With the publication of The Use of Bodies (2016) Agamben's multi-volume Homo Sacer project has come to an end, or to paraphrase Agamben, has been abandoned. We now have a new vantage point from which to reread Agamben's corpus; not only his method but his political and philosophical thought can been seen in a clearer light. This timely book both assesses and contributes to the debates on the Homo Sacer project in its entirety. Rethinking the notions of life and power (...) - two of the central themes in Agamben's work - through a reconstruction of his philosophical method and the examination of his critique of Western metaphysics, this book argues that Agamben's thought cannot be fully grasped if we do not account for the intertwining of politics and ontology. This book argues that it is only by revisiting Agamben's critique of signification and metaphysics and examining his reconstruction of the archaeological method that we can understand his notions of life and power. By bringing together the two parts of the Homo Sacer project, the archaeology of the signature of Sovereignty and the archaeology of governmentality, this book provides an analysis of the production of Agambenian 'bare life'. In this sense this project re-articulates Agamben's works on signification, language and ontology with his archaeology of power. Offering an original examination of Agamben's notion of resistance, this is essential reading for any thoughtful consideration of his philosophical legacy. (shrink)

This article presents a critical account of Agamben’s understanding of the logic of sovereignty and of the notion bare life, particularly Agamben’s approach to the paradox of sovereignty and its relation to Aristotle’s metaphysical category of potentiality. With regards to bare life, it brings together an analysis of the figure of the homo sacer with an account of Agamben’s use of paradigms as methodological tools. The first part of the paper argues that Agamben ontologises sovereignty by dramatising the paradox of (...) its structure as im-potentiality. The second part claims that even though an account of Agamben’s methodology serves to respond to the different critiques that his notion of bare life has raised, Agamben’s notions of sovereignty and of bare life ultimately rely on Schmitt’s decisionism. El artículo hace un recuento crítico de la forma en que Agamben entiende la lógica de la soberanía y la noción de nuda vida, particularmente su abordaje de la paradoja de la soberanía y su relación con la categoría metafísica aristotélica de la potencialidad. Con respecto a la nuda vida, combina el análisis de la figura del homo sacer con un recuento del uso que hace Agamben de los paradigmas como herramientas metodológicas. En la primera parte del ensayo, se argumenta que Agamben ontologiza la soberanía al dramatizar la paradoja de su estructura como im-potencialidad. En la segunda, se afirma que aunque la descripción de la metodología de Agamben sirve para responder a las diferentes críticas suscitadas por su noción de nuda vida, sus nociones de soberanía y de nuda vida dependen, en última instancia, del decisionismo de Schmitt. Este artigo apresenta a versão crítica do entendimento de Agamben sobre a lógica da soberania e da noção de vida nua. Em particular, a aproximação de Agamben para o paradoxo da soberania e da sua relação com a categoria metafísica da potencialidade de Aristóteles. No que diz respeito à vida nua, reúne uma análise da figura do homo sacer com uma explicação do uso de Agamben de paradigmas como ferramentas metodológicas. Na primeira parte deste artigo, argumenta-se que Agamben ontologiza a soberaniadramatizando o paradoxo de sua estrutura como im-potencialidade. Na segunda parte, será alegado que, apesar de uma explicação da metodologia de Agamben ter servido para responder às diferentes críticas que sua noção de vida nua tenha levantado, em última análise, duas noções da soberania e vida nua de Agamben dependem do "decisionismo schmittiano". (shrink)

In The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy, critical theory scholar Eduardo Mendieta examines the philosophical origins of discourse ethics through the prism of Apel's thought. Mendieta finds that Apel fundamentally transformed German philosophy, which had become stagnant in the years before World War II, and deeply influenced later thinkers such as JYrgen Habermas.

Resumo: Neste artigo, propõe-se uma confrontação entre a teoria dos signos de Gotthold E. Lessing, tal como exposta em Laocoonte ou sobre as fronteiras da pintura e da poesia, e os dois ensaios de Theodor W. Adorno sobre as relações entre música e pintura. Pretende-se, com isso, demonstrar a presença decisiva de elementos da estética clássica alemã no pensamento adorniano do pós-guerra; em particular, observa-se o modo pelo qual a teoria racionalista de Lessing atua na abordagem dialética adorniana a respeito (...) da irredutibilidade formal dos meios artísticos e das possibilidades de sua convergência. À luz de tal confrontação, discutem-se, em um segundo momento do artigo, os temas da conferência de Adorno de 1966, A arte e as artes, que, em certa medida, consubstancia a discussão dos ensaios anteriores sobre música e pintura. Assinala-se, nesse contexto, a continuidade da posição teórica de Adorno e se apresentam as diferenças entre o processo de pseudomorfose e o de imbricação dos meios artísticos, segundo o filósofo.s: This article presents a comparison of Gotthold E. Lessing’s theory of signs, as found in his Laocoön: an essay on the limits of painting and poetry, and Theodore W. Adorno’s two essays on the relationship between music and painting. Our aim is to point out the decisive influence of German classical aesthetics on Adorno’s post-war aesthetics. Specifically, we discuss how Lessing’s theory functions as a framework for Adorno’s dialectical assessment of the formal specificity of artistic media and their possibilities of convergence in the context of the 1960’s avant-garde. In this context, we discuss the main implications of Adorno’s famous lecture of 1966, Art and the arts, which concerned the process of media convergence that intensified during the 1960’s, as well as the concepts of “overlapping” between artistic media and of “pseudomorphosis”. (shrink)

Things are not to be found in the Critique. The things as appearances are only Vorstellungen. Confusion arrives because Kant calls these objects with the same names employed in the language of common sense for designating the things. Due to the absence of these things, nothing is said concerning the relation between things and empirical objects. Things in themselves, considered in the abstraction of sensible receptivity, are for this very abstraction, unknowable. Consequently, they cannot be considered as the origin of (...) appearances. I propose an explanation of the relation mentioned in. What is the use of the Critique of so strange a conception as the thing in itself instead of simply mentioning real things and their representations in the subject? Mind is not an adequate translation of the German gemüt. I think subject is better. (shrink)

Based on a symposium by the International Gesellschaft f'ur dialektische Philosophie, Societas Hegeliana with the theme "Abstrakt/Konkret," Sept. 21-12, 1998 in Braga, Portugal.

Discourse ethics is one of the most contemporary and controversial theories of ethics. It is contemporaneous because it attempts to formulate a theory of ethics that takes into account all of the major advances in philosophical thinking and their challenges to the foundations of any future ethical theory It is controversial because of its elaboration of the ethical as the injunction to see everything from the standpoint of the generalized Other which simultaneously factors in the social conditions that enable moral (...) subjects to orient themselves toward moral maxims . Discourse ethics may be understood as a synthesis of Hegel and Kant, vis-a-vis the mediation of pragmatism, more precisely via Peirce , and Mead . This dissertation is a reconstruction of the philosophical origins of discourse ethics, which in turn are investigated through a reconstruction of the path of development of its original formulator: Karl-Otto Apel. His Denkweq is characterized as a shift from Hermeneutics to Semiotics, indicating a transition in philosophical traditions from German hermeneutics and ontology to North American pragmatism. The work shows the extent to which Peirce, Royce, and Mead influenced Apel's understanding of ethics, leading him to formulate as early as 1967, the fundamental insights which have characterized discourse ethics. The dissertation begins with a discussion of Apel's doctoral dissertation, Dasein und Erkennen. This chapters shows how in this work Apel elaborated a philosophical-anthropological reading of Heidegger's existential hermeneutics with the intent of developing a theory of knowledge. Chapter two deals with Apel's Habilitation: Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis Vico. It shows how this work marked Apel's turn to the study of language as the point of departure for all future philosophizing. Here Apel's four major traditions that determined today's philosophy of language are reconstructed and analyzed. The third chapter deals with Apel's magnus opus, Transformation der Philosophie. This work is analyzed from the standpoint of how it contributes to a linguistic turn of German philosophy, and how it inaugurates both "transcendental semiotics" and "discourse ethics." The fourth chapter is a comparative analysis between Apel's transcendental semiotics and Jurgen Habermas's "universal pragmatics." The last chapter deals with discourse ethics and its contemporary contenders: postmodern ethics and liberation ethics . This chapter answers the question whether discourse ethics is the appropriate answer to a postcolonial and postmodern world; that is, one that has superseded its eurocentrism and false universalism. (shrink)

This paper addresses the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Argentina from an exploratory point of view. For this, it offers a preliminary state of the art in which the sources and materials for a study of this type are determined, and a periodization of the reception is proposed that includes the following periods: 1) from the 19th century to the Argentine University Reform of 1918, the time of Hegel’s indirect presence; 2) from 1918 to the First National Congress of Philosophy (...) in 1949, the true beginning of the reception of Hegel; 3) from 1949 to 1982/83, a period of dispute between the existentialist, Marxist, theological and Peronist interpretations of Hegel; and 4) from the democratic restoration to the present, when an institutional consolidation of Hegelian Studies is perceived in the country. As first conclusions, the federal character of the reception of Hegel’s philosophy and the two main moments of the institutionalization of Hegelian Studies in 1931 and 1983 stand out. The first one, in the context of the anti-positivist reaction and the vindication of German philosophy, and the second one, in the framework of the stabilization of academic activity due to the democratic transition. (shrink)

This article argues that there are three key claims of postphenomenology: first, that there is no immediate access to a phenomena that is not always already embodied; second, that there is no science that is not determined by a technology, and that technologies are instances of certain theoretical assumptions and perspectives; third, that all technoscience is enabled and mediated by the embodied perception that takes place in and through instrumentation, which leads to the insight that all scientific evidence is manufactured (...) perception. There is critical engagement with Ihde’s take on pragmatism and it is argued that he makes too severe a distinction between embodied praxis and communicative action, between practices of embodiment and practices of communicating. The argument is that the technoscientific body is a communicative body. The article closes with the consideration of Ihde’s provocative thesis that we ought to think of philosophical systems as having expiration or obsolesce dates. The author recalls the important work of German-Jewish philosopher Günther Anders in order to think through the sense in which it is not so much our technologies that expire, but our ethical worldviews that are made discrepant and incommensurate with the challenges our technologies throw at us. It is argued that we have to make distinction between obsolesce, on the one hand, and error or failure, on the other. (shrink)

This article argues that there are three key claims of postphenomenology: first, that there is no immediate access to a phenomena that is not always already embodied; second, that there is no science that is not determined by a technology, and that technologies are instances of certain theoretical assumptions and perspectives; third, that all technoscience is enabled and mediated by the embodied perception that takes place in and through instrumentation, which leads to the insight that all scientific evidence is manufactured (...) perception. There is critical engagement with Ihde’s take on pragmatism and it is argued that he makes too severe a distinction between embodied praxis and communicative action, between practices of embodiment and practices of communicating. The argument is that the technoscientific body is a communicative body. The article closes with the consideration of Ihde’s provocative thesis that we ought to think of philosophical systems as having expiration or obsolesce dates. The author recalls the important work of German-Jewish philosopher Günther Anders in order to think through the sense in which it is not so much our technologies that expire, but our ethical worldviews that are made discrepant and incommensurate with the challenges our technologies throw at us. It is argued that we have to make distinction between obsolesce, on the one hand, and error or failure, on the other. (shrink)

This conversation with Cornel West about his views on philosophical anthropology, race, U.S. history, tragedy, German philosophy, and theology includes lengthy discussions on former U.S. president Barack Obama, his policies, and his failure to live up to the promise of black prophetic thought.

Resumen Dada la renovada vigencia que la antigua pregunta socrática: ¿cómo se debería vivir? goza en nuestros días -en particular, en el ámbito anglosajón y alemán-, no extraña que los diferentes enfoques vengan acompañados a menudo por con sideraciones de índole metodológica. ¿Cómo abordar hoy la proverbial pregunta? ¿Con qué criterios de corrección debería cumplir una teoría de la vida buena? ¿Es siquiera posible una tal teoría? El propósito de la presente reflexión es contribuir al esclarecimiento de estas cuestiones mediante (...) lo que propongo llamar una apro ximación indirecta a la cuestión de la vida buena. En el texto se describen y justifican los rasgos centrales de dicha aproximación, la que se distancia del debate actual entre teorías de la vida buena, al no asumir una serie de pretensiones metodológicas características de dicho debate.Given the renewed interest that the old Socratic question “How should we live?” has taken in the present day -in particular, in the Anglo-Saxon and in the Germán world- it is not surprising that the different approaches are often accompanied by methodological considerations. How to deal with the old question today? What correction criteria should a theory of the good life meet? Is such a theory even possible? The aim of this essay is to contribute to the clarification of these issues through what I propose to call “an indirect approach” to the question of the good life. The paper describes and justifies the central features of this approach, which distances itself from the current debate between good life theories, by not assuming a series of methodological claims characteristic of this debate. (shrink)

This article presents the recent literature about the church Nossa Senhora da Consolação, considered through the prism of the study of sacred art. After a historical overview about the neighborhood and the ancient temple of Consolation, will be highlighted some most relevant artistic aspects of architecture and works of art gathered in the sacred building, designed by German engineer Maximilian Emil Hehl, whose inspiration reports to the formal and stylistic features of Romanesque architecture as well as the influences of eclecticism (...) with a predominance of Romanesque Revival architecture and Gothic Revival in São Paulo in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

The main object of the article is the exposition of the critical theory of culture of Georg Simmel, which we can call «tragedy of modern culture». In connection with this exhibition, whose topicality we do not doubt since the social and cultural problems that to a large extent are still suffered in large cities are being brought to the table, we present Simmel’s idea of culture as a condensation of the idea of culture developed by German idealism. On the other (...) hand, and as a second objective, we will try to demonstrate the line of continuity that exists between Simmel and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School with respect to the criticism of modern culture. (shrink)

Study of the relationship between the cultivated jews of Berlin and the German ical culture through the analysis of the role played in the latter by the idea of "personality", codeword of the German mandarins' ideology.Estudo da relação entre os judeus cultivados de Berlim e a cultura clássica alemã por meio da análise do papel nela representado pela idéia de "personalidade", senha da ideologia dos mandarins alemães.

Zur Anwendung der Diskursethik in Politik, Recht und Wissenschaft suggests that something like a critique of practical reason, or at least its foundations—from the perspective of transcendental semiotics—is in the works, and in addition that it is something possible, desirable and even necessary. The suggestion is that a semiotically transformed transcendental philosophy, as the theoretical aspect of a philosophical system, has its complement in a practical philosophy whose main tenets have come to be known as discourse ethics, or the discourse (...) theory of ethics. Historically, Karl-Otto Apel was the first to formulate some of the main arguments of a communicative, discursive, semiotical, or pragmatic theory of morality, and he did so as far back as the late sixties and early seventies. In the United States, in contrast to European and Latin American countries where Apel's work is better known, Habermas' name is the one most frequently associated with the discourse theory of ethics. This state of affairs may be due to a dearth of translations of primary sources, though Benhabib's and Dallmayr's The Communicative Ethics Controversy provides an excellent selection of primary texts. Consequently, today in the United States we stand not only quite behind the times in terms of the primary sources of discourse ethics, but also of the growing secondary literature on the subject. Neither Apel, nor Habermas, can be said to provide the only discourse-ethical approach within philosophy and political theory, exhaust the consequences and possibilities of an application of discourse ethics by their respective attempts to link it directly to either a theory of politics, or a theory of the democratic state that is circumscribed by both a specifically German historical horizon and a European-First World outlook. Indeed what makes this book particularly interesting, helpful, and above all timely is that it makes a conscious effort to represent the various positions that fall under the rubric of communicative, or discourse oriented practical philosophy, and the many ways in which problems of practical philosophy can be approached—while it attempts to give us a distinct sense that this approach has in fact graduated to an international status, that is, that it is no longer, if it ever was, exclusively an affair of German philosophy. (shrink)

This article presents the recent literature about Cathedral of See considered from the History of Arts perspective in São Paulo. After highlight some functional, stylistic and historical data about the building idealized by Brazilian Archbishop Dom Duarte Leopoldo e Silva and designed by German engineer Maximilian Emil Hehl , will be highlighted the most important artistic aspects of architecture and Works of Art gathered in the paulist sacred buildings. The article also highlights the Cathedral in its connection with the history (...) of the city and the Archdiocese of São Paulo. (shrink)

This book is about the ways in which modern enlightenment, rather than liberating humanity from tyranny, has subjected us to new servitude imposed by systems of mass manipulation, electronic vigilance, compulsive consumerism, and the horrors of a seemingly unending global war on terror. The main intellectual aims of this title are the following: the analysis of spectacle, the criticism of providential enlightenment, and the examination of positive dialectics. The spectacle, in this case, is the apotheosis of the culture industries, a (...) total inversion of reality and of our existences. Providential enlightenment is not only a critique of the failure of enlightenment, but of the mutilation of historical enlightenments. Positive dialectics signal a new era of intellectual engagement in the construction of our historical future. During a time in which national democracies seem an imperial farce, it is not enough for intellectuals faced with all this destruction to blithely recommend resistance. The book thus ties American, British, French and German theoretical traditions into a reflexive challenge to the notion of intellectual as critic, and argues instead for a trespassive tradition of cultural leadership. (shrink)

This article focuses on Karl Jaspers’s notion of the Axial Age, some of its critical appropriation, and how in particular Habermas has returned to this idea, after several critical engagements with Jaspers’s work through his long scholarly productivity. The article, however, centers on Habermas’s selective and critical use of Jaspers’s notion in his own latest and extensive engagement with what he calls “a genealogy of postmetaphysical thinking.” The goal of the article is to identify the ways in which Habermas is (...) refurbishing Jaspers’s generative concept, but at the same time, how his work on postsecular consciousness opens itself to some liabilities by not taking enough distance from the concept. (shrink)

This article deals with the concepts, processes, and antagonisms that are associated with the notion of postsecularity. In light of this article’s expanded interpretation of José Casanova on the secular and secularization, as well as thoughts on James A. Beckford’s take on public religions, five rubrics on the postsecular derived from critical theory and an understanding of ‘reflexive secularization’ are presented. This term focuses on secularization processes and how these practices unleash complementary as well as antagonistic tendencies, a confrontation of (...) normativities and specific social-empirical challenges. From this basis it is argued that social-empirical analysis should focus on non-naturalistic relations between individuals occupying structurally equivalent positions in narrative networks. A plurality of normativities are seriously considered as ideas circulating through social relations where the critical competence of the participants of such communication processes are provoked to subvert anything – including any normative positionality – as taken for granted. Moves towards the decolonization of the secular/postsecular dyad are emphasized, with ramifications for thinking about the urban, which point to the universal and authentic foundations of the human condition that are brought into play. (shrink)

This volume collects a number of important and revealing interviews with Richard Rorty, spanning more than two decades of his public intellectual commentary, engagement, and criticism. In colloquial language, Rorty discusses the relevance and nonrelevance of philosophy to American political and public life. The collection also provides a candid set of insights into Rorty's political beliefs and his commitment to the labor and union traditions in this country. Finally, the interviews reveal Rorty to be a deeply engaged social thinker and (...) observer. (shrink)

Pragmatism has been called "the chief glory of our country's intellectual tradition" by its supporters and "a dog's dinner" by its detractors. While acknowledging pragmatism's direct ties to American imperialism and expansionism, Chad Kautzer, Eduardo Mendieta, and the contributors to this volume consider the role pragmatism plays, for better or worse, in current discussions of nationalism, war, race, and community. What can pragmatism contribute to understandings of a diverse nation? How can we reconcile pragmatism's history with recent changes in (...) the country's racial and ethnic makeup? How does pragmatism help to explain American values and institutions and fit them into new national and multinational settings? The answers to these questions reveal pragmatism's role in helping to nourish the fundamental ideas, politics, and culture of contemporary America. (shrink)

In the first part of this essay, I develop the argument that Michel Foucault's work should be read with geographical and topological ideas in mind. I argue that Foucault's archeology and genealogy are fundamentally determined by spatial, topological, geographical, and geometrical metaphors and concepts. This spatial dimension of genealogy is explicitly related to racism and the regimes that domesticate agents through the practices, institutions and ideologies of racialization. The second part offers a genealogical reading of US history and spatiality in (...) terms of its racial institutions. I suggest that if we want to read the US geographies of topographies and cartographies of racism in a Foucauldian manner, then we must focus on plantations, ghettos, and prisons as the spaces‐institutions‐geographies that consolidated the racial matrix of US polity. My goal is to acculturate Foucauldian racial genealogy to the US racial matrix, and, conversely, to read US geo‐history in terms of racializing spatialities. (shrink)

Diese Festschrift für Michael Fischer ist ein Patchwork und eine wunderbare Mischung aus Wissenschaft, Persönlichem, Freundschaft und Genuss. Sie setzt sich aus unterschiedlichen und vielseitigen Texten, Zeichnungen und Bildern zusammen, von Menschen, die ihn begleitet haben, manche viele Jahre, manche nur eine kurze, aber entscheidende Zeit. Studentinnen und Studenten, die von ihm gelernt haben, Kolleginnen und Kollegen, die mit ihm Ideen entwickelt, Projekte initiiert und geforscht haben, Freunden aus Kunst und Kultur, Theater, Oper und den Bühnen des Lebens, nämlich: Eric (...) Hobsbawm, Claudio Magris, André Glucksmann, Wolf Singer, Johannes Hahn, Volker Gerhardt, Thomas Fischer, Rudolf (+) und Gundl Hradil, Helga Rabl-Stadler, Gerard Mortier, Jürgen Flimm, Brita Steinwendtner, Veit Heinichen, Peter Ruzicka, André Tubeuf, Thomas Oberender, Stefan Zweifel, Hermann Lübbe, Eduardo Chitas, Wilhelm Donner, Hans Eichhorn, Reinhard Kacianka, Tina Perisutti, Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Markus Hengstschläger, Henriette und Conrad Ulrich-Hürlimann, Michael Hagner, Thomas Macho, Johann Weyringer, Birgit Recki, Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Andreas Cesana, Kurt Seelmann. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This is a brief introduction to a special section on the work of Achille Mbembe.

This article tries to delineate the proposition that to Feuerbach nature is an autonomous and independent being that comes first in comparison to the spirit. To him, material nature, that exists in its qualitative differentness, independent from thinking, is the original source, the immediate, not deductible, uncreated fundament of all real existence, that exists and consists in itself, when put vis-a-vis the spirit. Feuerbach sets nature against the spirit, for it is his understanding that nature is not a pure other (...) that only through the spirit was set as nature, but as the first source, the objective material reality that exists outside reason and is given to man by means of his senses as fundament and essence of his life. Therefore, one is dealing first with that essence (light, air, water, fire, plants, animals etc) without which man does not exist or could be thought of as existing. To Feuerbach nature is all objects and essences put together. Under this condition it is possible to conceive nature as guarantor of externality itself as if it could exist independently from us, an entity that is unaware of itself and which exists in itself and by itself; for this reason it shall not be seen as something which it is not, i.e., neither divine nor human. Nature always existed, i.e., it exists in itself and has only meaning in itself; it is itself, i.e., it has no mystical essence, it does not hide behind it any absolute being whether human, divine, transcendental or ideal. (shrink)

In this essay an engineer and a philosopher, after many conversations, develop an argument for why the Aristotelian version of virtue ethics is the most promising way to develop what we call artificial moral, social agents, i.e. robots. This, evidently, applies to humans as well. There are several claims: first, that humans are not born moral, they are socialized into morality; second, that morality involves affect, emotion, feeling, before it engages reason; third, that how a moral being feels is related (...) to some narrative, whether moral or not; and finally, that narrativity is what builds a sense of a “moral” I, namely an authorial moral self. (shrink)

This essay urges us to complement work on the philosophy and social science of race that has focused on the “visual” and “epistemic” dimension of racism with work on affect or what is here called the somatological dimensions of racism. The racist self hears race before he sees it. The racist self is convulsed by race before she experiences it as an epistemic affair. It is argued here that we dwell in the sound house of race. Before racism is chromocratic, (...) it is phonocratic. The technologies of the racist self are the technologies of racializing aurality and phonology. Racism brands us sonically. Race, it will be argued, is a sonic stigmata. More specifically, the focus will be on voice, accent, what here is called the prosody of race. The aim is make those racialized and racializing accents in philosophy resound, echo, and reverberate so that we can hear the prosody of race. The racist does not dwell in the silent chamber of the mind’s “I.” The viscera of racism dwells in the body our racist habits have domesticated. (shrink)

In the Work that she presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 7 March 2013, in Galloway, New Jersey, Sassen most tellingly began her keynote with a reflection on method. She spoke of “Before Method.” She spoke of the need to step back, and suspend our extant methods. Emergent social orders, or what she called, in her massive and transformational text Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, the emergence of new (...) assemblages, requires that we rethink our old categories, or that we try to assess their usefulness or allow ourselves to countenance their obsolescence. The “before method,” and the invitation to step back, to bracket, or to .. (shrink)

We respond to criticism of our paper “Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality for Non-Perturbative Measurements”. We disagree with Steuernagel’s derivation of the visibility of the Afshar experiment. To calculate the fringe visibility, Steuernagel utilizes two different experimental situations, i.e. the wire grid in the pattern minima and in the pattern maxima. In our assessment, this procedure cannot lead to the correct result for the complementarity properties of a wave-particle in one particular experimental set-up.

Ao ser lançado em 1978, A brasilidade modernista - sua dimensão filosófica ganhou notoriedade pelo ineditismo da abordagem do movimento modernista. Esta nova edição, amplamente revista pelo autor, mantém a organização e as teses do livro, mas a forma da exposição foi simplificada e aperfeiçoada. Por isso mesmo, fica realçada a ruptura de Eduardo Jardim com as teses inocentes que, ainda nos anos setenta, viam a Semana de 1922 como o ato fundador do Brasil moderno. O propósito de abordar (...) filosoficamente o modernismo permanece e possibilita lançar luz sobre uma ampla gama de temas relativos ao nosso principal movimento de renovação cultural. Um deles é o da sua inserção em um debate de ideias que remonta às últimas décadas do século XIX. Graça Aranha aparece como a figura mediadora dessa inserção. A periodização do modernismo em duas fases - o primeiro tempo, de preocupações estéticas, e o segundo, tratando da brasilidade - ganhou visibilidade nesta nova edição. Na discussão da brasilidade foram considerados os pontos em comum entre as várias correntes do movimento, a partir de 1924. No entanto, duas posições aparecem contrastadas: a analítica, defendida por Mário de Andrade, e a intuitiva, que reúne Plínio Salgado e Oswald de Andrade. A vertente analítica propôs fazer o levantamento dos traços propriamente nacionais da cultura brasileira depositados nas manifestações de cultura popular. A intuitiva pretendeu apreender o caráter nacional de forma imediata, pelos sentimentos. (shrink)

En este artículo se discute el reciente libro de Jürgen Habermas, Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik . Se presta especial atención al argumento central relacionado con los efectos negativos que podría tener la aceptación general de la clonación y el diagnóstico génico preimplantacional sobre la autocomprensión moral y política de las generaciones presentes y futuras. La discusión continúa con una crítica a los argumentos centrales de Habermas contra el DGP, y desarrolla al menos (...) dos razonamientos que están en armonía con su defensa general de la democracia procedimental y la moral deontológica. Se apela a Peter Singer y John Rawls para desarrollar argumentos que no se oponen ni al DGP ni a la ingeniería genética y que, no obstante, están totalmente de acuerdo con el espíritu de la modernidad política, tal y como lo defiende y define Habermas. La conclusión insta a una crítica de las biotecnologías desencadenadas por la revolución de la información que tenga un carácter menos moralizante y más político-económico. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo tiene como objetivo principal describir y analizar la percepción de Manuel Baldomero Ugarte sobre Estados Unidos. Ugarte fue literato y político, pero también fue un pensador interesado por los asuntos internacionales de América Latina. Evidencia de ello son sus propuestas integracionistas y antiimperialistas, en las cuales la presencia de Estados Unidos era evidente. Debido a lo anterior, se estima conveniente explicar qué pensó Ugarte sobre la nación norteamericana, y desde esa perspectiva, contribuir a la discusión sobre tan (...) trascendental intelectual latinoamericano. The purpose of this work is to describe and analyze the perception of Manuel Baldomero Ugarte about the United States. Ugarte was a writer and a politician, but it was also a thinker interested in the Latin America’s international affairs. Testimony of this are his integrationist and anti-imperialist proposals, in which the U.S. presence was evident. Thus, it is considered advisable to explain what he thought about the American nation, and from this perspective, to contribute to the discussion around this important Latin American intellectual. (shrink)

In the article it is pretended to prepare the conceptual field for the correct use of the attribution of freedom. It is defended the importance to consider the complementarity of freedom of action and freedom of the will and it is argued for a non-metaphysical conception of adscription of freedom. The adequate use of the attribution of freedom is social and normative. This means additionally that the freedom is not a presupposition of the moral responsibility and the authorship, but on (...) the contrary the moral responsibility and the authorship are presuppositions of the attribution of freedom. (shrink)

O problema com o qual nos defrontamos no presente texto é o da necessidade dos dualismos pulsionais freudianos, especialmente aquele apresentado em “Além do Princípio de Prazer”. Tal problema persiste como uma marca da Überbau metapsicológica freudiana e, do ponto de vista deste artigo, reivindica uma análise mais pormenorizada, no sentido de sabermos, afinal, se essa marca dualista das teorias se sustenta efetivamente, ou se, inadvertidamente, Freud possa ter criado condições para que ela pudesse ser questionada, e, nesse caso, de (...) que modo e em que sentido. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most challenging and contentious thinkers currently working within the European tradition. This is the first collection devoted to his work for English-language audiences and will act as an introduction to his work, set an agenda for engagement with his ideas, and relate his writings to a range of political, theoretical and practical contexts. -/- Since his philosophical bestseller Critique of Cynical Reason (1983), Sloterdijk has exercised an important influence over German and other European thought (...) and recently interest in his diverse oeuvre has grown considerably. The past few years have seen a number of his books translated into English, with many more to come. The book seeks to do justice to the breadth of Sloterdijk’s work throughout his career, orientated around the central topics of cynicism, ressentiment, the posthuman, space and world, art and literature, language, social science and his role as a public intellectual. Contributors include Babette Babich, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Eduardo Mendieta, Marie-Eve Morin, Efrain Kristol, Wieland Hoban, Nigel Thrift, Jean-Pierre Couture, and Sloterdijk himself. -/- An explicitly interdisciplinary project, Sloterdijk Now is a crucial introduction to the work of this central thinker, in its complexity, variety and notoriety. It is set to spark debate amongst students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Is the essay literature or philosophy? A form of art or a form of knowledge? The contemporary essay is torn between its belletrist ancestry and its claim to philosophical legitimacy. The Spanish philosopher Eduardo Nicol captured the genre's uncertain status when he dubbed it “almost literature and almost philosophy” (Nicol 1961:207). The problem is hardly a new one. It goes back to what Plato called the “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy, and more recently to the German Romantic theorist, (...) Friedrich Schlegel, who called for a mode of criticism which would be at once philosophical and poetic. But today, when the status of critical discourse is up for grabs, reflecting the crisis of knowledge in the universities, the question of the essay takes on a new urgency. Now the predominant form of writing in the human sciences, it cannot avoid the challenge to define itself according to the prevailing standards of scientific knowledge and method. (shrink)

: O presente artigo evidencia, por um lado, o mérito da filosofia de Espinosa, pelo fato de haver submetido a oposição das partes e do todo, do corpo e da alma, da matéria e do espírito, à unidade da substância, já que toda parte singular da substância pertence à sua natureza. Por outro lado, destaca a crítica de Feuerbach a Espinosa, porque a filosofia deste é, na verdade, uma filosofia da identidade, que não reconhece, como Hegel também assinala, a substância (...) como espírito e o espírito como substância, e não determina suficientemente a unidade da matéria e do espírito, já que falta a ela a realidade da diferença, da determinidade. Enquanto Espinosa identifica Deus com a natureza (Deus sive natura) e, mediante a natureza divina (a substância), supera a contradição de Descartes entre matéria (res extensa) e espírito (res cogitans), Feuerbach quer, em oposição ao panteísmo, a diferença entre natureza e Deus (aut Deus aut natura). (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to examine some of the distinctive facets of human action in Spinoza’s philosophy and show their intrinsic connection with each other. By analyzing in detail how Spinoza addresses different aspects of human action in his main work, the Ethics, it is possible to notice that for him free human agency implies two interrelated features: on the one hand, the adequate knowledge of the causes that determine it, and, on the other hand, a growing capacity (...) to impact with greater power the scenarios in which it takes place. Thus, in contrast with quietist and passive readings, I show in the following that the two aforementioned characteristics are part of the Spinozian philosophical conception of agency as such. By pursuing this line of thought, it is also possible to establish a link—not always noticed in the secondary literature—with some of the central lines of thought contained in the Theological-Political Treatise. In discussing these theses, I advance the idea that the Spinozian conception of human agency involves a serious readjustment of the metaphysical vision of the agent, a change in her conduct and ethical practices, and an altogether different conception of politics and religion. (shrink)

In this chapter I will bring together two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of Rorty’s intellectual biography: on the one hand its consistency, loyalty, and deference to what I call his “vision,” and on the other, the expansiveness, capaciousness, voraciousness, and encyclopedic thrust of that vision. I argue that in contrast to many canonical philosophers, Rorty did not undergo a turn, a “Kehre,” a shift, a revelation, a Damascus moment. Rather, when reading his epochal texts, and numerous essays, one gets the impression (...) of an Amazonian river widening its shores and drinking its tributaries, relentlessly moving forward following its own course. I thus argue that we think of Rorty, following Berlin’s famous allegory, as a foxy hedgehog, one that pursued one truth, while rummaging inquisitively along the plains and forests of Western culture. From Platonism to metaphilosophy, from metaphilosophy to post-philosophy, and from there to the project of a liberal utopia, which brings together what I called his Brechtian patriotism, with his honest, open, and sincere ethnocentrism, the Rortyan vision has been held steady by one thought: “There are only languages that serve some human purposes better than others. Human purposes and human languages change in tandem with each other” (Rorty 2010, p. 22). Another way of expressing this vision is to say that what makes humans a unique animal is that we can recreate ourselves by means of changing our vocabularies. (shrink)

This article takes up the work of Bottici, Cornell, and Perez in order to expand on Lugones's inchoate notion of a decolonial feminist imaginary. The claim is that decolonial feminism is also the elaboration of a decolonial feminist imaginary that challenges the colonial/modern imaginary of global capitalism. The article also takes up Lugones's critique of Mignolo's notion of “colonial difference,” which is found to be incoherent and even dangerous.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Surviving American Culture:On Chuck PalahniukEduardo MendietaIn an age in which American culture has become the United States' number one export, along with its weapons, low intensity conflict, carcinogenic cigarettes, its "freedom," and pornography, it is delightful and even a sign of hope that there are writers who have taken on the delicate and perilous task of offering a prognosis of what ails this culture. In the following essay I (...) argue that Chuck Palahniuk's works ought to be read as a mortician's report on American culture. Chuck Palahniuk broke into the literary world by way of the movie version of his first novel: Fight Club (1995). He has gone on to write six other novels: Survivor (1999), Invisible Monsters (2000), Choke (2001), Lullaby (2002), and Diary (2003). He also has published an interesting travel book, Fugitives and Refugees; A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003), but since this is not properly fiction, I will not discuss it in this essay.1Clearly, Palahniuk has already produced a corpus worthy of careful consideration and analysis. Yet, as a west coast writer, far from the literary circles and brokers of the east coast, indeed far away from the clubs of self-promotion and self-monitoring that censure and hold in tight grip the monopoly of criticism that highlights "worthy literature," Palahniuk has not attracted a lot of critical attention. It is only with his most recent work Choke that he has began to be widely reviewed and commented on. In the following I provide a thematic reconstruction of each one of the six published novels, in chronological sequence. I will argue that Palahniuk is not trying to write the "great American novel," although he is profiling himself as a quintessential "American" writer in the midst of post–Cold War megalomania and celebrated Pax Americana. He has taken on a culture that has become so gargantuan, [End Page 394] fragmented, and differentiated but at the same time so rich, so self-reflexive, so historicized and also so mimicked that one novel cannot tell its story in one narrative with one dramatic thread. Many novels, many short cuts, many vignettes, are necessary: one polyphonic, asynchronous, temporally bi-directional, hyper-textual, and cyber-encyclopedic novel made up of individual novels, where each novel is the Bildungsroman of an American hero but told in reverse. These heroes, I will argue, are testimonies to the resilient power of individuals to resist even the most invasive and persistent onslaughts by culture on the physic life of freedom and individuality. I will also argue that he is neither a commercial nor academic writer; that is, he is not the kind of writer who writes either in order to maintain a living or secure tenure. He is a writer with a mission, a vision, and a very distinctive style. The stories that Palahniuk tells are stories that begin at the end, and end at the beginning: they are turned around Bildungsromans. They are, in other words, about unmaking, uncoupling, and disentangling our selves from the normal self into which we have been socialized. These stories are, thus, about the discovery of moral resources that lay dormant in the very simplicity of human solidarity and trust in our will to survive morally untainted, or at least redeemable. I will conclude by arguing that Palahniuk's novels are about surviving American Culture, and about how deviance is the health of the individual in a sick society.One could characterize Fight Club as the intelligent man's response to Robert Bly's Iron John (1990),2 or the fictionalized version of the Michael Kimmel's Manhood in America: A Cultural History (1996).3 Alternatively, one could argue that Fight Club is the fin-de-sieclé response to Barbara Ehrenreich's prognosis in her The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (1983) of 1970s and 1980s narcissistic and hedonistic masculinity.4 Chuck Palahniuk's first novel is a biting and poignant look at men in American culture after the end of affluence and the simultaneous "feminization" of masculinity. It is at the same time about the struggle for a viable sense of masculinity in an age in... (shrink)