Alexandros Kioupkiolis re-conceptualises the common in tandem with the political. By engaging with key thinkers of community and the commons, including Nancy, Ostrom, Hardt and Negri, together with poststructuralist conceptions of agonism and hegemony from Mouffe and Laclau, he remedies problematic issues of power relations and division.

This book constitutes a critical intervention in the theoretical discussion over the political relationship between democracy and communism. Shedding light on the philosophical origins of the democracy debate, it draws a clear demarcation line between liberalism and republicanism, arguing that after rejecting the former and supporting the latter, the young Marx endorsed 'true democracy' as a prelude to his forthcoming theory of communism. To this end, while following the dynamics of the Marxian history of political ideas and pre-communist theory of (...) the state, the book takes into account the thought of a vast range of philosophers and political theorists, starting from the Ancient times, passing through the Age of Enlightenment, the German Idealist tradition the Young Hegelians’ Republicanism, and reaching our own times. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the history of political thought, theories of democracy, and Marxism. (shrink)

Its preoccupation with ontology presents radical democracy with a thorny dilemma: how to combine commitment and affirmation with a distinctive emphasis on contingency and contestability. The article addresses this dilemma by engaging with three different perspectives. Ernesto Laclau’s work shows the intrinsic constraints of ontology and the inadequacy of a simple distinction between ontology and ethico-political decision. Simon Critchley opposes tying radical politics to ontological prefiguration and argues for a particular ethico-political orientation. But ethics and politics come entwined with ontological (...) assumptions, and the ethical direction of politics can be as restrictive as its ontological framing. William Connolly weds ontology and ethics to a sharp awareness of their contestability. But his approach does not reach deep enough. It is not alive to the contestability of the very recognition of contestability. To enhance openness and reflexivity, projects of radical democracy should combine a dimension of substantive, detailed accounts with a reflexive commitment to contestability, which disrupts, questions and renews the thicker descriptions in the name of democracy and truth. (shrink)

In this paper we secure the explanatory value of affordances by treating them as relational properties and as inherently linked to unintentional movements and possible intentional actions. We distinguish between Basic affordances, which are related to unintentional movements, and Complex affordances, which are subjective and executively controlled by individuals. The linkage between affordances and motor intentions allows for accounting for the infinite number of affordances that any given object potentially has. Appealing to objective systematic contingencies that provide the actor with (...) information about the effects of her actions, allows for accounting for perception of affordances and for securing their explanatory value. (shrink)

Straddling the divide between universalism and relativism, agonistic reason as construed by Foucault and Castoriadis dismisses universal foundations without becoming context-bound or inescapably subjectivist. It is propelled by a strong commitment to freedom and it draws flexibly on available resources and its creative potentials in order to vindicate its conditional claims. This provides a hyper-critical and liberating mode of critical reason which delves into the underlying norms of agency in order to open them up to question and to enhance free (...) self-direction. The argument that is put forward, then, is threefold. Firstly, Castoriadis’ accent on ontological reflection, the imaginative disclosure of new figures and the global intent of critique contrasts with Foucault’s account of agonistic reason and yields a more robust version of critical rationality. Secondly, this form of reflective agonism can effectively address fundamental challenges and reason across contexts, tackling moral and other issues that arise from cultural innovation and exchange. Lastly, agonistic reason need not, and should not, call upon absolute principles on any level in order to uphold its own values and do justice to its radical others. (shrink)

Current corporate social responsibility approaches attempt to implement the vision of sustainable development at the corporate level. In fact, the term "corporate sustainability" may be a more accurate descriptive label for these attempts. Ambitious governmental, business and academic goals, and corresponding efforts have been established. Nonetheless, a truly satisfactory implementation of the broad CSR concept as well as the more specific challenges of corporate sustainability continue to be an elusive goal at the corporate management level. This article presents a description (...) of a new management tool, a systematic method for implementing CSR successfully on the basis of a triple bottom line approach to sustainability. It fills in many of the still missing gap on the corporate level. The method presented here offers a multi-purpose approach for the collection, systematization, quantification, and evaluation of all the relevant issues found within a corporate environment. It allows for specifying and systematizing appropriate areas of action, taking into account the continuum of economic, ecologic,1 and social dimensions. Accordingly, the article is best characterized as a treatment of complex CSR issues, developed against the normative anchor of sustainability as the conceptual background. (shrink)

Many philosophers claimed that there might be fertile ground for collaboration between IBE and the objective end of the Bayesian methodology. Recent literature is investigated in this chapter, to highlight the latest developments about the possibility of such a collaboration. The merits of the convergence of the two methods are presented. It is argued that arriving on this end is not an easy goal as there are four ways by which subjective considerations may overshadow the objective picture. The existence of (...) subjective virtues, the vagueness of the mapping, the absence of an accurate weighting, and the existence of partial virtues allow the generation of infinitely many different initializations of priors and likelihoods, thus keeping the explanationist away from the objective extreme. Hence, either the explanationist successfully faces up with each one of the four problems so as to converge to the objective end or she ends up in a semi-objective position, whereby the explanatory restrictions allow a bunch of equally good probability distributions. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to discuss and compare major aspects of Saussure’s linguistic theory — including his recently discovered manuscript, published as Écrits de linguistique générale — and Derrida’s philosophy, focusing on its structuralist (not Kantian or phenomenological, or supposed pragmatist) foundations, in order to show the radical debt of Derrida to Saussure. To see Derrida as a structuralist is crucial for the understanding of his work. A major Saussurean concept, adopted by Derrida as the foundation of his (...) deconstruction, is the concept of “value”; this concept leads to the impossibility of a positive and stable delimitation of signification, which thus is shown to be a phantasmatic entity emerging from the nodes of a network of differences. In this context, I focus on three issues concerning limits, the one leading to the other: the above limitlessness of the linguistic signified, the ensuing limitlessness of linguistic semiosis, in the sense that there is no clear limit between it and the referent, and thus the limit imposed by semiosis in preventing the possibility of knowledge of material reality. I examine Saussure’s ambiguous view on this issue and argue that Derrida’s approach is contradictory, since he occasionally reintroduces the referent in the form of empirical evidence with no theoretical justification. (shrink)

This article makes the case that Greece has witnessed a transition from a ‘post-democratic’ condition in the ’90 s and the early 21st century to a regime of ‘post-political biopower’ in 2010–12 that can bid democracy farewell. To adequately theorize this modality of power in a way pertinent to contemporary Greece, the paper takes its bearings from Agamben’s take on biopower, the homo sacer and the endless state of exception. But the analysis fills in Agamben’s theoretical skeleton by drawing on (...) Naomi Klein’s account of the ‘Shock Doctrine’, which captures a particular technique of biopower deployed by neoliberal hegemony, Deleuze’s insights about the ‘society of control’ and Lazzarato’s elaborations of these insights with reference to the ‘indebted man’, which can shed light on the political implications of the Greek debt crisis. Yet popular responses, initiatives and electoral politics, as well as the intricacies of dominant power relations, upset any monolithic and quasi-totalitarian account of sovereign rule, disclosing cracks, imbalances and dispersion in its edifice. (shrink)

O presente estudo objetivou analisar introdutoriamente a pós-graduação em Educação Física quanto à produção de conhecimento, desenvolvimento da inovação e seus impactos na prática pedagógica na escola. Abordando o tema descritivamente e criticamente, analisando dados do crescimento quantitativo e qualitativo da PGEF no Brasil, se discute inovação e aplicação de conhecimento na escola. Verifica-se o crescimento significativo tanto em número de programas, mestres e doutores bem como de artigos publicados em periódicos nacionais e internacionais. Embora o crescimento da PGEF esteja (...) ocorrendo, observam-se dificuldades na produção de inovação e de aplicação de conhecimento na escola. (shrink)

Changes in the abundance of protein and RNA molecules can impair the formation of complexes in the cell leading to toxicity and death. Here we exploit the information contained in protein, RNA and DNA interaction networks to provide a comprehensive view of the regulation layers controlling the concentration‐dependent formation of assemblies in the cell. We present the emerging concept that RNAs can act as scaffolds to promote the formation ribonucleoprotein complexes and coordinate the post‐transcriptional layer of gene regulation. We describe (...) the structural and interaction network properties that characterize the ability of protein and RNA molecules to interact and phase separate in liquid‐like compartments. Finally, we show that presence of structurally disordered regions in proteins correlate with the propensity to undergo liquid‐to‐solid phase transitions and cause human diseases. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/kfpqibsNfS0. (shrink)

We report the results of an experiment on how individual risk taking clusters together when subjects are informed of peers’ previous risk taking decisions. Subjects are asked how much of their endowment they wish to allocate in a lottery in which there is a 50% chance the amount they invest will be tripled and a 50% chance their investment will be lost. We use a 2 × 2 factorial design varying: (i) whether the subjects initially observed high or low investment (...) social anchors, (ii) whether information about the investment decisions of other subjects in their social group is provided. We find strong evidence that individuals' risk taking decisions are malleable to that of their peers, which in turn leads to social clustering of risk taking. Social anchors shape initial risk taking, with mean investment then converging to a high level across treatments. (shrink)

The object of this paper is the domain of semiotic theories, from “traditional” semiotics to poststructuralism and postmodernism, excluding “semiotizing” approaches such as phenomenology or cultural studies. Thus, it is metatheoretical. It is based on two matrices. The first maps semiotic theories on the basis of the continuity or discontinuity between them. The second displays the logical categories of the relationship between semiotics and Marxism, which has historically been an important influence on the field. The paper presents the views of (...) the main authors of the domain in terms of these two matrices. Some of the conclusions are: the irreconcilability between Saussurean and Peircean semiotics; the greater historical development of the former in comparison to the latter; the different orientation between Central and Eastern European semiotics on the one hand and French semiotics on the other; the strong influence of Saussure and Levi-Straussian structuralism on poststructuralism; the increase of the influence of Marxism from structuralism to poststructuralism; and the transformation from poststructuralism to North American postmodernism.The paper closes with some thoughts about the present status of the main semiotic currents and a proposal for a fertile future orientation for semiotics. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to review the main aspects of a major super-paradigm running through spatial studies, a paradigm that I have called “subjectivism” and that may also be called the “conceptual” paradigm, with emphasis placed on postmodern approaches to space; it is opposed to another super-paradigm, the “objectivist” or “materialist” paradigm. While the objectivist paradigm approaches space as a material entity, the conceptual paradigm studies the conceptual world of social subjects, either the meaning that spatial objects have (...) for them or the ideas associated with them. Thus, the conceptual orientation is a semiotic orientation in the wide sense and hence a cultural orientation.Postmodern theorizing is only the latest subjectivist tendency in spatial studies, and there is a whole series of antecedents, which are thus a kind of “pre-postmodern” approaches. In this context, I discuss sociocultural human ecology, environmental psychology, behavioral geography, and humanistic geography from the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and structural anthropology and the semiotics of space from the French tradition. My discussion also covers the postmodern approaches to space in human geography , social anthropology, archaeology, and architecture and urban design.Subjectivism and objectivism in spatial studies are opposed and antagonistic paradigms. However, I believe that both of them are partial approaches that need to be articulated into a unified theory. Works of major authors show how this articulation may be realized, something which implies the integration of subjectivism with political economy. (shrink)

The research question of the present paper is what relation exists between biology and cultural semiosis and I examine as a token of this question the relation between the physiological senses of proprioception and the cultural concepts corresponding to them. While the origins of semiosis are biological, the origin of proprioceptive concepts is debated. Against the biological view that the proprioceptive senses define directly the concepts corresponding to them, there is an opposite view supporting that these concepts are culture-specific. The (...) concept of “classification system” is counter-proposed as the structural framework for the study of proprioceptive concepts. The paper discusses the senses and concepts of proprioception on the basis of a large corpus of anthropological and archaeological material concerning the semiotic systems of precapitalist societies and with the help of a set of metalinguistic spatial concepts. These metalinguistic concepts are up vs. down, front vs. rear, and right vs. left. The senses corresponding to them lead to the senses and concepts of spatial orientation and presuppose a point of reference, closely related to the sense of equilibrium. My conclusion is that the cultural concepts corresponding to these senses are not directly extrapolated from the senses themselves, but are culture-specific and each time integrated within a different cultural and social environment. (shrink)

La reconstitution de la 11e métope Sud du Parthenon est un exemple caractéristique de la démarche suivie par la recherche archéologique pour reconstituer les métopes détruites par l'explosion de 1687. En utilisant comme guide les très précieux dessins de Carrey, et en sachant que les métopes Sud sont les seules dont les reliefs n'ont pas été abattus par les Chrétiens, on peut identifier les divers fragments et les attribuer aux métopes auxquelles ils appartiennent. On ajoute deux nouveaux fragments à ceux (...) qui avaient été attribués jusqu'à présent à la métope S11 par divers archéologues, ce qui permet de confirmer l'attribution déjà proposée pour un autre et d'enrichir notre connaissance de la métope. (shrink)

The article considers the changes that have affected European border regimes of migration control as a testcase for discussing arbitrariness. The argument highlights the limited capacity of notions of arbitrariness defined as a departure from the rule of law to capture the ongoing conflict at the borders of Europe and brings, instead, to the foreground the ambivalent meaning of arbitrariness. By comparing Santi Romano’s classical theory of legal pluralism with recent analyses of legal globalization processes, arbitrariness emerges either as an (...) authoritative attempt to impose a different order on society or as a means to contrast acts of resistance to border regimes. In both cases, arbitrariness forcefully blurs the limits between the ordered and unordered, indicating the paradoxical impossibility of excluding the law’s outside from the legal order. On these premises, the article advocates the importance of reframing the demand for open borders as a call for freedom of those who challenge the pragmatic order of migration regimes. Indeed, arbitrariness is necessarily limited when the legal order recognizes, to an extent, the agency and the claims of subjectivities that resist the dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. Keywords: migration, arbitrariness, borders, legal order. (shrink)

The article presents the first edition of the Chapters on the purity of the soul written by the patriarch of Constantinople, Callistus I , with an italian translation and commentary. Many themes of the Chapters are related to the byzantine ascetical tradition and the teaching of Callistus' spiritual father, Gregory the Sinaite. Others are connected to the theological discussions of the period and the polemics of the patriarch against Nicephorus Gregoras.

Religion's historical mistrust of sexuality shapes people's behavior by inhibiting liberal sexuality. Still, it is unclear whether this inhibitive role also includes common, normative sexual behavior, particularly in secularized contexts. Moreover, the possible mediating effects emotions, affects, and thoughts have on the association between religiosity and restricted sexuality have never been integrated into a single model. Finally, cross-religious differences in common sexual behavior have still yet to be documented. We addressed these three issues in two studies, with samples of Catholic (...) and Muslim tradition (total N = 446). Consistently across samples, religiosity predicted, either directly or indirectly, less frequent common heterosexual behaviors and masturbation, partly through sexual guilt and inhibition, and/or decreased sexual fantasy and the search for sexual pleasure. However, married Muslims’ religiosity, unlike Catholics’, did not directly undermine fertility-oriented sexuality and the search for pleasure. Religion's role in restricting sexuality seems to be rooted in deep psychological rationale. (shrink)

Commentant des extraits du journal tenu dès l’enfance par la lausannoise Angletine Charrière de Sévery, cette contribution éclaire l’écrit personnel féminin sous un autre angle que celui de l’« intime » : celui de l’apprentissage de l’être en société, fondamental en milieu nobiliaire au siècle des Lumières. Il se traduit par le report quotidien sur le papier des visites effectuées et reçues par sa famille, comptabilité à laquelle n’échappent pas même les jours auxquels il ne se passe rien. Après avoir (...) situé cette pratique scripturaire dans une tradition familiale féminine, la contribution en analyse l’évolution : de la simple description à la critique, en passant par l’appropriation des premiers instruments du jugement, Angletine prend de plus en plus de place dans son journal, jusqu’à ce que sa mère s’en efface. (shrink)

What does the future hold? Is the desertification of the planet, driven by state and corporate authority, the final horizon of history? Is the dystopian future implied by the systemic degradation of nature and society inescapable? From marginal activist groups to governments and interstate organizations, all appear to be concerned with what the future of our shared world will look like. Yet even amid the ongoing global crisis caused by capitalism, the potential of a different, radically rooted future has also (...) appeared. Common Futures explores the global emergence of twenty-first-century social movements, opposed to capitalism and state authority. These movements, Yavor Tarinski and Alexandros Schismenos show, transcend traditional political forms of organization and try to form autonomous networks premised on direct democracy and solidarity. The authors identify the importance of grassroots movements, which can bring radical change and create a more democratic and ecological future. Common Futures examines the social and political roots of the environmental crisis and the relationship between ecology and direct democracy. But Tarinski and Schismenos go beyond the analysis of crises, contemporary struggles, and social movements: Common Futures also clarifies the conditions for the re-creation of free public time and space and point to practical steps that we can take to alleviate the problems of our future. (shrink)

Setting out from the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, this article engages with post-Heideggerian thought on community, seeking to bring out and to enhance its political thrust for contemporary democracies. It shows how Jean-Luc Nancy, Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben, ‘common the political’, that is, how they reconsider politics in light of a fundamental sense of co-existence which clears the ground for social openness, solidarity, plurality and autonomy. It then responds to a series of pertinent objections by further politicizing the post-Heideggerian (...) vision of the common. I set out to translate the ontologies of the common into more concrete political logics by relating them to actual political practices and by joining them to the political theory of hegemony and antagonism set out by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their conjunction of the ‘common’ with the antagonistic politics of hegemony is tension-ridden, as they draw from conflicting understandings of ‘the political’, pitting plurality and horizontal relations against division and uneven power. To mitigate that conflict, these two approaches should be situated at different sites of political action, and the hegemonic framework should be recast so as to bring it more into line with horizontalist ‘common’ politics. (shrink)

Everybody knows that Superman is Clark Kent. Nobody knows that Superman is Clark Kent. Located between these two absolute statements is the epistemological limit that separates the superhero fictitious universe from our universe of causal reality. The superheroic double identity is a secret shared by the superhero and the reader of the comic or the viewer of the movie, and quite often the superhero winks at the outside world, thus breaking the 4th wall and establishing this collusive relationship. However, in (...) our hypothesis, we are interested in Superman not as a fictitious archetype, but rather as a fictitious metaphor. We are not interested in his double identity as the matrix of superheroic attributes and narratives, but rather as the differential limit between superhuman and human within the fictional universe. Because, the reader or the viewer may share the secret identity with Superman and also with Spiderman or Batman or any other superhuman, but the secret equivalence of Superman and Clark Kent contains another hidden antithesis. (shrink)

My main point is that the creation of a free public time implies the creation of a democratic collective inspired by the project of social ecology. The first and second parts of this article focus on the modern social phenomena correlated to the general crisis and the emergence of the Internet Age (Castells, 2012). The third and fourth parts focus on new significations that seem to inspire modern social movements and the challenges that modern democratic ecological collectivities face. I use (...) the term “social ecology” as defined by Murray Bookchin: “Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems” (Bookchin, 2006, p. 19). And I use the term “democracy” exclusively in the original, true meaning, of direct democracy where society is self-governed by the equal participation of every individual to political decisions and functions, as opposed to a modern representative democracy or republic, where political decisions rest in the hands of an oligarchy. In this sense, a truly democratic political collectivity is a truly ecological collectivity and vice versa. (shrink)

Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the ‘mechanization’ of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize[1], even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late ‘60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata[2]. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of (...) human cognition to cybernetic systems. -/- The emergence of the world-wide-web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. -/- I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities. (shrink)

The last decades have witnessed the emergence of a burgeoning literature on freedom that has set out to reconfigure this idea in response to the critique of the autonomous subject. The paper has three main objectives. It engages critically with this new field of theory by exploring two divergent strands of thought: a recast form of liberal autonomy and agonistic freedom as envisioned by M. Foucault, C. Castoriadis and certain other authors. Second, it seeks to bring out the merits of (...) the agonistic view by situating it in the problematic of freedom that developed after the critique. Agonistic freedom attends more fully to social inhibitions and unconscious determinations; it grapples more effectively with internalized limits; and it gives more play to the creative powers of action, which carry liberating effects. The argument offers, finally, a reply to the much-iterated polemic against agonistic self-invention, which charges it with amoral and antidemocratic implications. In effect, this ethos of freedom displays virtues that can facilitate democratic interaction and reinforce commitment to democratic egalitarianism. The entire discussion ties in with debates around agonistic democracy and helps to construe democratic freedom in a way that enables social contestation, pluralization, and solidarity. (shrink)

Κατ’ αυτόν τον τρόπο η έννοια της ‘αριστερής μελαγχολίας’ δεν συνδέεται τόσο με το φαντασιακό της ήττας, όσο με το φαντασιακό της προδοσίας που οδηγεί στην ομφαλοσκόπηση, την καχυποψία ή τον κριτικό αναστοχασμό. Ένα διττό φαντασιακό βίωμα προδοσίας εγκαταστάθηκε στα δύο γενικότερα ιστορικά ρεύματα της επαναστατικής παράδοσης – το σοσιαλιστικό-κρατικό και το αντιεξουσιαστικό-αντικρατικό – από τις πρώτες δεκαετίες, ένα αίσθημα εσωτερικής προδοσίας των αξιών και των ιδεών από συγκεκριμένες τακτικές και πρακτικές, αλλά και εξωτερικής προδοσίας από αντίπαλες, μα υποτίθεται όμορες, (...) συλλογικότητες. Το φαντασιακό της προδοσίας τρέφεται από το διάνοιγμα της εμμενούς απόστασης λόγου και πράξης, τις μικρές διαφορές τακτικής αλλά και τις μεγάλες αντιθέσεις επιδιώξεων, και σε στιγμές κατάρρευσης, εσωτερικεύεται από τα εκάστοτε υποκείμενα ως σχάση εαυτού. Η ‘αριστερή μελαγχολία’, ιδίως στην τέχνη και τη λογοτεχνία, είναι η αισθητική υποκειμενική εκδήλωση αυτής της ενδογενούς αντίφασης που προκύπτει από την απόπειρα να βιώσεις το μέλλον στο παρόν μετασχηματίζοντας ενεργά το βάρος του παρελθόντος σε ποίηση. (shrink)

To what degree can the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis help analyze and evaluate our current social reality in relation to the project of autonomy? How meaningful is his political proposition for direct democracy in the 21st century? What significance do the concepts of social time and social space have in the determination of political freedom? -/- Castoriadis and Autonomy in the 21st Century presents basic concepts of Castoriadian philosophy, including the social-historical plane, ontological creativity, and social and individual time that (...) provide the theoretical tools to evaluate the historical phenomena of our era. Drawing from Greece's own turbulent past and the current global crisis to reveal new significances of social freedom, global solidarity and movements of direct democracy, this book explores social autonomy and human freedom today through critical dialogue with Castoriadis' ideas. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Enguehard (Natural Language Semantics 29(4):527–578, 2021 ), who observes that presuppositions project in the same way from coordinations of declaratives and coordinations of polar questions, but existing mechanisms of projection from declaratives (e.g. Schlenker in Theoretical Linguistics 34(3):157–212, 2008, Semantics and Pragmatics 2:1–78, 2009 ) fail to scale to questions. His solution involves specifying a trivalent inquisitive semantics for (coordinations of) questions that bakes the various asymmetries of presupposition projection into the lexical entry of (...) conjunction/disjunction. However, we argue that such a move faces both theoretical and empirical issues. Instead, we show that the data can be handled without moving to such an asymmetric inquisitive denotation, by adapting the novel pragmatic theory of _Limited Symmetry_ (Kalomoiros in Proceedings of the 52nd annual meeting of the North East linguistic society, GLSA, Amherst, 2022 ) to an inquisitive framework in a way that leaves the underlying semantics for conjunction symmetric and bivalent, while deriving the projection data. (shrink)

In recent years, theorists and activists championing the ‘commons’ have propounded a socio-centric idea of democratic resistance and renewal with a global address. This conception holds that the making of new social relations and practices here and now should be the main pillar of activity aiming at wide-ranging social reconstruction. The present paper complicates and qualifies this thesis. Socio-economic and technological breakthroughs can effectively serve as a catalyst for democratic change if they are adequately politicised, that is, deliberately oriented and (...) embedded in a broader counter-hegemonic project. As a first step, the paper reviews socio-centrism and brings out its limits. But the main part is a critical inquiry into alternative cooperative enterprises set up in recent years in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece: a cooperative bookstore and publishing house (‘Akyvernites Politeies’), a self-organised factory (‘Vio.Me’), and a consumer cooperative (‘Bios Coop’). The three ventures are construed as ‘alter-political’ economic initiatives to highlight their distinctive political self-construction. The case study corroborates the theoretical argument by indicating that socio-economic enterprises aspiring to radical democratisation are deliberately political from the outset. Second, such social innovation needs to be integrated into, and bolstered by, expansive counter-hegemonic politics and movements, as their actors themselves point out. (shrink)

Marx on a tightrope. the essence of freedom and the movement of becoming -- Kantian transcendence and beyond -- Knowledge and practice in trouble. a reasonable way out of ontological traps -- Liberal detours and their mishaps: negative liberty, I. Berlin, and J.S. Mill -- Agonic subjectivity and the stirrings of the new -- The social, the imaginary, and the real -- Freedom, agonism, and creative praxis -- Post-critical liberalism and agonistic freedom -- Post-foundational reason and sustainable affirmation -- Conclusion: (...) past agonies and present openings of freedom. (shrink)

The paper makes a case for the new paradigm of freedom which has been elaborated by thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis and Michel Foucault. In response to the critique of the subject, freedom is construed now as limited and agonistic, calling for an ongoing struggle against various constraints. But this idea is coupled with a heightened appreciation of contingency and creativity. Individuals can bring new possibilities into existence, which go beyond any predefined alternatives. The paper argues that this is a (...) tenable and empowering figure of freedom which overcomes the deficiencies of earlier modern views. Essentialist notions, which can be found in Kant and Marx, contract freedom by tying it down to unchanging universal laws and definite conditions of realization, while alternative accounts of negative liberty fail to address the constrained nature of human agency. (shrink)

La découverte sur l'Acropole d'un nouveau fragment de la tête Akr. 2381, qui a déjà fait l'objet de tant de discussions, et était attribuée ordinairement à diverses figures féminines du fronton Est du Parthénon, permet enfin de comprendre et d'interpréter la tête. Le nouveau fragment, qui appartient à la partie gauche de la tête, nous permet d'établir quel était le mouvement de la tête et nous aide à définir le sexe de la figure. Les conclusions que l'on tire d'un examen (...) général de la tête nous permettent une critique des différentes positions des recherches anciennes et récentes pour l'attribution de celle-ci aux différentes figures du fronton Est. (shrink)

Time was perceived by ancient philosophy as a cosmological enigma. The search for truth beyond time determined Greek thought. A true definition, says Aristotle (384-322 BC), expresses “the what-it-is-to-be” (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) of a thing, it is an account of the essence, and essence is identity. The principle of non-contradiction was considered by Aristotle as the first principle of the inquiry into Being. As such, it cannot be demonstrated, since this would lead to an infinite regress. Instead, the noncontradiction (...) principle is the first axiom of ontology. But time seems to question this tautology. Aristotle discusses time in the Physics. He begins with the questions about time’s existence which stem from his contemporaries’ conceptions. (shrink)