The post-global is a synthetic project of being with existential vectors. It concerns the essence of human existence. It is here a priori theorized, traced transcendentally, and ontologized in the necessary unity of human experience. The post-global is a cyclical relative ontologem, a transition from a global age to an age that does not have yet a clarified being-generating essence. It represents the immanent decay of a certain age. In this case: the collapse of the ontology of the spirit. That (...) is why ideologies are extant in it above all. The post-global is a permanent dynamic between a passing type of globalism, the current decline and an absent to-be, which, however, has an inter-epochal scale. It is marked by retrograde forces and influences. The post-global does not and cannot have its own name. Therefore, it is a gap in which only alienation reigns. Kant’s transcendental project, developed in a non-conservative formal-rational perspective, offers a possibility of an ontological balancing of the post-global in an existential horizon. (shrink)

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is (...) to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Life and World of a Singer:Finding My WayPäivi JärviöThe subject of my research is the performing practice of so-called early music, particularly the vocal music of the Italian Early Baroque era (ca. 1600–1630). The central figure in my study is Claudio Monteverdi and I am focusing my attention on the recitatives in his early operas, especially in Orfeo (1607). Or, should I say, these were the subject, focus, (...) and central figure of my research but they have been at least temporarily replaced by a more fundamental issue. Studying the performing practice of Italian Early Baroque vocal music1 made me realize how little has been revealed by research of the facts of performing practice and how much more I know from my own experience as a singer and as a teacher.This led me to ask what it meant to be a performer for the performer has been virtually absent from the literature on the performing practice of early music. Who was a singer of early music and what did she do? What happens when teaching this repertoire to others? I found it difficult to determine a point of view because first, the human being was missing altogether in my thinking; second, working with my own experience has required me to find a new way of talking/writing about it.Initially, my own experience functioned only as an illustrative example in my texts, if it was present at all. As my own experience as a performer and pedagogue started to take on greater significance in my research, I experimented for a long time with other types of writing, often with the result that the voices of others (philosophers and writers on performing practice) disappeared totally from the page or appeared only in footnotes. But such a way of writing raised questions about the validity and value of my own experiences. It was as if I needed some theoretical grounding, some sense of a larger guiding viewpoint which resonated with my own view of the performer, but which would allow me to open my experience and explore its possibilities. The search led me to the phenomenology of Michel Henry and to a new focus on the living body of a singer. Henry's thinking has radically transformed my understanding of what a human being is and how he is in Life and in the world.According to Henry, the subjective body has an affective and sensing relation to that which it is not, to the world. The world, in Henry's thinking, is not the transcendent horizon of classical phenomenology. Rather it is a world for life, a living cosmos, lived by the subject. I have access only to the world that I inhabit. I have no access to objects; rather, objects can be given to me and in me. The givenness happens in me, as a pathos. [End Page 65]Because I have only my experience, I read, write, and understand beginning from this experience. In this paper I will discuss the moment of starting a phrase with a vowel. I will first try to describe the experience of singing a note on the vowel "a," my example being from the entrance of the Messenger in the Orfeo singing "Ahi, caso acerbo" (Ah, hard fate!). Then I will discuss some points of view regarding this experience of singing one sound that are relevant for teaching singing and for art.Living in the Movement of My BreathI stand in a small, ascetically furnished room: there is nothing but a piano, a chair and a music stand. I look at the score on the music stand. I know how to read it: reading it makes the music happen in me even if no sound is heard in the room. I hear the continuo instruments and I feel and hear myself singing. My body reads the score, singing silently. My body is this ability to read music and to sing.When a pendulum swings there is a moment at the end of the upward movement where the pendulum stops, after which the movement turns downward. The pendulum feels weightless in the air until the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Life and World of a Singer:Finding My WayPäivi JärviöThe subject of my research is the performing practice of so-called early music, particularly the vocal music of the Italian Early Baroque era (ca. 1600–1630). The central figure in my study is Claudio Monteverdi and I am focusing my attention on the recitatives in his early operas, especially in Orfeo (1607). Or, should I say, these were the subject, focus, (...) and central figure of my research but they have been at least temporarily replaced by a more fundamental issue. Studying the performing practice of Italian Early Baroque vocal music1 made me realize how little has been revealed by research of the facts of performing practice and how much more I know from my own experience as a singer and as a teacher.This led me to ask what it meant to be a performer for the performer has been virtually absent from the literature on the performing practice of early music. Who was a singer of early music and what did she do? What happens when teaching this repertoire to others? I found it difficult to determine a point of view because first, the human being was missing altogether in my thinking; second, working with my own experience has required me to find a new way of talking/writing about it.Initially, my own experience functioned only as an illustrative example in my texts, if it was present at all. As my own experience as a performer and pedagogue started to take on greater significance in my research, I experimented for a long time with other types of writing, often with the result that the voices of others (philosophers and writers on performing practice) disappeared totally from the page or appeared only in footnotes. But such a way of writing raised questions about the validity and value of my own experiences. It was as if I needed some theoretical grounding, some sense of a larger guiding viewpoint which resonated with my own view of the performer, but which would allow me to open my experience and explore its possibilities. The search led me to the phenomenology of Michel Henry and to a new focus on the living body of a singer. Henry's thinking has radically transformed my understanding of what a human being is and how he is in Life and in the world.According to Henry, the subjective body has an affective and sensing relation to that which it is not, to the world. The world, in Henry's thinking, is not the transcendent horizon of classical phenomenology. Rather it is a world for life, a living cosmos, lived by the subject. I have access only to the world that I inhabit. I have no access to objects; rather, objects can be given to me and in me. The givenness happens in me, as a pathos. [End Page 65]Because I have only my experience, I read, write, and understand beginning from this experience. In this paper I will discuss the moment of starting a phrase with a vowel. I will first try to describe the experience of singing a note on the vowel "a," my example being from the entrance of the Messenger in the Orfeo singing "Ahi, caso acerbo" (Ah, hard fate!). Then I will discuss some points of view regarding this experience of singing one sound that are relevant for teaching singing and for art.Living in the Movement of My BreathI stand in a small, ascetically furnished room: there is nothing but a piano, a chair and a music stand. I look at the score on the music stand. I know how to read it: reading it makes the music happen in me even if no sound is heard in the room. I hear the continuo instruments and I feel and hear myself singing. My body reads the score, singing silently. My body is this ability to read music and to sing.When a pendulum swings there is a moment at the end of the upward movement where the pendulum stops, after which the movement turns downward. The pendulum feels weightless in the air until the... (shrink)

The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world ’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in the care for the self that leads to the care for the (...) others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up. (shrink)

The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world ’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in the care for the self that leads to the care for the (...) others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 2, Page 245-267, February 2022. The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world ’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in (...) the care for the self that leads to the care for the others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up. (shrink)

_The Horizon of Modernity_ provides a historicized account of New Confucian philosophy in relation to the contemporary revival of Confucianism and explores the nexus between subjectivity and social structure in the works of Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xiong Shili.

Professional Responsibility: New Horizons of Praxis addresses the manifold and complex challenges inherent in professional responsibility. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, professions have been accorded a conjoined mandate - political and moral responsibility - to serve the interests of individual's and society. The quality of professional work, how professionals understand and live out their responsibilities in practice, is a matter of pervasive concern since increasingly they have such a prominent presence in most people's lives. Until the late 1960's, (...) professionals' roles and responsibilities were rarely questioned, but such trust has since given way to collective scepticism concerning their commitment and willingness to live up to their moral and societal obligations. Abuse of power and privilege by some professionals has contributed to decline in trust by publics, the concept of 'good work' is increasingly challenged, and politicians and policy-makers have sought to regulate and hold professions to account. It is timely, therefore, to investigate critically conflicting discourses and practices on what counts as professional responsibility, to question how professionals understand and are prepared for a life of professional responsibility, and what acting with integrity and authority looks like in practice. One of the distinctive features of this book is the combination of normative and empirical dimensions that are used to dissect this question. The authors indicate from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives how professional responsibility includes particular thoughts and warranted actions yet remains multifaceted and inarticulate"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Niels Bohr famously argued that a consistent understanding of quantum mechanics requires a new epistemic framework, which he named complementarity . This position asserts that even in the context of quantum theory, classical concepts must be used to understand and communicate measurement results. The apparent conflict between certain classical descriptions is avoided by recognizing that their application now crucially depends on the measurement context. ;Recently it has been argued that a new form of complementarity can provide a solution to the (...) so-called information loss paradox. Stephen Hawking argues that the evolution of black holes cannot be described by standard unitary quantum evolution, because such evolution always preserves information, while the evaporation of a black hole will imply that any information that fell into it is irrevocably lost---hence a "paradox." Some researchers in quantum gravity have argued that this paradox can be resolved if one interprets certain seemingly incompatible descriptions of events around black holes as instead being complementary. ;In this dissertation I assess the extent to which this black hole complementarity can be undergirded by Bohr's account of the limitations of classical concepts. I begin by offering an interpretation of Bohr's complementarity and the role that it plays in his philosophy of quantum theory. After clarifying the nature of classical concepts, I offer an account of the limitations these concepts face, and argue that Bohr's appeal to disturbance is best understood as referring to these conceptual limits. ;Following preparatory chapters on issues in quantum field theory and black hole mechanics, I offer an analysis of the information loss paradox and various responses to it. I consider the three most prominent accounts of black hole complementarity and argue that they fail to offer sufficient justification for the proposed incompatibility between descriptions. ;The lesson that emerges from this dissertation is that we have as much to learn from the limitations facing our scientific descriptions as we do from the successes they enjoy. Because all of our scientific theories offer at best limited, effective accounts of the world, an important part of our interpretive efforts will be assessing the borders of these domains of description. (shrink)

Experiences of shame are not always discrete, but can be recurrent, persistent or enduring. To use the feminist phenomenologist Sandra Lee Bartky’s formulation, shame is not always an acute event, but can become a “pervasive affective attunement” (Bartky, 1990 : 85). Instead of experiencing shame as a discrete event with a finite duration, it can be experienced as a persistent, and perhaps, permanent possibility in daily life. This sort of pervasive or persistent shame is commonly referred to as “chronic shame” (...) (Pattison, 2000 ; Nathanson, 1992 ; Dolezal, 2015 ). Chronic shame is frequently associated with political oppression and marginalization. In chronic shame, it is the potentiality of shame, rather than the actuality, that is significant. In other words, the anticipation of shame (whether explicit or implicit) comes to be a defining feature of one’s lived experience. Living with chronic shame has important socio-political consequences. Thus far, chronic shame has eluded simple phenomenological analysis, largely because chronic shame often does not have a clear experiential profile: it is frequently characterised by the _absence_ rather than the _presence_ of shame. The aim of this article is to provide a phenomenology of chronic shame, drawing from Edmund Husserl’s formulation of the ‘horizon’ as a means a to discuss structural aspects of chronic shame experiences, in particular how chronic shame is characterised by structures of absence and anticipation. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on characteristics of perceived speech. I explore the extent to which the spoken word can be said to have a horizonal structure similar to that of spatiotemporal objects: our perception of each is informed by habitual associations and expectations formed through past experiences of the object or word and other associated objects and experiences. Specifically, the horizonal structure of speech in use can fruitfully be compared (...) to that of a tool in use. The comparison suggests an account of our linguistic faculty as continuous with more foundational faculties of perception and action. I provide empirical corroboration of this account by drawing on recent neuroimaging studies of the multimodal, sensorimotor bases of speech comprehension. I then discuss how such an understanding of our linguistic ability helps advocates of embodied, non-representationalist accounts of cognition respond to a common objection. Critics grant that embodied approaches may be adequate to account for lower-level, online modes of cognition, such as perception and action, which directly engage their object. But they question whether such approaches can “scale up” to higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, memory, thought, and language, which can entertain absent, non-existent, or abstract objects. By providing a plausible account of the continuity of lower cognition and language-involving cognition, my approach responds to this objection, at least where language is concerned. (shrink)

Abstract: How is it that we can visually experience complete three-dimensional objects despite being limited, in any given perceptual moment, to perceiving the sides facing us from a specific spatial perspective? To make sense of this, such visual experiences must refer to occluded or presently unseen back-sides which are not sense-perceptually given, and which cannot be sense- perceptually given while the subject is occupying the spatial perspective on the object that they currently are – I call this the horizonality of (...) visual experience. Existing accounts of these horizonal references are unsatisfactory. In providing a satisfactory account, this paper argues that the content and structure of the visual experience of complete three-dimensional objects is as follows: the object is presented as being perceptible from yet-to-be-determined alternative points of view. As part of the content of visual experience, this motivates non-propositional attitudes of anticipation. Explicating this proposal is the central positive aim of this paper. (shrink)

In several texts, Paul Ricœur has elaborated different concepts of horizon: the horizon of tradition that shapes our perspectives, the horizon as a careful set of determinations of the future, the horizon as a divine call that comes from the future towards us. However, the connection of these three views on the horizon, together with the explicitly Christian interpretation of the third horizon are problematic elements in Ricœur’s thoughts on this topic. In this article (...) his views are confronted with the criticism of Jacques Derrida, who uses a quite different notion of horizon: an enclosing limit that dominates the understanding of what seems to fit in its circle. Finally, the notions of horizon and history as formulated by Jan Patočka provide valuable alternatives to Ricœur’s problematic versions of the horizons of expectation, while leaving the underlying thread of his understanding of horizon intact. (shrink)

Our political present is characterized by the rise of right-wing populism. This trend has not only led to a repoliticization of society, but also of academic philosophy, including phenomenology. In the U.S., a strong movement has emerged under the label of critical phenomenology whereas in Europe the movement of political phenomenology has become prominent. Both projects have in common the aim of positioning phenomenology as a critical project, questioning social relations of domination and power. These projects relate to Husserl’s transcendental (...) phenomenology in different ways. In the following, I want to uncover this relation by fleshing out the horizons of critique that come with transcendental, critical, and political phenomenology. In particular I will show how the phenomenological method of demonstration can become a means of critique in political confrontations. (shrink)

This collection of essays represents an interdisciplinary approach to some contemporary issues in the philosophy of science and the theory of knowledge. It is also an attempt to place art in the context of human cognition in general and also to relate it to science and philosophy. Its conception is such that it accords with the view that our creativity is not separable from a humanistic orientation. Within such a humanistic framework, aiming at a stable form of peace becomes the (...) moral responsibility of both the scientist and the philosopher. (shrink)

This chapter represents an attempt to interpret a fundamental structure in Arabic music, maqām, in terms of Gadamer’s notion of the fusion of horizons. Often translated into English as “mode,” maqām goes beyond pitch set or scale. It is a musical reality, beautiful and fascinating, not well served by traditional theoretical tools, which deserves more attention. I argue, on the one hand, that Gadamerian hermeneutics can illuminate how maqām works, while showing, on the other, how maqām might contribute to a (...) better understanding of Gadamer’s thought. In the context of my overall argument, I deal with Gadamer’s key notions of play, imagination, indeterminacy, the centrality of the question and the notion of ethos. I show how Gadamerian hermeneutics applied to maqām can constribute to certain discussions in the philosophy of music. I suggest that maqām presents a challenge to Gadamer’s understandings of language and the musical work. Ultimately, it is appropriate to conceive of maqām as itself a horizon in which fusion of perspectives can take place. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a development of a variety of approaches for examining lived experience in the context of cognitive science. However, the field of first-person research has yet to develop a pragmatic epistemological framework that would enable researchers to compare and integrate – as well as understand the epistemic status of – different methods and their findings. In this article, we present the foundation of such a framework, grounded in an epistemological investigation of gestures involved in acquiring data on (...) experience. We examine the acts of turning towards one’s experiential field and attending to experience within the process of reflection. We describe what we call the _horizon of attending to experience_ by analogy to the “experimental arrangement” in quantum observation: this horizon, we argue, co-defines experiential phenomena that end up being observed and reported; at the same time, it itself forms an element of experience and is therefore amenable to phenomenological investigation. Drawing on the constructivist notion of enaction, we show that acknowledging the inherently constructive nature of attending to experience and accepting one’s lack of epistemic access to the “original”, observation-independent pre-reflective experience is not a dead end for first-person research when situated in a constructivist (but not relativist) understanding of the reflective act and its results. Expanding the notion of the horizon to encompass all epistemic acts involved in producing phenomenological data and final results of a first-person study (i.e., _horizon of the method_), we suggest some lines of inquiry that would allow researchers to identify and articulate horizons of particular methods, opening a way towards integrating past and future findings of different complementary first-person approaches into a comprehensive map of lived experience. (shrink)

Developing the Horizons of the Mind is a comprehensive book on Relational and Contextual Reasoning, a theory of the human mind which powerfully addresses key areas of human conflict such as the ideological conflict between nations, the conflict in close relationships and the conflict between science and religion. K. Helmut Reich provides a clear and accessible introduction to the fresh RCR way of thinking that encourages people to adopt an inclusive rather than an oppositional approach to conflict and problem-solving. Part (...) one outlines the key aspects of RCR theory and supporting empirical data and part two provides examples of its application in the world. RCR provides a stimulating and challenging tool to several disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, religious studies and education, and this book will be a valuable resource for cognitive scientists, psychotherapists, theologians, educators and all those involved in conflict resolution. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a development of a variety of approaches for examining lived experience in the context of cognitive science. However, the field of first-person research has yet to develop a pragmatic epistemological framework that would enable researchers to compare and integrate – as well as understand the epistemic status of – different methods and their findings. In this article, we present the foundation of such a framework, grounded in an epistemological investigation of gestures involved in acquiring data on (...) experience. We examine the acts of turning towards one’s experiential field and attending to experience within the process of reflection. We describe what we call the horizon of attending to experience by analogy to the “experimental arrangement” in quantum observation: this horizon, we argue, co-defines experiential phenomena that end up being observed and reported; at the same time, it itself forms an element of experience and is therefore amenable to phenomenological investigation. Drawing on the constructivist notion of enaction, we show that acknowledging the inherently constructive nature of attending to experience and accepting one’s lack of epistemic access to the “original”, observation-independent pre-reflective experience is not a dead end for first-person research when situated in a constructivist (but not relativist) understanding of the reflective act and its results. Expanding the notion of the horizon to encompass all epistemic acts involved in producing phenomenological data and final results of a first-person study (i.e., horizon of the method), we suggest some lines of inquiry that would allow researchers to identify and articulate horizons of particular methods, opening a way towards integrating past and future findings of different complementary first-person approaches into a comprehensive map of lived experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Horizons of Grace:Marilynne Robinson and Simone WeilKaty RyanThe sorrow is that every soul is put out of house.Marilynne Robinson1All of us, even the youngest, are in a situation like Socrates' when he was awaiting death in prison and learning to play the lyre.Simone Weil2Marilynne Robinson's first novel Housekeeping (1980) is a meditative and lyrical reflection on old themes: abandonment, loss, grief, renewal, hope, memory—what the narrator Ruth Stone calls (...) the "sad and outcast state of revelation" (p. 184). The novel returns in its opening pages to the suicide of Ruth's mother, Helen, and concludes with a bridge crossing, misinterpreted by other characters as intentional death. Critical responses to the novel usefully explore its nineteenth-century American literary impulses (Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Melville), its reworking of female subjectivity, its quiet insistence on the transience of all things and the unmaking of boundaries.3 Words on suicide are scarce. In this inattention, critics may be following the lead of the novel, which, among novels containing acts of self-destruction,is exceptional in its almost total reticence on the subject. Not one character asks why Helen kills herself, and little emerges from the narrative to shed light on the unasked question.Structurally, the function of the mother's suicide seems obvious. Helen's death creates two orphans—that preferred status in literature that frees characters up for adventure and self-discovery. It also appears to be the cause, or at least a leading cause, of Ruth's sadness. Ruth's aunt Sylvie assumes this to be true. After the deaths of their mother and [End Page 349] grandmother, Ruth and her sister Lucille are passed off by their overwhelmed great aunts to Sylvie, a woman who has been wandering the country, hopping trains, getting by. When the concerned women in the town of Fingerbone attempt to determine how best to keep Ruth from following in Sylvie's uncivil footsteps, to keep her "safely within doors" one of them remarks on how sad Ruth always looks.And Sylvie replied, "Well, she is sad." Silence. Sylvie said, "She should be sad." She laughed. "I don't mean she should be, but, you know, who wouldn't be?" Again, silence.(p. 185)The unsaid is met with repeated silence. Sylvie proposes that anyone who had survived what Ruth has survived, understood to be her mother's death, would be sad, should be sad. A long silence also greets Sylvie's discomforting observation that Ruth is "'like another sister to me. She's her mother all over again'" (p. 182).The generating absence of the mother sets the stage for Ruth's spiritual exile and eventual communion, the moment when a "word so true" comes home to her. Ruth does not, in fact, become "her mother all over again."Born of people falling to their deaths (Ruth's mother and grandfather), Housekeeping ends with a counter-image, an image of crossing over a bridge (horizontality) rather than falling from it (verticality). One way to think about the philosophical movement in the novel is provided by Simone Weil's writing, which relies of tropes of gravity. I am particularly interested in connections between Housekeeping and Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace (1952) and Waiting for God (1992). These texts explore the nature of suffering by focusing on the inevitability of waiting, the practice of attention, and the necessity of detachment.Although Weil wrote movingly and persuasively about industrial labor, war, and other forms of political oppression, here I emphasize her spiritual writings. In his introduction to First and Last Notebooks, Richard Rees writes of Weil, "One may say that two of her chief preoccupations were, first, how to organize a society so that suffering should be reduced to a minimum, and, second, how to ensure that the (large) irreducible minimum should not be valueless" (p. viii). Housekeeping dramatizes this second concern. The novel also provides a needed fictional example of decreation, Weil's difficult name for the [End Page 350] process by which something created can be transformed into something uncreated, or "the act of allowing moments empty of meaning to remain 'unfilled.'"4 The suicide... (shrink)

Starting from the often-used metaphor of the “horizon of experience” this article discusses three different types of intercultural hermeneutics, which respectively conceive hermeneutic interpretation as a _widening_ of horizons, a _fusion_ of horizons, and a _dissemination_ of horizons. It is argued that these subsequent stages in the history of hermeneutics have their origin in—but are not fully restricted to—respectively premodern, modern and postmodern stages of globalization. Taking some striking moments of the encounter between Western and Chinese language and philosophy (...) as example, the particular merits and flaws of these three types of hermeneutics are being discussed. The claim defended is that although these different types of hermeneutics are mutually exclusive from a theoretical point of view, as interpreting beings in the current era we depend on each of these distinct hermeneutic practices and cannot avoid living them simultaneously. (shrink)

One of the questions raised by the conference’s topic, in particular the relationship between the self and the other, a matter much discussed since Merleau-Ponty’s death, is the question of husserlian phenomenology’s cartesianism. Some believe that despite his reservations towards cartesianism, Husserl never disavowed his commitment to the Cartesian program of a first philosophy.

How can a post-Christian, secular audience understand the devoutly Christian, sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion? This article addresses this question with reference to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. Their confrontation reveals broad implications for the theory of humanistic interpretation at large. Gadamer celebrates Bach as a ‘classical’ touchstone of Western culture whom we may productively interpret through a ‘fusion of horizons’. Blumenberg, by contrast, cautions that our relation to Bach's Passion is fractured because (...) it is impossible to ‘pace off the horizon’. Blumenberg emphasizes the first-person experience of the diminution of historical meaning, a position this article calls ‘shattered hermeneutics’. The article concludes that Blumenberg's interpretation of Bach and his critique of Gadamer thereby usefully and plausibly deepen and radicalize hermeneutics. (shrink)

The aim of this presentation is to show that philosophy of education must seriously engage itself with horizons of education. After a brief explanation of the term “horizon”, the horizon of modern pedagogy, which was inaugurated by Pestalozzi and Herbart, is examined. Modern pedagogy with its special emphasis on method unravels itself as one of the major streams of modern epistemology, for which inspection of inner ideas is crucial. The modern epistemology, on the other hand, presupposes the atomistic (...) self represented by the Lockian dark room. This is the horizon of modern pedagogy. One of the deficiencies of this horizon is that it is not capable of articulating the educational aim on its own terms. Thus, dealing with the aim of education, modern pedagogy was obliged to use terms such as God or Nature, the terms, of which philosophical origin goes back to the Cave metaphor of Plato. This takes us to the second part of the presentation: the examination of the Cave metaphor in order to unravel the horizon of the classical education, paideia. The comparison of the two horizons will show the importance of horizon, about which philosophy of education must be sensitive. (shrink)

Horizons is a critical inventory of value-related thinking, demonstrating that the mind has the ability to profile a distinctive circumstance in diverse ways. Readers are first invited to a historical inquiry into typical configurations of values, their collisions, and the worldviews that drive them. They are then introduced to the epistemologies employed by the social sciences, so that they are better able to gauge the potential of these disciplines for coming to terms with values. Axiology is portrayed as a field (...) that has broken free from its neo-Kantian roots, benefiting from challenging new conceptual frames based in documents with global reach-mainly the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After scrutiny of what various sociological models claim about values and the way in which empirical surveys approach them, Horizons reaffirms the assumption that social life and its dynamics condition the fate of values. Yet, for the sake of more accurate accounts, research should consider to a greater extent social stratification, and pressing macrosocial problems such as environmental protection, sustainable development, and attainment of some form of global equity. Social sciences' limitations modulate their ability to serve as an unequivocal guide for value choices. These limitations are a problem because of the significance of the process of dialogue and deliberation in value-related fields. Rather than advancing the allegedly universal characteristics of any one culture, in a world consisting of many civilizations, the imperative is to acknowledge pluralism and discern what is held in common. (shrink)

An English translation of Leibniz's fragment "Horizon rerum humanarum... " in which he announces a plan to demonstrate "that the number of truths or falsehoods enunciable by humans as they are now is limited; and also that if the present condition of humanity persisted long enough, it would happen that the greatest part of what they would communicate in words, whether by talking or writing, would have to coincide with what others have already communicated in the past; and moreover (...) that new humans would lead an entire life that appears thoroughly the same to the senses as lives that others have already led." . (shrink)

"With provocations on every page, this book is a philosophical feast. The specialist will find familiar ingredients assembled here in a perspicuous and compelling way, while the nonspecialist will discover a Husserl whose philosophy is made of flesh and blood." —Journal of the History of Philosophy In this thorough study of the full body of his writings, Donn Welton uncovers a Husserl very different from the established view. Arguing against established interpretations, The Other Husserl traces Husserl’s move from static to (...) genetic phenomenology and uses accounts of perception, discourse, subjectivity, and world to elaborate the scope of his systematic phenomenology. This serious reflection on the meaning of phenomenology is the first book in English to outline in full Husserl’s phenomenological method and to argue for its cogency. Welton’s stimulating interpretation highlights Husserl’s relevance for current philosophical debates. (shrink)