Hamacher, Duane Indigenous Australian practices, developed and honed over thousands of years, weave science with storytelling. In this Indigenous science series, we'll look at different aspects of First Australians' traditional life and uncover the knowledge behind them - starting today with astronomy.

This chapter contains section titled: The Cosmic Community Social and Individual Autonomy The World Out of Balance Multiple Communities, Multiple Identities Renewing the Cosmic Community.

This book presents a reading of Martin Heidegger's philosophy as an effort to strike a middle position between the philosophies of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche. Duane Armitage interprets the history of Western philosophy as comprising a struggle over the meaning of "being," and argues that this struggle is ultimately between materialism and idealism, and, in the end, between atheism and theism. This work therefore concerns the question of the meaning of the so called "death of God" in the context (...) of contemporary Continental Philosophy.. (shrink)

On the Brink begins with a consideration of Kant's treatment of time as representation and of Hegel's treatment of the writing of history and the end of art, all while taking up other key figures in the history of philosophy. The book then moves to an exploration of language in a variety of manifestations, from translation to complaint and greeting. It concludes by analyzing political and social questions that continue to haunt us today--the conception of work, not least in National (...) Socialism, and our relationship to democracy. Taken together, Werner Hamacher's essays offer trenchant historical, political, and rhetorical interventions into the history of philosophy, literature, and our contemporary political situation. (shrink)

abstract: Despite the maturing and formalizing of Buddhist-Christian studies as an academic discipline, its practical and pastoral implications are insufficiently addressed. Most of the practical literature to date addresses spiritual care, broadly conceived, within a narrow range of sources and theories. This scoping study identifies three primary resources offered to providers of spiritual care by scholars of Buddhist-Christian studies: an expanded theoretical base for assessment and interpretation, practices for caregiver formation and cultivation, and guidance for care with spiritually fluid people. (...) Scholars of Buddhist-Christian studies could make at least four additional contributions to chaplaincy and spiritual care: a revised telos of care, attention to care as a site of spiritual practice, criteria for salutogenic spiritualities, and refined practices for interreligious and postcolonializing care. These potential contributions require the discipline to carefully consider methodological issues and broaden its range of sources. (shrink)

Since Hegel, philosophy cannot stop thinking its end. The violent transformations which Hegel's philosophy has uncovered and caused in the structure of philosophical terms and in the terms under which philosophy is possible is Hamacher's topic. Starting from Hegel's commentaries on biblical scripture, Hamacher traces the genealogy and unfolding of Hegel's thought into his mature works--the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Encyclopedia, the Philosophy of History--focusing throughout on the limits and borders, the limitations and extremities of its conceptual and (...) textual movements. Because the concept for Hegel is the end of the thing--the point where it peaks--because it occurs by severance from its representational content, the trace of this splitting appears imprinted into its discursive articulation. The Hegelian text is punctuated by a series of terms and topics that operate according to the logic of the turning point: one function activating its opposite, they serve as pores between mutually exclusive experiences and establish their unity. This dialectical procedure falters, its unity dissolves, the pores turn into aporias, wherever conceptual exigencies surpass the reality they have instilled. Hamacher shows that dialectics, proceeding by way of aporias, remains unable to account for its own movement. Hegel's system must be read from the point where its rupture fails to converge with its end. Analyzing both the historical and the systematic aspects of Hegel's philosophy, addressing Kant and religious fetishism, Nietzsche and the impossible repetition of the same, Marx and the aroma of religion, Freud and the hysterical body, Hamacher's argument is directed toward what in Hegel's philosophy of spirit resists spiritualization and defeats philosophy. Aspiring to be the last philosophy, speculative idealism has to incorporate all previous systems and spiritualize its incorporation. Its logic of ingestion must, however, reject with repulsion and nausea everything that resists appropriation. Emphasizing Hegel's claim to present the political theology of modern society, Hamacher shows that the mechanism of nausea meant to keep the system intact is in fact itself a mechanism foreign to its body; it averts the promised incorporation, defeats idealization, leaves the body politic disintegrated, and voids the claim of the most powerful ontology of modern society to mark the end, the completion and plenitude--the pleroma--of philosophy and history. What remains--the indigestible, the unreadable, the nondiscursive--demands yet another kind of discourse and another practical gesture: toward a pleroma other than Hegel's. (shrink)

Ethics and rationality -- Moral frameworks -- Experience in context -- Aesthetic aspects of ethical thought -- Morals and metaphors -- Ethics and pluralism -- Moral thinking -- Afterword: diversity, relativism, and nonviolence.

Depuis son commencement chez Platon et Aristote, la philosophie se définit comme phénoménologie : comme un logos se portant lui-même à l'apparaître dans un pur intuitionner. Selon les derniers traits de sa philosophie dans la phénoménologie spéculative de Hegel et dans la phénoménologie transcendantale de Husserl, se signalent sa réduction au phénomène Esprit et la thèse originaire de l'Ego à travers une « relève » et une « époché » qui, elles, ne semblent pas davantage réductibles. À la lecture d'un (...) poème de Paul Celan – Parenthèse ouverte, parenthèse fermée –, il devient clair que la poésie trouve la manière de conduire encore le résidu transcendantal et spéculatif de la phénoménalité, de l' aisthesis et de la thesis à ses plus extrêmes limites, de dépasser celles-ci, d'exposer le résidu dans une aphénoménalité absolue et de parler avec ce reste dépourvu d'apparence et de parole. (shrink)

For centuries, outside business organizations have sought to enter into business relationships with indigenous populations, often benefitting both parties. However, the power imbalance that foreign settlers had over indigenous peoples often led to exploitative relationships whereby the indigenous people were marginalized and at times treated inhumanely. While the nature of trade and relationships has changed over time, the special status that native tribes enjoy in U.S.A. continues to attract attention from business enterprises. In the past few years, various organizations have (...) found it advantageous to their business interests to engage in transactions with Native American tribes. Three specific examples are described: Allergan transferred patent rights to a tribe to circumvent a U.S. patent review panel; Tesla opened a store and service center on native land in New Mexico to get around the state’s dealership laws; and Lume Cannabis Co. opened retail stores on native lands in Michigan near communities that had decided to not license recreational cannabis stores. All three examples raise questions over the ethics of buying access to native sovereignty. Students are asked to apply ethical theories to try and identify what distinguishes ethical and unethical transactions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guilt History:Benjamin's Sketch "Capitalism as Religion"Werner Hamacher (bio)Translated by Kirk Wetters (bio)History as Exchange EconomySince history cannot be conceived as a chain of events produced by mechanical causation, it must be thought of as a connection between occurrences that meets at least two conditions: first that it admit indeterminacy and thus freedom, and second that it nonetheless be demonstrable in determinate occurrences and in the distinct form of (...) their coherence. Relations can thus be called historical and can be recognized as historical only if they are determined by neither necessity nor chance, and if their causality is of a different order than the mechanical. The temporal structure of history can therefore be characterized on the one hand by the distinct connection of its elements—and on the other hand by the dissolution of all connections that do not assist these elements in achieving their independence.A temporal nexus that clearly does not satisfy these conflicting requirements has been characterized in one of the oldest texts of occidental philosophy as the time of guilt. According to the sentence of Anaximander (from about 500 BC), handed down by Simplicius in his commentary (530 AD) on Aristotle's Physics, the origin and end of all things is subordinated to the law of necessity (katà tó kreòn). "They must pay penance and be judged for their injustice, according to the order of time (katà tèn tou chrónou táxin)"—so the fragment reads in the translation offered by Nietzsche in his treatise "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks." According to Anaximander, the sequence of time orders the rise and fall of all things and orders them in accordance with the law of guilt and punishment so that becoming (génesis) is a guilt (adikía) that must be expiated in perishing. Time and more precisely its táxis, the positing of time, is thought in Anaximander's sentence as an order of guilt and retribution, debt and payback. It is a time of economy in the sense that it is the time of law—and precisely a law that is valid for all beings, a táxis, a decree, an ordinance and an ordering—in which the unavoidable incurring of guilt is atoned in an equivalent penance that is just as unavoidable. The strict coherence of guilt and penance is ascertained by the principle of their equivalence. Time is therefore conceived here as a double process of coming into being and perishing, [End Page 81] a process that occurs in such a way that the genesis is erased in its passing away—so that time is thus erased by time itself.In Anaximander's sentence, however, time is not only the double-process of coming into being and passing away, it is—as a táxis—the common and constantly enduring medium of the exchange of the contrary but equivalent motions of coming into being and perishing. It is the time of the quid pro quo of everything that is generated and passes away within time. Its measure is a justice that represents itself as a táxis and thereby as the positing and the law of all becoming and vanishing, the law of physis and its demise as an onto-economic law. This taxiological order of time places every realm of the natural and human world under a law of substitution without exception; this also allows ethical, juridical, and economic concepts to substitute for one another within this order. The ethical dimension of justice, thus circumscribed by the order of time, is reduced to the juridical dimension of the decree, and both now define themselves according to the calculus of "an exchange economy in an eternally unchanging household of nature."1 It can only, however, be a matter of an ethics of time to the extent that this ethics, already juridified and economized, is subordinated to the schema of exchange, trade, and the equivalence of guilt and retribution. The time of history, ethical time, is thus interpreted in Anaximander's sentence as a normative time of inculpation and expiation. Whatever enters this táxis of time is thereby already guilty and can... (shrink)

A translation of Werner Hamacher’s essay “Andere Schmerzen,” which he was unable to complete before his death on July 7, 2017. The essay analyzes the connection between pain and language in the work of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca, Kant, Hegel, and Valéry.

In this work of philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, Duane Armitage offers a clear interpretation of Heidegger’s enigmatic theology as uniquely Pauline and Lutheran. He argues that the real impetus, aim, and structure of Heidegger’s philosophy of religion as well as his philosophy as a whole, are rooted in Pauline (and Lutheran) ontology. He thus demonstrates that continental philosophy of religion, and, to an extent, continental philosophy as a whole, is indebted to St. Paul and Martin Luther. This examination (...) also shows how much of continental thinking itself is traceable to Heidegger’s onto-theological critique and hence to Luther and St. Paul. Armitage argues that St. Paul and Luther remain the un-thought origins of postmodern thinking on religion, and perhaps postmodern thinking in general. (shrink)

Duane Cady views warism and pacifism as polar extremes on a continuum that embraces a full spectrum of ethical positions on the morality of war and peace. Realizing that he could not intellectually defend the notions of just-war theory, he found that he was a reluctant pacifist. In this new edition of From Warism to Pacifism, Cady continues to expose the pervasive, subconscious warism that is the dominant ideology in modern Western culture. He explores the changes over the last (...) twenty years—from the end of the Cold War to the ongoing “war on terror,” as well as Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. Like racism and sexism, the uncritical presumption that war is morally justifiable, even morally required, misguides our attitudes and institutions. In its place, Cady proposes the development of a positive concept of peace. Citing common objections to pacifist values, he describes peace as something more than the mere absence of war and demonstrates that pacifism is a defensible position. (shrink)

This essay examines the peritrope argument within the history of philosophy and discusses its various permutations, beginning with Plato and eventually mathematized with Gödel, each of which presents a philosophical system that either stands or collapses with this “peritropic” insight. I argue that the peritrope or self-reference argument itself presupposes a certain anti-reductionism, in terms of both anthropology and metaphysics, and is ultimately grounded in Aristotle’s anthropological insight that the human being is the “rational animal”. Thus the root of the (...) anti-reductionist, peritropic argument belongs to the self-transcendent nature of rationality itself. After discussing Aristotle’s anthropology in terms of this rational transcendence, I trace the history of the self-reference argument from Plato to Gödel and discuss its various implications as applied to any and every form of reductionism. My hope is that engagement with this most basic and often overlooked philosophic insight can counter certain reductionist trends in modernity. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with the ethical nature of language. Contrary to most post-modern and post-structuralist accounts, I argue that a thoughtful examination of the intersubjective relations of interlocutors can be accomplished without unduly privileging the subject, and can open new paths of inquiry into the ethical bonds of the human situation. ;I begin from the existential-phenomenological perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty's notion of the self engaged with others in speaking, writing, and gesturing developed continuously over the course of his (...) writings. But this account is one which must be gathered piecemeal from his diverse written works, which range in topic through psychology, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and many others. In the first part of the dissertation, I provide a thematic exegesis of these passages collected from the earliest and latest periods of his work. ;In the second part, I argue that the notion of the self which emerges from part one provides a fruitful starting point for reflection in the domain of ethics. Contrary to thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard, I contend that the individual engaged in language is best thought of as communicating subjectivity; and this subjectivity is already predisposed toward intersubjective communion. ;Next, I expand upon the work of Calvin O. Schrag. There is an ideality which is manifest in communicative praxis which points toward a radicalized understanding of responsibility, and which undergirds the proper critical standpoint for ethical as well as social philosophy. This can be achieved, I argue, only by rethinking the traditional notions of universality, particularity, and transcendence inherited from our Kantian practical tradition. ;Finally, I show that this notion of responsibility must emerge as distinct from a transcendental posture assumed by thinkers like Apel and Habermas, a volitional posture like Sartre's, or any traditional posture based upon a faculty psychology. The communion of communicative praxis is best understood from an existential-ontological inquiry standpoint, and is defined as care. Responsibility for thoughtful discriminations and discernment within the human ethical and social situation is shown to be an issue due to, and not in spite of, corporeality. (shrink)

Outlines four emerging "opportunity trends," including voluntary simplicity, that readers can utilize to surmount social, economic, and environmental challenges ...

L’essai se confronte à la nécessité de rendre plus précise et, par là même, de transformer la notion nancyenne d’être-avec-les-autres. C’est seulement s’il implique un être avec les autres qui ne puisse jamais appartenir à aucune communauté que l’être-avec-les-autres se présente comme la relation absolue et absolument indissoluble : la relation de toutes les relations qui est immédiatement une relation dont le corrélat n’est pas donné. Selon la structure infra-négative de cet être-avec-sans, les communautés ne peuvent se soumettre à des (...) systèmes « symboliques », ni être saisies « comme telles » par elles-mêmes ou par les autres, ni se présenter ou se représenter elles-mêmes dans un corpus philosophique. L’être-avec-les-autres est l’être-sans que l’on appelle « philosophie ». (shrink)

The Curia dei Foretani, or the Court of the Countrymen, of the commune of Lucca was a sort of rural small-claims court. Designed by an urban government to hear minor civil cases which originated in the countryside, it was occupied with the variety of issues that punctuated country life, most especially cases brought by landlords, merchants, and speculators whose living was tied to the rural economy of northwestern Tuscany. The records of the Curia dei Foretani offer an unusual opportunity to (...) investigate landlord-tenant, lender-borrower, and speculator-producer relations during the critical period of the fourteenth century when urban interest in the countryside was intense. As will become clear, the streamlined procedure used by the court was designed to allow rapid petition, hearing, and judgment, which, it has been argued, were designed to favor the wealthy, usually urban, elites. Yet as analysis of the actual functioning of the court will show, villagers in this part of Tuscany were able to avoid, or at least moderate, the most complete forms of landlord domination. The reasons why are complex, but one aspect was the court procedure itself, which could be manipulated by knowledgeable members of strong, semi-autonomous rural communities who had access to legal advice or who had broadly based communal support for their actions. Urban landlords in the Lucchesia never achieved the sort of economic domination of rural life which seems to have typified the region around Florence and Siena. (shrink)

It is quite clear to me that there is nothing presently available to rival this book." —Wlad Godzich, University of Geneva "Hamacher's Premises is the heir and successor to the most important theoretical and critical work done in American ...

Traditionally, science has regarded the universe as made up of inert matter and empty space. Duane Elgin brings together extraordinary evidence from cosmology, biology, and physics to show that the universe is not dead but rather uniquely alive, an insight that, he shows, is in harmony with all of the world’s major spiritual traditions. He explores how this view radically transforms our concept of ourselves, our place in the cosmos, and the evolutionary trajectory of the human family. The nonliving (...) view of the universe has led to rampant materialism and global environmental degradation. To transform our planetary crises we need to move past a paradigm of separation and exploitation and learn to live sustainably on the Earth, in harmony with one another, and in communion with the living universe. (shrink)

A new perceptual paradigm is emerging that views the universe as a living system that is being regenerated in its totality moment by moment. Scientific evidence for this view is presented as well as complementary insights from the world's spiritual traditions. The implications of this view of reality for our sense of identity, way of living, and evolutionary purpose are considered.

Niebuhr's definitions of "Christ" and "culture" set up a problematic dualism that leads to a misrepresentation of the Christ-against-culture type. The paper proposes that instead of Niebuhr's "idealized" Christ, an embodied Christology locates Christ within culture. The tension, then, is not between Christ and culture, but between different cultural visions. A cultural vision with Christ as norm provides a discriminating ethic of normative practices to engage culture. Many scholars have recognized that Niebuhr not only develops a descriptive typology in Christ (...) and Culture, he also argues that the fifth type, Christ-the-transformer-of-culture, is the most adequate position. Almost everyone identifies with this type. Why is that? The problem is that the variety of meanings of "transformation" is not illuminated by Niebuhr's typology. An alternative typology is proposed which addresses these two problems: a richer development of three types that Niebuhr lumps together in his Christ-against-culture type; and the development of a typology to show that there are four different ways to understand what the church has meant by Christ-the-transformer-of-culture. (shrink)

Our study “Towards an Evangelical Political Philosophy” continues with two articles on the Anabaptist and Reformed Tradition. Eds.

Karl Schmitz‐Moormann argues that the doctrines of God and Creation, usually explicated in Roman Catholic theology by using the analogy of being, must rather be conceived in light of evolution and an analogy of becoming. God the Trinity, characterized by unity, information, and freedom, provides the image toward which the creation tends in its evolutionary processes. Informed by Teilhard and others, the author hereby provides more of a new research program for theology's engagement with natural science than a fully developed (...) theology. (shrink)

Global climate change has very significant implications for the theory and practice of global justice. Climate change, whether generated by natural processes or human activities, generates uneven distribution of negative and net impacts across individuals, groups, and countries. Sources of climate change due to human activities, and also capacity to respond to climate change, are similarly unevenly distributed. Distributions of sources, impacts, and capacity are likely quite different from one another. In this context, justice concerns who should bear the final (...) real burden of climate change and of actions to mitigate, halt, and reverse climate change. This final real burden is interdependent with global poverty. (shrink)