Collected essays consider points of affinity and friction between Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, (...) their life trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, “sparks will fly.” Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work. (shrink)

Divine violence, an idea set out in Walter Benjamin’s early essay “Critique of Violence,” is violence undertaken by a sovereign individual, a strike at power, an attempt at the dissolution of the law in favor of justice, a decision that reaffirms the sovereignty of the self against the coercive violence of the law. In order to understand the category of “divine violence,” it is critical to understand the other kinds of violence that Benjamin discusses in the essay.

La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica es, sin dudas, la más emblemática aportación de Walter Benjamin a la estética y la teoría del arte. Un aspecto problemático que aflora en su lectura es el del impacto axiológico que el teórico marxista judío-alemán le atribuía a la nueva época. Es significativo el hecho de que, mientras para unos, este texto alberga una crítica negativa a la reproductibilidad técnica y una mirada nostálgica al pasado, para (...) otros, la obra entraña una asunción de la tecnología reproductiva cargada de optimismo y confianza en un futuro emancipador a ella asociado. ¿Son en realidad excluyentes ambas interpretaciones? El presente trabajo reflexiona sobre los fundamentos sociales y epistemológicos de esta ambivalencia interpretativa. (shrink)

What is reality? It is postmodern or poststructuralist philosophers like Roland Barthes, who realized that it only seems that the media present reality in the form of facts, because they actually spread myths. Accordingly, Jacques Derrida made it clear that communication via media is not based on logic, but is characterized by a significant “différance” between a “marque” (trace) of the past and the expectations of the future. Both agreed, that the initial misunderstanding of the concept of reality must be (...) uncovered or "deconstructed". This is more than necessary for them, because media, be it pictures or language, in truth convey values that are culturally and socially significant. They ‘iterate’ these values subliminally, because what shows up are only placeholders and thus mere forms (“structures of graphematic”) that are superficially realised as facts (“stereotypes”). In this way, according to Barthes, we all accept without question the values hidden behind them, so that they can gain a normative power that unconsciously guides our thinking, our decisions and our actions. Afterwards, it is Judith Butler who critically asked: How can we ever escape from this? Given the power of the subliminal dominant discourses, she saw the only effective solution “im Umdeuten” (in reinterpretation) of their subliminal values. In order to finally escape this “parasitic existence at the ritual”, the media philosopher Walter Benjamin already suggested to trigger "Chockwirkungen” (shock effects) in the viewer. It is the German painter Karin Kneffel, so it shall be shown, who has realized this with her series Fruits and Interiors in the most beautiful photorealistic strategy. (shrink)

This book places Benjamin’s writing on revolution in the context of his conception of historical knowledge. The fundamental problem that faces any analysis of Benjamin’s approach to revolution is that he deploys notions that belong to the domain of individual experience. His theory of modernity with its emphasis on the disintegration of collective experience further aggravates the problem. Benjamin himself understood the problem of revolution to be primarily that of the conceptualization of collective experience (its possibility and (...) sites) under the conditions of modern bourgeois society. The novelty of his approach to revolution lies in the fact that he directly connects it with historical experience. Benjamin’s conception of revolution thus constitutes an integral part of his distinctive theory of historical knowledge, which is also essentially a theory of experience. Through a detailed study of Benjamin’s writings on the topics of the child and the dream, and an analysis of his ideas of history, the fulfilled wish, similitude and communist society, this book shows how the conceptual analysis of his corpus can get to the heart of Benjamin’s conception of revolutionary experience and distil its difficulties and mechanisms. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century Walter Benjamin introduced the idea of epochal and ongoing progression in interaction between mind and the built environment. Since early antiquity, the present study suggests, Benjamin’s notion has been manifest in metaphors of gender in city-form, whereby edifices and urban voids have represented masculinity and femininity, respectively. At the onset of interaction between mind and the built environment are prehistoric myths related to the human body and to the sky. During antiquity gender (...) projection can be detected in western perceptions linking natural and built environments, commencing with Plato’s Atlantis and his Myth of Er, and later as a likely import of the Chinese yin-yang mythology. Culminating with the Age of Discovery, alongside advances in experiential awareness of the Earth’s sphericity, respective feminine and masculine earmarks can be detected in early modern perspicacity of the Earth’s southern and northern hemispheres. Our conceptions of natural and built environments inherently continue to contain gender traits. Yet urban voids, as the feminine face of city-form, have been severely understated in the built environment. Through design and configuration of urban voids, allegories of femininity in city-form ought to be celebrated, not discarded. (shrink)

There is a particular ressonance between the thinking of Walter Benjamin and that of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, including the fact that both analyse the 16th and 17th centuries in order to understand the 20th. Regarding this fact, the article attempts to clarify some themes that lead Schmitt’s work, i.e that of State of Exception, that of theologization of politics, the critique of parliamentarism as support of the Modern State, the tension between democracy and dictatorship, to explain (...) how the dialog between the two thinkers occurs, seeking thus for a better understanding of key works of Benjamin, specially The Origin of German Tragic Drama. (shrink)

El objetivo general de este artículo es interrogar el lugar de la crítica a la idea de progreso en la filosofía de Walter Benjamin, argumentando que las raíces de su pensamiento político podrían encontrarse en el misticismo cabalista. La intención principal es determinar, siguiendo a Benjamin, algunas de las principales características de la creencia en el progreso como problema y su relación con una determinada normatividad histórica. Este recorrido permitirá elucidar la relación que, según el autor, mantendría (...) una comprensión procesualista y lineal de la historia con una actitud político-intelectual apoyada en el conformismo y la indiferencia. Por último, se propone considerar la original interpretación sobre la temporalidad que aparece en una vertiente del misticismo judío, el cabalismo de Isaac Luria de Safed, actualizada en forma heterodoxa por Benjamin, que permitiría comprender desde un nuevo punto de vista, conforme a la argumentación presentada, el vínculo temporal que supone la idea de tradición y rememoración en el materialismo histórico benjaminiano. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the role that the concept of “presence of mind” (Geistesgegenwart) plays in Walter Benjamin’s thought, deepening lines of interpretation that are connected to other relevant concepts such as “attention” (Aufmerksamkeit) and “now-time” (Jetztzeit). It examines elements of Benjamin’s work that develop the philosophical importance of presence of mind, emphasizing its corporeal dimension and its aesthetic and critical relevance. The analysis covers fve lines of interpretation that intersect in different ways: (i) presence of (...) mind is a form of thought/action that should be cultivated as a way of dealing with the experience of shock; (ii) having presence of mind is an attitude that can be exercised; (iii) “seizing the day” involves the body and presupposes an experience of intensive time; (iv) the conceptual framework of presence of mind integrates elements related to play; and (v) by valuing the present, presence of mind implies a relationship between danger and a critical gesture – in Benjamin’s historical and political reflection, this gesture intertwines the individual and the collective dimensions. (shrink)

This review highlights how fascism and populism qua, popular culture feeds each other. Hannah Arendt's introduction too is commented upon.

"I have a tree, which grows here in my close, / That mine own use invites me to cut down, / And shortly I must fell it" (Shakespeare 2001, 168)—Timon's lament, which in Shakespeare's rendition occurs shortly before its utterer's demise "upon the beached verge of the salt flood" (2001, 168) beyond the perimeter of Athens, is an indictment of the nature that Timon finds unable to escape. Having given away his wealth in misguided generosity to a host of parasitic (...) sycophants, Timon turns misanthropic when his "friends" reject his requests for help in kind to repay his debts, eventually exiling himself from the city with the intent of sustaining himself on nothing but water and roots. Yet he soon finds that removing .. (shrink)

This article argues for a much more profound interconnection between philosophical romanticism and Walter Benjamin’s theses "On The Concept of History" than has been acknowledged up to now. It particularly reveals a number of parallels between Benjamin’s historical approach and the philosophy of history of the two principal thinkers of Early German Romanticism, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, who had already formed the object of Benjamin’s doctoral thesis. It examines Benjamin’s final philosophical work in the light (...) of three central topics inherited from Early German Romanticism, which have been less explored in romanticism studies and Benjamin scholarship, yet are decisive for helping clarify what is at stake in Benjamin’s text: the relation to prophecy; the question of messianism; and the heliotropism of the past. -/- _____________ Cet article défend l’idée d’un lien entre la philosophie romantique et les thèses de Walter Benjamin Sur le concept d’histoire bien plus profond qu’on ne l’a admis jusqu’à présent. Il met plus particulièrement en lumière des parallèles entre la démarche historique de Benjamin et la philosophie de l’histoire des deux principaux penseurs du premier romantisme allemand, Friedrich Schlegel et Novalis, auxquels Benjamin avait déjà consacré sa thèse de doctorat. L’article examine le dernier écrit majeur de Benjamin à la lumière de trois thématiques centrales héritées du romantisme, qui ont été peu approfondies tant dans les études romantiques que dans le commentaire benjaminien et qui sont pourtant décisives pour éclaircir ce qui est en jeu dans ce texte : le rapport à la prophétie ; la question du messianisme ; et l’héliotropisme du passé. (shrink)

Abstract This essay will take a look at the notion of state of exception, ausnahmezustand in german original version, comparing Walter Benjamin’s and Carl Schmitt’s two main books which are Critique of violence and political theology that were written such as a polemic one another. We will also take into consideration an alternative violence form such as a pure violence defined by Benjamin that could be revolutionary to change this schmittian state of exception.

Knowing that Cloud Atlas (2016) opens various analytical possibilities, this brief essay chooses to map possible relationships that the book, especially concerning stories 3, 5, and 6, can establish with Walter Benjamin's philosophy, more punctually, his Theses on the Philosophy of History. It will be briefly introduced, to this end, a summary of each of the six short stories that make up Cloud Atlas and its structural organization. After that, it will be indicated specific passages by Walter (...) Benjamin that would present similarities and resonances synchronized with the concepts that cross the literary work of David Mitchell. (shrink)

From the comparative framework of writing on the meaning of ritual in the field of the history of religions, this essay argues that one of the major problems in Benjamin’s thinking is how to make certain forms of materiality stand out against other forms. In his early work, the way that Benjamin deals with this problem is to call degraded forms “symbolic”, and those forms of materiality with positive value, “allegorical”. The article shows how there is more than (...) an incidental connection with the recent approach to ritual in the field of history of religions, seeing that Benjamin too wants to set out the significance of certain material forms against those that are “ritualistic” and hence false. It is argued that he treats the latter in his essay on Elective Affinities and the former in his Trauerspiel. The key claim is that the way material forms stand out as meaningful is akin to the Kantian description of the aesthetic attitude, which identifies how certain formations warrant and attract reflective attention and underpin moral orientation. The point is significant since Kantian aesthetics is an object of polemical attention across Benjamin’s heterogeneous corpus. Moreover, the approach shows the main difficulty in Benjamin’s treatment of sensible forms: what are the criteria he uses to distinguish the “bad” way a sensible form has of being meaningful from the “good”? (shrink)

Este ensayo acomete un análisis del concepto de fantasmagoría en el marco de los materiales del proyecto inacabado del Libro de los pasajes de Walter Benjamin. Para ello, parte de la relación que en ellos se traza entre este término y el carácter fetichista que Marx atribuye a la mercancía, a fin de mostrar cómo dicho carácter, así como la noción de ideología que se segrega de él, constituyen el fundamento de la utilización por parte de Benjamin (...) del concepto de fantasmagoría. Sobre esta base, se defiende que el sentido que Benjamin confiere a esta noción implica una ampliación del concepto marxiano de ideología que obedecería a un doble objetivo: incluir bajo su alcance aspectos de la autocomprensión de la sociedad moderna no tematizados por Marx y adaptarlo a los resultados de la evolución del capitalismo. Por último, se estudia la conexión que la noción de fantasmagoría guarda con lo que Benjamin llama el «despertar» en el contexto de su reflexión sobre la tarea del historiador materialista. (shrink)

Vardoulakis examines the connection between the political and aesthetic commitments of the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. He compares "The Origin of the Work of Art" to "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility.".

Die Rezeption von Walter Benjamins Arbeiten ist von einer Paradoxie durchzogen: Obwohl Konsens darüber besteht, dass er seine Begriffe in ›enger Fühlung‹ mit dem jeweiligen Material entwickelt, werden seine Schriften häufig ohne ein eigenständiges Studium seiner Quellen gelesen, losgelöst vom jeweiligen Problem- und Debattenzusammenhang. Das verstärkt den Eindruck einer Esoterik seiner Texte und kann zu der Annahme verleiten, Benjamin entnehme Motive willkürlich aus seinem Material- und Quellenstudium und nutze sie als Vehikel eines an sich schwer in eine Tradition (...) einzuordnenden Denkens. Die Autorinnen und Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes legen das Gewicht auf Benjamins Material, sei es Literatur, Theater, Metaphysik, Rechts- und Moralphilosophie, Zeitschriftenprojekte, soziale Bewegungen oder Stadtarchitektur. Anhand von Texten unterschiedlicher Werkphasen untersuchen sie das Verhältnis von Material und Begriff aus beiden Blickrichtungen. Dieses Vorgehen ermöglicht es, auch Licht auf theoretische Beziehungen und Arbeitszusammenhänge zu werfen, die bisher eher unbeachtet blieben. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the implications of digital technology on philosophy, applying Walter Benjamin's analysis of art in the mechanical age to the digital reproduction of philosophical texts. It identifies three core transformations: enhanced accessibility, global dissemination, and facilitated scholarly collaboration, brought forth by the advent of digital humanities. The discussion extends to the challenges digital mediums pose to the traditional "aura" of texts, the democratization of philosophical engagement, and the exacerbation of a digital divide among scholars. Through (...) a nuanced critique, the essay advocates for a balanced approach to digital scholarship in philosophy, emphasizing the need to harness digital tools judiciously while addressing the digital divide. This analysis contributes to the ongoing discourse on the digital history of philosophy, highlighting the complex interplay between technology and philosophical practice. (shrink)

This dissertation re-examines the principal philosophical thrusts of the German Enlightenment period, from the perspective of their totalizing-mythological function, and investigates how this function is criticized by the non-totalizing function of myth found within the primary mythical images in the work of Goethe, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Walter Benjamin. ;Utilizing the revolutionary book by Hans Blumenberg on the function of myth in German Idealism and Romanticism, I instigate a discourse between Blumenberg's totalizing work on myth and the negative-dialectical work (...) on myth as proposed by Theodor Adorno. I locate the German origins of this negative-dialectical myth-making in the work of Goethe, specifically his non-totalizing image, Wilhelm Meister. I locate the development of this use of myth in Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and, finally, trace a similar function at work in Rilke's Malte and Walter Benjamin's historical materialist. ;Contrary to Habermas, who argues that Nietzsche opened up two roads to postmodernity, one leading to the "ontologization of aesthetics" and the other to the "totalizing critique" of reason , I put forth the argument that the Nietzschean "two roads" metaphor is useful but needs to be re-shaped, configuring one road toward the mythological history and historical mythology of Rilke and Walter Benjamin, and another road the Theodor Adorno's "thorough critique" of reason. ;The need to revise Habermas's "two roads to post-modernity" theory mythographically, rests on the primary investigation of this dissertation: to trace by de-scription the practical incarnation of the word on German soil . I define this process of "practical incarnation" as that word which subversively desires to de-scribe and trans-figure the neurotic -psychotic structure that has defined the parameters of Western discourse, at least since neo-Platonic Christianity influenced cultural codifications of the West. Finally, I maintain that the primary image of criticism which emerges from the dialectical work of the writers herein, is the image of man-child, a classless, non-totalizing image implicit in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and developed in the Kind-Mensch constellation in the work of Nietzsche, Rilke, and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media .

This paper discusses two thinkers who locate the possibility of revolutionary historical change in political projects oriented toward the formation of subjects and cultivation of sensibility. I begin by considering the relationship between historical violence and education in the works of Walter Benjamin. After introducing the provocative association of education with divine violence found in “Toward the Critique of Violence,” I expand on Benjamin’s conception of pedagogical force. Highlighting the centrality of education in Benjamin’s early work, (...) I argue that his account of learning does not depend on the mastery of students by teachers, nor more generally on the mastery of objective reality by a sovereign subject, but on the mastery of the educational relationship by tradition. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ discussion of the abolition of slavery, I close by describing the revolutionary cultivation of sensibility as a dynamic and collectively achieved mode of historical learning. (shrink)

In attempting to determine why the Enlightenment project had derailed and how this failure might be remedied, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno both turned to canonical literary narratives. The resultant works, Benjamin’s major essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities and Adorno’s meditation on the Odyssey in Dialectic of Enlightenment, are centrally concerned with the very act of narration. The Saving Line reconstructs a hitherto unnoticed, wide-ranging dialogue between these foundational texts of the Frankfurt School. At the heart of (...) Dornbach’s argument is a critical model that Benjamin built around the concept of caesura, which Adorno subsequently reworked. Countering an obscurantism that would become complicit in the rise of fascism, the two theorists aligned moments of arrest in narratives mired in unreason. The Saving Line throws fresh light on the intellectual exchange and disagreements between Benjamin and Adorno, the problematic conjunction of secular reason and negative theology in their thinking, and the philosophical significance of literary narration. (See PDF file below for a more detailed précis). (shrink)

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics with (...) contingent creaturehood, it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

The paper suggests that Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s arguments against sympathy after the French Revolution, Walter Benjamin’s claims against empathy following the traumatic shock of Modernity and the First World War, and Hannah Arendt’s critical take on compassion. after the Holocaust are similar responses to singular historical crises. Reconsidering Arendt’s On Revolution (1963) and its evocation of Hermann Melville’s novella Billy Budd (1891), I show first that the novella bears the traces of an essay by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The (...) Appeal to Law” (1809). Then, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s writings on trauma in Illuminations (1968, edited by Arendt), I discuss the political importance Arendt attaches to the proper way of telling a story, at a time when “the communicability of experience is decreasing” (Benjamin, Illuminations, 86). Through the analysis of Benjamin’s “The Storyteller” and Arendt’s “heartless” report on the Eichmann trial (1963), I equally show that, according to Arendt, testimonies must be narrated, or rather performed, in a dispassionate, dry, and compact manner so that they can be historically and politically relevant. (shrink)

There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a sub-category of Art proper, it is worth re-considering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as pseudo-art is expressed in moral terms. T. W. Adorno, for example, critiques film as ‘mass-cult’; mass produced culture which presents a ‘flattened’ version of (...) reality. Adorno worries about the passivity encouraged in viewers. Films are narrative artworks, received by an audience in a context, making the focus on the reception of the work important. The dialogue held between Adorno and Walter Benjamin post-WWII is interesting because, between them, they consider both the possible positive emancipatory and negative politicization effects of film as a mass produced and distributed story-telling medium. Reading Adorno alongside Benjamin is a way to highlight the role of the critical thinker who receives the film. Arguing that the critical thinker is a valuable citizen, this paper focuses on the value of critical thinking in the reception of cinematic artworks. It achieves this by reconsidering Adorno and Benjamin 's theories of mass art. (shrink)

Both Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin borrow from Freudian theory in their analyses of fetishism’s relation to the contemporary reception of cultural products. I will argue that both authors have confused the Marxian and Freudian theories of fetishism, resulting in mistaken conclusions about artistic reception. By disentangling the Marxian and Freudian elements in both authors’ positions, I want to show that 1) Adorno’s characterization of regressive listening implies, contrary to his intentions, that the current reception of artwork is (...) in fact antagonistic to fetishism, and that 2) his criticism of Benjamin’s optimism toward “reception in distraction” is nevertheless justified. If I am correct, it may be necessary to reassess Adorno’s demand for asceticism in advanced art. The current danger may not be “fetishism” at all, but rather the troublesome consequences of fetishism’s decline. (shrink)

This paper argues that the principle of continuity that underlies Benjamin’s understanding of what makes the reality of a thing thinkable, which in the Kantian context implies a process of “filling time” with an anticipatory structure oriented to the subject, is of a different order than that of infinitesimal calculus—and that a “discontinuity” constitutive of the continuity of experience and (merely) counterposed to the image of actuality as an infinite gradation of ultimately thetic acts cannot be the principle on (...) which Benjamin bases the structure of becoming. Tracking the transformation of the process of “filling time” from its logical to its historical iteration, or from what Cohen called the “fundamental acts of time” in Logik der reinen Erkenntnis to Benjamin’s image of a language of language (qua language touching itself), the paper will suggest that for Benjamin, moving from 0 to 1 is anything but paradoxical, and instead relies on the possibility for a mathematical function to capture the nature of historical occurrence beyond paradoxes of language or phenomenality. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

The right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) has been associated with two apparently disparate functional roles: in attention and in social cognition. According to one account, the rTPJ initiates a “circuit-breaking” signal that interrupts ongoing attentional processes, effectively reorienting attention. It is argued this primary function of the rTPJ has been extended beyond attention, through a process of evolutionarily cooption, to play a role in social cognition. We propose an alternative account, according to which the capacity for social cognition depends on a (...) network which is both distinct from and in tension with brain areas involved in focused attention and target detection: the default mode network. Theory characterizing the rTPJ based on the area’s purported role in reorienting may be falsely guided by the co-occurrence of two distinct effects in contiguous regions: activation of the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), associated with its functional role in target detection; and the transient release, during spatial reorienting, of suppression of the angular gyrus (AG) associated with focused attention. Findings based on meta-analysis and resting functional connectivity are presented which support this alternative account. We find distinct regions, possessing anti-correlated patterns of resting connectivity, associated with social reasoning (AG) and target detection (SMG) at the rTPJ. The locus for reorienting was spatially intermediate between the AG and SMG and showed a pattern of connectivity with similarities to social reasoning and target detection seeds. These findings highlight a general methodological concern for brain imaging. Given evidence that certain tasks not only activate some areas but also suppress activity in other areas, it is suggested that researchers need to distinguish two distinct putative mechanisms, either of which may produce an increase in activity in a brain area: functional engagement in the task versus release of suppression. (shrink)

At the end of one side of a manuscript entitled “On Kant” and housedin the Scholem Archive in Jerusalem, one reads the following pro-nouncement: “it is impossible to understand Kant today.” 1 Whatever it might mean to “understand” Kant, or indeed, whatever “Kant” is heremeant to be understood, it is certain, according to the manuscript,that such understanding cannot come about by way of purporting tohave returned to or spoken in the name of “Kant.” For “[t]oday,” sothe document begins, “there are (...) many people who call themselvesKantians, and who profess to have—or actually do have—cognitions inKantian terminology.” Whatever the degree of truth or falsity to suchcognitions, however, neither those who produce these cognitions nor aphilosophy consisting in these cognitions have a right to call themselves“Kantian,” since it is “obvious” that “such terminology is not equivalent to Kantian language” but is abstracted from “language” as innovationstowards the better description of the world. (shrink)

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

There has been much criticism of the idea that Friston's free-energy principle can unite the life and mind sciences. Here, we argue that perhaps the greatest problem for the totalizing ambitions of its proponents is a failure to recognize the importance of evolutionary dynamics and to provide a convincing adaptive story relating free-energy minimization to organismal fitness.

In this essay, I argue that contractualism, even when it is actually used to construe our moral duties towards non-human animals, does not do so naturally. We can infer from our experiences with companion animals that we owe moral duties to them because of special relationships we are in with them. We can further abstract that we owe general moral duties to non-human animals because they are the kinds of beings that we can have relationships with, and because of the (...) capacities that make possible this relational capacity. This type of approach better explains our duties to non-human animals and other non-rational beings than does the trustee account that Scanlon leaves room for in his contractualism. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a radical departure from the existing philosophical literature on models, modeling-practices, and model-based science. I argue that the various entities and practices called 'models' and 'modeling-practices' are too diverse, too context-sensitive, and serve too many scientific purposes and roles, as to allow for a general philosophical analysis. From this recognition an alternative view emerges that I shall dub model anarchism.

Here we will argue that different kinds of friendships follow different kinds of scaling laws. First, we will review Aristotle’s three types of friendship. Second, we will review three different types of scaling laws. Third, we will show how the three types of friendship roughly map on to the three types of scaling laws. After this, we will discuss some of the consequences of the scaling laws of friendship. We hope that the use of these abstract scaling laws to describe (...) social values will convince computer programmers and policy makers to temper their would-be ambitions as social engineers. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to present and defend a new argument for rights contributionism – the view that the notion of a moral claim-right is a contributory (or pro tanto) rather than overall normative notion. The argument is an inference to the best explanation: it is argued that (i) there are contributory moral factors that contrast with standard moral reasons by way of having a number of formal properties that are characteristic of rights, even though they (...) can be overridden, and (ii) that this is best explained by a view that takes these factors to correlate with rights. The second aim is to show that the truth of rights contributionism matters for normative ethics. More specifically, it is argued that rights contributionism clears the way for deontologists to justify the pre-theoretically plausible verdict that we have a duty to save the greater number in so-called Taurek scenarios – scenarios in which we have to choose between saving either a greater or a smaller number of different people. The chapter offers a novel and distinctively deontological explanation of this verdict that is based on the assumption that everyone has a pro tanto right to be saved in a Taurek scenario. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

This article canvases the main areas of controversy: the nature of Lockean signification and his position on propositions and particles.

On a currently popular reading of Locke, an idea represents its cause, or what God intended to be its cause. Against Martha Bolton and my former self (among others), I argue that Locke cannot hold such a view, since it sins against his epistemology and theory of abstraction. I argue that Locke is committed to a resemblance theory of representation, with the result that ideas of secondary qualities are not representations.

Many of the moral and political disputes that loom large today involve claims (1) in the register of respect and offense that are (2) linked to membership in a subordinated social group and (3) occasioned by symbolic or expressive items or acts. This essay seeks to clarify the nature, stakes, and characteristic challenges of these recurring, but often disorienting, conflicts. Drawing on a body of philosophical work elaborating the moral function of etiquette, I first argue that the claims at issue (...) implicate a communicative apparatus of the same basic kind—a system that I term the “etiquette of equality.” That regime, I suggest, can serve a kindred function of facilitating the expression of morally appropriate attitudes. I also argue, however, that the etiquette of equality exhibits three problematic features that counsel ambivalence about its mounting significance: (1) the costly overdetermination of relevant signals; (2) a recursive tendency toward inflation in respect’s demands; and (3) a related set of incentives for testing, and then affirming, a group’s status through the assertion and symbolic remediation of dignitary harm. The upshot is a better understanding of the trade-offs and predicaments we face in a vital area of public life. (shrink)

Like their contemporary counterparts, early modern philosophers find themselves in a predicament. On one hand, there are strong reasons to deny that sensations are representations. For there seems to be nothing in the world for them to represent. On the other hand, some sensory representations seem to be required for us to experience bodies. How else could one perceive the boundaries of a body, except by means of different shadings of color? I argue that Nicolas Malebranche offers an extreme -- (...) and ultimately unworkable -- attempt to solve this riddle. Most commentators claim that Malebranche defends an adverbial theory of sensation, according to which a sensation is merely a way in which an act of sensing happens. The adverbial reading is wrong, or so I argue. Once we arrive at a more accurate reading, we shall see that his position is much more strange than is currently thought. Nevertheless, Malebranche’s view is similar to the adverbial theory in one respect, albeit it at a very high level of generality. His view thus inherits two of the main problems that afflict adverbial theories. Although Malebranche fails to solve them, his ingenious attempts to do so are instructive. (shrink)