Volume 17, Issue 2 -

In this fourth, concluding part of the Aarhus Lectures, I want to make sense of some features of Schelling’s positive philosophy in light of the fundamental idea of a philosophy of mythology. I believe that it is at least worth inquiring to what extent something like the so-called scientific world-picture – as well as the associated prominent insistence on normativity as a potential mark of autonomous mindedness as opposed to blind law-governed natural events – is embedded in a mythology. Genealogical points of this form are typically invoked in order to make room for an alternative. In Schelling’s case, the ultimate alternative (revelation) consists in overcoming the mythological condition of human consciousness as we know it altogether. However, like later modern eschatologists of a similar stripe (such as Heidegger and Derrida), he does not flesh out the alternative without creating another mythology, which is why in the second part of his positive philosophy, the Philosophy of Revelation, he resorts to revelation as a counter-myth to mythology, to an event that is not under the control of any kind of theory-building. Be that as it may, in the preparation of his triumphalist story about revelation, Schelling offers resources for a critical account of modernity’s constitutive mythology that he brings to bear in his critique of Hegel in ways not yet sufficiently explored in contemporary philosophy.

One well-known objection to the traditional Lewis-Stalnaker semantics of counterfactuals is that it delivers counterintuitive semantic verdicts for many counterpossibles (counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents). To remedy this problem, several authors have proposed extending the set of possible worlds by impossible worlds at which necessary falsehoods may be true. Linguistic ersatz theorists often construe impossible worlds as maximal, inconsistent sets of sentences in some sufficiently expressive language. However, in a recent paper, Bjerring (2014) argues that the “extended” Lewis-Stalnaker semantics delivers the wrong truth-values for many counterpossibles if impossible worlds are required to be maximal. To make room for non-maximal or partial impossible worlds, Bjerring considers two alternative world-ontologies: either (i) we construe impossible worlds as arbitrary (maximal or partial) inconsistent sets of sentences, or (ii) we construe them as (maximal or partial) inconsistent sets of sentences that are closed and consistent with respect to some non-classical logic. Bjerring raises an objection against (i), and suggests that we opt for (ii). In this paper, I argue, first, that Bjerring’s objection against (i) conflates two different conceptions of what it means for a logic to be true at a world. Second, I argue that (ii) imposes too strong constraints on what counts as an impossible world. I conclude that linguistic ersatzists should construe impossible worlds as arbitrary (maximal or partial) inconsistent sets of sentences.

Is poetry a topic for philosophical reflection? This paper seeks to argue that it is by exhibiting poetry as a form of knowledge. What the claim that poetry is a form of knowledge amounts to is that something can be knowledge in virtue of being poetical and poetical in virtue of being the (kind of) knowledge it is. Various kinds of skeptical doubt about this claim are considered. It is argued that such doubts are based on distorting pictures of poetry. Two strategies to justify the claim that poetry is a form of knowledge shall be explored. The first strategy is a broadly Wittgensteinian one, relying on grammatical reminders. The second strategy is a broadly Hegelian one, exhibiting poetry as a form of knowledge by showing that the concepts of two other forms of knowledge – practical and second-person knowledge – due to internal incoherences, point beyond themselves towards the concept of poetry.

Zusammenfassung Mit diesem Beitrag wollen wir zeigen, dass in den aktuellen Studien der Bildwissenschaft ein struktureller Unterschied zwischen künstlerischen und nicht-künstlerischen Bildern fehlt. Das Fehlen dieser Scheidungslinie führt fast immer zur Idee einer angeblichen “Bilderflut” innerhalb der modernen Gesellschaft, die teilweise das Ergebnis eines zweideutigen theoretischen Aufbaus des symbolischen Status der nicht-künstlerischen Bilder zu sein scheint. Unserer Meinung nach hängt notwendigerweise solch ein Status von der Errichtung von Unterscheidungskriterien ab, die der Individuationscharakter der künstlerischen Bilder als normatives theoretisches Feld einnimmt.