This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthropology's subject. Toward this, I examine Cohn's notion of `the colonial situation' (...) and reflect on how the emergence of the human sciences is intertwined with the proliferation of colonialism's enduring legacy within postcoloniality. (shrink)

In this article I will consider John D. Caputo’s ‘radical hermeneutics’, with ‘undecidability’ as its major theme, in conversation with Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘anticipatory resoluteness’. Through an examination of the positions of Caputo and Heidegger I argue that Heidegger’s notion of ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ reaches far beyond the claims of ‘radical hermeneutics’, and that it assumes a reconstructive process which carries within its scope the overtones of deconstruction, the experience of repetition and authenticity and also the implications of Gelassenheit. Further, (...) I am arguing that Caputo’s ‘radical hermeneutics’ is problematic and even erroneous when it comes to criticize Heidegger’s thought portraying it as being founded on ‘the myth of the early Greeks’. (shrink)

I defend a neo-Kantian view wherein we are capable of being completely autonomous and impartial and argue that this ability can ground normativity. As this view includes an existentialist conception of the self, I defend radical choice, a primary component of that conception, against arguments many take to be definitive. I call the ability to use radical choice “existentialist voluntarism” and bring it into a current debate in normative philosophy, arguing that it allows that we can be distanced from all (...) ends at once so as to be completely impartial. Finally, I indicate how this can be the source of normativity as it provides a purely impartial reason for being rational. (shrink)

This project retraces activations of Kierkegaard in the development of polit­ical theology. It suggests alternative modes of states of exception than those attributed to him by Schmitt, Taubes and Agamben. Several Kierkegaardian themes open themselves to 'something like pure potential' in Agamben, namely: living death, animality, criminality, auto-constitution, modification, liturgy, love and certain articulations of improbabilities. Attention is drawn to a modal ontology and auto-constitution at work in Kierkegaard's writings, as well as a complicated and indissociable operation between killing and (...) letting-live in legalist exceptionalism, comparable to similar functions found in Foucault regarding the biopowers and necropolitics of territorial and governmental apparatuses. It closes in consideration of Kierkegaard's critique of enumeration, large numbers, and statistical probability alongside contemporary tele-technoscientific social controls via the online datafication of people by surveillance or platform capitalisms. After Kierkegaard, such apparatuses are perhaps suspect as calculated to tranquilize humanity into more docile subhumans as it fools folk into becoming part of its numbers. (*Accompanying file includes only front matter, abstract, and endnotes*). (shrink)

This paper develops the thesis that personal identity is neither to be taken in terms of an unchanging self-sufficient ‘substance’ nor in terms of selfhood ‘without substance,’ i.e. as fluctuating processes of pure relationality and subject-less activity. Instead, identity is taken as self-transformation that is bound to particular embodied individuals and surpasses them as individuated entities. The paper is structured in three parts. Part I describes the experiential givenness of conflicts that support our sense of self-transformation. While the first part (...) develops an inter-subjective topography of emotional movements, the second part pays attention to their temporal dimension. We work with conflicts and get transformed by them also in the way we remember them. Part II focuses on the process of self-understanding that accompanies conflicts and their metamorphosis in memory. Part III compares and discusses different models of a ‘relational ontology’ of the person, which question the idea that we are defined only by how we define ourselves—just as they question the idea that one’s identity is independent of how one relates to one’s having changed. (shrink)

The topic of the present reflection is Christian religious belief. Specifically, we will use Husserlian tools in order to examine the positional nature of this particular type of belief. We will be less interested in the question concerning the success conditions of this experience and more in its noetic structure. According to our proposal, to believe by faith supposes (although it is not exhausted by) accepting the existence of mundane evidence speaking against this fundamental belief. The believer acknowledges the existence (...) of this contradicting en-doxical basis and nevertheless believes what she believes. We will refer to this simultaneous movement of accepting and cancelling as the concessive structure of the religious attitude. The para-doxical movement of experiencing conflicting evidence as being subjectively ineffective is a key component of this attitude. At least some inchoative conflict with the world is required in order for the religious belief to be religious. Lastly, we will try to show that, with a distinctive terminology, the idea that the Christian religious attitude involves a conflict between subjectivity and world is present not only in Kierkegaard but also in phenomenological figures like Scheler and even Husserl. (shrink)

This article aims at making a case for the role of seduction in existential education, that is, education that focuses on the pupil’s life choices. First, the article attempts to show that the relationship between the teacher and the pupil can be understood as a form of seduction. Secondly, the article examines how such a relationship functions in practice. Thirdly, the article warns against dangerous aspects related to seduction, and lastly, the article offers five conditions for how seduction can be (...) used in a justifiable manner in existential education. (shrink)

Since the Romantic period, painters have no longer made use of traditional Christian iconography to express religious transcendence. Taking their cue from Schleiermacher’s Reden Über die Religion , painters have sought for new, personal ways to express religious transcendence. One example is Caspar David Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea . Rosenblum argues, in his Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition , that there is a parallel between Friedrich and the abstract expressionist Rothko with respect to the expression to religious (...) transcendence. In this article I investigate how the experience of transcendence that Rothko’s paintings want to evoke is to be described. Is it an experience of the sublime in the Romantic tradition? Is it the evocation of the ultimate in accordance with Tillich’s broad concept of religion? Does it display affinity between Rothko and the first generation of abstract painters such as Kandinsky and Malevich? Or is it a transcendent experience that cannot be situated so easily within the options supplied? After determining Rothko’s understanding of transcendence, some issues will be brought up that could be fruitful for Christian theology. (shrink)

Since the Romantic period, painters have no longer made use of traditional Christian iconography to express religious transcendence. Taking their cue from Schleiermacher's Reden Über die Religion, painters have sought for new, personal ways to express religious transcendence. One example is Caspar David Friedrich's Monk by the Sea. Rosenblum argues, in his Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition, that there is a parallel between Friedrich and the abstract expressionist Rothko with respect to the expression to religious transcendence. In this (...) article I investigate how the experience of transcendence that Rothko's paintings want to evoke is to be described. Is it an experience of the sublime in the Romantic tradition? Is it the evocation of the ultimate in accordance with Tillich's broad concept of religion? Does it display affinity between Rothko and the first generation of abstract painters such as Kandinsky and Malevich? Or is it a transcendent experience that cannot be situated so easily within the options supplied? After determining Rothko's understanding of transcendence, some issues will be brought up that could be fruitful for Christian theology. (shrink)

In his self-published periodical The Moment, Søren Kierkegaard warns his reader against the possibility of “useless suffering”. Not only that, he urges the reader to make use of her suffering. Taking this caution as a point of departure, I investigate the pseudonymous Johannes Climacus’ deliberations on ethico-religious suffering in the Postscript. I demonstrate that Climacus construes suffering as useful, and with that outlines an economy of suffering that Kierkegaard delineates across his pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous work. The paradigmatic expression of this (...) is the use the subject makes of her suffering in “the moment”, in which suffering is defined according to its relation with the eternal. Suffering is thus a key element of the individual subject’s self-development: The subject is transformed, and transforms herself, in suffering. Finally, I argue that this economy of suffering produces a notion of the subject as actively involved in securing the contribution her suffering can make to her self-transformation. I criticize this notion, showing it renders problematic any ethical or ethico-religious account of the response of the subject to the suffering of the other: The subject is not first and foremost attuned to the other’s suffering, rather she is attuned to the possibility of her own transformation. Suffering becomes in this way both a key exegetical tool for understanding Kierkegaard’s view of the subject and, more significantly, a way to problematize Kierkegaard’s ethical account of the subject’s response to others’ suffering. (shrink)

This paper takes the position that the aim of existential teaching, i.e., teaching where existential questions are addressed, consists in educating the students in light of subjective truth, where the students are ‘educated’ to exist on their own, i.e., independent of the teacher. The question is whether it is possible to educate in light of existence. It is, in fact impossible, as existence is a subjective matter, meaning that it must be determined individually. In this way the existential teaching appears (...) thus: even though existence cannot be determined educationally, as it is a subjective matter, it does require some kind of education. However, the teacher cannot make use of pedagogical means that coerce the students to take responsibility for their subjective truth. A pedagogical ‘expedient’ is nonetheless required, which deprives of all types of constraint but still opens up for the students taking responsibility for their subjective truth. I argue that this expedient must be irony, but not all types of irony. I therefore discuss which conception of irony the existential teaching should and should not be connected with. (shrink)

Recently the CJEU decision in the case of ‘Ewa Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited’ has raised the issue of the transcultural/trans-territorial signification of hate speech and hate crimes. Taking a cue from this decision and the related semiotic/legal implications, the paper proposes an analysis of the semio/pragmatic conditions for the production of performativity inherent in hate speech across different cultural universes of discourse. Given that web-based digital communication is global—at least, potentially—regardless of any spatial/political compartmentalization, it crosses different semio-cultural circuits. (...) This trans-spatiality implies transcultural crossings that can multiply and even transfigure the semantic implications of the original signifier and the related prognoses of ‘semantic effectiveness.’ Cultural boundaries therefore may function as a kind of ‘horizon of events’ for hate speech and, more inclusively, all linguistic acts and their legal signification/classification. The question then arises regarding whether and to what extent the performativity of hate speech is able to withstand the variation of cultural boundary conditions. Insofar as cultures are universes of experience, the issue to be investigated broadens, and ends up invoking the question of whether or not the production of performativity implicitly presupposes and tacitly epitomizes the semio-pragmatic implications/consequences (or, in Peircean terms, ‘bearings’) coextensive with cultural universes of experience. Were this the case, it would seem to call into question the very possibility of ‘making things only with words,’ or more explicitly, the alleged meaning of ‘linguistic acts.’. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 350-367, September 2021.

The main aim of the paper is to show an existential religious model of business leadership. We want to defend the thesis that leaders, who consider existing norms and regulations, have the greatest influence on how organisational aims are achieved. Thus, based on the concept of Kierkegaard’s modes of existence, we show that the individual values and motives of leaders’ behaviour influence the shape of the leadership itself as well as the management of an organisation. On the basis of a (...) literature review, we propose the following connections: an aesthetic mode with instrumental motives which result in the shareholder perspective; an ethical mode of existence with normative motives which lead to the stakeholder perspective; and the spiritual mode of existence with transcendental motives which enable leaders to introduce a holistic perspective of management. However, we cannot link certain motives with a particular type of leadership, as leaders with different modes of existence might practice the same type of leadership (i.e., leadership based on values, authentic leadership) and combine various types of leadership in their actions. The paper might provide a theoretical basis for empirical research on leadership and managerial behaviour. (shrink)

In the perhaps most decisive reopening of philosophy in the twentieth century, Heidegger presented an existential analytic. This can be viewed as the highly complex analysis of one simple action: being-there. In the paper at hand, a Spinozist interpretation of this action is proposed. This implies a shift in the Aristotelian conceptuality, which, to a large extent, informs Heidegger’s analysis. The action of being-there is not a movement from potentiality to actuality. It is a force of existence. However, this force (...) is located right at the threshold between potentiality and actuality. Accordingly, it is not a matter of dismissing Aristotle’s concepts, but—with Heidegger—to observe carefully their deconstruction and pursue it to the point where these concepts become indistinct and where—beyond Heidegger—a Spinozian force of existence emerges. (shrink)

There has been a significant increase in studies devoted to Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love in contemporary Kierkegaard research. There are several good reasons why this is so. The single theme that dominates, though, is the relation between preferential love and neighborly love. Are they reconcilable or not? The present paper recasts this discussion by situating Works of Love in the trajectory of deconstructive readings of community from Jean-Luc Nancy and onwards. It is divided into three sections. It is first (...) shown that a deconstructive take on preferential and neighborly love indicates how any community has a place for love as its condition of (im)possibility. The opening of this place is then located in the Christian love-commandment. Finally, the expanse of this place is found in the spreading-out of the promise of love. The paper is conceived as a step towards letting love find its place in the analytics of being-there—as the phenomenon which opens the “there” without losing its “with.” The paper concludes with a postscript that points towards this broader context. (shrink)

In this study I provide a thematic comparison of Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to suggest that the representation of the ethical in Fear and Trembling is transparently Kantian. At times I draw on Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Conflict of the Faculties, and The Metaphysics of Morals to offer a comprehensive account of Kant’s ethical theory. Both philosophers hold profoundly important positions within the milieu of ethics, however (...) they have always shared a tenuous and at times negative relationship. In this study, I challenge such commentators by showing that when the figure of Abraham is taken typologically and excluded from the text, what emerges from Fear and Trembling is a Kantian based ethics. I argue that a comparative reading of Kant’s Groundwork and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling reveals that Kierkegaard’s thought gravitates towards three central principles of Kant’s categorical imperative, as well sharing some similarities with Kant’s understanding of duty. (shrink)

In his late reflections on values and forms of life from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl develops the concept of personal value and argues that these values open two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human individuals while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of care. In order to get at the core of the concept, I will explicate Husserl’s discussion of personal (...) values of love by distinguishing between five related features. I demonstrate that values of love (1) are rooted in egoic depts and define who we are as persons, (2) differ from objective values in being absolute and non-comparative, (3) ground vocational lives as organizing principles, (4) are endlessly self-disclosing and self-intensifying, and (5) establish transitive relations of care between human beings. On the basis of my five-partite distinction, I argue that Husserl’s concepts of love and value of love reveal the dynamic character of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This series of books and accompanying guides as a group are labeled “Academic Philosophy: and Uncommonly Creative, Imaginative & Challenging Curriculum” in the promotional brochure. Sharon Kaye is the author of the series but there are two different illustrators. Jordon Novak illustrates Question Mark, Theo Rising, and Mark and Theo make their case and Christopher Tice illustrates the rest of the series. The first three sets of teacher materials are labeled Teacher Manual, while the last three sets of teacher materials (...) are called Philosophical Curriculum Guidebooks. Each set of materials for the teacher is also labeled levels, A through F. As the included brochure states, the alphabetic labeling is provided for flexibility when using these materials in different grade levels, for example A, B, and so on. (shrink)