In this paper, I argue that Nietzsche’s published works contain a substantial, although implicit, argument for the will to power as ontology—a critical and descriptive, rather than positive and explanatory, theory of reality. Further, I suggest this ontology is entirely consistent with a naturalist methodology. The will to power ontology follows directly from Nietzsche’s naturalist rejection of three metaphysical presuppositions: substance, efficient causality, and final causality. I show that a number of interpretations, including those of Clark, Schacht, Reginster, and Richardson, (...) are inconsistent with Nietzsche’s naturalism, because they presuppose efficient or final causality. In contrast, I argue that the will to power is not an explanatory theory, but a description of the basic, necessary character of reality, designed to critically reveal and minimize metaphysical presuppositions—to reject false explanations of reality and human behavior. It avoids substance-metaphysics by describing reality as will, a causal process without discrete efficient causes or agents. It eliminates efficient causality by describing events as maximal manifestations of power, rather than as agent-actualized potentialities. Finally, it opposes teleology by describing life as tending toward the activity of resistance as such, rather than toward explanatory end-states, such as the accumulation of power or overcoming of resistances. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to propose a critique of the prevailing attitude of human health, what I refer to as the will to health, using a Nietzschean perspective. First, I briefly discuss the purpose and manner of Nietzsche’s methodological approach to philosophy and his problem with modernity. Second, I explicate the two current ideological paradigms of health that, in my view, constitute the prevailing will to health. Third, Nietzsche’s general understanding of human health is presented and following this, (...) a critique of some contemporary health matters from this perspective is undertaken. Strictly speaking, there is no specific thesis to be found in this paper. I do not presume to prove or disprove anything, rather I avail myself of Nietzsche’s unique insight into the human condition as a rubric from which to illuminate something of the nature of human health. (shrink)

This essay provides a theoretical and methodological introduction to the writings of Vinciane Despret. Over the last twenty years Despret has contributed a significant number of books and articles in the fields of philosophical ethology and animal studies, and throughout them all Despret's methodological approach resists easy explanation. There is no single, uni- versal method applicable to all animals, in every situation; instead, Despret responds with an open curiosity to the plurality of animal worlds and the storied versions about them. (...) She studies and works with animals just as much as with scientists, farmers, and conserva- tionists. Taking joy in the diversity of animal behaviour, she creates conditions that allow animals to be interesting, and finds humour, warmth, and care in the stories that they tell. Through the practices of human–animal relations Despret contends that humans are transformed, in their thought just as much as in their practices, as much as animals are transformed. This ess.. (shrink)

This article investigates the possibility and potential of a critical theory of nature and technology. A blind acceptance of the uninhibited development of the forces of production led traditional critical theory to neglect these areas, which it assigned to the domain of the natural sciences. The recognition that nature is socially constituted compels a reformulation of the interest in reasonable conditions that guided the older critical theory. The article asks what criteria offer themselves for determining what would be reasonable in (...) our relations both to the nature that we ourselves are, the body, as well as to the nature that we ourselves are not. Such questions might revitalize critical theory in the very moment it threatens to become historically obsolete. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

À peu près tout le monde a déjà fait l’expérience intuitive de l’authenticité, d’un moment qui semble révéler une lueur de sa véritable identité. Pourtant, en posant l’existence d’un «vrai moi», l’idée d’authenticité pose des défis métaphysiques qui mettent en lumière les complexités de l’individualité. J’avance que pour être bien examinée, l’authenticité exige une structure essentialiste qui tend à s’appliquer à l’identité personnelle. J’examine ensuite les trois types d’approches les plus influents dans les discussions philosophiques modernes contre cette position : (...) le romantisme et ses héritiers contemporains, l’existentialisme tardif et les conceptions de la vertu. Cette analyse met en doute la possibilité de générer une conception philosophique complète de l’authenticité. (shrink)

The evermore explicit technicization of the world, together with the immeasurable nature of the political and ethical questions that it poses, explicitly defy the syntheses of human imagination and invention. In response to this challenge, how can philosophy, in its relation of nonrelation with politics, help in orienting present and future negotiation with the processes of complexification that this technicization implies? The article argues that one important way to do this is to think and develop our understanding of technicity from (...) out of metaphysics, its destructions and deconstructions. The argument proceeds from the aporia of knowledge in Plato's Meno, situates continental philosophical thought's various articulations of the ‘other’ of metaphysics in relation to the problematic of this aporia and claims that certain understandings of this alterity can be further articulated in terms of technical supplementarity. Working between the concept of ‘arche‐writing’ in the thought of Jacques Derrida and that of ‘epiphylogenesis’ in that of Bernard Stiegler, the article then develops this supplementarity in terms of a play between originary technicity and its historical differentiations, one that both holds to the articulation of alterity in recent continental philosophy and develops it further in terms of its relation to historical determination. This relation, posited through a thinking of technicity, permits, finally, the ‘development’ of an ethics of giving time with which negotiation with processes of complexification can be undertaken in the name of justice. An ethical relation to these processes thereby emerges through the very excess of the human. (shrink)

It has gone largely unnoticed that when Deleuze opposes the “private thinker” to the “public professor,” he is invoking the existential thought of Lev Shestov. The public professor defends established values and preaches submission to the demands of reason and the State; the private thinker opposes thought to reason, “idiocy” to common sense, a people to come to what exists. Private thinkers are solitary, singular and untimely, forced to think against consensus and “the crowd.” Deleuze takes from Shestov and Kierkegaard (...) the idea that genuine thinking manifests itself in a thinking which rebels against rational necessity, a theme central to Shestov’s leading French interpreter, Benjamin Fondane. Although Deleuze at first expresses doubts as to whether Shestov’s critique of reason can overcome the legislative reason of Kant, or whether it is entirely free of ressentiment, I argue that Shestov and Fondane’s anti-rationalism is more radical than Deleuze sometimes admits, and show how Deleuze’s attitude toward Shestov became more unreservedly positive over the years. On the other hand, against Shestov and Fondane, I agree with Deleuze that the private thinker is in solidarity with the “strange powers” which can remake the world, and thus with “the people to come.” Nonetheless, I argue that Deleuze’s philosophy cannot form the basis of a politics of egalitarian consensus, but that “the people to come” can only be a “broken chain” of untimely and singular exceptions. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of forgiveness that is sensitive to recent work on anger. Like others, we claim anger involves an appraisal, namely that someone has done something wrong. But, we add, anger has two further functions. First, anger communicates to the wrongdoer that her act has been appraised as wrong and demands she feel guilty. This function enables us to explain why apologies make it reasonable to forgo anger and forgive. Second, anger sanctions the wrongdoer for what she (...) has done. This function allows us to explore the moral status of forgiveness, including why forgiveness is typically elective. (shrink)

Although the literature on Nietzsche is now voluminous one area where there has surprisingly been very little research concerns Nietzsche on the passions. This essay aims to correct this neglect. My focus is on illuminating Nietzsche on the passions in relation to his primary teaching on self-cultivation. To illuminate his position, I focus attention on examining his relation to Stoic teaching on the passions. If for Nietzsche the Christian mind-set involves a disturbing pathological excess of feeling, the Stoic way of (...) living results for him in a petrified of life devoid of movement and growth. After a consideration of his relation to Stoic teaching I then examine his relation to Spinoza on the emotions or affects. Whilst I acknowledge the affinities between the two thinkers and their criticisms of Stoic teaching, I maintain that it is an error to seek to construe Nietzsche and Spinoza as having an identical teaching on the passions. In the final section of the essay, I provide an appreciation of Nietzsche’s recommendation that instead of demonising the passions in the manner of the Christian psyche and its legacy, or extirpating our passions as recommended by the Stoics, we need to learn how to transform them into joys or delights. (shrink)

Digital technology has revolutionized connectivity, but it has also overcome spatial obstacles that used to shield people from subjugating gazes and unlimited exercise of power. The home as an auratic space is dead, and this alienation has hindered our democratic capacities and created complex crises. The Death of Home aims to intellectually engage readers via enhancing spatial literacy to critically confront today’s crises.

Tragedy is a founding theme in disability studies. Critical disability studies have, since their inception, argued that understandings of disability as tragedy obscure the political dimensions of disability and are a barrier facing disabled persons in society. In this paper, we propose an affirmative understanding of tragedy, employing the philosophical works of Nietzsche, Spinoza and Hasana Sharp. Tragedy is not, we argue, something to be opposed by disability politics; we can affirm life within it. To make our case, we look (...) to an ongoing ethnography of two Canadian children’s rehabilitation clinics. Looking to the clinical experience of Canadian boys and young men diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and those of their families, we show how this affirmative understanding of tragedy allows us to pursue the themes of disability politics within tragedy. Contrary to an optimism that would eschew tragedy at all costs or a pessimistic approach that declines to act in the face of tragic circumstance, we argue that a revised understanding of tragedy allows us to situate the occasionally-tragic clinical experience of disability in a philosophy of life. Both disability and tragedy point us to the shared entanglements that make life what it is. (shrink)

نظریۀ «مرگِ خدا» مشهورترین نظریۀ نیچه است. در این مقاله می‌کوشیم کارکردهای ایدۀ مرگِ خدا نزد نیچه را در سه سطح تحلیل کنیم. سطح نخست ، سطح ابتدایی بحث‌های هستی‌شناختی و اعتقادی دربارۀ وجود یا عدم وجود خدا؛ سطح دوم ، شادمانیِ الحادی از فقدان خدا؛ و سطح سوم ، میراث قاتلان. در پایان نیز به این پرسش می‌پردازیم که آیا نیچه از مرگ خدا سرخوش است یا بر آن سوگواری می‌کند؟ با توجه به این که نیچه در آثار مختلفش (...) رویکردهای مختلفی به مسئلۀ «مرگِ خدا» اتخاذ کرده است، تلاش خواهد شد تا، بدون توجه به تقدم و تاخر این آثار، تفسیری از موضع نیچه در مقام «یک کل» ارائه شود که در آثار مختلف، به فراخور بحث، لایه‌های مختلفی از این ایده را مطرح کرده است. در این میان سه قطعۀ بسیار کلیدی‌ از سه کتاب راه‌برندۀ تفسیر ما هستند: نخست انسانی زیاده‌انسانی، دوم چنین گفت زرتشت، و سوم علم شادمانه. در نهایت، از منظری انتقادی نشان داده می‌شود که نظریه‌ی «مرگ خدا»ی نیچه نه رویکردی هستی‌شناختی یا باوری اعتقادی بلکه بیانگر وضعیتی فرهنگی است. (shrink)

Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical thought of philosophers and moral psychologists is (...) also pervaded by rationalization. Moreover, although rationalization has some benefits, overall it would be epistemically better if the moral and philosophical reasoning of people, including professional academics, were not as heavily influenced by rationalization as it likely is. We discuss the significance of our arguments for cognitive management and epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

Many science teachers are presented with the challenge of characterizing science as a dynamic, human endeavour. Perspectivism, as a hermeneutic philosophy of science, has the potential to be a learning tool for teachers as they elucidate the complex nature of science. Developed earlier by Nietzsche and others, perspectivism has recently re-emerged in the context of the philosophy of science in the work of Ronald Giere. Giere presents a compelling case that scientific theories and scientific observation are perspectival by using science (...) itself. There are many tangible examples already present in science textbooks which, when approached in a certain way, offer an exciting opportunity for a realistic incorporation of philosophy of science into the classroom. Furthermore, introducing perspectivism to students necessitates an engagement with notions such as truth, reality, perception and experimentation, through a familiar medium, while painting a nuanced conception of the nature of science. (shrink)

Far from being indiscriminately critical of the ideas he associated with the morality system, Bernard Williams offered vindicatory explanations of its crucial building blocks, such as the moral/non-moral distinction, the idea of obligation, the voluntary/involuntary distinction, and the practice of blame. The rationale for these concessive moves, I argue, is that understanding what these ideas do for us when they are not in the service of the system is just as important to leading us out of the system as the (...) critique of that system. I then show how regarding the aspiration to shelter life from luck as the system’s organizing ambition explains why the system elaborates and combines these building blocks in the way it does. Finally, I argue that the ultimate problem with the resulting construction is its frictionless purity. It robs valuable concepts of their grip on the world we live in, and, by insisting on purity from contingency, threatens to issue in nihilism about value and scepticism about agency. (shrink)

Nietzsche is not known for his theory of empathy. A quick skimming of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on empathy demonstrates this. Arthur Schopenhauer, Robert Vischer, and Theodor Lipps are among those whose views are considered representative, but Nietzsche has been simply forgotten in discussion of empathy. Nietzsche’s theory of empathy has not yet aroused sufficient interest among commentators. I believe that his views on this subject merit careful consideration. Nietzsche scholars have been interested in his naturalistic accounts of (...) other phenomena, but there seems to be relatively limited interest in his naturalistic account of a phenomenon that is so central to his disagreement with Schopenhauer, namely, empathic concern for others. This is surprising because Nietzsche makes a valuable contribution; he has views more in keeping with contemporary theories of empathy than others of his time. My goal here is to fill in this gap in the scholarship and provide the first thorough analysis of Nietzsche’s theory of empathy, which appears most clearly in Dawn. (shrink)

Some people are deeply dissatisfied by the universe that modern science reveals to us. They long for the world described by traditional religion. They do not believe in God, but they wish He had existed. I argue that this is a mistake. The naturalist world we inhabit is admittedly rather bleak. It is very far from being the best of all possible worlds. But an alternative governed by God is also unwelcome, and the things that might make God’s existence attractive—cosmic (...) justice or the afterlife—could also be had without God. The most desirable of all possible worlds are therefore godless. (shrink)

he relationship between decadence and aesthetics is an intimate and complex one. Both the stock figure of the aesthete and the aestheticism of ‘art for art’s sake’ are classic decadent tropes with obvious sources in figures such as Théophile Gautier, Walter Pater, Joris-Karl Huysmans. Yet the links between aesthetics and decadence are more conflicted than might first appear: historically, aesthetics has served both as a site for the theorisation of decadence and as the basis of an attempt to stem it. (...) The purpose of this chapter is to examine these intricate ties. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

This essay responds to the machine question in the affirmative, arguing that artifacts, like robots, AI, and other autonomous systems, can no longer be legitimately excluded from moral consideration. The demonstration of this thesis proceeds in four parts or movements. The first and second parts approach the subject by investigating the two constitutive components of the ethical relationship—moral agency and patiency. In the process, they each demonstrate failure. This occurs not because the machine is somehow unable to achieve what is (...) considered necessary and sufficient to be a moral agent or patient but because the characterization of agency and patiency already fail to accommodate others. The third and fourth parts respond to this problem by considering two recent alternatives—the all-encompassing ontocentric approach of Luciano Floridi’s information ethics and Emmanuel Levinas’s eccentric ethics of otherness. Both alternatives, despite considerable promise to reconfigure the scope of moral thinking by addressing previously excluded others, like the machine, also fail but for other reasons. Consequently, the essay concludes not by accommodating the alterity of the machine to the requirements of moral philosophy but by questioning the systemic limitations of moral reasoning, requiring not just an extension of rights to machines, but a thorough examination of the way moral standing has been configured in the first place. (shrink)

S. Kierkegaard argued that our highest task as humans is to realize an “intensified” or “developed” form of subjectivity—his name for self-responsible agency. A self-responsible agent is not only responsible for her actions. She also bears responsibility for the individual that she is. In this paper, I review Kierkegaard’s account of the role that our capacity for reflective self-evaluation plays in making us responsible for ourselves. It is in the exercise of this capacity that we can go from being subjective (...) in a degraded sense—merely being an idiosyncratic jumble of accidental and arbitrary attitudes and affects—to being a subject in the ideal or eminent sense. The latter requires the exercise of my capacity for reflective self-evaluation, since it involves recognizing, identifying with, and reinforcing those aspects of my overall make-up that allow me to express successfully a coherent way of being in the world. Kierkegaard argues that taking immortality seriously is one way to achieve the right kind of reflective stance on one’s own character or personality. Thus, Kierkegaard argues that immortality as a theoretical posit can contribute to one’s effort to own or assume responsibility for being the person one is. (shrink)

In selected texts by Diderot, including the Encyclopédie article “Cabinet d’histoire naturelle” (along with his comments in the article “Histoire nat-urelle”), the Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature and the Salon de 1767, I examine the interplay between philosophical naturalism and the recognition of the irreducible nature of artifice, in order to arrive at a provisional definition of Diderot’s vision of Nature as “une femme qui aime à se travestir.” How can a metaphysics in which the concept of Nature has (...) a normative status, also ultimately consider it to be something necessarily artificial? Historically, the answer to this question involves the project of natural history. A present-day reconstruction would have to make sense of this project and relate it to the vision of Nature expressed in Diderot’s phrase. In addition, it would hopefully pinpoint the difference between this brand of Enlightenment naturalism and contemporary naturalism, and by extension, allow us to understand a bit more about what naturalism is in general. (shrink)

: Drawing on several feminist and anti-racist theorists, I use the trope of the vampire to unravel how whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality feed on the same set of disavowals—of the body, of the Other, of fluidity, of dependency itself. I then turn to Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories (1991) for a counternarrative that, along with Donna Haraway's reading of vampires (1997), retools concepts of kinship and self that undergird racism, sexism, and heterosexism in contemporary U.S. culture.

This paper offers a genealogy of national unity in the United States approached through practices of consumption and punishment. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Mauss, and Bataille, the analysis shows how these practices are mutually determining, how they demonstrate an economy of excess as opposed to one of utility or conservation, and how they depend on and reinforce specific patterns of discursive and emotional coding. The Thanksgiving holiday serves as a privileged site for locating the elements of an apparatus (...) that stretches from the earliest days of colonization to the present, and that operates across diverse political, religious, and ethnic lines. (shrink)

Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a non-zero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like our own, as well as infinitely many civilizations that differ from our own in any way permitted by physical laws. We explore the implications of this conclusion for ethical theory and for the doomsday argument. In the infinite universe, we find that the doomsday argument applies only to (...) effects which change the average lifetime of all civilizations, and not those which affect our civilization alone. 1. Introduction2. Physics background2.1The number of possible histories is finite2.2The universe is infinite2.3Every possible history occurs an infinite number of times3. Frequency and probability4. Inflation contrasted4.1Modal realism4.2Actualism4.3Eternal recurrence5. Ethical implications6. Universal doomsday6.1Application to our civilization in particular6.2Universal vs. particular dooms6.3Practical applications7. Concluding remarks. (shrink)

That philosophy exists, that it is possible, and that it has (and could still have) a future depends first and foremost on the existence of philosophers (necessarily considered in the plural). If the presence of philosophers is fundamental for the existence of the philosophical enterprise, then it can be easily deduced that, without philosophers, there would be no philosophy. If they come necessarily in the plural (as more than one), how should they, however, interact? Is philosophy a mere interaction among (...) philosophers, or is it a cooperation of philosophers? But maybe it is something different still. The concept of philosophy, in its original Greek understanding, reveals how this interaction can be understood in a provocative but very interesting way: as friendship. Philosophy as philo-sophy, as friendship of wisdom. Said differently, philosophy as a community (of friends) that gather around the question of wisdom and knowledge. This essay attempts to think philosophy according to its being φιλεῖν τὸ σοφόν. (shrink)

Abstract. In this essay, I compare the atheism of Friedrich Nietzsche with that of Richard Dawkins. My purpose is to describe certain differences in their respective atheisms with the intent of showing that Nietzsche's atheism contains a richer and fuller affirmation of human life. In Dawkins’s presentation of the value of life without God, there is a naïve optimism that purports that human beings, educated in science and purged of religion, will find lives of easy peace and comfortable wonder. Part (...) of my argument is that this optimism regarding the power of objective science is subject to Nietzsche's criticism of Socrates and what he calls the “theoretical man.” As such, it fails in terms of providing a true affirmation of life in the godless world. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche''s will to power, and the philosophical ediface built on this foundation, is formulated on a biologicism that is indebted to a particular post-Darwinian vision of the organism. Of the various models that attempt to formulate a comprehensive organismal biology, Nietzsche unknowingly grasped that of Elie Metchnikoff, who authored the theoretical foundation of modern immunology. Metchnikoff regarded the organism as a disharmonious entity, in constant inner strife between competing cellular activities. Immune functions were responsible for mediating harmonization, which however (...) remains an elusive ideal. This view of the organism posited an ever-changing, self-defining entity striving for self-actualization while in ceaseless inner struggle as well as in competition with the environment. The theory is no less than an epistemological response of how to establish the subject-object relation in a construct where the subject''s boundaries are dialectical and evolving. The similarity of the philosophical positions of Nietzsche and Metchnikoff regarding the Self offers rich resonance in current attempts to formulate a biomedical language appropriate to address the issues raised by these problems. (shrink)

Philosophy is a radical inquiry whose task is to interrogate the fundamental assumptions of some given activity, discipline, or set of beliefs. In doing so, philosophical inquiry must attempt to delineate a problem and to develop a method for resolving that problem. However, to be true to its intention, philosophy must be able to examine not only the object of its inquiry but also its own method of interrogation. To accomplish this task, philosophical inquiry must be able to create a (...) distance not only from the assumptions under investigation but also from its own assumptions, which is to say, that it must be able to raise questions about its own method. This self-reflexivity requires that any given philosophical investigation must be examined from an alternative vantage point. Since the assumptions which inform the inquiry are deeply imbedded within a given culture, immanent critique is insufficient. The only way to step outside the boundaries of these cultural presuppositions is to reflect on the given problem from the vantage point of another culture's philosophical tradition. Thus, I argue that philosophical inquiry is unable to go beyond certain limits without being cross-cultural philosophy. I illustrate the way in which cross-cultural philosophy does this with respect to the problem of the self by placing the Western philosophical approach to this problem in dialogue with the Indian Hindu-Buddhist narrative. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the connection between certain metaphysical views of time and emotional attitudes concerning one’s own death and mortality. I argue that one metaphysical view of time, B-theory, offers consolation to mortals in the face of death relative to commonsense and another metaphysical view of time, A-theory. Consolation comes from three places. First, B-theory implies that time does not really pass, and as a result one has less reason to worry about one’s time growing short. Second, B-theory (...) entails that there is a real sense in which one’s death does not result in one’s annihilation, and this fact can temper feelings of existential distress. Third, B-theory has the consequence that the benefits one has lost have concrete existence, and this fact can mitigate the emotional significance of the losses of death. (shrink)

Political theorists continue to be provoked by Giorgio Agamben’s disturbing diagnosis that ‘bare life’ – human life that is excluded from politics yet exposed to sovereign violence – is not a sign of the malfunction of modern politics but rather a revelation of how it actually functions. However, despite the enormous amount of attention this diagnosis has received, there has been relatively little discussion of Agamben’s proposed ‘cure’ for the problem that he diagnoses. In this article, I analyze the three (...) main concepts of Agamben’s positive philosophical program – ‘infancy,’ ‘potentiality,’ and ‘form-of-life’ – in order to show how he attempts to subvert the sovereignty of law over life with his idea of a life of habit in which life is sovereign over law. In addition to analyzing these concepts, I engage in an immanent critique of Agamben’s philosophy and contrast his vision of politics with those of other influential contemporary political theorists. I find that while Agamben’s philosophical program is almost undone by internal difficulties, it still radically challenges current theories of subjectivity, humanity, and community. (shrink)

There is a close conceptual relation between the notions of religious disenchantment and scientific naturalism. One way of resisting philosophical and cultural implications of the scientific image and the subsequent process of disenchantment can be found in attempts at sketching a reenchanted worldview. The main issue of accounts of reenchantment can be a rejection of scientific results in a way that flies in the face of good reason. Opposed to such reenchantment is scientific naturalism which implies an entirely disenchanted worldview. (...) However, one of the main problems of scientific naturalism are placement problems. A reenchanted worldview does have the conceptual resources to avoid placement problems, yet seems to throw out the baby with the bathwater. A dilemma results: the Scylla of an undesirable scientific naturalism and the Charybdis of a rampant, seemingly prescientific reenchanted worldview. In this article I argue that there is a safe middle passage between these two options, i.e. the recently proposed liberal naturalism which allows for a moderate normative reenchantment. Liberal naturalism lets us have it both ways: avoiding the placement problems while retaining a necessary and reasonable adherence to science, thereby avoiding both an all-too restrictive scientific naturalism. (shrink)

This article examines the double account of the human in Friedrich Nietzsche's writings. Genealogically, Nietzsche insists that humanity is a tamed herd that attacks its own animality. Philologically, this human – through anthropomorphism – sunders itself from those aspects of language that are not representational. Read in relation to this double critique, the article argues that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an attempt to imagine an entirely different relation between politics and language, one that enables a thinking of a future without (...) dominion and responds to the crisis of human rights and the humanities today. (shrink)

I evaluate four historically precedented tests for what makes a life worth living: (1) The Suicide Test (Camus), (2) The Recurrence Test (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), (3) The Extra Life Test (Cicero and Hume), and (4) The Preferring Not to Have Been Test (Job and Williams). I argue that all four fail and tentatively defend the heuristic value of a fifth, The Pre-Existence Test for what makes a life worth living: (5) A life worth living is one that a benevolent caretaker (...) with foreknowledge would allow. A life worth avoiding is one that a benevolent caretaker would disallow. This test usefully tracks the general extension of the concept of what makes a life worth living. I consider three objections and note that there appears to be an indeterminate middle category of lives worth neither. Ultimately, I argue that any plausible test will risk circularity or will require a theory of worth to be viable. (shrink)

Nietzsche was a philosopher, not a biologist, Nevertheless his philosophical thought was deeply influenced by ideas emerging from the evolutionary biology of the nineteenth century. His relationship to the Darwinism of his time is difficult to disentangle. It is argued that he was in a sense an unwitting Darwinist. It follows that his philosophical thought is of considerable interest to those concerned to develop an evolutionary biology of mankind. His approach can be likened to that of an extraterrestrial sociobiologist studying (...) clever beasts... in some out of the way corner of the universe ... It is shown how be uses this viewpoint to account for the origin of the central psychobiology of humankind: for dualistic philosophies, such as that of Descartes (which Ryle famously called the official doctrine), for human notions of truth and falsehood, being and becoming, and for other fundamental concepts of Western philosophy and science. All these, he argues, are no more and no less than the necessary adaptations of a zoological species, Homo sapiens, in its struggle for life in a Darwinian world. It is concluded that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to accept and use in their full depth the philosophical implications of nineteeth-century evolutionism, implications which are still resisted to this day. It is also argued that this interpretation of Nietzsche's aphoristic writings provides them with an organic consistency. (shrink)

The Water Margin is a great Chinese classical novel; Wu Song’s 武松 killing of his sister-in-law, Pan Jinlian 潘金蓮, is one of the most popular episodes of the novel. It depicts Wu as the hero and defender of traditional values, and Pan as the adulterous woman. In contemporary discussion, there has been a dearth of ethical analyses regarding Wu’s killing of Pan. How should we judge the moral status of his action? Does the killing signify Wu Song’s ethical achievement or (...) his ethical failure? What does the killing tell us about Wu’s character or his virtues? Does our appraisal of Wu’s action square with our modern belief regarding the treatment of women? I will examine these questions in the article. (shrink)

If there is one question that has perplexed the best minds in every society, it is how to raise the individuals from their present state to a higher state of existence and perfection? The answers have been tried using different formulations in history: religious, scientific and political. The common factor in all these historical formulations was that they were designed in opposition to each other and therefore left many things unaccounted. The aim of this paper is to explore the idea (...) of self-perfection as a continuous streak of infinite vertical ascension. The paper has elaborated the idea of ‘Verticality’, propounded by Peter Sloterdijk for looking in to the domains of self-perfection and the stages of vertical ascension. For our purpose, we have relied on the example of discipline of Management that has progressively theorized about different aspects and stages of existence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTContinental theorists have been increasingly drawn towards elements of the everyday – food, sex, exercise, and so forth – as sites of ethical and epistemological analysis and modification. These analyses have generally been seen separately through the lens of phenomenological, critical, or experimental methods. Despite this division, this paper argues, in line with the work of Bruno Latour, that the analysis of food reveals a complex interplay between the social, political, personal, and experimental dimensions of food. Food should thus be (...) seen as ecological and intermodal, as a complex site of interchange between multiple forms of activity and knowing. This explains both food’s potential for appropriation by multiple projects, but problematizes any single method for analyzing the politics, pleasure or culture surrounding food. (shrink)

I argue here that Weberian disenchantment is manifest in the triumph of instrumental reason and the expansion of analytic enquiry, which now dominates not simply those sciences upon which medicine depends, but medical practice itself. I suggest ways that analytic enquiry, also referred to here as anatomical reasoning, are part of a particular ideology—a way of seeing, speaking about, and inhabiting the world—that often fails to serve the health of patients because it is incapable of “seeing” them in the moral (...) sense described by Iris Murdoch and others. I use the work of James Elkins and Wendell Berry to call for the recovery of a way of seeing the human body as both other and more than an object of scientific enquiry and social control. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt privately acknowledged that his late theory of Erd-Herrschaft converged with some of Nietzsche’s thought, yet remained silent on this in his book The Nomos of t...