In the last years of its history, the Ukrainian ethnic group faced numerous external and internal challenges, which, to a large extent, were the result of its previous genesis and profound transformations in public consciousness. At the same time, one of the central stereotypes of the domestic political and legal mentality is the idea of truth and justice as a basic social ideal and the basis of the legal order. Analysis of research and publications. The problem (...) of mentality and the formation of behavioral stereotypes has been of interest to domestic and foreign scientists for a long time. The concept of «mentality» is most widespread in the writings of the French historical school «Annals». The scientific work of M. Blok, F. Braudel, M. Vovel, J. Le Hoff, J. Lefebvre, L. Fevre, R. Mandr and other scientists reveals the content of mentality and its structures, as well as the peculiarities of their influence on everyday life and activities of individuals who lived in different historical eras. The purpose and objectives of the article. In this article, the authors aim to analyze the idea of truth-justice as a tool for transforming the legal mentality of the Ukrainian ethnic group and to show its influence on the content of its behavioral stereotypes. Research methodology. The methodology of this research has a complex nature and is based on a socio-philosophical and philosophical-legal analysis of the behavioral guidelines of Ukrainians in the field of legal understanding. The results. The social ideology, developed on the basis of ancient social ideas and stereotypes of the national legal mentality, should become a tool for correcting such destructive phenomena in the state-building discourse as legal nihilism, anarchism, civic passivity, corruption, nepotism, etc. At the same time, the concepts of truth-justice, will-freedom and fraternity-equality are key in Ukrainian legal culture. Discussion. The interpretation of this idea in scientific opinion is not unambiguous. This idea clearly manifests itself in the context of the opposition between Truth and Evil in the national culture. Truth is inseparable from human existence and daily activities. The idea of truth is closely related to the idea of justice, which, according to many researchers, is a later, more rational and clearly defined phenomenon derived from truth. Justice as a socio-philosophical phenomenon is intended to act as a kind of moral measure of relations between individuals in society. It is considered as an authoritative criterion for establishing the correspondence between the nature of human activity and its assessment by the social community. Conclusions. Destructive behavioral stereotypes of the Ukrainian ethnic group that were formed, among other things, under the influence of factors of stressogenesis can be corrected with the help of the legal ideology of state building, which should be based on the content of the idea of truth and justice. The developed ideology should be based on the most stable constructive guidelines of the national legal mentality, organically complementing and ideologically justifying them. (shrink)

"Ever Since This World Began" from Love Dog (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013) by Masha Tupitsyn continent. The audio-essay you've recorded yourself reading for continent. , “Ever Since the World Began,” is a compelling entrance into your new multi-media book, Love Dog (Success and Failure) , because it speaks to the very form of the book itself: vacillating and finding the long way around the question of love by using different genres and media. In your discussion of the face, one of the (...) themes of Love Dog , I think there is something to be said about the surfaces media create and how you constantly manipulate them in your work. This seems important for thinking also about your book LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film ; a book on film written in tweets, interposing already three sets of expectations and pushing the boundaries of each medium's faciality, it's surface tension. In Love Dog , is there another kind of facial interaction? Perhaps the discursive faces of approaching love as topic and love as method? If so, how did/do these intersect for you, do/did they drive the creation of this book? MASHA TUPITSYN With LACONIA and Love Dog , I wanted to pay homage to the work modernism has done on subjective time and chronological time by carrying that experiment over into the digital economy. Because LACONIA is a time-based work of cultural criticism that employs the aphorism to look at 21 st century American culture, it is also an archival work of cultural mourning and memory. And in Love Dog , which is also a work about mourning as it relates to love, I wanted to think with all my senses, and to reflect that in the writing itself by using a multi-media form. LACONIA tackled the sound bite and the promotional image--the everyday language of consumer culture--which often wants to communicate ideological agendas through the repetition of a single image or reductive phrase. I had always been interested in the approaches of artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer and essayistic, typographical filmmakers, like Chris Marker and Godard. In both cases, I felt it was important to try to compose a book in which deep—critical—thinking happens in so-called immediate, informal, and disposable contexts. That is, in places where you are either not supposed to be serious or are not required to take things seriously. To me the most intervention is needed in every day instances of culture and representation. In order to do that, I had to utilize and interrogate the very structures I was critiquing. In other words, the writing had to materialize in that live, digital, public space. It couldn’t simply happen at home on a piece of paper or in a word document on my computer that no one could see until it was finished. It had to unfold in real time, amidst everything else. And it had to literally be surrounded by the cultural landscape I wanted to assess. In both LACONIA and Love Dog , I wanted to know how and if we can get away from what we cannot get away from? From which there is no respite. Given this, I don’t think hypertexts can really be called hypertexts anymore. Hypertexts are simply the world today. This is not only the way we read the world now. It is the way the world reads. Likewise, interfaciality, as you put it, works on a number of levels for me, both on and off the page. There is my relation to epistemological and phenomenological surfaces—the screen, the body, the face, the voice, gender; the official story. Then there is the way this dovetails formally, and to which the digital adds yet another dimension. It’s also where sound comes into Love Dog (giving the book a sound; giving tonality to the book’s ideas and feelings). As Anne Carson pointed out in her essay “The Gender of Sound,” the two are connected, and of course so are love and gender. In “Ever Since This World Began,” I wanted to think about the phenomenology of the voice, which is why I visualize the sonic in the book and why in my writing about faces, I look at the tonal aspects (the things a face voices and a voice faces) of a face. This was standard to do when images and faces were “silent” in the silent era. Those images/faces were extraordinarily audible. The greatest screen face, to me, is still Falconetti’s in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc . We can hear her face—even though there is no actual sound on screen of her speaking. The internet is a similarly “silent” space where actual voices are lacking. So intertextuality goes with interfaciality. I’ve also talked a lot about how categorization worked when it came to the reception of my first book, Beauty Talk & Monsters . How despite the fact that Beauty Talk is a text that crisscrosses form and content in a variety of ways, not pinpointing its exact genre—choosing one genre over another—only made things worse. Fiction was the category people were most adverse to me using, even though of course there is a lot of fiction in the book. Part of how fiction works in Beauty Talk is in the reader not knowing exactly where the fiction resides. In Godard’s 1967 film, Weekend , for example, everything matters. Everything is political, whether it’s real or imaginary, film or reality. In Weekend , life is not a game and neither is the game a game. The game is really life. Either everything is important or nothing is. But many people want clear answers and demarcations so that they can decide what is important and what is not important. My use of the “I,” subjective criticism, made everything “real” in Beauty Talk . But fiction is in the construction. It is in the blending. This is why I perforate the movie screen and connect the onscreen and the offscreen; the official story and the backstory. Although I don’t think there is a difference between onscreen and offscreen anymore. Nor is there a dialectic. It’s all screen all the time now. Non-fiction, on the other hand, was more tolerated as a moniker. Unlike Love Dog , Beauty Talk wasn’t explicitly or tangibly (what is tangible is a question in all these books) working with digital forms or within this digital economy, so some people resisted the book’s hypertextuality or intertextuality because they couldn’t see its other forms, if that makes sense. It was a problem of invisibility; of how to make something appear (this is where Nietzsche, big presence in Love Dog , comes in—the nature of appearances). Something people don’t necessarily want to see. Some readers couldn’t see the way forms were interfacing in that book. On the surface, Beauty Talk was simply a text about media culture—the domination of entertainment as a mode of being and knowing—and most readers could only see that one side of the book. But as Godard puts it in Wim Wenders’ documentary about the future of cinema, Room 666 , “Films are made, images are made, when there’s no one looking. That’s what the invisible is, that which we don’t see. That’s what the incredible is, that which we don’t see. And cinema shows you that which we don’t see, the incredible.” We are living in the aftermath of narrative and temporal collapse, which means we don’t read or feel in the same way. I began to use digital forms in my writing because I don’t see us as traditional book people anymore. I would add that power also resides in the invisible, in the things we make invisible by making them visible. Or it did for a long time. The new face of power is quickly becoming so-called transparency, which is even more corrupt because even though we now live in a behind-the-scenes culture, and see and know how the mechanisms of power and corruption operate, we still don't change. The world still doesn't change. Finally, another important thing that Godard says in Room 666 that relates to Love Dog is: “I’m here in front of the camera, and yet in my body and in my head, I’m behind it. My world is the imaginary and the imaginary is a journey between forwards and backwards.” This idea of visible/invisible, foresight and hindsight , backwards and forwards is an important dialectic in relation to time and the idea of the destinal. This is why I wanted Love Dog to travel, literally, figuratively, and discursively. You have to be open to not knowing. To epistemological, geographical, chronological, and emotional aporias. In Love Dog my story is both visible and invisible to me. Sometimes I could see where I was going. Other times I was completely in the dark existentially. Truth procedure, which love is, as bell hooks and Badiou tell us, requires expedition and openness to possibility. Unless you want a story you already know, but that is not truth procedure. So I tried to create this backwards and forwards journey in the book—this sense of travel and motion, hope and doubt—by jumping between forms, media, time; traveling to different places, texts, and emotional registers. The book’s “Time-Jump series,” which mostly takes the form of music—songs—but also a series of “green” videos that I shot, is the most obvious tribute to this idea of subjective and chronological time. continent. Your work aligns with writers that play with the form of their language, or have assumed the role of performance artist at some point: Kathy Acker, Chris Kraus, Avital Ronell, and Anne Carson to name a few representing varied approaches that show up in Love Dog . At the risk of ossifying the work, or missing the point—as these experimental modes of writing stack-up in piles of published works, do they approach a genre? MASHA As I noted in my book Life As We Show It , in Chelsea Girls the poet Eileen Myles points out, “You can’t get money without a category.” More importantly, you can’t get a category—or respect, rank—without a clear genre. This makes genre and gender an obvious pair. The two words are even linked etymologically and both genre and gender concern taxonomies of legitimacy—of sorting through what and who is valuable. So the words share common prejudices. The things one does not want to read is often synonymous with who one doesn't want to read about. Therefore a break-up of or with genre is maybe the genre or anti-genre that could be said to link these writers. Avital Ronell breaks up with philosophical tradition and modes of inquiry. Like Nietzsche, she revaluates methods of evaluation, testing out things you are not supposed to use philosophy to test (and, by the same token, testing philosophy in ways it’s not supposed to be tested), like drugs and stupidity—where philosophy fails and we fail philosophy. And Chris Kraus does something similar in her experimental fiction, using different forms to put female subjectivity “to the test,” so to speak. All these female writers and thinkers have tried to destabilize the systems that have been set up in (and against) writing. Thus missing the mark with genre, even intentionally, means that we have missed the point in some sense as writers and thinkers. And that to me is a good thing, however difficult. We’ve started at the wrong point and gone somewhere else instead. We’ve acknowledged that writing and thinking are also about failure, and that failure is always embedded in the act of writing and in our reasons for writing. So that missing the point is also the point. Derrida insisted: “We must invent a name for those ‘critical’ inventions which belong to literature while deforming its limits.” But how can you give something that resists and deforms, a name? Wouldn’t the name also be deformed? Isn't this why the aforementioned writers get hyphenated descriptors like ficto-criticism? Do we need a proper name to be able to read something carefully? I don’t think so. I don’t need it as a reader. I’ve always taken a work on its own terms. But for most people, if you don’t have an address, people don’t know how to find you. A lot of time, they won’t even know how to look. And in some cases, they’ll think you’re not even worth finding. You are not on the map because you have to literally make the map in order to exist. In her essay, “The Gender of Sound” Carson asks, “Why is female sound bad to hear?” I think for the same reason something uncategorizable (pedagogically, creatively, racially, and sexually)—Other—is hard to read. *For an audio recording of Florida , read by Masha Tupitsyn click here . continent. : We're also curious to hear know how you see the significance of 'performance' (and why the label sticks to the shoes of these authors like toilet paper) in describing this kind of writing work? MASHA I think I responded to the parenthetical portion of this question in my previous answer. As far as how performance relates to Love Dog , in Acker’s Don Quixote , which is another big presence in the book, she writes, “there is no other reality than anthropomorphism.” In Don Quixote , the dog is human and the human is dog. Which brings us to the title of Love Dog and the totemic function of the dog in the book: giving human things animal characteristics and animal things human characteristics. Rather than investing all our human love ideals into dogs, which we do constantly as a culture of dog lovers, I wanted to put the dog into love. It is the difference between the consumption of love as a patriarchal institution or status position and the essence of a type of radical and liberatory relation that would benefit humans in their bonds with other humans. So the dog in Love Dog is not simply the book’s cover or performative affect, so to speak. Love has always needed the dog, which is why the dog is the very embodiment of belief in love . Recall Argos The Great Dog and Odysseus. Argos is the only one who remembers and recognizes the ragged and old Odysseus even after his 20-year absence. So love is the high ideal and the dog, both common and dependable, is the bridge between the sacred and the profane. The dog is the house of love. And because Love Dog is a digital project, it seemed impossible to think about the post-human, technology, the virtual, or difference (which Badiou says is essential to love in In Praise of Love ) without thinking about animal-being and being-animal. Instead of simply “performing” these ideas and characteristics as literary affects, I’m interested in being-becoming. Which means the book’s tropes, leitmotifs, series, and even its titles are in service of that truth procedure. In other words, I actually want to live this way, not just write this way. And, more importantly, I want to live this way not just think this way. So Love Dog became both my totem animal and my autobiographical animal. This made the book organic, anthropomorphic—beyond literary. See the trailer to Masha Tupitsyn's new book available now from Penny Ante Editions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 415-416 [Access article in PDF] Tad M. Schmaltz. Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 288. Cloth, $65.00.More than fifty years ago Richard H. Popkin urged historians of philosophy to work on secondary figures in philosophy, in part for their own sake, but also because the true shape of philosophy and the development (...) of major figures can be understood only through examination of the intellectual milieu out of which they arose. Among others he specifically mentioned Robert Desgabets, Jean Du Hamel, Simon Foucher, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Pierre-Sylvain Regis, and Henricus Regius. Now in Radical Cartesianism, Tad Schmaltz has provided a masterful and erudite study of these and other philosophers who are minor now but were major in their day. The importance of this study is not just that it illuminates the metaphysics of Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche, and clarifies the relationship of these philosophers to Arnauld, Jansenism, Plato, and the Aristotelian scholasticism of the day, but also that it opens to view an intricate and significant body of thought. The radical Cartesianism Schmaltz examines addresses and provides solutions to problems of the relationship between mind and body, between man and God, and between ideas and the external world that continue to engage philosophers today. Schmaltz concludes his study with the suggestion that these philosophers might have had more latter-day influence if larger historical events, in particular the death of Louis XIV and the subsequent relaxation of attacks on Jansenism (and on supposed Jansenist Cartesianism) had not led to interest in matters other than the Eucharist and the nature of the soul that were major issues among the radical Cartesians and their opponents.But were any of these radical Cartesians actually Cartesians? If, as Schmaltz says, the metaphysical core of Cartesianism is Descartes's doctrine that "the essence of body consists in extension and that the essence of mind consists in thought" (10), then most of his followers were not radical Cartesians, but rather heretical Cartesians. They rebelled against as many of Descartes's doctrines as they accepted. Schmaltz's careful expositions, analyses, comparisons, correlations, and extrapolations of their arguments and positions make up the bulk of his book. The detail, command of the material, insight, and breadth of Schmaltz's exposition is on an order of magnitude above previous work on these figures and will stand for a long time as a challenge to the next few generations of scholars.But if so many of these figures alter Descartes's metaphysics so radically, why do they still designate themselves as Cartesians? The major reason is that while Cartesian metaphysics was in disarray, Cartesian science was flourishing. Regius is the model. He said (directly to Descartes) that metaphysics is inessential to science, that matters of God and certainty about the existence of the external world could and should be left to faith. What was liberating during the third quarter of the century in The Netherlands and in the fourth quarter in France was Descartes's scientific method of posing hypotheses and testing them with experiments. You will never get certainty this way, but already science was advancing by leaps and bounds. Christian Huygens, who as a boy had known Descartes, belittled the man's metaphysics, but was one of the greatest and most successful practitioners of the [End Page 415] Cartesian scientific method of his time. What remains to be written is a study of late-seventeenth-century Cartesian science that is as excellent and comprehensive as Schmaltz's study of the Cartesian metaphysics of the time. Here are some problems Descartes set up that are of particular concern to the philosophers of the time. If God can do anything, even make contradictions true, then why could he not make you think you exist even when you do not? How could you think of something that does not exist? Because your thoughts have a temporal dimension, and time depends on motion, and motion pertains only to material bodies, how could you... (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as (...) a means of subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

Modern epistemology adopted the idea of historicism, of the historicity of knowledge and the self-consciousness of the cognizer. The research, undertaken within cultural–historical epistemology, also spread in the context of the prevailing tendencies in the sphere of modern epistemology. The specificity of this type of epistemology is related to a special interpretation of the history of cognition. On this interpretation knowledge represents a cultural phenomenon that has an existentially-symbolical meaning for the cognizer. Therefore this type of epistemology (...) returns us to the dimension of knowledge, which has in fact been lost today. It returns us to the original antique notion of knowledge as “good,” as something that changes the person who acquires it. And here in this context comes forth such a feature of knowledge as its integrity. At the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Russian philosophers turned to the problem field of “integral knowledge,” the core of which lies in the unity of the integral and cognitive, which is reflected in the concreteness of knowledge. Such an understanding of knowledge enabled the articulation of a number of ideas that enriched European traditions of socio-humanitarian research and influenced the development of semiotics and structuralism both in Europe and in Russia. The ideas of R. Jakobson that stimulated the structure-semiotic research in the first half of the twentieth century are very well-known to world humanity science. Yet their epistemological potential is related to the idea of the integral knowledge. The epistemological turn towards historicism in semiotics in Russia was accomplished by G. Shpet. Jakobson communicated with Shpet at the Moscow linguistic circle in the 1920s. They both referred to the ideas of Husserl, and, as Jakobson acknowledged himself, he borrowed many ideas from Shpet—in particular, the idea of semiotics. Shpet’s helped implement the idea of “integral knowledge” that opened a perspective of the analysis of knowledge as an open symbolic sign system. This methodological approach appears to be especially topical nowadays in the sphere of humanities, which scientific character does not exclude historicism. The ideas of Russian philosophers, then, provide a productive context immediately as well as long-term prospects for developing the methodology of the humanities. The concepts that prevail in modern methodology accentuate the historical relativity and the outer social determinacy of scientific knowledge. Meanwhile the problem of the cultural–historical status of the humanities and the problem of addressing the idea of “integral knowledge” become increasingly topical and allow the transfer of the epistemological search for the conditions and the landmarks of scientificity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle as A-Theorist:Overcoming the Myth of PassageJacqueline Mariña and Franklin MasonTwo things are often said about Aristotle's treatment of time in the Physics. First, that Aristotle's considered view of time is intrinsically tied to a language of temporal passage heavily dependent on the A-series.1 As such Aristotle's understanding of time is plagued with the perplexities that the A-series generates.2 Second, that the series of puzzles that Aristotle treats in (...) IV. 10, leading to the conclusion that time is non-existent, are left unanswered by Aristotle.3 [End Page 169] Instead, after presenting the puzzles having to do with whether time is, Aristotle cannot move fast enough to his treatment of what time is, leaving the puzzles unresolved.4 In this paper we would like to look at these two issues together. Our thesis is that the puzzles about the existence of time discussed by Aristotle at IV.10 are generated by a particularly naïve version of the A-theory. Further, although Aristotle's answer to what time is incorporates elements of an A-theory of time, it manages to avoid just those particular puzzles discussed in IV. 10 leading to the conclusion of time's non-existence.Our discussion is divided into three parts. First we provide an analysis of the puzzles raised by means of the commonplace ideas () mentioned by Aristotle at 217 b 31. This analysis will reveal that the puzzles are the consequence of a hypostatization of time, that is, the naïve notion that time has metaphysical status in its own right, in the way that a substance has, for instance. The hypostatization of time is what results when we ask questions concerning when the now exists and when the now ceases to be. We argue that these are questions that arise when the present is thought of as something that becomes, that is, that surges forward through history. Moreover, the problems brought to light by these puzzles are not left unresolved by Aristotle. Rather, Aristotle's considered view of time, piggybacking as it does on substances and their changes, would clearly avoid such a reification of time and hence the problems generated by it. In the second part of the paper we discuss Aristotle's view of the substrate of time, namely change, and show why Aristotle argues that change must be thought of as following a magnitude. Using our discussion in section 2 as our basis, in the third and final section we discuss the [End Page 170] significance of Aristotle's theory of time as that which results when we measure one change by another. Our discussion in sections 2 and 3 is geared towards an exploration of how Aristotle's own theory avoids a commitment to pure temporal becoming as real, that is, the idea that the now moves through a fixed continuum along which events are arranged in chronological order. The fact that this denial is an implication of his theory is closely linked to Aristotle's solution of the aporias in IV.10.1. TheThe arguments presented in IV.10 concern difficulties arising from common sense views of time. We will argue that these puzzles are the result of a reification of time. Resulting from naïve conceptions of time, they dissolve once these have been replaced by Aristotle's ensuing demystified account of the nature of time. Two things stand out as important in this regard. First, Aristotle's definition of time involves number, and as Aristotle notes at 223 a 22 ff., number exists only insofar as there is a soul that counts. That Aristotle conceives of time as involving a soul that counts should alert to us to the fact that Aristotle does not conceive of time as something that, of itself, marches along a preexisting continuum, first privileging one moment and then another. Second, insofar as the substratum of time is that which is countable in the before and after in change, time is, as it were, a characteristic of substances undergoing change and is not an explanatory condition of their changing. Time is not a necessary condition of change; but rather... (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes the concept of religious foundations of culture and power as a problem of Russian political consciousness. The paper reveals the patterns of interaction between the religious and political traditions of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The author provides Bargradsky project case as a unique example of such influence, identifying its mean in the later Russian Empire’s political history. Philosophical-political case that is analyzed in the article makes it possible to trace (...) the inner links between religious attitudes and political imagination of Russian monarchical circles and to identify the peculiarities of religious and political self-awareness of Russian power, its mechanisms for the selecting the ideas, symbols, images of the national political, religious and artistic culture in the last period of the Russian Empire. From our point of view, it would be most effective to combine the cultural-historical and the philosophical and historical approaches both in the reconstruction of Bargradsky project and in studies of Russian political culture. The article examines both the political conditions of activities and spiritual-cultural goals of Bargradsky Committee on Bargradsky project in Italian Bari as well as in Saint Petersburg in the 1910s. The author discusses the religious concept of Russian political culture, applying philosophical-historical method for the analyses Bargradsky Committee activity and its attempt to slow down the degradation of the Russian autocracy. The major emphasis is placed on the political and philosophical way of analysis as well as on the possibility of introducing the results of philosophical-historical research into current debates on the issue of alternatives to Russian history. (shrink)

Philosophers of all times and peoples tried to describe the mystery of magic, each time giving humanity their own images of magical practices, on the one hand, and the attitude to magic from the side of public consciousness, on the other. Turning to the problem of magic even today, in the era of worldview pluralism and the crisis of traditional ideas about the world, turns out to be quite relevant. Magic, which actually originated with humanity itself and passed through (...) centuries and millennia, continues to exist in the consciousness of modern human.Some researchers talk about the onset of a «new magical era» and the formation of a whole subculture of magic followers. Yes, today in the individual and mass consciousness there is a sharp increase in interest in everything mysterious and supernatural: on the pages of newspapers, magazines, and social networks there are many ads from magicians and fortune tellers who promise to fulfill almost any wishes of people for a fee, television channels actively broadcast projects that talk about some magical events and phenomena, and even celebrities in their interviews tell how certain mysterious events happened to them, or how they personally turned to the mystery of magical practices. That is, we can say with confidence that the thinking and behavior of modern man is rightfully considered magical. Therefore, magic is not a relic of the past, but an integral part of the consciousness of a modern people. The aim of the publication is to analyze the influence of magic and magical practices on the consciousness and behavior of modern human. Research methodology. Research methods are comprehensive and based on a philosophical-anthropological and philosophical-cultural analysis of magic as an integral part of human consciousness. Discussion. Magic in the mind of a modern people exists in the form of: something prohibited, anti-social, anti-religious, dangerous and harmful; one’s native achievement of a certain goal or fulfillment of desires; everyday rituals and superstitions, which, although some do not associate the direction with magic, somehow have a strong connection with it.Conclusion. Magic is an integral part of the consciousness of modern human. For some, it is something dangerous, frightening, anti-religious and anti-social, and for some, magic appears to be an excellent means of learning about the surrounding world, a tool for subduing supernatural forces and obtaining certain benefits or fulfilling wishes. One way or another, each of us consciously or subconsciously performs certain magical rituals every day. Magic is so firmly entrenched in human consciousness that some philosophers speak of the onset of a «new magical era», which is associated with the open promotion of magical practices, supernatural forces and phenomena in modern society and the formation of such a phenomenon as a «magical worldview», which will perspective of our further research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:is There a White Gift?: A Pragmatist Response to the Problem of Whiteness Terrance A. MacMullan Introduction Lucius Outlaw and Shannon SuUivan are prominent contemporary philosophers of race who follow in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois as they search for a theoretical understanding of race and a political solution to the problem of racism. They agree that the solution to racism is not found in the (...) elimination of the idea of race from our discourses as suggested by Naomi Zack and Anthony Appiah, but in a critical conservation of race that is nonhierarchical and committed to addressing the suffering of non-white racial groups.1 This moral and critical conservation of race makes Sullivan and Outlaw standard bearers for Du Bois's idea of the racial gift, which John Shuford writes is rooted in the conviction that, "'race' and race-consciousness are not the causes of racism and racial injustice, [and] that 'race' may be employed toward collective and mutual liberation."2 However, despite their inteUectual kinship regarding their broad approach to race, Outlaw and SuUivan come to a significant and iUuminating disagreement over the issue of whiteness. In Du Boisian terms, they disagree about whether white people, qua white, have a racial gift worth conserving. Outlaw recognizes the illegitimacy of the hierarchical racial taxonomies established during the Enlightenment era but accepts race as a real and meaningful feature of our social landscape. Revealing a strong affinity for Du Bois' approach to race, Outlaw imagines his work as, an inquiry into raciality and ethnicity via a treacherous "third path" between racism and invidious ethnocentrism, on the one side, and anti-racism and antiinvidious ethnocentrism, on the other. What I propose can help us to recognize and nurture races and ethnies as we reconsider raciation and ethnicization as processes by which we humans produce TRANSACTIONS OFTHE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 41, No. 4 ©2005 Hi and reproduce ourselves as crucial aspects of our "social construction of ET1 realities."3 H tr* Q η He further argues for "the need to conserve 'race' and 'ethnie' (and 'ethnic- ¡» ity') as vital components of a philosophical anthropology."4 Outlaw there- 5j fore contends that the challenge facing liberatory race theorists is not the «' elimination of race, but instead, "the challenge is to find ways to conserve a Ç) sense of raciality that is both socially useful and consistent with democratic justice." Outlaw clearly wants to avoid invidious ethnocentrism, but what is more significant is that he also rejects the idea that we should purge racial ^j ideas and practices as a means to achieve democratic justice. He, like Du τ> Bois, is fully aware of the evils of racism, but is nonetheless committed to > the belief that human existence is inevitably colored by race as a salient fea- g ture of our social reality. Outlaw's commitment to the conservation of race ;> is so deep that he would preserve race-based communities of meaning, "even ^ if, in the very next instant, racism and perverted, invidious ethnocentrism in every form or > manifestation would disappearforever'. '6 ^ The key to this balancing act is to look at race and ethnicity through the r lens of "philosophical anthropology" instead of through the materialism of > biology. Outlaw argues that when we look at race this way we glean, an understanding and appreciation of senses of belonging and of shared destiny by which individuals are intimately connected to other individuals in ways that make for the constitution of particular kinds of social collectivities, what I term social-natural kinds. Races and ethnies are such "kinds."8 Outlaw thus uses an idea of race that is fully transactional, to use a term coined by Dewey and rewardingly reclaimed by Sullivan. Race is created in the confluence of culture and biology, to the extent that certain biologicaUy determined traits, primarily morphological features, are the tags that play important symbolic roles in terms of how social groups are formed. The goal, therefore, is not to eliminate race, because people long have and likely always will use appearance as one of the many determinants of how they form groups. The goal is, instead, to form groups in ways that encourage human flourishing "consistent... (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

The article considers the interpretation of the culture and philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Babylon in the texts of writers of the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries. This topic was highly important and widely discussed in connection with the outstanding discoveries of archaeological expeditions in the 1900–1920s in the Valley of the Kings on the Nile. In his treatise “Tajna trekh: Egipet i Vavilon”, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, referring to religious views of the previous eras, attempted to find an ideological synthesis that (...) could unite and reconcile people in the hard times of wars and revolutions. Alexander Chayanov in his story “Puteshestvie moego brata Alekseia v stranu krest’ianskoj utopii” turned to the biblical symbolism of the Tower of Babel which sought to overcome, as it were, the chaos that engulfed society—to give a warning against rash prometheistic ideas. He examined the ability of man to fight against the power of fate, to remain true to himself and to his ideas. In his mystical stories there can be traced allusions to the mysteries of the goddess Isis. Their heroines bear chthonic features. Chayanov examined how the feeling of love can destroy or revive the hero depending on his integrity and readiness to undergo evolution in order to find harmony. (shrink)

During the last thirty three years which elapsed from General Franco’s death there disappeared cleared divisions into two camps which saw relationships between Spain and Europe as well as Europe itself from disparate perspectives. For the sake of social peace and normalizing the political situation which ensued after the fascist coup on 18 July 1936 and which continued till the death of caudillo in 1975, or even a bit longer till funding the new constitution in 1978, the Spanish left (...) behind clear exposition of their political visions and their aggressive imposition on their adversaries. This common agreement resulted in, what is important, Spain’s access to the European Union in 1986. It can be seen as an unambiguous sign of its citizens’ agreement to subject their country to the processes of Europeanization (since such an opportunity appeared the Spanish saw EU accession as a solution to their homeland’s problems). Thus even the slogan from the 1960s aimed at tourists and saying: España es diferente (“Spain is different”, “eccentric”, different than other European countries) was forgotten. Undoubtedly, the modern Spain is in all the aspects of life a fully European country, and even, as it is often proudly emphasized by the Spanish authors, in many spheres of political, economic, cultural or social life it belongs to the European avant-garde. Of course, Spain has kept its national identity, its national culture (which, despite all this, has become cosmopolitan to a certain degree, as it is in the case of other European national cultures in the era of globalization) and its political, economic, social and other structures are the ones which characterize a modern, liberal, secular, democratic European state. (shrink)

The idea of finding Foucault first looks at the many influences on Foucault, including his Nietzschean acclamations. It examines Foucault’s critical history of thought, his work on the orders of discourse with his emphasis on being a pluralist: the problem he says that he has set himself is that of the individualization of discourses. Finally, it addresses his work on the culture of the self which became a philosophical and historical question for Foucault later in his life as (...) he investigated the historical form of relations between subjectivity and truth in Western philosophy since Antiquity and how philosophy as an activity taught about the care of the self. The conclusion suggests some ways that students might approach his work as they proceed in finding Foucault and their own selves. (shrink)

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, (...) philosophy of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)

The article attempts to comprehend the phenomenon of an event in the religious dimension. An event is considered as a phenomenon characterized by a singularity, that is, an individual character of expression, belongs to the sphere of non everyday life, does not coincide with the usual framework of understanding of the world and does not correspond to empirical factual. The need for a more active philosophical and religious discourse of the correlation between everyday and non everyday life in the realm (...) of religion led to the necessity of address to this problem. Thus, the purpose of the article is to find out the ontological status of the event, the religious context of which manifests itself as an opposition to everyday life and leads to a transformation of the established way of life of the believer. Everyday being is characterized by features of sacredness, demonstrates the attraction to the transcendent. For this reason, the obvious and justified is the combination of the phenomena of everyday empirical world with the values ​​of another dimension of being. The presence of non everyday in everyday life is evidenced, in particular, by elements of cult practice, since they are an expression of sacral time and space, as well as a way of incarnation of eternal values. The sphere of non everyday life includes the relationship between human and God described in the Gospels, prophecies, revelation, and vision as non everyday manifestations of religious experience. Event is the opposition of the world of phenomena to beyond the exquisite world of being, the transformation, which leads to the emergence of new orders and structures. Implementation of the event contradicts the previous ideas, therefore meeting the event with standard reality is accompanied by a transformation of everyday life. Establishing the rootedness of an event into being or its transcendental origin allows us to determine the causes of an event. In a secularized world, human, for the most part, demonstrates his willingness to recognize as significant events, including those in the universe, which correspond to scientific knowledge. This happens even when the fact of the event calls into question the fundamental postulates of science. Given this discovery in science, situations in politics, art, personal life are perceived as large-scale events. Moreover, the moment of meeting with the event can be described, for example, with a poetic language that expresses certain symbols of human existence and appears as a means of objectivizing the event as an unexpected innovation. Instead, the believer perceives events of a supernatural nature as an interference of the otherworldly reality in the usual way of life. Thus, the reception of religious experience is accompanied by the transformation of the individual's everyday life. The basis of the mystical experience of the religious tradition is the experience of meeting with the Divine, which results in a change in the believer's self-consciousness, transformation of its values, senses and meanings. That is, the awareness of an event that does not belong to an established order implies the prospect of new reality emersion, which contradicts previous notions. One of the forms of gaining religious experience is the process of conversion, which results in the transformation of the ideological orientation of a person, which enables the knowledge of their own hidden depths of consciousness. Conversion, the acquisition of grace and faith express the sudden or gradual process by which the individual achieves internal harmony, awareness of his righteousness, a sense of happiness, finds support in believing in the reality of what he has discovered in religious experiences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Roger A. Shiner GETTING TO KNOW YOU IN pursuits OF happiness, Stanley Cavell attempts to establish the existence of a previously unrecognized genre of film — "comedies of remarriage " — which both includes and is defined by such movies as Adam's Rib, Bringing Up Baby, and TL· Philadelphia Story. l By "marriage" and "remarriage " is meant a certain kind of enduring emotional intimacy with which we as (...) adult men and women will be involved, an intimacy which is an integral part of the human form of life and whose relationship to an institutionally supported legal status in our culture is not one of identity. The same is true for the concept of "divorce" in this context. Using some of Cavell's interpretive ideas as a starting point, I shall seek to present the genre of remarriage as a figure for the profoundest relationships of epistemology and metaphysics — the relationship of the knower to the world which is known and the relationship of the individual to die other individuals widi whom society is shared. Specifically, divorce and remarriage as part of human life are to be seen as figures for separation and kinship, avoidance and acknowledgement in the philosophical sense of those terms.2 My discussion proceeds on several levels. There is film criticism, which attempts to find significance in certain movies. There is an examination of values, which presents a certain view ofmarriage as a human relationship. There is some metaphysics, which addresses certain traditional philosophical problems in a nontraditional way. And finally there is metaphilosophy, which attempts to present a different way ofhow to ask, and how to acknowledge as being answered, the great questions of philosophy. Only the latter two projects could be described as "philosophical" in a conventional sense. Yet, as Arthur Danto has rightly remarked,3 Cavell in Pursuits ofHappiness seems to be trying to suggest that to blur deliberately the distinction between criticism and philosophy is to show something 80 Roger A. Shiner81 important about philosophy (and thus criticism as well). If this essay in some small way is thought to show something similar, I shall be pleased. Cavell begins his chapter on It Happened One Night with some ruminations on Locke, Hume, Kant, and the idea of the limitations of human reason. Kant undertakes to show, Cavell claims (PH, pp. 75-76), that our position as human knowers is both better and worse than the Empiricists suggest. It is worse, because even if we pressed human knowledge to its Kantian limits, we would know more but not enough to fulfill the philosopher 's dream. It is better, because the very facts that are limitations of human knowledge are also the necessary conditions ofknowledge as such and to know those conditions clearly is enormously to increase human knowledge. The link between the limitations ofhuman knowledge and the comedies of remarriage is forged by the thought (CR, p. 74) that the capacity to relate oneself to the world by knowledge and the capacity to relate oneselfto others by marriage are both constitutive ofhuman society. Human community is based in part on the fact that there are limitations as to what each of us as individual knowers can know. We need each other's knowledge. If one of us were per impossibile to transcend the limitations of human knowledge, he would know, as it were, what God knows and thus have the power that God has. But the existence of these limitations reveals something deep about human knowledge, something which traditional theory of knowledge rejects, namely that it is human. Human knowledge is limited, but it is genuine. It rests on no surer a foundation than human community, but human beings are a community. We need each other, but we are there for each other. Community, and therefore knowledge, does not need to be achieved: it exists.4 Similarly, the conventions in society limiting the capacity to relate oneselfto others by marriage (one at a time, and only under protest not one forever) reveal something deep about the nature of marriage. The mutuality of the intimacy ofmarriage is possible only in conjunction with the exclusiveness of marriage. Only by turning away from all others can the taking into... (shrink)

Since literary historian Robert Bone published his seminal essay ‘Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance’ in 1986, scholars have created new cartographies of previously unexplored terrain in American cultural history. The earliest studies focused on literature, but more recently attention has turned to other disciplines, including visual arts. Recent publication of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950 (2011) by Robert Bone and Richard A. Courage promises to decisively broaden scholarly understandings of the scope and (...) significance of Chicago-centred cultural production during the Great Depression and post-war years. Of particular relevance to contemporary studies of new media art is the manner in which then-emergent ideas and practices – centring on racialized subject matter, elite and mass audiences, traditional and new mediums of expression, private vs public sponsorship, and passive vs active reception of art objects – converged to create new paradigms and possibilities for visual artists to reshape consciousness in a period of institutional collapse and change. Chicago’s New Negro artists of the 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts in 1920s Harlem, sought to reframe perceptions of African American life, to re-present the black subject as something other than an object of contempt or amusement beneath the privileged gaze of the white viewer. Just as these artists sought to revise perceptions of racial reality, examination of the wide range of actual images they created and the mediums and styles they explored revises reductive notions about creative expression in this period, which often portray a mere subordination of art to propaganda and an embrace of representational aesthetics and simplistic narratives in a fruitless detour in the evolution from modernism to postmodernism. On the contrary, Andrew Hemingway notes the range of stylistic experiment and characterizes so-called ‘social art’ as ‘a hybrid and unstable mode [which] had to carry the imperative to be an art equal in formal achievement to both the great art of the past and the modern tradition … [and] to suggest a political orientation without becoming overt revolutionary propaganda’ (2002).New media theorist Oliver Grau observes thatIn many quarters, virtual reality is viewed as a totally new phenomenon… but it did not make its first appearance with the technical invention of computer-aided virtual realities. On the contrary, virtual reality forms part of the core of the relationship of humans to images… grounded in art traditions that have receivedscant attention up to now.(2004)In the midst of another period of change, of transformed and transforming ideas and practices in the arts, we have much to learn from the attempts of Chicago’s New (Media) Negro artists to create ‘art for the people’, to immerse broad audiences in such accessible media as mural painting, photography and graphic arts. (shrink)

Writing, the exigency of writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealist (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence) seems to devote itself solely to itself as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, (...) deferred, and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of the Book and the Work so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside discourse, outside language. – Maurice Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation , xi) The Compendium * Beginning with the idea and practice of writing, and moving to the subject or self, then to truth and the One, and arriving at the Book and the Work, Blanchot’s words reflect the trajectory of the following work of writing. True to the embeddedness of the subject in the work of writing, the term “Compendium” has been a metonym for me over the past few years as I have thought about the concept of totality alongside its expression in figures such as the One, the Whole, or the All. In the following I aim to share some of the content of this metonym, and to enrich it by making some distinctions. 1 Here the term “Compendium” will refer to a concept of totality that is ontological (pertaining to being, and the copula) and also textual (pertaining to the symbolic, and the signifier-signified relationship). The Compendium is a figure for thinking the world as a Book, in the broadest sense—an approach to reality that is by no means new, but one that is due for renewal. 2 In partial answer to the question of the Compendium we will say that the word ‘Compendium’ stands in for expressions which seek to totalize, or concepts which seek to approach the concept of ‘everything,’ particularly when these expressions are bound up in the question of the Book (both the book as a physical object and the Book as a metaphysical figure: a way of thinking about the work in and of writing). The question of the Compendium is strongly associated with the physical and metaphysical form of the Book, like the mysterious and symbolic books which are opened in the Biblical book of Revelation, the book of life and the book of death, which together constitute an important couplet. 3 Parataxis & Hypotaxis There are two helpful distinctions that will bring us closer to an answer to the question “What is a Compendium?” The first distinction is between two figures in and for writing: parataxis and hypotaxis . Typically paired in contrast to one another as literary techniques, with parataxis indicating a side-by-side placement of textual elements and hypotaxis referring to subordinate arrangements of textual elements, the two figures can be understood as having a philosophical significance in addition to their practical function as devices for writers. For us these two terms will remain between philosophical theory and writing practice, and serve as a perspective for our writing and creation of texts. Here I take texts to refer to anything from the concrete written words in a book, to the ontological text of the world that we experience. Parataxis , as a figural way of thinking about the ontological structure of texts, refers to texts which are tightly woven and interdependent – texts within which each sentence bears the weight of the entire work. Parataxis often involves repetition, great density, and fragility. One of the best examples of this sort of text is Theodor Adorno’s posthumous magnum opus , Aesthetic Theory . In addition to the text itself, the translation history of the book may also help us to better understand parataxis and its relation to hypotaxis . The final published version of Aesthetic Theory , in German, was a text that Adorno intended to revise and rewrite, but this intention was never realized because of his untimely death. Where the German text of Aesthetic Theory certainly exemplifies the concept of parataxis , the first English edition took this densely woven text and carved Adorno’s lengthy paragraphs and lengthy sentences into manageable ‘bite-sized’ pieces of English text. The first translator took further liberty and inserted headings and new paragraph breaks where there were none in the original. Aesthetic Theory was eventually retranslated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and is now available in a form that is much more faithful to the original work. 4 The pertinent idea that this translation history points to is the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis . Where parataxis describes texts which are repetitive, densely woven, and often fragile, hypotaxis describes texts which are hierarchical and in which the primary relation is linear – the latter of which is very similar to the first English translation of Aesthetic Theory . On the other hand, the original German text that Adorno wrote was very dense, often repetitive, and contained long sections of text unbroken by paragraphs or headings. This example of parataxis was then turned towards hypotaxis through the initial translation which took a text that was, in many ways, nonhierarchical and nonlinear, and artificially subjected it to a hierarchy that was not its own (and here I take the word of Fredric Jameson who comments on the two translations in a note at the beginning of his book Late Marxism ). 5 The point here is not about translation, but rather the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis precisely as they are figures for discourse, written or otherwise. The concept of parataxis looks far more postmodern and rhizomic than the concept of hypotaxis which remains very modern and arborescent. This is a more figural way of talking about the distinction. However, if we wanted to take a more precise and analytical approach we could say that on the level of form parataxis involves a relationship between sentences and paragraphs in which each part bears an equally crushing responsibility to present the whole content of the text. As well, on the level of content, parataxis requires that each concept in a work take on the full conceptual weight of the total work. Continuing the analysis, we could say that parataxis describes texts in which there is no (or very little) linear or causal move from antecedent to consequent, whether in content or form. Instead, parataxis describes texts which weave together concepts via conjugations or associations. The concept of hypotaxis , on the other hand, requires that texts submit themselves to hierarchy, one example of which is logical argumentation. The contingency of the conclusion upon premises in hypotaxis is certainly distinct from the repetition, re-presentation, and conjugation of concepts in parataxis , and I think that this is evident in the difference between the writing styles prevalent in contemporary Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. It is not the case that the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis absolutely corresponds with the writing styles of Continental and Analytic philosophy (respectively). There are thinkers who take exception to this pattern, such as Badiou’s more formal approach in the discourse of Continental philosophy to give one example. However, when Analytic philosophy takes its writing lessons from the sciences, and seeks to do philosophy via the clean linear move from antecedent to consequent, then I think that Analytic philosophy writes with hypotaxis in mind. On the other hand, when Continental (particularly German and French) philosophy takes its writing lessons from narrative or poetry then Continental philosophy writes with parataxis in mind. It is not fair to say that all those writing Continental philosophy are looking to narrative and poetry for stylistic direction, just as it is not the case that all those writing Analytic philosophy have mathematics and science as their writing format, however there are some striking ways in which the differing epistemologies of Continental and Analytic philosophy encourage writing with parataxis and hypotaxis in mind (respectively). For some, writing with parataxis or hypotaxis in mind is a conscious decision and a product of stylistic self-consciousness, and for others it is an unconscious discursive and epistemic requirement that must be met in order to be involved in a particular discourse. Before moving on to our second distinction, and then an examination of the question of the Book, it is important to point out that both totality and figurations like the One, the Whole, and the All, come out of very human desires to totalize or to actualize our being-towards-totality. The relationship between identity and totality then can be construed, with Heidegger in mind, as striving toward wholeness, completion, or fulfillment, each of which is a quality of compendia. 6 Compilation & Selection The first distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis pertains to both form and content, and to both the mechanics of writing and the ideas to which writing refers. The second distinction pertains to both as well. In the process of writing and in the process of perception as well, there is a tension between compilation and selection . To begin with, in the work of theory-writing there is compilation, and this is because writing theory requires a broad perspective and certain measure of totalization. On the other hand, writing theory requires that the writer select an idea or a combination of ideas to individuate out of a radical and infinite multiplicity of identities and combinations. The concern here is not primarily for the writing of a theory about a specific idea, like a secondary work or a reference text. But rather the concern is with the writing of grand theories: Marx and Marxism, Derrida and Deconstruction, Husserl and Phenomenology, Sartre and Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism —each of which strives along a trajectory towards being all-encompassing, whether it intends to or not. Today, we could even say that Speculative Realism has embarked on this journey, and perhaps now we could say that the discourse of Speculative Realism has reached the inevitable point after which a grand theory leaves the hands of its writer or writers and becomes a possession of the collective consciousness of the academy, or (perhaps now) the mass consciousness of the blogosphere—and this is a true pharmakon , a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. 7 When we write theory, whether the scope is that of a grand theory or a particular theory, we write in the tension between compilation (making good on the desire to be all encompassing) and selection (being required to decide and discern and to judge what is included in the work and what is deleted or appended or abridged or given over to ellipses). Generally speaking, the work of theory-writing often comes out of a desire to totalize, that is, to develop a theory of everything that is able to apprehend new experiences and ideas while still remaining whole. I grant that this is not a universal desire, and that not everyone who sits down to write a work (or book) of theory does so because of their will-to-totality, but it remains that this drive to totalize does condition a great many writers of theory (especially those who seek to develop grand theories like those mentioned previously). At the beginning of his book of interviews, Between Existentialism and Marxism , Sartre is quoted as saying, after completing the first volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason : “I no longer feel the need to make long digressions in my books, as if I were forever chasing after my own philosophy. It will now be deposited in little coffins, and I will feel completely emptied and at peace—as I felt after Being and Nothingness . A feeling of emptiness: a writer is fortunate if he can attain such a state. For when one has nothing to say, one can say everything .” 8 This is where our two initial distinctions come to bear on the being-towards-totality as it is expressed in the concrete practice of writing: the first being between parataxis and hypotaxis , and the second being between compilation and selection. Where this second distinction is concerned there is a certain paradox at play given that selection is inescapable, and compilation is unachievable. Selection is inescapable (with the figure of the Compendium in mind) because, even when the imperative to compile is followed to excruciating lengths, selection still has the last word. This is why the Compendium is a figure rather than some material thing that can actually be accomplished or actualized. No matter how far one goes along with the will-to-archive and the will-to-compile, it is only ever a question of minimizing selection and never eliminating it. This leads to the second point, which is that total compilation is unachievable. The closest thing to total compilation that we have before us is the ontological and textual fabric of the world. Even in the case of the world, compilation cannot be enacted in a total fashion because of the need to include both the sphere of the actual and the sphere of the possible or potential. This as another way in which compilation is always-already selection, and further evidence that total compilation is practically impossible. Discursive Figuration and Total Writing Rather than figuration referring to a figure of speech or an image, here the term points to a way in which to think about the work of writing, both the work put into writing, and the work that is the result of writing: the finished yet incomplete final piece. As figures or figurations, the Book and the Compendium are ways of thinking about the work of writing and the human desire for the wholeness, completion, and fulfillment that are made manifest in the completed form of the book (whether a published or printed or saved document put to rest by the author). These two figures bear more strongly upon works that seek to be all-encompassing, and works that strive towards expressions of totality such as the One, the Whole, or the All. Moving on to the topic of the subtitle, and on a more prescriptive note, I would say that there is more hope for theory-writing to be found in parataxis than hypotaxis . Part of the reason for this claim is the poststructuralist critique of hierarchies, and yet another part is the compelling line of thinking called “weak thought” (in theology by John D. Caputo, and in philosophy by Gianni Vattimo, among others). 9 The consequences of these two convictions are such that if one is to strongly assert the truth of a grand theory without leaving the realm of hierarchy-critique and weak thought, then one must write paradoxically with parataxis in mind, and in so doing write weakly and non-hierarchically. This does not mean avoiding a sort of topography or topology when writing theory, rather it means avoiding both subjugation and oppression in thought by pursuing a nonviolent sort of ontology. In order to do this, theory writing does not present itself as an exercise in logical analysis where one mechanically moves from a set of premises (via contingency) to the inevitable conclusion (via necessity). Instead, theory approaches the idea of a Compendium. Given that the figural Compendium places parataxis and compilation above hypotaxis and selection, then the question becomes: is placing one part of a binary term before another not just another way of selecting, or another expression of hypotaxis ? Counter to the urge to resign oneself to the reign of selection, with some qualification one can nonetheless write without deciding whether selection and hypotaxis should be subservient to compilation and parataxis (which is to say that writing-without-decision is somewhere between and beyond possibility and impossibility). This dilemma can be disarmed by stating that theory writing is not about primacy, and not about having-decided-beforehand, both stylistically and also where content is concerned. This is the paradox of writing: always striving along a trajectory ( telos ) towards totality via parataxis and compilation, but always being drawn back to finitude and making selections, and placing one idea before another with hypotaxis in mind. In light of this paradox, the question of the Compendium as a figure for discourse and a figural Book has resonance with Jacques Derrida’s essay on Edmund Jabès’ Book of Questions , found in his Writing and Difference . The Question of the Book “Little by little the book will finish me.” 10 Derrida quotes Jabès, and proceeds to outline the reflexive relationship between the author of the book and the book itself, each of which are subjected to the other through a sort of chiasmus, both ontological and textual (not that the two are entirely separable). The Book, for Derrida like Blanchot in the introductory quotation, “infinitely reflects itself” and “develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility”, and in light of this we can draw an association with the painful tension between the practical reality of selection and the ideal trajectory of compilation. 11 This tension in writing, between the will to total compilation and the necessity of abridgment, is an ontological tension between part and whole just as it is a textual tension between signifier and signified. The ontological tension in writing that Derrida expresses in his essay on Jabès is between everything and nothing – a contradiction which Derrida finds in Jabès’ Book of Questions and also in the divine, in God. When one writes between compilation and selection one writes towards totality, and here we can follow Derrida who states that the lapse in signification, presumably in the signifier-signified discrepancy, is a “ rupture with totality itself” and furthermore that this lapse cannot be rectified through deductive reason or even philosophical discourse. 12 This rupture with totality, found in the troubled relation between signifier and signified, can also tell us a lot about the Book and about writing. Given an understanding of writing as an ontological act that strives towards (but never accomplishes) totality, we can see the written book as the manifested and given body of that striving. Perhaps in other disciplines or even other schools of philosophy there is a cultural climate within which the article is prized above the book, but I am fairly confident, especially when referring to the grand theories of Continental thought, that there is a respect for the book as a uniquely meaningful object capable of apprehending totality. Derrida writes, Between the too warm flesh of the literal event and the cold skin of the concept runs meaning. This is how it enters into the book. Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This is why the book is never finite. It always remains suffering and vigilant. 13 Here the vitality of the literal event is compromised by the deadening weight of the concept, and the figure of the Book assists in this lapse of meaning. The Book is a totalizing object, much like the figure of the Compendium, and yet this totalization lacks its final object of completed totality both because the figural Book is necessarily incomplete, and because the physical book is always-already a product of selection. Instead of achieving its end of being a place where everything takes place, it suffers from the lapse of writing, the discrepancy between event and concept. Derrida continues his exposition on Jabès by bringing to light yet another reflexive relation, a reversal of the relationship between the Book and the world. Derrida writes that, for Jabès, “the book is not in the world, but the world is in the book.” 14 In addition to what was stated before, I take figuration to mean that the concepts employed, such as the Book or the Compendium, are not subject to the supposed rigor of analysis that is so prized by Enlightenment or Capitalist realisms. The figure of the Book and the figure of the Compendium cannot be held accountable to standards imported from scientific method, given an understanding that these standards require a concept to be replicable, consistent, falsifiable, measurable, and so on… This is an important point to make, especially in the present atmosphere within which theory must justify itself under conditions that are not its own. Instead of being held to these standards, figuration serves as a way in which to think about writing that leaves thought open to idealistic speculation, imperfect analogies, and most importantly the ever-present gain and loss that occur in the relationship between thought and being. By extension the figural way of addressing writing indulges in enough generalization to accommodate the excess/lack relationship between the ideal form of the Book or the Compendium, and the manifested and given body of a text (as it is practically completed and closed). Here we speak against the hostile atmosphere which would have theory submit itself to hierarchical rigor, rather than Blanchot’s “enigmatic rigor”, by being explicit about the discursive conditions and epistemic conditions under which theory operates. To write with parataxis in mind is, to a certain degree, to write with weakness as one’s methodology (with weak thought being in opposition to hypotaxis and hierarchy as much as weak thought can be in opposition to anything). Rather than asserting the strength of hierarchical theory, and rather than employing antagonistic argumentation with the goal of refutation different discursive and epistemic conditions for theory writing must be cultivated (and these are by no means new). First the critical and theoretical spirit reveals itself as being concerned with the task of complication—especially the complication and critique of binaries, dichotomies, dualities, polarities, paradoxes, parallaxes, hybridities, and especially antinomies. Second, theory positions itself as a sort of showing or revealing, rather than being ultimately focused on coming to full agreement or disagreement. This is where figuration can help theory-writing, both by placing emphasis on teleologies and trajectories (like parataxis and compilation), and by shifting focus away from pure primacy, power, or absolute origin. Figuration then, assists theory writing by placing the concern of theory outside of the concerns of the hard or soft sciences, and into the realm of thought or the idea. To speak of ‘the’ Compendium or ‘the’ Book, here, is to generalize not regarding the perfect form of the Compendium or Book, but to engage speculatively with an abstract idea which remains singular and yet complicated by multiplicity. The question of the Book that Derrida asks through Jabès is a question of everything and nothing, totality and nonbeing, and this question is a concern for writing and a concern for the figure of the Compendium so defined by the tension between compilation and selection, and parataxis and hypotaxis . On the note of nonbeing, we can look to the final page of Derrida’s first essay on Jabès in Writing and Difference and notice the introduction of his neologism, différance (with an ‘a’). Derrida writes: Life negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself, and writes itself as différance . Books are always books of life (the archetype would be the Book of Life kept by the God of the Jews) or of afterlife (the archetype would be the Books of the Dead kept by the Egyptians). 15 This introduction of différance into the equation of the Book, alongside ontological affirmation and negation, hearkens back to the discussion of the symbolic lapse earlier in his essay. Differing and deferring, the Book is always a Book of Life and a figure for the intersection of the vital (life) and the total in writing. In a way, the writer of the Book may be someone who lives life, and in another way the writer of the book-as-object may be someone who engages in the act of writing, both practically (by inscribing words on paper, or typing script on a computer) and ontologically or symbolically (by investing their existence and inexistence into a work worthy of the figural Book). In addition to the writer as writer, the writer also serves as an editor, and the editorial role alongside the idea of the Compendium shows the editor to be one who collects and compiles, while being restrained by eventual selection and decision. Beyond this the editor of works and texts, in both the Book and the world, is engaged in a process of inscribing notation—of annotating (on) the Compendium. Eternal commentary is a feature of the textual Compendium, just as open-ended totality describes the ontological Compendium. The writer as writer does not simply write texts, but rather engages in a profoundly ontological act of inscribing their existence into the world, and the writer as editor does not merely annotate or alter texts as they are, but rather comments upon the text of the world. In/Conclusion So as we create texts, and as we write and create theory, let us be and remain attentive to the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book. These two concurrent metonymies are essential for total writing (grand theories, etc.), and may be forgettable for those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing (which are valid in their own right). From the ontological and symbolic text of the world and phenomenological experience, to concrete texts such as books or mixed media, the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book are important for the actualization of the human will to be all-encompassing. The figure of the Compendium teaches writers of theory that the repetition, density, and fragility of parataxis offers a strong sort of weakness which does not become yet another variety of oppressive and hegemonic thought. Rather than write with hypotaxis in mind, subjugating one thought to another via cause and effect or antecedent and consequent, I would hope that theory-writing could guiltlessly indulge in the dialectical and contradictory conjugation of ideas, and take this as a legitimate methodology. Rather than being ashamed of showing resonances or giving way to abridgment or ellipses, it is my own authorial (but not authoritative) conviction that one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the fact that complete totalization is impossible, and one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the worry of violence, for the Book and the Compendium lack their completed object and are ever incomplete trajectories. NOTES * UPDATED 7/19/13: we've updated the HTML version to reflect the (correct) PDF version. Our apologies to the author—eds. 1. I would like extend thanks to Dr. Peter Schwenger of the University of Western Ontario for his comments on this paper and his hospitality as it was presented as a Theory Session at the Centre for Theory and Criticism on October 26th 2012. I would also like to thank Andrew Weiss for conversation and critique. 2. I should clarify my use of the term ‘figure’ at the outset. Given the use of the term by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Discourse, Figure (and also Gilles Deleuze in Francis Bacon ), I should state clearly that my use of the term will not correspond to the term ‘figure’ understood as the representation of an object. Instead, my use of the term ‘figure’ and its variations (‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘figuration’) will refer to the illustrative or metaphorical use of the Compendium or the Book as models or ways of thinking about writing and discourse. 3. Cf. Revelations 20:12-15. 4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London & New York: Continuum Press, 1997). 5. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990), ix-x. 6. I have written about this concept of being-towards-totality elsewhere in two pieces of writing: the first is called Notes on the Compendium (an unfinished draft) which addresses some very wide theoretical concerns, being structured as a sort of itinerary or archive, and the second is Dialectics Unbound (Punctum Books, 2013) which outlines a concept of totality without the violence of totalization. While these works are more concerned with ontological totality, here I would like to focus on the idea of the Compendium as a textual totality. 7. Cf. Louis Morelle, “Speculative Realism: After Finitude and Beyond, A vade mecum” in Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism . Issue 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012), 241-272. 8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism . Trans. John Matthews (London & New York: Verso, 1974), 9. 9. Cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). 10. Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” in Writing and Difference . Trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 65. 11. Ibid, 65. 12. Ibid, 71. 13. Ibid, 75. 14. Ibid, 76. 15. Ibid, 78. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.1 (2006) 149-179 [Access article in PDF] The Problem of "Misplaced Ideas" Revisited: Beyond the "History of Ideas" in Latin America Elías José Palti Universidad Nacional de Quilmes—CONICET The change that has come over this branch of historiography in the past two decades may be characterized as a movement away from emphasizing history of thought (and even more sharply, "of ideas") toward (...) emphasizing something rather different, for which "history of speech" or "history of discourse," if not unproblematic or irreproachable, may be the best terminology so far found J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History1In 1973, Roberto Schwarz published a paper that profoundly marked a generation of thinkers in Latin America: "As idéias fora do lugar" ("Misplaced Ideas").2 It was originally intended to provide a theoretical framework for "progressivist" authors to counter the influence of nationalistic tendencies that, in the 1960s and 1970s, were particularly noticeable among the leftist political organizations.3 Yet, the concept of "misplaced [End Page 149] ideas" soon proved especially productive for theorizing the problematic development of ideas in Latin American history. Schwarz's text thus became the fundamental point of reference for those in the field who intended to question the hitherto predominant paradigms in cultural and literary critique, which were mostly inspired by the Romantic-nationalistic tradition. Notwithstanding, a quarter of a century later, Schwarz's original contribution in this regard needs to be reassessed. In the course of the last twenty-five years, the apparent loss of the national states' centrality helped to reveal the inherent complexity of the processes of cultural exchange hidden behind a perspective that still tended to conceive of them exclusively in terms of inter-national relationships. Furthermore, a series of new developments in the disciplines specifically dedicated to analyzing those kinds of exchange processes compels us to reconsider some of the implicit assumptions in Schwarz's concept and reformulate it.The object of this paper is to explore, in the light of the new realities of the last fin-de-siècle, new perspectives regarding the dynamic of ideas and cultural exchange in peripheral areas (of which Latin American is only a particular case), utilizing the new conceptual tools provided by the recently developed disciplines and theories in the field. Ultimately, the present work intends to raise a broader, epistemological, issue, whose relevance exceeds the local context. As it shows, the shortcomings in Schwarz's theory spring from a crude linguistic view, which is inherent in the "history of ideas," that reduces language exclusively to its referential function. A more precise distinction of the different levels of language will thus help to reveal aspects and problems that Schwarz's perspective obliterates. Yet, as this paper also intends to demonstrate, Schwarz's original intellectual project may be disentangled from its linguistic premises and recovered for cultural critique. Applied in a new way, it can still provide a theoretical framework to comprehend the intricacies of the processes of cultural exchange, and, more specifically, the problematic dynamics of ideas in Latin America that Schwarz intended to analyze. On Places and Non-Places of Ideas In order to understand the sense of Schwarz's notion of "misplaced ideas" we must place it within the conceptual framework in which it emerged. With it, Schwarz aimed to translate into a cultural key the postulates of the so-called "dependency theory," the core of which took shape in the "Seminar [End Page 150] on Marx," organized in São Paulo in the early 1960s (and in which Schwarz participated). As is well known, that theory intended to refute the "dualistic" approaches that viewed the peripheral areas as vestiges of a precapitalistic world that tends historically to disappear. The nations in this area would thus replicate the same pattern of linear development of central countries. On the contrary, dependency theory postulated the existence of a complex dynamic between the center and the periphery, the two representing instances inherent in capitalist development, thus forming a single, interconnected system. According to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ernst Cassirer, Historian of the WillDavid A. Wisner‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper, which must form a Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ‘tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and a Resolution which must compleate the real Philosopher. 1In order to possess the world of culture we must incessantly reconquer it by historical recollection. But recollection does not mean merely the act of reproduction. It (...) is a new intellectual synthesis—a constructive act.... History is not knowledge of external facts or events; it is a form... an organon of our self-knowledge, an indispensable instrument for building up our human universe. 2Ernst Cassirer is probably best known to historians of ideas for his work on the problem of knowledge, which began with a neo-Kantian historical analysis of epistemological questions and culminated in the philosophy of symbolic forms. As he himself always admitted, even in his last public writings, this focus on epistemology was the foundation of his philosophical interests. Yet by the last two decades of his life he had in true Socratic fashion endowed his investigations with heightened emphasis. “That self-knowledge is the highest aim of philosophical inquiry,” he wrote in the opening lines of An Essay on Man, “appears to be generally acknowledged.” 3 Cassirer perceived, however, [End Page 145] that the need for such an effort to be made had reached monumentally critical proportions: the early twentieth century had engendered grave historical and philosophical crises which threatened to reverse the progress of modern thought. Paradoxically, modern philosophy had many tools for attaining “knowledge of human nature” and yet stood farther from its goal than ever before. What Cassirer called “anthropological philosophy,” concerned as it was “with the whole destiny of man,” still required special consideration, in both its theoretical and its historical dimensions. 4 It was essentially to these twin domains that Cassirer would devote himself in his later years.The transformation of Cassirer’s philosophical perspectives thus had two facets. In order to outline his program Cassirer had first to consider a broader range of human activities than thought alone, from which he concluded that human culture consisted of a hierarchy of symbolic forms beginning with myth and culminating in science. However, he also felt compelled to elucidate the historical process by which these symbolic forms could progressively manifest themselves, and more specifically the individual human effort which was required for true self-knowledge. This he did principally in his historical works of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and with particularly profound results: from a historian of knowledge Cassirer became a historian of the will; from an epistemologist he became an ethical thinker; from an academic he became an exemplar of self-conscious moral action, a paragon of human autonomy and freedom. Indeed, in this endeavor he proved to be more thoroughly and fundamentally a Kantian than ever his theory of knowledge would reveal.I would go so far as to suggest that Cassirer’s history of the will was an integral part of his mature constructive philosophy. On the surface this history can be restated in the following terms. First, Cassirer insists on a fundamental opposition between the rationalism and intellectualism of ancient Greek philosophy and the voluntarism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, both of which represent in Cassirer’s view manifestations of a struggle in Western thought continuing well into the twentieth century. Second, he suggests that the historical task of Western philosophy since the first mature articulation of Latin Christian theology by Saint Augustine has been to liberate the individual human will from any and all forms of subservience. Such views are most forcefully expressed in The Myth of the State, Cassirer’s last book, but they actually constitute an essential and coherent element in all of Cassirer’s later work on the history of ideas and culture. Indeed, Cassirer’s history of the will provides us with a particularly keen and nuanced account of this essential Western legacy, while at the same time reading into it in Kantian manner a moral for the life of the individual human being. [End Page 146]In making such claims I am situating myself among... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.1 (2006) 149-179 [Access article in PDF] The Problem of "Misplaced Ideas" Revisited: Beyond the "History of Ideas" in Latin America Elías José Palti Universidad Nacional de Quilmes—CONICET The change that has come over this branch of historiography in the past two decades may be characterized as a movement away from emphasizing history of thought (and even more sharply, "of ideas") toward (...) emphasizing something rather different, for which "history of speech" or "history of discourse," if not unproblematic or irreproachable, may be the best terminology so far found J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History1In 1973, Roberto Schwarz published a paper that profoundly marked a generation of thinkers in Latin America: "As idéias fora do lugar" ("Misplaced Ideas").2 It was originally intended to provide a theoretical framework for "progressivist" authors to counter the influence of nationalistic tendencies that, in the 1960s and 1970s, were particularly noticeable among the leftist political organizations.3 Yet, the concept of "misplaced [End Page 149] ideas" soon proved especially productive for theorizing the problematic development of ideas in Latin American history. Schwarz's text thus became the fundamental point of reference for those in the field who intended to question the hitherto predominant paradigms in cultural and literary critique, which were mostly inspired by the Romantic-nationalistic tradition. Notwithstanding, a quarter of a century later, Schwarz's original contribution in this regard needs to be reassessed. In the course of the last twenty-five years, the apparent loss of the national states' centrality helped to reveal the inherent complexity of the processes of cultural exchange hidden behind a perspective that still tended to conceive of them exclusively in terms of inter-national relationships. Furthermore, a series of new developments in the disciplines specifically dedicated to analyzing those kinds of exchange processes compels us to reconsider some of the implicit assumptions in Schwarz's concept and reformulate it.The object of this paper is to explore, in the light of the new realities of the last fin-de-siècle, new perspectives regarding the dynamic of ideas and cultural exchange in peripheral areas (of which Latin American is only a particular case), utilizing the new conceptual tools provided by the recently developed disciplines and theories in the field. Ultimately, the present work intends to raise a broader, epistemological, issue, whose relevance exceeds the local context. As it shows, the shortcomings in Schwarz's theory spring from a crude linguistic view, which is inherent in the "history of ideas," that reduces language exclusively to its referential function. A more precise distinction of the different levels of language will thus help to reveal aspects and problems that Schwarz's perspective obliterates. Yet, as this paper also intends to demonstrate, Schwarz's original intellectual project may be disentangled from its linguistic premises and recovered for cultural critique. Applied in a new way, it can still provide a theoretical framework to comprehend the intricacies of the processes of cultural exchange, and, more specifically, the problematic dynamics of ideas in Latin America that Schwarz intended to analyze. On Places and Non-Places of Ideas In order to understand the sense of Schwarz's notion of "misplaced ideas" we must place it within the conceptual framework in which it emerged. With it, Schwarz aimed to translate into a cultural key the postulates of the so-called "dependency theory," the core of which took shape in the "Seminar [End Page 150] on Marx," organized in São Paulo in the early 1960s (and in which Schwarz participated). As is well known, that theory intended to refute the "dualistic" approaches that viewed the peripheral areas as vestiges of a precapitalistic world that tends historically to disappear. The nations in this area would thus replicate the same pattern of linear development of central countries. On the contrary, dependency theory postulated the existence of a complex dynamic between the center and the periphery, the two representing instances inherent in capitalist development, thus forming a single, interconnected system. According to... (shrink)

The faith in progress that propelled the West for over four centuries is in decline due to its own success. The emergence of capitalism with its novel market imperatives has created both the poverty that causes political crises and the material growth that has destabilized the Earth’s climate. There is a growing sense that we are dominated by the technologies and social organizations that we hoped would liberate us. Individualism and secularity have left people feeling isolated and without a (...) sense of higher purpose, leading some to reject Enlightenment values in favor of traditionalisms and even neofascism. In universities, faculty struggle to prove their utility and relevance, because they cannot guarantee their graduates a decent living in a world of automation and globalized production. As a result of these trends, the West’s ability to produce responsible citizens is in question. Our students are largely inured to appeals to transcendent values because they are urged to be “practical.” Faculty are no longer encouraged to care about the character-building nature of a liberal education. United States universities are in danger of not having an independent voice, as those departments that can consistently get major external funding seek commercial applications for the products of their research. In the United States, ideologically based harassment and censorship of unpopular ideas takes place regularly and is a major deterrent to pursuing a career in higher education. Given these challenges, can intellectuals still make a difference in universities? Many have taken to social media and other ways of getting their ideas around the increasingly steep paywalls of academic publications and the de facto censorship in their institutions. Some of the most vibrant exchanges of ideas are now happening in other places, largely online. These venues draw in people who are trying their best to learn something they are unlikely to learn at universities. But are such alternatives truly sustainable or good enough? Higher education is at a crossroads in which even this “retreat and regroup” strategy is highly problematic. (shrink)

Mirrors for princes, in general, give advices to the rulers about the subtleties of political art. Another aim of these books is to define and explain the administration of the state and the duties of rulers based on experience. In consequence of this they reflect the practical ethics of the period in which they were written. As such, they resemble practical handbooks written for rulers. Another point regarding the mirrors for princes works in which the political understanding of the era (...) can be observed is that they generally use sacred texts in order to prove the political legitimacy or invalidity of the power, as well as the rightfulness or the unlawfulness of the claims to the throne. Evidences from the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth literature was almost always used to support such advocated opinions. In fact, during the Middle Ages when religion and politics were considered coupled, it was unthinkable that religious elements should not be included in the works of state administration. The important point here is that the verses and ḥadīths were sometimes removed from their contexts and interpreted and explained in a way to support the ideology of the author or the ruler whom the author presented his work. In this study, we will try to reveal the subjects in which the verses and ḥadīths used in the mirrors for princes, which is a genre that has emerged within the Islamic culture and civilization. Thus, we aim to prepare a background for the future studies, which will focus on a specific verse or ḥadīth.Summary: The first political splits in Islamic history occurred immediately after the death of prophet Muḥammad. These differences were resolved by the agreement of the majority of Muslims on Abu Bakr's name. Until the second half of the rule of the third caliph ʿUthmān, Muslims came together around the unifying power of the idea of conquest. Nevertheless, substantially as a result of economically based problems the period of tranquility in Islamic society came to an end and was replaced by disputes. Disputes turned into conflict and ultimately seperation fused with the massacre of ʿUthmān in the capital Medina turned into a big fire with the Battles of the Camel and Ṣiffīn, the emergence of Khārijīs, the formation of the Shia and the deepening of the intellectual divisions after the all of these. Islamic history has witnessed a clash of different religious views and beliefs. along with deepening of intellectual disagreements as a result of political debatesIn the Islamic political thought, especially the first two centuries process was formed around the views of the jurists, muḥaddiths and theologians. The first sources used by those who tried to justify their opinion in the differences of opinion experienced during this period were the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature which Muslims accepted as the determining factor in all their acts. The views based on the Qur'an and the hadiths, which are the two main sources of Islamic religion, had been used to influence the people, legitimize the actions and refute the claims of the opponents. On the other hand the sort who gave direction to political thought changed and political thought adhered a new path with Turks and Persians served as bureaucrats and soldiers and took an active position in the state. Especially Persians carried the culture of advice to Islamic thought, which is the product of both Greek and Hind civilization. Such books had brought in the İslamic society with translation movements began in the Umayyad period and peaked with the Bayt al-Ḥikma in the Abbasid period. Together with these books, the ideas of these civilizations on ideal state administration, politics and morality were recognized by Muslim scholars.These type of works, which are famous in terms of Islamic thought as mirrors for princes, have been written by Muslim scholars since the middle of the eighth century. Mirrors for princes are political, moral and religious content books that gives the rulers practical advice to maintain their power in accordance with the religious orders and prohibitions, and to the consent of Allāh’s who grant them this authority and people which appointed for their administration. Mirrors for princes are mostly theoretical books since they are mostly focused on what should be. In addition, since they are written for names that currently hold power, they are centered on how the rulers can maintain and increase their power and with which practices the state will maintain its existence for a longer period. The basic point of political thought and political interpretation are concepts and definitions. When the concept meaning of a word is mentioned, it is generally considered that there is a general definition. However, the concepts reflect the meaning that the user assigns to him in the context of his thoughts, perceptions, criticisms, explanations and analyzes. Concepts such as fair, honest, brave, hero, beautiful, rich, good and clean express what the person imposes on the meaning. In other words, everyone’s experience determines the content of the concept so far. The meaning of the concepts varies with the age and its user of that concept. Even concepts such as justice, merit and consultation can change meaning in different periods and geographies. The concepts, which are often used to facilitate understanding, are sometimes used to judge, to mold or mislead the interlocutor. In this context, it is imperative to enter the mind of the user in order to make concept analysis.In Islamic civilization, the principles of management are explained with concepts. The idiosyncrasies that Muslims expect from an ideal ruler are defined as justice, consultation, merit, trust and legitimacy and a broad corpus has been written about the concepts related to the administration, especially those mentioned. One type of this corpus is mirrors for princes.In Islamic history, there are many Mirrors for princes who are written in different time periods by names coming from different geographies and different backgrounds. Although the advice given in Mirrors for princes indicate a great similarity to each other, the preferred arguments and examples in the foundation of the counsel are different. While the persons in active politics mostly based their opinions on political arguments, scholars with scientific tradition supported their advices with religious arguments.Verses are the leading religious elements highlighted in Mirrors for princes. While explaining the concepts and emphasizing the importance of the advices, many verses have been exploited. Some verses are used only by one author, while some verses are the subject of their work by many authors. In the same way, ḥadīths and the sentences accepted as ḥadīths were also used to reinforce the emphasis and meaning. At this point, sometimes the context of the verses and ḥadīths were not taken care of. In this study, we aim to address the use of religious elements.In the literature, different opinions have emerged about who is ülü’l-emr and the limits of obedience to ülü’l-emr that used describe the names of senior executives and leaders of society. The reason for the difference is that each sect or religious school provides an interpretation on the basis of grounding its own views in explaining the verse. Justice is the most emphasized concept among the advices given to the rulers in mirrors for princes. Justice, which is shown as the most important feature of a sovereign, has been regarded as extremely important for the state to existences until the Doomsday. In addition, justice has been described as the most important condition for the maintenance of the state/sovereign authority. Consultation was important to make the right decision.Verses and ḥadīths were used in the explanations about the personal characteristics of the sovereign. Some features such as being compassionate, keeping promise, controlling anger, patience, honesty, blessing, extravagance, self-esteem, break a promise, revoke a promise and arrogance have become the subject of politics. When the mirrors for princes are considered as a whole, it is seen that religion and state are considered as inseparable twin brothers, taken one step further the understanding that accepts religion and the world as brothers especially is a product of the old Persian tradition. In this understanding, religion was accepted as the root and was given the duty of its patronage to political authority. It is seen that in the Mirrors for princes verses and ḥadīths hold a significant amount. As the reason for this can be said that along with religion takes place on the basis of morality, the authors of the Mirrors for princes, which put deep meanings on the relationship between religion and the state in the period that we are dealing with, consider both institutions to be complementary and integrative. (shrink)

In the current era of accountability, standardization has become the norm. From state mandated standards to district scripted curriculum, the individual child has been lost at the hands of removed politicians and administrators. Teachers have lost the freedom to individualize their classrooms to meet the needs of their students, and instead they contribute daily to the mass production line that we call "American education." As a result of No Child Left Behind, education now lacks the element of personalization necessary (...) to create meaningful learning experiences for students. There is currently a dire need for reform that revisits a child-centered approach to teaching and learning, as suggested by philosopher John .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symbolic Classification and The Emergence of a Metaphysics of CausalityOwen Goldinwhat is distinctive about metaphysics as a mode of thought that emerged in the fifth century before the Common Era? How did it emerge out of early ways of conceptualizing the world as a whole, and why? Many answers have been proposed. One common view is that earlier modes of thought personify natural agencies; once this is abandoned, (...) the way is open for discerning more complex regularities among natural events.1 Another view is that the process of "rationalization" introduced by the Greeks involves an implicit appeal to the individual's natural intelligence, in contrast to a dependence on an "inherited stock of wisdom."2 A third view is that the first Greek philosophers introduced inference as a way of navigating conceptual relationships, independent of the sorts of personal interactions among divinities related in mythical narrative.3 According to a fourth account, the mode of rationality that allowed for the development of ancient Greek metaphysics was a social [End Page 3] practice with the aim of persuasion, brought on by more democratic involvement in societal deliberations concerning law and policy.4To these I add a fifth way of answering the question. Crucial to the emergence of Greek metaphysics is explicit distinction of ontological/causal priority and posteriority. Ancient Greek scientific explanations developed out of older, archaic modes of conceptualization, which I maintain have deep parallels with modes of conceptualization shared by many nonliterate cultures. Such modes of thought rest on an implicit worldview which can be called a metaphysics, in a loose sense, and are still worthy of philosophical consideration.I begin with a red flag that will be raised for many as soon as we start talking about the metaphysical traditions of nonliterate cultures. What counts as a metaphysical tradition? I make some distinctions. In the loosest sense, an account or tradition is metaphysical if it reflects a coherent worldview concerning the kinds of beings that there are and how they are related to one another. According to a stricter sense of the term, a tradition is metaphysical if it involves working through this worldview in an explicit and systematic matter. In an even stricter sense, a tradition is metaphysical if, in addition to being explicit and systematic, it merits being classified as "philosophical," itself not an unproblematic term. I here stipulate that an account is philosophical if it does not rest on premises that are specific to certain cultural traditions and employs inferential arguments that are in principle subject to refutation.Generally speaking, there are two ways in which a tradition that is metaphysical in the strictest sense can listen to one that is metaphysical in a looser sense. First, a metaphysician might examine the latter tradition in order to explore how, historically, it served as the root for the former. An example is Aristotle's interest in Hesiod as expressing metaphysical intuitions that later philosophers unpacked.5 By studying [End Page 4] the ontological presuppositions of the sort of account from which our own metaphysics is derived, one learns more about our own ontological presuppositions and what we gain from them.6 This sort of dialogue carries with it the danger that the later thinker presupposes that—in the spirit of "you have to start somewhere"—the earlier thinkers were simply doing a bad job working through their own theories; Aristotle has often been accused of precisely this.7Another sort of dialogue is possible as well. An alternative metaphysical tradition can reveal the possibility of a radically different way of conceptualizing the causal and ontological structure of the world, one with its own advantages. In such a case there is shared set of problems at issue, shared points of reference within the philosophical literature, and a shared understanding of what philosophical argument is. But philosophical insight might also emerge from the kind of dialogue in which a developed metaphysics that conforms to certain standards of inferential argument confronts a way of thinking that is metaphysical in a looser sense. A substance-based ontologist can be led to reflect on whether the world has to be cut up as she does by studying Aztec... (shrink)

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into (...) American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines. (shrink)

Purpose. The aim of the article is to clarify the content of the concept of culture as an explication of vitality within the philosophy of life and its further modifications in current problems of contemporary. The analysis performed standing from the point, that contrasting of nature and culture is irrelevant, since culture does not contradict natural determinants and patterns, but rather qualitatively alters them. So, are justified the idea of culture as a phenomenon that exist accordingly and in proportion (...) to nature, need to form its potential and content and not contradict the axioms and values of life. Theoretical basis. In the theoretical field of philosophy of life, the local development of the problem of culture as an explication of vitality produces grounds for analytical and prognostic activity concerning meaningful transformations in a separate historical and social horizon. The fundamental categories of culture: spirit, value, symbol, freedom, justice and harmony receive the requested content and meaning. The idea of the constancy and super-naturality of cultural universals is illusory and dangerous. The consequences of such a "non-cosmological" justification of freedom and will, and the assertion of values, that contradict the logic of life, are the global environmental, economic and social crisis of our time. Originality. The originality of the authors’ thought lies in the interpretation of the essence of culture as an explication of vitality, as a logical and natural extension of life. In this formulation of the problem of culture, the possibility of reconciling the natural, social and value determinants of human life is formed. Theorists of the philosophy of life substantiated the primacy and supremacy of the values of life over the values and meanings of culture. The position of authors position consists in the need to understand culture as an environmentally appropriate and dimensional phenomenon, the content and strategies of which are determined by a single ontology. Conclusions. The analysis let authors understand the voluntarily chaotic element of life. Culture in its philosophical analysis took on a clearer anthropomorphic dimension: the immanent logic of being in substantiating the essence and purpose of man and the value of his being localized the universe of transcendence in the concept of "living world", "inhabited space", "human, too human". Accordingly, the range of cultural evaluations has been polarized: from the approving statement of its vital essence, to the disparaging calls for its reform. The chaotic state of voluntarily acts is transformed into cultural codes and stereotypes by rationalization. The modern global nature of crisis phenomena, both in the worldview, in the social, and in the ecological dimension, requires reformatting the understanding of culture as a continuation of nature, and not its antipode. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is aimed to reveal the essence of the eternal problem, comprehended by Augustine Aurelius in the culture of the early Middle Ages – the focus of the value orientations of the anthropological search. Theoretical basis. Only in the twentieth century, various aspects of Augustine’s creative legacy became the subject of scientific research by many authors. As the direction of their scientific research, the problem of the relationship of reason, faith, knowledge, which has risen sharply in (...) medieval Christian culture, has been considered. The logical outcome of these studies was the assertion that for Augustine Platonism was the main of the philosophical teachings of antiquity; that Augustine, being in line with Christian philosophy, considered the understanding of the aesthetic perfection of the Divine creation of the world as the sense of human life. The analysis of their works gives reason to argue that the definition of the human essence – the Augustine’s anthropological problems, was practically not addressed by representatives of domestic and foreign philosophical thought, and therefore remained undiscovered. Originality. The authors have proved that the definition of the human essence by Augustine is in the correlation with his answers to questions about the nature of the origin of man, about the secrets of being, etc. The ethical ideal of the thinker has been revealed, which is systematically formed in his works. Conclusions. The thesis has been substantiated that the anthropological views of Augustine Aurelius are in correlation with his epistemological judgments. Only by knowing the order of things in the universe, determined by the will of the Lord, we will know also the order of our value orientations. The basis of the philosophical comprehension of the human essence by Augustine Aurelius is a series of questions that constantly arise before mankind – about the nature of its appearance, about the secrets of human existence, the sense of life, death and immortality, etc. The ethical ideal of the thinker is an eternal city that is not based on human nature, it is too volatile, therefore it is only to a small extent subject to research, but on a Divine basis – the Christian idea. (shrink)

Anthropologists have tended to treat dreams as private fantasies arising from restless libidos struggling with reality. In this view, the dreamer is a victim of what she or he does not want, the intentions of the dreamer, and dreamed of, are often confused or illusory, and what happens in the dream is subj ect to a more primary, more objective, waking reality.The Barok people of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, define dreams as both sleeping and waking experiences. Their dreams are (...) expressions of spiritually powerful persons who deal with a spiritual reality.In waking and real, but substantially dreamlike experiences such as one I describe in this paper, the desires and intents of all involved were perceived as wild possibilities. In the three sleeping dreams that I describe, the desires and intents of the dreamers were true, clearly expressed, and effective in creating or foretelling reality.Describing such subjective and willful experiences entails personal and professional risk. But toward understanding what happened, I undertake this in personally revealing terms, and I recommend Barok and other Native perspectives for the light they shed on dreams and reality.Social science has, for the most part, left dream analysis to the psychologists, and dreaming experiences to "the natives.” People educated in modern European traditions, and especially in academe, learn to not talk plainly or too much about their more subjective experiences or awarenesses, e.g, sex, emotions, and dreams. This applies not only to our lives as fieldworkers, but to our private lives in Western culture.Even recent publications1 still define dreams as a softer and more subjective, or even false, too private, in contrast to the harder and more objective, true reality of waking life (see Tedlock 1987). From this perspective, the accepted truth of there being an objective, socially defined, wakeful reality is not seriously called into question.Fieldwork experiences have shown me different distinctions between dreaming and not‐dreaming realities. I have learned to both expect and get more from dreams. I did not seek nor intentionally precipitate these experiences. They were a congruent part of my learning during four different periods of fieldwork.These experiences suggest a link between the ambiguity of intent in western style, non‐Native2 dreamers, and a lack of creative power. This contrasts with the clarity in the intent of Native style dreamers, and a real creative power.This link short‐circuits conventional academic distinctions between dreaming and waking experiences. For this reason, people like myself have not paid attention to these kinds of field experiences, much less written them up. We fear being disbelieved and discredited. Treating dreams on a comparable footing with objective reality is tantamount to "going native.”3 As Katherine Ewing has stated it, the problem is how to believe the Native meaning of dreams in defiance of the taboo against anthropologists' accepting the "temptation to believe" that "the subjects of one's research actually know something about the human condition and an encompassing 'reality'"(Ewing 1994:572).The field experiences I describe here have made me a believer of both the Native version of what happened, and the truth of there being an encompassing (Native) reality.4 They also convinced me of the necessity of trying to deal openly with what I know of the internal, private, libidinous, and willful stuff that is a part of these dreaming experiences. I reveal my own intent, desires, and needs, in both personal and professional terms, in order to lay some of the cards on the table, in order to look at them from both Native and non‐Native perspectives on what happened.I have learned that the difference between dreams and reality is not what it has been made out to be. On the one hand, the conventional definition of reality too strongly limits my ability to talk about my subjective experiences of it. On the other hand, the conventional definition of dreams does not make enough sense of my real experiences.By describing the real, non‐dreaming experience in which my subjective feelings are centered, the problematic issues of my own wakeful intent as a person and as an anthropologist are centered. This allows comparison of what is supposedly the nature of waking reality with what I experienced in the three sleeping dreams (hereafter "sleepdreams") which follow.The first three sleepdreams were experienced when I was living among Barok people at New Ireland, PNG, between 1979 and 1985. The fourth occured at Taumako, Solomon Islands, in 1993. (shrink)

The efforts to prove God's existence in the history of thought have been one of the fundamental problems of philosophy and theology, and even the most important one. The evidences put furword to prove the existence of God constitute the center of philosophy of religion’s problems not only philosophy of religion, but also the disciplines such as theology-kalam and Islamic philosophy are also seriously concerned. When we look at the history of philosophy, it is clear that almost all philosophers are (...) interested in the evidence in favour of and against the existence of God. Especially in recent times, religious experience has often been regarded as evidence of the existence of God. Studies in the field of religious and mystical experience have put forward many arguments concerning the use of religious experience as evidence. However, this study has been limited to experience of sense and pure consciousness claims rather than examining all of these arguments. In this study firstly, the analogy between experience of sense and religious experience will be deal with, and then claims that conciousness can be emptied by a number of methods which are defended by mystics. In addition, it will be tried to defend the opinion that the mystical experiences which are the common point of the two approaches are valid. The main emphasis of the article will be that these arguments can be used as evidence for the existence of God.Summary: Religious experience - which has not been considered as one of the classical evidences regarding the existence of God before being popular by recent studies – is started to be called one of the arguments. The most important reason for not arguing religious experience among the evidences of God’s existence is that it is a personal experience and therefore contains subjective perspectives. However, many researchers, who refuse to accept the criticism raised against religious experience with restricting to subjectivity, emphasized the importance of religious experience by highlighting the objective aspects of such experiences. This emphasis was not only on its significance, but also on the fact that it had a cognitive feature and thus it could provide evidence for the existence of God. The argument of religious experience is generally defined as an effort for demonstrating to existence of God with reference to several feelings such as spiritual experiences of human in face of creator and sacred Being, encounter with God, uniting, and annihilating selfness in Him. The emergence of such efforts, especially after the XVIIIth century, indicates that the history of the evidence does not go back much earlier. However, even if notas evidence, it is possible to extend the traces of religious and mystical experience to the history of religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Considering a great amount of the previous literature focused on religious experience in the West, It is easily seen that such research is still new. The main purpose in addressing such a controversial issue is to make the argument on the religious experience more current and to show whether the religious experience would be able to use as evidence for the existence of God.First title of this study comprises many different claims such as Walter T. Stace’s The Argument from Unanimity Richard Swinburne’s The Principle of Credulity, William P. Alston’s Perceiving God, John Hick’s Experience-as. However, instead of briefly giving out very different claims, the study chooses to focus on two arguments which are less discussed and can be given in more detail. The first is the argument based on the analogy between the religious experience and the sense experience. The fundamental point of this argument is sense experience. With reference to the similarities between the sense experience and the religious experience, it can be argued that religious experience is also cognitive and may function as an evidence for the existence of God. In other words, being perceptual and noetic, namely cognitive, of sense experience is addressed as a similar side of religious experience. Whether it is imaginary or real, eventually, it is necessary for an experience to have an object and being experience of something. Therefore, the religious experience includes the perception of a Transcendent Being that is beyond and in excess of the individual who experiences. Perception of the sense experience will definitely be different from the perception of religious experience. Researchers who think that the five sense organs do not run the perception of Sacred Beings, identified broader and various meanings for the perception. Thereby, in this approach, where the semantic field of perception is expanded, it was contended that human beings were able to perceive the transcendent, eternal, and unlimited God, and this can be explained in the epistemological sense. In order to use religious experiences as an evidence for the existence of God, it is necessary to determine whether such experiences are caused by God rather than something else. This raises the issue of the validity of religious experience. The researchers in this area have propounded various criteria to identify whether religious experience is existed or not. Experiences, which do not meet the criteria, are not considered existed even if they claim to be religious experience.The second is the argument that discusses whether it is possible to suggest an evidence for the existence of God by utilizing pure consciousness events. In general, this argument claims that the consciousness gets clear, and thus, mystic or Sufi experiences the Divine One with pure consciousness by discharging consciousness from all sensual contents and removing it from secular desire and wishes. The argument, which claims the experience of Divine One is direct, therefore uninterpretable, and experienced by pure consciousness, believes clearing the consciousness of mystics from sensual qualities such as seeing, hearing, and tasting. It is stated that it is possible for mystics to empty their sensory images and get rid of them, and thus, their desires and wishes could be lost. Especially, the thinkers who are connected with the philosophy of perennialism and defend this approach, thought that people, who have distinct religion, culture, and beliefs in different parts of the world and in various time periods, had the same experience and considered such experiences were universal by suggesting that this similarity could be called as common essence.Even though the claim which offers that the events of pure consciousness are the same everywhere have been criticized in many respects, the advocates of this approach have argued that the experience has the common essence, but the interpretation is different. This relationship, which was tried to be established between experience and commentary, caused a lot of work for both the thinkers who put forward the claims of pure consciousness and the researchers who opposed it. However, examining the relationship between experience and interpretation requires serious studies in socio-psychological, cultural and religious fields. Therefore, in order not to exceed the limits of the article, the relationship between experience and interpretation is briefly mentioned.While discussing two arguments, the main claims of the arguments were addressed, and the criticisms directed to this argument were not discussed as much as possible. However, some fundamental criticisms have been mentioned shortly for a better understanding of the discussion. Since such western-oriented claims mostly were deployed in a western context, the study excluded the comparison of the claims across different cultures. (shrink)

Ethical beliefs may vary across cultures but there are things that must be valued as preconditions to any cultural practice. Physical and mental abilities vital to believing, valuing and practising a culture are such preconditions and it is always important to protect them. If one is to practise a distinct culture, she must at least have these basic abilities. Access to basic healthcare is one way to ensure that vital abilities are protected. John Rawls argued that access to all-purpose (...) primary goods must be ensured. Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum claim that universal capabilities are what resources are meant to enable. Len Doyal and Ian Gough identify physical health and autonomy as basic needs of every person in every culture. When we disagree on what to prioritize, when resources to satisfy competing demands are scarce, our common needs can provide a point of normative convergence. Need-based rationing, however, has been criticized for being too indeterminate to give guidance for deciding which healthcare services to prioritize and for tending to create a bottomless-pit problem. But there is a difference between needing something (first-order need) and needing to have the ability to need (second-order need). Even if we disagree about which first-order need to prioritize, we must accept the importance of satisfying our second-order need to have the ability to value things. We all have a second-order need for basic healthcare as a means to protect our vital abilities even if we differ in what our cultures consider to be particular first-order needs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy by John DeweyCharles A. HobbsJohn Dewey. Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012, 351 pp., index.John Dewey’s latest publication marks a watershed moment for scholarship in American philosophy, and, in addition to Dewey himself, we have editor Phillip Deen to thank for discovering it (among the Dewey papers in Special Collections at Morris Library of Southern Illinois (...) University) and editing it. We see Dewey late in life (early 1940s) engaged mainly in a critique of the modern, ancient, and (fragmentarily) medieval philosophical periods, which Dewey argues, are eras not nearly as distinct as traditional understanding admits. In the Introduction, Deen helpfully explains how we are now bequeathed incomplete but in most [End Page 122] cases quite robust chapter drafts that amount to another substantial work by Dewey. While published by Southern Illinois University Press, this volume is not itself part of The Collected Works of John Dewey. Still, the careful editing (of what are actually a number of manuscripts) is comparable in its excellence. There is also a well-done Index.The scope is twofold: retrospective and prospective. Chapters one through seven trace the development of so-called modern philosophy along with its central epistemological problem, with the aim being to demonstrate how thoroughly “unmodern” such philosophy has been. Then, chapters eight through fourteen constitute a genuinely modern approach that naturalistically and functionally undercuts the epistemic problem of subject/object and points to a revolution in the process of knowing.We turn to the retrospective, beginning in the first chapter with the acknowledgement that Dewey comes to philosophy itself as a kind of anthropologist, something we note as consistent with the influence of Franz Boas on Dewey (with whom Dewey was a colleague and intellectual ally at Columbia for about thirty-five years). This is further underscored by a lengthy quotation of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski on the meaning of culture (p. 290). The ongoing history of philosophy is itself a cultural activity. Indeed, citing James, Dewey declares that “The sickliest way in which a student of philosophy can approach his subject-matter is that of a search for ultimate impersonal revelation of truth.” (p. 16) Rather, let the philosopher have the pragmatic attitude of openness “... to truth from whatever source it comes” (ibid).With that, Dewey once again turns to the Greeks, who initiated “The Discovery of Rational Discourse” (Ch. III) as underscored by the Socratic means of cooperative discourse, with the dialogues—not lectures—being evidence of the Athenian philosophical revolution in turning “from discussing nature and giving an account of it to the examination of the nature and procedure of discussion and report” (p. 38). Yet this project, despite its initial promise, failed for lack of a genuine logic of experimentation or inquiry. Then philosophy focused on going beyond the natural, beginning with the medieval “Search for Salvation” (Ch. IV, a significantly less developed and unified chapter draft). “Modern” philosophers then rightly replaced grand cosmic schemes with a focus on human nature (Ch. V), but they went too far with their introspective methods, gradually resulting in the same consequence supernaturalism had produced: a dualism of mind and nature, as if human nature is somehow not a part of nature. As we recall from Human Nature and Conduct (1922), human nature is not independent of but rather interdependent (or, using Dewey’s later term, transactional) with the rest of nature. The key is to avoid hypostatizing mind and better to talk of culture as nature. [End Page 123]With the Renaissance onward, humans have been “Wandering between Two Worlds” (Ch. VI), and endless arguments between “rationalists” and “empiricists” overlook what these camps share, namely a psychology assuming a fundamental split between subjective/objective and assumptions about certainty as founded upon various first principles or substances. The result is the stagnation of philosophy while science flourishes. Dewey cites Bertrand Russell as an example of continued insistence on such a priori principles (p. 106).We find ourselves in an epoch split between scientism and moral and religious fundamentalism, the result of a lingering tenacious investment in bad elements from ancient and medieval... (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either (...) its core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

As a result of the developments in science and technology, humanity began to experience a digital transformation after the 19th century. With this digital transformation, it is seen that a serious change has occurred in human beings biologically, socially, and, more specifically, religiously. One could say that different trends have emerged at many points where human relations, the relationship of the human with the environment and with God are also affected. Among the most comprehensive and prominent of these trends is (...) transhumanism because of its aims for humanity and the world. Transhumanism, which views technology as the main point of reference for the future of humanity, is also considered a cultural, social, and ideological human movement with its statements intended for society. It considers immortality as a goal, along with such claims as improving welfare, extending human life, and wiping out diseases by using technology in every aspect of human life. Transhumanists, who claim that they can achieve immortality thanks to technology, argue that this will happen in two ways. The first is biological immortality. It will be achieved by eliminating all kinds of biological factors that lead to humans aging and death. The second is digital or virtual immortality, which is achieved by transferring human consciousness from the biological body to computer interfaces and installing it in any desired entity. This perspective must be critically examined as it can be considered an attempt to challenge death, which is the basic doctrine of classical religions. In the present study, human immortality, considered the most important claim made by transhumanists, is criticized within kalām, Islamic theology. Of course, transhumanists’ account of human immortality is impossible, according to kalām. It can be said that transhumanists view of immortal human can be considered in the category of created beings, which is defined in kalām as "the being created later and needs another being in order to exist and to continue its existence". Given that transhumanists base the idea of the immortal being upon biological healing or digital transmission, it is clear that both types of beings need someone else. Therefore, one could say that it would be more reasonable to define transhumanists’ notion of immortality as the act of prolonging human life. It is because the life of immortal beings, accepted as biological or digital entities, is shaped by many factors. If these factors disappear, so does the being. On the other hand, the attribute of immortality, which belongs to the eternal being only, according to kalām, must come from itself without needing any other being. Therefore, the notion of immortal being suggested by the transhumanists must be reexamined within kalām and be redefined as the extension of life. The redefined immortality as the extension of life hardly poses kalāmī (or theological) problems. In fact, Islam encourages using all types of tools and equipment to enable humans to have a healthy and blissful life. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore various facets of Addams' approaches to culture as art and as structures of life because they illuminate not only her struggles to reconcile competing perspectives and values, but also because these issues are recurring features in the development of feminist analyses of culture. -/- “This well-crafted collection of essays recognizes Jane Addams as the inspiring and occasionally provocative feminist she was. Connecting Addams’s pragmatism to social theory, political philosophy, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and more, the (...) book’s twelve authors sympathetically and critically explore Addams’s ongoing relevance to issues of art, culture, sexuality, prostitution, religion, cosmopolitanism, public/private divisions, and community organization. Scholarly experts on Addams, as well as those discovering her feminist pragmatism for the first time, will find this volume valuable.” -/- Although Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House is considered an American classic, her dozen books and hundreds of published articles have sometimes been thought of as quaint examples of an overly optimistic era. Beginning in the 1990s, feminist scholars rediscovered the vitality of Addams's social philosophy and challenged the marginalization of her ideas. Today, following a war-laden twentieth century and the failure of militarism and "get tough" approaches to solve domestic and global problems, Addams's social theorizing, which emphasizes cosmopolitan experiences and sympathetic connections, provides a provocative alternative to Western notions of individualism, transactional relations, and spectator epistemology. Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams brings together many of the leading Addams scholars in North America to consider Addams's ongoing relevance to feminist thought. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Victoria Bissell Brown, Marilyn Fischer, Judith M. Green, Shannon Jackson, Katherine Joslin, Louise W. Knight, L. Ryan Musgrave Bonomo, Wendy Sarvasy, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Eleanor J. Stebner, and Judy D. Whipps. (shrink)

Traditionally, the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as an era in history when new developments in fields of ‘scientific’ thought eclipsed the long-held notions presented by religion and philosophy. Historical interpretations subscribing to this view have often presented the Scientific Revolution as a time when significant changes occurred in the way societies understood their world. These historical analyses have focused on a limited suite of ideas – the iconic figures of the Scientific Revolution, the intellectual, methodological and theoretical developments of (...) the era and the shift away from antiquated worldviews. Owing to the decidedly intellectual foci of these investigations, the Scientific Revolution, and the influential figures therein, are depicted as the impetus for modern thought and society as we know it today. However, in recent decades, historical studies of the Scientific Revolution have shifted away from investigations emphasizing the supposedly progressive nature of the era and have chosen to observe aspects of the historical period that are significantly more cultural in tone. For instance, aspects such as the economic impacts of intellectual developments, the self-fashioning practiced by figures during the period and the importance of cultivating various social relationships are observed in order to provide a richer, more socially contextualized presentation of the Scientific Revolution. This paper will compare two modes of historical investigation – Intellectual and Cultural Historical, examine the changes that have occurred in historical interpretations of the Scientific Revolution and illustrate the motivations that have guided these two distinct approaches to history. This historiographical analysis will show how portrayals of the Scientific Revolution have changed over time and developed from something decidedly intellectual in focus, into a much more nuanced, culturally focused form of scholarship. (shrink)

Traditionally, the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as an era in history when new developments in fields of ‘scientific’ thought eclipsed the long-held notions presented by religion and philosophy. Historical interpretations subscribing to this view have often presented the Scientific Revolution as a time when significant changes occurred in the way societies understood their world. These historical analyses have focused on a limited suite of ideas – the iconic figures of the Scientific Revolution, the intellectual, methodological and theoretical developments of (...) the era and the shift away from antiquated worldviews. Owing to the decidedly intellectual foci of these investigations, the Scientific Revolution, and the influential figures therein, are depicted as the impetus for modern thought and society as we know it today. However, in recent decades, historical studies of the Scientific Revolution have shifted away from investigations emphasizing the supposedly progressive nature of the era and have chosen to observe aspects of the historical period that are significantly more cultural in tone. For instance, aspects such as the economic impacts of intellectual developments, the self-fashioning practiced by figures during the period and the importance of cultivating various social relationships are observed in order to provide a richer, more socially contextualized presentation of the Scientific Revolution. This paper will compare two modes of historical investigation – Intellectual and Cultural Historical, examine the changes that have occurred in historical interpretations of the Scientific Revolution and illustrate the motivations that have guided these two distinct approaches to history. This historiographical analysis will show how portrayals of the Scientific Revolution have changed over time and developed from something decidedly intellectual in focus, into a much more nuanced, culturally focused form of scholarship. (shrink)

The paper examines democratic concepts or elements in traditional Yoruba society and their implications for the culture of democracy in Africa and the social order at the global level. One of the major problems confronting African states is the problem of governance. Political crises have metamorphosed into problems of ethnic conflict, war, corruption, economic stagnation, social disorder and paucity of sustainable development in Africa and these crises have also resulted in global disequilibrium. This paper revisits traditional Yoruba society, (...) with a special emphasis on the democratic elements. It adopts as its theoretical framework some aspects of the traditional Yoruba socio-ethical values to underscore the importance of democratic elements based on communal values. Such concepts as ifowosowopo (cooperation), agbajo owo (solidarity), amumora (tolerance), and ilosiwaju (progress) are examined to point up their roles in addressing the crisis of (democratic) governance. The paper establishes that the inbuilt democratic elements, based on social ethical values, helped to sustain governance in traditional Yoruba society. It is concluded that democratic elements are much more important than democracy itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some Ideas Concerning Stephen Phillips' Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology:A Complete and Annotated Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇiEberhard Guhe (bio)Stephen Phillips' Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology (see Phillips 2020) is surely a landmark achievement in the realm of research on Navya-Nyāya. It is a work of reference not only for specialists but also for a broader audience of philosophically interested readers. Phillips has demonstrated (...) his expertise on Nyāya in general in many previous publications. At present, there is probably hardly anybody else who would have been better qualified to accomplish the mammoth task of translating and elucidating such a complex and voluminous Sanskrit work as the Tattvacintāmaṇi. It should however be noted that there is another edition and annotated translation of the Tattvacintāmaṇi (excluding the Upamānakhaṇḍa) by V.P. Bhatta (see Bhatta 2005, 2012, 2021), which is rather addressed to specialists, who are proficient in Sanskrit. The two volumes on the Anumānakhaṇḍa were published in 2021 (one year after the publication of Phillips' three volumes). Considering the enormous size of such a book project, the result cannot be expected to be completely flawless. The present review focuses on the introduction in volume 1 and on volume 2. I will address some minor issues, primarily methodological ones, but I will also address a few more serious (albeit surely accidental) translation errors (especially in the Siddhāntalakṣaṇa-section of the Vyāptivāda), which can lead to a misunderstanding of Gaṅgeśa's stance on a pivotal topic of the Navya-Naiyāyikas, namely the correct definition of the concept of pervasion (vyāpti).IThe introduction is very insightful. However, logicians will probably stumble over Phillips' methods of formalization. Some examples are given below. [End Page 498](1) The language of Phillips' formalizations looks a bit like a first-order language. Thus, for example, he uses "Ha" as a formal equivalent of the sentence "The mountain is smoky" (see vol. 1, p. 18). An obvious deviation from first-order conventions consists in the fact that Phillips uses at least two types of negation. Propositional negation is expressed by means of the symbol "~" (see vol. 2, p. 668; unfortunately, this symbol is not mentioned in vol. 1, pp. 18–19, where Phillips introduces his formalization techniques). Moreover, Phillips uses the negation symbol "¬," which he applies to capital Roman letters, in order to express a kind of term negation. Thus, for example, "¬H" may serve as a term referring to "the absence of the probans" (vol. 2, p. 623). To be precise, the type of absence which "¬H" refers to is a so-called "relational absence" (saṃsargâbhāva). Phillips formalizes the so-called "mutual absences" (anyonyâbhāva) differently (see below).Although "¬Hc" (see vol. 1, p. 18) looks like an ordinary first-order wff, it should more accurately be read as "The absence of H is located at c." Properly speaking, we should then also read atomic wffs like "Hc" as "H is located at c," where "H" should not be regarded as an expression of a predicate like "… is smoky," but rather as a general term, that is, as a formal counterpart of expressions like, for example, "smoke."Unfortunately, Phillips renders the meaning of wffs of the form "¬ϕx" not as "the absence of H is located at x," but in a somewhat simplified manner, which obscures the fact that he treats the negation symbol "¬" as a means to express a term negation: "And negation is term negation, not propositional negation [author's note: as we have just seen, this is not true of all kinds of negation which Phillips refers to in his formalizations, since he uses the "~" in a different sense]; thus, the negative sign '¬' in '¬ϕx' is defined as 'ϕ is absent at x'" (vol. 1, p. 19).Moreover, the use of different kinds of letters for the variables in "¬ϕx" (Greek and Roman) seems to suggest that the absentee should always be the referent of a general term. However, expressions of the form "the absence of a is... (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to show the connection of romanticism with the anthropological doctrine that goes back to Hegelianism and Kantianism, and at the same time – with the concepts of the future, structuralism and postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The man is a central figure of the Romantic literary, therefore it makes sense to single out romantic human anthropological doctrine and the image of man associated with a specific historical and cultural era called the "epoch of romanticism"; (...) to show that many romantic philosophical positions remained relevant to the basic foundations of contemporary anthropological research and coincide with it in analytical and critical thinking about a man, a person, his historical and evolutionary fate. Originality. The romantic worldview determined the specifics of anthropological discourse, both logical and illogical, remaining symbols and attaching, as for example, a real historical anecdote, a popular history, a philosophical thought, a myth, a famous literary episode and the arts multiplied by creative inspiration and imagination. This tendency determined the fragmentation of thinking and the scientific image of man as a dual being, nevertheless, presented and described in all the variety of relations with the world and with himself, that allows us to call this area of thought "the romantic human science". Conclusions. Structural analysis of numerous romantic texts allows us to draw the following conclusion: with mythopoetic imagery and anthropological thought about a man, romantic writers introduced the reader to any wisdom, to philosophical understanding of their human essence, to past and modern teachings, in a way processed antique, medieval and enlightening views, in which an important place was given to reflections on the place of man in nature, society, and history. Correlating the well-known statements about a person as a descendant of the "old Adam", "person", "personality", "soul", with the modern idea of historical and social development, about the evolution of the consciousness of a person who revealed himself as an individual in modern times, with scientific and aesthetic views, the writers of the first half of the XIX century gave romantic thought anthropological meaning and, in fact, laid the foundations of historical, social, psychological, cultural and psychoanalytic anthropology. (shrink)

Purpose. Institutionalism is gaining strength as a dominant point of view on the world. Its philosophical basis is the postulate of the uncertainty of the development, which comes to replace the neoclassical certainty characteristic of industrial society. The postulate of uncertainty is closely connected with the idea of subjectivization and individualization of post-industrial society. All these were very important components of the new paradigm, although they do not exhaust the problem. In the heart of postmodernism is a mass (...) identity as a spiritual substance, while the more recently mass of people to realize themselves as natural and social beings. Person has absolute freedom in the acceptance and rejection of culture and civilization; it is pluralistic in their actions and in their consciousness. It is the subject of history and it should be creative, fluent mastering all the achievements of culture. Methodology. The dialogue system of the Postmodern, which is the basis of human communication with another person, human with society is a model of convergent formation of the world community and world economy. The same model of rationalism and adequate industrial society is a monologue, which is easily builds a bridge to violence, even if it is carried out in the name of the man behind him and the pathos of the exaltation of man as the bearer of unlimited creation possibilities. However, it is very important not just to modify rationalism, and to understand the origins of civilization. Scientific novelty. The postmodern era begins is not easy. Modern defending, using all their reserves: public thirst for justice, the priority of rationality, monologist public agencies and politicians in contrast to the dialogic postmodern imperative modality in the spiritual existence of man instead the freedom. Finally, the world of the story is set a trap – the anthropological paradigm of the globalization ideology formation. In this paradigm, people see materialistic rational measure of space and society building, i.e. the natural and social being, not a spiritual person. All this was evident in the course of transformation in Ukraine. Its main weakness is obvious. This narrows the field of mass participation in the market or by the adopted symbolism, the field of subjectivity. The population is invited to wait and endure, i.e. plays the role of the object of political and economic manipulation. Even more unacceptable monopolization of subjectivity government, for which everything is regarded as a subject of state regulation. Conclusions. For civilization of cardinal feature is the treatment of the person as the subject of history. The need for the development of civilization to increase the degree of subjectivity in an economy where people can express themselves freely and responsibly through a system of private property relations: economic entity is the subject of property. Policy enhancing the role of human rights and the development of the principle of subjectivity means deepening the democratic foundations of the state structure. In the social sphere the subjectivity is expressed in the individualization of the social existence of man and the personification of public relations and it is implemented through the mechanisms of liberal institutions. It seems that the civilizational unity of the economy, democratic state and liberal society has the value of a scientific paradigm. Whatever the great cultural peaks of the postmodern, the main processes of a new society formed at its foot: in the area of formation of public consciousness and public preferences with the mass participation of the individual in the economy, in the field of state-building and the formation of social institutions on the principles of Amateur participation. (shrink)

Purpose. Institutionalism is gaining strength as a dominant point of view on the world. Its philosophical basis is the postulate of the uncertainty of the development, which comes to replace the neoclassical certainty characteristic of industrial society. The postulate of uncertainty is closely connected with the idea of subjectivization and individualization of post-industrial society. All these were very important components of the new paradigm, although they do not exhaust the problem. In the heart of postmodernism is a mass (...) identity as a spiritual substance, while the more recently mass of people to realize themselves as natural and social beings. Person has absolute freedom in the acceptance and rejection of culture and civilization; it is pluralistic in their actions and in their consciousness. It is the subject of history and it should be creative, fluent mastering all the achievements of culture. Methodology. The dialogue system of the Postmodern, which is the basis of human communication with another person, human with society is a model of convergent formation of the world community and world economy. The same model of rationalism and adequate industrial society is a monologue, which is easily builds a bridge to violence, even if it is carried out in the name of the man behind him and the pathos of the exaltation of man as the bearer of unlimited creation possibilities. However, it is very important not just to modify rationalism, and to understand the origins of civilization. Scientific novelty. The postmodern era begins is not easy. Modern defending, using all their reserves: public thirst for justice, the priority of rationality, monologist public agencies and politicians in contrast to the dialogic postmodern imperative modality in the spiritual existence of man instead the freedom. Finally, the world of the story is set a trap – the anthropological paradigm of the globalization ideology formation. In this paradigm, people see materialistic rational measure of space and society building, i.e. the natural and social being, not a spiritual person. All this was evident in the course of transformation in Ukraine. Its main weakness is obvious. This narrows the field of mass participation in the market or by the adopted symbolism, the field of subjectivity. The population is invited to wait and endure, i.e. plays the role of the object of political and economic manipulation. Even more unacceptable monopolization of subjectivity government, for which everything is regarded as a subject of state regulation. Conclusions. For civilization of cardinal feature is the treatment of the person as the subject of history. The need for the development of civilization to increase the degree of subjectivity in an economy where people can express themselves freely and responsibly through a system of private property relations: economic entity is the subject of property. Policy enhancing the role of human rights and the development of the principle of subjectivity means deepening the democratic foundations of the state structure. In the social sphere the subjectivity is expressed in the individualization of the social existence of man and the personification of public relations and it is implemented through the mechanisms of liberal institutions. It seems that the civilizational unity of the economy, democratic state and liberal society has the value of a scientific paradigm. Whatever the great cultural peaks of the postmodern, the main processes of a new society formed at its foot: in the area of formation of public consciousness and public preferences with the mass participation of the individual in the economy, in the field of state-building and the formation of social institutions on the principles of Amateur participation. (shrink)

The dialectical connection of law and culture is the relevant subject of research in philosophy, theory, and sociology of law, first and foremost due to the fact that insufficient theoretical substantiation lawmaking activity of politicians currently generates serious issues. Those of one cultural-legal traditions are unable to understand their partners belonging to another legal culture. Any modern legal theory should take into account the definition of culture the backbone factor for modern civilization. The novelty this research consists in examination (...) of the fundamental aspects of “law-culture” system alongside on the analysis of views of Western researchers previously unfamiliar to the Russian science. The goal of this work lies in revealing the key aspects of dialectical connection of law and culture and their correlation in modern era. The philosophy of law features ambivalent interpretation of the phenomenon of law: 1) as one of the forms of collective consciousness – along with culture, morality, philosophy, science,or religion; 2) in broad view of culture as a synonym of civilization, law would manifests as the crucial element of culture that generates multiple realities of sociocultural life of the people, society and the state. The research of dialectical connection of law and culture developed in the modern era, may contribute to resolution of complex problems that emerge in the contradictory “law-culture” system, which is of vital importance for the existence of separate national communities, as well as for survival of all the entire humanity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 187-191 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences. Ed. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. Pp. 393. $59.50, cloth; $19.95, paperback. According to its editors, the point of this anthology of previously published essays is to (...) "illustrate the ways in which 'narrative' has been used as an organizing concept in the human sciences over the last few decades" (ix). They argue that a "paradigm shift" is occurring in the human sciences, "one that leads away from nomological models and toward a more humanistic language and approach, in which narratives are central." Accordingly, the collection features essays about narrative written by authors who represent fields as disparate as philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, religion, law, gender studies, political science, speech communication, and environmental studies. The collection reprints a few essays that are well known within the humanities. For example, the Hinchmans include an excerpt from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981), as well as Gertrude Himmelfarb's often-reprinted attack on social history, entitled "History With the Politics Left Out."As their title indicates, the editors divide their collection into three sections entitled "Memory," "Identity," and "Community." Their rationale for this division is that memory serves humans as a narrative stream that makes sense of the otherwise inchoate data given by experience. The narrative structured by memory produces what the Hinchmans call identity. Identity in its turn is influenced by narratives that circulate in the communities in which an individual exists. This collection aims to demonstrate that narrative plays a fundamental role within all three of these conceptual categories. The Hinchmans put it this way: As historians, social scientists, or (for that matter) prophets and bards weave narratives of the second order--stories that connect the individual mind to the social world--they create artifacts that soon take on a life of their own. These stories, told and retold, furnish the stock from which individual life narratives can be constructed. In other words, the story of an individual life usually plays off of one or more historically and socially transmitted narratives, which serve as prototypes of the elaboration of personal identity. Narrative theory is thus always implicitly a theory of how communities are formed and maintained, and how individuals are drafted into available social roles. (xxii-xxiii) [End Page 187]Each of the three major sections contains one or two theoretical essays, as well as two or three more that consider ways in which the concepts of memory, identity, and community play out in specific disciplinary contexts. For example, the section on community is introduced with MacIntyre's meditation on the relation of narrated selves to communities. It contains a theoretical essay by Edward M. Bruner on the malleability of community narratives, entitled "Ethnography as Narrative," and Walter Fisher's "Narration, Reason, and Community." Philip Abbott examines the use of narrative in political theory in an essay entitled "Storytelling and Political Theory," while Jim Cheney demonstrates the fruitfulness of communal narrative to environmental rhetoric in "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative." (Cheney's is the most intriguing piece in the collection).The editors introduce each section of the collection with brief essays that raise interesting questions. For example, introducing the section called "Memory," they ask: "Is the past something that can be reconstructed, on the basis of memories, or can it only be constructed?" and "Is there such a thing as prereflective, prenarrative, unemplotted experience, or does all experience possess at least an implicit narrative structure?" (1-2). Two of the essays collected under this head, David Carr's "Narrative and Real World: An Argument for Continuity" and Stephen Crites's "The Narrative Quality of Experience," are theoretical attempts to answer these questions. Other essays in this section investigate the role played by memory and narrative in the construction of specific discourses. W. Lance Bennett examines the role played by storytelling in criminal trials, and Misia... (shrink)

Occasional Papers in Cassirer and Cultural-Theory Studies presented at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Intercultural Studies. Given the growing disenchantment, on all sides, with the 'high theory' of the 1970s and 1980s, and with the dominant master-trope of literary and cultural reflexion of the 1980s and 1990s, the extended metaphor or 'allegory', this volume offers a timely re-examination of what, according to Goethe, is a deeper mode of understanding the symbol. Via the life-long preoccupation of Ernst Cassirer (...) with the problems of 'symbolic form', as he christened it, the papers collected here try to come to terms with the thinking of Goethe and Schiller on the symbol, and on related issues. Taken together, they attempt to elucidate the filiation of German classicism down through the nineteenth century to the present, in the belief that some of Cassirer's ideas have fed, often unacknowledged, into the mainstream of contemporary cultural theory, and that the rigour of his thought can help clear up much of the confusion in that 'theory'. (shrink)

In order to lay the ground for the construction of a philosophy of culture the origin, meaning and some of the implications of the word „culture” are examined and discussed in light of a working definition of the anthropological concept of culture taken from C. Dawson. In Section II another concept of culture is examined, based on the idea of culture as human perfection. Then in Section III the concept of cultural levels is introduced, that is, the (...) differing levels at which the central concept of a culture can be understood or embodied. (shrink)

In order to lay the ground for the construction of a philosophy of culture the origin, meaning and some of the implications of the word „culture” are examined and discussed in light of a working definition of the anthropological concept of culture taken from C. Dawson. In Section II another concept of culture is examined, based on the idea of culture as human perfection. Then in Section III the concept of cultural levels is introduced, that is, the (...) differing levels at which the central concept of a culture can be understood or embodied. (shrink)

UNTIL RECENT YEARS moral traditions have not been an important topic for moral philosophy. With few exceptions, attention has been directed to the problem of moral justification, to the search for universal criteria for the assessment of moral beliefs or judgments regardless of their traditional provenance. Generally, philosophers aspire to formulate "the view from nowhere." Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue there has been a revival of interest in the concept of a living, moral tradition, especially among (...) moral philosophers concerned with the possibility of an ethics of virtue or character as a viable alternative to the ethics of principle or, say, to deontological, utilitarian, or contractarian ethics. We must observe here that in the three decades prior to 1981, some moral philosophers displayed similar concern with tradition, although terms other than "tradition" were used, for example, "forms of life," "ways of life," "moral practices," and "moral community." Rawls's conception of reflective equilibrium is also developed with an eye on the notion of tradition. Indeed, Rawls has been quite explicit about his tradition-oriented approach to moral theory: "What justifies a conception of justice is not its being true to an order antecedent to and given to us, but its congruence with our deeper understanding of ourselves and our aspirations, and our realization that, given our history and the traditions embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable doctrine.". (shrink)

The subject of this study is materialism, understood in the broadest sense of this concept: both as a philosophical doctrine and as a way of life corresponding to a certain worldview position. The aim is to clarify the objective role of this worldview position in various fields of human activity. At the center of the research is the question of the essence of materialistic ideas about the world hiding behind the sensually given reality to man. The study consists of two (...) parts, published in separate articles. The first part is devoted to the origins of the materialistic worldview and the main question of philosophy, and in this, its second part, the question of the philosophical problems of non-classical physics is considered, the root of these problems is revealed, a comparative worldview analysis of the basic concepts of classical and non-classical physics is carried out and the overall result of the research is summarized. The methodology of this research is the principle of materialistic monism, according to which absolutely all phenomena of the human-cognizable world can be based only on something material, "influencing". The general conclusions of this study are as follows: the roots of the materialistic worldview go back to the origins of life, to such a condition of successful vital activity of living beings, which is inherently ideological; this condition, called by the author the Main Question of Life, is the historical forerunner of the Main Question of Philosophy; the worldview position, equivalent to the materialistic solution of the OVF, is inherent in the vital activity of absolutely all living beings; all people in their daily and practical activities are born materialists. In addition, this study clarifies the idea of the essence of materialistic teaching; shows the exclusivity of the materialistic worldview as the only true worldview; provides a refined definition of the concept of matter; proves the need to shift the "center of gravity" of modern materialistic teaching from dialectics to the principle of materialistic monism; formulates the missing requirement for scientific theories to ensure their ideological viability; shows the ideological inconsistency the main ideas of the new, non-classical physics. (shrink)