Systematical Philosophy

Traditionally, it was a preserve of higher institutions of learning to provide quality education. The nitty-gritty of how the quality of education was controlled, managed, audited and assured was not so much of public talk. As rightly observed by Trow (1996), before concern rose; there would be general trust in higher education institutions and academics (Professors) that would know what to do and how to do it. Today the question of quality is in public domain, giving rise to the question of quality assurance. Brockerhoff et al (2015, p.3) recognizes that in the western world the increased attention to quality in higher education dates back from mid 1980s on. At the heart of every academic institution is the pursuit of quality. Teaching and learning in higher educational institutions therefore has as its cardinal focus the quality of the products. Quality education guarantees public confidence in higher education and resolves the dilemma of irrelevant graduates to the needs of the society. It is ideal then to ensure that an overseer committee for quality assurance is established in every institution of higher learning. However, it is most probable that the success of quality control measures factored in will largely depend on the budgetary allocation and the good will of the implementers. The question still remains, “why is the public enthusiastic today, more than ever, on quality in higher education?” This paper seeks to assess the enthusiasm of the public today on quality assurance in higher education  and the challenges faced in guaranteeing quality education in institutions of higher learning with reference to Katigondo National Major Seminary.
Key terms: Assessment, Quality, Quality Assurance, Quality Control, Quality Audit, Academic standards, Higher education.

Die Untersuchung zielt auf eine systematische Begründung der von Frege und Wittgenstein initiierten sprachphilosophischen Wende. Ihr zentrales Thema ist das Verhältnis zwischen Gedanken und ihrem Ausdruck. Entwickelt wird eine neuartige Begründung dafür, dass wir im Denken nicht zufällig auf den Gebrauch von Ausdrücken angewiesen sind. Vielmehr sind Gedanken notwendig an Ausdruck gekoppelt, ohne sich mit diesem gleichsetzen zu lassen. Dabei wird die logisch-philosophische Wende zur Sprache zu einer Wende zum Ausdruck verallgemeinert: Dem sprachlich artikulierten Denken muss ein vorsprachliches Denken vorangehen, dessen Ausdruck etwa gestisch-mimischer Art sein kann. Allerdings weist das vorsprachliche Denken aufgrund seiner eigenen Beschränktheit über sich hinaus. Die Untersuchung erweist die Sprache so als Leistung der Vernunft statt als bloß naturhafte Voraussetzung von deren Ausübung.

lumină rolul filosofiei: "În măsura în care conştiinţa filosofică avansează în contextul dialecticii sale interne, ea va descoperi totodată unitatea în diferenţă a formelor experienţei (concepute într-o ierarhie în care ele se suprapun) şi, odată dobândit conceptul filosofiei în deplina sa concretitudine, relaţia sa cu celelalte forme va fi, în sfârşit, clarificată", urmărind în principal "dialectica formelor filosofiei".

Freiheit als Prinzip. Schellings absoluter Idealismus der Mitwissenschaft als Antwort auf die metaphysischen und ethischen Problemhorizonte bei Hans Jonas, Vittorio Hösle und Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich (Wiener Forum für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, Bd. 21), Göttingen 2020.

Questions of completeness of grasp or certainty are being viewed with suspicion, while human action, mirrored in complete reality, confronts us with limits. Dealing with these issues (as with all others) is tinted by the selected categorial systems through which the empirical phenomena are being judged. The categorial structure of the currently paradigmatic approaches does indeed not allow certainty, especially not when dealing with completeness; this is why the 'modern' formulations of laws are not essentialist, but appear increasingly in stochastic terms. But they do not allow an access to the core of singularities (individual cases), and within these approaches it can not be decided whether the totality is inaccessible per se. - An approach is proposed that does not have these weaknesses. It operates through strictly universally applicable fundamental concepts, in which perspectivity and completeness of grasp can become compatible, and it provides also a clarification of the foundation of the presently paradigmatic approaches, which they cannot afford themselves (issue of ultimate justification). The result is a structure of precisely balanced categorial concepts with heuristic content, which complements the 'modern' formulations of laws and causation (ie reached on an external-empirical basis).
German original:
Fragen um Ganzheitserfassung oder Gewißheit werden beargwöhnt, während menschliches Tun, gespiegelt an der ganzen Wirklichkeit, uns vor Grenzen stellt. Der Umgang mit diesen Fragen ist (wie mit allen anderen) gefärbt von den gewählten Kategoriensystemen, durch die die empirischen Phänomene beurteilt werden. Die Kategorien der derzeit paradigmatischen Ansätze erlauben in der Tat keine Gewißheit, vor allem nicht im Umgang mit der Ganzheit; deshalb sind die 'modernen' Formulierung von Gesetzmäßigkeiten nicht mehr essenzialistisch, sondern zunehmend stochastisch geworden. Sie erlauben aber keine Einsicht in den Kern der Singularitäten (Einzelfälle) und es kann innerhalb dieser Ansätze nicht endgültig entschieden werden, ob die Ganzheit per se unzugänglich sei. — Wir legen einen Ansatz vor, der diese Schwächen nicht hat. Er verläuft in streng universell anwendbaren Grundbegriffen, in denen Perspektivität und Ganzheitserfassung kompatibel ist, und bietet auch eine Klärung der Basis der nun paradigmatischen Ansätze, die diese selbst nicht leisten können (Letztbegründungs-Problematik). Es resultiert eine Struktur von präzis ausgewogenen Leit-Ordnungen mit heuristischem Gehalt, welche die 'modernen' (d.h. auf äußerlich-empirischer Basis erreichten) Formulierungen von Gesetzmäßigkeiten und Ursächlichkeiten komplementär ergänzen.

›Bottom-up‹ and ›top-down‹ are common terms of methods in all sciences. However, both methods are not an invention of modern times, but rather have often been used in the history of science by synonyms and hypnoyms such as ›ascending‹ and ›descending‹, ›induction‹ and ›deduction‹, in order to describe and structure complex banks of knowledge. Paradigmatic for such a structuring are the medieval summa and the modern system. But, according to current research, such a summa has already been made in late antiquity by Dionysius the Areopagite; on the other hand, all modern system requirements were first fulfilled by Johann Gottlieb Fichteʼs ›Science of Knowing 1804‹. For that reason, the present study ›Summa and System‹ analyses the bottom-up- and top-down-methods in Dionys and Fichte, the prehistory of both methods and contrasts them with current models in philosophy of science. In doing so, it has been found that the first completed summa and the first completed system apply several methods, that are as yet unknown, in order to solve the problem of induction.

›Bottom-up‹ und ›top-down‹ sind heutzutage gängige Methodenbezeichnungen in allen Bereichen der Wissenschaft. Dennoch sind beide Methoden keine Entdeckung der Moderne, sondern wurden unter Begriffen wie beispielsweise ›Auf-‹ und ›Abstieg‹, ›Induktion‹ und ›Deduktion‹ in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte häufig verwendet, um komplexe Wissensbestände vollständig aufzuarbeiten und zu strukturieren. Paradigmatisch für eine derartige Aufarbeitung stehen die mittelalterliche Summa und das neuzeitliche System. Aktuellen Studien zufolge hat aber bereits Dionysius Areopagita in der Spätantike eine derartige Summe verfasst, während in der Neuzeit erst J. G. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre (1804) allen Systemansprüchen genügen konnte. Daher beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Studie mit den Auf- und Abstiegsmethoden bei Dionysius und Fichte, ihrer antiken Vorgeschichte und kontrastiert ihre Methoden mit der aktuellen Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Dabei zeigt sich, dass beide Autoren bei der Aufstiegs- bzw. bottom-up-Methode bislang unberücksichtigte Strategien zur Lösung des Induktionsproblems anwenden.

Kant is undoubtedly one of the greatest philosophers in European cultural and intellectual history. Anyone who delves deeper into the philosophical thought of his works and is coming to know and understand his intentions and goals can only speak of him with deep respect and in great veneration. Karl Popper has mentioned him in the same breath as Socrates. Along with Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Kant is one of those European philosophers whose works are studied again and again in every subsequent epoch of human history. This is true for almost all continents, cultures and nations where philosophers and historians of philosophy study the works of earlier European philosophers. Great philosophers have influenced and contributed to whole epochs of cultural and intellectual history. Whoever studies the history of ancient Greek philosophy from the Pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and Epicureans, may realize that Plato and Aristotle contributed to the emergence of a new, more reflective and much more complex way of thinking about man's situation in the world. Their brilliant achievements were not creations out of a cultural nothingness, but they were a productive "discovery of the mind" (Bruno Snell). For their new ways of thinking have contributed to gaining a more adequate, clear and comprehensive understanding of the whole complex reality of man's situation in the world. The much-cited path from myth to logos, that is, from the mythical worldview of a predominantly orally transmitted narrative explanations of the world to an empirical and rational understanding of the world captured in written thought with the help of natural science and philosophy, is itself neither a myth nor a mere utopia. Philosophers and natural scientists have produced new aspects of culture and techniques in this way. Even though mythical thinking has never completely disappeared, but has merged with the old narratives and teachings of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the tension between myth and logos, or narrative and reason, has remained until modern times and modernity. Since the emergence of Nova Scientia, the diverse cultures of modern Europe have still been permeated by the dynamic tension between myth and logos or between narration and reason. However, the Copernican Revolution of the late medieval and early modern periods overcame the demiurgic cosmology of the platonic dialogue Timaeus and the geocentric cosmology and spherical celestial mechanics of the aristotelian Physics. In this way, at first the manifold cultures of the European Renaissance and Reformation and then also the rest of mankind were led into a new age of the heliocentric understanding of the earth in a local solar system and in an almost boundless universe. However, the tension between myth and logos could never be completely removed and disappear. It seems to belong to the condition humaine and therefore cannot be dissolved and eliminated without a damage. In the early modern period and in the epoch of the European Enlightenment, the bipolar tension between myth and logos or between narrative and reason became a multipolar controversy between religions and denominations on the one hand and philosophies and sciences on the other. This controversy still continued in the modernity of the 20th century and the early 21st century.