This essay argues for a concept of political identity that is fundamentally relational in nature contra more liberal accounts of identity that are atomistic. I consider John Rawls’ account of political identity in his Political Liberalism and provide a response stemming from Hannah Arendt’s account of political identity grounded in the existential condition of politics: human plurality. Using her concept of human plurality, I argue that political identity ought to be conceived as relationally individuated as opposed to atomistically so, meaning (...) that our identities only emerge in and through appearing before other political actors and not prior to it. The larger upshot is that conceiving of political identity as relational provides a more fruitful concept of the citizen and might allow progress to be made regarding some of the more entrenched political problems in American political culture, especially polarization and partisanship. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Andrea J. Pitts and Mark William Westmoreland, eds. Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism Through the Writings of Henri Bergson, 255 pages./ Among Bergson’s contributions to philosophical and empirical investigations; such as those centered on freedom, memory, and evolution; exists in the form of his last book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. It is interesting because, as many readers of Bergson have remarked, it does not seem to fit well, primarily in method, with his other endeavors (...) in the pursuit of philosophical exploration and elaboration. Having been mentored by a philosopher who holds this position, I have long shied away from the text that represents Bergson’s last concerted philosophical effort of inquiry. Meanwhile, having been intrigued by the possibility of a more just world and compelled by a desire to serve such an end, I was interested in envisioning what a Bergsonian philosophy of social justice, revolution, or morality would contain. Early on in my readings of Bergson, I felt the seeming applicability of Bergson’s method of intuition to moral and social questions. Over the years, I have devoted significant time to thinking through durational investigations of intensity to problems of social justice. While I have made some inroads to accomplishing this goal, I feel the journey has just begun for me. It was in this context that I was excited at the prospect of this book, and it is this book that has helped me to appreciate some of the ways that Bergson’s philosophy could be adapted to thinking through moral and social questions. To be clear, much work has been done in the way of expounding political or moral philosophies in which Bergson’s thought might be interpreted as a prelude. My reluctance to embrace Two Sources has been a self-imposed hindrance to my engaging in those extra-Bergsonian works for fear of running against the current of Bergson’s earlier texts. My reticence is intended to be taken as neither a slight of Bergson’s Two Sources nor a discounting of those who find inspiration in that work. (shrink)

Emergentism is an important and yet underexplored component of John Dewey’s metaphysical program, and concerns the ways in which existences relate, operate, and grow in coordination with a more inclusive environment. Through an emergent account, Dewey addresses continuities among the generic traits of nature, inanimate substance, biological life, and experiential “fields” such as mind and consciousness. The notion of a field is especially important for depicting the ways in which existences serially interact in accordance with some particular purpose or set (...) of functions. Apart from an emergent scheme that contextualizes the interactive contexts of experience, phenomena such as “mind” and “consciousness” remain enigmatic occurrences. Moreover, cognition, and with it instances of “knowing,” remain susceptible to merely “subjective” characterizations that reinforce a misleading dualism between mind and nature. In addition to its role in addressing naturalistic continuities, Dewey’s emergentism suggests a non-reductive philosophical methodology that directly challenges contemporary varieties of realism and materialism. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, the debate between supporters of internal and external relations showed how our assumptions on the nature of relations result in ontological, epistemic, and ethical commitments. In this debate, Alfred North Whitehead provided the most articulated and satisfying account through his “philosophy of the organism,” which holds relations to be internal yet vectorial, without excluding completely external relations. Today, the debate has become once again topical and constitutes a core issue for speculative realism. This (...) paper aims to show how the theory of external relations endorsed by some leading figures of speculative realism does not suffice to preserve the desiderata it was designed for, and how a more serious consideration of Whitehead’s theory would have beneficial effects on the ontological and ethical issues of this rejuvenated metaphysical discourse. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Tommy Shelby and Brandon M. Terry, eds. To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., 463 pages./ To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Harvard professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry have produced a masterful reappraisal of King’s legacy, specifically as a political philosopher. More importantly, the book can be read as a mirror through which we can see King’s struggles and resistance, that led him down (...) a “dangerous road,” having strong parallels with the dangerous road we face with current political and social upheavals. Negative reactions against globalization have heightened the sentiments of fear, paranoia, and partisanship. Racial tensions are reaching a boiling-point in the U.S. after the 2017 Charlottesville protests and a pattern of discrimination and senseless killings from the privileged campus of Yale to the country roads of Minnesota or Georgia, by law enforcement and civilians alike. One of the tendencies growing in this distressing hour of world history entails the rise of personality and celebrity cults forming around “strong” leaders. A mobocracy mentality is forming the way we think about politicians, judges, or even health specialists like chief U.S. immunologist Anthony Fauci. Celebrity fetishizing has infected Americans’ sense of reality, including the ways in which politics are practiced and interpreted. Engulfed in the quagmires of identity politics, our attempts to legitimate who has the right to fight for social justice have been paralyzed by these performative gestures of social change and action. It could be argued that the aesthetic presentation and the skills of rebranding have, in a certain sense, replaced the philosophical and moral concerns explored in the sections on “Traditions,” “Ideals,” “Justice,” and “Conscience,” respectively. What King teaches us philosophically has, more often than not, been glossed over by a superficial publicity or aesthetics of infotainment destined for the tabloids. For this reason, King’s iconic image is both a blessing and curse. In order to appreciate the full thrust of King’s thinking, we have to go deeper morally and philosophically to supplement our aesthetic religious values and interests, and that is what these fifteen essays deliver. (shrink)

The inheritance of dualism from Plato to Descartes, and since, has impoverished the human relation with nature, the world, other humans, and other species. The division of soul and body, and its counterpart of mind and body, gave us a world from which we believe ourselves to be separate from and superior to other species. This self-othering standpoint has had devastating consequences socially, politically, economically, and ecologically. This essay seeks to identify some resources in the Western tradition in phenomenology and (...) pragmatism that avoid this standpoint and bring them into conversation with some primary insights of Buddhist philosophy: interdependent arising, the not-self, and interbeing. By doing so, it is not only suggested that comparative conversations are not only useful in their own right, but they add dimensions to our experience in the world. Moreover, they offer avenues for living enriched lives in concert with the world without engaging in self-deceptive mental and comforting psychological activities of who and what we really are. (shrink)

The article deals with relational aspects of mental disorders. The author takes into account the influence of mental illness on intersubjectivity and interpersonal relations in three aspects: “attitude to the illness,” that is, changes in the functioning of the subject and difficulties in dealing with the experience of mental illness; “dialogical relationship” in the form of difficulties in maintaining social cognition and entering into relationships with others; “social consensus,” that is, difficulties in adapting to the social world and a common (...) sense deficit. The analysis is made with reference to phenomenological research in contemporary philosophy of psychiatry. The result of this study is a reconstruction of a “different existence,” in other words, presentation of the transformation of the life-world and the specific way of inhabiting the world of a person in a mental crisis. Symptoms and experience of the illness are presented in the light of human possibilities of transformation. The analysis emphasizes the role of patients’ subjectivity and their efforts to find the meaning of a painful situation. The study of subjective aspects of disorders aims to reveal their consequences for understanding how to deal with mental crisis and to understand the positive aspects of the recovery process. (shrink)

The paper discusses the unique relationship that exists between the ego and one’s own body. There are two fundamental possibilities to grasp it – using the verb “to be” or “to have,” which results in two known formulas: “to be the body” or “to have the body.” However, after careful examination, it turns out that they are one-sided and entangle us in numerous aporias. A more complete picture of the relationships with one’s own body is made possible by a phenomenological (...) description, which is a first-person and direct approach. The body, given in numerous experiences, turns out to be paradoxical and ambiguous. This is also my relation with it – it is feeling myself and others, getting to know myself and the world; an internal and at the same time external bond, at most my own experience along with the need to transcend the body. Finally, we consider whether the category of “relationship” resp. “relation” matches the experience of one’s own body. Perhaps a better solution is to give up this term and describe the body as a character of human being. (shrink)

In our current unstable world, nuclear warfare, climate crises, and techno nihilism are three perilous clouds hovering over an anxious humanity. In this article I examine our current state of affairs with regard to the imminent risk of nuclear holocaust, rapid climate emergencies destroying the planet, and the cultural and political consequences of emerging technologies on the fate of civilization. In the wake of innumerable existential threats to the future of our world, I revisit the plausibility of the Doomsday Argument, (...) which predicts the end of human existence. (shrink)

In this essay I present culture as a realm constituted by a circular movement where progress is constantly confronted by different forms of reversions. By progress I mean specifically oriented changes we observe in culture. Many of them are rooted in the development of technology and science, or stem from demographical changes and intercultural influences. Reactions to these changes frequently involve returning to certain forms of behavior or responses that were common in the past but have been later abandoned. I (...) intend to present examples of this phenomenon observed in culture. (shrink)

Preview: A relation is what connects two separated beings or what a being joins with itself; what is, in other words, in-between two beings or inside two parts of one being. Relations may be conceived as external or internal to those beings, as an essential part, or as separate beings of another nature. One usually cannot easily perceive or experience relations themselves. But the case is that relations must be something rather than nothing. They must be something since we use (...) relations and go around them all the time, in natural, casual, day-to-day life, as well as in philosophical, careful, and reflexive attitude. And, if they are something, one can think them. Some may say, that philosophers should think about what can only be thought. Who else could do this? So, here it is, a new Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture issue devoted to relations. (shrink)

This article is concerned with an analysis of semantics and the normativity of evaluative judgments, in which “aesthetic concepts” and “predicates of personal taste” are used in the context of the evaluation of selected cultural forms. Qualitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews with representatives in four categories of actors in the cultural field are analyzed. In the light of the findings, theories of aesthetic judgment are critically assessed, which on the one hand, postulate the categorical semantic and normative difference between (...) aesthetic concepts and predicates of personal taste and, on the other hand, conceive aesthetic disputes from an epistemological point of view and do not sufficiently take into account their pragmatic context. In conclusion, a functional analysis of the semantics and normativity of evaluative judgments is presented, in which the speakers use terms from the field of aesthetics. (shrink)

Preview: In this essay, drawing on the case of Australia in particular, we develop the argument of “schools for democracy” as part of communities that prioritize developing people’s civic agency for human flourishing. We begin with the concept of social capital – norms, values, and practices of trust and reciprocity essential to vibrant civic life and healthy democratic society – and discuss social capital’s decline in recent years as well as its relationship to what we call public work. Declining social (...) capital and growing demands for politicians and experts to “fix things” turn citizens into spectators, largely devoid of responsibility for addressing public challenges like AI and erode hope for the future. Here, we concentrate mainly on a specific danger related to this dynamic that threatens the cultural and social foundations of democracy and is directly connected to schools and their potential for addressing the danger: In the context of declining community life, social media and other digital platforms shaped by AI can spread an “us-versus-them” mindset that feeds polarization and inflamed divisions, far beyond the formal electoral system. (shrink)

It is no secret that the methodology within psychiatric research has been challenged to the point of a possible paradigm shift. After decades of failed attempts to determine biological markers for the mental illnesses classified by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, we are witnessing a radical transformation of the way we think about mental illness. While research seems to be on the right track by migrating from a discrete categorical approach to a dimensional matrix of the neurobiological conditions responsible for cognition, (...) there are concerns that the neurosciences involved in the development of this dimensional framework will be unable to arrive at a diagnostic system appropriate for clinicians. Consequently, it has been suggested that researchers and clinicians should develop distinct ontologies. I argue that such an approach will not do justice to the complexity of mental illness and offer insight into the applicability of a phenomenological approach in psychiatric research. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenology of the suicidal process. It begins with an examination of the self and the breaks that occur within the world that the suicidal individual endures. This includes an examination of suicidal hopelessness, termed in this paper as ontological petrification. It follows with the role in which hope plays in the suicidal. The paper then turns to carrying out the action of suicide, including a discussion of the suicide note and the developing form of the suicide (...) note as found in live-streams on social media. The paper concludes by describing the completion of the suicidal process, and the persistence of the suicidal drive in the suicidal individual. The paper makes use of suicide notes, video suicide notes, and stories of suicides. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Randall Auxier, Eli Kramer, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, eds. Rorty and Beyond, 314 pages./ Richard Rorty became a highly controversial figure, both within and without the ranks of academic philosophy upon publication of his 1979 book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. The controversy over Rorty intensified with his writings over the remaining years of his life and beyond. Co-edited by Randall Auxier, Eli Kramer, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński and including sixteen original essays, this new book, Beyond Rorty (...) studies Rorty’s work with the passage of the years following his death to re-assess his significance and to consider ways in which philosophers might both learn from and move beyond his work. The volume originated in a conference held on Rorty’s work in 2013 at Opole University, Poland. It includes both papers presented at the conference together with additional submissions. The essays offer many perspectives on Rorty while seeking to move beyond his work in areas including metaphysics and epistemology, social philosophy, axiology, philosophy of religion, and more. The following review of Beyond Rorty discusses each of the essays in the volume together with the introductory essays by Auxier and Kramer to explore directions which contemporary philosophy might take to move beyond Rorty. (shrink)

This article explores the role of an international open society of mental health stakeholders in raising awareness of values and thereby reducing the vulnerability of psychiatry to abuse. There is evidence that hidden values play a key role in rendering psychiatry vulnerable to being used abusively for purposes of social or political control. Recent work in values-based practice aimed at raising awareness of values between people of different ethnic origins has shown the importance of what we call “values auto-blindness” – (...) a lack of awareness of one’s own values as a key part of our background “life-world” – in driving differential rates of involuntary psychiatric treatment between ethnic groups. It is argued that the vulnerability of psychiatry to abuse stems from values auto-blindness operating on the judgments of rationality implicit in psychiatric diagnostic concepts. Acting like a “hall of mirrors,” an international open society of mental health stakeholders would counter the effects of values auto-blindness through enhanced mutual understanding of the values embedded in our respective life-worlds across and between the diverse perspectives of its constituents. The article concludes by noting that a model for the required open society is available in the contemporary interdisciplinary field of philosophy and psychiatry. (shrink)

The paper analyzes, on the basis of Ryle’s concepts of knowledge that and knowledge how, both objectified forms of expert knowledge and the performative nature of expertise. Both theoretical and practical aspects of the identified categories are studied from historical and social perspectives as phenomena characteristic of post-modern information society. In virtue of the selected social examples an epistemological model of performative expert knowledge and expertise is constructed in which crucial elements are distinguished: experts’ cognitive attitudes and dispositions, intellectual skills, (...) intuition and mistakes as well as types of interactional versus contributory expertise. Also considered are the epistemological consequences derived from the research concerning expertise in psychiatric treatment where both expert knowledge and expertise fall into line with institutional requirements as well as procedures. (shrink)

Cultural identities and rituals are intersecting through increasingly overlapping social worlds. Whether one chooses to join in this mixing and to what degree, that is the question. Appropriationists and assimilationists assume a logic of domination that aims to justify forms of social entitlement, claiming exclusive possession or ownership of cultural heritages. This article argues that cultural adoption is a stronger frame for understanding how circulation of rituals and practices get distributed under “liquid,” orphan-like conditions. By accepting that no stable centers (...) or margins of culture can be securely ascertained, new semiotics of integral fakes gain cultural efficacy. Integral fakes manifest semblances and likenesses that can be adopted as one’s own, intensifying our experience of cultural freedom by expanding our sense of the familiar into unfamiliar cultural scales. Through a semiotics of cultural adoption, we hope to be attuned to an openness and hospitality that romanticized ideologies of culture suppress. (shrink)

Is there any witness to death? As detailed by Jacques Derrida, any testimony is detached from the direct perception of the event it reports. Thus, a testimony may report one’s encounter with death, not only with the death of the other, but also with one’s own death, even though it can never by experienced as such. In particular, reports from “survivors” ought to be taken un-metaphorically as they confront us with what Maurice Blanchot related as “the encounter of death with (...) death.” In line with such testimonies, Donald Woods Winnicott helps us here in considering an “anterior death,” a death that already happened without being experienced as such and which may haunt the subject until it remembers it. But how may one remember a past that has never been present? And how may one remember death without dying? In dialogue with Maurice Blanchot, we are guided toward a manner of considering silence as an oblivious remembrance of that which can be brought back from death. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper the author briefly revisits two of the most important traditions that stand behind the contemporary conceptualizations of affect: the Deleuzian tradition and the Lacanian one. Having pointed to the most important features of the two lines of thinking affect, as well as to certain difficulties that arise within them, the author proceeds to offer his own simple conceptual model that would be operative in thinking about film experience. The model involves feeling, emotion and (...) affect as three distinct phenomena; the concept of “ex-spectator” is introduced in order to account for the crucial difference between emotion and affect. In the second part of the paper, the model is tested against the later films by Quentin Tarantino. The films are presented as “affective”: by skilfully operating with “reflective images” they are able to deconstruct the subject of the ex-spectator into the split-but-real, affected self of the true spectator. (shrink)

This essay compares Freud’s and Heidegger’s concept of Angst. Heidegger’s and Freud’s interpretations are guided by different aims: A) in “Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety” Freud tries to define the concept of anxiety as a main element in neurosis; B) Heidegger’s notion plays a major role in gaining the existential meaning of Dasein. Despite the differences, this essay claims that it is possible to discover a common anthropo-existential interpretation. Anxiety marks the anthropological and existential passage from the non-distinction of the pre-subjective (...) life to the distinction that emerges from the progressive differentiation of the subject from the world. From such a distinction originates the conflict between the tendency to regain non-distinction and the necessity of multiplicity. In Freud, anxiety is the price for the renunciation of indistinction; in Heidegger, anxiety is encountered when this price is recognized as unavoidable. This is the core problem that this study takes into account in order to show the existential and anthropological role of anxiety. I will proceed with an analysis of Freud’s interpretation of anxiety, and then with the Heideggerian notion. The third part points out the affinity between them. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the dis-chronic temporality that characterizes the trauma of birth. In order to show the latter, we compare the temporalities of trauma and aesthetic experience. To perform this temporal analysis, the text adopts a phenomenological viewpoint. (shrink)

Preview: Where should we look for an answer to the question whether a psychiatrist is an expert? In analyses of the concept of “expert”? In sociological studies? Or perhaps in opinions formulated by psychiatrists themselves? The subject is not as simple as it might first seem and the answer cannot be obvious. Certainly, psychiatrists are considered to be experts when they are called in by the court to act as expert witnesses. They are also deemed experts when they make a (...) diagnosis, prescribe medication, or write out a sick note – similarly to other doctors. We typically trust that, just like other healthcare professionals, they will help us to recover or at least that they can alleviate our suffering. (shrink)

Preview: If we define “philosophy” simply as “love of knowledge,” then it is obviously a requirement for any serious scientific, scholarly, or professional pursuit – in whatever field. Philosophy’s relevance is also wide-ranging or even universal when we define it as the most basic or general discipline: the one that poses foundational questions regarding the nature and legitimacy of knowledge itself. Philosophy does seem, however, to have special pertinence for the human sciences, and perhaps especially for the mental-health-related disciplines and (...) professions of psychiatry and clinical psychology. Physics and the biological sciences run up against such problematic issues as the nature of causality, the impact of the observer on the observed, or the essence of life; yet these disciplines seem able to progress quite nicely on their own, with little demand for philosophers or for philosophizing of an explicit sort. Fields like psychiatry and clinical psychology appear, by contrast, to have a more profound need for such input; and indeed, without self-critical philosophical thinking, they often seem to run the risk of degenerating into one or another form of what philosopher of science Imre Lakatos called a “degenerating research program” – whether this take the form of reductionism, rigidification, or mere banality. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Martha Nussbaum, The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, 310 pages./ For decades Martha Nussbaum allied herself whole-heartedly with cosmopolitanism. No longer. She appealed at length to the righteousness of Stoic cosmopolitanism in past publications such as Cultivating Humanity in 1997. Now, according to The Cosmopolitan Tradition, that founding ideal cannot be right. She presently advocates what may be called “ethical nationalism” since no system of political internationalism could be good enough. A reassessment of cosmopolitanism by this (...) unimpeachable expert must be considered carefully. Despite saying that “cosmopolitanism” is a term “too vague to be useful,” her chapters are replete with tenets taken as essential to this tradition that she must reluctantly abandon. To reach higher for social justice, ethical nations should “Brexit” from frail international systems still failing the multitudes. Rights are global, but enforcement is local. (shrink)

The text traces the development of the notion of catatonia in the work of Gilles Deleuze across three spheres – the individual, social and literary. The need for an analysis is based on the author’s perception that Deleuze thought on catatonia and slowness has been undervalued in many interpretations ; the recognition, in works of sociologists such as Hartmut Rosa, of the adverse effects of social acceleration. In the individual sphere, catatonia is the effect of a radical withdrawal into anti-production (...) or the body without organs. In the social sphere, catatonia is also linked to anti-production, but since in capitalism most anti-production is included in the sphere of production, catatonia represents a special case of resistance to this tendency. Deleuze shows how these two spheres intertwine in his analyses of Herman Melville’s works, especially Billy Budd and Bartleby; the title characters of these two texts are interpreted as embodiments of the catatonic as a political-revolutionary figure. (shrink)

Eco says that which cannot be theorized must be narrated. What about that which cannot be narrated? What must we do about the limits of interpretation, especially as narration. This review essay takes a method from Giambattista Vico and applies it to the interpretation of Laurent Binet’s portrayal of Umberto Eco in his novel The Seventh Function of Language. Comparing the character of Eco with the thought of the historical Eco we find coincidences and other angles at incidence that reveal (...) some portion of Binet’s underlying interpretation of Eco, and it limits. (shrink)

Preview: Bergson noted that the cinematographic image does not really move. It is, then as now, a series of still photographs. The real motion in such images is produced by machinery, which imparts a kinesis, an energy of movement, to the succession of fixed images. Our perception then endows such images with their “life,” insofar as they can be said to possess life. It is an illusion, it is “virtual” both as space and time. The real duration, as generated by (...) the machinery or as lived by the perceiver is part of a broader system of images that includes those still photographs and their succession. Images of images of images, by the time they are processed by our bodies and appear to our mind’s eye as inhibited acts we have not enacted. (shrink)

This article offers a new definition of culture which hinges on what we consider to be its most distinctive feature, namely its artificiality. Our definition enables us to resolve some of the main issues and controversies involved in the concept of culture and its course of development. We argue that the large human brain played a revolutionary role in inverting the course of natural adaptation of the human species. This dramatic turnabout allowed humans to set their own conditions of existence (...) in their created environment; and one which unlike nature they were able to shape and dominate. We demonstrate the crucial part of language not merely in communication but in forming a web of meaningful symbols which gave rise to the human spiritual or metaphysical world. We depict human society as an unparalleled elaborate web of relationships which gave hominids an advantage over other species from the very beginning. (shrink)

The aim of my essay is to distinguish the aspects of the filmic experience that are decisive in relation to the film’s capability to sensitize the viewer to social issues in Williams’s sociology of culture. In order to do that, I will take into consideration Williams’s understanding of film as a particular medium that is connected with the general dramatic tradition and is able to realize a total expression of the structure of feeling rooted in every aspect of community life. (...) On the basis of Williams’s understanding of film, I will analyze the film’s potential for social innovation from the standpoint of the viewing subject. In the later part of my essay, I will argue that the filmic experience’s capability to promote phantasies is a decisive element in relation to the expressive power of the film. I will analyze the role of phantasy in relation to the socially innovative potential of film in the accounts of the filmic experience provided both by Williams and by other authors that follow in Williams’s footstep by conceiving the filmic flow as a gaze located outside the viewer. Finally, I will draw my conclusions concerning the elements of the filmic experience that are decisive in relation to the film’s potential for social innovation. (shrink)

The paper concerns a “Note on the Film,” a short appendix to Feeling and Form by Susanne Langer. The interpretation interweaves the Note into a larger context of Langer’s philosophical work – primarily in terms of her understanding of the dream as a lower symbolic form, to which the film is compared – as well as in terms of her account of literary arts among which, she suggests, cinema belongs. Langer’s references to Sergei Eisenstein are discussed and their respective concepts (...) of cinema are compared. An implicit political dimension of Langer’s writing on film is emphasized by relating her critique of modern civilization, as sketched in the last chapter of Philosophy in a New Key, to her film aesthetics. At the end of the paper I compare my interpretation of the Note with the one that was offered by Trisha Curran. (shrink)

One aim of this essay is to understand why white evangelical Christians, more than any other religious adherents in the United States, are deeply invested in denying the emergency of anthropogenic climate change and in obstructing action to address anthropogenic climate change. Michael S. Hogue, in his recent book, American Immanence, blames a religious imaginary he names the “redeemer symbolic.” This symbolic complex inspires the devotion of the politically powerful white evangelical Christian and nationalist movement in the United States at (...) the present time. A second aim of the essay is to analyze the redeemer symbolic. Through a reading of Maurice Sendak’s much-loved illustrated children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, the essay suggests that U.S. white evangelical devotees of the redeemer symbolic share a kind of inability to come to terms with a vital and ineliminable wildness in persons and cultures; further, that this inability correlates with a political-theological failure, even refusal, to grasp the emergency of anthropogenic climate change. The essay first explicates the redeemer symbolic, with a particular focus on its implication in the legitimation of climate skepticism. Then, with the aid of key concepts from the psychoanalytic theory of D.W. Winnicott, it interprets the story of Max, the protagonist in Where the Wild Things Are, as a fable of healthy development of what Winnicott calls “transitional space” and a related “capacity to be alone.” Unsuccessful development of those resources, it is suggested, contributes to an account of why adherents of the redeemer symbolic typically refuse wildness and thus may be prone to climate negligence. More importantly, though, recognizing the cultural-psychological importance of “wild things” may help fire imaginative ways around the obstructiveness of the redeemer symbolic, to more effectively address climate change in particular, and human well-being in nature in general. (shrink)

The paper discusses the possibility of a cinematic image which represents future catastrophes, while avoiding ideological entrapments and self-serving fantasies. Taking a Japanese ghost story and a brief note by Walter Benjamin as his dual starting point, the author first attempts to define the possible dangers inherent to the very idea of showing the future, the most important being the danger of the premature, cathartic discharge of the spectator’s anxiety in a sadistic/voyeuristic show. After discussion of the mechanisms of this (...) discharge, the author offers an analysis of a positive example, namely Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf. According to the analysis, Haneke manages to avoid the traps by constructing reflective images that make the spectators watch themselves as they are searching in vain for the cathartic images of the catastrophe. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the problem of the digital-culture-public-philosophy as a possible response of those philosophers who see the need to face the challenges of the Internet and the visual culture that constitutes an important part of the Internet cultural space. It claims that this type of philosophy would have to, among many other things, modify and broaden philosophers’ traditional mode of communication. It would have to expand its textual, or mainly text-related, communication mode into the aesthetic and visual (...) communication mode. More precisely, philosophers would have to learn how to aestheticize and visualize their ethical narratives by using some digital tools – YouTube clips for example. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, due to the development of mechanical reproduction and press, photomontage became a popular means of communication – popular and diverse in its nature and methods of exploitation. It is one of the cultural phenomena related to the change of rhythm of life and a sense of its increased pace, and an impression of fragmentation of reality. This article questions the role of photomontage in such an experience. The said role is complex: sometimes photomontage allows for expression (...) of that experience, and sometimes it is meant to evoke it, in the spirit of modernity; it is both a tool of agitation and critique. In order to answer this question I shall assume the approach of Walter Benjamin, who diagnoses the crisis of experience and the loss of storytelling skills – and describes the potential of photography. This potential is differently approached by artists and scholars who point out contradictory purposes and results of using photomontage. Referring to various works of art shall make it possible to define the tensions characteristic of photomontage. Due to its plasticity and the ambiguity of a photograph, and the potential for contextualization and construction, photomontage can function in a hard to understand, rapidly changing world and address the fragmentation of experience. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Paulina Sosnowska, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger: Philosophy, Modernity, and Education, 251 pages./ What is the vocation of philosophy? Should it be defined in terms of political or economic needs, or rather should philosophy autonomously establish its own goals and norms? One might say that philosophy began with questioning the place and role of philosophical thought. It remains one of its most interesting – at least for philosophers themselves – issues. This kind of question constitutes the inevitable background (...) of every research project that concerns the problem of the task of philosophy. The book written by Paulina Sosnowska could be viewed as another attempt to answer this question, but in a truly hermeneutical manner; in other words, via the historical study of the relationship between the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. This historical research, it should be emphasized, takes into account not only the internal, purely intellectual dynamics of Heidegger’s and Arendt’s thought, but includes extensive research on the important events that shaped their lives as well as their thought. (shrink)