Immanent critique has been a defining feature of the programme of critical social theory. It is a methodology that underpins theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society, based on its linking normative and empirical modes of analysis. Immanent critique distinctively seeks to discern emancipatory or democratizing tendencies. However, the viability of immanent critique is currently in question. Habermas argued that it was necessary to revise the normative foundations of critical social theory, late-capitalist developments tended to undermine immanent critique. (...) Although there is a need for critical social theory to incorporate aspects of alternative interpretations of the contemporary period, the logics of influential theoretical perspectives on the present, especially postmodernism, the risk society and globalization, will be shown to be inconsistent with some of immanent critique's presuppositions. The synthetic aspirations of critical social theory nevertheless persist in recent attempts to reconcile positive liberty and social justice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Arguments for Divine Incorporeality Arguments Against Divine Incorporeality The Immanence of God Works cited.

This essay begins by focusing on four cultural characters that signify different but associated aspects of the changing destiny of the human figure at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. These characters embody the human figure, in the double sense of form and metaphor, at work, at leisure and at war, and as gendered cultural and philosophical ideal. It is our suggestion that they provide excellent images of a general economy of the future present. Their significance as indices (...) of the destiny of the human resides in the way that they disclose the effects of a restricted economy that overflows its boundaries to incorporate, utilise and restrict every element of its generalised expenditure, to use the categories of Georges Bataille: its sumptuary excess, its sacred forms, its abjected waste, its modes of eroticism, its violence. The essay continues by discussing the implications of, and consequences for, human life in the face of the corporate or techno‐bureaucratic drive to incorporate the ‘impossible‐real’. For Paul Virilio, the technological desire to overwrite the temporal and spatial dimensions of ‘the actual’ discloses something of the ‘divine’ in this new technology. In conclusion, then, the essay questions what resistance there might be to the law of the machine‐God who lies, impossibly, as the immanent being of machinic efficiency, operativity and becoming excellence. (shrink)

In this essay I argue first that De anima 3.4–5 shows Aristotle answering affirmatively a question that he raises near the beginning of the work, namely, whether any of the soul’s affections are proper to it alone. Second, I argue that this initial conclusion reveals something important about the very first question that Aristotle broaches in the work, viz., the method and starting-points employed in the science of the soul. Aristotle’s position, I claim, shows that investigating the human soul is (...) not merely an empirical concern discharged by natural science but also a rational concern discharged by logic, epistemology, and possibly even metaphysics. I defend these views against two rival interpretations of the passage, the “transcendental interpretation,” on which it does not describe a faculty immanent to human beings at all, and the “bad science interpretation,” on which it does but only as the result of Aristotle’s faulty physiology of cognition. (shrink)

This essay studies the unfolding of Levinas' concept of transcendence from 1935 to his 1984 talk entitled "Transcendence and Intelligibility." I discuss how Levinas frames transcendence in light of enjoyment, shame, and nausea in his youthful project of a counter-ontology to Heidegger's Being and Time. In Levinas' essay, transcendence is the human urge to get out of being. I show the ways in which Levinas' early ontology is conditioned by historical circumstances, but I argue that its primary aim is formal (...) and phenomenological; it adumbrates formal structures of human existence. Levinas' 1940s ontology accentuates the dualism in being, between what amount to a light and a dark principle. This shift in emphasis ushers in a new focus for transcendence, which is now both sensuous and temporal, thanks to the promise of fecundity. Totality and Infinity (1961) pursues a similar onto-logic, while shifting the locus of transcendence to a non-sexuate other. The final great work, Otherwise than Being or beyond Essence (1974) offers a hermeneutic phenomenology of transcendence-in-immanence. It rethinks Husserl's focus on the transcendence of intentionality and its condition of possibility in the passive synthesis of complex temporality. If the 1974 strategy 'burrows beneath' the classical phenomenological syntheses, it also incorporates unsuspected influences from French psychology and phenomenology. This allows Levinas to develop a philosophical conception of transcendence that is neither Husserl's intentionality nor Heidegger's temporal ecstases, in what amounts to an original contribution to a phenomenology both hermeneutic and descriptive. (shrink)

In this interview with Vikki Bell, Elizabeth Grosz explains some of the key concepts and arguments in her book The Incorporeal, including how this book sits with her earlier interventions, the appeal of Simondon’s concept of the pre-individual, Ruyer and the notion of directionality, and why reading the Stoics helps us understand current Deleuzian-inspired debates on immanent ethics.

_ Source: _Volume 11, Issue 1, pp 26 - 45 In his _Commentary on the Timaeus_, Porphyry of Tyre argued against the second-century Platonist Atticus’ thesis that the creation in Plato’s _Timaeus_ was a process from a point of time. This paper focuses on the summary of one of Porphyry’s arguments against this thesis exposed in Book 2 of Proclus’ _Commentary on the Timaeus_. It argues that Proclus does justice to Porphyry’s views and that the argument points to a classification (...) of powers in Porphyry’s metaphysics that has so far been neglected by scholars. (shrink)

“Ideal theorists” in contemporary liberal political theory argue that we can only arrive at a conception of what our most important political values require by reference to an imagined ideal state of affairs and that we must therefore, to some extent, engage in utopian thinking. Critical theorists, from Marx and the Frankfurt School, have traditionally been highly skeptical towards using idealizations in this way. This skepticism is mirrored by contemporary authors, such as Charles Mills. I argue that most of their (...) critical arguments make a principled case only against ahistorical, decontextualized projects of utopian idealization, but not against ideal theorizing as such. Critical theories do not need to reject ideal theorizing. On the contrary: The method of immanent critique that is specific to critical theory allows for a conception of an ideal state of affairs that emerges from its diagnosis of social contradictions. I conclude that critical theories can (and should) incorporate some aspects of ideal theorizing and its utopian reference to a better society. (shrink)

Ego sum moribundus, or Heidegger's call -- I am the dead person I see in the mirror, or Lacan's subject -- Return to Descartes -- the equivocations of phenomenology -- The field of immanence -- The carnal synthesis, the chiasm -- How touching touches itself touching : the (im)possibility of the chiasm -- In contact with the untouchable : the remainder -- This is (not) my body : the remainder of incorporation -- Beyond the other -- The crisis of the (...) chiasm -- From hatred to love -- From archi-agony to resurrection -- Toward deliverance (instasy). (shrink)

Colin Hay’s and Vivien Schmidt’s responses to my previous critical engagement with their respective versions of neo-institutionalism raise the issue of how scholars may account for the ideational power of political processes and how ideas may generate both stability and change. Even though Hay, Schmidt, and I share a common philosophical ground in many respects, we nevertheless diverge in our views about how to account for ideational power and for actors’ ability to navigate a social reality that is saturated with (...) structures and meaning. There continues to be a need for an analytical framework that incorporates discourse and a constitutive logic based upon the power in ideas. Post-structural institutionalism (PSI) analyzes discourse as knowledge claims by means of the concept of a constitutive causality, analytically identified in respect to institutions, such that the substantive content of ideas/discourse provides ideational power and generates immanent change. (shrink)

In a move that has puzzled commentators, Derrida's The Animal that Therefore I Am rejects claims for continuity between the human and the animal, aligning such claims with the ideology of “biologistic continuism.” This problematization of the logic of the human-animal limit holds implications for how we are to understand life in relation to auto-affection, immanence in relation to transcendence, and naturalism in relation to phenomenology. Derrida's abyssal logic parallels the “strange kinship” described by Merleau-Ponty, though only if this strangeness (...) is intensified as “hetero-affection” by incorporating death into life. Following Merleau-Ponty and Elizabeth Grosz, we locate the creative moment of this abyssal intimacy in the transformative productions of sexual difference. This positive account of the excess of hetero-affection reconciles phenomenology with evolution and offers a figure for thinking the thickening and multiplying of the differences between human and non-human, living and nonliving, corporeal and cosmic. (shrink)

All information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of info-autopoiesis or information self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s ‘difference which makes a difference’. To highlight and illustrate the fundamental nature of the info-autopoietic process, initially, two simulations based on one-parameter feedback are presented. The first, simulates a homeostatic control mechanism (thermostat) which is representative of a mechanistic, cybernetic system with very predictable dynamics, fully dependent on an external referent. The second, simulates a homeorhetic (...) process, inherent to biological systems, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. Further, the active incorporation/interference of viral particles by prokaryotic cells and the activation of CRISPR-Cas can be understood as info-autopoiesis at the most fundamental cellular level, as well as constituting a planetary network of self-referenced information. Moreover, other examples of the info-autopoietic nature of information are presented to show the generality of its applicability. In short, info-autopoiesis is a recursive process that is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of rhythm as enabling relations and thus as an appropriate mode of analysis for digital sound art installation. In particular, the article argues for a rhythmanalysis of the sonic event as a ‘vibrating sensation’ (Deleuze and Guattari) that incorporates the virtual without necessarily actualizing it. Picking up on notions such as rhythm, time, affect, and event, particularly through their discussion in relation to Susanne Langer’s work, I argue for the consideration (...) of the sonic event as an instance of a different kind of temporality subsisting underneath clock-time and sense perception. Ultimately, and this is the position of this essay, an investigation into experimental projects that interweave digital, sound, and aesthetic dimensions enables the articulation of a rhythmic time that helps account for the unknown, indeterminate, and unintentional forces immanent to the sonic. (shrink)

In this conversation, which took place across several months in the year 2021, Elizabeth Grosz describes her position with respect to “new materialism” and “the material turn”: while she emphasizes the necessity of materialist thought in the current situation marked by a global pandemic, she also stresses the equal importance of what she calls “the incorporeal”: an excess in and of matter, materiality’s heterogeneous virtuality, differentiality and becoming-other. Grosz describes the incorporeal as mutually implicated with materiality in a way that (...) eschews both monism and dualism. The conversation roughly follows five topics: 1. How does one conceive of ontology without fixity? 2. How does matter “make sense”? 3. Can we think sexual differences beyond cisgender binarism and oppositional dualism? 4. What are the ethico-political implications of a materialist thought predicated on becoming and immanence? 5. Is psychoanalysis compatible with materialism, and is there a materiality of the unconscious? In the course of this exceptional interview, Grosz discusses the works of Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Sigmund Freud, Luce Irigaray, Karen Barad, Friedrich Nietzsche, and of course Gilles Deleuze, among many others... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism ed. by Janae Sholtz and Cheri CarrJami Weinstein (bio)Janae Sholtz and Cheri Carr, eds., Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2019, 304 pp., ISBN 978-1-3500-8042-3Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism is a timely, ambitious, and wonderfully diverse collection of essays that aims to forge a new feminist methodology. Described as a “delirium” with the potential to “unleash new (...) ideas, new desires, and new imaginings” (Sholtz and Carr, 1), the editors adopt Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis as the basis for this methodology. They argue that this juxtaposition of feminist theory and schizoanalysis might synthesize and advance research on notions like becoming-woman, rhizomatics, deterritorialization, assemblage, immanence, and material vitalism (2) that have propelled feminist work on Deleuze and Guattari over the last several decades. Moreover, in the volume’s critical reevaluation of schizoanalysis, it strives to reimagine “the philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, and political” (1) by incorporating the evolution of feminist thought since Deleuze and Guattari’s time. The volume is, indeed, important reading for feminist continental philosophers in search of fruitful applications of Deleuzo-Guattarian thought to a wide, intersectional diversity of feminist theory.Citing Buchanan and Colebrook’s Deleuze and Feminist Theory (2000) as the origin of a productive and less skeptical feminist engagement with their work, the volume aims to advance a new generation of feminist Deleuzo-Guattarian thought that departs from a radically heterogeneous, schizoanalytic foundation [End Page 192] asking, “what can philosophical concepts do?” (2). The editors also mention the recent uptake of schizoanalysis as a methodology by reference to the Schizoanalytic Applications series in which the volume is published. There, its application “to contemporary issues and uses in critically oriented and socially engaged philosophical approaches” (4) is explored in a variety of otherwise targeted collections. They suggest that the relevance of schizoanalytic methodology “to feminist theory can be similarly situated in providing a new lens for critical and social engagement,” which the volume explores under the guise of discovering what this “new encounter” between feminism and schizoanalysis “might yield” (4). Thus, the collection is a dual-pronged, dynamic investigation, where one trajectory investigates the potentials for forging a feminist schizoanalytic framework and the other considers the ways that feminism might nuance or reshape the contours of schizoanalysis that were established across Deleuze and Guattari’s collaborative works (1).Furthermore, the editors cite the publication of Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Cartographies (2013) as additional inspiration. And it is, indeed, in part from Guattari’s visionary work that the joint project with Deleuze—including the articulations of schizoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus, Kafka, and A Thousand Plateaus— came into being (see: Guattari 2006). As Stephane Nadaud explains, their collaboration was designed to “counter... despotic, solitary enunciation—with their own collective one,” which transcends the Cartesian “unity of our ego—the famous I that thinks, and therefore... the cogito” (Guattari 2006, 19). It is, thus, curious that the volume’s title omits Guattari’s name (though other books in the series include it) and that contributors make scarce reference to his individual work. For, it is the very process of their collaboration, which entails their essential duality and the schizoanalytic becoming-imperceptible of their respective individualities, that becomes an archetype for schizoanalytic praxis.The aforementioned delirium, which is at the heart of schizoanalysis, originates from the split or break implied by the “schizo,” meaning that schizoanalysis seeks to locate then mobilize these breaks toward the creation of delirious, impersonal subjectivities. Merging desire and delirium, which he considers “in a deep sense” indistinguishable, Deleuze emphasizes that “desire-delirium is by its nature a libidinal investment of an entire historical milieu, of an entire social environment” (2004, 275). The schizoanalysis process, according to the editors, thus aspires to be a liberatory short-circuit of the rigidly enclosed “Oedipal constraints on the unconscious,” which, in turn, decouples “the unconscious libidinal investment[s]... from the preconscious investments of class and interest” (Shultz and Carr, 4). This echoes Deleuze and Guattari’s well-known invocation: “Destroy, destroy. The task of schizoanalysis goes by way of destruction— a whole scouring of the unconscious, a... (shrink)

This article aims to expound the principle of justice, as a fundamental value and as an immanent category of law, as well as one of the fundamental human rights, prescribed and guaranteed by a myriad of international instruments and documents. After a brief historical account, by focusing on Article 40 of the Magna Carta Libertatum, which states that: “To No One Will we Sell, To No One Will we refuse or delay, right or justice”, this article claims to show (...) the importance of incorporation of this principle in the provisions of the Magna Carta and its impact on the development of theory and legislation in the past and present. Moreover, the article intends to explore the extent of influence that the priciple of justice has on the functioning of the law in general. Since justice implicates the permanent and constant will to render each person his due, and this achieved through equality, it results that justice means being equal. In this context, the article will explore the concept of equality as a precondition of justice, as well as the conditions and modalities for its implementation. Having in mind that the principle of justice is closely linked to the principle of equity, because equity precedes justice, or more precisely, equity is considered a source of justice, this article seeks to articulate the essential distinctions between these two concepts by focusing on their methods, i.e. in their approach for putting the idea of equality into action. (shrink)

The author analyses the second phase of the development of Husserl’s phenomenological egology and the transition from nonegological to egological phenomenology. Accepting the necessity of the pure I as a phenomenological residue of the transcendental epoché, a non-constituted transcendence in immanence and the source of the evidence of the ‘I am’, it is analysed in its main aspects – such as, among others, the I-pole and I-substrate of habitualities – and in its traits and roles it plays in the stream (...) of lived experiences of pure consciousness. Thus formulated, pure I will be incorporated into the late concepts of transcendental ego and transcendental intersubjectivity. The shortcomings of such an egological conception of consciousness will also be examined, to which the nonegological theories of Husserl’s followers will not offer an adequate solution, making the debate of the egological character of consciousness present also in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

With the rising influence of digitalization and its immense penetration intoeven everyday life, the last decade of the 20th Century addressed to a critical threshold in the successive transformation process of the spatiality in its long-term run. The advanced digital technologies of ubiquitous computing and generative design, as well as the invention of smart materials in late 90’s have all provoked the fluid characteristics of spatiality, and strengthen the transformative capacities of the architectural space through the emergence of computer-augmented territories. (...) Additionally, while they are becoming as the body extensions, the advent of novel apparatuses and gadgets further enhanced the inte- gration of the corporal and incorporal bodies with the spatio-temporal multiplicities, where the hyperdimensionality of the space has been triggered to its outmost range, in relation to the “soft and smart technologically augmented immanent millieu”, in Spuybroek terms. Thus, like Spuybroek points out as the “haptonomist” presence of the body merges itself with these diverse bodily extensions on one hand; and on the other hand, as the rising influence of nomadic view of the world further stimulates the unboundedness and endless fluidity of space, so that the spatiality becomes a landscape of successive transformations, a topology of emergence or a plane of becoming, which is merely defined by lines of forces, and occures as an alive territory rather than a limited space of predefined boarders. Therefore, this evolvable territory which is affectable and being affected by the lines of forces –inner and outer forces–, emerges as an animated existence, an interactive organism. So, by interacting with the Deleuzian Philosophy and their notions like lines of forces, folding, becoming, smooth space, territory, spatium, this article aims to reveal the relevance of these notions in architectural discourse, as well as the emergence of the smooth space in the contemporary architectural practice, by magnifiying one of the very initial examples of its kind; in terms of unfolding the Fresh Water Pavilion of NOX Architecture by Lars Spuybroek into question to reveal the essences of thecontemporary transformable-evolvable architectural spatiality. (shrink)

As the title suggests, this paper looks at the Deleuzian concept of body without organs and compares it with Indian Philosophy. In the Indian context, the concept of moksha/nirvana comes near to it as both are practices that aim at liberation; here, ‘liberation’ is never the awaited end of the process but the process itself. The traditional western substantialism rests on things whereas Deleuze, like Indian Philosophy, celebrates ‘experience’ and the ‘incorporeal’. Thus, body without organs plays a role in individuation. (...) It hints at a journey beyond ‘the self’ which is full of ecstasy or the ananda of the Indian thought system. The question of Being, which not only is conceptual identification, is presented in terms of the virtual and the actual. For Deleuze and Guattari, every actual body has a virtual dimension, a vast reservoir of potentials, and this is the body without organs. The actual emerges from it and carries it with it. Further, the plane of immanence is a field in which concepts are produced. It is neither external to the Self nor forms an external self or a non-self. It is ‘an absolute outside’, very much like Brahman. The pragmatics of Deleuzian theory is that it explains life to be ‘immanence of immanence, absolute immanence’ – an utter beatitude – which has a Vedantic counterpart where the essential Brahman is a combination of three attributes – sat, chit and ananda. Thus, this paper aims at the interesting comparison between Deleuzian theory and Indian Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: A Contribution to Recent Discussion* ST. THOMAS AQUINAS accepted and consistently defended Boethius' definition of person: "persona est substantia individua rationalis naturae." St. Thomas' analysis of this definition necessarily involves metaphysical questions because of the implications of the terms " substance" and " nature" and moreover it manifests the inescapahle imprint of the theological problematics which surrounded the issue (e.g. the (...) Trinity and the hypostatic union). Both of these influences, metaphysical and theological, have engendered problems of interpretation and criticism. Contemporary discussions of person largely either continue the scholastic controversies or adopt a modern perspective from which to expose apparent contradictions in St. Thomas' doctrine. The purpose of this article will be limited to a consideration of the metaphysical problems concerning the relationship between individual substance, universal, nature, and existence. It is hoped that such a clarification will resolve not only the neoscholastic controversies, but also some of the contemporary problems. I. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION OF PERSON AND ST. THOMAS' EXPLANATION A. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION Boethius develops his definition of person in the Liber contra Eutychen et N estorium after a careful consideration of na- * I have to thank cordially Father Brian Shanley, 0.P. for having revised completely this English version, devoting much time and energy to fit the text and the footnotes to the style of The Thomist. He adapted the version in good style and verified the Latin quotations. 435 436 HORST SEIDL ture and substance.1 In the first chapter he sets out to define nature and discovers four possible meanings. The first and broadest definition, embracing both substances and accidents, describes nature as belonging to all things which by their being can be in some way or another be comprehended by reason: "natura est earum rermn quae, cum sint, quoquo modo intellectu capi possunt." A second definition, comprising substances alone both corporeal and incorporeal, describes nature as anything that can effect or suffer something: " natura est vel quod facere vel quod pati possit." A third sense, taken from the Aristotelian analysis of the motion of natural substances, describes nature as the immanent principle of movement : "natura est motus principium per se et non per accidens." Finally, nature can also refer to the formal cause which provides the specific difference: " natura est unam quamque rem informans specifica differentia" (cf. ST Ia. 29, I ad 4). It is this last sense which is most important. In sum, "nature" is a broad term encompassing both composite beings and their causes. Boethius continues in chapter two by first narrowing the relevant sense of nature to substances (thus excluding accidents ) and then presenting a complete division of substances. The major distinction is between corporeal substances and incorporeal substances. Corporeal subdivides further into inanimate and animate, with animate dividing. into insensitive and sensitive and the latter dividing finally into irrational and rational. Incorporeal subdivides into rational and irrational (the life-principle of animals), with rational incorporeal substances being further distinguished into those that are immutable by nature (the Creator) and those that are not so by nature (the human soul and angels) but may become so by virtue of the immutable substance. Boethius then argues that person cannot be affirmed of inanimate beings or irrational animals. A 1 All citations from Boethius are taken from the Loeb text in Boethius: Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918). THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 437 final distinction of :substance into universal and particular leads to the conclusion that person must refer to an individual. Thus the background is set for the definition of person which opens the third chapter: " naturae rationalis individua substantia." Person must be an individual substance of a certain nature, namely rational, which nature accounts for the form or specific difference of the particular substance (the fourth meaning of chapter 1). The connection of this definition with Aristotle 's definition of man as a rational animal is unmistakable. It should also be noted that this definition of person is applicable not only to man, in whom the rational nature is not identical with his substance, but also to the... (shrink)

Together with the experience of time, finiteness and death, age is among the crucial, though neglected, topoi of existentialism. Its early representative Kierkegaard already emphasized the fundamental role of ageing as a basic condition of human existence which finds orientation in projections of the future. Similarly, Camus, who presupposes that human beings are afflicted with the experience of absurdity, incorporates the ambivalent phenomenon of ageing in his anthropological reflections. Latently following stoic ideas and with recourse to aesthetical considerations of nature, (...) Camus develops an autobiographically imbued philosophy of ageing that dwells on the immanent conditio humana and clearly refrains from speculative transcendental assumptions. He inspires us to a critical analysis of established stereotypes of age beyond the options of striking demotion and uncritical euphemization of later periods of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum. Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul by Robert VinkesteijnJulien DevinantVINKESTEIJN, Robert. Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum. Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul. Leiden: Brill, 2022. viii + 357 pp. Cloth, $155.00Vinkesteijn's book, stemming from his 2020 dissertation at Utrecht University, explores Galen's views on (human) nature and the soul. (...) Opting to sidestep the debate on the unity of Galen's thought, he offers a series of close readings of some of Galen's most philosophical writings, radiating from the short treatise The Capacities of the Soul Follow the Mixtures of the Body (QAM), which encapsulates the questions he investigates throughout the book. Although many of the texts and themes examined have been extensively discussed in previous scholarship, its strength lies in its steadfast and coherent defense of a long-favored interpretation of Galen as "somatizing the soul."Case Study 1 revisits QAM, which has sparked considerable debate in Galenic studies. It defends the idea, recently criticized, that despite Galen's agnostic statements about the substance of the soul elsewhere, he supports here the physicalist and more speculative thesis that the whole soul is indeed identical to the specific mixture of elemental qualities in the homoeomerous parts of the main psychic organs. Vinkesteijn maintains that this thesis aligns with Galen's general physiology, and that Galen's analysis of the soul as a formal aspect in a hylomorphic whole represents not an exegetical stance on Aristotelian positions but his own viewpoint, applicable to both the nonrational and rational parts. The study then rightly emphasizes Galen's conviction that our actions and affections can and should be modified by habituation. It argues that there is no basis for assuming that the identity thesis leads to a radically deterministic ethic. Indeed, it showcases the possibility of a second formation of our bodily mixture, with Galen attributing to the rational part of the soul a godlike potential for change and improvement of the soul's virtues—although it concedes the unlikelihood of such personal enhancement, as it hinges on rare natural predispositions.Case Study 2 focuses on Galen's definition of nature and his elemental theory; it focuses on the first book of Galen's Commentary on Hippocrates's On the Nature of Man (HNH) and examines the notable absence of the soul as an explanatory factor in an account of human nature. It argues that Galen articulates a concept of nature as a primary hylomorphic substance, shared by all beings subject to generation and decay and determining their secondary properties. The study then [End Page 557] examines Galen's use of his allegedly Hippocratic/Platonic method of division to dissect nature into its constantly interacting elemental powers of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. Vinkesteijn then underscores the complexities in delineating mixtures from nature as an intelligent creator, challenging the dichotomy between a transcendent and an immanent formation of natural beings and pinpointing the difficulty in differentiating between the causality of nature and that of the soul in humans.Case Study 3 explores Galen's engagement with Plato's Timaeus, focusing on the soul–body relationship. It drives home the argument of the first study and aims to show how the fragments of Galen's lost Commentary on the Timaeus offer a somatizing interpretation of the soul. Extensively drawing on the disputed but recently reassessed Larrain fragments, it convincingly argues that they align with passages from Galen's attested works. Vinkesteijn highlights Galen's creative reading of the Timaeus, tailored to mirror his own doctrines. Beyond incorporating Aristotelian notions into his analysis, Galen is depicted as ingeniously reinterpreting the Platonic soul–body distinction. Notably, Vinkesteijn shows how Galen takes the river metaphor literally, as an indication of moisture abundance, and applies it beyond its original context of generation. This approach enables Galen to reinterpret Plato's ideas through the prism of elemental qualities and emphasize the association of the soul with lightlike or dry and hot substances, bridging the gap between the Platonic concept of the soul and Galen's physiological understanding of human nature.Case... (shrink)

This work is driven by the attempt to criticise Phenomenology with the help of Levinas. Similar to the Frankfurt School, he characterises it as a “vision of essences”. These eidetical essences are, and can never be fully absolute, not only because several movements of Hegelian Dialectics are refuted in submitting knowledge either to the imago of mere immanence, or to normative structures which are postulated as invariant like in certain versions of Neoplatonism, but because they function as an apriori of (...) an eternally unfinished and fragmented Lebenswelt. Maybe it is to harsh to compare Husserl to the neoscholastic readings of Descartes and to the formalist interpretations of Kant. Husserl is well aware of the kinaesthetic foundations of consciousness and, contrary to Heidegger, he even promotes Spinozism in a certain phase of his work which excels his adolescent fervour of Berkeley. Nevertheless, Husserl incorporates a subject-based, “monadic” transcendentalism, that paradoxically leads to the dissolution of subjective identity. Traditional reasoning itself is exfoliated to perfection in Heidegger afterwards. Husserl's halfhearted formalism ignores the materialist theory of the simulacrum by Lucretius. Heideggers philosophy widens this overseen aspect in calling the Eidos an Aussehen in referring to the Presocratics, but it despises any kind of method and finally flees in to poetry, maintaining its fatalist errors which it committed right form the start: this is why it gained the name of pseudo-concreteness. Cursed through a specific anti-sociological tendency caused by an anti-empiricist vision of history, their theories virtually (not conceptually) exclude the influences of society on philosophy: they are the end result of the era of Kulturkampf, in which idealism tried to battle positivism, naturalism and historicism. Husserl even defines this philosophical battle as the very struggle of existence. The formulation of the Eidos becomes performance. Aristotle used Eidos synonymous to genus and species. Hence the amplitudes of these philosophies foster the metaphysical standpoint of race, that got out of hand in the Nazi Era and even later on. The “topic” of blood and soil appears in Husserl's definition of Heimwelt and his Eurocentrism. Phenomenology is in no case to blame for National Socialism, and it has very little to to with its causes. My work simply tries to make the same analogy that Marx had made for Hegel. It tries to describe, how two leading philosophers of the German Bourgeoisie are reproducing the categories of their surrounding society without even really observing it. (shrink)

While Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus is quite rightly considered a fully fledged response to May ’68 and as one with the radical politics of the 1970s, their 1980 follow-up, A Thousand Plateaus, has tended to provoke a more perplexed reaction. In this article, I will argue that we can nonetheless extract a definite line of argumentation serving a precise political end if we relate the text back to Foucault's mid-1970s output on power/knowledge. In particular, I will emphasise Deleuze and Guattari's (...) appropriation of the Foucaultian notion of dispositif via their concept of the assemblage, the former being understood as a concrete articulation of lines of power, knowledge and subjectivation, as well as the Foucaultian ‘diagram’, the latter being a more abstract or indeterminate stage of the dispositif whose relative indeterminacy, for Deleuze and Guattari, offers a means of escape. I will show that, making room for the assemblage's opening back onto the relative indeterminacy of its generative stages, the assemblage incorporates into itself a more immanent alternative to the dispositif that is focused on collective desire rather than power, within which resistance becomes a primary and generative dimension rather than a counter-attack. In the first section, I will outline Foucault's approach to power, knowledge and subjectivation, emphasising Deleuze's reading of Foucault though without trying to overdetermine my reading in this way. Next, I will turn to the Foucaultian diagram. In the third section, I will focus on A Thousand Plateaus, demonstrating how the notion of assemblage developed in this text responds to and builds upon Foucault's approach to power/knowledge and subjectivation in order to reconceive resistance. (shrink)

Last year, Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson published a brief, bold book on a topic from which historians of political thought have tended to shy away, curiously enough—the relations between republicanism and liberalism as political ideologies in the age of the American and French Revolutions. Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns is relentlessly polemical, blaming this neglect on the historians and theorists responsible for resurrecting the early modern republican tradition over the last few decades. Pocock, Skinner, Wood, Petit, (...) and more are assailed for having indulged in what Kalyvas and Katznelson call “republican nostalgia”—that is, for having wrongly presented republicanism as an alternative to modern liberalism, rather than its parent and precursor. Instead, the authors of Liberal Beginnings set out to show the ways in which republicanism evolved into liberalism, in and through the works of a set of leading thinkers—Smith, Ferguson, Paine, Madison, Staël, and Constant. Their story has a happy ending. Whatever was valuable and actual in republicanism was smoothly incorporated into early liberalism, for which they turn the dictionary inside out in search of approbative adjectives—“situated,” “thick,” “sturdy,” “confident,” “open,” “immanent,” “heterogeneous,” and “syncretic.” How persuasive is their account? Not a few readers will detect a hint of protesting too much in this kind of cheerleading. “Thick,” “sturdy,” and “confident” are surely not the first terms to spring to mind in regard to this gallery of thinkers, Staël and Constant least of all. It also seems clear that Kalyvas's and Katznelson's coverage of French thought, confined almost entirely to that pair, is too cursory to sustain their case. At one end, Montesquieu and Rousseau, the titans who together defined republicanism for the revolutionary generation, make only the most fleeting of appearances in Liberal Beginnings . At the other, Tocqueville, acknowledged on all sides as the master thinker of French liberalism, is missing altogether. Nevertheless, the attempt at treating anglophone and French thinkers within a single interpretative framework is in itself a virtually unprecedented feat, for which Kalyvas and Katznelson should be congratulated. For who could doubt that they are on exactly the right path in chasing their prey onto French soil? (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature combines four elements. Hegel develops (1) an a priori account of the logical determinations immanent in and peculiar to nature—determinations that incorporate (but are not reducible to) (2) the determinations set out in the Logic. Hegel then points to (3) the empirical phenomena corresponding to each determination and so proves indirectly that such phenomena are necessary. Finally, he draws attention to (4) those aspects of nature that cannot be explained (...) by nature’s immanent logic and so are contingent. In this way, I argue, Hegel demonstrates a priori that certain natural processes are made necessary by the distinctive logic of nature, but he also recognizes that there are contingencies in nature that only empirical science can discover. (shrink)

The concept of vital force – the immanent energy that promotes the processes of life in the body and in nature – has proved a source of endless fascination and controversy. Indeed, the question of what vitalizes the body has haunted humanity since antiquity, and became even more pressing during the Scientific Revolution and beyond. Examining the complexities and theories about vital force in Spanish modernity, Nicolás Fernández-Medina's Life Embodied offers a novel and provocative assessment of the question of (...) bodily life in Spain. Starting with Juan de Cabriada's landmark Carta filosófica, médico-chymica of 1687 and ending with Ramón Gómez de la Serna's avant-gardism of the 1910s, Fernández-Medina incorporates discussions of anatomy, philosophy, science, critical theory, history of medicine, and literary studies to argue that concepts of vital force served as powerful vehicles to interrogate the possibilities and limits of corporeality. Paying close attention to how the body's capabilities were conceived and strategically woven into critiques of modernity, Fernández-Medina engages the work of Miguel Boix y Moliner, Martín Martínez, Diego de Torres Villarroel, Sebastián Guerrero Herreros, Ignacio María Ruiz de Luzuriaga, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Pedro Mata y Fontanet, Ángela Grassi, Julián Sanz del Río, Miguel de Unamuno, and Pío Baroja, among others. Drawing on extensive research and analysis, Life Embodied breaks new ground as the first book to address the question of vital force in Spanish modernity. (shrink)

In this paper I give considerable attention to Richard Rorty's attempt to make plausible a conception of non-rational semantic and cultural change - change which Rorty insists on describing as identical with progress - in order to show the extent to which this attempt is compromised from the start by an unjustifiably narrow and inconsistent view of reason. The point of this immanent critique is not just to make Rorty's view of non-rational change look bad. It is meant to (...) do more justice to his claim that intellectual and moral progress is inseparable from speaking and acting differently by incorporating this claim into a philosophically enlarged picture of reason. So the value of taking Rorty's claims about change seriously lies less in showing the shortcomings of his conception of reason than it does in bringing a sense of urgency to the need to renew the project begun by Kant, Hegel, and German Idealism - the project of conceiving reason as an agency of change by reinterpreting reason in terms of self-determining freedom. (shrink)

The usual metaphor for time is a flow. Edmund Husserl, in describing experience of our inner temporality, uses the term often: Fluss. In the final three decades of his life (1900s to 1930s), he gives us a well-articulated theory of time, especially the experience of its ongoingness and of our- selves in the processing of time. He refers to this latter, our immanent temporality, as a "flux" or flow and thus calls up the image of the river moving along (...) with its contents comprised in that flowing, gaining their fluent qualities from it. Yet Husserl's theory is not limited to a mechanistic understanding of flow as pure series, but in fact incorporates both a serial- ized aspect and a decentering, highly complex aspect of inner time-con- sciousness. The theory, then, requires a new metaphor, a re-mapping from serialistic diagrams to more dynamic ones. The challenge lies not only in achieving this re-mapping, but in showing the relation of dynamic diagrams to the serialistic ones that are still vital to the full descriptions of inner time- consciousness. (shrink)

This paper engages Abhinavagupta’s philosophy of “aham,” “I” or “I-am,” in a global philosophical platform. Abhinavagupta reads aham to ground speech in experiencing and expressing subjectivity. The aham, in this background, has three distinctive topographies: aham as the ego of the empirical subject, aham as the subject of experience that objectifies the ego, and aham as the ego that embodies the totality. Nemec reiterates the fact that the concept of pūrṇāhantā or the vocabulary to support this concept is absent in (...) Somānanda. Besides Abhinava, I am incorporating later Śākta commentarial texts in this analysis. My justification for giving Abhinava main credit is that he formally established this concept and later commentators primarily expand upon his insights. See also Bäumer. While aham in its most exalted sense relates to the absolute I-consciousness that embraces the totality, it immanently encloses all individualities within its embrace, enveloping all to find a singular identity through its transcendental gaze. Aham in this sense is the “I-am” in which all those within the parameters discover their individuality while also finding collectivity. It is the I-sense that determines or delimits the parameters of the body, and in this sense aham also stands for the embodied self-experience. (shrink)

This paper considers three essential gestures in Levinas’s theology, highlighting in each case how Levinas’s thinking allows him to either incorporate or sidestep some of the fiercest modern criticisms of traditional theism. First, we present Levinas’s vision of divine transcendence, outlining his ontological atheism and explaining how this obviates proving the existence of God and avoids the tangles of traditional theodicy. Second, we describe Levinas’s idea of the trace, showing how a nonexistent God still leaves its mark in the face (...) of the other person and explaining how this vision of divine immanence accords with the agendas of thinkers such as Feuerbach and Nietzsche, who criticized theology that elevated God while debasing humanity. Third, we present Levinas’s insistence on the philosophical primacy of ethics, showing how he infuses his ethical philosophy with religious themes, elevating moral philosophy to the level of ultimate concern in a way that even atheist social theoris. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.2 (2001) 3-8 [Access article in PDF] The Two Secrets of the Fetish Jean-Luc Nancy "Commodity fetishism": Marx's formula has been imprinted on the largest and most resistant of cultural memories. It has become almost anonymous, or rather synonymous with Marx's very name, as is the case with certain coined terms(cogito, categorical imperative...). This privilege could only be due to a very particular virtue. Such a virtue is (...) that which not only consists in characterizing, in the strict sense of the word (to typify a property or an essence), but even in characterizing in such a way that the character (the stamp, the seal) is somehow inscribed on the thing itself and can no longer be detached from it, or at least without some loss in the substance of the thing.In Kantian terms: the intuition presented under the word "fetishism" is printed or traced indelibly onto the concept of "commodity," giving rise to a schema "commodity," from which a new image, and thus a new idea, ensues. Not just the commodity as the fetish—as if this were one of its traits or one approach among others—but rather the essence of the commodity revealed as fetish, so that the fetish character would remain once the approach was shifted or the "secret" of its "mystical character" was revealed. (As we know, these are all Marx's own terms.)As is also known, the secret consists in that the commodity value (or exchange value) of the object (or product), which seems to be its intrinsic or immanent property (parallel in this way to its use value, which is extrinsic and completely relative to its utilization in a given sociotechnical context) only covers, masks or represses the origin of its pure or absolute value—this last value being nothing other than the living human labor of the producer, which the act of production incorporates into the product. But the commodity value deflects this incorporated creative life toward equivalence within an exchange, where the producer (the worker) finds himself surreptitiously stripped of the part of the value that the mercantile calculation does not exchange for the maintenance of its labor force, but rather sets to the account of capital. * * * Here we are not concerned with addressing the problems associated with the evaluation or the appreciation of living work as it is related to the intensification or the very creation of value ("the surplus-value"), nor with respect to the extortion suffered by the creator of value (the valuable and value-making man, the living man as maker, as giver of prices in an absolute fashion) to the benefit of the one who accumulates value in the form of general equivalence, creating mercantile prices through a common currency. Currency is the fetish, where fetishism is fixed: belief in the value of the market price itself. The critique of political economy—that is, the critique of the economy as politics—reveals the inanity of this belief, and if this critique cannot measure the hidden and mysticized or mystified value in monetary terms, the principle of this critique remains [End Page 3] no less, but even more so, the incommensurability of the value creator and the marketed product.Alienation is not measurable. It is at the same time the principle of the critique and its impasse from the moment that we would like to, and indeed that we should, oppose one measure to another: the critical measure of the fetish against the mercantile measure through the fetish.In contrast, what we would like to sketch out here would have the following hypothesis as a point of departure: does not the strength of Marx's formula derive from a power other than that of the only critique thus broached? Is there not another energy, and another enigma, slipped into the first, adding itself to the revelation of the secret, even exceeding this revelation and perhaps in this fashion displacing just a bit the secret itself (precisely because it is not measurable)?This other power would derive from "fetishism" itself. That is to say... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Modern Socratic Dialogue and Resilient Democracy: Creating the Clearing for an American Bildung1Laura J. Mueller (bio)Michael Hogue’s American Immanence draws from some of the fundamental features of American philosophy: philosophy is not alienated from life, but rather, part and parcel of the structure of our experiences, a way of living. His notion of “resilient democracy” is particularly representative of this tradition of thought. Resilient democracy is, first of all, (...) an ethos, grounded in “the collective experience of uncertainty and animated by the living desire to bring about a more beautiful world.”2 This ethos is an associational, relational one, and it is democratic because, for Hogue, it must be “empathetic, emancipatory, and equitable,” assuming that each member of the association can be enriched by other members” (AI, 172–73). Vital to this democratic ethos is its anti-foundational politics; we start not with an immutable reality, but rather with the vulnerable reality of our actual, political, experiences (AI, 176). We start with where we are, not where some abstract ideal demands we should be. Democracy, for Hogue, is not just a certain political ideal for which to aim, but rather a way of being, a way of life. Dewey writes:A democracy is more than an associated form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.... These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond... They secure a liberation of his powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests.3Throughout this paper, I use “democracy” in this sense; as a way of life, as a relational ethos, not as any particular political system. [End Page 40]As a way of life, democracy is both the process—the struggle—and that which we aim for. This feature of democracy is similar to the structure of Bildung, in which self-cultivation is both the process and the product.4 For example, for Wilhelm von Humboldt, an individual is in “continuing activity,” whose powers are never stagnant; humankind is always progressing, an infinite object.5 This is an end-in-view, not a fixed end.6 Humboldt “did not formulate a catalogue which prescribed what a person should know, what a person should read, what a person should have heard, what a person should have concerned himself with, so that one can say: this person has Bildung.”7 For Humboldt, Bildung is “the development of the capacities of the individual into a harmonious whole.”8 This paper, in part, looks at Hogue’s resilient democracy as a cultivation of both the individual and the group, as Bildung of both self and culture. In particular, the individual and culture that are being cultivated are relational, grounded in an emancipatory, equitable, and empathetic ethos, with a democratic way of life.Similar to the traditional Bildungstradition, education plays a vital role in this kind of democratic cultivation. If our end-in-view is a democratic society, then the method to reach that end must also be democratically ordered. Myles [End Page 41] Horton put it best: “When you believe in a democratic society, you provide a setting for education that is democratic.”9Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) is a particular method of philosophical dialogue that engages in and cultivates the ethos of resilient democracy. It cultivates empathy (in listening), pluralism (difference is accommodated and incorporated) and equity (insofar as no special knowledge is required), and anti-foundationalism (participants approach the conversation with epistemic humility, not trying to grasp a Truth as the ground of knowledge, but rather work together to form a common truth that comes out of their situatedness). These are all traits of Hogue’s resilient democracy, and all traits of an American Bildung, our self-correcting vulnerability, a way of being that replaces an unattainable ideal without sacrificing amelioration.Much like the tradition it addresses, this paper is layered; it is polyphonically pluralistic in method and structure. The many voices of this paper are first stratified and folded in... (shrink)

The role of divine power in Aquinas’s spiritual doctrine has often been neglected in favor of a focus on the primacy of charity, the controlling virtue of spiritual progress. The tendency among some thinkers (e.g. Polkinghorne) to juxtapose divine love and power stems from the stress on divine immanence at the cost of divine transcendence, and from an evolutionary (vs. classical) view of God with its ‘kenotic’ theodicy. A study of the ways in which divine power grounds and directs the (...) spiritual life highlights the robust role that metaphysics plays in spiritual ascent for Aquinas, and offers a philosophical entry point to his doctrine. Themes in his doctrine of the spiritual life incorporate Platonic transcendent causal plenitude and Aristotelian causal axioms and motifs of growth and unity. From the side of theology, divine power is analyzed through several lenses, including power through weakness in Christ, the sin of Lucifer against the gift of being in contrast to the counsel of obedience, and the role of Christ’s human nature in the Church. Taken together, these themes combine to characterize divine power as redemptive medicine, as opposed to a distant, arbitrary force, and to reveal the ways in which Aquinas applies metaphysical insights to the supernatural order. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this (...) shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this (...) shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the foundation (...) of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: A Contribution to Recent Discussion* ST. THOMAS AQUINAS accepted and consistently defended Boethius' definition of person: "persona est substantia individua rationalis naturae." St. Thomas' analysis of this definition necessarily involves metaphysical questions because of the implications of the terms " substance" and " nature" and moreover it manifests the inescapahle imprint of the theological problematics which surrounded the issue (e.g. the (...) Trinity and the hypostatic union). Both of these influences, metaphysical and theological, have engendered problems of interpretation and criticism. Contemporary discussions of person largely either continue the scholastic controversies or adopt a modern perspective from which to expose apparent contradictions in St. Thomas' doctrine. The purpose of this article will be limited to a consideration of the metaphysical problems concerning the relationship between individual substance, universal, nature, and existence. It is hoped that such a clarification will resolve not only the neoscholastic controversies, but also some of the contemporary problems. I. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION OF PERSON AND ST. THOMAS' EXPLANATION A. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION Boethius develops his definition of person in the Liber contra Eutychen et N estorium after a careful consideration of na- * I have to thank cordially Father Brian Shanley, 0.P. for having revised completely this English version, devoting much time and energy to fit the text and the footnotes to the style of The Thomist. He adapted the version in good style and verified the Latin quotations. 435 436 HORST SEIDL ture and substance.1 In the first chapter he sets out to define nature and discovers four possible meanings. The first and broadest definition, embracing both substances and accidents, describes nature as belonging to all things which by their being can be in some way or another be comprehended by reason: "natura est earum rermn quae, cum sint, quoquo modo intellectu capi possunt." A second definition, comprising substances alone both corporeal and incorporeal, describes nature as anything that can effect or suffer something: " natura est vel quod facere vel quod pati possit." A third sense, taken from the Aristotelian analysis of the motion of natural substances, describes nature as the immanent principle of movement : "natura est motus principium per se et non per accidens." Finally, nature can also refer to the formal cause which provides the specific difference: " natura est unam quamque rem informans specifica differentia" (cf. ST Ia. 29, I ad 4). It is this last sense which is most important. In sum, "nature" is a broad term encompassing both composite beings and their causes. Boethius continues in chapter two by first narrowing the relevant sense of nature to substances (thus excluding accidents ) and then presenting a complete division of substances. The major distinction is between corporeal substances and incorporeal substances. Corporeal subdivides further into inanimate and animate, with animate dividing. into insensitive and sensitive and the latter dividing finally into irrational and rational. Incorporeal subdivides into rational and irrational (the life-principle of animals), with rational incorporeal substances being further distinguished into those that are immutable by nature (the Creator) and those that are not so by nature (the human soul and angels) but may become so by virtue of the immutable substance. Boethius then argues that person cannot be affirmed of inanimate beings or irrational animals. A 1 All citations from Boethius are taken from the Loeb text in Boethius: Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918). THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 437 final distinction of :substance into universal and particular leads to the conclusion that person must refer to an individual. Thus the background is set for the definition of person which opens the third chapter: " naturae rationalis individua substantia." Person must be an individual substance of a certain nature, namely rational, which nature accounts for the form or specific difference of the particular substance (the fourth meaning of chapter 1). The connection of this definition with Aristotle 's definition of man as a rational animal is unmistakable. It should also be noted that this definition of person is applicable not only to man, in whom the rational nature is not identical with his substance, but also to the... (shrink)

The ontological implications of the Peircean Categories, as set forth most clearly in Peirce’s summative architectonic statement, “New Elements,” and referenced elsewhere in Peirce’s body of writings, are examined with reference to the existent or physical universe. The Peircean universal ontological Categories Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are shown to give rise to a cosmos that is triadic and representational in essence. This immanently representational cosmos, denominated the “Book Universe,” is shown to be evidenced by the representational contours of both the (...) mathematical and of the conceptual framing of the three broad domains of theoretical physics, the quantum, classical, and relativistic domains. This triadic “Book Universe” model is both characterized and also contrasted with the “Block Universe” model, and is seen to incorporate both time and space as emergent representational characteristics, and to be manifest, qua triadic Representamen, in terms of a “foliated eternalism” that requires both antecedent and parallel cosmoi. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature combines four elements. Hegel develops an a priori account of the logical determinations immanent in and peculiar to nature—determinations that incorporate the determinations set out in the Logic. Hegel then points to the empirical phenomena corresponding to each determination and so proves indirectly that such phenomena are necessary. Finally, he draws attention to those aspects of nature that cannot be explained by nature’s immanent logic and so are contingent. (...) In this way, I argue, Hegel demonstrates a priori that certain natural processes are made necessary by the distinctive logic of nature, but he also recognizes that there are contingencies in nature that only empirical science can discover. (shrink)

Resumen: Mediante la metodología de una reconstrucción inmanente del mejor argumento de quienes se oponen al reconocimiento jurídico del matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, este artículo muestra por qué el juez o el legislador no debe aceptar dicho argumento. Con ello se señala solo indirectamente o de modo negativo por qué sí debe ser reconocido dicho matrimonio. En este artículo se reconstruye la estructura y los diferentes contenidos de las justificaciones opositoras, buscando identificar la más robusta de ellas; esto (...) es, aquella con mayor capacidad para -recurriendo a argumentos adecuados a sociedades plurales- traspasar el peso de la prueba al lado de la demanda por dicho reconocimiento. Dicha capacidad se comprueba mostrando concretamente cómo tal justificación logra argumentos de defensa, de crítica a dicha demanda, así como incorporar argumentos del mundo progresista. Pese a su robustez y luego de una evaluación detenida, se concluye que esa justificación no es sostenible bajo medios racionales.: Through a methodology of an immanent reconstruction of the best argument of those who oppose the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, this article shows why the judge, or the legislator should not accept this argument. With this, it is pointed out indirectly and in a negative way why that marriage should be recognized. In this article the structure and the different contents of the conservative justifications are reconstructed, trying to identify the most robust of them; that is, the one with the highest capacity for -using adequate arguments to plural societies- to transfer the burden of proof to the side of the demand for such recognition. This capacity is demonstrated by showing precisely how such a justification achieves arguments of auto-defense, of criticism of said demand, as well as incorporating arguments from the progressive world. Despite its robustness and after a careful evaluation, it is concluded that this justification is nor sustainable under rational means. (shrink)

In his restitution of metaphysical founded ethics Hans Jonas replied to the challenges of modern technology. His reperception of the immanent teleology of nature tries to prevent the technological overkill. This article shows in opposition to Jonas the impossibility to deduct a moral obligation from the teleology of nature. Moreover in theological thoughts it is illegitime to talk obout a good nature in which men ought to incorporate themselves.

RESUMO Na segunda metade da década de 1930, Theodor W. Adorno e Alfred Sohn-Rethel estabeleceram um rico intercâmbio teórico, no qual uma enorme convergência inicial evolui para um gradual afastamento. Apesar de não reconhecer de pronto a procedência dos argumentos de Sohn-Rethel contra a formulação de seu procedimento de crítica imanente, Adorno os incorpora anos mais tarde. Além disso, a descoberta dessa revisão subterrânea ajuda a explicitar o sentido da transcendência da crítica imanente adorniana e sua relação com a crítica (...) da economia política marxiana. ABSTRACT In the second half of the 1930s, Theodor W. Adorno and Alfred Sohn-Rethel established a rich theoretical exchange, in which a huge initial convergence evolved into a gradual alienation. Despite not immediately acknowledging the validity of Sohn-Rethel’s arguments against the formulation of his procedure of immanent critique, Adorno incorporates such arguments years later. Moreover, the discovery of this subterranean review helps clarifying the meaning of transcendence of the Adornian immanent critique and its relation with the Marxian critique political economy. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s political philosophy incorporates the view that legitimacy is immanent to law, even though it makes morality a central component of democratic legitimacy. Taking this as a startin...

RESUMO: A relação entre arte e filosofia é examinada com base na noção de Stimmung, que surge no século XVIII, na teoria musical, como relação de proporção entre tons ou instrumentos, sendo, em seguida, transposta para a estética, no final do século, com Kant e Fichte. Em Kant, a Stimmung refere-se à disposição das faculdades de conhecimento para um conhecimento em geral, isto é, como o pressuposto da apresentação estética, por meio da qual se preserva a noção de proporção entre (...) as faculdades. Em Sobre o espírito e a letra na filosofia, Fichte assinala que a disposição estética é o modo de atuar do impulso estético, ligado livremente e diretamente à faculdade da imaginação e à atividade de criação. Essa tradição estética é revista pelo historiador Aloïs Riegl, em 1899, no ensaio intitulado Die Stimmung als Inhalt der moderne Kunst, no qual o conceito de Stimmung é pela primeira vez apresentado em chave histórica, enquanto conteúdo da arte moderna, no sentido de atmosfera, isto é, da vivência de uma relação por meio da qual a consciência, em conformidade com a lei imanente, adquire alguma certeza. Revisão semelhante foi realizada pelo jovem filósofo György Lukács, em A alma e as formas, de 1910, na qual o autor pensa as diferenças de sentido entre as noções de Stimmung e de atmosfera. ABSTRACT: The relationship between art and philosophy is examined based on the notion of Stimmung, which appears in eighteenth-century music theory as a proportional relationship between tones or instruments; it was then incorporated into aesthetics at the end of the century in the works of Kant and Fichte. In Kant's works, Stimmung refers to the capacity of the faculties of knowledge for knowledge in general, that is, as a presupposition of aesthetic presentation through which the notion of proportion between the faculties is preserved. In his On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy, Fichte points out that the aesthetic disposition is the mode by which the aesthetic impulse acts out, connected freely and directly to the faculty of imagination and to the activity of creation. This aesthetic tradition is revisited by the historian Alois Riegl in 1899 in the essay Die Stimmung als Inhalt der moderne Kunst, where the concept of Stimmung is first presented from historical perspective as content of modern art in the sense of atmosphere, i.e., the experience of a relationship by which awareness, in accordance with immanent law, acquires certainty. A similar review was done by the young philosopher György Lukács in 1910 in Soul and Form, where the author conceptualizes the differences in meaning between the notions of Stimmung and Atmosphäre. (shrink)

Indigenous critiques of postcolonialism are as diverse as First Nations or Original Peoples communities themselves. Yet, within that diversity, there is often claimed to be a set of core universal teachings. My article engages this field in a three-step process that begins with examining the incorporation of two Indigenous critiques into a Handbook of Qualitative Research edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. Focusing on justice through their lens of an ethics and politics of interpretation, Denzin and Lincoln simultaneously reject (...) much of what they claim critical realism advocates. They then deny any significant emancipatory potential to critical realism. This article immanently critiques their denial. In doing so it argues a case, on the one hand, for the explanatory potential of dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-Reality both generally and in the case of postcolonialism as decolonizing praxis. On the other hand, viewing Indigenous critiques within an interpretive paradigm risks ensnaring them within modernist dualist categories, postmodernist unconstrained deconstruction or poststructuralist formless flux. Such a reading thus restricts their capacity to contribute to depth-totalizing praxis. I introduce a critical realist reading of Indigenous critiques and conclude that the political programme of emancipation is strengthened through an interweaving of critical realism and Indigenous political philosophy. (shrink)

If the theme of this special edition can be reformulated as a question (what was and is the current use of the Bible in theology?), it would be challenging and very difficult to answer the question because of a diverse usage of the Bible throughout history and today, stretching in a continuum of both vertical and horizontal probabilities: vertically, theism vs. atheism and horizontally, worldliness vs. holiness. The objective of this essay is to argue for the incorporation of the ‘spiritualities’ (...) of divine immanence and divine transcendence in the composition of theologies, facilitated by a comprehensive and multidimensional reading of the Bible and the acknowledgement of contributions from the sciences. In this research, the reasoning will address the following relevant aspects: (1) taking into account the epistemology of the ‘Bible’ and ‘Theology’; (2) the consideration of postmodernity, post-secularism and spirituality and (3) the composition of neo-theologies. Contribution: This article pleads that biblical analyses should play a more comprehensive and determinative role in the composition and formulation of theology, pointing more explicitly to the transcendence and immanence of God. The reading of such theologies then must create different lived experiences of the immanence and transcendence of God. (shrink)

While Logics of Worlds already emphasized that one’s participation in a process of truth is signalized by an affect and already pointed out some of the affects connected with these processes (enthusiasm, joy, pleasure, beatitude), the further elaboration of this topics remains the task of the third part of the Being and Event, which has yet to be written and is entitled The Immanence of Truths. The first part of the lecture discusses the very reasons for this work, its necessity, (...) and its place in my opus thus far. The task of The Immanence of Truths is to elaborate the question of how somebody is incorporated into a truth-process, how this relates to the question of the subject and the very role of philosophy itself. The latter is not the process of truth in a similar manner as its four conditions, it does presuppose them, but not the other way around. A short sketch of the inner structure of The Immanence of Truths follows and the argument in favour of the transformation of the formal category of negation. The role of the paraconsistent logics in The Immanence of Truths is to conceptualize the process of truth. The aleatory, the contingent character of any event namely means that we have to insist that there is a cut and that the truth is in the position of an exception, but which, however, is not something untransmittable. Concerning the question of the transmission and the ineffable, I distance myself in relation to Plato’s as well as to Bergson’s treatment of this question. For me, the category of an exception is a dialectical category. It has to be thought on one hand as a negation, which is not a miracle of some sort, and on the other as something inner, immanent (perhaps that was aimed at by Lacan with the term ‘extimacy’). The negation is namely an operator which simultaneously divides and includes, it is also part of the dialectical thought which includes the contingent and is therefore not deterministic. Everything that has been said so far has consequences for the functions of philosophy and concerns the question of the relationship between philosophy and life. Philosophy for me as a discipline departs from the conviction that there are truths. It is triple, being at the same time the diagnostics of an age, the construction of the concept of truth, and the existential experience of true life i.e. the immanent experiment of what is a true life, “what is it to live”. This is signalled by the affect of true life and by the formula “to live as an immortal”, which does not entail any kind of sacrifice or recompense. (shrink)