We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of the (...) process of the production of art, inspired especially by the views of Antonin Artaud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature. (shrink)

We develop a new understanding of the historical horizon of event ontology. Within the general area of the philosophy of nature, event ontology is a still emerging field of investigation in search for the ultimate materialist ontology of the world. While event ontology itself will not be explicated in full mathematical details here, our focus is on its conceptual interrelation with the dominant current of Idealism in Western thought approached by us as a problem in the history of ideas. Our (...) presentation is designed to be accessible to a wider audience. We especially highlight the deep connection between event ontology and postmodernism in general, and the post-war French philosophers Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari in particular, who are viewed as main sources for current and future programs of abstract materialism. (shrink)

Educated historians of philosophy reluctantly expose connections between Western esotericism and the mainstream modern philosophy Esotericism is usually associated with intellectual quackery, which leads many of its followers to heresy and exclusion from the Christian world. However, prominent representatives of the European philosophy sometimes drew their inspiration from esoteric knowledge, e.g. G. Bruno and Spinoza from kabbalah or F. W. J. Schelling from F. C. Oetinger’s theosophy. G. W. F. Hegel was probably aware that the esoteric thought played an essential (...) role in the establishing of the modern scientific method. Therefore, in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy he devoted a separate chapter to J. Boehme, who provided the basis for the modern dialectic in his theosophy. The author of this article makes a comparative analysis between the elected elements of Boehme’s and Hegel’s thought and exposes many structural similarities in their works. At the same time, the author suggests that Boehme’s theory could have been an important source of inspiration for Hegel, especially in the early phase of his intellectual development. (shrink)

The term ‘inertia’ is often used to describe a kind of irrational resistance to change in individuals or institutions. Institutions, ideas and power structures appear to become entrenched over time, and may become ineffective or obsolete, even if they once played a legitimate or useful role. In this paper I argue that there is a common set of problems underlying the occurrence of resistance to change in individuals, social structures and the development of knowledge. Resistance to change is not always (...) irrational or problematic; it is also necessary to allow stable personal identities and social structures to survive in a constantly changing world. I offer a historical and theoretical framework for the question of inertia. Finally, I argue that philosophy has often seen its task to be the critique of ossified, inert or obsolete ideas and social structures, but that it has neglected the positive dimension of resistance to change. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE. (shrink)

This paper argues that insofar as the ‘translation’ of deconstruction in America has become a discourse on the sacred, it mis‐recognizes what Derrida calls the trace, and identifies it as the radical outside to thought, or as ‘God’. The ‘trace’ on Derrida's account is indeed unknowable, but it is not the radical outside of thought. Rather, it is a disruptive force that is internal to thought. Reconstructive analyses investigate the way that thought is breached, and necessarily so, by what thought (...) cannot think. This breach, this unsignifiable opening, is intolerable to philosophical undertakings because philosophy must totalize; this is what philosophy does. Following Walter Benjamin, I argue that translation is possible, precisely because of this breach. Thus, just because this breach or opening is intolerable to thought or to philosophy does not prevent it from happening. On Jacques Derrida's analysis, this opening has a name: it is deconstruction. To this extent, those variants of ‘deconstruction in America’ which misrecognize the trace as God, miss the very political force of deconstruction in the first place, which is to say, a philosophical undertaking which thematizes the intolerability of refusing what philosophy does and must do.The breach in thought is precisely what Walter Benjamin suggests is untranslatable. It cannot be communicated by any sign. Notwithstanding the great difference between Benjamin and Hegel's political commitments, comparing Benjamin's work on the untranslatability of language's ‘languageness’ to Hegel's semiological theory is instructive. It establishes that both thinkers argue that the practice of language should be the practice of learning each word as though it were a proper name. Each argues in their own way that the practice of language should erase the trace. It is precisely this erasure — the identification of the trace as radically exterior to thought ‐ that covers over what is at stake, not simply philosophically, in an investigation into the breach of language, but what is at stake politically. What is at stake politically is what Derrida calls the ‘risk of absolute surprise’ which is nothing less than the risk of a political philosophy with no guarantee. (shrink)

This paper pursues the lsquo;thinking dialoguersquo; between Hegel and Heidegger, a dialogue centred on Heideggerrsquo;s lsquo;confrontationrsquo; with Hegelrsquo;s Phenomenology of Spirit. To this end, I examine Heideggerrsquo;s critique of Hegel on the relationship between time and Spirit; Heideggerrsquo;s interpretation of the Phenomenology as exemplifying the Cartesian-Fichtean metaphysics of the subject; and Heideggerrsquo;s later reflections on Hegel as articulating the modern metaphysics of lsquo;subjectityrsquo;. I argue that Heideggerrsquo;s confrontation forgets those aspects of Hegelrsquo;s philosophy that make him our philosophical contemporary: Hegelrsquo;s (...) thinking of intersubjectivity and recognition, of the historicity of the experience of spirit, and his critique of modernity. The point of this dialogue is to begin a retrieval of Hegel from Heideggerrsquo;s critical deconstruction, and thus to suggest that the future of Hegelmdash;in Catherine Malaboursquo;s phrasemdash;remains something still to-come. (shrink)

It is a widespread view that Marx did not apply dialectics to nature, and that Engels’s writings on this subject are a distortion of his outlook. This paper examines Marx’s discussion of elliptical motion and some other physical phenomena, and shows that he did indeed find contradictions and oppositions in nature, and thus recognised a dialectics of nature. In addition to analysing relevant passages in Marx’s texts, his study of the physics and mathematics of elliptical motion is reviewed and compared (...) with Hegel’s position. Marx’s conception of how dialectical contradictions are resolved is reviewed in order to interpret his claim that the contradiction in elliptical motion is ‘solved’ but not ‘overcome’ by that motion. Textual evidence is presented that Marx regarded ‘real contradictions’ as resolved only by ‘development’, a process in which the conflict between the opposing sides of the contradiction becomes more intense. The consequences of this interpretation for Marx’s analysis of elliptical motion are explored, and some alternative interpretations are discussed. (shrink)

E.V. Ilyenkov is widely considered to be the most important Soviet philosopher in the post-Stalin period. He is known largely for his original conception of the ideal, which he deployed against both idealist and crude materialist forms of reductionism, including official Soviet Diamat. This conception was articulated in its most developed form in ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’, which was written in the mid-1970s but prevented from publication in its complete form until thirty years after the author’s death. The translation before (...) you provides for the first time the complete, unabridged and unedited text of ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’ in English translation, including the author’s own subsequent comments on the text. (shrink)

This article offers the motivation for organising a conference on philosophy as it is practised across several faculties and departments at the University of Cambridge. It also offers an overview of the main themes that emerge in the essays collected in this issue of Metaphilosophy, which derive from the aforementioned conference. In particular it focuses on the risk of scholasticism and dogmatism that philosophy faces when it divorces itself from its own history, other disciplines, and real life. It then discusses (...) the potential problems that can arise from the practice of philosophy in close conjunction with other disciplines, such as the natural sciences and the history of philosophy. Finally, it briefly comments on how institutional/academic structures have an influence on the way philosophy is practised. (shrink)