The articles considers how the "death of the subject" influences ways in which we understand the aestheticization of the political." It explores how Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility" can contribute to a conception of the political implications of thinking the subject. It also turns to Solon's conception of subjectivity as a way of mediating the current discussion on the subject.

Morality exercises a deep and questionable influence on the way we live our lives. The influence is deep both because moral injunctions are embedded in our psyches long before we can reflect on their status and because even after we become reflective agents, the question of how we should live our lives among others is intimately bound up with the more general question of how we should live our lives: our stance toward morality and our conception of our lives as (...) having significance are of a piece. The influence is questionable because morality pretends to a level of objectivity that it may not possess. Moral injunctions are meant to be binding on us in some way that is independent of the desires or preferences we may happen to have. When one asserts that a certain action is morally worthy or shameful one is, prime facie, doing more than merely expressing approval or disapproval or trying to get others to act as instruments of one's own will. If moral assertions were shown, at bottom, to be merely such exhortations, then they would be shown to wear a disguise. Morality would be revealed as pretending to an objectivity it does not have, and such a revelation could not but have a profound impact on our lives. It is doubtful that such a revelation could be kept locked up inside our studies. (shrink)

Morality exercises a deep and questionable influence on the way we live our lives. The influence is deep both because moral injunctions are embedded in our psyches long before we can reflect on their status and because even after we become reflective agents, the question of how we should live our lives among others is intimately bound up with the more general question of how we should live our lives: our stance toward morality and our conception of our lives as (...) having significance are of a piece. The influence is questionable because morality pretends to a level of objectivity that it may not possess. Moral injunctions are meant to be binding on us in some way that is independent of the desires or preferences we may happen to have. When one asserts that a certain action is morally worthy or shameful one is, prime facie, doing more than merely expressing approval or disapproval or trying to get others to act as instruments of one's own will. If moral assertions were shown, at bottom, to be merely such exhortations, then they would be shown to wear a disguise. Morality would be revealed as pretending to an objectivity it does not have, and such a revelation could not but have a profound impact on our lives. It is doubtful that such a revelation could be kept locked up inside our studies. (shrink)

This essay explores the thorny issue of theory and practice, partly in response to the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (37.2, 2003) but more especially as a way of offering a critique of Joseph Dunne’s book, Back to the Rough Ground (1993). It argues that Dunne’s notion of phronetic techne risks the reduction of philosophy to the merely instrumental, and, in turn, that this approach threatens the significance of philosophical character.

The focus of this essay is on how we overcome the past by dealing with it. In this setting, the analysis is of the relationship between ‘moral transactions’ concerning blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness and the possibility of transition away from states of trauma. The first section draws on previous work to set out a position on human love as the basis for an understanding of guilt and the ‘moral grammar’ of justice. The second section considers Martha Nussbaum’s claim (...) in Anger and Forgiveness that the idea of transition should be prioritized at the cost of a moral transactional analysis that would engage the moral grammar of blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness. The latter is seen as potentially obstructing the transition to a better world. I suggest to the contrary there are grounds for thinking that a successful transition requires relevant moral transactions. (shrink)

Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is framed by a comprehensive theory of living nature. Central to this philosophical biology is the claim that animals lack self-consciousness but their awareness of their surroundings is nevertheless anchored in a self. Since Plessner does not explain how this unselfconscious self is manifest to the animal, the warrant for his claim remains unclear. Following Plessner’s construal of human existence as a radically transformed variant of animal life, I argue that he leaves animals’ selfhood unaccounted for (...) because he overlooks the animal precursor of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, which affords a pre-reflective self-awareness. I fill this lacuna by drawing on Kant’s and Plessner’s theories of human feelings, Hans Jonas’s conception of animal emotion,and recent arguments that make evaluative affects fundamental to animal consciousness. Revised along these lines, Plessner’s framework allows us to specify how animal affectivity is transformed in self-conscious human life. (shrink)

Feminists have disagreed about whether women can choose gendered subordination autonomously. Less attention has been paid, however, to the socio-ontological questions that underlie this debate. This article introduces novel cases of ‘thwarted autonomy,’ in which women pursue autonomy but in ways that reinforce gendered subordination, in order to challenge dominant proceduralist and substantivist views, as well as motivate an expressivist view of the social self as a promising foundation for an account of autonomy. On this view, which draws on the (...) Hegelian tradition, agents must embody their desires and values in the social world to achieve self-understanding. Social meanings and norms therefore mediate the form an agent’s expressive activity takes, and the sense of self she develops. An expressivist view, I argue, allows us to reinterpret women’s outward acquiescence to gendered subordination as an attempt to express autonomy in an oppressive social context. It also points towards a robustly social conception of autonomy to aid in the diagnosis and redress of patriarchal oppression. (shrink)

In the times where the predominant description of the world has become that of the so-called “post-truth” reality, all the questions on the possibilities of leading a fulfilled life, the life of εὐδαιμονία, seem to have become irrelevant, if not unattainable. This is due to the reason that εὐδαιμονία, as such, intrinsically involves a connection with the truth and the universal. On the other hand, the concept of a fulfilled life should not exclude subjective happiness. The latter has always been (...) intertwined with the concept of pleasure. Nonetheless, what the contemporary world-view has to offer is not at all the compound of pleasure and truth, the dialectics of particular and the universal. Instead, it is a paradigm of life led by undifferentiated particular pleasures, to be desired and pursued for the sole purpose of their being pleasurable. Paradoxical as it may seem, the issue is not a new one. The first aim of this paper is to critically assess the Epicurean concept of pleasure. Rather than taking an a priori moralistic stance, I intent to point out that the concept in question is intrinsically, i.e., theoretically problematic. My second aim is to critically analyze the hedonistic world-view as such assessing it primarily as a political attitude. In addition, I hope to show that in contrast to ancient hedonism, which I regard as a type of unintentional individual escapism, contemporary hedonism has transformed into a systematically induced and politically desired ideology of activism prevention. Phrased in the context of Platonic terminology, it has become the discourse of the Cave. Thus, beginning with the sources analysis, the paper is mainly conceived as a critique of an idea targeting both its early and its ultimate manifestations. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author takes up aspects of Richard Rorty's account of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the light of such developments. In an autobiographical essay Rorty recounted an early phase of his intellectual life in which he became disillusioned with the Platonist "quest for certainty" that he had harbored up to that time. Rorty's parallel vision of Hegel as providing a philosophical form of this redescriptive path to freedom and thereby as providing a philosophical narrative without a "moral" (...) or any "aspect of eternity" is one that, of course, stands in stark contrast to the usual picture of Hegel's philosophy. Rorty had been obviously attracted to the strongly anti‐Cartesian dimensions of Hegel's account of "Anerkennung" in which mindedness is treated not as a fixed human capacity but as having a history in virtue of being dependent on historically variable forms of social interaction. (shrink)

The first anthology exclusively devoted to Hegel’s linguistic thought.

Critically engages the work of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein.

_The first anthology exclusively devoted to Hegel’s linguistic thought._.

Jean-Francois Lyotard's essay `Adorno as the Devil' had argued that Theodor Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music was a `diabolic' work of `negative theology' which attributed to Schoenberg's music a secret redemptive power. However, in his later writings, such as the essays in The Inhuman, Lyotard has himself moved close to a `negative theological' position with respect to modernity, time, aesthetics and music. The paper uses the occasion of Lyotard's own theologically inspired essays on music, `God and Puppet' and `Obedience', to (...) re-evaluate the following: Adorno's claims that music transcends mere language and `reaches' for the theological; and more general claims within modern western culture on behalf of music's ability to express the inexpressible. The argument is that the music as negative theology position is not inherently metaphysical but rather that it reflects the importance of the `unsayable' to modern conceptions of reason. In resisting the `closure' of the modern narrative of reason, music, as a temporal art, has often given expression to the more radical forms of alterity present within modern forms of time. In other words, negative theology is not the discourse of the devil; it is the impossible discourse of western reason and its internal fracturing. (shrink)

Radical self-silencing is a particular variety of speech act disablement where the subject silences themselves, whether knowingly or not, because of their own faults or deficiencies. The paper starts with some concrete cases and preparatory comments to help orient and motivate the investigation. It then offers a summary analysis, drawing on a small number of basic concepts to identify its five individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions and discriminating their two basic forms, ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’. The paper then explicates and (...) defends what has been proposed, where the most salient and pressing objections concern the use of two basic concepts: ‘uptake’ and ‘silencing’. Finally, the paper gives a longer-term motivation for deepening our understanding of radical self-silencing, what it is and what it implies. (shrink)

Reporting on a study of activists living with HIV/AIDS who give testimonials of their experiences with the disease in various educational settings, this article employs the notion of 'haunting' as a means of analyzing the effect of social justice activism in the "aftermath" of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Because of a shift in both the discursive construction of AIDS and the material symptoms of the disease (due to widespread availability of anti-retroviral medication), the signified of AIDS is "out of joint" with (...) the signification of the disease in the public sphere. AIDS, as a social phenomena and a personal, traumatic experience has been rendered spectral through processes of social othering, structural disenfranchisement, and cultural denialism. Most of the presenters included in this study utilize a strategy of "survivorhood" in order to promote prevention and combat stigma. In doing so, they inadvertently buttress dominant discourses that claim that the disease is now "manageable," normalized, and under control. By contrast, one presenter utilizes a completely different performative approach. In order to confront and subvert the "aftermath" discourse and thereby presence the living trauma of AIDS, this presenter embodies the specter of AIDS. As such, his presentation forces the audience to reckon with processes of social exclusion and cultural otherness. (shrink)

In this paper I made an attempt to discuss how the concept of alienation has been discussed in G.W.F. Hegel’s (1770–1831) social philosophy. In Hegel’s philosophy, alienation is part of the process of self-creativity and self-discovery. According to Hegel, initially our consciousness is alienated from itself. It cannot understand its own true nature. In order to realize its own true nature consciousness’s needs to develop absolute knowledge. The development of consciousness’s absolute knowledge is possible through the overcoming of self-alienation of (...) consciousness. Here, concept of alienation plays an important role in bringing consciousness to the shape of itself called absolute knowing. According to Hegel, consciousness cannot easily know itself with certainty. Consciousness has to develop its self-understanding to fully understand itself. In his discussion of the concept of alienation Hegel compares the dialectic of self-consciousness and consciousness which is not self-realised with the famous dialectic of the lord and the bondsman. It means while discussing the relation of lord and bondsman Hegel compares lord with independent consciousness and bondsman with dependent consciousness. This dialectic of lord and bondsman is sometimes referred to as the dialectic of the master and the slave relationship. In the productive system when everybody regards themselves to be producer and as a member of productive activity, when everybody participates in the large collaborative activity, then there exists no alienation in the society. But when people forget this identity then alienation arises in the society. Hegel thinks that when our consciousness reaches at the stage of itself called Absolute knowledge then it clearly comes to know that it is a differentiated spiritual unity of subjectivity and objectivity. Then it comes to know its own true nature and it overcomes its self-alienation. In the same way in society people overcome their self-alienation when everyone can think themselves to be a part of the whole community. In the present study, I shall deal with how Hegel has applied the concept of alienation in his social philosophy and how does he try to show that through overcoming his alienation a man gets united with the other or the whole community. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It used to be said that shame culture waned in early modernity, but there is a growing body of historiography on the vital role that recognition and the opinion of others continued to play. Honour mattered; for some it was the mark and the maker of your true self. While philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and Rousseau disagreed in their evaluations of the phenomenon, they were united in thinking that the great engine of recognition whirred like furious (...) clockwork through human society. When one listens to voices from the margins of power, however, to formerly enslaved black women and men, and white women, one hears a different story – that the machine is broken. I argue that, albeit from incomparable positions, they articulate a theory of misrecognition in the face of systematic power. Sensitive to the entanglements of epistemology and naturalised inequality, they offer a politics of vision that deconstructs the punitive lenses of gender and race which render people invisible and misunderstood, and in so doing they try to write themselves into view. They offer an account of the mysterious intractability of hegemonic ways of seeing that poses a challenge to both the putatively laissez-faire economy of recognition of their enlightened contemporaries, and to the emancipatory teleology of modern recognition theorists. (shrink)

In his posthumously published Broken Hegemonies, Reiner Schürmann shows how the ‘tragic denial’ of the differend – between the universal and the singular, natality and mortality, institution and destitution – gives rise to hegemonies. When ‘the sovereign fantasm’ that grounds and anchors the hegemony expires, the hegemony gets withered away. Taking Schürmann’s insights as point of departure, this paper attempts to think of singularisation to come in messianic sense, as truly anarchic thought worthy of our time, that is, to think (...) without hegemonies. Such a messianic/eschatological tragic-anarchic thought can’t be understood as the dialectical operation of the universal’s antagonism to the particular. Beyond the dialectical opposition of the universal and the particular, differend of the singularisation to come can only be understood as the unheard of an-arché, that is, living without ‘why’. (shrink)

This essay attempts to think anew the relationship of pain with finitude and language. If man is that finite, mortal being whose being is essentially linguistic and being-in-communication, where language is not seen as mere attribute, property, or instrumental means of appropriation, then language cannot be understood in its cognitive disposal as categorical grasp of the “entities presently given,” but must be understood in a more originary manner as opening of the coming into presence, as the event of this coming (...) itself. If a certain dominant ontology, in its innermost ground, understands pain as the very grounding work of logos, then it is necessary to open up the closure of this logos of metaphysics to another, more originary experience of pain in relation to mortality that dispropriates us beforehand, and thereby grants us language itself as gift and promise which welcomes the incalculable event of the “not yet.” This essay reads Heidegger, Schelling and Benjamin to think of the promise of this redemptive, messianic language in relation to an originary finitude, outside the metaphysics of subjectivity, insofar as this metaphysics subsumes language to its cognitive disposal, to its categorical grasp of entities’ “given present.”. (shrink)

How can an agent's desire or will give him reasons for acting? Not long ago, this might have seemed a silly question, since it was widely believed that all reasons for acting are based in the agent's desires. The interesting question, it seemed, was not how what an agent wants could give him reasons, but how anything else could. In recent years, however, this earlier orthodoxy has increasingly appeared wrongheaded as a growing number of philosophers have come to stress the (...) action-guiding role of reasons in deliberation from the agent's point of view. What a deliberating agent has in view is rarely his own will or desires as such, even if taking something as a reason is intimately tied to desire. Someone who wants to escape a burning building does not evaluate her options by considering which is likeliest to realize what she wants or wills. She is focused, rather, on her desire's object: getting out alive. The fact that a successful route would realize something she wants is apt to strike her as beside the point or, at best, as a trivial bonus. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

Este texto pretende apresentar algumas posições sobre o problema do gênero, na modernidade. Partindo do diagnóstico de Foucault de que os processos de constituição e de produção do sujeito implicariam ter um modelo de autodeterminação de si, buscamos pensar o problema do gênero por duas vertentes: por um lado, uma proposta de Butler, em que a sexualidade não poderia ser determinada, pois ela sempre resistiria a qualquer forma de normatização; por outro, uma luta por reconhecimento da individualidade que procura incluir (...) todas as possibilidades de autorrealização de si, na esfera jurídica. Nossa proposta é avaliar esses dois modelos e questionar o que poderia estar mais próximo das demandas sociais em relação ao problema do gênero e, de um modo mais amplo, do problema da identidade individual. This paper aims to present certain positions regarding the question of gender in modernity. Starting from Foucault’s diagnosis that the processes of the constitution and production of the subject involve having a model of self-determination, we have attempted to reexamine the question of gender from two different perspectives: on the one hand, Butler’s proposal that sexuality cannot be determined, since it always resists any form of normatization; on the other, the struggle for recognition of individuality which seeks the inclusion into the legal sphere of all possibilities for self-fulfillment. Our aim is to evaluate these two models and to question which of the two might be closer to social demands connected to the issue of gender and, more broadly, the issue of individual identity. (shrink)

Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Yet I then argue that it fails (...) to note the practical importance of Kant's separation of knowledge and aesthetics. I propose an alternative approach to tragedy that builds from the revised view and yet maintains the autonomy of aesthetics. Tragedy represents an action, a set of events that are internally unified and yet cannot be reduced to theory. This is to say that tragedy confronts us with an aesthetic sphere of making and doing that, while constrained, is incessantly open and free. (shrink)

Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Yet I then argue that it fails (...) to note the practical importance of Kant's separation of knowledge and aesthetics. I propose an alternative approach to tragedy that builds from the revised view and yet maintains the autonomy of aesthetics. Tragedy represents an action, a set of events that are internally unified and yet cannot be reduced to theory. This is to say that tragedy confronts us with an aesthetic sphere of making and doing that, while constrained, is incessantly open and free. (shrink)

Axel Honneth distinguishes between recognitive practices according to the social domain in which they occur and this allows him to theorise the relationship between power and recognition. 'Love-based recognition', which suggests the centrality of recognition to the relationships that nurture us in the first instance, is located in the family. Honneth argues that relationships encompassed by this category are pre-political, thereby repeating the distinction between the public and the private common to much political theory. This article explores the structure of (...) this delineation in his thinking. I argue that Honneth's analysis marginalises feminist concerns with how power functions through recognition in the private sphere. Honneth also robs himself of a rejoinder to recognition sceptics, who suggest that the desire for recognition is a condition of subordination. The article argues for an alternative approach to the analysis of 'love' within recognitive theory. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. (shrink)

In what we might call its particularly Christian manifestation, “guilt” denotes the feeling or fact of having offended, the failure to uphold an ethical code. Under such terms, “guilt” connotes negative consequences: shame, punishment, and estrangement. Yet, penetrating further into its meaning and value, one finds that guilt extends beyond this narrow classification, playing a productive, necessary, and ineluctable role for recognitive sociality. This paper examines guilt as it appears in Hegel’s thinking. I find that Hegel’s understanding of Schuld (guilt) (...) in the Phenomenology , undergoes a crucial development over the course of the chapter titled, “Spirit,” culminating in a robust understanding of guilt that represents not a hopelessly broken bond, but a bond that awaits its fulfillment, its very incompleteness exerting a palpable pull upon the guilty party towards its fulfillment. I examine three key moments in “Spirit”: Hegel’s treatments of Antigone , the French Revolution, and the confession and forgiveness of evil. By comparing these moments, I distinguish between “abstract guilt,” guilt that only brings about shame and punishment, and what we might call “determinate guilt”: guilt that brings about action, reminds one of her/his indebtedness to the other. Understanding the development of guilt from the beginning to end of “Spirit” provides an entryway into a discussion of the social and political relevance of Hegel’s conception of the subject as—in a certain sense—always already guilty. I go on to argue that guilt as indebtedness and responsibility only exists as embedded within an already recognitive social structure. Re-thinking guilt as responsibility is not, therefore, a call to a new objective a priori moral system. Rather, it invites us to think through our recognitive being-together in a way that shakes off its metaphysical fetters. Such an ethics of recognitive intersubjectivity is an infinite task—not in the futile sense of the “unhappy consciousness”—but in the sense that we are responsible for constantly understanding, critiquing, and reforming ethical commitments that can only be (understood as) ours. (shrink)

In this paper, I make explicit some implicit commitments to realism and conceptualism in recent work in social epistemology exemplified by Miranda Fricker and Charles Mills. I offer a survey of recent writings at the intersection of social epistemology, feminism, and critical race theory, showing that commitments to realism and conceptualism are at once implied yet undertheorized in the existing literature. I go on to offer an explicit defense of these commitments by drawing from the epistemological framework of John McDowell, (...) demonstrating the relevance of the metaphor of the “space of reasons” for theorizing and criticizing instances of epistemic injustice. I then point out how McDowell’s own view requires expansion and revision in light of Mills' concept of 'epistemologies of ignorance'. I conclude that, when their strengths are used to make up for each others' weaknesses, Mills and McDowell’s positions mutually reinforce one another, producing a powerful model for theorizing instances of systematic ignorance and false belief. (shrink)

This paper argues for the inclusion of a fourth order of recognition, pertaining to self-recognition, in Axel Honneth's critical theory of social recognition. I argue for the significance of this on the basis of examining the critical potential of the social psychology he has developed across his career as it pertains to autonomy, authenticity and agency. However, incorporating a fourth order of recognition into Honneth's internally differentiated account of recognition will not be easy given the architecture of his theory. To (...) remain consistent with Honneth's delineation between love, rights and solidarity, a fourth order of recognition would need to be capable of generating a practical relation to self and a normative attitude; it would require an institutional locale in which it could be articulated through social practices that admit conflict and thereby the possibility for further extension and/or reconstitution. Self-recognition fulfils three of these four criteria: it may lack for a specific institu.. (shrink)

The final lines of Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? call for a non-philosophy to balance and act as a counterweight to the task of philosophy that had been described by them in terms of concept creation. In a footnote, Deleuze and Guattari mention François Laruelle’s project of non-philosophy, but dispute its efficacy in terms of the designated relationship between non-philosophy and science, as had been realised by Laruelle at the time. However, the mature non-philosophy of Laruelle could indicate a (...) resolution to the problematic relationship between science and educational philosophy that we have inherited due to the poststructural theories of Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Non-philosophy suggests a framework for thought that includes science in a non-positivist style and provides the means to view education as a performative practice. This article explores the non-philosophy of Laruelle in education as a means to view education under the conditions of strict immanence and in line with an anti-phenomenological metaphysics of non-representation. Laruelle is perhaps one of the most important critics of Deleuze in France, and as such, his insights into the Deleuzian oeuvre reveal a way forward for education as a practice that analyses science, philosophy and politics through non-philosophy. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hegel’s thesis that we are, in our practical relation to the world, inherently committed to certain aspects of idealistic metaphysics. For Hegel, our practical attitude is fundamentally at odds with a naïve realism that would take the world to consist ultimately of self-contained, self-sufficient individuals whose relations to one another are fundamentally external to their identities. Hegel contends that our practical attitude is premised upon an overcoming of this mutual externality, and especially the externality which is supposed (...) to hold between individual agent and world. It is shown that his argument hinges on conceiving of external things as inadequately individuated, as compared to living agents, and that it is precisely this ontological deficiency that conditions and motivates our action. Hegel’s discussions of morality and property ownership are appealed to in order to illustrate how we might better understand the nature and practical role of this purported deficiency. (shrink)

Scholars have questioned the doctrine of desireless action in the Bhagavadgita and questioned whether Krishna’s advice is to be taken literally on the basis that the Humean account of motivation is more plausible than the anti-Humean account. In this paper, I will avoid the Humean principle debate by proposing a new way of examining the term ‘desireless action’. I aim to show that Krishna’s advice can be rendered coherent on the basis that we understand a desireless action as an action (...) motivated by a benevolent desire. I will be referring to the notion of benevolence as constructed by Francis Hutcheson because there is a parallel between the Hutchesonian experience of benevolence and purusha, or pure consciousness. Benevolent desire results in a desireless action since to act benevolently is to act ‘disinterestedly’ and thereby accepting purusha as one’s true nature. (shrink)

This paper explores the materialist and the object-based dimension of “the ideal” in Evald Ilyenkov’s thought and, consequently, his speculative technique of converging matter and idea. The philosophic figures that Ilyenkov relies on to legitimate such a convergence are Hegel, Spinoza, and Marx. The paper reveals the complexities in Ilyenkov’s task to reconcile his dialectics of the ideal with Spinoza’s studies of Substance, tracing the discrepancies in Ilyenkov’s attempt to conjoin Hegelian and Marxian dialectics and Spinoza’s nonidealist immanentism. The reference (...) to the researchers of Spinozism, such as Macherey, Deleuze, Badiou, Della Rocca, Oittinen, and Maidansky, confirms the difficulties in discerning dialectics in Spinoza’s thought. Ilyenkov managed to reveal that Hegel’s idealism was grounded in an objective materialism conditioned by the other-determined self, and merely needed Marx’s thought to complete the socialization of Subject; whereas Spinoza never truly needed to theorize the concept of the ideal. The key finding of the paper is in tracing how—due to developing Marxist epistemology out of Marxist political economy—Ilyenkov manages to consider social being and labor through noumenal parameters, proving that any material activity can be seen as thought-oriented. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of seminal examples of Western thought in which food features as a means to the conceptual differentiation of the human from the animal. Such an approach allows the emergence of a “structure” that seems to underlie the production of these distinctions. It is, paradoxically, human and animal mutuality – as this is manifested in their common need for, and consumption of, food – that has been utilised as their “differentiator” in the Western tradition and it (...) is this, I argue, that renders possible the functions of what Agamben calls the “anthropological machine.”. (shrink)

The paper questions an official narrative of Soviet Marxism that had been formulated both by the Bolshevik leaders and the Western European Marxists. It proposes to shift the discussion from a historically constituted understanding of Soviet Marxism as a partisanship of theory to the epistemic conditions of Marxism after the October Revolution. The paper argues that a post-revolutionary Soviet logic assumes that theory should start where Marx ended and that it should act in a Marxist fashion across all conceptual and (...) practical realms. Instead of asking ‘how’, the Soviet thought returns to the old pre-critical question of ‘what is’, and reformulates this ‘what is’ in the Marxist post-critical terms. Constructing a new critical concept of Soviet Marxism, the paper proceeds with the analysis of the post-critical status of knowledge after the revolution and recovers forgotten and repressed epistemological alternatives to orthodox Bolshevism. (shrink)

The claim that theoretical foundations are historically contingent does not draw the same intensity of fire as it did one or especially two decades ago. The aftermath of debates on the political boundaries created by foundations allows for a deeper exploration of the foundations of feminist theory. This article re-examines the (anti)-Hegelian foundations of the feminist standpoint put forward by Nancy Hartsock and argues that the Hegelian subject of the early Phenomenology of Spirit resists gender codification in its experience of (...) ongoing rediscovery and fallibility in knowing. The subject against which the feminist self was constituted does not fit the masculinity thought to be natural. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and phenomenological subject reveal contradictions that cannot be resolved by an opposing feminist standpoint, and may provide resources that resist the rigid gender categories upon which the standpoint depends. Key Words: abstract masculinity • feminist standpoint • feminist theory • foundations • Nancy Hartsock • Hegel • master-slave dialectic • subjectivity. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Down by Law (Jarmusch, 1986) is about how the encounter with otherness renews freedom and American identity. I first develop the idea of renewal through otherness by way of a discussion of Levinas' philosophy of freedom and Arendt's notion natality, contrasting it with the idea of negative liberty, which I explicate through a discussion of Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, and Tocqueville. Next, I show how negative liberty is engrained in the idea of America through a (...) discussion of the formative American motifs of the road and the prison, which play structuring roles in Down by Law . I then try to show how the immigrant character of Bob (Roberto Benigni) is an other who liberates the American characters of Jack (John Lurie) and Zack (Tom Waits), who are existentially 'imprisoned' by their negative liberty. (shrink)

This paper seeks to destabilize the silent privilege given to the secured juridical-political position of the citizen as the stable site of enunciation of the problem/solution framework under which the stranger (foreigner, immigrant, refugee) is theoretically located. By means of textual, intertextual, and extratextual readings of Antigone, the paper argues that it is politically and literarily possible to (re)invent her for strangers in the twenty-first century, that is, for those symbolically produced as not-legally locatable and who resignify their ambivalent ontological (...) status between life and death as an alternative sociopolitical location of speech and action in equality with “others.”. (shrink)

Practical political relations according to Luce Irigaray ground the possibilities for emerging to a new political epoch. She articulates that in order to move toward a more peaceful and emancipated politics, philosophers must focus more on subject-subject relations as opposed to subject-object relations. This in turn promotes the possibility of relating to a naturally and culturally different other. She also elaborates how an emancipated politics demands initially and primarily grounding subjectivity in the two, rather than in individuality or collectivity. This (...) is in contrast to classical liberalism which conceives of a social contract between individual agents who relate through mediations of property. Her philosophy conceives of refounding politics not only in the sphere of public government, but also in the traditionally private domestic sphere, which must become politically awakened. She articulates ways of refounding the family and the couple mediated first by relations between two, and liberating the family from its primary role as the material ground of society. Irigaray suggests that political relations at all levels must be rooted in difference rather than sameness, starting with recognizing sexual difference. Establishing such conditions involves creating civil protections and rights, especially for women, and establishing contexts nurturing to desire, including cultivating sensitivity and attending to sensible differences. Liberating contemporary politics from competitiveness and violence, and providing favorable conditions for peace, demands first attending to cultivating difference and fostering relations between two. (shrink)

Nearly all of the scant comparative work on Søren Kierkegaard and Confucius places the two starkly at odds with each other. Kierkegaard is pictured as the paradigmatic exemplar of the Western self: a discrete rights-bearing and volitional atom who is quite alone in the world, while Confucius, by contrast, is the paradigmatic exemplar of the Eastern self: a complex and irreducibly embedded communitarian bundle of relations and rich social roles. In this article, I challenge this oppositional approach, since it is (...) both erroneous and obscures fruitful dialogue between the two on conceptually commensurate problems. I argue (1) that Kierkegaard offers a relational ontology of the self which moves in a Confucian direction, (2) that subjectivity and relational reciprocity are not fundamentally at odds in the two thinkers, (3) that both thinkers value a life of harmonious integration that entails right relation to others, and finally (4) that Confucius’ appeal to Heaven as a source of normativity allows for salutary social critique of prevailing ethical norms and practices, in a way that provides important comparative insights with Kierkegaardian theism. (shrink)

The experience of being a therapist can be both gratifying and frustrating at the same time. This article takes the form of a psychoanalytical formulation of the process of therapy and parental feedback sessions conducted with an adolescent diagnosed with bulimia nervosa. It also incorporates the therapist’s experience of being in the room with both the patient and the patient’s parents. Through exploring the concept of ‘mutual recognition’ and being present in the moment, it seems that therapeutic change is able (...) to occur in both the patient and the family. Furthermore, this article explores the difficult process of negotiating feedback sessions with the patient’s parents. The expression of the experiences of both the therapist and patient are brought to life by psychoanalytical theory and phenomenological experience. A phenomenological exploration of experiences allows for the transcendence of conventional investigative research settings as “interpretive phenomenological research cannot be separated from the textual practice of writing”. This article could constitute a protocol as it captures unique data from a setting that is often not easily accessed, and provides data and insights from the perspective of the therapist, which are often not expressed. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Gilles Deleuze’s engagement with phenomenology, and with the phenomenological problematic of sensation, in his Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Considering Deleuze’s adoption, from the phenomenology of art, of notions of sensation and rhythm, it examines how Deleuze complexifies these phenomenological notions by aligning them with his profoundly non-phenomenological notion of the body without organs, as well as with the concepts of modulation and the diagram. In mapping Deleuze’s complexification of rhythm and his development of a logic (...) of rhythmic modulation, this article shows how Deleuze immanently refines an approach to working beyond phenomenology, through phenomenology. (shrink)

Mark Wicclair’s defense of conscientious objection is grounded in an effort to respect the core moral beliefs of health care providers. While such a theoretical schema has merit, this paper argues that core moral beliefs should not serve as the basis of conscientious objection in health care because we, as a community, lack reliable access to a person’s core moral beliefs and because individuals are prone to be confused about the scope and extent of their core moral beliefs. Furthermore, a (...) person’s confusion over their core moral beliefs is likely to be exacerbated when they lack time to investigate those beliefs and are under heightened external pressure to do so—both conditions frequently encountered by health care providers. Finally, the paper considers whether grounding conscientious objection in core moral beliefs might have the unintended consequence of further entrenching the practical problems that the move is aiming to solve. (shrink)