This book presents an original exploration of philosophical questions pertaining to the ways we grasp the Absolute by bringing together the Buddhist notion of interpermeation of all phenomena into contemporary strains of thought in continental philosophy. This text introduces an ontological concept, granularity, deploying it to probe questions concerning the intersection of ontology, ethics, and education. A wide range of issues in metaphysics are covered—including being, nothingness, unity, plurality, truth, change, transformation, subjectivity, contradiction, coherence, potentiality—from the perspective of thinkers such (...) as Hegel, Heidegger, Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Žižek, and Harman. The text deploys granularity in arguing for an ethics of unconditional hospitality within education. This volume is intended for students and researchers working in the areas of philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, and continental philosophy. (shrink)

The following article looks briefly into the development of the spiritual practice of dance in Islamic mysticism prior to the ritualization of the dervishes’ ‘dance’ with the early Mawlawiyya. Focusing on changes in the notion of ‘dance’ or physical motion as a consequence of contemplation and ecstasy, it also examines its quality as a means to obtain this state. This is preceded by some remarks on the terms ‘dance’ in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and a brief discussion of the difficulties (...) of research dealing with medieval dance, primarily in the Turkish context. (shrink)

Surah al-Mâûn is one of those disputed surahs of the Holy Qur’an. To begin with, it’s a matter of controversy whether the Surah belongs to the Mecca or Medina periods of Prophecy. Beside those who believe that the Surah, which consists of seven verses, was revealed at Medina in total, while there are also some mufassirs who think that three verses of the Surah were revealed at Mecca, and the remaining at Medina. It’s obvious that the origin of the dispute (...) is the differentiation among various riwayats coming from the Sahabah. Furthermore, various arguments have been made about the meaning of such words as “sahûn” and “mâûn” included in the Surah; and the identity of the people mentioned in the Surah is a severely disputed question. This study prefers trying to understand the dispute by focusing on its historical background than solving it. By that, we analyze and understand the data, from which the dispute arises; thus, try to make it more comprehensible. The reason why we prefer focusing to understand the dispute than solving it is our wish to set forth an example of hermeneutical approach to the Holy Qur’an. By that example, our objective is to emphasize the significance of the comprehensive approach to the Qur’anic tafsir in general. As a matter of fact, such an endeavor will show that we need a new point of view not only for the Surah al-Mâûn but for any problems faced in the field of Qur’anic tafsir. We believe that this point of view is the original point of view of the first generation, whom history made us forgot. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman develops a critique of social science to argue that current technocratic practices are prone to predictive failures and unintended consequences. However, he does not provide evidence that the cause he singles out—“ideational heterogeneity”—is in fact a non-negligible source of technocratic limitations, more than or alongside better-known problems such as missing data, measurement issues, interpretive difficulties, and researcher bias. Even if we grant ideational heterogeneity, Friedman’s preferred institutional solution of exitocracy does not necessarily follow. (...) His critical epistemology would also be compatible with radical forms of collective action. (shrink)

We are no longer in a position to attribute a positive essence to humanity and its presumed centrality. What it means to be human cannot be ascertained once and for all or in any a priori fashion....

The catastrophic risks posed by new technologies such as killer robots and geoengineering have triggered calls for halting new research. Arguments for restricting research typically have a slippery‐slope structure: Researching A will lead to deployment; we have decisive moral reasons against deployment; therefore, we should not research A. However, scientific uncertainty makes it difficult to prove or disprove the conclusion of slippery‐slope arguments. This article accepts this indeterminacy and asks whether and when it would be permissible to restrict research under (...) empirical and normative uncertainty. The argument starts from the ethical framework for the regulation of scientific research with human subjects and offers modifications to adapt it to the purpose of restricting new technologies. Two main questions arise in the process: whether it is permissible to impose restrictions at the research stage to prevent harms that will arise from the use of a technology and whether it is permissible to restrict research preemptively on the grounds of public fear and anxiety, before there is sufficient evidence establishing the risk of harm. I answer both questions in the affirmative and defend this position against objections. (shrink)

Will existing forms of artificial intelligence (AI) lead to genuine intelligence? How is AI changing our society and politics? This essay examines the answers to these questions in Brian Cantwell Smith's The Promise of Artificial Intelligence and Mark Coeckelbergh's The Political Philosophy of AI with a focus on their central concern with judgment—whether AI can possess judgment and how developments in AI are affecting human judgment. First, I argue that the existentialist conception of judgment that Smith defends is highly idealized. (...) While it may be an appropriate standard for intelligence, its implications for when and how AI should be deployed are not as clear as Smith suggests. Second, I point out that the concern with the displacement of judgment in favor of “reckoning” (or calculation) predates the rise of AI. The meaning and implications of this trend will become clearer if we move beyond ontology and metaphysics and into political philosophy, situating technological changes in their social context. Finally, I suggest that Coeckelbergh's distinctly political conception of judgment might offer a solution to the important boundary-drawing problem between tasks requiring judgment and those requiring reckoning, thus filling a gap in Smith's argument and clarifying its political stakes. (shrink)

Rachel Friedman’s Probable Justice and Jeffrey Friedman’s Power without Knowledge explore the promises and pitfalls of the application of predictive tools to the solution of social and political problems. Rachel Friedman argues that a fundamental duality in philosophical interpretations of probability allowed social insurance schemes to successfully accommodate two rival visions of liberal justice over the centuries. But in focusing on ideas around probability, she misses the limitations of the experts who put these ideas into practice and threatened to undermine (...) them in the process. Jeffrey Friedman, by contrast, is centrally concerned with the limitations of experts. While he shows how these undermine one rather narrow conception of technocratic legitimacy, he avoids examining their implications for democratic legitimacy understood more broadly. (shrink)

Rachel Friedman’s Probable Justice and Jeffrey Friedman’s Power without Knowledge explore the promises and pitfalls of the application of predictive tools to the solution of social and political problems. Rachel Friedman argues that a fundamental duality in philosophical interpretations of probability allowed social insurance schemes to successfully accommodate two rival visions of liberal justice over the centuries. But in focusing on ideas around probability, she misses the limitations of the experts who put these ideas into practice and threatened to undermine (...) them in the process. Jeffrey Friedman, by contrast, is centrally concerned with the limitations of experts. While he shows how these undermine one rather narrow conception of technocratic legitimacy, he avoids examining their implications for democratic legitimacy understood more broadly. (shrink)

Many political and economic forces are driven by the desire to eliminate democratic plurality in today’s political juncture. Democratic republicanism itself in its contemporary forms has failed to address many of the daunting moral, political, economic, social, technological, and ecological challenges we face today. It is argued that to fulfill its essence of egalitarian freedom and social justice, democratic republicanism must first decouple from the global neoliberal capitalist regime and secondly embrace some form of postcapitalist and posthumanist orientation guided by (...) a new attractor, a teleological approach anchored in a new telos of superhumanity. Democracy without a telos of superhumanity is a democracy in name only. It is time to lay our teleophobia aside and propose a strong teleological account in the vein of a Buddhist no-self doctrine at the heart of the onto-politico-economy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience, should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children improve their ability to become more conscious of and make judgments about the aspects of their experience that have ethical, aesthetic, political, logical, or even metaphysical meaning. Although (...) an international success, the PFC programme has attracted many criticisms from a variety of directions. I claim that Deweyan concept of consummatory aesthetic experience is broad and flexible enough to provide a robust framework to make sense of the pedagogical horizon of PFC and therefore fruitfully engage the various critics of the movement coming from religious and social conservatives, educational psychologists, critical theorists, postmodernists/posthumanists, and professional philosophers themselves. The goal of this paper is to offer in a preliminary fashion the basic elements of Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which was principally elucidated in his Art as Experience, to defend PFC as a viable pedagogy. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to discuss what I would like to call “the ideal of teaching as consummatory experience” in relation to John Dewey’s concept of “experience,” as the latter was elucidated in his later works, especially Art as Experience. What I have in mind with the phrase “the ideal of teaching as consummatory experience” basically points to what it means to be fully alive as a teacher and what happens when teaching is experienced in such a manner. In (...) other words, what is the relationship between teaching that is truly fulfilling for the teacher and experience that is truly educative for the student(s)? There is no doubt in my mind that the two are intimately connected. Truly fulfilling teaching and truly .. (shrink)

An intriguing interresonance plays out between various forms of Mahayana Buddhist ontology and Žižek’s dialectical materialism. His disdainful critique of Buddhism is well-known. As a cultural critic, Žižek might be onto something in his contention that Western Buddhism functions as the perfect ideology for late capitalism. As an ontologist, however, he seems to be ambivalent regarding the parallels between the Buddhist Void, to which the Western Buddhists supposedly withdraw, and his elaboration of a new foundation of dialectical materialism. Žižek is (...) one of the few contemporary continental philosophers who do not hesitate to engage Buddhism. My claim is that, notwithstanding his criticism, Žižek is much closer to Mahayana than he thinks. My aim therefore is to demonstrate how this is so. To do this, I will mainly focus on the following forms of Mahayana thought: śūnyatā in the context of Nāgārjuna's the Two-Truth doctrine, Tiantai School of Chinese Buddhist concept of li, and Nishida Kitarō’s philosophy of basho, which was heavily influenced by the Japanese Zen/Pure Land Buddhism. After going through some of the preliminary affinities among Mahayana forms and Žižek in its absolute contradiction, and materialism as the contradictory/paradoxical field conceived as an atheistic religious field, and so on), I will analyse each school of Mahayana mentioned above and point out the parallels between these and Žižek’s own thought. (shrink)

In this paper, an account of two novel ontologies is given to point to the need to revise the status of facts in school curriculum. It is argued that schooling is in dire need of re-enchantment. The way to re-enchant schooling is to re-enliven the world we inhabit. We need to fall head over heels in love with the world again. In order to do that, we need to shake up our conception of “the hard and cold facts of the (...) world” to make the latter come alive radiating vibrancy and luminosity out into the world. Facts have to be liberated from their “cold and hard” status and become things that captivate us with their uniqueness and dynamism. To the extent that facts enchant (instead of merely re/present the world), working with them leads to educative experience. To work out how to let the facts do that, two thinkers and two ways to reconceptualize ‘facts’ are discussed: Graham Harman and his objects, and Ken Wilber and his holons. (shrink)

In their defence of the school Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons define it as a source of ‘free time.’ Drawing on Catherine Malabou's compelling reading of Heidegger in her The Heidegger Change, I aim to provide a strong ontological justification for the claims made on behalf of the school concerning free time, common goods, and renewing (changing) the world: the school provides free time; it transforms knowledge and skills into common goods; and it has the potential to give everyone the (...) time and space to renew the world. The paper enquires into what ‘free time as non-productive time,’ ‘common goods,’ and ‘changing the world’ mean on an ontological register, and why therefore the school is so precious and warrants our utmost care in the face of its conservative and progressive critics alike. I discern a single underlying notion, the notion of essence as mutability, constituting the link connecting free time, common goods, and renewal of the world. (shrink)

This article is about a pedagogical movement I discern in Quentin Meillassoux’s ontology. The goal of the essay is to introduce his approach to reality in outline form and offer it as a possible route to conceptualize education as the practice of keeping the bodymind attentive and agile against its unsound ossification by way of providing a unified heightened sense of meaning, that is, consummatory experience, in a radically open and contingent world. Meillassoux offers a new conception of necessity and (...) contingency based on the Badioun principle that ‘nothing is inaccessible to reason.’ This move helps Meillassoux to claim that reason can access the absolute for there is no inaccessible necessary transcendence by providing an intriguing critique of the principle of sufficient reason. As a result, Meillassoux’s argument leads to the conclusion that the only necessity is contingency itself. By excluding any necessary being, but also maintaining the absolute necessity of contingency itself, Meillassoux establishes what he calls the “factial.” Meillassoux’s factiality induce pedagogical interventions that lead to acquiring a new point of view whereby ossification of bodymind is staved off and a state of mind that is endlessly fascinated by the immanence, or the most radical becoming, of the world is achieved. (shrink)

In this article, it is argued that the inordinate amount of time and attention given to the use of textbooks in education inadvertently leads to deadening miseducative experiences and creates a learning environment where what Dewey calls ‘consummatory experience’ is thwarted. In order to unpack this thesis, Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics is engaged, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience is defined and its temporal nature is elucidated by referring to two modes of time: chronological and phenomenological. Subsequently, the relation (...) between teaching and consummatory experience is elucidated to uncover the reason why using textbooks is counterproductive. (shrink)

This paper discusses the repercussions of a new metaphysics—speculative/weird realism—for education and pedagogy. A historic shift is taking place in present-day continental philosophy, which involves an explicit and renewed call for realism. One of the most salient features of this development is a revitalised interest in ontological questions. As part of this overall trend towards realist and materialist ontologies in current continental thinking, the paper particularly focuses on Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, which claims that aesthetics is first philosophy. Harman’s object-oriented (...) philosophy is an approach to metaphysics and ontology that is enamored by the experience of the vibrant yet inscrutable autonomous reality of objects. In order to come to terms with this new approach to reality, I suggest education be conceived as the cultivation of an aesthetic attitude understood as the ability to uphold the tension between relational and non-relational aspects of objects understood in the Harmanian idiom. (shrink)

This paper attempts a new interpretation of Heidegger’s existential analysis of the phenomena of fear and anxiety. Heidegger is shown to analyze both phenomena as basic states-of-mind . Basic states-of-mind are taken to differ from other states-of mind in that they are formal phenomena, i.e. phenomena that are not apparent or experienced themselves, but only concretize in apparent and experienced phenomena. As an instance of phenomena, in which the formal phenomena of fear and anxiety concretize, the paper presents hüzün, a (...) collective mood described by Orhan Pamuk in his latest novel. (shrink)

Bu makale Orhan Pamuk’un Kar romanından hareketle çağdaş Türk romanında din ve siyaset ilişkisine odaklanmıştır. Çalışma, Türkiye’nin yakın dönemdeki dini ve siyasi tartışmalarına edebi bir kurgu ile yaklaşan Kar’da din-siyaset ilişkilerinin nasıl bir paradigma üzerine oturduğunu ve bu çerçevede Türkiye’de dini ve siyasi kültürün romana nasıl yansıdığını anlama ve açıklama hedefini gütmüştür. Romanda 1980 sonrası yeni bir gelişim ivmesi yakalamış ve 1990’lar boyunca siyaseti daha aktif bir şekilde motive eden sağ, muhafazakar ve İslamcı çevrelerle aslında -yazarın yaklaşımı çerçevesinde- Türkiye’ye (...) bir türlü uğramayan modernizmin Türkiye’dekijakoben ve taşralı temsilcilerinin değerleri arasındaki çatışmalar öne çıkarılmıştır. Postmodern bir bakış açısıyla yazılan Kar İslamcı-laik, Doğulu-Batılı çatışmaları arasında modernleşme çabalarının devam ettiği bu aşamada din ve siyaset ilişkileriyle ilgili önemli fotoğraflar paylaşmıştır. Nihayet romanda din; yoksulluk ve yoksunlukları araçsallaştırıcı, yerine göre değişimi engelleyici karakteri yanında baskın olarak ideolojik yönü ile öne çıkarılmıştır. Siyaset ise orada daha çok jakoben ve laik, modernleşme ile ilişkisi bağlamında da taşralı olarak betimlenmiştir.Özet: Şüphe yok ki imparatorluktan Cumhuriyete geçiş sürecinde edebiyat; özellikle de Batılı bir ürün olarak roman, modern Türkiye’nin bilinç düzeyinin inşasında önemli bir rol oynamıştır. Bu edebi etki belli bir çizgi takip etmek yerine 2 asra yaklaşan maceralı yolculuğu içinde genellikle Türk toplumunun dönemsel tarihi, sosyal, politik şartları ile uyum içinde yürümüştür. Bu bağlamda Türk romanı başlangıçta daha yoğun olmak üzere siyasal yapıyı meşrulaştırıcı bir tavır takınırken özellikle son yarım asırda modernleşmenin ulaştığı noktalar itibariyle farklı iktidar ve ideoloji üretmenin bir aracı olarak da görülmüştür. Fakat bununla birlikte kültürel sistemin önemli bir unsuru olarak din romanın söz konusu yolculuğunda hep ana temalardan biri olmuştur.Makale çağdaş Türk romanında din-siyaset ilişkilerinin din sosyolojisi açısından incelenmesini konu edinmiştir. Çalışmaya örnek olarak Orhan Pamuk’un, ilk baskısını 2002 yılında yapan ve Türkiye’de 1980’li şartların olgunlaştırdığı gerilimli din-siyaset ilişkilerini geniş bir kültürel birikimden hareketle temalaştıran Kar romanı seçilmiştir. Çalışmanın amacı çağdaş Türk romanının Türkiye’de her zaman bir gerilim ortamı yaratmış din-siyaset ilişkilerine yaklaşımını Kar örnekleminde anlamak ve açıklamaktır. Bu çerçevede tarihsel bir karşılaştırma yapılarak Türk romanının siyaset ve din algısında Karın yeri gözden geçirilmiş, bir sosyal kişilik ve yazar olarak Orhan Pamuk üzerinde durulmuş ve daha sonra da romandaki sosyal olay, olgu ve süreçlerin inşa ettiği farklı bilinç düzeyleri fenomenolojik bir perspektiften değerlendirilmiştir.Bu çalışmada Kar modern Türkiye’nin yakın dönem din-siyaset ilişkilerini dini ve siyasi kültürün farklı anlam setleri üzerinden postmodern bir alegori ile işleyen bir roman olarak görülmüştür. Bu yönüyle Kar edebi bir ürün olmanın yanında kendini toplumun dini, siyasi ve ideolojik bilgi gövdesi hakkında farklı bilinç düzeylerine yer veren hatta bugünkü din-siyaset ilişkilerinin köklü sorunlarına ışık tutan bir metin olarak da sunmuştur. Buradan hareketle denilebilir ki roman, edebiyat-toplum ilişkisi bağlamında bir taraftan toplumunun dini ve siyasi değerleri çerçevesinde olayları örgütlerken diğer taraftan bu değerlere postmodern bakış açıları sunmak suretiyle bir zenginlik katmıştır. Nihayet Karda Pamuk Türkiye’de din ve siyaset ilişkilerinin toplum temelinde edebi bir dışavurumunu gerçekleştirmiştir. Ancak bu dışavurum Osmanlıdan Cumhuriyete intikal eden dini ve siyasi birikim yanı sıra kendinin kurumsal bir bagaj etrafında şekillendirdiği sosyal kişiliğinden bağımsız olmamıştır.Açıkça Pamuk, Karda din ve siyasete, onların birbirleriyle olan ilişkilerine bazen farklı karakterler üzerinden bazen de ironi ve eleştiriler yoluyla bir dizi anlamlar yüklemiştir. Postmodern bir paradigma etrafında Kar din ve siyasetin farklı anlam dünyalarını ve bu kadim iki sosyal kurumun farklı görüntülerini felsefi ve sosyolojik bir bakış açısı içinde sunmuştur. Başka bir ifadeyle Pamuk romanın olay örgüsünü, sosyal tiplerini, sosyal sınıfları ve bunların epistemolojik birikimlerini kendi doğal sosyoekonomik, kültürel, dini ve politik ortamlarında ele almıştır. Kar, İslamcı-modernist gerilimi üzerinden şekillenen bir kimlik mücadelesi etrafında kurgulanmıştır. Burada din ve siyasetin bireysel-uzlaşmacı yönlerine yer verilmekle birlikte “Kemalist” ve “İslamcılar”ın dayatmacı, popülist siyaset anlayışları ile dinin dışlayıcı ve ideolojik yönü öne çıkarılmıştır. Dolayısıyla roman 28 Şubat 1997 askeri müdahalesinden esinlenerek Türkiye’de bir karşılığa sahip dini ve siyasi kültüre ışık tutmuş ve nihayet toplumun din ve siyaset kurumlarına ait anlam şebekeleri hakkında bugüne de yansıyan önemli fotoğraflar çekmiştir.Karda din ve siyaset “darbe”, “Kemalizm”, “siyasal İslam”, “türban”, “İslamcı”, “laik” gibi kavramlara yüklenen anlamlar üzerinden işlenmiştir. Romanda “darbe” özelinde ortaya konan sosyal ve politik görüntüler 2000’li yıllar itibariyle Cumhuriyet’in yaklaşık son yarım yüzyılını gösteren bir dizi semboller taşımıştır. Nitekim romanda konu edinilen darbe özellikle 1980 sonrası yaşanan sosyoekonomik, kültürel, siyasi, dini ve etnik sorunlar etrafında örgütlenip güçlenen “dinci”lere karşı yapılmıştır. Öte yandan romanda “Kemalizm” ve onun yaydığı ideoloji, Türkiye’de siyasetin değerlendirildiği diğer önemli bir tema olmuştur. Bu bağlamda farklı kategorik özellikler taşımakla birlikte genel olarak “Kemalizm” ve askeri bürokrasinin topluma ve onun değerlerine bakışı, romanda bireysel hak ve özgürlükleri devlet lehine kısıtlayan jakoben ve elitist bir tavır içinde sunulmuştur.Romanda dinin alt sınıf örüntüsü olma, görece yoksunlukları telafi etme, yerine göre sosyal değişimi engelleme gibi özelliklerine vurgu yapılmakla birlikte daha çok onun darbe ile siyasal, ideolojik, popülist ve araçsal bir kimlik kazanması üzerinde durulmuştur. Nitekim türbanlı kızlar meselesi siyasal İslamcılar tarafından sembol bir dava olarak görülmüş ve onlar bu davayı siyasi bir malzeme yapmışlardır. Karda din ve siyaset ayrı, yerine göre birbirleriyle çatışan sosyal kurumlar olarak değerlendirilmekle birlikte özellikle Şeyh Efendi ve bazı bürokratların çıkar ilişkileri bağlamında söz konusu iki kurumun karşılıklı ilişkilerine de yer verilmiştir. Dolayısıyla Kar Türkiye’de din-siyaset ilişkisinin sembolik düzlemde yerini bulan kadim ilişkilerine de işaret etmiş olmaktadır.Gerek siyasi gerek dini her türlü dayatmaya karşı edebi bir tavır olarak kendini gösteren Kar din ve siyasete çoğulcu bir bakış önerisi getirmiştir. Türk romanı açısından yeni sayılabilecek bu durum aslında bir yönüyle de okuyucuya dinsel ve siyasal kültür konusunda yeni evrenler sunmuştur. Ancak söz konusu öneri ve bakış açıları dini ve siyasi kültürün kendi dinamiklerinden bağımsız şekillenmiş değildir. (shrink)

This article draws out the political implications of some of the avatars of ancient skepticism in modern fiction. It relies on Martha Nussbaum’s claim that fiction can provide some of the best lessons in moral philosophy to refute her claim that ancient skepticism was a bad influence on morals. It surveys references to skepticism from Shakespeare through such diverse writers as Isabel de Charrière, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Anatole France, and Albert Camus down to recent writers such as Orhan (...) class='Hi'>Pamuk and Michel Houellebecq. The most substantial treatment is of Naguib Mahfouz’sCairo Trilogy, which is interpreted in two ways: one, as an example ofisostheniaor equipollence in arguments on both sides of questions about gender in the Islamic world, and two, as the biography of a person who claims to be a self-conscious skeptic. Skepticism emerges as a multi-faceted concept in modern literature, but there are definite references back to the ancient skeptics, including mention of the name Pyrrhonism and knowledge of the writings of Sextus Empiricus. The political implications militate against dogmatic claims to truth and knowledge of a one-dimensional justice. (shrink)