Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

Writers on organisational change often refer to the cosmology of Heraclitus in their work. Some use these references to support arguments for the constancy and universality of organisational change and the consignment to history of organisational continuity and stability. These writers misunderstand the scope of what Heraclitus said. Other writers focus exclusively on the idea that originated with Heraclitus that the universe is composed of processes and not of things. This idea, which has been particularly associated with Heraclitus’s thought from (...) the time of Plato, does indeed provide a rich source of insights into organisational analysis, not least the current trends towards giving proper attention to processual studies of organisational change. Yet there is some uncertainty as to whether Heraclitus actually said that the universe was composed exclusively of processes rather than things, and even if that was what he thought, he intended his ideas on flux to be understood not in isolation but in the context of other aspects of his cosmology. Writers on organisational change seldom make reference to this wider context. Heraclitus was a rational but also a religious thinker. A central element in his thought was the notion of divine Justice, which to a Greek of his era meant the order of the universe. Remote as his Olympian theology may seem today, it sets a crucial and entirely rational context for understanding his ideas about flux. It means that ideas about continuity and stability were quite as important in Heraclitus’s cosmology as his more commonly quoted ideas about change. This paper sets out an overview of Heraclitus’s philosophy, insofar as it appears to have potential relevance to organisational analysis, and discusses how far it supports or contradicts the ideas that organisational change scholars have drawn from it. (shrink)

This essay pursues Gilbert Durand’s plea for a new anthropological spirit that would overcome the bureaucracy-or-madness dichotomy which has since Nietzsche left its imprint upon contemporary thought, forcing it to choose between an “Apollonian” ontology established upon some kind of first principle and a “Dionysian” ontology consisting in the erasure of any founding norm. It does so by reclaiming Dionysus and Apollo’s original twin-ness and dual affirmation in dialogue with contemporary anthropological theory, especially Roy Wagner’s thesis on the interplay of (...) “elicitation” and “containment” in sociocultural life. What would happen then, I ask, if we were to reimagine today’s philosophical game – which after Heidegger Deleuze, and Derrida turns variously and increasingly around subtraction – otherwise: as a chiastic board on which Apollo would cut Dionysus’s continuum, which Dionysus would in turn restore despite Apollo’s cuts, and on which the obliteration of any of the two gods would entail the inevitable dismemberment of the other? Accordingly, I offer a full reassessment of Dionysus’s and Apollo’s complementary roles in ancient-Greek culture in discussion not only with Nietzsche’s Dionysian philosophy but also with Ihab Hassan’s postmodern critique of Orpheus. All of it less with the purpose of putting forward a new metaphysics than with the intent of restating the translucent-ness that keeps together reality and thought against any claim that they are either transparent or opaque to one another. (shrink)

The expression “(on) this day” has an extremely pregnant meaning in different contexts of early Greek poetry. It is used in rituals and in solemn utterances, but it is much more than an emphatic way of saying “today.” It shows that the speaker is recognizing that a decisive, irreversible moment is approaching. Such knowledge of the appointed destiny is only accessible to the gods or to mortals inspired by them, which often makes the authoritative utterance “this day” a performative speech-act (...) that brings immediate accomplishment. The study of the instances of this expression, both with ἦμαρ and ἡμέρα, in epic, religious poetry, and tragedy, also sheds light on the different Greek notions of what a decisive day was. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the analysis of Plotinus’ citation of the Heraclitean saying B113 DK in the second treatise On the Presence of Being (VI 5 [23]). I shall argue that the use which the author of the Enneads makes of this fragment has been hitherto misunderstood by scholars and that, for this reason, the significance of the passage and its role within Plotinus’ argument have been missed. Close attention will be paid to the tool through which Plotinus conveys (...) his own reading of Heraclitus’ tenet, i.e. etymology, and to the passages in which he both lays down and puts into practice the programmatic guidelines for his interpretation of the Presocratic. In addition, I shall interpret Plotinus’ recourse to a wordplay which is, in character, quite Heraclitean as a proof of the importance of his philosophical engagement with the Obscure. (shrink)

Do the early Greek poets and thinkers really “play” with their language? What sort of “play” should we expect from part of the professional craftsmen they were of a basically sound language? What did imply their awareness of the phono-syllabic nature of Greek language? And what about Heraclitus in particular, who is most concerned among them with the intrinsic virtues of Greek discourse (λόγος)? An analysis of fr. 22 B 52 DK within the melodic and sonic state of archaic Greek (...) language reveals, instead of “play of words”, a rather spontaneous phenomenon of phono-syllabic generation, that is as necessary for the political message of Heraclitus’ fragment as the meaning of each of its words and their superficial syntactic organization. (shrink)

The paradigmatic bases, which sustain traditional western psychological interpretative efforts, need not be just a footnote to Plato. In this paper we introduce the Talmudic interpretative perspective, which we use to point at some weaknesses we identify in contemporary research imaginings. While the empiricist approach may be traced to Plato and the interpretative and the critical approaches may be traced to Heraclitus, we argue that the Talmudic approach is a differentiated and unique perspective that, because of its non-epistemic nature, its (...) dialogical character, and its recognition of two intermingled levels of interpretation, can make an important contribution to new ways of thinking about understanding and meaning in research. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo, inspirado en la idea de Vernant de que la razón griega es “hija de la ciudad”, aborda el vínculo existente entre las circunstancias políticas y sociales de Éfeso y el pensamiento heraclíteo. En efecto, a partir de la tensión que se produjo entre la realidad histórica en que vivió Heráclito y el resultado de su propia reflexión sobre ella, el filósofo desarrolló una idea de organización de la ciudad, según la cual una pólis debería ser gobernada (...) por el mismo principio rector del universo -i. e. el lógos-, lo cual, en términos prácticos, se traduciría en un modelo político monárquico.This paper, inspired by Vernant’s belief that Greek reason is “a creature of the city”, explores the connection linking Heraclitus’ thought to the political and social circumstances prevailing at Ephesus. Indeed, the tension arising from Heraclitus’ own historical framework and this philosopher’s resulting outlook on it led him to conceive of a rule for organizing a city, according to which a pólis should be governed by the same principle guiding the universe -i. e. the lógos-, which would materialize in concrete form as a monarchical government. (shrink)

In this thesis, I use a close reading of the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to examine a question of listening posed by Jean-Luc Nancy, “Is listening something of which philosophy is capable” (Nancy 2007:1)? Drawing on the work of Nancy, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak, I consider a claim that philosophy has failed to address the topic of listening because a logocentric tradition claims speech as primary. In response to Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism, Nancy complicates the problem of listening (...) by distinguishing between l’écoute and l’entente. L’écoute is an attending to and answering the demand of the other and l’entente is an understanding directed inward toward a subject. Nancy could deconstruct an undervalued position of l’écoute, making listening essential to speech. I argue, Nancy rather asks what kind of listening philosophy is capable of. To examine this question, I focus on the peculiarly dialogical figure derived from Chaplin that communicates meaning without using speech. This discussion illustrates how Chaplin, in the role of a silent figure, listens to himself (il s’écoute) as other. Chaplin’s listening is Nancean resonance, a movement in which a subject refers back to itself as another subject, in constant motion of spatial and temporal non-presence. For Nancy, listening is a self’s relationship to itself, but without immediate self-presence. Moving in resonance, Chaplin makes the subject as other as he refers back to himself as other. I argue that Chaplin, through silent dialogue with himself by way of the other, makes his listening listened to. Chaplin refused to make his character speak because he believed speech would change the way in which his work would be listened to. In this way, Chaplin makes people laugh by making himself understood (se fait entendre) as he makes himself listened to (se fait écouter). In answer to Nancy’s question, I conclude philosophy is capable of meeting the demand of listening as both l’entente and l’écoute when it listens as Chaplin listens. (shrink)

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge fromthe timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as thepotential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation?This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints becauseit has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print,the apparatus (...) of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating movement ortimeas it occurs in human-centered experience. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze on cinema,this article argues that the outside of a human sense of time is an untapped source of invention,already present yet dormant within kairos. (shrink)

The aim of this brief article is to demonstrate and analyze the influence of Heraclitus’s thought on some of the poems written by Miguel de Unamuno, in particular ‘La elegía eterna’ and ‘La flor tronchada’. At times –as in ‘La elegía eterna’– Heraclitus merely serves as a sort of a walking stick, an aid to his efforts to poetically reveal his anxieties. On other occasions –as in ‘La flor tronchada’– he genuinely needs Heraclitus’s philosophy to illustrate his view of human (...) life and its relation to God as unending warfare. (shrink)