ABSTRACT In this article, the author analyzes the relationship between art and terrorism. Referring to the element of sublimity operative in philosophical writings pertaining to war and terror, the article raises questions concerning the sublimity of violence on the one hand, and the aesthetization of life and politics on the other. The article’s focus will lie particularly in Immanuel Kant’s account of the sublime in The Critique of the Power of Judgment, which will then be connected to contemporary literature on (...) this theme. In the end, the author wishes to draw attention to the sublimity of violence operative in contemporary discourses and demonstrate the inherent tendency that aestheticized ideology has for applauding cruelty and force. (shrink)

This article critically discusses Hubert Dreyfus’s idea of mindless-skillful coping, arguing that this notion provides an incomplete picture of human dwelling. While contemporary scholarship addressed the problematic aspects of Dreyfus’s pragmatic approach to Martin Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world, a concentrated effort to show the discord between Dreyfus’s skillful coping and Heidegger’s account of dwelling is wanting. Refuting the idea that the most complete version of human dwelling only signifies immersion in bodily practical skills, the article brings into view the significance (...) of the confrontational nature of dwelling, which requires a hermeneutic capacity of defamiliarization from our everyday worlds and habits. Explaining how humans’ relation to the world is different than those of robots or computers does not suffice to explicate authentic human dwelling. The author elucidates why Dreyfus’s prioritization of the practical over the theoretical and the corporeal over the mental leads to a dualistic mode of thinking. Finally, returning to the discussion of existential spatiality in Being and Time, the author identifies Dreyfus’s lack of an explicit understanding of place, one that would be necessary for a coherent account of poetic human dwelling. (shrink)

ABSTRACT William James’s lead continues to provide a balancing act of inquiry and truth with plurality and conflict. First, this article considers this balancing act in neuroscience, both what we have been learning since James published The Principles of Psychology and in how neuroscience is done. As pragmatists have long argued against dualisms and absolutes, the authors situate contemporary understanding in its historical context. Humans have evolved as brains-in-bodies-in-cultures and navigate such worlds through good-enough strategies, not a disembodied reason. Embodied (...) intelligence is laden with instinct, habit, and emotion as much as it is about consciousness. Truth, for James, is focused on nuanced success outcomes, both modest and broad. James’s sense of fallibility is critical in terms of comfort and discomfort in a social group. More prosocial behavior tends to be honest and less sociopathic, of course unless it is myopic and only in group orientation, which it often is. Understanding ourselves through the neuroscience does not answer most of the questions nor solve all the problems. However, such understanding is an important tool in aiding our coping efforts, especially regarding contemporary life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the present contribution, the author contends, first, that “the perfect piece of Stoicism” that Emerson wanted to make out of Thoreau’s philosophical correspondence with his disciple Harrison Blake in Letters to Various Persons (1865) was neither concerned with a personality stereotype, as Sophia Thoreau feared, nor with the specifically Stoic way of living, as Richardson and Risinger have claimed in response. This first edition of Thoreau’s correspondence was in fact meant to be representative of that generally philosophical “art (...) of living well” to which Thoreau was entirely committed. Second, the author provides a comparative analysis of Thoreau’s philosophical letters to his pupil and Seneca’s epistolary with Lucilius, in order to ascertain precisely how Thoreau’s letter-writing itself, apart from Emerson’s framing of it, might have been informed by his knowledge and interest in Stoic epistolary practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers an analysis of “social stupidity”: the generation of publics mobilized in a compromised manner as a result of a complex web of forces that compromises the potential for intelligent collective inquiry. The article juxtaposes this phenomenon with the notion of “social intelligence” offered by John Dewey and the concept of the “apparatus” as treated by Michel Foucault.

ABSTRACT Enlightenment liberalism has come under furious attack from multiple sources in recent years, including cognitive science, the social sciences, identity politics of the left, and populism and nationalism on the right. The notions of individual liberty, free speech, and broad rights protections operating under neutral procedural law has been tied to elitism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and oppressive capitalism. This article points out that recent criticisms from progressives and conservatives are not new. They were mostly formulated several decades ago. Further, (...) they commonly create a straw liberalism, failing to recognize the complexity of the Enlightenment liberal tradition. They ignore the fact that the validity of the institutions and processes of liberalism can, indeed must, be accepted, regardless of criticisms of simplistic versions of liberal theory. For those liberal institutions and processes remain the only known means for controlling the forces of modernity on which we all depend. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article begins with a consideration of whether the January 6, 2021, attack on the United State’s Capitol building can be considered a form of “legitimate political discourse” and compares the insurrectionists to the Black Lives Matter protest movement. Both movements, as different and antithetical as they are, raised meta-questions about how it is that we establish by means of law the forms to express dissent. It is proposed that “constitutionalism,” namely, the doctrine that the primary means to create (...) and sustain free institutions are constitutions, which were and are result of historical events, i.e., revolutions such as the French, the American, and Haitian, that nonetheless unleashed normative powers and aspirations. After an analysis of constitutionalism through the lens of the US Constitution, the text turns to an analysis of what here are called “constitutional deconstructions.” Six such deconstructions are discussed: of the written constitution itself, of the law, of rights, of the people, of the state, and finally, of the Supreme Court as the protector and ultimate reader of the constitition. In this last section, the 2021 Report of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States is considered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Human beings evolved in small groups. Social trust was and is, according to Jay Schulkin, a critical feature in getting a foothold in the world. Social trust is fundamental for our viability in our democracy. It is frail. Tribes dominate, truth-telling is marginalized by partisan interests. Pragmatism is rooted in democratic adventures and self-corrective inquiry with civic sensibility. Freedom, Schulkin suggests, is about choice, but limiting choice is an important factor in the organization of action and our viability in (...) democratic ventures. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Democracy proposes the impossible: that each citizen makes community with those they consider opponents or foes. In the increasingly embittered partisan environment animating so many democracies, this paradoxical demand justifies more attention. This article explores the challenges of democracy among polarized and divided groups by engaging the political theory of Bhimrao Ambedkar’s Navayana pragmatism. Ambedkar, an Indian political figure and thinker who felt the crushing oppression of caste discrimination, reshapes the pragmatism of John Dewey to better encapsulate the importance (...) of overcoming divisions and injustices while forging a community of shared interests. Using Ambedkar’s merging of the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity into a pragmatist vision of democracy as a habit or way of life, this article demonstrates that justice can be usefully taken as a balancing of values among agreeing and disagreeing citizens. This also leads to a recognition of the tragedy of democracy, or the fact that attending to the end and means of fraternity places limits on what one group can do to their opponents in the pursuit of freedom or equality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Beginning with the observation that “freedom” has many meanings, this article explains that freedom is typically understood in one of three ways: as self-determination (in terms of its origin), as choice (in terms of its experience), or as power (in terms of its outcome). These accounts render freedom essentially a feature or characteristic of individuals. Against such views, this article argues that freedom is a feature of institutions and the practices those institutions make possible. In this context, it is (...) clear that only some freedoms are compatible with the institutions of democracy. Democratic freedom requires democratic institutions (now under attack from authoritarian and market forces), democratic personal ways of life (now under attack by forces that foster non-democratic habits), and a democratic, inclusive understanding of selves and their powers to love others and attend to their suffering and well-being. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article returns to Freud’s 1927 The Future of an Illusion in order to explore and elaborate the relations among identity, belief, and affect. Reading the competing authorial and opponent voices in the text, I ask whether realism about illusion is consistent with a belief in the ultimate victory of reason in human civilization. I return to Future of an Illusion for two reasons: first, we can see in this work the ambiguous and tumultuous intersection between “group psychology” and (...) “political epistemology,” the way that the formation of community is bound up with the formation of epistemic anchors for belief; and second, the text offers a demonstration of the complex relations among science, scientism, and the critique of scientism that is itself worth engaging with, given the ways that epistemic and political authority are bound together, and both are bound to the variable authority of reason that post-truth seemingly puts under question. (shrink)