Man has built tools to extend his visual experience in order to explore reality beyond his sensory capacity, for example microscopes, telescopes, high shutter speed and infrared cameras. However he has yet to build a tool to fully explore visual realms beyond his ordinary cognitive faculties. With the development of computing, comes the possibility of building a tool to explore the virtual forms/spaces of images that are ordinarily inaccessible to the mind. This article identifies how cognition is ordinarily limited and (...) posits a way of going beyond those limits, by defining a computational model of how those virtual forms/spaces might be created. This definition is based on brief but repeated empirical experiences of ‘higher order’ manifestations. (shrink)

In the present paper, i propose, first, to present some aspects of what we may call a type of "phenomenology" of the image contained in the Berlin lectures on transcendental logic – notably, in the second of these courses in Berlin. Second, i would like to return to the problem of the relationship between logic and philosophy, starting from these indications with regard to the "image", and, if possible, outline some parallel with certain theses on the same subject from (...) the Jena years. Finally, in what i consider a novelty concerning these lessons, i would like to conclude my exposition by raising the question of the foundational character of Fichte’s project. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the meaning of Deleuze's transcendental empiricism by means of the kind of experience that his project opens up for us – an experience that I want to call transcendental. Primarily on the basis of his works on cinema, famously dedicated to freely investigating Bergson's thought, I argue that Deleuze's notion of the time-image, together with his search for its real and necessary conditions, consists in the liberation of experience from its Kantian limitative conditioning. (...) I then examine both the new kind of subjectivity (the fissured ego) that emerges from this enlarged experience and the new conception of temporality (time out of joint) that subtends it. Finally, I try to bring out the concrete relations between (transcendental) experience, thought and the brain that Deleuze brings to light in his analysis of great cinema's reinvention of the relationship between time and movement. (shrink)

Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation are said to aim for “contentless” experiences, where mental content such as thoughts, perceptions, and mental images is absent. Silence is understood to be a central feature of those experiences. The main source of information about the experiences is texts by experts from within the three traditions. Previous research has tended not to use an explicit scientific method for selecting and reviewing expert texts on meditation. We have identified evidence synthesis as a robust and (...) transparent method that is suitable for this purpose. In this paper we use evidence synthesis based on expert texts to examine silence/quietness as a feature of the contentless experiences in the three practices. Objective criteria were used to select a sample of 135 expert texts. A database containing the expert descriptions of the meditation techniques and experiences was produced by extracting the relevant material from the publications and coding that material to differentiate individual features. The database, which forms part of the supplementary material for this paper, identifies each feature of the contentless experiences referred to in the expert texts, including silence/quietness. Our key finding is that the experts indicate silence/quietness has a particular connection with stillness, and the absence of concepts, mental activity/noise, thoughts, and disturbance. Further analysis leads to the following insights. The silence/quietness reflects the absence of thoughts and sounds, and this fits neatly with a conception of silence/quietness as the absence of internal and external noise. In some cases the terms silence and quietness may also reflect the absence of other disturbances such as non-auditory perceptions, mental images, and negative feelings. That would fit with a conception of silence/quietness as complete calm or absence of disturbance. It is not clear from the expert texts how silence/quietness is distinct from other features such as stillness that also reflect the absence of disturbances. As a separate matter, silence/quietness has connections with all the other features of the contentless experiences, but the closeness of the connections varies. Our work uncovers fine distinctions and ambiguities which lead to new research questions that can be explored in future studies. (shrink)

The eastern Islamic concept of the imaginal realm, which explains how supra-sensory realities present themselves to imaginative perception, can enrich the imagination of film-philosophy. The imaginal realm, in Arabic ‘alam al-mithal, world of images, or ‘alam al-khayal, imaginative world, is part of a triadic ontology of sensible, imaginal, and intelligible realms. Diverging from roots shared with Western thought in the concept of the imaginative faculty, the Islamic imaginal realm is supra-individual and more real than matter. The imaginal realm is a (...) radically pro-image concept, affirming the importance of poetry, art, and images in motion. As developed by the Persian philosopher Sadr al-Dîn Muhammad al-Shîrâzî, known as Mullâ Sadrâ (1571–1640), the imaginal realm flows and intensifies, in a process philosophy we may fruitfully compare with Spinoza, Leibniz, and Whitehead. I sketch the genealogy of the imaginal realm and compare it to contemporary Western film-philosophy. I suggest how this transcendental concept can be made immanent. Finally, I draw from contemporary Muslim thinkers, such as Mohammed Arkoun, who ground a visionary collective politics in the imaginal realm. My central example, the documentary The Lebanese Rocket Society (2012) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joriege, exemplifies film's imaginal powers. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to look at the way in which Deleuze's reading of Kant's transcendental dialectic influences some of the key thèmes of Différence and Répétition. As we shall see, in the transcendental dialectic, Kant takes the step of claiming that reason, in its natural functioning, is prone to misadventures. Whereas for Descartes, for instance, error takes place between two faculties, such as when reason (wrongly) infers that a stick in water is bent on the basis (...) of sensé impressions, Kant postulâtes that reason générâtes illusions internally purely in the course of its natural function. It is thèse illusions which lead reason into antinomy, as on the basis of thèse illusions, it is led to posit an illegitimate concept of the world as a totality. Further, for Kant, the antinomies represent an indirect proof of transcendental idealism, as it is only with the additional assumption of the noumenon, as that which falls outside of appearance, that we are able to résolve the antinomies. Deleuze's work on the image of thought clearly owes a great deal to Kant's theory of transcendental illusion, but the connections between Kant's transcendental dialectic and the structure of Différence and Répétition go deeper than this. Whereas Kant's problem is that reason générâtes contradictions when it assumes that the unconditioned can be given to reason, Deleuze's problem is the impossibility of developing a concept of différence within représentation. Between thèse two problems, there are significant structural parallels - in particular, the attempt to think outside the dichotomy of the finite and the infinité, and the attempt to prevent the application of spatio-temporal predicates to the noumenon. The antinomy of représentation for Deleuze is the inability of représentation to think différence apart from as purely representational or as undifferenciated abyss. As we shall see, Deleuze gives an explanation of this antinomy in terms of the differential calculus, and the notion of the differential in particular. While thèse parallels exist between Kant and Deleuze's thought, there are also some important différences. Although the differential is not determined in relation to représentation, this does not mean that it lacks ail détermination. This opens up a possibility not available in Kant's philosophy, that is, a thinking beyond the limit of représentation. As we shall see, Kant closes off this possibility by giving reason a heuristic function which in effect reinstates représentation. Kant makes this move precisely because the lack of spatiotemporal déterminations of the noumenal means for Kant that the noumenal lacks déterminations altogether. (shrink)

This critical response to Dominic Smith’s ‘Taking Exception: Philosophy of Technology as a Multidimensional Problem Space’ begins by outlining the key contributions of his essay, namely his insightful approach to the transcendental, on the one hand, and his introduction of the topological problem space as an image for thought, on the other. The response then suggests ways of furthering this approach by addressing potential reservations about determinism. The response concludes by suggesting a way out of these questions of determinism (...) by thinking the transcendental in concert with the agonistic. (shrink)

Grammatology of Images radically alters how we approach images. Instead of asking for the history, power, or essence of images, Sigrid Weigel addresses imaging as such. The book considers how something a-visible gets transformed into an image. Weigel scrutinizes the moment of mis-en-apparition, of making an appearance, and the process of concealment that accompanies any imaging. Weigel reinterprets Derrida's and Freud's concept of the trace as that which must be thought before something exists. In doing so, she illuminates (...) the threshold between traces and iconic images, between something immaterial and its pictorial representation. Chapters alternate between general accounts of the line, the index, the effigy, and the cult-image, and case studies from the history of science, art, politics, and religion, involving faces as indicators of emotion, caricatures as effigies of defamation, and angels as embodiments of transcendental ideas. Weigel's approach to images illuminates fascinating, unexpected correspondences between premodern and contemporary image-practices, between the history of religion and the modern sciences, and between things that are and are not understood as art. (shrink)

The activity of thinking has been traditionally set against the risk of error and its concomitants: inconsistency, incoherence, the false. Philosophy pursues and protects the truth; such is its mission statement. But this is, for Deleuze, an inadequate conception that gives us the image of a thought so weak, so thin and impoverished, that everything happens as if from the outside. What, asks Deleuze, of stupidity? How are we to account for it transcendentally? In his attempt at an answer, Deleuze (...) draws directly from Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, though without clearly articulating either the form of Schelling’s concepts or presenting how exactly they are supposed to account transcendentally for stupidity. Further still, Deleuze seems implicitly to recapitulate—to the serious detriment of his conceptual schematic, as Derrida famously claimed in The Beast & the Sovereign—Schelling’s belief in a freedom that is solely human, and therefore the refusal of a capacity for stupidity to the animal as well. The present article intervenes here, reconstructing the Schellingian concepts necessary to an understanding of Deleuze’s theory, and sketching in conclusion the possibility of a revised account that need not stratify itself so straightforwardly along the human/animal divide. (shrink)

In this reply I further defend my claim that the transcendental should always remain a primary concern for philosophy of technology as a philosophical enterprise, contra the empirical turn’s rejection of it. Yet, instead of emphasizing the non-technological conditions of technology, as ‘classic’ thinkers of technology such as Heidegger did, it should recognize technology itself as the transcendental operator par excellence. Starting from Heidegger’s ontological understanding of transcendence I show that while technical artifacts may indeed always conform to (...) a certain horizon of understanding, they also constitute this horizon in specific ways. Following Stiegler I show that concrete technologies (technology with a small ‘t’) are not just empirical effects of an overarching movement of transcendence (Technology with a capital ‘T’) but are originally constitutive of it. In response to Romele’s critique that the social, language, images, imaginaries, symbols, etc. are also transcendentals, I argue that all these phenomena are always already conditioned by technical milieus. As for Besmer’s contention that I offer a reductive interpretation of postphenomenology’s notion of multistability, I argue that there are decisive systemic and organological limits to multistability offered by technical artefacts and that all variation in use and implementation is always constrained by inherent technical tendencies and processes of concretization. Agreeing with Besmer that the transcendental and the empirical should be understood not oppositional but compositional I argue that technology may be that which constantly ‘mediates’ between the two. (shrink)

Neo-Kantianism is traditionally seen as a philosophy that was formed to develop and actualise Kant’s philosophy and Kantian transcendental methodology. However, Kant was the determining, but by no means the only, influence on the emergence of the neo-Kantian tradition. Neo-Kantianism was strongly influenced by the entire German post-Kantian philosophy, especially by Fichte and Hegel, although neo-Kantians have repeatedly tried to dissociate themselves from the great idealists. In many ways neo-Kantianism was cultivated by the Fichtean reading of Kant, which enabled (...) succeeding philosophers, notably H.-G. Gadamer, to consider neo-Kantianism to be “hidden neo-Fichteanism”. The main goal of this study is a historical-philosophical reconstruction of the image of Fichtean philosophy formed within German neo-Kantianism. To achieve this aim I have analysed the key projects of the German neo-Kantians in which the influence of Fichte’s philosophy, in particular his interpretation of the Kantian doctrine of the primacy of practical reason, is most clearly manifested. I show that the theory of values of the Southwest neo-Kantians and the ethics of pure will of the Marburg neo-Kantians are associated with the Fichtean revision of Kant’s doctrine of the primacy of practical reason. The following, in my opinion, are the main features of the image of Fichte’s philosophy: it is close to neo-Kantians precisely because it strives to combine theoretical and practical reason; it is in ethics that Fiche’s ideas are most manifest in neo-Kantianism; neo-Kantian original theories contain the ideas of self-consciousness “in the spirit” of Fichte. The conclusion is drawn that the growth of the metaphysical component in neo-Kantian doctrines may be connected with the influence of Fichte’s philosophy. (shrink)

SummaryIn this paper it is argued that, contrary to some widely accepted views, Kant's doctrine of Transcendental Schematism is a coherent one. The interpretation of this doctrine is given as follows: for Kant, the imagination functions empirically and transcendentally . Empirically, an image is created out of a collection of impressions which we happen to have at any particular time: this is the «certain content« of inner sense. In order that this be an object of cognition, however, it must (...) be brought to order in accordance with certain necessary and unchanging forms and this task is performed by the transcendental imagination. Here, the procedure of imagination is schematic: by means of it the categories become schematized, i.e. the transcendental imagination in its schematic procedure, produces a schema for each category such that is becomes materially operative. But generally speaking the schemata, as transcendental time determinations, are the conditions under which the categories are brought to bear on inner sense. Time is «determined» in a number of ways so that sensible intuition is received under various temporal modes in accordance with the categories. Schemata therefore, in guaranteeing the employment of the categories, restrict their application to inner sense. (shrink)

The essay is a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire distributed to a sample of 775 worshipers immediately after the Sunday Liturgy in a random number of churches in Athens, Thessaloniki and Mytilini. The questions addressed to them try to grasp feelings and thoughts felt during liturgical experience and effervescence as such, as well as reflections concerning the religious and the political self. The findings suggest that the liturgy has profound effects on those who attend service often, but it is not (...) irrelevant even to those who attend service less often. Those who attend service often and feel strongly the liturgical rite tend to identify religion, both doctrinal and vernacular, with politics, consider themselves to be rightist and hold political beliefs revolving around antinomian egotism and authoritative paternalism. Those who attend service rarely and do not experience any effervescence, as the mirror-image of the former, tend to identify themselves as leftist and hold political beliefs revolving around revolution, defiance and the like, and reject democratic institutions. The study underlines the very close connection of church attendance to ‘magical’ aspects of the Orthodox religion, as well as the very strong presence of icons in the life of the believers irrespective of their frequency of liturgical attendance. (shrink)

This article will first give an account of Mou's judgment of the transcendental character of Huayan School by tracing his understanding of the doctrinal relationship between the “One Mind Opens Two Doors” in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna and the “Simply True Mind” of Huayan School. Second, Mou's interpretation of “the co-dependent origination of tathagatgarbha” of Huayan School will be analyzed so as to identify the sense in which Mou considers that the teaching of Huayan School is (...) perfect. This will be explicated in detail in the second and third parts. However, Mou's interpretation of the “Perfect” Doctrine of Huayan School draws our attention to the fact that the “distinctive” ontological explanation of all dharmas in Huayan teaching is different from that of the Tiantai School. Mou argues that the Huayan School is not the final and authentic “Perfect” Doctrine of Buddhism. In the fourth part we will discuss this in detail. Finally, does Mou's transcendental interpretation do justice to the Huayan School? Wing-cheuk Chan (Chen Rongzhuo inline image) criticizes such a reading as a mere step toward a proper understanding of the dialectical essence of Huayan School. We will introduce this in the last part of this article. (shrink)

Discusses consciousness as an island of images, which informs us incompletely and indirectly about the mental and the physical worlds. A dualistic worldview separates the perceptual world from the transcendental physical world. Both universes of discourse are empowered by dynamic forces and are related to each other by reflection, the one reflecting the other. The physical world is understood and operated through the intermediary of perception. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

O'Shea concludes that Sellars's attempts to preserve the core truths in Kant's theory of experience and to integrate them with an overall scientific naturalist outlook can and should survive the rejection of several central components of Sellars's proposed adaptation of Kant's transcendental idealism: ABSTRACT: "Sellars’ career-long engagement with Kant’s philosophy involved both readings of Kant and appropriations of Kant that are nuanced, original, and related in complex ways to Sellars’ own philosophical views. In some ways similar to Strawson’s classic (...) reading, Sellars defended Kant’s theory of experience and his analysis of human knowledge as essentially correct. This includes various views on the nature of conceptual cognition, the thinking self, practical reason, perceptual experience, and the lawfulness of nature. On the other hand, and again like Strawson, Sellars regarded Kant’s transcendental idealism as involving a strong ontological commitment to unknowable but thinkable (and non-spatiotemporal) ‘things in themselves’. However, whereas Strawson regarded such a position as deeply incoherent, Sellars argues that Kant’s theological conception of things in themselves can coherently be replaced with a scientific realist conception of things in themselves as theoretically postulated imperceptible processes, which play a structurally similar role for Sellars in grounding the Kantian-phenomenal ‘appearances’ in the ‘manifest image’ of the world. Sellars’ highly complex but sophisticated reading of Kant on sensibility and intuition, when combined with Sellars’ own idiosyncratic views on sensory qualia, render it even more difficult to come to terms with Sellars’ engagements with Kant’s idealism. This chapter attempts to provide a concise presentation and evaluation of certain central themes in Sellars’ complex philosophical dialogue with Kant.". (shrink)

This article investigates the origins of the experiences involved in the diagnostics (detection and normative evaluation) of biological entities in image-based medical praxis. Our specific research aim presupposes a vast discussion regarding the origins of knowledge in general, but is narrowed down to the alternatives of anthropomorphism and biomorphism. Accordingly, in the subsequent chapters we will make an attempt to investigate and illustrate what holds the diagnostic experiential situation together—biological regularities, manifestation via movement, conscious synthesis, causal categories, or something else. (...) We argue that as long as knowledge originates out of practices, a promising way forward is to oscillate between the prominent although controversial ideas of the history of philosophy and observations of concrete human practices, such as, in our chosen example, image-based medical diagnostics of biological pathologies. Although a number of thinkers are involved in the discussion, Aristotle and Husserl are most important here as the representatives of historical paradigms on the matter. The body in this research was not taken solely as the physical entity (Körper) but rather as a transcendental, constitutive structure where diagnostic and biological processes synchronize in teleological movement (Leib). However, philosophical speculations are illustrated by actual radiograms, the interpretation of which brings us back to the aforementioned question of primacy regarding cognition. (shrink)

When formulating the concept of the impulse-image, Deleuze never tires of asserting that these images are saturated with death and obsessed by degradation. They stand at a curious intersection in the taxonomy of images, a constitutively in-between space: they are formally inserted between affection-image and action-image in The Movement-Image, but produce a direct passage to the time-image. However, they do not reach the time-image due to obsession by the negative effects of time. This article introduces the concept of the impulse-image (...) in Deleuze's work on the impulse and death instinct, in his fundamental texts of the 1960s and 1970s, including his collaboration with Félix Guattari. The death instinct in the late 1960s was a transcendental principle that acquired the form of the groundless or crack-up essential for the production of difference. It is at this time that Deleuze publishes Zola and the Crack-up, an embryonic essay for what would later become the impulse-image. In the 1970s, Deleuze, along with Guattari, fought the need to include a groundless force in the mould of the death instinct. Speaking of cinema in the 1980s, which is when he returns to the impulse theme, one finds characteristics of both preceding periods, especially the structure conceived in the 1960s, associated with the criticism of the 1970s. However, Deleuze now stands apart, recognising a naturalistic image and admiring a practice of symptomatology, but pointing out that his own understanding of the world does not lie in it. With the impulse-images, Deleuze also plays a relevant role in studies of film naturalism, shaping a powerful concept for studies of contemporary naturalistic symptomatologies that emerge in situations of misery of civilisation. (shrink)

An important influence on Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology is the work of Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Marion is particularly interested in Balthasar’s ‘phenomenological’ approach to the content of Christian revelation, centered on the metaphor of the work of art. Balthasar suggests in his Theo-Logic that the early Marion ‘concede[s] too much to the critique of Heidegger,’ moving too far away from the ‘transcendental’ metaphysics of Aquinas and the classical tradition. Yet Balthasar’s criticism is premature. Rather, Marion’s work, (...) particularly his emphasis on the ‘saturated phenomenon,’ paves the way for a postmetaphysical theological aesthetics that might renew Balthasar’s project in a cultural situation ‘after’ the death of God, while simultaneously opening a space for Christian revelation apart from a certain hegemonic tradition of onto-theology. (shrink)

'A Differential Play of Forces' is a study of transcendental empiricism in musical contexts. It presents a reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical apparatus and explores how music can be thought of as functioning in the operation Deleuze terms transcendental empiricism. Central to transcendental empiricism is the idea of an encounter with intensive difference and the consequent experience of intensive and virtual forces. The thesis sets out to explore this idea in three interwoven steps. First, (...) it develops transcendental empiricism as a philosophical framework, expounding central notions related to time and aesthetic experience. In the context of this philosophical apparatus, music is then discussed as an encounter with intensity and what this may entail for our understanding of musical experience and its potential. The third part of the thesis explores the idea of experiencing intensive forces through music in the thinking and poietic of three composers of the twentieth century: Arnold Schönberg, Olivier Messiaen and Giacinto Scelsi. The thesis develops three ‘images of thought’ corresponding, respectively, to the composers’ expressed theoretical ideas, identifying central concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. A mutual illumination of ideas about music and transcendental empiricism is thus presented, pointing towards a possible convergence between theory and practice, thinking and aesthetic experience as a differential play of intensive forces. (shrink)

Examines the work of transcendental filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Terence Malick using a metaphysical framework.

ABSTRACT In the work of Ernesto Laclau, populism is treated as a hegemonic challenge. Hegemony describes the usurpation of the image of society as a totality by a particular and underdetermined social imaginary. Seen through the lens of what Johann P. Arnason terms “post-transcendental phenomenology”, this concerns the way in which a society sees and experiences both itself and the world it inhabits. This article suggests that hegemonic social imaginaries are built into a society’s public spaces, and are in (...) turn experienced by citizens moving through these spaces, meaning that the built environment is central to the development of populist imaginaries. The article discusses how the neoliberal city exemplifies the way social imaginaries are inscribed into the physical landscape by highlighting three moments in the city; the institution of a certain imaginary as dominant; its sedimentation within the urban fabric over time; and finally, the re-activation of the original moment of institution, which opens up the possibility for new beginnings to overwrite the imaginaries encoded in the city. These three moments describe how physical, built spaces make concrete the power relations and horizons of possibility of the hegemonic imaginary—making possible and encouraging certain ways of being while discouraging (and hiding) others. This hegemonic logic of occupying a public space in the name of a particular subset of the population is a not only parallel to the form of populist politics, but populist sentiment is—at least in part—provoked by the experiences of inhabiting these spaces. (shrink)

What does it mean for philosophy to take seriously the chaos that haunts and threatens to undermine the fleetingly static formations that populate our epistemological landscapes? What does it mean to learn, think and know on a plane detached from transcendent truths, from recognition and representation, from the inverted image of falsity? We risk badly mangling our answers to these questions so long as we take for granted the orthodoxal image of thought and its conservative postulates. But critique is not (...) enough, we need reconception, creativity; we need thought. This paper locates in Deleuze's ‘Image of Thought’ precisely these resources in the form of a philosophy of learning, taking as its guiding light the claim that learning ought no longer to name a merely transitory movement between a lack of knowledge and its fulfilment in the apprehension of truth, but the domain from which the transcendental conditions of thought itself are to be drawn. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that the idea of a universal history is systematically legitimized in Kant’s transcendental system of philosophy by way of the concept of a need [Bedürfnis] for pure practical reason. In this sense, the idea of a universal history is a fundamental part of the moral image of the world that emerges from Kant’s whole philosophy, and it is crucial for understanding both the possibility of the system of pure reason, as well the full (...) development of Kant’s moral philosophy, especially for political philosophy. RESUMO Nesse artigo eu argumento que a ideia de uma história universal é sistematicamente legitimada no sistema da filosofia transcendental de Kant por meio do conceito de precisão [Bedürfnis] da razão pura prática. Nesse sentido, a ideia de uma história universal é uma parte fundamental da imagem moral do mundo que emerge da totalidade da filosofia de Kant e é crucial para o entendimento tanto da possibilidade de um sistema da razão pura, quanto para um desenvolvimento completo da filosofia moral, particularmente para a filosofia política. (shrink)

The study will focus on the relationship between the representations of God’s image in the Bible and on film. How is transcendence presented and what is Christology like in film production in the time that is either negligent of the religious and the transcendental or tries to reduce it to a matter of human intellect? How does Christ differ in the films by Pasolini, Zeffirelli and Gibson? Can Jesus Christ the Saviour be replaced by a popular action movie hero? (...) The paper will deal with religion from another perspective, namely, it will try to see whether religion has truly disappeared from the public life as it is sometimes assumed. How were the ideas about God used or misused by some politicians and leaders, such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and George W. Bush? What to do if the media enable us to perceive how religion is made political and how politics is made religionist? (shrink)

Resumen En la década del noventa del último siglo apareció en Alemania el así denominado “giro icónico” (ikonische Wende). Keith Moxey (2009) interpretará este viraje como un nuevo paradigma que, harto del giro lingüístico y la tesis del acceso mediado a la realidad, propone a la imagen como una instancia de acceso inmediato al mundo, eliminando la distinción entre sujeto y objeto. Sin embargo, Boehm sostiene que el giro icónico debe entenderse a partir del giro de todos los giros, el (...) giro trascendental kantiano. La hipótesis que defenderé aquí es que el giro icónico debe entenderse como un pensamiento postkantiano. Abstract The 1990s saw the emergence in Germany of the so-called “iconic turn” (ikonische Wende). Keith Moxey (2009) interprets this turn as a new paradigm that, fed up with the linguistic turn and the thesis of mediated access to reality, proposes the image as an instance of immediate access to the world, eliminating the distinction between subject and object. However, Boehm argues that the iconic turn must be understood on the basis of the turn of all turns, the Kantian transcendental turn. The hypothesis I will defend here is that the iconic turn is to be understood as a post-Kantian thought. (shrink)

This paper examines the ambiguity that attends Paul Klee's characterization of the daemonic element in his work. It does so by analyzing the history of this concept in classical German thought from Wincklemann to Goethe. I note transformations of the concept in writings contemporaneous to Klee in literary theory and theology. These include Lukács, for whom the modern novel articulates the daemonic as an ironic world devoid of transcendental immanence, homeland, or essence; and Otto, for whom the world remained (...) in some sense still not devoid of the numinous. I further consider these issues in brief discussion of Klee's account of the polyphonic construction of the artwork. Finally, attention is given to proximate philosophical treatments of the topic in writers influenced by Klee's work. (shrink)

This paper presents an exposition and critical appraisal of the concepts of earth that appear almost simultaneously in essays by Husserl and Heidegger in the mid 1930s. I argue that while both of these earths are noteworthy insofar as they suggest, each in its own way, the isolation of a non-worldly dimension of disclosure, nevertheless, neither Husserl nor Heidegger succeeds in fully emancipating the earth from the logic of the world. In Husserl's case, the earth is implicated in a fourfold (...) schema involving: the absolute fixity of the world; the horizon of all being, sense, and judgment; the transcendental unity of the world; and the lifeworld as the basis of a common humanity. In Heidegger's case, the earth is construed as the “stream of boundary-setting” that, as the primordial adversary of the world, accomplishes the rising-up of beings into the open of being. The effect of this failure on the part of both philosophers to achieve an adequate ontological segregation of world and earth is to devalue the naïve image of the earth apprehended in the natural attitude even while the earth-dimension is divested of any discernable earthly character, leaving the earth itself barren and abstract, a pure category of thought rather than the horizon of actually lived life. (shrink)

A substância deste artigo consiste na leitura de alguns autores que tratam do mito e do imaginário sem acatar as propostas que se fundamentam no racionalismo cartesiano e no influente positivismo do século XIX. Tais autores, como Eliade e Durand, desenvolveram no século XX um estudo do mito e da imagem com a perspectiva de uma orientação epistemológica que surgira na intenção de se constituir como uma nova abordagem científica, levando o elemento imaginativo e mítico ao encontro da realidade imediata. (...) O argumento principal dessa nova abordagem, que aqui tentamos minimamente apresentar, em torno do mito e da imagem, opõe-se ao dualismo filosófico que coloca em extremos o materialismo e o subjetivismo; dessa forma, tais autores chegaram a uma conclusão que ratifica a retórica da imagem simbólica e reafirma a força diretiva dos mitos, deixando o ditame imaginário de ser uma simples abstração ou engano, uma vez que segue regras mais profundas e é significativamente responsável pela dinâmica social ou pelas produções individuais representativas da cultura, no tempo e no espaço. Palavras-chave: Mito; Imaginário; Nova epistemologia; Século XX. ABSTRACT This article resentats some authors who treat myth and the imaginary without taking into consideration the proposals based on Cartesian rationalism and on 19th-century influent positivism. Those authors, such as Eliade and Durand, developed a study of myth and image in the perspective of an epistemological orientation aimed at elaborating a new scientific approach, promoting the encounter between imaginative and mythical elements and immediate reality. The main point in this approach in terms of myth and image, which we attempt to briefly present here, is opposed to the philosophical dualism that sets materialism and subjectivism distantly apart. Thus, those authors eventually reached a conclusion that ratifies the rhetoric of symbolic image and reaffirms the guiding strength of myths, releasing the imaginary from the restriction of being just an abstraction or a mistake, once it follows much deeper rules and is significantly responsible for social dynamics or for the individual’s culturally representative prductions in time and space. Key words: Myth; The imaginary; New epistemology; 20th century. (shrink)

Throughout much of his career, Deleuze repeats a problem he attributes to Spinoza: “we do not even know what a body can do.” The problem is closely associated with Deleuze’s parallelist reading of Spinoza and what he calls ethology. In this article, I argue that Deleuze takes ethology to be a new model for philosophy which he intends to replace ontology. I ground my claim in Deleuze’s suggestion that Spinoza offers philosophers the means of thinking “with AND rather than thinking (...) for IS...” The argument is developed through Deleuze’s monographs and collaborations on Spinoza and alongside his meta-philosophical critique of the Image of Thought. -/- A travers la plupart de sa carrière, Deleuze répète un problème qu'il attribue à Spinoza : « on ne sait même pas ce que peut le corps. » Le problème est étroitement lié à paralléliste lecture de Spinoza par Deleuze et à ce qu’il appelle éthologie. Dans cet article, je soutiens que Deleuze prend éthologie être un nouveau modèle de philosophie qu’il entend remplacer l’ontologie. Je centre mon contention sur la suggestion de Deleuze que Spinoza propose des philosophes les moyens de « penser avec ET au lieu de penser pour EST… » L’argument est développé à travers les monographies et collaborations de Deleuze sur Spinoza et aux côtés de sa critique méta-philosophique de l’Image de la Pensée. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault's first published piece, “Introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence“ in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn't received much critical attention, is of particular interest because, whereas OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of “Man” as an empirico‐transcendental double in particular, IB views “existential anthropology” as a unique opportunity to establish a (...) new and fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object, “Menschsein”, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault, existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault's later view. (shrink)

Sartre analyse l’imagination dans le contexte d’une radicalisation de l’intentionnalité husserlienne. Alors que Husserl opérait avec un concept de constitution qui explicitait le statut de la transcendance à partir de l’immanence, la phénoménologie sartrienne semblerait faire l’économie de la notion de constitution. Mais ce point est plus délicat qu’il n’y paraît. Sartre rencontre plusieurs types de transcendances problématiques : celle de l’Ego (en 1936), de certaines images (1940), et celle du « soi » (1943). Cette étude vise à montrer comment (...) ces transcendances amènent à un remaniement implicite : il existerait un concept de constitution opératoire chez Sartre qui se passe de toute référence à l’immanence. Au moyen de l’imagination, nous proposons de clarifier le lexique sartrien : unité, identité et individualité sont des termes impliqués dans une analyse de la constitution. On montrera en quoi la « constitution sartrienne » met en évidence une dimension transcendantale de la phénoménologie de Sartre qui permet d’apprécier à nouveaux frais l’enjeu et les limites de ses prétentions ontologiques. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and fruitful (...) relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)

Gaetano Rametta,Roberto Formisano | : Le présent essai tente de dégager les structures fondamentales de la philosophie de la religion de Fichte après 1800. Une attention particulière est accordée à l’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse et à la Doctrine de l’État. La connaissance théorique, la version johannique de la chrétienté, ainsi qu’une nouvelle conception de l’État sont interprétées ici comme autant de visages différents d’un système philosophique strictement interconnecté. Dans sa période berlinoise, Fichte n’a plus conçu le sujet comme le (...) premier principe de sa Doctrine de la science, mais plutôt comme l’« image » transcendantale au travers de laquelle s’écoule le flot d’une vie indivisée et spirituellement transfigurée. | : The present essay tries to show the fundamental structures of Fichte’s philosophy of religion after 1800. Particular attention is focused on the Introduction to a Blessed Life and the Theory of the State. Theoretical knowledge, John’s version of Christianity, and a new concept of the State are here interpreted as different faces of a strictly interconnected philosophical system. In his Berliner period, Fichte did not conceive the Subject any more as the “first principle” of his Doctrine of science, but rather as the transcendental “image” through which flows the stream of an undivided and spiritually transfigured Life. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss two recent readings of Kant’s schematism that are productive for my take on performativity. The first stems from Sibylle Krämer’s Figuration, Anschauung, Erkenntnis from 2016, in which Krämer examines Kant’s writings on schematism, while taking a special look at the notion of figurality. Krämer is keen on describing that intuitions and concepts are dissimilar, and the schema is required to make them similar. The transcendental schema or schematization, Krämer underlines, is a method or act. (...) It is not an image but figurality, and in Kant it is temporal figurality, which acts as a hinge providing homogeneity between concepts and intuitions and thereby making intuitions into something that the categories can latch onto. The second reading of the schematism I discuss is outlined in Maja Soboleva’s Das Denken des Denkens from 2016. Soboleva’s reading is monist and realist, claiming that the understanding does not judge in its primary activity but “shows” in its ability to make rules; it mimics an object for the human understanding. Intuition is crucial for thinking, since we are presented with a system of images, a sphere of semantically undetermined objects that we then judge in a concept. Finally, I conclude with my own reading of Kant’s schematism in outlining two kinds of imagination – one that imagines (Einbildungskraft) the connection in the intelligible realm and the other that emagines (Ausbildungskraft) the connection in the sensible realm. This is how in experience we take in with the senses and subsume under the concepts after concepts have been ordered or prefigured through this double schematization, which effects that intuitions and concepts are the same. (shrink)

The paper traces some of Gilles Deleuze’s reflections on the subject of thought and philosophical activity, focusing especially on the third chapter of one of his main works, Difference and repetition (1968). Following the general structure of the chapter, the paper first analyses the concept of “Image of thought”, which describes the tendency of thought itself to represent its own functioning, and the risks that the Image imply, since it chains the activity of thought to old sedentary habits and its (...) ordinary functioning. Secondly, the paper examines Deleuze’s original proposal of a “thought without image”, a thought whose conditions are not predetermined and that therefore must recreate itself each time. Deleuze arrives at this conception through questioning the classical notion of truth and revisiting Kant’s theory of transcendental knowledge. (shrink)

The "Transcendental Deduction" in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is one of the great mirrors of philosophy. By that I mean that there seems to be no steady and unchanging image to be found in that text; each philosopher who approaches it finds in it a reflection of his or her own deepest concerns. Jay Rosenberg's new book, "Accessing Kant: A Relaxed Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason" is no exception. Rosenberg lays out a different approach to the (...) central argument of the first Critique from those found in other commentaries. I want to bring out some of the central features of that approach, some of its history, and, finally, raise some questions about how closely his approach might come to Kant's own intentions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I contend that Sellars defends a uniquely Kantian naturalist outlook both in general and more particularly in relation to the nature and status of what he calls ‘epistemic principles’; and I attempt to show that this remains a plausible and distinctive position even when detached from Sellars’s quasi-Kantian transcendental idealist contention that the perceptible objects of the manifest image strictly speaking do not exist, i.e., as conceived within that common sense framework. I first explain the complex Kant-inspired sense (...) in which Sellars did not take the latter thesis concerning the objects of the manifest image to apply, at least in certain fundamental respects, to persons. In this primary Kantian sense, I suggest, persons as thinkers and agents exist univocally across both the manifest and scientific images, and this in principle would enable an integration of persons within a multi-leveled naturalistic ontology, one that is independent of Sellars’s quasi-Kantian transcendental idealist thesis. Finally, I examine in some detail how this defensible blend of Kantian and naturalist themes turns out to be what is fundamental in Sellars’s complex and controversial views on the nature and status of epistemic principles. (shrink)

The films and live cinema of Vincent Moon are considered in this chapter as ‘psychedelic’: a form of filmmaking and film performances that can open the doors of perception to invisible realms of percepts, affects and durations that are beyond or below ordinary human perception. According to Paul Schrader, films can evoke such spiritual dimensions, in particular through what he called the transcendental style of film, and what Gilles Deleuze termed the time-image. As an audio-visual ethnographer of world religions (...) who is distinctly influenced by shamanic and animistic traditions, Moon brings the transcendental style back to its plane of immanence. His live cinema performances have a ritualistic and ecstatic aspect that recalls the esoteric history of haunted media. Moon's enthralling film performances induce altered states of mind, tap into spiritual realities and immerse the audience in magic. (shrink)

Dans la présente étude, je cherche à dégager ce qui me semble être l’idée fondamentale du transcendantalisme fichtéen : l’interprétation du transcendantal dans la figure du Soll caractérisée par un « redoublement possibilisant ». Cette figure est analysée à travers les deux schémas fondamentaux de la Doctrine de la Science de 1804 et la doctrine fichtéenne de l’image. Par cette figure, Fichte entend légitimer la connaissance transcendantale et accomplir la tâche suprême de la philosophie .The study aims to bring out (...) what seems the fundamental idea of the Fichtean transcendentalism : the interpretation of the transcendental under the figure of the Soll characterized by a ‘possibilizing reduplication’. This figure is analyzed through the two basic patterns of the Science of Knowledge of 1804 and the Fichtean doctrine of the image. With this figure, Fichte wants to legitimate the transcendental knowledge and to achieve the ultimate task of philosophy. (shrink)

I take up two questions raised by Luz Christopher Seiberth's meticulous reconstruction of Wilfrid Sellars's theory of intentionality. The first is whether we should regard Sellars as a transcendental phenomenalist in the most interesting sense of the term: as denying that even an ideally adequate conceptual structure would enable us to represent worldly objects as they are in themselves. I agree with Seiberth that the answer is probably yes, but I suggest that this is due not to Sellars's rejection (...) of the Myth of the Given or appeal to image-models (as Seiberth maintains), but to his view of modality as categorial but as absent from the world an sich. The second is whether, as Richard Rorty complained, Sellars's appeal to picturing lands his theory of intentionality in intractable skepticism. Pace Seiberth, I argue that the transcendental role of picturing does not mitigate this problem, and I suggest that Sellars's most fruitful resource for doing so is not his semantic externalism, but his purely pragmatic response to skepticism. (shrink)

This article is a commentary of the section 5.552 of the Tractatus, about the “experience” that is necessary to understand logic, from the point of view of the so called continental philosophy. In this commentary are tackled some questions: what is exactly this “experience”?; what does mean that logic is a speculative image of the world?; how are the relations between logic and metaphysics (the two components of philosophy, according to Wittgenstein)? All these questions lead us to the conception of (...) philosophy present in the Tractatus and to the role, so important, the two following problems play in this book: the reflection on the philosophical method and the transcendental character of being. Just for this it is necessary to take it seriously the opposition between speaking of something and speaking about something, employed in the final section and so clear in German as habitually mistranslated. (shrink)

The reference of the postmodern task of thinking is Auschwitz, the abyss and discontinuity separating us from the world of our ancestors. As inhabitants of Planet Auschwitz our point of reference lacks all transcendental warrants; it is not a non-referable reference which constitutes the abyss we must enter, endure, and in which our intellectual and cultural tradition must be transformed. The private/public transformations which constitute the texts of this book attempt to depart from the dystopic individuality and public life (...) resulting from business-as-usual after Auschwitz. The three parts of the book are progressive reworkings of traditional metaphysics as adapted and modified by a modernism that refuses to grapple with its complicity. It is precisely that complicity which postmodern thinking takes up in its attempt to signify otherwise than the easy modernist translations and images of tradition. Thus it is a series of uneasy images imaging otherwise but never apart from modernity that take us away from complicity toward a transformed tradition. The uneasy images of this book are photogrammic combinations of photographs and texts, mutual supplements, pulling tradition through the Event against the persistent and murderous forces of contemporary idolatry and repression. (shrink)

From its beginnings the phenomenological conception of intentionality has been marked by a fecund tension between the simile of directedness to an object and the image of a network of time-extended references, which are about the object and in their mutual remissions determine the significance the object acquires in our thought and practices. With the predominance of this second aspect we drift apart from a purely object-theoretical stance, in order to connect the presence of objects of all kinds to a (...) history of meaning-giving acts. Historical subjectivity, made by acts in which thought refers to what was already thought, and the renewed display of the world of objects in the present are thus seen as constituting the weave of conscious life. Nonetheless, when it comes to the study of inner time-consciousness which Husserl repeatedly undertakes, the essential coordination of perceptive acts and what happens in the world remains out of sight; without the latter the notion of time, and particularly that of now, are emptied of sense. This inner turn is motivated by the idea of a transcendental reduction. However, the study of subjective meaning of objectivations does not necessarily lead to conferring an ontological priority to interiority. Husserl himself wavers between an ontological and a sense-elucidating understanding of what he calls phenomenological reduction. The illegitimate priority given to inner time-consciousness is paralleled by Heidegger’s considering of intra-mundane time as improper and derivative. Both are pray to the lure of the Augustinian Noli foras ire: Don’t go out. (shrink)

Resumen Desde sus comienzos la concepción fenomenológica de la intencionalidad se ha caracterizado por una tensión fecunda entre el símil de una dirección a un objeto, y la imagen de una red de referencias, extendida en el tiempo, que versan acerca del objeto y en sus remisiones mutuas determinan los significados que el objeto adquiere en nuestro pensamiento y en nuestras prácticas. Con la predominancia de este segundo aspecto nos alejamos de una teoría de los objetos para conectar la presencia (...) temática de objetos de toda clase con la historia de los actos que les confiere significado. La (inter) subjetividad histórica constituida por actos en los cuales el pensamiento se refiere a lo ya pensado, y el renovado despliegue de los objetos del mundo en el presente forman juntos la trama de la vida consciente. No obstante , en el estudio de la conciencia interior del tiempo que Husserl emprende repetidas veces se pierde de vista la coordinación de los actos perceptivos con lo que ocurre en el mundo, sin la cual la noción del tiempo, y en particular la de un ahora, se vacía de su sentido. Este vuelco hacia el interior es motivado por la idea de una reducción transcendental. Sin embargo, el temario iniciado con el estudio del sentido subjetivo de las objetivaciones no lleva necesariamente a conferir una prioridad ontológica a la interioridad. Husserl mismo oscila entre una comprensión ontológica de la reducción transcendental y una en términos de una elucidación de sentidos. La ilegítima prioridad dada a la conciencia interior del tiempo encuentra su paralela en la consideración por parte de Heidegger del tiempo intramundano como impropio y derivado. Ambos son en ello víctimas del espejismo agustiniano del Noli foras ire: No salgas. Palabras clave: intencionalidad longitudinal y transversal; historicidad del pensamiento; referencia exterior de la conciencia; vía cartesiana de la reducción;vía psicológico-transcendental. Internal and External References of Consciousness in Phenomenological DiscussionFrom its beginnings the phenomenological conception of intentionality has been marked by a fecund tension between the simile of directedness to an object and the image of a network of time-extended references, which are about the object and in their mutual remissions determine the significance the object acquires in our thought and practices. With the predominance of this second aspect we drift apart from a purely object-theoretical stance, in order to connect the presence of objects of all kinds to a history of meaning-giving acts. Historical (inter)subjectivity, made by acts in which thought refers to what was already thought, and the renewed display of the world of objects in the present are thus seen as constituting the weave of conscious life. Nonetheless, when it comes to the study of inner time-consciousness which Husserl repeatedly undertakes, the essential coordination of perceptive acts and what happens in the world remains out of sight; without the latter the notion of time, and particularly that of now, are emptied of sense. This inner turn is motivated by the idea of a transcendental reduction. However, the study of subjective meaning of objectivations does not necessarily lead to conferring an ontological priority to interiority. Husserl himself wavers between an ontological and a sense-elucidating understanding of what he calls phenomenological reduction. The illegitimate priority given to inner time-consciousness is paralleled by Heidegger’s considering of intra-mundane time as improper and derivative. Both are pray to the lure of the Augustinian Noli foras ire: Don’t go out Keywords: Longitudinal And Transversal Intentionality; Historicity Of Thought;External Reference Of Consciousness; Cartesian And Psychological-Transcendental Route of Reduction. (shrink)