In an age of internet scrolling and skimming, where concentration and attention are fast becoming endangered skills, it is timely to think about the act of reading and the many forms that it can take. Slow Philosophy: Reading Against the Institution makes the case for thinking about reading in philosophical terms. Boulous Walker argues that philosophy involves the patient work of thought; in this it resembles the work of art, which invites and implores us to take our (...) time and to engage with the world. At its best, philosophy teaches us to read slowly; in fact, philosophy is the art of reading slowly – and this inevitably clashes with many of our current institutional practices and demands. Slow reading shares something in common with contemporary social movements, such as that devoted to slow food; it offers us ways to engage the complexity of the world. With the help of writers as diverse as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Woolf, Adorno, Levinas, Critchley, Beauvoir, Le Dœuff, Irigaray, Cixous, Weil, and others, Boulous Walker offers a foundational text in the emerging field of slow philosophy, one that explores the importance of unhurried time in establishing our institutional encounters with complex and demanding works. (shrink)

I argue for a significant slowing down in philosophy. In today’s hectic world, the ‘slow movement’ has had a salutary effect in a variety of domains, from mental health to food and music. But the academic world, philosophy included, has yet to catch on. And this, in spite of the fact that university culture has become increasingly focused on productivity and performance, thus creating a managerialist ethos and an “academic Darwinism” where scholars are placed under pressure to (...) “publish or perish”, with little opportunity to allow their thoughts to mature organically. In response to this commodification of philosophy, I offer an alternative: ‘slow philosophy’. Inspired by the Greco-Roman ideal of philosophy as a ‘way of life’, the goal in such philosophizing is not only to inform but to transform every aspect of one’s being, to achieve the kind of wisdom which brings peace of mind and inner freedom, as well as deeper understanding. But this requires a slowing down: taking time with the texts we read and write, making time to read and re-read, not forcing the meaning or desiring immediate comprehension, not philosophizing in haste but in grace, in a wondering spirit of contemplative open-endedness and receptivity to the other – thereby opposing the current regime of seeking to get everything done at once. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy is typically concerned with such questions as the goals of philosophy, the relations between philosophy and the arts and sciences, the methods of argumentation and tools of analysis employed by philosophers, major trends and schools of thought, the prospects for progress and future directions. But one topic that has been consistently overlooked in these discussions is that of the temporality, or pace and tempo, of philosophy. Initially this may seem a relatively insignificant topic and therefore one (...) that has been justifiably passed over. The tempo of philosophy, however, relates in quite direct ways to the nature of philosophical practice and how this has been shaped by wider social currents and changes – matters that are of crucial concern to metaphilosophy. Most of us, for example, are keenly aware that modern life is fast and frenzied, and its busy-ness appears only to be accelerating. How has this impacted upon the ways in which philosophy is understood and produced? Does the fast pace of contemporary life compel us to reevaluate not only our ways of living but also our ways of thinking as philosophers? In response to such questions, I propose that philosophy is in urgent need of slowing down, and to this end I develop what might be called a ‘Slow Philosophy’. (shrink)

In an age of internet scrolling and skimming, where concentration and attention are fast becoming endangered skills, it is timely to think about the act of reading and the many forms that it can take. Slow Philosophy: Reading Against the Institution makes the case for thinking about reading in philosophical terms. Boulous Walker argues that philosophy involves the patient work of thought; in this it resembles the work of art, which invites and implores us to take our (...) time and to engage with the world. At its best, philosophy teaches us to read slowly; in fact, philosophy is the art of reading slowly – and this inevitably clashes with many of our current institutional practices and demands. Slow reading shares something in common with contemporary social movements, such as that devoted to slow food; it offers us ways to engage the complexity of the world. With the help of writers as diverse as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Woolf, Adorno, Levinas, Critchley, Beauvoir, Le Dœuff, Irigaray, Cixous, Weil, and others, Boulous Walker offers a foundational text in the emerging field of slow philosophy, one that explores the importance of unhurried time in establishing our institutional encounters with complex and demanding works. (shrink)

Before the pandemic, our life was often described as fast, since in globalised society speed has been generally understood as a marker of efficiency, productivity and diligence; and so many people...

Qigong practices are contemplative body practices and meditation techniques that emerge from Chinese philosophical, medical, and martial traditions. This paper argues that qigong is a kind of embod...

Qigong practices are contemplative body practices and meditation techniques that emerge from Chinese philosophical, medical, and martial traditions. This paper argues that qigong is a kind of embod...

An introduction to slow gardening -- Garden psychology -- Carving out your space -- Plants: the real deal -- Nuts and bolts: universal garden practices -- Getting slow in the garden.

There is a tendency to associate intelligence with speed. ‘Quick’ is a synonym for clever and suggests intellectual ability. ‘Slow’, by contrast, implies a want of intelligence, even stupidity. The slow child in the class is the one who is ‘behind’, the one who must ‘catch up’ with the others. This is symptomatic of a wider stress in our culture on getting things done quickly and ‘saving time’. It seems that fear of time running out often compels us (...) into running after it. Within philosophy however resources are available for challenging this perspective. (shrink)

Speed is an obvious facet of contemporary society, whereas slowness has often been dismissed as conservative and antimodern. Challenging a long tradition of thought, Lutz Koepnick instead proposes we understand slowness as a strategy of the contemporary--a decidedly modern practice that gazes firmly at and into the present's velocity. As he engages with late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century art, photography, video, film, and literature, Koepnick explores slowness as a critical medium to intensify our temporal and spatial experiences. Slowness helps us (...) register the multiple layers of time, history, and motion that constitute our present. It offers a timely mode of aesthetic perception and representation that emphasizes the openness of the future and undermines any conception of the present as a mere replay of the past. Discussing the photography and art of Janet Cardiff, Olafur Eliasson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Michael Wesely; the films of Peter Weir and Tom Tykwer; the video installations of Douglas Gordon, Willie Doherty, and Bill Viola; and the fiction of Don DeLillo, Koepnick shows how slowness can carve out spaces within processes of acceleration that allow us to reflect on alternate temporalities and durations. (shrink)

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

Based on content externalism, the question of whether self-knowledge is authoritative or not has launched a real controversy in the philosophy of mind. Boghossian proposed slow switching argument in defense of incompatibility of the two views. This argument has been criticized by some philosophers through different approaches. Vahid is one of them. He claimed that Boghossian's argument appeals to some controversial assumptions without which it cannot achieve its conclusion. In this article, I criticize Vahid's response to slow (...) switching argument and show that self-knowledge in Vahid's response differs in having authority and therefore in function from that of Boghossian. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

_Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers_ uses insights from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to rethink bioethics. Although Wittgenstein produced little formal writing on ethics, this volume shows that, in fact, ethical issues permeate the entirety of his work. The scholars whom Carl Elliott has assembled in this volume pay particular attention to Wittgenstein’s concern with the thick context of moral problems, his suspicion of theory, and his belief in description as the real aim of philosophy. Their aim is (...) not to examine Wittgenstein’s personal moral convictions but rather to explore how a deep engagement with his work can illuminate some of the problems that medicine and biological science present. As Elliott explains in his introduction, Wittgenstein’s philosophy runs against the grain of most contemporary bioethics scholarship, which all too often ignores the context in which moral problems are situated and pays little attention to narrative, ethnography, and clinical case studies in rendering bioethical judgments. Such anonymous, impersonal, rule-writing directives in which health care workers are advised how to behave is what this volume intends to counteract. Instead, contributors stress the value of focusing on the concrete particulars of moral problems and write in the spirit of Wittgenstein’s belief that philosophy should be useful. Specific topics include the concept of “good dying,” the nature of clinical decision making, the treatment of neurologically damaged patients, the moral treatment of animals, and the challenges of moral particularism. Inspired by a philosopher who deplored “professional philosophy,” this work brings some startling insights and clarifications to contemporary ethical problems posed by the realities of modern medicine. _Contributors._ Larry Churchill, David DeGrazia, Cora Diamond, James Edwards, Carl Elliott, Grant Gillett, Paul Johnston, Margaret Olivia Little, James Lindemann Nelson, Knut Erik Tranoy. (shrink)

The last decade has seen the transformation of the study of sexuality from a marginalized effort to a fully respected discipline at many major universities. There are numerous publications devoted solely to the topic and queer theory, a force to be reckoned with, has its own celebrities. Nonetheless, queer studies is considered to be the brainchild of the humanities, with the social sciences slowly coming around to apply its principles to empirical research. Long, Slow Burn, a powerful collection of (...) essays by Kath Weston, argues that social science has been talking about sex all along; to deny this one would have to overlook Kinsey's pioneering sex research in the 1950s, or the psychiatrist Evelyn Hooker's pathbreaking study of homosexuality, but also in the "sex talk" that lies at the heart of classic debates on kinship, inequality, cognition, and other foundational topics in the social sciences. What is different now, Weston claims, is the way sexuality has been isolated from other contemporary issues. Long, Slow Burn lays out a radically different approach to the study of sexuality. Not content with its ghettoization as a contained subfield, Weston refuses to draw an artificial line around sexuality. Her essays do not attempt to make sexuality a discrete object of study. Rather, each essay "sexes up" a conventional subject, such as kinship, race or labor, proving that once you start paying attention to sexuality, you can never look at social issues in the same way again. Long, Slow Burn offers an intervention, an attempt to see sexuality as it permeates the multiple fibers of our social fabric. It demonstrates that sexuality has always been a part of the social sciences, but more importantly, is the key to their future. (shrink)

Yoga is often presented as a ‘slow’ form of exercise. Yoga magazines are filled with advice about how to ‘slow down’. However, Ashtanga yoga is considered dynamic and ‘fast’—something that dates ba...

Yoga is often presented as a ‘slow’ form of exercise. Yoga magazines are filled with advice about how to ‘slow down’. However, Ashtanga yoga is considered dynamic and ‘fast’—something that dates ba...

In this paper three senses of slow sport are demonstrated through three modalities of technical, and as such, it is found within a precise methodology. Self-awareness is defined by paying attention...

In this paper three senses of slow sport are demonstrated through three modalities of technical, and as such, it is found within a precise methodology. Self-awareness is defined by paying attention...

Recent discussions of externalism about mental content have been dominated by the question whether it undermines the intuitively plausible idea that we have knowledge of the contents of our thoughts. In this article I focus on one main line of reasoning (the so-called 'slow switching argument') for the thesis that externalism and self-knowledge are incompatible. After criticizing a number of influential responses to the argument, I set out to explain why it fails. It will be claimed that the argument (...) trades on an ambiguity, and that only by incorporating certain controversial assumptions does it stand a chance of establishing its conclusion. Finally, drawing on an analogy with Benacerraf's challenge to Platonism, I shall offer some reasons as to why the slow switching argument fails to reveal the real source of tension between externalism and privileged self-knowledge. (shrink)

We survey a selection of results about majorization hierarchies. The main focus is on classical and recent results about the comparison between the slow and fast growing hierarchies.

Wrapped in the glow of the computer or phone screen, we cruise websites; we skim and skip. We glance for a brief moment at whatever catches our eye and then move on. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age reminds us of another mode of reading--the kind that requires our full attention and that has as its goal not the mere gathering of information but the deeper understanding that only good books can offer. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age (...) is a practical guide for anyone who yearns for a more meaningful and satisfying reading experience, and who wants to sharpen reading skills and improve concentration. David Mikics, a noted literary scholar, demonstrates exactly how the tried-and-true methods of slow reading can provide a more immersive, fulfilling experience. He begins with fourteen preliminary rules for slow reading and shows us how to apply them. The rules are followed by excursions into key genres, including short stories, novels, poems, plays, and essays. Reading, Mikics says, should not be drudgery, and not mere escape either, but a way to live life at a higher pitch. A good book is a pathway to finding ourselves, by getting lost in the words and works of others. (shrink)

The present paper has three aims. The first and foremost aim is to introduce into philosophy of mind and related areas (philosophy of language, etc) a discussion of Slow Earth, an analogue to the classic Twin Earth scenario that features a difference from aboriginal Earth that hinges on time instead of the distribution of natural kinds. The second aim is to use Slow Earth to call into question the central lessons often alleged to flow from consideration (...) of Twin Earth, lessons having to do with relations of minds to spatially definable boundaries of bodies such as skin or skull. The third aim is to suggest a puzzle for adherents of cognitive content externalism having to do with the metaphysical requirements on slow-switching, a hypothetical process whereby changes in the relations between subjects and their environments are followed by gradual changes in cognitive contents. (shrink)

This is the story of the transformation of the ways in which the increasingly Christianized elites of the late antique Mediterranean experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. The metaphor of Babel stands for the magnificent edifice of classical culture that was about to reach the sky, but remained self-sufficient and selfcontained in its virtual monolingualism - the paradigm within which even Latin was occasionally considered just a dialect of Greek. The gradual erosion of this vision is the slow fall of (...) Babel that took place in the hearts and minds of a good number of early Christian writers and intellectuals who represented various languages and literary traditions. This step-by-step process included the discovery and internalization of the existence of multiple other languages in the world, as well as subsequent attempts to incorporate their speakers meaningfully into the holistic and distinctly Christian picture of the universe. (shrink)

In a famous 1964 interview with _Le Monde_, Jean-Paul Sartre describes the evolution in his thought from the writing of _Nausea_ up to the publication of his autobiographical Les Mots. While not rejecting his earlier literary and philosophical work, he does recontextualize it in light of his own existential growth in the previous two decades, which he attributes to his confrontation with the reality of human suffering – specifically, that of a child dying of hunger. In this essay, I use (...) Sartre’s interview as an entrée to a discussion of some of my students’ and my own existential development, by way of my emerging use of a variety of pedagogical practices (service learning, narrative teaching, civic engagement) in an interdisciplinary philosophy course called “Religion, Suffering, and the Moral Imagination.”. (shrink)

In recent research, dual-process theories of cognition have been the primary model for explaining moral judgment and reasoning. These theories understand moral thinking in terms of two separate domains: one deliberate and analytic, the other quick and instinctive. -/- This book presents a new theory of the philosophy and cognitive science of moral judgment. Hanno Sauer develops and defends an account of "triple-process" moral psychology, arguing that moral thinking and reasoning are only insufficiently understood when described in terms of (...) a quick but intuitive and a slow but rational type of cognition. This approach severely underestimates the importance and impact of dispositions to initiate and engage in critical thinking – the cognitive resource in charge of counteracting my-side bias, closed-mindedness, dogmatism, and breakdowns of self-control. Moral cognition is based, not on emotion and reason, but on an integrated network of intuitive, algorithmic and reflective thinking. -/- Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Bergson’s philosophy marked a turning point in Western understanding of time by differentiating quantitative time—apprehended by intelligence—from qualitative time—duration, embedded in consciousne...

In recent years, scholars have critiqued norms of neoliberal higher education by calling for embodied and anti-oppressive teaching and learning. Implicit in these accounts, but lacking elaboration, is a concern with reformulating the notion of ‘time’ and temporalities of academic life. Employing a coloniality perspective, this article argues that in order to reconnect our minds to our bodies and center embodied pedagogy in the classroom, we should disrupt Eurocentric notions of time that colonize our academic lives. I show how this (...) entails slowing down and ‘being lazy’. (shrink)

The demonstration that slow transport of clocks can be used to define simultaneity in inertial frames of reference leads to the question of whether clock transport can similarly be used in noninertial frames. It is shown that there are certain types of reference frames in which the clock-transport method cannot be used in a self-consistent manner. It is also shown that there are other types of noninertial frames in which the clock-transport method will succeed. The discussion includes noninertial frames (...) in flat space-time as well as the case of curved space-times. (shrink)

The belief that White people are targeted victims of dispossession, displacement, and genocide has spread with shocking intensity since Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory. Although this Great Replacement myth may seem absurd and irrational, its destructive real-world consequences force the question: what explains its efficacy and appeal? Drawing on White nationalists Greg Johnson and Tucker Carlson, I argue that the Great Replacement myth functions as an explanation for the real socioeconomic decline that has culminated in deaths of despair. I (...) then explore this decline’s sociohistorical context to argue that deaths of despair are consequences of political-economic domination reinforced by White supremacy. Put otherwise, these deaths result from socioeconomic violence that White people have inflicted on each other. I conclude that the real problem “the White race” faces today is not a Great Replacement but a Slow White Suicide. (shrink)

Ellis and Bowman's account of nonstandard signal synchronizations is examined as a prolegomenon to this paper. Attention is called to some consequences of an important ambiguity in their account of the transitivity of nonstandard synchrony. Then an analysis is given of the principle of relativity to assess E & B's claim that this principle either restricts nonstandard signal synchronisms or rules them out altogether. It is argued that the latitude for choices of nonstandard synchronisms is not circumscribed by the factual (...) content of the principle of relativity; instead, the exclusion of such synchronisms by this principle depends on a tacit appeal to the particular conventions implicit in certain formulations of the principle. Hence E & B's claim is rejected as an argument against the factual tenability of nonstandard synchronisms. (shrink)

This article examines the connection between actions, temporality, and media-based observation. Slow motion technology is currently being used especially in sports to examine and evaluate athletes’ actions more precisely in order to identify potential infringements of rules. Starting with a phenomenological perspective, this article engages in a critical assessment of the degree to which the intentions underlying athletes’ actions become clearer if their actions are slowed down using slow motion. It transpires that a more in-depth understanding is not (...) possible because the process of time-stretching using media technology tends to obscure intersubjective understanding. Nevertheless, the use of different playback speeds does increase observers’ sensitivity to the temporality of action and observation. This is particularly the case when greater emphasis is placed on the body and its role in the formation and carrying out of intentions. With the phenomenological view and in special consideration of the body and the subjective intentionality, the paper contributes to a discussion about the connection of time and action already led in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. These findings mark a contribution to empirical social research as well, which is increasingly using video material in action analysis and should take slow motion as a possible augmented but also manipulated access to actions into account adequately. To this end, this article suggests a method for identifying the merits and demerits of using slow motion to analyse actions, and discusses the methodological implications of temporality in observation. (shrink)

This paper traces the history of accelerationism as a political philosophy, from its inception at Warwick University to its deployment by avowed white supremacists. Probing its philosophical commitment to a both a deterministic philosophy of history and a sacrificial logic of politics, I argue that even the initial elaborations of (non-race-based) accelerationism contained the seed of its development into violent white supremacy. The conclusion assesses a politics of deceleration as a strategy for countering accelerationism, ultimately arguing for the (...) superiority of a Benjaminian politics of the emergency brake. (shrink)

Daniel Sennert is one of the more neglected big figures of that seventeenth-century process that goes by the shorthand name of Scientific Revolution. Born in Breslau/wroclaw in 1572, he was professor of medicine at the University of Wittenberg from 1602 until his death in 1637. However, his fame and importance were not due to his classroom teaching but to his writings, which were reprinted throughout the century in Germany, France, England, Italy, and the Netherlands, and partially translated into English. His (...) reputation among both his contemporaries and today’s historians of science has to do with the highly innovative synthesis of natural philosophy, medicine, and chymistry, which he presented notably in the two editions of his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu and in his late Hypomnemata physica, both of which relied on a novel type of atomistic matter theory. His influence, generally underestimated in today’s scholarship, was felt throughout the century and, as William R. Newman has demonstrated, is particularly important in the case of Robert Boyle, who was “plundering Sennert’s œuvre for proofs of the corpuscularian hypothesis,” albeit without acknowledging his source. (shrink)

Until the 1930s Germany had been the international leader in biochemistry, chemistry, and areas of biology. After WWII, however, molecular biology as a new interdisciplinary scientific enterprise was scarcely represented in Germany for almost 20 years. Three major reasons for the low performance of molecular biology are discussed: first, the forced emigration of Jewish scientists after 1933, which not only led to the expulsion of future distinguished molecular biologists, but also to a strong decline of ''dynamic biochemistry'', a field which (...) contributed greatly to molecular biology. Second, German university structures that strongly impeded interdisciplinary research. Third, the international isolation and self-isolation of German scientists that was a major obstacle to the implementation of new fields of research developed elsewhere. Despite the fact that there was no official boycott against Germany as there had been after WWI and despite the Cold War policy of integrating Germans into the West, as a consequence of National Socialism and WWI for many years only very few German scientists gained access to the international community of molecular biologists. Max Delbruck played an important role in helping the Germans establish modern, mostly molecular, biology because he retained strong connections to Germany. Most importantly, it required a new generation of young scientists who had received part of their training in the US to establish modern molecular biology at German universities and Max Planck Institutes. (shrink)