These three volumes assemble the most important essays written on Jacques Derrida's philosophy since he became established in 1967. These volumes make well-known essays easily available and also present many essays never translated in English.

"... no other book undertakes to relate all these French philosophers to each other the way that [Lawlor] does, brilliantly." —François Raffoul For many, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze represent one of the greatest movements in French philosophy. But these philosophers and their works did not materialize without a philosophical heritage. In Thinking through French Philosophy, Leonard Lawlor shows how the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty formed an important current in sustaining the development of structuralism and post-structuralism. Seeking (...) the "point of diffraction," or the specific ideas and concepts that link Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, Lawlor discovers differences and convergences in these thinkers who worked the same terrain. Major themes include metaphysics, archaeology, language and documentation, expression and interrogation, and the very experience of thinking. Lawlor’s focus on the experience of the question brings out critical differences in immanence and transcendence. This illuminating and provocative book brings new vitality to debates on contemporary French philosophy. (shrink)

These three volumes assemble the most important essays written on Jacques Derrida's philosophy since he became established in 1967. These volumes make well-known essays easily available and also present many essays never translated in English.

In the 1970's Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida participated in a published debate over the nature of philosophical discourse. The question of the possibility of univocal discourse in philosophy drives the published debate. I provide a commentary on this debate and situate it in a broader confrontation over the nature of language in general. Ricoeur sees language as the discursive event which aims at the communication of univocal meaning. I show that the discursive event, for Ricoeur, happens in the (...) present, and that presentness implies singularity and wholeness. In contrast, Derrida holds that the unavoidable use of iterable forms of phonemes and graphemes, what Derrida calls traces or traits, can always threaten communication by producing an irreducible metaphoricity. I show that the primary characteristic of iterability is absence or nonpresence and that nonpresence implies plurality and differentiality . ;Yet, the confrontation between Ricoeur and Derrida is not a simple opposition between event and iterability, between univocity and metaphoricity. Ricoeur always asserts that language possesses a type of iterability or repeatability and a type of metaphoricity or plurivocity. I show, however, that, for Ricoeur, repeatability designates repeatability of meaning and it always functions teleologically. It always aims at unity, identity and univocity. For Derrida, iterability designates not simply repeatability of meaning but repeatability of linguistic forms, from which meaning is inseparable. Iterability never functions teleologically. It is the essential possibility of deviation from any normative precedent, from any unity, from any identity, from any univocity. ;I conclude by taking up two points which Derrida makes throughout his writings. First, Derrida shows the absolute necessity of the externalization of meaning in iterable linguistic forms. Second, a linguistic form is not strictly or identically repeatable. I argue that these two points are undeniable. Thus I conclude that Ricoeur's attempt to assure a certain type of philosophical univocity, his attempt to revitalize metaphysics, the very project which animates perhaps all of Ricoeur's hermeneutical philosophy, cannot succeed. (shrink)

Lawlor’s investigations of the work of Jean Cavaillès, Tran-Duc-Thao, and Jean Hyppolite, as well as recent texts by Derrida, reveal the depth of Derrida’s relationship to Husserl’s phenomenology.

In his 1970s work Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod provided an explanatory framework not only for the biological evolution of species, but, as has become recently apparent, for the evolutionary development of cancers. That is, contemporary oncological research has demonstrated that cancer is an evolutionary disease that develops according to the same dynamics of chance and necessity at work in all evolutionary phenomena. And just as various challenges are raised for religious thought by the operations of chance and necessity (...) within biological evolution, so this particular theological question is raised by the findings of contemporary cancer science: Where is love, divine and human, within the evolutionary chance and necessity operative in all dimensions of cancer? In this article, we contribute to the dialogue in science and religion by offering the following responses to this question: the thought of Arthur Peacocke to claim that divine love may be understood to be at work in, with, and under our very efforts to make theological meaning of the chance and necessity that inform the evolution of cancers; and Charles Sanders Peirce's evolutionary philosophy to make this claim: that the work of scientific communities of inquiry to understand and to find better ways to cope with the disease of cancer is itself the work of divine love amid the chance and necessity of cancer. (shrink)

Imagination and Chance illuminates the different philosophical projects that animate Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and Derrida’s deconstruction. Basic concepts in Ricouer such as discourse, metaphor and symbol, and tradition are examined, and texts by Derrida including “White Mythology,” Introduction to Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry, and “The Double Session” are analyzed. The book also includes a previously untranslated round table discussion between Ricoeur and Derrida.

Recently, questions have been raised about the imagery of violence that one finds in certain kinds of contemporary philosophical discourses that are commonly called “poststructuralist,” “postmodernist,” or “deconstructive,” that is, discourses in which Jacques Derrida was directly involved or which he inspired. The questions raised seem to consist in three types. This chapter aims to respond to each of these three questions. It takes up the second kind of question concerning the need for vigilance. The chapter begins with Plato (...) for the obvious reason that his dialogues are the first truly philosophical discourse on the soul, but also a discourse with imagery of violence. Nietzsche is saying that violence is irreducible in life. As in Plato, in Nietzsche, life is fundamentally polemos; the opposing forces are brought together, or, so to speak, “synthesized,” on a battlefield. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:George J. Leonard EMERSON, WHITMAN, AND CONCEPTUAL ART The widespread abandoning of the art object at the end of the 1960s was taken as something radically, even frighteningly, new, by critics and artists alike. Objects, concept artist Joseph Kosuth was asserting by 1969, are "irrelevant" to art. Though an artist might choose, as in the past, to "employ" objects, "all art is finally conceptual." In fact it was now (...) time that the object, nothing more than the "physical residue" of the artist's mental activity, was dispensed with.1 "We / open our eyes and ears seeing life / each day excellent as it is," John Cage chanted: "This / realization no longer needs art...."2 Aestheticians as disparate as Murray Krieger and Harold Rosenberg reacted to this "transfiguration of the commonplace," as Arthur Danto has called it. Danto has gained a wide scholarly audience for his ideas about the 1960s as "the end of art," or at least as the beginning of "post-historical art."3 We know from such works as Renato Poggioli's TL· T^ry oftL· Avant-Garde that, in this century, particular movements have routinely declared themselves to be art's climax.4 Critics like Jacques Barzun and artists like Amedee Ozenfant had been saying for years that art was exhausted. Yet conceptualism's attack on the object struck most critics as something both alarming and new: Irving Sandler wrote in a special edition of the College Art Association's Art Journal devoted to the problem that it demolished "every notion of what art should be,"5 and Murray Krieger feared that this "leap beyond Pop Art" would "complete the obliteration of the realm of art, its objects, its museums...."6 But the conceptualist attacks on the art object were, in fact, not new. One can find attacks as scathing in Emerson and Whitman; so scathing, that criticism has rarely taken them seriously. The attacks the concep297 298Philosophy and Literature tualists mounted in the 1960s were only the culmination ofan intellectual tendency which appeared throughout the West one hundred and sixty years before. It has long been a scholarly commonplace that after 1800 an "intellectual tendency"—as M. H. Abrams finallytermed it—extolling the possibilities of this world emerged in all parts of Western culture. When itappears in literature we nowusually call it, withAbrams, Natural Supernaturalism; or, with Harold Bloom, the "visionary company." Man, Wordsworth decreed, can and must learn to find "Paradise" in "the common day."7 Surprisingly litde work has been done on what happened when this intellectual tendency, Natural Supernaturalism, confronted the art object. Emerson and Whitman can stand for many who were necessarily ill at ease with the idea of art objects as elite objects superior to the common things it was their mission to extol. Wordsworth works before these two; Ruskin develops similar ideas into greater complexity; but since Emerson writes clear expository prose and avoids fanciful terminology, he makes a good place to enter this dark wood. Let us begin with some straightfor-ward, overdue interdisciplinary history, reading Emerson on the art object, noticing similar passages in Whitman, and noting where Emerson has reworked Hegel for his own ends. For Emerson objects are but thought's "inert effect," as for the concept artist Kosuth they would be but the "physical residue" of the artist's activity. Emerson and Kosuth, opposite Shakespeare, do not applaud the art process as the giving to an airy nothing a local habitation and a name; rather they disdain the stuff as petrifactions, as dead mud footprints left by living thoughts diat have raced away.8 In his essay "Circles," Emerson derides our admiration for a work of architecture, directing us to the "litde waving hand" that built it, for "that which builds is better than that which is built." By the same logic, the invisible thoughts which truly wrought the object were even better than the hand and "nimbler."9 When such passages are discussed at all, they are usually considered Platonic,10 but, in his essay "Art," Emerson envisions a use for art objects Plato would have blinked at. For the time being, art objects have a particular "office" to fill. That office, Emerson wrote in... (shrink)

Between Deleuze and Derrida is the first book to explore and compare the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, two leading philosophers of French post-structuralism. This is done via a number of key themes, including the philosophy of difference, language, memory, time, event, and love, as well as relating these themes to their respective approaches to Philosophy, Literature, Politics and Mathematics. Contributors: Eric Alliez, Branka Arsic, Gregg Lambert, Leonard Lawlor, Alphonso Lingis, Tamsin Lorraine, Jeff Nealon, Paul Patton, Arkady (...) Plotnitsky, John Protevi, Daniel W. Smith. (shrink)

L'auteur de cet essai tente de circonscrire l'aventure philosophique de la "quête de la vérité", en s'inspirant des recherches les plus récentes de l'épistémologie et de la logique, essayant de trouver dans la praxis des pierres d'achoppement pour un discours au moins tendanciellement vrai. Dans la confusion politique et culturelle de ce siècle, des vérités multiples prétendent avoir droit à l'expression. On parle d'intelligence digitalisée et artificielle, de désinformation, d'infox, d'intox, de propagande, de mensonges, de vérités alternatives. Ça caquète et (...) ça rugit de toutes parts, voulant soutenir la véracité par la force ou la répétition. Surtout dans ce qui se vante comme l'extrême conquête de notre civilisation occidentale, la démocratie, les harangues et les verbiages sont souvent vides de contenus, des baudruches regorgeant de promesses vaines et de captations factices. De gros intérêts financiers ou des déformations idéologiques se cachent derrière un discours qui se prétend précis et neutre. Il n'est pas étonnant de voir maint citoyen perdu dans cette cacophonie ambiante, de le voir découragé devant son manque d'information fiable et d'action cohérente. Pourtant les choses qu'il vit et qu'il sent sont dures et réelles. Elles ont des angles qui parfois font mal. La vérité existe... quelque part et de quelque façon."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This essay uses the global impact of the Coronavirus as a heuristic semiotic for exploring the future of the church. Unlike the pandemic of 1918, which left few dents on the world's economic, social, and cultural systems, almost all the nations of the world have passed laws and implemented procedures that are only comparable to world wars in their impact on entire populations. Nations are acting in unison, but not in unity. This post-COVID, post-Corona world is the 'time that is (...) given' to the church. But it will not be a post-pandemic world. We may become COVID-proof, but we will never be pandemic-proof. There is no pre-COVID reset. There is only risk assessment from natural extinction risks to existential dangers of our own creation that are catching up to us. Disruption is the new status that is never quo; stability is the new abnormality; global cataclysm is the ever-present peril. The only way to prepare for a future of constant 'the end of the world as we know it?' moments is by developing a high Contextual Quotient, and deepening our Contextual Intelligence so we can choose 'the next right thing' in a world of volcanic volatility. CONTRIBUTION: This essay frames the semiotics of a missional ecclesiology in the COVIDian wake from the hermeneutics of blessings not curses. What virtues might we expect to come out of a virus that is fast-forwarding the future, virtues that will shape the contours of Christianity. What if the pandemic is a shock treatment that is putting the world, and the church, back in a new and better equilibrium? What if there are goldmines on the other side of the landmines and minefields? (shrink)

El autor se pregunta por el sentido de la religión en nuestro mundo, en la Modernidad. Nuestro mundo —el moderno— se caracteriza por la libertad en el núcleo del ser humano, la razón crítica como el árbitro de lo que hay que afirmar o no, y la historia, el proceso, el dinamismo visto en el corazón de la vida humana y la sociedad. Pero, más que nada, la Modernidad mundializada siente una creciente necesidad de estar en diálogo con quienes piensan (...) de modo diferente a nosotros. Esta necesidad de diálogo nos interpela agudamente cuando, como en el caso de la religión, el diálogo debe versar sobre cuestiones cruciales en la comprensión que el ser humano tiene de sí mismo y de su entorno. (shrink)

Numerous authors have expressed concern that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) poses an existential risk to humanity. These authors argue that we might build AI which is vastly intellectually superior to humans (a ‘superintelligence’), and which optimizes for goals that strike us as morally bad, or even irrational. Thus, this argument assumes that a superintelligence might have morally bad goals. However, according to some views, a superintelligence necessarily has morally adequate goals. This might be the case either because abilities for moral (...) reasoning and intelligence mutually depend on each other, or because moral realism and moral internalism are true. I argue that the former argument misconstrues the view that intelligence and goals are independent, and that the latter argument misunderstands the implications of moral internalism. Moreover, the current state of AI research provides additional reasons to think that a superintelligence could have bad goals. (shrink)

The idea of modern art presupposes the rise of historicism and the sense of progress since the Enlightenment. Once art, however, conceives itself as progressive and hence modern, it is confronted by the paradoxes of progress: progress renders the modern obsolete at the same time as it seeks to give itself meaning by positing a goal, a destination that would be the end purpose and hence the end of progress. As a consequence, modern art is impelled to constantly transcend its (...) own achievements and limits in a utopian quest for the artwork of the future, the ultimate work of art. But what happens to art when the grand art-historical narrative of modernism collapses? I argue that the ‘modern’ mutates into the ‘contemporary’ and that art now defines itself not in relation to the future but to the present. Contemporary art understands itself as operating in the present, that is, as an art for the present. It finds its destination now in the latest institutionalization of the paradoxes of progress: the museum of contemporary art. (shrink)

Solidarity is a fundamental social value in many European countries, though its precise practical and theoretical meaning is disputed. In a health care context, I agree with European writers who take solidarity normatively to mean roughly equal access to effective health care for all. That is, solidarity includes a sense of justice. Given that, I will argue that precision medicine represents a potential weakening of solidarity, albeit not a unique weakening. Precision medicine includes 150 targeted cancer therapies (mostly for metastatic (...) cancer), all of which are extraordinarily expensive. Our critical question: Must a commitment to solidarity as defined mean that all these targeted cancer therapies should be guaranteed to all within each country in the European Union, no matter the cost, no matter the degree of effectiveness? Such a commitment would imply that cancer was ethically special, rightfully commandeering unlimited resources. That in itself would undermine solidarity. I offer multiple examples of how current and future dissemination of these targeted cancer drugs threaten a commitment to solidarity. An alternative is to fund more cancer prevention efforts. However, that too proves a threat to solidarity. Solidarity, with or without a sense of justice, is too abstract a notion to address these challenges. Further, we need to accept that we can only hope to achieve “rough justice” and “supple solidarity.” The precise practical meaning of these notions needs to be worked out through a fair and inclusive process of rational democratic deliberation, which is the real and practical foundation of just solidarity. (shrink)

Can Rawlsian public reason sufficiently justify public policies that regulate or restrain controversial medical and technological interventions in bioethics (and the broader social world), such as abortion, physician aid-in-dying, CRISPER-cas9 gene editing of embryos, surrogate mothers, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of eight-cell embryos, and so on? The first part of this essay briefly explicates the central concepts that define Rawlsian political liberalism. The latter half of this essay then demonstrates how a commitment to Rawlsian public reason can ameliorate (not completely resolve) (...) many of the policy disagreements related to bioethically controversial medical interventions today. The goal of public reason is to reduce the size of the disagreement by eliminating features of the disagreement that violate the norms of public reason. The norms of public reason are those norms that are politically necessary to preserve the liberal, pluralistic, democratic character of this society. What remains is reasonable disagreement to be addressed through normal democratic deliberative processes. Specific issues addressed from a public reason perspective include personal responsibility for excessive health costs, the utility of a metaphysical definition of death for organ transplantation, and the moral status of excess embryos generated through IVF and/or their use in medical research. (shrink)

La question des frontières des arts plastiques et littéraires contemporains peut être approchée à travers l'exemple de la géopoétique de Kenneth White. Renonçant à réduire l'art à la production d'une représentation dominée par le plaisir de la vue, le mouvement esthétique de la géopoétique cherche à faire de la création artistique un geste de participation aux matières de la terre sur fond d'une expérience polysensorielle où la marche et le nomadisme constituent des explorations d'un proto-monde. L'oeuvre écrite ou plastique est (...) destinée à conserver des fragments et traces de cette aventure sensible, ouvrant ainsi la voie à une rencontre qui n'est plus un spectacle mais une expérience quasi chamanique. Reste à savoir dans quelle mesure on peut s'émanciper totalement de la représentation pour accéder à une auto-présentation du cosmos dont l'artiste serait le médium. (shrink)

Dans À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust est, en réalité, à la recherche de son identité, de son moi profond et véritable. Pour ce faire, il s'isole du présent dans le but de se retrouver dans le passé. Cependant, la « résurrection du passé », qui doit lui apporter le salut éperdument recherché, n'est pas le produit de la mémoire volontaire. Cette forme de mémoire, fonction de l'évocation objective et « quasi-dépersonnalisée », n'a pas, au dire de Proust, le (...) don de nous représenter le passé dans sa plénitude totale. Dès lors, elle ne saurait le conduire au moi profond, dont elle ne pourrait lui donner qu'une image factice et tronquée. En revanche, la mémoire authentique, selon Proust, est la mémoire involontaire, qui est liée à l'actualité de notre vie par la plus mystérieuse des intimités. Et même, à l'en croire, cette mémoire aurait une fonction méta- physique précise, qui serait de nous révéler notre moi profond, de faire émerger, à la surface de la monotonie de notre présent, notre « essence ». C'est que, pour Proust, le souvenir involontaire n'est pas, en réalité, quelque chose qu'on a, mais bien quelque chose qu'on est. Son rôle n'est pas seulement de fixer des événements écoulés, mais de nous exprimer nous-même, d'affirmer, par delà la multiplicité de nos moi changeants et superficiels, l'identité et la permanence d'un moi authentique et profond.In Remembrance of Things Past , Proust is actually searching for his own identity, his innermost, true self. In order to do this, he isolates himself from the present, with the aim of finding himself in the past. However, the "resurrection of the past", which ought to bring him the salvation so desperately sought, is not the product of voluntary memory. This form of memory, function of the ob- jective, "quasi-depersonalized" evocation, does not have the capability of presenting the past to us again in its totality. Consequently, it could not lead him to the innermost self, of which it could give him only a factitious and truncated image. On the other hand, the authentic memory is the involuntary memory, which is linked to the reality of our life by the most mysterious connections. This memory, according to Proust, would even have a precise metaphysical function, which would be to reveal to us our innermost self, to make our "essence" emerge at the surface of the monotony of our present. This means that the involuntary remembrance is not, in reality, something that one has, but rather something that one is. Its role is not only to set events in time, but to explain ourself to us, to affirm, over and above the multiplicity of our changing and superficial selves, the identity and permanence of an au- thentic, innermost self. (shrink)

According to a growing number of researchers, AI may pose catastrophic – or even existential – risks to humanity. Catastrophic risks may be taken to be risks of 100 million human deaths, or a similarly bad outcome. I argue that such risks – while contested – are sufficiently likely to demand rigorous discussion of potential societal responses. Subsequently, I propose four desiderata for approaches to the reduction of catastrophic risks from AI. The quality of such approaches can be assessed by (...) their chance of success, degree of beneficence, degree of non-maleficence, and beneficent side effects. Then, I employ these desiderata to evaluate the promises, limitations and risks of alignment research, timelines research, policy research, halting or slowing down AI research, and compute governance for tackling catastrophic AI risks. While more research is needed, this investigation shows that several approaches for dealing with catastrophic AI risks are available, and where their respective strengths and weaknesses lie. It turns out that many approaches are complementary and that the approaches have a nuanced relationship to approaches to present AI harms. While some approaches are similarly useful for addressing catastrophic risks and present harms, this is not always the case. (shrink)

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo argue that plants have a surprisingly varied and complex behavioral repertoire. Which of these behavioral capacities are credible indicators of sentience? If we use the standards of evidence common in discussions of animal sentience, the behavioral capacities reviewed are insufficient evidence of sentience. Even if some putative indicators of animal sentience are present in plants, it is not clear whether what we should conclude is that plants are sentient or that those indicators are inadequate.

De Bie et al. (2023) call attention at the conclusion of their essay to the “novel questions” generated by complete ectogenesis. The question I explore is how complete ectogenesis from conception t...

The annual cost of healthcare in the United States reached $2.5 trillion in 2009 (about 17.6% of GDP) with projections to 2019 of about $4.5 trillion (about 20% of likely GDP).

John Rawls has held up as a model of public reason the U.S. Supreme Court. I argue that the Dobbs Court is justifiably criticized for failing to respect public reason. First, the entire opinion is governed by an originalist ideological logic almost entirely incongruent with public reason in a liberal, pluralistic, democratic society. Second, Alito’s emphasis on “ordered liberty” seems completely at odds with the “disordered liberty” regarding abortion already evident among the states. Third, describing the embryo/fetus from conception until (...) birth as an “unborn human being” begs the question of the legal status of the embryo/fetus, as if an obiter dictum settled the matter. Fourth, Alito accuses the Roe court of failing to exercise judicial restraint, although Alito argued to overturn Roe in its entirety. In brief, the Dobbs opinion is an illiberal, disingenuous, ideological swamp that swallows up public reason and the reproductive rights of women. (shrink)

A new era has emerged in research on entheogens largely due to clinical trials conducted at Johns Hopkins University and similar studies sponsored by the Council for Spiritual Practices. In these notes and queries, I reflect on implications of these developments for psychological studies of religion and on what this research may mean for Christian churches in the United States. I conclude that the aims and methods of this research fit well within Jamesian efforts of contemporary psychology of religion to (...) assess religious practices by their fruits for life. Furthermore, some communitarian religious concerns that religious experiences occasioned by entheogens pose risks to the integrity of religious community are shown to be largely unfounded. However, it is suggested that certain risks for religious life posed by all investigations/interventions by knowledge experts—in particular, the colonization of the religious life world and the commodification of its practices—also attend these developments for Christian churches. Additionally, risks of individual harm in the use of entheogens appear to be significant and, therefore, warrant earnest ethical study. (shrink)

Frederick Watkins’ 1953 edition of Rousseau’s _Political Writings_ has long been noted for being fully accurate while representing much of Rousseau’s eloquence and elegance. It contains what is widely regarded as the finest English translation of _The Social Contract_, Rousseau’s greatest political treatise. In addition, this edition offers the best available translation of the late and important _Government of Poland_ and the only published English translation of the fragment _Constitutional Project for Corsica_, which, says Watkins, provides the clearest possible demonstration (...) of the practical implications of Rousseau’s political thought. (shrink)