Why do things happen as they do in the universe of Oedipus Tyrannus, consisting of the play itself coupled with the myth that surrounds and informs it? Why is Oedipus fated to kill his father and marry his mother? What part does Oedipus play in his own destruction? What role do divinities play? And what of human free will? In what follows I consider the power of curses, prophecy, prayer, fate, the gods, (...) and human self-determination as they serve to effect the action.Generally accepted is the notion that the Greek audience knew the Oedipus myth before entering the theater. Sophocles's use of dramatic irony depends on this. But where does the myth begin? Sophocles starts in medias res with the plague, but the myth... (shrink)

Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant has recently begun to gain the concerted attention of critics, who have noted the play’s signature blend of low and high, of ephemeral, late Regency politics with the classic genres of Sophoclean tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and mock epic. But Austin Warren’s famous and widely accepted definition of mock epic as “not mockery of the epic but elegantly affectionate homage, offered by a writer who finds [the serious epic] irrelevant to his age” does not describe Shelley’s (...) earnest goal of immediate political reform in authoring Swellfoot. Instead, the play evinces Shelley’s unique, conscious reconfiguration of four conventions characteristic of the high, classical epic: the “prosperous breeze”; the epic simile; katabasis or descent into the underworld; and divine intervention. I argue that Shelley’s comic adaptation of these epic conventions reflects his serious aim of helping effect reform through Swellfoot and embodies his absorption of the concept of Shakespeare’s history plays as an experimental hybrid of dramatic forms with epic subjects, gained during his earlier reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Though the immediate suppression of Swellfoot prevented its relevance in its own historical moment, it comprises a singular hybrid of Aristophanic satire and Sophoclean tragedy with high epic conventions, while ironically also identifying Shelley as a proponent of the French neoclassical theory of the epic’s consciously didactic purpose propounded by Le Bossu. (shrink)

Apollo's oracle gives specific instructions concerning the treatment of the murderer of Laius. Oedipus issues an edict of excommunication and bindshimself under a curse. I wish to examine the relationship between these three pronouncements as they occur initially and as they are used throughout the play. The basis of what I have to say is tentative in that it consists in a particular interpretation of Oedipus' addres, 216 ff., and in the assumption that Sophocles employed a distinction (...) between an edict, that is a secular command of the kingas governing authority, and a curse which, once pronounced, is felt to operate independently. However, both the interpretation and the assumption are farfrom arbitrary, and if they are acceptable the resulting analysis reveals whatmight be called Sophocles' creative use of past episodes. The terms of the oraclegive way to an edict of excommunication, and this in turn, becomes the contentof a curse which initially had a different content. (shrink)

Apollo's oracle gives specific instructions concerning the treatment of the murderer of Laius. Oedipus issues an edict of excommunication and bindshimself under a curse. I wish to examine the relationship between these three pronouncements as they occur initially and as they are used throughout the play. The basis of what I have to say is tentative in that it consists in a particular interpretation of Oedipus' addres, 216 ff., and in the assumption that Sophocles employed a distinction (...) between an edict, that is a secular command of the kingas governing authority, and a curse which, once pronounced, is felt to operate independently. However, both the interpretation and the assumption are farfrom arbitrary, and if they are acceptable the resulting analysis reveals whatmight be called Sophocles' creative use of past episodes. The terms of the oraclegive way to an edict of excommunication, and this in turn, becomes the contentof a curse which initially had a different content. (shrink)

Can politics be thought?, asks Alain Badiou in the title of a recent book. The question itself reveals an experienced lack: that of politics. A lack which the so-called “return of the subject,” far from resolving, would stigmatize. The “return of the subject,” as he asserts, is merely the counterface of the break of politics, its reduction to an “ethics of tolerance” from which all its properly political traces have previously been erased. If politics cannot be associated with (...) the “return of the subject,” this is because politics does not relate to any subject but rather to the very impossibility of conceiving of it. Thus, the attempt to reactivate politics becomes inextricably linked to the endeavor of rethinking, or better said, unthinking the subject. As this article shows, this project articulates a specially dynamic current of thought in the last years, which we may call, generically, “poststructuralist Marxist.” That project not only gave a new impulse to Marxist thinking, articulating a space of reflection which delimitates this current from that one with which it borders—deconstructionism—and from which it can interpellate the entire philosophical tradition. Ultimately, it comes to condense an issue whose relevance far exceeds the ambit of Marxist thinking: how politics is possible in a post-metaphysical and post-subjective context. Being and Event, by Alain Badiou, is, no doubt, the most systematical attempt to answer that question. It allows us to observe the main contributions of these current to contemporary philosophical thinkings, revealing, at the same time, the kind of aporias that that issue poses to it. (shrink)

The present article has as its purpose to analyze the “spectacle” (ὄψις), from the conceptions developed in the Poetics of Aristotle, as a fundamental part in the tragic conception of Sophocles, in the work Oedipus Tyrannus. The analysis focused on the exodus of the play to demonstrate how aspects of theatrical representation are present in the tragic text.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 29.2 (2005) 269-285 [Access article in PDF] Oedipus The King: Temperament, Character, and Virtue Grant Gillett Robin Hankey University of Otago I Recent discussions of ethics and literature suggest that there is a relationship between reading (or, better, immersing oneself in) literature (in particular, fiction) and the virtues. Nussbaum goes so far as to claim not only that good literature is conducive to moral sense (...) and sensibility but also that "the well-lived life is a work of literary art."1 The character development in most substantial fictional work that aims to engage us through its realism and truth to the human condition suggests that there is such a thing as a quasi-stable character and that an agent's character plays a significant role in the way not only that the person acts but also in the kinds of thing that happen to him or her. For a certain kind of virtue theorist, the internal harmony of character required for a person to do the right thing in a diverse range of situations involves cultivating exactly those skills required to live well. This thesis amounts to a claim that there is a close, indeed conceptual, relationship between right living and good living and that the type of character which results from cultivating the virtues is a character conducive to getting the best out of the situations that life throws in our way, whereas the vicious character reveals itself by causing strife, harm, and even tragedy.Gilbert Harman, criticizing virtue ethics on the basis of some key experiments in social psychology which have led to the idea of a "fundamental attribution error," argues that people do not have enduring character traits of the type required to sustain such a position.2 His critique has itself been attacked on the basis that what the experiments show is not the absence of character traits but their ability [End Page 269] to be influenced by the demands of a situation.3 Our objection is against the conception of virtues being attacked and also his sweeping conclusion about human nature and it has two strands. First we argue that phronesis, as the hallmark of a virtuous character, is a mix of skills, abilities, and attitudes honed in such a way as to allow the person to act fittingly in different life situations. Second, character runs true to type in an individual and even runs in families.We find support for both claims in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. This is, of course, a myth but one that has spoken to human beings across the ages and it recognizes both that different individuals show certain regularities in their modes of relationship and their conduct and that these tendencies are often familial, contributing significantly to the events marking family stories and traditions. Phronesis or practical wisdom is the skill to negotiate the challenges that life produces when fate deals one a hand of this (genetic and genealogical) kind. In the process of making the case we will support the claim that fiction "can significantly contribute to moral understanding by revealing what certain situations amount to" and therefore that it "can bring home to us the force of, for example, moral dilemmas" and indeed moral concepts, and we will use the Oedipus story to reflect on the lessons emerging from one version of virtue ethics.4We approach the Oedipus myth through Sophocles' tragedy in which an oracle about patricide and incest plays itself out in the lives of certain characters. The relevance for virtue ethics arises from the ways in which characters in the play react to their predicament and try to cope with the situations they must face. In moral life, individuals need to find strategies to deal with challenges they face both as individuals and as persons-in-relationships-with-others. The reactions portrayed in Oedipus make vivid not only the idea of character traits but also the role of virtue in moderating what we might do in situations that interact with our characters in potentially disastrous ways. II Harman's challenge begins... (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between theory and praxis by contrasting three different models of intellectual endeavor: totalizing, particular and decolonial. Attending to the critique that Gayatri Spivak raised against Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in Can the Subaltern Speak?, this article advocates a dramaturgical reading of texts as a model for political theory to address subaltern agency. It reads such agency in the smile that Pier Paolo Pasolini registers in his 1967 film version of Sophocles’ play, (...) class='Hi'>Oedipus Tyrannos. Dramaturgically read, Oedipus reveals another text, the tragic history of a yet insufficiently explored democratic alternative that goes against the established democracy and its complicity with inequality in the continued naturalization of slavery despite its foundation in equality. This subtext demands understanding Oedipus as a political production from the speechless agency of dissident servants, a more subversive aspect of democratic politics. (shrink)

The axiom at the heart of this article stipulates that everything that can be extracted from Heidegger's thought by way of political contribution can be so extracted only from a position that is itself essentially non-political. This means that everything Heidegger says about politics, or that can be seen to resonate with our political situation, is articulated from a position or a space that is itself not political, a space that, furthermore, defines and decides (...) the essence of politics. His contribution, then, is not to the political debate as such. Rather, it consists in asking whether what is historically at stake in politics and played out in political terms is itself political, and so a matter for political thought, or whether the questions and concepts of political thought are themselves shaped in response to a phenomenon, possibly an event, which it, as political thought, cannot interrogate, or even intimate. Following Heidegger, I envisage our political situation from a non-political perspective, and provide the measure for an evaluation of contemporary politics as an ontohistorical phenomenon. This, I do by following a lead Heidegger develops in the 1930s and 1940s, and by focusing on the concept of Macht, the translation of which will turn out to raise key philosophical issues. Despite its obvious political connotations and overtones, this concept will turn out to designate a phenomenon that is not so much political, as it is metaphysical: it is metaphysics itself, and metaphysics in its entirety, that is of power. This means that all metaphysics is metaphysics of power, and that power itself is through and through metaphysical. Politics, especially modern politics, turns out to be an effect of Macht understood as a metaphysical phenomenon. Having revealed the structure of power, its logic, imperatives and different regimes, I consider briefly the possibility of a politics that would not be governed by such a principle of power, the possibility of what I would call a politics of powerlessness, or a politics of the otherwise than power (Ohnmacht). Could that be ‘politics’ in the highest and ownmost sense? Could ‘Europe’ stand for such radical politics? (shrink)

In recent years there has been great attention paid to the so-called Italian theory in the field of political philosophy. This definition has brought to the fore Italian thinking, but at the same time also covers many reflections of the past several decades, by creating a category easily disclosable but also restricted to a few authors and topics. To this regard, I want to highlight the philosophical work of Ubaldo Fadini, professor of philosophy at the University of Florence, who (...) for many years has been dedicated to the German and French philosophical tradition, crossing different disciplines and combining aesthetic and ethical issues to frame the subjectivity and the institutions into the post-Fordist era. -/- Since his work is multi-faceted and broad, I would suggest first reading Il desiderio in America (The desire in America) for his ‘achipelago-politics’. Fadini addresses the issue of desire in Deleuze with an approach that escapes the opportunity and claim to be an interpretive key from which to see everything systemically. His work wisely touches on several authors and issues, from Kafka to Melville, Spinoza and Nietzsche, and many others, addressing the dynamics of a desire, debt, conscience, responsibility and law. These are, therefore, multiple inputs to desiring, which does not hide the dotted plurality of the brothers in the world, beyond the tight grip of the Oedipal triangle, i.e. the father-mother-child relationship. It follows a not only a psychological issue but also a political one, thus it regards the delineation of a field of forces in which ‘who’ acts – and speaks – is not only the person (a term which in Latin refers to theatrical mask, but well-defined identity fictitious necessary to enter the scene and carry on a story), but the scene itself, produced by relations not illuminated by the light of the show. The plural world of the brothers is the American one, in which the Oedipal relationship with the father-homeland is cut in the name of equality, contrary to colonial subjection (of which Fanon has also shown the psychic character revealing the mechanism of the colonized that internalized the oedipal function of the dominus. Fanon, in fact, has linked the production of subjectivity employee with the apparatus of colonial subordination). -/- To this aside to Deleuzian thought, Fadini adds another, but productively connects to the first: from the cut with the father was not born the son (as in Hegelian-Lacanian interpretation or dialectical-psychoanalytic who wants the definition of the son from by the conflict with his father), but the brothers, the concrete manifold in which the father is not necessary but is placed from time to time in the decision-making function of the uncertainty, in the mobile uncertainty of the brothers in their organization. That this is happening is not a scandal. That this would represent a danger, as Fadini states, is a necessary point to be aware. Maybe, the problem arises when this function is preached the need: no, the fathers are not necessary. And even mothers. We reiterate: it is a political issue around which affirms or denies the legal capacity of the many in favor of the one. The one may be different persons: those who came before, the old, the wise, the priest who runs the border between the world and underworld with the rules applied on the swinging from one place to another, the legislature, the owner. The reason why the scope of the one is so problematic is mainly related to the mechanism he establishes so to ex-istere. It is a mechanism for fault-liability-debt, such as a pyramid which is based on a ‘primary’ concept, namely that of the absence. The paternal function certainly sums up everything in a person: the father is the legislator, he was there before, is older, closer to the world of the dead, but even in that of the living, owns the world, provides rules – even interpretation – to be applied to the fluctuations of life. A really great invention, no doubt about it, higher than that of basileus-priest, more functional, yes, more functional. -/- As in The Wizard of Oz, a narrative that is served in an American election campaign and, as Graeber reminds us, explains the necessity of the idea of debt so to found the new relationship between money and gold, the legislator is microscopic compared to the effects of the conviction that is produced on a large scale, not only on his community but also on the foreigners who come to him in search of completeness. The vacuum is once again an instrument of domination, nothing else. Lack of confidence, of course. Lack of confidence in the ability of the brothers. In the story of The Wizard of Oz, the wizard was well-intentioned and therefore the trick is revealed, however, he reaffirms his role by giving foreigners a certificate of completion that settles the existential debt. Lack of confidence and perhaps even the reading of fairy tales. We don’t need ‘real’ narrations but concrete tales, and, as Fadini says, archipelagos and pirates and cartographers. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between theory and praxis by contrasting three different models of intellectual endeavor: totalizing, particular and decolonial. Attending to the critique that Gayatri Spivak raised against Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in Can the Subaltern Speak?, this article advocates a dramaturgical reading of texts as a model for political theory to address subaltern agency. It reads such agency in the smile that Pier Paolo Pasolini registers in his 1967 film version of Sophocles’ play, (...) class='Hi'>Oedipus Tyrannos. Dramaturgically read, Oedipus reveals another text, the tragic history of a yet insufficiently explored democratic alternative that goes against the established democracy and its complicity with inequality in the continued naturalization of slavery despite its foundation in equality. This subtext demands understanding Oedipus as a political production from the speechless agency of dissident servants, a more subversive aspect of democratic politics. (shrink)

Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath's work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath's defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath's project (...) of unified science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath's position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath's politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)

Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath’s work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath’s defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath’s project (...) of unified science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath’s position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath’s politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)

By the start of the Victorian period the school of British economists acknowledging Adam Smith as its master was in the ascendancy. 'Political Economy', a catch-all title which ignored the diversity of viewpoints to be found amongst the discipline's leading proponents, became associated in the popular mind with moral and political forces held to be uniquely conducive to the progress of an increasingly industrialised and competitive society. 'Political Economy' served in turn as the focus for critics of (...) equally diverse moral and political persuasions, who sought to challenge the materialism of contemporary society and offer their own assessments of the profound social changes of the time. In the introductory essay to the collection of readings from such 'critics of capitalism', the editors review the principles of the early economists, the way in which these principles were appropriated and applied by their Victorian successors and the contrasting modes which critics of popular economic ideas assumed. Subsequent extracts from the writings of the Owenite Socialist John Bray, Carlyle, Marx and Engels, J. S. Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, T. H. Green, William Morris and G. B. Shaw, demonstrate both the breadth of the possible grounds for ideological opposition to the prevailing philosophy and the shifting nature of the debate as 'Political Economy' itself was revealed as incapable of explaining or responding to the changing conditions of the 1870s. Headnotes to the extracts describe the genesis of individual debate and discuss distinctive stylistic features. Annotation in the form of footnotes and endnotes has been designed to gloss obscure allusions and arguments. In making more accessible the socio-economic writings of those authors now better known for their imaginative work, this volume will enable readers to reach a more profound appreciation of the central role such work played in developing the moral vision embodied in their more lastingly popular books and essays. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the beginnings of a resemblance theory of representation. I start by surveying the contemporary philosophical debate surrounding musical representation and reveal that its main interlocutors share a conception of artistic representation as a mode of meaningful communication. I then show how conceiving of artistic representation in this way severely limits music’s possibilities as a medium for representation. Next, I propose an alternative conception of representation that, despite its widespread acceptance outside of the philosophy of art, (...) has been largely denigrated within it: namely, that representation fundamentally depends on structural resemblance. Finally, I demonstrate how conceiving of artistic representation as grounded upon structural resemblances, rather than as a mode of meaningful communication, provides us with a more accurate picture of both (a) how music represents and (b) how we perceive and appreciate musical representations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Politics to Philosophy and Theology:Some Remarks about Foucault's Interpretation of Parrêsia in Two Recently Published SeminarsCarlos LévyAt the beginning of his seminar entitled Le courage de la vérité, Foucault gives a first definition of parrêsia (2009, 10–12), which I take as my point of departure.Parrêsia is a fundamental political concept; it denotes outspokenness, and Foucault distinguishes between two versions of it, one negative, the other positive. The (...) first meaning implies the articulation of everything, "n'importe quoi" (whatever), an expression that in French is indeed derogatory. For Foucault this meaning finds an illustration in a passage from Plato's Republic in which the philosopher describes the appalling state of the democratic city, where everyone tries to impose their own desires on others.1 The positive meaning implies that truth will be stated "without dissimulation, reservation, set clause, or rhetorical ornament that could encode or hide it" (2009, 11). But Foucault says that to effectuate this positive meaning it is not enough to merely state everything and state it truthfully. It is also necessary for the speaker of parrêsia, the parrêsiastês, to personally involve himself in what he says and to take a risk. As Foucault says himself, this is to speak "truth while taking the risk of violence" (2009, 12). [End Page 313] This risk is nonetheless attenuated by what Foucault calls "the parrêsiastic play," that is, the capacity of the interlocutor (assembly, tyrant) to tolerate outspokenness.Even though Foucault never sets the problem out in these terms, one may construe parrêsia as both a passion, since it entails an emotional investment, and a virtue, insofar as it is still linked to courage. It is common to say that somebody has "a passion for the truth" or that he has "the courage of his convictions." However, Foucault uses the term "passion" very sparingly. An analysis of word frequency in his seminars for the period 1982 to 1984 reveals that the term "virtue" occurs often, while "passion" is almost entirely absent, except about tragedy (2008, 105–35). By refraining from speaking of the "passion of truth," Foucault rejects the possibility of analyzing the concept of parrêsia in a more unitary way. For him, there is a good and a bad parrêsia, a situation that emphasizes the difficulties usually inherent in dualism: how can two opposite realities coexist, especially within the same concept? These difficulties are carefully analyzed in the seminars, but there is also a methodological difficulty: do historical sources force us to accept the dualistic interpretation or, better, the reconstruction proposed by Foucault in such a persuasive way? Or do they prompt us to introduce the notion of passion, somehow or other, as being present even in the "good" parrêsia?In my view, one does not compromise Foucault's position by saying that, for him, the dualism inherent in political parrêsia has a functional nature. It is linked to what he calls the right functioning and the worsening functioning of democracy, as they are articulated in his seminar of 2 February 1983 (2008, 157–69). In his exposé some postulates are expounded using the metaphor of the rectangle: the existence of parrêsia requires democracy, and thus democracy forms the first vertex of this rectangle. But one of the most interesting elements in Foucault's subsequent seminars is his effort to demonstrate that parrêsia can nevertheless exist under tyranny without its most essential features being undermined.Democracy, in Foucault's opinion, can't be lively and dynamic without the second vertex, which he calls "le pôle de l'ascendant"—the pole of ascending leadership; that is, in his own words, "the problem of those who, speaking before others and above them, are heard by them, persuade them, lead them, and have control over them" (2008, 157). Foucault's use of the term "problem" is itself somewhat... problematic. It is not clear why the existence of this ascendancy is a problem to the extent that it can be seen as the condition of a democratic and parrêsiastic functioning. In Foucault's [End Page 314] own words, the... (shrink)

Many philosophers of music, especially within the analytic tradition, are essentialists with respect to musical experience. That is, they view their goal as that of isolating the essential set of features constitutive of the experience of music, qua music. Toward this end, they eliminate every element that would appear to be unnecessary for one to experience music as such. In doing so, they limit their analysis to the experience of a silent, motionless individual who listens with rapt attention to the (...) sounds produced by either musicians a on stage, a stereo, or a portable device. This approach is illustrated in recent work by Nick Zangwill. Drawing on essentialist assumptions, Zangwill concludes that properly musical experience is effectively disembodied and radically private. While this seems plausible when we consider the essentialists’ paradigm case, Zangwill’s conclusion seems odd once we consider the wide variety of ways that people experience music. One’s body and social situation seem ineluctably enmeshed within the experience of, e.g., hot jazz played in a nightclub, where listeners bob their heads and dance to the music, cheer on the musicians, and socialize with their fellow concertgoers. The question this paper aims to answer is: should we consider this and similar experiences of music properly “musical”? I maintain that we should. Far from the world of pure music that Zangwill and others relegate properly musical experience, I conclude that our musical experiences are fully enmeshed within the somatic, affective, and interpersonal dimensions of human life. (shrink)

Political theorists can at times forget that the origins of political theory lie in the struggles of concrete political life. This paper focuses on one arena of political contestation: the collision between dissenters and their communities’ legal systems. It focuses on The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted, a purported transcript of the trial of William Penn and William Mead for disturbance of the peace. The trial plays an important role in the emergent principle of jury (...) independence and a key role in Penn’s career as a political actor during the 1670s, culminating in his American colonizing enterprise. After a few remarks about the trial itself, the paper proceeds in two parts, each emphasizing an aspect of the text’s performative nature. First, akin to canonical works of the Anglo-American tradition, Peoples presents embedded principles: coherent and substantive visions of legitimate government, justified by reference to authoritative texts, arguments, and practices. But the defendants in Peoples also enact and embody political dissent in ways other than overt and explicit argumentation: Penn and Mead themselves appear as characters performing a politics of dissent. As a work of both political theory and political theater, Peoples offers insights into Deleuze’s notion of “dramatization,” and can lead us to a broader appreciation of the many different genres that constitute political theory. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Willa Cather, (...) Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them. (shrink)

This paper attempts to establish that, and explain why, the practice of punishing offenders is in principle morally permissible. My account is a nonstandard version of the fair play view, according to which punishment 's permissibility derives from reciprocal obligations shared by members of a political community, understood as a mutually beneficial, cooperative venture. Most fair play views portray punishment as an appropriate means of removing the unfair advantage an offender gains relative to law-abiding members of the (...) community. Such views struggle, however, to provide a plausible account of this unfairly gained benefit. By contrast, on my account punishment 's permissibility follows more straightforwardly from the fair play view of political obligation: Specifically, the rule instituting punishment is itself among those rules with which members of the political community are obliged to comply. For criminal offenders, compliance requires submitting to the prospect of punishment. (shrink)

Iboga's Travel is the title of a global project which was conceived after a Gabonese initiation into ‘Bwiti’. The Bwiti is one of the few secret shamanic practices forced to open itself to the outside world by the disappearance of the Equatorial forest. Its traditions remain alive in Gabon, but it has to adapt to the changes brought by cultural globalization. The Bwiti is a rite in which the sacred and revealing plant called ‘iboga’ plays a central role. (...) It leads to visions supposed to widen the power of consciousness. Iboga's Travel can be analysed both in its political and spiritual dimensions. What questions the current globalization process is the author's very unusual presence in the Bwiti, and also when she obtained access to their traditional knowledge. This globalization has contradictory aspects, since it endangers the forest-based healing and initiation traditions on the one hand, and opens it up to the outside world on the other. This experience turned out to be a lot more than the political act that it was in the beginning. It showed us another way of comprehending our world. Making art about it was the author's own way of documenting this experience. (shrink)

This essay aims to demonstrate that the concepts of conflict and prophecy play a key role in the thought of Mario Tronti and Sergio Quinzio – even though they are interpreted in a different way. Tronti describes them as “extreme think- ing and careful acting”, remaining “within and against” the mainstream sociopolitical system. Quinzio, instead, interprets conflict and prophecy as spes contra spem, “hoping against hope” ; hence, he observes the present lucidly, remaining tenaciously faithful to the promise of (...) the Second Coming of Christ. Tronti, rethinking some fundamental aspects of the Quinzio’s reflections, connects clearly the Marxian conception of the world, on the one hand, with the theological-political one, and, on the other hand, with the messianic one; in this way, it reveals itself as a resource of meaning, from which even today we can draw. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Willa Cather, (...) Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 14.1 (2006) 77-88 [Access article in PDF] Revealing the Habitual: The Teachings of Unconventional Piano-Playing Tuomas Mali Vantaa, Finland Playing Experiences as a Source of Knowledge As a pianist, I know piano-playing from the inside as something I am accustomed to doing. For me, as for every serious pianist, playing is an everyday activity that has become so habitual as to be inseparable (...) from myself. As I am absorbed in piano-playing, I become musical in a way that more or less makes me forget myself. In the tumult of playing there is no objectifying gaze, no clear distinction between subject and object, performer and music; there is just skilful coping with musical tasks and concerns.1 For an experienced pianist the centrality of the lived body is a commonplace: to know piano-playing is to know one's own body in and through playing as one cultivates a "pianistic" way of existing. This calls for daily training.2 Although it is not always this obvious, the lived body is important to all knowing. Through regular practicing and performing I know piano-playing in the same direct way as we all know the world in and through living "in" it as human bodies, in and through our everyday coping, our "dealings" in the world.3 Juha Varto, the Finnish phenomenologist, uses the word "inspective" to describe this way of knowing, in a sense that emphasizes active bodily being-in-the-world.4 [End Page 77]To reflect on piano-playing, in contrast, requires one to distance oneself from playing, to adopt a perspective that is not present in the playing itself. The relationship between the knower and the world is now different. Here, Varto uses the word "perspective" as an adjective to designate this way of knowing. He illuminates the difference between "inspective" and "perspective" knowing with the image of a burning stake: the spectators certainly know that the stake is hot and that it kills, but the smell of one's own burning flesh makes it clear and certain in a radically different way without intermediary thought.5 Reflection makes it possible to "observe" piano-playing, to see it "in perspective," as part of a larger, ordered, cultural reality, as part of a considered "view" or "theory." When devoting oneself to reflection, it is typical to characterize the activity of playing as objective, as something that lies outside the lived experience of the body. But—and this is often deliberately ignored—a view or a theory arrived at through observation is also irrevocably bound to the embodied existence of the observer, even if the view often seems to be more or less a product of thought alone.While the distinction between concerned coping ("inspective" knowing) and reflective viewing ("perspective" knowing) is important, it should be kept in mind that in human life they are always interwoven. There is no way to eliminate one of them, no way to choose only one or the other. Rather, we are constantly negotiating between the "inspective" and "perspective," dealing on the one hand with our situated bodily experience and on the other hand with our recognition of a larger cultural perspective.Historically, valued knowledge about music-making has often been framed around a conception of reflection as detached, disinterested inquiry which as pure contemplation, has nothing to do with the lived body of the knower. A particular discourse or a quest for definition has often served as starting points for research—starting points that seemingly rule out the relevance of bodily experiences. However, it seems to me that there is no way to cut the link between knowing and experiencing; differences on the level of the lived body are often crucial for knowledge. For example, the difference in the experiential basis often results in a gap between the knowledge of a "maker" and that of a "viewer." When music is known mostly through making it, knowledge gained through observation often seems to miss what is essential, to distort and misinterpret the musical practice. This gap, and... (shrink)

The Decline of LiberalismFrom the perspective of the Russian political philosopher Konstantin Krylov, Russia’s civilizational order is not liberal—in most respects, it is the very opposite of liberal. At the same time, Russia has, over the course of centuries, failed to properly come into its own as its own civilizational type. From Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin, Russia has lingered in a stunted, oversimplified version of its own “Northern” national idea even as it has repeatedly taken up, like (...) children playing at dress-up, the civilizational ideas of others. Like much of the rest of the world, Russia at present is playing at liberalism.1 Writing in the late 1990s (the reader is urged to keep in mind that Krylov’s theory was formulated and put on paper not today but twenty-five years ago), Krylov predicted that Russia’s dalliance with liberalism would play itself out within a decade or so and that by about 2030 Russia would finally come into its own as a civilization of the “Northern” type. What Krylov means by this is something we will get to in due course. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 60–63 Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes. From the forthcoming book Post-History , Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2013. It is not necessary to have a keen ear in order to find out that the steps we take towards the future sound hollow. But it is necessary to have concentrated hearing if one wishes to find out which type of vacuity resonates with our progress. There are several types of vacuity, and ours must be compared to others, if the aim (...) is to understand it. The incomparable is incomprehensible. If we affirm that our situation is incomparable, we give up the effort to grasp it. The comparison that imposes itself is to the vacuity of the Baroque. There are innumerable traces in the present that evoke the Baroque. We bear the mark of the same somber rationalism (logics, informatics, cybernetics), and of the same magic and fanatic irrationalism (mass media, phantastic ideologies). But there is a decisive difference. Humanity advanced over a stage during the Baroque. All of its gestures, even the most sincere, were marked by theatricality. The vacuity that resonated under its feet was of the void under the stage. Baroque man represented. 1 For example he represented faith in waging religious wars. Baroque vacuity was the consequence of a medieval loss of faith in dogmas . Our vacuity is different. We do not represent anything. Our world is not a stage. We are not actors, and if we act, it is not to represent a drama, but to divert the audience's attention and our own from the subjects that really matter. We act like criminals that try to hide their tracks. We pretend. Our progress is a farce. The vacuity under our feet is not Baroque. We have not lost our faith in dogmas: we have lost faith in ourselves . We are as counter-reformists as was the Baroque (we want to cover up the recent revolution with warm cloths), but for different reasons. Although comparable with the Baroque, in certain aspects, our situation is in fact incomparable to any other. That is because an incomparable, unheard of, never before seen event happened recently, which emptied the ground we tread. Auschwitz . Other posterior events; Hiroshima, the Gulags, are nothing but variations of the first. Therefore every attempt to grasp the present leads to the following questions: how was Auschwitz possible? How can we live after this? Such questions relate not only to the ones directly or indirectly responsible, and not only to those who were directly or indirectly hit by it: they relate to everyone who takes part in our culture. Because what is so incomparable, unheard of, never before seen and therefore incomprehensible in Auschwitz, is that it was there that Western culture revealed one of its inherent virtualities. Auschwitz is a characteristic realization of our culture. It is neither the product of a particular Western ideology, nor of specific “advanced” industrial techniques. It springs directly from the depths of culture and of its concepts and values. The possibility to realize Auschwitzes is implicit within our culture from the very start: the Western “project” already harbored it, although as a remote possibility. Auschwitz lies within the initial program of the West, which progressively realizes all of its virtualities as history unfolds. That is why the question that Auschwitz poses before us is not: how did it happen? It serves no purpose to “explain” Auschwitz. The fundamental question is: how was it possible? Because what is being questioned is not the extermination camp, but the West. Thus one other question: how to live within a culture henceforth unmasked? Everything that happened afterwards resonates with such a question, with such vacuity. Every economic, social, political, technical, scientific, artistic, philosophic event is corroded by such an undigested question. The distance that separates us from the event does not mitigate the abyss, it erodes it even deeper. Because the distance progressively dissolves the aura of the horror that envelops the event, and it progressively opens up a vision of the scene. It progressively reveals that there all of our categories, all of our “models”, suffered an irreparable shipwreck. Auschwitz was a revolutionary event, in the sense that it overthrew our culture. Insofar as we seek ways to cover up such revolution with trips to the moon or with genetic manipulations, we are counter-revolutionaries: we are inverting the course of history in order to cover up the past. The unspoken in Auschwitz is not the mass murder, it is not the crime . It is the ultimate reification of people into amorphous objects, into ashes. The Western tendency towards objectification was finally realized and it was done so in the shape of an apparatus . The SS were functionaries of an extermination apparatus, and their victims functioned in function of their own annihilation. The extermination camp's program, once it started functioning, developed in an automatic fashion, autonomous from the decisions of the initial programmers, even if, as it effectively did, it contributed to the defeat of the programmers. The SS and the Jews functioned one in function of the other like cogwheels. The models for such functionality were provided by the highest of Western values: the SS behaved like “heroes” and the Jews like “martyrs”. This is an apparatus that functions at a borderline situation: objective even beyond death. What has just been said is intolerable. We cannot accept it and so we mobilize arguments against it. Good arguments. The SS behaved like criminals: they removed the gold teeth from the cadavers. The Jews behaved like victims: they rose up in the Warsaw ghetto. Such arguments are true, but they do not reach the nucleus, the “ eidos ” of the phenomenon: they do not grasp it. Although there was “normal” behavior: (theft, murder, revolt, heroism), there was also “abnormal” behavior: functionality during a borderline situation. And this is what counts. There, for the first time in the history of humanity, an apparatus was put into operation that was programmed with the most advanced techniques available, which realized the objectification of man, together with the functional collaboration of man. The previous horrors committed by Western society against other societies and against itself (and there are many) were crimes . They were violations of Western models of behavior: anti-Christian, anti-human, irrational. So that it is possible to condemn them and continue to be Western, even if the horror is so colossal, such as the enslavement of Africans. However, it is not possible to condemn Auschwitz and continue to adhere consciously to the West. Auschwitz is not a violation of Western models of behavior, it is, on the contrary, the result of the application of such models. Our culture allowed its mystifying mask to fall and must be rejected in toto if we admit that the purpose of every culture is to allow for the convivial existence of men that recognize each other mutually as subjects. However: it is not possible to reject one's own culture. It is the ground we tread . Those who seek to reject their own culture (as Nietzsche did in rejecting Judeo-Christianity), fall victim to madness. Those who reject their culture's models, are incapable of grasping the world in which they live. Cultural models are traps to catch the world. Those who seek to substitute their own models for other's (for example by shouting “Hare Krishna”) will find that such exotic models have already been caught by the very models to be substituted. There is no exit: we are condemned to use our models and to serve such models, even after they have been unmasked, if we wish to continue living. The only alternative would be to commit suicide. That is: we must continue our economic, political, scientific, artistic, philosophic activities despite Auschwitz. We must continue progressing despite everything . That is why there are those who recommend that we should seek to forget what happened, that we should repress the event. They sustain that enough has already been said and written about the subject and that it is time to “overcome” it. But such an ostrich strategy reveals itself disastrous. Because the result is that Auschwitz transfers itself from Poland of the 1940s to the post-industrial society of the future. What characterizes the extermination camp is precisely that it is not an event that can be “overcome”, because it is the first realization of an inherent virtuality within the Western project, which will repeat itself in other formats unless we become totally conscious of it. The advantage (if this is an appropriate term) that Auschwitz offers us, is to give us a concrete example of the West’s tendency towards the apparatus. For the first time in our history it is possible for us to experience concretely the utopia inherent in our culture. For the first time in our history we have the experience that utopia, no matter in what form, towards which we progress, is the extermination camp. Everywhere we can observe, as of now, the emergence of variations on the theme “Auschwitz”. Everywhere apparatus spring, just like mushrooms after a Nazi rain, from the ground that has become rotten. Certainly: such new apparatus are not externally similar to the Nazi extermination camps. Their labels are different, as are the ideologies that pretend to inspire them. Even the apparatus that admittedly envision extermination, such as the Gulags, the ones of a future nuclear war, or the ones that functioned in Vietnam, claim to be different from Auschwitz. Others claim to be “friends of mankind”, such as the scientific, technical and administrative apparatus. But such labels and such ideologies are deceptive and serve only to cover up the essence of apparatus. They are all just like Auschwitz, black boxes that function with complex inner-workings in order to realize a program. They all function according to an inertia that is inherent to them and such functionality escapes , from a certain point, the control of their initial programmers. In a final analysis such apparatuses function, all of them, towards the annihilation of all their functionaries, including their programmers. Exactly because they objectify and dehumanize man. Thus Western culture reveals itself as a project that seeks to transform itself into an apparatus. What characterizes the West is its capacity for an objectifying transcendence. Such transcendence allows for the transformation of all phenomena, including the human phenomenon, into an object of knowledge and manipulation. The space for such transcendence opened up thanks to Judeo-Christianity and resulted, in the course of our history, in science, technique and recently, in Auschwitz. The ultimate objectification of the Jews into ashes is the ultimate victory of the spirit of the West. It is social technique taken to the extreme. Certainly: the transformation of men into ashes is primitive, incipient social technique that progressively refines itself. It will be followed by less brutal objectifications, such as the robotization of society. But it does not matter which form it will assume: it will always be an objectifying manipulation of mankind. Although the apparatus of the immediate future are not necessarily incineration ovens, all will be, and not only the nuclear ones, apparatus for the annihilation of man. The Western program contains several virtualities, not only apparatus. Numerous virtualities have not yet been realized. In this sense the “history of the West” has not ended yet, the Western game continues. But all not-yet realized virtualities are infected by apparatus. That is why it has become currently impossible to engage ourselves in the “ progress of culture .” As it would be to engage ourselves in our own annihilation. We have lost our faith in our culture, in the ground we tread. That is: we have lost faith in ourselves. It is this hollow vibration that follows our steps towards the future. What remains is for us to analyze the event “Auschwitz” in all its details in order to discover the fundamental project that realized itself there for the first time, so that we may nurture the hope to project ourselves out of that project. Out of the history of the West. This is the “post- historical” climate in which we are condemned to live from hereon. NOTES 1. In Portuguese representar (to represent) also means “to act” or “to play a role.&rdquo. (shrink)

This book is a radical reappraisal of positivism as a major movement in philosophy, science and culture. In examining positivist movement and its contemporary impact, I had the following goals. First, to provide a more precise and systematic definition of the notion of positivism. Second, to describe positivism as a trend of thought concerned not only with the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, but also with problems of ethics, social, and political philosophy, and show that its representatives (...) usually thought that the problems of the latter cannot be solved without solving the former first. Third, to examine the development of positivism as a movement which preserves a certain tradition and hence possesses some coherence, although the forms of this movement changed in different historical circumstances: it was born in the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, took the form of social positivism in the nineteenth century, was transformed at the turn of the twentieth century with the emergence of empirio-criticism, and became logical positivism in the twentieth century. Fourth, to reveal the external and internal factors of this evolution. Fifth, to disclose the relation of positivism to other trends of philosophy. Sixth, to determine the influence the positive mind had not only upon philosophy, but upon other cultural phenomena, such as the natural and social sciences, law, politics, arts, religion, and everyday life. (shrink)

Politics is on the one hand an attempt to implement certain good, a desire for achieving agreed objectives, on the other hand – as Max Weber says – a simultaneous a#empt to avoid a particular evil. If in defining the notion of politics there are references to good and evil, purpose and desire, it has to include the non-political spheres – culture, axiology, religion. Mark Lilla argues that for decades we have been aware of the great and final separation (...) that has taken place in Western Europe between political and religious life. This awareness implies a conviction, which is obligatory today in most countries and societies, that to separate politics from religion is a great achievement. For many thinkers and politicians this is an undisputed success from which the West learns to benefit while preparing other regions of the world for such separation. Therefore it seems that modern politics should be free from religious inspiration and temptation. On the other hand, many sociologists and political scientists show the vitality of religious attitudes, proving that in its deepest essence religion is an expression of human behaviour. Each person and each community always has an element of irreducibility which is an internal defence against reducing man to “here and now”, restricting his world to what is useful and usable. We experience that in man there is a natural opening to what is transcendent. Thus, if man is ever to achieve individual and social reconciliation with himself, he will always look for rational and moral meanings. This situation creates a platform for the emergence of a completely new a#itude in society and politics – to seek and pursue spirituality in a world without religion. Increasingly, the understanding of religion reveals itself in a wide etymological sense, sociological and ethnological: religare – “to connect”, “to bind”, “to build community ties”. Religion so understood would be a great solution to the dilemma of separation – the adoption of religion (bonds) without the doctrine, while ensuring social cohesion, strengthening the feeling of being together, maintaining a spiritual connection. Many thinkers are convinced that we cannot base social life only on fear, discipline and economy; we need a deeper and stronger foundations for Community Cohesion. But is such a project possible at all? Is politics becoming a place for the formation of relationships, education and conservation of values, a narrative space which tells citizens what is good and right and what is wrong and alien? Can it replace religion in its deepest essence – in its intimate sense of an exploration and discovery of transcendence? Will it not become a caricature of religion, and a caricature of politics, and ultimately a trap for freedom? (shrink)

In the eighteenth-century England, the aesthetic vision of most contemporary writers of the time was closely related to the social, political and religious system of belief. Augustan writers, satirists particularly, sought to reclaim for literature the morally privileged status, they thought, it supposedly held in the context of the Latitudinarian system of thought; the very rationale behind the ethic of good nature that distinguishes major writings of the time, namely the dramatic, journalistic and fictional works of the major eighteenth (...) century novelist and satirist Henry Fielding. His major dramatic works not only display the influence of the Latitudinarian philosophy but mainly Shaftesbury’s moral theory of innate goodness, which Fielding revokes, offering then a representation of a more universal moral frame which rather reflects and criticizes the society of the author’s time. The providential pattern that Fielding creates in his plays valorizes indeed the principle of good-nature and the triumph of virtue against all apparent social evils. Most significantly, it has positioned Henry Fielding himself in a “comedic” tradition in which characters are not ultimately responsible for themselves. In the present paper, and with reference to Earl of Shaftesbury’s assumptions about the ideal good-natured man, I intend to evince that Fielding uses the value of good-nature and virtue not as pure moral abstractions, but rather as nodal points around which he organizes, and through which he presents a broad cultural and historical vision. With reference to his major regular comedies, and a through a close study of his most representative characters, I will attempt to evince that this underlying moral vision is more than an abstract rumination of the relative power of good and evil. When we view and consider such concepts as virtue, good-nature and ill-nature in the immediate contexts of his plays, we conceive a picture of a broad cultural landscape in which ethical values become nodal points of meaning, in which Fielding represents both the most basic, traditional values and the most sordid everyday events and attitudes of his society. (shrink)

The author of the article discusses a political discourse of the US president Donald Trump. The political discourse is considered to be a type of discourse based on views and beliefs, the purpose of which is to manipulate the consciousness of the addressee using strategies in order to form certain beliefs. The strategy in this case means the plan of implementation of the communicative task, necessary for effective achievement of the addressee’s goal, realized with the help of certain (...) tactics. The choice of the subject matter is determined by the interest to political communication. The author analyses discourse strategies and markers, stylistic and lexico-grammatical means used as manipulative means in Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech, Victory Speech, and Inaugural Address. Special attention is given to the strategy of improvement, strategy of enhancement, and strategy for evaluation of alternatives. It is known that presidential public addresses are of great importance, therefore communicative skills of politicians and ability to speak in public play a great role in their political career. The analysis of D. Trump’s presidential discourse has revealed the use of discursive manipulative strategies and manipulative markers, numerous repetitions, calls for joint action, the use of ‘unifying vocabulary‘, slogans, inversion. It is noted that the presidential political discourse is an effective means of manipulating the consciousness of the nation and the formation of its outlook. The author concludes that speech manipulation is a complex phenomenon, the effectiveness of which depends on linguistic, psychological, extralinguistic, and social factors. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give an account of a methodological link between drama and political theory. This account is drawn primarily from the early philosophical work of Deleuze. Following Deleuze, we will refer to it as ‘the method of dramatization’. We will argue that dramatization is a method aimed at determining the quality of political concepts by ‘bringing them to life’, in the way that dramatic performances bring to life the characters and themes of a (...) play-script. We demonstrate that this can be specified in relation to the development of this method in Deleuze's early philosophical work as a practical, critical and artistic method and, in relation to the ontological assumptions he articulated and defended in Difference and Repetition, as a process of intensification of the Idea of the political. By way of example, we discuss how the dramatization of the concept of ideology functions in Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. We conclude with some lines of inquiry that could be pursued by political theorists looking to investigate further the dramatic nature of method in political theory. (shrink)

Ibsen’s plays can be interpreted as experiments in which the ideology of individualism is confronted with the realities of an individualistic society. The result allows of no misunderstanding. The individual has no real chance.Ibsen makes as good a case as possible for the ideology of individualism, because in the choice of his subjects he usually avoids the social problems proper, the questions of poverty and starvation, and concentrates his attention nearly exclusively on private life and spiritual conflicts. This first omission, (...) however, turns into a radical attack. In Ibsen’s plays the soul, this fundamental conception of modern ideology, reveals itself as a focal point of all the social contradictions. In the psychological analysis within his plays, reality acquires a stronger pungency and harsher bitterness than in most of the plays of social propaganda of the time. Even in their private lives, men are mirrored as being dominated by the laws of a society based on private property and competition. A real development of their personalities is denied them. The more they attempt consciously to achieve this, the more intense grow the conflicts within themselves and with others.Ibsen returns to this fundamental conflict ever again in the relationship of man and wife, of parent and child, of lover and beloved. The indomitable influence of these social and economic forces permeates every single trait of his characters, pervades the general atmosphere of his plays : the inexorability of social conditions, which subject the destiny of the individual to the play of blind accident, is echoed in the fear and the terror that animate these plays and that embrace even amorous relationships. Abstract idealistic programs do not change such impotence as the playwright portrays, but help to safeguard it.But Ibsen is not a pessimist. The female characters that he creates represent a glance towards a freer development of humanity. They represent the ability to achieve real happiness and real enjoyment. The demands of these women, which seem egoistic but are clung to with determination of real conviction, are superior to the idealistic assurances of the men who, in reality, bow to the power of the material facts of life.There is a certain rigorousness and utopianism in Ibsen which he shares with certain tendencies of modern society, tendencies to which his conscious intentions are opposed. More characteristic for his general significance, however, is his critical attitude, that would do away with the misery of his time in order to pave the way for a life of real happiness. Because of his individualistic starting point, and in spite of it, he remains a resolute enemy of bourgeois individualism.Les drames d'Ibsen peuvent être considérés comme une expérience qui confronte l'idéologie individualiste avec la réalité de la société individualiste. Le résultat est clair : il apparaît que l'individu n'y a pas de chances réelles. Ibsen rend la justification de l'idéologie bourgeoise aussi facile que possible : il n'aborde guère, dans le choix de sa matière, les questions sociales à proprement parler, la misère matérielle, il se contente presque uniquement de la vie privée et de l'intimité du sujet. Mais en fait, cette concession devient une accusation radicale. L'âme— ce concept fondamental de l'idéologie bourgeoise — se révèle, dans l'oeuvre d'Ibsen, comme le réflexe des contradictions sociales. Par l'analyse psychologique et dramatique des individus, la réalité amère du système „harmonique“ est mise dans une lumière plus crue que dans la plus grande partie de la littérature à tendances sociales de l'époque. Même en tant que personnes, les hommes sont dominés par les lois d'une société, fondée uniquement sur la propriété privée et la concurrence. Un véritable déploîment de leur individualité leur est interdit ; ils sont les victimes d'antagonismes avec eux-mêmes et avec les autres, antagonismes d'autant plus profonds qu'ils cherchent consciemment à mener leur vie individuelle. L'analyse d'Ibsen est particulièrement frappante lorsqu'elle s'attache aux relations entre époux, amants, parents et enfants. L'auteur suit l'influence insurmontable des puissances économiques et sociales jusque dans les traits de caractère les plus particuliers ; de même, ces puissances commandent l'atmosphère générale des pièces : l'angoisse et l'horreur qui les traversent et qui pénètrent jusqu'aux relations érotiques, reproduisent le caractère impitoyable d'une société où chaque destin individuel est livré au hasard aveugle. En même temps, le poète montre que des revendications idéalistes et abstraites contribuent plutôt à la stabilisation de cette impuissance.Cependant, Ibsen n'est nullement pessimiste. Les grandes figures de femmes nous font apercevoir des perspectives d'un développement plus libre de l'être humain : elles représentent la capacité de véritable bonheur et de jouissance authentique. Les revendications, en apparence égoïstes, que ces femmes maintiennent sans fléchir, sont supérieures, même moralement, aux affirmations des hommes qui, en pratique, se soumettent constamment à la force brutale des faits.Dans un dernier paragraphe, on fait la part des tendances progressistes et conservatrices d'Ibsen. Un certain rigorisme, l'agnosticisme et l'utopisme — lequel se trouve surtout dans son idée de la force rédemptrice de la nature — lient Ibsen aux tendances de la société bourgeoise que consciemment il combat. Cependant le motif critique le caractérise plus authentiquement : mettre un terme à la misère du présent qui est un obstacle au bonheur humain. C'est ainsi que, en dépit et à cause de son point de départ idéaliste, Ibsen reste un adversaire décidé de l'idéalisme bourgeois. (shrink)

This article offers a reading of Eriugena’s thought that is inspired by Heidegger’s claim according to which being is constituted in a dialectical interplay of revelation and concealment. Beginning with an analysis of how “causality as concealing revelation” works on the level of God’s inner-Trinitarian life, the piece moves on to a consideration of the way in which the human soul reveals itself in successive stages of exteriorization that culminate in the creation of the body, its “image.” The body, (...) however, conceals as much as it reveals true human nature. Moreover, it is shown that for Eriugena all of reality, as theophany, possesses this character of concealing its fundamental truth. These insights lead Eriugena to a recognition of radical human finitude, as genuine wisdom requires an acknowledgement of our fundamental ignorance. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give an account of a methodological link between drama and political theory. This account is drawn primarily from the early philosophical work of Deleuze. Following Deleuze, we will refer to it as ‘the method of dramatization’. We will argue that dramatization is a method aimed at determining the quality of political concepts by ‘bringing them to life’, in the way that dramatic performances bring to life the characters and themes of a (...) play-script. We demonstrate that this can be specified in relation to the development of this method in Deleuze's early philosophical work as a practical, critical and artistic method and, in relation to the ontological assumptions he articulated and defended in Difference and Repetition, as a process of intensification of the Idea of the political. By way of example, we discuss how the dramatization of the concept of ideology functions in Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. We conclude with some lines of inquiry that could be pursued by political theorists looking to investigate further the dramatic nature of method in political theory. (shrink)

It is now some years since Professor D. Daiches Raphael published his interesting book, The Paradox of Tragedy , which represented one of the first serious attempts made by a British philosopher to assess the significance of tragic drama for ethical, and indeed metaphysical theory. Since then we have had a variety of books touching on related topics: for instance, Dr George Steiner's Death of Tragedy and Mr Raymond Williams’ most recent, elusive and interesting essay, Modern Tragedy. To entitle an (...) essay Theology and Tragedy might be thought to invite needless trouble for oneself; to indulge to a dangerous degree the human intellectual obsession of supposing that ‘the meaning of a word is an object’. After all, if one confines one's regard to the Greeks, one has to recognise that between the treatments of their common theme of Electra , Sophocles and Euripides are in fact doing very different things. There is no gainsaying the significance for Euripides of the postponement of the murder of Clytemnestra till after that of Aegisthus, still less of his introduction into the play of the morally upright peasant, who has had the banished Electra in his keeping, and whose simple integrity contrasts both with the corruption of the court and the obsessive preoccupation with a dreadful, supposed duty of brother and sister. The element of propaganda is unmistakable; while in Sophocles’ Electra it is altogether absent, although Dr Victor Ehrenberg in his very interesting monograph on Sophocles and Pericles has argued strongly for an element of subtle political commentary in the treatment of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus , and of Pocreon in the Antigone. These remarks may serve to show that the title does not express a blind indifference to the multiple complexity of those works which we class together as tragedies. They are inherently complex, and various in emphasis; at best we can discern a family resemblance between them, and, in an essay like this, the author runs the risk not only of selecting examples tailor-made to his thesis, but also of imposing an appearance of similarity of conception where it is at least equally important to stress differences. (shrink)

The debate over whether ‘fair-play’ can serve as a justification for legal punishment has recently resumed with an exchange between Richard Dagger and Antony Duff. According to the fair-play theorist, criminals deserve punishment for breaking the law because in so doing the criminal upsets a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, and punishment rectifies this unfairness. Critics frequently level two charges against this idea. The first is that it often gives the wrong explanation of what makes crime deserving (...) of punishment, since the wrongfulness of murder is not primarily about unfairness. The second is that it implies that all crimes deserve the same degree of punishment, because all crimes create the same degree of unfairness. These objections are viewed as revealing fatal flaws in the theory. Although Dagger attempts to meet these objections by drawing on political theory, Duff responds that this still draws upon the wrong kind of resources for meeting these objections. This paper argues that these two objections rest on a crucial mistake that has been overlooked by both the defenders and critics of fair-play. This mistake results from failing to distinguish between what justifies punishment as a response to crime (which requires a common element to all crime) and what justifies attaching particular penalties to crimes (which requires making distinctions in the severity of crime). The arguments presented will give reasons to consider fair-play as a viable justification for legal punishment. (shrink)

The work of Sophocles shows the human suffering which might be caused by evil without the presence of guilt. Within the historic confrontation of the Athenian political stage, the presentation of the tragic conflict opposes the illustrated omnipotence: to present that what is divine as incomprehensible is one of the traditional features of Sophocles’ work and his announcement of anti-modernity. “Not-understanding” is the banner of silence when faced with the limit of natural reason. As a response to sophist thought, (...) which replaced the divine paradigm, the preponderance of the gods in the work of Sophocles might be seen as an affirmation. What is characteristic of the traditional restoration proposed by Sophocles is not only the appearance of the Gods in his works, but the particular way in which they reveal themselves. Knowing that what is divine is not characteristic of men because it is not a feature of the former to be understood to a lesser degree than that of its own nature. That is exactly the stage where the struggle between the reality of knowing and the relative appearance of knowing occurs. Bearing this interpretative intention in mind, the aim of the paper is to highlight the way in which evil reveals itself in Oedipus the King, as a device chosen by the gods to trigger the unfolding of the nature of the hero. (shrink)

How can we imagine a future not driven by capitalist assumptions about humans and the wider world? How are a range of contemporary artistic and popular cultural practices already providing pathways to post-capitalist futures? Authors from a variety of disciplines answer these questions through writings on blues and hip hop, virtual reality, post-colonial science fiction, virtual gaming, riot grrrls and punk, raku pottery, post-pornography fanzines, zombie films, and role playing. The essays in Art as Revolt are clustered around themes such (...) as technology and the future, aesthetics and resistance, and ethnographies of the self beyond traditional understandings of identity. Using philosophies of immanence – describing a system that gives rise to itself, independent of outside forces – drawn from a rich and evolving tradition that includes Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Braidotti, the authors and editors provide an engrossing range of analysis and speculation. Together the essays, written by experts in their fields, stage an important collective, transdisciplinary conversation about how best to talk about art and politics today. Sophisticated in its theoretical and philosophical premises, and engaging some of the most pressing questions in cultural studies and artistic practice today, Art as Revolt does not provide comfortable closure. Instead, it is understood by its authors to be a “Dionysian machine,” a generator of open-ended possibility and potential that challenges readers to affirm their own belief in the futures of this world. Contributors include Timothy J. Beck, Mark Bishop, Dave Collins, David Fancy, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Malisa Kurtz, Nicole Land, Eric Lochhead, Douglas Ord, Joanna Perkins, Peter Rehberg, Chris Richardson, Hans Skott-Myhre, and Kathleen Skott-Myhre. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the meaning of political action by way of a dialogue between Dewey, Thoreau, and Cavell. These philosophers demonstrate possibilities of political engagement and participation. Especially in response to the psychological and emotional dimensions of political crisis today, I shall claim that American philosophy can demonstrate something beyond problem-solving as conventionally understood in politics and that it has the potential to re-place philosophy in such a manner that politics itself is changed. First, I shall (...) draw a contrast between the ways of political action demonstrated respectively by Dewey and Thoreau. Some points of divergence are revealed within American philosophy. I shall then explore the partially different sense of political action implied by Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy, identifying this as the politics of acknowledgment. Finally, I shall propose the idea of challenging inclusion as an alternative political education for human transformation, taking this as a key to changing politics. (shrink)

The messianic messages delivered to Londoners by the self-styled prophet, Richard Brothers, were regarded by many sceptical observers and pamphleteers as eccentric or, worse still, the embarrassing utterances of someone wishing to reprise the political turmoil of a by-gone era marred by religious ‘fanaticism’. This article shows the extent to which Brothers's messages, as set down in his Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (1794–1795), were absolutely central to the religious politics and culture of the 1790s—or what one (...) contemporary critic mockingly referred to as the ‘age of prophecy’. Brothers's prophecies came to the attention of the British government, which culminated in his arrest for treasonable practices in March 1795 when he became a cause célèbre, before being confined to an asylum for eleven years. He was deemed a criminal lunatic but, as this article seeks to demonstrate, his ‘prophetic imagination’ arose out of the same rich theological, political and cultural context that spurred ‘radicals’ like Tom Paine, whilst inspiring poets and artists such as William Blake. If the content of his prophecies were regarded by contemporary sceptics for having no validity, it remains true to say that Richard Brothers, as an educated gentleman and naval officer, dramatically altered 18th-century expectations and perceptions of what prophets were and the nature of prophecy itself. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner’s thesis ‘that political life itself sets the main problems for the political theorist’ marks a turning point in the study of the history of political thought. The Protestant princes who revised Luther’s doctrine of disobedience in order to save Lutheranism as a political force are the best example of this ‘Skinnerian revolution’ in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. This is in accordance with his claim that principles play a legitimating and (...) innovating role in politics. A tacit implication of the thesis is that we should not only read theorists as politicians but also read politicians as theorists. The politician possesses a special competence in discerning between various types of situation, has a distinct contestational imagination, is a person who is prepared to acknowledge the inherent paradoxes of the situation and who has the capacity to deal politically with limited time. (shrink)

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of this book's powerful exploration of the fraught ways in which money, race and power shape the story of Christianity in American public life. The authors' subject is the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC: arguably the latest example of a long line of white evangelical institutions aiming to amplify and promote a (...) religious, political, and moral agenda of their own. In their careful and compelling investigation, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon disclose the ways in which the Museum's exhibits reinforce a particularized and partial interpretation of the Bible's meaning. Bringing to light the Museum's implicit messaging about scriptural provenance and audience, the authors reveal how the MOTB produces a version of the Bible that in essence authorizes a certain sort of white evangelical privilege; promotes a view of history aligned with that same evangelical aspiration; and above all protects a cohort of white evangelicals from critique. They show too how the Museum collapses vital conceptual distinctions between its own conservative vision of the Bible and 'The Bible' as a cultural icon. This revelatory volume above all confirms that scripture – for all the claims made for it that it speaks only divine truth – can in the end never be separated from human politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Racine, Oedipus, and Absolute Fantasies*Mitchell Greenberg (bio)Tout mythe se rapporte à l’origine. Toute question d’origine ne saurait ouvrir que sur un mythe [Every myth points back to an origin. Any questioning of origins necessarily opens onto myth].—Jean-Paul Valabrega, Phantasme, mythe, corps et sensAinsi l’itinéraire de la psychanalyse freudienne est-il celui d’une recherche qui... se fait attentive à ce qui du corps réside dans les mots, s’inscrit dans les (...) traces, reste gravé en mémoire au point de n’apparaître que comme réminiscence [Thus the itinerary of Freudian psychoanalysis would be a quest for... what of the body resides in words, is inscribed in traces, or remains engraved in memory to such an extent that it only can reappear as reminiscence].—Pierre Fédida, “L’anatomie dans la psychanalyse”Something happened in the seventeenth century. Somethings in this particularly conflicted period radically altered the ways in which human subjectivity was created and internalized to produce what in our late twentieth century we have come to call modernity. Despite the different and often contradictory inflections we like to give it, it now seems fairly certain that there was a “crisis of the seventeenth century,” a crisis that was traumatic and that was marked, most significantly for our purposes at least, by an altering of subjective sensibility.In an ever-crescendoing leitmotiv from Machiavelli to Montaigne, from Richelieu to Louis XIV, from Olivares to James I, we hear echoing across Europe the same strident clamor. An anxious, pervasive suspicion that the order of things was out of kilter, that in fact the world was sinking into disorder, seems to dominate European thought in the first half of the century. 1 The fear of chaos, especially in societies whose past has been grounded in rigid hierarchical structures, is obviously exacerbated in periods of great [End Page 40] social change. Nevertheless, if we are to believe those political theorists influenced by the work of Freud, this fear, although enflamed by real experience of social unrest, reaches well beyond the actuality of a particular historical event and finds its terrifying power in the most archaic strata of the human psyche. “All civilization,” writes Eugène Enriquez,is a struggle against chaos. Not against chaos as it might or might not have actually existed in prehistoric times, but against the phantasm of a primordial chaos, of a primeval disorder, of an immixture, of the undifferentiated, against an ordinary violence.... Chaos is the constantly retreating horizon in front of which all social organization and institutions are constructed. It returns us to our ancestral fear. We embrace any and all protection against it.[101]The stately image of Classical France, therefore, an image to which we have become accustomed by almost two hundred years of academic history and which finds its most paradigmatic icon in the tragic production of Racine, tends to obscure a reality of almost constant social and religious trauma. For the purposes of my discussion, I would like to return to Racine, who is perhaps the most prominent representative of the aesthetic and ethical tradition of classicism, which, perfected in France in the mid-1600s, will go on to colonize European ethics and aesthetics into the eighteenth century. Despite the radical changes wrought by political, industrial, philosophical, and psychoanalytical revolutions, classicism, through its corollary myth of the unitary ego, continues to haunt our own inabilities to live unneurotically the various drives, contradictions, identifications, and projections that continually tell us that we are not one but many.A central paradox exists at the heart of any discussion of Racinian dramaturgy. While the tragic dilemma of Racine’s theater is profoundly anchored in the passionate, forbidden sexuality of its characters, passions that are inextricably tied to the desiring body, this body is absent, banished from the lexical construction of the Racinian text. How are we to understand the conundrum of a theater that, more than any other, presents incestuous sexual desire and its frustration as the enchafed crucible of tragedy, when the crucible itself has been exiled from the field of representation? In its plots and peripeteia, Racine’s theater ingeniously reconfigures how his protagonists... (shrink)

The phenomenon of lobbying is considered as a mechanism for representing group interests, a system and practice of realizing the social interests of various groups, unions and associations of citizens, as well as business groups and corporations, which act through purposeful influence on the legislative power and state administrative structures. The informational and communicative essence of lobbying is revealed, and informational lobbying is singled out as a specific type of lobbying activity in the conditions of a post-industrial society. Information lobbying (...) is defined as a method of information support for the activities of certain interest groups, structures operating in the sphere of decision-making by state authorities and local governments, and a special way of forming and supporting communications, which has specific features, principles and norms of information exchange and reproduction of political contacts, communication channels and other components. It is proven that the communicative nature of information lobbying allows its subjects to organize political discourse. In general, it is appropriate to define information lobbying as a form of marketing communications, which is a specific result of the development of political markets in the conditions of developed representative democracy, when the owners of large public resources begin to play a special political role. Like any type of marketing communications, information lobbying is focused on establishing two-way relations and forming feedback between the communicator and the recipient. A special direction of information lobbying is international lobbying activity, which is interpreted as the interaction of legal entities or individuals with state power structures and management institutions that are formed at the global level, in order to influence the development and decision-making by them in their own interests or in the interests of specific clients. (shrink)

How are we to understand what happens to Oedipus? What or who is the cause of the terrible deeds—predicted by oracles to both Laius and Oedipus—that he has already committed before the play begins and that are revealed in its course? The purpose of the present essay, whose title alludes to a well-known article by E.R. Dodds, is to draw attention to aspects of the play that have been ignored or explained away. To give them their (...) due it will be necessary to take issue with two views of Dodds (one of which he owes to Wilamowitz) that I regard as mistaken. To argue against an article that is more than fifty years old might be thought a pointless exhumation, but Dodds's highly influential formulations, I will argue, have caused what Sophocles wrote to be either overlooked or misconstrued and are still causing misunderstanding in the second decade of the present century. It is time these views were examined critically. (shrink)

Examination of Sophocles’ Antigone reveals how the corpse remains a historically, culturally and politically inscribed subject. To leave Polynices’ corpse, by Creon’s decree, to the open air to be consumed by carrion is e!ectively to erase Polynice’s status as an Athenian citizen and transubstantiate the materiality of the corpse into one that is immaterial and non-human – that of a slave. Antigone’s refusal to leave the unburied remains of her brother - a refusal that has been traditionally romanticized as an (...) act of rebellion against authoritarian control - circumscribes and rei”es class boundaries between the free, the civilized, and the unfree, uncivilized slave. In e!ect, Polynices’ unburied body unearths the ways in which a “western, hegemonic canon” has e!ectively buried a history of chattel slavery that has made much of this cultural output possible. An engagement with particularly notable ruminations on Antigone, such as Hegel’s and Derrida’s, serves to exemplify how the “gure of Antigone has been appropriated in ways that consolidate, rather than disrupt, a tradition of thought that evades its own implication in slavery and colonialism. (shrink)

‘There is surely more than geography involved in the extraordinary stress laid in the play on the importance of the branching road.’ So writes the latest editor of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, R. D. Dawe, who proceeds to mention the ‘sexual significance … ’ which ‘people tell us’ is to be discerned behind the references to the cross-roads where Oedipus met and killed his father. Dawe finds it difficult to make up his mind whether quasi-Freudian symbolism is (...) properly to be attributed to Sophocles, and in adopting an equivocal position he cites only one further factor, that ‘the imagery of crossroads is common enough representing a point where a crucial decision has to be made’. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel sees Oedipus as an epitome of the philosophical quest for self-knowledge. In Hegel's readings of Oedipus, the latter becomes a distant reflection of the modern and mature Hegelian self, who consciously takes on this quest. Yet unlike Oedipus, whose search for the truth about his past is characterized by both metaphorical and literal blindness, the modern self knows itself, precisely because it understands its past and can thus appropriate and situate itself (...) in relation to the present. For Hegel, self-understanding entails grasping the proper relationship between past and present, which in turn necessitates acknowledging his own relationship to Oedipus. This essay examines Henrik Ibsen's turn to the Hegelian engagement with the past, by focusing on one of the most enigmatic scenes in his 1866 drama, Peer Gynt, where the Norwegian protagonist is cast as Oedipus. The scene examines the drama's own past—through an engagement with a dramatic ancestor—and focuses on the influence of the past on fashioning modern European identity. Moreover, it offers a critique of how the past is utilized in the creation and consolidation of that identity. With this, Ibsen offers an implicit critique of Hegel's understanding of Oedipus, and his encounter with the Sphinx in particular. Revisiting Oedipus through its modern reception, Ibsen questions the act by which the past is revealed as such and is put to work in the service of a particular present. (shrink)