Charles Taylor’s method of philosophical argumentation is distinctive, interlacing historical, ontological, phenomenological, hermeneutical, theistic, and ethical strands. His writings contribute t...

I take a philosophical approach and seek to address the question of inter-religious rituals and practices with reference to what Charles Taylor has called ‘the immanent frame.’ Whilst considering the dynamics of inter-religious or cross-religious ritual, this article will focus mainly on the idea of rituality occurring in an immanent frame or habitus. I will argue that whilst there are specific cultic rituals that need to be negotiated as part of any form of explicit inter-rituality, there (...) is a larger potential that is suggested by a broader anthropological vision. Moreover, an ‘immanent turn’ by religions may be the positive step towards the joint creation of meaning and practice in the public sphere. (shrink)

El artículo se propone rehabilitar el concepto tomasiano de representación cognoscitiva que es fuertemente criticado en su versión post cartesiana. Con este objetivo se contextualiza la representación en el marco más amplio de otras características que Tomás de Aquino atribuye al conocimiento humano, concretamente las de inmanencia e intencionalidad. El análisis de estos atributos del conocimiento permite establecer el ámbito propio del acto cognoscitivo, diferenciándolo de una condición física o natural This article aims at recovering Aquinas’ concept of cognitive representation (...) which is strongly criticized in its post-cartesian sense. For this purpose, representation is contextualized in the wider frame of other characteristics that Thomas Aquinas attributes to human knowledge, i.e. that of immanence and intentionality. The analysis of these features allows to establish the proper scope of the cognitive act and to differentiate it from a physical or natural condition. (shrink)

The Chapter on The equality predicate in the dialogical frame. It is based on a kind of indirect copy-cat moves.

Roberto Formisano | : Dans L’essence de la manifestation, la phénoménologie de Michel Henry se présente à la manière d’une philosophie première qui demande expressément et exige l’expulsion de la finitude hors du questionnement ontologique. Dans cet article, je vise à montrer que la raison ultime de cette exigence repose sur une opposition que, dans le cadre de la « critique du monisme ontologique », la problématique henryenne établit entre l’existence en soi de l’absolu et sa manifestation opérée par l’ouverture (...) de l’horizon temporellement fini de l’existence humaine. Reprise et développée à partir d’une interprétation critique de la philosophie de la religion de Fichte, la thèse de l’opposition entre l’absolu en soi et sa manifestation finie dans l’existence constitue en effet le préalable décisif qui régit le renversement — toujours revendiqué par Henry — de l’ontologie de Heidegger et de sa conceptualisation de la phénoménologie. | : In L’essence de la manifestation, Michel Henry’s phenomenology takes the form of a first philosophy which expressly demands and requires the expulsion of finitude out of the ontological questioning. In this article, I aim to show that the ultimate reason for that requirement rests on an opposition which, within the frame of the “critique of ontological monism”, the issues raised by Michel Henry establish between the existence in itself of the absolute and its manifestation brought about by opening up the temporally finite horizon of human existence. Taken up and developed starting with Fichte’s philosophy of religion, the thesis of the opposition between the absolute in itself and its finite manifestation in existence constitutes indeed the decisive precondition governing the reversal — constantly advocated by Henry — of Heidegger’s ontology and of his conceptualization of phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Husserl—Heidegger relationship is systematically misunderstood when framed in terms of a distinction between internalism and externalism. Both philosophers, it is argued, employ the phenomenological reduction to immanence as a fundamental methodological instrument. After first outlining the assumptions regarding inner and outer and the individual and the social from which recent epistemological interpretations of phenomenology begin, I turn to the question of Husserl's internalism. I argue that Husserl can only be understood as an internalist on the (...) assumption that immanence equates with internal. This, however, is not the case as can be seen once the reduction is understood not as setting aside the existence of the world, but rather a reflection on its meaning. Turning to Heidegger, I argue that his commitment to a form of the phenomenological reduction precludes him from being either a semantic or a social externalist. The place of authenticity and the first person perspective in his work derive from his phenomenological commitments, which can be seen in his accounts of discourse and language and of falling (Verfallen). I then go on to briefly outline a more plausible basis for understanding the difference between Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenologies in terms of their respective emphases on logic and on poetics. (shrink)

This essay studies the unfolding of Levinas' concept of transcendence from 1935 to his 1984 talk entitled "Transcendence and Intelligibility." I discuss how Levinas frames transcendence in light of enjoyment, shame, and nausea in his youthful project of a counter-ontology to Heidegger's Being and Time. In Levinas' essay, transcendence is the human urge to get out of being. I show the ways in which Levinas' early ontology is conditioned by historical circumstances, but I argue that its primary aim is formal (...) and phenomenological; it adumbrates formal structures of human existence. Levinas' 1940s ontology accentuates the dualism in being, between what amount to a light and a dark principle. This shift in emphasis ushers in a new focus for transcendence, which is now both sensuous and temporal, thanks to the promise of fecundity. Totality and Infinity (1961) pursues a similar onto-logic, while shifting the locus of transcendence to a non-sexuate other. The final great work, Otherwise than Being or beyond Essence (1974) offers a hermeneutic phenomenology of transcendence-in-immanence. It rethinks Husserl's focus on the transcendence of intentionality and its condition of possibility in the passive synthesis of complex temporality. If the 1974 strategy 'burrows beneath' the classical phenomenological syntheses, it also incorporates unsuspected influences from French psychology and phenomenology. This allows Levinas to develop a philosophical conception of transcendence that is neither Husserl's intentionality nor Heidegger's temporal ecstases, in what amounts to an original contribution to a phenomenology both hermeneutic and descriptive. (shrink)

Against the two dominant ethical paradigms of continental philosophy–Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of the other and Michel Foucault’s ethics of self-cultivation—The Self-Emptying Subject theorizes an ethics of self-emptying, or kenosis, one that reveals the immanence of an impersonal and dispossessed life without a why. Rather than align immanence with the enclosures of the subject, Dubilet engages the history of Christian mystical theology, modern philosophy, and contemporary theories of the subject to rethink immanence as what precedes and exceeds the very difference between (...) the (human) self and the (divine) other, between the subject and transcendence. By arguing that transcendence operates on life in secular as well as religious domains, the book challenges a dominant distribution of concepts within contemporary theoretical discourse, which associates transcendence exclusively with religion and theology and immanence exclusively with modern secularity and philosophy. -/- The Self-Emptying Subject argues that it is important to resist framing the relationship between medieval theology and modern philosophy as a transition from the affirmation of divine transcendence to the establishment of autonomous subjects. Through an engagement with Meister Eckhart, G. W. F. Hegel, and Georges Bataille, it uncovers a medieval theological discourse that rejects the primacy of pious subjects and the transcendence of God (Eckhart); retrieves a modern philosophical discourse that critiques the creation of self-standing subjects through a speculative rewriting of the concepts of Christian theology (Hegel); and explores a discursive site that demonstrates the subjecting effects of transcendence across theological and philosophical operations and archives (Bataille). Taken together, these interpretations suggest that if we suspend the antagonistic relationship between theological and philosophical discourses and decenter our periodizing assumptions and practices, we might encounter a yet unmapped theoretical fecundity of self-emptying that frees life from transcendent powers that incessantly subject it to their own ends. (shrink)

Recent developments regarding the pharmacology of psychoactive substances are significant for treating depressions or opioid addictions. Current theories, hypotheses, and models of drug effects assume a cause–effect narrative, which is based on a stimulus/response mechanism. These narratives prioritize effects rather than conscious experiences. In this sense, drug experiences are quickly subsumed into common categories and codes of biological determinism. If subjective experiences are in the focus of the research, it quickly becomes a link to mystical, spiritual, or transcendental narratives. These (...) classifications lead to epistemological doublets (Gadamer). In this article, psychedelic experiences of drug users are analyzed in the frame of the pharmaco-analysis by Deleuze/Guattari. These framed psychedelic experiences are interpreted by means of a non-philosophical approach through philo-fictions (Laruelle), i.e., contradictory assumptions and hyperspeculations. In this respect, the aim of this article is to bring philo-fictions in relation to psychedelic experiences and to discuss them with models of information science, quantum mechanics, new materialism, and the philosophy of immanence. The result will be an open synthesis, with the assumption of further reflections on the agency, immanence, and the wholeness of matter. (shrink)

This article rethinks Michel Foucault’s relation to religion by situating his engagement with the ‘death of God’ in relation to his ongoing efforts to frame critical discourse in consistently immanent terms. It argues that a certain, indirect ‘theological’ horizon is the paradoxical and problematic limit, for Foucault, of the possibility of a thoroughgoing immanent discourse in his earlier work, due to the paradoxes of the death of long-duration of God (and ‘man’). The relation of his work to (...) religion thus emerges less as a productive question, for Foucault, than as a problem to be resolved if his critical project is to be viable. The article argues that his later work is informed by a significant re-framing of his relation to religion, signalled in comments he makes at the end of his 1978 lecture, “What is Critique?” and performed in his engagements with Christian mysticism, the ‘political spirituality’ of the Iranian revolution and early Christian practices of the self. Foucault is shown to perform a complex openness to religion as ‘other,’ which negotiates the ‘religious problem’ haunting his early work, even as it must repeatedly risk undermining his project. It is concluded that the relation to religion in Foucault’s work, less reflects resonance with aspects of a religious worldview, than it stages and clarifies the challenge of thinking otherwise immanently after the death of God. (shrink)

In research on organizational environmentalism, there has been a repeated call for ways to go beyond the business case for sustainability frame. While the business case frame assumes that developing eco-friendly solutions can benefit firms financially, this article highlights the importance of challenging established understandings of sustainability. To this end, I introduce Deleuze’s distinction between morality and ethics. Morality involves passing judgements on the basis of values. Ethics provides an immanent evaluation of the principles by which specific (...) solutions are considered sustainable. Analysing interviews with architects, building engineers and business developers, the article shows how these actors reflect on the values that form the basis of their practice, but also try to imagine new ways of working with sustainability. In conclusion, the article suggests that an immanent ethics of organizational environmentalism can allow for the values that inform environmental efforts in organizations to be evaluated as well as alternative visions of sustainability to be created. (shrink)

In research on organizational environmentalism, there has been a repeated call for ways to go beyond the business case for sustainability frame. While the business case frame assumes that developing eco-friendly solutions can benefit firms financially, this article highlights the importance of challenging established understandings of sustainability. To this end, I introduce Deleuze’s distinction between morality and ethics. Morality involves passing judgements on the basis of values. Ethics provides an immanent evaluation of the principles by which specific (...) solutions are considered sustainable. Analysing interviews with architects, building engineers and business developers, the article shows how these actors reflect on the values that form the basis of their practice, but also try to imagine new ways of working with sustainability. In conclusion, the article suggests that an immanent ethics of organizational environmentalism can allow for the values that inform environmental efforts in organizations to be evaluated as well as alternative visions of sustainability to be created. (shrink)

If mysticism, as Coventry Patmore defines it, is 'the science of ultimates,' in what way would mysticism explain the possibility of a profound relationship between ultimate reality as infinite and proximate reality as finite ? This paper attempts to address that question through the lens of Evelyn Underhill’s philosophy of mysticism. The paper fundamentally works at framing two of Hegel’s triadic patterns of dialectic against the being-becoming binary as engaged by Underhill. This application helps unveil the relation of transcendence with (...) immanence, a relation that is crucial for a structuring of the infinite-finite mystical intimacy. (shrink)

In this article, I present an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s ethics in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s distinction between immanent ethics and transcendent morality. I argue that Kierkegaard’s skepticism towards moral prescription, his emphasis on the single individual as the basis of normative evaluation, and his view of Christianity as somehow “beyond” the scope of moral obligation are all functions of a Deleuzian conception of immanent ethics as a non-moralistic form of normativity. On this basis, I argue for two conclusions: (...) first, that Kierkegaard’s work is better understood through this frame-work than through either aretaic or deontological frameworks; and second, that Deleuzian ethics is better served by Kierkegaardian illustrations like patience and stillness, than by the tropes of destruction that are often associated with it. Dans cet article, je présente une interprétation de l’éthique de Kierkegaard du point de vue de la distinction deleuzienne entre l’éthique immanente et la moralité transcendante. Dans cette perspective, je soutiens que le scepticisme de Kierkegaard quant à la prescription morale, sa conception d’un christianisme « en dehors » du champ de l’obligation morale, et l’accent qu’il fait porter sur le seul individu comme étant la base des évaluations normatives, sont tous fonction d’une conception deleuzienne de l’éthique immanente, en tant que forme amorale de la normativité. Sur cette base, j’affirme deux conséquences : la première, que l’oeuvre kierkegaardienne est mieux comprise selon ce cadre que selon, d’une part, le cadre de l’éthique de la vertu, et d’autre part, le cadre déontologique. La deuxième, que l’éthique deleuzienne s’illustre mieux par les exemples kierkegaardiens, comme ceux de la patience et de la tranquillité, que par les tropes de la destruction auxquels elle est souvent associée. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between technology and aesthetics in contemporary Hollywood, using experiments with frame rates and shutter speeds to show how deep, systemic changes in cinematic technologies can alter our relation to the image’s referential functions. For eighty years, cinema’s registration of movement relied upon a standardized frame rate and shutter speed, meaning that cinema’s sense of motion was constant. With the proliferation of ever more powerful digital capture systems, however, these formerly inflexible options are made (...) variable and put into question. By changing the registration of movement, the high frame rate experiments in The Hobbit and the open-shutter cinematography of Miami Vice offer an estranged relation to cinema’s presentation of worldly motion. I argue here that this altered sense of the image’s referentiality is well suited to depictions of our contemporary reality, which, being profoundly bound up in digital technologies, seems similarly disorienting, estranging, and aesthetic. In the first section of the article, I trace out the origins of this style of movement in the logics of the corporate tech industry, which rolls out continual upgrades in audio-visual technologies in order to justify new product lines. According to industry rhetoric, these upgrades ostensibly lead to a heightened sense of realism, but viewer response has been torn over whether this new sense of motion is realistic or unrealistic. In the second section, I closely analyze The Hobbit and the recent work of Michael Mann to show how established film form shifts in relation to this problem in digital cinema’s representation of worldly movement. In The Hobbit’s case, film form is altered in order to assimilate the HFR’s unfamiliar sense of motion, but the cinematography in Miami Vice embraces a productive aesthetic estrangement which is both realistic and hyperaestheticized, leaving the divide between immanent experience and technologized disorientation an open question. (shrink)

What is everything made of? -- Do I have free will? -- Can I know the world? -- Does God exist? -- How shall I live? -- What are my rights? -- How can I be saved? -- Appendix: Letters on philosophical topics.

A History of Western Philosophy and Theology is the fruit of John Frame's forty-five years of teaching philosophical subjects. No other survey of the history of Western thought offers the same invigorating blend of expositional clarity, critical insight, and biblical wisdom. The supplemental study questions, bibliographies, links to audio lectures, quotes from influential thinkers, twenty appendices, and indexed glossary make this an excellent main textbook choice for seminary- and college-level courses and for personal study. Book jacket.

John Frame gives us an accessible introduction to "triperspectival" study-where theological issues are fruitfully viewed from multiple perspectives without compromise to their unity and truth. Book jacket.

The 1968 My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam and shocking events at Abu Graibh prison in Iraq in 2003 show that the behaviour of some in the American military has descended into barbarism. How strong is the military's commitment to avoiding misconduct and atrocity? This timely and compelling book asks critical questions and raises sobering issues the Australian Army can't ignore. Leading military personnel, aid workers, commentators and scholars discuss the Australian Army's commitment to behaving ethically and the challenges associated (...) with contemporary warfare. With chapters on social media and inciting violence, cyberweapons, and special operations and humanitarian deployments, 'Ethics Under Fire' offers a rare insight into the key issues facing the modern army, from technology and tactics to terrorism"--Back cover. (shrink)

Charles Darwin found much in Australia to challenge and inform his thinking. This book explores the impact that Darwin’s short visit to Australia in 1836 had on the man himself and on the emerging nation. Now, more than 170 years later, Darwin continues to influence Australian attitudes to life and living.

In this paper we seek to make the case for a teaching and learning strategy that integrates business ethics in the curriculum, whilst not precluding a disciplines based approach to this subject. We do this in the context of specific work experience modules at undergraduate level which are offered by Middlesex University Business School, part of a modern university based in North West London. We firstly outline our educative values and then the modules that form the basis of our research. (...) We then identify and elaborate what we believe are the five dimensions which distinguish an integrated approach based on work experience from a disciplines-based approach, namely: process and content, internal and external, facilitation and teaching, covert and overt, and living wisdom and established wisdom. The last dimension draws on the practical relevance of the Aristotelian notion of phronesis inherent in our approach. We go on to provide two case examples of our practice to illustrate our perspective and in support of our conclusions. These are that reflection integrated into the Business Studies curriculum, using the ASKE typology of learning [Frame, 2001, Proceedings of the 9th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference, p. 80], in respect of personal and group process in a work experience context, provides a useful heuristic for the development of moral sensibility and ethical practice. (shrink)

During the last few years two major volumes have been published, both greatly revised versions of earlier Gifford Lectures: Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age ( 2007 ) and Raimon Panikkar’s The Rhythm of Being ( 2010 ). The two volumes are similar in some respects and very dissimilar in others. Both thinkers complain about the glaring blemishes of the modern, especially the contemporary age; both deplore above all a certain deficit of religiosity. The two authors differ, however, both in the (...) details of their diagnosis and in their proposed remedies. Taylor views the modern age—styled as “secular age”—as marked by a slide into secular agnosticism, into “exclusive humanism”, and above all into an “immanent frame” excluding theistic “transcendence”. Although sharing the concern about “loss of meaning”, Panikkar does not find its source in the abandonment of (mono)theistic transcendence; on the contrary, both radical transcendence and agnostic immanence are responsible for the deficit of genuine faith. For him, recovery of faith requires an acknowledgment of our being in the world, as part of the “rhythm of being” happening in a holistic or “cosmotheandric” mode. In classical Indian terminology, while Taylor’s emphasis on the transcendence-immanence tension reflects ultimately a dualistic perspective (dvaita), Panikkar’s holistic notion of the rhythm of being captures the core of Advaita Vendanta. (shrink)

This chapter explores the making of a humanist ceremony, and discusses why self‐identified humanists and secularists, who often define themselves within the tradition of ‘free thought’, want to foster ceremonies, given that ceremonies so often connote the routine, discipline, and authority associated with religion. It focuses on funerals provided by celebrants in the British Humanist Association (BHA), the most important non‐religious organization in the United Kingdom, and one of the world leaders in the development of such ceremonies. A ‘non‐religious’ funeral, (...) then, is one in which a conscious decision has been made to ground the event and its importance within ‘the immanent frame’. Anthropologists often observe that ritual speech and action carry particular meaning and force. Ritual frames a social world, and it communicates and validates a particular way of looking at the world. (shrink)

Volume 22, Issue 1-2, July - December 2019, Page 94-102.

In this paper we seek to make the case for a teaching and learning strategy that integrates business ethics in the curriculum, whilst not precluding a disciplines based approach to this subject. We do this in the context of specific work experience modules at undergraduate level which are offered by Middlesex University Business School, part of a modern university based in North West London. We firstly outline our educative values and then the modules that form the basis of our research. (...) We then identify and elaborate what we believe are the five dimensions which distinguish an integrated approach based on work experience from a disciplines-based approach, namely: process and content, internal and external, facilitation and teaching, covert and overt, and living wisdom and established wisdom. The last dimension draws on the practical relevance of the Aristotelian notion of phronesis inherent in our approach. We go on to provide two case examples of our practice to illustrate our perspective and in support of our conclusions. These are that reflection integrated into the Business Studies curriculum, using the ASKE typology of learning [Frame, 2001, Proceedings of the 9th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference (Nottingham: Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University), p. 80], in respect of personal and group process in a work experience context, provides a useful heuristic for the development of moral sensibility and ethical practice. (shrink)

_Global Religious and Secular Dynamics_ integrates European theories of modern secularization and theories of global religious revival as interrelated dynamics. Casanova contrasts the internal European road of secularization with the external colonial road of global interreligious encounters and the globalization of the secular immanent frame with the expansion of global religious denominationalism.

In his book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor appeals to the metaphysical?normative distinction between ?immanence? and ?transcendence? as definitive for post-Axial religion. On Taylor's view, therefore, those of us who embrace a fully secular modernity can be described as having abandoned ?transcendence? to take up our lives wholly within the confines of the immanent frame, though he grants we may seek alternative satisfactions or ?substitutes? for eternity. But the notion that any metaphysical?normative model of sacred experience can serve (...) as an irresistible foundation is open to doubt if one recalls the Heideggerian insight that any metaphysical picture both reveals and conceals aspects of our experience. Taylor's own description of sacred and non-sacred experience within the immanent frame seems to rely upon this foundational distinction, without entertaining the possibility that the language itself may very well actually distort what our experience is like. This paper pursues the above objections to Taylor's argument, focusing special attention on the assumption that one can judge aesthetic experience (such as listening to a Beethoven string quartet) with the criteria we have inherited from post-Axial religion. The overwhelming authority of the Axial tradition might seem to validate questions such as, ?Is there an object?? or ?Is the experience purely immanent?? But to such questions we might respond that such language simply has no grip on the phenomena. Any such talk of ?substitution? might therefore be understood as an historical remnant in Taylor's book of the traditional monotheist's critique of idolatry. (shrink)