Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy offers extremely careful and detailed criticisms of some of the most important assumptions scholars have brought to bear in beginning the process of (Platonic) interpretation. It goes on to offer a new way to group the dialogues, based on important facts in the lives and philosophical practices of Socrates - the main speaker in most of Plato's dialogues - and of Plato himself. Both sides of Debra Nails's arguments deserve close attention: the negative (...) side, which exposes a great deal of diversity in a field that often claims to have achieved a consensus; and the positive side, which insists that we must attend to what we know of these philosophers' lives and practices, if we are to make a serious attempt to understand why Plato wrote the way he did, and why his writings seem to depict different philosophies and even different approaches to philosophizing. From the Preface by Nicholas D. Smith. (shrink)

The People of Plato is the first study since 1823 devoted exclusively to the identification of, and relationships among, the individuals represented in the complete Platonic corpus. It provides details of their lives, and it enables one to consider the persons of Plato's works, and those of other Socratics, within a nexus of important political, social, and familial relationships. Debra Nails makes a broad spectrum of scholarship accessible to the non-specialist. She distinguishes what can be stated confidently from what remains (...) controversial and--with full references to ancient and contemporary sources--advances our knowledge of the men and women of the Socratic milieu. Bringing the results of modern epigraphical and papyrological research to bear on long-standing questions, The People of Plato is a fascinating resource and valuable research tool for the field of ancient Greek philosophy and for literary, political, and historical studies more generally. In discrete sections, Nails discusses systems of Athenian affiliation, significant historical episodes that link lives and careers of the late fifth century, and their implications for the dramatic dates of the dialogues. The volume includes a rich array of maps, stemmata, and diagrams, plus a glossary, chronology, plan of the agora in 399 B.C.E., bibliography, and indices. (shrink)

That C. P. Snow had first-hand experience both in science and writing was taken for granted in the years of controversy over ‘the two cultures’, but neither the quality of his experience nor the circumstances of his eventual adoption of a literary career was given close enough consideration. Snow's own statements on these two points are often misleading. Yet the autobiographical nature of his fiction throws significant light on the subject. An examination of the autobiographical elements in Snow's novels in (...) the light of his conception of the novel raises the question of whether his shift from science to literature was exactly the result of a genuine choice and also reveals that the two cultures dichotomy is embedded in his personal experience. (shrink)

Thomas Nail’s interview with Alain Badiou focuses on the concept of the migrant, or the sans-papiers. Badiou discusses the importance of this concept in his previous work and for contemporary politics. Nail also inquires into Badiou’s involvement with a migrant-focused political organization, L’Organisation politique, as well as his eventual break with the organization.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to (...) the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions and figures of migration, he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration. (shrink)

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to (...) the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 289-290 [Access article in PDF] Monoson, S. Sara. Plato's Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. 256. Cloth, $39.50. Sara Monoson is that rare exception to the rule that political theorists cannot sustain the interest of political philosophers: her training in ancient history and classical Greek gives her treatment of Plato's complicated relationship (...) to democracy a depth and richness that will repay the efforts of the most exacting of critics. The book under review has much to offer philosophers as well as historians of philosophy. Notably, Monoson answers the question, "What is democracy?" with attention to a whole constellation of "cultural practices and normative imagery" (237) constitutive of the Athenian polis, on which the narrow conception of democracy qua system of government depends. The experience of festival participation, including processions, theater, and funeral orations; multifarious opposition to tyranny; and parrhe sia, frank speech, were practices that contributed to the Athenian citizen's confidence and expectation that he should and could participate actively in the governing of his polis. One of Monoson's implicit arguments is that Platonic political philosophy is inextricably bound up with its context; thus, when we excise a Platonic "position" or argument and test its soundness, we are doing philosophy, not the history of philosophy.Monoson details the democratic practices and images that are woven into the dialogues, and she features passages others have neglected or treated as anomalous (e.g., Statesman 303a-d, Letter 7 342d), arguing convincingly that it is an unfair oversimplification to view Plato as anti-democratic, or indeed as a doctrinaire writer in any sense (133-137). Thus she does not describe Plato as simple-mindedly pro-democratic either. Rather, she does an impressive job of demonstrating just how very deeply ambivalence toward democracy runs in the dialogues, most markedly in the Republic and Gorgias,but even in the Laws. Plato was as attracted to democracy as he was wary of it, as committed to its institutions as he was apprehensive of their untoward effects.The parts of Monoson's book devoted to theater participation, frank speech, and opposition to tyranny—in relation to democracy and in Plato—are especially fine and contain a wealth of evidence that withstands scrutiny admirably. Her treatment of the funeral oration, including an interpretation of Plato's Menexenus, is less successful, but because her thesis is demonstrated without it, I need not digress from the book's virtues. Monoson's historical sections on the tyrannicides, the early Academy, and Plato's Sicilian involvement are lucid and compelling. All along in this book, one notes passages that serendipitously bear on contemporary debates and on widely shared—but controversial—interpretations of the dialogues. To take but one example from [End Page 289] what I think of as the centerpiece of the book on the realizability of the Republic's ideal city (130-133), consider the well known and variously interpreted passage suggesting how to realize the ideal the "quick and easy way": send away everyone over ten, and let the philosophers educate the remaining children (541a). The conclusion and crux of Monoson's thoughtful reply is, "I suggest we see in this passage an indication that Plato acknowledged that all governing regimes can be supported or unsettled by cultural formations. He is deeply involved here with the question of how it is that a person or people can imagine themselves out of a dominant discourse." (I should add that the book is remarkably free of jargon.) Although Monoson has given us so much so well, I am greedy to know what she makes of democracy in the Protagoras,how she views the success of sycophants after the Peloponnesian War, and how she would incorporate deme politics into her account.The deficiencies of the work as a whole are few and minor: the sole structural weakness of this excellent book is that Monoson sometimes cites, instead of evidence or argument, the judgments of others whose work... (shrink)

Mâturîdî’nin istidlâle verdiği önem bilinmektedir. Onun düşünce sisteminde istidlâle dayalı yorumlamanın ayrı bir yeri vardır. İstidlâli doğru haber ve sağlam duyularla birlikte bilgi edinmenin temel yolları arasında gören Mâturîdî’nin düşüncesinde istidlâlin bilgi edinme aracı olarak kullanılmasının reddi mümkün görünmemektedir. Zira istidlâli reddetmek için bile istidlâle ihtiyaç duyulurken, doğru haber ve duyulardan gelen bilginin test edilmesi için de gereken yine istidlâldir. Mâturîdî’ye göre insanlar için istidlâle dayalı yorumlamaya elverişli alanlar bulunmaktadır. Bu alanlarla ilgili istidlâller, genelde duyulur âlemden hareket ederek duyular ötesinin (...) bilgisine ulaşma şeklinde kurgulanır. O, istidlâllerini Allah’ın varlığı ve birliği, ahiretin varlığı, âlemin hudusü gibi konularda görüşlerini delillendirmek maksadıyla kullanmıştır. Bu alanların bilgisine duyulur âlemde elde edilen bilgilerin delâletiyle ulaşmak mümkündür. Ancak Mâturîdî’nin düşüncesinde kişinin olaylara bağlı olarak değişkenlik gösterebilen ruhî yapısı, kimi zaman onun istidlâlde bulunmasını engelleyebilir. İnat ve kibir bu türden ruhî durumlara örnektir. Çalışmamız; literatür taraması, karşılaştırma ve yorumlama yöntemleriyle işlenecektir. Mâturîdî’nin Kitâbü’t-Tevhid ve Te’vîlât, adlı eserleri bu yöntemlerle taranarak Mâturîdî’nin özellikle bu iki eseri çerçevesinde istidlâli hangi açılardan ele aldığı, görüşlerini temellendirirken ondan nasıl yararlandığı, istidlâlin kapsamını ve işlev alanlarını nasıl belirlediği gibi sorular etrafında şekillendirilecektir. (shrink)

More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; and yet, we lack a single contemporary ontology which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. Being and Motion sets out to remedy this lacuna in contemporary thought by providing a historical ontology of our present: an ontology of movement.

Öz Mâtürîdî, dinin anlaşılmasında akla verilen değer açısından Eş‘arîler ile Mu‘tezile arasında konumlandırılmaktadır. Mâtürîdî’nin akıl yürütme anlayışında, gerçekliği beş duyu ile algılanabilen ve şehâdet âlemi olarak adlandırılan dış dünyanın ayrı bir yeri vardır. Mâtürîdî’ye göre bu dünya, beş duyunun algı alanına girmeyen ve gayb âlemi olarak bilenen duyular ötesi âlemin varlığına delil teşkil etmektedir. Kitâbu’t-Tevhid’de bu delillendirme “Delâletü’ş-Şâhid ale’l-Gâib” terkibiyle ifade edilmiştir. “Görünür âlem” veya “duyular âlemi” de denilen bu âlem, bizzat varlığıyla onu var edenin varlığına şahitlik etmektedir. Ancak görünür (...) âlemin, görünmezin varlığına şahitliğinin her zaman mümkün olup olmadığı tartışmalıdır. Şayet bu mümkünse hangi şartlarda gerçekleşeceği, üzerinde durulması gereken konulardandır. Söz gelimi görünür âlemin kendisinin özelliklerini taşıyan bir âleme şahitlik ettiği kabul edildiğinde bu durum Allah hakkında nasıl uygulanacaktır? Yani Allah’ın da bu âlem gibi fizik kurallarına bağlı bir varlık olduğu mu kabul edilecektir? Zira görünür âlemin kendisi gibi bir âleme şahitlik ettiğini kabul etmek böyle bir sonuca götürebilir. Öte yandan Allah ve sıfatları ile ahiret âlemi gibi konularda bu metodun kullanılmaması durumunda bilgi elde edilebilecek başka bir yol var mıdır? Mesela duyu organları bu sahada ne kadar etkindir? Veya “doğru haber”den elde edilen bilgi kendi başına yeterli midir? Çalışmamız, Mâtürîdî’nin görünür âlemi temel alarak görünmez âlemle ilgili yorumlamalarında nasıl bir yol takip ettiğini ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Çalışma, literatür taraması, kavram tahlili, metin yorumlama yollarıyla yapılmış ve Mâtürîdî’nin Kitâbu’t-Tevhid ve Te’vîlat adlı eserleriyle sınırlandırılmıştır. (shrink)

The concept of assemblage plays a crucial role in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In a 1980 interview with Catherine Clément, Deleuze describes their invention of the concept of the assemblage as the “general logic” at work in A Thousand Plateaus. However, despite its thirty years of influence on political theory, this “general logic of the assemblage” still remains obscured by the fact that Deleuze and Guattari never formalized it as a theory per se, but largely used (...) it ad hoc throughout their work. This fact continues to pose problems for theorists today who wish to deploy something like a theory of assemblages, but also admit, as Manuel DeLanda does, that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of... (shrink)

Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Sanusi is one of the most important Ash'ari theologist in the 15th century North Africa. It is known that he wrote in most of the theological sciences which mainly in theology and mysticism. The fact that logic science is also included among these sciences, reflects the level of development in terms of "istidlal". Senûsî's booklet named "Umm al-berahin” was written with the purpose of proving the belief that "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his (...) messenger" is the source of all faith. In addition to the inferences about Allah and His attributes he also explained the attributes that must be found in the messengers based on the word "Muhammad is His messenger" and also tried to prove these features, which are considered to be truthfulness, rescript and notification, with various arguments. According to Sanusi, who defends the opinion that belief to the Hereafter, other prophets, angels, sacred books were entering this context, this is because the Prophet brought religion as a means to attest to all this. He based his inferences about the messengers adjectives on the inverse analogy in "Umm al-barahin". Besides, he used "inference by using miracle", "arrangement two original according to a result", "chained analogy", "arrangement according to two original results" and "abbreviated analogy" forms. (shrink)

The vast majority of theologians accept true news, sound senses and healthy working mind as sources of knowledge. Due to the fact that the mind is counted among the sources of knowledge, reason-based evidence has been used in many subjects. It is known that Māturīdī was the first theologian who dealt with the mentioned sources of knowledge in his work. At the very beginning of his Kitāb al-Tawhīd, he determined the ways of acquiring knowledge as correct news, sound senses and (...) reason, and elaborated them in detail. Māturīdī mostly prefers the term inference to describe the use of reason. He has proven his views on theological issues with many types of inference as well as true news and sense knowledge. These include matters related to the hereafter, too. The visible over the invisible, which is a type of inference, was used as evidence by Māturīdī to prove almost every subject. Many definitions of the method of the method the visible as an evidence for the invisible have been made. However, it is possible to understand the structure on which it is built as follows: There are areas that human beings cannot comprehend and have will no definite knowledge about. These areas called as al-ghaib “the invisible” may be related to ontological differences or may be due to differences in time and space. The difference between humans and Allah is ontological difference, and Allah is an ontological invisible for humans. While events that have not yet happened are invisible in terms of time, happenings what beyond the mountain for example, are invisible in terms of spatial difference. It is not possible for human beings to fully understand (perceive) the attributes of Allah, who is ontologically invisible. For this reason, many theologians have used the method the visible as an evidence for the invisible especially in making the attributes of Allah understandable and have tried to explain the divine attributes with this method. Belief in the hereafter is also related to the realm of the unvisible. There are a lot of revelations (true knowledge) about the hereafter. However, because of the conditions of the hereafter are different from this world, it is necessary to make the revelations about that place comprehensible. Accordingly, it is interesting how Māturīdī uses the aforementioned method to understand the nature of reward and punishment in the hereafter, which is the area of the unvisible. Māturīdī sometimes understood the verses about reward and punishment in the hereafter with their real meanings, and sometimes attributed different meanings to these verses. In this context, while dealing with the verses about the afterlife, he listed the possibilities regarding what they might mean, and included interpretations based the method the visible as an evidence for the invisible. Thus, Māturīdī tried to make the hereafter, intelligible based on human being’s experiences in this world. According to Māturīdī, the mind also has a function in understanding the hereafter. The mind has the capacity to go beyond the senses and gives us information about that field. Our mind, based on what we can perceive and understand, can go beyond itself and make inferences about the issues that are incapable of understanding. Knowing the pleasures and tortures of the world in order to understand the reward and punishment that will be given to humans in the hereafter happens in a similary way. In addition, he makes inferences based on events, situations, characteristics, etc. (visible) that people know from worldly life in order to better understand the expressions in such verses, which is quite remarkable for our study. In this context, while interpreting many verses, Māturīdī bases on the aspects of the realm of the visible similar to the realm of the hereafter. He explains the similarities of the hereafter to the worldly life, mostly through human nature, the Arabs’ perception of reward and punishment, and people’s perception of color and direction. In addition to these, he takes our knowledge, which has increased to the knowledge of observation, as a basis even though we learn through news, and evaluates the divine narrations for the hereafter on these principles. For the hereafter can be understood through things known, visible, lived and experienced in the life of this world. Māturīdī emphasizes the similarity of the world and the hereafter as well as the different aspects of the hereafter and uses these differences as a basis for his inferences. Our study is aimed at understanding how Māturīdī brings evidence to what people know from worldly life while explaining the nature of reward and punishment in the hereafter. In this context, methods such as interpretation, comparison, concept analysis, and literature review were used, and the study was limited to the books of Kitāb al-Tawhīd and Ta’wīlāt of Māturīdī. (shrink)

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail (...) provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large. (shrink)

Plato's Republic critiques Athenian democracy as practised during the Peloponnesian War years. The diseased city Socrates attempts to purge mirrors Athens in crucial particulars, and his proposals should be evaluated as counter-weights to existing institutions and practices, not as absolutes to be instantiated. Plato's assessment of the Athenian polity incorporates two strategies -- one rhetorical, the other argumentative -- both of which I address. Failure to consider Athens a catalyst for Socrates' arguments has led to the misconception that Plato was (...) dogmatically committed to a single political doctrine for all and for all time. (shrink)

François Renaud replies to the question of what principles one ought to employ in the study of Plato by arguing that, and demonstrating how, the argument and the drama operate together successfully in the Gorgias. In agreement with Renaud’s approach, I expose some historical roots with a review of Platonic interpretive strategies of the modern period in the context of history of philosophy more generally. I also try to show why argument and drama operate together, an insight I attribute to (...) Plato’s genius in relation to music. (shrink)

Introduction We have to try and think a little about the meaning of revolution. This term is now so broken and worn out, and has been dragged through so many places, that it's necessary to go back to a basic, albeit elementary, definition.

Theory of the Image offers a new and systematic philosophy of art and aesthetics from the perspective of movement.

This paper argues that borders and violence against migrants no longer takes place exclusively at the geographical space between two sovereign territories. Instead border violence today has become much more normalized and diffused into society itself. An entire privatized industry now capitalizes on the cycle of transporting, incarcerating, hiring, and releasing non-status migrants. Similarly, however, resistance to this violence is also shifting from the older confrontation with sovereignty and the demands for rights to the larger aim of making the non-status (...) migrant or nomad the new figure of political belonging and solidarity: demanding equality for all, regardless of status. (shrink)

Contemporary platonism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is the belief in a fundamental cleavage between intelligible but invisible Platonic forms that are real and eternal, and perceptible objects whose confinement to spacetime constitutes an inferior existence and about which knowledge is impossible. The other dogma involves a kind of reductionism: the belief that Plato’s unhypothetical first principle of the all is identical to the form of the good. Both dogmas, I argue, are ill-founded.

The Most Original and Shocking Interpretation of Lucretius in the Last Forty Years, After centuries of abuse by modern atomists and mechanistic materialists, Thomas Nail argues that it is now time to return to De Rerum Natura from the perspective of a new materialism. Nail shows that some of the most important contributions of Lucretius' poem have been completely overlooked or misunderstood. He reinterprets this classical text as an absolutely contemporary one defined by motion and gives us a genuinely new (...) Lucretius - a Lucretius for today. Book jacket. (shrink)

Contemporary platonism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is the belief in a fundamental cleavage between intelligible but invisible Platonic forms that are real and eternal, and perceptible objects whose confinement to spacetime constitutes an inferior existence and about which knowledge is impossible. The other dogma involves a kind of reductionism: the belief that Plato's unhypothetical first principle of the all is identical to the form of the good. Both dogmas, I argue, are ill-founded.

Translations of Plato's Republic, footnotes, and commentary strongly influence how the dialogue is interpreted. This brief paper compares a few English translations and commentaries.

The "third man" argument presented in plato's "parmenides" is valid against any articulated version of the theory of forms. Plato recognized this fact, yet continued to hold the theory because the most fundamental description of what is (the "unwritten theory") cannot be articulated and does not fall victim to the third man.

"Of Children, Fools, and Madmen: Spinoza's Scientific Method and the Constraints of Fact" Spinoza has been largely ignored in the history of the scientific method in the seventeenth century. Such neglect is unjustified insofar as Spinoza deliberately circumscribed with scientific method both Biblical hermeneutics (TTP), a field which he deserves credit for founding, and political theory (TP). Although he wrote no discrete discourse on method, he wove his scientific methodological principles into the fabric of his philosophical treatises.

Plato put housing second only to a secure food supply in the order of business of an emerging polis [Republic 2.369d); we argue, without quibbling over rank, that adequate housing ought to have fundamental priority, with health and education, in civil societies' planning, budgets, and legislative agendas. Somethingmade explicit in the Platonic Laws, and often reiterated by today's poor — but as often forgotten by bureaucrats— is that human wellbeing, eudaimonia, is impossible for the homeless. That is, adequate housing is (...) valuable to human societies independently of its instrumental role in supporting the safety, health, and education of the populace. Currently, governments all too frequently end up undermining their own health and education programs as a direct result of neglecting the housing needs of the poor. Finally, we argue that governments ought now to be using the low-cost ways that already exist to provide, or to promote the provision of, better housing for their increasingly urbanized populations; further, even in those circumstances where it is necessary to subsidize housing, governments' most important role is to develop just regulatory and enforcement systems within which public- and private-sector investment can operate. (shrink)