When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that (...) established Foucault's reputation as an intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls "exotic charm". Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault. (shrink)

Like the latter, it unites into one and the same function the possibility of giving things a sign, of representing one thing by another, and the possibility of causing a sign to shift in relation to what it designates. The four functions that define the ...

In The Order of Things (OT), Foucault recounts the birth and imminent death of Man as an object of study for science and philosophy. Foucault's point is that this very notion of “Man” is dependent on a particular transformation in the history of Being. The mere formulation of this hypothesis opens up a whole series of questions. First, is it true that Man has only become an object of concern in the late eighteenth century. Secondly, if Man has (...) indeed only recently become an object of theoretical interest, is Foucault's description and explanation of this process correct. Thirdly, why should we overcome the concept of “ Man”. Fourthly, in what sense was structuralism deemed to help us overcoming the limitations of this paradigm. In conclusion, if OT has to be overcome, it seems that it should be on grounds slightly different from those usually advanced. (shrink)

This paper situates Wittgenstein in what is known as the causalism/anti-causalism debate in the philosophy of mind and action and reconstructs his arguments to the effect that reasons are not a species of causes. On the one hand, the paper aims to reinvigorate the question of what these arguments are by offering a historical sketch of the debate showing that Wittgenstein's arguments were overshadowed by those of the people he influenced, and that he came to be seen as an anti-causalist (...) for reasons that are in large part extraneous to his thought. On the other hand, the paper aims to recover the arguments scattered in Wittgenstein's own writings by detailing and defending three lines of argument distinguishing reasons from causes. The paper concludes that Wittgenstein's arguments differ from those of his immediate successors; that he anticipates current anti-psychologistic trends; and that he is perhaps closer to Davidson than historical dialectics suggest. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Ecce Homo The Great Chain of Being The Absent Soul The Tree of Life The Kind that Counts.

This text is an exploration of the metaphysical principle, "Every agent acts for an end." It is split into two parts, the first being primarily pedagogical and general, the second topical. In the first part, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange sets forth the basics of the Aristotelian metaphysics of teleology, defending its place as a central point of metaphysics. After defending its per se nota character, he summarizes a number of main corollaries to the principle, primarily within the perspective established by traditional Thomistic (...) accounts of metaphysics, doing so in a way that is pedagogically sensitive yet speculatively profound. In the second half, he gathers together a number of articles which he had written, each having some connection with themes concerning teleology. Thematically, the texts consider the finality and teleology of the human intellect and will, along with the way that the principle of finality sheds light on certain problems associated with the distinction between faith and reason. Finally, the text ends with an important essay on the principle of the mutual interdependence of causes, causae ad invicem sunt causae, sed in diverso genere. (shrink)

Things make sense to us. The identity of a thing is a meaningful style that expresses the usability of the thing. The usability is a dynamic order of the praxis in which the thing is embedded and in which we are ourselves de-centered. According to Merleau-Ponty, this sociocultural and psychosocial order is a formation of practical understanding and interpretation that rests upon and resumes the elementary, perceptual-expressive structuring of being. The Spiel is one of the three dimensions (...) of corporeal intentionality, in which this entire organization of meaning and experience unfolds. So, the Spiel of usability is a corporeal and practical intentionality that reaches from an aesthetic-ontological structuring of meaning to the order of the things in modern everyday praxes. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the study of minerals from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century in the light of the work of Michel Foucault on the history of systems of thought. In spite of a certain number of theoretical problems, Foucault's enterprise opens up to the historian of science a vast terrain for exploration. But this is the place neither for a general exegesis nor for a general criticism of his position; our aim here is the more modest (...) one of taking certain points from Foucault's study,The order of things, and seeing how far they can be extended into an area not explicitly considered in that work. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault's first published piece, “Introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence“ in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn't received much critical attention, is of particular interest because, whereas OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of “Man” as an empirico‐transcendental double in particular, IB views “existential anthropology” as a unique opportunity to establish (...) a new and fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object, “Menschsein”, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault, existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault's later view. (shrink)

This article examines racial theories of development in connection with Kant; America exceptionalism, nationalism, and nativism; and the transformation of manifest destiny into a racial destiny. It then focuses on the forms of social Darwinist thinking that pervaded and dominated American intellectual life toward the end of the nineteenth century, as well as the chief ideological uses to which this new racial imaginary was put in domestic and foreign affairs. Finally, it sketches the decline of this dominant ideology and its (...) replacement with a nearly equivalent cultural theory of development and difference. (shrink)

This paper explores the perceptual space of Thomas A. Clark’s poetry and its links with the long and influential Western literary and artistic traditions of walking in the landscape, from Romanticism to Land Art. Particular attention will be given to the relations that Clark establishes in his writing between walking as a bodily practice and the multi-sensory engagement with the landscape it provides. It will be shown that Clark’s most significant contribution to the literature of walking lies in the balance (...) he creates between movement and stillness. In this dynamics, walking is envisaged as means of contemplation and communion to be found within the body, but which is at the same time directed towards the world, and the landscape appears as an infinite variety of perspectival views and as a dynamic process of discovery. (shrink)

This paper explores the perceptual space of Thomas A. Clark’s poetry and its links with the long and influential Western literary and artistic traditions of walking in the landscape, from Romanticism to Land Art. Particular attention will be given to the relations that Clark establishes in his writing between walking as a bodily practice and the multi-sensory engagement with the landscape it provides. It will be shown that Clark’s most significant contribution to the literature of walking lies in the balance (...) he creates between movement and stillness. In this dynamics, walking is envisaged as means of contemplation and communion to be found within the body, but which is at the same time directed towards the world, and the landscape appears as an infinite variety of perspectival views and as a dynamic process of discovery. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s _History of Sexuality_ has been one of the most influential books of the last two decades. It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of questions to this key work, Ann Laura Stoler examines volume one of _History of Sexuality_ in an unexplored light. She asks why there has been such a muted engagement with this work among students of colonialism for whom (...) issues of sexuality and power are so essential. Why is the colonial context absent from Foucault’s history of a European sexual discourse that for him defined the bourgeois self? In _Race and the Education of Desire, _Stoler challenges Foucault’s tunnel vision of the West and his marginalization of empire. She also argues that this first volume of _History of Sexuality_ contains a suggestive if not studied treatment of race. Drawing on Foucault’s little-known 1976 College de France lectures, Stoler addresses his treatment of the relationship between biopower, bourgeois sexuality, and what he identified as “racisms of the state.” In this critical and historically grounded analysis based on cultural theory and her own extensive research in Dutch and French colonial archives, Stoler suggests how Foucault’s insights have in the past constrained—and in the future may help shape—the ways we trace the genealogies of race. _Race and the Education of Desire_ will revise current notions of the connections between European and colonial historiography and between the European bourgeois order and the colonial treatment of sexuality. Arguing that a history of European nineteenth-century sexuality must also be a history of race, it will change the way we think about Foucault. (shrink)

The Archaeology of Semiotics and the social order of things is edited by George Nash and George Children and brings together 15 thought-provoking chapters from contributors around the world. A sequel to an earlier volume published in 1997, it tackles the problem of understanding how complex communities interact with landscape and shows how the rules concerning landscape constitute a recognised and readable grammar. The mechanisms underlying landscape grammar are both physical and mental, being based in part on the (...) mindset of the individual; the same landscape can thus evoke different meanings for different people and at different times. People's perception has greatly influenced the construction of landscapes over millennia but, until recently, the potential of this area has been largely untapped. Apart from chapters focusing solely upon human interaction with landscape, there are several which skilfully integrate artefacts and place with landscape (e.g. Gheorghiu and Sognnes). Other chapters look at the way people have marked the landscape through such mechanisms as rock-art (e.g. Clegg, Devereux, Estévez, Fossati, Kelleher and Skier). Rock-art establishes personal and communal identity in relation to landscape and it is clear that other forms of visual expression were in place which distinctively created special places within the landscape. Landscape constructs can bind cultures together; bringing the old ways of reading the landscape into contemporary life (e.g. Smiseth). Defining early and late prehistoric landscapes and segregating these into, say, mundane domestic and ritualised spaces rely on both clear and subtle archaeologies and in this volume distinct monument clustering and ritualised linearity are considered (e.g. Mason and Nash). A volume such as this cannot escape the influence of New World approaches, such as anthropology, and in many respects chapters by Bender, Muller and Merritt give context to other chapters within the book. Finally, one must consider text as a means of constructing landscape and this is considered by Heyd, who eloquently deconstructs the travel diary of a 17th century Japanese poet. This will be an important volume for archaeologists, landscape scholars and students. The many approaches used are tried and tested, forming an invaluable resource and not just another edited book. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and (...) fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)

The received view in physicalist philosophy of mind assumes that causation can only take place at the physical domain and that the physical domain is causally closed. It is often thought that this leaves no room for mental states qua mental to have a causal influence upon the physical domain, leading to epiphenomenalism and the problem of mental causation. However, in recent philosophy of causation there has been growing interest in a line of thought that can be called causal antifundamentalism: (...) causal notions cannot play a role in physics, because the fundamental laws of physics are radically different from causal laws. Causal anti-fundamentalism seems to challenge the received view in physicalist philosophy of mind and thus raises the possibility of there being genuine mental causation after all. This paper argues that while causal anti-fundamentalism provides a possible route to mental causation, we have reasons to think that it is incorrect. Does this mean that we have to accept the received view and give up the hope of genuine mental causation? I will suggest that the ontological interpretation of quantum theory provides us both with a view about the nature of causality in fundamental physics, as well as a view how genuine mental causation can be compatible with our fundamental (quantum) physical ontology. (shrink)

_Coming to Our Senses_ positions affect, or feeling, as our new cultural compass, ordering the parameters and possibilities of what can be known. From Facebook "likes" to Coca-Cola "loves," from "emotional intelligence" in business to "emotional contagion" in social media, affect has become the primary catalyst of global culture, displacing reason as the dominant force guiding global culture. Through examples of feeling in the books, film, music, advertising, cultural criticism, and political discourse of the United States and Latin America, Reber (...) shows how affect encourages the public to "reason" on the strength of sentiment alone. Well-being, represented by happiness and health, and ill-being, embodied by unhappiness and disease, form the two poles of our social judgment, whether in affirmation or critique. We must then re-envision contemporary politics as operating at the level of the feeling body, so we can better understand the physiological and epistemological conditions affirming our cultural status quo and contestatory strategies for emancipation. (shrink)

Grounded on Foucault's suggestion that discourses are not just referential or representational systems, but part of the infrastructure ordering practices in a society, this article analyzes transformations in the etiquette literature in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. It claims that the transformations undergone by etiquette books at the time involved not only a change in the substance of manners but also in their format, and it shows how this change in format embodied and helped deploy an (...) infrastructure of social relations constituted by a logic of decenteredness, as opposed to a logic of centeredness. The article discusses both the theoretical issues raised by the concept of an infrastructure of social relations and methodological points concerning the use of etiquette books for social research, and raises some analytical questions regarding our understanding of American history at the time, as well as our more general conceptions of modernity and postmodernity. In order to reinforce its general argument concerning the embeddedness of an infrastructure of social relations in discourse, and to help clarify the idea of a logic of decenteredness, the article also illustrates how etiquette books from a much earlier period embodied and deployed a logic of centeredness. (shrink)

Gilabert argues that the humanist conception of duties of global justice and the principle of cosmopolitan justifiability will lead us to accept an egalitarian definition of individual autonomy. Gilabert further argues that realizing conditions of individual autonomy can serve as the cut-off point to duties of global justice. I investigate his idea of autonomy, arguing that in order to make sense of this claim, we need a concept of autonomy. I propose 4 possible definitions of autonomy, none of which (...) seem to necessitate Gilabert’s duties of egalitarian global justice. Instead, I propose that he may have in mind Autonomy 5, which requires that individuals have access to a maximum number of options and not simply a sufficient range of options to choose from. I criticize this premise as too demanding in the global world characterized by fundamental inequality. Second, I argue that if we were to endorse the preconditions for Autonomy 5, we would have to accept that Gilabert’s theory of global justice doesn’t provide for a cut-off point of duties of global justice. (shrink)

Most people believe that everything happens for a reason. Whether it is “God’s will,” “karma” or “fate,” we want to believe that an overarching purpose undergirds everything, that nothing in the world--especially a disaster or tragedy--is a random, meaningless event. This dilemma presents itself provocatively in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that, in the conventional scientific understanding, is driven by random chance. Reconciling chance and divine purpose poses challenges to the Judeo-Christian tradition. But the Hebrew Scriptures, in the ancient and (...) powerful story of Job, reveal that questions of purpose and order have long been a part of the conversation. Although the Bible generally affirms that God blesses the righteous in an orderly way, the story of Job is a powerful counterexample to this orderly scheme. The achingly beautiful but tragic story of Job, in concert with the modern quantum picture of the world, push back against the idea that “everything happens for a reason.”. (shrink)

This book is primarily a study of what we can learn about Didymus the Blind from a careful analysis of the Tura Papyri. The story of these Papyri, their origin, their being hidden,...

Drawing from Andean cosmological, mythological and aesthetic lineages, this paper is about the possibility of a phenomenology of things at catastrophic ends. In this regard, I approach things under the sway of a (de)formative emptiness. In the first part, I develop a relational ontology on the basis of the Andean notion of pacha or cosmos, which provides a phenomenological frame for a determination of “place,” “world” and “topology.” I also contrast an elemental topology of the cosmos configured by (...) ouranic sunlight with an elemental catastrophism that overturns it. In the second part, I study a chronological series of artifacts in an Andean aesthetic lineage in order to attempt a phenomenology of “things” (utensils, buildings, mountains) that “spectrally” hover in overturns of the cosmos (pachakuti). (shrink)

Drawing on an ethnographic study of the installation and maintenance of Paris subway wayfinding system, this article attempts to discuss and specify previous claims that highlight stability and immutability as crucial aspects of material ordering processes. Though in designers’ productions, subway signs have been standardized and their consistency has been invested in to stabilize riders’ environment, they appear as fragile and transforming entities in the hands of maintenance workers. These two situated accounts are neither opposite nor paradoxical: they enact different (...) versions of subway signs, the stabilization of which goes through the acknowledgment of their vulnerability. Practices that deal with material fragility are at the center of what we propose, following Annemarie Mol and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, to term a care of things. Foregrounding such a care of things is a way to surface a largely overlooked dimension of material ordering and to renew how maintainability issues are generally tackled. (shrink)

The article states that in the "Esprit des Lois" Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu famously proposes a version of the doctrine of the separation of judicial, executive and legislative power as a way of protecting political liberty ("the opinion each has of his security"). Given the context in which he situates his arguments: an immense and theoretically opaque excursus which discusses almost everything known to political theory, anthropology and economics before his time, and essentially descriptive methodology, it is not easy (...) to discern a clear line of argument in support of the doctrine of the separation of powers. (shrink)

Generally, where scientistic attitudes towards the order of creation tend towards the reductive, postmodern attitudes tend towards the deconstructive. The given order of beauty tends to be made problematic. The surface of things is often invested with an equivocity that, whether reductively or deconstructively, we can only approach with epistemic-ontological suspicion. In the following reflections I focus on the connection between given beauty and the order of creation in light of issues connected to this. Beauty itself (...) is inseparable from some sense of formed wholeness. Is there is a givenness to beauty in nature which belies the claim that order is just an imposition of power on flux? The notion of creation is inseparable from the origination of order, but the order comes to be, arises from originating sources that allow forms of beauty to be that are more than our determination or self-determination. Something marvelously original comes to be, comes to shine. There is a shine on things. But what shines on things when we come to appreciate their given beauty? Is it just our shine on things, as if we were the sole source of light? Is it the shine of things, as if the things were luminescent in their own being there? Is it a shine on things, such that the source of the light was not just ours, nor confined to the thing of beauty? These questions will be explored. (shrink)

Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions---these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and (...) explain how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature’s best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds. Frontmatter Preface, page 9 Introduction: At the Limit, page 13 I THE TOPOGRAPHY OF WONDER, page 21 II THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS, page 67 III WONDER AMONG THE PHILOSOPHERS, page 109 IV MARVELOUS PARTICULARS, page 135 V MONSTERS: A CASE STUDY, page 173 VI STRANGE FACTS, page 215 VII WONDERS OF ART, WONDERS OF NATURE, page 255 VIII THE PASSIONS OF INQUIRY, page 303 IX THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ANTI-MARVELOUS, page 329 Epilogue, page 365 Photo Credits, page 369 Notes, page 373 Bibliography, page 451 Index, page 499. (shrink)

In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy,Françle;ois Julien, a French sinologist whose work has not yet appeared in English usesthe Chinese concept of shi - meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential - as atouchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking.A Hegelian prejudice still haunts studies of ancient Chinese civilization:Chinese thought, never able to evolve beyond a cosmological point of view, with an indifference toany notion of (...) telos, sought to interpret reality solely on the basis of itself. In thisgroundbreaking study, prejudices toward the simplicity and "naiveté" of Chinese thought, Hegelianand otherwise, are dismantled one by one to reveal the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking and representing reality.Jullien begins with a single Chinese term, shi,whose very ambivalence and disconcerting polysemy, on the one hand, and simple efficacy, on theother, defy the order of a concept. Yet shi insinuates itself into the ordering and conditioning ofreality in all its manifold and complex representations. Because shi neither gave rise to anycoherent, general analysis nor figured as one of the major concepts among Chinese thinkers, Jullienfollows its appearance from one field to another: from military strategy to politics; from theaesthetics of calligraphy and painting to the theory of literature; and from reflection on historyto "first philosophy."At the point where these various domains intersect, a fundamental intuitionassumed self-evident for centuries emerges, namely, that reality - every kind of reality - may beperceived as a particular deployment or arrangement of things to be relied upon and worked to one'sadvantage. Art or wisdom, as conceived by the Chinese, lies in strategically exploiting thepropensity that emanates from this particular configuration of reality. (shrink)