_Aion_ is one of a number of major works that Jung wrote during his seventies that were concerned with the relations between psychology, alchemy and religion. He is particularly concerned in this volume with the rise of Christianity and with the figure of Christ. He explores how Christianity came about when it did, the importance of the figure of Christ and the identification of the figure of Christ with the archetype of the Self. A matter of special importance to Jung (...) in his seventies - the problem of opposites, particularly good and evil - is further discussed and the importance of the symbolism of the fish, which recurs as a symbol of both Christ and the devil, is examined. As a study of the archetype of the self, _Aion_ complements _The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious_, which is also published in paperback. (shrink)

La obra de Manfredo Tafuri puede ser vista como una teoría temporal de la modernidad opuesta a otras más puramente racionalistas de la misma, como las de Mumford o Weber. Para su construcción dentro del ámbito de la historia de la arquitectura y del arte, y realizado desde una óptica temporal, Tafuri despliega unas categorías óntico-temporales que le sitúan directamente dentro del ámbito de filósofos como Althusser, Deleuze, o Cacciari, todos ellos inmersos en la crítica historiográfica realizada a las diversas (...) continuaciones de los planteamientos cronológicos y teleológicos desarrollados desde Hegel y Dilthey en adelante. (shrink)

Deleuze speaks about specific time of the event, which he names – following the stoics – Aion. Time that is eternal, immovable, incorporeal; time that is in opposition to Chronos, in which everything takes place and is corporeal. To understand this temporality, one can explain the concept of an event by asking about its place. An event is contained neither in objects nor in meanings nor in subjects. It is close to what Kapuściński calls „teatrum”: simultaneously a subject and an (...) object. These particular properties are the result of the makeup of an event, of the singularities which create an event as one transforms into another, causing a cloud of virtualities and becomings to emerge. In the quotation from Kapuściński, the grandfather who foretells war to the children is those children to some extent: he projects his life onto them; the coming tragedy and the presence of children make him sensitive to „what needs to be saved in them”, which is also „what needs to be saved in him.” This process of becoming, which here is a part of the „war” event is not merely a subjective impression; as an event it seems to enjoy an existence of its own, inseparable from the theatrum of circumstances or „states of being”. Sense emerges from circumstances, yet it seems to be outside time, unmoving, always both already gone and coming: Aion. (shrink)

In this dialogue between two interlocutors, the ontology of childhood is considered, first from the point of view of temporality, then power, then language, then from the perspective of philosophy, and inquires whether there is a specific philosophical and/or childlike dialectic of questioning and answering. The claim is made that both the philosopher and the artist carry a childlike way of questioning and acting on the world into adulthood. The discussion then moves to education, and considers the possibility of reconstructing (...) the latter beyond the Platonic notions of “formation,” reproduction, discipline and subjection, and evaluates the role of philosophical dialogue in a school setting as an agent of transformation. (shrink)

An images is build up of elements placed in a fix reciprocal positions. In this way an image is able to organize a block of space-time extracted from becoming and offered as a crystallized present, this notion imply Chronos notion of time. How would spatial co-ordinates work on the time line of Aîon , where present can’t exist? We are going to answer this question by analyzing Robert Smithson’s Monuments of Passaic.

For contemporary critical philosophers of education, the thought of Paul Tillich, a protestant theologian, does not seem to be a very likely point of reference. Nevertheless, we decided to read some of his works within a philosophical-educational context. Reading those works of Tillich we realized that they required a pedagogical-philosophical acknowledgement. Scarce as the educational analyses of Paul Tillich’s writings are, they concern mostly either religious education or some specific issues connected with teaching. Our proposal was to read him differently: (...) as a critical tool for grasping contemporary educational issues, independent from a religious or didactic approach. In the article, referring to the thoughts of Tillich, we analyze the three most important tensions of the last and present centuries: kairos I and II, referring to the human condition after World Wars I and II, and kairos III, related mainly to the war on terrorism and to the growing climate crisis. The analysis of these special moments in the history of humankind is related to the postulates and pedagogical attitudes articulated by us. We conclude that as a result of the deepening climate crisis and the looming specter of a cataclysm, the transition to a better aion may enable the pedagogy of radical hope. The essence of this pedagogy is to shape the “courage to be” during grassroots, collective and political action - an existential attitude saturated with resistance, concern and hope that such grassroots, cultural-religious practices can contribute to social change and reduce the fear of inevitable death associated with the risk of annihilation of the Earth. (shrink)

This article reflects on childhood times based on the words chrónos, kairós and aión, which the Greeks use to conceptualize time, in dialogue with different authors, such as Kohan, Pohlmann, Skliar, Kohan and Fernandes. In the pedagogical field, we explore how Pedagogy of Childhood has focused on the importance of childhood temporality and children’s agency, with contributions from Hoyuelos, Parrini, Aguilera et al., Barbosa, Oliveira-Formosinho e Araújo, Oliveira-Formosinho, Pinazza and Gobbi. We reflect on what forms of organizing time are (...) possible when we think about children and their childhoods. Would it be a continuous and chronological time, a time of opportunity for the instant or the timeless intensity of the aiónic? Would it be possible to open spaces in school for other temporalities, given its immersion in chronological time, and its extreme emphasis on routine? We seek a relationship between forms of temporality, philosophy, and early education in order to explore alternative possibilities in the relationship between child and the school context, and conclude that, since the child’s is the aiónic time of intense experience, it is in the heightened dynamic immediacy and the multiple symbolic languages of play that it may be possible to create pedagogical structures that provide a dwelling for childhood temporality. (shrink)

This paper advances an interpretation of Deleuze's Chronos–Aion distinction in The Logic of Sense as a development of Freud's thesis concerning the timelessness of the unconscious. If Chronos forms a unidirectional sequence along the arrow of a living present, the Aion as the eternal truth of events represents a form of time that is transcendentally distinct. While Chronos belongs to consciousness through the functions of good and common sense, the paradoxical insistence of the Aion represents for Deleuze the force of (...) the unconscious. By identifying the Aion with the death drive, Deleuze positions timelessness as the transcendental condition of the living, corporeal ego. (shrink)

Ampliamente conocida es la confrontación que Heidegger sostiene con el pensamiento de Nietzsche, reivindicando la pregunta por el Ser en relación a su problematización vitalista. Conocidas, también, son las posteriores propuestas filosóficas que denuncian el ser-para-la-muerte, recreando nuevas problematizaciones en que la Vida juega una función protagónica y, frente al Dasein, se cobra una revancha intempestiva. Sin embargo, dichas propuestas suelen ejecutarse desde una problematización externa que resulta ajena al propio modo de pensamiento heideggeriano. En este trabajo, por el contrario, (...) se adoptará un temple de ánimo acorde al preguntar de Heidegger que, poniéndose a la escucha de las palabras iniciales de los pensadores del inicio, problematice las relaciones jerárquicas establecidas entre el Ser y la Vida. (shrink)

The article presents an interpretation of Plotinius’ concept of eternity, which is defined in his treatise On Eternity and Time III.7 [45] as the “life of being.” The textual and philosophical analysis of a number of related passages from Plotinus’ Enneads concludes that the description of eternity as the life of being is neither metaphorical nor analogical. It should be understood in a technical philosophical sense, which contains direct metaphysical and phenomenological implications. Life is not an effect of intelligible reality (...) but an ontological condition, the limit, source of activity, background for the identity of Intellect. The life of being is not identical with partial aspects of the intelligible universe, but is implied and covered by them. In the context of the Plotinian noetics, the notion of life expresses the wholeness of being in its totality—this is applicable not only to the life of intelligible being, but also true for the life of Soul, which assumes the totality of Soul’s time. Life is recognizable and experienced by living and existing beings on the basis of common liveliness and their common ontological status, so life establishes, develops and intensifies the connection of our own being with eternity via eternal in us. There are notable functional similarities between the Plotinian concept of eternity as the life of being and the image of Aion as reconstructed from fragments of Chaldean oracles—a mystical philosophical text widely read by later Neoplatonic philosophers, albeit never openly referred to by Plotinus. The comparative analysis and philosophical interpretation of the Plotinian and Chaldean concepts and images related to eternity suggest that both the sources maintain similar metaphysical roles of mediation, the transfer of unifying and animating light, causing the motion of reality. It is also significant that the Plotinian parallelism of eternity and “eternal in us” is comparable to the Chaldean image of “flower of the mind,” which is described both as a metaphysical attribute of Aion and as a specific power of Soul, which could be used by a person to acquire knowledge of divine reality. (shrink)

The Greek word afi≈n has a wide-ranging meaning as well as a wideranging history: it is most commonly translated as ‘eternity’ but has as its first meaning ‘life’ or ‘lifetime’; it has its place in Greek literature and philosophy, but also in the Greek Bible, where it represents the Hebrew word ‘olâm. In this article I intend to sketch the history of the meaning and interpretation of aiôn from the word’s first attestation in Homer up until the beginning of the (...) Christian era. The expanded version of this study was defended as a doctoral dissertation, entitled Life Time Entirety: A Study of AIVN in Greek Literature and Philosophy, the Septuagint and Philo, on 7 September 1999 at the University of Amsterdam. (shrink)

This paper explores how affirming events rather than substances, and difference rather than identities, might affect how one responds to life's exigencies, in particular the act of choosing when to end the life of a dog that was a beloved companion. The paper addresses the concepts of the event and the time of Aion as they are presented in The Logic of Sense, and examines the resonances these concepts have with a notion of learning presented in Difference and Repetition and (...) a notion of essence presented in Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. The argument is made that Deleuze presents us with a notion of death that is a part of the creative unfolding of life, and that affirming events rather than substances and difference rather than identities can give us insight into practical questions about how to live one's life. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo investigar el vínculo entre la imagen óptico-sonora pura y el Aión. Para ello, se propone como hipótesis principal la situación óptica-sonora pura es el puntapié inicial para adquirir una imagen directa del tiempo. En efecto, dicha imagen sería la del Aión, base del tiempo cronológico. La situación óptico-sonora pura describe el momento en el que ya no hay percepción seguida de acción, dando lugar a la percepción de la interioridad del tiempo fundamental. Por (...) lo tanto, se sostiene aquí que lo visto en la imagen óptico-sonora pura es el tiempo Aión o tiempo del acontecimiento. (shrink)

I demonstrate that Deleuze's identification of Aion as an empty form offers a fascinating model of temporality that prioritises variation. First, I suggest that Deleuze's identification of time as an empty form is supported by ancient Greek and Gnostic concepts of the relation of Aion and Chronos. From Plato, through Aristotle, to Plotinus the concept of time undergoes substantive revision, in the sense that temporal measurement becomes removed from the measurement of existent entities. This gradual untethering of time from movement (...) gives rise to the development of the concept of eternity as an ontologically comprehensive mode of time that is devoid of content. It is here, with Deleuze's reading of the Platonic cosmology, that we see the first hints of the suggestion that Aion is involved with ontogenesis. Eternity is characterised as: a temporal ‘all’ that is non-reducible to the determinacy implied by any particular temporally localised existent or temporal series ; that which tends towards a diversity of possible states of affairs. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects in the long history of Aion is that – in the ancient world – it was used in magical incantations. For the Gnostics and Oracles, Aion was a deity, and a potent one at that. From the Gnostic papyri, we get a vision of Aion as a force which enjoys eternal realisation. I suggest that the papyri conjure an image of Aion as a deity that is liberated from time, in the sense that it enjoys a neutrality with respect to the movements of any particular entity or group of entities – a form, in the most general sense of the term. Then, to clarify this mercurial aspect of an empty form of time, I elaborate on a complex analogy between Aion and Deleuze's concept of an ‘ideal game’ – an analogy that Deleuze specifies through reference to Fitzgerald and Borges. The claim is that Aion is an analogue of an ideal game in the sense that both share essential properties. Both Aion and the ideal game involve the multiplication of chance. Finally, I suggest that the differential aspects of Aion imply that it is pure variability; something which can be illustrated through a differential equation. These yield the suggestion that Aion enjoys realisation as an ontogenetic force. I further claim that ontogenetic forces may enjoy expression as the content of literature and mathematics. In concrete terms, temporality is involved in the creation of existent entities, which may be illustrated as various types of continuous multiplicity. (shrink)

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

This article argues for a reconceptualization of utopia as akairological rupture. Its central thesis disputes the conventional reading of utopia as a teleological goal to be realized by a social collective. Thus rather than viewing the potentiality of utopia as a prescribed ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants live in harmony, I argue that it should be seen as an akairological rupture, manifested through a determinately negative, individual, approach. In this reading, utopia is primarily a social condition within culture, and perennially opposed (...) to any ideal telos. This temporal and qualitative reconceptualization of utopia as disruptive is anathema to the positive reading that sees it as feasible through social reform and rational discourse. This reconceptualization argues for the importance of developing a reading of utopia that can transcend any reified, fixed conception that seeks to domesticate it in the service of a contingent political aspiration, however noble and humanitarian it may appear to be. Herein lies its critical potentiality under neoliberal conditions. (shrink)

As is well known, Deleuze says in Difference and Repetition that ‘the task of contemporary philosophy has been defined: to reverse Platonism’. This task is then continued in Logic of Sense, through its discussion of Stoic logic. Deleuze says there that ‘the Stoics are the first to reverse Platonism’. And, at the same time, in the big Spinoza book, we see Deleuze present Spinoza's ‘anti-Cartesian reaction’. This anti-Cartesian reaction is equivalent to the reversal of Platonism. We can say then that (...) the task of the reversal of Platonism unifies the three books Deleuze published at the end of the Sixties. The thesis of this essay will consist in arguing that ethics we find in Logic of Sense – which we can call ‘the ethics of the univocity of being’ – completes, in a constructive way, Deleuze's early project of the reversal of Platonism. The ethics centres on the idea of counter-actualisation. We shall argue that there are four senses of counter-actualisation. Here is a summary of the four senses of counter-actualisation: beatitude against resentment ; caring for the sense against neglecting the sense ; the embodiment of plural hopings and rememberings against the embodiment of one hope and one memory ; and ‘just enough’ against ‘too much’. Yet, as we shall see, there is a fifth meaning of counter-actualisation, the ultimate meaning. The ultimate sense of counter-actualisation is universal freedom. This is where my essay will end. (shrink)

A comienzos de los años 70 del siglo XX se produjo una revisión crítica de los postulados metodológicos e historiográficos de las denominadas “grandes narraciones” creadas a los largo del siglo XIX como ejemplificaban las obras de Voltaire, Hegel o Spengler. De este modo se produjo una nueva moda historiográfica basada en los tópicos de la interdisciplinariedad, las microhistorias, o las metodologías fragmentarias. En este casillero fue colocada, entre otras, la arqueología de Foucault. La crítica de Manfredo Tafuri ataca dichos (...) juicios proponiendo a su vez una verda-dera metodología interdisciplinar radical. (shrink)

A comienzos de la década de los 80, el filósofo Gilles Deleuze aplicó la teoría de la imagen de Bergson expuesta en Materia y Memoria (1896) a la imagen cinematográfica con la intención de desarrollar nuevas herramientas conceptuales que, a través de un análisis de la historia del cine, permitieran poder delinear mejor tanto la relación cognoscitiva más allá de los presupuestos de sujeto-objeto, como una teoría de la comunicación pre-verbal no estructuralizada fonéticamente que superara definitivamente la concepción lacaniana del (...) lenguaje. Si bien dichos análisis pueden ser vistos también como el establecimiento de unos principios alternativos a las teorías del montaje tanto de Vertov como de Eizenshtéin, el interés primario de nuestro paper se centrará en la redefinición de las categorías espacio-temporales que conlleva esta nueva teoría del cine esgrimida por Deleuze. Concretamente analizaremos cómo la nueva tecnología cinematográfica, especialmente en su desarrollo europeo de la segunda postguerra (Godard, Fellini, Syberberg, Tarkovski) supone una comprensión temporal por completo ajena a cualquier comprensión de causalidad lineal, teleológica o no, de corte cronológico. En su lugar, el cine en tanto que medio de comunicación propio del mundo metropolitano contemporáneo emplea unas categorías temporales más cercanas a conceptos como “acontecimiento” o “haecceitas”, que en algunos puntos lo acercan a la concepción del tiempo desarrollada por Walter Benjamin, pero que por otro lo relacionan directamente con formas aiónicas del mismo ya estudiadas por Deleuze en la década de los 60, y aplicadas al estudio del dadaísmo en la de los 70. (shrink)

The project of all philosophy may be to gain reconciliation with time, even if not every philosopher has dealt with time expressly. A confrontation with the passing of time and with human finitude runs through the history of philosophy as an ultimate concern. In this genealogy of the concept of temporality, David Hoy examines the emergence in a post-Kantian continental philosophy of a focus on the lived experience of the "time of our lives" rather than on the time of the (...) universe. The purpose is to see how phenomenological and poststructuralist philosophers have tried to locate the source of temporality, how they have analyzed time's passing, and how they have depicted our relation to time once it has been--in a Proustian sense--regained. Hoy engages with competing theoretical tactics for reconciling us to our fleeting temporality, drawing on work by Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Sartre, Bourdieu, Foucault, Bergson, Deleuze, Žižek, and Derrida. Hoy considers four existential strategies for coping with the apparent flow of temporality, including Proust's passive and Walter Benjamin's active reconciliation through memory, Žižek's critique of poststructuralist politics, Foucault's confrontation with the temporality of power, and Deleuze's account of Aion and Chronos. He concludes by exploring whether a dual temporalization could be what constitutes the singular "time of our lives.". (shrink)

This essay examines Deleuze's account of time and the wound in The Logic of Sense and, to a lesser extent, in Difference and Repetition. As such, it will also explicate his understanding of the event, as well as the notoriously opaque ethics of counter-actualisation that are bound up with it, before raising certain problems that are associated with the transcendental and ethical priority that he accords to the event and what he calls the time of Aion. I will conclude by (...) proposing a dialectic between the two aspects of time that he counterposes (Aion and Chronos, roughly the disjunctive and the conjunctive) that does not instantiate any kind of a priori privilege of the one over the other. (shrink)

This conversation offers a discussion of the meaning, sense and social function of school, both as an institution and as a time-space for the practice of schole . It also discusses the different types of Greek time : Schole is, as aion or childhood, a further emergence, a radicalization of school as an experimental zone of subjectivity and of collectivity. Schole is, as aion or childhood, a further emergence, a radicalization of school as an experimental zone of subjectivity and of (...) collectivity. The source of this radicalization is philosophy, to the extent that the philosophical impulse turns us inward upon ourselves in the interest, not of techniques for the enhancement of productive time, but of an emergent new brain: in the interest of new values, new sensibilities, new capacities, new connections, new centers of meaning, new bodies. Today we are in a global situation—the situation of late capitalism and late empire—in which school turns upon and ruthlessly suppresses schole, which distorts their relation almost beyond recognition. There is a struggle between school as a more efficient, far-reaching vehicle for the technical transformation of the chore curriculum, and schole as utopia. The paper also examines the place of childhood in educational discourse, and some critiques of the practice of community of philosophical inquiry in schools are considered as well as the role of questions and questioning in both philosophy and schooling. Finally, it problematizes the role of philosophy in school and in scholé: if the role of philosophy in schole is an active one, even an activist one, then the role of the child in producing dikaiosyne in school as scholé should be no less active. The conversation ends with some questions: in what way is the philosophical life preferable to the political life? Why are the politics of philosophy worth any more than the politics of the political order? (shrink)

O presente texto procura colocar em diálogo reflexões do campo da Filosofia da Infância com os da Educação Infantil. Além das contribuições teóricas pretende fazer conexões com situações observadas em uma pesquisa de doutorado na qual as relações com o espaço e o tempo são entrelaçadas com as do corpo como experiência que surgem nas relações que as crianças estabelecem com seus machucados, ou como elas definem, seus ‘dodóis’. Nessas relações duas particularidades podem ser observadas: uma primeira é que as (...) crianças percebem o corpo como uma experiência contextualizada com o mundo social e material, ou seja, elas não percebem seus corpos separados dos espaços. Uma segunda particularidade é que as crianças trazem a possibilidade do tempo aión como uma aproximação à experiência, uma compreensão do tempo entrelaçado com pessoas, espaços, lugares e ações em que evidencia também relações, emoções e encontros. Dando seqüência as reflexões o texto pretende trazer para o diálogo também situações nas quais são tema entre as crianças as expressões dos sentimentos e das emoções e ainda situações que envolvem suas excreções como as ‘melecas’ e os ‘ranhos’ trazendo uma potencialidade para se pensar as relações entre corpo, infância e educação. A partir da compreensão de uma infância como experiência, como acontecimento que rompe com a história, pretende pensar indicações para uma infância da educação e não já apenas uma educação da infância. Essa necessidade de se pensar uma infância da educação, e não já apenas uma educação da infância parece simples, mas requer um outro ‘olhar’, requer ‘jogar fora’, ou pelo menos questionar, problematizar parte de nossa história para que seja possível pensar em condições de outras ordens, outros valores, enfim, outra educação. Ou seja, uma educação, em que se ‘olha’ não apenas os processos de desenvolvimento das crianças, mas também os seus conhecimentos, as suas produções, as suas manifestações, as suas preferências, as suas interações e particularmente as suas experiências. (shrink)

In order to understand how Deleuze's method of dramatization is ‘not privileging mankind in any way’, this article turns to the figure of the marionette as it is discreetly, but consistently, developed thorough Deleuze's books. Inspired by Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre, this marionette figure claims for a rhizomatic approach to the subject, defined by the lines it draws into space and exercising its freedom in the present of Aion through spatio-temporal dynamisms similar to those of Leibniz's monads. The strange (...) freedom developed by marionettes also leads to an examination of Nietzsche's ‘eternal return’, which is at the core of Deleuze's elaboration of the method of dramatization. Combining Nietzsche's eternal return with the characteristics of Deleuzian marionettes then requires us to revisit the famous concept of ‘becoming’: becomings are selective, both methodologically and ontologically. (shrink)

Este ensayo tiene como propósito la interpretación del pasaje 37d5-7 del Timeo de Platón, en el cual se dice que el tiempo es una imagen móvil eónica del aión que permanece en lo uno y que marcha según el número. La tesis central es que el tiempo es entendido por Platón desde la dimensión del lenguaje (lógos) y la dimensión de la necesidad (anánké), que se entrecruzan en el tiempo. Para ello se discuten brevemente estos conceptos, así como la (...) manera en que ambos participan en la determinación de aquello que llamamos tiempo. También se trata de pensar un concepto de aión como vida que esté libre de la connotación de eternidad introducida por la tradición cristiana. Se quiere además mostrar como los conceptos de lógos y anánké, de lenguaje y necesidad, son los conceptos que subyacen a toda su filosofía. (shrink)

At any angle it is constituted in our Tradition, or in addition to chronos, as aion, kairos, and eniautos, the concept of time has been the fundamental reason of our self-identification, self-comprehension, and self-narrating. This paper, through the reconstruction of some of milestones of Western Philosophy until post-Einstein physics, tries to analyze Julian Barbour’s proposal. He argues that the holy grail of physicists—the unification of Einstein’s general relativity with quantum mechanics—may well spell the end of time. The idea of the (...) discontinuity of time proposed by Barbour attempts to explain in a theoretical context a universe composed of many points he calls ‘Now’. (shrink)

El presente artículo problematiza sobre la temporalidad de la historia (Geschichte) pensada a partir del instante kairológico y el vínculo que éste guarda tanto con la propuesta de Martin Heidegger en torno a la temporalidad propia (Zeitlichkeit), como con la denominada efectua-ción del tiempo (Zeitigung) de Reinhart Koselleck. Inicialmente, buscamos preponderar el carácter kairológico del tiempo que irrumpe y media entre la relación del tiempo pensado co-mo Chronos y Aión. Seguidamente explicitamos algunas de las formas desde las cuales pue-de (...) ser entendido el Kairós (καιρός), para finalmente enfatizar la posibilidad del carácter reso-lutivo de éste en la apertura del acontecer histórico y en la decisión propia del Dasein (Ser-Ahí) como ser en el mundo. (shrink)

L’espace esthétiqueLe « renversement du cartésianisme » chez Deleuze et Merleau-PontyCet essai se propose de développer le rapport entre Deleuze et Merleau-Ponty à partir de la tentative des deux philosophes français d’aller au-delà du courantde pensée qu’on pourrait qualifi er, comme le fait Merleau-Ponty lui-même, de « cartésianisme ».Nous commençons notre itinéraire avec la critique que les deux philosophes adressent à la notion cartésienne de « ligne » – passage obligé pour penser, à travers Leibniz et sa notion de « (...) point », la ligne en tant qu’« ensemble de points ». On cherche ensuite à penser une ligne qui ne serait plus tracée dans un espace objectif présupposé, mais plutôt qui « se trace » dans un « espace expressif ».Un tel renversement de la « ligne cartésienne » produit, comme on le verra, des effets qui intéressent également la représentation de la ligne du temps. Émanciper cette dernière du modèle cartésien signifi e la penser par-delà toute référence chronologique, toute dépendance du temps de Kronos. On peut lire dans ce sens la tentative des deux philosophes pour penser le temps de l’événement, le temps de l’Aion. On verra enfin comment, d’un espace et d’un temps anticartésiens, doit naître, pour Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, une nouvelle grammaire porteuse d’une nouvelle compréhension de la métaphore. Ni l’idée de métaphore proposée par Merleau-Ponty, ni le concept de devenir créé par Deleuze ne concernent une ressemblance fondée sur une identité donnée. Si la métaphore merleau-pontienne et le devenir deleuzien doivent être en mesure de restituer l’essence d’une chose, une telle essence se trouve, ou mieux se crée,à partir d’un mouvement vers « ce que la chose n’est pas ». C’est précisément dans ce sens que Merleau-Ponty lit la métaphore proustienne et que Deleuze cherche à rendre compte des ressemblances créées dans l’oeuvre de Gombrowicz.The Aesthetic SpaceThe “Reversal of Cartesianism” in Deleuze and Merleau-PontyThe present essay proposes to explore the relationship between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty from the attempt they make to go beyond the current of thought thatwe may qualify, like Merleau-Ponty does it himself, as Cartesianism. We begin our itinerary with the critique that both philosophers direct at the Cartesian notion of the line. The passage through the Cartesian notion of the line is “obligated” in order to think – by means of Leibniz and his notion of point -- the line as a “set of points.” The Cartesian passage is obligated moreover in order to think a line which could no longer be drawn in a presupposed objective space but, rather, which would be “drawn” in an “expressive space.” Such a reversal of the Cartesian line, as we shall see, produces effects that concern also the representation of the line of time. To emancipate the line of time from the Cartesian model means we must think beyond all chronological references, beyond all dependence on the time of Chronos. We are able to read, in this way, both philosophers’ attempt to think the time of the event, the time of Aion. Finally we shall see how, for Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, a new grammar carrying a new understanding of the metaphor must be born from an anti-Cartesian space and time. Neither the idea of metaphor proposed by Merleau-Ponty nor the concept of becoming created by Deleuze speaks of a resemblance founded upon an identity that is given ahead of time. If Merleau-Ponty’s idea of metaphor and Deleuze’s concept of becoming must be able to produce the essence of a thing, such an essence finds, or better, it iscreated on the basis of a movement toward “what the thing is not.” It is precisely in this sense that Merleau-Ponty reads Proust’s metaphors and that Deleuze will seek to give an account of created resemblances in the work of Gombrowicz. (shrink)

L’espace esthétiqueLe « renversement du cartésianisme » chez Deleuze et Merleau-PontyCet essai se propose de développer le rapport entre Deleuze et Merleau-Ponty à partir de la tentative des deux philosophes français d’aller au-delà du courantde pensée qu’on pourrait qualifi er, comme le fait Merleau-Ponty lui-même, de « cartésianisme ».Nous commençons notre itinéraire avec la critique que les deux philosophes adressent à la notion cartésienne de « ligne » – passage obligé pour penser, à travers Leibniz et sa notion de « (...) point », la ligne en tant qu’« ensemble de points ». On cherche ensuite à penser une ligne qui ne serait plus tracée dans un espace objectif présupposé, mais plutôt qui « se trace » dans un « espace expressif ».Un tel renversement de la « ligne cartésienne » produit, comme on le verra, des effets qui intéressent également la représentation de la ligne du temps. Émanciper cette dernière du modèle cartésien signifi e la penser par-delà toute référence chronologique, toute dépendance du temps de Kronos. On peut lire dans ce sens la tentative des deux philosophes pour penser le temps de l’événement, le temps de l’Aion. On verra enfin comment, d’un espace et d’un temps anticartésiens, doit naître, pour Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, une nouvelle grammaire porteuse d’une nouvelle compréhension de la métaphore. Ni l’idée de métaphore proposée par Merleau-Ponty, ni le concept de devenir créé par Deleuze ne concernent une ressemblance fondée sur une identité donnée. Si la métaphore merleau-pontienne et le devenir deleuzien doivent être en mesure de restituer l’essence d’une chose, une telle essence se trouve, ou mieux se crée,à partir d’un mouvement vers « ce que la chose n’est pas ». C’est précisément dans ce sens que Merleau-Ponty lit la métaphore proustienne et que Deleuze cherche à rendre compte des ressemblances créées dans l’oeuvre de Gombrowicz.The Aesthetic SpaceThe “Reversal of Cartesianism” in Deleuze and Merleau-PontyThe present essay proposes to explore the relationship between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty from the attempt they make to go beyond the current of thought thatwe may qualify, like Merleau-Ponty does it himself, as Cartesianism. We begin our itinerary with the critique that both philosophers direct at the Cartesian notion of the line. The passage through the Cartesian notion of the line is “obligated” in order to think – by means of Leibniz and his notion of point -- the line as a “set of points.” The Cartesian passage is obligated moreover in order to think a line which could no longer be drawn in a presupposed objective space but, rather, which would be “drawn” in an “expressive space.” Such a reversal of the Cartesian line, as we shall see, produces effects that concern also the representation of the line of time. To emancipate the line of time from the Cartesian model means we must think beyond all chronological references, beyond all dependence on the time of Chronos. We are able to read, in this way, both philosophers’ attempt to think the time of the event, the time of Aion. Finally we shall see how, for Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, a new grammar carrying a new understanding of the metaphor must be born from an anti-Cartesian space and time. Neither the idea of metaphor proposed by Merleau-Ponty nor the concept of becoming created by Deleuze speaks of a resemblance founded upon an identity that is given ahead of time. If Merleau-Ponty’s idea of metaphor and Deleuze’s concept of becoming must be able to produce the essence of a thing, such an essence finds, or better, it iscreated on the basis of a movement toward “what the thing is not.” It is precisely in this sense that Merleau-Ponty reads Proust’s metaphors and that Deleuze will seek to give an account of created resemblances in the work of Gombrowicz. (shrink)

Greek ontology eventually developed a notion variously described as ‘timeless’, ‘atemporal’, or ‘non-durational’ eternity. In Proclus and Simplicius it is already a school-commonplace, with a stable vocabulary in which aiōn is sharply distinguished from what is merely aïdios. Plotinus had perfected this notion beforehand, believing not only that he found it in Plato, but that Plato had developed it on Parmenidean grounds.

This paper argues that children as members of a perennial psychoclass represent one potential vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. I argue from Herbert Marcuse’s prophetic invocation of a “new sensibility,” which is characterized by an increase in instinctual revulsion towards violence, domination and exploitation and, correspondingly, a greater sensitivity to all forms of life. As the embodiment of (...) a form of philosophical “post-animism” or hylozoism, it represents the evolutionary shift that, it could be argued, our species requires for survival at this historical moment. I suggest that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” I argue for a form, or archetype of schooling first articulated in ancient Greece called skholé, a space that functions, according to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, as a “meeting place,” a “form of gathering and action” dedicated to inquiry, and not to the production of calculated, preordained outcomes—a space removed from the world of production, and characterized by a form of temporality associated with childhood: aion, or “timeless time,” as opposed to kronos, or linear time. Skholé is dedicated to emergence and cultural reconstruction, which follows from an educative relationship between adults and children based on understanding the latter as bearers of the “novel,” and on a faith in the “reorganizing potentialities” of childhood impulse, or interest—that is, on natality as a fundamental principle of cultural evolution. (shrink)

The psychological and religious implications of alchemy were Jung's major preoccupation during the last thirty years of his life. The essays composing the present volume complete the publication of his alchemial researches, to which three entire volumes have been devoted ^DDL the monumental _Mysterium Coniunctionis_,_ Psychology and Alchemy_, and _Aion_ ^DDL besides shorter papers in other volumes. This collection of shorter _Alchemial Studies_ has special value as an introduction to Jung's work on alchemy. The first study, on Chinese alchemy, marked (...) the beginning of his interest in the subject, and was originally published in a volume written jointly with Richard Wilhelm. The other four are now published for the first time completely in English. (shrink)

This contribution proposes to reflect on a different way of considering the link be-tween temporality and nature, between aiôn and physis, in dialogue with the words and works of the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone. The basic idea is the following: we will not be able to essentially determine our cognitive and experien-tial relationship with nature, until we are able to know, experience and represent the time inscribed in being itself. The philosophical tradition has developed its conception of temporality mainly along (...) two lines: a “cosmic” line, of a physical, objective temporality, and a “phenomenological” one, of a temporality as an in-ternal articulation of human consciousness. Through the archaeological and conceptual excavation carried out by Penone, we will ask ourselves what it does mean to take care of the “subjective time of things”. (shrink)

Michel Weber, The Threefold Root of Temporality. Elements of Whiteheadian Organic Metaphysics, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2021 ; 978-2-930517-76-6, pdf 978-2-930517-77-3 ; 120 pp. ; 16 € -/- The question of the nature of time is as old as philosophy itself. Before philosophy, time was not problematized, it was a pure common-sensical matter. There were various experiences of time, and, accordingly, different words to name it. Whitehead’s solution of the temporal conundrum lies in the concept of “creative advance of nature” that (...) is systematically elucidated only in Process and Reality (1929) To understand the creative advance of nature, one needs to interpret the togetherness of its three aspects —creativity qua concrescence, efficacy qua transition, vision qua initial subjective aim—, and this provides us with the core meaning of time: (i) genuine novelty appears in the World, (ii) past events are, so to speak, ontologically memorized, and (iii) there is an upward trend in terms of “intensity” of events. These three complementary requirements refresh in their own way the Greek triple understanding of time: time is “aiôn,” lived duration (outside physical time) and destiny, but it is also “chronos,” causal time, and “kairos,” timeliness or the appropriate moment for action. -/- Michel Weber is Director of the Centre for Philosophical Practice (Brussels) and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Educational Foundations of the University of Saskatchewan. His current research program mainly addresses the Ayurvedic understanding of the anchoring of the mind in the body and of the expression of the body in the mind. (shrink)

Since the first lockdown in March 2020, time seems to have slowed to a continuous present tense. The Greek language has three words to express different experiences of time: aion, chronos and kairos. If aion is the boundless and limbo-like time of eternity, chronos represents chronological, sequential, and linear time. Kairos, however, signifies the rupture of ordinary time with the opportune moment, epiphany and redemption, revolution, and most broadly, crisis and emergency. This paper argues that the pandemic is impacting how (...) individuals perceive time in two ways: first, as a distortion of time in which individuals are caught between linear time (chronos) and rupture (kairos) invoking the state of emergency and second, as an extended present that blurs the passing of chronological time with its seeming eternity (aion). As a result of the perceived suspension of ordinary time, temporal understandings of the future are postponed, while the past hovers like a ghost over the present. (shrink)

The relationship between silence as non-speech and bilingualism in early childhood education is intricate. This article maps this relationship with the help of diverse theoretical entrances to a video-recorded everyday episode from a bilingual preschool in Sweden. Though this, three alternative readings of silence are produced. Thinking with Deleuzian philosophy, the aim is to consider how the different readings of silence require different understandings of both time and language and allow different bilingual child subjectivities. The different readings present silence as (...) development, strategy and intensity. Thinking with different dimensions of language as well as Chronos and Aion as different notions of time, the article shows that silence as development and silence as strategy are individually, chronologically and linguistically oriented readings. These allow viewing the bilingual child as more or less competent, active and powerful in relation to adults. Furthermore, silence as intensity is collectively produced as well as temporally unbounded, and produces the bilingual child, as involved in several material–semiotic relations capable of amazement. It is discussed whether, due to the evasive and inconsistent nature of silence, all three readings are equally possible. Nevertheless, they produce different effects and raise different questions concerning bilingual educational practice in the early years. (shrink)

This work deals with concepts of time in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and in the Koran, placing them in relation to Hellenistic conceptions of time in Late Antique poetry. The analysis shows that just as in the much earlier field of Greek poetry, so too in Old Arabic verse time is seen as an inescapable power. The Arabic concept for endless time, dahr, is revealed to be the Arabic equivalent of the Greek concept aión. In the Koran the power of (...) time is denied completely and replaced by the absolute power of God, which is described with the help of Hellenistic conceptions of time. The research suggests the existence of an Arabic Hellenism, in the context of which Islam came into being. (shrink)

The early Greek understanding of time is characterized by the fact that it develops various concepts of different forms of time but it is itself not exhausted by the total sum of its own concepts. Homer already employs a differentiated concept of time, depending on whether he speaks of chronos, émar or aión. From Hesiod comes the earliest literary record of the concept kairós. Even richer than substantivized time is time in its epic form, unfolding three-dimensionally, historically. That is (...) why an adequate understanding of the early Greek conception of time can only be reached through literature. Pre-socratic philosophy is embedded in a context which includes lyric poetry and tragedy as well as Homer and Hesiod. Predominant here is Pindar, whose work supplied Plato with key words and who resolved the traditional concepts of time in the movement of his fundamental idea. (shrink)