The paper takes as the starting point a dense and notorious quote by Lacan where he takes up in a single gesture three concepts of ancient philosophy, tyche, clinamen and den. The contention is that all three aim at the status of the object, although by different means and in different philosophical contexts, and the paper tries to spell out some crucial points concerning each. Tyche, usually translated as chance and put into an opposition with automaton, requires a reading (...) of some passages of Aristotle’s Physics where Lacan took it from, and an account of the problem of repetition in psychoanalysis. Clinamen, the swerve, stemming from Epicure and Lucretius, requires a condensed reading of the tradition which took it up, from Cicero to Hegel, Marx, Deleuze and Badiou, pinpointing the dilemmas and contradictions of this tradition. Den, stemming from Democritus who coined this neologism, brings up an entity which is neither being nor nothing, neither one nor zero nor multiple. It is perhaps the best evocation, at the dawn of philosophy, of what Lacan would call object a, and it allows to sidestep the difficulties and the pitfalls presented by the other two notions. The paper tries to pin down the minimal requirement for the Lacanian theory with the irreducible and incommensurable (non)relation of ‘minus one’ and den. (shrink)

Este artigo compara e contrasta dois conceitos filosóficos provenientes de distintas linhagens de pensamento: de um lado, o _clinamen _de Lucrécio; do outro, o _conatus _de Espinosa. O que fomentou minha pesquisa foi uma conjugação dessas noções tal como proposto por Deleuze no apêndice de seu _Logique du sens_. Nesse sentido, a primeira seção está orientada tendo em vista uma elucidação da filosofia de Lucrécio — consequentemente, também a de Epicuro — e, especificamente, uma interpretação do desvio dos átomos ou (...) _clinamen_ em combinação com o tópico da liberdade. A segunda seção se dedica a clarificar a metafísica de Espinosa e a acomodação do tema da liberdade dentro de seu robusto enquadramento necessitário, entrelaçado com o motivo do _conatus _ou esforço de auto-preservação. Contra a leiture de Deleuze, entretanto, argumentarei que _clinamen _e _conatus _pertencem à sistemas metafísicos que são praticamente incompatíveis e que corroboram um entendimento diferente sobre liberdade e necessidade. (shrink)

The conflagration of community stands as the “gravest and most painful testimony of the modern world.”1 So begins Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Inoperative Community. But as he quickly shows, it is not a return to a premodern communal intimacy that we should seek. The lost intimacy of community is a lost immanence. The question, instead, must be: Can absolute immanence be undone through community? “Community, or the being-ecstatic of Being itself? That would be the question.”2To answer this question, I turn to (...) an unlikely source: the political ontology of John Duns Scotus. Our return to the premodern political ontology of this medieval scholastic is not a return as nostalgic yearning. There is no longing for the... (shrink)

According to François Laruelle, French thought has been unduly influenced by corpuscular or atomist thinking, yet Laruelle has himself employed key atomist terms—in particular, that of the clinamen or swerve—in framing his own style of thought. This essay looks at this tension between atomism and anti-atomism in Laruelle’s thought, taking the measure of his contribution to a larger stream of postwar French thinking about the relevance and stakes of ancient atomism. Its contention is that Laruelle subtly but really outlines (...) a quantum theoretical resumption of ancient atomist philosophy—one that deserves closer attention and comparative study in the larger context of French philosophical interest in the atomists. A first section of the paper briefly describes Laruelle’s general project, along with his claim that he differs from his contemporaries because he uniquely escapes the dangers of what he calls corpuscular thought. A second section addresses the apparent tension between Laruelle’s claim to produce a non-corpuscular thinking and his consistent recent use of the atomist image of the clinamen, ultimately arguing that Laruelle sides with the clinamen against two forms of corpuscularity supposedly avoided by the clinamen itself but nonetheless usefully embodied in atomist thought. The final section of the paper draws up in preliminary terms a comparison between Laruelle’s understanding of his relationship to atomism and that of his contemporaries, focusing in particular on Alain Badiou. (shrink)

O presente trabalho teórico e bibliográfico se dedica a reconstruir o conceito de declinação espontânea do átomo em Epicuro, tal qual Marx defendeu em sua tese de doutorado. Seu objetivo é descobrir se a clinamen do átomo está presente em Epicuro e, se está, como se pode pensá-la. Percebe-se que a clinamen que aparece nos textos remanescentes de Epicuro não traz a noção de declinação espontânea, como aparece em Lucrécio e Marx, como Quartim de Moraes afirma. Entretanto, tendo (...) como base as premissas fundamentais de Epicuro, conclui-se que é necessário, ao sistematizar o seu pensamento, introduzir a noção de declinação espontânea para não reduzir sua filosofia ao determinismo e ao fatalismo. A clinamen não é um absurdo no pensamento de Epicuro, mas é uma questão fundamental que passa por toda sua filosofia e que poderia estar presente nas obras perdidas deste autor, assim como Marx pensou. Fundamentalmente, como filósofo da felicidade, Epicuro introduz a clinamen como declinação da vida infeliz. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Introduction 1 - Mise en scène 2 - La déclinaison de la lettre 3 - Pause : par où commencer? 4 - Plaisirs d'amour... 5 - Naissances 6 - Chutes 7 - La lettre (...) de la déclinaison 8 - Discrétion 9 - Lucrèce selonl'ordre des raisons Conclusion Appendice Pages de fin. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende exponer la recepción del atomismo de Epicuro y la reinterpretación dialéctica de la teoría del clinamen en la tesis doctoral de 1841 de Karl Marx, con el propósito de extraer algunas aportaciones para una teoría de la libertad. Para ello se analizan las implicaciones del enfoque dialéctico marxiano aplicado a la declinación epicúrea a la luz de las aportaciones del pensamiento filosófico de Schiller y la fenomenología hermenéutica de Ricoeur. Marx descubre en Epicuro una “ciencia de (...) la atomística” en la cual el clinamen es la autodeterminación formal del átomo respecto de la materia; su ley interna, por medio de la cual se abre la posibilidad de una libertad humana que transgrede el determinismo. Se intenta mostrar que causalidad natural y libertad no son excluyentes en un materialismo idealista como el epicúreo, en el que, conforme a la interpretación de Marx, idea y materia se integran en una síntesis dialéctica. (shrink)

This book is important for philosophy of mathematics and for the study of French philosophy. French philosophers are more concerned than most Anglo-American with mathematical practice outside of foundations. This contradicts the fashionable claim that French intellectuals get science all wrong and we return below to a germane example from Sokal and Bricmont [1999]. The emphasis on practice goes back to mid-20th century French historians of science including those Kuhn cites as sources for his orientation in philosophy of science [Kuhn (...) 1996: p. viii]. And the French often look to the experience, rather than the ideology, of Bourbaki. (shrink)

À partir de l’analyse d’un passage du Contre les géomètres de Sextus Empiricus, cet article tente d’évaluer la signification réelle ainsi que les con­séquences épistémiques de la destruction épicurienne des objets de la géométrie. L’existence du clinamen ainsi que le schème explicatif des explications multiples sont interprétés comme des résultats positifs du refus par Épicure de toute géo­métrisation de la nature.

While many of the most important figures in the history of philosophy have employed the concept of the simulacrum in one way or another, a detailed study of this usage has yet to be written. In this essay, I will attempt to tell the story of a sequence in that history of that usage, by focusing on one of Deleuze's case studies of the concept of the simulacrum. To do so, I will focus primarily on one the appendices to The (...) Logic of Sense: ‘Lucretius and the Simulacrum’. In order to understand what I will call the Deleuze–Lucretius encounter, I will proceed as follows. After a few initial guiding remarks regarding the general project of the ‘inversion of Platonism’, we will outline some of the most fundamental features of atomistic physics. This will allow us to discuss Lucretius’ thoughts on the clinamen, the swerve. This, in turn, leads directly to the concept of the simulacrum. With such a picture of Lucretian physics in hand, I will pivot to a discussion of Lucretius’ ethics. The ethics consists of a critique of superstition in terms of a general project of demystification. Although this sequence will concentrate mostly on what became one of the appendices to The Logic of Sense, I will end by looking at the more general usage of Lucretian atomism, especially as it functions in Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense. (shrink)

Atoms and space. Clinamen. Individual existence. Isotachy. The contemporary epilogue to Epicurus's physics. The problem of death and fear of death in Epicurus and Einstein. The gods of Epicurus and Einstein's God.In 1923 a new edition of Lucretius's De rerum natura was published in Germany. The second volume—a translation of the poem into German—was prefaced by Einstein. In it one reads that “Lucretius's book will enchant anyone who is not yet completely dominated by the spirit of our time, and (...) who feels able to take a step back to take stock of the present age, and judge our contemporaries' spiritual attainments.”. (shrink)

Resumen:En el presente texto proponemos realizar un primer trazado de una zona de correspondencia entre cuerpo y materialidad, para replantear esta materialidad a partir de ciertas categorías conceptuales. La hipótesis planteada es que hay determinadas concepciones del cuerpo en el pensamiento del siglo XX en adelante que suponen una materialidad no reductible a principios de determinación, una materialidad emparentada con la libertad, donde la necesidad se subsume a la contingencia concreta de los cuerpos. Nos proponemos bosquejar una construcción conceptual de (...) materialidad que pueda articular diferentes pensamientos que incluyen al cuerpo de un modo relevante, especialmente el de Jean-Luc Nancy.Palabras clave: Jean-Luc Nancy; Materialidad; Cuerpos; Clinamen. (shrink)

En este artículo se sostiene que el pensamiento de Althusser sobre el vacío comprende dos tesis: “la nada de tiempo y de lugar” y “la ‘nada’ de la desviación”, cuya relación es estructuralmente necesaria. En el campo del materialismo aleatorio, el vacío no es un substrato espacial en el que los objetos vienen a tomar lugar, y tampoco es un estado originario al modo de un arché o principium, sino que es el “campo libre” que deja-ser. Lejos de hacer pasar (...) un origen por otro, adoptando, por ejemplo, la figura de un “abismo original o trascendental”, el doble movimiento de este pensamiento discurre sobre las formas del “tener lugar”, es decir, la contingencia de los acontecimientos, y la necesidad producida por esos acontecimientos. Palabras clave: Materialismo aleatorio, atomismo, vacío, nada, origen, clinamen. (shrink)

El siguiente texto pretende plantear las bases del pensamiento filosófico de Heráclito en su infinita lucha de opuestos en un cambio eterno, del acontecimiento estoico y del clinamen de Epicuro, articuladas en lógica de sentido de Deleuze, como base de los planteamientos en la última de etapa de enseñanza de Jaques Lacan. Los puentes teóricos trazados entre Lacan y Deleuze se han perdido en análisis históricos de sus encuentros y desencuentros, en el sentido que marcan hacía lo real y (...) por supuesto en el Edipo como máquina de subjetividad. Sin embargo, considero, hasta el momento no se ha planteado una articulación de sus teorías, porque se han desconocido las bases filosóficas lacanianas. El planteamiento que se realiza en el texto permite una forma novedosa de comprender la identificación al fin del análisis, como una identificación a lo permanente en la impermanencia, poniendo como lo más profundo e intimido de la subjetividad, la piel, el borde, lo falso de la imagen. (shrink)

This article presents a brief survey of the Epicurean doctrine, its general purpose, and its different aspects, and argues that, for all the historical differences involved, it still remains useful, relevant, and even necessary, in many respects for us today: the wholly immanent nature of Epicurean ideals (“the fourfold remedy”) and the materialism for which it provides a convincing model, even with its paradoxical “theology,” can serve as a means of resistance to the current “return of the religious” and the (...) growth of irrationalism, as a support for a contemporary atheism which attempts to safeguard purely human values, and for the emphatic recognition that human beings form part of and belong to nature and its processes. The demand for human freedom within this perspective, symbolised by the doctrine of the “clinamen,” the immanent character of the Epicurean criteria for choosing and evaluating acts and decisions with reference to pleasure and pain, the self-limitation of the pursuit of pleasure by eliminating all desires that are neither natural nor necessary, all this can help to counter the anxieties, reactions and rejections produced today by the damage inflicted by supposed “development,” especially its catastrophic ecological consequences, and by the growth of artificially generated needs that serve nothing but the demand for commercial profit. (shrink)

Nature's simplest atom and mother of all matter, hydrogen feeds the stars as well as interlaces the molecules of their biological descendants – to whom it ultimately whispers the secrets of quantum reality. Hydrogen’s most prevalent earthly guise lies within the composition of water. A slight electrical disturbance can split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, resulting in diaphanous bubble clouds slowly rising towards the liquid’s surface. Though the founding fathers of electrochemistry posited that the mass of liberated bubbles is (...) directly proportional to the input voltage, certain modes of electrolysis release more energy than is spent. One such mode involves water’s Janus-faced capacity to react as either an acid or a base. Emanating from an array of electrodes at the bottom of a water-filled chamber, strings and strata of hydrogen bubbles meticulously trace their emergent surroundings. In addition to eddy formations incited by a bubble's rapid growth and subsequent detachment from the electrode surface, acoustic vibrations permeate the two-phase fluid. As the sonic frequency and amplitude rises, the hydrogen bubbles start to coalesce with one another. When the sound field reaches maximum intensity, it can trap bubbles within its antinodes. The vibrations are generated both by transducers and by the bubbles themselves, which emit frequencies ranging from the audible spectrum to as high as 800 kHz. A white laser sheet scans and illuminates the hydrogen bubble trajectories. Each quivering bubble-lens divides the white light into its constituent spectrum of colors. While scanning, the laser sheet also swiftly pulsates and thereby extends the perceivable resolution of micro-momentary bubble dynamics. Before it even begins to map out its vibratory environment, a bubble goes through various stages of spatio-temporal evolution. During the first phase of growth, a bubble nucleus inflates linearly with time. At the second stage, bubble growth is limited by the diffusion of gas within the liquid, causing its size to increase as the square root of time. The final phase before detachment is limited by the kinetics of dissolved gas production, causing the bubble to grow as the cube root of time.1 Beyond macroscopically observable bubbles, an expanse of nanobubbles hides within the water’s internal architecture. Some researchers presume that these nanobubbles of dissolved gas are the carriers of water’s magnetic ‘memory’, enabling electromagnetic fields to saturate its innards for hours and even days after their initial appearance. In the seas and oceans, the lingering presence of electromagnetic fields photonically imparted by sunlight, triggers the electrolysis responsible for most of the Earth’s hydrogen. An essential form of photosynthesis, solar water splitting is the cleanest and most efficient means imaginable for generating and storing energy. —Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand *** Animals and plants are formed in earth and in water because there is water in earth, and there is pneuma in water, and there is soul heat in all pneuma ; so that in a way all things are full of soul. Hence plants and animals quickly form once this gets enclosed; and when this enclosing happens, when the corporeal liquids get heated, a sort of frothy bubble is formed. Now the difference between the various creatures which are produced in this way are due to the stuff which makes up the envelope around the soul-source.2 Throwing light into this pneumatic spray of perdurances, which would otherwise swarm below the threshold of human visibility, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s Hydrogeny saturates the viewer’s sensorial space with the nano-architectures of froth. Straddling the cell wall between scientific enquiry and artistic praxis, Hydrogeny , beckons a recasting of Lucretius' clinamen in tune with the technologies of the modern observer. For Lucretius it was the indeterminate swerving of an atomistic layer of reality which accounted for the unpredictability of change and the existence of free will. Taken up by Harold Bloom to describe the swerving of cultural production from that which has already been made, the idea has since been textually redressed by Lacan, Derrida, Serres, Deleuze, Nancy, and Badiou. Here we have been given a kaleidoscopic technique for refining and expanding awareness of our enmeshment with so many nested, atomistic layers of object-bubbles—of things—as Aristotle might say,“full of soul.” The gravitational pull of Hydrogeny ushers a de-centered human spectatorship to the ever more intimate recesses of what media philosopher N. Katherine Hayles calls our capacity for “deep attention.”3 Vaporous attention suspended and re-oriented. Microscopic as these diaphanous waves are, the calling they produce is anything but inconsequential. Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand are two-thirds of the Amsterdam-based Art–Science Labratory, Optofonica , an atelier initiated by the Italian interdisciplinary artist TeZ in 2006. Follow more of their work at www.portablepalace.com —Isaac Linder NOTES (1) cf. Brandon, Kelsall, Levine, & Smith. “Interfacial Electrical Properties of Electrogenerated Bubbles.” Journal of Applied Electrochemistry 15 (1985):485-493. (2)Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, 762a18, tr. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1942). (3)“ My article on hyper and deep attention ,” N. Katherine Hayles, accessed on September 14, 2011. (shrink)

La fortune à la fois littéraire et philosophique de Lucrèce ne s'est jamais démentie depuis la Renaissance. Mais comment notre temps a-t-il reçu le De rerum natura, ce poème didactique romain consacré à l'exposition de la physique d'Epicure? Si les contemporains ont exploré en historiens des aspects auparavant négligés ou minorés de la doctrine matérialiste exposée par Lucrèce (la théorie de l'imaginaire, l'analyse critique de l'amour), plusieurs d'entre eux sont entrés en un véritable dialogue spéculatif avec son poème, y cherchant (...) des clés de leur propre compréhension du présent : tels Althusser ou Derrida avec le fascinant concept de la déviation des atomes (clinamen) ou Leo Strauss et l'interrogation sur le rôle de la critique de la religion dans la modernité. Pour d'autres, enfin, l'actualité de Lucrèce tient à l'originalité d'une écriture poétique mise au service d'un projet indissociablement philosophique et didactique (Queneau, Ponge). Les textes réunis dans ce volume ont été présentés au colloque international Lucrèce et la modernité : le 20e siècle, qui s'est tenu à l'Université Paris Est Créteil les 4 et 5 février 2010. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * The gaze drifts where the stare dares not. The gaze is attentive while the stare is intent. Dériver : Equally to drift and/or to derive. —When drifting then, something must be taken along. Something must be derived from the drift. Something of oneself must always become other. Incorporating the other, incorporating oneself as other. Je est un autre , Rimbaud disait; 1 this in his last letter to Georges Izambard, a final correspondence to a former mentor and friend, from whom he was drifting away, having derived much. The drift is a control incomplete. To drift is to come closer and closer, but to always be turning away, pulling apart, pulling oneself apart. It is parabolic in the sense that it is always eluding a formerly established intent. Of all axes, it never finds room to rest. Filling new spaces, always changing places, ever escaping the Cartesian; the indubitable pinpointing of position. It is never pinned down. Love together what we will be apart. Once together, we will drift apart. Il le faut . Attention is held; it traces the path. It follows each point which traces the arc, the line, the swerve. It is not concerned with the figure being drawn, but rather the movement between one point and the next. The smallest movement. The clinamen of De Rerum Natura is the smallest of swerves, it is nothing more than the minimum — nec plus quam minimum . Michel Serres says of the clinamen , that it is an absurdity — a logical, geometrical, mechanical, physical absurdity. 'The clinamen, from here (its state of absurdity), finds refuge in subjectivity; it passes from the world to the soul, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the theory of inert bodies in freefall to the theory of the free movements of the living.' 2 So this swerve is something of the mind and something of the body, both in action, rather than a body which is merely acted upon. Swerve, however, has a connotation of suddenness. It is a movement which is made to avoid an otherwise inevitable impact. Drift, on the other hand, is the unleashing of something which is then allowed to follow a more complex series of forces. These forces now come from within as well as without. It is no longer tethered; now following tides, winds, flows or pitched slopes, now acting on its own. We are not atoms in freefall. Our attention long ago pulled us from this precipitous descent. We now live, ourselves, as one of the many forces. In the drift, as with the gaze, there is an ease. ‘Ease is the proper name of this unrepresentable space.’ It is the space nearest, the next, the neighboring space. To occupy this space requires a turn, a shift or a drift. It cannot be reached by proceeding straight ahead. ‘..the space adjacent, the empty place where each can move freely, in a semantic constellation where spatial proximity borders on opportune time (ad-agio, moving at ease) and convenience borders on the correct relation.’ 3 Intention always seeks to straighten this line, to make it less complex, to isolate the point of departure and the desired destination. It believes there can be two points and, between them, there must be a straight line. Can there be? Maybe. Must there be? Never. Straight lines may exist, but they can never be followed to the finish. After leaving this point, we will never reach that one without being buffeted at least a little — at least the least. One foot in front of the other, this is a very restrictive dance, less even than a two-step. Straight lines lead only to lost intentions, being the shortest and quickest way to get there. When attention drifts it slowly turns away from the intended target, leaving it for something which pulls the attention away. Now we are for a moment free; all at once we can pivot, now we can waltz. Drifting along the page, deriving from what is seen. Reading is seeing; the movement of the eyes as they drift. Reading in the eyes what has been seen, what has been derived from the act of reading. Reading eyes drift back and forth down the page, now and then jump back and forth, up to the top, one word, back down, quickly a few pages back, now gaze out towards the horizon. When attention drifts it is the gaze that follows. Our attention is not restricted to the path the words follow, but links them together; deriving what is to be seen, rather than read. La philosophie fait voir . ‘Thus, philosophers speak through proverbs, and demonstrate. They connect their imaginations with foreign rings, flown into famous tombs.’ 4 Now drifting off to sleep, dreams come as unintended visions. To dream is pure drift, vision without an object, gazing into the dark, reading the unknown of the night. NOTES: Arthur Rimbaud, Poésies (Paris: Bibliothéque de Cluny, 1958), 57. Michel Serres, La Naissance de la Physique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1977), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), 25. Louis Aragon, Une Vague des Rêves (Paris: Editions Seghers, 2006), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson.  . (shrink)

A última fase do filósofo Louis Althusser desperta amplo interesse pela resolução da maioria das questões suscitadas desde suas primeiras publicações na década de 60, dentre as quais a mais relevante delas sobre a teleologia no materialismo histórico. No entanto, suas publicações sobre o chamado “Materialismo de Encontro” só apareceram post mortem e, ainda, o fatídico episódio da morte de sua esposa contribui para o repúdio e esquecimento do autor. O materialismo de encontro, ou aleatório, é o empenho resultante da (...) tentativa de compreensão dos processos históricos isentos da teleologia. O materialismo de encontro é, ainda, a realização de um projeto mais ambicioso que é o estabelecimento de uma filosofia para o marxismo. No caso, uma filosofia assistemática aberta aos eventos histórico e também impulsionadora de um projeto político de transição. Filosofia que se estabeleça de maneira a escapar à interpelação dos indivíduos em sujeitos, um desvio à Ideologia dominante. Trataremos, então, da categoria de clinamen como o desvio do assujeitamento e, sobretudo, como categoria habilitadora de uma ação política. Observaremos as principais linhas de fundamentação, como núcleo invisível, da assertiva teórica althusseriana do aleatório no seio do materialismo de Charles Darwin, na análise elaborada pelo professor Vittorio Morfino. Numa conjectura, a questão da dialética e seu papel reservado à Teoria, à Ideologia, às formações sociais e a possibilidade de uma ação política inscrita no clinamen. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * * Australia, Summer, 2012. …. essential humanity exists, and runs its course, within a system whose first principle is the preservation of balance. And arching over it all, is the logos of The Dreaming. How shall we state this when we fully understand it I do not know, but I should think we are more likely to ennoble it than not. Equilibrium ennobled is abidingness.” 1 On return to birthplace I write. Caught between jetlag and surprise, a relentless sun cracks my skin. Upright words fall under cockatoo roars. The attempt to settle, to be attentive, is shaken. Some kind of Dreaming surrounds and elements intrude without consent. Homeless at home. Exhausted, I fight sleep’s hard currents. Their victory would confuse the body clock, so the in-between wins. Half-there — half-awake — here in this place — I am driftwood. Driftwood: wood floating in or washed ashore by a body of water. A severed limb set adrift from the birthing body. Tossed from home it’s cast into processes of wind, water, sand, bacteria, decay and movement. Driftwood is orphaned members at the mercy and agency of weather, currents, submersion, and being thrown into dry world. Driftwood — singular plural. White man got no dreaming. Him go ‘nother way. White man, him go different Him got road belong himself. 2 photo: Bronwyn Lay The old man comes from the northern rivers. A while ago, he could no longer pay attention to wage slavery, so retreated north to be with dead redgum that lay abandoned in dry riverbeds. Derived from driftwood peoples tossed here by the sea, he followed the fragile river veins of his birth. He walked along water bodies and through country’s lungs. Some kind of displaced ancestral song compelled his leathered hands to pick up centuries old driftwood from flood plains. It emerged from under muddy creeks, was flung up by salt soaked coves, pushed underground by cracks in the claypan and lay embedded in mud and salinized soil. Smoothed and grooved in equal measure, the branches were marked by an organic alphabet that preceded him. As he held the wood, he touched decomposing circles that started with a blast and never ceased writing into abandoned flesh. When the ute was full the old man returned home having been away with the stuff that ‘growed him up’. His shed filled with red sawdust and the sound of tools at labour. His hands sculptured driftwood. History carved into itinerant skin. I sit opposite the old man. His body no longer holds the repetition of carpentry. He can no longer gift driftwood its detail. Outside redgum bits lie scattered around the fence line and beside the dam. He crouches over an unreliable computer researching the massacres of indigenous peoples that occurred along the same river veins that ‘growed him up’ long ago. Staring into the remnants of frontier resistance that he and I inherit, his eyes nurture fire. He discovers severed limbs and the slicing of tribes. In the ashes of sentences he sifts the lies that smoulder into our histories. In the 30’s the anthropologist Stanner said that due to certain factors — lack of change and isolation — the ideal and real come very close together in indigenous Dreaming. They are a people who were able to defeat history. 3 “If the Ideal and the Real drift too far away from one another (as they did at the end of the middle ages and seem increasingly to do this century) men face some difficult options. They have to change their way of life, or their philosophy, or both, or live unhappily somewhere in-between.” 4 Stanner says Indigenous Dreaming is blackfella thinking. 5 Dreamtime is not ethereal, not utopic, or otherworldly. It’s fused with the real and it’s not mine. I might never understand, but it’s the substance of my home. This here place ‘growed me up’. Is driftwood the unhappy in-between? Is it a radical itinerant written upon by currents? Where are we? The settler restless? photo: Alison Pouliot I return to the bush late one night, tired from high talk in city cafes, to find the old man at his computer. He’s either researching his white farming ancestors, or tracing unrecorded massacres of blackfellas. I laugh, “You know Dad, if you were indigenous you might go out by the dam and sing up your ancestors rather than try find them on a screen.” He peers over his glasses. His stare delivers an ancestral scold. He’s white man. Of course he archives. This is our way. One may see that, like all men, he is a metaphysician in being able to transcend himself. With the metaphysician goes a mood and spirit, which I can only call a mood or spirit of assent, neither despair nor resignation, optimism not pessimism, quietism nor indifference. The mood, and the outlook beneath it, make him hopelessly out of place in a world in which the renaissance has triumphed only to be perverted, and in which the products of secular humanism, rationalism and science challenge their own hopes, indeed their beginnings.” 6 The clinamen sometimes comes abstract — the rarefied swerve of possibility. But in the place we gather &mdash where this text has landed — in the heart of settler colony denial — the clinamen reminds of familiar violence and goes maximum. The earth’s swerve. Topography’s tip. Physics gone violent. Here, drift is initiated by the tear of flesh, scurvy voyages, frontier blood and the deracination from belonging. Here, war precedes drift. We all got tossed. Here. Pay attention. The country has its own gaze. ‘Lest we forget’. The seasonal turn on aborescent substances starts with a fall, an upwards rupture, a drop, a cut, a storm, a violence, a loss, forced migration, refugees, agricultural imperialism, settler wheat and poisoned rations. Pay attention to aftermath debris. Don’t drift too far from the real. History hasn’t settled into the water. It still tosses limbs back and forth. Surrounded by the backdrop of Dreaming country the old man archives and dreams. Both ways of settling into the real. But lest we forget, time, in this place, has no textual tick — tock. Our bodies know this, even though we persist with shipwreck illusions. It’s difficult being here. Here. Pay inattention. I walk through eucalyptus, over dried out clay pans and under kookaburras. It’s been two years in-between. This time country speaks strong underfoot. Forget books, forget texts, forget other lands and times, beginning and end. Be here. All falls raw. Leaves drop and refuse to compost. Bark untethers quick. Light denudes worlds. The heated horizon melts monoliths. It’s enough to make Cartesians shiver. Awake. Refuse the temptation to run. Have enough courage to drift into here. Love with a gum tree. Stand with her whole and dissolving. She moves light between our limbs, tossing them to wind. She — the original romance — is the dream that dares touch flesh and reaches over nightmares with elemental desire. I gaze and lose me. There’s no distance. The land that ‘growed me up’ speaks with symbiotic breath. There’s no division, no separation, no other. The gum is plastic arborescence. You be my body for me, always were. …..but I wake to driftwood histories and recall slaughters. Drifted, wicked fellow citizen — the other is someone else’s blind sleep. Betrayal maintains the other as mine. Archives reveal this place doesn’t belong to me. Body articulates that it became here. Gumtree cares not………her arms take me in anyway. “Like all men he is a philosopher in being able to use his power of abstract reason. His genius, his metier, and in some sense — his fate is that because of endowment and circumstance this power has channelled itself mainly into one activity, making sense out of social relations among men living together.” 7 The old man excavates seven generations of settler ancestors. They’re an ordinary lot with written-upon skin. He records genocides that occurred alongside his peoples fertility. Bodies rise from riverbeds like sovereign sacrifices. It hurts. It disrupts. He labours at the past with gestures that might go unnoticed in a country suffocated by rich amnesia. Inside walls, he seems attentive to historical details. Outside he seems inattentive to time, lost to us and embedded in a family of active matter — the bush. His driftwood skin appears around my eyes - grooves of experience, the rush of cruel sun, the push of blind winds, and the love of everything. The sovereign’s reluctant children are thrown here by, with and through blood, but country gets in and sculpts us here. photo: Chris Corrigan “But his abstractions do not put him at war with himself.” 8 The kangaroo family appears at dusk. When the sun is soft I follow the old man into the back paddock. Children skip behind us. In-between generations, I step into the old man’s driftwood leanings. My feet find traces of his understanding – the archivist that reads trees. Here, on home dirt, inattention and attention collapse as we wander into where we are. The roo family gaze at us. Through the grass the old man’s wooden finger articulates kin’s details. He points to the head male, the mother holding a joey in pouch and the young warriors side by side. My children, quieter than ever, meet the laser - eyed silence of another family. In half-light Dad, me, and the kids mirror the kangaroo constellation and stand gentle together. At the bushblock’s limit we encounter ancestral desires. White peoples are subject to driftwood histories. We’re severed limbs attempting to fuse here now, with what was, only to discover our skin becomes racked and embedded with the weather. Into the shelter and fissures of this difficult and ambiguous inheritance, I fall into dream light until balance saturates. Light breaks when the kangaroos move. They bounce someplace else without effort or impact. We turn and tread through the dark towards home. It’s time to sleep. Driftwood skin covers the country. Dreaming is still. photo: Bronwyn Lay NOTES W.E.H. Stanner, The Dreaming and Other Essays , (Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda, 2009), 72. Ibid., 56. Stanner is recalling one intelligent old man who said to him, “with a cadence almost as though he had been speaking in verse.” Ibid., 60. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 68. Ibid., 59.  . (shrink)

This book deals with the psychotherapeutic factor that permeates the whole Epicurean philosophical program. It is the aim of this study to research and to rehabilitate its healing function. Since the Garden’s philosophy is a very systematic one, the question about the natural reality, φύσις, had to be addressed firstly. Anti-nihilism, materialism, eternal atoms, infinite void, perpetual movement, clinamen and the plurality worlds are key notions of the axiomatic and scientific Epicurus’ physics. Once we had gained clarity about those (...) core concepts, the central role of human beings in the system was to be discussed. As natural, yet exceptional, atomic compounds, men and women do have flesh and soul and are, therefore, completely mortal. Nevertheless, they possess numerous qualities, originating in their ψυχή, which render them unique: freedom, rationality and even a material community with the gods. According to Epicurus, there is a fourth element constituting the souls of both people and deities, so that a physical continuity and material formation are preserved through the entire nature. -/- Gods are studied from a naturalistic physiologic perspective and at the very same time they act exemplary and, freed from any providential, governing tasks, they provide a regula uitae in order to achieve a pleasant, authentic happiness. In fact, this research tries to demonstrate that complete curation is not to be linked to an eternal extra-corporeal soul, but arises from the removal of pain and fear, aponia and ataraxia. These two are the paramount pleasures, far distant from a gross hedonism. Ethics are, then, presented as a soothing practice, having a nuclear medical purpose. Taking this into account, it was necessary to explore the historical connections between philosophy and rational Hellenic medicine before Epicurus. After that, multiple therapeutic forms conceived or applied by the Samian philosopher were analyzed. The λόγος proved to be the unifying element among them and involved not only human reason but also analogy. Epicurus’ diagnose is very sad: we are in pain. To reverse that, he presented exercises such as meditation, confession, self-examination, laugh therapy, emotional intelligence, intrusive thoughts control, companionship, solidarity and friendship. There are still two additional therapies completing the above mentioned: an Epicurean thanatology, because we miss the point when considering (im)mortality and forget about sensation as the ground of any life; and an ars desidrandi, because we should accept only natural and necessary desires, instead of chasing whimsy dreams with vain hopes. All this will help us regain our primal bodily and mental health and happiness, our essential, frugal and glad wellbeing. (shrink)

Introduction.--Literary history and tradition: Eliot, T. S. Tradition and the individual talent. Trilling, L. The sense of the past. Hassan, I. H. The problem of influence in literary history.--An aesthetics of origins and revisionism: Guillen, C. The aesthetics of literary influence. Block, H. M. The concept of influence in comparative literature. Bloom, H. Clinamen, or poetic misprision. Bate, W. J. The second temple.--Reader as participant: Rosenblatt, L. M. Towards a transactional theory of reading. Holland, N. N. Literature as transformation. (...) Fish, S. E. Literature in the reader. (shrink)

Las nociones de alma y cuerpo propuestas por Epicuro deben ser entendidas en relación con su "teoría atómica", en las que se destaca la tesis del "Clinamen", y algunos postulados de su doctrina moral. El Jardín epicúreo abrió sus puertas para el ingreso de la mujer, siguiendo tal vez a los cínicos. Leontion, epicúrea, llegó a ser regente de estudios. Los rasgos comunes que son posibles de señalar entre cinismo y epicureísmo se explican por lo demás por el papel (...) que jugaron ambos en la etapa de la filosofía antigua a la que se denominó "Helenismo", en que jugó importante papel Roma como capital del Imperio. El cristianismo primitivo fue uno de los movimientos religioso-metafísicos que impulsó la disolución del epicureísmo, lo cual no le ha restado valores que traspasan los tiempos. The concepts of body and soul proposed by Epicuro should be understood as related to his "atomic theory", in which the "Clinamen" thesis and some assertions of his moral doctrine stand out. The Epicurean Garden opened its doors to the woman, following the cynics. Leontion, Epicurean herself, reached the position of studies regent. The common features that can be pointed in cynicism and Epicureanism are explained by the role they played in "Hellenism", when Rome became important as the capital of the empire. Primitive Christianity was one of the religious-metaphysical movements that caused the Epicureanism dissolution, though some of its values persist through time. (shrink)

La mort n'est rien pour nous, c'est une etude erudite qui fait le point sur les travaux francais et etrangers les plus recents. Elle met en lumiere egalement la diffusion de l'epicurisme a Rome, l'attitude de Lucrece a l'egard de la religion, la perversion de la nature dans l'art de la guerre, le role du clinamen dans la psychologie epicurienne, les terreurs relatives au destin du corps mort, la critique de l'amour-passion, etc. Lucrece est-il le poete de l'angoisse?

El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar la articulación del fatalisme del Barónd’Holbach en su Système de la nature. D’Holbach parece inscribirse en latradición del atomismo epicúreo, afirmando que nada existe por fuera dela Naturaleza. Sin embargo, nos proponemos mostrar que el Barón buscadiferenciarse de Epicuro y Lucrecio, exponiendo cómo la noción de hasard,criticada y rechazada por d’Holbach, se vincula al concepto de parénklisiso clinamen epicúreo-lucreciano. Así, se ofrece además una elucidación dela utilidad y el alcance de dicho concepto, (...) el cual adquiere relevancia nosólo en cuestiones físicas o cosmológicas sino principalmente en asuntosético-morales. Finalmente, procuramos examinar cómo d’Holbach respondea las inquietudes morales que no les permitirían a Epicuro y a Lucreciopronunciarse a favor de una filosofía de la necesidad. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * "… to sleep perchance to dream " 1 To dream: to be not quite asleep, yet not particularly awake. Or, rather: to be awake but not quite know it. For, it is only when we dream, when we are dreaming, that we know that we are not in that final sleep. But we can only know that we are dreaming, that we have dreamt, when we are awake, when we have awoken; after it is too late. When all we know is that the sleep beyond finitude, the sleep that is the step beyond, is not yet upon us, is only to come. To die to sleep … To dream: a sleep that refuses sleep. Perchance to dream: to drift—between sleep and sleep. Aye there's the rub For, can we even know if we have been sleeping? Or, if death has claimed us?—even if a little death. α Ω α Ω α Ω To drift: but from, to, what? For, to drift implies a certain direction that one was headed from, heading to, headed for; without these indications, markers, points in relation with each other, one would just be moving. Can one know—intend—one's drift? Certainly a stunt driver would say so. But even as (s)he is starting her slide, all that (s)he can know is that she is setting the car, herself, the car with herself in it, in motion: after which the drift itself takes over. After which, all (s)he can do is attend to it. At the point of the drift: both (s)he and the car are drifting—here, one might not even be able to separate the movement from those involved in it. Without either of them, there would not be a drift; there is no drifting without the drifter. Both the drifter and the drifting are in a relationality; in which, all that they can know is that they are in relation with each other. Hence, the drift itself is a relationality. A non-essence. But, it is not as if we cannot speak of it. Perhaps though: we can only speak of it as if we can speak of it. Always already an imaginary gesture; where what is being imagined is the relationality between the drift and the ones drifting. Thus, we have a situation where the drifter and drifting are in a relationality; where relationality itself is what is being imagined. Perhaps then, what are we drifting from, to? , is a moot question. As is, what is drifting? Perhaps then, all we can say is drift? To speak of drift is an attempt to speak of the unspeakable. Not that what is speakable and what is unspeakable are antonyms: if that were so, speaking the unspeakable would make no sense, be a contradiction. But that in every act of speaking, something unspeakable is potentially said: something that opens, ruptures, wounds even. And not just that—at the point where it punctures, speaking itself moves out of the way for the unspeakable; speaking itself disappears. "… the whole art is to know how to disappear before dying, and instead of dying. " 2 To disappear; or, to drift out of sight. Where the words themselves slip away. After all: "in the Beginning was the Word. It was only afterwards that Silence came." Perhaps the wish, the hope, is that "the end itself has disappeared …" (Baudrillard, 70) Remaining hidden from us. Perhaps only glimpsed when we dream. Secret. α Ω α Ω α Ω " Bury all your secrets in my skin " (Corey Taylor) Which is the problem: words cling. And they remain. Perhaps not ontologically; but they certainly remain to haunt us. And here, we should not forget Lucretius' lesson that communication occurs in the skin between the parties in communion with each other. Which is not to say that the encounter is determined by atoms—and more precisely atoms that move in straight lines until they collide with each other—that communication is pre-determined. For, one must not forget that will is found, discovered, enacted even, at the moment the atoms swerve. Clinamen . Drift. But even in their movement—drifting—they trace themselves into the skin between; a tangential touching. Perhaps only briefly. But even then, enough … "… there's always texture that betrays the place." (May Ee Wong) Here though, one must not forget that betrayal cannot happen in the absence of love. In fact, betrayal is the very excess of love: where one loves the other so much that one can no longer bear to see the other drift from what (s)he could have been. Whether that idealised other exists or is only in one's head is another question altogether. Perhaps, a fetishised other: keeping in mind that "fetishes are hinged around simulation." After all, "when one is supposed to show up as an oil rig diver no one is expecting actual crude oil" (Amanda Sordes); in fact, actualisation is the perfect way to destroy the fantasy. Perhaps then, the only way to maintain love for another is to maintain a proper distance, as it were, from love: allow the love to constantly alter, change. And here, one must not forget that if love is a relationality between one and another who remains wholly other (otherwise just a mere manifestation of the self), love is a relationality that knows nothing except for the fact that it is in a relation. For, to love one has to attend to—without subsuming another, some other, under oneself. Which means that to love, one has to be willing to risk, to open oneself, to allow oneself to be wounded, torn apart. In new ways, ways that we have yet to understand, come across, ways we do not yet have a name for. Thus, this movement in love is one that occurs in utter blindness; to not only the other, but to what love is. This is love as pure drifting. Perhaps always searching for love itself, without ever knowing what it is that it is looking for. Love: only at the very moment when the word love itself disappears. Perhaps all we can do is sit, and attend: watching the tides flowing away—as if they were having their "last swim of the summer." (Hendrik Speck) Like a butterfly. α Ω α Ω α Ω Isn't it quite amazing how the appearance of a butterfly can inject a stutter or pause into any conversation? Words and words pour out of the animals in assembly, before they are all of a sudden arrested by the passing flight. Heads turn to trace a lilting poetics, attempting to close the distance with this seemingly awkward beauty. There are no straight lines here, only a relative arrival and departure to bracket a brilliant and bewildering trajectory, surging and lurching in a vibrating and nomadic line avant la lettre. (Sean Smith, 'I Seek You: Countdown to Stereoscopic Tear') Before the letter. Before the possibility of naming. Before being sayable. Quite possibly also before language. And yet, a "surging and lurching," a movement with an effect—"vibrating and nomadic"—tracing itself before there is even anything to trace. Leaving something, even if that thing remains unknowable, for us to attend to. Drifting into us. I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee..." (Carly Simon) NOTES William Shakespeare, Hamlet , Act 3 Scene 1. Jean Baudrillard, Why hasn't everything already disappeared? , 25.  . (shrink)

This doctoral dissertation deals with the psychotherapeutic factor that permeates the whole Epicurean philosophical program. It is the aim of this study to research and to rehabilitate its healing function. Since the Garden’s philosophy is a very systematic one, the question about the natural reality, φύσις, had to be addressed firstly. Anti-nihilism, materialism, eternal atoms, infinite void, perpetual movement, clinamen and the plurality worlds are key notions of the axiomatic and scientific Epicurus’ physics. Once we had gained clarity about (...) those core concepts, the central role of human beings in the system was to be discussed. As natural, yet exceptional, atomic compounds, men and women do have flesh and soul and are, therefore, completely mortal. Nevertheless, they possess numerous qualities, originating in their ψυχή, which render them unique : freedom, rationality and even a material community with the gods. According to Epicurus, there is a fourth element constituting the souls of both people and deities, so that a physical continuity and material formation are preserved through the entire nature. Gods are studied from a naturalistic physiologic perspective and at the very same time they act exemplary and, freed from any providential, governing tasks, they provide a regula uitae in order to achieve a pleasant, authentic happiness. In fact, this research tries to demonstrate that complete curation is not to be linked to an eternal extra-corporeal soul, but arises from the removal of pain and fear, aponia and ataraxia. These two are the paramount pleasures, far distant from a gross hedonism. Ethics are, then, presented as a soothing practice, having a nuclear medical purpose. Taking this into account, it was necessary to explore the historical connections between philosophy and rational Hellenic medicine before Epicurus. After that, multiple therapeutic forms conceived or applied by the Samian philosopher were analyzed. The λόγος proved to be the unifying element among them and involved not only human reason but also analogy. Epicurus’ diagnose is very sad: we are in pain. To reverse that, he presented exercises such as meditation, confession, self-examination, laugh therapy, emotional intelligence, intrusive thoughts control, companionship, solidarity and friendship. There are still two additional therapies completing the above mentioned: an Epicurean thanatology, because we miss the point when considering (im)mortality and forget about sensation as the ground of any life; and an ars desidrandi, because we should accept only natural and necessary desires, instead of chasing whimsy dreams with vain hopes. All this will help us regain our primal bodily and mental health and happiness, our essential, frugal and glad wellbeing. By means of prudence and reflection, governing our body and cultivating our mind we will liberate ourselves and taste a durable, profound, stable joy, comparable to that of the gods. (shrink)

Scholars have cited the influence of Lucretius on Machiavelli as important to framing Machiavelli’s position on the freedom of political agents. Some scholars like Roecklin and Rahe argue that Machiavelli was a determinist based on Machiavelli’s rejection of the clinamen; others argue with Brown and Morfino that Machiavelli’s affirmation of Lucretian natural principles left room for the freedom of agents. However, this paper takes a different approach by arguing that Machiavelli successfully resists identification with either of these positions. I (...) argue here that Machiavelli affirms a notion of agency that reflects the influence of the Lucretian notion of mixed bodies where human actions emerge from an irreducible multiplicity of subjective and objective factors. I also argue that Machiavelli structures the narratives describing the actions of his agents in a way that supports interpreting their actions as both contingent and necessary. (shrink)

에피쿠로스는 쾌락을 위해 욕망을 줄이는 삶의 방식을 제시한 쾌락주의자 혹은 윤리학자라는 지위에 여전히 머물러있다. 하지만 니체 철학과 에피쿠로스 철학이 주요한 지점에서 특징을 공유하고 있으며 이를 토대로 에피쿠로스 철학이 새로운 의미를 가질 수 있음을 충분히 밝혀낼 수 있다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 에피쿠로스 철학이 형이상학적 관점에서 초월 세계를 지향하는 삶과 경험 세계에서의 삶의 가치 전도를 시도했다는 점에서 니체 철학과 연관성이 있음을 드러내고자 한다. 이 작업은 먼저 니체가 에피쿠로스에 대해 긍정적으로 혹은 부정적으로 평가한 구절들을 검토한 뒤에, 에피쿠로스의 윤리학과 자연학, 특히 원자론에서 발견할 수 (...) 있는 에피쿠로스의 철학적 태도를 살펴보는 과정으로 이루어질 것이다. 이를 통해 니체 철학과 에피쿠로스 철학에서 함께 나타나는 특징이 무엇인지 확인하고, 그리고 에피쿠로스 철학이 니체의 관점에서 어떤 형이상학적 의미를 갖게 되는지를 밝혀낼 것이다. (shrink)

Beauvoir's Second Sex seems to be acknowledged as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. However, its relation to structuralism still has to be elaborated. The aim of this chapter is to analyze Beauvoir's reliance on Lévi‐Strauss, his elementary structures of kinship and the exchange of women (and not men). As the very asymmetry of sexual division became a target of Beauvoir's attack, she came close to asking Lévi‐Strauss the same question as Althusser, namely: Why is this (...) possible, and not something else? We conclude that the later Althusser's “repressed” aleatory materialism could account for Beauvoir's reasoning as to why the point of view of psychoanalysis and historical materialism are insufficient, and that Beauvoir's place could be identified with the repressed of the repressed. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Physics Cosmology and Anthropology Epistemology Ethics Conclusion Bibliography.