosophers, that Whitehead influenced Kemp Smith, but that the latter did not influence Whitehead.

First draft of an article published in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review; based on a talk d... more First draft of an article published in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review; based on a talk delivered in 2012 at a workshop on fictionalism in Nancy (http://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/manifestations/le-fictionalisme-elements-sur-son-histoire-et-sa-portee-philosophique)

In this paper, I sketch a fictionalist interpretation of Whitehead’s metatheory of metaphysics from Process and Reality. I hold that he engages in a program of foundational research in philosophical cosmology and I interpret his metatheoretical remarks accordingly, in the framework of scientific structuralism.

Process Studies, 2012

Draft of a paper first published in: Process Studies & then republished in: Bucharest School in A... more Draft of a paper first published in: Process Studies & then republished in: Bucharest School in Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology. Edited by Ilie Pârvu. University of Bucharest, 2014:111-126

Chromatikon, 2011

This paper aims at a partial comparison between Green's metaphysics and that of Whitehead. Its sc... more This paper aims at a partial comparison between Green's metaphysics and that of Whitehead. Its scope is a very limited one: I intend to suggest that there is some possible connection between Green's metaphysics of knowledge and Whitehead's philosophical endeavor. There is no place that I know of where Whitehead quotes Green. But he speaks on several occasions of the "Hegelian school" and of "the stream which descends through Kant, Hegel and Caird" (R, 13) as partaking in the same philosophical enterprise. He famously wonders in PR whether "the type of thought involved [in his cosmology] be not a transformation of some main doctrines of Absolute Idealism onto a realistic basis" (xiii). A few lines earlier Whitehead refers to the metaphysics of Bradley, as bearing a similarity of outlook to his own conception. However, he says 'Absolute Idealism', and it is hard to believe that he took the phrase to stand only for Bradley's metaphysics. In Bradley's shadow there is room enough for his predecessor, Thomas Hill Green.

Noema, Journal of the Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the Romanian Academy, 2010

Alliage, 2009

Dans cet article, je me propose de montrer que la position de Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947),... more Dans cet article, je me propose de montrer que la position de Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), à l’égard de la métaphysique est une forme de fictionnalisme. Habituellement, Whitehead est perçu comme un métaphysicien réaliste. Certes, le programme philosophique de Whitehead a d’indéniables traits réalistes ; sa philosophie de la perception est réaliste, chose évidente surtout dans ses travaux de philosophie naturelle. Mais je vais soutenir que, malgré ses affinités avec le réalisme, la métaphysique de Whitehead n’est pas réaliste, mais antiréaliste. Une analyse du concept de philosophie spéculative de Whitehead peut montrer, à mon avis, que son approche de la métaphysique est fictionnaliste, dans le sens actuel du terme.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei românești, 2024

In imperial Transylvania, the Hungarian professors of philosophy served as models for the Romania... more In imperial Transylvania, the Hungarian professors of philosophy served as models for the Romanian proponents of philosophy. Due to the official catholic hostility to Kant, Márton Istvan promoted the philosophy of Krug, of which he edited and translated a compendium into Latin. Krug was not a genuine Kantian, but an eclectic post-Kantian, influenced by Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling. His metaphilosophy influenced a whole generation of Hungarian thinkers, most of them eclectics, who forged along its lines a broad concept of "critical philosophy", of which Kantianism was supposed to be just a species among others. "Critical philosophy" became the name of a new brand of eclecticism, integrating commonsensism, the main theses of the old ontotheological metaphysics, and elements of Kantian doctrine in diverse proportions. The Transylvanian Romanian teachers of philosophy imitated the example of their Hungarian models, went to Krug's texts, either in Latin or in German, translated them to the purpose of using them in their lectures, and sometimes published their translations. The first centre of diffusion of Krug's critical philosophy was the Blaj Gymnasium, at the end of the 1820s. Krug's philosophy reached Bucharest in the 1840s, through a graduate of Cluj Piarist Lyceum, and eventually Jassy, through a former Blaj teacher, in the second half of the 1850s, where it was taught until the end of the 1870s. Despite this relatively wide diffusion, Krug's critical philosophy was far from having on Romanians the same kind of impact it had on Hungarians. It left virtually no traces on the Romanian culture, with the exception of a political manifesto by Simeon Bărnuț (1842) and, most importantly, it was ineffective in generating interest in Kant's philosophy. Thus it cannot be said, as the accepted narrative holds, that the diffusion of Krug's works in Romanian marks a moment of the reception of Kant in Romania.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei românești, 2022

Constantin Leonardescu (1844–1907) was a professor of philosophy for 34 years at the University o... more Constantin Leonardescu (1844–1907) was a professor of philosophy
for 34 years at the University of Iași. He was an adept of the French eclectic spiritualism, which he tried to reconcile with the positivism of Herbert Spencer and with the Darwinism of Ernst Haeckel, while countering Vasile Conta’s brand of scientific materialism. Leonardescu argued against the positivist tenet of the incompatibility of metaphysics and positive science, based on the emergence of new “partial” or “local” metaphysics in the thought of contemporary genuine scientists, who philosophized disregarding the former metaphysical tradition, using only the concepts of their own disciplines and forging their own principles. Positive metaphysics exists thus potentially, the metaphysician’s task being to systematize, or to “reconcile” the local contributions of the scientists-philosophers in the framework of a general, unifying theory. This framework, he argues, is a generalization of “Darwinism”, that is, of the special metaphysics initiated by Darwin, then rendered general by Spencer and most importantly by Haeckel. However, philosophical Darwinism or “evolutionary monism” curiously vindicates, in Leonardescu’s view, traditional spiritualism. Generalized Darwinism thus interpreted offered a fundamental theory in which science could achieve systematic unity and become a true mirror of the Totality, which is metaphysics’ true object. Scientific metaphysics is principally a reflection upon science, taking as starting point the positive facts recognized as such by the sciences, and
the empirical generalizations validated within each science, and aiming to ensure logical coherence amongst them, under the rule of the supreme evolution-principle.

Argos (Galați-Brăila), 2022

Thoughts about the Treatieses of Zara Yaqob and Walda Heywat This is a discussion of the conte... more Thoughts about the Treatieses of Zara Yaqob and Walda Heywat

This is a discussion of the content of the Treatises attributed to Ethiopian XVIIth century philosophers Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat, with regard to the issue of their authenticity and of their relevance to African and Ethiopian philosophy. I suggest that there are two layers of the doctrine developed by the two authors, one metaphysical, the other sapiential. I argue that the metaphysical doctrine of the two Treatieses is a version of theistic rationalism, a conception that flourished in the XVIIIth century, even though it had predecessors in the previous century. The sapiential layer contains advices for good behavior, hygiene, children education, such as one can find in many books of wisdom popular within the Eastern-Orthodox and Oriental-Orthodox space until late in the 19th century. I suggest that the metaphysical doctrine, as well as the anti-monastic diatribes, could belong to Giusto da Urbino, the supposed discoverer of the manuscripts of the two Treatieses, who creatively welded them into two sapiential writings (conduct books) which he might actually have discovered and which probably belonged to Ethiopian authors, displaying genuine philosophical sagacity. I thus conjecture that the two Treatieses belong to the history of Western philosophy, not of African or Ethiopian philosophy, but are also relevant to a history of Ethiopian sapiential literature, yet to be written.

Revista de filosofie, 2021

The beginnings of the critical philosophy in Romania have been traditionally connected with the a... more The beginnings of the critical philosophy in Romania have been traditionally connected with the activity of some Transylvanian scholars, most importantly with the teaching activity of Gheorghe Lazăr in the Saint Sabbas College of Bucharest (1818–1822). However, a fresh new look at the facts suggests that this received view is rather groundless. The first thinker positively influenced by Kant and who disseminated Kantian ideas in print was Eufrosin Poteca, who taught philosophy in the Saint Sabbas College after Lazăr’s departure and death (1825–1832). Poteca compiled the first general exposition of Kant’s philosophy in Romanian and defended a Kantian conception of morality, nevertheless subordinated to an eudaemonist ethics of virtues. The sources, previously undiscovered, of his knowledge of the Kantian doctrines were Tennemann’s handbook of the history of philosophy and Krug’s system of practical philosophy, which Poteca read in K. Koumas’ Greek translations.

Revista de filosofie, 2020

Ion Zalomit (1820/23–1885, PhD Berlin, 1848) was a professor of philosophy at the Saint Sava Coll... more Ion Zalomit (1820/23–1885, PhD Berlin, 1848) was a professor of philosophy at the Saint Sava College and later at the University of Bucharest, Rector of the latter for 14 years, and a high State official, member and sometime vice-president of the Permanent Council of Public Instruction. He was influential in synchronizing Romanian academic philosophy with the French academic philosophy, which was by then dominated by Victor Cousin and the members of his eclectic spiritualist school. A disciple of Schelling himself and possibly of Krause, Zalomit formed his students in the spirit of a liberal and spiritualist eclecticism, with rational psychology as a foundational discipline. This psychology, maintaining the soul’s substantiality, simplicity, immateriality and spiritual character as well as the existence of the soul’s several “faculties” centred around the will, provided a general basis on which the Romanian philosophers of the 1870’s built their psychological doctrines, or against which they reacted. Two of Zalomit’s students, D. A. Laurian (1846–1906, B.A. Bucharest, 1868, Ph.D. Bruxelles, 1871) and C. Leonardescu (1844–1907, B.A. Bucharest, 1868, Ph.D. Bruxelles, 1872), contributed to psychological literature with studies and textbooks in which the joint influence of French spiritualism and Belgian Krausism was manifest. While remaining broadly spiritualistic dualists, they proposed a form of psychophysiological parallelism as a solution to the mind–body problem, insisting on the contrast of mind and body, cohering by reason of their very harmonic contrast, rooted in a deeper essential unity. The following paper tells in some detail the story sketched above.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei românești, 2020

In this paper we present and discuss the main Romanian attempts in philosophical psychology in th... more In this paper we present and discuss the main Romanian attempts in philosophical psychology in the first decades of the 19th century, with a special focus on the mind–body problem. Whereas the issue of the relationship between the mind or soul and the body, comprising the existence or inexistence of the soul, its materiality or immateriality, its mortality or immortality etc. is discussed in sufficient detail by the authors of this epoch, the narrow mind–body problem, concerning the difficulty for a material thing and an immaterial thing to causally interact, is curiously underestimated and unsatisfactorily treated. We explain this by the interplay of a sensualist philosophical outlook and a pre-modern, basically religion-informed, world-view. The resulting thought, we argue, misses the modern concept of Spirit, hence of mind as spiritual. Therefore, the narrow mind–body problem does not arise for it.

Vatra (Târgu Mureș), 2018

In this paper I examine the spread and depth of Lenin's knowledge of Hegel, in respect to his vie... more In this paper I examine the spread and depth of Lenin's knowledge of Hegel, in respect to his views on dialectics as a method. I conclude that Lenin read Hegel merely to confirm a conception of dialectics he derived essentially from Engles, and that his reading of Hegel was never philosophical.

Dialogue and Universalism, 2024

The aim of this paper is to present Peirce’s semiotics as an important factor in the genesis of A... more The aim of this paper is to present Peirce’s semiotics as an important factor in the genesis of Alfred North Whitehead’s doctrine of symbolism. I argue that Peirce had a direct impact on Whitehead’s earliest reflections on symbolism generally and mathematical symbolism particularly. From his first encounter with Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic doctrine, contrasted to that of George F. Stout, Whitehead derived a general doctrine of signs which he never abandoned and which formed the basis of his mature doctrine of symbolism. While in the first years of his Harvard professorship, Whitehead suffered a second, indirect, influence from Peirce, through the American philosophers he interacted with. His mature philosophy of perception is both the development and application of the doctrine derived from Peirce and Stout thirty years before, and a reply to the realist doctrines which stressed the symbolic nature of perceptual knowledge, most importantly Santayana’s. Whitehead’s own brand of realism rests on the assumption of a pansemiotic principle, obscurely and mediately derived from Peirce.

Contradictions A Journal for Critical Thought, 2024

This paper highlights the activity and ideas of Nicolas Trifon (1949-2023), an anarchist of Roman... more This paper highlights the activity and ideas of Nicolas Trifon (1949-2023), an anarchist of Romanian birth and Aromanian ethnicity who lived and was politically active in France. Trifon contributed to the ideological debates of the 1970s and to the coordination of many autonomous militants and of several autonomous groups that did not fit in within the extant organisations, aligning then into an organisational structure of anarcho-communist orientation. He also represented the anarchist opposition to the so-called "communist" regime of Ceaușescu, and was one of the main representatives of the libertarian critique of the Eastern regimes generally. Lastly, he was an activist for the rights of Aromanians, and formulated an interesting hypothesis about their deliberate refusal to become a nation-a refusal that could point anarchists towards finding a solution to the tension between anti-statism and ethnic attachment.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei universale, 2023

Without ever becoming central, the refutation of scepticism constitutes one of the pervading them... more Without ever becoming central, the refutation of scepticism constitutes one of the pervading themes of Whitehead's philosophy of perception. His way of resisting scepticism about the external world was the doctrine of the two pure modes of perception, presentational immediacy and causal efficacy, and of the mixt mode of symbolic reference. In the present study, I try to evaluate Whitehead's theory of perception as a rampart against scepticism of the sort Santayana developped in Scepticism and Animal Faith. I argue that the doctrine of causal efficacy does not effectively counter the solipsism of the present moment, but Whitehead's doctrine of subjective forms works as a patch for the theory, and allows it to counter some varieties of scepticism.

Science and Mind in Contemporary Process Thought, 2019

Draft of a paper based on a talk delivered at the 9th International Whitehead Conference (Krakow,... more Draft of a paper based on a talk delivered at the 9th International Whitehead Conference (Krakow, 2013).

Draft of a paper published in PS 45.1, Spring/Summer 2016, pp. 58-85. In this paper I argue that ... more Draft of a paper published in PS 45.1, Spring/Summer 2016, pp. 58-85. In this paper I argue that the source of Whitehead's concept of feeling is to be found in the works of British psychologist-philosophers, most importantly in the psychological works of G. F. Stout.

La Perception, entre cognition et esthétique, 2016

Cette étude montre qu’A. N. Whitehead répond au réalisme de Cambridge par une théorie du symbolis... more Cette étude montre qu’A. N. Whitehead répond au réalisme de Cambridge par une théorie du symbolisme. Appliquée à la perception, elle signifie que l’immédiateté de présentation et l’efficacité causale sont deux donations entretenant un rapport symbolique, dont la structure commune correspond à celle des sense-data. Une part essentielle de la démonstration de Whitehead consiste à prouver que nous percevons l’efficacité causale des choses, et que ce mode de perception est le plus fondamental.

Noema, Journal of the Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the Romanian Academy, Nov 2015

In this paper I examine the connection between Kemp Smith’s theory of knowledge and Whitehead’s l... more In this paper I examine the connection between Kemp Smith’s theory of knowledge and Whitehead’s later theory of perception from Symbolism. Its Meaning and Effects. I aim to determine whether Kemp Smith influenced Whitehead or not. I conclude that there is a commonality of concerns between the two philosophers, that Whitehead influenced Kemp Smith, but that the latter did not influence Whitehead.

First draft of an article published in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review; based on a talk d... more First draft of an article published in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review; based on a talk delivered in 2012 at a workshop on fictionalism in Nancy (http://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/manifestations/le-fictionalisme-elements-sur-son-histoire-et-sa-portee-philosophique)

In this paper, I sketch a fictionalist interpretation of Whitehead’s metatheory of metaphysics from Process and Reality. I hold that he engages in a program of foundational research in philosophical cosmology and I interpret his metatheoretical remarks accordingly, in the framework of scientific structuralism.

Process Studies, 2012

Draft of a paper first published in: Process Studies & then republished in: Bucharest School in A... more Draft of a paper first published in: Process Studies & then republished in: Bucharest School in Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology. Edited by Ilie Pârvu. University of Bucharest, 2014:111-126

Chromatikon, 2011

This paper aims at a partial comparison between Green's metaphysics and that of Whitehead. Its sc... more This paper aims at a partial comparison between Green's metaphysics and that of Whitehead. Its scope is a very limited one: I intend to suggest that there is some possible connection between Green's metaphysics of knowledge and Whitehead's philosophical endeavor. There is no place that I know of where Whitehead quotes Green. But he speaks on several occasions of the "Hegelian school" and of "the stream which descends through Kant, Hegel and Caird" (R, 13) as partaking in the same philosophical enterprise. He famously wonders in PR whether "the type of thought involved [in his cosmology] be not a transformation of some main doctrines of Absolute Idealism onto a realistic basis" (xiii). A few lines earlier Whitehead refers to the metaphysics of Bradley, as bearing a similarity of outlook to his own conception. However, he says 'Absolute Idealism', and it is hard to believe that he took the phrase to stand only for Bradley's metaphysics. In Bradley's shadow there is room enough for his predecessor, Thomas Hill Green.

Noema, Journal of the Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the Romanian Academy, 2010

Alliage, 2009

Dans cet article, je me propose de montrer que la position de Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947),... more Dans cet article, je me propose de montrer que la position de Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), à l’égard de la métaphysique est une forme de fictionnalisme. Habituellement, Whitehead est perçu comme un métaphysicien réaliste. Certes, le programme philosophique de Whitehead a d’indéniables traits réalistes ; sa philosophie de la perception est réaliste, chose évidente surtout dans ses travaux de philosophie naturelle. Mais je vais soutenir que, malgré ses affinités avec le réalisme, la métaphysique de Whitehead n’est pas réaliste, mais antiréaliste. Une analyse du concept de philosophie spéculative de Whitehead peut montrer, à mon avis, que son approche de la métaphysique est fictionnaliste, dans le sens actuel du terme.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei românești, 2024

In imperial Transylvania, the Hungarian professors of philosophy served as models for the Romania... more In imperial Transylvania, the Hungarian professors of philosophy served as models for the Romanian proponents of philosophy. Due to the official catholic hostility to Kant, Márton Istvan promoted the philosophy of Krug, of which he edited and translated a compendium into Latin. Krug was not a genuine Kantian, but an eclectic post-Kantian, influenced by Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling. His metaphilosophy influenced a whole generation of Hungarian thinkers, most of them eclectics, who forged along its lines a broad concept of "critical philosophy", of which Kantianism was supposed to be just a species among others. "Critical philosophy" became the name of a new brand of eclecticism, integrating commonsensism, the main theses of the old ontotheological metaphysics, and elements of Kantian doctrine in diverse proportions. The Transylvanian Romanian teachers of philosophy imitated the example of their Hungarian models, went to Krug's texts, either in Latin or in German, translated them to the purpose of using them in their lectures, and sometimes published their translations. The first centre of diffusion of Krug's critical philosophy was the Blaj Gymnasium, at the end of the 1820s. Krug's philosophy reached Bucharest in the 1840s, through a graduate of Cluj Piarist Lyceum, and eventually Jassy, through a former Blaj teacher, in the second half of the 1850s, where it was taught until the end of the 1870s. Despite this relatively wide diffusion, Krug's critical philosophy was far from having on Romanians the same kind of impact it had on Hungarians. It left virtually no traces on the Romanian culture, with the exception of a political manifesto by Simeon Bărnuț (1842) and, most importantly, it was ineffective in generating interest in Kant's philosophy. Thus it cannot be said, as the accepted narrative holds, that the diffusion of Krug's works in Romanian marks a moment of the reception of Kant in Romania.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei românești, 2022

Constantin Leonardescu (1844–1907) was a professor of philosophy for 34 years at the University o... more Constantin Leonardescu (1844–1907) was a professor of philosophy
for 34 years at the University of Iași. He was an adept of the French eclectic spiritualism, which he tried to reconcile with the positivism of Herbert Spencer and with the Darwinism of Ernst Haeckel, while countering Vasile Conta’s brand of scientific materialism. Leonardescu argued against the positivist tenet of the incompatibility of metaphysics and positive science, based on the emergence of new “partial” or “local” metaphysics in the thought of contemporary genuine scientists, who philosophized disregarding the former metaphysical tradition, using only the concepts of their own disciplines and forging their own principles. Positive metaphysics exists thus potentially, the metaphysician’s task being to systematize, or to “reconcile” the local contributions of the scientists-philosophers in the framework of a general, unifying theory. This framework, he argues, is a generalization of “Darwinism”, that is, of the special metaphysics initiated by Darwin, then rendered general by Spencer and most importantly by Haeckel. However, philosophical Darwinism or “evolutionary monism” curiously vindicates, in Leonardescu’s view, traditional spiritualism. Generalized Darwinism thus interpreted offered a fundamental theory in which science could achieve systematic unity and become a true mirror of the Totality, which is metaphysics’ true object. Scientific metaphysics is principally a reflection upon science, taking as starting point the positive facts recognized as such by the sciences, and
the empirical generalizations validated within each science, and aiming to ensure logical coherence amongst them, under the rule of the supreme evolution-principle.

Argos (Galați-Brăila), 2022

Thoughts about the Treatieses of Zara Yaqob and Walda Heywat This is a discussion of the conte... more Thoughts about the Treatieses of Zara Yaqob and Walda Heywat

This is a discussion of the content of the Treatises attributed to Ethiopian XVIIth century philosophers Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat, with regard to the issue of their authenticity and of their relevance to African and Ethiopian philosophy. I suggest that there are two layers of the doctrine developed by the two authors, one metaphysical, the other sapiential. I argue that the metaphysical doctrine of the two Treatieses is a version of theistic rationalism, a conception that flourished in the XVIIIth century, even though it had predecessors in the previous century. The sapiential layer contains advices for good behavior, hygiene, children education, such as one can find in many books of wisdom popular within the Eastern-Orthodox and Oriental-Orthodox space until late in the 19th century. I suggest that the metaphysical doctrine, as well as the anti-monastic diatribes, could belong to Giusto da Urbino, the supposed discoverer of the manuscripts of the two Treatieses, who creatively welded them into two sapiential writings (conduct books) which he might actually have discovered and which probably belonged to Ethiopian authors, displaying genuine philosophical sagacity. I thus conjecture that the two Treatieses belong to the history of Western philosophy, not of African or Ethiopian philosophy, but are also relevant to a history of Ethiopian sapiential literature, yet to be written.

Revista de filosofie, 2021

The beginnings of the critical philosophy in Romania have been traditionally connected with the a... more The beginnings of the critical philosophy in Romania have been traditionally connected with the activity of some Transylvanian scholars, most importantly with the teaching activity of Gheorghe Lazăr in the Saint Sabbas College of Bucharest (1818–1822). However, a fresh new look at the facts suggests that this received view is rather groundless. The first thinker positively influenced by Kant and who disseminated Kantian ideas in print was Eufrosin Poteca, who taught philosophy in the Saint Sabbas College after Lazăr’s departure and death (1825–1832). Poteca compiled the first general exposition of Kant’s philosophy in Romanian and defended a Kantian conception of morality, nevertheless subordinated to an eudaemonist ethics of virtues. The sources, previously undiscovered, of his knowledge of the Kantian doctrines were Tennemann’s handbook of the history of philosophy and Krug’s system of practical philosophy, which Poteca read in K. Koumas’ Greek translations.

Revista de filosofie, 2020

Ion Zalomit (1820/23–1885, PhD Berlin, 1848) was a professor of philosophy at the Saint Sava Coll... more Ion Zalomit (1820/23–1885, PhD Berlin, 1848) was a professor of philosophy at the Saint Sava College and later at the University of Bucharest, Rector of the latter for 14 years, and a high State official, member and sometime vice-president of the Permanent Council of Public Instruction. He was influential in synchronizing Romanian academic philosophy with the French academic philosophy, which was by then dominated by Victor Cousin and the members of his eclectic spiritualist school. A disciple of Schelling himself and possibly of Krause, Zalomit formed his students in the spirit of a liberal and spiritualist eclecticism, with rational psychology as a foundational discipline. This psychology, maintaining the soul’s substantiality, simplicity, immateriality and spiritual character as well as the existence of the soul’s several “faculties” centred around the will, provided a general basis on which the Romanian philosophers of the 1870’s built their psychological doctrines, or against which they reacted. Two of Zalomit’s students, D. A. Laurian (1846–1906, B.A. Bucharest, 1868, Ph.D. Bruxelles, 1871) and C. Leonardescu (1844–1907, B.A. Bucharest, 1868, Ph.D. Bruxelles, 1872), contributed to psychological literature with studies and textbooks in which the joint influence of French spiritualism and Belgian Krausism was manifest. While remaining broadly spiritualistic dualists, they proposed a form of psychophysiological parallelism as a solution to the mind–body problem, insisting on the contrast of mind and body, cohering by reason of their very harmonic contrast, rooted in a deeper essential unity. The following paper tells in some detail the story sketched above.

Studii de istorie a filosofiei românești, 2020

In this paper we present and discuss the main Romanian attempts in philosophical psychology in th... more In this paper we present and discuss the main Romanian attempts in philosophical psychology in the first decades of the 19th century, with a special focus on the mind–body problem. Whereas the issue of the relationship between the mind or soul and the body, comprising the existence or inexistence of the soul, its materiality or immateriality, its mortality or immortality etc. is discussed in sufficient detail by the authors of this epoch, the narrow mind–body problem, concerning the difficulty for a material thing and an immaterial thing to causally interact, is curiously underestimated and unsatisfactorily treated. We explain this by the interplay of a sensualist philosophical outlook and a pre-modern, basically religion-informed, world-view. The resulting thought, we argue, misses the modern concept of Spirit, hence of mind as spiritual. Therefore, the narrow mind–body problem does not arise for it.

Vatra (Târgu Mureș), 2018

In this paper I examine the spread and depth of Lenin's knowledge of Hegel, in respect to his vie... more In this paper I examine the spread and depth of Lenin's knowledge of Hegel, in respect to his views on dialectics as a method. I conclude that Lenin read Hegel merely to confirm a conception of dialectics he derived essentially from Engles, and that his reading of Hegel was never philosophical.

A talk delivered at a philosophy teachers' meeting in Rouen.

A talk delivered at a philosophy teachers' meeting in Rouen.

Tomis (Constanța), Dec 2010

Draft of a review (in Romanian) of the Romanian translation of Whitehead's Religion in the Making.

Tomis (Constanța), 2010

Draft of a review of H.-R. Patapievici, „The Last Culianu” (București: Humanitas, 2010).

Dominus (Galați), 2003

Draft of a review of A. Pleșu, „On Angels” (București: Humanitas, 2003)

An interpretation of a philosophical essay by Romanian thinker Petre Țuțea.