DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

This paper traces the origins of the concept of permaculture and discusses the sustainability of permaculture itself as a form of alternative agriculture. The principles of permaculture are shown to have many views and perspectives in common with Taoism and with Buddhist ecology and economics. The amalgamation of these Oriental traditions can be translated into the Kaya equation and beyond. It is argued that future permaculture movements should focus on revitalising the communitarian spirit of traditional farming villages instead of building (...) intentional communal communities. The paper also calls for more aggressive environmental-policy measures that support permaculture and internalise the non-market value of reduced fossil-fuel energy consumption and waste recycling. (shrink)

The main aim of this essay is to show that, for Stevens, the concept of reality is very fluctuating. The essay begins with addressing the relationship between poetry and philosophy. I argue, contra Critchley, that Stevens’ poetic work can elucidate, or at least help us to understand better, the ideas of philosophers that are usually considered obscure. The main “obscure” philosophical work introduced in and discussed throughout the essay is Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism. Both a (shellingian) philosopher and a (...) (stevensian) poet search for reality. In order to understand Stevens’ poetry better, I distingush several concepts of reality: initial reality (the external world of the common sense), imagined reality (a fiction, a product of one’s mind), final reality (the object of a philosopher’s and a poet’s search) and total reality (the sum of all realities, Being). These determinations are fixed by reason (in the present essay), whereas in Stevens’ poetic works, they are made fluid by the imagination. This fluidity leads the concept of reality from its initial stage through the imagined stage to its final stage. Throughout this process, imagined reality must be distinguished from both a mere fancy and its products. Final reality is, however, nothing transcendent. It is rather a general transpersonal order of reality created by poetry/the imagination. The main peculiarity of final reality is that it is a dynamic order. It is provisional at each moment. Stevens (and Schelling too) characterizes this order as that of a work of art which is a finite object, but has an infinite meaning. Stevens calls this order “the central poem” or the “endlessly elaborating poem”. If ultimate reality is a poem created by the imagination, one may ask who is the imagining subject. I argue that this agent is best to be thought as total reality, that is, as Being. Stevens, however, maintains that if there were such an agency, it would be an inhuman agency, “an inhuman meditation”. The essay concludes, in a Derridian manner, with the claim that this agency cannot have any name; it is the “unnamed creator of an unknown sphere, / Unknown as yet, unknowable, / Uncertain certainty” (OP: 127). It is best thought as an X, as an unknown variable. Being has no name. (shrink)

Philosophe hors du commun, François Châtelet (1925-1985) a profondément marqué le paysage intellectuel français du XXe siècle. Cofondateur, avec Michel Foucault et Gilles Deleuze, du département de philosophie du Centre universitaire expérimental de Vincennes, aujourd'hui Université Paris VIII, il a dirigé ce département jusqu'à sa mort. Les textes réunis ici se composent de quatre articles de François Châtelet devenus introuvables et une série de textes de philosophes qui mettent en valeur, tant ses talents d'historien de la philosophie, de pédagogue que (...) de philosophe engagé. C'est tout un ensemble de souvenirs d'un philosophe médiatique qui est donné à lire, luttant par l'histoire des concepts contre l'orthodoxie marxiste. François Châtelet fut le cofondateur avec Jacques Derrida, Jean-Pierre Faye et Dominique Lecourt du Collège international de philosophie. Il militait pour la pratique d'une philosophie ouverte et populaire et n'a eu de cesse de décloisonner la philosophie et de l'ouvrir pour la mettre en commun. (shrink)

Duties of kings and rulers in Thailand on religious aspects and political ethics.

InhaltStichworte zur Dialektik der Freiheit oder Durchaus untaugliche Ausfuhrungen zur Philosophie Milan PruchasJ. Kosta, Das interdisziplinare Forschungsprojekt des Prager Fruhlings von 1968J. Kotik, Der LandvermesserKonzepte der DialektikM. Theunissen, Dialektik der Endlichkeit - Hegel von Heraklit bis DerridaC. Iber, Begriff und Kategorien negativer Dialektik bei AdornoA. Arndt, Figuren der Endlichkeit - Zur Dialektik nach KantB. Scholze, Die dialektische Aufwertung der Rhetorik: Zu Adornos Theorie der DarstellungMotive der Philosophie Hegels und ihre WirkungM. Sobotka, Hegels Spruch: Gott ist totM. Rolli, Zum Vergangenheitscharakter der (...) Hegelschen AsthetikA. Jubara, Vom Reich des Antichristen zum Homogenen Weltstaat. Das "Ende der Geschichte" bei Vladimir Solov'ev und Alexandre KojeveDie Differenz denkenC. Friedrich, Differenz und Wiederholung in der Sprache. Fur eine Konzeption der Sprache ohne TelosR. Krause, Verkehrte Welt - Dialektisch denken mit DeleuzeD. Benseler, Den Krieg finden. Bemerkungen zu Lyotards skeptischer Konzeption der PraxisMilan Prucha - Auswahlbibliographie. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the dominant approaches to climate change impede a meaningful set of political interventions that might be galvanised in the face of destructive transformations in the climate. If one overemphasises the possibility of unexpected turns of events, the ability to build and pursue a political agenda is undermined. If, however, one overemphasises humanity's mastery over the course of events, deliberate interventions will falter when the unexpected occurs. Using Lewis Carroll to illustrate the former and Sophocles’ (...) depiction of Theban sovereigns to illustrate the latter, I propose a Deleuzian-inspired middle ground: thinking through climate change as a Deleuzian ‘event’ described in The Logic of Sense provides a novel set of strategies for becoming alongside the changing climate. As resources, I call on both Sophocles and Lucretius to provide an account of the world that is marked by predictable events and occasional swerves in the normal course of things. Ultimately, I argue Deleuze's Event captures creative potentiality but insists on a degree of predictability and agentic influence. By drawing on the Event, the goal is to mitigate the dangers involved with the masterful agent in Oedipus as well as the nihilism that results from being at the whim of the fates – both of which preclude meaningful action in the face of climate change. Rather than ignoring, denying, or controlling the outcome of widespread transformation, I propose creatively participating in the metamorphosis. (shrink)

In this article, I draw resources from Deleuze's Difference and Repetition to develop an explanation and critique of invasive policing techniques on certain populations in the United States. First, I analyse recent studies revealing the neighbourhood effects of aggressive policing on those who never directly encounter officers. Second, I use Deleuze's concepts of the virtual, potentiality, the Idea and problems to illuminate the limitations to studying these effects that are inherent in a social scientific approach. I then use Deleuze's discussion (...) of the Image of Thought to theorise a racialised Image of the Human that justifies the aggressive policing policies in certain neighbourhoods. I argue instead for an open, unsettled, in-process category of the human that continues to creatively actualise. Finally, I offer two normative claims that again derive from Deleuze's philosophy: the first is a preliminary strategy for mitigating the non-localisable and virtual effects of policing policy by ‘conjugating’ oneself in a complex set of neighbourhood relations, particularly in response to inequitably distributed spaces of oppression; the second is an attempt to avoid reducing humanity to calculability by ‘fully explicating’ the other. In combination, the goal is to undermine the dogmatic Images of Thought and the Human that ground oppressive policing practices, and to foster an intensive potentiality for newness that might take these Images' place. (shrink)

The liberal-communitarian debates, which became prominent in social and political philosophy during the 1980s, continue to be waged in those disciplines and in politics today with even more fervor, and this time, both the ‘80s and the ‘90s are called forth as bleak and sorry evidence for one side or the other. The current scene is reminiscent of some of the ‘60s ideological disputes, especially the reformist critique of conservatism within liberalism. And that dispute itself is reminiscent of yet another, (...) the one from whence it derived, John Dewey's well-known opposition of new and old individualism. (shrink)

This paper presents its author's famous distinction between globalization, as the process or vehicle by which ideas, habits and worldviews travel from one culture to another and are transformed in the process, and mundialization, as the taking in of the outside world into our own lifeworlds, a process by which the ideas and customs of other cultures are transported into our homeworlds. In this process, what was once strange and unfamiliar is transformed into something comfortable and familiar. This is the (...) process that is generally known as cultural assimilation, and by virtue of which the boundaries of our individual homeworlds become constantly widened. Examining this phenomenon, which he calls the 'mundialization of home', leads the author to sketch the main features of a possible transcultural moral world. (shrink)

Like any construction of the human mind, ideologies and utopias are products of reason and social imagination. The human interactions they feed off are nowadays being intensified by processes of globalization. Utopian projects, which are by nature ambitious, consist of dreams of freedom and equality but the voluntarist character of their implementation very often takes them far from their declared objectives. Thus utopia frequently tips over into ideology. In order to survive, utopia has to go through a process of ‘universalization’ (...) that allows ideas from different cultures to develop and mature in contact with one another. By forging bonds between individuals and cultures, this process could define the outlines of a constantly evolving global civil society. Universalization of conceptualizations that transform and motivate us, such as the global inclusivity of human rights, freedom and justice, builds an ethic of peace for the emergence, beyond frontiers, of an extended society such as that envisioned by the American philosopher John Dewey. (shrink)