Benjamin’s Critique of Violence (1921) has been a relevant source of legal and political philosophy about the nature of law, from Derrida to Menke. In this article, we rebuild the reading of Benjamin’s Critique proposed by Menke and consider the appropriateness of violence in the law not as a tragic tension, but as a condition for its reproduction. Finally, we will consider its paradoxical nature as a confirmation of the difference between the force of law and social-normative elements such (...) as recognition [ Anerkennung]. (shrink)

This paper examines the influence of Euripides on Plato, reflecting the intertextuality between Euripides‘ Antiope und Plato’s Gorgias (esp. the agon between Zethos and Amphion and the agon between Callicles and Socrates, then the deus ex machina in the Antiope and the myth of the afterlife in the Gorgias). It is argued that the final part of the Gorgias is a serious philosophical answer to the tragic aporias, which Euripides dramatically staged in his Antiope (that is the aporia (...) of supposed and real kinship as well as the aporia of traditional revenge ethics) and which the viewer should answer for himself according to the conception of Euripidean tragedy. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to conceptualize and evaluate the transhumanist movement by applying a Nietzschean critique to its techno-progressive agenda of human enhancement. The investigation itself is divided into three distinctive, yet methodologically intertwined steps: first, I will present an exegetical approach by circumscribing the discussion concerning the alleged similarities and disparities between the transhumanist notion of transforming the human into a posthuman being and Nietzsche’s concept of education, understood as self-overcoming; secondly, in a more practical and future-oriented (...) manner, I will consider some of the major aporias for conceptualizing a ‘Nietzschean transhumanism’ by confronting the techno-progressive idea of morphological freedom with Nietzsche’s critical approach to the commerce- and consumer-oriented mentality of the non-creative modern individual; finally, I will employ Nietzsche’s complex treatment of nihilism in order to formulate a critical evaluation of transhumanism’s cultural implications. My fundamental conclusion will be that the techno-progressive agenda does not strive to overcome human limitations by coping with the tragic nature of life in a Nietzschean sense, but merely promotes the nihilistic dream of Zarathustra’s ‘last human’ to establish a common happiness by eradicating the Dionysian reality of all existence. (shrink)

Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, a tragic and schizophrenic science fiction coming-of-age tale is a perplexing and paradoxical film with multiple interpretations and many aporias of meaning. In this examination, I first compare the two standard phenomenological ways to regard the film: either Donnie exists in a science fiction world or he is schizophrenic. Second, I pose a new and divergent reading of the filmic world: Donnie is a character in a story of artistic mourning. Third, I compare the feature (...) film and the director's cut in terms of world and world view and conclude that the latter reduces the tragic existential hero to a scifi messiah. (shrink)

This article reinterprets the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a retelling of the Christian myth of the Fall. Through its account of the aporia, which Horkheimer and Adorno maintain stands at its core, the Dialectic of Enlightenment rearticulates the doctrine of original sin. The human condition is presented as tragic, and the source of this tragedy is inscribed into the very structure of human subjectivity. While the Dialectic of Enlightenment refuses to abandon hope, emancipation is reconceptualised on the model (...) of redemption; a kind of fulfilment of human nature, which would at the same time be an escape from it. Horkheimer and Adorno dispense, however, with any transcendent source of grace. Instead, the activity of philosophy itself takes on redemptive quality. (shrink)

Cette etude suppose un releve exhaustif des occurences d'aporia, et de douze autres mots etymologiquement apparentes, dans la litterature philosophique des Grecs, depuis les debuts jusqu'a Aristote. Les divers textes, que se sont repartis les collaborateurs du volume, sont etudies du point de vue de la grammaire et de la semantique. Chaque chapitre s'acheve sur des conclusions d'ordre philosophique, comme font aussi les trois grandes parties de l'ouvrage: philosophes preclassiques, Platon, Aristote. On trouvera en outre a la fin du (...) volume des etudes relatives au vocabulaire de l'aporia aussi bien dans la tradition arabe que chez les latins. Bibliographie et index des mots grecs etudies. (shrink)

There is a concern that the widespread deployment of autonomous machines will open up a number of ‘responsibility gaps’ throughout society. Various articulations of such techno-responsibility gaps have been proposed over the years, along with several potential solutions. Most of these solutions focus on ‘plugging’ or ‘dissolving’ the gaps. This paper offers an alternative perspective. It argues that techno-responsibility gaps are, sometimes, to be welcomed and that one of the advantages of autonomous machines is that they enable us to embrace (...) certain kinds of responsibility gap. The argument is based on the idea that human morality is often tragic. We frequently confront situations in which competing moral considerations pull in different directions and it is impossible to perfectly balance these considerations. This heightens the burden of responsibility associated with our choices. We cope with the tragedy of moral choice in different ways. Sometimes we delude ourselves into thinking the choices we make were not tragic ; sometimes we delegate the tragic choice to others ; sometimes we make the choice ourselves and bear the psychological consequences. Each of these strategies has its benefits and costs. One potential advantage of autonomous machines is that they enable a reduced cost form of delegation. However, we only gain the advantage of this reduced cost if we accept that some techno-responsibility gaps are virtuous. (shrink)

_Tragic Play_ explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age _after_ tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, (...) and Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In _Hamlet_, _Endgame_, _Philoktet_, and _Ithaka_, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence. (shrink)

In this essay I will examine the various ways in which the concept of decision emerges in the writings of Kierkegaard focusing mainly on the Philosophical Fragments and the Postscript. This prepares the way for revisiting Kierkegaard’s concept of decision. Doing so indicates the radical way in which Kierkegaard connects the concept of decision to an aporia. The crucial existential concept of decision not only concerns the difficulty, or even the impasse, pertaining to knowledge, but also relates to the (...) question of how the singular finds his or her own way through existence. (shrink)

A world awash in little understood chemicals tragically harms adults and children alike. Laws keep health agencies in the dark about toxicants, slow, well motivated research hampers protections, and strenuous vested opposition exacerbates the harm. How science is used in the tort law can facilitate or frustrate redress of harm. This book recommends better approaches.

In this essay, I muse upon aporia’s value as a pedagogical technique in the philosophy classroom using as a guide examples of aporia that are found in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. The word aporia, translated as “without passage” or “without a way,” is used metaphorically to describe the unsettling state of confusion many find themselves in after engaging in philosophical discourse. Following a brief introduction in which I situate aporia as a pedagogy amicable to experiential learning, I (...) examine various ways in which aporia appears in certain Platonic dialogues, which enables us to draw out some paradigmatic features of aporia. I then discuss how I apply aporia as a pedagogical technique in the contemporary philosophy classroom, taking up three specific concerns in detail: aporetic discomfort, right use, and potential misuse. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of tragic-remorse. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a (...) moral stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

This paper discusses a new aporia, the aporia of future directed beliefs. This aporia contains three propositions: (1) It is possible that there is someone who is infallible that believes something about the future that is not historically settled, (2) it is necessary that someone is infallible if and only if it is necessary that everything she believes is true, and (3) it is necessary that all our beliefs are historically settled. Every claim in this set is (...) intuitively plausible, and there are interesting arguments for or against each of them. Nevertheless, {(1), (2), (3)} entails a contradiction. Consequently, at least one of the sentences in this set must be false. I consider some possible solutions to the problem and discuss some arguments for and against these solutions. Five solutions, in particular, stand out. Three solutions reject (1), one solution rejects (2), and one solution rejects (3). No solution is without problems, and it is not obvious which one we should choose. Yet, we have to give up at least one sentence in {(1), (2), (3)}. This is the nature of an aporia. (shrink)

Of other ancient writers, call into question the traditional view that katharsis in the Poetics is a homeopathic process - one in which pity and fear affect emotions like themselves. She maintains, instead, that Aristotle considered katharsis to be an allopathic process in which pity and fear purge the soul of shameless, antisocial, and aggressive emotions. While exploring katharsis, Tragic Pleasures analyzes the closely related question of how the Poetics treats the.

Peter Szondi´s pathbreaking work is a succinct and elegant argument for distinguishing between a philosophy of the tragic and the poetics of tragedy espoused by Aristotle. The first of the book´s two parts consists of a series of commentaries on philosophical and aesthetic texts from twelve thinkers and poets between 1795 and 1915: Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel, Solger, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Vischer, Kierkegaard, Hebbel, Nietzsche, Simmel, and Scheler. The various definitions of tragedy are read not so much in terms of their (...) specific philosophies, but rather in the way their views assist in analyzing tragedies with an aim to establish a general concept of the tragic. The second part presents exemplary analyses of eight tragedies: Sophocles’Oedipus Rex, Calderon´s Life Is a Dream, Shakespeare´s Othello, Gryphius´ Leo Armenius, Racine´s Phaedra, Schiller´s Demetrius, Kleist’s The Schroffenstein Family and Büchner’s Danton's Death. The readings neither presuppose a concept of the tragic determined by context (as in Hegel's idea of the conflict between two orders of right), nor do they focus exclusively on the texts´ explicit contents. Instead, they elaborate the dialectical or aporetic structures at the heart of the tragic. The works analyzed represent the four great epochs of tragic poetry: the age of Greek tragedy; the Baroque era in Spain, England, and Germany; French Classicism; and the age of Goethe. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to read Rogues, in order to show that Derrida is neither a philosopher of democracy nor a critic of sovereignty, but rather a thinker of democratic sovereignty. Taking my cue from his Aporias, I argue that democratic sovereignty is aporetically in excess over itself, for it is based on articulating the path through the im-possible passage from the unconditional injunction of the ‘promise’ to the exigency of sovereignty. That is why it can neither be (...) absorbed into the conditions of any existing democracy nor abstracted into any pure identity of sovereignty. Political trends today fail in enduring the aprioricity of aporia, as neoliberals valorize the posited conditions of existing democracy and populists the objective pregivenness of the ‘people’. (shrink)

In many tragic plays, the protagonist is brought down by a disaster that is a consequence of the protagonist's own error, his or her hamartia, the tragic flaw. Tragic flaws are disconcerting to the audience because they are not known or fully recognized by the protagonist—at least not until it is too late. In this essay, I take tragic flaws to be unreliable belief-forming dispositions that are unrecognized by us in some sense. I describe some different (...) types of flaws and consider what we might do about them. Then I examine three types of policies for managing our tragic flaws: doxastic, dispositional, and methodological. (shrink)

En este trabajo se analizan algunas de las tesis que Luigi Ferrajoli desarrolla en su libro La lógica del diritto. Dieci aporie nell’opera di Hans Kelsen. Se discute hasta qué punto las aporías que el autor italiano identifica en el pensamiento de Kelsen pueden ser consideradas auténticas aporías. Al mismo tiempo, se señala que el sentido general de la crítica de Ferrajoli tiene que ver más bien con la comparación de dos modelos de consideración del Derecho, en donde los derechos (...) fundamentales y la labor del juez, entre otras cosas, son entendidos de modo diverso. (shrink)

_A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy__ “Spare, elegant and poignant.... If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it.”—John Gray, _New Statesman_ “It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan’s luminous _The Tragic Mind_ is so urgently needed.”—George F. Will_ Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has (...) learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In _The Tragic Mind_, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time. (shrink)

This article sketches, and works to motivate, a controversial approach to Posterior Analytics II.19. But its primary goal is to recommend a novel solution to one particular interpretive aporia that’s especially vexed recent scholars working on Post. An. II.19. The aporia concerns how to understand the enigmatic "ē ek pantos" ( “or from all...”) in the genealogical account of foundational knowledge at II.19 100a3-9. Our proposed solution to the aporia is discussed in connection with a number of (...) larger philosophical issues concerning Aristotle’s theory of epistēmē. (shrink)

It is said that transcendental phenomenology faces an unavoidable aporia, according to which it is perfectly justified to accept the claim that the transcendental ego constitutes the sense of all external being, including other subjects, as well as the claim that other subjects constitute the sense of all external objects, since they are a community of transcendental egos. The essence of the aporia is that it is impossible to accept both of these claims if one accepts the conceptual (...) schema of transcendental phenomenology. In the article, I present an interpretation of transcendental phenomenology which allows one to avoid such consequences. Firstly, the static theory of intersubjectivity presented in Ideas of Pure Phenomenology and Carthesian Meditations is reconstructed and analyzed. Attention is devoted to the issues of phenomenological reduction and constitution of sense. Afterwards, it is argued that one should distinguish two kinds of constitutive processes: one understood as an activity of the sole transcendental ego (self), and the second one as an activity of the community of transcendental egos. It is claimed that both processes are mutually connected. Moreover, it seems that the second kind of constitution is metaphysically prior then the former one. This claim will allow one to overcome solipsistic interpretations of transcendental phenomenology and to overcome the aporia presented. (shrink)

This article investigates the forms of respect and responsiveness that must be present in the process of practical reason. Drawing upon Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory and his incidental remarks about aesthetics, I identify two modes of respect. The first is the mutual respect and equality that emerges in the process of coming to agreement on proposed norms; the second is the call to infinite responsibility that emerges in opening to the transcendent character of others. However, Habermas makes an error in (...) treating these two types of response as appropriate for different classes of beings when he suggests that mutual respect is appropriate for humans, but asymmetry is appropriate when humans deal with animals or others who are incapable of communicative action. Rather, drawing upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I argue that both responses are always present in all encounters with the world. There is therefore an aporia at the heart of the process of practical reason: the responsiveness required in the exercise of practical reason demands that participants be open not just to another's opinions and claims, but also to precisely that which is not understood, which entails the idea of infinite responsibility. It is the movement between these orientations that enacts the main features of ethical life. (shrink)

This paper argues that Derrida’s aporetic conclusions regarding moral and political concepts, from hospitality to democracy, can only be understood and accepted if the notion of différance and similar infrastructures are taken into account. This is because it is the infrastructures that expose and commit moral and political practices to a double and conflictual (thus aporetic) future: the conditional future that projects horizonal limits and conditions upon the relation to others, and the unconditional future without horizons of anticipation. The argument (...) thus turns against two kinds of interpretation: The first accepts normative unconditionality in ethics but misses its support by the infrastructures. The second rejects unconditionality as a normative commitment precisely because the infrastructural support for unconditionality seems to rule out that it is normatively required. In conclusion, the article thus reconsiders the relation between a quasi-transcendental argument and its normative implications, suggesting that Derrida avoids the naturalistic fallacy. (shrink)

Debates in ecological social theory are characterised by dualisms of nature and society. The author proposes the notion of ‘ecological aporias’ to account for these dualisms, focusing on three landmark examples of ecological thought over the past four decades from Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour and Jason W. Moore. He shows the persistence in this work of paradoxes and intractable contradictions revolving around the nature/society dualism. Rather than trying to dissolve these ecological aporias, he draws on recent work in eco-deconstruction to (...) suggest that the ecological is itself an aporetic category and that this enables a new perspective for political ecology in an age of climate crisis. Rejecting Latour’s identification of political ecology with the politics of dwelling, he argues that climate change demands we recognise forms of life irreducible to the ontological security on which the concept of the ecological has long been based. (shrink)

_Tragic Play_ explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age _after_ tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, (...) and Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In _Hamlet_, _Endgame_, _Philoktet_, and _Ithaka_, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence. (shrink)

As genealogy has gained greater disciplinary recognition over the last two decades, it has become increasingly common to call any historically oriented philosophy, such as Theodor W. Adorno’s, “genealogy.” In this article, I show that Adorno’s philosophy performs genealogy’s defining functions of “problematization” and “possibilization.” Moreover, it does so in unique ways that constitute a significant contribution to genealogical practice. Adorno’s method, here called “tragic genealogy,” is particularly well-suited to the genealogical analysis of traditional philosophical problems and to the (...) critical reanimation of declining, but ethically significant, values. Nevertheless, I also argue that Adorno’s philosophy cannot be assimilated into genealogical practice without rejecting or revising some of its Hegelian influences, particularly its philosophy of history and its modal metaphysics. (shrink)

This work identifies Kant’s doctrine of inner sense as a central element within the ‘architectonic of pure reason’ of the first Critique, exposes its variant construals, and considers the implications of its problematicity for Kant’s theoretical philosophy most generally.

“Aporías de la democracia” es la primera obra colectiva de la red NosOtros y que surge del encuentro de un grupo de académicas y académicos de distintas instituciones y países de América latina y Europa. Esta red inicio el proceso de compartir y producir en colectivo con el 1er Coloquio Euro-Latinoamericano consagrado al tema que da su título a la obra.

This short article does not intend to disagree with the philosophical tradition, which states that the Cratylus is an ‘aporetic’ dialogue. The aim of this paper is to raise the possibility that the Cratylus’s true aporia is not the excluding antagonism of conventional view by Hermógenes and naturalistic theory by Cratylus, but the question of the relationship between language and knowledge. Like Plato asks: can you know things without the aid of language? For this question that matter he does (...) not have an answer in Cratylus. Thus, the aporia is configured. To find an answer to it we must use other Platonic dialogues, such as Fedun, Tiimaeus and Sophist. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of 'tragic-remorse'. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a (...) moral stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

The Aporia of Rights is an exploration of the perplexities of human rights, and their inevitable and important intersection with the idea of citizenship. Written by political theorists and philosophers, essays canvass the complexities involved in any consideration of rights at this time. Yeatman and Birmingham show through this collection of works a space fora vital engagement with the politics of human rights.

This paper outlines and defends a notion of ‘tragic-remorse’. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a (...) moral stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

In the first part of The Aporias of Open Society the author enters a polemic with the views of Karl R. Popper, who links open society to capitalism, sees it endangered by totalitarianism, and considers Plato, Hegel and Marx as its intellectual fathers. In the second part she makes broad reference to the findings of global capitalism scholars, including Popper student George Soros, in defining the capitalist system’s self-destructive traits, which she sees as confirmation of Soros’ claim that open society’s (...) most serious enemy today is itself. (shrink)