This paper considers whether Marx's views about communism change significantly during his lifetime. According to the ‘standard story’, as Marx got older he dropped the vision of self-realization in labour that he spoke of in his early writings, and adopted a more pessimistic account of labour, where real freedom is achieved outside the working-day, in leisure. Other commentators, however, have argued that there is no pessimistic shift in Marx's thought on this matter. This paper offers a different reading of this (...) debate. It argues that there are two visions of the good life in Marx. However, it suggests that these two visions cannot be understood in terms of a simple shift between a ‘young’ and ‘mature’ Marx. Rather, it claims that Marx moves between these two visions throughout his writings. In this way, it suggests that Marx's intellectual development on this issue is best understood as an oscillation rather than a shift. Once this interpretive claim is advanced, the paper then moves on to consider some potential causes and implications of Marx's life-long oscillation between two different conceptions of the good life. (shrink)

The article consists of a re-examination of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization in the light of continuing interest in that work. After a brief consideration of Marcuse’s attempt to use Freud to indict contemporary civilization, focusing on the concepts of surplus repression and guilt, the article turns to his utopian sketch of Eros as a culture builder and the reconciliation of reason and instinct. These themes, which form the focus of recent interest, are explored by examining Marcuse’s interpretation of Kant and (...) Schiller as well as Freud. In all cases Marcuse’s interpretation is shown to be flawed. The conclusion is that Marcuse’s attempt to indict established reason in the light of instinct and yet to hold out the prospect of a reconciliation of reason and instinct leads to an impoverished concept of both. (shrink)

Taking a bird’s-eye-view of the philosophical discourses that metaphorize creativity as “expression,” “production,” and “reconstruction,” this article depicts their vital characteristics and distinct ways of portraying the relationships between creativity, educative experiences, and the epistemic cultures now occurring within and beyond the workplace. Illustrative examples are taken from an ongoing comparative and longitudinal study that explores the epistemic trajectories of Norwegian nurses, teachers, auditors, and computer engineers. The aim is to provide a better understanding of the contours of creativity in (...) relation to productive workplace learning. This article reveals how different ways of metaphorizing creativity carries distinct images, theoretical representations, and models of thought that provide openings and limitations for our ways of thinking about education and contemporary workplace learning. (shrink)

This article is an investigation of two apparently contradictory impulses in Oakeshott's writings about liberal education. On the one hand, he implied that it was primarily ‘aesthetic’, something undertaken for its own sake with no practical consequences. On the other hand, he often implied that a student might undergo a moral transformation in the process of becoming educated. This article attempts to reconcile both these ideas in Oakeshott's thought, and to show that they are coherent within the German Bildung tradition.

The ‘humanisation’ of education is one of the three leitmotifs in a recent Soviet planning document A Conception of General Education. It is suggested that Western education systems also need to be humanised, although not so radically as the Soviet, by the removal of obstacles to educating pupils as members of a liberal democratic society. A future joint research agenda between East and West should concentrate on improving mutual understanding of this goal, clarifying conceptual obstacles, and reflecting on means of (...) realising it. Specific proposals are put forward under all three headings. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

This article analyses the concept of ?aesthetic emotion? in John Dewey's Art as experience. The analysis shows that Dewey's line of investigation offers valuable insights as to the role of emotion in experience: it shows emotion as an integral part and structuring force, as a cultural and historical category. However, the notion of aesthetic emotion is characterized by a fundamental ambiguity. There is a conflict between a mechanical and an organic understanding of emotion, a confusion of emotion as structure and (...) of emotion as process, of emotion as content and as agency. The central problem may consist of the conception of aesthetic experience as the ideal. While evil and despair are thereby excluded from the art, everyday life is left wanting, as it cannot live up to the ideal. (shrink)

When discussing the changing sense of reality around 1900 in the cultural arts the lexicon of early modernism reigns supreme. This essay contends that a critical condition for the possibility of many of the turn of the century modernist movements in the arts can be found in exchange of instruments, concepts, and media of representation between the sciences and the arts. One route of interaction came through physiological aesthetics, the attempt to ‘elucidate physiologically the nature of our Aesthetic feelings’ and (...) explain how works of art achieve their effects. Physiological aesthetics provided the terms for new formalist languages of art and criticism, and in some instances suggested optimistic, even utopian, possibilities for art to remake human individuals and societies.Keywords: Physiology; Psychology; Evolution; Aesthetics; Modernism; Art history. (shrink)

Arguing against the dominant developmental theories (e.g., Piaget, 1945; Vygotsky, 1978) stating that pretend play is limited to early childhood, we illustrate that pretend play is an adaptive human activity of adulthood as well as childhood. We advance this argument on three levels. First, we offer an analysis of why the discipline of developmental psychology in the Western world considered play only as an activity of childhood by neglecting to explore whether or how pretend play exists during adulthood. Second, we (...) discuss the similarities between adult improvisational theater and children’s pretend play in illustrating our thesis that pretend continues to exist during adulthood. In this discussion, we focus on similarities in the definitions, psychological origins, social functions, and developmental consequences of pretend play and adult improvisation. Finally, we end the article with educational implications of conceptualizing pretend play as a life-span activity and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

A critical analysis of Alfred Schuetz' conception of rationality based upon Edmund Husserl's phenomenology.

How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an ‘epistemic arc’, consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we (...) cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call ‘aesthetic’. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. (shrink)

This paper addresses the concept of play concerning human formation, especially as manifested in the philosophies of Gadamer and Schiller. Gadamer depicted understanding as an organic motion that unfolds through seeing differences and characterized play as a flexible back-and-forth movement or interplay between possibilities and transformations. Schiller structured play as the playful impulse similarly as an interactive moving force that connects the two seemingly oppositional impulses of reason and sensation and lets the two affect the other dialogically. Both Gadamer and (...) Schiller suggest that play, as in essence an inter-play, orients us into seeing more possibilities of making a refreshing sense of our intellectual and perceptual abilities and thereby transfiguring our living being into richer and fuller meaningfulness. (shrink)

This essay considers Kant’s concept of the highest good from a systematic point of view. The two spheres of freedom and nature—of the practical and theoretical—need to be brought into a causal relation for the highest good to be achieved. Kant seems to offer numerous possibilities for how human beings are able to think that it is possible for the highest good to be attainable. I argue that it is only in the third Critique, however, that Kant articulates an answer (...) that also establishes freedom and nature within a larger system. The third Critique does this by positing a third, independent and mediating sphere of human experience that allows a transition between freedom and nature to be effected. This answer to the problem of the highest good is distinctive because the causal efficacy of reason in attaining its own demands is preserved. I examine Kant’s view by way of an analysis of his discussion of ‘territory’ and ‘domain’ in the Introduction to the text. (shrink)

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested (...) or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. (shrink)

This article seeks to analyze the theory of technology formulated by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). It shows the ways in which the author repurposes fundamental concepts of classical aesthetics in order to formulate a theory of technology aimed at liberating both nature and humanity. To this end, we argue that Marcuse mobilizes the theories of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). In the first part of the article, we tackle some important aspects of Kant’s and Schiller’s aesthetic theories. (...) We begin with an analysis of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), focusing on central concepts that would later be absorbed by Schiller and Marcuse. Next, we try to show the reception of the Third critique in Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) and this author’s contribution to aesthetic studies within political thought. In the second part, we focus on Marcuse’s work, highlighting two key moments in his analysis on technology. We show that his theory undergoes transformation and development until it reaches its stable form in the 1960s and 1970s, during which the author proposes a new theory of technology based on human aesthetic possibilities whose goal is the liberation of nature. (shrink)

Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years of dance experience, in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or “Moves” for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term “positure” most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; “gesture” similarly in Condillac, Mead and (...) Kristeva; “grace” in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and “resilience” in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze. With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility for a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue. The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and political ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing. (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of the Kantian theory of disinterested pleasure in beauty reflects his own commitment to claims that closely resemble certain Kantian aesthetic principles, specifically as reinterpreted by Schiller. I show that Schiller takes the experience of beauty to be disinterested both (1) insofar as it involves impassioned ‘play’ rather than desire-driven ‘work’, and (2) insofar as it involves rational-sensuous (‘aesthetic’) play rather than mere physical play. In figures like Nietzsche, Schiller’s generic notion of play—which is itself (...) influenced by Kant’s claim that aesthetic pleasure is orthogonal to desire-satisfaction—becomes decoupled from his (further) Kantian view that aesthetic play essentially involves a harmony of sensuous receptivity and rational spontaneity. The result, I suggest, is a self-standing opposition between desires and passions. This motivates a recognizably Romantic vision of aesthetic disinterestedness, as freedom from desire realized in a state of creative determination by passion. (shrink)

RESUMEN La filosofía hegeliana en general, y en particular la “Ciencia de la lógica” y el tratamiento que en esta se hace sobre nociones como las de identidad y diferencia, generaron desde el momento mismo en que vio la luz, un sinnúmero de posiciones críticas tales como las de Schelling, los hegelianos de izquierda y, en general, de todos aquellos filósofos que, en virtud de las posibles implicaciones prácticas de una filosofía de la identidad buscaron “expurgar la semilla del dragón (...) del panteísmo hegeliano”, entre las cuales es necesario mencionar la legitimación de estados totalitarios y los genocidios asociados a ellos. Esta búsqueda, fue realizada sobre la afirmación de que el pensamiento hegeliano, al estar soportado sobre la identidad, implica una negación y, por tanto, aniquilación y reducción de la diferencia. En este sentido, el presente artículo busca examinar la noción hegeliana de la identidad, la correspondencia o no de las críticas que sobre el particular se han hecho sobre Hegel y, finalmente, analizar una de las salidas que, desde las interpretaciones hegelianas más recientes, se han hecho para responder a las críticas: la filosofía hegeliana in stricto sensu, una filosofía de la diferencia. ABSTRACT The Hegelian philosophy in general, and in particular the “Science of Logic” and the treatment that in this is made about notions as identity and difference, generated since its conception a countless critical positions such as those of Schelling, the left Hegelian and, in general, of all those philosophers who, accordingly with the posible practical implications of a philosophy of identity sought to “purge the dragon’s seed from Hegelian pantheism” among which it is worth to mention the legitimization of totalitarian states and genocide associated with them. This search was made on the assertion that Hegelian thought, being supported on the identity, implies a negation and, therefore, annihilation and reduction of the difference. In this sense, the present article seeks to examine the Hegelian notion of identity, the correspondence or not of the criticisms that have been made about Hegel and, finally, to analyze one of the outlets that, from the most recent Hegelian interpretations, have been made to respond to the criticisms: the Hegelian philosophy in stricto sensu, a philosophy of the difference. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hegel attempts to appropriate the irreversible aspects of Romantic aesthetics in four ways: (i) Hegel radicalizes Kantian aesthetics on the basis of a basically textual approach to sublime experience that opens up the question of community as a philosophical one; (ii) without demoting classical conceptions of art, Hegel privileges Romantic conceptions that demonstrate the ascendancy of sign over symbol in a spiraling chain; (iii) Hegel laments the fate of art in the triumph of Romantic subjectivism but (...) also suggests how communities can reconstitute themselves on the horizon of aesthetic dissolution; so that, finally, (iv) art can be reconceived as a emancipatory adventure that redefines metaphysics through its historical unfolding as an unending series of semiotic transformations. (shrink)

Kant's 'Copernican Revolution', which began in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), had, by the early 1790s, fundamentally altered the terrain of German philosophy – but not entirely in the way that Kant had foreseen. Skeptical challenges to Kant's discursive account of cognition, in which experience arises from the separate faculties of sensibility and understanding, had led thinkers such as K.L. Reinhold and J.G. Fichte to attempt to provide a first, foundational principle for the critical philosophy. These efforts were enormously (...) influential, but by the middle of the 1790s, they too were facing a great deal of critical scrutiny. The central challenge to the Fichtean project came from an unlikely quarter: a group of young thinkers and poets who are collectively known as the early Romantics. For the Romantics, Fichte's project remains too 'subjectivist', for it tries to provide an account of the world by beginning with the conditions that govern subjectivity alone. Rather, the Romantics argue that the world must be understood in terms of a monistic Absolute, akin to Spinoza's substance, in which all dualisms are overcome. It is with this step that Absolute Idealism comes on the scene, and sets the stage for the development of Hegel's system in the early 1800s. This essay, which continues the story of 'Who's Who from Kant to Hegel I', examines the ways in which early Romanticism reacted to the Fichtean project, looks at a variety of anti-foundationalist idealisms that the Romantics – in particular Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel, and Schleiermacher – developed, and traces the role that Friedrich Schelling plays in offering the first systematic account of Absolute Idealism. (shrink)

Shows the relevance of Schiller’s thought for contemporary philosophy, particularly aesthetics, ethics, and politics. This book seeks to draw attention to Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) as a philosophical thinker in his own right. For too long, his philosophical contribution has been neglected in favor of his much-deserved reputation as a political playwright. The essays in this collection make two arguments. First, Schiller presents a robust philosophical program that can be favorably compared to those of his age, including Rousseau, Kant, Schelling, and (...) Hegel, and he proves to be their equal in his thinking on morality, aesthetics, and politics. Second, Schiller can also guide us in our more contemporary philosophical concerns and approaches, such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and politics. Here, Schiller instructs us in our engagement with figures such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Roberto Esposito, and others. María del Rosario Acosta López is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. She has published several books, including La tragedia como conjuro: el problema de lo sublime en Friedrich Schiller. Jeffrey L. Powell is Professor of Philosophy at Marshall University and the editor of Heidegger and Language. (shrink)

In Nietzsche and Embodiment Kristen Brown reveals the smartness of bodies, challenging the traditional view in the West that bodies are separate from and morally inferior to minds. Drawing inspiration from Nietzsche, Brown vividly describes why the interdependence of mind and body matters, both in Nietzsche's writings and for contemporary debates (non-dualism theory, Merleau-Ponty criticism, and metaphor studies), activities (spinal cord research and fasting), and specific human experiences (menses, trauma, and guilt). Brown's theories about the dynamic relationship between body and (...) mind provide new possibilities for self-understanding and experience. (shrink)

Zero-sum aspects of sport have generated a number of ethical concerns and a similar number of defenses or apologetics. The trick has been to find a middle position that neither overly gentrifies sport nor inappropriately emphasizes the significance of winning and losing. One such position would have us focus on the process of trying to win over the fact of having one. It would also ameliorate any harms associated with defeat by pointing out that benefits like achievement, excellence, and moral (...) development are available to winner and loser alike. Relying on the notion of ‘frame’ introduced by Polanyi, I argue that this approach underplays the poignant drama of sport (including the sting of defeat) and thus, seeks redemption at too high a cost. I argue for a version of red-blooded competition that is justified more by transcendence than mitigation, more by a willingness to play again tomorrow than civility during any single contest. I analyze sport in terms of its receptivity to such repetition and find that epistemological uncertainty, enhanced by the presence of chance in sport, renders repeat engagements both sensible and attractive. I conclude that sport verdicts, unlike outcomes in war, business, and love, do not settle things. Rather they invite both winner and loser alike to ‘play again tomorrow’. (shrink)

This paper examines the use of “pleasure” as the distinguishing mark of aesthetic experience in post-Kantian philosophy. It shows how the distinctive features of aesthetic experience, such as pleasure, qualify this experience as a platform for social criticism. The key argument is that the autonomy of the aesthetic experience is not “false”, rather it is paradoxical in the strong sense that the fact of its communicative efficacy, which follows from distinctive, “autonomous” aesthetic features, necessarily loads it with functions and expectations (...) that are external to the aesthetic moment. Kant takes a complicated path to qualify aesthetic judgment as disinterested in order that it may eloquently testify for morality. He thereby sets up the cogency of the modern pattern of looking to aesthetic experience as a locus of meaningful communication for ideas that are experientially poor or remote. (shrink)

This article analyses Eric Rohmer’s film theory in the light of the Platonic triad of truth, beauty and goodness, as embodied by the aesthetic philosophy of Kant, Hegel and Schiller. Although his film theory shows affinity with Kant’s ideal of art as a form of natural beauty, I will argue that a broader look at Rohmer’s philosophical foundations is necessary. The point where Rohmer’s film theory deviates from Kant’s triadic philosophy is exactly the point where he approaches the aesthetics of (...) Hegel and Schiller. Turning towards their idealistic philosophy creates a new understanding of Rohmer’s film theory. His ideas on cinema’s ontology and value mirror both Hegel’s emphasis on beauty as the artistic and immediate manifestation of trans-historical truth and Schiller’s belief in beauty as the condition for morality and freedom. Plato’s conceptual and intertwined triad of truth, beauty and goodness lies at the basis of his affinity to 18th century aesthetic philosophy. This close affinity raises the question of the relation between film theory and philosophy, and Rohmer’s position in this debate. He enriches his own thoughts with those of philosophers that inspired him, and enriches their legacy with his cinema-related conclusions. (shrink)

This article examines Rancière’s political reading of aesthetics through a historical analysis into the two aesthetic theories of freedom at work in Rancière’s philosophy; Kant’s freedom as self-governance and Schiller’s freedom as harmony. While aesthetic experience is considered morally conducive through its association with freedom, this article argues that Rancière translates such discussions of freedom into that of equality by extracting the political dimensions of aesthetic experience. Given that art has the unique ability to empower the spectator through its aesthetic (...) experience of equality, the true political potential of art arises from its power to redistribute the sensible rather than through the overt expression of political themes. By juxtaposing Rancière’s politics of art with Kant’s beauty as the symbol of morality, this article argues that art becomes a symbol of political emancipation for Rancière in its capacity to generate the experience of equality. Inasmuch as Rancière attributes the aesthetic revolution to the eighteenth century, it becomes evident that the empowerment of the spectator has been central to art since the inauguration of the aesthetic regime. (shrink)

This essay links Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of fine art to his description of Christian love. It does so by carefully showing how Marion's overall project is closely related to Kant's well-known account of the relationship between aesthetics and morality. While Kant and Marion both believe that aesthetic experience can lay the groundwork for moral action, their contrasting views of morality lead them to very different articulations of such a relationship. While Kant sees encounters with fine art as preparing individuals for (...) the particular kinds of disinterested judgments characteristic of moral decision-making, Marion sees artwork as preparing the subject for the openness toward intuitive excess that is necessary for love. (shrink)

This article takes its retrospective lead from the oppressive schooling years during the Chinese Cultural Revolution to reflect on the educational significance of artistic activities through considering aesthetic virtues and moral agency cultivated in these activities. Describing an unconventional educational milieu where schooling was deliberately ‘dismantled’, I emphasize the important role that artistic endeavours can play in building a person’s aesthetic strength and moral power to overcome the adversity of life, hence for the fuller human development. By blending philosophical discussion (...) with historical manifestation, I stress the less articulated educational discourse that makes dance relevant to the educational formation of epistemic virtues and moral sensibilities. Joining in the emerging efforts to improving the worlds of schools, curricula, and pedagogies, I argue that the contingent integration of different histories, life conditions, and social and cultural discourses are ‘transformative’ sites for pedagogy. Thus, I seek to shed historically fresh light on the ways of thinking of schooling, education, and the arts for hope and possibility to ultimately argue for ways that can speak to the diversity of global societies today. (shrink)

Summary: In this paper I investigate Nietzsche’s ideal of wholeness or unity. The consensus among commentators is that this ideal consists in the achievement of psychic integration in a person whereby the various parts of the agent’s mind are restructured into a harmonious whole. Against this prevalent reading, I argue that Nietzschean wholeness concerns cultural integration: a person becomes whole by pursuing the ideal of freedom and humanity in himself and in all, an ideal that transcends national boundaries and that (...) is universal in scope. For Nietzsche, the pursuit of this ideal makes a person into a piece of fate or primal law, that is, it makes him necessary for all that is and that is yet to come. In this way, the person who becomes whole finds redemption from the meaninglessness of existence. Instead of allowing his life to become a mindless act of chance, this person manages to project his energies into the future in the form of the very ideal he fought and aspired to realize while alive – an ideal that is being perpetually renewed and guaranteed for all within the suprapersonal community that is made up of those genuine fighters of culture who became whole. Resumen: En este trabajo investigo el ideal de Nietzsche de completud o de unidad. El consenso entre los analistas, es que este ideal consiste en el logro de una integración psíquica dentro de la persona a través de la cual las diversas partes que conforman la mente del agente son restructuradas de forma tal que se vuelvan un conjunto armonioso. En contra de esta usual lectura, sostengo que la completud Nietzscheana se refiere a la integración cultural: una persona alcanza la completud persiguiendo el ideal de la libertad y de la humanidad en sí mismo y en todos, un ideal que trasciende fronteras nacionales y que es de alcance universal. Para Nietzsche, la búsqueda de este ideal hace que una persona se convierta en un pedazo de fatalidad o de ley primaria, es decir, hace que se vuelva necesario para todo lo que es y está por venir. De esta forma, la persona que alcanza la completud logra redimirse del sinsentido de la existencia. En vez de permitir que su vida se convierta en un puro acto de azar carente de pensamiento, esta persona proyecta sus energías hacía el futuro en la forma del propio ideal por el cual luchó y que aspiró a realizar mientras estuvo vivo – un ideal que está siendo constantemente renovado y garantizado para todos dentro de la comunidad suprapersonal que componen los auténticos luchadores de la cultura que alcanzaron la completud. (shrink)

This article addresses two issues: the first is the philosopher's fear of a lawless freedom of nature. I quote Deleuze and Guattari, who explain our terror before chaos and the consequent call for help and protection. My hypothesis was that this threat of chaos has affected also the enlightened mind of Kant. Facing the possibility of chaos, the objective Kant did not exactly fear delusion and madness, which affect only fragile subjectivities, but was terrified with the chance that nature does (...) not behave regularly, i.e., that _ knowledge _ becomes impossible. The second issue is a harder and more difficult question, and it is related to the _modern_ artist’s (or genius) anguish. It is a technical or an artistical complaint. He/She finds no more given rules to create his/her artworks. Differently from the philosopher, the genius fears the silence and the absolute muteness of nature. I try to deal with these two issues by taking into account Kant’s concept of purposiveness of nature as a regulative principle. I realize that, although this sufficed to calm down the philosopher’s anxiety, it proved to be insufficient to guide the artist. The delusion and madness that threaten the genius are deeper and more extreme than those of the philosopher. In order to treat the artist’s pain, without having to abandon the connection between art and nature, that constitutes one of the most fruitful reading keys of Kant’s Aesthetics, I resort to other ideas I found reading Lacoue-Labarthe and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

This paper elucidates Kierkegaard’s notion of the “simultaneity of factors” in order to reveal the intimate connection between reason and emotion. I begin with the romantic vision of aesthetic education as embodied in Friedrich Schiller, which Kierkegaard himself inherited, though in a critical and nuanced manner. Next, I explore Kierkegaard’s pointed critique of the romantics, namely through his conviction that they had misrepresented the role of imagination to the detriment of harmony in the individual. Finally, I present Kierkegaard’s positive view (...) of the simultaneity of factors, emphasizing his improvement on the romantics through the central category of “inwardness.” Throughout, I underline that Kierkegaard gave higher status neither to emotion nor reason, taking them as complimentary aspects of human existence and thereby inviting their reunion in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Kierkegaard recognized that the changes ushered in by the revolutions of 1848 would profoundly affect human existence in both its political and personal dimensions. At the political level he was concerned that the new forms of government would not be able to govern any more effectively than the previous forms. Loquacity would be substituted for policy. Then, too, the new forms of government encouraged confusion about the actual locus of power; the appearances and the reality of power did not conform. (...) Also, the actual state represents ?interests?, and as a result, justice is jeopardized. To be sure, compromise will be evident in such an actual state, but is governing possible in and through such conflictual arrangements? What is the relation of the press (media) to the public, and these in turn to politics? (shrink)

This article argues that children represent one vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult-child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. Following Herbert Marcuse's invocation of a ‘new sensibility’, the author argues that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. (...) After exploring child-adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what Dewey called ‘impulse’ and ‘habit’, three key dimensions of dialogic schooling are identified, all of which are grounded in a fourth: the form of dialogical group discourse called community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), which is based on the problematisation and reconstruction of concepts through critical argumentation. As a discourse-model, CPI grounds practice in all of the dialogic school's emergent curricular spaces, whether science, mathematics, literature, art, or philosophy. Second, it opens a functional space for shared decision-making and collaborative governance, making of school an exemplary model of direct democracy. Finally, CPI as a site for critical interrogation of concepts encountered in the curriculum (e.g. ‘alive’, ‘justice’, ‘system’, ‘biosphere’) and as a site for democratic governance leads naturally to expression in activist projects that model an emergent ‘new reality principle’ through concrete solutions to practical problems on local and global levels. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that within competitive sport zero-sum logic and the theory of mutualism are compatible and complementary. Drawing on Robert Simon’s theory of mutualism and Scott Kretchmar’s argument for zero-sum logic, this article shows how athletes can strive for a clear-cut victory and shared benefits such as athletic excellence fully and wholeheartedly at the same time. This paper will also consider how acknowledgment of this dynamic could advance understandings for ethical theories for sport. It will then conclude by describing (...) a subjective approach that will make the affinity of zero-sum logic and mutualism more accessible for sports people. (shrink)

This paper offers a genealogy of dialogic education, tracing its origins in Romantic epistemology and corresponding philosophy of childhood, and identifying it as a counterpoint to the purposes and assumptions of universal, compulsory, state-imposed and regulated schooling. Dialogic education has historically worked against the grain of standardized mass education, not only in its view of the nature, capacities and potentialities of children, but in its economic, political and social views, for which childhood is understood as a promissory condition. Dialogic education (...) is oriented to what Dewey called “a future new society of changed purposes and desires,” made possible by an emergent form of social character. It has followed its own developmental trajectory from its origins in Pestalozzi’s Rousseau-inspired innovations, through anarchist theory and practice and the Progressive Education movement, to its current most salient formulation in the Democratic Education movement, whether as an enemy within the gates of standardized education or as expressed in innumerable alternative forms of schooling or unschooling. The paper highlights several key characteristics, gleaned from all those forms, of the dialogic school—identified as intentionality, transitionality, emergence, aesthetic temporality, interdisciplinarity and group governmentality--and argues further that community of philosophical inquiry theory and practice as a form of post-Socratic group dialogue that emerged in the 1970’s, is a pedagogical praxis that offers a grand operational template for dialogic education as a form of schooling. (shrink)

This edited collection highlights the valuable ontological and creative insights gathered from anticipation studies, which orients itself to the future in order to recreate the present. The gathered essays engage with many writers from speculative metaphysics to poetic philosophy, ancient writing systems to the fringes of pataphysics. The book situates itself as a creative intervention in and with various thinkers, designers, artists, scientists and poets to offer insight into ways of anticipating. It brings together philosophical practices for which creativity is (...) both a fundamental area of consideration and a mode of working, a characterization of recent Continental Philosophy which takes a departure from traditional futures studies thinking. This book will be of interest to scholars and research in futures studies, anticipation, philosophy, creative practice and theories about creative practice, as well as the intersections between philosophy, creativity and business. (shrink)