This paper is a contribution to a discussion in philosophy of technology by focusing on the epistemological status of the example. Of the various developments in the emerging, inchoate field of philosophy of technology, the “empirical turn” stands out as having left the most enduring mark on the trajectory contemporary research takes. From a historical point of view, the empirical turn can best be understood as a corrective to the overly “transcendentalizing” tendencies of “classical” philosophers of technology, such as Heidegger. (...) Empirically oriented philosophy of technology emphasizes actual technologies through case-study research into the formation of technical objects and systems and how they, for example, transform our perceptions and conceptions or pass on and propagate relations of power. This paper explores the point of convergence of classical and contemporary approaches by means of the notion of the “example” or “paradigm.” It starts with a discussion of the quintessential modern philosopher of technology, Martin Heidegger, and his thinking about technology in terms of the ontological difference. Heidegger’s framing of technology in terms of this difference places the weight of intelligibility entirely on the side of being, to such an extent that his examples become heuristic rather than constitutive. The second part of the paper discusses the methodological and epistemological import of the “example” and the form of intelligibility it affords. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Agamben, we argue that the example offers an alternative way of understanding the study of technologies from that of empirical case studies. (shrink)

This paper revisits the Derrida-Searle debate, an exchange that, unfortunately, did not lead to much, if any, mutual understanding. I will suggest that this failure can be traced back to key features of their respective theories. In that Searle and Derrida use their own theories of speech as resources in trying to understand each other, their unsuccessful communication can be used to reveal a great deal about the limitations of both their theories. My paper tries to draw out these limitations (...) by analyzing specific moments in the debate. I also suggest concrete proposals for overcoming defects in each of the theories, proposals that, arguably, would make some mutual understanding more possible. (shrink)

Certain familiar theoretic claims of both popular and academic postmodernism are examined for their implications as to the necessary and desirable limits of social life. Taken to the end, these claims promote errancy as a means of freeing conduct from the constraints of foundation. But this kind of freedom, one which treats all limitation as pernicious, generates social action that is mechanical, scattered, and without substance—it is a pyrrhic emancipation which trades content for self-sufficiency and thus constitutes an empty life (...) of unhappy social dispersion. And yet an opportunity does remain to address the way a limit can also be inspiring if we think through how interpretation, a limit which is itself limited, invites nevertheless what Derrida glossed as joyous affirmation. Interpretation, though imperfect, offers powers that are genuine and enjoyable because these powers supply life with content and thus with the vitalizing collective and individual possibility of conduct which is affirmative (and disaffirmative). Perhaps it could even be said that interpretation emancipates us from the emptiness of pure freedom. (shrink)

I present the contours of an explanatory model of legitimacy that directs the focus away from normative questions and onto specific mechanisms of reality construction at play in constituting social orders. The key assumption informing the model is that stable orders rely fundamentally on their capacities to construct separate spheres of social reality, by which they exempt critical parts of reality from the burden of legitimation. I argue that an order's legitimacy ultimately depends on its ability to confine the question (...) of legitimacy by relegating authorship of reality to opaque sources that are separated epistemically from the institutional order. The effective reification of critical zones of reality is shown to be a functional precondition for institutional stability. I show that capitalist democracy, in particular, depends on this mode of constructing ‘passive legitimacy’, which constitutes a key obstacle for any attempt to transform it towards an ecologically and socially sustainable formation. (shrink)

Everything about Derrida suggests that he is for a radical reform or transformation of language, whilst Wittgenstein seems to vindicate a fidelity to ordinary language and to want to 'expunge' from language the 'metaphysical use' of words. But just how opposed are they? My contention in this paper is that Wittgenstein does not 'deconstruct', as some critics have rather loosely suggested, because, as we shall see, the expunging of metaphysical use favoured by Wittgenstein does not amount to the deconstruction of (...) metaphysical appurtenance practised by Derrida. However, there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the two philosophers which I shall try to articulate in the course of this paper. The first part provides the background, in Wittgenstein's writings, to his concept of 'metaphysi cal use'; the second is an exposition of what Derrida refers to as 'metaphysical appurtenance' and attendant notions such as those of binary oppositions and of the labouring of concepts; and the third is a summing up and a defence of the thesis that Wittgenstein does not, in any full-bodied sense of the term, 'deconstruct'. Key Words: Derrida • language • meaning • metaphysics • Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This article re-conceptualises the ‘constitutive outside’ through Roberto Esposito’s theory of immunity to detach it from Laclau and Mouffe’s political antagonism. It identifies Esposito’s thought as an innovative epistemological perspective to dissolve post-ontological political theories of community from the intertwinement with a foundational self/other dialectic. Esposito shows how a community can sustain its relations through introversive immunisation against a primarily undefined outside. But it is argued that his theory of immunity slips back to a vitalist depth ontology which ultimately de-politicises (...) the construction of the communal outside. This article draws on Niklas Luhmann’s immunity theory to resituate immunisation in the political production of social connectivity. Following Luhmann, politics relies on immunisation through contradictions to reproduce its functional role as a decision-making institution, but is at the same time constantly exposed to potential rupture through the political openness immunity introduces. Through Esposito and Luhmann, this article identifies the relationship between a social inside and its outside as open-ended and secondary to an introversive process of socio-political self-differentiation. It can involve, but does epistemologically necessitate, the construction of an external other. (shrink)

This article examines the contending redefinitions of national identity in contemporary Germany's memorial culture, focusing particularly on the ensemble of monuments and parade fields known as the former Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In a detailed case study, I analyse the recent conversion of one of the physical remnants of National Socialism – Albert Speer's transformer station – into a fast-food restaurant and interpret this conversion as a novel contribution to the discourse on German nationhood. I argue that the (...) provocative commercial reutilisation of the former Nazi monument gives expression to a renewed self-confidence that Germany has gained from displaying a willingness to face up to its past as perpetrator nation. While the intervention thus deviates from the self-indicting spirit that had been characteristic for Germany's memorial culture after World War II, an ironic note is conspicuous in this act of commemorative politics that indicates a way of dealing with the fascist legacy that is, surprisingly in some respects, superior to more conventional memory strategies. (shrink)

The author argues that Thomas Hobbes anticipates a set of questions about meaning and semantic order that come to fuller expression in the 20th century, in the writings of W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Despite their different points of departure, these 20th-century writers pose a number of profound questions about the conditions for the stability of meaning, and about the conditions that govern the use of the term “language” itself. Though the more recent debate (...) benefits from a set of philosophical tools unavailable in the seventeenth century, the author further argues that Hobbes performs a number of maneuvers in his texts from which his 20th-century successors would profit. (shrink)

El presente trabajo confronta el abordaje de la cuestión del sujeto en Louis Althusser y Ludwig Wittgenstein. La comparación se produce porque el tratamiento del lenguaje de la filosofía del segundo Wittgenstein es particularmente apropiado para abordar la intervención del discurso en el proceso por el cual la ideología interpela a los individuos como sujetos, según Althusser. El descentramiento del sujeto obliga a repensar la dimensión de la agencia, y con ella, la de la política. Tanto Wittgenstein como Althusser desembocan (...) en una encrucijada: negación teórica de la noción de sujeto y reconocimiento de la existencia paradójica de la misma en la práctica. Ello implica deconstruir el par "determinismo-libertad" sobre el que se asienta la pregunta por la agencia. Sobre el final retomamos el trabajo de Michel Pêcheux sobre los efectos retroactivos del discurso, lo que implica un replanteo del vocabulario de la determinación, prominente en los escritos althusserianos. -:-:-:-:--:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-ABSTRACT:- The present paper compares Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Louis Althusser’s approach to the problem of subject. This comparison is motivated by the fact that second Wittgenstein’s approach to language is particularly appropriate to think of the intervention of discourse in the process of ideological interpellation which, according to Althusser,constitutes individuals as subjects. The decentering of the involved subject requires rethinking the dimension of agency and, consequently, of politics. Both, Wittgenstein and Althusser, end in a crossroads: they refuse theoretical prominence to the notion of the subject, but at the same time they recognise the practical priority of this notion, which gives it a sort of paradoxical existence. This implies deconstructing the pair “determinism–liberty” where the priority of agency is located. We end with the work of Michel Pêcheux on the retroactive effects of discourse, that entail (in agreement with Wittgenstein) rethinking the vocabulary of determination, prominent in Althusserian writings. (shrink)

Sensory Qualities Austen Clark Oxford, Clarendon, 1993 pp. xii + 250Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics Mark Johnson University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1993 pp. xiv + 287Understanding Origins Francisco J. Varela & Jean‐Pierre Dupuy (Eds) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1992.

This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream Anglo‐American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea in Anglo‐American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it (...) is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the Continental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the Anglo‐American tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”. (shrink)

In his recent paper "Indeterminacy, empiricism, and the first person" John R. Searle tries to refute Willard V. O. Quine's famous "indeterminacy of translation thesis" by arguing that this thesis is in fact a reductio ad absurdum of Quine's own "linguistic behaviorism". Searle accuses Quine of being "antimentalistic" and suggests that the "absurdity" of Quine's thesis might be avoided if a full-fledged "intentionality" were tolerated in the debate on meaning. - This anti-Quinean approach in some respects reminds of the "improbable (...) debate" between Searle and Jacques Derrida ten years ago, when Derrida had split and "deferred" intentionality by showing that the essential "iterability" of signs inevitably infects every intentional act with an unremovable "non-presence". In this paper it is argued that Searle's attacks on Quine and Derrida have both failed - and that there are structural similarities between these two failures which reveal some interesting parallels between Quine's and Derrida's philosophy. (shrink)

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.–Nietzsche (1879) Human, All Too Huma...

Everything about Derrida suggests that he is for a radical reform or transformation of language, whilst Wittgenstein seems to vindicate a fidelity to ordinary language and to want to 'expunge' from language the 'metaphysical use' of words. But just how opposed are they? My contention in this paper is that Wittgenstein does not 'deconstruct', as some critics have rather loosely suggested, because, as we shall see, the expunging of metaphysical use favoured by Wittgenstein does not amount to the deconstruction of (...) metaphysical appurtenance practised by Derrida. However, there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the two philosophers which I shall try to articulate in the course of this paper. The first part provides the background, in Wittgenstein's writings, to his concept of 'metaphysi cal use'; the second is an exposition of what Derrida refers to as 'metaphysical appurtenance' and attendant notions such as those of binary oppositions and of the labouring of concepts; and the third is a summing up and a defence of the thesis that Wittgenstein does not, in any full-bodied sense of the term, 'deconstruct'. (shrink)

The idea of meaning plays, together with the notion of caring, a pivotal role in recent nursing theory, informing its approach to philosophy, research and practice. Unlike caring, however, it has received relatively little analytical attention – a fact that is surprising in view of the scepticism about meaning that is characteristic of much contemporary philosophy and social theory. This paper reviews the philosophical literature on meaning, highlighting sceptical currents in the Wittgensteinian corpus, neo‐behaviourism and poststructuralism. It also considers a (...) similar line of thought that has emerged in social theory, questioning the explanatory value of concepts such as ‘practice’, ‘culture’, ‘norms’, ‘tacit knowledge’, and ‘tradition’. All these perspectives suggest that there is something wrong with the common‐sense picture of a set of shared, implicit rules that account for our ability to understand and communicate; and they all point to an alternative picture which is naturalistic, materialist and causal, and which depicts ‘shared meaning’ as a rather mysterious quality, unable to explain the familiar regularities of verbal and nonverbal behaviour. In this picture, while the idea of meaning can be retained, it ceases to be something shared, and becomes something individual and idiosyncratic, a unique cluster of associations, concomitants, and other habits of thought. The paper closes with a brief interpretation of what the alternative implies for a research methodology in nursing. In particular, it proposes that certain well established approaches will have to be abandoned, and that qualitative strategies will have to be grounded in a rigorous scientific framework, rather than in techniques (such as phenomenology), which presuppose a misleading and inaccurate conception of what meaning is. (shrink)

This paper advances a novel take on Chantal Mouffe’s appropriation of the late Wittgenstein, arguing that Wittgenstein’s philosophy, at the same time, gives rise to and offers a solution to the relativism problem as it can be found in Mouffe’s radical political thought. Unlike other vindications of Wittgenstein-inspired political thought, I also show at which point Wittgenstein’s support for such an approach comes to an end. I thus acknowledge that the relativism problem – at least to some extent – stems (...) from the ambiguity of Wittgensteinian thought itself. After having outlined these challenges, I suggest turning to alternative approaches from the field of critical social philosophy. In particular, Rahel Jaeggi’s Frankfurt School account of forms of life highlights what such a non-relativist but still context-sensitive approach may look like. By virtue of this last step, this paper contributes to recent engagements by Critical Theorists with the late Wittgenstein. (shrink)

To date, film scholars have found the films of Jim Jarmusch to be tantamount to works of postmodern philosophy. For as intriguing and productive as such interpretations of Jarmusch’s films have been, I submit that the postmodern framework occludes a crucial aspect of Jarmusch’s film-philosophy, namely, his investment in the ordinary. From this perspective, I intend to show the availability of Jarmusch’s films to Wittgensteinian interpretation. More specifically, I plan to situate Jarmusch’s arthouse action film Ghost Dog: The Way of (...) the Samurai (1999) between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida in order to demonstrate the profound affinities between Jarmusch’s film-philosophy and Wittgenstein’s conception of ordinary language. Through a consideration of character dialogue, I will demonstrate the extent to which Jarmusch rejects the private language argument – which, by extension, amounts to a rejection of linguistic relativism as an instance, or species, of skepticism – in favor of ordinary conceptions of language, expressiveness, knowledge, and responsibility. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that ‘post-Marxist’ or ‘poststructuralist discourse theory’ represents a complex deconstruction of the Marxist tradition of social and political theory. Focussing on three ontological positions in Marx’s texts – the ontologies of human alienation, praxis, and production – the article shows how this approach repeats and transforms the rich tradition of Marxist thinking so as to elaborate a novel approach to social and political analysis. This claim is built around the idea that discourse is best conceptualized as an (...) ‘articulatory practice’, whose elements are both linguistic and non-linguistic in character, and whose products are finite relational orders, including social institutions and economic processes. The result is a shift away from economic determinism and class reductionism to a relational account of social and political forms; the development of an anti-essentialist and anti-reductionist account of political identities, which emerge in a dialectical tension with incomplete processes of identification, and a particular understanding of the subject and agency in political theory, which grounds a different account of political practices. The article also sets out the methodological implications of post-Marxist discourse theory, which is focussed on the articulation of different logics of critical explanation, before exploring the role of critique and normativity in this approach, which are conceptualized as continuous, immanent and complex. (shrink)

This article focuses on the recent work of Slavoj Žižek and his extensive critique of poststructuralism and deconstruction from a Lacanian perspective. In this context, it examines Žižek's provocative approach to questions of social reality, ideology and nationalism, and explores the potential of such an approach for an analysis of crucial themes in British political culture. In addition, the article investigates the nature of the encounter between psychoanalysis and deconstruction — and especially where explicit referral is made to the terrain (...) of politics — with a view to breaking the apparent deadlock that has emerged. Through the development of a post-Marxist critique, it is argued that an alternative perspective can be formulated which combines the insights of both psychoanalysis and deconstruction and, at the same time, is able to transcend the limitations of each. (shrink)

This article connects the insights of post-realist scholarship about radical indeterminacy and its consequences for the legitimacy of adjudication to the current legitimacy crisis of the international investment regime. In the past few years, numerous studies have exposed serious shortcomings in investment law and arbitration including procedural problems and the substantive asymmetry of the rights protected. These criticisms have prompted a broad consensus in favor of amending the international investment regime and multiple reform proposals have appeared that appeal to the (...) rule of law ideal as an instrument for increasing the acceptability of the international investment system. This article argues that the reliance of such proposals on jurisprudential approaches that fail to adequately accommodate the post-realist indeterminacy critique and take seriously the role of ideology in adjudication renders reform efforts unable to solve the legitimacy problems of the investment regime. The conclusions suggest the need to abandon implausible claims to depoliticization and face the methodological challenges posed by the promise of ideologically balanced assessments advanced by some rule of law theorists. The article finally points at the urgency to reform traditional approaches to doctrinal work in order to increase awareness of critical challenges and open up doctrinal methods to alternative methodological avenues. (shrink)

The idea of meaning plays, together with the notion of caring, a pivotal role in recent nursing theory, informing its approach to philosophy, research and practice. Unlike caring, however, it has received relatively little analytical attention – a fact that is surprising in view of the scepticism about meaning that is characteristic of much contemporary philosophy and social theory. This paper reviews the philosophical literature on meaning, highlighting sceptical currents in the Wittgensteinian corpus, neo‐behaviourism and poststructuralism. It also considers a (...) similar line of thought that has emerged in social theory, questioning the explanatory value of concepts such as ‘practice’, ‘culture’, ‘norms’, ‘tacit knowledge’, and ‘tradition’. All these perspectives suggest that there is something wrong with the common‐sense picture of a set of shared, implicit rules that account for our ability to understand and communicate; and they all point to an alternative picture which is naturalistic, materialist and causal, and which depicts ‘shared meaning’ as a rather mysterious quality, unable to explain the familiar regularities of verbal and nonverbal behaviour. In this picture, while the idea of meaning can be retained, it ceases to be something shared, and becomes something individual and idiosyncratic, a unique cluster of associations, concomitants, and other habits of thought. The paper closes with a brief interpretation of what the alternative implies for a research methodology in nursing. In particular, it proposes that certain well established approaches will have to be abandoned, and that qualitative strategies will have to be grounded in a rigorous scientific framework, rather than in techniques (such as phenomenology), which presuppose a misleading and inaccurate conception of what meaning is. (shrink)

In this paper I reply to the four critical articles that were provided in response to my book Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). It proceeds in four steps: (1) I begin with a reply to Stanisław Chankowski’s use of the psychoanalytic term “fetishistic denial” to describe the formal character of the text. (2) I then engage with the criticism supplied by Piotr Kozak, who questions deconstruction’s theory of truth (or its lack thereof). (3) From this, I take-up and respond to Przemysław (...) Nowakowski’s proposal that deconstruction might provide a way to reimagine the interdisciplinarity of cognitive science. And (4) I conclude with a response to Michał Piekarski’s mashup of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida, which supplies a reading of these two thinkers that is arguably greater than the sum of the parts. The objective of the reply is not to offer a defense of myself or my text but to engage with these interesting and insightful reviews in a way that opens the space for productive dialogue. -------------------------- Received: 28/09/2023. Reviewed: 30/10/2023. Accepted: 12/11/2023. (shrink)

This article re-conceptualises the ‘constitutive outside’ through Roberto Esposito’s theory of immunity to detach it from Laclau and Mouffe’s political antagonism. It identifies Esposito’s thought as an innovative epistemological perspective to dissolve post-ontological political theories of community from the intertwinement with a foundational self/other dialectic. Esposito shows how a community can sustain its relations through introversive immunisation against a primarily undefined outside. But it is argued that his theory of immunity slips back to a vitalist depth ontology which ultimately de-politicises (...) the construction of the communal outside. This article draws on Niklas Luhmann’s immunity theory to resituate immunisation in the political production of social connectivity. Following Luhmann, politics relies on immunisation through contradictions to reproduce its functional role as a decision-making institution, but is at the same time constantly exposed to potential rupture through the political op... (shrink)