Ermanno Bencivenga
Biographic Data
| ID | 1119772 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ermanno Bencivenga |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ermanno |
| FAMILY NAME | Bencivenga |
| SIGNATURE | BENCIVENGA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Logic of Mysticism
Zeno and Eubulides
The narrative element of philosophy
A narrative element is essential to philosophy, because nothing gets going in it without some vision, some story about what the world, or the subject, is like. The argumentative element can only structure the story from the inside; it can never prove it true. And, whatever clarification arguments provide for the story, the latter remains in all its ambiguous glory, ready to originate new arguments and to spawn new visions
The Aesthetic of Play
Book Review| January 01 2016 The Aesthetic of Play Upton, Brian, The Aesthetic of Play. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 324 pp. Ermanno Bencivenga Ermanno Bencivenga Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2016) 22 (1): 132–133. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3323181 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ermanno Bencivenga; The Aesthetic of Play. …
Play and Games
Urban gaming simulation (UGS) appeared in American universities in the early 1960s, following the successful applications of gaming simulations in military and financial fields, when urban structures were in crisis. This guest column, by a philosopher who has speculated about philosophy and other cultural endeavors as forms of play, points out conceptual traps that specialists in UGS should avoid and decisions they ought to consider making. In pa…
Fuzzy Reasoning
A logic is a doctrine of the logos, that is, of meaningful discourse; hence the first thing we expect from it is an account of what makes the logos meaningful - of what a meaning is. There is no single such doctrine or account: it is part of the immense richness of meaningful discourse that we can shift back and forth between several logics - several organized ways of reasoning, of providing reasons or grounds for our claims. Building on previous…
Introduction: Genres of Blur
Ever since Clifford Geertz urged the "blurring of genres" in the social sciences, many scholars have considered the crossing of disciplinary boundaries a healthy alternative to rigidly maintaining them. But what precisely does the metaphor of "blurring" imply? By unpacking the varieties of visual experiences that are normally grouped under this rubric, this essay seeks to provide some precision to our understanding of the implications of fuzzines…
The Trouble with Cephalopoda
No other natural kind receives as much abuse in the Aristotelian corpus as the octopus, and an instructive itinerary through that corpus can be constructed by following the manifestations of such abuse. Specifically, the octopus is judged "stupid" and endowed with poor, rudimentary structure; together with fellow cephalopoda and mollusks, it is even regarded as behaving "contrary to nature." The moral that emerges from following this path is that…
A Note on Gaunilo's Lost Island
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Ethics vindicated: Kant's transcendental legitimation of moral discourse
"Can we regard ourselves as having free will? What is the place of values in a world of facts? What grounds the authority of moral injunctions, and why should we care about them? Unless we provide satisfactory answers to these questions, ethics has no credible status and is likely to be subsumed by psychology, history, or rational decision theory. According to Ermanno Bencivenga, this outcome is both common and regrettable." "Bencivenga points to…
The Science of the Individual: Leibniz’s Ontology of Individual Substance: Leibniz's Ontology of Individual Substance (Topoi Library)
In his well-known Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz puts individual substance at the basis of metaphysical building. In so doing, he connects himself to a venerable tradition. His theory of individual concept, however, breaks with another idea of the same tradition, that no account of the individual as such can be given. Contrary to what has been commonly accepted, Leibniz’s intuitions are not the mere result of the transcription of subject-predi…
The Paradox of Existence: Philosophy and Aesthetics in the Young Schelling
Hegel’s Dialectical Logic
This clear, accessible account of Hegelian logic makes a case for its enormous seductiveness, its surprising presence in the collective consciousness, and the dangers associated therewith. Offering comprehensive coverage of Hegel’s important works, Bencivenga avoids getting bogged down in short-lived scholarly debates to provide a work of permanent significance and usefulness
Discriminating From Within
A classic experiment by Henri Tajfel provides evidence for the conclusion that the division of a group into subgroups is enough to trigger discriminatory behavior, even if there is no reason for such behavior in terms of the individual’s own interest. I don’t challenge that conclusion; but I question an implicit assumption which is suggested by the experimental setup and by the language used by Tajfel in describing the experiment. The assumption …
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Kant's Copernican Revolution
That Obscure Object of Desire
In the fifties, Quine sounded a call to arms against all sorts of creatures of darkness: propositions, meanings, non-existent objects, and the like.' Since then, many of those creatures have found safe haven in other possible worlds or in Meinongian appendages of the actual one, with one notable exception: objects of desire. The anomaly has gone largely unnoticed; in the present paper, I want to focus on it, and make it into an Archimedean turnin…
A new paradigm of meaning
Economy of Expression and Aesthetic Pleasure
Virgil [. . .1 loves to suggest a truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it, to let us see just so much as will naturally lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. This is wonderfully diverting to the understanding [. . .1. For here the mind, which is always delighted with its own discoveries, only takes the hint from the poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of its own faculties. (Joseph …
Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves
In his lucid and perceptive essay, "Recent Work on Kant's Theoretical Philosophy", Karl Ameriks signals Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves as one of the (two) "central issues" of the Critique of Pure Reason. The reason why the issue is central (and complicated) is that Kant appears to say contradictory things on the matter. At times he says (or implies) that appearances are the same as things in themselves, and at oth…
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Economy of Expression and Aesthetic Pleasure
Virgil [. . .1 loves to suggest a truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it, to let us see just so much as will naturally lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. This is wonderfully diverting to the understanding [. . .1. For here the mind, which is always delighted with its own discoveries, only takes the hint from the poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of its own faculties. (Joseph …
Introduction: Genres of Blur
Ever since Clifford Geertz urged the "blurring of genres" in the social sciences, many scholars have considered the crossing of disciplinary boundaries a healthy alternative to rigidly maintaining them. But what precisely does the metaphor of "blurring" imply? By unpacking the varieties of visual experiences that are normally grouped under this rubric, this essay seeks to provide some precision to our understanding of the implications of fuzzines…
Discriminating From Within
A classic experiment by Henri Tajfel provides evidence for the conclusion that the division of a group into subgroups is enough to trigger discriminatory behavior, even if there is no reason for such behavior in terms of the individual’s own interest. I don’t challenge that conclusion; but I question an implicit assumption which is suggested by the experimental setup and by the language used by Tajfel in describing the experiment. The assumption …
That Obscure Object of Desire
In the fifties, Quine sounded a call to arms against all sorts of creatures of darkness: propositions, meanings, non-existent objects, and the like.' Since then, many of those creatures have found safe haven in other possible worlds or in Meinongian appendages of the actual one, with one notable exception: objects of desire. The anomaly has gone largely unnoticed; in the present paper, I want to focus on it, and make it into an Archimedean turnin…
Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves
In his lucid and perceptive essay, "Recent Work on Kant's Theoretical Philosophy", Karl Ameriks signals Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves as one of the (two) "central issues" of the Critique of Pure Reason. The reason why the issue is central (and complicated) is that Kant appears to say contradictory things on the matter. At times he says (or implies) that appearances are the same as things in themselves, and at oth…
Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves
In his lucid and perceptive essay, "Recent Work on Kant's Theoretical Philosophy", Karl Ameriks signals Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves as one of the (two) "central issues" of the Critique of Pure Reason. The reason why the issue is central (and complicated) is that Kant appears to say contradictory things on the matter. At times he says (or implies) that appearances are the same as things in themselves, and at oth…
A new paradigm of meaning
Economy of Expression and Aesthetic Pleasure
Virgil [. . .1 loves to suggest a truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it, to let us see just so much as will naturally lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. This is wonderfully diverting to the understanding [. . .1. For here the mind, which is always delighted with its own discoveries, only takes the hint from the poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of its own faculties. (Joseph …
That Obscure Object of Desire
In the fifties, Quine sounded a call to arms against all sorts of creatures of darkness: propositions, meanings, non-existent objects, and the like.' Since then, many of those creatures have found safe haven in other possible worlds or in Meinongian appendages of the actual one, with one notable exception: objects of desire. The anomaly has gone largely unnoticed; in the present paper, I want to focus on it, and make it into an Archimedean turnin…
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Discriminating From Within
A classic experiment by Henri Tajfel provides evidence for the conclusion that the division of a group into subgroups is enough to trigger discriminatory behavior, even if there is no reason for such behavior in terms of the individual’s own interest. I don’t challenge that conclusion; but I question an implicit assumption which is suggested by the experimental setup and by the language used by Tajfel in describing the experiment. The assumption …
Hegel’s Dialectical Logic
This clear, accessible account of Hegelian logic makes a case for its enormous seductiveness, its surprising presence in the collective consciousness, and the dangers associated therewith. Offering comprehensive coverage of Hegel’s important works, Bencivenga avoids getting bogged down in short-lived scholarly debates to provide a work of permanent significance and usefulness
The Paradox of Existence: Philosophy and Aesthetics in the Young Schelling
The Science of the Individual: Leibniz’s Ontology of Individual Substance: Leibniz's Ontology of Individual Substance (Topoi Library)
In his well-known Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz puts individual substance at the basis of metaphysical building. In so doing, he connects himself to a venerable tradition. His theory of individual concept, however, breaks with another idea of the same tradition, that no account of the individual as such can be given. Contrary to what has been commonly accepted, Leibniz’s intuitions are not the mere result of the transcription of subject-predi…
A Note on Gaunilo's Lost Island
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Ethics vindicated: Kant's transcendental legitimation of moral discourse
"Can we regard ourselves as having free will? What is the place of values in a world of facts? What grounds the authority of moral injunctions, and why should we care about them? Unless we provide satisfactory answers to these questions, ethics has no credible status and is likely to be subsumed by psychology, history, or rational decision theory. According to Ermanno Bencivenga, this outcome is both common and regrettable." "Bencivenga points to…
The Trouble with Cephalopoda
No other natural kind receives as much abuse in the Aristotelian corpus as the octopus, and an instructive itinerary through that corpus can be constructed by following the manifestations of such abuse. Specifically, the octopus is judged "stupid" and endowed with poor, rudimentary structure; together with fellow cephalopoda and mollusks, it is even regarded as behaving "contrary to nature." The moral that emerges from following this path is that…
Fuzzy Reasoning
A logic is a doctrine of the logos, that is, of meaningful discourse; hence the first thing we expect from it is an account of what makes the logos meaningful - of what a meaning is. There is no single such doctrine or account: it is part of the immense richness of meaningful discourse that we can shift back and forth between several logics - several organized ways of reasoning, of providing reasons or grounds for our claims. Building on previous…
Introduction: Genres of Blur
Ever since Clifford Geertz urged the "blurring of genres" in the social sciences, many scholars have considered the crossing of disciplinary boundaries a healthy alternative to rigidly maintaining them. But what precisely does the metaphor of "blurring" imply? By unpacking the varieties of visual experiences that are normally grouped under this rubric, this essay seeks to provide some precision to our understanding of the implications of fuzzines…
Play and Games
Urban gaming simulation (UGS) appeared in American universities in the early 1960s, following the successful applications of gaming simulations in military and financial fields, when urban structures were in crisis. This guest column, by a philosopher who has speculated about philosophy and other cultural endeavors as forms of play, points out conceptual traps that specialists in UGS should avoid and decisions they ought to consider making. In pa…
The Aesthetic of Play
Book Review| January 01 2016 The Aesthetic of Play Upton, Brian, The Aesthetic of Play. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 324 pp. Ermanno Bencivenga Ermanno Bencivenga Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2016) 22 (1): 132–133. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3323181 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ermanno Bencivenga; The Aesthetic of Play. …
The narrative element of philosophy
A narrative element is essential to philosophy, because nothing gets going in it without some vision, some story about what the world, or the subject, is like. The argumentative element can only structure the story from the inside; it can never prove it true. And, whatever clarification arguments provide for the story, the latter remains in all its ambiguous glory, ready to originate new arguments and to spawn new visions
The Logic of Mysticism
Zeno and Eubulides
Philosophy (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Hegelianism (3 works)