"Platonism" is not only an example of this movement, the first "in" the whole history of philosophy. It commands it, it commands this whole history. [But the "whole" of this history is conflictual, heterogenous; it gives place to only relatively stabilizable hegemonies. Thus, it is never totalized, never totalizes itself.] A philosophy as such (an effect of hegemony) would henceforth always be "Platonic." Hence the necessity to continue to try to think what takes place in Plato, with Plato, what is (...) shown there, what is hidden, so as to win there or lose there.1. (shrink)

The paper explores a connection between Schelling’s celebrated Freedom Essay and Plato’s Timaeus by considering the importance of Schelling’s translation of a phrase found in the Platonic dialogue in which Timaeus expresses the limits of human discourse, speaking of it as a kind of “bastard reasoning.” These limits are said to arise necessarily through the progression of the inquiry carried out by Timaeus. Schelling’s own resistance to viewing his inquiry determined by such limits and such necessity is highlighted by the (...) fact that he curiously translates the phrase as “false imagination” or sin. The paper questions the reasons for such resistance given the striking structural similarity between the Timaeus and Schelling’s own essay. The paper concludes that Schelling’s thinking of the “unground” is comparable to the chorological interruption enacted in the Timaeus, but that Schelling does not consider how such an interruption bears upon God’s word. The paper thus points to a self-estranging necessity at the heart of all discourse and thought. (shrink)

Since the appearance of Plato’s Dialogues, philosophers have been preoccupied with the identity of Socrates and have maintained that successful interpretation of the work hinges upon a clear understanding of what thoughts and ideas can be attributed to him. In Descent of Socrates, Peter Warnek offers a new interpretation of Plato by considering the appearance of Socrates within Plato’s work as a philosophical question. Warnek reads the Dialogues as an inquiry into the nature of Socrates and in doing so opens (...) up the relationship between humankind and the natural world. Here, Socrates appears as a demonic and tragic figure whose obsession with the task of self-knowledge transforms the history of philosophy. In this uncompromising work, Warnek reveals the importance of the concept of nature in the Platonic Dialogues in light of Socratic practice and the Ancient ideas that inspire contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The paper considers the legacy of Empedocles as it bears upon the difficulty confronted by Hölderlin in his Death of Empedocles: how are we to understand Hölderlin’s failure to complete this ‘mourning play’ despite his continued and repeated efforts? This difficulty is elaborated through a reading of Hölderlin’s own understanding of “elemental tragedy” as it is presented and developed in the three dense so-called Homburg essays on tragedy. It is evident that the understanding of tragedy that emerges here entails a (...) dramatic poetry that would break with the prevailing tradition and its determination of poetry according to a mimetic operation. Aristotle’s own account of Empedocles and his apparent refusal to consider Empedocles as a poet is considered alongside other ancient accounts of Empedoclean poetry, notably those provided by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Lucretius. In this context, Nietzsche’s account of the end of tragedy through his interpretation of another philosophical death, that of Socrates, is introduced as a counterpoint to help elucidate the difficulties faced by Hölderlin. This Nietzschean account of ‘the image of the dying Socrates’ also proves to be related to Nietzsche’s own brief but provocative statements concerning what is eclipsed with the loss of Empedoclean tragic philosophy and emergence of Socratism. The paper concludes by returning to Hölderlin’s letters to Böhlendorff as these letters make thematic an ‘elemental’ difference in the impossible recovery of the tragic in our time. (shrink)

The paper begins by taking seriously Heidegger's provocative claims concerning Hegel's relationship to the Greeks. Most notably, the enigmatic assertion that Hegel, as the "last Greek," brings Greek philosophy to its completion through a historical thinking is considered in terms of the strange sense of repetition it opens up: the Hegelian presentation of Greek philosophy must both present that philosophy, repeat its movement, but also, in the repetition, present the truth of that movement for the first time. It thus must (...) remain undecided whether Hegel's presentation only opens up a necessity already at work in Greek philosophical history or whether that presentation, in fact, first grants such necessity to that history. The singularity of Hegel's relation to the Greeks is then explored through an examination of Hegel's own statements concerning the singularity of Aristotle. In this way, it becomes apparent that Hegel's own thought, in its entirety, asserts itself as nothing other that a decisive repetition of the Aristotelian speculative thought of actuality. This exceptional position of Aristotle in Hegel's logic of history suggests that there is a need for another sense of history's movement, in which that movement does not simply progress but unfolds as the sin- gular dialogue between one Greek and one German. (shrink)

The article takes up the question of the “truth” of images by means of a somewhat playful reflection upon our human kinship with canine life and by considering the recurrent images of dogs of all shapes and sizes within the philosophical tradition. Here there is occasion to consider both Socrates and Confucius, who had a special fondness for dogs and who were at times compared to dogs themselves. The paper begins with a reading of Kant’s schematism in the First Critique, (...) as an operation that would establish a mediating relation between the concepts of the understanding and sensible intuitions, and ends with a meditation upon the dog-themed painting, “Dark Room,” by the contemporary artist, Alan Loehle. Kant accounts for our ability to grasp that we see a dog by introducing a mysterious distortional skewing or Verzeichnung, which as a power of the imagination is able to freely sketch what appears for it within the sensible. The sense of this Kantian skewing or sketching thereby anticipates what Heidegger names the essential Verunstaltung belonging originally to the event of truth. The last half of the paper turns to Jean-Luc Nancy’s difficult but provocative work on the abysmal ground of images and attempts to show in this way how our human kinship with canine life exposes us to what Nancy would think, following Heidegger, as the elemental strife between earth and sky. (shrink)

The paper asks about the difficulty of reading Schelling's work today given the historical biases that dominate contemporary philosophical inquiry. But if we cannot succeed as the readers Schelling himself appears to be looking for, this does not already have to mean that his work cannot speak to our time. Such a possibility, however, presupposes that we consider Schelling's work as it is inseparably connected to a critique of the modern project and as it points thereby to the monstrous discord (...) that defines human philosophical discourse as such. In particular, the paper considers the Kantian opposition between faith and knowledge and claims that this opposition itself appears to establish a kind of limit for philosophical inquiry today. In this context, some reflections are offered on the history of European nihilism and the death of God. The paper concludes by giving several indications of how Schelling's thought promises to subvert this opposition and this limit. (shrink)

The paper begins by raising once again the question of the possible unity of Schelling’s work, despite the undeniable transformations the work undergoes. It isproposed that such unity is best considered by taking seriously the primacy of the philosophical task that Schelling confronts, rather than by emphasizing whatever doctrinal or doxographical positions he espouses. Such a view of Schelling’s work is confirmed if one considers his continual critique of predicative discourse. Philosophical thought remains irreducible to propositional content because the matter (...) of philosophy must already be presupposed if such propositions are to arise. This matter or “unprethinkable” source, given to thinking, can only be addressed in an explicit affirmation of freedom and life. Thus, Schelling’s work as it raises the question of freedom has to be encountered as itself a manifestation of freedom, and such an interpretation of Schelling for its part also must presuppose the freedom of the interpreter. The paper argues that this approach to Schelling makes it necessary to be attentive to the “performative dimension” of his work, to the way in which what is at issue in it becomes manifest indirectly. Schelling’s demand for a positive philosophy thus also calls for and makes possible a different relation to language and the word. The word can no longer be taken as the sensible marker for an intelligible content, but becomes the living bond of what is. (shrink)

The paper begins by raising once again the question of the possible unity of Schelling’s work, despite the undeniable transformations the work undergoes. It isproposed that such unity is best considered by taking seriously the primacy of the philosophical task that Schelling confronts, rather than by emphasizing whatever doctrinal or doxographical positions he espouses. Such a view of Schelling’s work is confirmed if one considers his continual critique of predicative discourse. Philosophical thought remains irreducible to propositional content because the matter (...) of philosophy must already be presupposed if such propositions are to arise. This matter or “unprethinkable” source, given to thinking, can only be addressed in an explicit affirmation of freedom and life. Thus, Schelling’s work as it raises the question of freedom has to be encountered as itself a manifestation of freedom, and such an interpretation of Schelling for its part also must presuppose the freedom of the interpreter. The paper argues that this approach to Schelling makes it necessary to be attentive to the “performative dimension” of his work, to the way in which what is at issue in it becomes manifest indirectly. Schelling’s demand for a positive philosophy thus also calls for and makes possible a different relation to language and the word. The word can no longer be taken as the sensible marker for an intelligible content, but becomes the living bond of what is. (shrink)

The paper revisits the discussion of freedom in the Phenomenology of Perception and considers how according to Merleau-Ponty a phenomenology of freedom must challenge the tradition that attempts to account for experience and appearance through the filter of reflective consciousness. The paper begins by posing this problem in broad historical terms, as a distinctly modern predicament, and briefly considers Schelling’s philosophical engagement with negative philosophy as a provocation and historical precedent for reading the phenomenological work of Merleau-Ponty. It is noted (...) that Schelling’s criticism of the formal freedom of Kant prefi gures Merleau-Ponty’s polemic against Sartrean freedom, although the claim is also made that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of freedom remains irreducible to the terms established by this polemic, since what appears is a freedom no longer determined by consciousness and reflection. Before turning to the reading of the Phenomenology of Perception, a single passage is also adduced from The Visible and Invisible in order to demonstrate how the concern elaborated in the Phenomenology runs throughout Merleau-Ponty’s work, namely, that a phenomenological interrogation of experience must break down the boundaries of what is properly one’s own as this would be defined in and by the reflective act. The reading of the Phenomenology then proceeds by showing how the entire work is framed by the possibility of transforming philosophical practice through an overturning of the dominant paradigm of reflection. The paper interrogates in this light the Preface, the chapter on Descartes’ cogito and the concluding chapter on freedom. A connection is drawn between the appearance of the “tacit” cogito and the elaboration of freedom that ends by insisting upon the necessity of silence. (shrink)

This paper seeks to steer a way between a dogmatic and a skeptical reading of the Meno by taking up the performative dimension of Socrates’ responseto Meno. How does the philosophical inquiry into the definition of virtue promise to radicalize Meno’s alleged concern with the genesis of virtue? The paper shows that Socrates is acting, in a way, as an educator, in the sense that he attempts to awaken Meno to the task of self-knowledge as it bears upon the possibility (...) of virtue in his own life. Thus, a dogmatic response to Meno’s question could not succeed in interrupting his tendentious memorizing approach to philosophical questions. But the paper also develops this reading by retracing the way in which nature undergoes a transformation, or a doubling, during the course of the dialogue. It becomes evident that the apparently inconclusive answer at the end of the dialogue, which states that the origin of virtue is to be found in “divine dispensation” and “correct opinion,” is only understandable in light of this transformation or doubling of nature that is made manifest dialogically andmythically in Socrates’ interaction with the young and handsome Meno. Socrates thus appears as a kind of “Teiresias in Athens,” but his clear failure inimpacting Meno in any lasting way only demonstrates that the possibility of political health is irreducible to any and all technical production. (shrink)

This paper seeks to steer a way between a dogmatic and a skeptical reading of the Meno by taking up the performative dimension of Socrates’ responseto Meno. How does the philosophical inquiry into the definition of virtue promise to radicalize Meno’s alleged concern with the genesis of virtue? The paper shows that Socrates is acting, in a way, as an educator, in the sense that he attempts to awaken Meno to the task of self-knowledge as it bears upon the possibility (...) of virtue in his own life. Thus, a dogmatic response to Meno’s question could not succeed in interrupting his tendentious memorizing approach to philosophical questions. But the paper also develops this reading by retracing the way in which nature undergoes a transformation, or a doubling, during the course of the dialogue. It becomes evident that the apparently inconclusive answer at the end of the dialogue, which states that the origin of virtue is to be found in “divine dispensation” and “correct opinion,” is only understandable in light of this transformation or doubling of nature that is made manifest dialogically andmythically in Socrates’ interaction with the young and handsome Meno. Socrates thus appears as a kind of “Teiresias in Athens,” but his clear failure inimpacting Meno in any lasting way only demonstrates that the possibility of political health is irreducible to any and all technical production. (shrink)