Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

In _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who attempt (...) to deny or delimit it._ In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion—Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable _will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition. "William Franke is an articulate spokesman for what cannot be said not only with regards to modern European poetry but also with respect to contemporary theology. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable _is essential reading for everyone working in religion and literature and in modern theology." — Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia __ "By now, it would seem that there could be no more to say about not-saying. Apophatic language and negative theology have been accused of meaninglessness, nihilism, and even ill-concealed ontologies. In this lovely and surprising book, William Franke not only deftly undoes these criticisms but shows that apophasis underlies and strangely grounds all language and thought, even of those very discourses that most vigorously reject it. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_ demonstrates with elegance that there is indeed more to say, and more that is both meaningful and important." — Karmen MacKendrick, Le Moyne College__ "William Franke is an eminent scholar in comparative literature, who is schooled in philosophy and religion. He is recognized as one of the most creative contemporary thinkers working at the double intersection of philosophy and literature and philosophy and theology. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_ shows an intellectual grasp of a dizzying array of discourses and sheds real light on all thinkers who are discussed." — Cyril O'Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 95-98 [Access article in PDF] Response to Frede V. Nielsen's "Didactology as a Field of Theory and Research in Music Education" Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon Northwestern University Let me begin by acknowledging what is about to become obvious: I am not a musicologist, music educator, or a philosopher of music education. I am, however, a philosopher of education and a devoted student of music, (...) so I found Frede Nielsen's paper both intriguing and rewarding. It is intriguing because it positions the theoretical study of music education—what he calls "didactology"—in relation to the practice of teaching music and exemplifies, if you will, the practice of didactology. As a philosopher, and one who has worked at philosophy of science as well as philosophy of education, I became intrigued by the conceptual ground-clearing and ground-construction that Nielsen undertakes in his paper.I found the paper rewarding for two reasons. First, it is about music—at least I think it is about music, and music is about my favorite topic. Like many good works on aesthetic subjects, it seems to offer another way into a beloved yet ultimately mystifying domain and, thus, another glimpse into the unfathomable. Second, the paper offers a complex and rigorous analysis. I had fun wading through its parts and beginning to view them in relation to one another. I think that I have begun to understand not only the difference between didactics and didactology but also something about the contribution the latter might make.So to begin these remarks, let me offer a brief overview of some key points in the paper. I will then go on to raise a question or two with the hope that these will prompt Nielsen to further elaborate his ideas.To begin, Nielsen separates the topic of music pedagogy into two parts—the [End Page 95] normative and the descriptive. He defends both the study of theory and the study of practice as useful for understanding the subject of music pedagogy. He then defines the term "didactology" as "the theory of didactics, especially the theory of the content, aim, and rationale of education," and he defines "didactics" as planning and decision-making related to the practice of teaching. He tells us that didactology, though theoretical, is related to practice, that while it is descriptive rather than prescriptive it assumes values, that it "implies a view of science and the subject—the subject of music and the music itself." A didactological statement is a scientific statement and its truth is judged according to criteria for scientific truth. In summary, according to Nielsen: It is the task of and the object area of didactology in relation to the subject of music to describe, analyze, problematize, and develop intended, actual, or possible issues concerning music education as well as its conditions with special regard to the content, aims, and rationale of the education. Can the didactology of music be an independent science? The answer seems to be yes. As an illustration of the claim, Neilsen presents us with four levels of didactological reflection. The four levels, from top to bottom, are, fourth, reality (natura)—the "inner" and "outer" aspects—which refers to the experiences of hearing/understanding and performing the music; third, the musical phenomena (ars)—the music itself (the musical phenomena include, it seems, the social and existential contexts in which the music occurs); second, the theory that offers a disciplined or systematic explanation of the musical phenomena (scientia), that is, musicology (the theory envisions the musicology—the explanation of the musical phenomena—in relation to, for example, the theory and practice of teaching the music itself); and first, the didactic practices and didactological principles (didactica) that serve as the basis for determining "the content, aim, and rationale of teaching and learning music."Now despite the elegance of the typology here, I find myself wondering about two things. First, what is the subject of Nielsen's analysis? He tells us that... (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Life has a central position in Hegel’s philosophy, and its development has gone through the stages from primitive unity to finite life. In this process it appears in two forms: the first is the form of conceptual definitions about life, which mainly involves Hegel’s preexisting thoughts, and these definitions are born out of his thinking about how to overcome the subject-object split; the second is the form of the principle of life, which mainly appears in the process of constructing (...) Hegel’s philosophical system, and the dialectical kernel of which is reflected in his combining of life with negativity. The study of the principle of life in Hegel’s philosophy enables a complete understanding of Hegel’s thought. This study deals with three aspects to reveal the principle of life in Hegel’s philosophy in terms of vitalization of the self, changes in pre and post thought. The vitalization of the self in Hegel’s philosophy is discussed, and the principle of life in Hegel’s philosophy is elaborated in two stages: the first and the second. (shrink)

In this paper, I deal with Heidegger’s evolving account of metaphysics, since Heidegger’s persistent concern, the question of being, is a basic metaphysical question. To date, most Heidegger scholars have focused only on a particular stage of Heidegger’s philosophy: either his early attempt to deconstruct metaphysics, or his efforts to overcome metaphysics in the 1930s, or his late embrace of ‘releasement’ from metaphysics. However, these limited approaches fail to address Heidegger’s different understandings of metaphysics, which lie at the root of (...) his changing approaches to the question of being. They also fail to explain whether there is any inner connection between the various approaches. Further, given Heidegger’s unremittingly negative attitude towards metaphysics, some scholars have even maintained that Heidegger thought it both possible and desirable to leave metaphysics behind altogether. I address these issues first by arguing that metaphysics for Heidegger has three interconnected meanings: initially it is the representation of the totality of things that are present-at-hand, a view subsequently developed into subjective representational thinking, and finally radicalized into an expression of the will to power. At each stage, Heidegger critiques the metaphysical tradition but never claims that it can be fully eliminated, since it is a mode of Dasein’s being and ultimately possiblized by being itself. For this reason, Heidegger’s own philosophy of being remains inseparable from metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 539-560 [Access article in PDF] Plenitude, Possibility, and the Limits of Reason: A Medieval Arabic Debate on the Metaphysics of Nature Taneli Kukkonen In a recent article Simo Knuuttila has examined the argumentative patterns of modern cosmology, especially the search in fundamental physics for an "ultimate explanation," a unified "Theory of Everything" that would subsume all more local theories under (...) its aegis. Knuuttila goes on to compare contemporary modes of explanation with previous ways of conceiving of the metaphysics of understanding. As it turns out, on the cosmological borderline where physics shades into metaphysics desires similar at heart have fueled the efforts of thinkers throughout the history of western thought. When what is at stake is the final intelligibility of the world, shared ideals of necessity, transparency, and simplicity come to the fore. More often than not, theological concerns and preconceptions accompany these notions. 1One can react to this finding in one of two ways, either by retorting that the moderns have not gotten very far or by pointing out that earlier discussions on the topic were often quite philosophically sophisticated. In this article I propose to investigate how some of the issues raised by Knuuttila figure in a specific historical context. This is the debate on the pre-eternity of the world initiated by the celebrated Muslim theologian Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî (1058-1111) in his polemic arguing for The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahâfut al-falâsifa, 1095) and later picked up by the Andalusian philosopher Averroës (1126-98) in [End Page 539] his reply, The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahâfut al-tahâfut, 1180). 2 The exceptionally rich cosmological materials could be taken in any number of directions, but I will focus on three main issues: the discussants' construction of the domain of possibilities (i.e. the relation of the possible to the actual), their understanding of the reasonability of creation, and the question of its finitude and infinity. The study is undertaken partly to illustrate the sophistication with which the topics were handled in medieval Islamic philosophy, but in each case I will also draw parallels with certain modern conceptions, and I submit that in each case al-Ghazâlî's and Averroës's debate throws light on the contemporary discussion. In the final section I will develop this contention further by pointing to a connection between finitude and possibilities which I believe has both heuristic and existential value. Plenitude and Possibility Among historians of philosophy it is now acknowledged that in late medieval discussions certain modal theoretical innovations were instrumental in bringing about profound change in the western worldview. A conceptual shift occurred where, roughly speaking, a single intelligible universe was exchanged for several possible worlds. In Knuuttila's estimation this change in worldviews was in some ways more fundamental than anything modern science has produced since. 3 This claim deserves consideration but I would like first to outline what the change was about, for in al-Ghazâlî's and Averroës's debate this shift in modal paradigms is clearly discernible.Representative of the philosophers' point of view, Averroës holds onto the received Arabic Aristotelian interpretation of setting possibilities in a statistical temporal-frequency framework. According to this account, what is truly possible must at some time be realized--this is a technical interpretation of what has after Lovejoy commonly become known as the principle of plenitude. 4 As a [End Page 540] corollary, what always is is necessarily. The cosmological consequences of these assumptions can be outlined as follows. First, lest God's creative possibilities be limited, it must be admitted that the world could have been created however long ago in the past. By extension God must have been able to create the world an infinite time ago. But if it is a genuine possibility that the world is eternally old, then according to the principle of plenitude, this possibility is an actual fact. Once it is... (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 6–21. The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet , 1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness is not a form of condescension: by publishing a complete system of philosophy in the grand style, he has already done what none of us (...) in the older generation of speculative realists has done so far. His book is sophisticated, erudite, rigorous, imaginatively rich, and abundant in worldly wisdom– despite the author’s conclusion that wisdom does not exist. The quality and scope of Forme et objet took few observers by surprise, since Garcia has been treated as an emerging philosopher to watch across half a decade of Parisian oral tradition. But Garcia was not just the subject of rumor, being already well known to the French public as a writer of fiction. His debut novel, La meilleure part des hommes , 2 was awarded the 2008 Prix de Flore 3 and has already appeared in English as Hate: A Romance . 4 His follow-up novel, Mémoires de la jungle , 5 made clever use of a chimpanzee narrator. Nor was Garcia only published as a novelist before last November: his philosophical study L’Image 6 had already appeared when the author was just twenty-six, a year before he was crowned by the muses at the historic Café de Flore. And then in 2011, just months before the appearance of Forme et objet , Garcia published a widely distributed work entitled Nous, animaux et humains , 7 with its focus on Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about animals. Given this prolific and versatile track record, an optimistic scenario might envisage the young Garcia as one of those combined literary/philosophical talents who appear intermittently in France across the centuries: Jean-Paul Sartre is merely the most famous recent case. While more time is needed to see how Garcia will channel his impressive mental energies, Forme et objet displays such breadth of insight that its author has a good chance to emerge as one of the leading philosophers of his generation. If we accept Aristotle’s dictum that the peak mental age is fifty-one, then to read Garcia’s massive book is to gain some idea of what European philosophy might look like in the futuristic-sounding 2030’s. The present article is confined to Forme et objet . At 486 pages, the work is obviously daunting in size. Indeed, it is even longer than it sounds, given that many of its early sections are printed in a smaller typeface to designate them as supplemental commentary to the main flow of the argument. But while the length of the book reportedly led to delays in French publication, and will probably slow the inevitable appearance of an English translation, the length of the book should not deter interested readers– much of it results from Garcia’s teacherly writing style. Whereas Quentin Meillassoux’s prose displays an arctic economy of means, Garcia’s style is reminiscent of the repeated lessons of oral classroom proceedings. Rarely is the reader given fewer than three or four chances to master an idea before the author moves on to the next. In practice, the style feels welcoming rather than long-winded. Otherwise, the structure of Forme et objet is surprisingly simple. There is a useful Introduction of less than twenty pages. Then comes Book I: Formally , running to approximately 135 pages. Here Garcia outlines the most basic features of a thing “no matter what it is,” or n’importe quoi , an everyday phrase that Garcia shapes into a technical term. This part of the book feels at times like a more amiable version of Hegel’s Science of Logic , a parallel emphasized further by the threefold articulation of its theme: 1. Thing; 2. Thing and World; 3. Being and Understanding. This is followed by the much longer Book II: Objectively , totaling more than 300 pages. It contains sixteen essay-like meditations on specific kinds of objects—including time, animals, humans, history, gender, and death. Here each chapter rolls smoothly into the next, making this second part of the book feel more like a different work of Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit . But these are merely analogies. Garcia is no Hegelian, even if the book contains a few dialectical flourishes that seem to reflect his early enthusiasm for the Frankfurt School. Forme et objet ends with a six-page Coda, followed by the usual page of acknowledgments. In what follows, I will briefly summarize each of these four parts of the book before ending with some more general remarks. Before doing so, it will be useful to situate Garcia biographically (as much as I am able) and philosophically. Though Toulouse is his native city, his formative years were spent largely in Algeria, where his family has deep roots. During our sole private conversation, Garcia mentioned that his parents are professors of literature. 8 As a student of philosopher Garcia flourished so early that many of his current ideas date to his teenaged years: “There are sentences in Forme et objet that I wrote when I was seventeen,” he said in response to a question on that cold night on the Canal St.-Martin. I recalled that remark when reading his brilliant account, late in the book, of the central role of adolescence in contemporary culture. While many prodigies blow through their formal academic training without serious obstruction, Garcia’s student memories are rich in tales of isolation and struggle, though equally rich in gratitude for a half-dozen or so exceptional teachers who provided the intellectual space he needed: Meillassoux and Alain Badiou are simply two of the most prominent figures on that list. Though there are many points of agreement between Garcia’s philosophical position and my own, he not only reached his position years before reading my work, 9 he arrived along a rather different path: not through phenomenology, but via the Frankfurt School, which may be one of the reasons for his profound fascination with aesthetics. Garcia’s cultural background is as broad as one could wish: he is no less informed about punk rock and European football leagues than about the spiritualist roots of Bergson’s philosophy. Curious about everything and contemptuous towards nothing, Garcia can be expected to write insightfully on dozens of topics in the years to come. Given that his philosophy is so personally tantalizing in its agreements and disagreements with my own, and given the great internal richness of Forme et objet itself, the present review is no better than a first effort at coming to terms with the challenges posed by this minstrel from the rising generation. This is especially intriguing for older Generation X’ers like me, since confrontation with the younger generation is one of the many themes treated insightfully in Garcia’s book. 1. Introduction Garcia begins in defense of a so-called “flat ontology,” in which all things are equally things. While Roy Bhaskar 10 used this term pejoratively to refer to anti-realist philosophies that flatten everything onto an epistemic plane of human access, Manuel DeLanda 11 (an admirer of Bhaskar) reversed it into the positive principle that all realities are equally realities. Similar notions can be found in the “absistence” of Alexius Meinong, 12 the “irreduction” of Bruno Latour, 13 and my own critique 14 of the undermining/overmining pair. Also noteworthy is Levi Bryant’s use of the term “flat ontology” throughout The Democracy of Objects 15 and his earlier essay “The Ontic Principle.” 16 But for Garcia, flatness is only one face of the cosmos, and one that he ultimately declares to be rather impoverished. Even so, he always remains an advocate of a flat ontology. Insofar as everything is equally something, no matter what it is ( n’importe qui ), everything is equally a thing, equally solitary in its relation with world. This is why his book abounds in those long lists of random, ontologically equivalent entities that Ian Bogost has playfully termed “Latour Litanies.” 17 The first litany in Garcia’s book runs as follows: “We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things.” (7) Yet Garcia is frankly dualistic; his flat ontology only lasts until page 159 and the end of Book I (entitled “Formally”), which deals entirely with things that are equally things. Thereafter Garcia turns his attention from things to objects, which are not flat in the least, but engage in hierarchical relations with one another. In agreement with both DeLanda and the speculative realists, Garcia proclaims that his book “proposes to put to the test a thought about things rather than a thought about our thought about things .” (8) Just as ducklings are “imprinted” (9) after hatching and treat the first creature they see as their mother, philosophers are imprinted by the idea with which they begin. Hence, philosophies that begin with human access will never truly find their way back to things. This makes Garcia rather suspicious of twentieth century philosophy, since “the twentieth century—to which in some way this work proposes to bid adieu—has been a period of theorizing modes of access to things rather than things...” (9) Among other possible benefits of the philosophy of things that Garcia proposes, it is fully able to account for thought as a special variant of things, while the reverse is not possible.(10) In Book I of Forme et objet , Garcia’s “things” are so flat, so de-determined, that he is forced to renounce some of the most basic features ascribed to things by most realists. As he tells us in his foreboding third footnote: “We will maintain that the solitude [of things] is less than unity, less than identity, and that it does not imply acceptance (any more than refusal) of the principle of non-contradiction.” (11) In a contemporary world cluttered with too many things, Garcia’s flat and formal plane provides us with some breathing room: “The formal plan of thought enables or re-enables us to cut short all accumulation—whether of knowing, experience, or action—by a simplicity, an impoverished surface...” (13) As Garcia says elsewhere in responding to a Deleuzian critic of the book, his starting point in flat ontology is designed to obstruct the claims of both analytic philosophy and Hegelianism: “Hence, this work seeks to protect each thing—real, imaginary, inconsistent, contradictory—both against Ockham’s Razor and against the Aufhebung or dialectical process.” 18 Yet contrary to the equalizing spirit of many flat ontologies, “we will add to our formal ontology of the equal, an objective ontology of the unequal.” (13) But initially, Garcia joins all flat ontologists in holding that everything is irreducible: “this irreducibility, which we will term the ‘chance’ of each thing... also marks the refusal of a positive thought that reduces things exclusively to natural things, or social things, or historical things, etc.” (15) This irreducible “chance” of a thing emerges as an important technical term in the book, always paired with its inverted brother, the “price to pay” ( prix à payer ). On pages 17-19, we find the only diagrams in the book. What they illustrate is that Garcia wishes to avoid two equally dangerous extremes. The first is the philosophy of substance, featuring the thing-in-itself as a mighty river fed by attributes as if by subordinate tributary streams. This model can be found in many of the classic thinkers of West and East alike. In it, “there is obviously a hierarchization between that which is dragged towards something other than itself, and this other which serves it as an ontological support while supporting its proper being.” (16) For Garcia, the second extreme worth avoiding is the philosophy of events: “One thus conceives trajectories of being, identified as events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality. These vectors of being come first, bearing and supporting being, displacing it, but without ever finding a stopping point, a buffer, an objective consistency.” (17) The first model gives us a thing too wrapped up in itself, too compact . This word “compact” (the French and the English are the same) is another technical term for Garcia. But if the “compact” model of things leads us to something more than things, the philosophy of events gives us less than things, by dissolving them into a play of vectors. Garcia’s alternative lies midway between these two extremes: Being enters the thing, being comes out of it. And a thing is nothing other than the difference between the enters and the being that comes out. Thus, the circuit of being is never halted. In the thing, there is never the thing-in-itself. And the thing is never in-itself, but outside of itself. Nonetheless, being is not eventally “pollinated” by vectors: it possesses an objecting halting-point... (19) This single idea is the key to Garcia’s book: the thing is neither a self-contained durable lump nor some sort of evental flux. Instead, the thing is the difference between its various components and its relations with its environment. Or stated differently: “the price to pay for this disposition is a circulation of being that systematically distinguishes two senses of things: that which is in the thing , and that in which the thing is , or that which encompasses it and that which it encompasses,” (19) translating comprendre here as “encompass.” 19 In a beautiful description of a piece of black slate, Garcia sums up the various minerals, qualities, and shapes that compose [ comprend ] it, and calls them “that which is in the thing,” (20) noting that this tells us nothing about “that in which [the slate] is”—namely, all the various situations in which the black slate can be found. Instead, the slate is the difference between these two: the most characteristic principle of Garcia’s philosophy. 2. Formally Book One of Forme et objet , “Formally,” is concerned with the formal equality of all things in a flat world. “Two questions mark the boundaries of reflection: of what is everything composed [ composé ], and: what do all things compose?” (27) Looking downward, we wish to know what everything is made of; looking upward, we want to know the ultimate result of the combination of all things. Here we must turn our attention to the thing n’importe quoi— no matter what it is. (30) Anything with finite qualities is obviously too specific to be relevant to global ontological questions. To an equal degree, something possessing all qualities (think of Whitehead’s God) 20 would not be n’importe quoi either, since it would still be too definite, even if incredibly vast. The same holds for contradictions, since these all differ from each other. The square circle, the non-white black white, and the non-city city are all too distinct to count as the thing no matter what it is. The n’importe quoi must be devoid of all specific qualities, including contradictory ones. In one of the more intriguing points in his book, so reminiscent of Meinong, Garcia proclaims that “the ‘no matter what it is’ is neither a reality nor an abstract construction, nor both of these at once; the ‘no matter what it is’ is simply the plane of equality of that which is real, that which is possible, that which is inexistent, that which is past, that which is impossible, that which is true, that which is false, that which is bad.”(39-40) Since everything has two faces, it would be a grievous mistake to focus on just one of them at the expense of the other, as physicalism or materialism do when reducing the world to minuscule physical underpinnings. For scientistic materialism, “it is either atoms, particles, or fields of force... which are the things.” (47-48) Moreover, “these more-than-things are accompanied by less-than-things: for example, ideas or facts of consciousness are determined by the state of matter and are not autonomous things, but manifestations reduced to secondary effects of material processes...” (48) On this point, Garcia’s position is in complete accord with my own critique of undermining and overmining. 21 Where we disagree is that Garcia is more deeply suspicious of the notion of substance, which I view as salvageable with a few needed changes, while Garcia sees this operation as hopeless: “A substance, in the history of philosophy, is the more-than-thing par excellence.” (51) Another agreement between our positions is visible when Garcia claims (correctly, in my opinion) “that it is vain to distinguish between things which are material and those which are not.” (52) Yet we also find an even more important disagreement, since for Garcia withdrawal cannot be the quality of a thing. Instead, the absence of a thing is simultaneous with it, embodied in all that is not it– the absence of the sculpture of a woman is to be found in the mold that appears at the same time as it, and thus withdrawal must be viewed as an “event” rather than as something pertaining to an object. For Garcia, nothing withdraws beyond access. Since we must distinguish between “that which is something” and “that which something is,” and since the former is identified with “no matter what it is is” and the latter with “ not no matter what it is,” we can say that “everything is thus a milieu, a fragile link between ‘no matter what it is’ and ‘ not no matter what it is.’” (62) And here we find Garcia’s critique of the thing-in-itself: “A thing is never defined en bloc . We can affirm that a thing is this or that, but that does not suffice. It is still necessary to state precisely that which is this thing .” (62) Stated differently, “something is not in itself : for that which is in the thing is not the thing, and that in which the thing is is not the thing.” (62) And here Garcia and I, facing the same evidence, draw opposite conclusions. For me, the fact that nothing can be identified with either its components or its concrete location means that the thing must be something in-itself distinct from both of these. Yet for Garcia, to be in-itself would mean to be identified with just one of these two extreme terms, and hence the thing can only be the difference between them. Garcia is equally suspicious of the classical tendency to view “unity” as a property of the thing, since in his eyes unity is too relational a property to belong to things. (65) While specific things are situated determinately with respect to other things, we are still speaking here about the thing no matter what it is, and this can be viewed only in terms of solitude, which all things share: a human being, a hand, or a chair or all equally things insofar as they are on their own , not insofar as they are one . (64) A thing is alone, and relates only to the one thing that is not another thing: world. In a striking parallel to my own argument for a partial revival of occasionalism, Garcia tells us that “the things communicate only by their solitude: it is because everything is equally on its own in the world that things can be together, enmeshed in one another.” (67) Alone in their solitude, things all relate to world, which serves as a mediator allowing them to become mixed up in one another. As we have seen, one reason that nothing can be in itself is because everything is in something else. For Garcia, “to be in something and to be something are equivalent.” (69) Stated more broadly, “being is thus the difference between the two aspects of each thing: that which is it, and that which it is.” (70) And even more vividly: “a thing is almost like a sack: there is that which one puts in the sack and that which remains outside the sack.” (70) But not quite like a sack, “since a thing is not a thin skin or film. Instead, a thing is comparable to a sack that is immaterial and without thickness: it is nothing other than the difference between that which is this thing and that which thing is, between content and container.” (71) Nothing can be in-itself because everything is two selves at once. For example, we cannot say that our self is defined by our consciousness: “Everything has a self because nothing is in itself. The self is not the quality of that which is related to itself (which is conscious, for example) or which thinks itself related to itself. Nonetheless, for an entity called ‘conscious’ to be related to itself, it is necessary that this very relation should be another thing than the self to which it is related.” (71) Consciousness cannot be the self, precisely because it is other than that of which it is conscious. Nothing is able to grasp itself. The self is “the function by which being and composition [ compréhension ] are mutually excluded...” (72) The self is “the point of shadow of everything that projects some light...” (72) The in-itself faces two opposite dangers: “For something to be in-itself is to be a self. Something which is a self flies out through one of its two sides... Stated differently, being in-itself is simply the possibility of a double failure.” (73) The in-itself can be termed compact : “There remains to us a means of thinking that which does not fully enter into the world, though without exiting from it. This means is what we call the compact.” (76) In a sense, the compact is the opposite of the world. For in the case of the world, everything enters it and it enters nothing; as for the compact, it enters the world (since it is something, after all) while nothing enters it. (77) The compact marks the presence of the impossible in the world. (78) It is not impossible, but possible only on the condition that it fails. (78) The time has come to speak of where a thing is located. “The sole condition of a thing is that of being in another thing than itself, and thus in another thing than something.” (78) A condition is “that which determines something, that which forms something, that in which something is.” (78) As for humans, “the condition of someone is his situation; my social condition is that which socially determines me, my place and my function...” (79) More generally, “to be conditioned is to find oneself reduced to that in which one is.” (79) Everything is conditioned, but nothing is reducible to this condition. To determine the condition of something is to determine in what it is. A thing is located in that which contradicts it, just as a statue exists in its mold, which is precisely that which it is not. Since the thing is finite and definite, its condition or form must be infinite and indefinite. That in which all things are is the world, which Garcia also terms “the whole.” (81) “To try to be in-itself is to attempt to remain outside the world. And indeed, to try to be in-itself is only a path of entry into the world.” (83) For Garcia, “the world is not the pre-existent container of the things it contains, a priori , nor the construction by the mind of a fictional ensemble of all things, a posteriori .” (85) Instead, the world is simultaneous with all things; the two always go together. The world cannot be a determinate world, such as the physical universe or mathematical space, since these are already too specific and limited. “Every determinate world, which is in fact a universe , is a ‘big thing’ [ grosse chose ]: it is a set, however vast, of composite things which itself embodies a thing.” (85) Every determinate world is really just a “big thing.” Stated differently, “it is nothing other than a balanced milieu between the things that compose it and the thing that it composes.” (85) We generally picture the world as a physical univer. (shrink)

In the conceptual preliminaries of his philosophical Encyclopedia Hegel discusses three approaches to epistemology under the headings of three ‘Attitudes of Thought Toward Objectivity’. The third of these is Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate’ or intuitive knowledge. Hegel’s discussion presumes great familiarity with Jacobi’s highly polemical and now seldom read texts. In this essay I disambiguate and reconstruct Hegel’s discussion of Jacobi, in close consideration of Jacobi’s texts, showing why Hegel finds him important and what Hegel’s objections to his doctrines (...) are. Jacobi’s importance for Hegel lies in three points. First, Hegel agrees with Jacobi’s claim, against Kant, that God and the world are themselves knowable. Second, Hegel must answer Jacobi’s charge that discursive thinking ineluctably leads to determinism and ultimately to nihilism. Third, Hegel’s analysis of Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate knowledge’ reveals some points that are important to Hegel’s metaphysics. Hegel mounts five objections to Jacobi’s doctrine. First, Jacobi’s key term ‘immediacy’ illicitly equivocates among the rejection of three different kinds of ‘mediation’: syllogistic inference, the application of concepts, and representational accounts of perception. Second, Jacobi’s doctrine of a-conceptual knowledge is untenable because one must apply concepts to objects in order identify objects and thus to know what kinds of things known objects are. Third, if a fundamental point of Hegel’s holistic ontology (explained in the essay) is correct, then the identity conditions of things are interdependent, and this interdependence would render ‘immediate’ knowledge impossible. Fourth, Jacobi’s doctrine is self-referentially inconsistent: it is possible on his doctrine to prove that his doctrine is false. Finally, Jacobi’s doctrine licenses question-begging and is in principle unable to address or to settle disagreements among divergent intuitions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel and the Problem of Beginning: Scepticism and Presuppositionlessness by Robb DUNPHYJ. M. FritzmanDUNPHY, Robb. Hegel and the Problem of Beginning: Scepticism and Presuppositionlessness. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. x + 213 pp. Cloth, $105.00This rich, learned, and important book investigates and critically evaluates how, according to Hegel, philosophy should begin. Briefly stated, the problem of beginning philosophy is that any beginning seems susceptible to a skeptical (...) challenge that takes the form of a dilemma. On the one side, if philosophy begins immediately with a presuppositionless assertion, skeptics will contend that it is dogmatic. On the other side, if philosophy begins mediately with a claim that presupposes an argument, skeptics will confront each premise of that argument with a trilemma: The premise is either only a dogmatic assertion; it is the conclusion of an argument whose premises must in turn be justified (which threatens an infinite regress); or it depends on an argument that is viciously circular. Hegel solves this problem with a beginning that is simultaneously immediate and mediate.The introduction explains that this book has three goals. First, it critically analyzes the problem of beginning, showing how Hegel responds to the skeptical challenge. Second, it explains how Hegel’s approach to the problem and his solution are informed by his deep engagement with the tradition of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Finally, it provides a guide to reading Hegel’s essay “With What Must the Beginning of the Science be Made?” in the Science of Logic.Chapter 1, “Hegel and Pyrrhonian Scepticism,” presents the essentials of Pyrrhonism and Hegel’s interpretation of it. Pyrrhonism is a way of life. It aims to find an equally good counterargument for every argument it encounters, thus leading to a suspension of judgment that allows the skeptic to live in a state of undisturbedness. Pyrrhonism presents encountered arguments with a trilemma: Either they depend on dogmatic assertions; they generate an infinite regress of arguments; or they are viciously circular. Hegel’s interpretation emphasizes skepticism’s equipollence, whereby it opposes every argument with a counterargument that is equally persuasive. Viewed historically, Pyrrhonism seems to have confronted arguments only as it happened to encounter them and to have restricted itself to epistemology. However, Hegel is open to the interpretation that skepticism’s inquiry could be completed. This would allow it to demonstrate that for every argument there will always be an [End Page 143] equally persuasive counterargument. He also interprets skepticism as accepting a metaphysical principle regarding the inherent instability of objects.“A Short History of the Problem of Beginning,” chapter 2, provides a detailed précis of Hegel’s essay. It also gives the brief history of the problem of beginning, discussing Descartes, Kant, Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling. It notes that some philosophers posit an objective beginning, others a subjective beginning. It explains why Hegel regards previous attempts to solve the problem of beginning as inadequate. It recognizes that Fichte’s solution can be interpreted as much closer to that of Hegel than Hegel acknowledges.Chapter 3, “The Problem of Beginning,” supplies Hegel’s own account of the problem. His solution has two versions, one in the Science of Logic and the other in the Encyclopedia Logic. Each version posits a beginning without determinate content. In the Science of Logic, Hegel states that absolute knowing, the culminating shape of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, corresponds to the empty thinking with which philosophy begins. Philosophy’s beginning in the Science of Logic is mediate as it emerges from the progression of shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit and immediate as it does not have an object of thought. In the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel proposes that a completed skepticism corresponds to the abstract concept of being with which philosophy begins. Philosophy’s beginning in the Encyclopedia Logic is mediate as it emerges from the skepticism’s equipollence and immediate as being without content. Hegel ultimately denies that a completed skepticism could play this role, however, which suggests that he believes that philosophy can begin immediately.“Meditation I—Phenomenology,” chapter 4, argues that Hegel’s first version is unsuccessful. To succeed, William Maker’s interpretation would have to be accepted, which... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:82 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PEIRGE'S MARGINALIA IN W. T. HARRIS' Hegel's Logic Among the most eminent philosophers of nineteenth-century America were William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) and Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914 ). The former, by his establishment in 1867 of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, furnished a starting point for American philosophical maturity. The latter, who contributed to that iournal, has been considered America's greatest logician. It may therefore be (...) of interest to examine Peirce's marginalia in the first edition of Harris' chief work, Hegel's Logic: A Book on the Genesis of the Categories of the Mind (Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1890). Discovered by the present writer on a New York book-stall, in a cheaply priced, coverless, and water-stained copy, and now in his possession, it bears imprinted on the reverse of the title page: "Harvard University: Philos. Dept. Library. Gift of Mrs. Charles S. Peirce. June 28, 1915." Shortly after Peirce, in depressed circumstances, died on April 19, 1914, the Harvard Philosophy Department acquired from his wife the manuscripts that were published in the Collected Papers.1 Harris' Hegel's Logic, which presumably accompanied that transaction, contains several marginal annotations, mostly in faded ink, in a neat, small hand, similar to that reproduced in the frontispiece to Volume IV of Peirce's Collected Papers. Recalling a notable philosophical conjunction, the markings also reveal aspects of Peirce's character and confirm his complex attitude toward Hegel, crucial to the development of his philosophy. Peirce's shifting view and persistent concern regarding Hegel may be traced in some other remarks. For example, in a letter to Harris dated January 1, 1868, he says, "I admit there is music in the logic of Hegel, but that is all I discover there. ''2 In another letter to Harris, dated May 13, 1868, he indicates his ambivalence: "But as I should draw the line... I should come on the same side as Hegel, because I am idealistic. I do not 1eel very much opposed to Hegel, though I think his main point.s tin his own estimate of importance) are wrong. ''s About 1890, Peirce declared, "I reiect his philosophy in toto, ''~ and about 1896, he accused Hegel of reaching "each category from the last preceding by virtually calling 'next!'-5 Yet, in 1903, he acclaimed Hegel "in some respects the greatest philosopher that ever lived. ''6 And, in the very same year, reviewing another treatment of Hegel's logic, and including a reference to Harris' t Eds. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss,and Arthur Burks (Vols.I-VIII; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958). 2,.C.S. Peirce to W. T. Harris." ed. WallaceNethery, The Personalist,XLIII (19fi2),37. I am indebted to Dr. Nethery for his kindness in letting me see these letters in advanceof publication. sIbid.,40. 4Collected Papers,I, 193. 5 Ibid., I, 246. eIbid., I, 277. NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 83 treatise, Peirce flatly remarks: "But all these Hegelians--Harris, XVallace, Hibben, Everett, etc.--who dog the steps of their master in almost textual comments, are profoundly unfaithful to the spirit of his philosophy... the Logik now condemns itself. ''7 A constant feature in Peirce's negative attitude toward Hegel concerns the latter's failure to equip himself scientifically to deal with a subject the American considered basically scientific. For instance, about 1899, Peirce writes: Hegel, while regarding scientific men with disdain, has for his chief topic the importance of continuity, which was the very idea the mathematicians and physicists had been chiefly engaged in following out for three centuries. This made Hegel's work less correct and excellent in itself than it might have been; and at the same time hid its true mode of affinity with the scientific thought into which the life of the race had been chiefly laid up. It was a misfortune for Hegelism~ a misfortune for "philosophy," and a misfortune (in lesser degree) for science: Although Peirce adds, "My philosophy resuscitates Hegel, though in a strange costume, ''9 and his dialectic parallels Hegel's, he attempts to escape the Hegelian subjectivism by an "objective logic" and by avoiding Hegel's supposed mathematical ignorance. "Most of what is true in... (shrink)

Given the tremendous burst of activity in the philosophy of science during the last quarter century, the number of books by trained philosophers dealing with the logic of biology is surprisingly small. Simon’s book resembles Morton Beckner’s The Biological Way of Thought in its comprehensive ambitions: "trying to discover what, if anything, is distinctive about biological science, its concepts, and its mode of explaining." The most obvious difference of the two books is Simon’s long central chapter on "Theories, (...) Models, and the Concept of the Gene," which deals with the history of genetics from Mendel’s predecessors to the successors of Watson and Crick. Beckner paid little explicit attention to the history of biology. Another difference lies in Beckner’s dogged assessment of all problems in the logic of biology from the perspective of what he called the Humean Pattern of Explanation—a detailed and difficult variant of the approach of Hempel, Oppenheim, and Nagel. Simon’s philosophical position is more flexible than Beckner’s. He provides an acceptable review of the literature of the last decade and a half; some of his conclusions are most interesting—even when incompletely supported by his arguments; and the utility of his book is insured by the fact that it is necessary to go back over twelve years to find another with which it can be compared. The first chapter contains a very effective critique of J. J. C. Smart’s thesis that biology is no more an autonomous science than is electrical engineering, but is merely applied physics and chemistry. Smart had argued from the grounds that all biological generalizations implicitly refer to terrestrial evolution and are not truly universal, and Simon demonstrates the general lack of success of all efforts to demonstrate a difference in kind between so-called laws of nature and empirical generalizations of the sort found in biology. The second chapter continues in this same vein, drawing an interesting contrast between phylogenetic explanation in biology and the explanation of individual events in human history, and claiming that ‘explanatory’ status may be granted to accounts which do not meet the requirements of the deductive-nomological model, as in the case of Darwin’s theories of the geographical distribution of plants and animals and the persistence of rudimentary organs. The author’s negative reaction to much of the recent philosophical literature concerning the role of functional analysis in biology seems particularly well placed. Following Hempel, most philosophers writing in the past ten years have regarded the occurrence of the item whose function is in question as the event to be explained. Simon correctly points out that in the biological literature, statements indicating the presence of this item are part of the explanans, usually one component in an explanation of the normal functioning of the organism. He also insists that functional or teleological statements cannot effectively be replaced by nonteleological ones. A functional account is one that relates an entity to the role it plays in an organized system. In the first of several serene non-sequiturs which mar the latter half of this book, Simon insists that the above account shows that the notion of function is essentially an "extrinsic" one and that teleological principles generally cannot be used to account for experience. No better argument than an appeal to Kant’s authority backs up this conclusion. The third chapter deals with the recent history of genetics; its summary makes the claim that "at no time during this history was it correct to say that one model was replaced by another one; rather, the development appears to have been one involving successive correction and refining of earlier conceptions. There has been no revolution: geneticists have always succeeded in either repelling or accommodating critical attacks on the model." The evidence presented earlier in the chapter confers some plausibility on this conclusion, but no more: Simon takes no notice of the controversy surrounding Kuhn and the notion of scientific revolutions, and provides no criteria by which to distinguish "revolutions" from "accommodations." The precise nature of the methodological continuity to be found in the history of genetics is crucial for the view that "biology, or at least genetics, must be regarded as incapable of yielding a complete explanation of the phenomena that come within its purview; if the ultimate principles appealed to are not those of chemistry and physics and hence essentially nonbiological, the explanation cannot be regarded as complete." The text does not clearly indicate the extent to which the author agrees with the statement just quoted; perhaps he only attributes it to "many biologists" impressed by the successes of molecular genetics. It is clear the Simon regards something he calls the "Cartesian attitude" as pervasive in biology. "Biologists are committed to attempting to explain the phenomena of life in terms of the nonliving... The property of being alive or being associated with a living system is simply not treated as a logical primitive within biological science." But this seems to take us back full circle—to the position of Smart, that biology is no more than applied physics and chemistry. Simon disagrees with Smart. How does he stand vis-a-vis this last statement of the Cartesian spirit he finds so pervasive in biology? I think he disagrees with it, but it is very hard to tell. Perhaps the answer is that the resolution of the issue of the autonomy of biology is a pragmatic matter, relative to a complex set of needs and commitments: the sorts of things that determine life styles, political attitudes, and religious points of view, as well as the growth of scientific understanding. The question of the precise configuration of Simon’s pragmatism remains very vague indeed—a consequence of his over use of the style of impersonal attribution rather than direct assertion. Simon says generally sane and familiar things about Biology and the Idea of Progress and about Biology and Ethics. The really startling assertion of the penultimate chapter, that "consciousness" is neither a biological nor a behavioral predicate, and that its foundations are essentially moral and legal, is unfortunately supported by no argument whatsoever. Instead, the reader is urged to examine two of the author’s previous articles.—E. M. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epic and Tragic Music: The Union of the Arts in the Eighteenth CenturyJoshua BillingsI. The Union of the Arts in WeimarAround 1800 in Weimar, thought on Greek tragedy crystallized around the union of speech, music, and gesture—what Wagner would later call the Gesamtkunstwerk. Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder both found something lacking in modern spoken theater in comparison with ancient tragedy’s synthesis of the arts. Schiller’s 1803 (...) “Trauerspiel mit Chören,” Die Braut von Messina, represents a radical experiment in recreating the ancient union of the arts.1 The Greek tragic chorus, revived in Schiller’s drama, becomes the modern locus for this union. In a preface appended to the published version of the play, Schiller writes,The tragic work of poetry first becomes a whole through its theatrical performance: the poet only gives the words; music and dance must be added as well to enliven them. As long as the chorus lacks this powerful sensory accompaniment, so long will it appear in the economy of a tragedy as an alien element, a foreign body, a retardation.2 [End Page 99]Exactly contemporary (and possibly in response), Herder’s discussion of drama in his journal Adrastea similarly views the union of the arts in ancient tragedy as a corrective for modern drama:3A Greek who attended our tragedy [Trauerspiel], used to the musical voice of his own, would have to find in it a sad play [trauriges Spiel]. “How wordy-mute,” he would say, “how dull and soundless! Have I stepped into a decorated grave? You shout and sigh and bluster! Move your arms, strain your facial features, reason, declaim; but does your voice and feeling never become song? Do you not miss the strength of this demonic expression? Do your rhythms, your iambs never urge you on to the accents of the true language of the gods?”4The focus on media distinguishes these Weimar discussions of tragedy both from the Jena aesthetics of the Schlegel brothers and from the Idealist “philosophy of the tragic” already underway in the works of Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hegel.5 Though both Schiller and Herder are relatively indifferent to dance, their writings reflect strong interests in music.6 Their considerations [End Page 100] of tragedy show a close engagement with the sensory experience of drama that is unusual for its time, and has little precedent in Germany.For Schiller’s late poetics, the union of words, music, and gesture is a means of radically dividing the experience of theater from daily life. The tragic chorus “should be for us a living wall, which tragedy sets up around itself in order to close itself off wholly from the real world.”7 It “justifies the tragic poet in this raising of tone, which fills the ear, which strains the spirit, which broadens the whole mind.”8 Musical speech, Schiller argues, allows for an expression that transcends conventional language and quotidian existence. Schiller had hoped “to let [the choral intermezzos] be recited in the way of song and to accompany them with an instrument,” though his wish went unfulfilled in the first, and subsequent performances.9 Yet even after relinquishing the real possibility of a union of the arts in performances of Braut, Schiller upheld it as an ideal in his preface.Herder is remembered today primarily for his elaboration of an organic historicism, which understands cultural phenomena according to the circumstances of their creation. Yet his concern was more than merely historical; especially in the Adrastea, he continually sought guidance for the present in the events of the past. A contemporary, writing shortly after Herder’s death, saw the two orientations, historical and critical, as equally important: investigation of the past was intended as “a didactic or warning image” for his own time.10 The guiding idea of the journal was similarly educative, based on Herder’s understanding of Adrastea as a principle of justice and moderation.11 In Herder’s thought, as in most writing on ancient literature of the eighteenth century, there is no absolute division between scholarly and critical concerns: the study of ancient works was both an end in itself and a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Warner PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: THE CASE OF FOUR QUARTETS I FOR plato the quarrel between philosophy and poetry was already an ancient one. Since his day strenuous efforts have been made to eliminate it by circumscribing each widiin carefully specified boundaries, on die principle that strong fences make good neighbors, and allowing die one to venture onto the territory of the other only as licensed. Thus until recently (...) assessments of the literary quality of a philosopher's writing have commonly been treated as extraneous to its value as philosophy, and philosophical probing of die thought of a poem as irrelevant to a literary critic's final assessment ofit. For some works, however, such compromises seem forced; Four Quartets is a case in point. Here we have a sustained effort to explore issues of a philosophical and theological nature in poetic terms — in a manner that challenges our understanding and lays claim to our assent. The poetry does not merely encapsulate a theoretical position, but enacts a process ofthought perceived as bearing on diese topics at least as significandy as do those processes commonly termed "philosophical," and diereby raises by implication more general issues concerning die status of those "philosophical" modes themselves. F. R. Leavis is well known both for his engagement with the poetry of T. S. Eliot, and for his insistence on a clear separation between literary criticism and philosophy; dius his raising of philosophical questions as an integral and decisive element in his final and most extensive analysis ofthe Quartets is particularly striking: That Four Quartets offers us thought, searching, basic and rigorous, we have our assurance in the first ten lines of"Burnt Norton".... As thought, it aspires to a general validity.... 222 Martin Warner223 The questions, how must reality be conceived, and what is the nature of the human situation, have been raised in a way diat compels one to determine and verify one's own ultimate beliefs.1 Of course, Leavis is clear that the manner in which die poem raises these questions is not that traditionally associated with philosophy: "The 'music' of Four Quartets challenges a criterion that is not logic, but something equivalent in the field of total meaning. We can only tell what it is by intelligent self-exposure to the poetry" (p. 159). Similarly his mode of"determining " and "verifying" his own beliefs in response is that proper to literary criticism. But the questions are plainly philosophical ones, and one does not need the authority of Leavis to see that the poem raises them. From a philosophical point ofview, the interesting questions are the status of the manner in which it does so and the nature of the "criterion that is not logic" which is said to have an internal relation to that "intelligent selfexposure to the poetry" which Leavis in his critical practice seeks to exemplify. Unfortunately, this late commentary on Eliot's poetry is among the weakest in the Leavis corpus, precisely lacking "intelligent self-exposure to the poetry";2 but this should not lead us to dismiss its more general claims. In earlier and far stronger criticism Leavis had already argued that "Burnt Norton" does "by strictly poetical means the business ofan epistemological and metaphysical inquiry" ("Eliot's Later Poetry," p. 65). Further, die most distinguished recent criticism of Eliot's poetry is probably that of A. D. Moody,3 and he too finds himself driven to place his own "ultimate beliefs" in relation to it. On the one hand, "There is likely to be at least some degree of essential conformity between the way we live now and die way in which the poem would order life; and to that extent the poem can be said to express, and to give a form to, the sensibUity ofits age" (p. 264). But on the other, "It is a neurotic vision, one arising from some disorder or disease of the personality — or of his culture.... It is not easy to attain a detached view of die neurosis which is like a dominant gene in our culture. It is a matter... of the alienation ofman from mat to which he properly, of his nature, belongs — his being cut off from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Minds, Memes, and Multiples”Timothy Sprigge (bio)In his paper “Minds, Memes and Multiples” Stephen Clark discusses the problem of multiple personality, to some considerable extent in response to Stephen Braude’s recent book First Person Plural, with eloquence, subtlety and some apposite historical references. I am delighted to have been asked to make some comments on it, developing some points I made in discussion when Professor Clark read his (...) paper at a seminar in Edinburgh.Multiple personality is certainly a fascinating subject on which anyone with views about the nature of human persons does well to cast an eye. I am grateful to both Clark and Braude for having raised my awareness of it. Clearly, Clark has been persuaded by Braude of the reality of the phenomenon as something more than just a form of extreme role-playing or play acting, 1 but also agrees with him that there is an ultimate single self behind the genuine multiplicity (Clark 1969; Braude 1991). What this ultimate self is Clark seeks to explain by reference to a single “light” which illumines all the variety (extreme in the case of multiple personality), of ideas, thoughts, emotions etc. by which we are variously swayed.Let us for simplicity take the case where the putatively distinct “persons” associated with the one human organism are three. Prima facie, there are, in these cases, three distinct centers of consciousness associated with a single human organism each capable turn and turn about of being the dominant one (that which is using the first person pronoun out aloud to speak of itself and whose desires and wishes are what is most immediately expressed in behavior).There seem to be three main features of genuine and full blooded multiple personality (as described most famously—I shall assume correctly—in Morton Prince’s The Dissociation of a Personality and Thigpen and Cleckley’s The Three Faces of Eve). First, the different centers of consciousness exhibit very different personalities, so different that the individual seems in some ways even physically altered according as to which is dominant. By personality here I mean a system of character traits rather than the principle of personal identity, whatever we think that to be. The expression “multiple personality” tends rather to blur the distinction between personality in this sense and person. Someone can change quite radically in personality without ceasing to be the same person—or at least that is how we ordinarily look at it. Second, at least one of them does not “remember” the experiences and conscious behavior of at least one of the others, while one of them does. If they really are different persons, some would think that “memory” is the wrong word here. But I am using “memory” to refer to any cognitive relation sufficiently akin to that in which we stand to our own past experiences when we [End Page 31] remember them. Third, they co-exist in the sense that at least one other of the centers is often “looking on” at the contents and public manifestations of the then dominant one.Another important factor is that they have attitudes to one another, often of hostility, which seem much more like the attitudes one can have to another person than one normally does to oneself. However, important as this is, it should not be taken as part of the definition of multiple personality, since so many of these attitudes are ones many people direct at themselves, (e.g. self-hatred and self-pity). To say that these are distinct from the hatred and pity felt towards others just because they are self-directed seems rather to beg the question.It seems to me that unless the first three conditions are met, we do not have multiple personality in a full sense. I cannot consider all possible cases in which only one or two of the conditions are met but here are some examples. Suppose that the first condition is met but not the other two. Then we would have a person subjected to striking mood swings, each mood bringing with it a contrasting set of personal loves and hates, political opinions, aesthetic tastes, sporting enthusiasms, and... (shrink)

Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. (...) The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy. Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the Park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture. The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their ↪Quart Nr 2(52)/2019 logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in Kant’s philosophy, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

In this article I explore how a philosophical conception of love may be used to draw debate on the death of God beyond the binary opposition between theology and philosophy through a comparative study of the work of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy. Although Marion’s reading of love—in both its theological and phenomenological guises—proposes an innovative phrasing of a non-metaphysical notion of divinity, I argue that it is ultimately unable to maintain its coherence in nominal discourse due to Marion’s insistence (...) on keeping love and being separate. In contrast, through his unique thinking on ontology, Nancy’s philosophy allows us to reposition love at the heart of being, from whence it may serve as a means of disrupting the very principle governing the atheist and theist world-views. Far from dismantling Marion’s core proposition, I conclude that the two thinkers may in fact be more closely aligned than previous scholarship has acknowledged, coming together in the need to affirm an experience of the impossible that takes place in the present rather than in any eschatological fulfillment to come. At this intersection between two nominally very different thinkers, love forms an ontological limit-point for thought that poses a challenge to both theology and philosophy alike as they continue to grapple with the question of religion in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Does the Scientist of Man Observe? Janet Broughton In the introduction to the Treatise, Hume cautions the reader that the scientist of man cannot "go beyond experience" and "discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature."1 "[T]he only solid foundation we can give to this science," tie says, "must be laid on experience and observation" (Txvi). This methodological principle is a familiar Newtonian one; indeed Hume (...) makes a point of saying it applies to "all the sciences" (T xviii), not just to the science of man. Although the principle is familiar, just what it enjoins is not clear. We are to renounce investigations that go "beyond experience," and we are not to seek "ultimate" qualities. But exactly which investigations and qualities are these? The question is a difficult one for Newton as well as for Hume. But Hume's invocation of the familiar methodological principle raises two additional questions, ones that need not especially trouble Newton. When the scientist of man goes about his task ofgathering "experience and observation," what sort ofthing is he to observe? And how is he to make his observations? My mainaimin this paperisto answerthose two questionsas they arise for the early stages ofHume's investigation ofhuman nature in the Treatise. I hope also to persuade the reader that these questions are more difficult, and more important, than they may at first seem, andthattheyare connected with evenbroader questions aboutthe sort ofproject Hume undertook in the Treatise. "Perceptions" Without explanation, Hume begins the Treatise proper by distinguishing between two kinds of"perceptions ofthe human mind" and drawsthe distinction accordingtohow the perceptions"maketheir way into our thought or consciousness"(T 1). Afew pageslater, he asks which of these "impressions and ideas are causes and which effects" and then announces that the "full examination ofthis question is the subject of the present treatise" (T 4). The scientist ofman, then, is to observe perceptions in our consciousness. Most commentators assume therefore that Hume takes himselfto be studying what Locke called ideas: states of awareness whose 'immediate objects' are dependent for their existence on the existence Volume XVIII Number 2 155 JANETBROUGHTON ofthe states ofawareness themselves, and can be theimmediate objects of awareness for one mind only. Many commentators make the additional assumptionthatforHume, thepropersphere ofhis scientific investigations is really just his own Lockean ideas. That is, the only form of experience the scientist of man may consult is immediate experience; the only appropriateform ofobservationhe may undertake is introspection. Kemp Smith disagrees. He claims thatin the openingstages ofthe Treatise, Hume takes up a point of view that is "naively realistic."2 Kemp Smith prefers this readingbecause he thinks it explains Hume's general tendency, in the early parts ofbook 1, to slide between talking about objects and talking about ideas; before part 4's "Of scepticism withregard tothe senses," Kemp Smith claims, Hume himselfoccupies the position ofthe "vulgar"(for example, T 192), rather than that ofthe "philosophers." Kemp Smith reminds us that in part 4, after a long account of the position of the vulgar, Hume says that its inherent instability leads philosophers to change their system, and distinguish, (as we shall do for the future) betwixt perceptions and objects. (T 211, emphasis added) Only at this point, Kemp Smith says, does Hume adopt the Lockean theory ofideas. I also oppose the standard view, but unlike Kemp Smith I do not see our central interpretative task here as that of deciding whether Hume began his investigation ofhuman nature as a "naive realist" or as a Lockean theorist. For one thing, when Kemp Smith calls Hume a naive realist, he means that Hume begins by assuming that the Lockean is right about this much: when we see, hear, remember, and so on, we are "immediately" or "directly" aware of something—albeit objects, not ideas. But I do not think that Hume's account of the early phases of his investigation requires us to impute that assumption to him. I also see the choice Kemp Smith offers us as limiting in another way. For it focuses our attention just upon the metaphysical status of the objects ofsense-perception. We might agree with Kemp Smith that on that score Hume does notbegin... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XX, Number 2, November 1994, pp. 219-240 Infinite Divisibility in Hume's First Enquiry DALE JACQUETTE The Limitations of Reason The arguments against infinite divisibility in the notes to Sections 124 and 125 of David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding are presented as "sceptical" results about the limitations of reason. The metaphysics of infinite divisibility is introduced merely as a particular, though especially representative problem, among several (...) that Hume discusses. Hume first writes: The chief objection against all abstract reasonings is derived from the ideas of space and time; ideas, which, in common life and to a careless view, are very clear and intelligible, but when they pass through the scrutiny of the profound sciences (and they are the chief object of these sciences) afford principles, which seem full of absurdity and contradiction.1 There follows an intuitive appeal to the apparent incoherence of the consequences of infinite divisibility in the geometry of space and measurement of time. Hume enlists natural belief against the infinite divisibility thesis in the mathematics of extension: But what renders the matter more extraordinary, is, that these seemingly absurd opinions are supported by a chain of reasoning, the Dale Jacquette is at the Department of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University, 246 Sparks Building, University Park PA 16802 USA. e-mail: [email protected] 220 Dale Jacquette clearest and most natural; nor is it possible for us to allow the premises without admitting the consequences. Nothing can be more convincing and satisfactory than all the conclusions concerning the properties of circles and triangles; and yet, when these are once received, how can we deny, that the angle of contact between a circle and its tangent is infinitely less than any rectilinear angle, that as you may increase the diameter of the circle in infinitum, this angle of contact becomes still less, even in infinitum, and that the angle of contact between other curves and their tangents may be infinitely less than those between any circle and its tangent, and so on, in infinitum? The demonstration of these principles seems as unexceptionable as that which proves the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right ones, though the latter opinion be natural and easy, and the former big with contradiction and absurdity. (EHU 156-157) The implied sense of contradiction is then extended by Hume to the problem of infinite divisibility in time. The absurdity of these bold determinations of the abstract sciences seems to become, if possible, still more palpable with regard to time than extension. An infinite number of real parts of time, passing in succession, and exhausted one after another, appears so evident a contradiction, that no man, one should think, whose judgment is not corrupted, instead of being improved, by the sciences, would ever be able to admit of it. (EHU 157) The contradictions involved in traditional concepts of extension and time demarcate the limits of which reason is capable. But Hume's answer is more complex than merely surrendering to skepticism over the prospects of reason achieving understanding in the metaphysics of space and time. He tries to show that what he calls "Pyrrhonian" skepticism is ultimately self-defeating in its application of reason against reason. In place of a negative conclusion, he offers another solution to the paradoxes of infinite divisibility. What is remarkable about Hume's pronouncements against the infinite divisibility of extension and time, that may signal a change in his methodology if not his overall position on divisibility in the Enquiry from that of A Treatise of Human Nature, is his straightforward claim that natural belief rebels against the concept of infinite divisibility as its consequences apply to the metric of space and time.2 As in the Treatise, Hume pits natural disbelief in infinite divisibility against abstract metaphysical reason. But in the Enquiry, he does not invoke reason merely to correct the excesses of natural belief for the skeptical deflation of natural belief, say, in the necessity of causal connection, or the existence of mind-independent continuants. On the contrary, Hume Studies Infinite Divisibility in Hume's First Enquiry 221 Hume here appears instead to invoke natural disbelief in... (shrink)

In Aenesidemus, G.E. Schulze adopts the skeptical voice of Aenesidemus and engages in critical dialogue with Hermias, a Kantian, in the hopes of laying bare what he views as the fundamental issues of K.L. Reinhold’s version of critical philosophy. While some attacks reveal a deep misunderstanding of Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie on Schulze’s part, others hit their mark. In the Aenesidemus Review (1794), J.G. Fichte at times agrees with criticisms raised by Aenesidemus and at times defends Reinhold against them. On Fichte’s (...) class='Hi'>view, Schulze succeeds in proving that the first principle of Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie, the principle of consciousness (Satz des Bewußtseins), is neither self-evident nor self-determining. Therefore, it cannot be the first principle of philosophy. However, Schulze fails to dissuade Fichte from viewing Reinhold’s principle of consciousness as the pithiest expression of human consciousness of the time. For these reasons, Fichte holds that Reinhold’s principle of consciousness must be deduced from an even higher principle. The goal of this paper is to assess whether Fichte puts forth his own candidate for the first principle of philosophy in his Aenesidemus Review. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 328-344 [Access article in PDF] Spaces of Invention:Dissension, Freedom, and Thought in Foucault Kendall R. Phillips Over the past two decades, invention has become an increasingly difficult concept to discuss. In an age when the free, rational actor has become not only de-centered but viewed as both impossible and undesirable by some social theorists, the traditional conception of invention, especially rhetorical invention, becomes (...) more tenuous. While some continue to promote a rational deliberative model of the human subject—Habermas is a prime example of this school of thought—the harsh and unrelenting critiques of poststructural and postmodern thinkers have cast these recovery efforts in a nostalgic and often negative light. Chief among these critics of the modern, humanist conception of human action is Michel Foucault. Within Foucault's perspective our utterances are governed by underlying rules of discourse formations, our actions are proscribed and authorized by relations of power, and our very conception of our self is circumscribed by technologies of subjectivity. Contained within these intertwined relations of knowledge, power, and subjectivity, the human subject takes on a very different meaning and even the concept of "human subject" is itself a product of these intertwined relations; a product that may, in time, disappear under new relations of discourse and governance.Despite the apparent centrality of a creative human subject to the study of rhetoric, Foucault has taken his place within the study of rhetoric. Of course, neither this incorporation of Foucault nor the observation of its peculiarity is particularly new. The incorporation of Foucault into rhetoric took its most dramatic turn in 1989 with Raymie McKerrow's "Critical Rhetoric" essay and the implications of this union of Foucault and rhetoric were forcefully raised by Barbara Biesecker in "Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric" (1992). These two important essays made the relationship between Foucault and rhetoric most pressing: McKerrow by offering [End Page 328] a practical agenda for a Foucaultian rhetorical perspective and Biesecker by opening a space for reflection on this type of agenda. In the intervening decade, however, the incorporation of Foucault into rhetoric has outstripped the reflection on this incorporation and Foucault now sits as comfortably in the bibliographies of rhetorical scholars as Burke or McKeon or Perelman.The purpose of the present essay is to revisit this relationship between Foucault and rhetoric. I pursue this end not in order to critique McKerrow's project or to outstrip Biesecker's reflections, but in order to press the importance of their earlier arguments. The project of a Foucaultian rhetoric should be taken seriously, seriously enough to keep the peculiarity of this union in the forefront of our minds as we pursue it. My present effort furthers this end by seeking within Foucault a space for invention and, in so doing, asks the question: how might invention be rendered within a Foucaultian framework?My contention is that a space for invention exists within Foucault's studies of knowledge, power, and subjectivity and that this space can be demonstrated by considering the counterpoints to his tripartite understanding of the human condition. The limiting/enabling relations of knowledge/power/subjectivity are counterpointed by three terms that describe the conditions for invention: dissension, freedom, and thought. Before turning to the conditions for these spaces of invention and the unique shape of invention that emerges from them, I will briefly consider previous discussions of Foucault. Power, resistance, and invention Rhetoricians, to be clear, are not the first to be concerned with the apparent foreclosing of the possibility of invention within Foucault. Focusing mainly on dominating relations of power/knowledge/subjectivity, Foucault seems to leave little ground for the creation of new ways of acting, speaking, or being. However, what I call a concern for invention has generally not been expressed as such; rather, in rhetoric and in other fields, criticism of Foucault has been largely couched in terms of resistance. Edward Said (1986), for instance, contends that Foucault's work is "not finally as contestatory, or as oppositional as on the surface it seems to be" (152... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 554-555 [Access article in PDF] Nicholas White. Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics.New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 369. Cloth, $55.00. This is a thoughtful book on an interesting subject by a well-known scholar of ancient ethical philosophy. However, the organization and mode of exposition is, in some ways, rather odd; and this rather muffles (...) the potential depth and impact.White challenges (what he presents as) a widespread current view about Greek ethical philosophy. This is that Greek philosophy does not contain the same kinds of moral conflict that we find in modern thought: namely, between the claims of the individual and the state, and between doing your duty, or what is best for others, and pursuing your own happiness. White, by contrast, believes that those conflicts do figure—as substantive, problematic issues—in Greek thought, and that they are conceived in a way that is broadly similar to modern thought, despite some other salient differences. Further, White maintains that the general denial of conflict in Greek thought has its roots in certain eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual tendencies. A crucial factor was the Hegelian picture of Classical Greek thought as free from the conflicts between individual and state, and between happiness and duty that are central in modern thought and are articulated especially by Kant. White sees the Hegelian view as influential on late nineteenth-century readings of Greek philosophy by thinkers such as Sidgwick, on more recent anti-Kantian thinkers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams, as well as on much current scholarship on Greek philosophy.White confronts what he sees as a mistaken tendency partly by charting its historical roots and partly by offering a competing (or at least "ground-clearing" [xiii]) reading of key relevant features of Greek ethics. Two crucial topics are Plato's presentation of the demand that the fully trained philosopher-rulers go back into the cave to direct the state rather than philosophizing, as they would prefer (Republic 219-21) and Aristotle's selection [End Page 554] of the philosophical life, rather than the ethical life of practical action, as the highest form of human happiness (Nicomachean Ethics10.7-8). White argues, first, that these are recognized as substantive and difficult issues by the two Greek thinkers and, second, that the way in which the issues are conceived is (roughly) in terms of the modern-style contrast between doing your communal duty and pursuing your personal happiness. The "eudaimonistic" (happiness-centered) outlook often seen as typical of Greek philosophy does not mean that these issues are therefore defused or resolved. Hellenistic (Epicurean and Stoic) philosophy does offer a unified ethical outlook, but not in a way that matches the Hegelian pattern. The influential Hegelian reading of Greek ethics is shown up as mistaken and the door is opened for interpretations which recognize and analyse these issues in more accurate terms.White's central claims are challenging, important and, in principle at least, plausible. How effectively is the case made? As indicated earlier, the organization of the book does not seem to me to support the argument as well as it could. The discussion of Plato and Aristotle, which forms the core of White's thesis, is preceded by an extended preparation, extending to nearly half of the book. This examines, in meticulous detail, the background in modern intellectual history to the tendency that White attacks. It also explores in general terms conceptual issues (about deliberative conflict, the role of imperatives and the city-state as a source of normativity) that bear on his claims about Greek thought. When White finally gets to detailed discussion of philosophical texts, he does not—surprisingly—try to show in specific ways how current leading scholarly interpretations are informed by the Hegelian pattern he has so elaborately described. His confrontation with the modern version of this pattern is generalized, with references to scholarly readings largely confined to footnotes. The thrust of his interpretative discussion is negative, ruling out the harmonizing, Hegelian... (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics. Eastern and Western Modes of Thought. Summary. The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That (...) nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. -/-. (shrink)

First published in Spanish in 2006, _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is a major statement on political philosophy from Enrique Dussel, one of Latin America’s—and the world’s—most important philosophers, and a founder of the philosophy of liberation. Synthesizing a half-century of his pioneering work in moral and political philosophy, Dussel presents a succinct rationale for the development of political alternatives to the exclusionary, exploitative institutions of neoliberal globalization. In twenty short, provocative theses he lays out the foundational elements for a politics (...) of just and sustainable coexistence. Dussel first constructs a theory of political power and its institutionalization, taking on topics such as the purpose of politics and the fetishization of power. He insists that political projects must criticize or reject as unsustainable all political systems, actions, and institutions whose negative effects are suffered by oppressed or excluded victims. Turning to the deconstruction or transformation of political power, he explains the political principles of liberation and addresses matters such as reform and revolution. _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is inspired by recent political transformations in Latin America. As Dussel writes in Thesis 15, regarding the liberation praxis of social and political movements, “The winds that arrive from the South—from Nestor Kirchner, Tabaré Vásquez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, and so many others—show us that things can be changed. The _people _must reclaim sovereignty!” Throughout the twenty theses Dussel engages with Latin American thinkers and activists and with radical political projects such as the World Social Forum. He is also in dialogue with the ideas of Marx, Hegel, Habermas, Rawls, and Negri, offering insights into the applications and limits of their thinking in light of recent Latin American political thought and practice. (shrink)

Hegel's philosophy depends on the answer to a fundamental question: why assume that the abstract structures and necessities of pure thought reveal anything at all about the varied and mutable realm of real life experience? In her study of Hegel's Phenomenology, Ardis Collins examines the way Hegel interprets the Phenomenology of Spirit as an answer to this question and in the process invents a proof procedure that does not depend on unquestioned philosophical principles, cherished social norms, or established prejudices (...) for or against certain ways of thinking or acting. Employing close readings and innovative analysis, this groundbreaking study challenges current interpretations of the Phenomenology. Collins demonstrates that the way Hegel interprets the role of the Phenomenology remains consistent throughout his career, that he claims for the demonstration developed in it the strict necessity of a proof, and that the beginning of philosophy cannot be justified without this proof. In the process, she sheds light on the way Hegel examines the structures and truth expectations of experience to show that the human spirit is involved in a shared project of culture and history that challenges us to become engaged in conscientious causes. Skilfully argued and persuasive, this study of Hegel's Phenomenology explores the concreteness of human experience and shows how Hegel finds in it evidence that the whole domain of human experience belongs to the logical spirit investigated by philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy ed. by Jane Kneller and Sidney AxinnJeanine GrenbergJane Kneller and Sidney Axinn, editors, Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 334. Paper, $21.95.The intent of this volume is not narrow textual exegesis but the application of Kantian themes to “problems of contemporary society,” (xi). The editors (...) thus advise their readers that “[t]he present collection is … ‘Kantian’ in a broad sense,” and that the opinions put forward by the contributors may “diverge rather widely” (viii) from Kant’s own. In an introductory essay, Jane Kneller notes further that the book distinguishes between “political” philosophy in a narrow sense, and “social” philosophy, which is concerned with “the behaviour of human beings” more broadly construed. Kant, Kneller argues, does have such a “social philosophy,” and this volume will reveal it.The book is largely successful in its stated goal. The essays run the gamut of careful, if controversial, textual analyses (e.g., Allen Wood’s and Robert Paul Wolff’s essays) to those which take Kant simply as a launching pad for an analysis of a variety of social issues. At times, this relation to Kant is a positive one (e.g., Harry van der Linden’s claim that Kant provides the basis for enterprise democracy), and at times negative (e.g., Charles Mills’ claim that Kantian respect for persons masks a “dark ontology” which supports structural racism).A careful reader can find among these varied essays interestingly opposed approaches to similar topics. Wolff and Sharon Anderson-Gold [End Page 538] end up at loggerheads over the relation of Kant’s ethical and social philosophies. Wolff makes Kant’s justification of morality derivative of the establishment of the social contract. But Anderson-Gold argues for a reversed relationship; for her, Kant’s “principle of humanity” grounds a basic human right of persons in any society to be free from certain types of state interference.Another interesting juxtaposition is found between Nelson Potter and Thomas Auxter, both of whom tackle Kant’s views on retributivism. Potter seeks to humanize retributivism by showing its basis in equality and respect for persons. Auxter takes a diametrically opposed approach, arguing that Kant’s moral theory can stand unscathed if we eliminate his now outdated retributivist commitments.A meta-issue looms in all these discussions: what does and doesn’t count as “Kantian”? This book, wisely, provides no hard and fast definition; rather, by presenting a broad variety of at times seriously divergent points of view, it constitutes a refreshingly pluralistic response to what counts as Kantian: Kantian is as Kantian does. It is rare to find such diversity of interpretation in a single volume, and this book is to be commended for achieving it.There are, however, prices to pay for the achievement of diversity, the largest being a certain disconnectedness of thought. The sectioning of the book into two parts—“Kantian Social Theory” and “Kant and Contemporary Social Issues” —instead of helping to guide the reader, ends up encouraging an ultimately strained distinction. Why does Robin Schott’s essay on feminism belong with “social theory” instead of “contemporary social issues”? Why don’t Anderson-Gold’s reflections on the relationship between moral and social issues qualify as “social theory”? It might have been better, organizationally, to highlight more specific themes by distinguishing sections on “Retributivism,” “International Law,” and the like.The individual essays vary in their success in defending their stated theses. Allen Wood is insightful and even-handed in convincing this initially skeptical reader of what seems, at first blush, a rather implausible view of Kant as an historical materialist. Though some may not find his own position to be very “liberal,” Gerald Gaus’ assessment of the current state of Kantian liberalist approaches to environmental values and his proposed alternative are cogent, enlightening and challenging. Sidney Axinn’s acceptance, without argument, of a simple analogy between individual persons and individual nation states to argue for the need for a world government makes his account ultimately dissatisfying. Charles Mills rightly takes note of an editor’s concern that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:JOHN PASSMORE AND HUME'S MORAL PHILOSOPHY1 A quarter century ago, the message undergraduates absorbed about David Hume was as an extremely favourable one. He was the great precursor of logical empiricism and so his philosophy, at least in its main lines, must be nearer the mark than that of any other of the great names. Hume had discovered the right view of causation. He had exposed and banished (...) school metaphysics. He had rightly drawn attention to the problem of induction. He had discovered the isought gap and revealed the practical impotence of reason in the face of the passions. But for his weight problem, he could have walked on water. Those were the circumstances in which I first read John Passmore's book on Hume. Because he was plainly not, like many of Hume's critics, an apologist for Thomism or any of Hegel's offspring, his work could not be dismissed on the grounds of parti pris. It was 2 a shock, therefore, to find him, in Hume's Intentions, presenting an image of Hume a considerable distance this side of idolatry. Passmore's critical and, for its time, boldly unfashionable appraisal is to be admired, taken to heart, and extended. Hume's Intentions concentrates on Hume's philosophy of the understanding. It takes up strands of that philosophy and points to their inherent implausibility and mutual incompatibility. Yet these problems also vitiate other parts of Hume's position. In this paper I attempt to introduce the Passmorian method of reasoning into what are nowadays the moral subjects. Let me remind you of the structure of Passmore's book: it does not mount a consecutive argument so much as take up, tease out, and display one or other leading element in the Humean philosophy. Thus we have chapters on Hume as an enthusiast for the 110. moral (that is, human, or social) sciences, as a critic of traditional Aristotelian logic, as a developer of more suitable methods for scientific advance, as a positivist, a phenomenalist, an associationist theoretician in psychology, and a sceptic. We learn as we read that in these respects Hume is not consistent. Principles which he espouses, principally negative and sceptical principles, lead to conclusions too extreme to suit his major purposes. Accordingly, they must not be pressed to their proper conclusions. Hume's philosophy of the study must be abandoned rather than actually taken seriously. Thus, for example: in methodology, Hume insists that reason cannot yield results in the contingent and fallible natural and human sciences. This should lead him to the view that any scientific hypothesis which goes beyond immediate experience is, so far as reason goes, as good, or as bad, as any other. But he recoils from this, distinguishing sensible men from the foolish and superstitious on the basis of the regularity and consistency of the experiences on which the wise rely. Yet as Passmore points out, on Hume's principles, the preference for regularity and consistency cannot be more than a prejudice. Prejudices do not admit of any genuinely rational defence. There is real substance to the superiority claimed for the wise. Again, consider Hume's positivism. He offers a beguilingly short way with nonsense, especially learned and theological nonsense. School metaphysics and superstition (i.e. Christianity) are to be banished by the use of the impressions and ideas test: When you come upon a word whose meaning you would discover, ask if it refers to an impression or an idea. If to an impression, well and good, its meaning is to be found in present experience. If to an idea, ask from which impression (or impressions) the idea did (or could) Ill, derive. If you cannot find any suitable impressions, the idea is chimerical, and is to be excised from thought as a pathological intruder. This procedure produces most satisfactorily negative results when it comes to the Trinity and the sacraments, or essence, inherence, substantial form, and such metaphysical extravagances. Unhappily the very same procedure, the impressions and ideas test, also wrecks the foundations of Hume's own thought. As Passmore makes sure we remember, the test robs Hume of the resources with which to account for substance and... (shrink)

This dissertation traces the themes of madness and death from Plato to twentieth century European philosophy. By focusing on the writings of Plato, Hegel, Heidegger and Foucault, this work tries to articulate the way in which philosophy relies on the themes of madness and death to define itself. Madness and death are not simply topics within philosophy, but they are the "other" of philosophical discourse. In this respect madness and death are instances of negativity. Negativity plays a significant (...) role in the constitution of philosophical discourse. Thus far from being marginal topics within philosophy, madness and death prove to be related to many contemporary philosophical problems, such as subjectivity, the metaphysics of presence, the relationship between the body and language, and finally the question of ethics. ;The first chapter concentrates on Plato's Phaedo and Phaedrus. For Plato, philosophy is defined as a preparation of death and as a kind of madness. Through a close reading of these texts, this chapter establishes the constitutive roles of madness and death for philosophy. ;The second chapter concentrates on Hegel's notion of madness in the Encyclpaedia, and his understanding of death in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This chapter establishes that Hegel's approach to negativity ultimately remains a cognitive one, and incapable of thinking the question of negativity in a radical fashion. ;The third and fourth chapters focus on Heidegger in order to articulate a more radical thinking of negativity. The notion of death in Being and Time, and that of madness in Heidegger's later writings characterize Heidegger's non-cognitive understanding of negativity that cannot be reduced to a content of thought. ;The final chapter focuses on the debate between Foucault and Derrida on madness and ultimately attempts to question the radicality of both Hegel's and Heidegger's notions of negativity. ;The conclusion tries to connect the questions of madness and death to that of ethics. The radicalization of the question of ethics in twentieth century continental philosophy presupposes and requires a rethinking of the question of alterity. This work gestures towards such a rethinking. (shrink)

In a sense it would be inappropriate to speak of “Hegel’s system of philosophy,” because Hegel thought that in the strict sense there is only one system of philosophy evolving in the Western world. In Hegel’s view, although at times philosophy’s history seems to be a chaotic series of crisscrossing interpretations of meanings and values, with no consensus, there has been a teleological development and consistent progress in philosophy and philosophizing from the beginning; Hegel held that his own (...) version of “German idealism” was simply bringing to final expression the latest refinements of an ongoing, perennial system. If we take Hegel at his word, then one of the best entries into his system would be through the history of philosophy, showing how systems and schools of thought prior to Hegel led up to his system. The most important currents to focus on, however, would be in modern philosophy, in which especially intensive changes led ultimately to German idealism and Hegel’s immediate predecessors. Fortunately, Hegel lectured extensively on the history of modern philosophy and structured his lectures in such a way as to throw light on the status of the “one system” of Western philosophy at the time — the status to which Hegel felt he had been contributing and was continuing to contribute. These lectures are of interest, first of all, as a systematic chronicle of philosophical positions in the heyday of modern philosophy, from Bacon to Hegel. Second, they are interesting because Hegel’s critical comments on his predecessors clarify his own positions: for example, the dialectic method and the importance of triplicity, the relationship of philosophy to the scientific method, the necessity for avoidance of the extremes of empiricism and of idealism, the subject/object problematic, the “identity” of rationality and reality, and the technical meaning in Hegel’s philosophy of “absolute,” “infinity,” and the “idea.”. (shrink)

The recent emergence, among philosophers, of the view that the activity of human reason in all its possible modes must also be historicized, including the activity of philosophizing itself, may be found in writers as diverse as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and Alasdair MacIntyre. This contemporary view of human reason contrasts with the traditional commitments of "First Philosophy," Aristotle's name for the knowledge of things through their ultimate causes and principles. This book challenges the prevailing (...) historicist orthodoxies about the nature of reason and philosophy and offers the first comprehensive analysis and critique of historicism in its current philosophical form. Can philosophical historicism reasonably justify the interpretation of human reason on which its own objections to First Philosophy are based? While Carl Page ultimately concludes that it cannot, he also seeks to rehabilitate historicism's motivating insights by showing how they derive from questions Hegel and Heidegger raised about reason's relation to history. (shrink)

Reale points out that the good and the demiurgic intelligence are radically distinct, a conclusion denied by J. Seifert in the last paper of the book. Fourteen characteristics of the idea of the good are listed by T. A. Szlezák. It is obvious, he argues, that the theory of principles of Plato’s unwritten doctrines is not identical with what Republic 6 and 7 say about the good, but there is no real opposition. In the next paper, however, H. W. Ausland, (...) after a sober evaluation of the esoteric teachings, suspects that Reale and Szlezák succumb to a certain romanticism. According to L. Brisson, the good belongs to the sphere of being, even if it is not being ; it is not in every way beyond being. Plotinus was the first to place it above being. M. Erler shows what must be the attitude of the philosopher with regard to the information orally received by him. Although Plato did not want to define the good, he pointed out several of its characteristics. The good, M. Migliori notes, combines in itself beauty, proportion, and unity. The Philebus pursues the doctrine of the Republic and goes into the direction of the unwritten doctrines. The ultimate reality, however, is beyond our understanding. E. Cattanei attempts to explain how for Plato mathematics is a way of access to the knowledge of the good. R. Ferber, on the other hand, stresses that Plato nowhere directly says that the essence of the good is the one. Beauty, symmetry, and truth are not the good itself. According to C. Gill, Gadamer demystified the idea of the good, a view which shows some common ground with the position of analytical philosophy: the good is not a transcendent entity. M. Vegetti, however, upholds the transcendent character of the good as a cause of being. G. A. Press argues that over the past hundred years Plato was considered a dogmatic philosopher, and it was believed that the leading speaker in the dialogues states Plato’s own views, but the situation is far more complex. Plato wants us to acquire a vision rather than propositional knowledge. The idea of the good should not be accorded a special position. C. Rowe tries to demystify some current interpretations, whereas F. Ferrari insists on the causality of the good, and sees Plato’s teaching as the origin of the entire tradition of negative theology. Yet some texts give the impression that the good belongs to the ontological order. C. Porebski reminds us that problems of ethics are the starting point of what Plato says about the good in the Republic. According to F. Trabattoni, Aristotle’s description of Plato’s theory of principles is wrong and his philosophy differs fundamentally from Plato’s. The School of Tübingen is a prisoner of Aristotle’s interpretation. Plato’s reluctance to describe the good in detail may mark the beginning of a skeptic trend in the Academy. The Parmenides tells us, E. Berti says, that one has first to remove all hypotheses before a definition of the Good can be given. E. Moutsopoulos draws attention to some simplistic and wrong qualifications of Plato’s thought as related to idealism and mentions Kant and Hegel’s attitudes with regard to Platonism. J. F. Crosby points to a clear leaving behind of the Socratic “no one knowingly does wrong” in the Alcibiades 216b: as Plato explains in the Protagoras, one may live according to one’s lower appetite or follow the insight of the rational soul. G. Santos makes a strong stand in favor of the identity of goodness and reality. L. P. Gerson examines theories of Platos’s development: there is no evidence of a theory of the form of the good earlier than the Republic. Aristotle, J. Dudley writes, upheld an ethical ideal resembling that of Plato, substituting the contemplation of the unmoved mover for that of the idea of the good. In the last paper J. Seifert argues that Plato identified the demiurge and the good. (shrink)

In 1970, the Italian feminist Carla Lonzi published her now-classic polemic urging women to “spit on Hegel”. Disregarding her advice, many subsequent feminist theorists and philosophers have engaged substantially with Hegel's thought, and a wide variety of feminist readings of Hegel have sprung up. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of these different feminist criticisms and interpretations of Hegel. In introducing these various interpretations, I will show how they reflect a range of divergent feminist approaches (...) to the history of philosophy as a whole. My aim is not only to describe but also to evaluate these approaches, with respect to their capacity to generate insightful and productive readings of Hegel's philosophy. I shall argue that what I will call the “essentialist” feminist approach to Hegel is the most fruitful, doing most to illuminate the contours of his thought and to open up new and creative ways of reading his works.To anticipate, in surveying the various feminist interpretations of Hegel, I will classify them as reflecting four different types of feminist approach to the history of philosophy. The first, “extensionist” approach draws upon the history of philosophy for conceptual resources to understand and explain women's social situation. The second approach is more critical, tracing the pervasiveness of “masculinist” assumptions and biases in the history of philosophy. To call views “masculinist” is to say that they uphold systematic and hierarchical contrasts between masculinity and femininity, contrasts which need not be explicit but may be sustained through contrasts between other ostensibly neutral concepts which actually have tacit gender connotations. This critical approach generates an overwhelmingly negative picture of the philosophical tradition. The third, “essentialist” approach complicates this picture, recovering and highlighting the strands within historical texts which revalorise concepts or items that are given feminine connotations. These often overlooked strands oppose the dominant masculinist tendencies in texts by assigning equal importance and value to “symbolically feminine” concepts. However, proponents of the fourth, “deconstructive” approach object that essentialist readings of philosophical texts accept and reinforce patterns of gender symbolism which feminists ought to challenge. Deconstructive feminists seek to expose and exacerbate the instability within these patterns of gender symbolism by tracing how philosophical texts continuously undermine the gender contrasts present within them. (shrink)

This book provides a clear and nuanced appraisal of Hegel's treatment of Africa, India, and Islam, and of the implications of this treatment for postcolonial and global studies. Analyzing Hegel's master-slave dialectic and his views on Africa, India, and Islam, it situates these views not only within Hegel's historical scheme but also within a broader European philosophical context and the debates they have provoked within Hegel scholarship. Each chapter explores various in depth readings of Hegel by postcolonial critics, investigating both (...) the Eurocentric and potentially global nature of his dialectic. Ultimately, the book shows both where of this profoundly influential thinker archetypally embodies certain Eurocentric traits that have characterized modernity and how, ironically, he himself gives us the tools for working towards a more global vision. Offering a concise introduction not only to an important dimension of Hegel's thought - his orientation towards "empire" - but also to the various issues raised by postcolonial theory and global studies, this book will be of use to philosophers as well as advanced students of literary and cultural theory alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit by Andrew Alexander DavisPaul T. WilfordDAVIS, Andrew Alexander. Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. ix + 214 pp. Cloth, $125In Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy, Andrew Davis makes a convincing argument that just as the problem of how to distinguish sophistry from philosophy is a recurrent theme of Plato's dialogues, so (...) too is the problem of sophistry or "pseudo-philosophy" central to the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Indeed, the problem of how to recognize and guard against pseudo-philosophy is the common theme linking the prefaces to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia, and the Philosophy of Right, each of which endeavors "to reveal something about the essence of philosophy... by highlighting the ways pseudo-philosophy fails to do justice to philosophical content." Such an undertaking is especially important to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, however, because the subject matter [End Page 543] of the work is nothing but the logos of the appearances of spirit. To arrive at knowledge of spirit requires attending to all the various ways in which spirit (or Geist) can appear, but, as Davis remarks, "like life, Geist may be thought as a source of appearances, but not as an appearance itself. It is always 'behind' what appears." As a result, the Phenomenology is an exercise in trying "to grasp what does not appear through appearances alone." Thus, just as the Phenomenology approaches the truth of spirit by considering spirit's partial, abstract, and one-sided modes of appearing, so too does the preface to the Phenomenology approach the truth of philosophy by investigating forms of pseudo-philosophy.As Hegel himself states, there are two principal tasks pursued in the preface: (1) to offer a preliminary sketch of what it would mean for "the cognition of absolute actuality to become perfectly lucid about its own nature;" and (2) to eliminate some "habitually accepted forms of thought" that prove obstacles to philosophic cognition. While most commentators take their bearings from the former, Davis's approach to the preface is unique (to my knowledge) in foregrounding the latter. Yet, as his book unfolds, it becomes clear that the latter is the route into the former. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the book is that, although the elimination of erroneous habits of thought may seem to be merely negative and therefore principally propaedeutic to the positive task of leading the reader toward "absolute knowing," the examination of error is an integral component of grasping the true. If the Phenomenology as a whole is a "highway of despair"—a comprehensive refutation of natural consciousness's pretensions to knowledge that is simultaneously a dialectical ascent to conceptually comprehending knowing (begreifende Wissen)—the preface initiates the reader into the via negativa that philosophic cognition must travel to attain self-knowledge.Davis's book is structured around seven forms of pseudo-philosophy, each of which is treated as a discrete, distinguishable problem in its own right and also as emblematic of the common failure to recognize that the form of philosophy is inseparable from the content of philosophy. As Davis argues, this failure lies at the root of the attempt (common to much of modern philosophy since Descartes) to establish a priori a universal method for thinking (what Leibniz called a mathesis universalis) that will secure certain and indubitable knowledge. But this effort proves self-undermining, always ultimately engendering the very skepticism it seeks to master. Through observing the aporiai generated by forms of pseudo-philosophy, we learn that "the method of philosophy is inseparable from the subject matter of philosophy. Method cannot be isolated and discussed on its own. Philosophy is thinking (form) about thinking (content)."Davis thus gradually discloses Hegel's positive answer to the question "what is philosophy?" through a series of determinate negations of philosophy's imitations. We learn that philosophy is the recollective, self-comprehending, self-moving thinking of thinking by attending to a set of tendencies that impede philosophy: "a tendency to explain rather than [End Page 544] present (chapter 1), a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 227-229 [Access article in PDF] Philip Pothen. Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. x + 235. Paper, $29.95. Most scholarship argues that Nietzsche grants art a position of vital importance for culture, history, and philosophy. Philip Pothen seeks to challenge this general view of Nietzsche [End Page 227] while at the same time raising new (...) questions about Nietzsche's thoughts on art and how Nietzsche's views on art relate to his philosophical concerns. He does not locate Nietzsche's "deep suspicion and at times hostility" (1) toward art in a specific period of Nietzsche's thought, but instead traces it from the notebooks of the 1870s through Nietzsche's so-called "positivist period" to the very end of his productive life. The result is an honest attempt to recognize Nietzsche's ambivalent and at times hostile attitude toward that which is often times unquestionably admired.Although the Birth of Tragedy is the central text for most scholarship about Nietzsche's thoughts on art, this scholarship does not generally look to contemporaneous unpublished private writings. By conducting a close reading of Nietzsche's first published work in juxtaposition with selections from the Nachlass, Pothen shows that even as early as the 1870s, Nietzsche was developing some of the major themes of his subsequent writings on art. Nietzsche had begun to make decisive breaks with conceptual presuppositions inherited from Schopenhauer and the Kantian philosophical framework as well as from Wagner.Nietzsche's earlier belief in a rebirth of the Dionysian through works of genius such as Wagner's was severely criticized by Nietzsche himself in his 1886 Preface to the Birth of Tragedy. The second chapter of this book looks at Nietzsche's criticism of the concept of "genius" and the recognition of the "death of art" in modern artists such as Wagner. Pothen shows that Nietzsche gives a highly naturalistic account of genius, criticizing traditional notions that elevate the genius to a higher status than the merely talented artist.According to Pothen, the decadence of modern art, the deception of the artist, and the "end of art" suggests a type of "sickness" for Nietzsche. Art "represents a suppression of the instincts of becoming" (56). Pothen claims the future of art and its possible "death" are much more severe for Nietzsche than, for instance, Hegel. The challenging conclusion is that Nietzsche, not Hegel, properly announces the "death of art" in modernity.What, however, of the "monological work of art" that Nietzsche first formulates in the Gay Science? By considering the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a decisive conclusion and not an inferior appendage, Pothen argues that this work "for All and None" illustrates "a radical and perhaps impossible orientation" (9) that the godless artist must take up according to Nietzsche. It is a creative position "in favor of solitude [Einsamkeit], forgetting [vergessen] and inner strength" (74).Chapter four of Pothen's book addresses the concept of the "will to power." Pothen argues that it is a "metaphysical principle" of explanation that nevertheless undermines certain other metaphysical concepts such as a unified "subject" as well as traditional aesthetic concepts such as artistic autonomy. Pothen challenges Heidegger's claim that art is the "highest expression" of the will to power for Nietzsche while utilizing Heidegger's insights into art to highlight and question previous themes in the book such as the reduction of art to physiology (117-32).Chapter five concentrates on Nietzsche's analysis of the psychology of production and his critique of the Kantian themes of "disinterestedness" and the "judgment of taste." The book ends with a look at Nietzsche's final productive year of 1888. In works such as The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche, Pothen suggests, holds decadent works such as Wagner's as representative of all art produced "in the time of the death of God and the revaluation of all values" (169). For Nietzsche, modernity's inability to understand its own time might "herald the death or the end of this art of works... (shrink)

The Wofford symposium was the first of the North American bi-centennial conferences on Hegel. Except for a considerable number of troublesome misprints, the present volume preserves the quality of the meeting, and its editor is to be thanked for bringing off the conference and bringing out the volume. Circumstances led him to substitute a general exposition of Hegelian concepts for an intended introduction to the conference theme. As a result the Introduction is too general for most readers of the volume. (...) The spirited use of examples - an Eskimo, an apprentice, a burglar and Moses - will interest pedagogues who have tried to present Hegel. I am not sure, however, that the student would be made sufficiently aware of Hegel’s departure from ordinary dualistic modes of thought. Thus, we read of ideas as “contents coming before the mind,” of Hegel’s “theory of innate ideas,” of mind “having” its thoughts. I am, moreover, puzzled by assertions which I may not have understood well. For example, I do not know what it means to say that for Hegel the unity of a concept “cannot contain a contradictory content,” ; it seems to me that Hegel demands something like this for the concept as notion. Nor does it seem true to say that “the concept of God… is … an exemplification of the triumph of the monistic principle in Hegel’s philosophy”, since he closes the Encyclopedia with an exposition of the necessity for a Trinitarian conception of the divine. These points also seem to trouble the much more sophisticated study which the editor contributed to the conference itself. Although somewhat removed from the specific theme of the conference, it raises one of the most serious questions in Hegelian studies. In what way can Hegel’s readers judge the truth of his assertions? Mr. Christensen sets out to answer by clearly stating the “formal properties” of Hegel’s dialectic method, so that its results will be falsifiable and thereby meet a test which every historical account must meet. It seems to me, however, that Mr. Christensen has shifted from Hegel’s logic to some alleged “method,” and from his philosophical account of history to an “historical” account. Now this introduces presuppositions alien to Hegel’s enterprise, however compatible they may be with some theory of falsifiability. Moreover, we read of two types of content belonging to the Notion, which look very much like an a priori formal and an a posteriori material content. Furthermore, Mr. Christensen seems to suppose that the dialectic must present only those stages which advance spirit and contain their predecessors in a straightforwardly accumulative way. Towards the end of what is a vigorous paper, he confesses that Hegel’s “blurring” of the distinction between method and notion renders a dialectical account of history in principle not falsifiable. It seems to me, however, that in framing the question - while the author has avoided gross reductions of Hegel to formalism or dualism - his thought has shifted towards Verstand and away from Begriff. He is uneasy with his more abstract approach, and with good cause, for the shift works at cross-purposes to the expressed intent of his analysis. Professor Findlay recognizes the importance of calling Hegel to some kind of critical account, but at the end of his prudent comment he returns to an initial scepticism regarding any single formulation of the vital and revisionary character of the dialectic. While he finds many Hegelian accounts “profoundly illuminating”, he also finds that he “cannot further illuminate this illumination”. (shrink)

In order to introduce the text description of this class will show seven keywords, they represent In order to understand the general process for the seven. Need to mention is that the author published in Chinese script - title "Gadamer's philosophy of the seven key" - and this content is not the same. In fact, only one in that the use of key words in this speech mentioned the four key words will be used the next article. 1 Linguistics as (...) high as the United States in the "real management and methods," a book in the last third of the contents of the specified language is "the universal medium of interpretation of experience." It is in this medium, things are understood, understanding and interpretation to occur. It is the fundamental and the first thing on a switch, it makes things possible, without it, understanding must not occur. It is in this medium, the real management there, although in terms of the real incidence of management and is not limited to this medium. Sprachlichkeit is up to the universal language of the United States to name the first of of a proper noun. history of as language, history is a popular media, and history is also rising to become "a hermeneutical principle." To understand history, which must be traced back to Heidegger, "and there is time," the first six parts, entitled "Timing and historical nature." This title has been out of correct revelation, history is the study of this structure there is some a result of this there is the same as in the past and the present one there, it was possible there through his plans and will itself which extend to the future. Dilthey on Heidegger benefit of this term and its historical significance, but that裡Dilthey, the basic processes of life, and in Heidegger, the basic process is still alive there in the past and future Among the visual field. It is a learning process rather than the life there is a process, there is a process rather than the life philosophy of life regardless of the process. Dilthey and Gadamer and Heidegger places of historical analysis for the premise. 3 by the historical role of awareness up to the United States, this keyword has not appeared in from Schleiermacher, Dilthey, or Heidegger that裡. But Heidegger once spoke to the author, the concept represented by the word directly from Dilthey and future. Indeed, the word and the "fusion of" two persons都benefit from Hegel and Dilthey, Heidegger than In order to impact. At the same time, for the resumption of encounter with the text of the history of this effort directly, the recall In order to Heidegger and Qike fruit. Up to the United States shows that it is essential that "the existence of the structure." That is to say, it is usually associated with the text coming from a tradition, crushed In order to present before the sight. 4 hermeneutics into the cycle and see in understanding the structure and the first cycle between hermeneutics, there is a close link. Hermeneutics and the cycle regardless of such a concept, not only from a part of the overall future understanding, understanding from the part of the overall future. This is a logical contradiction, but it depicts In order to understand the kind of work does not have the way to recovery. This is to see What are the relationship? Up with the United States use this word in the former understanding of the meaning of a person he can understand any part of the text and context before, must have a pre-understanding. When Schleiermacher hermeneutics for the cycle to take a more formalistic point of view, he also participate in an objective and subjective look for. In order to reject the United States is up for the subjective, and he describes, in understanding the text, our understanding of a person but a different meaning, and this sense of ownership in a situation with a theme of the event . Heidegger the hermeneutic circle and put the world on their own understanding of the context in which the world is time and the existence of the world, in order to In order to reinvent the meaning of hermeneutic circle. It exists in the time being and is expected to forward to the future, it is a person exists in the world of all possibilities of a personal meaning. Gadamer Heidegger and then one more step beyond, he is defined as the cycle of hermeneutics and the interpretation of the traditional sports were a correlation between the movement. Heidegger's masterpiece裡tradition and not important, but those for the traditional and the interpretation of the relationship between text, up to the U.S. In order to play an important role in the analysis. Up to the United States, brought into the discussion In order to "complete expectation" that the key concept, it is subject to the historical role of awareness of the operation of the core. In this part of the contents of the directory for the present review is to show to some of the major associated. 5 authority and tradition up to the United States on the authority of the traditional view is that from his understanding and the hermeneutic circle before the concept developed in the future. Enlightenment for the suspect an effort made ​​to switch the authority of the United States to see coming up is one-sided, because the authority is naturally found in the leading field in a PhD, the referee, professors and experts. Recognize these people for a topic you know even in the natural and appropriate. So regardless of up to his brother's wife is not a legitimate authority and legitimate authority, and authority as a concept to see the future is appropriate. Similarly, our traditional understanding among the living, and we should explore a more deeper with our traditional relationship. Traditional German text is Űberlieferung, incurs passed along . Once again, as a fair decision without dialogue and is not legal to see, up to the United States against this anti-traditional views of the Enlightenment. 6 Depending on the domain of integration sight philosophy of integration is another sign up to the United States is not to find elsewhere. Basically, the text of the encounter with a sight In order to involve the integration of text and interpreter of the visual field of sight. And a man's own awareness is a fusion of traditional with the product. "That is convenient to get a sight of their own, but also requires a fusion of traditional with." In order for each dialogue also involves a fusion of sight. It is a wildcard description of the terminology. 7 Dialogue dialogue leading up to the U.S. interpretation of the theme of philosophy, relying on a life of his ideal, he as such a show of openness. Schleiermacher as high as the United States in general, is a talented rapper. However, the need for a fruitful dialogue open to others point of view, and the need to recognize that he or she may be right. In a true dialogue, both sides都want to talk more close to the truth regardless of management topics, which are more important than winning. Finally, the dialogue is a basic hermeneutical tool, a means to understand, so we coming close to the theme of the issue, but ready to change our point of view. An introductory section explains that the lecture will present seven key terms, representing seven aspects of the universal process of understanding. It is noted that a published lecture in Chinese by this author under the title "Seven Key Terms in the Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer "is not the same as this, and indeed only one of the terms in that lecture is used in this one, although four of them are used in tomorrow's lecture. An introductory section explains that the lecture will present seven key terms, representing seven aspects of the universal process of understanding. It is noted that a published lecture in Chinese by this author under the title "Seven Key Terms in the Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer" is not the same as this, and indeed only one of the terms in that lecture is used in this one, although four of them are used in tomorrow's lecture. 1. Sprachlichkeit-Linguisticality As Gadamer notes in the final third of Truth and Method, language is the "universal medium of hermeneutical experience." It is the medium in which things are understood, the medium in which understanding and interpretation take place. It is fundamental and prior to everything. It makes things possible, and without it understanding cannot take place at all. It is the medium in which truth happens, although there is more than this to the happening of truth. Sprachlichkeit is the term Gadamer uses to name the "universal priority" of language. 2. Geschichtlichkeit-Historicity Like language, history is a universal medium, and historicity is raised to the status of "a hermeneutical principle. "To understand historicity, one has to go back to the six sections of Heidegger's Being and Time that carry the heading" Temporality and Historicity. "Already this title correctly suggests that historicity is a consequence of the ontological structure of Dasein as a being that lives with a past and a present, and also extends itself into the future through projecting possible being. Heidegger is indebted to Dilthey for the term and sense of historicity, but in Dilthey the basic process is life, whereas in Heidegger, the basic process is being-in-the-world in horizons of past and future. It is an ontological process rather than a life process, a process of being rather than the vitalism of life in life-philosophy. Gadamer presupposes Dilthey's and Heidegger's analysis of Geschichtlichkeit . 3. das wirkungsgeschichtliche Bewusstsein-the Historically Effected Consciousness This is a key term in Gadamer that does not appear in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, or Heidegger. Heidegger once remarked to the author that the idea that this term represents is straight out of Dilthey. Certainly it and the "fusion of horizons" are more indebted to Hegel and Dilthey than to Heidegger. At the same time, the effort to restore the historical immediacy of encounter with a text recalls Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Gadamer argues that the essence of it is " the structure of experience. "That is to say, it shatters the present horizon, usually with a text from tradition. 4. Hermeneutische Zirkel and Vorurteil-Prejudice and the Hermeneutical Circle There is an intimate connection between the fore-structure of understanding and the hermeneutical circle. The hermeneutical circle refers to the idea that one understands the part from the whole, but also the whole from the parts. This is a logical contradiction, but it describes the back and forth way that understanding works. What has this to do with prejudices ? Gadamer uses this word as synonymous with pre-understanding, and one has to have a prior understanding before one can understand any part of a text or situation. While Schleiermacher took a more formalistic view of the hermeneutical circle, he also looked at the objective and subjective sides. Gadamer rejects the subjective side and explains that in understanding a text we are not understanding a person but a meaning that resides in a situation and a subject-matter. Heidegger revolutionized the meaning of the hermeneutical circle by placing it in the context of an understanding of self and world that is temporal and existential. It exists in time and anticipates a future, and it is the personal sense of one's possibilities for being in the world. Gadamer took a step beyond Heidegger by defining the hermeneutical circle as the interplay between the movement of tradition and that of the interpreter. Tradition plays little role in Heidegger's masterwork, but it and the interpreter's relation to the text loom large in Gadamer's analysis. The discussion brings in the key concept in Gadamer of the "anticipation of completion" which is central to the working of historically effected consciousness. A review of the table of contents for the section is presented to show some of the major relationships. 5. Autorität und Tradition-Authority and Tradition Gadamer's views with regard to authority and tradition grow out of his concepts of preunderstanding and the hermeneutical circle. The effort by the Enlightenment to discredit all authority seemed one-sided to Gadamer because authority is naturally accorded to doctors, judges, professors, and other experts in a field. To acknowledge that they know more about a subject than you do is natural and appropriate. So Gadamer speaks of legitimate authority and illegitimate authority, but authority as a concept seems appropriate. Likewise, tradition inhabits our understanding, and we should seek an ever deeper relationship to our tradition. The German word for tradition is Űberlieferung, that which is handed down. Again, Gadamer takes up arms against the Enlightenment prejudice against tradition as illegitimate without dialogue or a fair trial. 6. Horizontverschmelzung-Fusion of Horizons The "fusion of horizons "is another trademark of Gadamerian philosophy. It is not found elsewhere. Basically, the encounter with the text involves a fusion of horizons, that of the text and that of the interpreter. Also one's own consciousness is a product of a fusion of horizons with the tradition. "Even to acquire one's own horizon requires a fusion of horizons with the tradition." Every conversation, too, involves a fusion of horizons. It is an all-purpose term. 7. Conversation Conversation is a leitmotif of Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy, an ideal he lived by, an openness he exemplified. Schleiermacher was a gifted conversationalist, as was Gadamer. But a fruitful conversation requires openness to the viewpoint of the other person, and the acknowledgement that he or she could be right. In a true conversation both partners want to come closer to the truth about a matter, and that is more important than winning. Ultimately, conversation is a basic hermeneutical tool, a means of reaching understanding, so we approach a subject with questions, but ready to change our point of view. (shrink)

Few if any of Kant’s critics were more trenchant than Hegel. Here I reconstruct some objections Hegel makes to Kant in a text that has received insufficient attention, the chapter titled ‘the Moral World View’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I show that Kant holds virtually all the tenets Hegel ascribes to ‘the moral world view’. I concentrate on five of Hegel’s main objections to Kant’s practical metaphysics. First, Kant’s problem of coordinating happiness with virtue (as worthiness to (...) be happy) is contrived. Kant denies that there is any inherent connection between acting rightly and being happy, but his denial depends on his defining happiness in terms of satisfying inclinations, rather than in terms of achieving ends in general. Second, Kant’s view of moral motivation is contrived; he ultimately admits that we cannot resolve to act without taking inclinations into account. (We cannot resolve to act apart from the matter of our maxim.) Third, Kant’s idea about perfecting our virtue in an infinite progress is incoherent. Kant defines virtue, and evidence of virtue, in terms of overcoming inclinations. Inclinations die with the body. Therefore there can be neither virtue nor evidence of virtue after death. Fourth, Kant’s view of the autonomy of moral agency is inconsistent with viewing the moral law as a divine command. Fifth, Kant’s moral principles cannot be put into practice in concrete circumstances because he supplies inadequate guidance for classifying acts. I conclude that Hegel’s objections to Kant’s practical metaphysics are sound, and I show that the problems Hegel raised against Kant’s account of autonomy and moral motivation are still current, since they have not been resolved, e.g., by Onora O’Neill’s Constructions of Reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gregory Currie TEXT WITHOUT CONTEXT: SOME ERRORS OF STANLEY FISH "Intuition told him that the vast ineptitude of the venture would serve as proof that no fraud was afoot." —Jorge Luis Borges, "Tom Castro, the Implausible Imposter," in A Universal History ofInfamy There are those of us who seek unity, universality, patterns of invariance in any diverse multitude of particulars. With the interpretation of texts, the diversity is evident, (...) the unity, universality and invariance less so. Still, we have the text itself, a sequence of determinately meaningful signs, independent of, and a constraint on, the activities of interpreters. We universalists might want more than that, but it's a start. It's a start some people are not prepared to give us. Stanley Fish is one of them. According to him we are looking for something which does not exist, and which we do not need. I shall argue that Fish is wrong on both counts. According to Stanley Fish, there are no constraints on interpretation that transcend particular, local interpretive communities. Indeed, there is no truth or validity that is community transcendent, no standard of lightness, proof or confirmation that has any warrant other than community approval. Intellectual ascendency is always ultimately a matter of rhetorical power, and the locus of power shifts as the norms of the community change. Yet we need not worry that this implies any dangerous kind ofrelativism or subjectivism. Each ofus is deeply immersed Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 212-228 Gregory Currie213 in his or her own community. Our thoughts, intentions, and actions gain their very identity from the structure of public, communitarian relations we enter into, and the community imposes on us a tight structure of norms and intellectual options that "situate" us (a favored word in the Fish vocabulary) in such a way that it is always clear what interpretive move is appropriate.1 Fish is no epistemological anarchist in the style of Feyerabend: it is not the case, for him, that "anything goes." There is always a clear distinction between what goes and what does not; it is just that the rules, the structure, the hierarchy of options are not invariant across time or communities.2 Now we do it like this, tomorrow we may do it like that; we do it this way, they do it that way. Wherever you are, the rules are always clear, but the rules depend on where you are. I shall call this thesis "internalism." It bears some resemblance to views of the later Wittgenstein, and rather closely parallels Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific paradigms. It has a negative and a positive aspect. The negative aspect is that community-specific constraints on interpretation are all we have. The positive aspect is that they are all we need. Is internalism correct? I say it is not. I say that the positive claim is false, because internal constraints alone can never answer the relativist's challenge, when that challenge is properly understood; more about that in a moment. But this merely serves to highlight the importance of the negative thesis: if that is correct then relativism carries the day. So my primary concern here is with the negative thesis. Fish's main argument for the negative thesis is that what seems to most of us to be an obvious external constraint on interpretation—the literal meaning of the text in question—is no such thing. And he bases this claim on some arguments which purport to show that there L· no such thing as literal meaning. So my aim, it emerges at last, is to defend the idea of literal meaning. But first, I shall say something about the question of relativism. II Fish's answer to relativism, it will be remembered, is that interpretive communities constrain the interpretive choices of their members in such away that there can always be seen tobe nonarbitrary ways ofproceeding when it comes to formulating and choosing between interpretive hypotheses. This claim, the positive claim of Fish's internalism, raises two questions: Is Fish right, as a matter of fact, about the ways in which interpretive, and more generally intellectual communities constrain the 214Philosophy and Literature thoughts and actions... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John R. Boly NIHILISM ASIDE: DERRIDA'S DEBATE OVER INTENTIONAL MODELS DERRIDA'S PHILOSOPHY, or perhaps antiphilosophy, emerges from phenomenological thought. But to a great extent, he has been permitted to define that emergence on his own terms, particularly in his writings on Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. This is, of course, highly questionable. It in effect licenses Derrida to become a revisionist historian of his own origins. So I propose (...) a variation. Instead of placing phenomenology against Derrida's backdrop, I want to question his deconstructive project in its relation to the phenomenological venture. The difficulty with this is apparent. What would such a venture be? Even posing the question raises problems in that it presupposes an impossible vantage, an uninvolved point from which to look down in serene mastery at a game rigged in advance. Yet perhaps a synoptic point ofview may be indulged in for a while, provided no one forgets its provisional nature. In that case, the phenomenological venture includes four moments. 1. Suspension (or epoche). Human beings cannot perceive reality in itself. They can only experience meaning through the operations of intentionality, which may be thought of as the exclusions, selections, and combinations of a mediating system. This truism is no less terrifying for being so true, and every mediating system bears within itselfan impulse towards protective closure, an impulse to veil its own forming activity. Such closure eventually encrusts a mediating system and hardens into what Marxists call ideology, the early Barthes called myth, or contemporary response theorists call repertoire. Suspension involves a questioning attentiveness that remains within the closure it questions. Every fact is reconsidered, as factum, a deed brought forth through a process ofmaking. The consequently bracketed "fact" is both sacred object, granting reflexive ac152 John R. Boly153 cess to its formative process, and utter pretension, trying to conceal that process and thereby promote itself as fact rather than facture, origin rather than product. Phenomenology begins with a questioning of that pretension. Like a difficult child, it is perplexed at the self-evident and wonders at the obvious. 2.Reduction. Yet this questioning attentiveness takes only a first step. Suspension disenchants or disillusions, but it does not advance toward an understanding of the intricate patterns through which meaning emerges from the infinite possibilities of perception. That is the task of reduction, to which Husserl assigned two phases, the eidetic and the transcendental.1 In the eidetic phase, phenomena are released, so far as this is possible, into a preflective and preconceptual mode, as pure perceptions still awaiting the activity of mediation. Here, phenomena are boundless as well as exhilarating in their semantic potential. This return to primary perception, however, generates an opposing phase, the transcendental reduction, which traces the way in which mediating systems or what John Wild called versions of the life-world, select and arrange a potentially infinite semantic potential into actual meanings.2 Eidetic and transcendental phases work together, as inseparable antagonists within a continuous dialectic of disclosure. Because these two phases oppose one another, reduction involves a continuous interplay between energy and order, dynamism and system, with the result that it tirelessly traces patterns in the life-world, yet does so only to modify and transform those patterns through the very act of its tracing. Efforts to set the patterns of a life-world into a stable structure at the same time set free their infinite possibilities.3 The eidetic phase of the reduction thus provides a relentless semantic pressure that qualifies, elaborates, and eventually disperses every order of the transcendental phase. Yet without the revealing provocation of such inadequate orders, the eidetic phase would become incoherent and lapse into a speechless nihilism. Though it enacts a comic drama, reduction is the central task of the phenomenological venture, which halts the instant it is denied access to the intentional realm of the life-world. 3.Opening. So important is this access that it generates a separate moment, which pauses to meditate on the conditions of such access. The issues that arise here dominated Heidegger's thought after Being and Time, and they are among the most abstruse yet important concerns of phenomenology. How can models of intentional patterning be... (shrink)

My research takes as its guiding thread the statement from Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of spirit of 1805-06, that «cognition is recognition[Erkennen ist Anerkennen]». In this perspective I delineate, first, the consequences of this position for Hegel's epistemology, in particular with reference to the question of skepticism. Then, I show in what sense the recognitive conception of knowledge makes it possible for Hegel to comprehend unitarily, on one hand, cognition as exercise of natural capacities and cognition as exercise of (...) normative capacities socially articulated, and,on the other hand, theoretical self-consciousness and practical self-consciousness. The gnoseological importance of this solution can be comprehended only if we reconstruct the evolution of Hegel's thought in that span of time in which he most directly tackles the issue of skepsis: that is, from 1797 - the beginning of his Frankfurt period - when he began to occupy himself with gnoseological questions, until the end of his stay in Jena,which begins in 1801 and concludes in 1807 with the writing of the Phenomenology. The analysis of the development of the Hegelian theory of knowledge - worked out in the first part of my study - is dealt with in the context of a reconstruction of the historico-argumentative constellation within which it matured. The constellation of importance for our analysis is represented by the skeptical crisis - triggered by authors such as Schulze, Maimonand Platner - that invested the post-Kantian galaxy, within which the idealist solutions to the problem of cognition matured. Through the analysis of journals and authors with whom Hegel came directly or indirectly into contact - from Platner to Reinhold, Jacobi, Fichte and Schelling, to Hölderlin and Sinclair, concluding with Zeender, Krug, Bouterwek and Werneburg, and among the journals Fülleborn's Beiträge and Niethammer's Journal in particular - it is possible to map the various solutions proposed for the skeptical problem andsee how it is in relation to this problem that the conceptions of self-consciousness evolve and the very concept of "interpersonality" - "intersubjectivity" - emerges for the first time. At the same time, pursuing my objective of broadening the investigation of the phenomenon of recognition, which in my view is not reducible to the field of practical philosophy, I proposea fresh reconstruction of the lexical and conceptual evolution of the various terms -Erkennen, Wiedererkennen, Recognition, Anerkennen - through which the various modalities of the phenomenon of recognition were indicated in the philosophical tradition to which Hegel refers: recognition of objects as perceptive reidentification; reminiscence on the level of theory of memory; recognition of subjects as self-recognition (apperception) and attribution to others of intentionality; logical recognition as recognition of the validity of a proposition; moral recognition, where "recognizing" generally means approving, accepting(more specifically, someone may be "recognized" as an autonomous subject and as a unique,genuine individuality). I focus in particular on the theory of memory as «recognitio» in Wolff and in his school, on the conception of «reconnaissance» in Bonnet, on Kantian«Recognition» and on the theory of «Anerkennen» in Ernst Platner. This investigation serves, on the one hand, to show how the phenomenon of recognition is central for a comprehension of the structure both of the lower and of the higher cognitive faculties. This ought to allow us to understand in what sense Hegel, taking intersubjective recognition as hisleading phenomenon, attempts to reunite the various meanings of recognition within a theory of knowledge on the basis of which «cognition is recognition». On the other hand, my conceptual and lexicographic investigation also serves to bring to light - in a new way with respect to the studies on Anerkennung - a hitherto unknown problematic constellation and the input of certain authors, such as Werneburg and Platner, whose conceptions may haveinfluenced Hegel's approach.The second part and the third of my study - a reconstruction of the pre- phenomenological Jena writings dealing with «Anerkennung» - dwells on the theme of the notion of natural recognition, whose centrality for the Hegelian conception of recognition has not yet been adequately grasped. This reconstruction of the theory of natural recognition gives due weight to the influence of Schelling on Hegel's understanding of «Anerkennung» -while the critical literature has generally concentrated on Fichte. Analyzing the conception of the animal organism developed in particular in the lectures on the philosophy of nature of 1803-04 brings to light how Hegel already individuates the recognitive phenomenon at the level of sexual reproduction: it is from here that he posits the natural prerequisites for the development of consciousness of self. The category of natural recognition will present itself anew in Hegel's analysis of the social ontology of the human world in the philosophy of spirit, where it concerns sexual love, reproduction and child raising: natural recognition is, then, that on the basis of which Hegel develops his theory that cognition is recognition.Recognition, as a «middle» of spirit, is a cognitive phenomenon that is primitive with respectto linguistically structured human intersubjectivity; it is, properly, that cognitive structure which is necessarily presupposed by a self-conscious subjectivity that expresses itself linguistically: linguistic intersubjectivity expresses various modes of recognition, but notevery form of recognition is linguistic. The evolutional theory of cognition as recognition is in fact designed to show how increasingly complex recognitive relations emerge from a basic level of natural interactions to take on a linguistically mediated and universal structure. Withthe notion of spiritual recognition Hegel indicates just that ensemble of normative relations that constitute the infrastructure of action and thus mediate the formation of socially articulated self-conscious knowing of self. In the lectures on the philosophy of spirit of 1803-04 and of 1805-06 Hegel thus reconstructs the recognitive structure of the social institutions of right, of labor, and of exchange, showing that, within a politically structured community,dyadic (I-you) interactions are mediated by the universal viewpoint of the "we" incarnated in institutions that can be recognized by citizens as their own and by which citizens can be recognized. (shrink)

The contribution of Jesuits to the different fields of knowledge, including philosophy, is historically well known. In fact, since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in the 16th century, Jesuits from different generations and cultures have taken part in the philosophical debates of their time and their different contexts. Since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in 1540, the Jesuits, individually and as a body, have engaged in a fruitful dialogue between the Christian tradition and different dimensions of (...) human culture. During almost five centuries, numerous Jesuits taught philosophy in academic institutions all over the world. Some of them have their names recorded in the history of philosophy. Of course, the majority of them is not anymore remembered, despite their valuable contribution to the development of the Jesuit intellectual tradition up to our times. In fact, as an heir of the Roman College, the first academic institution founded by the Society of Jesus, in 1551, the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, is a witness to this tradition, which has been kept alive thanks to the discrete work of both Jesuits and lay intellectuals. Known as the University of the Nations, this institution corroborates not only the capacity of the Jesuit tradition to put faith in dialogue with reason, but also the option to take the concrete reality of each human culture and its historical context as its point of departure. The Jesuits’ willingness to engage in dialogue with different intellectual perspectives is underpinned by one of the most defining traits of the Jesuit charism, namely, the conviction that God can be found and served in all things. Accordingly, Jesuits have adopted, from the beginning, an amenable stance towards the world with its different cultures and intellectual trends. As such, Jesuits have, since the beginning, inhabited the frontiers of human thought. According to the contemporary philosopher Paul Gilbert, SJ, within the institutions under the leadership of the Society of Jesus, it was always possible to maintain an equilibrium between two principles: “intellectual unity” and “openness to the world.” Without detriment to the Jesuit identity, the companions of Ignatius have been willing to dwell in the various dimensions of human reality, in their multiplicity and plurality. Either in the renewal of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ metaphysics, or in the dialogue with modern philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, or Hegel, and even in the inculturation in non-European contexts, the Jesuits have been able to preserve the Christian tradition through an original development of human culture in all its richness and diversity. With respect to the last century, it has to be acknowledged that a significant number of Jesuits made significant contributions, with recognized competence, to philosophy. Certainly, the 20th century was particularly complex in many respects. It would be enough to recall that this period, which brought with it unprecedented social, scientific, and technological developments, was also the stage for the two World Wars. With the emergence or consolidation of philosophical currents such as Marxism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Structuralism, and Post-Modernism, the past century was, without any doubt, fascinating from the intellectual point of view. Jesuits such as Karl Rahner, Frederick Copleston, Bernard Lonergan, William Norris Clarke, John F. Kavanaugh, Teilhard de Chardin, Gaston Fessard, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Michel de Certeau, Xavier Tilliette, Paul Valadier, Paweł Siwek, Ignacio Ellacuría, Francisco Taborda, Henrique de Lima Vaz and, in the Portuguese context, Diamantino Martins or Júlio Fragata, among many others, were able to engage different philosophical currents, problems and controversies of their times. Faithful to their long tradition of being present in the frontiers of thought, those Jesuits have engaged in a fruitful dialogue with these intellectual trends, offering relevant contributions to different ongoing debates. Within this context, the present volume recalls and discusses the philosophical contribution of some of the most prominent Jesuit protagonists of the intellectual interchange that took place in the 20th century. This volume also intends to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, which happens just before the inauguration of the Ignatian Year. Decreed by Father Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, this celebratory Year will start on May 20, 2021, precisely 500 years after Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, was wounded at the battle of Pamplona. We are happy that this volume could bring together outstanding specialists in the thought of some of the most prominent Jesuits philosophers of the last century, namely Paul Valadier, Paul Gilbert, Józef Bremer, Jacek Poznański, Alexander Maar, Patrick H. Byrne, M. Ross Romero, Carlos Alvarez, Hélio Pereira Lima, José Gama, Domingos Terra, Gabriel Flynn, Marie-Gabrielle Lemaire, José Sols Lucia, Lorena Zuchel Lovera, Pedro Pablo Achondo Moya, Enzo Solari, Massimo Borghesi, Mendo Castro Henriques, João Barbosa, and Dominique Lambert. In addition, in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Júlio Fragata’s birth, Maria Teresa Fragata presents a memory of his life and thought. We hope that this volume may be useful to all those interested in the Jesuit philosophical tradition. Hopefully, it will stimulate scholars to pursue a fruitful and creative dialogue with contemporary philosophy, in the footsteps of the Jesuit philosophers featured here. We would like to thank all the authors and all those who, in different ways, made this volume possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Way to Ethical CultureThe Meaning of Art as Oscillating between the Other, Il y a, and the ThirdRossitsa Varadinova Borkowski (bio)Who can suppose that a poet capable of effectively introducing into his scenes rhetoricians, generals and various other characters, each displaying some peculiar excellence, was nothing more than a droll or juggler, capable only of cheating or flattering his hearer, and not of instructing him?Are we all (...) agreed that the chief merit of a poet consists in his accurate representation of the affairs of life? Can this be done by a mere driveller, unacquainted with the world?The excellence of a poet is not to be measured by the same standard as that of a mechanic or a blacksmith, where honor and virtue have nothing to do with our estimate. But the poet and the individual are connected, and he only can become a good poet who is in the first instance a worthy man.— Strabo, The Geography of StraboAfter Emmanuel Levinas showed the need for radically positing the Ethical as the original structure of human inwardness and as art is a fundamental aspect of being human, a reexamination of the meaning of the Artistic and its relation with the Ethical is necessary.1 Throughout [End Page 195] the history of Western thought and culture, the meaning of art has been regarded either as imitation of the world and nature (Plato and Aristotle), objective self-expression of the Absolute Spirit (Hegel) or Being (Heidegger), a subjective “free play of imagination” and judgment (Kant and the Romanticists), or as inevitable engagement with social issues and political position (the Marxists and Sartre). In spite of the variety of theories and views about the essence and value of art, it is unquestionable that the Artistic has transformational power over humans, which points to art’s connection with ethics. Therefore, following Levinas, instead of asking the general ontological questions about the gist of art “What is art?” or “Why is there art instead of something else?” we should seek an answer to the ethical question about the meaning of art: “How can the existence of art be justified?”The answers could be sought in two directions. The first already quite well beaten path explores Levinas’s own vision on art, which most critics find hesitant or even ambiguous.2 The impression of this hesitation is significant on the background of Levinas’s rigorous clarity about the Ethical. Overlooking this impression would lead to conclusions that would deviate our attention from the main question about how the existence of art can be justified. A possible explanation would be that Levinas’s seemingly fragmentary thoughts about art are woven into the fabric of his ultimate meta-ethical project — that is, his approach to art is instrumental, subjected to the Ethical. For example, commentators agree that Levinas’s early article “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948) is the only one exclusively focused on art and use it as a starting point to assemble the fragments of his aesthetic views into an aesthetic theory. Although this move might be justified methodologically, Levinas is clear that the discussion of art in this article is subordinated to the more general (and more serious) question about the nontruth of being (LR 132). Positing art as mythological and mystical, thus incapable of transmitting a meaningful message if separated from philosophical criticism (142), Levinas puts “in brackets” the discussion about the artistic and focuses on the reason qua knowledge (philosophy) and its relation with the Other. The impression of his hesitation about art’s [End Page 196] independent capability to dephase the instant, to breach the ontological gravity, and to expose the human spirit to the Ethical comes from those texts where Levinas applies his own vision about the integrative role of philosophical criticism — i.e., texts that work as philosophical criticism of art: “Transcendence through poetry — is this serious?”3 (PN 175n12), “if poetry can contain teachings” (165; emphasis added). Therefore, on one hand, Levinas exhaustively scrutinizes all possibilities of ethics of philosophy and comes to the clear position that in order for reason to function humanly it should be dethroned by the Other. He is... (shrink)

The work aims to demonstrate that at the heart of Eriugena’s approach to Christian theology there lies a profoundly philosophical interest in the necessity of a cardinal shift in the paradigms of thinking – namely, that from the metaphysical to the dialectical one, which wins him a reputation of the ‘Hegel of the ninth century,’ as scholars in Post-Hegelian Germany called him. The prime concern of Eriugena’s discourse is to prove that the actual adoption of the salvific truth of Christ’s (...) revelation about all humans’ Sonship to God directly depends on the way the truth of God’s Oneness is consistently thought of. It is exactly the dialectic of the universal and particular which allows Eriugena both to tackle the dichotomy between being and non-being and to proceed towards raising a question how the totality of God’s being can be approached so as to let him radically reconsider a predominantly metaphysical view of creation the theological reflection traditionally relies on. According to the dialectical understanding of unity that Eriugena does adhere to, the reality of creation cannot be thought of, and therefore known, otherwise than in the way of being inseparable from the universal Principle of all. This is the Principle abandoned by nothing, unless the mind corrupted by the senses thinks otherwise and, following the metaphysical pattern of dichotomy, improperly sets the creation and its Principle apart. Restoration of the mind to the proper rational motion of recta ratio freed, as Eriugena argues, from the dictates of senses therefore becomes the way of both the epistemological breakthrough to the infinite whole and practical return from the world of finite things to living in the divine reality of creation. The work’s argument is based on the assumption of close affinity between Eriugena’s discourse and that of his Islamic contemporaries, who developed their dialectical ideas within the Mu’tazilah tradition of a philosophically disciplined approach to the truth of God’s Oneness. In particular, al-Nazzam’s engagement with Parmenides’ Periphyseon and his resistance to the danger of a dualistic interpretation of its ontology seem to provoke Eriugena’s innovative approach to Christian theology with a view to suggesting a mode of overcoming dualism as the main obstacle on the way to the Truth revealed. This vision of the meaning of Eriugena’s undertaking allows us not only to better understand the novelty of his approach to Christian theology, but also reconsider some of the key points of his discourse that seem to have become a sort of commonplace in Eriugenian studies: 1. Unlike the prevalent opinion, not the forms of the division of Nature but the modes of interpreting being and non-being are to be understood to constitute the genuine subject-matter of each book of the Periphyseon and, hence, of the five parts of his system. 2. The fourfold division of Nature is to be interpreted not as a basic structure of the system offered by Eriugena, but as a means of introducing dialectic to the body of theology by refuting Augustine’s metaphysical vision of a hierarchical model of the universe and indicating the way of resolution of the cardinally theological contradiction – God does and does not create at the same time. 3. All this gives reason to disagree with a general tendency of associating Eriugena’s work with exploration of the division of God’s Nature and to reinterpret it as an immense anti-division project to be understood as an important turn in the history of Christian thought entirely focused on the truth of God’s Oneness and human life in conformity to it. *** I affirm that this thesis is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for examination in any form elsewhere. (shrink)

As we know, the whole system of Hegel 's thought is based totally on the self-development process of the Geist. In other words, according to dialectical scheme of neoplatonism which Proclus systematized as a triad, μονή-πρόοδος-ἐπιστροφή, Hegel says that the Geist remains in himself, comes out from himself, and then returns to himself. With this process of self-development of the Geist, Hegel tries to explain the realities in general such as nature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. This process of (...) the development of the Geist makes a circle mode with the triadic way of an sich - für sich - an und für sich, but itself as the final destination of the Geist after finishing the whole process, is not a mere itself at the beginning, but the completed itself filled with the self-consciousness and freedom in full bloom. The last moment when the Geist returns to itself, Hegel says it is ‘Ruhe in Gott’. This is the final moment which the Geist as reality of the world and the history arrives and also the conclusion of his philosophy. Then, what happens to this final stage of the return of the Geist to itself, and what does it mean? Most of all, Hegel saw that, as the goal of world history is the achievement of self-consciousness of the Geist on its freedom and the realization of the freedom, this goal was achieved in the self-return of the Geist. And he has seen that the finite and the infinite, which showed constant opposition in the history of Western thought, are united here. According to Hegel, the infinite and finite in the bad concept that came out of the intellect(Verstand) are confronted with each other, and existence and non-existence are substantially separated. However, in the true concept of the infinite derived from reason(Vernunft), is formed the unified moment, in which the confrontations of both parties has been resolved and everything had been included in itself. The transcendence that he advocates is not a transmundane transcendence that is separated absolutely from the finite sensory world in existence and then unreachable absolutely, but a ‘right transcendence’ in which the finite and the infinite are really inseparable and remain as moments of the process of the Geist. In his view, the former which Platonism represents in Western philosophy, is an 'empty transcendence,' but the transcendence that he speaks is a 'full transcendence' that encompasses all moments of the finite in itself. The return of the absolute idea to itself means not only the sublation (Aufhebung) of the finite but also the the sublation of the reality, of the other, of the outwardness, of the abandonment of history, and secures the opposites to those such as ideality, self-identity, inwardness, and trans-historicity. Hegel's Geist as returning to itself has self-consciousness recognizing that it negates and rules the world and the history at the same time. In other words, it is honored and then the glorifying of God has been achieved in the consciousness of itself as the Absolute that it has been the only subject and the sole ruler of world history. According to Hegel, this glorifying of God is the most valuable object of the Geist and history. The Geist that has completed the process of self-development in the return to the itself enjoys the serenity, which is not a 'vacant serenity' but a ‘full serenity’ integrating the finite and the infinite into its inner simplicity. Hegel regarded the transition from the other to being self-internal as a transition from necessity to freedom, and in this serenity the Geist enjoys the freedom that it has in its own nature, as possible as it can. That is to say, in this serenity, the Geist becomes absolutely free and became itself, negating and sublating all other-being(Anderssein). In his view, the "Serenity in God," where the Geist becomes itself and its absolute freedom is obtained, is the ultimate goal of the Geist, and the omega point of the history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 565-566 [Access article in PDF] Kai Hammermeister. The German Aesthetic Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 259. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $22.00. This history of German (or more accurately, Germanic) aesthetics surveys the tradition stretching from Alexander Baumgarten to Theodor Adorno. The author has divided his survey into three thematic parts. In the first, "The Age of Paradigms," (...) Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Kant, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel establish the principal approaches to aesthetics and the philosophy of art that will structure the tradition. In the second part, "Challenging the Paradigms," Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche raise critical problems with the positions of their forebears. In the final part, "Renewing the Paradigms," Cassirer, Lukács, Heidegger, Gadamer, Marcuse, and Adorno revive elements of the classical tradition for twentieth-century purposes. As one might expect, covering fifteen complex figures in a relatively short book makes for a survey primarily of the surfaces of their thought. Even so, the exercise may be useful for those with no knowledge of German aesthetics who would like a quick introduction.From the outset the author establishes a plan to consider each philosopher's work in terms of his ontological treatment of art, the epistemic role he attributes to art and beauty, and the practical functions he assigns art. In the early chapters the author dutifully addresses these matters at the end of each chapter, but from Hegel on, the author's commitment to this structure seems to wane. It becomes more difficult to discern these assessments of each philosopher as the book progresses. It is an odd feature of the book that its [End Page 565] author announces these "principles of comparison" so explicitly in the introduction, but does not consistently apply them.There is also inconsistency in the author's choices regarding whose theories to directly criticize. In some cases (with Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Cassirer, for example), Hammermeister offers quite global criticisms of the philosophers' views, while in other cases (with Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Heidegger, and Gadamer) he provides very little criticism. The book does not advance a philosophical position from which to understand why some figures in this tradition, but not others, warrant sharp criticisms that on occasion (with Kierkegaard, for example) amount to blanket dismissals.The second part of the book, "Challenging the Paradigms," stands in an uncertain relationship to the first part, "The Age of Paradigms." Hammermeister advertises Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche as thinkers intent on dismantling the aesthetic-theoretical systems of their predecessors, and there is no doubt much truth in this assertion. Yet these chapters offer little in the way of explicit elaboration of precisely which views of which prior thinkers each of these rebels seeks to undermine. Schopenhauer, for example, is presented as a champion of Kantian aesthetic disinterestedness, while his delirious antipathy for Hegel is hardly discussed. Kierkegaard's famous disagreements with Hegel receive little attention, either.The third part, "Renewing the Paradigms," advances one of the author's principal claims in the book: that twentieth-century German(ic) philosophers recapitulate the sequence of positions in the classical Kant-Schiller-Schelling-Hegel development. Cassirer revives Kant; Lukács and other neo-Marxist thinkers revive Schiller; Heidegger is far more indebted to Schelling than he acknowledges. To some extent the author's proposal is a useful heuristic, especially regarding Cassirer and Lukács. With Heidegger problems begin to arise. Hammermeister argues that Heidegger shares with Schelling a view of art as a "truth-event," but this, of course, would be a view that Heidegger also shares with Hegel. When Hammermeister notes (189) that for Heidegger truth can happen in practices other than art, this strengthens a comparison to Hegel (despite the profound differences between Heidegger and Hegel), rather than to Schelling (for whom art alone is the organon of truth, at least in the System of Transcendental Idealism that Hammermeister treats as the most Schellingian of Schelling's texts).As with the author's other overarching structures for the book, the paradigm-renewal claim also loses momentum halfway through. Hammermeister appropriately presents... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegelian RhetoricThora Ilin BayerIntroduction: Rhetoric and DialecticAristotle in the famous first line of his Rhetoric defines the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic: "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic" (1354a). Both rhetoric and dialectic belong to no definitive science. They treat those things that come within the purview of all human beings. As an antistrophes to dialectic, rhetoric concerns particular cases and "may be defined as the faculty [dynamis] of (...) observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (1355b). Dialectic concerns reasoning on general issues and in its generality it is like deduction. But unlike deductive demonstration, dialectic, as Aristotle says in Topics, "reasons from reputable opinions," rather than from premises that are true and primitive (100a).Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason takes a more extreme view of dialectic than Aristotle. Kant regards dialectic as a logic of illusion (Schein) that occurs when reason takes its powers beyond experience to make claims concerning the nature of the soul, world, and God. When reason attempts to determine the nature of what the soul is in itself, its assertions end in paralogisms; when it does so about the world its claims end in antinomies; and when it does so about God its efforts end in the impossibilities of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. Kant regards rhetoric as having no role in the philosophical pursuit of truth. In the Critique of Judgment Kant classifies rhetoric (Beredsamkeit) as belonging [End Page 203] to fine art. He regards ars oratoria as an art of manipulation and deception that achieves its end by a beautiful show (Schein) of speech that plays upon human weaknesses. He says oratory deserves no respect whatsoever—"ist gar keiner Achtung würdig" (1951, 172n50; 1974, 185n).1 Kant's exclusion of rhetoric from Kritik (with which he identifies philosophy) establishes the general exclusion of rhetoric in the development of philosophical idealism.Hegel interpretation for a century and a half presumed that rhetoric was irrelevant to understanding Hegel's thought. It considered Hegel's dialectic as a method independent of any connection to rhetoric. The first book on Hegel in English, James Hutchinson Stirling's The Secret of Hegel, published in 1863, regards the key to Hegel's system as his formulation of the concrete universal (Begriff). He makes no reference to rhetoric as an element in Hegel's thought (1887, xxii). In his preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel mentions Plato's Parmenides as "surely the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic," but he makes no mention of rhetoric (1952, 57; 1977, 44). A ground for ignoring rhetoric as important for Hegel's philosophy is the fact that Hegel himself ignores it. There is no discussion of rhetoric (Redekunst) in his whole corpus beyond a few pages concerning the differences between poetry and prose in his Lectures on Fine Art (1986, 15:257–68; 1998, 2:986–95).All of the approaches to Hegel in nonrhetorical terms changed with the appearance of Donald Phillip Verene's Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit" (1985) followed by John H. Smith's The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of "Bildung" (1988).2 Verene's work showed that there is a dialectic between image (Bild) and concept (Begriff) within Hegel's mode of expression that provides the reader with a necessary means of access to the work. Smith's study showed not only that Hegel employs rhetorical principles in the composition of the Phenomenology but that Hegel in his early years studied rhetoric closely and was concerned to master it. Smith's work, although developed independently of Verene's, joined with it to present a new reading of Hegel. This poetical and rhetorical grasp of Hegel's thought has been recently restated in Verene's Hegel's Absolute (2007).My views that follow begin where Verene's and Smith's accounts leave off. I wish to consider two questions that extend what has been broached in their readings of Hegel. (1) In what sense does Hegel's Phenomenology embody a transformation of the Aristotelian conception of rhetoric as an antistrophes to dialectic? (2) To... (shrink)