The article examines the transformations of the philosophical concept of world as it appears in the cosmopolitan tradition of political thought and its relation to the problem of the border. It focuses particularly on how world is understood as either lost or multiplied in the contexts of modernity, globalisation, and migration. The article discusses postcolonial conceptions of cosmopolitics and the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt to show how the universal ideal of the world is replaced by singular constructions of worlds (...) in terms of the experience of migrants and refugees or the phenomenological horizon of political action. I conclude by suggesting that Jacques Rancière’s understanding of politics as a conflict of worlds can take us beyond the traps of both cosmopolitan universalism and the phenomenological singularity of being-in-the-world. (shrink)

In the present article, we have demonstrated that it is important to understand the equating of mathematics with ontology in Badiou’s philosophy, taking into account the necessary connection between rational materialism and ontological realism. Only in this way can we truly understand Badiou’s fundamental thesis that thinking and being are the same. Philosophy is not ontology and it is not a true procedure, but a thought that arises by being conditioned with the generic thoughts of all four truth procedures (art, (...) politics, science, and love), which in turn does not mean that it cannot speak in the name of truth and ontology. (shrink)

In the article, the author addresses with two ways of dealing with life, biopolitics, and necropolitics, and connects them to the excess of power over life and death in the era of neoliberal global capitalism. Dealing with necropolitical processes requires a different analysis of spaces and temporalities, of necrospaces and necrotemporalities. It also requires consideration of the possibilities of resistance to necropolitical processes by those who are by no means silent witnesses, by no means mere victims, but subjects who have (...) undergone a process of (de)subjectivation in a way that, as Achille Mbembe would argue, leads to a process of destruction of their own subjectivity. (shrink)

Today, in the situation that we call the _instantiernity_ of the digital age, the visual aspect of the social (and power) relations is ever more important. A majority of human interaction on internet is happening in the field of vision. In this field, human desire follows the scopic drive, which is, according to Freud, expressed in the ambivalence of voyeurism and exhibitionism. This means that voyeurism and exhibitionism are the fundamental mechanisms operating in, and structuring, the digital virtual. This topic, (...) in a broader sense, tackles the inscription of the subject within the digital virtual spectacle, which deals with the relation between individual’s imaginary and symbolic identification, that is, between _ideal ego_ and _ego ideal. _To a certain extent, this also relates to what has been marked as »pathological narcissism«. Even if the changes brought about by the digital virtual, as far as the subject is concerned, are not ontological, i.e. they do not concern its relation to being, they do concern its entry into the field of the Other, and can, because they are systemic changes, fundamentally restructure the social fabric. The bet of this article is therefore not only to try to understand the mechanisms driving the formation of subectivity within the digital virtual, but also to trace their transformative potential. (shrink)

Although the desire to be free from God springs from humanity’s wish to enjoy pleasure without restraint, Lacan observes that humans remain neurotic and unhappy. That is because the prevailing “dead of God” form of atheism relies on the denial of a father/god, a negation that inadvertently replicates the logic of religion. Lacan, by contrast, grounds his atheism in a theory of pleasure that recognizes the role of “unpleasure” in breaking the tedium of easy, unlimited gratification. Turning to Greek tragedy, (...) Lacan shows how the ancient world used the gods as creators of “unpleasure” to generate human _jouissance_. The figure of Antigone, in particular, shows how the divine function can fulfill “the true formula of atheism,” which is not “God is dead,” but rather, Lacan affirms, that “_God is unconscious_.”. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s theory of discipline condenses many important theoretical tools that he developed throughout his long encounter with various philosophical and political milieus from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s, when he wrote his magnum opus _Being and Event_. Through this vast terrain, Badiou expressed seemingly different commitments: from logic and the epistemology of science in the late 1960s and politics during the 1970s, to ontology and mathematics in the 1980s, which has continued to this time. However, a close (...) reading of his major works during this period reveals an internal thread of thought that runs between them, which I have named discipline. In other words, discipline is the framework within which we can reconstruct Badiou’s main ideas as part of a continuous work (during the stated period) that not only reveals the internal coherence of his overall thought over the course of time, within which he showed different and seemingly unrelated commitments, but also gives us a powerful tool to understand the key concepts of his philosophy, such as the procedures of truth, ontology, phenomenology, and his commitment to axiomatic thinking. In this essay we aim to examine the concept of the subject in relation to the theory of discipline. We will do so by examining Badiou’s encounter with two crucial aspects of the theory of the subject discussed by Lacan: the Cartesian _cogito_ and the relation of the subject to the mathematical infinite. (shrink)

Seen from the perspective of the inconsistency of the Other, the post-truth era can be considered to be an era emerging from a crisis in belief in the existence of the Other, which is to be taken in a twofold sense: as a belief in the Other of the Other, that is, the Other of Law, and a belief in the Other considered as the subject supposed to know. Insofar as the contemporary subject does not want to know anything about (...) this “condition of belief” without which no knowledge, and therefore no truth, are possible, the crisis of belief affect both, the Other and the subject. This can be seen in the fact that the failing belief in the Other and knowledge, considered as a distinctive feature of our profoundly unbelieving times, is accompanied by an unprecedented rise in anxiety at the social level, as contemporary subjects who do not believe in the (existence of the) Other are singularly defenceless before the irruption of the real. With truth losing its power to name the real, the subject itself as a singular response to the real is becoming ever more precarious. Which is why, when faced with the erratic irruption of the real, contemporary subjects are condemned to a desperate search for certainties. (shrink)

Analysing the role of Kant’s third and final Critique, the _Critique of Judgement_, in the system of Kant’s three Critiques (_Critique of Pure Reason_, _Critique of Practical Reason_, _Critique of Judgement_), the paper posits that with the conclusion of the system of critiques in the third _Critique_, Kant succeeds in presenting it as a point of a transfinitisation of knowledge within the critiques’ system.

It is the praxis of being a subject in the world which enables psychoanalysis to theorise subjectivity. Freud theorised subjectivity from the perspective of desires, those repressed unconscious forces which conflict with the subjects’ need to live in the world. The upshot of this conflict for the subject is trauma and for psychoanalysis such trauma provides a way into a remedy, a cure, the presumption of psychoanalysis being that through its method of transference, it does indeed possess the knowledge to (...) pursue a remedy. Lacan offers a new interpretation of Freud by considering the subject as an ongoing ontological enigma in so far as subjective unconscious desire is not only (potentially) traumatic but necessarily (always) linguistic. How is this an ontological enigma? For Lacan the subject is first and foremost a speaking being engaged in an ongoing struggle to articulate unconscious desire. This is because, claims Lacan, we are born into language which not only pre-exists us but continues after death. In this way subjectivity is inescapably oriented to language as simultaneously intrinsic external to it. The unconscious is therefore a mixture of inside and outside, an enigmatic (pre)ontological space which Lacan calls extimacy. This essay seeks to explore Lacan’s orientation of the subject towards extimacy as the site of subjective conflict where, in its quest for the subject’s desire to know and handle the symptom, transference engages a new ontological dimension in which we can say that the extimate is structured like a sensation. (shrink)

The paper is primarily devoted to Nietzsche’s account of cruelty, which represents an indispensable key to understanding Nietzsche’s genealogical project in many of its essential aspects. This study is complemented by parallels with two other outstanding intellectual figures of the late nineteenth century: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Dostoevsky wrote that “civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.” Nietzsche went a step further in this assessment: not only does civilisation not (...) make us immune to cruelty, but it must itself be seen to emerge directly from cruelty at every significant step it has taken. What brings Nietzsche close to Masoch, on the other hand, is the fact that these historical or even prehistorical developments that have shaped humankind and civilisation are not only related to cruelty, but must be observed as various forms of the internalisation (“spiritualisation”, “deification”) of cruelty. The core of the study is devoted to analyses of different forms and aspects of Nietzsche’s concept of the internalisation of cruelty (in relation to power-relations, subject-object relations, mutations of pleasure, and perversions). (shrink)

The article defines the problem of the nature of ideas in Descartes’s philosophy according to the ontology of substances. First, it illuminates Descartes’s relation to antecedent theories of ideas (as platonic forms or as corporal images) and demonstrates that, in opposition to them, Descartes conceives ideas as modes of thinking substance. Then, it develops two possible explanations of his theory. The first one understands an idea as a complex consisting of perception and its necessary internal object, which enables the representation (...) of external objects. The second one understands it as an act with intrinsic representative structure. By using Arnauld’s analysis of Descartes’s texts, it demonstrates that in accordance with the second model, an idea is a singular mode of thinking substance, which should at the same time be understood as an act of mind and as a representation of objects. (shrink)

The text treats the theme of cruelty starting from how it appears in the everyday dominant ideology. If we want to feel the pulse of our modern ideological landscape, we cannot ignore the fact that it has recently been severely shaken by the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has repeatedly been called cruel, and cruelty in general is today unanimously seen as something reprehensible and repulsive. But the same is true of torture, which, although in principle prosecuted, (...) is carried out in secret. And if every war is cruel, what does the statement “the war in Ukraine is cruel” mean? In what contexts does it fit? The text explores this question on several levels, beginning with modern understandings of war and cruelty, moving to the broader historical context in which the statement is made, and finally asking whether it means that we still have one foot in the 20th century in some sense. Following Badiou’s work _The Century_, which emphasises the role of the passion of the real, war (which is intended to end all wars), and cruelty in the twentieth century, this statement also means that the twentieth century is not (yet) over in a sense, and that this century may be settling accounts with itself (again) with the war in Ukraine. (shrink)

Slovenian epistemology is characterised by an idiosyncratic canon, based on three fundamental authors: Gaston Bachelard, Alexandre Koyré, and Thomas Kuhn. What binds this canon together is the attitude that the history of science should be viewed as a history of radical breaks or revolutions in scientific thought. The drawback of such an anthology of authors is not only that it is outdated, but that, from the position of this canon, it is difficult to discern the problems stemming from the approach (...) to history of science it endorses. In order to highlight the blind spots of Slovenian epistemology, I examine a different interpretative trajectory of the notion of scientific revolution in the United Kingdom and the United States. The methodological program, which focuses on revolutionary breakthroughs in scientific ideas, is thus re-evaluated by considering its strategic role in the institutionalisation of the history of science as a discipline. The event that marked the translation of French epistemology into English history of science were the lectures of the delegates from the Soviet Union at the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in 1931. In post-war Anglo-American history of science, the concept of scientific revolution was adopted as a means of excluding Marxist studies of science – which had spread under the influence of the Soviet delegation – from the realm of acceptable discourse. I demonstrate how the Cold War historiography of science introduced a divide between the “internal” and “external” factors of scientific development, and their supposed synthesis in the work of Thomas Kuhn. Finally, I review the critiques that the sociology of scientific knowledge levelled at the story of the Scientific Revolution and point out the importance of these controversies for current epistemological research. (shrink)

The article describes a rarely mentioned and discussed method of explication first found in Chapter six of Descartes’s posthumously published _The World_ (_Le Monde_), where he uses a fictitious cosmological narrative to develop an account of our material universe and its laws. The assumption of such an approach is that the thing’s structure (nature) can be revealed by its genesis (its producibility), even if the latter is fictitious, or rather, precisely _because_ it is fictitious. This method of “genetic epistemology” turns (...) out to be surprisingly influential: it is found, for example, in Rousseau’s reflections on the state of nature, but also in commentaries on Descartes’s philosophy – e.g. in Martial Gueroult’s principle of “the order of reasons”. (shrink)

This article draws on Jacques Derrida’s and Roberto Esposito’s conceptualisations of the immunitarian paradigm to analyse the Slovenian crime novel _The Virus_. In the first part, we examine the links between neoliberalism and the rise of the Slovenian authoritarian state during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second part, we show that the neoliberal ethos is expressed in the figure of the self-serving and self-disciplined detective, in the nature of desocialised and privatised crime, and in the figure (...) of the self-righteous criminal. Although the actions of the detective and the criminal are autoimmunitarian, both function – paradoxically – as guardians of the common good by pursuing private interests. In the final section, we deconstruct the binary oppositions underlying the dual status of murdered victims, who are simultaneously criminally responsible and possess an unusual (non-heteronormative) or pathological sexual identity. (shrink)

If we had to identify the most controversial concept today, “happiness” would certainly figure among the main candidates for this role. On the one hand, “happiness” has represented one of the main ethical axes in the history of philosophy – from Greek _eudaimonia_ to Bentham’s “greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” Ethics was almost inextricably connected with the search for happiness, which was already in Greek synonymous for the “good life”. On the other hand, capitalism today, notwithstanding the (...) general apathy and despair due to the permanent crises of the capitalist system (climate change, pandemics, financial crises, etc.), still legitimises itself with, if not guarantees, at least a promise of happiness. Despite different historical contexts which again and again gave meaning to the concept of happiness, a common denominator can still be identified, which today, in the era of late capitalism, has even gained the status of a cornerstone of our hegemonic image of happiness. Happiness is a question of being. The evocation of happiness usually raises the question of whether one is happy or not, what it means to be happy, and how we become so. Happiness is thus inextricably connected to the question of identity: it is the sensual expression of our being, of what we supposedly are. In contrast to this “ontologisation of happiness”, the article tries to show not only that there is a _materialist concept of happiness_, but also that the latter bases itself on the primacy of the verb “having” instead of “being”. From a materialist perspective, happiness is something that we have or encounter, and not something that we are. Two references are crucial in this articulation: first, Benjamin’s formulation of happiness from his last essay “On the concept of history”, and second, the Freudian-Lacanian theory of repetition. (shrink)