One of principal tasks of Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting is to analyze the phenomenon of social cohesion, understood not as a uniform bond, but in terms of human plurality that arises from a diversity of perspectives of remembering groups rooted in complex stratifications and concatenations. This paper focuses on the role of remembrance and of its historical inscription as a source of social cohesion, which is subject to rupture and dissolution over time. It first identifies the way in (...) which, according to Ricœur, memory and history function as essential preconditions of social cohesion; following this, it examines the significance and scope of temporal rupture and discontinuity to which this cohesion is subject. In examining Ricœur’s reflection on social cohesion and on the discontinuity to which it is subject over time, I aim to place his thought in a critical light in order to set in relief what I take to be an important aporia it encounters. (shrink)

Modern scholarship has drawn hasty and numerous parallels between the Yellow Peril discourses of the 19th- and 20th-century plagues and the recent racialization of infectious disease in the 21st-century. While highlighting these similarities is politically useful against Sinophobic epidemic narratives, Michel Foucault argues that truly understanding the past’s continuity in the present requires a more rigorous genealogical approach. Employing this premise in a comparative analysis, this work demonstrates a critical discontinuity in the epidemic imaginary that framed the Chinese as (...) pathogenic. Consequently, those seeking to prevent future disease racialization must understand modern Sinophobia as fundamentally distinct from that of the past. (shrink)

In this article I inquire into the question of cultural continuity against the background of the problem of modernity through the medium of the specific case of New Confucian philosophy. I reflect on the import of the concept of "culture" from a historical point of view and investigate how the Hegelian notion of "Spirit" was employed by modern Confucian philosophers such as Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi as a conceptual strategy in the face of the structural and semantic discontinuities (...) resulting from modernization. I single out the symbolic May Fourth Movement in order to approach Mou's and Tang's attitude towards historical continuity and point towards the contemporary significance of their philosophical undertaking. (shrink)

RESUMEN: La muerte del hombre anunciada por Foucault está en estrecha relación con la muerte de Dios anunciada por Nietzsche. El retorno del lenguaje conlleva la desaparición del hombre como figura cardinal del saber moderno. La historia es discontinua. Foucault dudó de las verdades de cada época y de las verdades intemporales. En este artículo trazo el recorrido del hombre en Les mots et les choses, mostrando la tensión entre el lenguaje y la desaparición del hombre, hablo de la discontinuidad (...) de la historia y los “jeux de vérité”, y muestro que Foucault se consideraba, por encima de todo, un pensador escéptico. / ABSTRACT: The death of man proclaimed by Foucault is in close relationship with the death of God proclaimed by Nietzsche. The return of language is linked with the disappearance of man. History is discontinuos. Foucault doubted the truths of each era as well as the timeless truths. In this article I present man’s journey in Foucault’s Les mots et les choses, showing the tension between language and the disappearance of man, I talk about historical discontinuity and the “jeux de vérité”, and I argue that Foucault considered himself, above all, a skeptical thinker. (shrink)

If it is true, as I have argued in an earlier essay, that discontinuity is not an unintended side-effect of our ambition to attain goals that are in line with our identity, but the result of our giving in to a sublime “why not?,” then how can we conceive of history as a process? In this essay I will explore the thesis that my notion that the discontinuities of history spring from a dehors texte squares well with an evolutionary (...) view of history. I will do so by giving an account of how Lenin and Trotsky brought off one of the primordial discontinuities of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution. Starting with Trotsky's remark that Lenin owed his success to his “imagination,” I show that the October 1917 coup d'état was not guided by strategy or driven by ideology, but by a series of “inspired” improvisations in which the protagonists fled forward into the unknown. Trotsky describes Lenin's “intuition of action” as the fruit of his ability to take leave of the system of complexity reduction that is stored in conventions, received wisdom, and other things we take for granted. Trotsky in effect says that Lenin's improvisations were most successful when he was so completely “possessed” by his deeds that he didn't fully know what he was doing—when, that is, he was in a state of dissociation. In Lenin's inspired deeds the “latent powers of the organism” that humans have “inherited from animal ancestors” rose up, Trotsky said, and “smashed through the doors of psychic routine and—together with the highest historico-philosophical generalizations—stood up in the service of the revolution.” Acting out the dehors texte, Lenin brought about one of the metamorphoses in which humanity mutates to new—though not necessarily higher or happier—levels. The essay includes some remarks on what all this might mean for the relation between history and theory in the upcoming years. (shrink)

Starting from recent formulas of EU bureaucracy for subordinating scientific and educational apparatuses to the needs of the capital and to the requests of its political representatives, the article analyses the interconnection between the historical transformation of the ideological state apparatuses and the epistemological discontinuity provoked by the triumph of technosciences. The hypothesis to be tested is the following: While the crisis of West European-North American capitalism requires an ever tighter submission of ideological state apparatuses, and especially of (...) scientific and academic apparatuses to the needs of the capital, theoretical practices in the humanities and social sciences have come to the point where they entered into an open conflict with the domination of the capital and have, as a consequence, started to subvert their own institutional supports in the ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state. For this purpose, the article reconsiders social sciences as a compromise formation and, eventually, reassesses the historical materialism as a non-Cartesian modern science. Polazeci od skorasnjih formula EU birokratije putem kojih se naucni i obrazovni aparati podredjuju potrebama kapitala i zahtevima njegovih politickih predstavnika, ovaj rad analizira uzajamnu povezanost istorijske transformacije ideoloskih aparata drzave i epistemoloskog diskontinuiteta koji je izazvan trijumfom tehno-nauka. Ispitivacemo sledecu hipotezu: iako kriza kapitalizma u Zapadnoj Evropi i Severnoj Americi zahteva sve cvrsce podredjivanje ideoloskih aparata drzave - narocito onih akademskih i naucnih - teorijske prakse u humanistickim i drustvenim naukama su dosegle tacku otvorenog sukoba sa dominacijom kapitala, cime su sledstveno pocele da podrivaju sopstvena institucionalna uporista u ideoloskim aparatima kapitalisticke drzave. U tu svrhu, rad preispituje drustvene nauke kao jednu kompromisnu formaciju i, naposletku, iznova razmatra istorijski materijalizam kao ne-kartezijansku modernu nauku. (shrink)

Historians go to great lengths to avoid confronting discontinuity, searching for explanations as to why such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, and the introduction of the euro logically develop from what came before. _Moved by the Past_ radically breaks with this tradition of predating the past, incites us to fully acknowledge the discontinuous nature of discontinuities, and proposes to use the fact that history is propelled by unforeseeable leaps and bounds (...) as a starting point for a truly evolutionary conception of history. Integrating research from a variety of disciplines, Eelco Runia identifies two modes of being "moved by the past": regressive and revolutionary. In the regressive mode, the past may either overwhelm us--as in nostalgia--or provoke us to act out what we believe to be solidly dead. When we are moved by the past in a revolutionary sense, we may be said to embody history: we burn our bridges behind us and create accomplished facts we have no choice but to live up to. In the final thesis of _Moved by the Past_, humans energize their own evolution by habitually creating situations ("catastrophes" or sublime historical events) that put a premium on mutations. This book therefore illuminates how every now and then we chase ourselves away from what we were and force ourselves to become what we are. Proposing a simple yet radical change in perspective, Runia profoundly reorients how we think and theorize about history. (shrink)

The article reconstructs the main lines of three hypotheses in the current literature concerning the evolutionary pace which characterized the natural history of human language: the “continuist” and gradualist perspective, the “discontinuist” and evolution-free perspective, and the “punctuationist” view. This current debate appears to have a long history, which starts at least from Darwin’s time. The article highlights the similarities between the old and the modern debates in terms of history of ideas, and it shows the current limits of each (...) of these perspectives. In the final part, we present an alternative approach which considers human language not as a single trait, but as the result of a mosaic of different elements, some of which recently evolved, and some others gradually evolved and phylogenetically ancient. When matched with a tree thinking and comparative perspective, this view suggests that expressions of symbolic and linguistic behaviors in other human species could have preceded the more complex and systematic behaviors showed by Homo sapiens. (shrink)

Jan Patočka’s philosophical development was varied. Over the course of fifty years of philosophizing, he gradually, and to varying degrees, developed close to a dozen systematic projects, whose ambition was, at least initially, to present what he called a “unified philosophy.” However, the dynamism with which he changed his philosophical plans and incessantly embarked on new projects invites the question of how to approach the various and often mutually “contradictory” transformations of his philosophical thinking, if neither the continuity and integrity (...) of Patočka’s thought nor the essential specificity of any of these positions is to be lost. Through the notion of the “personal a priori” found in one of Jan Patočka’s early texts, and in a critical, “overcoming-preserving” reference to two antagonistic conceptions of Patočka’s philosophical development, the article attempts to sketch a solution to this general interpretative problem. In the context of the search for Patočka’s “basic position of seeing” as the integrating framework of his diverse philosophical attempts, it simultaneously reconstructs the early question about the meaning of philosophy in general, which Patočka developed in a series of texts from the 1930s, some of which are still available only in the Czech language. (shrink)

In 2004 in Prague, I met Slovak philosopher Miroslav Marcelli, who had attended Foucault's lectures in Paris in 80s. We talked about the legacy of Foucault and contemporary philosophy. Mr. Marcelli taught me philosophy at Comenius University in 1995.. I never visited his lectures, I only passed the exam.. The most interesting point was his answer to my 'provocations' replicating the common prejudice about impracticability of the philosophy. He answered "Do you think that e.g. Descartes didn't know about it?" In (...) fact, people tend to think that philosophers or mathematicians, are "asocial" without "social" intelligence, while their occasional isolation (e.g. Nietzsche) is a product of social exclusion, rather than their choice. In 2013 I applied Foucault's concept of Discontinuity to short 10 minutes movie: Discontinuity, projected in my exhibition "From Animation" in Holland Park, London. The film has 3 parts, ends as it starts to show the significant historical events in 4 windows, when the same idea appears to disappear to re-appear.. Foucault's philosophy doesn't seem to me so unique now, e.g. the idea that many historical changes or progress itself is often illusionary - masking the power structure, had already been explored 515 BC, in depth by Parmenides who concluded: the change is impossible. (shrink)

This article explores recent questions regarding the interpretation of Vatican II by examining the council's theological and historical relation to what John O'Malley has called ‘the long nineteenth century’. This period, which O'Malley dates from the French Revolution until the end of the pontificate of Pius XII , connotes a time when political and philosophical developments ‘traumatized’ the Church. This sustained trauma left the Church in a defensive position which deeply informed its view of itself and its relation to (...) the world. While a great deal of attention has been directed at examining the council's degree of continuity or discontinuity with the conciliar tradition, not enough has been done to understand its relationship to developments within this more immediate setting. This study argues that a more contextualized appreciation of the Church's efforts to respond to the challenges of the long nineteenth century, expressed especially in the teachings of Vatican I, can illumine key elements of the meaning of Vatican II's documents and the continuity and/or discontinuity that they represent. (shrink)

Incommensurability between successive scientific theories—the impossibility of empirical evidence dictating the choice between them—was Thomas Kuhn's most controversial proposal. Toward defending it, he directed much effort over his last 30 years into formulating precise conditions under which two theories would be undeniably incommensurable with one another. His first step, in the late 1960s, was to argue that incommensurability must result when two theories involve incompatible taxonomies. The problem he then struggled with, never obtaining a solution that he found entirely satisfactory, (...) was how to extend this initial line of thought to sciences like physics in which taxonomy is not so transparently dominant as it is, for example, in chemistry. This paper reconsiders incommensurability in the light of examples in which evidence historically did and did not carry over continuously from old laws and theories to new ones. The transition from ray to wave optics early in the nineteenth century, we argue, is especially informative in this regard. The evidence for the theory of polarization within ray optics did not carry over to wave optics, so that this transition can be regarded as a prototypical case of discontinuity of evidence, and hence of incommensurability in the way Kuhn wanted. Yet the evidence for classic geometric optics did carry over to wave optics, notwithstanding the fundamental conceptual readjustment that Fresnel's wave theory required. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 22 This is an attempt to discover and clarify the philosophical nature of what Eelco Runia claims to be his new and up-to-date philosophy of history, a programme offered in his 2014 book _Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation_. His suggestion that his argument is a “dance” is taken seriously, and following an analysis of historical “meaning” and its time-extended nature it is argued that the book’s presentation commits Runia to a (...) conception of meaning that requires more weight than he allows to the centrality of narrative understanding in history. His attempt to reconnect critical and substantive philosophies of history is analysed and criticised. His apparently inconsistent commitments to both Vico’s _verum-factum_ claim, where we can make history, and to Gumbrecht’s “presence”, where history can make us, is clarified in terms of a pragmatic philosophy that permits Runia to have the psychology-based approach that he relies upon. (shrink)

Abstract Daniel H. H. Ingalls referred to Gaudap?da's M?nd?kya K?rik?, a very early Advaita text, as ? ... the most puzzling perhaps, of all Sanskrit philosophical texts?. This article shows that some of the philosophical quandaries associated with this text are the result of inappropriately imposing a graphic and prose model of textuality upon a text composed in the k?rik? (memorial verse) genre and in an oral cultural context. Developing a model of textuality consistent with the literary genre and cultural (...) context, the article is not only able to resolve some of the philosophical problems associated with the text, but also raises the possibility that this inappropriate hermeneutical process has contributed to mislabelling Gaudap?da as an idealist. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to balance two major conceptual tendencies in science policy studies, continuity and discontinuity theory. While the latter argue for fundamental and distinct changes in science policy in the late 20th century, continuity theorists show how changes do occur but not as abrupt and fundamental as discontinuity theorists suggests. As a point of departure, we will elaborate a typology of scientific governance developed by Hagendijk and Irwin ( 2006 ) and apply it to (...) new empirical material. This makes possible a contextualization of the governance of science related to the codification of the “third assignment” of the Swedish higher education law of 1977. The law defined the relation between university science and Swedish citizens as a dissemination project, and did so despite that several earlier initiatives actually went well beyond such a narrow conceptualisation. Our material reveals continuous interactive and rival arrangements linking the state, public authorities, the universities and private industrial enterprises. We show how different but coexisting modes of governance of science existed in Sweden during the 20th century, in clear contrast with the picture promoted by discontinuity theorists. A close study of the historical development suggests that there were several periods of layered governance when interactions and dynamics associated with continuity as well as discontinuity theories were prevalent. In addition, we conclude that the typology of governance applied in the present paper is fruitful for carrying out historical analyses of the kind embarked upon in spite of certain methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

Proposing to examine syntheses of manifold experiences of the contemporary philosophical panorama, Michel Foucault’s “critical ontology of actuality” culminates in the elaboration of an epistemology of the human sciences starting from their irreversible modern twist. Among the various possible ways of characterizing this epistemology—equipped with its own modus operandi: the archaeological-genealogical method—is to see it as the result of a reflection on the topic of temporality. In particular, it is a reflection on historical temporality as «knowledge of time», that (...) is organized into two different yet complementary modalities, two historical heterochronies that can be defined as evenemential time and epistemic time. The first, acephalous and atelic, proves discontinuous, traced back to pure becoming. The second corresponds to the necessary disciplining of this original shapeless material by means of the solidification of structures that each time produce an equilibrium among the instances of knowledge and power. Yet these structures, too, remain subjected to that historic-temporal change to which they have attributed an order. Such an interpretation of time implies a metamorphosis of the notion of subject that, within an overall anti-humanistic perspective, goes from its death as the cogito to its rebirth in the form of an ethical-aesthetic subject: no longer the atemporal guarantor of the order of the real, but rather something committed to a risky exercise of its own freedom as care of the Self. (shrink)

There are two possible realist defense strategies against the pessimistic meta-induction and Laudan’s meta-modus tollens: the selective strategy, claiming that discarded theories are partially true, and the discontinuity strategy, denying that pessimism about past theories can be extended to current ones. A radical version of discontinuity realism is proposed by Gerald Doppelt: rather than discriminating between true and false components within theories, he holds that superseded theories cannot be shown to be even partially true, while present best theories (...) are demonstrably completely true. I argue that this position, running counter both the cumulativity of science and fallibilism, is untenable; it cannot account for the success of past theories, nor for the failures of current theories, and rather than shutting the door to the pessimistic historical objections it opens it wide. The best strategy, instead, joins the selective idea there was both some truth and some falsity in discarded theories, like in current ones, with the moderate discontinuity idea that the truth rate in present best theories is much greater than in past ones. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the reception of French philosophy of scienceFrench philosophy of science on the world stage, taking up what was a constant concern of Jean Gayon. Three major features distinguish this tradition. First, the use of the term epistemologyEpistemology to designate philosophy of science, thereby allowing for discontinuities between common knowledge and scientific knowledge. Secondly, the conviction that philosophy of science should be grounded on history of scienceHistory of science. Finally, what has come to (...) be called the regional turn: philosophical reflection should be carried out with respect to a specific body of knowledge. These directions of research, which have been cultivated for over a century by French thinkers, emerged belatedly within the Anglo-American tradition. Gayon devoted particular attention to the case of philosophy of biology. I complement his endeavor by an examination of philosophy of chemistry. Such divergences raise the question of the relations between the two traditions. It is only recently, with the advent of a newHistorical epistemologyhistorical epistemologyGayon, JeanOn historical epistemology, that a true dialogue has been established. However, the many misunderstandings that have arisen between French and Anglo-American philosophy of sciencePhilosophy of science (Anglo-American), show how fragile such a dialogue is. (shrink)

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the _plebeian experience_ consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted (...) action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power. Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. _The Plebeian Experience_ describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond. (shrink)

Like all great thinkers, Charles Taylor was able with his oeuvre to challenge and often change the vocabulary, habits and theoretical imaginary of his readers. In this sense, he deserves to be celebrated as a teacher in the broadest sense of the word. Especially remarkable is his mastery in making the complexity of our experience as modern men and women accessible. Now, the first thing that can be learned from his sane attitude towards modern epistemology is the resolve to embrace (...) what he once called "a hazy picture of history" , in which order and chaos coexist in the same picture as a warning for the purity seekers. Our view of history must remain somewhat hazy because, if we want to understand long-term change without resorting to an old-style philosophy of history, we have to do justice both to historical discontinuity and to historical continuity. Thus, understanding deep historical change means being able to combine a fair dose of theoretical recklessness and a good eye for the details. (shrink)

The doctrine of natural machines, of organisms, of composite substances, assumes a marked consistency in Leibniz starting from his mature years (let us say, from the publishing of New System in 1965 onwards). There is no doubt, therefore, that for a full explanation of the conceptual content of the reflection of Leibniz on the nature of living substances we must turn to the “classic” places in which it took form: from the letters to De Volder and Lady Masham of the (...) early 1700s, to the Nouveaux Essais, to Animadversiones contra Stahl and, naturally to Princìpes de la Nature et de la Grace and to the Monadologie. We can in any case ask what are the elements of specific difference are that emerge in this vast doctrinal corpus regarding those elements of the theory of the living being that had already appeared with a certain frequency in the texts of the early 1780s. Put in other words: what link of continuity subsists between the proto-theory of the living being of the ‘80s and that of the mature years (let us say from New System on)? Or, overturning the formulation of the problem: what elements of discontinuity suddenly break into Leibniz’s reflections from the second half of the ‘90s compared to the immediately preceding phases of his thought? Certainly, the monads, the machines of nature. But is it possibile to focus even more clearly the lens of our observations? I mean: after a decade of intense theoretical debate on the nature of corporeal substances, on organisms, on machines of nature, is it possibile to sketch a historical picture that accounts in a coherent manner for the development of Leibniz's thought in relation to the questions raised here? (shrink)

Probably the most dramatic historical challenge to scientific realism concerns Arnold Sommerfeld’s derivation of the fine structure energy levels of hydrogen. Not only were his predictions good, he derived exactly the same formula that would later drop out of Dirac’s 1928 treatment. And yet the most central elements of Sommerfeld’s theory were not even approximately true: his derivation leans heavily on a classical approach to elliptical orbits, including the necessary adjustments to these orbits demanded by relativity. Even physicists call (...) Sommerfeld’s success a ‘miracle’, which rather makes a joke of the so-called ‘no miracles argument’. However, this can all be turned around. Here I argue that the realist has a story to tell vis-à-vis the discontinuities between the old and the new theory, leading to a realist defence based on sufficient continuity of relevant structure. 1Introduction2No Realist Commitment Required?3Enter the Physicists4A New Approach to the Non-relativistic Success5Relativity and Spin6Structure and Realist Commitment7Conclusion. (shrink)

To be fair to Robinson, it is worth mentioning that he does offer a number of qualifications to his thesis. He tries to avoid excessive determinism and at one point suggests:A satisfactory account should not imply an evolutionary notion and should leave open the possibility of historic discontinuities and of contingencies that generate alternative pathways of development, including alternative futures.In other words, maybe this embryonic TNS will never progress beyond its current stage or perhaps it will continue to grow but (...) it will never become a real state. But the main thrust of Robinson’s account is strongly deterministic. In fact, he does not consider a single factor that might impede the unity of the global bourgoisie or derail transnational state formation.In a sense, Robinson’s mistake is that he has tried to derive a theoretical solution to a concrete problem that global capitalism has not yet solved in practice. While it might well be a logical step for capitalist elites to create a Transnational State, it is always risky to attribute too much rationality to an order that is notorious for its contradictions. (shrink)

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the _plebeian experience_ consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted (...) action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power. Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. _The Plebeian Experience_ describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond. (shrink)

There is one critical way we honor great tragedies: by never forgetting. Collective remembrance is as old as human society itself, serving as an important source of social cohesion, yet as Jeffrey Andrew Barash shows in this book, it has served novel roles in a modern era otherwise characterized by discontinuity and dislocation. Drawing on recent theoretical explorations of collective memory, he elaborates an important new philosophical basis for it, one that unveils profound limitations to its scope in relation (...) to the historical past. Crucial to Barash’s analysis is a look at the radical transformations that symbolic configurations of collective memory have undergone with the rise of new technologies of mass communication. He provocatively demonstrates how such technologies’ capacity to simulate direct experience—especially via the image—actually makes more palpable collective memory’s limitations and the opacity of the historical past, which always lies beyond the reach of living memory. Thwarting skepticism, however, he eventually looks to literature—specifically writers such as Walter Scott, Marcel Proust, and W. G. Sebald—to uncover subtle nuances of temporality that might offer inconspicuous emblems of a past historical reality. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe overall portrayal of early modern experimentation as a new method of securing assent within a philosophical discourse sketched in many of the recent studies on the historical origin of experimentation is questioned by the analysis of the experimental practice of chemistry at the Paris Academy. Chemical experimentation at the Paris Academy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century originated in a different tradition than the philosophical. It continued and developed the material culture of the chemical work (...) shops of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and explored epistemic objects which had rather loose connections to philosophy. On the other hand, I argue against the classical dichotomy between the work of the mind that of the hand, and for an epistemology of experimentation that acknowledges that experimental manipulation goes hand in hand with reflexion. In particuler, I argue against the view that chemists at the Paris Academy were “pragmatists” who merely gathered experimental facts and classified substances and operations without perplexing themselves over general conceptions. I claim that the chemists at the Paris Academy constructed a general conception framework which shaped the significance of their experiments. This conception that I call conception of the chemical combination, compound and reaction was rather quickly reified into an experimental fact. Despite its generality it was a genuine chemical conception rather independent of philosophy. (shrink)

At Vatican II and since Vatican II there have been Catholics who have held that the Council's teaching on religious freedom is in contradiction to the Church's earlier teaching and practice. The Council defended it as a legitimate development of doctrine in part through claiming that changing human experience in history shows us only gradually what human dignity entails, and the Church learns from this experience. True, the Council's teaching is in part a denial of its earlier teaching and practice. (...) The present article defends the legitimacy of this development through showing that there is a change of paradigm by which the Church now views this issue, a change that includes both continuity and discontinuity. This reliance on what is revealed to us by changing human experience is accepted by the Church only when it sees it as critically evaluated by an adequate philosophy and as in accord with Christian revelation, but its acceptance moves us to a growth in our understanding of revelation itself. (shrink)

David J. Kalupahana's Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis has, since its original publication in 1976, offered an unequaled introduction to the philosophical principles and historical development of Buddhism. Now, representing the culmination of Dr. Kalupahana's thirty years of scholarly research and reflection, A History of Buddhist Philosophy builds upon and surpasses that earlier work, providing a completely reconstructed, detailed analysis of both early and later Buddhism.

Church history is dead, long live historical theology! This restatement of the monarchical law of le mort saisit le vif is at once a statement of irreparable discontinuity and assumed continuity. The old monarch is no more, yet a new and different monarch ascends to fill the same vacant throne. This is the paradox of church history becoming historical theology. Reviewing the work of W.A Dreyer and J. Pillay on the re-imagining of church history as historical (...) theology, this article explores the tension between the demise of church history as a subject in South Africa and the emerging understanding and application of historical theology, arguing that more can be made of trans-disciplinary dialogues. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine two conflicting strands in the United States Supreme Court's treatment of “freedom of association,” by exploring some aspects of the historical development of the doctrine. It suggests that there are two conceptions of “freedom of association,” an older, traditional one, that eschews forcing odious contact on members of associations, and a newer one which privileges antidiscrimination doctrines over “freedom from association.” These two conceptions still exist on the Court, resulting in irreconcilable decisions such as (...) those permitting the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters, but forcing the Jaycees to accept women. The preference of one conception over the other is also evident in the work of different scholars, whose doctrinal approaches are similarly irreconcilable. The Supreme Court has explained the discontinuities in the doctrine by seeking to characterize it in terms of the First Amendment's “freedom of speech” clause, but the paper argues that it makes more sense, in the context of these two cases, to regard them as related to the First Amendment's “freedom of religion” clauses. (shrink)

This paper traces the meaning of technology in Arendt and Foucault’s work, their historical analyses of technology, and the way that their notions of technology’s role in modernity influence their historical methods. I argue that whilst the two political thinkers approach the idea of technology from different perspectives, there is also substantial overlap in the way that they conceive of technology – often critically – as a wide-ranging set of practices of power interlocked with particular modes of knowledge. (...) This helps to properly situate some aspects of their work that converge, for instance their analyses of what Foucault calls ‘biopolitics’. But their different conceptions of the historical character of technology, and its relationship to modernity, also create divergence: their concepts of ‘technology’ suggest different ways of thinking through the nature of historical continuity and discontinuity and the degree of access that we have to meaningful histories. (shrink)

In ‘The Epistemic Goals of the Humanities’, Stephen Grimm (2024) argues for epistemic continuities between the humanities, on one hand, and the social and natural sciences, on the other. This paper focuses on discontinuities. Drawing inspiration from Svetlana Alexievich’s literary non-fiction, I argue that if a reader is to gain a specific kind of understanding of the actions of the agents who appear in such work, they must engage in a rational evaluation of those agents’ reasons and actions. This epistemic (...) process may yield, not just understanding of another’s action, but a grip on the evaluative distance between the reader and the agents she reads about, together with a greater appreciation of normative matters. These epistemic gains are, I suggest, central to the value of the humanities, and play a key role in its corrective power. (shrink)

This study consists of two parts. The first is an examination of the hermeneutical presuppositions underlying the theory of models that Moshe Idel has applied to the study of Jewish mysticism. Idel has opted for a typological approach based on multiple explanatory models, a methodology that purportedly proffers a polychromatic as opposed to a monochromatic orientation associated with Scholem and the so-called school based on his teachings. The three major models delineated by Idel are the theosophical-theurgical, the ecstatic, and the (...) magical or talismanic. Idel’s hermeneutic rests on the assumption that the phenomenon of Jewish mysticism (as the phenomenon of religion more generally) cannot be essentialized, and therefore no one methodological approach should be privileged as the exclusive means to ascertain it. In the second part of this study, I raise the possibility that affirming set patterns of thought and a unified system of symbols that link together kabbalists from different historical periods might not inevitably implicate the scholar in a methodological reductionism. Moving beyond a binary logic, which is still operative in the postmodern dichotomy of truth and dissimulation, I surmise that the polysemic nature of the text that may be elicited from kabbalistic sources is not dependent on the rejection of laying claim to an inherent and original intent that is recoverable through proper philological attunement. Multivocality and essentialism are not mutually exclusive. Kabbalah, I submit, is a cultural-literary phenomenon that illustrates an open system in which each moment is a mix of newness and repetition, each event a renewed singularity. The hermeneutical praxis appropriate to this system displays a temporality linked to the conception of time in its most rudimentary form as an instant of diremptive reiteration, the repetition of the same as different in the renewal of the different as same. The tendency to generalize, therefore, should not be misconstrued as viewing the variegated history of Jewish mystical doctrines and practices monolithically. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of historical experience in Gadamer's hermeneutics and Ankersmit's philosophical-historical concept. The interest of the philosophy of history in experience was actualized against the background of exhaustion of the heuristic potential of historical narrativism and constructivism, closely related to the so-called "linguistic turn". At first glance, Gadamer and Ankersmit are representing antinomic interpretations of historical experience: as mediated by the effects of involvement in a tradition or heritage (...) and direct, extracontextual encounter with the past. However, the investigation proves that, despite the apparent antinomy of these approaches, the Gadamerian hermeneutic experience as an experience of the prevailing historical reality is not so far from the sublime historical experience of Ankersmit. And, on the contrary, the sublime historical experience, despite its claims to immediacy, turns out to be an experience of the finitude of human existence, that is, it is close to what Gadamer considered the essence of hermeneutic experience. In both cases, historical experience is considered as a condition for the possibility of understanding the past, and therefore, the question of the universal structure of such experience and understanding necessarily arises. The differences in the positions of the two authors stem from fundamentally different ontological prejudices that they share. For Gadamer, this is the reduction of history to a linguistically structured heritage, as a result of which most of the past falls out of hermeneutic experience. For Ankersmit, this is an uncritical understanding of time, as a result of which his concept of the sublime does not receive a reliable methodological foundation. Clarification of the temporality of the sublime historical, as well as rejection of the rigid connection between historical experience and language, open the prospect of removing the abstract antinomy of contextuality and immediacy of historical experience. The temporality of human existence turns out to be a universal prerequisite of historical experience, the two opposite forms of which are heredity and discontinuity. Contrary to the widespread criticism of Ankersmit's theory as far from historiographical practice, the development of the potential of the concept of sublime historical experience reveals its relevance to the dynamic and tragic modern history that Ukraine is currently experiencing. (shrink)

The potential societal impacts of automation using intelligent control and communications technologies have emerged as topics in a number of recent writings and public policy initiatives. Many of these expressions have referenced the writings and research efforts of Herbert Simon (1961), Norbert Wiener (1948), and contemporaries from their early technological and social vantage points concerning the future of technology and society. Constructed entities labeled as “thinking machines” (such as IBM’s Watson as well as intelligent chatbot and robotic systems) have also (...) played significant roles in this discourse. This paper provides an historical sequencing then analyzes a selection of writings produced since the 1940s concerning the economic and social issues involving artificial intelligence (AI) research and applications. The paper explores how overstatements and hyperbolic themes and concepts, often stemming from AI’s early periods, are being employed in characterizations of current AI approaches in apparently opportunistic attempts to provide rhetorical support for various large-scale business and societal initiatives. It also addresses the relative neglect of the consideration of many of AI’s sociotechnical failures and discontinued approaches in recent examinations of automation and social welfare issues. The paper discusses the moral logic of AI researchers and developers providing reasonable and measured narratives in public discourse rather than hyperbole, efforts that can empower decision makers to make sounder judgments concerning the technology’s current and future applications as well as allocate the rewards of the technology more equitably. (shrink)

Discoveries in physics imply two elements. The firstone is the belief that formal tools, already foundedin the framework of existing mathematical theories,may offer the solution to a puzzling anomaly. Thesecond one is the ability to assign a physical meaningto the adopted formalism, and to consider all itstheoretical implications.Discussing an historical case where the adoption of aparticular formalism represents the real motor of thecreative intuition, we mean to delineate scientificdiscovery both as a discontinuous change with respectto previous achievements and as (...) a linear process ofknowledge enrichment. (shrink)

The structure "home - world - ideals" is presented as the structure of "philosophical striving" (F. Marković). It could be formally described as a model consisting of a domain, relations and a valuation. On that basis, the identity, openness, and the significance of Croatian philosophy is investigated. The programme of the renewal of Croatian philosophy (as proposed 1882 by Franjo Marković) is re-examined, and some unsolved historical-cultural discontinuities within the programme are described. The written beginnings of Croatian philosophical thought (...) are detected in the Charter of Duke Trpimir (852). (shrink)

After sketching the historical development of “emergence” and noting several recent problems relating to “emergent properties”, this essay proposes that properties may be either “emergent” or “mergent” and either “intrinsic” or “extrinsic”. These two distinctions define four basic types of change: stagnation, permanence, flux, and evolution. To illustrate how emergence can operate in a purely logical system, the Geometry of Logic is introduced. This new method of analyzing conceptual systems involves the mapping of logical relations onto geometrical figures, following (...) either an analytic or a synthetic pattern (or both together). Evolution is portrayed as a form of discontinuous change characterized by emergent properties that take on an intrinsic quality with respect to the object(s) or proposition(s) involved. Causal leaps, not continuous development, characterize the evolution of human life in a developing foetus, of a thought out of certain brain states, of a new idea (or insight) out of ordinary thoughts, and of a great person out of a set of historical experiences. The tendency to assume that understanding evolutionary change requires a step-by-step explanation of the historical development that led to the appearance of a certain emergent property is thereby discredited. (shrink)

According to the philosopher Lurcretius, ‘Some races wax and other wane’. The history of the world, at any one point in its past, has seen remarkable civilizations of which there is hardly any trace left now. The 18th-century philosophers of history J. G. Herder's views on historical recurrence are also discussed in this chapter. According to him historical discontinuity means that it is inappropriate for one culture to pass judgment on another. The belief that the past consists (...) of discrete cultural episodes does not exclude the possibility that these episodes have a common structure. The conception explored in this chapter is sometimes referred to as historical cycles. (shrink)

Maclntyre's critique of modern moral theory is supported by a theory of narrative in turn premised on a discontinuous reading of history. Thought through to the end, historical discontinuity redefines objectivity according to the rules of the particular context in which it appears. This claim both founds Maclntyre's intervention in moral debate and troubles that intervention from within. Against his opponents, he claims to have the argument most in accord with the rules of our context; Maclntyre's narra tivity (...) is thus universalistic within the post-Enlightenment context. But contrary to his own tendency and occasional statements, that same com mitment to contextuality deprives him of the possibility of a final, secure position. This tension within Maclntyre's argument better expresses his theory of contextuality than does the specific direction he wishes to take it in: narrativity can be considered to embody an instability essential to not only moral debate but also moral identity. Key Words: Aristotle • . context • Maclntyre • narrative • rationality • relativism • Spinoza • tradition • universalism. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the four images from Auschwitz analyzed by Didi- Huberman in Images in Spite of All —the so-called Sonderkommando photographs— through the lens of the “historical sublime” as proposed by historian Eelco Runia. These photographs are taken as an example of a possible reconciled aesthetic experience with an “unimaginable” past that horrifies us. Moreover, I argue that aesthetic depictions are able to champion a model of historical commemoration which makes these events imaginable again. In (...) order to show this, I will first employ the concept of the “sublime historical event” which Runia proposes to interpret the Holocaust’s historical catastrophe. Runia’s “historical sublime” provides a framework to understand the process of becoming what “we are no longer” through the invention of new identities that defy our former ones and explain historical discontinuities. Secondly, I will examine the Sonderkommando photographs by applying Runia’s notion of commemoration to the viewer’s aesthetic experience of these images. I will finally suggest the possibility of a reconciliation with our former identities, those who committed sublime historical acts with which we no longer identify, thanks to this aestheticized experience of commemoration. (shrink)

The experience of the post-colonial State underlines the transformations of the modern State. In fact, some features of the post-colonial State which were regarded as being overcome or at least inconsistent with the constitutional, democratic and rational form of the State, are now emerging also in those States that never made experience of colonization, or have been colonizers. The essay analyses the transformations of the modern State aiming to articulate the concept of Global State. In this case, the question of (...) origins does not represent a principle of legitimation, as it was with the doctrine of social contract. Rather, the symbolic and historical discontinuity defines a cut between the origin and the functioning of the State, corresponding to a transformation of the legitimating sources of the State itself. Within the global State, sovereignty is not anymore a monopoly, but a widespread practice enacted by several social structures. (shrink)

In response to recent recognition of the complexities of scientific change, discussion of the objectivity and the rationality of science has focused on criteria of theory choice. This paper addresses instead the rationality of scientific decisions at the level of ongoing research. It argues that whether or not a realist view of theories is compatible with the historical discontinuities of scientific change, certain realist assumptions are crucial to the rationality of research. The researcher must presume that questions about the (...) existence and the properties of at least some of the "unobservable" entities he theorizes about or experiments on are answerable on the basis of his work. The rationale of research cannot be understood solely in terms of the desiderata of instrumental utility or the empirical adequacy of theories. (shrink)

The attempts to interpret Russian and Southeast European history in light of a Byzantine background tend to focus on traditions of political culture, and to claim that patterns characteristic of the late Roman Empire have had a formative impact on later developments. But the effects attributed to political culture presuppose a civilizational framework, and arguments on that level must come to grips with evidence of historical discontinuity, during the Byzantine millennium as well as in later centuries and on (...) the periphery of the Byzantium cultural world. The path to a historically grounded civilizational analysis is, however, obstructed by persisting images of Byzantium as a stagnant culture, immobilized by a complete fusion of secular and sacred authority. The article discusses and criticizes some of the most influential versions of this view. (shrink)

Surely one of the key issues in historiography is how to account for those mind-boggling and sometimes extremely bloody events in which we enter something really, sublimely new. In this essay my point of departure is that retrospectively it is almost impossible even for the historical actors themselves to get access to the contingent, irrational, “sacrilegious” aspect of the sublime event they brought about. In order to get a grip on the evanescent essence of the historical sublime, I (...) propose to bring to a head, instead of leveling down, the tension that characterizes all historical and biographical discontinuities: the tension between the fact that discontinuities are made by the participants, yet are portrayed by these very participants as having come as a surprise. I will argue that discontinuity is not a regrettable side-effect of our ambition to attain goals that are in line with our identity, but that every now and then we give in to the urge to cut ourselves loose from our moorings. A key concept of the perspective that with sublime historical events “in the beginning is the deed” is vertigo. Vertigo may feel like a fear of falling, but really it is a wish to jump, covered by a fear of falling. Vertigo predisposes, as psychoanalysts say, to “counterphobic” behavior. Giving in to vertigo is a strategy for escaping from an unbearable tension by doing something—by breaking apart from what one used to cherish, by eating the apple, by committing an “original sin”. Making history—in the sense of embarking upon something that is as sublimely new as the French Revolution or the First World War—thus is not a matter of pursuing some interest but of willfully fleeing forward into the unknown. (shrink)

Historically the plan has been about much more than economic planning. By plan-based thought I mean a concept of social governance that requires a multiple but structured articulation of social, economic, administrative and political forces and institutions and aims at shaping new forms of integration and social control using a specific scientific discourse.The following essays provide an analysis of global planning starting from different historical and geographical situations and different disciplinary perspectives. The broad picture that emerges shows points of (...) continuity and discontinuity between different contexts and theories but also reveals a common theme: the conflictual relationship between economics and politics which not only reflects the hierarchies between state and society but also shows the dialectic between different forms and conceptions of power and their social reproduction. Plan-based thought does not only concern temporary institutional transformations, but reacts and is connected to the management of social conflicts over time. (shrink)

For historical epistemology to succeed, it must adopt a defensible set of categories to characterise scientific activity over time. In historically orientated philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the original categories of theory and observation were supplemented or replaced by categories like paradigm, research program and research tradition. Underlying all three proposals was talk about conceptual systems and conceptual structures, attributed to individual scientists or to research communities, however there has been little general agreement on the nature of (...) these structures. Recent experimental research in cognitive science has considerably refined the theory of concepts. Drawing upon the results of that research, philosophers can construct more concrete and empirically defensible representations of conceptual systems. I will suggest that this research supports a modest and useful sense of both normal and revolutionary science, not as epistemological continuities or discontinuities, but as particular patterns of conceptual change. (shrink)