Online research in philosophy

Deleuze, in Difference & Repetition, opposes Idea to concept. “The entire Idea is caught up in the mathematico-biological system of different/ciation.” (220) Concept is that of which Laugier, classically, speaks: the thought of architecture is that of static “firm principles” determining the architect’s judgement; concept exists in the realm of representation; the status of architecture is subsumed to the concept from which it derives; and the thought is, finally, merely expressed in the work. The Deleuzian Idea, by contrast, is anti-classical, anti-representational, anti-expressionist and genetic (anti-static). It is this by virtue of its status not as arché (principle) but as differentialising problem. As such, it exists in the intense play of difference and the eternal return of the same – which means for Deleuze (following Klossowski) not the return of the identical but the effect of primary difference. Thus architecture, thought outside the classical bind, can never be the translation of an apparently formal aspect of philosophy (the fold, for instance) into the form of architecture. Rather, as is said of art in Ozenfant/Jeanneret’s Purism manifesto, architecture raises space to the level of mathesis, and it does this as a genesis, as a development of the Idea by virtue of the process of differentiation (of the Idea as problem) and differenciation (of the actualisation of this) – “by posing the question of its own difference”(195). This genesis is a creative “triple genesis” of qualities, space and time, and concepts (173); thus architecture, as such a creative movement, does not follow concepts but rather generates them. A truly conceptual architecture does not begin, but ends, with the concept; and we can thus understand how it would be that philosophy, as conceptual, must perforce rely on the architectonic plan. It will be shown, in conclusion, that architecture will therefore stay true to Deleuze’s thought (in Logic of Sense) of the Event as that “battle which hovers over its own field…. neutral in relation to its temporal actualisations… all the more terrible.” (100).

This thesis analyzes the text of Genesis Rabba, one of the largest and most important of the rabbinic midrashim. It pays particular attention to its use of the term miyyad ("immediately"). Two specific patterns of usage are identified. Through these patterns, the thesis demonstrates how Genesis Rabba's midrash is simultaneously a work of narrative and of exegesis, and comments on some aspects of these two functions. It also traces the lexical evolution of the word miyyad in Hebrew.

Following a general sketch of my paradigm of the opening chapter of Genesis as a presentation and analysis of the human predicament, I offer an analysis of the Adam and Eve story and the story of Babel as paradigms of the Genesis authors’ understanding of human transcendence. A brief summary of the primary elements within this notion of transcendence precedes my applicalion of it to a contemporary social issue.

This is volume One of texts (from sanskrit and Tibetan sources) of the two planned volumes on Buddhist Ligic (the second volume to be on topics and opponents).

This work is primarily an interpretation of Indian Logic preserved in China.

This article clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s enigmatic, later concept of reversibility by showing how it is connected to the theme of the genesis of sense. The article first traces reversibility through “Eye and Mind” and The Visible and the Invisible , in ways that link reversibility to a theme of the earlier philosophy, namely an interrelation in which activity and passivity reverse to one another. This linkage is deepened through a detailed study of a passage on touch in the Phenomenology ’s chapter on “Sensing,” which shows how reversibility is important to the genesis of sense, not from some already given origin, but through a creative operation within being, beyond the perceiver, wherein the field of perception internally diverges into active and passive moments. The article connects this point about the genesis of sense to themes in Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and passivity. Altogether the article shows how reversibility is a sign of a divergence and thence of a sort of gap or excess in being that allows for a genesis of sense within being itself.

Can contradictions be meaningful? How can one assert 'P soku not-P' or 'P and yet not-P' without sacrificing intelligibility? Expanding on previous attempts, mainly by Dilworth and Heisig, to demystify the soku connective, a formal system is presented here for the logic of soku. Through a formal distinction between internal and external negation, grammatical features of the soku connective are shown to be logically irrelevant, and the principle of non-contradiction is preserved. Disparities with traditional logic are noted, with a focus on negation rather than 'soku'. The formal examination of the logic of soku is intended to present the logic in a way acceptable to more analytically minded philosophers and thereby enhance East-West and Japanese-Anglo-American interaction and criticism.

: Can contradictions be meaningful? How can one assert 'P soku not-P' or 'P and yet not-P' without sacrificing intelligibility? Expanding on previous attempts, mainly by Dilworth and Heisig, to demystify the soku connective, a formal system is presented here for the logic of soku. Through a formal distinction between internal and external negation, grammatical features of the soku connective are shown to be logically irrelevant, and the principle of non-contradiction is preserved. Disparities with traditional logic are noted, with a focus on negation rather than 'soku'. The formal examination of the logic of soku is intended to present the logic in a way acceptable to more analytically minded philosophers and thereby enhance East-West and Japanese-Anglo-American interaction and criticism.

A glimpse of the new application of Buddhist logic in the seventeenth century leads us to reflect about our approach to logic in a given religious tradition: Should we isolate a logical system from the very context that has given rise to the genesis and development of such an intellectual apparatus? Methodologically, we do have the legitimate right to approach Buddhist logic from a purely logical point of view. However, when we study the actual use of Buddhist logic in the seventeenth-century anti-Christian polemic, an analysis of its intentional application allows us to conclude that Buddhist logic in the context of controversy is primarily apologetic. Therefore, with a methodological concern, I suggest that philosophers and logicians should reconsider the apologetic nature of logic in any given religious tradition.

In this paper, I provide an account of what Kant means by “intuition” [Anschauung] in the Critique of Pure Reason. The issue is whether “intuition” should be understood in terms of (1) singularity (e.g., singular concepts, singular representation, etc.), or (2) immediacy in knowledge. By considering issues intemal to the Critique, such as the nature of transcendental logic, the type of intuition God exhibits, and Kant’s use of the term “Anschauung,” I argue that the most fundamental way to view intuition is in terms of immediacy. More specifically, “immediacy” means that intuition is that through which the existence of an object, or the matter that goes into making an object, is given to the mind.