In this work, it has been mainly aimed to make a research on origin, meaning and context of two terms [Apophasis and Aphairesis]. These two terms which have an important place within the negative theology that has been thought explicitly appeared first with Pseudo-Dionysos Areopagita –but if required, it can be started in Plotinus, Aristotle, Plato or Parmenides– in history of philosophy [terms which also have been a subject to a misunderstanding, to a problem due to their being understood (...) as synonymous with each other], are tried to be traced back within Greek thinking, culture and especially in Aristotle. With putting forth which sense and context these two terms were used and understood in Aristotle, the meaning and context changes these two terms had historically have been tried to be revealed. (shrink)

This paper discusses the notion of disimagination a translation of the German word Entbildung, which was devised by Meister Eckhart as a reinterpretation of the Neoplatonic categories of abstraction (aphairesis) and negation (apophasis) in connection with Nishitani Keiji's standpoint of emptiness. Nishitani proposes a nonsubjective, nonrepresentational, and nonconceptual type of knowledge to avoid the problem of representation implied in the modern subjective self-consciousness that prevents our access to the reality of things. It is argued that what he calls a (...) knowing of non-knowing can be understood as a transposition of the problematics of aphairesis to a new context, that of the formless form. The ontology of images in the creative process, both cosmic and artistic, is examined from Nishitani's identification of likeness and suchness on the field of emptiness. It is suggested that the resulting denial of the traditional distinction between being and appearance approaches a critique closer to postfoundational metaphysics and, like disimagination, aims at an ascetic movement of self-negation and detachment from words and images that leads, in turn, to a creative and playful use of language free of representation. (shrink)

By utilizing words, photographs, and motion pictures, this multimodal and multisited project traces a rhizomatic genealogy of Russian Cosmism—a nineteenth century political theology promoting a universal human program for overcoming death, resurrecting ancestors, and traveling through the cosmos—throughout post-Soviet techno-utopian projects and imaginaries. I illustrate how Cosmist techno-utopian, futurist, and other-than-human discourse exist as Weberian “elective affinities” within diverse ecologies of the imagination, transmitting a variety of philosophies and political programs throughout trans-temporal, yet philosophically bounded, communities. With a particular focus (...) on the United States and Ukraine, and taking an apophatic analytical position, I dissect how different groups of philosophers, technologists, and publics interact(ed) with Cosmism, as well as how seemingly disparate communities (re)shape and deterritorialize Cosmist political theology in an attempt to legitimize their constructed political imaginaries. (shrink)