Translation (French to English) of Jean-Luc Marion's "La donation en son herméneutique," originally published (in French) as chapter II of Reprise du donné (Paris: PUF, 2016).

The concept of life plays a crucial role in the debate on synthetic biology. The first part of this chapter outlines the controversial debate on the status of the concept of life in current science and philosophy. Against this background, synthetic biology and the discourse on its scientific and societal consequences is revealed as an exception. Here, the concept of life is not only used as buzzword but also discussed theoretically and links the ethical aspects with the epistemological prerequisites and (...) the ontological consequences of synthetic biology. The second part examines this point of intersection and analyses some of the issues which are discussed in terms of the concept of life. The third part turns to the history of the concept of life. It offers an examination of scientific and philosophical discourses on life at the turn of the 20th century and suggests a surprising result: In the light of this history, synthetic biology leads to well-known debates, arguments, notions and questions. But it is concluded that the concept of life is too ambiguous and controversial to be useful for capturing the actual practice of synthetic biology. In the fourth part I argue that with regard to the ethical evaluation of synthetic biology, the ambiguity of the concept of life is not as problematic as sometimes held because other challenges are more important. The question whether the activity of synthetic biological systems should be conceived as life or not is primarily theoretical. (shrink)

In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a bridgeconcept (...) that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

A tradução que se segue é uma versão resumida e revisada do artigo “Schicksal Nietzsche? Zu Nietzsches Selbsteinschätzung als Schicksal der Philosophie und der Menschheit (Ecce Homo, Warum ich ein Schicksal bin §1)” — publicado originalmente em Nietzsche-Studien 37 (2008) — que foi especialmente preparada para ser apresentada em palestra organizada pelo Grupo de Pesquisa Spinoza & Nietzsche (SpiN), na Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, em 14/09/2009. No texto, o autor faz uso de sua própria metodologia filológico-hermenêutica, denominada interpretação (...) contextual, com vistas a esclarecer os conceitos do primeiro aforismo de “por que sou um destino”, de Ecce Homo no seu contexto próprio, no contexto de Ecce Homo e no contexto da obra de Nietzsche como um todo. (shrink)

Gotthard Deutsch (1859–1921) taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from 1891 until his death, where he produced a card index of 70,000 ‘facts’ of Jewish history. This article explores the biography of this artefact of research and poses the following question: Does Deutsch’s index constitute a great unwritten work of history, as some have claimed, or are the cards ultimately useless ‘chips from his workshop’? It may seem a curious relic of positivistic history, but closer examination allows us to (...) interrogate the materiality of scholarly labor. The catalogue constitutes a total archive and highlights memory’s multiple registers, as both a prosthesis for personal recall and a symbol of a ‘human encyclopedia’. The article argues that this mostly forgotten scholar’s work had surprising repercussions: Deutsch’s student Jacob Rader Marcus (1896–1995) brought his teacher’s emphasis on facticity to the field of American Jewish history that he pioneered, catapulting a 19th-century positivism to the threshold of the 21st century. Deutsch’s index was at an inflection point of knowledge production, created as historians were shifting away from ‘facts’ but just before new technologies (also based on cards) enabled ‘big data’ on a larger scale. The article thus excavates a vision of monumentality but proposes we look past these objects as monuments to ‘heroic’ scholarship. Indeed, Deutsch’s index is massive but middling, especially when placed alongside those of Niklas Luhmann, Paul Otlet, or Gershom Scholem. It thus presents a necessary corrective to anointing such indexes as predecessors to the Internet and big data because we must keep their problematic positivism in perspective. (shrink)

Levinas's Talmudic readings have played an important role in defending the claim that the discipline of modern Jewish philosophy cannot be reduced to a list of assimilationist thinkers. This article argues that this claim is defendable, but only if the premise of the claim ceases to be the content of Levinas's Talmudic readings: "The Temptation of Temptation" wrongly takes its sugya as representative of Judaism as a whole, the differing mathematical calculations between Levinas and the sugya he treats in "The (...) Pact" suggest that the Talmud assumes a Rousseauian amour-propre , and "And God Created Woman" implies that Jewish ethics is not opposed to Jews' assimilation. I instead suggest that Levinas's Talmudic readings serve to promote the fecundity of Judaism; it is only through such "bad" readings that historical determinism can be conquered, and a messianic future becomes possible. (shrink)

The thesis of this article is that Nietzsche's use of irony in On the Genealogy of Morals is so pervasive that it cannot be relied upon to report Nietzsche's views, even at the moment of writing, on a historical sequence of events or the causal sources of the phenomena that Nietzsche identifies. I argue, primarily on the basis of textual evidence, that Nietzsche's procedure is neither to reliably report his own views nor to assert the reality of what might be (...) called the theoretical terms of the account. I offer as an explanatory hypothesis that Nietzsche adopted this procedure as a response to a problem of epistemic authority that he confronted in assessing morality. I also provide some historical context for Nietzsche's method and discuss some implications of my view for the interpretation of Nietzsche's project. (shrink)

An Emotional History. The Affective Dimension of Historical Discourse Resumen: Se trata de indagar en la dimensión afectiva del uso del concepto de historia, así como del concepto mismo. Más allá de la pretensión científica de una historia escrita sine ira et studio, el texto se sitúa en la encrucijada del giro emocional reciente, que ha potenciado la historia de las emociones justo en el momento en que el concepto moderno de historia ha entrado en crisis. Tras un análisis de (...) la dimensión afectiva del trabajo del historiador y de los motivos emocionales que subyacen al concepto moderno e ilustrado de historia, se interroga por la propia historicidad como objeto de deseo y móvil de las acciones humanas. Deseo que se plasma en varias formas comunitarias de emoción, variables en el tiempo. Entre ellas, se sugiere, han dominado últimamente el sentimiento de lo sublime y el duelo. Se propone, en definitiva, un “sentimiento de la historia” como elaboración cultural de la temporalidad.: This essay explores the affective aspects in the use of the concept of history. Although history claims to be written sine ira et studio, the modern notion of history has entered into crisis precisely at the moment when the emotional turn takes place, and the history of emotions becomes mainsteam. After an analysis of the affective dimension of the historian’s work and of the emotional motives underlying the modern, enlightened concept of history, I explore historicity itself as an object of desire and a motive for human actions. This desire is embodied in various communal forms of emotion, variable over time. Among them, it is suggested, the feeling of the sublime and mourning have dominated lately. It is proposed, in short, a “feeling of history” as a cultural elaboration of temporality. Palabras clave: historicidad, historia conceptual, afectividad, Koselleck, comunidad emocional, entusiasmo, sublime. Keywords: historicity, conceptual history, affectivity, Koselleck, emotional community, enthusiasm, sublime. (shrink)

Gedächtnis-Enhancement oder Memory-Enhancement ist ein Teilbereich der verschiedenen Ansätze zur pharmakologischen und technischen Verbesserung menschlicher Leistungsfähigkeit. Wie Erfahrungsberichte von Menschen mit von Natur aus gesteigertem Erinnerungsvermögen zeigen, ist eine Steigerung der Gedächtnisfähigkeit prinzipiell möglich. Allerdings verweisen diese Erfahrungen auch auf einige Komplikationen und Beschwernisse infolge dieser gesteigerten Leistungsfähigkeit. Es wird argumentiert, dass erstens diejenigen philosophischen Theorien, die die Funktion des Gedächtnisses v. a. in der Speicherung von Informationen lokalisieren, einige dieser Probleme nicht antizipieren und nur unzulänglich erklären können. Zweitens wird (...) argumentiert, dass philosophische Konzepte zur Funktion von Erinnern und Vergessen, die deren Bedeutung bei der Bildung eines normativ geleiteten Selbstverständnisses in den Vordergrund stellen, diese und weitere mögliche Komplikationen deutlicher in den Blick bekommen können. Beispielhaft wird hier auf Ansätze von Ricoeur und Nietzsche eingegangen. (shrink)

Inspired by three monographs of Gladys Swain and Marcel Gauchet, my presentation traces the rise of the new science of psychiatry in Revolutionary France, with Philippe Pinel and his student J.-E. Esquirol. As the directors of the division of the aliénés in the Hôpital Bicêtre (Paris), Pinel and Esquirol pioneered a therapeutic programme that spread out between their “traitement moral” (reasoning with the passions) and an “energetic repression,” wherever necessary. The discipline they created sought to gain autonomy from medicine treating (...) diseases of the body, much as pathology would do in regard to physiology, some fifty years later. Using Canguilhem, Foucault’s teacher and significant influence, I show how the unfolding of a science of disorders (for Canguilhem, this was pathology) poses questions of taxonomy and runs the inevitable ‘risk’ of extensive fragmentation. This is what happens in France after Pinel. However, Pinel, above all, will have made one contribution that—by Swain and Gauchet’s argument—stands in stark contrast to the theses of the young Foucault. Rather than sequestering and excluding the fou by forcing him or her into exaggerated, discursive revelations or silence, Pinel and Esquirol “discover” the sense, or sens , at the heart of madness, notably in what Pinel called “manie intermittente.” Esquirol takes this discovery one step further, to discern in various attacks, a certain rationality. This rather modern conception of madness exerts a considerable influence on literature, criticism, philosophy, and medicine in their time. Hegel’s understanding of madness will come directly from Pinel, and it will see in folie the internal division of subjective Reason. From this characterization comes a therapeutics based on the conviction that one could often reintegrate the mad into society, and avoid prolonged sequestration and exclusion. Thus the presentation focuses on Swain and Gauchet’s question to Foucault ( Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique , notably), using the work of Pinel and Hegel to illustrate their claim. (shrink)

In 1976, in “Society Must be Defended,” Foucault did more than offer an alternative genealogy of his own genealogical perspective to the one he is sometimes taken to have provided in “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” He also, by implication, located Nietzsche within that genealogy, one result of which is that he gave what amounts to a new perspective on how Nietzsche might be placed within the history of racisms.

Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career. In addition to well-known threats such as nuclear holocaust, the propects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks. Our future, and whether we will have a future at all, may well be determined by how we deal with these challenges. In the case of radically transforming technologies, a better understanding of the transition dynamics from (...) a human to a "posthuman" society is needed. Of particular importance is to know where the pitfalls are: the ways in which things could go terminally wrong. While we have had long exposure to various personal, local, and endurable global hazards, this paper analyzes a recently emerging category: that of existential risks. These are threats that could case our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth - originating intelligent life. Some of these threats are relatively well known while others, including some of the gravest, have gone almost unrecognized. Existential risks have a cluster of features that make ordinary risk management ineffective. A final section of this paper discusses several ethical and policy implications. A clearer understanding of the threat picture will enable us to formulate better strategies. (shrink)

Within the variety of subjects considered by Heidegger after Being and time, the notion of ‘thinking’ stands out for its constant presence and for the central place it occupies in a large part of his later work. In fact, as a path towards overcoming metaphysics and as a means of rethinking the relationship between humans and being, distorted in the world of technique, Heidegger uses the exercise of thinking that is not only the heritage of philosophers, but is latent in (...) many of the habitual practices of individuals. This article aims to elaborate this notion in line with the concepts of forgetting and remembering, which are both human experiences and constitutive elements of being in its happening. The outlined thesis is thus that, in a world dominated by the entity, Heidegger ascribes to the ‘reminiscent thinking’ the task of restoring our relationship with being and thus widening the possibilities of meaning of our existence. (shrink)

On July 14, 1866 Franz Brentano stepped up to the pulpit to defend his thesis that “the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences”. This thesis bound his first students to him and became the north star of his school, against the complex background of the progress and specialization of the natural sciences as well as the growth and professionalization of universities. I will discuss the project of the renewal of philosophy as science in (...) the School of Brentano and how this aimed to provide a scientific foundation for the humanities independently from the natural sciences, while preserving the unity of science. Through his well-known re-introduction of the concept of intentionality as criterion to distinguish internal and external perception, Brentano was able to supply an empirical foundation for the Geisteswissenschaften. While philosophy would use the method of natural science, its domain would not be nature, but consciousness: a full-blooded science of the mind that did not require a reduction to the physical in order to be scientific. Brentano’s science of consciousness was empirical, but not experimental, and relied on subjective methods, but was not introspective. Brentano’s students Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl and others came to occupy important chairs in philosophy throughout Europe. While they were certainly not all orthodox followers, they adapted and spread his theories far and wide in the schools and movements they founded and influenced: Gestalt psychology, Prague linguistics, phenomenology, etc.. Moreover, the 19th century idea of scientific research as a collaborative and collective achievement led to a division of labor in Brentano’s school. Each of his students was meant to work out a part of the greater whole: Stumpf, the philosophy of sound and music; Marty, language; Meinong the history of philosophy; Husserl, mathematics; etc. Yet all of them also contributed to the shared project of the renewal of philosophy as science and discussed the (foundational) relation of philosophy to other sciences in programmatic works. Though often forgotten and overlooked due to contingent historical circumstances, the scientific paradigm of the School of Brentano was very fruitful and highly influential in philosophy and the human sciences in general, throughout the second half of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Yet it is relevant then as now to preserve the independent scientific dignity of the humanities. (shrink)

This research aims to address the hypothesis of the possible influence of Rickert’s ideas about chaos on the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. This paper considers arguments in favor of the hypothesis and those against it. I show that pieces of evidence exist, proving that Rickert’s interpretation of chaos influenced Rudolf Carnap when he was working on Der logische Aufbau der Welt. I argue that Carnap’s pre-Aufbau unpublished manuscript Vom Chaos zur Wirklichkeit demonstrates this influence. This study opens new vistas in (...) exploring the genesis of Carnap’s ideas. (shrink)

There are arguments for determinism. Admittedly, this is opposed by the fact of everyday experience of autonomy. In the following, it is argued for the compatibility of determinism and autonomy. Taking up considerations of Donald MacKay, a fatalistic attitude can be refuted as false. Repeatedly, attempts have been made to defend the possibility of autonomy with reference to quantum physical indeterminacy. But its statistical randomness clearly misses the meaning of autonomy. What is decisive, on the other hand, is the possibility (...) of knowledge, which opens up opportunities for planning, freedom of choice and ultimately 'self-choice'. Results of neurobiological research, especially Benjamin Libet's and more recently John-Dylan Haynes', seem to refute this: Actions are unconsciously initiated before conscious decision. But, as Libet has also shown, consciousness always has the possibility of a veto – and thus also of knowledge-driven action control. Ultimately, the idea of possible self-choice can thus become the determining condition. Only such a form of rational self-determination establishes a spiritual identity and at the same time represents the maximum of autonomy possible for human beings. (shrink)

This thesis examines Kant's and Nietzsche's treatments of the moral agent. It argues for three broad conclusions. Firstly, it argues that, although Nietzsche's explicit criticisms of Kant's conception of the moral agent can be understood only in the context of Nietzsche's broader moral philosophy, neither these criticisms nor their context are well understood by the prevailing literature. The thesis thus engages with existing scholarship on the nature of Nietzsche's moral philosophy and with the scanty literature on the relationship between Kant's (...) and Nietzsche's moral philosophies. Secondly, the thesis argues that Kant's conception of the moral agent is not undermined by the criticisms which Nietzsche explicitly levels at it, or, indeed, by others which are commonly made in Nietzsche's name. In doing so, the thesis combines original interpretations of Kant with elements of recent Kant scholarship. Finally, however, the thesis argues that neglected elements of Nietzsche's own moral philosophy provide for a more sophisticated, telling, and, indeed, original critical engagement with Kant's conception of the moral agent is not undermined by the criticisms which Nietzsche explicitly levels at it, or, indeed, by others which are commonly made in Nietzsche's name. In doing so, the thesis combines original interpretations of Kant with elements of recent Kant scholarship. Finally, however, the thesis argues that neglected elements of Nietzsche's own moral philosophy provide for a more sophisticated, telling, and, indeed, original critical engagement with Kant's conception of the moral agent. Thus the thesis defends an original interpretation of Nietzsche's moral philosophy and its critical relation to Kant's, and demonstrates the pertinence of a certain neglected critical approach to Kant's conception of the moral agent. On the basis of these conclusions, the thesis ultimately defends a conception of the moral agent which, although Kantian, owes something to both Kant and Nietzsche. (shrink)