The "Chinese Room" controversy between Searle and Churchland and Churchland over whether computers can think is subjected to Derridean "deconstruction." There is a hidden complicity underlying the debate which upholds traditional subject/object metaphysics, while deferring to future empirical science an account of the problematic semantic relation between brain syntax and the perceptible world. I show that an empirical solution along the lines hoped for is not scientifically conceivable at present. An alternative account is explored, based on the productivity (...) of neural nets, in which the semantic relation is found to be dynamical - a spontaneous, stochastic, self-organizing process. (shrink)

Some metaphysics are provided showing that what is commonly called ‘the physical world’ can be deconstructed into three ‘levels’: a single, unified ‘noumenal world’ on which everything supervenes; a ‘phenomenal world’ that we each privately experience through direct perception of phenomena; and a ‘collective world’ that people in any given ‘language using group’ experience through learning, using and adapting that group’s language. This deconstruction is shown to enable a clear account of qualia and of how people can hold (...) some things to be physically real even when it is clear no one can ever directly experience those things as phenomena. It is further shown to enable a single, internally consistent, largely empirically supported conceptual framework – a ‘metacosmology’ – able to encompass not only the physical world as people conceive of it for everyday purposes, and as scientists conceive of it for scientific purposes, but also people’s first person phenomenal experience of a physical world and, prospectively, the mechanisms by which such first person, conscious experiences can be generated. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, debates over the viability of commonsense psychology have been center stage in both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Eliminativists have argued that advances in cognitive science and neuroscience will ultimately justify a rejection of our "folk" theory of the mind, and of its ontology. In the first half of this book Stich, who was at one time a leading advocate of eliminativism, maintains that even if the sciences develop in the ways that eliminativists (...) foresee, none of the arguments for ontological elimination are tenable. Rather than being resolved by science, he contends, these ontological disputes will be settled by a pragmatic process in which social and political considerations have a major role to play. In later chapters, Stich argues that the widespread worry about "naturalizing" psychological properties is deeply confused, since there is no plausible account of what naturalizing requires on which the failure of the naturalization project would lead to eliminativism. He also offers a detailed analysis of the many different notions of folk psychology to be found in philosophy and psychology, and argues that simulation theory, which purports to be an alternative to folk psychology, is not supported by recent experimental findings. (shrink)

Deconstruction is often depicted as a method of critical analysis aimed at exposing unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language. Starting from Derrida's contention that deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one, I make a case for a different attitude towards deconstruction, to which I refer as 'witnessing'. I argue that what needs to be witnessed is the occurrence of deconstruction and, more specifically, the occurrence of metaphysics-in- (...) class='Hi'>deconstruction. The point of witnessing metaphysics-in-deconstruction is affirmative: it is an affirmation of what cannot be conceived in terms of the system and yet makes this system possible. To the extent to which education is concerned with the 'coming into presence' of new beginners and new beginnings, it shares an interest with deconstruction. Through a discussion of the role of communication in education I indicate how we might witness the occurrence of deconstruction in education. Through this we may be able to identify openings that can become potential entrances for the coming into presence of new beginnings and new beginners. Such an engagement with Derrida's work is more than the application of 'his' philosophy to the 'field' of education and therefore also has implications for how we think of the very idea of philosophy of education. (shrink)

"This is a remarkable book: wide-ranging, resonant, and well-written; it is also reflective and personable, warm and engaging." —Philosophy and Literature "With this book Caputo takes his place firmly as the foremost American, continental post-modernist... " —International Philosophical Quarterly "One cannot but be impressed by the scope of Radical Hermeneutics." —Man and World "Caputo’s study is stunning in its scope and scholarship." —Robert E. Lauder, St. John’s University, The Thomist For John D. Caputo, hermeneutics means radical thinking without transcendental justification: (...) attending to the ruptures and irregularities in existence before the metaphysics of presence has a chance to smooth them over. Radical Hermeneutics forges a closer collaboration between hermeneutics and deconstruction than has previously been attempted. (shrink)

I distinguish the ethics of transhumanism from a related metaphysical position which I refer to as “speculative posthumanism.” Speculative posthumanism holds that posthumans might be radically non-human and thus unintelligible in human terms. I claim that this transcendence can be viewed as analogous to that of the thing-in-itself in Kantian and post-Kantian European philosophy. This schema implies an impasse for transhumanism because, while the radically non-human or posthuman would elude evaluation according to transhumanist principles such as personal autonomy or liberal (...) freedom, it is morally unacceptable for transhumanists to discount the possible outcomes of their favoured policies. I then consider whether the insights of critical posthumanists, who employ a cyborg perspective on human-technology couplings, can dissolve this impasse by “deconstructing” the opposition between the human and its prospective posthuman successors. By exhibiting its logical basis in the postructuralist philosophies of Derrida and Deleuze, I show that the cyborg perspective is consistent with both cyborg humanism and a modified speculative posthumanism. This modified account treats the alterity of the posthuman as a historically emergent feature of human and posthuman multiplicities that must be understood through their technical or imaginative synthesis, not in relation to a transcendental conception of the human. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are from the Second Conference of the Central European Pragmatist Forum, held in Krakow, Poland in 2002. Written by prominent specialists in pragmatism and American philosophy from the United States and Europe, they survey contemporary thinking on classical and contemporary pragmatism, social and political theory, ethics, aesthetics, experience, knowledge, rationality, metaphysics, and the application of pragmatist thought in contemporary Europe.

Originally published in 1982. Aside from Jacques Derrida's own references to the "possible articulation" between deconstruction and Marxism, the relationship between the two has remained largely unexplored. In Marxism and Deconstruction, Michael Ryan examines that multifaceted relationship but not through a mere comparison of two distinct and inviolable entities. Instead, he looks at both with an eye to identifying their common elements and reweaving them into a new theory of political practice. To accomplish his task, Ryan undertakes a (...) detailed comparison of deconstruction and Marxism, relating deconstruction to the dialectical tradition in philosophy and demonstrating how deconstruction can be used in the critique of ideology. He is a forceful critic of both the politics of deconstruction and the metaphysical aspect of Marxism (as seen from a deconstructionist perspective). Besides offering the first book-length study of Derrida in this context, Ryan makes the first methodic attempt by an American scholar to apply deconstruction to domains beyond literature. He proposes a deconstructive Marxism, one lacking the metaphysical underpinnings of conservative "scientific" Marxist theory and employing deconstructive analysis both for Marxist political criticism and to further current anti-metaphysical developments within Marxism. Marxism and Deconstruction is an innovative and controversial contribution to the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and political science. (shrink)

While theorists of epistemic injustice often refer to Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” as an early articulation of the field’s concerns, they have stopped short of engaging deeply with Spivak’s deconstructive take on epistemic violence and her suggestion that this consists in an attribution of subjectivity to historically marginalized speakers. In redressing this oversight, this article makes a case for adopting a broader conception of epistemic harm and exclusion than has been acknowledged in the literature: I argue that the (...) presumption that speakers are subjects can precipitate silencing. For in determining the other who speaks as a subject, one forecloses hospitality to an alterity not already understood according to the subject/object distinction central to Western metaphysics. This deconstructive intervention thus challenges one of the field’s key assumptions, namely, that epistemic harm consists in a failure to treat speakers as subjects, and consequently that generating a more inclusive dialogical climate depends on restoring marginalized individuals to subject status. Folding Spivak’s deconstructive insight into the remedial project of epistemic justice is therefore far from straightforward; nonetheless, I argue that it is consistent with the literature’s demand for a heightened sensitivity vis-à-vis the ways marginalized others are routinely harmed in epistemic practices. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Derrida is often characterized as anti-scientific, and his philosophy of language taken to mean we are sealed off from empirical reality, confined to our metaphysical prison. This position is reinforced by the fact that his forerunners, Heidegger and Nietzsche, did diminish the importance of the sciences, and argued that we are enclosed within the limits of language. Today, philosophy continues to deconstruct the nature/culture distinction, and challenge the meaning of materialism, but in recent decades has realized (...) that this work requires, in addition to a critique of the modern concept of science, a rehabilitation of the sciences outside their metaphysical definition. The fact that Derrida continues to be understood as an anti-science thinker has led to the exclusion of his work from this project. In this paper, I show that Derrida, while deconstruction the metaphysical concepts of science, nature and empiricism, in fact takes the mathematical sciences as an important force of deconstructing, and develops an interpretation of empiricism that points to a non-metaphysical understanding of it. From this perspective, Derrida's work is useful for thinking through the relation of the human to language and nature in the age of globalization and anthropogenic climate change. (shrink)

Although Marxism and deconstruction of differences, but can be associated with. To associate Marxism and deconstruction, not only back to Marx's radical critique of capitalist ideology, the basic theory of Marxism screening of metaphysical factors, but also avoids Marx's logocentric misappropriation. Despite the divergent attitudes between Marxism and deconstruction, there exists a possible link between the two of them. A critical articulation of them can not only restore the radical edge to Marxism devoted to the critique of (...) bourgeois ideology, which is tainted with metaphysical presuppositions, but also be able to avoid the influence of the implicit logocentrism in Marxism. (shrink)

At the end of his writing, “La Différance,” Jacques Derrida deconstructs his text by taking on an authoritative rhetorical tone. Reflecting back on his discussion of metaphysics, Derrida announces that “(t)here will be no unique name, even if it were the name of Being”. And then he takes a surprising phenomeno-logical turn and advocates a privileged attitude or disposition towards his reflection:And we must think this without nostalgia, that is, outside the myth of a purely maternal or paternal language, (...) a lost native country of thought. On the contrary, we must affirm this, in the sense in which Nietzsche puts affirmation into play, in a certain laughter and a certain step of the dance. (shrink)

An attempt to compare the approaches of Alfred North Whitehead and Jacques Derrida might appear extremely unrewarding from the outset. Derrida has often been hailed (and reviled) as a figure who rejects many key concepts in the philosophical lexicon, amongst them those of subjectivity, rationality, creativity and progress. Whitehead, on the other hand, may seem to hold uncritically to the notion of a metaphysical system in which every element of our experience can be interpreted, so that everything of which we (...) are conscious ‘shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme’.1 In our modern world, furthermore, Whitehead argues that it is the business of philosophers and students and practical men ‘to recreate and re-enact a vision of the world...penetrated through and through with unflinching rationality’.2 In this article I wish to show that Whitehead’s understanding of philosophy converges with Derrida’s in certain significant respects, and that this clearly illustrated when we relate both of them to Edmund Husserl. I will begin with brief outlines of Derrida’s account of the philosophical tradition, of his deconstruction or delimitation of subjectivity, and of the way in which his understanding of philosophical openness is influenced by the work of Husserl. I will then proceed to show how many of the ideas found in Whitehead’s metaphysics resemble those of Derrida. Other aspects of this metaphysics would certainly be inimical to the latter, but need not be seen as fixed in stone. This is recognized by Whitehead himself, who has a fallibilistic and revisionary understanding of the philosophical enterprise that is akin to Husserl and Derrida. My conclusion, however, is that Whitehead is closer to Husserl in concentrating on the reconstructive side of philosophy, a side which Derrida has ultimately neglected. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida is one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the last fifty years. Derrida on Deconstruction introduces and assesses: Derrida's life and the background to his philosophy the key themes of the critique of metaphysics, language and ethics that characterize his most widely read works the continuing importance of Derrida's work to philosophy. This is a much-needed introduction for philosophy or humanities students undertaking courses on Derrida.

The aim of this paper is to question the significance of Derrida's deconstruction of the concepts of subject and history. While ‘postmodernity’ tends to be characterized by philosophical critique as the ‘liquidation of the subject’ or the ‘end of history’, I attempt to show that Derrida's deconstruction of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘historicity’ is not an elimination or destruction of these concepts, but an attempt to transform them in order to free them from their metaphysical-teleological presuppositions. This paper argues that (...) this transformation, which begins in Derrida's and continues in Stiegler's texts, leads to the notions of ‘psycho-social individuation’ and ‘doubly epokhal redoubling’. I maintain that such notions ‘supplement’ the metaphysical concepts of subject and history by forcing a reconsideration of the technical conditions of psychic individuation and the technological conditions of ‘epochality’. (shrink)

Recoding Metaphysics: The New Italian Philosophy presents for the first time in English the work of many leading Italian contemporary thinkers. It suggests a third way in the hitherto almost exclusively French and German discussion of the deconstructive critique of poststructuralism on one hand, and the emancipatory convictions of post-Marxist discourse on the other. Each essay attempts to establish the validity of this third way, some by developing the concept of "weak thought" through rigorous analysis of Marxism and a (...) reinterpretation of Nietzsche's nihilism and Heidegger's existentialism, and others by developing alternative critiques to postructuralist thinking. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida is one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the last fifty years. _Derrida on Deconstruction_ introduces and assesses: Derrida's life and the background to his philosophy the key themes of the critique of metaphysics, language and ethics that characterize his most widely read works the continuing importance of Derrida's work to philosophy. This is a much-needed introduction for philosophy or humanities students undertaking courses on Derrida.

A mini-review of Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy.

In this essay, I criticize John Caputo’s deconstructive analysis of the nature of mystical union. Using the works of St. John of the Cross, I show that the notion of mystical union does not belong to “the metaphysics of presence.” I also discuss the true significance of deconstruction for the study of mysticism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Allman PAUL DE MAN, DECONSTRUCTION, AND DISCIPLESHIP God may be dead, but his vocabulary lives on, oddly enough, in the militandy secular pages of recent literary theory. Just when we thought it was safe to plunge the depths of postmodernism without the muddying mystifications of worship, religious language seems to have resurrected itself and is walking once again on the troubled waters of literary criticism. In an (...) essay on "The Institutional Control of Interpretation," forexample, Frank Kermode suggests that the Church offers us the best model for understanding the "exegetical activities" ofliterary critics everywhere: "self-perpetuating, hierarchical, authoritative, much concerned with questions of canon, and wont, as we are, to distinguish sharply between initiate and uninitiate readings, the Church is a model we would do well to consider as we attempt to understand our own practice."1 We can find traces of sacred vocabulary in the description not only of the Church of Criticism in general, but also of particular sects within this institution, even those determined to undermine the notion that anything is sacred. In fact, religious language seems most abundant in critical assessments ofdeconstruction, by all appearances the most iconoclastic of recent modes of interpretation. Gerald Graff, for example, argues that the deconstructive project transforms literature into "a vehicle for a nihilistic metaphysics, an anti-didactic form of preaching." Literature becomes "once again the great oracle of truth, but now the truth is that there is no truth. In a curiously inverted restatement of the religion of literature, the literary work is made the sole source of truth only in the sense that it alone refuses to succumb to the delusion that the truth can be spoken."2 Focusing on the style rather than the Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 324-339 John Allman325 dogma of deconstruction, Mark Felperin echoes a number of theorists (both radical and conservative) when he comments that de Man, Derrida, and their brethren, much like "high priests ofa new mystery cult," are guilty of "a deliberate obscurantism designed to exclude all but an elite—only those who already know will understand and be saved."3 And John Ellis suggests that "deconstructive logic" is simply a crude version of "a standard formula in many branches of religious mysticism."4 Clearly, Ellis, Graff, and others so stigmatize deconstruction not by way of providing neutral descriptions of an interpretive approach, but rather as part of a polemical strategy intended to expose flaws in deconstruction—its hypocrisy, its elitism, its unoriginality. Despite this appropriation of religious language in the rhetoric denouncing deconstruction, it seems to me to be both possible and useful to examine how religious vocabulary might offer a fair as well as illuminating means of describing rather than proscribing the critical phenomenon known as deconstruction. In particular, I would like to look at the ways in which the relation between the originators ofdeconstruction and their successors resembles that between master and disciple. To those sympathetic to deconstruction, such an approach may seem inappropriate, if not hostile; deconstructionists, accustomed to charges that they are presenting a metaphysics of absence, a religion of antirepresentationalism, have consistentiy denied that their practices are in any way religious. What I would like to suggest, however, is that deconstruction, like the texts it reads, is governed by the very forces it resists. By studying the relation between one "exemplary" deconstructive critic— Paul de Man—and one of his influencial students—Barbara Johnson—I hope to illustrate how the survival of deconstruction depends paradoxically on its ability to both resist and restore the powers that shape the relation between master and disciple. Particularly useful in the context ofmy argument are the observations of two sociologists of religion, Joachim Wach and Max Weber, whose sociological perspective permits them to comment on the dynamics of the master-disciple relationship without referring to any particular set of beliefs or teachings. Wach's essay "Master and Disciple" is especially helpful, for he begins his discussion of this dynamic by contrasting the relation between master and disciple with that between teacher and student. For Wach, the essential difference between master and teacher is that the teacher "gives a definite subject matter" while the master "provides only... (shrink)

In this essay I respond to criticisms of my position on the question of the relation between deconstruction, ethics, and politics levelled at me by Richard Rorty and Ernesto Laclau. With regard to the latter, I argue that there is a normative deficit in Laclau's discourse theory' and with regard to the former, I argue that Rorty's reading of Derrida is at the least questionable and I attempt to criticize Rorty on the issues of the status of metaphysics (...) and politics. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s philosophy greatly disrupted traditional Western metaphysics by questioning our understanding of the relationship between language and reality. This paper examines how Derrida deconstructs logocentric and phonocentric perspectives that have influenced Western thought, focusing on his analyses of Plato’s Cratylus and Phaedrus, as well as Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. For Derrida, the meaning in language is always shifting, suggesting that absolute truths, as traditionally conceived in Platonic metaphysics, are inherently unstable. His concept of différance (...) illustrates the fluid nature of meaning and the limitations of language. In his critique of “Plato’s Pharmacy,” he explores the inclusive potential of writing, which contrasts with Plato’s preference for speech and dialectics. While Plato is concerned with texts reaching readers he deems “inappropriate” for not fully grasping their meaning, Derrida views access to texts as positive and equitable. He argues that writing removes hierarchical barriers of interpretation, empowering readers and promoting inclusivity and diverse voices. Through this approach, he not only reshapes Western philosophical thinking but also encourages continuous questioning of the truths we often take for granted, expanding philosophy’s relevance to social and political aspects of everyday life. Derrida believes that philosophy should be accessible to all and not limited to privileged academic circles. He critiques elitism and advocates for philosophy to adapt to new social demands, challenging outdated rhetorical models and institutional authority. Derrida’s deconstruction encourages us to consider perspectives beyond our own backgrounds and experiences. By breaking down barriers that limit which voices are acknowledged and valued, we support more open and equitable intellectual and social systems. (shrink)

This thesis examines the nature of the supplementary relationship between Husserlian phenomenology and deconstruction. Chapter 1 gives an account of the strategies and aims of deconstruction, determining these to be an attempt to respond, using ‘other names’, to the other which is excluded by phenomenology/philosophy in its attempts to master its own limits. In Chapter 2, it is found that alterity is encountered by phenomenology on its own thresholds, informing the genetic turn in phenomenology which is necessitated as (...) a result of the inquiries into the temporal constitution which founds the possibility of an object’s being given as such to consciousness. Furthermore, it is shown how the possibility of the genetic turn resides in the indication relation examined in the phenomenology of signification. Chapter 3 focusses on the deconstruction of phenomenology, and investigates the double movement in phenomenology which the deconstruction reveals, taking time and language as guiding threads. On the one hand, the genetic turn appears to reveal a founding alterity, which, on the other hand, phenomenology strives to suppress in accordance with its adherence to its own ‘principle of principles’. It is argued that the deconstruction aims to accord phenomenological respect to the alterity uncovered by phenomenological descriptions. This is done through thematising certain operative concepts, concepts which remain unthemtised in phenomenology precisely because such thematisation would reveal a founding non-presence intolerable to phenomenology. Deconstruction supplements phenomenology to the extent that it attempts to name, on the fissured margins of phenomenology, the radical alterity uncovered by phenomenology in a way which does not reduce the very otherness of the alterity. However, in the final Chapter, it is argued, from the perspective of Levinas, that Derrida does not in fact manage to find a sense for founding alterity in phenomenology which is ‘beyond metaphysics’. The thesis concludes by arguing that, in order to achieve its strategic aims, as detailed in Chapter 1, the deconstruction of phenomenology needs to be ethically supplemenred, one example of such an ethically supplemented deconstructive reading of Husserl being found in some of the most recent texts of Levinas. (shrink)

The starting point of this study is the observation of a new importance of philosophy « in the post-metaphysical era » (according to the expression of J.-L. Schlegel) in the analysis of the religious fact and the significance of the Bible in Western culture, including the most contemporary. The recent Chilean film El Cristo ciego/Blind Christ by director Christopher Murray (2016) offers an emblematic example of the problems posed by the interpretation of a work that questions the mystery of transcendence (...) in a context marked both by the radical immanence of the characters’ experience and by the explicit and massive reference to the New Testament. The short narratives of the main character will be analyzed as parables (exegetic approach) and will be interpreted in the light of the Christology of liberation (cf. Jon Sobrino) and the philosophy of deconstruction (cf. J.-L. Nancy), which will lead to the question of the epistemological coherence of the proposed analysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhism and Deconstruction: Toward a Comparative SemioticsYouru WangBuddhism and Deconstruction: Toward a Comparative Semiotics. By Youxuan Wang. London: Curzon Press, 2001. Pp. xiv + 242. Hardcover $65.00.Youxuan Wang's Buddhism and Deconstruction: Toward a Comparative Semiotics is a full-length study comparing Derridean and Buddhist discourse, especially their deconstruction of the notion of sign. Since Robert Magliola's 1984 publication Derrida on the Mend, which involved his (...) pioneering comparison of Derrida and Nāgārjuna, many articles or book chapters have contributed to the growing body of comparative studies on Derridean and various (Indian, Chinese, or Japanese) Buddhist thought. However, a more systematic study of Buddhist deconstruction had not been achieved until the publication of Wang's book. In my view, as long as the investigation of deconstructive strategies in important Buddhist texts has not been completed, the comparison of Derridean and Buddhist deconstruction will never be sufficient. Wang's book provides substantial development of this topic. The understanding of sign and the conception of the Same are the major threads running [End Page 486] through his detailed investigation of Derridean texts and the Chinese texts of Mādhyamika and Yogācāra Buddhism.Wang denies that the objects of his study are "representatives of Buddhist philosophy" but rather believes they are "specimens of Buddhist literary production" (p. 11). This attitude enables him to be open to different Buddhist texts, to discover different strategies and styles, without being fettered by the problem of the self-identity of each text and its authorship. Consequently, the author's selection of a particular set of Buddhist texts has proven distinctive and philosophically significant. The texts he investigates are written neither by famous Indian Mādhyamika philosophers such as Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti nor by great indigenous Chinese thinkers such as Sengzhao, Jizang, and the Chan Buddhists. Such texts, with their greater names, are popular among contemporary scholars for their study of Buddhist deconstruction. What Wang examines, however, is a set of peripheral texts, including the Dazhidu Iun (translated and edited by Kumārajīva but attributed to Nāgārjuna) and the Treatise on the Eighteen Points about Emptiness (translated and edited by Paramārtha but also attributed to Nāgārjuna). Because of their problems of alleged authorship, these have largely been neglected by modern scholarship. Wang's study in fact subverts this kind of judgment of central/marginal texts by revealing their significance to the historical development of the understanding of Mahāyāna teaching in Chinese Buddhism and their critical usefulness in the postmodern discourse of sign.The subversiveness of Wang's study lies not only in his use of marginal Mādhyamika texts, but also in his bold approach to a couple of Yogācāra texts. To my limited knowledge, no serious discussion of Buddhist deconstruction has specifically referred to any Yogācāra text. Most discussions have hitherto referred to Nāgārjuna, Prāsangika, or Chan/Zen texts. It has been a common impression that Yogācāra Buddhism somehow smuggles a form of substantialization into Mahāyāna teaching through the back door. But this is not the case with the texts Wang studies. Although these texts may also be considered marginal compared to some others, Wang convincingly demonstrates in them a Yogācāra deconstruction of substantialization through the three categories of absence-of-being (san wu xing) and other strategies, with regard to a Yogācāra understanding of the Same or True Suchness.The first two chapters concentrate on a survey of the Sarvāstivāda-Sautrāntika metaphysical-semiotic themes in the list of seventy-five existential factors and how they are undone by Kumārajīva and Paramārtha's commentaries on the Mahāyāna list of eighteen points about emptiness. Wang's analysis reveals the deconstructive power of these commentaries while doing justice to the Sarvāstivāda-Sautrāntika refutation of naive realism. The central semiotic theme as involved in the soteriology of Mahāyāna Buddhism, according to these commentaries and Wang's interpretation, is the "true character of all dharmas"—the emptiness of all existential factors (pp. 76... (shrink)

The Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH) and later the Nuwaubians, is a deeply significant and controversial African American Muslim movement. Founded in Brooklyn in the 1960s, it spread through the prolific production and dissemination of literature and lecture tapes and became famous for continuously reinventing its belief system. In this book, Michael Muhammad Knight studies the development of AAC/NIH discourse over a period of thirty years, tracing a surprising consistency behind a facade of serial (...) reinvention. It is popularly believed that the AAC/NIH community abandoned Islam for Black Israelite religion, UFO religion, and Egyptosophy. However, Knight sees coherence in AAC/NIH media, explaining how, in reality, the community taught that the Prophet Muhammad was a Hebrew who adhered to Israelite law; Muhammad’s heavenly ascension took place on a spaceship; and Abraham enlisted the help of a pharaonic regime to genetically engineer pigs as food for white people. Against narratives that treat the AAC/NIH community as a postmodernist deconstruction of religious categories, Knight demonstrates that AAC/NIH discourse is most productively framed within a broader African American metaphysical history in which boundaries between traditions remain quite permeable. Unexpected and engrossing, Metaphysical Africa brings to light points of intersection between communities and traditions often regarded as separate and distinct. In doing so, it helps move the field of religious studies beyond conventional categories of “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy,” challenging assumptions that inform not only the study of this particular religious community but also the field at large. (shrink)

Everything about Derrida suggests that he is for a radical reform or transformation of language, whilst Wittgenstein seems to vindicate a fidelity to ordinary language and to want to 'expunge' from language the 'metaphysical use' of words. But just how opposed are they? My contention in this paper is that Wittgenstein does not 'deconstruct', as some critics have rather loosely suggested, because, as we shall see, the expunging of metaphysical use favoured by Wittgenstein does not amount to the deconstruction (...) of metaphysical appurtenance practised by Derrida. However, there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the two philosophers which I shall try to articulate in the course of this paper. The first part provides the background, in Wittgenstein's writings, to his concept of 'metaphysi cal use'; the second is an exposition of what Derrida refers to as 'metaphysical appurtenance' and attendant notions such as those of binary oppositions and of the labouring of concepts; and the third is a summing up and a defence of the thesis that Wittgenstein does not, in any full-bodied sense of the term, 'deconstruct'. (shrink)

What, ultimately, is the nature of reality according to Derrida? What, in his scheme of things, is being, what is time? What is consciousness and how should we conceive of the relation between self and other? What sort of metaphysics, or, more specifically, what sort of ontology if any can Derrida justifiably be said to adhere to? The aim of this chapter is to address these questions in a way that will not be entirely disloyal, or, rather, will be (...) as loyal as possible, to Derrida's legacy. In “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida subjects this term to a relentless deconstruction. In Specters of Marx, written almost 30 years later than “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida famously invokes and sketches what he calls hauntology, namely, a “logic of haunting” understood as a discourse and practice that would transcend “the opposition between presence and non‐presence, actuality and inactuality, life and non‐life”. (shrink)

One of the ways in which Heidegger characterised his philosophical project was as ‘overcoming metaphysics.’ This was a way of expressing the task of destruction—or, in Derrida’s version, deconstruction—of the tradition of western philosophy. One of the consequences of Heidegger’s critique of traditional western metaphysics is that, in the decades since, there has been a reluctance to engage in anything that might be called ‘metaphysics’. This is somewhat ironic, given that one of the branches of (...) class='Hi'>metaphysics is ontology, and that Heidegger explicitly describes his own work as phenomenological ontology. This essay sketches some ontological implications of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, then outlines some of the ways in which that ontology might be modified in light of hermeneutic critiques of Levinas and Marion, and concludes by suggesting that an ontology informed by these hermeneutic insights can be traced in the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This collection of essays by five scholars whose views were mutually shaped in several years of association at Yale attempts to define deconstruction and its place in criticism from a philosophical standpoint. Though the definition is not easily got at, the volume does provide some important insights into the purpose and future of criticism. "Deconstruction" is a way of reading that holds in tension the contradictory evidence of a romantic criticism, which asserts the primacy of the author's mind (...) over his material, and of semiotics, which asserts the priority of linguistic codes over any rational or imaginative determination of meaning, thereby undermining claims to causality or intuitive truth. Thus, the authors here can remain in contact with the romantic mode even after having rigorously shown it to be untenable. Eschewing pure structuralism, these essays demonstrate a continuing commitment to the integrity of the literary text, not out of a misguided aestheticism but because of the manifest inability of analysis to resolve the contradictions that engender the text. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS people will in fact he causally influenced to do B as well. The former is a philosophical issue and the latter is an empirical one. There are many interesting issues in these last three chapters. But the most important planks in Rachels's radical view are his distinction between biological and biographical life and his Bare Difference argument against the active killing/passive letting die distinotion. This hook contains (...) a number of very important moral issues which are rich· ly discussed. But his case against the rtraditional view must ultimately he judged inadequarte. Rachels himself admits that until now the traditional view has been the only one that is sufficiently worked out in a sophisticated and satisfactory way. In my opinion, Rachels's contribution to the discussion has not changed that situartion. J.P. MORELAND Lynchburg, Virginia Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project. By JoHN D. CAPUTO. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. Pp. 319. Professor Caputo's impressive book, which is composed of an introduction and three parts, is a closely reasoned, scholarly explanation and defense of what its author calls radical hermeneutics. In his Jn. troduction, which he entitles "Restoring Life rto Its Original Difficulty," Caputo presents what he takes to be the problem of trying l:o make sense of contemporary experience, given the thought developments of the last two centuries. Central to Caputo's project is his reading of traditional metaphysics as a betrayal of the human experi· ence of the flux. He claims that, though metaphysics makes a show of beginning with questions, it quickly forecloses those questions as soon as things begin to look uncertain. In Being and Time Heidegger tried to restore the original difficulty of Being that metaphysics had swept under the rug. Viewing Kierkegaard in his pseudonymous masks, such as the disguise of Contantin Constantius, as involved in making life difficult rather than easy, Capuito links the Danish existentialist's con· cerns to Heidegger's. Caputo argues that radical hermeneutics is for the hardy and not for those who seek some way out of the flux. Meta· physics has illegiitimartely claimed some transcendental high ground ac· cording to Caputo, hut radical hermeneutics will have none of that ap· parently consoling hut ultimately unjustifiable comfort. Rather, her· BOOK REVIEWS meneutics wants to describe the difficulrty we are in and rather than rise above the flux " gets up the nerve to stay with it " (p. 3). Caputo's book is evidence of the author's attempt to "get up the nerve to stay with it " and though difficult reading the hook is nonetheless exciting. Caputo argues Philosophy is scandalized by motion and thus tries either to exclude movement outright from real being (Platonism) or more subversively, to portray itself as a friend of movement and thus to lure it into the philosophical house of logical categories (Hegelianism). Kierkegaard objects to the mummifying work of philosophy, not because he thinks that eternity-the sphere of that which lies outside of time and movement -is an illusion, that the real world is a myth (Fabel), as does Nietzsche, but because he thinks that philosophy makes things too easy for itself. It is ready to sneak out the back door of existence as soon as life begins. It does not have the courage for the flux, for the hard work of winning eternity in time, of pushing forward existentially for the prize which lies ahead. It is not eternity as such (Nietzsche's 'real world') to which he objects but philosophy's effete manner of seeking it. He takes the side of becoming against Being, of existence against thought, of existential 'interest' against metaphysics. For it is on the basis of interest that philosophy founders, that metaphysics comes to grief (pp. 11-12). Impressed with :the radicalization which hermeneutics provides, Caputo sees the protohistory of hermeneutics in thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Husserl, Nietzsche, Meister Eckhart, the late Heidegger and even Derrida, who is a critic of hermeneutics. In Part One Caputo discusses Kierkegaardian repetition and Husserlian conS. (shrink)

Reading Voice and Phenomenon from a phenomenological perspective, this paper argues that the book is an internal criticism of Husserlian phenomenology that, among other things, can serve as an introduction to Husserl’s genetic method. Derrida’s most powerful arguments are delivered by turning the Cartesian method of Logical Investigations and Ideas I to Husserl’s inquiries into time-consciousness; as such, it is a phenomenological criticism through and through. An analysis of Husserl’s later manuscripts and lectures published posthumously shows that driven by what (...) Derrida calls the radicality of intuitionism, Husserl has developed a genetic phenomenological method that breaks free from the metaphysics of presence and arrived at a conception of meaning and language that is similar to Derrida’s. (shrink)

“One of the most dangerous of ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads, or in our heads.” Wittgenstein… aber wir sprechen das Allgemeine aus;” Hegel“Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing.” Derrida“Linguistic turn”, “pragmatic paradigm”, “Destruktion”, “deconstruction”, “condition postmoderne”, “pensiero debole” are not only philosophical labels. They are not only indices of intellectual positions which have inscribed themselves, as consequences as well as preconditions, in the end (...) of traditional metaphysics. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, Nietzsche'sGenealogy of Moralsannounces, describing the empty space which the metaphysical concepts have left; and in doing so opening up a seemingly boundless dimension for new developments of thoughts. The dilemma of these developments of modernity is that the vacuum they left, caused by their ruthless critique, cannot be refilled. So the outlook of modernity remains necessarily heterogeneous and unstable, meandering towards the colourful and fashionable-macabre extremes of postmodemity which gain from the tragic certainty of rien ne va plus the happy imperative of anything goes. But these are also ciphers of a particular philosophical-historical constellation, a work situation, in which the potencies of reason, being verhimmelt for a long time, now are going to be situated into their real contexts. Only, as Habermas puts it, “under the premises of an unexcited postmetaphysical thinking”, the once heroic concept of theory, which was meant to explain the world of human beings and their history as well as Nature out of onto-theleological principles of rationality, falls to pieces. (shrink)

In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement... is its own movement... is automatic expansion... able to add value to itself... living off-springs...golden eggs...an independent substance....It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus value; as (...) the father differentiates himself from himself qua the son, yet both are one and of one age: for only by the surplus value of £10 does the £100 originally advanced become capital, and so soon as this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the son, the father, is begotten, so soon does their difference vanish, and they again become one, £110.3. Marx (1967, 1:171-73) The future must no longer be determined by the past....Anticipation is imperative...in order to be more than herself...“impossible” subject, untenable in a real social framework....But secretly, silently, deep down inside, she grows and multiplies...she goes and passes into infinity....Heterogeneous, yes...she does not cling to herself; she is dispersible, prodigious, stunning, desirous and capable of others, of the other woman that she will be, of the other woman she isn't, of him, of you...she is everywhere, she exchanges...in the exchange that multiplies....She does not “know” what she's giving, she doesn't measure it...she finds not her sum but her differences....In one another we will never be lacking. Cixous (1986, 309-20) If God is dead, everything is permitted, then the conclusion imposing itself within the text of our experience is that the response to God is dead, is nothing is any longer permitted. Lacan (1991, 139) It is therefore absolutely impossible to control capitalism from the metalevel, because capitalism itself is deconstructive. Karatani (1995, 71). (shrink)

In this article I explore some points of convergence between Habermas and Derrida that revolve around the intersection of ethical and epistemological issues in dialogue. After some preliminary remarks on how dialogue and language are viewed by Habermas and Derrida as standpoints for departing from the philosophy of consciousness and from logocentric metaphysics, I cite the main points of a classroom dialogue in order to illustrate the way in which the ideas of Habermas and Derrida are sometimes received as (...) well as the actual relevance of ethical and epistemic concerns within educational settings. I claim that such concerns cannot be sidestepped without cost and that they can be approached by combining rather than rigidly separating Habermas and Derrida. Beyond the consolidated polemics, emancipatory politics and Enlightenment priorities of truth and justice bring Habermasian reconstruction and Derridean deconstruction closer than it is typically assumed. Attention to such a convergence can enrich the teaching material of higher education courses which usually comprises either Habermasian or Derridean texts but rarely both. It can also stave off some of the risks involved in some versions of constructivism as they occur in school practice. (shrink)

Theologians and philosophers remain rather indecisive about the notion of desecularisation. I suggest that desecularisation should be considered relevant insofar as it interacts with other notions belonging to contemporary thought, namely: radical secularisation, desacralisation, deconstruction, and dis-enclosure. I argue that desecularisation can be understood as belonging to the same movement as the one marked by deconstruction and dis-enclosure. Staging this interaction will yield the following: the necessity of secularising secularisation itself, the importance of differentiating between secularisation and desacralisation, (...) the rightful belonging of desecularisation to the events of deconstruction and dis-enclosure at the “end” of metaphysics, and the need to rewind the ideological abuse of secularisation. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is described as a post-continental philosopher to distinguish his work from that of thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault. Indeed he is critical of key strategies characteristic of genealogical and deconstructive critiques, since he wishes to reconnect with fundamental metaphysical and ethical preoccupations of the western philosophical tradition. In Badiou’s work metaphysical, ethical and socio-political concerns are interwoven. In this article Ioffer a critical evaluation of Badiou’s philosophy, moving from an examination of his writing on ethics to the (...) ontological positions which underlie his ethics and socio-political critique. In my critical evaluation I draw attention to the new work going on in metaphysics in analytical philosophy, but, more fundamentally, I draw upon Bernard Lonergan’s critical realist thought. (shrink)

Central to Holmes Rolston’s Environmental Ethics is the theoretical quest of most enviromnental philosophers for a defensible concept of intrinsic value for nonhuman natural entities and nature as a whole. Rolston’s theory is similar to Paul Taylor’s in rooting intrinsic value in conation, but dissimilar in assigning value bonuses to consciousness and self-consciousness and value dividends to organic wholes andelemental nature. I argue that such a theory of intrinsic value flies in the face of the subject/object and fact/value dichotomies of (...) the metaphysical foundations of modem science—a problem Rolston never directly confronts. The modern scientific world view is obsolete. A post-modem scientific world view provides for a range of potential values in nature actualizable upon interaction with consciousness. The bestthat a modem scientific world view can provide are subject-generated—though not necessarily subject-centered—values in nature. (shrink)

The paper evaluates a well‐known argument for a self from episodic memories—that remembering that I did something or thought something involves experiencing the identity of my present self with the past doer or thinker. Shaun Nichols argues that although it phenomenologically appears to be the case that we are identical with the past self, no metaphysical conclusion can be drawn from the phenomenology. I draw on literature from contemporary psychology and Buddhist resources to arrive at a more radical conclusion: that (...) there is no phenomenological sense of identity with a past self; the sense of self in episodic memory depends on narrative construction of the self. (shrink)

TWENTIETH CENTURY PHENOMENOLOGY articulates itself in terms of both an implicit and explicit interpretation of Greek philosophy. 'Phenomenology' is not only a Greek-based word, it signifies a Greek way of thinking. Yet within this Hellenic economy two affiliated currents appear that lead, at first, to a small difference and, then, finally, to a dramatic difference in the way phenomenology relates to the Greeks. The first current is represented by Husserl whose relation I shall call the constructing one, the second by (...) Heidegger which I shall call the deconstructing one. I want to explore and contrast these relations from that perspective. To a remarkable degree, they bear a resemblance to those which open and close the nineteenth century, which is to say the first great phenomenologist, Hegel, and the first great deconstructionist, Nietzsche. According to the constructive program, the purpose of phenomenology is to carry forward philosophical thought, while revising and shifting it, in order to build and complete the edifice of Greek philosophical science. It supposes a certain archë, follows a course even as it insists on past diversions and errance [[sic]] in its pursuit, and orients itself toward a future telos. (shrink)

It seems that Derrida objects to Gadamer's hermeneutics on the grounds that it is, as Gadamer puts it, "a discipline that guarantees truth," taking it as something that partakes in the "metaphysics of presence." However, this criticism is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of hermeneutic truth. It would be on target if hermeneutic truth were some kind of universal condition of correspondence. Gadamer has tried to correct this conception of hermeneutic truth in his various attempts at opening (...) a dialogue with deconstructionism. In this article, the author argues that in a possible debate between hermeneutics and deconstructionism, there are good reasons to judge in favor of the former. (shrink)

Roland Végső opens up a new debate in favour of abandoning the very idea of the world in both philosophy and politics. Opening with a reconsideration of the Heideggerian critique of worldlessness, he traces the overlooked history of worldlessness in Hannah Arendt, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou.