This essay connects the mystical concept of “supernothing” with Bergson’s notion of the image of nothingness as a movement in the making. I do this also with respect to the film The Empty Man (David Prior, 2020) – which explicitly cites Gorgias’s four-part embargo on nothing (it exists, it cannot be known, communicated, or understood): nothingness is re-rendered as movement, in particular, the transmission and reception of images in the brain. Indeed, this is precisely Bergson’s theory of the brain too (...) – as the receiver and transmitter of images, a communication of movements. This “nihilistic” approach to the brain (it does not store images, it has no positive content) is not a valorisation of the ego as void à la Metzinger, but the real, processual rethinking of what nothingness and nihilism might mean – with a full, moving “supernothing” at its heart. Though there is a mystical and a film-philosophical account referenced in this renewal of nothingness, it will not lead to any exotic or hyperbolic excess (the brain as supernatural agent), but rather a very “ordinary” account that we will describe in terms of “supernormalisation”: an “unlearning” or mundanising of the supernatural: an extraction of the supernatural by natural means. (shrink)

This essay argues that a radical, non-standard, philosophical concept of the human is one that is consistently used both towards itself and others: it is an amplified concept that applies itself non-philosophically, that is, generically. Our purpose here, consequently, is to outline how Laruelle's work can be seen as performing something other than an inflation or deflation of either side of one fixed philosophical dyad ; rather, it can be seen as unilateralising the couple, that is, expanding the meaning of (...) the two alongside the One Real that resists any lone philosophical version's attempt to commandeer that meaning. It is the performative mutation that counts, not the terms of the dyad. As such, this essay also contends that what Laruelle explicitly does with philosophy – namely its de-authorisation and democratisation – is also what must be done, by implication, in a non-standard philosophical radicalisation of the human. Nonstandard philosophy does not know what the human is, but this negative capability is precisely what allows it to expand, performatively, the meaning of the human in its ongoing search to discover what the human may be. (shrink)

Deleuze’s film-philosophy makes much of the notion of virtual images in Bergson’s Matter and Memory, but in doing so he transforms a psycho-meta-physical thesis into a unBergsonian ontological one. In this essay, we will offer a corrective by exploring Bergson’s own explanation of the image as an “attitude of the body”—something that projects an actual, corporeal, and postural approach, not only to cinema, but also to philosophy. Indeed, just as Renoir famously said that “a director makes only one movie in (...) his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again,” so Bergson wrote that each philosopher only makes one “single point” throughout his or her whole career. And this one point, he then declares, is like a “vanishing image,” only one best understood as an attitude of the body. It is embodied image that underlies an alternative Bergsonian cinema of the actual and the body —one that we will examine through what Bergson’s has to say about “attitude” as well as “gesture” and “mime.” We will also look at it through a gestural concept enacted by a film, to be precise, the five remakes that comprise Lars von Trier’s and Jørgen Leth’s The Five Obstructions. This will bring us back to the idea of what it is that is being remade, both by directors and philosophers, in Renoir’s “one film” and Bergson’s singular “vanishing image” respectively. Is the “one” being remade an image understood as a representation, or is it a gesture, understood as a bodily movement? It is the latter stance that provides a wholly new and alternative view of Bergson’s philosophy of cinema. (shrink)

All Thoughts Are Equal is both an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an exercise in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his "non-standard" approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinking--including the nonhuman--are equal. John Ó Maoilearca examines how philosophy might appear when viewed with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. He (...) does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film (Lars von Trier's documentary The Five Obstructions) as an example of the non-standard method. Von Trier's film is a meditation on the creative limits set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how these limits can push our experience of film--and of ourselves--beyond what is normally deemed "the perfect human." All Thoughts Are Equal adopts film's constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelle's radically new style of philosophy is best presented through our most nonhuman form of thought--that found in cinema. (shrink)

This collection of 16 essays brings 20th-century French philosopher Henri Bergson's work on immanence together with the latest ideas in art theory and the practice of immanent art as found in painting, photography and film. It places Bergson's work and influence in a wide historical context and applies a rigorous conceptual framework to contemporary art theory and practice.

Originally published as the Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy, this book offers the definitive guide to contemporary Continental thought. It covers all the most pressing and important themes and categories in the field - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Twelve specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, valuably, how the (...) various topics intersect. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including an A to Z of key terms and concepts, a chronology, and a guide to practical research in the field, this is the essential reference tool for anyone working in and studying Continental Philosophy. (shrink)

This essay interrogates recent materialist monisms, be they based on contingency, eliminativism, or objective phenomenology, on account of their metaphilosophical ramifications. It is argued that certain dualities must be retained, at least nominally, in order to have any explanatory purchase and escape velocity from philosophical circularity. Dyads such as “spirit” and “matter,” “manifest” and “scientific,” “living” and “dead,” or even “illusion” and “reality” are given an immanentist reading that treats them as equal parts of the Real. Following this revisionary metaphysics (...) that reviews the meaning of such terms as optical realities, the matter–spirit couple is specifically used to explain why reality cannot appear as just one thing, even if only in virtue of the illusion of at least two things. The consequences for philosophical monisms of all types, and for anthropocentric thought in general, are then examined in the light of the ethical effects of recent attempts to explain every thing through one medium alone. (shrink)

Deleuze’s film-philosophy makes much of the notion of virtual images in Bergson’s Matter and Memory ([1896] 1994), but in doing so he transforms a psycho-meta-physical thesis into a (very) unBergsonian ontological one. In this article, we will offer a corrective by exploring Bergson’s own explanation of the image as an ‘attitude of the body’ – something that projects an actual, corporeal and postural approach, not only to cinema, but also to philosophy. Indeed, just as Renoir famously said that ‘a director (...) makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again’, so Bergson wrote that each philosopher only makes one ‘single point’ throughout his or her whole career. And this one point, he then declares, is like a ‘vanishing image’, only one best understood as an attitude of the body. It is an embodied image that underlies an alternative Bergsonian cinema of the actual and the body – one that we will examine through what Bergson’s has to say about ‘attitude’ as well as ‘gesture’ and ‘mime’. We will also look at it through a gestural concept enacted by a film, to be precise, the five remakes that comprise Lars von Trier’s and Jørgen Leth’s The Five Obstructions (Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, 2003). This will bring us back to the idea of what it is that is being remade, both by directors and philosophers, in Renoir’s ‘one film’ and Bergson’s singular ‘vanishing image’, respectively. Is the ‘one’ being remade an image understood as a representation, or is it a gesture, understood as a bodily movement? It is the latter stance that provides a wholly new and alternative view of Bergson’s philosophy of cinema. (shrink)

In such an unsheltered world, it may sound naive to suggest that this might be the moment to invoke and awaken beauty, yet this is exactly the claim that this ...

Is there a relation between the increasing extension of markets and market norms to previously non-market goods, and the growth of environmental problems? This chapter explores two competing answers: market-endorsing positions that argue that a source of environmental problems lies in the absence of markets in environmental goods and that the extension of markets or market modes of valuation to environmental goods offers the most effective way of protecting them; market-skeptical positions that deny that the extension of markets will protect (...) environmental goods or more strongly that markets and increasing marketization are themselves a source of environmental problems. These positions offer distinct perspectives on market mimicking instruments in environmental policy making, such as cost-benefit analysis, and on the development of new markets, for example in emission rights and biodiversity offsets. The issues raised include questions about value commensurability, justice, epistemic limits to planning and markets, and environmental limits to growth. (shrink)

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

Theories of spatial cognition are derived from many sources. Psychologists are concerned with determining the features of the mind which, in combination with external inputs, produce our spatialized experience. A review of philosophical and other approaches has convinced us that the brain must come equipped to impose a three-dimensional Euclidean framework on experience – our analysis suggests that object re-identification may require such a framework. We identify this absolute, nonegocentric, spatial framework with a specific neural system centered in the hippocampus.A (...) consideration of the kinds of behaviours in which such a spatial mapping system would be important is followed by an analysis of the anatomy and physiology of this system, with special emphasis on the place-coded neurons recorded in the hippocampus of freely moving rats. A tentative physiological model for the hippocampal cognitive map is proposed. A review of lesion studies, in tasks as diverse as discrimination learning, avoidance, and extinction, shows that the cognitive map notion can adequately explain much of the data.The model is extended to humans by the assumption that spatial maps are built in one hemisphere, semantic maps in the other. The latter provide a semantic deep structure within which discourse comprehension and production can be achieved. Evidence from the study of amnesic patients, briefly reviewed, is consistent with this extension. (shrink)

We live in a world confronted by mounting environmental problems; increasing global deforestation and desertification, loss of species diversity, pollution and global warming. In everyday life people mourn the loss of valued landscapes and urban spaces. Underlying these problems are conflicting priorities and values. Yet dominant approaches to policy-making seem ill-equipped to capture the various ways in which the environment matters to us. Environmental Values introduces readers to these issues by presenting, and then challenging, two dominant approaches to environmental decision-making, (...) one from environmental economics, the other from environmental philosophy. The authors present a sustained case for questioning the underlying ethical theories of both of these traditions. They defend a pluralistic alternative rooted in the rich everyday relations of humans to the environments they inhabit, providing a path for integrating human needs with environmental protection through an understanding of the narrative and history of particular places. The book examines the implications of this approach for policy issues such as biodiversity conservation and sustainability. Written in a clear and accessible style for an interdisciplinary audience, this volume will be ideal for student use in environmental courses in geography, economics, philosophy, politics and sociology. (shrink)

Revealing flaws in both 'green' and market-based approaches to environmental policy, O'Neill develops an Aristotolian account of well-being. He examines the implications for wider issues involving markets, civil society an.

The author draws on considerable research in this area to provide an overdue critical evaluation of the limits of the market, and future prospects for non-market socialism.

Revealing flaws in both 'green' and market-based approaches to environmental policy, O'Neill develops an Aristotolian account of well-being. He examines the implications for wider issues involving markets, civil society an.

Deliberative or discursive models of democracy have recently enjoyed a revival in both political theory and policy practice. Against the picture of democracy as a procedure for aggregating and effectively meeting the given preference of individuals, deliberative theory offers a model of democracy as a forum through which judgements and preferences are formed and altered through reasoned dialogue between free and equal citizens. Much in the recent revival of deliberative democracy, especially that which comes through Habermas and Rawls, has Kantian (...) roots. Deliberative institutions are embodiments of the free public use of reason that Kant takes to define the enlightenment project. Within the Kantian model the public use of reason is incompatible with the use of rhetoric. While this paper rejects strong rhetorical criticisms of deliberative democracy which render all communication strategic, it argues that rhetorical studies of deliberation have highlighted features of deliberation which point to significant weaknesses in Kantian approaches to it. Two features are of particular importance: the role of testimony and judgements of credibility in deliberation; and the role of appeal to emotions in public discourse. Both from the Kantian perspective are potential sources of heteronomy. However, the appeal to testimony and emotion are features of public deliberation that cannot and should not be eliminated. For those committed to the enlightenment values that underlie the deliberative model of democracy the question is whether these rhetorical features of deliberation are incompatible with those values. The paper argues that they are compatible. It does so by defending an Aristotelian account of rhetoric in public deliberation which denies the Platonic contrast between reasoned discourse and rhetoric which the Kantian model inherits. (shrink)

The volume contains studies by eleven distinguished scholars, concerning changes in ethical and religious consciousness during this important era of Western ...

No net loss approaches to environmental policy claim that policy should maintain aggregate levels of natural capital. Substitutability between natural assets allows losses in some assets to be compensated for by gains in others while maintaining overall levels of natural capital. This paper argues that significant goods that matter to people’s well-being will be lost through a policy of no net loss. The concepts of natural capital and ecosystem services that underpin the no net loss approach to environmental policy cannot (...) capture important dimensions of value that are central to human well-being. (shrink)

This paper advances the thesis that sensory concepts have as a semantic component the first-person indexical. It is argued that the private nature of our access to our own sensations forces, in our talking about them, an indexical reference to the inner states of the speaker in lieu of publicly accessible properties by which reference is usually fixed. Indexicals, such as ‘here’, can be understood despite ignorance of their referent. Such is the case with sensory terms. Furthermore, the thesis that (...) sensory terms are indexical has considerable explanatory power. I give two examples: firstly, I argue that clashes of intuition over Block's ‘inverted spectrum’ thought experiment can be explained by appeal to semantic properties of indexicals. Secondly, I argue that multiple realisability intuitions can be shown to be consistent with the view that sensations are type-identical with brain states. (shrink)

Environmental problems have an ethical dimension. They are not just about the efficient use of resources. Justice in the distribution of environmental goods and burdens, fairness in the processes of environmental decision-making, the moral claims of future generations and non-humans, these and other ethical values inform the responses of citizens to environmental problems. How can these concerns enter into good policy-making processes?Two expert-based approaches are commonly advocated for incorporating ethical values into environmental decision-making. One is an 'economic capture' approach, according (...) to which existing economic methods can be successfully extended to include ethical concerns. For example, stated preference methods, especially contingent valuation, have been developed to try and capture ethical responses as 'non-use values' of the environment, in particular 'existence values'. The other is a 'moral expert' approach which confines economic methods to the analysis of welfare gains, and assumes committees of ethical experts will complement economic expertise.Both approaches face problems in terms of addressing many widely held ethical values about the environment. Furthermore, both face problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of their procedures. How can policy-making be made responsive to different ethical values? What role is there for new deliberative and participatory methods? How far do existing decision-making institutions have the capacities to incorporate different modes of articulating environmental values?This policy brief examines the limitations of current attempts to capture ethical values within existing economic instruments and considers how these limitations might be overcome. Section 1 examines the assumptions that standard economic theory makes about individuals when they express values and make choices about the environment. The current models of agents that inform policy-making are seen to be ill-suited to incorporating the ethical responses of agents and this reveals some of the policy failures that may result. Section 2 shows how the physical and social properties of many environmental goods prevent their being treated as commodities. Section 3 considers the problems surrounding conceptions of fairness and legitimacy in processes for environmental valuation. Section 4 raises questions concerning the capacities of policy-making institutions to take cognisance of the results of different methods for articulating environmental values. (shrink)

Problems of representation lie at the centre of recent experiments in deliberative democracy. The problems are not primarily social scientific questions concerning the statistical representiveness of small-scale deliberative institutions but normative questions about their political and ethical legitimacy. Experiments in deliberative democracy often rely for their representative legitimacy on appeals to the presence of members of different groups. However, they often do so without clear sources of authorisation and accountability from those represented. The representation of nonhumans and future generations in (...) deliberative institutions is still more problematic. In the necessary absence of their authorisation, accountability, and presence, claims to speak on their behalf relies on epistemic claims, coupled with care. To highlight these problems is not to claim that small deliberative institutions are illegitimate but rather to point out the need for a clearer account of their role in democratic institutions and the proper sources of contestability of their outcomes. (shrink)

Presents three generations of German, French, and Anglo-American thinking on the Hegelian narrative of desire, recognition, and alienation in life, labor, and language.

I / The Structures of Behavior MERLEAU-PONTY'S ANALYSIS of the structures of behavior proceeds by means of a critical confrontation of the realism of ...

In this commentary, John O'Neill concentrates upon three themes in the goal Merleau-Ponty set for himself, namely "to restore to things their concrete physiognomy, to organisms their individual ways of dealing with the world, and to subjectivity its inherence in history." O'Neill considers the three objectives in their original order: first, the study of animal and human psychology; then, the phenomenology of perception; and finally, certain extensions of these perspectives in the historical and social sciences.

This collection of essays on communicative theory and praxis from the eminent Merleau-Ponty scholar and translator John O'Neill explores the thesis that the human body is the exemplary ground of all other communicative processes.

The representational theory of phenomenal experience is often stated in terms of a supervenience thesis: Byrne recently characterises it as the thesis that “there can be no difference in phenomenal character without a difference in content”, while according to Tye, “[a]t a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character.” Consequently, much of the debate over whether representationalism is true centres on purported counter-examples – that is (...) to say, purported failures of supervenience. The refutation of putative counter-examples has been, it seems to me, by and large successful. But there is a certain class of these for which the representationalist response has been something less than completely convincing. These are the cross-modality cases. I will explain what I mean, and then argue that the response in question is not only unconvincing but actually undermines the representationalist position. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Meta‐ethics and normative ethics Intrinsic value Is the rejection of meta‐ethical realism compatible with an environmental ethic? Objective value and the flourishing of living things Human sensibilities and environmental values Environmental ethics through thick and thin.