This article discusses the problem of understanding in Adorno’s critical theory. It is argued that another rationale for the contingency of understanding is provided by Adorno, one that justifies understanding critical theory as disclosing critique. For Adorno, what is responsible for the contingency of understanding is not the local limitation of our knowledge and vocabulary, but the presupposition of understanding itself. In this article, two readings of this contingency of understanding are distinguished: an epistemo-critical one and an ideology-critical (...) one. Finally, the case is made for adopting the epistemo-critical view of the contingency of understanding in preference to the ideology-critical view - not least because it contains a normative impulse which goes beyond contextualism. (shrink)

What Kompridis admirably describes as the transformative power of disclosing critique should be incorporated into a renewed model of critical theory. At the same time, disclosing critique should be regarded as supplementing, rather than supplanting, those normative forms of analysis and reflection that remain rooted in experiences of social suffering, which are precisely what continue to give critical theory its normative ground and theoretical impetus. In this way, we could agree with Kompridis that practicing world-disclosing (...) critique, and thereby retrieving the aesthetic critique of modernity, will ensure that critical theory continues to have a future worthy of its past. Adapted from the source document. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article articulates the idea of a disclosing critique of society. It starts from the assumption that the curiously organicistic undertones of Adorno’s negative social ontology is part and parcel of a disclosing gesture in his social criticism. It then traces Adorno’s debate with social organicists to the point where the critical theorist’s own concept of society emerges with a claim to be critical in itself. It is argued that this critical claim is enforced by a (...) disclosing gesture. To articulate what is at stake in this gesture of critical disclosure a parallel is drawn, and contrast made, to Emerson’s conception of disclosure as “drawing a circle around a circle”. The relationship between Adorno’s and Emerson’s conceptions of critical disclosure is complex. However, their juxtaposition allows for a distinction between two directions of critical disclosure. It will be argued that disclosing critique of society can be understood as an exemplary dissociation from alienated society by means of a creative association of empirical knowledge, poetic description and philosophical speculation by a critic standing, as it were, with one foot inside and the other outside our form of life. (shrink)

At the centre of Adorno’s critical theory of society lies the problem of Bann or Bannkreis: why do individuals systematically act in ways that reinforce conditions that are obviously incompatible with their freedom and pursuit of happiness? Despite criticism of Dewey’s experimentalism by several Frankfurt School critical theorists claiming that the American pragmatist fails to account for systematic blockages to critique, Dewey does in fact formulate his approach to social critique as a response to the problem that social (...) life might be made immune to transformative claims. In Human Nature and Conduct, thirty years prior to Adorno’s Bannkreis, he conceptualizes a ‘vicious circle’ in which attempts to transform social life seem to be caught and points to a way out. This article shows that Adorno and Dewey share in a project at the heart of critical theory, the project of a disclosing critique of society. In different and mutually completing ways, the Frankfurt School critical theorist and the American pragmatist point out the extent to which their contemporary societies are caught in antagonistic and painful vicious circles and thereby point to the objective possibility of another form of social life. The article is historical, but it is animated by the intent to brush a fruitful path for disclosing critique today. From Adorno, this critical practice gains the idea that theory of society can be a disclosing gesture, which presents an important corrective to Dewey’s failure to trace the eclipse of the public. From Dewey, it gets a reminder that these theories must find ways to continue into ordinary life experience through group action for their disclosure to come full circle. (shrink)

At the centre of Adorno’s critical theory of society lies the problem of Bann or Bannkreis: why do individuals systematically act in ways that reinforce conditions that are obviously incompatible with their freedom and pursuit of happiness? Despite criticism of Dewey’s experimentalism by several Frankfurt School critical theorists claiming that the American pragmatist fails to account for systematic blockages to critique, Dewey does in fact formulate his approach to social critique as a response to the problem that social (...) life might be made immune to transformative claims. In Human Nature and Conduct, thirty years prior to Adorno’s Bannkreis, he conceptualizes a ‘vicious circle’ in which attempts to transform social life seem to be caught and points to a way out. This article shows that Adorno and Dewey share in a project at the heart of critical theory, the project of a disclosing critique of society. In different and mutually completing ways, the Frankfurt School critical theorist and the American pragmatist point out the extent to which their contemporary societies are caught in antagonistic and painful vicious circles and thereby point to the objective possibility of another form of social life. The article is historical, but it is animated by the intent to brush a fruitful path for disclosing critique today. From Adorno, this critical practice gains the idea that theory of society can be a disclosing gesture, which presents an important corrective to Dewey’s failure to trace the eclipse of the public. From Dewey, it gets a reminder that these theories must find ways to continue into ordinary life experience through group action for their disclosure to come full circle. (shrink)

Nikolas Kompridis has recently argued that the future of critical theory depends upon a critical appropriation of Heidegger’s concept of ‘world disclosure’, and hence on a transformation of critical theory into a form of ‘world-disclosing critique’ oriented towards the future. This article engages in a critical dialogue with Kompridis' account of world-disclosing critique, arguing that critical theory should embrace it as an innovative way of retrieving the forgotten tradition of aesthetic critique of modernity.

This essay provides a critique of mainstream computer ethics and argues for the importance of a complementary approach called disclosive computer ethics, which is concerned with the moral deciphering of embedded values and norms in computer systems, applications and practices. Also, four key values are proposed as starting points for disclosive studies in computer ethics: justice, autonomy, democracy and privacy. Finally, it is argued that research in disclosive computer ethics should be multi-level and interdisciplinary, distinguishing between a disclosure level, (...) a theoretical level, and an an application level. (shrink)

In his article "Disclosive Computer Ethics," Phillip Brey critiques mainstream computer ethics and argues for a disclosive computer ethic "which is concerned with the moral deciphering of embedded values and norms in computer systems, applications, and practices." 1 In this article I argue that DCE simply shifts the focus of MCE toward issues Brey deems important.

In this paper I indicate the reasons why critical theory needs an alternative conception of critique, and then I sketch out what such an alternative should be. The conception of critique I develop involves a time-responsive redisclosure of the world capable of disclosing new or previously unnoticed possibilities, possibilities in light of which agents can change their self-understanding and their practices, and change their orientation to the future and the past.

What and how is the work of art? This paper considers Heidegger’s venerable question by way of a related one: what exactly is the essence of the painting? En route to critiquing the Heideggerian conception of the work of art as that which discloses a world, I present Michel Henry’s competing aesthetic theory. According to Henry, the artwork’s task is not to disclose the exteriority of the world, but rather to express the interiority of life’s pathos—what he calls transcendental self-affectivity. (...) To clarify Henry’s view, I examine his analysis of the abstract painting of Kandinsky, after which I illustrate the significance of Kandinsky’s abstractionism by showing how the representational paintings of Paul Signac, Andrew Harrison, Alphonse Osbert, and Henry Ossawa Tanner attempt to express the invisibility of subjectivity. I then reveal how Heidegger’s account of the work of art in terms of world disclosure overlooks the work’s task of exalting life. In closing, I accordingly suggest that Henry’s view of painting—which locates its essence in Life rather than the world—not only presents a competing position to the Heideggerian view of the origin of the work of art worthy of our attention, but one that explains how art can contribute to overcoming our age’s nihilism. (shrink)

In Critique and Disclosure, Nikolas Kompridis argues provocatively for a richer and more time-responsive critical theory. He calls for a shift in the normative and critical emphasis of critical theory from the narrow concern with rules and procedures of Jürgen Habermas's model to a change-enabling disclosure of possibility and the enlargement of meaning. Kompridis contrasts two visions of critical theory's role and purpose in the world: one that restricts itself to the normative clarification of the procedures by which moral (...) and political questions should be settled and an alternative rendering that conceives of itself as a possibility-disclosing practice. At the center of this resituation of critical theory is a normatively reformulated interpretation of Martin Heidegger's idea of "disclosure" or "world disclosure." In this regard Kompridis reconnects critical theory to its normative and conceptual sources in the German philosophical tradition and sets it within a romantic tradition of philosophical critique.Drawing not only on his sustained critical engagement with the thought of Habermas and Heidegger but also on the work of other philosophers including Wittgenstein, Cavell, Gadamer, and Benjamin, Kompridis argues that critical theory must, in light of modernity's time-consciousness, understand itself as fully situated in its time--in an ever-shifting and open-ended horizon of possibilities, to which it must respond by disclosing alternative ways of thinking and acting. His innovative and original argument will serve to move the debate over the future of critical studies forward--beyond simple antinomies to a consideration of, as he puts it, "what critical theory should be if it is to have a future worthy of its past.". (shrink)

When the social relevance of robotic applications is addressed today, the use of assistive technology in care settings is almost always the first example. So-called care robots are presented as a solution to the nursing crisis, despite doubts about their technological readiness and the lack of concrete usage scenarios in everyday nursing practice. We inquire into this interconnection of social robotics and care. We show how both are made available for each other in three arenas: innovation policy, care organization, and (...) robotic engineering. First, we analyze the discursive “logics” of care robotics within European innovation policy, second, we disclose how care robotics is encountering a historically grown conflict within health care organization, and third we show how care scenarios are being used in robotic engineering. From this diagnosis, we derive a threefold critique of robotics in healthcare, which calls attention to the politics, historicity, and social situatedness of care robotics in elderly care. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse Axel Honneth's theory of recognition by focusing on two distinct methodological approaches present in it, namely, critique and reconstruction. The critical moment in Honneth's theory of recognition is articulated around two concepts: world-disclosing critique, which is based on the attempt to suggest new and provocative points of view on social reality through the usage of rhetorical devices; and misrecognition, as the empirical starting-point for the theoretical model. These two notions, which can be (...) traced back to Adorno and the so called "first generation" of the Frankfurt School, are interpreted as the mainlines of the diagnostic moment in Honneth's critical theory, as they provide an effective analytical insight into the reality of social suffering. Furthermore, they represent the basic fundament upon which the second level, reconstruction, is articulated. By bringing to light the core aspects of social interaction, they provide the initial clues for the development of the normative framework of recognition, the formal idea of a "good life". The final part of the paper argues that such an interpretation of Honneth's theory of recognition helps to overcome some of its most problematic aspects and thus to deepen its critical potential. (shrink)

Although the major part of the chapter’s investigation is on the mode and acts of remembering in Chan Buddhism, Wang opens with a survey of the traditional Indian Buddhist context of remembering, its differentiation of wholesome and unwholesome acts of remembering, and its critique of unwholesome and discursive modes of memory, as Buddhism evolves from Theravada to Mahayana. This context is a necessary condition under which the interaction between Indian and Chinese Buddhist ideologies, or between the inherited tradition and (...) its Chinese Chan appropriation, becomes possible. Wang then examines how Chan masters, from early to classical period, appropriate and develop the traditional distinction of wholesome and unwholesome remembrance and its affirmation of the former and critique of the latter in a Chinese context. As opposed to the widespread Chan hierarchy of forgetfulness over remembrance that has shaped much of our modern understanding, Wang presents a rediscovery of Chan teachings on remembrance, disclosing how remembrance is related to the internal tension between the positive attitude towards the traditional cultivation and the iconoclastic attitude towards it in various Chan ideologies. The approach of these examinations is a combination of textual/contextual inquiry, conceptual analysis and philosophical interpretation. The part of “summary and reflections” includes a review of the uniqueness of the Chan mode of remembering, an analysis of its ethical dimension by using, and comparing it with, Ricoeur’s ethics of memory, and an exploration of the paradoxical relationship between remembering and forgetting. (shrink)

In this article I reply to four critics. Responding to Linda Alcoff, I contend that my original two-dimensional framework discloses the entwinement of economic and cultural strands of subordination, while also illuminating the dangers of identity politics. Responding to James Bohman, I maintain that, with the addition of the third dimension of representation, my approach illuminates the structural exclusion of the global poor, the relation between justice and democracy, and the status of comprehensive theorizing. Responding to Nikolas Kompridis, I defend (...) a view of recognition that prioritizes the critique of institutionalized injustice. Responding to Rainer Forst, I argue that such a critique is better formulated in participation-theoretic than justification-theoretic terms. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to show that instances of valorising blackness have turned out to be harmful to African peoples. Whereas there have been several movements such as Black Power Movement, Black Consciousness Movement as well as individuals such as Steve Biko, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Sedar Senghor, William DuBois, Edward Blyden, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, it is the case that none of these minds made the conscious effort to interrogate the literal and symbolic use of black for Africans. Consequently, (...) this research limits its scope to Fela’s valorisation of blackness as enshrined in his blackism. Using the method of critical analysis, it argues that Fela’s “Blackism” takes the categorical and symbolic implications of blackness to an uncritical assimilation. The present study submits that until the ideological underpinning of the categorical and symbolic uses of blackness for Africans is engaged, all valorisation attempts will continue to yield meagre outputs. The first task is therefore to disclose the Eurocentric campaigns that mitigated the worth of the original or traditional people of Africa, south of the Sahara as well as the arrays of rejoinders which led to the valorisation of blackness. Afterward, Fela’s version of valorisation as encapsulated within the fold of his blackism will be disinterred. The rest of the paper shows not only that the valorisation agenda was a failed project but also that Fela’s “Blackism” is one of these failed projects. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to show that instances of valorising blackness have turned out to be harmful to African peoples. Whereas there have been several movements such as Black Power Movement, Black Consciousness Movement as well as individuals such as Steve Biko, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Sedar Senghor, William DuBois, Edward Blyden, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, it is the case that none of these minds made the conscious effort to interrogate the literal and symbolic use of black for Africans. Consequently, (...) this research limits its scope to Fela’s valorisation of blackness as enshrined in his blackism. Using the method of critical analysis, it argues that Fela’s “Blackism” takes the categorical and symbolic implications of blackness to an uncritical assimilation. The present study submits that until the ideological underpinning of the categorical and symbolic uses of blackness for Africans is engaged, all valorisation attempts will continue to yield meagre outputs. The first task is therefore to disclose the Eurocentric campaigns that mitigated the worth of the original or traditional people of Africa, south of the Sahara as well as the arrays of rejoinders which led to the valorisation of blackness. Afterward, Fela’s version of valorisation as encapsulated within the fold of his blackism will be disinterred. The rest of the paper shows not only that the valorisation agenda was a failed project but also that Fela’s “Blackism” is one of these failed projects. (shrink)

La théorie marxiste de l'État souffre de l'ambiguïté fondamentale de la doctrine marxiste. C'est sur la question centrale de la « période de transition » et du « dépérissement » de l'État prolétarien que cette théorie révèle les apories d'une conception économiste des superstructures. Par une étude de certains textes classiques sur la question, nous tentons de démontrer que la dérive totalitaire des états socialistes procède tant de l'incapacité de poser le problème de la bureaucratisation de l'État que de la (...) croyance mythique en une extinction spontanée de l'État. Cette théorie reste aveugle aux conséquences d'une concentration étatique des pouvoirs qu'elle préconise néanmoins explicitement. Ainsi le marxisme en vient-il à combler la figure hégélienne d'un État représentant l'universalité.The Marxist theory of the State is afflicted by the fundamental ambiguity of the Marxist doctrine. It is in relation with the central question of the "transition period" and of the "witering away" of the proletarian State that this theory discloses the difficulties of an economic determinism of the superstructure. Through a study of some classical texts on this subject, we will try to demonstrate that the totalitarian drift of the Socialist States proceeds from the incapacity to set forth the problem of the bureaucratisation of the State as well as from a mythical belief in a spontaneous extinction of the State. This theory stays blind to the consequences of a concentration of powers in the State, although it advocates it explicitly. Marxism thus fulfils the Hegelian figure of a State representing universality. (shrink)

George Orwell wrote to Roger Senhouse upon completion of 1984 that the work was designed in part “to indicate by parodying them the intellectual implications of totalitarianism.” The implications for social and political philosophy have furnished a generation of readers with frightening realizations. I will attempt in what follows to show that the implications for epistemology and metaphysics are equally central to the book’s message, and equally discomfitting to philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition. The book connects totalitarianism with the entire (...) British empiricist tradition from George Berkeley to A. J. Ayer, primarily by disclosing the totalitarian implications of Berkeley’s philosophy. The result is a vision of empiricism as the intellectual foundation for totalitarianism. (shrink)

This paper suggests that genealogy is an exemplary form of critique. The stakes of this argument are established in the course of on intial response to critics of genealogy such as Habermas and Fraser throght the distinguishing of legislative and exemplary forms or critique. The essay then goes on to to show how Foucault's central concern, namely, the relation of humanism and bio-power, leads him to articulate an ethics of creativity which exhibits an ethods of ironic heroization and (...) discloses a conception of the political as agon. Reflecting on these features of genealogy's saying, it is argued that the form of genealogical reflection manifests these features. This emphasis on the showing of genealogy leads to the claim that Foucault's anti-humanism, mode of historical consciousness and perspectivism reproduce the substantive commitment of genealogy to the value of autonomy within the structure of genealogical reflection. (shrink)

This essay offers a novel interpretation of Michel Foucault’s original and often misunderstood conception of philosophy as a critical activity. While it is well known that Foucault’s critique undertakes to disclose contingent limits of thought that appear necessary in the present, the nature of the obstacle whose overcoming critique is meant to facilitate remains poorly understood. I argue that this obstacle, “the present limits of the necessary,” resides on the unconscious level of thought Foucault identified as the object (...) of analysis for an archaeology of knowledge. Therefore, Foucault’s conception of a critique can be grasped only against the background of the distinctive conception of thought that informs his archaeological analyses of discursive practices. According to that view, thinking is always shaped by some historically specific system of unconscious norms that define the contingent set of conceptual possibilities subjects are able to recognize in the present. Drawing on Foucault’s largely neglected remarks on the obvious and the habitual, I argue that these unconscious norms of thought are enacted habitually in a discursive practice, which endows them with an appearance of obviousness. In this way, I explain how something contingent appears in the guise of necessity and begins to function as part of the present limits of the necessary. Finally, I argue that the task of a critique to expand the scope of conceptual possibility by disclosing these unconscious limits of thought is motivated by Foucault’s commitment to the ideal of autonomy understood as subject’s self-determination. (shrink)

In the space of barely more than five years, with the publication of four pathbreaking books, Slavoj Žižek has earned the reputation of being one of the most arresting, insightful, and scandalous thinkers in recent memory. Perhaps more than any other single author, his writings have constituted the most compelling evidence available for recognizing Jacques Lacan as the preemient philosopher of our time. In _Tarrying with the Negative_, Žižek challenges the contemporary critique of ideology, and in doing so opens (...) the way for a new understanding of social conflict, particularly the recent outbursts of nationalism and ethnic struggle. Are we, Žižek asks, confined to a postmodern universe in which truth is reduced to the contingent effect of various discursive practices and where our subjectivity is dispersed through a multitude of ideological positions? _No_ is his answer, and the way out is a return to philosophy. This revisit to German Idealism allows Žižek to recast the critique of ideology as a tool for disclosing the dynamic of our society, a crucial aspect of which is the debate over nationalism, particularly as it has developed in the Balkans—Žižek's home. He brings the debate over nationalism into the sphere of contemporary cultural politics, breaking the impasse centered on nationalisms simultaneously fascistic and anticolonial aspirations. Provocatively, Žižek argues that what drives nationalistic and ethnic antagonism is a collectively driven refusal of our own enjoyment. Using examples from popular culture and high theory to illuminate each other—opera, film noir, capitalist universalism, religious and ethnic fundamentalism—this work testifies to the fact that, far more radically than the postmodern sophists, Kant and Hegel are our contemporaries. (shrink)

In his recent work, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud proposes to carry out an in-depth critique of the attempt by philosophers to invalidate all knowledge of an external world on the basis of Descartes' dream argument. His more particular aims in this endeavour are to uncover significant features of any such scepticism and to disclose in the process fundamental aspects of ‘human knowledge’ itself. Thus, among other features of knowledge that his study discloses, he thinks, is, echoing (...) Kant, the idea ‘that a completely general distinction between everything we get through the senses, on the one hand, and what is true or not true of the external world, on the other, would cut us off forever from knowledge of the world around us.’ And a significant feature of Cartesian dream scepticism he believes to have uncovered is that its ‘effectiveness’ rests upon the philosopher's traditional assumption of an objectively existent world that is understandable ‘from a detached “external” viewpoint.’. (shrink)

Šios analizės tikslas yra trilypis. Visų pirma, bandoma nustatyti pagrindinius Nietzsche’s subjekto kritikos aspektus. Visų antra, bandoma identifikuoti centrinę šios kritikos funkciją. Visų trečia, bandoma interpretuoti Nietzsche’s ginamą subjektą kaip kūnišką stimulų, instinktų, ir reikmių daugialypumą. Esėje parodoma, kad standartinis subjekto problematikos Nietzsche‘s kūriniuose svarstymas nėra adekvatus. Pasak tokio svarstymo, Nietzsche atsisako subjektyvistinių mąstymo kontūrų ir pakeičia juos radikaliai nauja paaiškinamąja schema. Esėje taip pat parodoma, kad Nietzsche niekad nesiekė pateisinti atomistinės ar anarchiškos subjekto sampratos. Nietzsche siekė suprasti subjektyvybę dvigubo (...) patvirtinimo būdu – kaip valdančio stimulo ir subjekto tapsmo patvirtinimą. Tokio dvigubo patvirtinimo dėka, savastis atsiskleidžia kaip tekstas ir jo interpretacija.Esminiai žodžiai: ego, kūnas, Nietzsche, savastis, subjektas.The following analysis has a threefold task. First, it aims to identify the central aspects of Nietzsche’s critique of the subject. Secondly, it aims to identify the main function that this critique serves. And thirdly, it aims to interpret the subject Nietzsche defends and endorses in terms of a bodily multiplicity of drives, instincts and needs. The paper argues against the standard interpretation of the problematic of the subject in Nietzsche, according to which Nietzsche abandons the subjectivistic approach in favor of an entirely different explanatory framework. The paper shows that far from supporting an atomistic or an anarchic view of the subject, Nietzsche’s narrative endorses a notion of subjectivity that entails a double affirmation: the affirmation of the ruling drive of the body and of the style of the subject’s becoming. In virtue of such a double affirmation, the self discloses itself as both the text and its interpretation.Key words: body, ego, Nietzsche, multiplicity, self, subject. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist thinker whose radical ideas on how to build an alternative world from below remain vigorously relevant today. Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis critically dissects the institutions of modern liberal democracy to reveal what is perhaps its deepest secret: it is the most successful political system in modernity at preserving an objective condition of domination while transforming it into a subjective conviction of freedom. Based on a careful reading of Gramsci's The Prison Notebooks, Marco Fonseca shows (...) hegemony as more than leadership of elites over subaltern majorities based on "consent". Following Gramsci’s critique of citizenship, civil society and democracy, including the current project of neoliberal "democracy promotion" particularly in the Global South, he discloses a hidden process of hegemony that generates the preconditions for consent and, thus, successful domination. As the struggles from Zapatismo to Chavismo and from the Arab Springs to Spain’s Podemos show, liberation is not possible without counter-hegemony. This book will be of interest to activist scholars engaged in the study of Marxism, Gramsci, political philosophy, and contemporary debates about the renewal of Marxist thought and the relevance of revolution and Communism for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Husserl identifies naturalism as the greatest threat to both the sciences and philosophy. In this paper, I explicate Husserl’s overall diagnosis and critique of naturalism and then examine the specific transcendental aspect of his critique. Husserl agreed with the Neo-Kantians in rejecting naturalism. He has three major critiques of naturalism: First, it (like psychologism and for the same reasons) is ‘countersensical’ in that it denies the very ideal laws that it needs for its own justification. (...) Second, naturalism essentially misconstrues consciousness by treating it as a part of the world. Third, naturalism is the inevitable consequence of a certain rigidification of the ‘natural attitude’ into what Husserl calls the ‘naturalistic attitude’. This naturalistic attitude ‘reifies’ and it ‘absolutizes’ the world such that it is treated as taken-for-granted and ‘obvious’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis, however, discloses that the natural attitude is, despite its omnipresence in everyday life, not primary, but in fact is relative to the ‘absolute’ transcendental attitude. The mature Husserl’s critique of naturalism is therefore based on his acceptance of the absolute priority of the transcendental attitude . The paradox remains that we must start from and, in a sense, return to the natural attitude, while, at the same time, restricting this attitude through the on-going transcendental vigilance of the universal epoché. (shrink)

So far aesthetics has played a limited role in our understanding of business activity, focused mainly on evaluating product quality and the character qualities (virtues) of the firm that produced them We draw on Heidegger’s fuller account of aesthetic value to show how a firm—like a work of art – can disclose the way human projects and technologies are already at work in a given context. In this way, we show that firms play an essential role in human self-understanding—a role (...) that Heidegger assigns primarily to works of art. We then apply the Heideggerian approach to the contemporary turn to artisanal products such as personalized handcrafts, craft beer and the “third wave” coffee movement. (shrink)

The history of the philosophical exchanges between China and the West is the history of the translations between the two traditions. On the western side, after the Jesuits, the range of translators became gradually broader. On the Chinese side, many intellectuals introduced Western classics in their language in the twentieth century. This led several historians to argue that Chinese philosophy took off with the translation-comparison of both traditions. However, not all comparisons are of equal value. Thus, translation in philosophy implies (...) comparing concepts or arguments and considering all the cultural references involved. This means taking a risk and accepting a limit. A risk is to be taken because translating interprets a “foreign thought” according to one’s context. This implies disclosing one’s presuppositions. There is a limit because transitioning from one set of references to another implies welcoming a part of “untranslatable” that always remains. According to Ricoeur’s words, “linguistic hospitality” is required here. This article first presents two interpretations of the translation-comparison processes. In the last part, it describes the necessity of linguistic hospitality in the context of Comparative Philosophy. (shrink)

In Another Philosophy of History, J.G. Herder claims that his aim is not to compare and judge different cultures, but merely to describe and explain how each came into being and thus to adopt the standpoint of an impartial observer. I argue, however, that there is a tension between Herder's understanding of his own project—his stated doctrine of historicism and cultural relativism—and the way in which it is actually put into practice. That is, despite Herder's stated aims, he is nevertheless (...) unable to avoid justifying premodern forms of life and making context-transcending evaluative judgments in the process of trying to understand cultures on their own terms and holding them up as exemplars vis à vis the Enlightenment. This tension presents the challenge of accounting for it in the most charitable and illuminating way. I argue that this goal can be achieved by appealing to the resources of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which enables us to disclose two enabling conditions for Herder's project of which he was not explicitly aware, viz., the internal connection between understanding and justification and the enabling character of prejudice as the condition for the possibility of understanding as such. (shrink)

In this paper I shall present an argument against Deleuze’s philosophy of painting. Deleuze’s main thesis in Logic of Sensation is twofold: [1] he claims that painting is based on a non-representational level; and [2] he claims that this level comes out of the materiality of painting. I shall claim that Deleuze’s theses should be rejected for the following reasons: first, the difference between non-intentional life and the representational world is too strict. I submit that the non-intentional relation that painting (...) opens up is itself part of and emerges out of the representational force of painting. If this would not be the case, then the criterion for differentiating between paintings and other objects cannot be developed. Indeed, Deleuze fails to give us a criterion. Second, Deleuze’s way of dealing with materiality in painting remains unsatisfactory, insofar as he is unable to take into account how materiality is charged with an “attitude towards the world.” In sum, materiality can only be painting’s materiality if we understand it as being formed and disclosed in representation. (shrink)

Written in a clear and engaging style, this text demonstrates Nietzsche's significance as a philosopher and as a political theorist by highlighting his critique of liberalism (in both its philosophical and political forms) and by elaborating the form of ethical and political understanding which his philosophy discloses.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dialectic as "Philosophical Embarrassment":Heidegger's Critique of Plato's MethodFrancisco Gonzalez (bio)Philosophie ist ein Ringen um die Methode.(GA58, 228)Hans-Georg Gadamer has expressed the following debt to the thought of Martin Heidegger: "The philosophical stimuli I received from Heidegger led me more and more into the realm of dialectic, Plato's as well as Hegel's."1 It is therefore surprising to discover that Heidegger himself did not see his thought as leading him (...) into the realm of dialectic. On the contrary, in Being and Time we find a curt and unexplained dismissal of dialectic, specifically Plato's, as a "genuine philosophical embarrassment" (Verlegenheit).2 This dismissal is repeated in the Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics course of WS 1929/30 where Heidegger asserts that "all dialectic in philosophy," and thus that of Hegel as well as Plato, "is only the expression of an embarrassment."3 Only with the publication of Heidegger's earlier lecture courses from the 1920s, are we in a position to understand and evaluate this surprising dismissal. We are also in a better position to understand why even the later Heidegger failed to reassess his rejection of dialectic, despite the existence of strong incentives for doing so: incentives recognized not only by Heidegger's students but, as will be shown, by Heidegger himself. What will emerge are not only the oft-observed limitations of Heidegger as an interpreter of Plato, but also, and more importantly, their source in certain limitations of Heidegger's own thinking. [End Page 361]1. Heidegger's Critique of Dialectic in the 1920sHeidegger's most detailed account of Plato's dialectic, and thus the one that best explains his curt dismissal of dialectic in later works, is to be found in the Sophist lectures of 1924/25.4 This account begins with a description of the pervasiveness and potential obstructiveness of. Though ordinarily and most immediately pervades all forms of disclosing (GA19, 196), "[a]ccording to its original sense and original facticity, is not at all disclosing (aufdeckend), but is, if one may speak in an extreme way, precisely concealing (verdeckend)" (197).5 In other words, is initially and for the most part "idle talk" (Gerede), the kind of speech that is bandied about concerning anything whatsoever and that "has the facticity of not allowing the things themselves to be seen, but producing instead a self-satisfaction in resting content with what 'one says'" (197). Thus speech at first presents itself as self-sufficient and autonomous; one hangs onto what is said without being directed beyond it to the things themselves.This tendency of to conceal is a theme to which Heidegger returns repeatedly in the courses of the 1920s. In a course from WS 1923/24 he argues that deception has its origin in the very facticity of language.6 In the unpublished course from SS 1924 ("Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie"), the one that immediately preceded the Sophist lectures, Heidegger characterizes language as the proper domain of "Das Man" (18, 22) and describes the dominance of as leading to Gerede (7, 112).7 Heidegger therefore claims that because the Greeks lived in speech they were also imprisoned by it, with the result that a tremendous effort was needed for them to overcome their imprisonment and thus make science possible (41, 106 ).In the Sophist lectures, Heidegger assigns to dialectic an important role in this effort. Given both the pervasiveness and the concealing character of, philosophy, in its attempt to disclose the things themselves, must both begin with and break through it by means of a "speaking for and against" (Für- und Gegensprechen) that destroys the autonomy and self-sufficiency that has in Gerede and in this way "leads more and more to the matter under discussion and lets it be seen" (GA19, 197). What is needed, in short, is dia-lectic: a speaking that passes through speech.Already, however, one can see the tension that characterizes dialectic on Heidegger's account. Though dialectic is a, a speaking, it seeks to be more. Its aim is to disclose the things themselves of which it speaks, to see these things in a "pure seeing" uncontaminated by the... (shrink)

In this paper, the author aims to show that transhumanists are confused about their own conception of the posthuman: transhumanists anticipate radical transformation of the human through technology and at the same time assume that the criteria to determine what is “normal” and what is “enhanced” are univocal, both in our present time and in the future. Inspired by Nietzsche’s notion of the Overhuman, the author argues that the slightest “historical and phenomenological sense” discloses copious variations of criteria, both diachronic (...) and synchronic, for what can be considered “normal” and “enhanced.” Radical transformation through technology does not simply enable us to become “stronger,” “smarter,” or “healthier,” but it can and often will also change the very standard or yardstick with which we measure what counts as “stronger,” “smarter,” or “healthier.” Put yet differently: new and emerging technologies are not neutral means but often bring about different and, from our current perspective, foreign standards for determining what are “normal” and “enhanced” capacities. Since the qualitative meanings of these terms are themselves not fixed, it is unintelligible and too reassuring to simply predict that new technologies will enhance human beings. (shrink)

The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the (...) mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)

The fight for emancipation takes place on different levels, and one of them is the level of contemporary financial capitalism as debt-economy. Debt can be a major tool of control and exploitation in that it produces subordinate subjects situated in exchange relations of debt and credit. Recent work on financial debt and the debt-economy has, however, not taken gender adequately into account in philosophical definitions of indebted subjects. Gender analysis discloses how the debtor–creditor relationship is based on a contractarian idea (...) of the indebted subject as an autonomous moral agent, and on a masculine, that is, a-relational understanding of what counts as debt and what does not in the contemporary debt-economy. In contrast to atomistic notions of the subject in liberal, contractarian theories, relational notions of the subject as advanced in care ethics are a better point of departure for capturing the interdependence of subjects within a debt-economy as a core feature of a nonsustainable monetary system. On the basis of such analysis, care ethics also offers means for imagining ways of emancipation from private and public problem credit in order to make financial systems more sustainable and more just. (shrink)

How political communities should be constituted is at the center of Hannah Arendt’s engagement with two ancient sources of law: the Greek nomos and the Roman lex. Recent scholarship suggests that Arendt treats nomos as imperative and exclusive while lex has a relationship-establishing dimension and that for an inclusive form of polity, she favors lex over nomos. This article argues, however, that Arendt’s appreciation occurs within a general context of more reservations about Rome than Roman-centric interpretations admit. Her writings show (...) that lex could not accommodate the agonistic spirit and Homeric impartiality that helped the Greeks achieve human greatness and surpassing excellence. Arendt also points out that Roman peace alliances occurred at the expense of disclosive competition among equals and assumed some form of domination. Indeed, although Arendt appreciates lex’s relationship-establishing aspect, she is undoubtedly critical of anti-political practices accompanying lex, manifested when the Romans required enemies’ submission to terms of peace the Romans themselves set. In the end, Arendt’s statements regarding nomos and lex highlight the fundamental challenge in free politics: balancing the internal demand of agonistic action with the external need to expand lasting ties. (shrink)

The September 11 attacks on the US dramatized the relationship between media spectacles of terror and the strategy of Islamic Jihadism that employs violent media events to promote its agenda. But US administrations have also used spectacles of terror to promote US military power and geopolitical ends, as is evident in the Gulf war of 1990–1991, the Afghanistan war of fall 2001, and the Iraq war of 2003. In this paper I argue that both Islamic Jihadists and two Bush administrations (...) have deployed spectacles of terror to promote their political agendas; that both deploy Manichean discourses of good and evil which themselves fit into dominant media codes of popular culture; and that both deploy fundamentalist and absolutist discourses. Criticizing the role of the US broadcasting media in presenting the September 11 terror spectacle and subsequent Bush Terror War, I argue against both Islamic terrorism and US militarism, and call for multilateral and global responses to terrorism and rogue regimes. I also argue that the Internet is the best source of information concerning complex events like Terror War, while mainstream US corporate media, especially broadcasting, have become instruments of propaganda for the Bush administration and Pentagon during spectacles of terrorism and war. Finally, I suggest limitations to the politics of the spectacle and argue that the record of the spectacles of Terror War in recent years discloses highly ambiguous, unpredictable, and negative political effects. (shrink)

Traditional Yorùbá culture admits the hegemonic locus that humans rank above all else on the planet. The outlook received decisive ratification several millennia ago in one of the Odùs of their Ifá Corpus. Specifically, in Odù Ògúndá Otura, one of the numerous chapters of the Ifá Corpus, Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the founder and primordial deity of Ifá discloses his authorization, the use of non-human animals for sacrifice and other human ends interminably. In this study, we engage the Ifá chapter that upholds this (...) outlook. We riposte that the age long supercilious perspective among the Yorùbá that humans rank higher and over non-human animals, as documented in the said Odù is no longer tenable on biological and moral-legal grounds. If the biological and moral-legal thrusts are not invalid, what framework is plausible when the interest(s) of non-human animals clash with the interest(s) of Ifá tradition and Yorùbá culture? On what basis will it be appropriate to jettison the interest(s) of the one for the interest(s) of the other? In the light of these posers, we employ Kai Horsthemke’s ethical individualism as the suitable groundwork that considers the interest of animals recommended for sacrifice in Ifá obeisance. (shrink)

In this paper I take issue with Heidegger's use of the concept of death as a means of disclosing human finitude. I argue that Being‐towards‐death is inadequate to the disclosure of Dasein's thrownness which is necessary for the kind of authentic historizing that Heidegger describes and furthermore leads to a reading of authenticity which is preclusive of Being‐with‐Others, I suggest that this difficulty may be alleviated through increased attention to the opposite boundary of Dasein's existence, namely its birth. Although (...) I do not pursue the project here of conducting a phenomenology of birth, I suggest some directions for proceeding with that task, and I illustrate that a greater emphasis on Dasein's beginning will increase the richness of our understanding of our Being‐with‐Others. (shrink)

Following tropes of light and dark in Amanda Gorman’s poem ‘The Hill We Climb’, the article explores, from a feminist perspective, who counts as a truth-teller. Against the backdrop of Hannah Arendt’s and Michel Foucault’s works on truth-telling, the article theorizes feminist modes of truth-telling. It scrutinizes truth-making in politics while unearthing the andro-centrism in truth-telling. Under the impression of post-truth rhetoric in recent populist landscapes, the article argues for a feminist and intersectional articulation of truth-telling to disclose the gendered (...) and racialized power relations in contemporary masculinist populism. (shrink)

Libertarianism attempts to establish a set of property rights as a complete political morality, its argument proceeding from liberty tout court, as the unique foundational aspect of well being that grounds rights. In this book, Attas presents a sympathetic reconstruction of the libertarian argument and then brings to bear a critical evaluation leading to an ultimate rejection of libertarianism. Exposing the limitations of libertarianism and disclosing its errors, Attas argues that the rights which libertarians adopt with respect to persons, (...) natural resources and products are indefensible given what liberty must be. (shrink)

Human Reason and Its Enemies is the result of a two-year research project under a National Fellowship of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. The book is an uncompromising expose of postmodernism-a philosophy which seeks to destroy philosophy; challenges and objectivity, universality and impartiality of reason; and whcih swears by 'situated' knowledge. The views of many postmoderns, particularly those of Cohen, Foucault, Lyotard, MacIntyre and Taylor, are shown to be superficial, sophistical, confused, fallacious and even ridiculous. Postmodernism believes truth to (...) be culture-relative and therefore believes that intercultural comparison and critical appraisal must require an 'Archimedean point' to make this possible. Since, they say, there is no such point, cultures are incommensurable. This argument, as well as the incommensurability thesis, are shown to be based on messy thinking and prejudice. The postmodern reliance on the concept of 'language games' and its love hate relationship to Western science, are examined in depth. The pronouncements of thinkers like Feyerabend and Kuhn are thoroughly exposed as mistaken and even laughable. An attempt is made to disclose the true nature and salient features of human reason and thinking. A full chapter is devoted to the arch-postmodern, Richard Rorty, and another to feminist writers like Fox Keller, Harding, Irigary and Tiles, who are powerfully drawn to postmodern ideas. (shrink)