Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works (...) with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting.The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time. (shrink)

A revised, expanded and fully up-to-date critical introduction to Deleuze's most important work of philosophyBy critically analysing Deleuze's methods, principles and arguments, James Williams helps readers to engage with the revolutionary core of Deleuze's philosophy and take up positions for or against its most innovative and controversial ideas.

What is it to do justice to the absent victims of past injustice, given the distance that separates us from them? Grounded in political theory and guided by the literature on historical justice, W. James Booth restores the dead to their central place at the heart of our understanding of why and how to deal with past injustice. Testimonies and accounts from the race war in the United States, the Holocaust, post-apartheid South Africa, Argentina's Dirty War and the conflict (...) in Northern Ireland help advance and defend Booth's claim that caring for the dead is a central part of addressing past injustice. Memory, Historic Injustice, and Responsibility is an insightful and original book on the relationship of past and present in thinking about what it means to do justice. A valuable addition to the currently available literature on historical justice, the volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, philosophy, history, and law. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order (...) to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to (...) his controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

This book focuses on the fascinating connection between Wittgenstein and Oswald Spengler and in particular the acknowledged influence of Spengler's Decline of the West. His book shows in meticulous detail how Spengler's dark conception of an ongoing cultural decline resonated deeply for Wittgenstein and influenced his later work. In so doing, the work takes into account discussions of these matters by major commentators such as Malcolm, Von Wright, Cavell, Winch, and Clack among others. A noteworthy feature of this book is (...) its attempt to link Wittgenstein's cultural concerns with his views on religion and religious language. DeAngelis offers a fresh and original interpretation of the latter. (shrink)

This collection of 216 letters offers an accessible, single-volume distillation of the exchange between celebrated brothers William and Henry James. Spanning more than fifty years, their correspondence presents a lively account of the persons, places, and events that affected the Euro-American world from 1861 until the death of William James in August 1910. An engaging introduction by John J. McDermott suggests the significance of the Selected Letters for the study of the entire family.

An examination of late Rorty shows that he does not abandon belief in an external world about which we can, and indeed must, acquire knowledge. His disapproval of the correspondence theory of truth does not involve the idea that anything other than local weather, for example, could falsify remarks about local weather. It is just that once we get done looking out the window or, if we are outside, feeling the right kind of drops make contact with our skin, there (...) is nothing else we can do, nothing better, to make ourselves more certain, more cognitively secure. One can see this in the detailed work that enables scientific progress. Science improves itself by doing more of the same. G. E. Moore's famous open question stays open only as a reminder that our fallibility never disappears and that our cognitive security is never better than pro tem. Rorty, as a faithful pragmatist and undogmatic meliorist, thinks this is perfectly O.K. (shrink)

A new process philosophy of signs, where process becomes primary, and fixed relation secondary'Behind Red Doors - Signs, Process and the Political' - a post by James Williams on the Edinburgh University Press blogWhat is a sign? We usually think that it is a fixed relation: a red light signifies 'Stop'. In his bold new book, James Williams now argues that signs are varying processes: seeing the red light triggers a creative response to the question, Should I stop?Williams (...) develops this new process philosophy of signs through a formal model, in contrast to earlier structuralist definitions. He draws on the philosophies of Deleuze and Whitehead, criticises earlier work on the sign in biology by Jakob von Uexküll, and connects to contemporary work on process in the philosophy of biology by John Dupré.The process model has wide applications in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and informs their critical debates with science. In defining the sign as essentially political, this radical definition of the sign opens up new possibilities for social and political critique.". (shrink)

Socrates said that leisure is the sister of freedom.Aelian.

Instantiation Theory presents a new, general unification algorithm that is of immediate use in building theorem provers and logic programming systems. Instantiation theory is the study of instantiation in an abstract context that is applicable to most commonly studied logical formalisms. The volume begins with a survey of general approaches to the study of instantiation, as found in tree systems, order-sorted algebras, algebraic theories, composita, and instantiation systems. A classification of instantiation systems is given, based on properties of substitutions, degree (...) of type strictness, and well-foundedness of terms. Equational theories and the use of typed variables are studied in terms of quotient homomorphisms and embeddings, respectively. Every instantiation system is a quotient system of a subsystem of first-order term instantiation. The general unification algorithm is developed as an application of the basic theory. Its soundness is rigorously proved, and its completeness and efficiency are verfied for certain classes of instantiation systems. Appropriate applications of the algorithm include unification of first-order terms, order-sorted terms, and first-order formulas modulo alpha-conversion, as well as equational unification using simple congruences. (shrink)

This article uses the case of “social impact bonds” (SIBs) to explore the role of social science methods in new markets in “social investment.” Pioneered in the UK in 2010, SIBs use private capital to fund social programs with governments paying returns for successful outcomes. Central to the SIB model is the question of evaluation and the method to be used in determining program outcomes and investor returns. In the United States, the randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been the dominant (...) method. However, this has not been without controversy. Some SIB practitioners and investors have argued that, while this may be the perfect tool, the need to grow the SIB market demands a more pragmatic approach. Drawing from a three-year study of SIBs, and informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS)-inspired work on valuation and the social life of methods, the article explores RCTs as both a valuation technology central to SIB design and the object of a micropolitics of valuation which has impeded market growth. It is the relationship between, and the politics of, evaluation and valuation that is a key lesson of the SIB experiment and an important insight for future research on “social investment” and other settings where methods are constitutive of financial value. (shrink)

It is argued in this paper that recent work on immanence and transcendence in Whitehead scholarship, notably by Basile and Nobo, provides helpful guidelines and ideas for work on problems regarding immanence in Deleuze's philosophy. By following arguments on theism and naturalism in the reception of Whitehead, it argues that Deleuze's philosophy depends on reciprocal relations between that actual and the virtual such that they cannot be considered as separate without also being incomplete. It is then shown that Deleuze's philosophy (...) allows for metaphysical terms such as ‘pure’ without having to concede a separate and self-sufficient pure realm. (shrink)

Your classic Jaguar XK 120 stands useless by the roadside. Why? Because you gave priority to the admittedly gorgeous 6 cylinder straight six engine; because you privileged the highest value part. Rubber pipes perish, though, and now thanks to a leak in a cheap hose the head gasket has blown. You are stranded and facing a costly bill. More seriously, your mechanical gaffe is a sign of your misunderstanding of Deleuze. Like Sir William Lyons, he engineers systems where the (...) concept of priority must not be confused with independence, separateness, abstraction or ethical superiority. As a good engineer, Deleuze's constructions are holistic and opposed to abstract hierarchies: if a crucial small, actual part perishes in a particular practical situation where it has a role to play, then it does not matter how much virtual power you have in reserve. Your feet are still in a pool of hot water as you survey the wasted potential of actual motion and ideal expressions, hand made in Coventry. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION A story has been passed down to us from some two millennia ago of a conversation between a wealthy Athenian estate owner, ...

'This is an unusually ambitious book... a considerable achievement. It raises important issues, and affords many valuable insights in the course of its historical reflections.' -Maurice Wiles, Journal of Theological Studies 'Every issue and thinker is expounded clearly and concisely, with attention always drawn to strengths as well as weaknesses. To this non-specialist the argument was always accessible and regularly persuasive.' -The Expository TimesCanon and Criterion in Christian Theology provides an original and important narrative on the significance of canon in (...) the Christian tradition. Abraham shows that the move to treat canon as a criterion of truth has had unsuspecting consequences for the history of theology and philosophy, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology. (shrink)

I argue in this essay that there can be harm due to philosophy that is not directly expressed in violent imagery. The harm is instead a concealed and delayed detrimental effect of an assumption of non-violence in a working model, defined as a picture of a field of enquiry and the methods required to approach it. Theses for the extended mind, as developed by Andy Clark and others, lead to a form of harm that follows from the models they work (...) with. These engineering, tool and function-based models seek smooth interactions and transparency. Following points made by Kim Sterelny in the philosophy of biology, I argue that claims for smoothness and transparency conceal underlying conflict in the situations they seek to describe and explain. This concealment leads to harm, defined as a diminishing of our capacities to flourish in a given environment. (shrink)

This essay shows how real objects must be processes for Gilles Deleuze. These processes are determined by his account of time as a nine-fold manifold of processes deduced from Deleuze’s account of three interconnected syntheses of time in his Difference and Repetition . It will also be argued that Deleuze’s philosophy of time is speculative in a broad sense and that Deleuze’s account of the real is opposed to forms of abstraction which associate objects with conceptual, perceptual or transcendental identity. (...) In order to demonstrate the radical and systematic nature of Deleuze’s account of process, there is a discussion of a basic process underlying his manifold of time. This process is opposed to Markov chains, in order to set up an opposition to interpretations of Deleuze’s philosophy that deny its metaphysical and speculative approach in favour of scientific realism. (shrink)

The Philosophical Forum, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 263-272, Fall 2021.

Epicurus, though popularly and indeed nominally associated with a doctrine advocating the procurement of rather expensive pleasure, lived very simply in his garden with a circle of friends. The 14th of his Sovran Maxims or Cardinal Tenets (kuriai doxai), as collected by Diogenes Laertius, reads: ‘When tolerable security against our fellowmen is attained, then on a basis of power sufficient to afford support and of material prosperity arises in most genuine form the security of a quiet private life withdrawn from (...) the multitude’ R. D. Hicks, the translator, gives, as an alternative to ‘power sufficient to afford support’, ‘power to expel’, but on either reading, we are to think of Epicurus's garden, both the real place and the conceptualized, or tropologized, topos of wisdom and earthly felicity, as enclosed and exclusive. This enclosure, exclusivity, and—what is also implied—abstention of its inmates from participation in the affairs of state are given apophthegmatic expression in ‘Live hidden!’ We contemplate this adage, or slogan, from an enormous cultural distance and, for most of us, ‘Live hidden!’ is much more likely to trigger secondary reflections about the relations between ethics and politics, private and public, perfection of self and improvement of the world, than it is to constitute an actual, or potential, piece of advice we might think about whether, and how, to follow. (shrink)

The everyday sense of pragmatic involves ideas of sensible practice, cautious realism about current situations, flexibility allied to technical knowledge, and the prioritisation of what works, as opposed to unrealistic and damaging ideals. I argue against this technical and sensible flavour of pragmatism, pre-sent in many of its historical and contemporary versions. Pragmatism can be taken as technically-minded, realistic and practical, thereby avoiding the excesses of abstract ideologies. Instead, I will defend the thesis that pragmatism should be fantastic, in the (...) precise sense of metaphysically inventive. In making this latter argument, my main critical point will be against the metaphysically «quietist» version of pragmatism, in particular as defended by David Macarthur. My claim is counter-intuitive, since it seems to commit pragmatism to the forms of idealism that it has sought to criticise and escape. If metaphysics propose ideal pictures of the world, as opposed to detailed, local and evidence-based descriptions - allied to rigorous experimentation - then the fantasies of metaphysics are exactly what pragmatism should avoid. In response to this critical counter, I will argue that pragmatism should be metaphysically inventive because it cannot avoid being metaphysical. However, I also argue that it should be self-critical in its fantastic creativity. (shrink)