Interviewet er lavet i juli 2021. Dets formål er at belyse emner, der er centrale i Celikates’ tænkning, f.eks. den voksende højrefløjspopulisme, migration, voldelige versus ikke-voldelige protester, civil ulydighed og den kritiske filosofis rolle i dag. -/- When Celikates and I sat down digitally in July 2021, the interview’s primary purpose was to examine topics central to Celikates’ thinking, such as the rise of right-wing populism, migration, violent versus non-violent protest, civil disobedience, and the role of critical philosophy today.

This book provides an overview of recent debates about critical theory from Pierre Bourdieu via Luc Boltanski to the Frankfurt School. Robin Celikates investigates the relevance of the self-understanding of ordinary agents and of their practices of critique for the theoretical and emancipatory project of critical theory.

The goal of this article is to show that mainstream liberal accounts of civil disobedience fail to fully capture the latter’s specific characteristics as a genuinely political and democratic practice of contestation that is not reducible to an ethical or legal understanding either in terms of individual conscience or of fidelity to the rule of law. In developing this account in more detail, I first define civil disobedience with an aim of spelling out why the standard liberal model, while providing (...) a useful starting point, ultimately leads to an overly constrained, domesticated and sanitized understanding of this complex political practice. Second, I place the political practice of civil disobedience between two opposing poles: symbolic politics and real confrontation. I argue that the irreducible tension between these poles precisely accounts for its politicizing and democratizing potential. Finally, I briefly examine the role of civil disobedience in representative democracies, addressing a series of recent challenges made in response to this radically democratic understanding of disobedience. (shrink)

The Turkish market of Qur'an translations and studies is exceedingly oversaturated. Critics find some of these lacking in proper hermeneutical judgement, impelling them to reflect on the conditions of judicious Qur'anic exegesis. These reflections have remained relatively unexplored in English academic literature. In Critical Hermeneutics, Celik explores and compares the hermeneutical philosophies of three Turkish intellectuals, namely Alpyagil, Cündioglu, and Öztürk. By exploring their philosophical views on subjectivity and objectivity in the context of interpreting the Qur'an, Celik draws major implications (...) for reading the Qur'an in new and different ways. (shrink)

Bu çalışmamızdaki amacımız, din felsefesinde tartışılan temel bir problem olan kötülük probleminin ne felsefedeki öyküsünü vermektir ne de Türk filozof Yunus Emre’de tüm ayrıntısıyla tartışmaktır. Amacımız, Türk filozof Yunus Emre’nin “gönül yıkma” ve “gönül yapma” ifadelerinin kötülük problemi açısından felsefedeki anlamını sorgulamak ve felsefi anlamlarını ortaya koymaktır.

Nefsin tanımı, mahiyeti, özellikleri, ilişkili olduğu alanların tespiti hem metafiziğin hem de teolojinin en temel problemlerinden biridir. Öyle ki nefs konusunun ele alınış tarzı, İslam düşünce geleneğini topyekûn bu konu üzerinden inceleme imkânı dahi sunmaktadır. Zira varlığı ve özel olarak insanı anlama noktasında, nefs konusunun kozmolojik, ontolojik, epistemolojik ve ahlâkî alanların tümünün temeline yerleştirildiği görülmektedir. Bu durum, nefs teorisinin kendi içinde bir bütün oluşturacak şekilde değerlendirildiğini göstermektedir. Literatürde hâkim olan anlayışa göre, nefsin; a) varlığın oluşumunda önemli bir yer teşkil ettiği, (...) b) bedenden ayrı ve farklı bir mahiyet taşıdığı, c) bilgi elde etmenin gerekçesi olduğu ve d) ahlâkî eylemlere kaynaklık ettiği vurgulanmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda, “Neredeyim ve neyle ilişkiliyim?”, “Neyim?”, “Neyi, nasıl bilebilirim?” ve “Ne yapmalıyım?” sorularına nefs teorisi bağlamında cevap arandığı söylenebilir. İnsan varlığının temel belirleyeninin bedenden ayrı ve farklı bir varlık olarak sunulması, birtakım gerekçelerden hareket etmektedir. Kognitif süreçleri üst düzeyde işletebilmesi, ahlâkî eylem üretebilmesi; ayrıca vahye muhatap kılınması, insanın diğer varlıklardan farklı ve üstün olduğu sonucuna götürmüştür. Bu farklılık ve üstünlük ise insanın maddî olanla sınırlı olamayacağı fikrini beraberinde getirmiştir. Maddenin daima; değişme, bozulma, parçalanma, yok olma gibi niteliklerle ilişkilendirilmesi bu kanaati beslemiştir. Dolayısıyla –özellikle müteahhir dönemde- hem maddî olan hem de maddî olana sıkışmayan bir varlık tasavvuruna yer verilmemiştir. Bir başka ifadeyle, maddî olduğu halde gayrı maddî üretimler sağlayabilecek bir varlık fikrinden vazgeçilmiş, insanı nefs-beden düalitesi ardında irdeleme tercih edilmiştir. Bu tercih, teolojinin oluşum özünde yer alan bir anlayış değildir. Zira erken dönem Mu’tezilî, Eş’arî ve Mâtürîdî kelâm literatürünün, ortak bir şekilde, insanın bedenden ayrık nefse referansta bulunmadan tanımlanması gerektiği üzerinde durduğu görülmektedir. İnsan varlığını çözümleme noktasında düalist anlayışın tercih edilmesi, farklı kültürlerle karşılaşma sonucundaki etkinin bir ürünüdür. Bu doğrultuda Yunan, Hint, Mısır ve Sümer felsefelerinin İslam düşünce geleneği üzerinde etkili olduğu görülmektedir. Özü itibarıyla kelâmın düalist anlayıştan uzak yaklaşımının ise Kur’ân’dan temel aldığı söylenebilir. Çalışmamızda bu iddiamızın temeli kurulacaktır. Kur’ân’ın temel terimlerimden biri olan nefs kelimesi, bütünsel bir bakış açısıyla incelenecektir. Bu inceleme, bu konuda oluşturulmuş literatürün nasıl değerlendirilmesi gerektiğiyle ilgili de zemin oluşturacaktır. (shrink)

It can be said that both Plato's tripartite soul and Hippocrates' theory of temperament were influential in Galen's perception of ethics. In this respect, Galen, who presents a kind of composition of the effective philosophical and medical traditions of his day, is outside the tradition with his understanding of physicalist psychology. Considering the capacities of the soul as depending on the temperament of the body, Galen generally displays a deterministic attitude towards ethics, that is, the development of the soul. This (...) is because the natural and physical structure is difficult to change. On the other hand, Galen, whom we can call both a physician and a "philosophical therapist", argues that character traits (ethos) can be changed "to the extent that nature allows" through education and habituation at an early age. This article will try to determine and evaluate the possibility Galen ascribes to ethical change and development in humans in the context of character traits. (shrink)

Bu çalışmamızdaki amacımız, Türk filozof Yunus Emre’de en çok karşılaştığımız kavramlardan biri olan Gönül kavramının felsefi bir kavram olarak ne olduğunu sorgulayarak Yunus Emre’nin genel olarak hakikat anlayışını bu kavram çerçevesinde ortaya koymaktır. Böyle bir çalışmanın ortaya çıkışında en temel etmen, ‘Gönül kavramı neden felsefi bir kavramdır?’ sorusudur. Bu soruyu felsefi bilinçle birlikte entelektüel ve kültürel kökenimizde izi sürülen felsefenin en zengin örneklerden biri olan Yunus Emre’de ele almaya çalışacağız.

The purpose of this study is to present how ancient and modern thinkers describe politics and to discuss reasons for differences seen in these definitions. In the ancient period, the identification of human being as a political entity by nature caused politics to be seen as the most supreme of all human activities. For the ancient thinkers, politics is conceptualized as a pluralist area in which the common issues are discussed by equals and also which excludes inequality. Ancient thinker Aristotle (...) says that the purpose of politics is “good life”. However, modern political thought which began with Machiavelli identified politics with the concepts of force, power and violence. Politics is defined by Machiavelli and his successors as the legitimate organization of physical violence, the distribution of power, value and resources by authority. While in the Ancient Greece violence is excluded from the public-political sphere, It has become one of the central concepts defining the political society in the modern world. While the human being was defined as a political entity (zoon politikon) in the ancient period, it is usually seen as an economic entity (homo economicus) in the modern period. For the ancients good life means a life that is dedicated to politics; nevertheless, it has been often associated with econo- mic activity by the moderns. This study argues that the main difference between the political definitions of ancients and moderns stem from differences between their perspectives about the aim of human and human life. (shrink)

The matter of ḥusn (goodness) and qubḥ (evil), which is the result of the disagreements on the source of moral value in human actions, is one of the main disputes between the Sunnī schools and the Muʿtazilī school of theology. This study examines the reasons why Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī, the Ash‘arī scholar, argues that the values of the ḥusn- qubḥ in actions are relative (i‘tibārī) against to the Mu‘tazilī school that considers these values to be inherent in actions. According to (...) the Ash‘arīs, and specifically al-Āmidī, if the actions make people worth of either praise in this world and reward (thawāb) in afterlife or blame in this world and punishment in afterlife, those actions are named as ḥasan (good) or qabīḥ (bad). Therefore, if the action of a person provides him/her praise in this world and reward in afterlife, the action is called ḥasan. If an action necessitates condemnation in this world and punishment in the afterlife, the action is called qabīḥ. The moral values in actions can only be determined by the Sharī‘a. In other words, human reason cannot know which actions are included in the category of ḥasan and qabīḥ. In addition to their contentious meanings in the doctrine, ḥasan and qabīḥ have two more meanings. The first one is the suitability and contrariety to the purpose or disposition while the second one is the agent’s right of doing any given action. However, there is no debate about these two meanings. (shrink)

Ethics has been an important discipline that has been discussed for ages without losing its importance or timeliness. With this importance, a problem regarding the source of ethics appears throughout the ages with different views and theories following accordingly. One of the various suggestions made regarding the source of ethics is the secular understanding of ethics. The modern period where knowledge is thought to be power is also the period where secular ethics came into prominence. Accordingly, the purpose of this (...) article is to study secular ethics, a perception of ethics that interprets the source of ethics outside of the religion and within the earthly world and considers reason to be the ethical principle rule maker. The aforementioned way of thinking was put forward in accordance with the English philosopher Francis Bacon (d. 1626) who was referred to as the father of modern science owing to him uttering “Knowledge is power’’ slogan at his age. Although the philosopher is more widely known more for his properties as a scientist, he also shared his thoughts on ethics in his works titled The Essays and in The Advancement of Learning. Although the ideas suggesting that religion is not the source of all ethics were voiced prior to Bacon, he, as a clear reflection of the fundamental characteristic of English empiricism, went down in history as the first person who expressed the modern philosophy approach and enlightenment view replacing classical philosophy approach and teleological universe view in the English history of thought. Bacon stated clearly that experiments and experiences are essential for scientific knowledge and accordingly, emphasized that the mind could explain everything related to humanity and the universe. This emphasis laid the ground for a secular moral understanding which does not base religion as its source, thus making it secular. With that mentioned, it should be noted that the period that he was in had an important role in his acceptance of secularized ethics. The said time period is a period where the Industrial Revolution occurred and colonization policies rose with it. Accordingly, how the Industrial Revolution and the scientific developments that led to it had encircled Bacon could be understood from his motto. This encirclement could easily be seen in his leadership of settling in science as a power in our minds and how he reflects the scientific methods to the ethics. As much as the socio-cultural conditions that were created by the Industrial Revolution had an effect on the ideas of Bacon, the psychological effect that was created by his ‘’Knowledge is Power’’ understanding had an influence over colonial policies. The viewpoint “Knowledge is power’’, which prepared the Industrial Revolution and later on utilized it to increase its own importance and strength, brought mental transformation and changes in consciousness with it. Humanity now believed that they had authority over nature and had the power to rule over it. It developed an ethical viewpoint that it could utilize nature as it likes for its own benefit and comfort. The said consciousness has created differences in ethics and behaviors while causing the purposes of and ways to be ethical to change. Accordingly, having information has emerged as the most important ethical act and sentiment; reality and meaning have been started to be searched in the world where humans could feel and see. It could be said that the secularized ethical viewpoint Bacon laid the foundations of started here. In addition to controversial aspects of secular ethics that Bacon tried to lay the foundations of independent of religion, we could refer to a positive aspect such as this: In the present, religion has sometimes been suggested as the source of the evil deeds that were done by humans and even natural and ethical evils have been used to imply that there is a God that wants bad things for humanity. Secular ethics could be utilized to show how ungrounded these claims are. In other words, secular ethics could be utilized to point out that claims putting the responsibility of immoral attitudes and acts on religion and blaming religion for these acts have no concrete ground. Although his personality as an ethics philosopher has been secondary, the importance he has due to voicing an ethical understanding that is outside of religion, that is secular ethics, makes it clear that there is a need for more studies regarding him. This article was written due to this necessity and utilized secondary sources to present Bacon’s views on ethics. (shrink)

Gossip, in its most general sense, means talking about absent third parties with regards to their strengths and weaknesses in an evaluative or informative tone. It is a common phenomenon and has been investigated from different perspectives of research such as human sciences, behavioural psychology, anthropology and so forth. Although it is a prevalent research topic amongst researchers of various disciplines, the sequential organisation of gossip talk still keeps its authenticity in terms of real-life talk-in-action research. This study aims to (...) provide a micro-analysis of the sequential organisation of gossip talk adopting an emic perspective. The data set consists of a collection of 90 hours of audio data collected from a retirement home in Turkey. The data are analysed using Conversation Analysis. The results of the micro-analysis of authentic gossip talk points to a systematicity in gossip talk sequences in terms of initiation, response and closing. (shrink)

John Rawls’s political liberalism and Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach have been among the most influential theories in political philosophy. Their theoretical and practical implications have also been an important aspect of discussion in the field of philosophy of education. This study provides a discussion focusing on the concepts justice, education, and equality from the perspectives of political liberalism and the capabilities approach. It also examines impacts of neoliberal economic theory over education policies and finalizes with a discussion on why democratic (...) societies need to consider egalitarian education policies. (shrink)

This article argues that, far from being a merely defensive act of individual protest, civil disobedience is a much more radical political practice. It is transformative in that it aims at the politicization of questions that are excluded from the political domain and at reconfiguring public space and existing institutions, often in comprehensive ways. Focusing on the reconstitution of the political community also allows us to reconceptualize constituent power. Rather than portraying it as a quasi-mythical force erupting only in extraordinary (...) moments, constituent power can be conceptualized as a dynamic situated within established orders, transgressing their logic and reconfiguring them from within. Civil disobedience as a transformative and potentially comprehensive practice aimed at reconstituting the political order can then be seen as an internal driving force keeping this dialectic in play. A concrete example can be found in protests and border struggles by irregularized migrants. They show how unexp... (shrink)

Error related potentials, which are elicited in the EEG in response to a perceived error, have been used for error correction and adaption in the event related potential -based brain computer interfaces designed for typing. In these typing interfaces, ERP evidence is collected in response to a sequence of stimuli presented usually in the visual form and the intended user stimulus is probabilistically inferred and presented to the user as the decision. If the inferred stimulus is incorrect, ErrP is expected (...) to be elicited in the EEG. Early approaches to use ErrP in the design of typing interfaces attempt to make hard decisions on the perceived error such that the perceived error is corrected and either the sequence of stimuli are repeated to obtain further ERP evidence, or without further repetition the stimulus with the second highest probability is presented to the user as the decision of the system. Moreover, none of the existing approaches use a language model to increase the performance of typing. In this work, unlike the existing approaches, we study the potential benefits of fusing feedback related potentials, a form of ErrP, with ERP and context information in a Bayesian fashion to detect the user intent. We present experimental results based on data from 12 healthy participants using RSVP Keyboard™ to complete a copy-phrase-task. Three paradigms are compared: [P1] uses only ERP/LM Bayesian fusion; [P2] each RSVP sequence is appended with the top candidate in the alphabet according to posterior after ERP evidence fusion; corresponding FRP is then incorporated; and [P3] the top candidate is shown as a prospect to generate FRP evidence only if its posterior exceeds a threshold. Analyses indicate that ERP/LM/FRP evidence fusion during decision making yields significant speed-accuracy benefits for the user. (shrink)