In _Basic Concepts_, Heidegger claims that "Being is the most worn-out" and yet also that Being "remains constantly available." Santiago Zabala radicalizes the consequences of these little known but significant affirmations. Revisiting the work of Jacques Derrida, Reiner Schürmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Tugendhat, and Gianni Vattimo, he finds these remains of Being within which ontological thought can still operate. Being is an event, Zabala argues, a kind of generosity and gift that generates astonishment in those who (...) experience it. This sense of wonder has fueled questions of meaning for centuries-from Plato to the present day. Postmetaphysical accounts of Being, as exemplified by the thinkers of Zabala's analysis, as well as by Nietzsche, Dewey, and others he encounters, don't abandon Being. Rather, they reject rigid, determined modes of essentialist thought in favor of more fluid, malleable, and adaptable conceptions, redefining the pursuit and meaning of philosophy itself. (shrink)

In The Time That Remains, Agamben seeks to separate the Pauline texts from the history of the Church that canonized them, thus revealing them to be "the fundamental messianic texts of the West.

On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom. At a quantum level, this view of change as relative variation leads to a fundamentally timeless formalism for quantum gravity. Here, we will show how one may avoid this acute ‘problem of time’. Under our view, (...) duration is still regarded as relative, but temporal succession is taken to be absolute. Following our approach, which is presented in more formal terms in, it is possible to conceive of a genuinely dynamical theory of quantum gravity within which time, in a substantive sense, remains. 1 Introduction1.1 The problem of time1.2 Our solution2 Understanding Symmetry2.1 Mechanics and representation2.2 Freedom by degrees2.3 Voluntary redundancy3 Understanding Time3.1 Change and order3.2 Quantization and succession4 Time and Gravitation4.1 The two faces of classical gravity4.2 Retaining succession in quantum gravity5 Discussion5.1 Related arguments5.2 Concluding remarks. (shrink)

Assertion is widely regarded as an act associated with an epistemic position. To assert is to represent oneself as occupying this position and/or to be required to occupy this position. Within this approach, the most common view is that assertion is strong: the associated position is knowledge or certainty. But recent challenges to this common view present new data that are argued to be better explained by assertion being weak. Old data widely taken to support assertion being strong has also (...) been challenged. This paper examines such challenges and finds them wanting. Far from diminishing the case for strong assertion, carefully considering new and old data reveals that assertion is as strong as ever. (shrink)

To make sense of the material afterlives of animals, this book draws together multispecies perspectives from literary criticism and theory, cultural studies, anthropology and ethnography, photographic and film history, and contemporary art practice to offer the first synoptic account of animal remains.

At once photographic analysis, philosophical essay, and autobiographical narrative, Athens, Still Remains presents an original theory of photography and throws a fascinating light on Derrida's life and work.The book begins with a sort of ...

Readers have much to consider when evaluating Greenblum and Hubbard’s conclusion that ‘physicians have no business doing theology’.1 The two central arguments the authors offer are fairly convincing within the confines they set for themselves, the provisos they stipulate and their notions of ‘privacy’ and ‘public reason’. However, I would ask readers to consider two questions, the answers to which I believe the authors leave opaque. First, what is theological negotiation? Second, what makes chaplains the singular group of healthcare professionals (...) responsible for theological negotiation? In this Commentary, I explore these questions not with the goal of rejecting the authors’ conclusion, but rather with the goal of highlighting relevant considerations when evaluating the authors’ central tenets. First, I would like readers to consider Greenblum and Hubbard’s descriptions of theological negotiation. They categorise theological negotiation into metaphysical, normative and alternative responses, and hold that this kind of negotiation is, for the most part, impermissible for healthcare professionals, save chaplains.1 The examples of Dr Chatterjee and Dr Thompson expand theological negotiation to include instances where physicians add a theological veneer to their clinical recommendations. In both the examples, the physician has made the case for accepting or rejecting a certain intervention—for Dr Chatterjee, accepting …. (shrink)

It is common to think that, in making choices for others, we should consider their values. But do the current interests of people with dementia ever depend on what they used to value? Or do their interests depend solely on what matters to them from now on? Two approaches are especially prominent in the philosophical literature. Some believe that the capacity to value or significantly care about things bestows a certain standing on the person’s present perspective, making it inappropriate to (...) appeal to her former values until the person no longer has this capacity. Others hold that a person’s past attitudes can never affect what is good for him now. On the “Revision Model” I defend, we should ordinarily recognize a person’s current values as authoritative in defining a person’s interests, because these represent his most up-to-date revision of his earlier views. However, if a person has lost the ability to comprehend his former values, then we cannot treat his current perspective as a genuine revision, since he is not answerable for the fact that his values have changed. Having never truly revised those former values, we should recognize their enduring relevance in defining his interests, insofar as they remain relevant to his life. This, however, is consistent with recognizing that the person’s interests may also depend on some of his current values and concerns as well. (shrink)

(2010). Remaining True to Our Values – Reflections on Military Ethics in Trying Times. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 183-194. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2010.510850.

Neurorights, as “new human rights,” have been increasingly recognized in the literature. In the Neurorights Initiative, these rights are supposed to be directed toward mental privacy, free will, pe...

Here I examine some recent attempts to provide a new way of thinking about the philosophy of time that question the central role of ‘presentness’ within the definition of presentism. The central concern raised by these critics turns on the intelligibility and theoretical usefulness of the term ‘is present’. My overarching aim is to at least challenge such concerns. I begin with arguments due to Deasy. Deasy develops a view that he calls ‘transientism’ and that he takes to be a (...) well-motivated version of presentism. I show that both this way of thinking about presentism and the argument supposedly motivating it all fail. I then move to an argument due to Correia and Rosenkrantz. Correia and Rosenkrantz purport to show that presentism can be salvaged without making recourse to the term ‘is present’. I demonstrate that their arguments fail. I then move on to a view, proposed and defended by Merricks, Tallant, and Zimmerman, and show that it has the wherewithal to meet the challenges raised by Williamson who, as noted above, raises genuine concerns about our capacity to define presentism. (shrink)

People are organisms of a characteristic shape, with individual personalities, abilities and memories. Each of these features varies through time, but does not normally change very abruptly before death. Because these changes are only gradual, we are able to pick out one and the same individual through time, and refer to him, her or it by use of a proper name, just as we are able to refer to one and the same planet, animal or building. In particular, organisms change (...) shape only gradually, and we have every reason to believe in the possibility of our continuing to watch the spatiotemporally continuous life-history of one and the same organism. (shrink)

This paper has two parts. In the first part, I concede an error in an argument I have given for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. I go on to show how to modify my argument so as to avoid this error, and conclude that the thesis that free will and determinism are compatible continues to be—to say the least—implausible. But if free will is incompatible with determinism, we are faced with a mystery, for free will undeniably exists, and (...) it also seems to be incompatible with indeterminism. In the second part of this paper, I will defend the conclusion that the concept of agent causation is of no use to the philosopher who wants to maintain that free will and indeterminism are compatible. I conclude that free will remains a mystery---that is, that free will undeniably exists and that there is a strong and unanswered prima facie case for its impossibility. (shrink)

This is a reference work surveying the literature (as of the publication date) on treatment of the remains of human beings. I discuss leading views on the possibility of posthumous harm, posthumous rights, and rights of the living in the bodies of the dead.

In this book encounter with Kostas Axelos' Introduction to Future Ways of Thought: On Marx and Heidegger, I introduce Axelos as an imaginative reader of Marx and Heidegger. His approach draws on their parallels to imagine what is possible. I argue that Axelos makes three unique contributions to the Heideggerian-Marxist project. First, Axelos’ understanding of the planetary epoch relies on a reading of Marx that is heavily influenced by Heidegger’s concept of “world”. Second, he builds on the idea of an (...) “open world” meant to combat the technological over-determination characteristic of the planetary era. Third, Axelos preserves the significance of Heidegger and Marx to outline the possibilities of a thinking that, as of yet, remain a future undertaking. I conclude with some ideas about how Axelos' thinking may be further developed. (shrink)

This historico-critical edition of Schopenhauer's manuscript remains contains Schopenhauer's entire surviving philosophical notes, from his university years until his death in 1860. Translated here into English for the first time, it provides a fascinating insight into the workings of Schopenhauer's mind and an important key to his philosophical work.

Book synopsis: This astonishingly rich volume collects the work of an international group of scholars, including some of the best known in academia. Experts in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, political theory, aesthetics, history, critical theory, and hermeneutics bring to light the best philosophical scholarship what is arguably Friedrich Nietzsche's most rewarding but most challenging text. Including essays that were commissioned specifically for the volume as well as essays revised and edited by their authors, this collection showcases definitive works that (...) have shaped Nietzsche studies alongside new works of interest to students and experts alike. Sections are devoted to the topic of genealogy generally, numerous essays on specific passages, applications of genealogy in later thinkers, and the import of Nietzsche's Genealogy in contemporary politics, ethics, and aesthetics. A lengthy introduction, annotated bibliography, and index make this an extremely useful guide for the classroom and advanced research. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 3, May 2020, Page 354-359.

McGovern, Kevin This is a slightly edited version of a talk given on 1 September 2011 at the Catholic Health Australia National Conference at the National Convention Centre in Canberra. The theme of the conference was Remaining True.

In _The Time That Remains_, Agamben seeks to separate the Pauline texts from the history of the Church that canonized them, thus revealing them to be "the fundamental messianic texts of the West." He argues that Paul's letters are concerned not with the foundation of a new religion but rather with the "messianic" abolition of Jewish law. Situating Paul's texts in the context of early Jewish messianism, this book is part of a growing set of recent critiques devoted to the (...) period when Judaism and Christianity were not yet fully distinct, placing Paul in the context of what has been called "Judaeo-Christianity." Agamben's philosophical exploration of the problem of messianism leads to the other major figure discussed in this book, Walter Benjamin. Advancing a claim without precedent in the vast literature on Benjamin, Agamben argues that Benjamin's philosophy of history constitutes a repetition and appropriation of Paul's concept of "remaining time." Through a close reading and comparison of Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" and the Pauline Epistles, Agamben discerns a number of striking and unrecognized parallels between the two works. (shrink)

"The king is dead. Long live the king!" In early modern Europe, the king's body was literally sovereign—and the right to rule was immediately transferrable to the next monarch in line upon the king's death. In The Royal Remains, Eric L. Santner argues that the "carnal" dimension of the structures and dynamics of sovereignty hasn't disappeared from politics. Instead, it migrated to a new location—the life of the people—where something royal continues to linger in the way we obsessively track (...) and measure the vicissitudes of our flesh. Santner demonstrates the ways in which democratic societies have continued many of the rituals and practices associated with kingship in displaced, distorted, and usually, unrecognizable forms. He proposes that those strange mental activities Freud first lumped under the category of the unconscious—which often manifest themselves in peculiar physical ways—are really the uncanny second life of these "royal remains," now animated in the body politic of modern neurotic subjects. Pairing Freud with Kafka, Carl Schmitt with Hugo von Hofmannsthal,and Ernst Kantorowicz with Rainer Maria Rilke, Santner generates brilliant readings of multiple texts and traditions of thought en route to reconsidering the sovereign imaginary. Ultimately, The Royal Remains locates much of modernity—from biopolitical controversies to modernist literary experiments—in this transition from subjecthood to secular citizenship. This major new work will make a bold and original contribution to discussions of politics, psychoanalysis, and modern art and literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Peter van Inwagen’s claim (in “Free Will Remains a Mystery”), that agent-causal views of free will could do nothing to solve the problem of free will (specifically, the problem of chanciness). After explaining van Inwagen’s argument, I argue that he does not consider all possible manifestations of the agent-causal position. More importantly, I claim that, in any case, van Inwagen appears to have mischaracterized the problem in some crucial ways. Once we are clear (...) on the true nature of the problem of chanciness, agent-causal views do much to eradicate it. (shrink)

The new Chomskian orthodoxy denies that our linguistic competence gives us knowledge *of* a language, and that the representations in the language faculty are representations *of* anything. In reply, I have argued that through their intuitions speaker/hearers, (but not their language faculties) have knowledge of language, though not of any externally existing language. In order to count as knowledge, these intuitions must track linguistic facts represented in the language faculty. I defend this idea against the objections Collins has raised to (...) such an account. (shrink)

We start this issue of Journal of Military Ethics with a recent address on military ethics given by one of the US ARMY's leading officers.Brigadier General H. R. McMaster graduated from the United...

Among Foucault’s works on the “techniques of the self,” the importance of the Stoic doctrine of cura sui is testified by a number of essays such as The Care of the Self and The Hermeneutics of the Subject. In line with Foucault’s biopolitical thought throughout the 1970s, my core argument in this paper is that some authors of the Italian Theory develop their account of contemporary neoliberalism through the interpretation of cura sui as a form of self-enterprise. Thus, I compare (...) certain passages of late imperial Stoicism with contemporary critical literature in order to demonstrate that a certain semantic contiguity led to an interpretation of the technologies of the self that is quite different from Foucault’s original purpose, and their ethical outcomes in the domain of self-entrepreneurship suffer from a substantial ambiguity.L’importance de la doctrine stoïque de la cura sui dans les études foucaldiennes sur les « techniques du soi»s’affirme par des ouvrages tels que Le souci de soi et l’Herméneutique du sujet. Dans le sillage de la pensée biopolitique de Foucault à la fin des années 1970, la thèse que je développe dans ce texte est que certains auteurs de l’Italian Theory, dans leur lecture du présent néolibéral, ont rapproché la question classique de la cura sui à celle de l’auto-entrepreneuriat. Dans cette perspective, je fais une comparaison de certains passages du stoïcisme impérial tardif à la littérature critique contemporaine, afin de démontrer que une certaine contiguïté sémantique a conduit à une interprétation des technologies du soi assez différente des intentions originaires de Foucault et que leur finalité éthique, à propos de l'auto-entrepreneuriat, confirme son ambiguïté de fond. (shrink)

Transcendental conceptions of subjectivity, beginning with Descartes and including Kant, Fichte, and Husserl as well as neo-transcendental accounts of the 20th century, try to explicate a subject’s subjectivity as a necessary condition for all theoretical and practical validity claims. According to this conception, only this subject-theoretical presupposition allows for an adequate foundation of terms of authorship of action and self-determination. However, the conceptual self-explication of this position faces some inherent difficulties, which has repeatedly been pointed out even by representatives of (...) this school of thought themselves. Moreover, it seems as if the constitutional achievements of transcendental philosophy are increasingly being detached from philosophy: due to the development of the modern sciences of man, they are step by step conceived as objects of empirical research. This paper looks critically into this thesis of detachment. (shrink)