Continental Philosophy, Misc

Notes prises par Jacques Lagrange lors du cours d'anthropologie donné par Michel Foucault en 1954-1955 à l'École Normale Supérieure.

Metaphysics relies on the presupposition of the non-being of the world: since the world has once not existed it is necessary to postulate a cause for its existence, i.e. an extrinsic principle to explain the absolute beginning of the causal series of all things that constitute the world. After the critique of theologizing metaphysics by authors like Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, the notion of an absolute beginning still persists though in a field in which it often goes as such unnoticed, (...) while it factually enjoys wide acceptance, namely in epistemology. It sounds as a truism that knowledge begins: personal inexistence (birth-death cycle) and the phenomenon of unconsciousness (sleep-wake cycle) seem to endorse the obviousness of that statement. Now, to link the beginning of the phenomenal series of subjective acts of knowledge with the existence of an external world that causes the specific content of our temporary cognitive acts relies, however, on two presuppositions, namely on the thesis of a complete non-being or nothingness of knowledge and, intrinsically related to this first presupposition, on the thesis of an absolute beginning of cognitive activity. If knowledge begins from its own nothingness, there must be a cause that is external to the totality of acts of knowledge, a cause that it doesn´t belong to the series of cognitive acts and, therefore, that it is not caused by any of them: this uncaused cause of contentful knowledge is supposed to be the real world external to the knowing subject. In my paper I make explicit the relation between realist-empiricist approachs to epistemology and the double presupposition of the nothingness and absolute beginning of knowledge, I explain the difficulties implied by these two presuppositions and, finally, I propose as a plausible solution to those difficulties some key theoretical claims of absolute idealism. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a phenomenological account of historical experience, aimed at showing how people directly experience an event as being historical. After examining the only previous phenomenological account, David Carr’s Experience and History, and exploring its limits, I present my own contributions. My analysis focuses on the features of three main concepts or “moments”: eventfulness, substantiality, and narrativity. Considering the transcendent character of historical experience in the moment of eventfulness brings three features to light: initial incomprehensibility, need for (...) categorization, and memorability. The concept of “substantiality,” on the other hand, shows how a historical event is felt as a moment of change. History is perceived as a structure shaping a community and whose unity seems irremediably shattered. Three features of historical change are explored: threatened identity, broken temporality, and emphasized belongingness. Lastly, I look at the decisive role of the gradual transformation of past beliefs and expectations as it occurs “narratively,” revealing a further two features of historical experience: narrative justifications and uncertain new normativity. Dealing narratively with a historical event means providing justifications for how it constitutes a new configuration of practices and ideas foreshadowing the now uncertain future. (shrink)

Abstract – In this paper I reconstruct the nature, origins and survivals of the divide between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ tradition—the famous dualism which affected the development of philosophy in the second half of the XX century. I also present a theory of it, stressing that its intra-philosophical causes are to be found in the mutual resistance between critical (transcendental) and semantic (logical) approaches in philosophy. I conclude by noting that good philosophers (more or less knowingly) are and have always been (...) sensitive to the transcendental and logical aspects of the philosophical work. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the films of Andrei Tarkovsky are particularly suitable for inducing feelings of the numinous. This suitability is a formal rather than semantic feature of his films, and is tied indelibly to what film scholars call ‘suture’. I with a summary of what film theorists mean by ‘suture’, before providing a principled defence of the Merleau-Pontian suture theory outlined by George Butte. Second, I will demonstrate that, in spite of the strength of Butte’s formulation, the (...) numinousness of Tarkovsky’s films pose an analytical challenge to his suture theory. Finally, I will then provide my own extension of Butte’s suture theory, arguing that, by virtue of the formal properties they possess, we encounter Tarkovsky’s films more like religious objects than ordinary films. The tenor of these encounters is why Tarkovsky’s films are appropriate loci for feelings of the numinous. (shrink)

La filosofía de Nietzsche anticipó notablemente el umbral de la modernidad biológica al conceptualizar el alcance fisiológico de la moral, la política y la religión, así como su instrumentalización con fines de control social. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el estímulo que ha representado la filosofía de Nietzsche para algunos de los principales pensadores de la cuestión biopolítica, en concreto, Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito y Peter Sloterdijk, y desvelar en qué medida sus núcleos conceptuales convergen y divergen. La (...) aportación concreta reside en señalar algunos de los vínculos que articulan el tema de la disciplina y la cría con la configuración de la biopolítica como una de las principales corrientes filosóficas actuales, analizar las interpretaciones que dichos pensadores han formulado sobre la cuestión de la Züchtung y resaltar así la capacidad heurística de la filosofía nietzscheana para el diagnóstico de nuestro presente. -/- Nietzsche notably anticipated the threshold of biological modernity, when he conceptualized the physiological scope of morals, politics and religion, as well as their instrumentalization with the aim of social control. The aim of this paper is to analyze the stimulus that Nietzsche’s philosophy has represented for some of the main philosophers of biopolitics, namely Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito and Peter Sloterdijk, and to reveal to what extent their core concepts converge and diverge. The specific contribution is to point out some of the links between the theme of discipline and breeding (Zucht und Züchtung) and the configuration of biopolitics as one of the main philosophical currents, to analyze whether and how those philosophers have interpreted the question of Züchtung in Nietzsche’s philosophy, and to stress the heuristic capacity of Nietzschean philosophy for the diagnosis of current social issues. Keywords: Nietzsche; breeding; discipline; Foucault; biopower; norm; Esposito; community; Sloterdijk; anthropotechnics. (shrink)

The astounding flourishing of fashion we have witnessed for the past centuries would not have been possible without a range of specifically modern phenomena like capitalism, the rise of an ambitious middle-class, the growth and diversification of mass-communication, and the Industrial Revolution. However, there is yet another interesting link between the two as they both have a common ‘condition of possibility’, that makes them interconnected. In this paper I will argue that such a condition is what I loosely call a (...) ‘will to novelty’. Following some of Herbert Blumer’s suggestions, I will argue that the quest for renewal remains probably the best explanation of all possible candidates in explaining the incessant change of fashion (one of such candidates being Simmel’s famous class-differentiation analysis). My claim is that such a pursuit of renewal is undertaken for the sake of renewal itself, and this is a key aspect that connects fashion with modernity, namely an aesthetic concept of modernity, which I will outline, in the footsteps of Michel Foucault and Matei Călinescu, as a quest for novelty and change. Unlike the bourgeois modernity or the scientific one, the aesthetic modernity does not innovate for the sake of profit or truth respectively, but for the sake of innovation itself. Like fashion, the aesthetic modernity is an expression of the ‘will to novelty’. (shrink)

The philosophical line of inquiry opened by Edmund Husserl remains one of the most inspiring ones for contemporary thinking, insofar as it places the experiential dimension at its center. Yet its initial disposition rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding. While phenomenology scolded the traditional representationalist accounts, for which we never have the things themselves, but ever only internal representations of it, its major advanced consisted in stressing that in experience, we have the things in themselves and not just emissaries or representatives. (...) However, this advance, which we will qualify as the " principle of selfhood " led to imprudently make another assumption, that is that in experience, we do not only have the things themselves (principle of selfhood) but that we also have them immediately (principle of immediacy). A deconstructive analysis of experience provides such a postulation to be problematic: what appears (phainestai) is never given right off the bat, but appears through something else (dia phainestai). The paper indicates where a deconstruction of Husserl's theoretical framework is necessary, and sketches the transformations of phenomenology into a kind of thinking that makes space for the intermediaries of experiences. Diaphenomenology starts off with the assumption that whatever appears appears through something. Experience has to be conceived of as transphenomenality. A diaphenomenological perspective moves away from both a foundationalist account of subjectivity (where the ego is the ground for all appearances) and a merely accusative account of it (where the ego is nothing but a pole of affections). It describes the modes in which the subject is actor, albeit not author of her experiences. (shrink)

This review essay introduces Brian Treanor’s Melancholic Joy in dialogue with themes in Nietzsche’s thought. The book invites this comparison in its penultimate section, which distinguishes briefly its own account from the tenets of Dionysiac pessimism. Finding that section fertile, but tantalizingly short, I parse in greater detail relevant points of convergence and divergence. The first section, “After Nietzsche,” follows Nietzsche’s development out of the first naïveté of ascetic idealism and into the wanderer’s night of biting suspicion. It likens Nietzsche’s (...) leonine eschewal of metaphysics and morals to Treanor’s sober engagement with the fruits of the physics and philosophy that have ripened in between. The second section, “Second Innocence,” contrasts Nietzsche’s vision of childlike innocence after nihilism, a renaissance beyond good and evil, with Treanor’s vital response to an updated nihilism: a love of world that refuses to deny the many realities of evil, and that responds by embracing the many mundane realities of joy. (shrink)

Onur Karamercan, Heidegger'de Sanat Eserinin Yeri: Sanal Müzeler Çağında Sanat ve Mekân adlı yazısında, iki yıldır yaşamakta olduğumuz salgınla birlikte çok daha sık biçimde görülmeye başlayan “sanal müze” veya “elektronik müze” uygulamalarına yakından bakar. Dünyanın en meşhur müzelerinin ve sanat galerilerinin sanatsal ve kültürel etkinliklerden mahrum kalmak istemeyen ziyaretçilerine "kapılarını" elektronik ortamda açtığı ve birçok müzenin de koleksiyonlarını tamamen ya da kısmen dijitalleştirdiği bu ortamda, şu iki soruyu yanıtlamayı amaçlar: 1) Bir mekân olarak bir müzeyi uzaktan ziyaret etmek ve bir (...) müzede sergilenen sanat eserlerini internet üzerinden “deneyimlemek” ne anlama gelmektedir ve 2) bu estetik-dijital “deneyim” (Erlebnis) insanın sanat ve mekân ile olan ilişkisi ve sanat eserinin “tecrübesine” (Erfahrung) dair ne söylemektedir? (shrink)

This chapter is to offer a critical study of what the human living condition would be like in a new era of hi-tech mobilization, especially the condition of self-government or autonomy, and how, in the Thai perspective, the condition affects culture. Habermas’ analysis of individuation through socialization and Heidegger’s question concerning technology and being are used in the study, and it is revealed that we are now confronted with a new technological condition of positioned individuals in the universe of communication (...) through mobile phones. This situation surely will be realized in a world highly mobilized by the phenomenon of connectedness. This means that we are concerning ourselves with our concrete individuality for our self-expression in that universe. I offer an interpretation that we would hold this kind of individuality to be valuable because of an effect from technological thinking. In addition, comparing this view on individuality with Buddhism, I found that the view offered here is not similar to the Buddhist concept of self as a construction. I offer an argument to show that these concepts are basically different for ethical reasons; while the Buddhist concept still preserves the nobility of the moral agent (Buddhism, after all, is a religion and needs to concern itself with morality), the concrete individuality discussed here is considered only as an instrumental value in a world of hi-tech mobilization. (shrink)

The issue “Human being in the digital era” is not superfluous. Every technology, i.e. literacy, print etc., gives tools, but at the same time impacts deeply human being. The article attempts to answer the following questions: what kind of change is taking place nowadays? what are the associated challenges? Is it true what Einstein once said: “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them”?

This article reveals three aspects of victimhood in Bataille’s reading of Sade (of the other, of the self, and Sade’s language) and relates them to some of Bataille’s metaphysical and political notions: the impossible, the general and the restricted economy, sovereignty, and transgression. Doing so shows a progressive simplification of possibilities for transgression from the pre-Christian world to that of popular sovereignty, i.e., the sovereignty of the crowd, the latter leaving open one avenue for transgression: Sadean victimhood. The article then (...) applies these aspects to the pamphlet in Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir, “Frenchmen, Some More Effort If You Wish to Become Republicans,” in relation to a contemporaneous document of popular sovereignty, the preamble to the Constitution of the Year III, titled “Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen.” Attending to the aspects of Sadean victimhood in “Effort” shows that its system’s very impossibility makes it the Declaration’s logical completion. Finally, that impossibility is revealed as the sovereignty of the masses, distinct from that of the crowd. (shrink)

The paper provides a thorough account of the relationship between Ernst Mach’s thought and that of an apparently more intellectually distant near-contemporary, Friedrich Nietzsche. The consistency of their views is in fact substantial, as I try to show within the paper. Despite their interests being different, both Mach and Nietzsche were concerned with the same issues about our intellectual relationship with the external world, dealing with the same questions and pursuing a common aim of eliminating worn-out philosophical conceptions. Moreover, it (...) can be argued that both Mach and Nietzsche converged on what we now know as the problem of realism versus anti-realism in the philosophy of science, and that they both rejected ‘representational’ (realist) conceptions of science in favour of a certain sort of pragmatic anti-realism, whose focus was on the role science plays as a means of orientation. (shrink)

The importation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new era of cinema scholarship and criticism. Figures including Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz are often considered the pioneers of applying Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of film theory, most notably through their writings in Screen Journal. However, where French and British scholarship on Lacan and film reached its limits, American Lacanianism flourished. When Joan Copjec’s now classic essay “The Orthopsychic Subject: Film (...) Theory and the Reception of Lacan” was published in 1989, the trajectory of Lacanian film theory would become radically altered; as Todd McGowan recently put it, the “butchered operation” on Lacan committed by Mulvey and (quoting Copjec) the “Foucaultianization” of Lacan under the auspices of Screen Journal were finally indicted in one gesture through Copjec’s critique. Copjec and McGowan’s unique American view of Lacan marks a pivotal point in the convergence of psychoanalytic theory and cinema studies; by seeking to wrest Lacan from historist/deconstructionist theories of the subject, and by revisiting Lacan beyond the mirror stage, Copjec and McGowan can be said to have instantiated a resuscitation or even a renaissance of Lacanian theory in film studies in particular and in American scholarship more generally. In this essay, this renaissance of Lacanian theory is examined, focusing on the innovations these two American thinkers brought to psychoanalytic film theory and the multiple paths carved out into other disciplines that followed. First, a detailed summation of the contentions between screen theory and Copjec’s position is introduced, as well as McGowan’s assessment thereof. Then, the trajectory of psychoanalytic film theory after Copjec’s arrival is the focus, including the major innovations in her thought from cinematic subjectivity to sexual difference (most notably from Read My Desire) and the way her position spread to philosophy and ontology. Finally, the article identifies the limitations of Copjec’s and McGowan’s thought and seeks new possibilities through which we may continue to apply psychoanalysis to the cinema in the wake of these two important thinkers. L’importation de la psychanalyse lacanienne dans la théorie du film au cours des années 1970 et 1980 a apporté une nouvelle ère de recherche et de critique cinématographiques. Des figures comme Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey et Christian Metz sont souvent considérées comme étant les pionniers dans l’application de la psychanalyse lacanienne au contexte de la théorie du film, surtout dans leurs écrits pour le Screen Journal. Par contre, là où les recherches françaises et britanniques sur Lacan et la cinématographie ont atteint leurs limites, le lacanisme américain a prospéré. La publication en 1989 de « The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan », l’essai classique de Joan Copjec, a complètement changé la trajectoire de la théorie lacanienne du film; comme Todd McGowan l’a récemment exprimé, « l’opération massacrée » commise sur Lacan par Mulvey et (citant Copjec) la « Foucaultisation » de Lacan sous les auspices de Screen Journal avaient finalement été accusées d’un seul coup par la critique de Copjec. Le point de vue uniquement américain de Copjec et de McGowan sur Lacan marque un tournant dans la convergence de la théorie psychanalytique et des études cinématographiques. En cherchant à arracher Lacan des théories historicistes/déconstructivistes du sujet, et en revisitant Lacan au-delà du stade du miroir, Copjec et McGowan ont instancié une ressuscitation, voire une renaissance, de la théorie lacanienne dans les études cinématographiques en particulier et dans les études américaines en général. Dans cet article, cette renaissance de la théorie lacanienne est examinée, mettant l’accent sur les innovations que ces deux penseurs américains ont apportées à la théorie psychanalytique du film et les multiples chemins tracés dans d’autres disciplines subséquentes. Premièrement, un résumé détaillé des différends entre la théorie du film et la position de Copjec est présenté, ainsi que l’évaluation de McGowan à ce sujet. Puis, la trajectoire de la théorie psychanalytique du film après l’arrivée de Copjec est mise de l’avant, notamment les innovations importantes de sa pensée de la subjectivité à la différence sexuelle (particulièrement dans Read My Desire) et la manière dont sa position s’est propagée dans la philosophie et l’ontologie. Finalement, l’article identifie les limites de la pensée de Copjec et de McGowan et cherche de nouvelles possibilités à travers lesquelles nous pourrions continuer d’appliquer la psychanalyse au cinéma après ces deux grands penseurs. (shrink)

Copyright©Daniel Fidel Ferrer, 2018. 1. Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976. 2. Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976 -- Concordances. 3. Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976 -- Indexes. 4). Metaphysics. 5). Philosophy, German. 6). Philosophy, German – Greek influences. 7). Heidegger, Martin; -- Wörterbuch. 8). Ontology. 9). Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976 -- Concordances. 10). Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976—Homes and haunts— Germany—Todtnauberg. I. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-. Language: English (Preface and Introduction). Language: German (Main Index). Includes bibliographical references. Cover graphics by Shawn Rodriguez. Motto At the beginning (...) of a section in GA 97. Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942 1948), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) quotes Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646- 1716) with the sentence (GA 97, e-text page 329, printed text page 325): "Qui me non nisi editis novit, non me novit." "He who knows me only from my publications does not know me.” Table of Contents 1). Preface and Introduction. 2). Outline of main manuscripts (in German). 3). Main Index (in German). An Index to Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) two printed volumes Zum Ereignis Denken; Gesamtausgabe Volumes GA 73.1 and GA 73.2 (published in October 2013 by Verlag Vittorio Klosterman). This Preface and Introduction to the Main Index are mostly written in English. Nevertheless, the Main Index is an index to a volume Gesamtausgabe GA 73.1 and 73.2 of Martin Heidegger's collected writings and that text is in German. Note: this is only an index and does not include the actual text of Zum Ereignis-Denken (GA73.1-2), because that book is protected under current copyright law. The actual printed two volume ends with page 1496 (GA 73.2). The entire book is listed under six (I to VI) main headings in the two printed volumes (Zum Ereignis-Denken (GA73.1-2). The six main headings from the table of contents are: Zu Ereignis I. Zerklüftung und ἀλήθεια Zerklüftung des Seins. Zu Ereignis II. Die Seinsfrage und das Ereignis. Zu Ereignis III. Das Da-sein. Zu Ereignis IV. Wesen des Entwurfs – Vorgehen. Zu Ereignis V. Abschied. Eine Reihe von Manuskripten zum Ereignis (1943-1945) Zu Ereignis VI. Ontologische Differenz und Unterschied . (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, theorists developed approaches to Nietzsche’s philosophy that provided an alternative to the received view, some of them suggesting that his view of truth may be his most important and original contribution. It has further been argued that Vaihinger’s fictionalism is the paradigm within which Nietzsche’s view can be properly contextualized. As will be shown, this idea is both viable and fruitful for solving certain interpretive issues raised in recent Nietzsche scholarship.

In this article I compare Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. I try to demonstrate the similarities (focus on language and history), but moreover the differences between them. The core issue is the problem of the other, which appears in the works of both authors. Two perspectives are applied: concerning the notion of text (or tradition), and referring to the field of the political. Gadamer strives to communicate with the other (text) in the mutual understanding, although he has (...) no hope in finding a final sensus communis. Derrida emphasizes the difference underlying every thought, as well as situations of understanding as such. As a result, their visions of democracy differ – subtly, but essentially. (shrink)

Motivating this article is an interest in how postphenomenological technical relations participate in aesthetic experiences. Introducing aesthetic experience into our analyses of technical relations allows us to better tease apart the distinction between our relationship with the artefact, and how we experience that relationship. However, the sublime poses a unique set of complications for postphenomenologists. Thanks to the overwhelming qualities of the sublime, it is unclear where sublimity fits within the Ihdean relational taxonomy—or indeed, if it can at all, given (...) that sublime experience would in principle overwhelm and dissolve the extant relation. This article resolves this apparent tension, and offers an accounts of how sublime experience is able to be reconciled with Ihdean postphenomenology. (shrink)

Levinas is famously opposed to the sacred and its association with violence. In Totality and Infinity, he writes that he seeks to describe a relationship with the other that is ‘purified of the vio...

What is biopolitics? What kind of relationship does biopolitics establish between politics and biology? Although the etymology of the term ‘biopoli- tics’ seems to suggest a straightforward meaning resulting from the relation- ship between biological life and politics, the current literature is characterised by a wide variety of definitions. As the social theorist Thomas Lemke notes in his thoughtful introduction to this field of research, ‘[p]lural and divergent meanings are undoubtedly evoked when people refer to biopolitics’ (Lemke 2011, 2). Lemke (...) is not the only scholar to acknowledge the difficulty in estab- lishing a satisfying definition of this term; the scale of the problem is well exemplified by the decision of the philosopher Roberto Esposito to begin his major work on the topic with a chapter entitled ‘The Enigma of Biopolitics’. In the first chapter of Bios: Philosophy and Biopolitics, Esposito traces the enigmatic character of biopolitics back to the thinker who introduced it into the Continental debate—Michel Foucault—and maintains that the proble- maticity encountered by the French philosopher concerns ‘the same logical and semantic configuration’ (Esposito 2006, 43) of biopolitics. According to Esposito, the impasse characterising this field of research depends on the fact that ‘notwithstanding the theorization of their reciprocal implication . . . politics and life remain indefinite in profile and in qualification’ (Esposito 2006, 43–44). In this chapter I focus on the work of Foucault, with the aim of explain- ing the impasse in defining the notion of biopolitics. Following Esposito, I claim that it is the lack of a correct articulation of the relationship between politics and life that lies at the core of the ‘enigma of biopolitics’. However, the enigma does not concern the lack of inquiry into the two terms compris- ing this concept; at stake is a deeper and more complicated issue. I argue that when politics and biological life meet to constitute the notion of biopolitics, their function becomes that of representing two opposing theories of the human being. In turn, these two ways of defining the human determine two mutually exclusive approaches to biopolitics: the discursive and the vitalist. The ‘enigma of biopolitics’ is the name of this fracture. The two definitions of the human being that I take into consideration in this chapter contribute, from opposite sides, to challenging his ultra- mundane origin. The reason for their conflict is the definition of the world to which the human being is returned after his fall. On the one hand, the notion of the human being of the discursive approach to biopolitics can be summed up, paraphrasing a famous Foucauldian passage, with the sentence: the human being is ‘a thing of this world’. The original Foucauldian passage reads as follows: Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint and it introduces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth—that is, the type of discourse it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances that enable one dis- tinguish true and false statements. (Foucault 2000a, 131) Paraphrasing this quotation and affirming that the human being is ‘a thing of this world’ means that every society has a general politics of the human being—that is, the mechanisms and instances that enable every society to distinguish between normal and abnormal. Assuming this mundane definition of man means affirming that there is no human being prior to the ‘dispositifs’ or historical ‘machinations’—to use a Heideggerian term—so the human being has always already been thrown into the processes of subjectification and desubjectification. Reaching a point where it is possible to say what the human being is remains structurally impossible. On the other hand, the definition of the human being proper to the vitalist approach to biopolitics entails a form of animalisation of the human being where his essence is found in the natural world of life. This definition of man can be expressed in Foucauldian terms, paraphrasing another passage on truth. The ultramundane notion of truth is no longer returned to the mecha- nisms of discourse and power but to the horizon of biological life: ‘The true\ false dichotomy and the value accorded to truth constitute the most singular way of living that has been invented by a life that, from the depths of its ori- gin, bore the potential for error within itself’ (Foucault 2000b, 477). In this case the human being is not the product of social practices but is the result of the natural evolution of life. The human being becomes an animal among other animals. Social practices and their true or false value are nothing more than an invention of a life which seems to be animated by a force aimed at its own survival and reproduction. The opposition between these two notions of man determines two approaches to biopolitics. They can be distinguished from one another pre- cisely because of the hierarchy they impose on the two terms comprising the word ‘biopolitics’: biological life and politics. Whereas the discursive approach implies the politicisation of biology, with the consequent reduc- tion of every biological definition of the human being to an epiphenomenon of political struggle, the vitalist approach involves the biologisation of politics with the consequent reduction of politics to an epiphenomenon of biological life. The failure to articulate a nonreductionist relationship between life and politics implies a teleology which inevitably informs both Foucauldian approaches to biopolitics. Beyond the antithesis between the discursive and the vitalist human being, it is, therefore, possible to find a common ground characterised by an unwanted teleological drift. This teleology is a force intended as the site of permanent openness and resignificability, an excess always overflowing its forms, which expresses a constant activity aimed at a work of contestation and metamorphosis set against fossilisation in a fixed identity. This teleology—which prescribes to be like wanderers who never belong to a place but belong to travel itself—can be defined in Foucauldian terms as an ‘impatience for liberty’ (Foucault 2000a, 319), in the case of the discursive approach and, paraphrasing Foucault, as an impatience for life, in the vitalist approach. In this chapter, I show how these two definitions of the human being and consequent approaches to biopolitics coexist in the work of Foucault. It is precisely because of this conflict secretly operating in Foucauldian thought that his definition of biopolitics remains enigmatic. This vagueness should not be interpreted as a weakness but instead as a clear sign of Foucault’s great capacity for grasping and describing the complexity of the theories involved in biopolitics. In the following pages, I do not propose a totalis- ing explanation of Foucauldian thought, but I try to reveal how his work has become the anchoring point in defining two perspectives that play a hegemonic role in the contemporary understating of the relation between biological life and politics. The fracture between these two approaches undermines the possibility offered by biopolitics to sit astride the wall that today divides naturalism and critical theory, biology and politics. The pur- pose of this chapter is not to offer a hasty alternative but rather to explore the extent of this fracture in order to lay an adequate foundation for a new biopolitical inquiry. (shrink)

This edited collection explores the problem of violence from the vantage point of meaning. Taking up the ambiguity of the word ‘meaning’, the chapters analyse the manner in which violence affects and in some cases constitutes the meaningful structure of our lifeworld, on individual, social, religious and conceptual levels. The relationship between violence and meaning is multifaceted, and is thus investigated from a variety of different perspectives within the continental tradition of philosophy, including phenomenology, post-structuralism, critical theory and psychoanalysis. Divided (...) into four parts, the volume explores diverging meanings of the concept of violence, as well as transcendent or religious violence- a form of violence that takes place between humanity and the divine world. Going on to investigate instances of immanent and secular violence, which occur at the level of the group, community or society, the book concludes with an exploration of violence and meaning on the individual level: violence at the level of the self, or between particular persons. With its focus on the manifold of relations between violence and meaning, as well as its four part focus on conceptual, transcendent, immanent and individual violence, the book is both multi-directional and multi-layered. (shrink)

The case of Kafka stands at the very centre of Adorno’s articulation of modernist mimesis. His main study of Kafka is the long and complex essay “Notes on Kafka” (1953), which he republished in the collection Prisms (1955). But numerous references to Kafka are found throughout his unfinished masterpiece, Aesthetic Theory (first published in 1970) and in the four part collection of essays, Notes to Literature.

This cross-disciplinary collection explores Vladimir Jankélévitch’s thought on love, forgiveness, humility, virtue, bad conscience, remorse, death, reconciliation, music, and religion. It examines his relations with philosophers such as Henri Bergson and Plotinus. The chapters are linked by the theme of intangibility, or what cannot be touched.

Il concetto di Reale non coincide con la realtà; se l’atteggiamento dell’empirismo tradizionale nei confronti della realtà è infatti un ingenuo realismo, l’empirismo radicale è riuscito, invece, a pensare in maniera rivoluzionaria l’origine trascendentale dell’esperienza ordinariamente intesa e, dunque, la natura virtuale di quell’evento del tutto particolare che, soprattutto con Gilles Deleuze e Jacques Lacan, è il Reale. Più dettagliatamente, l’obiettivo dell’intervento consisterà nell’individuare, nelle prospettive aperte dall’empirismo radicale tra Ottocento e Novecento, una forma di temporalità atopica e “utopica”, che (...) non risponde alla scansione cronologica e all’accumulazione di istanti omogenei, poiché essa si distingue quale condizione di possibilità del tempo che scorre, o per meglio dire, di ciò che nel tempo trascorre. Si tenterà quindi di vedere in che modo, in tale prospettiva, si possa pensare un tempo quale presente assoluto (il tempo bizzarro di quell’evento reale che giunge a coincidere con una vita intera) scisso dalla kinesis aristotelica; un tempo, cioè, quale limite od origine trascendentale dell’esperienza: un presente assoluto in quanto atto in atto del vivente che vive o forse - si tratterà di capirlo attraverso una proposta di riflessione - quella terza sintesi del tempo quale forma pura e vuota del tempo medesimo, così come ebbe a scrivere Gilles Deleuze nel 1968 in Differenza e ripetizione. (shrink)

This chapter reviews three of the most consequential works in modern European philosophy published in 2017: Étienne Balibar’s Citizen Subject, Nick Nesbitt’s edited volume The Concept in Crisis, and William Clare Roberts’s Marx’s Inferno. These works reflect the fact that 2017 witnessed an upsurge of philosophical publications on Marx and Marxism. On one level, this is because 2017 was simultaneously the 150-year anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Capital and the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution. (...) Yet on another, more substantial, level, these works point to the enduring question of the meaning of ‘Marxist philosophy’ in its dual, and disputed, relationship to transformative political practice, on the one hand, and to the history of philosophy on the other. There are different threads that tie these works together, but two concepts, coming out of Louis Althusser’s work, stand out: those of ‘conjuncture’ and ‘symptomatic reading’. In short, this chapter suggests that the importance of modern European philosophy is in large part attributable to the theoretical and political problems that Marxism constitutes for it, problems which, at the same time, Marxism cannot articulate without this philosophy. The chapter is divided into five sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Writing and Conjuncture: Citizen Subject; 3. A Symptomatic Reading: The Concept in Crisis; 4. A Symptomatic Reading? Marx’s Inferno; 5. Conclusion. (shrink)

Jan Patočka and Paul Ricoeur are well known for their accounts of history and the historical understanding of human life. Lesser known are their phenomenological accounts of death and the afterlife. Although their thoughts are available only in fragments, they show a peculiar theoretical richness, as their conceptions of the afterlife are connected to fundamental topics like history, intersubjectivity and memory. In my article, I will attempt to shed light on these fragments, to show how they are embedded in already (...) existing phenomenological theories of the afterlife such as Max Scheler’s essay Tod und Fortleben, and to trace their relation to each other. As I will try to show, Patočka and Ricoeur’s thoughts can offer an alternative formulation of the phenomenology of death that differs from Martin Heidegger’s analysis of death and human mortality in Being and Time. Such an alternative phenomenology of death would not so much focus on the authentic but rather on the intersubjective understanding of death, human mortality, and the afterlife. (shrink)

Nel suo "Il canone minore", Rocco Ronchi descrive il tentativo compiuto da quelle figure, sovente eretiche del pensiero rispetto a quello che l’autore individua come canone maggiore, che nel corso della storia della filosofia hanno pensato davvero l'immanenza dell’assoluto o, che è lo stesso, l’univocità dell’essere sul piano degli enti di natura. Nell’esigenza fondamentalmente speculativa e per ciò stesso anti-moderna della filosofia, ciò che si dà a vedere quale dato immediato dell’intuizione è un'equivalenza solo apparentemente innocua, ma in realtà profondamente (...) perturbante e traumatica: immanenza assoluta = natura. (shrink)

L'articolo si propone di accostarsi alla figura di Ernst Mach seguendo la stessa metodologia storico-critica da lui utilizzata. Essa permette di contestualizzarne la figura e l'opera in un momento significativo della storia della filosofia occidentale, ma anche di ridefinire alcuni concetti fondamentali del suo pensiero. Scopo ulteriore della ricerca è di osservare da una diversa prospettiva la questione relativa al valore filosofico del lavoro epistemologico di Mach, mostrando come esso possa essere affermato senza bisogno di uscire dai confini da lui (...) stesso tracciati. (shrink)

ΤΙ ΣΗΜΑΙΝΕΙ «ΜΕΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΚΑΣΤΟΡΙΑΔΗ»; Μα ακριβώς αυτό που καταλαβαίνουμε εξαρχής. Τα χρόνια που ακολούθησαν τον θάνατο του μεγάλου φιλοσόφου ανέδειξαν τη σημασία της φιλοσοφικής και πολιτικής του σκέψης, έφεραν τα ερωτήματα που ο ίδιος είχε διατυπώσει στο επίκεντρο των κοινωνικών αγώνων, επιβεβαίωσαν την κριτική του στην καπιταλιστική (αν)ορθολογικότητα, έθεσαν το ζήτημα της Άμεσης Δημοκρατίας στην καρδιά της κοινωνίας. Ταυτόχρονα, νέες μορφές επικοινωνίας και συνταύτισης αναδύθηκαν, δριμύτατες κοινωνικές συγκρούσεις γκρέμισαν το κάτοπτρο της ασημαντότητας και καινούργιες πολιτικές αγωνίες προσπαθούν να βρουν (...) λέξεις για να αρθρωθούν. Ο λόγος του Καστοριάδη μοιάζει πιο επίκαιρος από ποτέ, ενώ η γλαύκα της Ακαδημίας αρχίζει να λοξοκοιτά μυωπικά το έργο του με στόχο να το απολιθώσει. Όμως το έργο του Καστοριάδη δεν προσφέρεται για απολίθωση. Δεν είναι μία κλειστή θεωρία, είναι μια πρόσκληση σε πράξη, μια προτροπή σε αναστοχασμό, μία αξίωση αυτονομίας. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Nietzsche’s rejection of egalitarianism depends on equivocation between distinct conceptions of power and equality. When these distinct views are disentangled, Nietzsche’s arguments succeed only against a narrow sense of equality as qualitative similarity (die Gleichheit as die Ähnlichkeit), and not against quantitative forms that promote equality not as similarity but as multiple, proportional resistances (die Gleichheit as die Veilheit and der Widerstand). I begin by distinguishing the two conceptions of power at play in Nietzsche’s (...) arguments, power as quantitative superiority of ability and as qualitative feeling of power (das Gefühl der Macht), an affective state that does not directly correlate with quantitative ability and, because based in resistance (der Widerstand), requires relative equality as its condition. Nietzsche presents four principal arguments against egalitarianism, each concluding that equality harms the flourishing of humanity’s highest individuals. First, equality directly promotes qualitative similarity (die Ähnlichkeit) at the expense of multiplicity (die Vielheit). Second, because material inequalities ground the ‘pathos of distance’ (the recognition of spiritual inequality), equality indirectly undermines the desire for self-development. Third, because it opposes aristocratic conditions, egalitarianism promotes a form of liberalism that removes conditions of constraint necessary to human development. Finally, equality is a less efficient means to human enhancement, which is best promoted through unequal distribution of resources to the most able individuals. I argue that in each case Nietzsche’s argument succeeds only if interpreted according to the quantitative conception of power as superiority, but fails when we also consider the qualitative conception of power as feeling. For the promotion of an individual’s qualitative power is compatible with quantitative power equality. Moreover, because power is felt only in resistance, the feeling of power requires relative equality as its precondition—an alternate sense of equality construed, not as qualitative similarity, but as quantitative resistance from proportional counter-powers. I conclude that Nietzsche’s commitment to the promotion of humanity’s highest individuals does not entail the rejection of moral egalitarianism in every form and even supports certain forms. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two tasks. First, I examine in detail Edmund Husserl’s earliest philosophy of surrogates, as it is found in his 1890 “On the Logic of Signs ”. I analyze his psychological and logical investigations of surrogates, where the former is concerned with explaining how these signs function and the latter with how they do so reliably. His differentiation of surrogates on the basis of their genetic origins and degrees of necessity is discussed. Second, the historical importance of this (...) text is disclosed by showing how Semiotic serves as both the inspiration for, and the foil to, Husserl’s 1901 First Logical Investigation. Husserl not only adopts the idea that linguistic signs can function via association, but also maintains that such signs can motivate me to execute one of two experiences. The key difference between the texts is that Husserl abandons his theory of surrogates in 1901, instead holding that I can experience absent objects by means of empty intentions. The reasons why Husserl found it necessary to transform this tenet of his philosophy are discussed at length. (shrink)

Diese Sammelrezension sondiert philosophische Perspektiven auf politische Affektivität. Judith Mohrmann knüpft in Affekt und Revolution an Arendt und Kant an, um ein »theatrales« Modell der wechselseitigen Bestimmung von Affekt und Politik zu skizzieren. Martha Nussbaum ergänzt in Politische Emotionen ihren politischen Liberalismus mit einem Verständnis öffentlich inszenierter Emotionen, die zur Akzeptanz der Werte liberaldemokratischer Gemeinwesen beitragen sollen. Eine andere Richtung schlagen Brian Massumi (Politics of Affect) und John Protevi (Political Affect) ein, wenn sie im Anschluss an Spinoza und Deleuze die (...) politischen Potenziale transindividueller affektiver Dynamiken ausloten. In dieser Perspektive sind Affekte politisch, weil sie politische Subjekte hervorbringen und deren Einstellungen, Wahrnehmungen und Gewohnheiten prägen. Im letzten Abschnitt wird eine Programmatik philosophischer Affekt- und Emotionsforschung in politischer Orientierung umrissen. (shrink)

This paper is about erotic love as source of the self. Unlike in the Platonic tradition, love is interpreted in the light of human mating systems. Following modern sociobiological theories I reconstruct the pair-bond as the original site in the evolution of man. For the philosophy of mind it follows that the unity of personal consciousness can be explained as a dialectic of emotional nearness to and distance from the beloved other.

The present paper defends the thesis that Spenser's recovery of place, as enacted in 'The Faerie Queene,' Book VI, can be linked in a direct way to his use of a poetic phenomenology which informs and clarifies his work as an epic writer. Spenser's "Book of Courtesy" enacts a Neo-Platonic movement from the lower levels of temporal existence to an exalted vision of spiritual perfection. The paper explores this movement along phenomenological lines as a mysterious adventure that embraces self and (...) other, personality and community, aesthetics and ethics, in a sequence of images that opens up a new interpretation of imaginative fulfillment. -/- . (shrink)

This is an interview with the philosopher Iain Hamilton Grant, author of Idealism: The history of a philosophy and Philosophies of Nature After Schelling.

This article elaborates Theodor W. Adorno’s understanding of ‘negation’ and ‘negative theology.’ It proceeds by introducing a typology of negation within modern philosophy roughly from Descartes onwards, showing how Adorno both fits and also stands out in this typology. Ultimately, it is argued that Adorno’s approach to negation and thereby to negative theology is throughout distinguished and infused by an ethical commitment.

The call to “know thyself” is neither a matter of presence and absence to self, nor the necessary or unnecessary possibility or impossibility of self-knowledge ‒ rather it is a problem. And the oracle gives a sign of this problem by implying that which is neither spoken nor concealed. But if implication is the problem of the sign, it is because it suspends the self and the very possibility of self-knowledge.

Roger Scruton is dismissed by those who do not care to study him as a conservative philosopher. This review shows how Scruton is in fact more a theologian than a philosopher. This review is contrarian in tone to the reviews of Scruton to be found online and restores him as the rightful heir to theologians like Barth, Bultmann etc.

Attentive readings of Deleuze’s works alongside the projects of his teachers show that they often share a common problem or set of problems. One of the most innovative and influential of these projects is the work of Jean Wahl. Wahl’s analysis of French existential phenomenology, here analyzed through a representative essay published in 1950, focuses on the problem of the pre-personal, pre-subjective elements of thinking and worldly existence. Deleuze’s philosophical project, already visible in his early essays on Bergson, is a (...) critique of the phenomenological presuppositions that determine this problem in terms of negation. (shrink)

This book is a critical analysis of how key philosophers in the European tradition have responded to the emergence of a modern conception of temporality. Espen Hammer suggests that it is a feature of Western modernity that time has been forcibly separated from the natural cycles and processes with which it used to be associated. In a discussion that ranges over Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Adorno, he examines the forms of dissatisfaction which result from this, together with narrative (...) modes of configuring time, the relationship between agency and temporality, and possible challenges to the modern world's linear and homogenous experience of time. His study is a rich exploration of an enduring philosophical theme: the role of temporality in shaping and reshaping modern human affairs. (shrink)