By way of essays and a selection of primary sources in parallel text, Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing provides an introduction to a vast, significant, but neglected corpus of early modern literature: collective biography. It focuses especially on the various related strands of political, philosophical, and intellectual and cultural biography as well as on the intersection between biography, historiography, and philosophy. Individual texts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century are presented as examples of how the (...) ancient collective biographical tradition--as represented above all by Plutarch, Suetonius, Diogenes Laertius, and Jerome--was received and transformed in the Renaissance and beyond in accordance with the needs of humanism, religious controversy, politics, and the development of modern philosophy and science"--Provided by publisehr. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I claim that Plato’s Cave is fundamentally a political, not an epistemological image, and that only by treating it as such can we appreciate correctly its relation to the images of the Sun and the Line. On the basis of textual evidence, I question the two main assumptions that support (in my view, mistakenly) the effort to find an epistemological parallel between the Cave and the Line: first, that the prisoners represent humankind in general, and, (...) second, that the cave itself represents the visible world of ordinary experience while the world outside the cave represents the realm of the Forms. Disrupting these assumptions opens up a reading that highlights the cultural and political themes at play in this famous allegory and allows us to make better sense of it. -/- Keywords: Plato, Cave, Politics, Culture -/- Resumen: En este ensayo sostengo que la Caverna de Platón es fundamentalmente una alegoría política, no epistemológica, y que solo tratándola como tal, podremos apreciar correctamente la relación que guarda con las imágenes del Sol y de la Línea. Sobre la base de evidencia textual, pongo en duda las dos hipótesis principales sobres las que se funda (a mi parecer, equivocadamente) el esfuerzo por encontrar un paralelo epistemológico entre la Caverna y la Línea: la primera, que los prisioneros representan a la humanidad en general, y la segunda, que la propia caverna representa el mundo visible de la experiencia corriente, mientras que el mundo fuera de la caverna representa el reino de las Ideas. La suspensión de estos supuestos posibilita una lectura que pone de relieve los temas culturales y políticos que están en juego en esta famosa alegoría y nos permite así entenderla mejor. -/- Palabras Clave: Platón, Caverna, Política, Cultura . (shrink)

While Levinas famously claims that ethics precedes ontology and emanates from the concrete experience of the other's face, it is often forgotten that Deleuze also discusses the face in numerous writings. The purpose of this paper is to briefly outline Levinas's arguments regarding the constitution of the face to chart its ethical importance, before engaging with Deleuze's critique of Levinas's position. I show that, by distinguishing between two systems of signification – the head-body system and the face system – Deleuze (...) agrees with Levinas that the face is an important signifier delineating the other, but destructs the notion of face to show that it: is more complex and multi-dimensional than Levinas realizes; emanates from a specific semiotic relationship; and emanates from specific socio-historical circumstances. Showing the face is a semiotic construct based in and emanating from a specific socio-historical configuration allows Deleuze not only to conclude that the face is related to politics not ethics as Levinas claims, but also to claim that it entails the inhuman in the human. This clarifies the nature of the face in Deleuze, offers a critique of Levinas's influential thinking on ethics, brings us to a discussion of the relationship between ethics and politics and reveals what Deleuze takes the political to entail. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume shows how Chinese and Japanese intellectuals mobilized the past to create a better future. It is especially significant today given a world where, amidst tensions within Asia and the rise of China, East Asian intellectuals and governments constantly find new political meanings in their traditions. The essays illuminate how throughout Chinese and Japanese history, thinkers constantly weaved together nationalism, internationalism and a politics of time. This (...) volume explores a broad range of subjects such as premodern and early modern attempts to conjure a politics of Confucianism, twentieth century Japanese Marxist interpretations of Buddhism and Japanese and Chinese endeavors to imagine a new world order. In sum, this book shows us why understanding East Asian pasts are essential to making sense of ideological trends in contemporary China and Japan. For example, without understanding Confucianism and how modern intellectuals in China grappled with this body of thought, we would be unable to make sense of the Chinese government's current promotion of the Chinese classics. This book will interest students and scholars of political science, history and Asian Studies, sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

In Orientalism, Edward Said attempts to show that all European discourse about the Orient is the same, and all European scholars of the Orient complicit in the aims of European imperialism. There may be “manifest” differences in discourse, but the underlying “latent” orientalism is “more or less constant.” This does not do justice to the marked differences in approach, attitude, presentation, and conclusions found in the works of various orientalists. I distinguish six different styles of colonial and postcolonial discourse about (...) India , and note the existence of numerous precolonial discourses. I then examine the multiple ways exponents of these styles interact with one another by focusing on the early-twentieth-century nationalist orientalist, Sri Aurobindo. Aurobindo’s thought took form in a colonial framework and has been used in various ways by postcolonial writers. An anti-British nationalist, he was by no means complicit in British imperialism. Neither can it be said, as some Saidians do, that the nationalist style of orientalism was just an imitative indigenous reversal of European discourse, using terms like “Hinduism” that had been invented by Europeans. Five problems that Aurobindo dealt with are still of interest to historians: the significance of the Vedas, the date of the vedic texts, the Aryan invasion theory, the Aryan-Dravidian distinction, and the idea that spirituality is the essence of India. His views on these topics have been criticized by Leftist and Saidian orientalists, and appropriated by reactionary “Hindutva” writers. Such critics concentrate on that portion of Aurobindo’s work which stands in opposition to or supports their own views. A more balanced approach to the nationalist orientalism of Aurobindo and others would take account of their religious and political assumptions, but view their project as an attempt to create an alternative language of discourse. Although in need of criticism in the light of modern scholarship, their work offers a way to recognize cultural particularity while keeping the channels of intercultural dialogue open. (shrink)

Agnotology is the study of how ignorance arises via circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead. Legates et al. had questioned the applicability of agnotology to politically-charged debates. In their reply, Bedford and Cook, seeking to apply agnotology to climate science, asserted that fossil-fuel interests had promoted doubt about a climate consensus. Their definition of climate ‘misinformation’ was contingent upon the post-modernist assumptions that scientific truth is discernible by measuring a consensus among experts, and that a near unanimous consensus exists. However, (...) inspection of a claim by Cook et al. of 97.1 % consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3 % endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. Agnotology, then, is a two-edged sword since either side in a debate may claim that general ignorance arises from misinformation allegedly circulated by the other. Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain. Therefore, Legates et al. appropriately asserted that partisan presentations of controversies stifle debate and have no place in education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images of Ancient Rome in Late Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan HistoriographyMelissa CalaresuThe case of the late Neapolitan enlightenment, the variety and sophistication of which has been little recognized outside of Italian scholarship, illustrates the significance of particular regional concerns and intellectual traditions in the development of enlightened movements in Europe. 1 This becomes apparent when examining how Neapolitans looked to their own past in relation to the unique set of (...) political and social problems of the Kingdom of Naples. In this article I shall examine a number of historical writings published in the 1780s. This was a decade of intense intellectual activity which saw the publication of the defining works of the later Neapolitan enlightenment, such as Gaetano Filangieri’s Scienza della legislazione from 1780 and Francesco Mario Pagano’s Saggi politici between 1783 and 1785. 2 It was also the decade in which Giuseppe Maria Galanti’s Storia filosofica e politica delle nazioni antiche e moderne [End Page 641] introduced in translation important texts of the British and French Enlightenments, and the journal Scelta miscellanea briefly became an important focal point of collaboration and intellectual exchange for reform-minded intellectuals in Naples. 3 The impetus which bound together these many projects of the 1780s was twofold: on one hand, the growing awareness of the particular problems of Neapolitan society and of the urgent need for reform, expressed through the language and concerns of the wider enlightened movement; and at the same time a revived sense of a distinct cultural and political identity. The writing of history, even of the most remote age, did not escape these concerns.The cultural renewal of the 1780s brought new histories of the Kingdom, and in these Rome played an essential role. As Naples’s most powerful neighbor in ancient times, Rome defeated the Samnites, the tribe which had inhabited the Kingdom, and brought the region under Imperial control. From the Middle Ages the universal pretensions of the Roman papacy had continually threatened the temporal authority of Neapolitan rulers, and the symbol of these pretensions had survived into the eighteenth century with the offering each year of a feudal homage, the Chinea, to Rome. It was against this threat which Pietro Giannone’s anti-clericalism in the Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli (1723) was directed. 4 The symbol of Rome, ancient and modern, served as an effective foil for Neapolitan intellectuals who believed that the development of good government in the Kingdom had been frustrated by the interference of outside powers.This interference was perceived as having broken the natural bond between the rulers of Naples and their subjects. The Spanish viceroys already had an established and especially reviled place in this history of misgovernment in Naples. 5 The arrival of Charles III in 1734 and the establishment of an autonomous monarchy in the Kingdom broke this history and brought a new optimism for the possibility of reform. As regalisti, the reformers of the end of the [End Page 642] eighteenth century continued their efforts to strengthen the jurisdictional rights of the now autonomous Bourbon monarchy against both the Papacy and the feudal nobility within the Kingdom. 6 Within these historiographical and political traditions Rome was clearly recognized as a recurring symbol of oppression and obstacle to Naples’s sovereignty, and late eighteenth-century historians looked back to a period before the arrival of the ancient Romans to find a native tradition which could inform contemporary reform and upon which a cultural identity could be constructed.Italian writers, from the Renaissance, had charted the early history of the various city-states, duchies, and kingdoms in the Italian peninsula relative to the rise and fall of ancient Rome. Despite the local patriotism which these histories expressed, Rome remained a powerful symbol and model of civilization, and it was from such a model that both politics and culture were discussed and compared in Europe. Consequently, interest in pre-Roman Italy most often related to the reconstruction of the origins and early history of Rome, and it was towards this which most antiquarians and historians worked in their attempts to understand the causes for its rise. 7 In any case antiquarian interest in pre-Roman... (shrink)

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address (...) this question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different “camps” in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur’s solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of “defatalizing” the past. (shrink)

In order to deepen the studies on the philosophy of practice, it is essential to explore the political significance of Marx's philosophy of practice. Marx's philosophy of practice is rooted in the problem of modernity and the separation between “individual subjectivity” and “societal community” in the modern context is the basic background of Marx's practical philosophy. It is the basic interest of Marx's philosophy of practice to find a way to end this separation via critique of civil society. (...) Therefore, Marx's philosophy of practice has a clear significance, which manifests in the following aspects: one is “liberation politics,” and the other, “the regulatory mode of the socio-political institution.”. (shrink)

Popular protest is occurring on a remarkable scale in South Africa. Nonetheless, there is a significant degree to which it tends to be organized and articulated through the local. This contribution argues that while the political limitations of purely local modes of organization are clear, it should not be assumed that local struggles are some sort of misguided distraction from building a broader progressive movement. It is suggested that, on the contrary, the best prospects for the emergence of a (...) broader popular struggle lie in building, sustaining and linking local struggles. (shrink)

This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader can therefore (...) observe how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion. (shrink)

Philosophers of language have tended to focus on examples that are not politically significant in any way. We spend a lot of time analyzing natural kind terms: We think hard about “water” and “pain” and “arthritis.” But we don’t think much about the far more politically significant kind terms (natural or social—it's a matter for dispute) like “race,” “sex,” “gender,” “woman,” “man,” “gay,” and “straight.” In this essay, I will try to show, using the example of “woman,” that it's worth (...) thinking about terms like these, for at least three reasons: (1) There are some interesting puzzles. (2) Politically significant terms matter to people's lives— and it's worth spending at least some of our energy thinking about things that matter in this way. (3) Most importantly, interesting methodological issues emerge at the intersection of philosophy of language and politics. (shrink)

During the fifth to the seventh centuries after Hegira, the Shiites did not have significant political power in the Islamic World and had a minority population. Yet despite these limitations, the Shiites left behind numerous works a large part of which is destroyed by religious prejudices or negligence leaving the Islamic Civilization bereft of these scientific treasures. By introducing the historiographical works of the Imami Shiites, this study attempts to clarify their station in historiography and to demonstrate that (...) Shia has had valuable works in different historiographical fields in proportion with sociopolitical circumstances and thereby address the richness of Islamic culture and civilization and show that deprivations have had no influence on Shia’s creation of scientific works. Furthermore, Shiites’ attention to historiography in different fields including Rejaal (Note 1) and Taraajom (Note 2), Dala’el (Note 3), history and lives of the Innocent Ones (Ma’sumin) and historical-theological books and using Hadiths have been very important in compiling these works. (shrink)

In this book, Maria Chehonadskih unsettles established narratives about the formation of a revolutionary canon after the October Revolution. Displacing the centre of gravity from dialectical materialism to the rapid dissemination, canonisation and decline of a striking convergence of empiricism and Marxism, she explores how this tendency, overshadowed by official historiography, establishes a new attitude to modernity and progress, nature and environment, agency and subjectivity, party and class, knowledge and power. The book traces the adventure of the synthesis of (...) empiricism and Marxism across philosophy, science, politics, art and literature from the 1890s to the 1930s, offering a radical rethinking of the true scope and scale that the main proponent of Empirio-Marxism, Alexander Bogdanov, had on the post-revolutionary socialist legacies. Chehonadskih draws on both key and forgotten figures and movements, such as Proletkult, Productivism and Constructivism, filling a gap in the literature that will be particularly significant for Marxism, continental philosophy, art theory and Slavic studies specialists. (shrink)

The article examines the political challenge and significance of forgiveness as an indispensable response to the inherently imperfect and tragic nature of political life through the lens of the existential, narrative-inspired judging sensibility. While the political significance of forgiveness has been broadly recognized in transitional justice and reconciliation contexts, the question of its importance and appropriateness in the wake of grave injustice and suffering has commonly been approached through constructing a self-centred, rule-based framework, defining forgiveness (...) in terms of a moral duty or virtue. Reliant on a set of prefabricated moral standards, however, this approach risks abstracting from the historical, situated condition of human political existence and thus arguably stands at a remove from the very quandaries and imperfections of the political world, which it purports to address. Against this background, this article draws on Albert Camus’s and Hannah Arendt’s aesthetic, worldly judging sensibility and its ability to kindle the process of coming to terms with the absurd, and perhaps unforgivable character of reality after evil. As an aptitude to engage the world in its particularity, plurality and contingency rather than seeking to subdue and tame it under prefabricated standards of thought, namely, worldly judgement is able to reveal how past tragedies have arisen from the ambiguity of human engagement in the world and thereby also elicit the distinctly human capacities of beginning anew and resisting such actions in the future. As such, I suggest, it is well-suited to bring into clearer focus and confront the main political challenge and significance of forgiveness: how to acknowledge the seriousness of the wrongs committed, yet also enable the possibility of a new beginning and restore among former enemies the sense of responsibility for the shared world. (shrink)

This article examines Jacques Derrida’s criticism of the significance Hannah Arendt attributes to her mother tongue in, “What Remains? The Language Remains.” I begin by developing Derrida’s claim in The Monolingualism of the Other that despite Arendt’s suggestion otherwise, the German language can and did go mad. I argue that his criticism, while powerful, overlooks the political concerns at work in Arendt’s commitment to her mother tongue. I turn to Arendt’s analysis of language in Eichmann in Jerusalem to (...) show that by distinguishing Eichmann’s “empty talk” from the mother tongue, she suggests that our primary language is integral to political life insofar as it reminds us of our radical singularity and our responsibility to the world. With this, I maintain that Derrida’s decisive intervention in this discourse does not settle the question of the mother tongue; instead it raises new questions concerning the political significance of our relation to language. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been renewed in meaning and importance over recent decades. Scholars such as Judith Butler, Martha Fineman and Pamela Sue Anderson have endeavored to redeem vulnerability from its traditional signification as a negative individual condition, and to reveal the positive meaning of vulnerability as a transformative call for solidarity, equality and love. In this paper we examine the newly constructed positive understanding of vulnerability, and argue that the current way of pursuing this positive understanding affirms a (...) merely functional positivity. In the recent accounts, vulnerability is still a status to avoid, yet functions positively as a corrective force to the environment that produces vulnerability. We will try to find an essential way of designating the positivity of vulnerability by revisiting the philosophical discussion on vulnerability in Emmanuel Levinas. We will argue that Levinas’s notion of vulnerability is positive in a sense which goes beyond the purely functional; it is seen as essential for his definition of humanity. Yet compared to the contemporary discussion, Levinas’s notion of vulnerability lacks a direct social political meaning. We will tentatively explore how the essential positivity drawn from Levinas can provide a new way to construct the political significance of vulnerability. (shrink)

From Ricoeur to Action engages with the thinking of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur in order to propose innovative responses to 21st-century problems actively contributing to global conflict. Ricoeur's ability to draw from a diverse field of philosophers and theologians and to provide mediation to seemingly irreconcilable views often has both explicit and implicit practical application to socio-political questions. Here an international team of leading Ricoeur scholars develop critical yet productive responses through the development of Ricoeur's thought with respect (...) to such topics as race, environmental ethics, technology, political utopia and reinterpreting religion. Representing a new generation of Ricoeur scholarship that attempts to move beyond an exegetical engagement with his philosophy, this collection of original essays examines key problems in the 21st-century and the ways in which Ricoeur's philosophy understands the subtleties of these problems and is able to offer a productive response. As such it presents an elucidation of the practical significance of Ricoeur's thinking and an innovative contribution to resolving socio-political conflicts in the 21st century. (shrink)

SummaryThe aim of this article is to shed light on the eighteenth-century Italian reflection on luxury and consumption in a comparative perspective, clarifying, on the one hand, the complex significance that it assumed and, on the other, the specificity of the Italian context, marked by the immense political value of the debate on the subject. In particular this objective will be pursued through the analysis of specific cases among the many offered by the Italian context and through different (...) research strands. These are: the debate on the evaluation of luxury; the transition from the notion of luxury to that of consumption; and the discussion on luxury and consumption in the revolutionary context. This article intends to outline the particular contribution made by Italian thought, which conveyed a multifaceted discourse of social reform, critique and understanding built on more even foundations, and at the same time to clarify what contribution can be made to current historiography by the study of this theme within eighteenth-century Italy. (shrink)

This book brings together for the first time an updated, revised collection of influential essays and articles that capture some of the most exciting scientific and scholarly contributions to the topic of political ideology. John Jost tackles fundamental questions about how psychology, neuroscience, and societal factors impact political attitudes and group divisions. In what sense, if any, are ordinary citizens "ideological"? Is it useful to locate political attitudes on a single dimension of representation? Are there meaningful differences (...) in the beliefs, opinions, and values of leftists and rights-or liberals and conservatives? How are personality traits related to ideological preferences? What situational or contextual factors contribute to liberal and conservative shifts in the general population? What are the implications of ideological polarization for the future of democracy? Drawing on Max Weber's concept of elective affinities, one of the world's leading political psychologists discusses the myriad ways in people choose ideas and ideas choose people. (shrink)

Although Gramsci developed his conceptual methodology out of concrete historical analysis, there is a significant tension between his account of the Risorgimento, which plays into a narrative of Italian exceptionalism, and concepts such as historical bloc, hegemony and passive revolution, which point towards European wide convergence in capitalist state dynamics after 1848. This article shows a de-alignment between Gramsci’s account of the Risorgimento and Marx’s analysis of the meaning of 1848 in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the same (...) time, Gramsci’s conceptual methodology both re-aligns his argument with Marx and significantly develops Marxist analysis of politics. However, Gramsci’s conceptualisation of the role of intellectuals, especially the problematic distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals, does provide support for the kind of exceptionalist argument he offers of the Risorgimento. Therefore, this article reconstructs Gramsci’s account of the intellectuals in order to integrate it better into his analysis of a historical bloc composed of both conservatism and liberalism. (shrink)

In recent discussions on the meaning of derogatory terms, most theorists base their investigations on the assumption that slurring terms could in principle have some neutral, i.e. purely descriptive, counterpart. Lauren Ashwell has recently shown that this assumption does not generalize to gendered slurs. This paper aims to challenge the point and benefit of approaching the meaning of derogatory terms in contrast to their allegedly purely descriptive counterparts. I argue that different discursive practices among different communities of practice sometimes change (...) the semantics of a term. By the example of the term ‘black,’ I show in what ways these different practices may amount to semantic contestations which complicate the assessment of whether a specific politically significant term is purely descriptive. My discussion of politically significant terms provides insights into further phenomena such as the appropriation of derogatory terms by the target group or meaning change more generally. Moreover, it not only accounts for the political aspects of a linguistic phenomenon, but equally highlights and explains the oft-neglected but crucial role that language plays in social and political struggles. It thus contributes to ongoing discussions both in philosophy of language and in social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This paper reevaluates the role of Adeimantus in Book 2 of Plato's Republic, arguing that his challenge to Socrates' view of justice—specifically, his interest in the influence of the outer world on our inner lives—serves a crucial yet underappreciated purpose in initiating the political project of the work. I suggest that it's due to Adeimantus' contribution in the Republic that Plato's wide-ranging inquiry into issues in ethics, politics, psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics hangs together as an integrated whole. A further (...) benefit of this reevaluation, I argue, is the way it illuminates Plato's assessment of poetry in the dialogue. This paper was delivered this past year as part of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. Comments are welcome but please do not cite without permission. (shrink)

Despite her emphasis on politics, Hannah Arendt’s account of the existential grounds of action in The Human Condition culminates in a discussion of Jesus of Nazareth that emphasizes the significance of forgiveness for grasping the radicality of human freedom. This essay investigates Jesus’s role in Arendt’s thought by excavating and explicating the premises that undergird her account of Jesus’s political significance. It argues that Arendt’s innovative approach to politics is complemented by a comparably innovative conception of human (...) agency and shows how Arendt’s defense of the autonomy of the political rests on a novel metaphysics of action—a ‘Kantian existentialism’—that underlies and explains her account of Jesus’s political significance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article contributes to current theoretical debates about the political significance of narrative imagination by drawing on Camus’s and Arendt’s existential aesthetic judging sensibility. It seeks to displace the prevalent tendency to probe literature for its moral-philosophical insights, and instead delves into the experiential reality of our engagement with literary works. It starts from Martha Nussbaum’s recognition of the literary ability to account for the fragility of human affairs, yet finds her reduction of narrative imagination to the role (...) of furthering moral lessons wanting politically. Against this background, the article reclaims Camus’s and Arendt’s dialogical-representative judging orientation and its insight into the narrative ability to respond to the intersubjective character of politics. As such, their aesthetic sensibility reveals the potential political significance of literary imagination in its capacity to open a public space where the contradictions of our situated existence can be confronted through politics between plural equals. (shrink)

Modernity is characterized by an assertion of the individual as a singular unit of significance, and its various systems (political, legal, economic, etc.) take their lead from a commitment to the individual as the bearer of rights. While a powerful accomplishment, this idea is also problematic: it does not adequately recognize how the individual it prioritizes would itself point to other contexts of significance by which its experience is rendered meaningful. This paper explores this basic tension between (...) these two visions of selfhood: one expressed in terms of “rights” and the other in terms of “worlds.” It will show how care for “worlds” is necessary for the very operation of rights, and it will identify various ways in which these “worlds” could be politically protected. (shrink)

The objective of this study has been to establish the level of significance that Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Luis Segundo attribute to politics in their contributions to liberation theology and to extract the relevant consequences for political theory. ;A systematic analysis of the theory of history in the works of these two authors indicates a higher level of integration between Christianity and politics that is usual in Christian political thought. Liberation is equated with salvation and political (...) liberation is seen as one of its components. This brings politics to a position of privilege. When at the service of justice it occupies, for our authors, a high rank among Christian concerns and when devoted to oppression it requires diligent response from every Christian. ;This understanding of politics is valuable in that it accentuates the political aspect of the Christian theory of history, an element frequently underestimated. Certain tensions remain, however, in the theory as a result of this emphasis: between the moral improvement expected from the involvement in political activities conducive to justice and the moral ambiguity of political structures emerging from such activity; and between the use of the concept of class struggle and notions of conversion and reconciliation. Finally, there is the danger of reducing the critical ability of Christians regarding a particular political project by identifying it with the concept of eschatology. (shrink)

This thesis maintains that Friedrich Holderlin's poetic thought is a key element not only in the development of Martin Heidegger's philosophical thought from 1929/30 to 1933 but also in his decision to become politically involved with National Socialism. Although Heidegger was familiar with Holderlin's poetry prior to 1929, he did not perceive the significance of the poet's thought and language until he was able to overcome the position of transcendental subjectivity which haunts Being and Time. Heidegger did so in (...) 1929/30 by shattering the unity of Dasein's temporal horizon--a unity which still preserved the assumption of being as permanent presence. This enabled Heidegger to think through the turn or Kehre to the occurrence of being as difference as the originary event which gave rise not only to Greek philosophy but the Western tradition as a whole. ;It is precisely at this juncture that Holderlin's poetic thought and language became significant for Heidegger. The turn from the unity of Dasein's temporality to the occurrence of being as time implies not only a revolution in thinking but also a revolution in language. Heidegger's attempt to set this revolution in motion by setting the originary sense of the Greek logos to work linguistically in his own work is the philosophical counterpart of what Norbert von Hellingrath first described as Holderlin's harte Fugung or hard style. ;The pre-logical grammar and syntax Heidegger employed, I have called the language of revolution. Its purpose is to dislocate thinking out of metaphysics toward a hidden Greek origin in the past which shows itself in the future as what is left unthought of the Greek beginning and what still remains to be thought. This back-and-forth movement of questioning is the philosophical counterpart to Holderlin's poetic andenken. In dislocating political and ideological thought from its metaphysical foundations, Heidegger intended to shift the political revolution, especially in the universities, toward a second, deeper revolution which would confront the hidden origin of the Western tradition itself. (shrink)

Khalīfa b. Khayyāt(d. 240/854-855) was an historian- muḥaddith in the ʿAbbāsid’s period. There are references in sources to his competence in history and lineage rather than Ḥadīth. Two works of him have survived. The first one is al-Ṭabaḳāt which is about study of men and the second one is al-Taʾrīkhwhich chronologically narratesthe events in the history of Islam until 232 AH. The latter is the most significant work to be applied for the historiography of ibnKhayyāt. In this article, Khalīfa (...) b. Khayyāt’s methodology in historiography is examined. In this study, the early period of Islamic histography is handled and the subject is discussed comparatively. The main characteristics of his historiography are his adoption of a chronological style that facilitates the follow-up of the book, his knowledge for the lineage of those who died in wars and the details about the wars. Also, among the charactersitics are his application of isnād to his history book as a muḥaddith, his knowledge for the previous resources via his teachers who belong to the schools of al-Madīna and ʿIrāḳ and when required, his usage of ayah, ḥadīth and poems. These issues are dealed in the artcile with examples. Besides, a study in the West about Khalīfa b. Khayyātasserts that he was a follower of Umayyad dynasty and so this affected his historiography. In this article, this assertion is tackled by analyzing the whole book and it concludes that it is not valid because of some narrations against this assertion.SummaryKhalīfa b. Khayyāt (d. 240 / 854-55), who grew up in Basra, one of the most important centers of scholarship of the time and the meeting point of scholars, and he continued his scholarly works in this city. Since his grandfather and father are engaged in the field of Ḥadīth, Khalīfa b. Khayyāt started his scholarly adventure at an early age and he took his first education in the field of Ḥadīth.Scholars, in the early periods, continued their studies in the fields of sciences related to each other. Khalīfa b. Khayyāt’s studies are also in this kind. Although there are references in sources to his accumulation of Ḥadīth, Khalīfa b. Khayyāt ’s main area of ​​expertise is history and nasab/genealogy. The fact that his works and references to him in later sources are largely related to historical events, knowledge of the nasab/genealogy, and wafayāt (death dates of Ḥadīth scholars and narrators) reveals his considerable knowledge on these issues. Khalīfa b. Khayyāt lived in the period of ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Maʾmūn (813-833) and al-Muʿtaṣim (833-842). This period is important because of the fact that the al-Mihna incident took place and the pressure on the Ḥadīth scholars increased. Although Khalīfa b. Khayyāt is not one of the direct opponents of Muʿtazila, his participation in a debate against them provides clues about the place where he stands. The scholarly atmosphere of Basra, enabled Khalīfa b. Khayyāt to benefit from a wide range of teacher-student network. In addition to his professors from whom he benefitted in the field of Ḥadīth, he had the opportunity to obtain the knowledge and understanding of the history of that time through his teachers who are important historians of the period in his field. Two works related to Khalīfa b. Khayyāt whose reliability is confirmed by djarh wa l tadil scholars reached to our time. One of the oldest Ṭabaḳāt works in the history of Islam is al-Ṭabaḳāt; the other one is the book, al-Taʾrīkh, which provides a new method for Islamic historiography.This study deals with the principles of the method of historiography, which can be put forward through Khalīfa b. Khayyāt 's al-Taʾrīkh. al-Taʾrīkhis important in terms of being the first example of chronological writing type in Islamic historiography and has not been subject to any independent study to date. There are two ongoing M.A. thesis about Khalīfa b. Khayyāt, however, no study has been identified that directly deals with its methodology of history. On the other hand, based on some riwāyats/narrations in al-Taʾrīkh, there is a work that claims that Khalīfa b. Khayyāt had sympathy towards Umayyads. The study named “Khalīfa b. Khayyāt’s History on the Umayyad Dynasty (660-750), prepared by Carl Wurtzel as his PhD. Dissertation, examined the life of Khalīfa, partly the historiography and the religious-political narrations in the work. On the case of Muʿāwiya’s (d. 60/680) request of the allegiance to Yazīd (d. 64/683), Wurtzel compared an event that took place between the envoy of Ibn al-Zubayr (d. 73/692) and Muʿāwiya with al-Balādhurī’s (d. 279/892-93) narrative and concluded that Khalīfa was an Umayyad sympathizer. However, Khalīfa b. Khayyāt’s exclusion of an event such as al-Mihna which was against the ʿAbbāsid and changed the course of history in his book, shouldn’t be considered as a symptom of sympathy; It would be more appropriate to accept it as a feature of history writing.At the top of Khalīfa b. Khayyāt's principles of historiography, adopting chronological method comes first. Accordingly, Khalīfa b. Khayyāt, gives a brief history about the siyar of the Prophet Muhammad at the introduction of the book. Then, by beginning from the first hijri year, he gives the important events, wars and deaths by the years. Sometimes, he refers to the people assigned by the caliphs of the period by referring to the Amîrs (Administrators) of the Hajj. He gives lists of those who died on both sides of the wars. The importance of mentioning the tribes of the deceased shows his competence in the knowledge of nasab. One of the highlights of his historiography is that he sometimes does not touch upon some of the events and situations that are considered to be turning points in Islamic history; and sometimes he does not go down into detail but just gives relevant narratives. For example, he doesn’t mention any narrations about the selection of the Caliph which perhaps the most fundamental point of separation between Ahl al-Sunnah and Shīʿa in the history of Islam.Although he gave detailed information about The Battle of The Camel (36/656) and Ṣiffīn cases (37/657), it is not possible to determine his views on this subject. In addition, he never mentioned the al-Mihna incident, which deeply influenced society and the scholarly environment during the ʿAbbāsid period. Isnād is also holds an important place in the methodology of history of Khalīfa who was a muḥaddith at the same time. In many of the narrations he used the words haddathanā and ahbaranā.In our study, the siyar section of al-Taʾrīkhwas examined in order to determine the sources of the Khalīfa’s historiography and has been seen that the works of Ibn Isḥāḳ (d. 151/768) and Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833) were the main sources of this chapter. Considering Khalīfa b. Khayyāt’s emphasize to isnād and his reach to Ibn Isḥāḳ 's work through the mediation of Bekr b. Suleiman, it can be said that he was dominant in historiography on the sources before him. Khalīfa b. Khayyāt rarely refers to Qur’anic verses and hadiths when describing events. He referred to the verses in only two places and hadiths in only five places. One of them, and perhaps the most remarkable one in the book is the Ḥadīth of the Prophet Muḥammad: “I am the guardian of whom; ‘Alī is his guardian” This narration is used in the letter of Caliph Mahdī (d. 169/785) of the ʿAbbāsid to khārijī (outer) Abd al-Salām b. Hishām who rebelled. The study is based on the principles outlined above. At the end of the study it is also considered that Khalīfa b. Khayyāt ’s works should be the subject of graduate studies which should be prepared with deep readings. (shrink)

This symposium examines how various discursive frameworks inform Jewish and non-Jewish interpretations of Jewishness. Although the specific characteristics of these frameworks are context-dependent, the underlying themes remain the same: Jewish identification entails identifying “difference,” and this process of drawing distinctions between Jews and non-Jews gets developed in discursive frameworks of temporality, “race thinking,” nationalism, and genetics, among others. In the broader contexts within which Jewish identification is formulated, these frameworks serve to: delineate categories of people on the basis of socially (...) salient qualities associated with human and other bodies; evaluate these categorical “types” in regard to their determined “desirable” and “undesirable” qualities; implement institutionally sanctioned measures that facilitate the privileging of the people who apparently embody desired qualities; and enforce structural constraints within which people may choose to contest, re-inscribe, re-appropriate, and/or attempt to transform components of the other three networks mentioned above. It also emphasizes the significance of who mobilizes these discourses, with what objectives in mind, and how both factors instantiate discursive and discursively informed concretized outcomes. (shrink)

The degree of doxastic revision required in response to evidence of disagreement is typically thought to be a function of our beliefs about (1) our interlocutor’s familiarity with the relevant evidence and arguments, and their intellectual capacities and virtues, relative to our own, or (2) the expected probability of our interlocutor being correct, conditional on our disagreeing. While these two factors are typically used interchangeably, I show that they have an inverse correlation in cases of disagreement about politically divisive propositions. (...) This presents us with a puzzle about the epistemic impact of disagreement in these cases. The most significant disagreements on (1) are the least significant disagreements on (2), and vice versa. I show that assessing the epistemic status of an interlocutor by reference to either (1) or (2) has uncomfortable consequences in these cases. I then argue that this puzzle cannot be escaped by claiming that we usually have dispute-independent reason to reject the significance of politically charged disagreement altogether. (shrink)