The present article investigates the rhythm of study as described by Giorgio Agamben in ‘The idea of study’, present in Idea of prose. In this short treatise, Agamben presents Melville’s scrivener Bartleby as the exemplary embodiment of study. Bartleby’s paradigmatic status, according to Agamben’s interpretation, does, however, exclude him from belonging to the ‘class of study’. Bartleby’s exclusion leads to the discovery of an unmentioned member of the ‘class of study’: Eros. The surprising absence of Eros dissolves, however, once he (...) is recuperated as the image of ‘The idea of the work’. Bartleby’s exclusion and Eros’s absent inclusion and presence as the ‘The idea of the work’ not only demonstrate the close relation between study and work, but also explain Agamben’s considerations on the connection between study and the nature of his own work. The article concludes with a call for the remaining importance of Agamben’s festina lente, the rhythm of study, within the broader context of our contemporary university institutions. Once the incessant shuttling between passion and action has been called to a halt—in favour of one of the two extremities—study becomes impossible. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of Purgatory. However, in contradistinction to the many monographs and edited volumes published in the past 50 years devoted to historical, cultural, or theological treatments of Purgatory—especially in proportion to the voluminous output on Heaven and Hell—this collection features papers by philosophers and other scholars engaged specifically in philosophical argument, debate, and dialogue involving conceptions of Purgatory and related ideas. It exists to broaden the discussion beyond the prevailing trends in the academic literature and fills (...) an important intellectual gap. (shrink)

The observation that our world is signed by a lasting crisis is as much underwritten as it is questioned. This book offers a new and provocative thesis by taking recourse to the religious discourse of Limbo, and by investigating the temporal and spatial structures of crisis and modernity. Modernity reveals itself to be the state of perennial crisis, and we all live in an immanentized state of Limbo.

What if language was an autonomous historical being? What if language’s use was not solely dependent on the intentions of the one who speaks? In this text I will test these provocative statements. Specifically, I will investigate whether language’s proclaimed historical independence can be traced in the usage of the concept of ‘secularisation’, and I will try to unveil the consequences of this operation.Contribution: Has Christianity abandoned the public stage in the ‘secularised’ and industrialised world? In this article I intend (...) to demonstrate that this is not the case. The continuous operative presence of Christianity in our socio-political language is used as the model to prove this argument. (shrink)

That philosophy exists, that it is possible, and that it has (and could still have) a future depends first and foremost on the existence of philosophers (necessarily considered in the plural). If the presence of philosophers is fundamental for the existence of the philosophical enterprise, then it can be easily deduced that, without philosophers, there would be no philosophy. If they come necessarily in the plural (as more than one), how should they, however, interact? Is philosophy a mere interaction among (...) philosophers, or is it a cooperation of philosophers? But maybe it is something different still. The concept of philosophy, in its original Greek understanding, reveals how this interaction can be understood in a provocative but very interesting way: as friendship. Philosophy as philo-sophy, as friendship of wisdom. Said differently, philosophy as a community (of friends) that gather around the question of wisdom and knowledge. This essay attempts to think philosophy according to its being φιλεῖν τὸ σοφόν. (shrink)

Mis-readings are not necessarily detrimental, Slavoj Žižek has interestingly argued. In this article, we investigate a mis-reading by the hand of Žižek himself. José Saramago’s intriguing novel Seeing, that tells the story of the massive casting of blank ballots by the population and its political implications, has frequently been mentioned in some of Slavoj Žižek recent work. However, not once has Žižek offered his readers the correct message present in the plot of Seeing. But how do have to interpret this (...) non-detrimental misreading? After having proposed a brief summary of Seeing’s plot and the various versions offered of it by Žižek, this article attempts to demonstrate and explain why Slavoj Žižek could not have not mis-read Saramago’s novel. Žižek’s understanding of a ‘revolution’ does not allow him to fully understand Saramago’s blank ballot vote – it being a valid non-vote, a positive negative. The article concludes with an ‘appeal’ to fully understand the revolutionary (political) power of the blank ballot in times of the democratic relic we are living in. (shrink)

What is the difference between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy? Where should the line be drawn between ?using? previous philosophers to make one's point and discussing what past philosophers claimed? In trying to confront these questions, this essay starts with a reflection on the difference between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy as proposed by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and confronts it with a different one derived from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The ideas (...) developed by Heidegger will then lead to a definition of ?philosophy? and to some etymology-based reflections on what a ?philosopher? is that Plato proposes in his ?Symposium?. The essay continues by arguing that, when doing philosophy, it is necessary to return to philosophy's past in order to recoup philosophical momentum. The essay concludes with some reflection on the possible similarities between Plato's characterization of Eros as the first philosopher and the difference between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The past decades have seen a growing “philosophical” interest in a number of authors, but strangely enough Saramago’s oeuvre has been left somewhat aside. This volume aims at filling this gap by providing a diverse range of philosophical perspectives and expositions on Saramago’s work. The chapters explore some possible issues arising from his works: from his use of Plato’s allegory of the cave to his re-readings of Biblical stories; from his critique and “reinvention” of philosophy of history to his allegorical (...) exploration of alternative histories; from his humorous approach to our being-towards-death to the revolutionary political charge of his fiction. The essays here confront Saramago’s fiction with concepts, theories, and suggestions belonging to various philosophical traditions and philosophers including Plato, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Lacan, Foucault, Patočka, Derrida, Agamben, and Žižek. (shrink)

Contemporary society tends to behave very ambiguously towards tradition. Religious and moral customs that are still widely practiced are also often critically questioned or simply abandoned. Similarly, attitudes towards the role of science and technology in today’s global community are highly paradoxical. Some practices reveal a deeply rooted belief in the potentials of science and technology to increase happiness, on both the individual and the collective levels. Other practices and discourses are trying to prove the opposite, recommending to treat the (...) belief in scientific and technical progress as a myth that is mature for de-mythologization . Traditional myths should be rehabilitated instead. While the former opinion may be traced back to the spirit of modernity, the latter is called “postmodern,” hinting that the modern mentality has either come to an end, or reached a stage of profound transformation. Tradition is then no longer a taboo, but identified as what founds and guarantees a community’s value-system. Only the restoration of basic symbolic distinctions may prevent a culture from sliding into moral arbitrariness, in which only “good feelings” define moral standards and commitments are replaced by a “liberalism of neutrality” . A genuine moral and religious renewal may start from the rediscovery of the all-encompassing, mysterious dimension of life. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy is said to focus on particular issues, rather than on comprehensive syntheses. The following contribution intends to join this trend by offering some reflections on the “animal rights” debate, which is to be situated within the wider context of environmental philosophy. While classical Western concepts of man were anthropocentric, recent cultural developments have triggered a rediscovery of Nature, especially of nonhuman animals, while focusing on their affiliations with us, humans. Appropriate relations with those animals require a respectful attitude (...) on the human side, as if those animals had full moral and legal rights. But is this not an illusion? Can we talk about real “rights” for animals, or should we just remain aware of them having their own feelings and take care not to hurt them, unless for a “serious” cause? While taking note of the wide variety of animal species and habitats , the answer to this question may have its bearings on one’s personal choices regarding food, clothing, entertainment, etc. (shrink)

Paul Richard Blum. Philosophy of religion in the Renaissance Farnham /Burlington : Ashgate, 2010, 211p. The book begins with a preface on the status of the philosophy of religion in the Renaissance. While this could be initially understood as a continuation of the medieval tradition of reflecting on the praeambula fidei, it gradually has shifted towards a reflection sui generis on a variety of issues, including the historicity of dogmas and rituals, or religious policies, and the epistemological legitimacy of addressing (...) matters of piety through reason. The rest of the book is composed of ten different essays or chapters, followed by an epilogue and a bibliography. Each of the ten chapters is dedicated to a particular personality that has helped in shaping the Renaissance culture and has played some role in the interaction between religion and philosophy in particular. (shrink)

This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By (...) means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person’s point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a ‘live’ condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the ‘rubber hand illusion’ in order to clarify the spectator’s tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world. (shrink)

As an art theoretician, and as a father, I focus on the social and political consequences of Vanderbeeken’s postmodernist negative theology. I express doubts about the relevance of a poetics of catastrophe that conflates any possible alternative to the alleged technocracy under the sign of the simulacrum. To my opinion, the discourse about the virtual and the real are in a deadlock. Following the lead of American novelist Thomas Pynchon, I rephrase these critical doubts in Luddite terms: should we imagine (...) a counterattack as radical as the alleged dystopian nightmare dreamed up and sketched out by Vanderbeeken? I try to show that this line of thinking risks to result in a bold and speculative logic where ethical nuance collapses and, ultimately, the relationship between art, theory and the social culture is reduced to metaphorical analogy. To make this point I retake a critical, phenomenologically inspired reaction by Vivian Sobchack to Baudrillard’s account of Crash, J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel on techno-fetishism. My argument is that the scar that marks Sobchack’s ‘technobody’ might here stand for an alternative that approaches our technological condition not as a discursive machine but as a social pragmatics with deep ethical implications. (shrink)

Natalia Tomashpolskaia, "Predictive World", pp. 301–308. -/- In the contemporary world, the scientific model of reality has become prognostic and predictive. Scientists make predictions based on facts, re- search, and experiments. These predictions create a new picture of reality and have a great impact on people’s behavior and decision-making. For in- stance, we can observe a vivid manifestation of this phenomenon in mod- ern medicine. Prognosis replaces diagnoses, and diagnoses and vital de- cisions begin to be based on a prognosis. (...) However, not only sciences, but the mass-media news industry also has become prognostic. Nowadays, the prevailing part of all news consists not of facts but of predictions and pro- gnoses (economic, political, societal, environmental, medical, etc.). All types of analysts and prognosticators in all spheres have become in de- mand. To sum up, nowadays we do not live here and now but we are living in constant stress awaiting negative events based on some prognosis we have believed in and these beliefs condition our current behaviour. (shrink)

The author has a lot to tell about Hobbes. Decades of study work and teaching have provided him with both a penetrating look and a balanced interpretation of the “leading English political philosopher.” This reputation of Hobbes, he finds to be “fully deserved.” There is no reason to fear of being deceived by such a comment, since the more you read Hobbes, “the more impressive he becomes.” Bernard Gert presents Hobbes basically in five chapters, including one on Hobbes’s life and (...) historical situation, as well as his general views. The following chapters include one each on human nature, Hobbes’s moral theory, his political theory, and one entitled “after Hobbes” that focuses on the philosopher’s influences on others, including the present time, and on a critical reflection of some of Hobbes’s positions. The author is generous enough to offer the reader an extended analysis of what he believes is Hobbes’s influence on his own thought. Hobbes’s view on religion could have formed another chapter, but Gert prefers to include this complex topic in the first or introductory chapter. (shrink)

Taken together, the commentaries by Sigrid Merx and Tom Paulus suggest a remarkable dialectical relationship with regard to our article “Performing Phenomenology: Negotiating Presence in Intermedial Theatre”. On the one side a lack of elaborated political consciousness is being detected, while on the other side an alleged surplus of political consciousness is being criticized. Although apparently contradictory, these reactions seem to originate in the same ideological stress: both are somehow haunted by the legacy of Bertolt Brecht and the ideology of (...) the image implicit in critical theory. We argue that the tension between illusion and deconstruction indeed is crucial to the history of the mediatized image, but that it should be taken to a deeper level where it not only remains unsolved but where it forms the heart of the experience. The user knows very well that she is being fooled and, moreover, generously lets herself being fooled. We historicize this fundamental ambivalence with a short excursion in pre-cinematic, pre-Brechtian times. Throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth century, periodic shifts between illusion and its suspension indicates the emergence of what we, in the digital era, might refer to as a ‘meta-realism’, an imagery that incorporates its own critique inside itself. If this analysis holds true, we eventually have to reformulate the stakes of deconstruction and push critical theory beyond its own borders. (shrink)

The study focuses on the ethical aspects of decision-making by national elites in the context of the thinking of Ján Kollár (1793–1852) and Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856) on the issue of Slavism. Attention is paid to the issue of responsibility for preserving the greatness and unity of the nation in the context of the formation of national identity and individuality. The concepts of the mentioned authors had an impact on the cultural-civilizational orientation of Slovak elites with an emphasis on the role (...) of moral obligations in shaping the value orientation of the nation. In this context, the analysis focuses on the works Reciprocity between the various tribes and dialects of the Slavic nation and Slavdom and the world of the future, which, at the same time, represent alternative concepts of the cultural and political orientation of the Slavs. The study simultaneously analyses these concepts as alternative programs of cultural and political development of national identity, as well as concepts aimed at humanist and political goals. (shrink)

There is the tension between, on the one hand, Wittgenstein’s not giving theoretical weight to metaphor, and on the other, his exuberant use of it. On a more fundamental level, there is a straightforward contradiction between Wittgenstein’s claim of the primordial literalness of everyday language, and his stress on the multiplicity and flexibility of language-games. Wittgenstein’s problem was that he did not succeed in making his ideas on metaphor, and indeed his ideas on metaphor and images, converge with the main (...) drift of TS 227 (the so-called ‘Part I’ of the so-called ‘Philosophical Investigations’). It was this divergence, I believe, that prevented him from rounding out his later philosophy. (shrink)

The present online volume contains the papers prepared for the 11th Budapest Visual Learning Conference – ENVISIONING AN ELECTRIFYING FUTURE – held in a physical-online blended form on Nov. 13, 2024, organized by the University of Pécs (represented by Prof. Gábor Szécsi, Dean, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Education and Regional Development), and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (represented by Prof. Kristóf Nyíri, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). Nyíri and Szécsi were responsible for sending out the call for abstracts (...) and inviting plenary speakers, Szécsi organized the physical surroundings. Nyíri’s task was to build up and continuosly update the conference website, as well as to edit the accepted submissions. As we indicated in the call for submissions, the conference was planned as an interdisciplinary encounter of communication and media theory, cultural sciences, sociology, psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, history, political science, picture theory, and other disciplines. We insisted on achieving new scholarly results. Especially with AI now complementing, or intruding into, the world of the internet, what image of the future can we conceive of, what new patterns of life and in particular forms of education should we strive to create? (shrink)