2006, Vol.20, No.

Philosophical Investigation 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.41

pISSN : 1598-7213 / eISSN : 2671-7565
https://journal.kci.go.kr/philinst

This article is intended to clarify that Thomas Aquinas' ontology is grounded on his view on the existence of God and sets forth its major poles through the analogy of being and the proof of God's existence, which reflect the difference between God and all the other beings about the relation of essence and existence. He poses God for the ultimate cause of all beings who are both the composite of essence as ‘what it is’ with existence as ‘that it is’ and the composite principle of form and matter generally similar yet specifically different. This requires the understanding of some major philosophical issues of God and beings, which deal with the unity or distinction of essence and existence, the relation between form and matter, and with the analogy of being and participation. All beings disclose the truth of divine being by constructing their own individual substantial realities, based upon their participation into the perfection of God. This means that, just as that which has fire, but is not itself fire, is on fire by participation, so they represent God's form by partially getting into the perfect being of God, even if they are strikingly different from God in the matter of essence and existence. After all, Aquinas' ideas of God and being are rooted upon two presupposing facts: 1) the world has the changeable, hierarchical, and teleological order, and the different degrees of perfection. 2) all beings in the world have the pluralistically real distinctions between essence and existence, and between form and matter, which are not absolutely, but relatively true and good. Hence it argues that we can talk about God analogically and prove the existence of God in a way of tracing from the variety of worldly existential realities back to God the ultimate cause.

In this essay, I investigated in what sense we can take Spinoza as precursor of Nietzsche by comparing Spinoza's philosophy to Nietzsche's thought. Both Spinoza and Nietzsche maintain monism on the condition of denying teleology and even mechanism. Furthermore, Nietzsche's 'over man' has, like Spinoza's 'free man', the virtues such as highmindness, courage, tolerance, and friendship. Besides, they both deny freedom of will, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil. In this way, both of them have the same framework, and they ultimately give us the same massage; their divergences are, as Nietzsche said, due to differences in time, culture, and science. Yet, in Korea, the research on Nietzsche's relation with Spinoza has not been attempted. Regarding this situation, I hope my essay would, within the country, motivate people doing more fruitful research and discussion on the subject

The purpose of this paper is aimed at studying the relationships between Hume's causation conception and modern scientific explanation theory. For this object there are two interpretations regarding how developed critically modern scientific explanation theory based on classifying regular and necessary interpretation of philosophical positions surrounded by Hume's definition of causation. According to Hume, Constant conjunction by the causal conception C1 is the essential element of causation. Also the other definition of causation in Hume is construed as modal relationship following counter-factual condition between causation and resulting events. it is possible to have the basis of necessary interpretation so that causal conception C2, the analysis of counter-factual condition in causation. I investigated critically Hempel‘s explanation model on the strongly regular interpretation of causation. And I would like to debate that the criticism and anti-instance surrounding Hempel’s explanation model are all the same encountered with the limit of regular interpretation in causation. But One attempt to insure causal necessity that Lewis argued is counter-factual theory of causation. Lewis argued that explaining a certain event could provide an information with causal history having its information in causal explanation. But Lewis's causal theory drove the ship on the rocks encountering the problem of late preemption. In conclusion, I look out this thesis that the realistic explanation of causation make a sense for the being relevance of explanation.