This essay, in the form of a letter written to director László Nemes in the immediate aftermath of viewing Son of Saul, is at once a critical reading of the film within a larger theoretical framework and a subjective emotional response to seeing on the screen something of the author’s own “most harrowing nightmares.” While bringing Nemes’s film into conversation with Maurice Blanchot, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, the Hassidic tale and ancient myths, Georges Didi-Huberman returns to his reflections in Images (...) in Spite of All (2008) on the four photographs taken clandestinely of the gas chambers in Auschwitz by one of the Sonderkommando. Son of Saul presents the allegory of Saul whose job as a Sonderkommando is to drag countless corpses to the crematorium where they will be reduced to ashes but who sets out on a mad, single-minded quest to give a proper burial, complete with the recitation of kaddish, to the body of one boy. According to the author, the film marks the invention of the “documentary tale” genre, combining Benjamin’s notions of montage based on the document, as manifested in the work of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Alfred Döblin, and that of the dying art of storytelling, intimately bound up as it is with the authority of the dying. Thus, the dead child drowning at the end of the film stands as an inversion of the story of Moses, a living child saved from drowning, just as the real historic death of the Jewish people reverses the mythical Biblical birth of the Jewish people. (shrink)

The ancient Pyrrhonians skeptics suspended judgment about all philosophical views. Their main opponents were the Dogmatists—those who believed their preferred philosophical views. In Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism: On Disbelieving Our Philosophical Views, Mark Walker argues, contra Pyrrhonians and Dogmatists, for a "darker" skepticism: we should disbelieve our philosophical views. On the question of political morality, for example, we should disbelieve libertarianism, conservativism, socialism, liberalism, and any alternative ideologies. Since most humans have beliefs about philosophical subject matter, such as beliefs about (...) religious and political matters, humanity writ large should disbelieve their preferred philosophical views. Walker argues that Skeptical-Dogmatism permits a more realistic estimation of our epistemic powers. Dogmatists who believe their view is correct, while believing that two or more competitor views of their opponents are false, must—at least implicitly—take themselves to be “über epistemic superiors” to their disagreeing colleagues. Such a self-assessment is as implausible as it is hubristic. Skeptical-Dogmatism, in contrast, permits a more realistic and humbler epistemic self-conception. The author also shows that there are no insuperable practical difficulties in living as a Skeptical-Dogmatist. (shrink)

We argue that, in all probability, the universe will become less predictable. This assertion means that induction, which some scientists conceive of as a tool for predicting the future, will become less useful. Our argument claims that the universe will increasingly come under intentional control, and objects that are under intentional control are typically less predictable than those that are not. We contrast this form of skepticism about induction, "Skeptical-Dogmatism," with David Hume's Pyrrhonian skepticism about induction.

on writing prescriptions.[2] These two reasons indicate why there are obvious repercussions for those who do not have reasonable access to physicians’ services. Of course, the word ‘reasonable’ is important here. After all, there is the old joke—for those who enjoy gallows humor—that the U.S. has universal access to healthcare so long as one is willing to commit a crime to see the county jail’s physician, or make one’s self sick enough to qualify for emergency services. Putting aside such extraordinary (...) measures, at least some deficit in accessing physicians’ services can be made up through consulting written medical knowledge. Many libraries have medical textbooks, and the Internet has many good sites that contain medical knowledge. Of course, all the knowledge in the world is not going to do much good if treatment requires a prescription. The physicians’ monopoly on writing prescriptions means that nothing (legal[3]) can be done in terms of treatment if one does not have access to the services of a qualified physician. This state of affairs is unjust. A just society cannot have it both ways: legislation cannot say both that the expertise of physicians is so precious that only they can prescribe medicine AND not everyone is guaranteed reasonable access to their services. If there is no guarantee of reasonable access then physicians should not have a monopoly on writing prescriptions, and if there is a monopoly on writing prescriptions then people should have reasonable access to their services. (shrink)

This reappraisal of the geographical aspects of philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s theories finds fresh meanings and contemporary applications in his work. The book reveals what they tell us about space and politics today, how they can interpret modern geopolitics and provide the tools to overturn the status quo.

Purpose: We sought to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) literature research and scholarship types, topics, and contributing community fields of training as a first step to charting the broader ELSI community’s future priorities and goals. Methods: We categorized 642 articles and book chapters meeting inclusion criteria for content in both human genetics or genomics and ethics or ELSI during a 5-year period (2003–2008) according to research and scholarship types, topics, and the area of advanced training of the (...) first-listed author. Research and scholarship type categories were developed and characterized through in-depth review of 95 randomly sampled publications from the larger group. Results: There is a single dominant approach to ELSI, which focuses on ethical and other social issues “downstream” of advances in genomics, the contributors to which predominately have advanced training in medicine or science fields other than social science. A comparatively low percentage of publications primarily offer policy recommendations, and these are much more likely to be written by those with advanced training in law than is the case for the literature as a whole. Social science studies predominately employ qualitative methods and vary significantly with respect to the extent and types of recommendations offered. Two further types of ELSI research and scholarship offer alternative models for so-called “normative” work in this field. Conclusion: Considering topics, training, and types of ELSI research and scholarship from the most recent past allows for a baseline perspective that is sorely needed in charting this field’s future course. (shrink)

This thesis argues for the continuing possibility of Adorno set against the backdrop of a post-modern proliferation of affects. A major theoretical contention is the concept of the subject: a sticking point within philosophy. The thesis takes this up and offers a new pathway without falling into the cliché of a renewal of Adorno’s position. Drawing on Adorno’s theoretical thoughts on the subject the thesis contends that the subject is that which by turns dissolves all eventualities or more proportionally acts (...) like a place-holder for the newly emerging: structures that cannot be explained by recourse to the laws that govern its parts. These experiential structures present a surface, resistance, or solidarity that upon closer examination dissolve back into the ephemeral. Although such structures are profligate and prolific, the thesis adopts as its major concern artworks and aesthetics. Following Adorno, a claim is made for artworks that present open-ended possibilities. They are able for example to critically challenge the dominant hegemony the profundity that all too easily sides with the oppressors of life. What philosophy, a critical tool in furtherance of the good life, a concept restaged, here takes from art is not a sense of equivalence, art and philosophy are held apart in a creative and critical tension, but the sense of yearning that animates the nonconceptual side of art which the concept negates. The yearning, being experiential, is always embodied. Its fulfilment negates the immediacies, the mere appearance of life, particularly in its systematically reflexive form. The conclusion concurs with Adorno in the thought that affinity with the object is achieved not as the resultant of identity thinking, but through the act of definite negation of identifying schema. (shrink)

The Factualistic, Positivistic Basis . . . this life of suffering, of doubt, which makes you deeply love naked, living reality. Zola "Gustave Doret,"Mex ...

There is a spectrum of identities: from the mathematical, through cases where specific criteria matter, to the complex or intuitive cases where we can recognize identity but don't know what the criteria should be. In a series of essays by senior figures in the sciences and humanities, this book examines what identity means across a number of academic disciplines. Topics range from mathematics, through the rules of recognition in biology and the law, to comprehending the individual in the visual, performing (...) and literary arts, and ultimately to notions of the philosophy of existence. Using the theme of identity to make new interdisciplinary connections, the contributors offer interested readers a glimpse into their specialist subjects and suggest new ways for students and scholars to think about identity in relation to their own work. (shrink)

Despite All Critique (2014) -- World Politics and Western Reason (1980) -- The Doubled Outsides of the Modern International (2005) -- The Subject of Security (1995) -- The Protection of Nature and the Nature of Protection (2005) -- Social Movements/World Politics (1994) -- Europe is Not Where It is Supposed to Be (2000) -- They Seek it Here, They Seek it There : Looking for Politics in Clayoquot Sound (2003) -- Violence, Modernity, Silence : From Weber to International Relations (1993) (...) -- Hobbes, Origins, Limits (2011) -- War, Terror, Judgement (2002) -- International, Imperial, Exceptional (2005) -- Which Democracy for Which Demos? (2013) -- The Political Theory of Boundaries and the Boundaries of Political Theory : Interview With Raia Prokhovnik (2012). (shrink)

This thesis is about toleration as a modality of citizenship for pluralistic societies. Its central argument is that the current dissatisfaction with "mere" toleration which we find so broadly represented in our public and scholarly cultures is based on an underestimation of the capacities and attitudes that toleration entails. The liberal recasting of toleration, sophisticated and indeed invaluable though it is abets this devaluation by focusing too exclusively on public justification and on the Lockean stream of the tradition from which (...) we draw. ;The present thesis begins by tracing some of the difficulties facing the Rawlsian and Habermasian projects if we accept a vivid picture of the pluralisms amidst which we live. It then sketches the central features of a complementary tradition of toleration as it flows to us through the works of Montaigne, William James, Mikhail Bakhtin and others. An attempt is made to show where the resources drawn from this tradition might fit in to a theory of citizenship given reasonable Rawlsian qualms about "thick" public conceptions and given the fissiparous nature of a civil society like ours. The thesis ends with a pair of empirically oriented chapters which show ways in which we could conceive a praxis of toleration which might respond to the issues raised in the earlier sections of the work. (shrink)

This essay seeks to understand the domain and demands of reparative justice in terms of moral vulnerability. Significant harms raise the question of whether victims stand in truly reciprocal practices of accountability; if they do, they enjoy the power of calling others to account as well as bearing the liability of being accountable to others. In the aftermath of harms, victims’ moral vulnerability is tested: they may be exposed to the insult and injury of discovering that they do not enjoy (...) the moral standing of holding others accountable. While the occasion of reparative justice is significant wrongs and wrongful harms and losses, this essay argues that the aim of reparative practices is not only or even primarily to redress those harms and losses, but to address the moral vulnerability of victims by affirming their status in accountability relations. (shrink)