First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition of (...) Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the theoretical background and practical meaning of the so called war writings which emerged within the phenomenological movement during the First World War. The author exemplifies it by researching the works of two German representatives of this movement, Max Scheler and Kurt Stavenhagen. He focuses on their application of the phenomenological method to the analysis of Russian national identity, and historical as well as cultural foundations of Russian state. The paper’s main thesis (...) is that the politicization and militarization of phenomenology consisted in both “personalization” and “sociologization” of the phenomenological approach to the problem of the state. While interpreting Scheler’s personalism as an exemplification of the approach to the state as a problem of social ontology, the author reconstructs the theoretical conditions of analyzing the Russian imperial state in terms of the “world.” The focus of the paper is particularly on the phenomenology of, as Scheler put it, Russian collective personality and Russian national consciousness or “soul” as well as on the question of legitimacy of Ukrainian resistance against Russian imperialism. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others.

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others.

Max Scheler’s contribution to the early development of phenomenology is second to only Edmund Husserl’s. What perhaps distinguishes Scheler’s early contribution is his willingness to examine phenomenologically social and political phenomena. Not only did this early trajectory lead him to develop a non-formal value theory, but it also enabled him to engage directly in the political problems of his time. Like many of his contemporary intellectuals, Scheler was an adamantsupporter of German aggression during the onset of World War I, (...) and he wrote many works during this time demonstrating the value and justification of the war. In only a few years’ time, Scheler’s position on the value of war shifted dramatically and he began to defend a position of peace and pacifism. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to clarify the early themes and influences in phenomenology that prepared Scheler for his analysis of war and peace; and (2) to illustratehow Scheler’s analysis offers the possibility of concretising the present experience of war and the possibility of peace. (shrink)

Since the beginning of its history philosophy deals with the question for the meaning of war. This question, however, was always understood as the question for the causes of war: Why is there war? Where does it come from? The article presupposes that only this question and the attempts to respond to it can shed light onto the interpretation of the historical reality of war, which is finally the only reason to reflect on its causation. The article refers to a (...) set of notions and texts, which belong to a discourse on war unfolding through the centuries of European thinking. These notions are: contradictions, body, justice, nature, right, politics, and morals. Even if this sequence is only one possible sequence of the philosophical reflection on warfare, I consider it to be one of greater importance. We see, how a plurality of causes creates a context, in which we could try to analyze actual events: For it is evident that no war has only one reason. And the article has finally one other intention, namely to show that probably every possible sequence of causes of war will have the same consequence. This con-sequence will be the final destruction of the world, the coming of the ash. (shrink)

The Philosophy of War and Exile argues that our current paradigms for thinking about the ethics of war - just war theory - and the suffering of war - PTSD theory - judge war without a proper understanding of war. By continuing the investigations of J. Glenn Gray into the meaning of how war is experienced by combatants we can find an alternative understanding of not only war, but of peace, culminating in a new theory of responsibility centered around embodiment (...) and mortality rather than praise and blame. This conception of responsibility will in turn allow us to not only ask new questions about torture, unmanned warfare, and the treatment of veterans, but also to ask new questions about what it means for noncombatants to experience as home what combatants experience as exile. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, Phenomenology of Perception is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, (...) Merleau-Ponty's insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

Max Scheler’s contribution to the early development of phenomenology is second to only Edmund Husserl’s. What perhaps distinguishes Scheler’s early contribution is his willingness to examine phenomenologically social and political phenomena. Not only did this early trajectory lead him to develop a non-formal value theory, but it also enabled him to engage directly in the political problems of his time. Like many of his contemporary intellectuals, Scheler was an adamantsupporter of German aggression during the onset of World War I, (...) and he wrote many works during this time demonstrating the value and justification of the war. In only a few years’ time, Scheler’s position on the value of war shifted dramatically and he began to defend a position of peace and pacifism. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to clarify the early themes and influences in phenomenology that prepared Scheler for his analysis of war and peace; and (2) to illustratehow Scheler’s analysis offers the possibility of concretising the present experience of war and the possibility of peace. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to the fifth part of the Common Knowledge symposium on forms of quietism. Responding to a sense that prior installments of the symposium had overlooked the phenomenology of quietism, of patient suffering, the essay details the daily life of Mary Rowlandson's captivity during King Philip's War in the 17th century and, in particular, her strategies for surviving the breakdown of every basic taxonomy that had until then structured her life in Puritan New England. Refusing (...) either suicide or rebellion and thus reduced to maintaining “bare life,” Rowlandson demonstrated by her resilience that quietist strategies can result in kinds of triumph. (shrink)

In “The Phenomenology of Spirit” and “Philosophy of Right”, Hegel gives a detailed specification of the theses about the war that were claimed in earlier papers and manuscripts, but his position is not fundamentally changed. In the “The Phenomenology of Spirit” Hegel advocates governments’ need and right to initiate a war from time to time in order to prevent both the isolation and atomization, and let individuals feel the death. As in the past, the war, as Hegel says, (...) has a moment of ethical life. In the “Philosophy of Right” Hegel introduces final deliberations about war that rely on ideas of his earlier paper about natural law even more than in the “The Phenomenology of Spirit”. Hegel emphasizes the ethical role of sacrifice in the war and expresses opinions critical of not an abstract perpetual peace but a concrete philosophical project of Kant. Due to Hegel, Kant’s perpetual peace does not resemble a perpetual deception, since the required union of states is elusive and none except the world spirit in the world history can be a praetor. In line with Heraclitus, Hegel maintains that wars underlie the nature of things. I contribute to the discussions of Hegel scholars if Hegel’s philosophy glorifies a war or not as follows: I substitute the term “glorification” with the term “bellicisme” that suits better to measured, not snobbish and deprived of certain historical implications Hegel’s theses about reasonableness, necessity, the ethicality of war and ethicality of perpetual peace illness. (shrink)

It is over forty years since Merleau-Ponty published his first major work, Le structure de comportement (‘The Structure of Behaviour’) (1942) and a quarter of a century since he died. He belongs, therefore, with Sartre and Marcel, to the first post-War generation of French philosophers. Like his friend Sartre's, his philosophy may be regarded as dated, passé, of no interest or relevance to truly contemporary thought. In philosophical terms forty years are nothing; in terms of trends, fashions and novelties they (...) are an eternity. But perhaps the work of Merleau-Ponty has not dated because it was never in vogue. He did not write plays and novels, or take part in political demonstrations, though he was involved in politics, or win a Nobel prize and refuse to receive it. He was very much a philosopher's philosopher, eminent in his field, well known in academic circles in France but hardly a household name. In this country he is hardly known even in philosophical circles, except by name. More is the pity, since his philosophical approach and manner of philosophizing have much in common with certain modes of British philosophizing, as I hope to show. (shrink)

It is over forty years since Merleau-Ponty published his first major work, Le structure de comportement (‘The Structure of Behaviour’) (1942) and a quarter of a century since he died. He belongs, therefore, with Sartre and Marcel, to the first post-War generation of French philosophers. Like his friend Sartre's, his philosophy may be regarded as dated, passé, of no interest or relevance to truly contemporary thought. In philosophical terms forty years are nothing; in terms of trends, fashions and novelties they (...) are an eternity. But perhaps the work of Merleau-Ponty has not dated because it was never in vogue. He did not write plays and novels, or take part in political demonstrations, though he was involved in politics, or win a Nobel prize and refuse to receive it. He was very much a philosopher's philosopher, eminent in his field, well known in academic circles in France but hardly a household name. In this country he is hardly known even in philosophical circles, except by name. More is the pity, since his philosophical approach and manner of philosophizing have much in common with certain modes of British philosophizing, as I hope to show. (shrink)

Recent critiques have selected textual evidence for casting Hearne as a failed narrator, because he did not live up to the mercantile or imperialist expectations for late 18th-century explorers, or as a biased narrator, because he never fully moves beyond such valuations. But if we categorize phenomenologically Hearne's experiences as a student of the Arctic throughout his four-year journey, there is more textual evidence for reading it as the account of a civilized narrator's conflicted adaptation to an indigenous society as (...) his consciousness is more and more shaped by Arctic nature. Hearne's A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay, to the Northern Ocean 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 (1795) is filled with patterns of experience in which Hearne is learning, often slowly and painfully, a culture of place through his body. Hearne is a developing narrator who moves from experiencing the Arctic as an alien, hostile, and unnatural place to responding directly to its actualities, adjusting over time to the demands the land and its people place on him. As Hearne eventually finds a temporary home in Arctic wilderness, his most significant accomplishment as a narrator is to move the locus of culture into it. As the phenomenologist Edward S. Casey puts it, this results in a 'thickening' between the antinomical oppositions of civilization and Arctic. Viewed in light of his own statements in his Preface, the commendation of contemporary reviewers, and the contrasting limitations of pre-Hearne sub-Arctic narratives, Hearne's Journey amounts to a reconfiguration of 18th-century civilized constructs into three roles grounded in Arctic phenomena: as a naturalist, as a traveler across northern terrain, and as a member of a Chipewyan war party. An ur-narrative of land-based Arctic exploration, Hearne's Journey finally demonstrates an integration with the land and the Chipewyans with whom he travels that establishes phenomenological precedents for the reading of all later accounts of land-based Arctic travel. (shrink)

Two German philosophers working during the Weimar Republic in Germany, between the two World Wars, produced seminal texts that continue to resonate almost a hundred years later. Franz Rosenzweig—a Jewish philosopher, and Martin Heidegger—a philosopher who at one time was studying to become a Catholic priest, each in their own, particular way include in their writings powerful philosophies of art that, if approached phenomenologically and ethically, provide keys to understanding their radically divergent trajectories, both biographically and for their philosophical heritage. (...) Simon provides a close reading of some of their essential texts—The Star of Redemption for Rosenzweig and Being and Time and The Origin of the Work of Art for Heidegger—in order to draw attention to how their philosophies of art can be understood to provide significant ethical directives. (shrink)

In my paper, I develop a phenomenological and pragmatist reflection on the fragility of liberal democracy’s moral foundations in times of war. Following Judith Shklar’s conception of the “liberalism of fear”, the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic order is seen as grounded in experiences of suffering caused by political violence. It is also assumed that the liberalism of fear delivers an adequate conception of the normative foundations of the European project. With the help of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (...) and Michel Henry, the paper ants to philosophically deepen the liberalism of fear by outlining a theory of “pathic evidence” as a normative foundation and the concept of a common “flesh of the political” as a shared moral sensitivity that sets boundaries to political conflict as well as the political imaginary, excluding what I call the production of “monumental meaning”. It then examines the question which political conditions are needed for this evidence to become a shared, communal criteria of ethical thought, and considers inner and outer challenges to the transmission and reproduction of this evidence in time, drawing especially on John Dewey’s ideas of democratic communication and social intelligence. In the current war, the following problem appears as crucial for the “soul” of European democracies which are confronted with the need to respond to Russia’s attack: How can a political morality grounded in pathic evidence be sustained, once it is challenged by an aggressor who, out of cultural and political reasons, shows a higher level of toleration towards violence? Besides aggression from an external foe, there are also temporal dynamics that further the loss of the inhibiting force of pathic evidence from the inside. As it shall be argued, boredom can be such a factor. The paper concludes by drawing conclusions for the current war in Ukraine. (shrink)

In this text, the work of Serbian writer Stanislav Krakov, between the two world wars, the famous, and later, due to ideological divisions, repressed and forgotten figure, is ovserverd through the lens of philosophy of existence and phenomenology. The?philosophical? significance of Krakov?s autobiographical war prose, which in the aesthetic, especially formal-innovative aspect, represented the pinnacle of the genre of that time Serbian literature, is that it can be viewed as a first-class document of phenomenological introspection of a man in (...) situation of mortal combat; and the ragne his prose of his prose is, in some respects, without exaggeration, comparable to war prose of Ernst J?nger. But besides his authentic documentality, Krakov?s writing is characterized by brilliant insights. So, on the one hand, Krakov can be viewed as a thinker of war and corporeality avant lettre, and, on the other hand, the interpretative contextualization of his prose within the aforementioned philosophical tradition helps us to better understand his literature. nema PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179064: Istorija srpske filosofije. (shrink)

English Editorial of the special Issue on Philosophical Theories of War: Contemporary Challenges and Discussions giving an overview of the latest state of the debate.

Jean Hyppolite produced the first French translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. His major works--the translation, his commentary, and Logique et existence --coincided with an upsurge of interest in Hegel following World War II. Yet Hyppolite's influence was as much due to his role as a teacher as it was to his translation or commentary: Foucault and Deleuze were introduced to Hegel in Hyppolite's classes, and Derrida studied under him. More than fifty years after its original publication, Hyppolite's analysis (...) of Hegel continues to offer fresh insights to the reader. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

An alternative to objectifying approaches to understanding Post-traumatic Stress Disorder grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology is presented. Nurses who provided care for soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and sixty-seven wounded male servicemen in the rehabilitation phase of their recovery were interviewed. PTSD is the one major psychiatric diagnosis where social causation is established, yet PTSD is predominantly viewed in terms of the usual neuro-physiological causal models with traumatic social events viewed as pathogens with dose related effects. Biologic (...) models of causation are applied reductively to both predisposing personal vulnerabilities and strengths that prevent PTSD, such as resiliency. However, framing PTSD as an objective disease state separates it from narrative historical details of the trauma. Personal stories and cultural meanings of the traumatic events are seen as epiphenomenal, unrelated to the understanding of, and ultimately, the therapeutic treatment of PTSD. Most wounded service members described classic symptoms of PTSD: flashbacks, insomnia, anxiety etc. All experienced disturbance in their sense of time and place. Rather than see the occurrence of these symptoms as decontextualized mechanistic reverberations of war, we consider how these symptoms meaningfully reflect actual war experiences and sense of displacement experienced by service members. (shrink)

The analysis explores the main arguments of Noam Chomsky’s short book,Media Controlthat also reprints the monograph “The Journalist from Mars: How the ‘War on Terror’ Should Be Reported.” The problematic is Aristotelian rhetoric and Enlightenment rationality (justice) in civic discourse (Lógos) as compared to the thematic of dialogic reasonableness (Eulógos). Chomsky’s assumption of, and critique of, “old rhetoric” [Aristotle’srhētorikḗ] is followed by a discussion of Chiam Perelman’s “new rhetoric” [presocraticpoiētikḗ/epideiktikos / gērys] and his “incarnate adherence” (givingvoiceto) concept of the Universal (...) Audience as a function of Epideictic argumentation. This is also a critique of Stephen Toulman’s neo-Aristotelian model of rhetorical “warrant” and its connection to Charles S. Peirce’s normative semiotic of the “argument cycle.” Heidegger’s and Lakoff’s concept of discourse framing is associated with Michel Foucault’s rhetoric concept of an ethic of social discourse for the common good (parrhesia) in the age of Umberto Eco’s hyperreality media that displays Baudrillard’s simulacra, such as Donald Trump. (shrink)

The paper is guided by three goals. First, it shows that the methodological standpoint of classical Husserlian phenomenology provides us with reliable tools to resist the grand narratives that proliferate during times of war. Second, it demonstrates that phenomenology provides much-needed methodological support for hermeneutically-oriented reflections on war. Third, it shows how the gruesome reality of World War One introduced a practical turn in Husserl’s phenomenology by forcing Husserl to rethink the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics. (...) Tracing the development of phenomenological metaphysics in Husserl’s Fichte lectures, Kaizo articles and private correspondence, the paper shows that, in response to war, Husserl deliberately chose not to engage in straightforward reflections on war, but instead to write about the prospects of peace. Reflections on cultural renewal necessitated him to rethink phenomenology as practical philosophy. The entanglement of praxis and theoria in Husserlian phenomenology relies upon the establishment of a metaphysically-grounded conceptual bond that ties reason to love and faith, which in its own turn suggests that a human being is not merely animal rationale, but also animal amans and animal religiosum. Ultimately, the possibility of cultural renewal relies upon a metaphysical broadening of Husserl’s conception of philosophy as rigorous sciences. (shrink)

In the Algerian War of Independence, women famously used both traditional and modern clothing as part of their revolutionary efforts against French colonialism. This paper uncovers some of the principal lessons of this historical episode through a phenomenological exploration of agency, religion, and political transformation. Part I draws primarily on the philosophical insights of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty alongside the memoirs of Zohra Drif, a young woman member of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, in order to explore the (...) worldly and habitual nature of human agency in contrast to the Enlightenment stress on individual rationality and autonomy. Part II turns to John Russon’s phenomenological interpretation of religion in order to argue for the ineluctable significance of religion on human existence, in contrast to the modern tendency to oppose religious tradition and secular modernity. Part III analyzes the dynamics of intercultural communication, and argues for the political power of phenomenology as a critical enterprise that enables more just and emancipatory visions of collective human life and political transformation to come to the fore. (shrink)

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and (...) teleology are the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

Abstract:Whatever the technology, whatever the age, geophonic, biophonic, and anthro-pophonic soundscapes are a wholesale part of the sensory experience of warfare, and this essay considers how representations of sound in the Iliad attempt to capture through attunement to aural sensory perception the extreme phenomenological experiences of warfare for individuals, communities, landscapes, and nations. Much attention has been given to the visual imagery in the Iliad, some attention to the acoustic poetics of the Iliad, but very little to representations of sound (...) as they relate to both the physical environment and the phenomenological experience of war. I argue here that representations of geophonic and biophonic sound in the Iliad frequently serve to contrast both anthrophony and the devastational impact of anthropogenic agency, and that this impact extends to the environmental. (shrink)

Nelson Maldonado-Torres argues that European modernity has become inextricable from the experience of the warrior and conqueror. In _Against War_, he develops a powerful critique of modernity, and he offers a critical response combining ethics, political theory, and ideas rooted in Christian and Jewish thought. Maldonado-Torres focuses on the perspectives of those who inhabit the underside of western modernity, particularly Jewish, black, and Latin American theorists. He analyzes the works of the Jewish Lithuanian-French philosopher and religious thinker Emmanuel Levinas, the (...) Martiniquean psychiatrist and political thinker Frantz Fanon, and the Catholic Argentinean-Mexican philosopher, historian, and theologian Enrique Dussel. Considering Levinas’s critique of French liberalism and Nazi racial politics, and the links between them, Maldonado-Torres identifies a “master morality” of dominion and control at the heart of western modernity. This master morality constitutes the center of a warring paradigm that inspires and legitimizes racial policies, imperial projects, and wars of invasion. Maldonado-Torres refines the description of modernity’s war paradigm and the Levinasian critique through Fanon’s phenomenology of the colonized and racial self and the politics of decolonization, which he reinterprets in light of the Levinasian conception of ethics. Drawing on Dussel’s genealogy of the modern imperial and warring self, Maldonado-Torres theorizes race as the naturalization of war’s death ethic. He offers decolonial ethics and politics as an antidote to modernity’s master morality and the paradigm of war. _Against War_ advances the de-colonial turn, showing how theory and ethics cannot be conceived without politics, and how they all need to be oriented by the imperative of decolonization in the modern/colonial and postmodern world. (shrink)

Ernst Jünger is known for his war writings, but is largely ignored by contemporary phenomenologists. In this essay, I explore his e Adventurous Heart which has recently been made available in English. is work consists of a set of fragments which, when related, disclose a coherent ow of philosophical thinking. Speci cally, I show that, beneath a highly poetic and obscure prose, Jünger posits how subjective experience and poetry allow individuals to realize truth. I relate parts of Jünger’s insights to (...) contributions by Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, arguing that Jünger o ers a unique and valuable contribution to the phenomenological discipline. (shrink)

This is a philosophical rumination on Shawn Loht’s important extension of “film as philosophy” into a Heideggerian phenomenological account of the philosophical response that cinema can engender. After considering the importance of these kinds of approaches, I turn to Loht’s phenomenological engagement with Terrence Malick’s early masterpiece, Days of Heaven (1978). After sympathetically reviewing his “interpretation”, I expand upon its delineation of “earth and world” to include the “fallenness” of the world as well as the possibility of a metanōetic awakening (...) to the vocation of “mud doctor”, that is, to heal the rift between earth and world, a rift made more exigent by world war, economic exploitation, and the ecological catastrophe of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The concept of apocalypse is well established in all the major religions of the world, be they Semitic religions or Hinduism. The underlying idea behind the concept in all the religions remains the same, that is, the world will come to an end. The end itself, which has been called the Judgment Day, Day of Resurrection, or the Day of Retribution or Reckoning will be preceded by some signs. It has also been called the day of Apocalypse, the day when (...) the whole world will be destroyed. One of the distinct forms of it is Muslim Apocalypse about which a lot has been written. However, the argument of the present research paper shall be to examine the concept of the Mahdi primarily from the Shi’te Muslim point of view. The premise of the argument is that Shi’te argument or concept of the Mahdi is far more substantial having a solid theoretical foundation than the other perspectives about it. No wonder, therefore, the concept of the Mahdi has manifested itself in literature across cultures and ages. There are so many poets, primarily, Muslim poets who have highlighted this concept in their poetry and thus the research paper shall make an attempt to look at some of those poets and their understanding of it. (shrink)

Summary In his series of lectures, Le pouvoir psychiatrique, Michel Foucault employs concepts from the military field of knowledge in order to analyse the founding scenes of psychiatry. I focus on three issues connected to Foucault's use of these military terms. Firstly, I examine why Foucault was reluctant to use concepts from sociology and psychology in Le pouvoir psychiatrique and how this affects the notions that he had formulated in his earlier work, Histoire de la folie. Secondly, I show how (...) he challenges traditional understandings of the founding scenes of psychiatry by using concepts from a different field of knowledge. In doing this, he creates metaphors, and this is something that he himself had previously been critical of doing. Thirdly, I reflect upon the fact that Foucault's creative use of concepts from different disciplines and examples from different historical times can be related to episodes in his own life; I argue why it is important to supplement a structural analysis with linguistic, phenomenological and hermeneutical ones. (shrink)

An absorbing introductory treatment of logic, ranging from classic philosophy to the fundamental building blocks of modern electronics.