his study aims to determine whether the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching gives a positive effect on the creative character of students, to know the response of the students against the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching, and to find out if the student response against the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching correlates positively with the creative character of students in learning mathematics. The research method used that is (...) quantitative. The instruments used, namely the now student response related application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching, and sheets of observation about the creativity of students in learning mathematics after implementing this method. The correlation analysis with the results of the study showed that the value of the larger significance of the alpha values (5%) which means accepting and rejecting H0 Ha which means student response against the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching not correlated positively with the creative character of students in learning mathematics. The average student response score against this method is found on very good i.e. amounted to 85%. As for the observations of the creative character of the students, after this method is applied, the average score of 68% is found quite creative. (shrink)

Comparatively easy questions we might ask about creativity are distinguished from the hard question of explaining transformative creativity. Many have focused on the easy questions, offering no reason to think that the imagining relied upon in creative cognition cannot be reduced to more basic folk psychological states. The relevance of associative thought processes to songwriting is then explored as a means for understanding the nature of transformative creativity. Productive artificial neural networks—known as generative antagonistic networks (GANs)—are a recent example (...) of how a system’s ability to generate novel products can both be finely tuned by prior experience and grounded in strategies that cannot be articulated by the system itself. Further, the kinds of processes exploited by GANs need not be seen as incorporating something akin to sui generis imaginative states. The chapter concludes with reflection on the added relevance of personal character to explanations of creativity. [This is Chapter 12 of the book Explaining Imagination.]. (shrink)

Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality, the vehicle of self-expression, and the engine of progress in every human endeavor. It also raises a wealth of neglected and yet evocative philosophical questions: What is the role of consciousness in the creative process? How does the audience for a work for art influence its creation? How can creativity emerge through childhood pretending? Do great works of literature give us insight into human nature? Can a computer program really (...) be creative? How do we define creativity in the first place? Is it a virtue? What is the difference between creativity in science and art? Can creativity be taught? The new essays that comprise The Philosophy of Creativity take up these and other key questions and, in doing so, illustrate the value of interdisciplinary exchange. Written by leading philosophers and psychologists involved in studying creativity, the essays integrate philosophical insights with empirical research. CONTENTS I. Introduction Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman II. The Concept of Creativity 1. An Experiential Account of Creativity Bence Nanay III. Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art 2. Creativity and Insight Gregory Currie 3. The Creative Audience: Some Ways in which Readers, Viewers and/or Listeners Use their Imaginations to Engage Fictional Artworks Noël Carroll 4. The Products of Musical Creativity Christopher Peacocke IV. Ethics & Value Theory 5. Performing Oneself Owen Flanagan 6. Creativity as a Virtue of Character Matthew Kieran V. Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science 7. Creativity and Not So Dumb Luck Simon Blackburn 8. The Role of Imagination in Creativity Dustin Stokes 9. Creativity, Consciousness, and Free Will: Evidence from Psychology Experiments Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 10. The Origins of Creativity Elizabeth Picciuto and Peter Carruthers 11. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: a Contradiction in Terms? Margaret Boden VI. Philosophy of Science 12. Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Dean Keith Simonton VII. Philosophy of Education (& Education of Philosophy) 13. Educating for Creativity Berys Gaut 14. Philosophical Heuristics Alan Hájek. (shrink)

In this essay we collect and put together a number of ideas relevant to the under- standing of the phenomenon of creativity, confining our considerations mostly to the domain of cognitive psychology while we will, on a few occasions, hint at neuropsy- chological underpinnings as well. In this, we will mostly focus on creativity in science, since creativity in other domains of human endeavor have common links with scientific creativity while differing in numerous other specific respects. We begin by briefly (...) introducing a few basic notions relating to cognition, among which the notion of ‘concepts’ is of basic relevance. The myriads of concepts lodged in our mind constitute a ‘conceptual space’ of an enormously complex structure, where con- cepts are correlated by beliefs that are themselves made up of concepts and are as- sociated with emotions. The conceptual space, moreover, is perpetually in a state of dynamic evolution that is once again of a complex nature. A major component of the dynamic evolution is made up of incessant acts of inference, where an inference occurs essentially by means of a succession of correlations among concepts set up with beliefs and heuristics, the latter being beliefs of a special kind, namely, ones relatively free of emotional associations and possessed of a relatively greater degree of justification. Beliefs, along with heuristics, have been described as the ‘mind’s software’, and con- stitute important cognitive components of the self-linked psychological resources of an individual. The self is the psychological engine driving all our mental and physical activity, and is in a state of ceaseless dynamics resulting from one’s most intimate ex- periences of the world accumulating in the course of one’s journey through life. Many of our psychological resources are of a dual character, having both a self-linked and a shared character, the latter being held in common with larger groups of people and imbibed from cultural inputs. We focus on the privately held self-linked beliefs of an individual, since these are presumably of central relevance in making possible inductive inferences – ones in which there arises a fundamental need of adopting a choice or making a decision. Beliefs, decisions, and inferences, all have the common link to the self of an individual and, in this, are fundamentally analogous to free will, where all of these have an aspect of non-determinism inherent in them. Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially on de- cisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. With this background in place, we briefly sketch the affect theory of decisions. Affect is an innate system of response to perceptual inputs received either from the exter- nal world or from the internal physiological and psychological environment whereby a positive or negative valence gets associated with a perceptual input. Almost every sit- uation faced by an individual, even one experienced tacitly, i.e., without overt aware-ness, elicits an affective response from him, carrying a positive or negative valence that underlies all sorts of decision making, including ones carried out unconsciously in inferential processes. Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that gener- ates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual do- mains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, analogous to the way a complex computer program proceeds through junctures where the program ascertains whether specified conditions are met with by way of generating appropriate numerical values – for instance, the program takes different routes, depending on whether some particular numerical value turns out to be positive or negative. The valence generated by the affect system in the process of adoption of a choice plays a similar role which therefore is of crucial relevance in inferential processes, especially in the exploration of the conceptual space where remote domains need to be linked up – the affect system produces a response along a single value dimension, resembling a number with a sign and a magnitude. While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. A successful access to a remote conceptual domain, necessary for the creative solution of a standing problem or anomaly – one that could not be solved within the limited domain hitherto accessed – requires a phase of relatively slow cumulative search and then, at some stage, a rapid cascading process when a solution is in sight. Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organized criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. In order that inferential access to remote domains may actually be possible, it is necessary that restrictions on the exploration process – necessary for setting the context in ordinary instances of inductive inference – be relaxed and a relatively free exploration in a larger conceptual terrain be made possible. This is achieved by the mind going into the default mode, where external constraints – ones imposed by shared beliefs and modes of exploration – are made inoperative. While explaining all these various aspects of the creative process, we underline the supremely important role that analogy plays in it. Broadly speaking, analogy is in the nature of a heuristic, establishing correlations between concepts. However, analo- gies are very special in that these are particularly effective in establishing correlations among remote concepts, since analogy works without regard to the contiguity of the concepts in the conceptual space. In establishing links between concepts, analogies have the power to light up entire terrains in the conceptual space when a rapid cas- cading of fresh correlations becomes possible. The creative process occurs within the mind of a single individual or of a few closely collaborating individuals, but is then continued by an entire epistemic community, eventually resulting in a conceptual revolution. Such conceptual revolutions make pos- sible the radical revision of scientific theories whereby the scope of an extant theory is broadened and a new theoretical framework makes its appearance. The emerging theory is characterized by a certain degree of incommensurability when compared with the earlier one – a feature that may appear strange at first sight. But incommen- surability does not mean incompatibility and the apparently contrary features of the relation between the successive theories may be traced to the multi-layered structureof the conceptual space where concepts are correlated not by means of single links but by multiple ones, thereby generating multiple layers of correlation, among which some are retained and some created afresh in a conceptual restructuring. We conclude with the observation that creativity occurs on all scales. Analogous to correlations being set up across domains in the conceptual space and new domains being generated, processes with similar features can occur within the confines of a domain where a new layer of inferential links may be generated, connecting up sub- domains. In this context, insight can be looked upon as an instance of creativity within the confines of a domain of a relatively limited extent. (shrink)

Common sense has it that some of the greatest achievements that are to our credit are creative, whether artistic or otherwise. But standard theories of achievement and merit struggle to explain them, since the praiseworthiness of creative achievements isn’t grounded in effort, quality of will, disclosing the agent’s values, or even reasons-responsiveness. I argue that it’s distinctive of artistic or quasi-artistic creative activity that it is guided by what I call aspirational aims, which are formulated in terms (...) of evaluative predicates (like painting something “moving” or engineering something “nifty”) whose descriptive realizers are not known in advance. Aesthetic creativity itself fundamentally consists in perceiving or conceiving of some modification of raw material or a medium as promoting or constituting a novel way of realizing the aspirational aim. Creative achievements like poems and paintings are then to our credit in virtue of being exercises of spontaneity that disclose a deep layer of our selves that is manifest in active perception of affordances, showing that there is something beautiful about the way we experience the world, as a Sally Rooney character puts it. As with other creditworthy achievements, what makes them difficult is that simply trying won’t suffice to make success likely – but unlike in many other cases, neither will trying hard, since we have no direct volitional or rational control over perceptual spontaneity. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of mutual relations between the social creativity and the substance of success. This problem is analyzed with reference of contemporary conceptions of social reality which unite objective and subjective aspects of the society and make accent on the complex and dynamic its character. Such approach leads to idea that success means capability to change social space and time. The success creates a new point of attraction not only by success itself but also by (...) future possibility. The success in postindustrial society obtains the symbolic form more than material. The direction of the social mobility in case of success may be not only vertical. These transformations are the process of social creativity. (shrink)

I argue that practical knowledge can be understood as constituted by a kind of imagining. In particular, it is the knowledge of what I am doing when that knowledge is represented via extramental imagination. Two results follow. First, on this account, we can do justice both to the cognitive character and the practical character of practical knowledge. And second, we can identify a condition under which imagination becomes factive, and thus a source of ob-jective evidence. I develop this (...) view by extracting an account of self-knowledge via extramental imagination from the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240). (shrink)

Using Foucault’s concept of governmentality vis-à-vis Appadurai’s “global ethnoscapes” as frames, I argue for a techno-cultural dimension which brought forth the phenomenon of the “dancing inmates,” an argument against the charge of Filipino colonial mimicry of a Hollywood popular entertainment. Albeit the inmates’ dance routines indeed depict Foucault’s “docile bodies” in his analysis of the modern prison, as pointed out by critics, I am inclined to show how the internet mediation through social media networks awakened a culturally imbibed dance and (...) musical character trait vis-à-vis the jolly cultural disposition of Filipinos. Thus, I view these characteristics as existential responses, hence, ‘creative resilience,’ to the inhuman incarcerating conditions of the prison life through using the art of dance with the aid of media technology. I argue on the role of the internet as the prisoners’ avenue to the outside world that was strategically deprived of them as a form of punishment, and the role of the internet as their last frontier to freedom and to realize their human potentials. (shrink)

ABSTRACT "Why can’t I decide to be happy?" This is the question that encapsulates the meaning behind Gabriele’s story, the main character of the novel Il film delle emozioni (The Movie of Emotions; Calabretta 2007a, in Italian). Gabriele is a victim of his negative emotions, and is completely in the power of his self-blame and self-devaluative thinking, which he learns to change only at the end of the novel, thanks to creativity and to the artistic expression of his own (...) traumatic experiences (see Sparrow and Wegner 2006). The novel tells of Gabriele’s several attempts at writing, first, the script of an autobiographical "educational" movie on emotion regulation; and then at transforming it into a novel. In reality, it reveals itself as a book popularizing the most recent scientific knowledge on psychology of emotions; as a dramatization of a scientist’s life—of his interior, interpersonal, and social conflicts (as well as political ones); and as a dramatization of the creative process of writing. As we will see in this article, The Movie of Emotions is a very particular novel that has much to do with creativity viewed in three different aspects—creativity in the novel’s structure, creativity in the process of the novel’s creation, and proposed techniques to increase creativity. (shrink)

In this article we wish to share the work in which the Group of Peirce Studies of the University of Navarra has been involved since 2007: the study of a very interesting part of the extensive correspondence of Charles S. Peirce, specifically, his European letters. Peirce wrote some of these letters over the course of his five trips to Europe (between 1870 and 1883), and wrote others to the many European scientists and intellectuals he communicated with over the course of (...) his life. The translation of those letters has been an excellent practical example of the creative and abductive nature of translation, as well as of the cooperative character of research. Translating Peirce's letters has allowed us a deep study of some theoretical aspects, and at the same time it has permitted us to work creatively and cooperatively to enrich the common vision of this scientist and philosopher. (shrink)

This article focuses on the distinction between psychosocial types and conceptual personae advanced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in What is Philosophy? The conceptual persona is the tool that a philosopher invents in order to create new concepts with which to bring forth new events. Although they present it as one of the three elements of philosophy, its nature and function and, above all, its conjunctions with psychosocial types have been overlooked by scholars. What is Philosophy? contains a list (...) of character traits of which each conceptual persona is composed. The central argument of this article is that this list can well be regarded as a table of categories that enable the exercise and experience of philosophy’s creative thinking. Since the character traits of a conceptual persona match the characteristics of the given psychosocial types, it is necessary to keep inventing new conceptual personae always starting from the historical presuppositions. The philosopher requires the conceptual persona to transfer his or her movements of thought to philosophy’s plane of immanence and thereby transform them in such a manner that philosophy can unfold as a creative power. It emerges as the subject of creative thinking at the same time as the concepts that subject creates, with which it coincides in the moment of creation. With the conceptual persona in What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari determine the one element of philosophy that makes the transcendental empiricism a method of creation that appears as a precise operation with all its convincing and transparent results. (shrink)

A well-documented “beauty is good” stereotype is expressed in the expectation that physically attractive people have more positive characteristics. Recent evidence has also found that unattractive faces are associated with negative character inferences. Is what is good (bad) also beautiful (ugly)? Whether this conflation of aesthetic and moral values is bidirectional is not known. This study tested the hypothesis that complementary “good is beautiful” and “bad is ugly” stereotypes bias aesthetic judgments. Using highly controlled face stimuli, this preregistered study (...) examined whether moral character influences perceptions of attractiveness for different ages and sexes of faces. Compared to faces paired with nonmoral vignettes, those paired with prosocial vignettes were rated significantly more attractive, confident, and friendlier. The opposite pattern characterized faces paired with antisocial vignettes. A significant interaction between vignette type and the age of the face was detected for attractiveness. Moral transgressions affected attractiveness more negatively for younger than older faces. Sex-related differences were not detected. These results suggest information about moral character affects our judgments about facial attractiveness. Better (worse) people are considered more (less) attractive. These findings suggest that beliefs about moral goodness and physical beauty influence each other bidirectionally. (shrink)

Consider the concept combination ‘pet human’. In word association experiments, human subjects produce the associate ‘slave’ in relation to this combination. The striking aspect of this associate is that it is not produced as an associate of ‘pet’, or ‘human’ in isolation. In other words, the associate ‘slave’ seems to be emergent. Such emergent associations sometimes have a creative character and cognitive science is largely silent about how we produce them. Departing from a dimensional model of human conceptual (...) space, this article will explore concept combinations, and will argue that emergent associations are a result of abductive reasoning within conceptual space, that is, below the symbolic level of cognition. A tensor-based approach is used to model concept combinations allowing such combinations to be formalized as interacting quantum systems. Free association norm data is used to motivate the underlying basis of the conceptual space. It is shown by analogy how some concept combinations may behave like quantum-entangled particles. Two methods of analysis were presented for empirically validating the presence of non-separable concept combinations in human cognition. One method is based on quantum theory and another based on comparing a joint probability distribution with another distribution based on a separability assumption using a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Although these methods were inconclusive in relation to an empirical study of bi-ambiguous concept combinations, avenues for further refinement of these methods are identified. (shrink)

Words, languages, symphonies, fictional characters, games, and recipes are plausibly abstract artifacts— entities that have no spatial location and that are deliberately brought into existence as a result of creative acts. Many accept that composition is unrestricted: for every plurality of material objects, there is a material object that is the sum of those objects. These two views may seem entirely unrelated. I will argue that the most influential argument against restricted composition—the vagueness argument—doubles as an argument that there (...) can be no abstract artifacts. There is no way to resist the vagueness argument against abstract artifacts that does not also undermine the vagueness argument against restricted composition. (shrink)

According to possibilism, or non-actualism, fictional characters are possible individuals. Possibilist accounts of fiction do not only assign the intuitively correct truth-conditions to sentences in a fiction, but has the potential to provide powerful explanatory models for a wide range of phenomena associated with fiction (though these two aspects of possibilism are, I argue, crucially distinct). Apart from the classic defense by David Lewis the idea of modeling fiction in terms of possible worlds have been widely criticized. In this article, (...) I provide a defense of a possibilist account against some lines of criticism. To do so, I assume that names for fictional characters are directly referential and a possible-worlds model that accommodates transworld identity. On this background, I argue, it is possible to construct an elegant model of fictional discourse using familiar models of information exchange in ordinary discourse, and I sketch how this model can be used to i) make a natural distinction between fictional and counterfactual discourse, ii) account for creativity, and iii) sustain a natural definition of truth-in-fiction that avoids certain familiar objections to possibilism. Though I set aside questions about the metaphysical commitments of a possible-world interpretation here, there is accordingly reason to think that the battle over possibilist treatments of fiction will have to be fought over metaphysical foundations rather than technical shortcomings. (shrink)

It is natural to say that when we acquire a new concept or concepts, or grasp a new theory, or master a new practice, we come to see things in a new way: we perceive phenomena that we were not previously aware of; we come to see patterns or connections that we did not previously see. That natural idea has been applied in many areas, including the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. And, in (...) reflecting on the character of philosophy itself, Wittgenstein himself associates the introduction of a new concept in philosophy with the discovery of a new way of looking at things (PI §401), and says that the point of presenting us with an imagined example may be to change our way of looking at things (PI §144). The paper considers four interrelated questions about this association between seeing-as and change, novelty, or innovation. 1. Is there an important difference between the case where the change in someone’s way of seeing things involves the invention or discovery of a completely new concept, a completely new theory etc., and the case where it involves the person’s coming to understand an existing concept or theory? 2. Is there a special connection between seeing-as and conceptual or theoretical change or creativity: a connection that does not obtain between seeing-as and using or applying a familiar theory or system of concepts? 3. In cases where seeing-as is associated with novelty or creativity, is there any sense in which the fact that someone sees things in a new way can help to explain their conceptual or theoretical creativity? 4. To the extent that there is some association between seeing-as and novelty or creativity, why if at all does it matter that one experiences things in a certain way? Would someone who was aspect-blind be any worse off with respect to creativity or innovation than the rest of us? And if so, why? (shrink)

Transhumanists, like other elites in modernity, place great value on human creativity, and advances in human enhancement and AI form the basis of their propos- als for boosting it. However, there are problems with this perspective, due to the unique ways in which humans have evolved, procreated and socialized. I first describe how creativity is related to past evolution and developmental aspects in children, stressing pretend play and the ambivalent character of creativity. Then, I outline proposals for enhancing creativity, (...) be it in embodied humans on the way to a superior species, in AI- related beings (virtual reality, robotics), or even in any degree of mixture in human- machine interaction. In the final section, I describe intrinsic limits to these proposals, such as the absence of a good understanding of human psychology by the proponents of enhancement; the lack of interest in the subjective side of creativity (for one’s own sake); delayed maturation and the ambivalence of pretend play in childhood; and the contrariness typical of new human generations. As for the enhancement of creativity, it is argued that creativity in its social context may be the victim of its own past success. On the other hand, an asymmetry between virtual beings and children is described— the latter can behave in a nasty way, it is part of their growth and creativity, whereas the former are not supposed to cause any harm to human beings. In sum, despite impressive progress in several scientific and technological interventions in creativity, philosophical questions emerge that place many constraints on transhumanist dreams of endless creativity. (shrink)

While examining the important role of imagination in making moral judgments, John Dewey and Moral Imagination focuses new attention on the relationship between American pragmatism and ethics. Steven Fesmire takes up threads of Dewey's thought that have been largely unexplored and elaborates pragmatism's distinctive contribution to understandings of moral experience, inquiry, and judgment. Building on two Deweyan notions—that moral character, belief, and reasoning are part of a social and historical context and that moral deliberation is an imaginative, dramatic rehearsal (...) of possibilities—Fesmire shows that moral imagination can be conceived as a process of aesthetic perception and artistic creativity. Fesmire's original readings of Dewey shed new light on the imaginative process, human emotional make-up and expression, and the nature of moral judgment. This original book presents a robust and distinctly pragmatic approach to ethics, politics, moral education, and moral conduct. [The downloadable sample is Chapter Seven, "The Moral Artist."]. (shrink)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) is often thought of as a “philosopher’s philosopher,” with a specialist rather than generalist appeal. One reason for Schelling’s lack of popularity is that he is something of a problem case for traditional narratives about the history of philosophy. Although he is often slotted in as a stepping stone on the intellectual journey from Kant to Hegel, any attention to his ideas will show that he does not fit this role very well. His later (...) philosophy suggests a materialism and empiricism that puts him outside of idealism proper; his connection with the romantic movement suggests an aestheticism that challenges traditional philosophy as such; and his mysticism allies him with medieval, pre-critical philosophies considered antiquated by the 19th century. And if Schelling was not entirely at home with his contemporaries, he seems, on the face of it, to have fared little better with his future: there has been no Schelling school, he has had no followers. No historical trajectory announces Schelling as its point of departure. -/- And yet Schelling’s influence has been an extraordinary one. He has inspired physicists, physicians, theologians, historians and poets. A wildly diverse set of philosophers have claimed that their ideas have resonance with his. Perhaps the question of Schelling’s influence can be approached by looking at what Kant says about works of genius -- that they should give rise to inspiration, not imitation. Paradoxically, to imitate genius is not to produce an imitation but a new creative work. Whether or not Schelling should be strictly viewed as a genius, Kant’s notion suggests a sense in which Schelling should be understood as a “philosopher’s philosopher”; he inspired creativity, not repetition. In this perspective, the lack of a “Schelling school” is a sign of strength; Schelling is continually being rediscovered, and his works have retained a fresh and untimely character. If Schelling does not have any obvious historical successors, it is because his influence cannot be charted by the usual methods. New philosophical tools are needed in order to understand his philosophical significance, his impact on contemporary thought and relevance for contemporary concerns. (shrink)

A cosmological principle, because it was the first to be created, Exu presents itself as the creative protomatter, whose expansive and unfinished character makes possible the appearanceof all other creations. He is the animating principle of existence and in everything there isExu. The crossroads is its space-time and this fact would explain why “black culture is acrossroads culture”. But, incarnated in Afro-diasporic practices in the Atlantic bands, Exunot only vigorously maintains his multifaceted power, showing that colonial redemption didnot (...) obtain the expected result, but also shows that its everyday meanings in the African BlackDiaspora here in the Americas they are the result of battles, negotiations, authoritarianism,power regimes, violence, transgressions, silencing and alliances experienced in the colonialdynamic, as Luiz Rufno reminds us in his book Pedagogia das Encruzilhadas (2019). (shrink)

This chapter attends to somaesthetic expressions occurring irrespective of knowledge of the movement, using Mandalay’s Water Festival and Cairo’s Arab Spring as case studies. These celebrations and protests feature bodies creatively gravitating around urban structures and according to emotional, cultural concerns, all of this together defining city spaces for a time. Bodies also become venues for artistic refashioning, for example, through creative conversion of injuries into celebratory badges of dissent. Geared almost therapeutically towards life-improvement—albeit sometimes implicitly—these celebrations and protests (...) also have meliorative aspects that mark the somaesthetic movement. Moreover, they have a shared, public character stressed by Shusterman, but arguably lost on many because of his interest in self-focused meditation and the popular appeal of such exercises among those interested in body practices. (shrink)

I believe that there is a fact of nature: “The content of elementary particles is “pure”, concrete matter of nature”. On this fact, as on the basis, foundation my entire “Theory of Nature” (TN) was build. This fact (judgment about this fact) is at the same time the solution to the main question of physics and all natural science (MQPNS). This is the question: “How specifically is matter represented in nature?” I believe that the question posed in this way is (...) the third side of the fundamental question of philosophy (FQP). The first two sides of the fundamental question of philosophy were formulated by the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the founders of dialectical materialism K. Marx and F. Engels. V. I. Lenin made his invaluable contribution to the explanation of these provisions. All these provisions remain relevant to this day. In the connection with the revolutionary development of the foundations of physics and cosmogony (cosmology), laid down by the “Theory of Nature”, the philosophy of dialectical materialism also receives its further creative development. We all remember the words of the classics and founders of dialectical materialism that dialectical materialism is not a dogma, that along with the development of science, there is a further development of the philosophy of dialectical materialism. The scientific fact discovered within the framework of TN (as a new dialectical-materialistic physics) has a revolutionary significance and character. This is such fact “the content of elementary particles is “pure”, concrete matter of nature”. Dialectical materialism takes this fact into its arsenal. In this regard, the formulation of the fundamental question of philosophy (FQP) is clarified. This clarification is the third side of the main question of philosophy. The third side of FQP becomes the question of “the concrete representation of matter in nature (matter of nature)”. The solution to this question was presented above. --------- -/- Я считаю, что имеет место факт природы: «Содержимое элементарных частиц есть «чистая», конкретная материя природы». На этом факте, как на базисе, фундаменте, основе построена вся моя «Теория Природы» (ТП). Но этот факт (суждение об этом факте) является в то же время решением основного вопроса физики и всего естествознания. Это такой вопрос: «Как конкретно в природе представлена материя?». Я считаю, что так поставленный вопрос есть третья сторона основного вопроса философии (ОВФ). Первые две стороны основного вопроса философии сформулированы классиками марксизма-ленинизма, основоположниками диалектического материализма К. Марксом и Ф. Энгельсом. Свой неоценимый вклад в разъяснения этих положений внёс В. И. Ленин. Все эти положения остаются актуальными и по сей день. Но в связи с революционным развитием основ физики и космогонии (космологии), положенным «Теорией Природы», своё дальнейшее творческое развитие получает и философия диалектического материализма. Все мы помним, слова классиков и основателей диалектического что диамат не догма, что вместе с развитием науки, происходит дальнейшее развитие и философии диалектического материализма. Революционное значение и характер имеет открытый в рамках ТП (как новой диалектико-материалистической физики) научный факт, что «Содержимое элементарных частиц есть «чистая», конкретная материя природы». Диамат берёт этот факт на своё вооружение. И в этой связи уточняется формулировка основного вопроса философии (ОВФ). Этим уточнением является третья сторона основного вопроса философии. Третьей стороной ОВФ становится вопрос «о конкретном представлении материи в природе (материи природы)». Решение этого вопроса представлено выше. (shrink)

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the assumption that relations are primary to the constitution of the person, hence acting in the early Chinese context necessarily is interacting and co-acting along with others –human and nonhuman actors. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical (...) Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency –what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin 因). As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action also conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires great capacity of self and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response, which allows the agent to co-raise courses of action ad-hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines, opening a brand-new topic in Chinese and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

As a sort of intellectual provocation and as a lateral thinking strategy for creativity, this chapter seeks to determine what the study of the dynamics of biodiversity can offer linguists. In recent years, the analogical equation "language = biological species" has become more widespread as a metaphorical source for conceptual renovation, and, at the same time, as a justification for the defense of language diversity. Language diversity would be protected in a way similar to the mobilization that has taken place (...) to protect endangered species. Nevertheless, one must be careful when uncritically transferring conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks from one field to another, since obviously, these two phenomena are quite different in the real world. The dialogue with bioecologists starts by asking about the formation of diversity, i.e., about specialization. Here, one can observe the similarity between the processes of linguistic and genetic fragmentation, in the sense that both phenomena have a (socio)geographical basis for dispersion and consequently, for the loss of their original compact nature and their intercommunication. The self-organizing and creative properties of human beings favor the development of specific varieties for each subset, varieties that continue to evolve constantly, through the unceasing "languaging" of humanity. Regarding the continuity of species or languages, one can also observe the decisive role of intragroup relations. The staying power of linguistic varieties will increase in direct proportion to the intensity of the relationship among the components of the subset. On the other hand, if exotic elements are introduced, especially if these elements are aggressive in nature, the alteration of the ecological niche may turn out to be fatal for the continuity of the previously existing forms. This suggests to us the need to make an in-depth study of what the minimal contextual conditions would be so that a set linguistic group could be assured a sustainable continuity within a framework of linguistic contact. What type of minimum (socio-)ecological niche would a language have to have if we wished to ensure its habitual reproduction? A proposal is made here to explore the ideas of "exclusive functions" and "non-hierarchical functional distribution" for codes in situations where there is high contact and a danger of disuse. As regards change, this phenomenon is seen as an inherent element in the tendency of life to create new developments, which may or not be accompanied by an adaptation to changing environmental conditions. It is pointed out that, similar to what happens in biology, much of linguistic innovation stems from a systemically reorganized mixture of solutions from different codes. An important research question would be, however, to determine why some of these innovations disappear and others survive and extend throughout the community. The big question mark, as Mufwene points out, is, then how to manage to understand how "the evolution of language proceeds by naturally selecting from among the competing alternatives available through the idiolects of individual speakers". Extinction, whether it be of languages or of species, is caused in most cases "by a combination of demographic processes and environmental changes", as Brown points out. Thus, the environment plays a fundamental role in the direction of evolution, since the "the survival of the fittest is, in actuality, the survival of those who fit into the context (Allen and Hoekstra)". This allows us to see the great degree of importance of political-economic contexts in the case of languages. In the same way, migratory movements are also one of the major variables determining the extinction of biodiversity and language diversity. Species and habitat form the basic unit of existence, and this is the major point of departure for understanding the problem of the preservation and recovery of species or languages. Given the increase in the degree of linguistic contact, the continuity of language diversity depends on determining, as exactly as possible, as Prigogine, the physicist, would say, what precise conditions of imbalance may prove to be stable. The great challenge is not so much avoiding contact but managing it. And "restorative ecology" can also be of help to us here. Being able to reach sustainable solutions for language diversity implies a profound knowledge of the dynamics for determining the ways in which language is used in contact situations. The general conclusion is that linguistics is still terminologically and conceptually ill prepared to deal with the dynamic character of human languages. The world and our objects must be conceived of as elements in a state of flux, as changing systems in an unstable equilibrium. With respect to language policy, it would be necessary to make an effort to manage to establish some general principles regarding the linguistic organization of the human species that would make it possible for local linguistic diversity and communication on a planetary scale, which must necessarily take place, to be compatible with each other. To succeed, it will be necessary to continue promoting an autonomous socio-ecological perspective devoted to the comprehension of language phenomena. Such a perspective would be based on a paradigm of complexity, and would, at the same time, place human beings at the center of its theoretical underpinnings. (shrink)

The main purpose of this work is presenting a philosophical analysis of the general notion of play. This analysis starts from Huizinga's definition of the "play-concept" and is extended so as to include Wittgenstein's conception of language-games. By supplementing Huizinga's definition with a distinction between "play" and "game", as the two opposite components of that concept, I carry out an investigation of some of the interesting issues raised by his book. I focus especially on the relationship between the play-phenomenon and (...) artistic experience and I develop Huizinga's suggestions regarding this point through an examination of past and modern conceptions of art. The results of this analysis are connected with Wittgenstein's notion of language-games. I find that this notion can be taken to emphasize the very character of integration that creative and appreciative experience in art show. Language-games, like artworks, demand and generate at the same time the need of communality, that is of customs. (shrink)

In this critical review I explore the anti-intentionalist stance Adorno offers in his aesthetics, specifically focusing on his Notes to Literature, and the internal limits to this stance. Adorno rejects the primacy of authorial intentionalism: The presuppositions of its aesthetic methodology, he claims, place the individual in a position of epistemic priority, without exploring the social totalities which constitute the conditions of the presentation of aesthetic knowledge by any such individual. The role of the creator for Adorno is inherently mediated (...) within the context of such totalities. -/- This is not to wholly discount the role of creative intentions, however. Rather, Adorno frames the artist as a ‘bearer’ and a ‘representative of the total social subject’. In this context he allows for a qualified form of subjectivity, construed as a mode of creativity produced by a particular kind of “achieved self-awareness” or disposition of consciousness towards an “estrangement of meaning”. Indeed, the loss of the stronger presupposition that the subject acts as an authentic expository force can lead to a realization that objectivity by this means constitutes a “loss”, Adorno claims, which creates the possibility for pursuing a critical stance to facilitate the capacity for creating autonomous works of art. Creators of autonomous works acknowledge “the paradoxical relationship of the autonomous work to its commodity character” (‘Valery’s Deviations’), namely an awareness of their inherent reification. The self-alienating yet autonomous work is described by Adorno as possessing and demonstrating tacit yet genuine ‘wants’, but this is framed by the demands of the human condition to recognize how ill-fitting the forces of social production are upon and towards securing them. Aesthetic intentions and the subjects which channel them can be critically valuable if they allude to or exposit the contradictions between these demands and those forces. (shrink)

Receptive Spirit develops the thesis that the notion of self-induced mental activity at the heart of German idealism necessitated a radical rethinking of humans’ dependence on culturally transmitted models of thought, evaluation, and creativity. The chapters of the book examine paradigmatic attempts undertaken by German idealist thinkers to reconcile spontaneous mental activity with receptivity to culturally transmitted models. The book maps the ramifications of this problematic in Kant’s theory of aesthetic experience, Fichte’s and Hegel’s views on the historical character (...) of philosophy, the Fichtean model of philosophical communication, and Friedrich Schlegel’s theory and practice of literary communication and criticism. Drawing on Gadamer and McDowell, I argue that the conceptual framework established by the Idealists remains indispensable for orientation in the contemporary intellectual landscape. (See the PDF file below for a synopsis). (shrink)

In Against the Day, Pynchon is obsessed with twoness, double worlds, as well as dual realities, and like Deleuze’s concept of repetition, these duplications and twinships are not merely repetition of the same, rather they allow for creativity, reinvention, and becoming. Pynchon’s duplication of fictional and spectral characters intends to critique the notion of identity as does Deleuzian concept of repetition. Not attached to the representational concept of identity as the recurrence of the same, Pynchon’s duplications decenter the transcendental concept (...) in favor of a perpetual becoming and reproduces difference and singularity. Like Deleuze, Pynchon eschews an identity that is always guaranteed, and shows that the repetition of an object or a subject is not the recurrence of the original self-identical object or person. Moreover, Iceland spar, the mystifying calcite, with its doubling effect provides the reader with a view of a world beyond the ordinary, actual world, which is quite similar to what Pynchon’s novel does per se. (shrink)

Although recent scholarship has begun to clarify Porphyry’s position on the first principle in its distinction from that of Plotinus we must be careful not to gloss over the crucial ramifications of Porphyry’s developments. The Plotinian One is beyond Being, and thus beyond all relation and difference. In his attempt to understand how such a principle can be productive of all else that follows from it, Porphyry considers the Plotinian One in both its transcendent and creative aspects, introducing the (...) notions of difference and self-relation within the One itself. Porphyry’s modifications of Plotinus’s doctrine, however, result in a first principle having a character utterly distinct from what Plotinus envisioned, and from what I believe Plotinus would have accepted. Because Porphyry’s first principle is relational, it loses its decisive Plotinian character as absolutely transcendent. This distinction between the first principles of Porphyry and Plotinus has important ramifications for each of their philosophical itineraria, and further strengthens the status of Plotinus within the Neoplatonic tradition. Plotinus is a unique thinker within the Neoplatonic tradition, and we must be careful not to equate Neoplatonism with Plotinus, when in fact, it is Plotinus who against both his own predecessors and successors often stands alone. (shrink)

The album Echo was produced in a depressed, drug-riddled phase when Tom Petty’s first marriage was ending and his physical condition so degraded that he took to using a cane. Petty filmed no videos, avoided playing the album’s songs on the follow-up tour and reported little memory of its making. The thoughtfulness and self-reflection that traumatic circumstances spur distinguish the album. So too does the tendency to look backwards in times of crisis, whether in hopes of finding solidity in the (...) past or just out of exhausted inability to cope with the present. -/- While melancholically creative, the album might be regarded as an echoing of past musical fragments. The sprightly mix of acoustic and electric guitars, the backing vocal harmonies and the stories of loss in songs such as “Won’t Last Long” and “This One’s for Me” harken to Petty’s albums from the late 80s to mid-90s. “Accused of Love” similarly contains echoes of Petty’s more upbeat work, but with depressing lyrical undertones. The production qualities and lyrics of “Rhino Skin” recollect “Asshole,” a Beck cover from Petty’s previous album. “I Don’t Wanna Fight”—a Heartbreakers performance composed and sung by Mike Campbell—returns to the hard driving rock of Damn the Torpedoes. The lyrics, straight-laced drums and layered drones of electric guitars of “Free Girl Now” go back further to “American Girl,” which itself was influenced by psychedelic music. At the same time, all of this typifies Petty’s oeuvre. Throughout his career, he made music steeped in past rock traditions. He was also a seminal figure in Southern rock, with its emphatically nostalgic character. -/- The crisis that Petty was experiencing echoes throughout the album in more specific ways, with many songs repeating the theme of being up or down, high or low. The theme of fighting or not wanting to has an especially strong echo, showing up in “Swingin’,” “Billy the Kid” and “I Don’t Wanna Fight.” These songs, in turn, exhibit nostalgia for past icons, with protagonists going down hard like Billy the Kid; or going down swinging like Sonny Liston; or again like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Sammy Davis in a punny reference to the swing era. -/- The retrospective feel of the album is one of looking to the past for the sake of self-preservation in the present, along lines discussed by Nietzsche. While symptomatic of illness, Nietzsche maintains this movement “springs from the protective instinct of a degenerating life which tries by all means to sustain itself and to fight for existence.” This seeming denial of growth can, as Nietzsche continues, be “among the greatest conserving and yes-creating forces of life.” Petty clearly associated Echo with personal grief, refusing to listen to it for years. As with many other examples of art, however, the album was also a way of surviving and growing beyond a present trauma, and one more specifically that compelled him to overcome an important part of his past, namely, his wife of 20-plus years. One can speculate that clinging to fragments of the past—musical and otherwise—was a way of coping with a difficult present and a fading past. (shrink)

While J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and other creations enthrall readers through immersive adventures and captivating characters, a deeper understanding of the author’s faith unlocks a new dimension of appreciation. Tolkien declared his works “fundamentally religious and Catholic,” but their subtle nuances often escape surface-level readings. Delving into his faith journey unveils crucial threads woven into the very fabric of his narratives. -/- In the expansive corpus of literature dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien, his faith has often been overshadowed (...) by the towering legacies of Middle-earth. Holly Ordway’s Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography is a seminal work that meticulously unravels the interplay between Tolkien’s devout Catholicism and his literary creations. Ordway, the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, brings to the fore a long-neglected dimension of Tolkien’s life—his spiritual journey. -/- Ordway’s biography distinguishes itself through its rigorous exploration of Tolkien’s spiritual development, from his environment to the profound Catholic faith he maintained throughout his life. Ordway delves into the complexities of Tolkien’s life, including the pivotal moments that shaped his religious beliefs and, by extension, his literary work. The biography is not merely a chronological recounting of events but a deep, thematic exploration of the influence of faith on Tolkien’s creativity. Ordway’s scholarship shines in her ability to weave together Tolkien’s letters, unpublished works, and the socioreligious context of his time, offering readers a holistic view of the man behind Middle-earth. Ordway’s balanced approach further enriches the narrative. She neither critiques nor endorses Tolkien’s religious beliefs but presents them with an academic rigor that allows readers to form their interpretations. This objectivity is crucial for the work’s target academic audience, providing a foundation for further scholarship in Tolkien studies and the study of literature and religion. (shrink)

In 1804, when asked by the aspiring writer Clemens Brentano why she had chosen to publish her work, Karoline von Günderrode wrote that she longed “mein Leben in einer bleibenden Form auszusprechen, in einer Gestalt, die würdig sei, zu den Vortreflichsten hinzutreten, sie zu grüssen und Gemeinschaft mit ihnen zu haben.” In light of this kind of statement, it is perhaps not surprising if, despite some exceptions, much of the still relatively scant literature on Günderrode reads her works largely in (...) terms of how they articulate and manifest Günderrode’s desires, frustrations, and character, for the most part ignoring their imaginary, creative, and intellectual aspects. This interpretation of the author’s works as biography is, in Günderrode’s case, often accompanied by an interpretation of her biography, particularly her suicide, as literary work. This paper is not the first to question the conflation of Günderrode’s life, death, and writing, but it is one of only a handful that aim to address the autopoietic element of Günderrode’s work in a way that does not reduce her writings to biographical and psychological expressions, or Günderrode herself to an image – or a legend – encapsulated by her writings and her relationship to them. This paper argues that Günderrode’s own position on what the self is has been largely neglected as a result of this conflation, and that taking this position into account changes how we understand Günderrode’s articulations of self in her writings. Thus this paper has two goals: to address difficulties in articulating and even constituting oneself sincerely when one’s efforts are unrecognized, belittled, censored, and forced to conform to the conventions of a society in which one is marginalized; and to unearth a neglected and potentially rich account of the modern self. (shrink)

Like human existence itself, our enduring legacies—whether poetic, ethical, political, or philosophical—continually unfold and require recurrent communal engagement and (re)enactment. In other words, an ongoing performance of significant works must occur, and this task requires the collective human activity of re-membering or gathering-together-again. In the Symposium, Diotima provides an account of human pursuits of immortality through the creation of artifacts, including laws, poems, and philosophical discourses that resonates with Gadamer’s account of our engagement with artworks and texts. This essay explores (...) common places among Gadamer and Plato; however, it does so through the complex character of Diotima the philosopher-priestess. Diotima’s teaching on the processive character of human existence and her understanding of knowledge as dynamic has been largely ignored. Given Gadamer’s historically oriented philosophical hermeneutics, not to mention his creative and critical engagement with Platonic themes such as beauty, recollection, and art, Diotima makes for an especially fruitful dialogue partner. (shrink)

Hyppolite stresses his proximity to Merleau-Ponty, but the received interpretation of his “anti-humanist” reading of Hegel suggests a greater distance between their projects. This paper focuses on an under-explored dimension of their philosophical relationship. I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Hyppolite are both committed to formulating a mode of philosophical expression that can avoid the pitfalls of purely formal or literal and purely aesthetic or creative modes of expression. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to navigate this dichotomy, I suggest, closely resembles Hyppolite’s interpretation (...) of Hegel’s “speculative” mode of expression. In particular, his emphasis on the “mediating” character of philosophical language, which moves between descriptive and creative expression, suggests a debt to Hyppolite. This reading provides more evidence to think that Hyppolite cannot be straightforwardly understood as an anti-humanist or post-phenomenological thinker, and paves the way for a _rapprochement_ between his work and the broader phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an ecological, Schelerian-based description of the aesthetic experience that, without being exhaustive, may account for its complexity, perspective character and stratifications. Aesthetic enjoyment, aesthetic object and the creative process of the artistic type are all specific and necessary moments of an experience – an aesthetic experience – shared by different experiential “individuals”, who also contribute to its formation process. The content of this experience grows and develops in conformity with its own laws, like (...) a living being so to speak, able, as such, to turn its own gaze to the others’ gaze at the same time as they turn to it. In other words, I will deal with the dynamics of the artist’s interactions with the spectator, of those of the spectator with the artist and of those of both with the work of art, which, created by the artist, or rather, “brought to light” by the artist, becomes an object– a quasi-sujet in Dufrennian terms – unique to the spectator. In this context, I will try to rehabilitate the axiological virtues of beauty, not in the sense of a metaphysics of beauty, but in a sense nearer to our experiences of “seeing something in a new light”. (shrink)

This paper aims to suggest a new approach to Plato’s theory of being in Republic V and Sophist based on the notion of difference and the being of a copy. To understand Plato’s ontology in these two dialogues we are going to suggest a theory we call Pollachos Esti; a name we took from Aristotle’s pollachos legetai both to remind the similarities of the two structures and to reach a consistent view of Plato’s ontology. Based on this theory, when Plato (...) says that something both is and is not, he is applying difference on being which is interpreted here as saying, borrowing Aristotle’s terminology, 'is is (esti) in different senses'. I hope this paper can show how Pollachos Esti can bring forth not only a new approach to Plato’s ontology in Sophist and Republic but also a different approach to being in general. -/- Keywords Plato; being; difference; image; pollachos esti; pollachos legetai 1. Being, Not-Being and Difference The three dialogues where the notion of "difference" attaches to the notion of being, namely Parmenides II, Sophist and Timaeus,and specifically the first two we try to discuss here. In these dialogues, Plato is going to achieve a new and revolutionary understanding of being which is not anymore based on the notion of "same" as it was before in Greek ontology. It was his discovery, I think, that the notion of being in the Greek ontology is attached to the notion of the "same" and it is because of this attachment that there have always been many problems understanding being especially after Parmenides. That being has always been relying on the "same" can be found out from the way most of the Presocratics understood it. It was based on such a relationship between being and "same" that a later Ionian, Heraclitus of Ephesus, rejected Being by rejecting its sameness: unable to be the same, being cannot be being anymore but becoming. Heraclitus’ criticism of his predecessors’ understanding of being was due to his discovery that what they call being is not the same but different in every moment. The relation of being and sameness reaches to its highest point in Parmenides. What Plato does in using the "difference" is nothing but the establishment of a creative relation between being and "difference". In this new relation, although he is in agreement with Heraclitus that being is not the same but different, he does not do it by use of becoming. He disagrees, on the other hand, with Parmenides that such a relation between being and difference leads to not being. At Parmenides 142b5-6 it is said that if One is, it is not possible for it to be without partaking (μετέχειν) of being (οὐσίας), which leads to the distinction of being and one: -/- So there would be also the being of the one (ἡ οὐσία του̑ ἑνὸς) which is not the same (ταὐτὸν) as the one. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be its being, nor the one would partake of it. (142b7-c1) -/- The fact that what is (ἔστι) signifies (σημαῖνον) is other (ἀλλο) than what One signifies (c4-5), is being taken as a reason for their distinction. The conclusion is that when we say 'one is', we speak of two different things, one partaking of the other (c5-7). Having repeated these arguments of the otherness of being and one at 143a-b, Parmenides says that the cause of this otherness can be neither Being nor One but "difference": -/- So if being is something different (ἕτερον) and one something different (ἕτερον), it is not by being one that the one is different from being nor by its being being that being is other than one, but they are different from each other (ἕτερα ἀλλήλων) by difference (τῷ ἑτερῳ) and otherness (ἄλλῳ). (143b3-6) -/- The fifth hypothesis, 'one is not' (160b5ff.) is also linked with the notion of difference. When we say about two things, largeness and smallness, that they are not, it is clear that we are talking about not being of different (ἕτερον) things (160c2-4). When it is said that something is not, besides the fact that there must be knowledge of that thing, we can say that it entails also its difference: 'difference in kind pertains to it in addition to knowledge' (160d8). Parmenides explains the reason as such: -/- For someone doesn’t speak of the difference in kind of the others when he says that the one is different from the others, but of that thing’s own difference in kind. (160e1-2) -/- Although the theory of being as "difference" is not fulfilled yet, an exact look at what occurs in Sophist can make us sure that this was the launching step for "difference" to get its deserved role in Plato’s ontology. The notion of the "difference" is not yet well-functioned in Parmenides because we can see that being is still attached to the same: -/- For that which is the same is being (ὄν γὰρ ἐστι τὸ ταὐτόν) (162d2-3). -/- The notion of difference in Sophist is the key element based on which a new understanding of being is presented and the problem of not being is somehow resolved. The friends of Forms, the Stranger says, are those who distinguish between being and becoming (248a7-8) and believe that we deal with the latter with our body and through perception while with the former, the real being (ὄντως οὐσίαν) with our soul and through reasoning (a10-11). Being is then bound with the "same" by adding: -/- You say that being always stays the same and in the same state (ἣν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἔχειν) but becoming varies from one time to another (δὲ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως). (248a12-13) -/- That the theory of the relation of being and capacity (247d8f., 248c4-5) matches more with becoming than with being (248c7-9) must be rejected because being is also the subject of knowledge which is kind of doing something (248d-e). It does, however, confirm that 'both that which changes and also change have to be admitted as existing things (ὄντα) (249b2-3). I believe that this is what Socrates would incline to do at Theaetetus 180e-181a, that is, putting a fight between two parties of Parmenidean being and Heraclitean becoming and then escaping. The solution is that becoming is itself a kind of being and we ought to accept what changes as being. This is what must be done by a philosopher, namely, to refuse both the claim that 'everything is at rest' and that 'being changes in every way' and beg, like a child, for both and say being (τὸὄν) is both the unchanging and that which changes (249c10-d4). This kind of begging for both is obviously under the attack of contradiction (249e-250b). For both and each of rest and change similarly are (250a11-12) but it cannot be said either that both of them change or both of them rest, being must be considered as a third thing both of the rest and change associate with (250b7-10). The conclusion is that 'being is not both change and rest but different (ἕτερον) from them instead' (c3-4). The notion of difference helps Plato to take being departed from both rest and change because it was their sophisticated relation with being that made the opposition of being and becoming. Plato is now trying to separate being from rest and, thus, from "same" by "difference". Such a crucial change is great enough to need a 'fearless' decision (256d5-6). The possibility of being of not being is resulted (d11-12) comes as the answer to the question 'so it’s clear that change is not being and also is being (ἡ κίνησις ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν) since it partakes in being?' (d8-9). It is then by the notion of difference that becoming is considered as that which both is and is not. This coincidence of being and not being about change is apparently similar to Socrates’ paradoxical statement at Republic 477a about what both is and is not. -/- Introduction The Republic 476-477 has always been a matter of controversy mainly about two interwoven points. The first problem is the meaning of being here; that whether what he has in mind is a veridical, existential or propositional sense of being. The second problem is his distinction between the objects of knowledge and opinion which seems to lead, some believe, to the Two Worlds (TW) theory. The crucial point in Republic is that what is considered between knowledge (ἐπιστήμης) and ignorance (α͗γνοιας), namely opinion, must have a different object that leads Socrates to draw the distinction of knowledge and opinion between their objects. The problem of understanding being in the fifth book of the Republic is that when it is said that the Form of F is F but a particular participating in F, both is and is not F, it sounds too bizarre and unacceptable. It cannot be imaginable how a thing can be existent and non-existent at the same time. At the first sight, the only solution seems to be the degrees of existence which is called by Annas (1981, 197) a 'childish fallacy' and a 'silly argument'. Kirwan (1974, 118) thinks that Republic V does not attribute 'any doctrine about existence' to Plato and Kahn (1966, 250) claims that the most fundamental value of einai when used alone (without predicate) is not "to exist" but "to be so", "to be the case" or "to be true". The problems of understanding being in Republic and Sophist besides the difficulties of the existential reading led scholars to the other senses of being, mostly related to the well-known Aristotelian distinctions between different senses of being. In the predicative reading, Annas, for example, refers this difference to the qualified and unqualified application. Whereas the Form of F is unqualifiedly F, a particular instance of F can be F only qualifiedly (1981, 221). Vlastos’ well-known substitution of 'degrees of reality' for 'degrees of being/existence' must be categorized as a predicative reading. Kahn thinks that the basic sense of being for Plato is 'something like propositional structure, involving both predication and truth claims, together with existence for the subject of predication' (2013, 96). Believing that the complete-incomplete distinction terminology is misleading about Plato, he thinks that semantic functions are only second-order uses of the verb and it is the predicative or incomplete function which is fundamental. Suggesting a veridical reading, Fine (2003, 70 ff) thinks that while both existential and predicative readings separate the objects of knowledge and belief, it is only her reading which does not force such separation of the objects and thus does not imply TW. Stokes (1998, 266) thinks that though Fine is right saying that Plato does not endorse TW in book V, she is wrong in rejecting existential in favor of the veridical reading. The reception of existential reading can be seen more obviously in Calvert who thinks, in agreement with Runciman, that 'it would be safer to say that Plato’s gradational ontology is probably not entirely free from degrees of existence' (1970, 46). At Sophist 254d-e Plato singles out five most important kinds (or Forms!?) in which the same (ταὐτὸν) and difference (θάτερον) are regarded besides being, rest and change. They are, therefore, neither the same nor the difference but share in both (b3). Being (τὸ ὄν) cannot be the same also because if they 'do not signify distinct things' both change and rest will have the same label when we say they are (255b11-c1). We have then four distinct kinds, being, change, rest and same, none of them is the other. The case of difference is more complicated. When the stranger wants to assess the relation of being and difference, he can say simply neither that they are distinct nor that they are not. He has to make an important distinction inside being to get able to draw the relation of being and difference: -/- But I think you'll admit that some of the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) are said (λέγεσθαι) by themselves (αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτά) but some [are said] always referring to (πρὸς) other things (ἄλλα) (255b12-13) -/- The difference is always said referring to other things (τὸδέγ’ ἕτερον ἀεὶ πρὸς ἕτερον) (255d1). It pervades all kinds because each of them should be different from the others and is so due to the difference and not its own nature (253e3f.) After asserting that change is different from being and therefore both is and is not (256d), the difference is described as what makes all the other kinds not be, by making each different from being. Given that all of them are by being, this association of being and difference is the cause of their being and not-being at the same time, the issue that its version at RepublicV made all those controversies we discussed above: -/- So in the case of change and all the kinds, not being necessarily is (Ἔστιν ἄρα ἐξ ἀναγκης τὸ μὴ ὄν). Τhat’s because as applied to all of them, the nature of the difference (ἡ θατέρον φύσις) makes each of them not be by making it different from being. And we’re going to be right if we say that all of them are not in the same way. And conversely [we’re also going to be right if we say] that they are because they partake in being. (Sophist 256d11-e3) -/- Plato’s new construction of five distinct kinds and the role he gives to thedifference among them is aimed to resolve the old problem of understanding being which has always been annoying from the time of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Both the ontological status of becoming and that of not being were, in Plato’s mind, based on the absolute domination of the notion of the Same over being. Now, not only becoming is understandable as being but also not being which is not the contrary of being anymore but only different (ἕτερον) (257b3-4). Though I agree partly with Frede that the account of not being which is needed for false statements is more complicated than just saying, as Cropsey (1995, 101) says, that Plato is substituting 'X is not Y' with 'X is different from Y', I totally disagree with him that when we say X is not beautiful, Plato could not have thought that it is not a matter of its being different from beautiful because 'it would be different from beauty even if it were beautiful by participation in beauty' (1992, 411). Conversely, as we will discuss, it is exactly the relation of the beautiful thing, X, and the beautiful itself, in which X shares that is to be solved by the notion of not being as difference. Though it is beautiful because of sharing in beauty, X is not beautiful because it is different from beautiful itself. What the difference is to do is to show how something can both be and not be the same thing. The difference is what makes one thing both be and not be a certain other thing. This equips the difference with the ability to explain a certain thing’s not-being when it is. Thanks to the notion of difference, it is now possible to explain not only not being but also the simultaneous being and not being of a thing: 'What we call "not-beautiful" is the thing that ἕτερόν ἐστιν from nothing other than του̑ καλου̑ φύσεως' (257d10-11). The result is that not beautiful happens to be (συμβέβηκεν εἶναι) one single thing among kinds of beings (τι τῶν ὄντων τινὸς ἑνὸς γένους) and at the same time set over against one of the beings (πρός τι τῶν ὄντων αὖ πάλιν ἀντιτεθὲν) (257e2-4) and thus be something that happens to be not beautiful (εἶναί τις συμβαίνει τὸ μὴ καλόν); a being set over against being (ὄντος δὴ πρὸς ὄν ἀντίθεσις) (e6-7). Neither the beautiful is more a being (μα̑λλον ... ἐστι τῶν ὄντων) nor not beautiful less (e9-10) and thus both the contraries similarly are (ὁμοίως εἶναι) (258a1). This conclusion, it is emphasized again (a7-9), owes to θατέρου φύσις now turned out as being. Therefore, each of the many things that are of the nature of the difference and set over each other in being (τῆς τοῦ ὄντος πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀντικειμένων ἀντίθεσις) is being as being itself is being (αὐτοῦ τοῦὄν τοςοὐσία ἐστιν) and not less. They are different from, and not the contrary of, each other (a11-b3). This is exactly τὸμὴὄν, the subject of the inquiry (b6-7). Hence, not being has its own nature (b10) and is one εἶδοςamong the many things that are (b9-c3). Such far departing from Parmenides’ ontological principle is done on the basis of the nature of the difference. It was the discovery of such a notion that made the stranger brave enough to say that not being is each part of the nature of the difference that is set over against being (258d7-e3, cf. 260b7-8). That the relation of being and difference is difference is the key element of the new ontology. The difference is, only because of its sharing in being, but it is not that which it shares in but different from it (259a6-8). Not being is exactly based on this difference: ἕτερον δὲ τοῦ ὄντος ὄν ἔστι σαφέστατα ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἶναι μὴ ὄν (a8-b1). 2. Difference and the Being of a Copy We discussed above that the sense of being of particulars in Republic V made so many debates that whether being is there used in an existential sense or not. Particulars in Republic are regarded as images in the allegories of Line and Cave. The being of an image/copy makes, thus, the same problem. Plato’s analogy of original -copy for the relation of Forms and their particulars in Republic has obviously a different attitude to being. The main question is that what is the ontological status of a copy in respect of its original? Are there two kinds of being, 'real being' versus 'being' as Ketchum says (1980, 140) or only one kind? What is the difference of being in an original and its copy? Is it a matter of degrees of being or reality as some commentators have suggested? Is it a matter of being relational? By reducing the ontological issue to an epistemological one, Vlastos’ suggestion of degrees of reality in an article with the same name does neither, I think, pay attention to the problem nor resolve it. He agrees that Plato never speaks of "degrees" or "grades" of reality (1998, 219). What allows him to entitle it as such are some of Plato’s words in Republic as well as Plato’s words in some other dialogues (1998, 219). When Plato states that the Forms only can completely, purely or perfectly be real he means, Vlastos says, they are cognitively reliable (1998, 229); an obvious reduction of the issue to an epistemological one. He thinks that when in Republic we are being said that a particular’s being F is less pure than its Form, it is because it is not exclusively F, but it is and is not F and this being adulterated by contrary characters is the reason of our confused and uncertain understanding of it (1998, 222). Ketchum rightly criticizes Vlastos’ doctrine in its disparting from ontology thinking that 'to understand Plato’s talk of being as talk of reality is to obscure the close relation that exists between "being" and the verb "to be"' (1980, 213). He thinks, therefore, that οὐσία must be understοοd as being rather than reality, τὸὄν as "that which is" and not "that which is real" and … (ibid). His conclusion is that degrees of reality cannot interpret Plato correctly and we must accept degrees of being. Allen believes that a 'purely epistemic' reading of the passage in Republic is patently at odds with Plato’s text (1961, 325). He thinks that not only degrees of reality but also degrees of reality must be maintained (1998, 67). What Cooper suggests gets close to this paper’s solution: -/- Plato does not I think wish to suggest that existence is a matter of degree in the way in which being pleasant or painful is a matter of degree. Rather there are different grades of ontological status. (1986, 241) -/- A more ontological solution for the problem of understanding the being of a copy and its relation with the being of its original is suggested by the theory of copy as a relational entity. Based on this interpretation, 'the very being of a reflection is relational, wholly dependent upon what is other than itself: the original…' (Allen, 1998, 62). As relational entities, particulars have no independent ontological status; they are purely relational entities which derive their whole character and existence from Forms (ibid, 67). Although these relational entities are and have a kind of existence, we must also say that 'they do not have existence in the way that Forms, things which are fully real, do' (ibid). Allen (1961, 331) extends his theory to Phaedo where it is said that particulars are deficient (74d5-7, 75a2-3, 75b4-8), 'wish' to be like (74d10) or desire to be of its nature (75a2); an extension that, like F.C. white (1977, 200), I cannot admit. He correctly states that Plato did not start out with a doctrine of particulars as images and semblances but come to such a view after Phaedo, or perhaps after Republic V (1977, 202). Though we may not agree with him about Republic V, if we have to consider its last pages also, we must agree with him that not only the ontology of Phaedo but also that of Republic II-V (except the last pages of the latter book) are somehow different from (but at the same time appealing to) the ontology of original-copy which should exclusively assign to Sophist, Timaeus and RepublicVI-VII besides the last pages of book V. The answer to the problem of Plato’s sense of being in RepublicV can be reached only if we read Republic V based on and as following Sophist. We can find out his meaning of that which both is and is not only by the ontological status he assigns to a copy in Sophist. The kind of being of a copy in Sophist reveals as Plato’s key for the lock of the problem of not being. Let’s see how the ontological status of a copy is the critical point of Plato’s ontology. In the earlier pages of Sophist, we are still in the same situation about not being. To think that that which is not is is called a rash assumption (237a3-4) and Parmenides’ principle of the impossibility of being of not being is still at work (a8-9). At 237c1-4, the problem of "not being" is noticed in a new way which shows some kinds of a more realistic position to the problem of not being. Nevertheless, not being is still unthinkable, unsayable, unutterable and unformulable in speech (238c10). Soon after mentioning that it is difficult even to refuse not being (238d), the solution to the problem appears: the being of a copy (εἴδωλον) (239d). A copy is, says Theaetetus, something that is made referring to a true thing (πρὸς τἀληθινὸν) but still is 'another such thing (ἕτεροντοιου̑τον)' (240a8). Nevertheless, this 'another such thing' cannot be another such real or true thing. In answer to the question of the Stranger that if this 'another such thing' is the true thing (240a9), Theaetetus answers: οὐδαμῶς ἀληθινόν γε, ἀλλ’ ἐοικὸςμὲν (240b2). A copy’s being 'another such thing' does not mean another true thing but only a resemblance of it. Not only is not a copy another true thing besides the original, but it is the opposite of the true thing (b5) because only its original is the thing genuinely and being a copy is being the thing only untruly. The word ἐοικὸς is opposed to ὄντως ὄν in the next line (240b7): 'So you are saying that that which is like (ἐοικὸς) is not really that which is (οὐκ ὄντως [οὐκ] ὄν)'. But still a copy 'is in a way (ἔστι γε μήν πως)' (b9). While it is not really what it is its resemblance, it has its own being and reality because it really is a likeness (εἰκων ὄντως) (b11). The Stranger asks: -/- So it is not really what is (οὐκ ὄν ἄρα [οὐκ] ὄντως ἐστὶν) but it really is what we call a likeness (ὄντως ἣν λέγομεν εἰκόνα)? (b12-13) -/- This is Plato’s innovative ontological solution to the problem of not being. Theaetetus’ answer confirms this: 'Maybe that which is not is woven together with that which is' (c1-2). Therefore, a copy neither is what really is nor is not-being but only is what in a way is. Thanks to the ontological status of a copy, the third status intermediate between being and not being is brought forth. The essence of an image, in Kohnke’s words, does not consist 'solely in the negation of what is genuine and has real being' because otherwise 'it would be an ὄντως οὐκ ὄν,essentially and really a not being' (1957, 37). The characteristics of a copy can be summed up as folows: i) A copy is a copy by referring to a true thing (πρὸς τἀληθινὸν). ii) A copy is different from that of which it is a copy (ἕτερον). iii) A copy is not itself a true thing (ἀληθινόν) as that of which it is a copy but only that which is like it (ἐοικὸς). iv) It is not really that which really is (ὄντως ὄν) but only really a likeness (εἰκων ὄντως). The conclusion is that: v) A copy in a way (πως) is that means it both is and in not, the product of interweaving being with not being. This leads to the refutation of father Parmenides’ principle, accepting that 'that which is not somehow is (τό τε μὴ ὄν ὡς ἔστι)' and 'that which is, somehow is not (τό ὄν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι) (241d5-7). Besides copies and likenesses (εἰκόνων), we have also imitations (μιμημάτων) and appearances (φαντασμάτων) as the subjects of this new kind of being and thus false belief (241e3). In Timaeus, the world of becoming which cannot correctly be called and thus we have to call it "what is such" (τὸ τοιου̑τον) (49e5) or "what is altogether such" (τὸ διἀ παντὸς τοιου̑τον) (e6-7), consists solely of imitations (μιμημάτα) (50c5) which are identifiable only by the things that they are their imitations. The word τοιου̑τον which had been used to determine the situation of a copy in respect of its original, now becomes the definition of the world of becoming in which everything is an image of another thing, a Being, that stays always the same and is different and separated from its image. Cherniss, in my view rightly, draws attention to the very important point about the ontological status of an image that can at the same time be considered a criticism of the relational theory. What we are being said in Timaeus, he thinks,cannot be explained by saying that an image is not self-related and making its being relational. What is crucial about an image is that it 'stands for something, refers to something, means something and this meaning the image has not independently as its own but only in reference to something else apart from it' (1998, 296). This function finds its best explanation in the theory we are to suggest in the following. 3. πολλαχῶς ἔστι The best way to understand the ontological status of an image in Plato is to see first how his most clever pupil, Aristotle, resolved the same problem that Plato brought his theory of image for its sake. Aristotle’s theory of pollachos legetai is a brilliant and, at the same time, deviated version of Plato’s theory that is able, however, to help us read Plato in a better way. We discuss Aristotle’s theory to reach to a full understanding of Plato’s theory because it is, firstly, constructed in Aristotle in a more clear way and, secondly, it can also be taken as an evidence that our reading of Plato is legitimate. The phrase τὸ ὄν πολλαχῶς λέγεται, a so much repeated phrase in Aristotle’s works, is his resolution for some of the ontological problems of his predecessors all treating being as if it has only one sense. Aristotle is right in his criticism of the philosophical tradition specially Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato since all did presuppose only one sense for being and his theory is, thus, a creative and revolutionary solution for many problems that all the past philosophers were stuck in. But it is at the same time somehow a borrowed theory. As we will discuss, both the structure of the doctrine and the problems it tries to resolve are the same as Plato’s doctrine (and even is comparable in its phraseology) though it is in Aristotle, as can be expected, a more clear and better structured doctrine. 1) Associated with the theory of pros hen and the theory of substance, the theory of several senses of being provides a structure which, I insist, is the best guide to understand Plato’s theory of Being in Sophist, Timeaus and Republic. a) Although the theory of pollachos legetai is not necessarily based on the theory of pros hen, they become tightly interdependent about being: -/- Being is said in many ways/senses (τὸ δὲ ὄν λέγεται μὲν πολλαχῶς) but by reference to one (πρὸς ἕν) [way/sense] and one kind of nature (μίαν τινὰ φύσιν). (Metaphysics 1003a33-34) -/- The doctrine of pros hen which is Aristotle’s initiative third alternative besides the homonymous and synonymous application of words, is primarily a linguistic theory that tries to provide a new theory to explain the different implementations of the same word. The pros hen implementation of being is to provide an alternative for the theory of the synonymous (in Plato: homonymous) implementation of being which says being is said in one sense (kath hen) (1060b 32-33). That both the pros hen and the kath hen implementation of a word has one thing (hen) as what is common, makes them in opposition to the homonymous implementation which does not consider anything in common. Whereas both pros hen and kath hen assume a common nature, with which all the implementations of the word have some kind of relation, their difference is that while kath hen takes all the implementations of the word as the same with the common nature, pros hen makes them different. Substance is called πρῶτον ὄν because it is said to be primarily: -/- For as is (τὸ ἔστιν) is predicated of all things, not however in the same way (οὐχ ὁμοίως) but of one sort of thing primarily and of others in a secondary way. So too τὸτί ἐστιν belongs simply (ἁπλῶς) to substance but in a limited sense (πῶς) to the others [other categories] (1030a21-23). -/- The word ἁπλῶς standing against κατὰ συμβεβηκός tries to make substance different from the accidents. When we are being said that τὸ ὄν πολλαχῶς λέγεται, it means that only the substance that is simply (ἁπλῶς) the ἕν, the common nature, τὸὄν. When we use the word 'being' about a substance, the being is said differently from when we use 'being' about an accident. The distinction between the substance and the other categories is a distinction between what simply is said to be and what only with reference to (pros) the substance is said to be. The doctrine of pros hen, changing kath hen to pros hen in respect of to on, makes a distinction that wants to show that while there is a kind of implementing the word being that is simply being, there is another kind which is called being only by reference to that which is simply being. In the doctrine of pros hen it is not so that all the things that are said to be are only by reference to a common one thing, but that while one thing is called being because it is that thing itself, the other things are called so without being that thing itself but only by referring to it. At the very beginning of book Γ, it is said that: -/- Being is said in many senses but all refer to one arche. Some things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substances, others because they are a process towards substances or destructions or privations or qualities of substances … (1003b5-9, cf. 1028a18-20) -/- Substance is what really is said to be and all other things that are said to be are said only in favor of it. This difference of substance from all other senses of being is what is, I believe, primarily aimed in Aristotle’s interrelated theories of pollachos legetai,pros hen and the theory of substance. b) The difference of the implementation of being in the case of substance and the accidents goes so deep that while substance is considered as the real being, the accidents are almost not being. An accident is a mere name (Metaphysics 1026b13-14) and is obviously akin to not being (b21). Aristotle adds that Plato was 'in a sense not wrong' saying that sophists deal with not being (τὸ μὴ ὄν) because the arguments of sophists are, above all, about the accidental (1026b13-16). At the beginning of book , he says about quality and quantity (which look to be more of a being than other accidents) that they are not existent (οὐδ̕ ὄντα ὡς εἰπεῖν) in an unqualified sense (ἁπλῶς) (1069a21-22). The two above-mentioned points, Aristotle’s (a) interwoven theories of pollachos legetai, pros hen and the theory of substance and (b) taking accidents almost as not being, comparedwith substance, brings forth a structure that I shall call Pollachos Legetai (with capital first letters). What is of the highest importance in this structure for me is the difference of substance from accidents and the kind of relation which is settled between them. There is a substance that without any qualification is said to be and the accidents that are said to be only by reference (pros) to it. Adding Aristotle’s point about accidents that they are nearly not being to this relation and difference, we can obviously see how much this structure is close to Plato’s original-copy ontology. We spoke of the relation of being and difference in Plato’s model and the way Plato construes the being of a copy. A copy is a copy only by referring to (pros) a model; it is different from (ἕτερον) that of which it is a copy; it is not itself a true thing as its model and not really that which is (ὄντως ὄν) but only is in a way (πῶς). If we behold the difference of substance and accident in the context of the theory of pollachos legetai and pros hen, we can observe its fundamental similarity with Plato’s original-copy theory in its structure. Allen draws attention to the fact that the relation between Forms and particulars in Plato’s original-copy model is 'something intermediate between univocity and full equivocity' (1998, 70, n. 24) and the same as what Aristotle calls it pros hen (ibid). What made us compare the two structures was not, of course, the complete similarity of two structures (we have to agree with many possible differences of the two theories) but exactly the specific relation between an original and its copy on the one hand, and a substance and its accident on the other hand. As substance and accident do not share a common character and the substance -accident model hints that they stand in a certain relation, there is no common character between the original and copy in Plato’s model as well. Furthermore, their similarity is not confined to their structure only; they are also aimed to solve the same problem. The central point of the theory is that all the predecessors took being in one sense and this was their weakness point. Besides the mentioned above passages about the relation of pollachos legetai and presocratics’, as well as Plato’s, ontology, the relation of the theory with the problem of not being is clear in several passages. In Metaphysics, it is said: 'Being is then said in many senses… It is for this reason that we say even of not being that it is not being' (1003b5-10). Discussing the accidental sense of being, Aristotle points that it is in the accidental way that we say, for example, that not-white is because that of which it is an accident is (1017a18-19, cf. 1069a22-24). We mentioned that he thought Plato was right saying that sophistic deals with not being because sophistic deals with accidental, which is somehow not being (1026b14-16). Plato turned sophistic not-being to what both is and is not and Aristotle to what accidentally is said to be. What helps Aristotle to resolve the problem of not being is his distinction between ἁπλῶς and κατὰ σθμβεβηκός. Aristotle’s "qua" (ᾕ) which is directly linked with his distinction between καθ’ αὑτο λέγεται and κατὰ συμβεβηκός λέγεται, is used to resolve the old problem of coming to be out of not being (Physics 191b4-10). He strictly asserts that his predecessors could not solve the problem because they failed to observe the distinction of "qua itself" from "qua another thing" (b10-13). He then continues: -/- We ourselves are in agreement with them in holding that nothing can be said simply (ἁπλως) to come from not being (μὴὄντος). But nevertheless we maintain that a thing may come to be from not being in an accidental way (κατὰ συμβεβηκός). For from privation which ὅ ἐστι καθ’ αὑτο μὴ ὄν, nothing can become. (Phy. 191b13-16, cf. b19-25) . (shrink)

The institute of education in modern society is currently in the process of serious transformation associated with the large-scale introduction of high technologies, which is due to a similar process in post-industrial society as a whole. There is a growing understanding of the negative consequences of digitalization of society and education along with the understanding of the objective necessity of such transformation. The article contains an analysis of the negative consequences and problems arising in the course of the spread of (...) digitalization of higher education in Russia. Methodology and sources . The methodology of the research is based on the methods of comparative analysis and extrapolation of transformations of social environment and anthropological factors under the influence of technological progress in the field of higher education. The signs of “high technology poisoning” considered by J. Naisbitt in his book “High Tech – High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning” and the concept of extensive and intensive types of creativity formulated by A.I. Stoletov are a conceptual basis for analyzing the impact of high technology on education. Results and Discussion . Seven symptoms of technological poisoning in higher education, representing the main risks of the modern educational system, their manifestations in the educational process and prospects in case the existing trend persists, have been considered. One of the sources of manifestation of these symptoms is the extensive character of creativity inherent in scientific and technological activity of the society, which stakes on innovative development and mastering of material aspects of nature. The technogenic character of the emerging innovation process levels out the activities associated with the intensive type of creativity, aimed at the meaning-creating and existential aspects of human existence. Conclusion. Minimization of negative consequences presupposes the strengthening of the humanitarian component in education, allowing to form a culture of “pause of contemplation” (Grigory Pomerantz), in which technology will acquire, as it was suggested by J. Naisbitt himself, a fullness of meaning that goes beyond instrumental values into the realm of ethical and existential ones. (shrink)

The book, which constitutes part of the current feminist research as broadly understood, deals in particular with issues related to the philosophical approach to women’s experience. The main thrust of the research is to ask questions such as: What is women’s experience? Is it generally possible to speak of women’s typical experiences? Does it influence knowledge, and if so, how? Does it influence women’s perception and interpretation of art, and if so, how? And finally, taking a broader perspective: can women’s (...) experience serve as a basis for distinguishing philosophical theories specific to women? Within the framework of feminist philosophy developed since the 1960s and 70s, researchers have employed the concept of women’s experience, but this concept has not yet been comprehensively elaborated and defined. Importantly, women’s experience also plays an essential role in the project of feminist esthetics, whose isolation from traditional esthetic reflection has been proposed by certain feminist authors. Therefore, the book also discusses the problem of the relationship of women’s experience in the feminist approach to the feminist esthetics postulated by researchers both male and female. The book takes the position that feminist philosophy is an integral part of traditional philosophical research, a part in which the feminist perspective is applied. This perspective is understood as a theoretical research tool, applied in the humanities and social sciences, in order to unmask the gender-related elements in traditional discourses and to determine their impact on the results of the conducted research, i.e., the knowledge obtained thereby. In this sense, the feminist perspective is of an evaluative and critical but also transformative nature, because the purpose of its application is to appreciate and highlight women and the phenomenon of womanhood as well as to incorporate gender-related categories within philosophical reflection and academic research. This goal is expressed in the practical demand for a transformation of sociopolitical practice and theory that takes women’s ways of experiencing reality into account. In this approach, the feminist perspective paradoxically brings us closer to the attainment of more universal, holistic, and gender-transcending knowledge. The order of the considerations presented in the book was dictated by their main objective: a philosophical approach to and description of women’s esthetic experiences. The first part comprises a reconstruction of the historical development of feminism, in which three waves of feminism―which, from the perspective of a contemporary researcher, constitute a historically complete field of research―are discussed in a synthetic manner. The first part of these considerations concludes the introduction to feminist philosophy, specifically through the reconstruction of selected critical arguments advanced by feminist researchers regarding the traditional theory of cognition. The second part of the book covers issues in the field of feminist philosophy. The considerations presented here are focused on the concept of women’s cognitive experience, of which women’s experience of an esthetic character constitutes a particular type. Hence, studies of feminist epistemology are presented first, followed by studies of feminist esthetics. Analysis of the esthetic experiences of women is carried out in two stages: first, through reference to a philosophical approach to women’s cognitive experiences, and second, on this basis, through indicating fundamental differences between feminist and androcentric understandings of esthetic experiences. Although critical references to feminist ideas and solutions appear in many places in the book, on the most general level the considerations presented here are consistent with the feminist ideal of merging theory and practice. Feminism, in essence, has grown from socio-political practice and evolved toward detailed philosophical and scientific theories. Importantly, these theories are continually being revised and creatively developed. Feminist researchers refer to women’s life practices because it is the latter that determines whether a given theory adequately addresses problems affecting women. Therefore, the research presented in the book is focused on women’s experiences, which, in the author’s opinion, constitute the reference point for any and all reflections taking the feminist perspective into account. -/- . (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

Techne and Truth. The problem of techne in the dispute between Gorgias and Plato -/- The source of the problem matter of the book is the Plato’s dialogue „Gorgias”. One of the main subjects of the discussion carried out in this multi-aspect work is the issue of the art of rhetoric. In the dialogue the contemporary form of the art of rhetoric, represented by Gorgias, Polos and Callicles, is confronted with Plato’s proposal of rhetoric and concept of art (techne). The (...) ingenuous and dramatic structure of the dialogue composed of three acts, in each of which Socrates’ consecutive interlocutors emerge, is difficult to interpret. It seems, however, that even though the first conversation between Socrates and Gorgias constitutes a small part of the dialogue, it forms the foundations for the discussion. This part, dealing with such important issues as the subject of art, knowledge, power and relation between art and good, is the starting point for the conversations which follow. What do the differences between the Gorgias’ and Plato’s concepts of art consist in? Any attempt to answer the question requires presentation of the background for the discussion taking place in Plato’s work as well as the reconstruction of Gorgias’ vision of the art of rhetoric and art in general, defining the relation between art and knowledge. The latter may be undertaken on the basis of two paraphrases of the treatise “On Non-existence”, two epideictic speeches entitled “Helen” and “Palamedes” and some smaller fragments which have been preserved from Gorgias’ creative output. The treatise “On Non–existence”, very paradoxical in its philosophical meaning, testifies to new, sophistic thinking represented by Gorgias of Leontinoi. The treatise is the polemic and attack on Eleatism based on certain principles and methods elaborated by the Eleatics themselves. It also shows that Gorgias – using traditional Eleatic schemes – is opposed to this tradition. Even though the treatise does not discuss the problem of art directly, it anticipates the considerations from epideictic speeches. “Helen” and “Palamedes” constitute further stages in the development of Gorgias’ thought and concept of art combining typically epideictic elements with some philosophical convictions. Gorgias refers to the Eleatic theme considering the issues of truth, knowledge and belief, yet defining them in the empirical spirit. Solutions in the cognitive sphere determine the horizon of Gorgias’ rhetoric. The word is separated from the existence. Human cognition is limited and therefore the word and visual images affect the belief. This promotes the great importance of rhetoric, painting and sculpture, i.e. the areas which influence in a specific way – creating the “delusion” (ἀπάτη). Through idealization art provides pleasure, which is its objective. Therefore the task of art is to create delusion. The rhetor of Leontinoi discusses the issue of “how?” to use the word ‘rhetoric’. Gorgias is aware that rhetoric may be used to talk about what is unknown and that technical correctness of a rhetoric statement is not identical with the truthfulness of the proclaimed message. Mentioning it, Gorgias shows his respect to the truth as a value which should be respected in speech on the one hand, and on the other emphasizes that the truth in itself has no persuasive power. For this reason it is not enough to proclaim the truth, but, to convince the listeners, the orator should possess the skill of speaking. What is then the relation between truth and art emerging from epideictic speeches? Gorgias undoubtedly emphasizes the formal aspect of speech, as rhetoric is art, thus an ability based on certain principles. According to Gorgias, the truth is the value which should be respected in speeches. Rhetoric is able to create a fictive world, as a great range of reality remains outside direct human experience. Rhetoric does not oppose the truth but discussing not only what is directly given concerns the area outside the sphere of direct experience. This concept of rhetoric is the basis of the discussion about art carried out in the dialogue “Gorgias”. Even though the first of the discussions in the dialogue – the conversation between Socrates and Gorgias – is directly concerned with rhetoric itself, numerous remarks testify to its much wider character. This is best exemplified by the way of carrying out the conversation by Socrates, who, asking questions about rhetoric practised by Gorgias, throughout the whole conversation compares it with other skills. Additionally, the manner and the structure of the conversation prove that Plato considers the issue of rhetoric from a wider perspective determined by the issue of art. The specific feature of the conversation is ordering it around main issues – such notions as πρᾶγμα, ἐπιστήμη, δύναμις, each of which has its own meaning in Plato. In the first part of Gorgias Plato presents the principles previously occurring in other dialogues in a certain order, thus constructing the structure of the conversation with Gorgias. The notions are not novum in Plato but the fact that he clearly wants to systematise them and present a certain concept of art is a new and significant aspect. This tendency is of paramount importance for the discussion because Gorgias’ answers are evaluated by Plato from the perspective of this clearly set concept consisting of not only established notions but also certain principles. The discussion between Socrates and Gorgias introduces a theme which is crucial for the dialogue: the relation between art and good, i.e. the technical and ethical spheres. The issue is introduced by Gorgias, who mentions that rhetoric may be used for evil purposes. On this basis Socrates proves that if rhetoricians can use rhetoric for evil purposes, they have no knowledge concerning the subject of their art – justice, because one who knows what is just, always acts justly. Thus the relation between the technical and ethical spheres transpires to be the main point of contention. The question is whether a technician following the principles of the art he practices may act against good. This paradoxical statement based on the well-known Socrates’ principle "nemo sua sponte peccat" acquires philosophical foundations in the dialogue. In its remaining two parts Plato presents a justification, placing the principle within the framework of a certain concept of art, as a result of which not only rhetoric but also many other skills are criticised. The notions on which the conversation with Gorgias focuses are more precisely defined in the subsequent parts of the dialogue. Additionally, Plato presents twice the conditions which art should fulfill. They oblige the “technicians” to know the nature and purpose of the art and to know the causes of undertaken activities and to be able to justify them. These conditions determine the relation between the two spheres – technical and ethical. According to Plato, art may not act against good because it should be the objective of its activities. Certain concepts of good and knowledge outlined in the dialogue are the guarantees of “technicality”. Good, which should be respected by every art, is understood objectively and is contrasted with subjective pleasure. Knowledge, which should be the basis of art, opposes experience, which uses observation and recollection. Additionally, the definition of knowledge, significance of order in the world assuming the form of “geometrical equality”, significance of mathematics becoming the ideal of exactness indicate that Plato’s concept of knowledge is formed in Gorgias. These conclusions render it impossible that the results of any activity deserving the name of art should oppose good. And this is Plato’s main reproach of Gorgias’ concept, who wrote about false speeches possessing the power of conviction because they were written according to the principles proof of art or who defined tragedy as “a deceit, where he who cheats is more just than he who does not and the cheated is wiser than he who was not cheated”. Such determination of the relation between the technical and ethical sphere resulted from Gorgias’ concept of the world and fundamental philosophical principles. The whole concept of art described by Plato in the dialogue opposes the view presented by Gorgias. According to Plato, every technical activity has a defined object (ἔργον), is based on knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and is always aimed at the good of human soul or body. The danger revealed and presented in the dialogue by Plato exists in the very concept of art presented by Gorgias, i.e. in its empirical foundations and the resulting understanding of the relation between art and good. Gorgias’ concept of art based on empirical cognition, which concerns the world of phenomena and rejects the possibility of perfect knowledge, leads, according to Plato, to a dangerous falsification of the relation between art and good. Plato proves that this weakness of Gorgias’ concept is revealed when confronted with these representatives of “the magnificent art” who are not protected against radicalism by the adherence to the moral tradition. The comparison of two, completely contrasting concepts of art based on different philosophical understanding of knowledge and good is decisive for the criticism of rhetoric in Gorgias. The concept presented by Plato criticises contemporary rhetoric and sophistry but determines the direction of research of the real art of rhetoric. (shrink)

Some transhumanists argue that we must engage with theories and facts about our evolutionary past in order to promote future enhancements of the human body. At the same time, they call our attention to the flawed character of evolution and argue that there is a mismatch between adaptation to ancestral environments and contemporary life. One important trait of our evolutionary past which should not be ignored, and yet may hinder the continued perfection of humankind, is the peculiarly human way (...) of bearing and raising children. The suffering associated with childbirth and a long childhood have demanded trade-offs that have enhanced our species, leading to cooperation, creativity, intelligence and resilience. Behaviors such as mother–infant engagement, empathy, storytelling, and ritual have also helped to create what we value most in human beings. Therefore, the moral, cognitive, and emotional enhancements proposed by these transhumanists may be impaired by their partial appropriation of evolution, insofar as the bittersweet experience of parenthood is left aside. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore what insights relevant logics may provide for the understanding of literary fictional narrative. To date, hardly anyone has reflected on the intersection of relevant logics and narratology, and some could think that there is good reason for it. On the one hand, relevance has been a prominent issue in pragmatics, in the tradition of Grice, and Sperber and Wilson; thus framed, relevance is highly context-sensitive, so it seems unsuitable for formal analysis. On (...) the other hand, the very idea of a logic of narrative has been criticized, arguing that logic brings to a stasis the time of human action (Ricœur, II: 29-60), or that its emphasis on rules misses the creative, unpredictable character of literature (De Man)... First, I will briefly introduce relevant logics, with an eye to showing their interest for narratological concerns, rather than to here providing a coherent (let alone comprehensive) survey. Secondly, lest I get drawn into purely abstract discussion, I will analyse several stories in order to give some instances of the kind of topics congenial to narratology that may be addressed with a relevantist toolkit. Thirdly (and lastly), I will expand in more theoretical fashion on certain issues raised in the second section and bring them into connection with pragmatic relevance theory. (shrink)

In § 35 of Sein und Zeit Heidegger’s denunciation of Gerede, idle talk, is confident and scathing. It sounds so sinister and threatening. What could Heidegger be talking about? One could cite numerous fictional characters (e.g., Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, Skimpole, Podsnap – all in Dickens), characters whose speech is very nearly an idiolect of bad faith. And yet there is something so fascinating and creative in their speech, an exuberance in their dissimulation, that one wouldn’t want to miss them. (...) Could idle talk in Heidegger’s sense contribute to the theoretization of Bakhtin's idea of the dialogic and heteroglossia and to the notion of discours as it has been developed by Benveniste, Barthes, and Genette? In prose fiction language is valorized (often implicitly) in terms of meaning/nonsense, serious/non-serious, full/empty. When in fiction language that is deemed low, formulaic, or “empty”-- gossip, chatter, prattle, idiotismes – comes to the fore the narrative elements falters, “nothing much” is said. But a kind of speech as act and process is foregrounded. It is this kind of inadvertence in language, its “idling” state, that Gerede points to. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on the C-Manuscripts to see how Husserl reflects on the margins of phenomenality with reference to the three limit-phenomena of sleep, death, and others. We choose to juxtapose these three limit-phenomena, because in the C-Manuscripts Husserl has depicted their affinities, both in terms of their phenomenal characters and their transcendental functions, in a creative way. There Husserl has outlined at least two approaches for introducing the limit-phenomena of sleep, death, and others to the core (...) concerns of phenomenology. These two approaches rely on different heuristic strategies to shed light on the genetic constitution of monadic life and the generative constitution of humanity respectively. The first approach privileges sleep as the model of unconscious pause in order to illuminate the more perplexing cases of death and others. The second approach treats sleep and death as bridging-members of the constitution of the total human world, after the model of others in the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This article critically analyses the dynamic levels at which metaphor, as the preferred trope through which pain is conceived and expressed, is signified in Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail. It interrogates the creative representation of pain as a psychological and physical motif using Trauma and post colonialism as its theoretical anchor. The adoption of metaphor, therefore, creates a therapeutic space that exists beyond linguistic constraints, having the individual wield a certain form of linguistic liberty and privilege. It is this privilege (...) and liberty that the writer experiments with in his portrayal of the pain that characters feel in the creative universe of the novel that we engage in this paper. We conclude that the characters in Abani’s novel are true embodiments of pain, who scale the hurdles and challenges posed by villain and the society at large to become assertive personalities against denials and effacement. (shrink)

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata written in Sanskrit are considered to be the standard texts in India. During the medieval period, the poets have composed these two epics in regional languages incorporating their social elements. While the regional poets maintained the characters of the standard texts constant, the events and functions were variable in their cultural context. The reinterpretation of standard Sanskrit texts in different and diverse contexts was maintained in the vernacular languages and cultures during the medieval period was (...) embedded with many local imaginations connected to these epics. Surdamuni Sarala Das was the first composer of Odia Mahabharata during the 15th Century .His writing was the first of its kind to compose a complete eighteen parvas of the Mahabharata. The Sarala Mahabharata is the foundation of Odia language and has shaped the Odia identity. Surdamuni Sarala Das was an epic singer who mastered the text in his mind through his experience, knowledge, and creativity, and then he wrote the epic poetry in Odia. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to highlight the relevance of Lacanian psychoanaly-sis for an understanding of Islamism, unfolding its discursive-ideological complexity. Inan attempt to reply to Fethi Benslama’s recent exploration of the function of the fatherin Islam, I suggest that Benslama’s argument about the ‘delusional’ character of Islamismand the link he envisages between the emergence of Islamism and the crisis of ‘tradi-tional’ authoritative systems, should be further investigated so as to avoid potential risksof essentialism. A different reading of (...) Islamism is proposed, which valorizes ‘creative’attempts by Islamist groups to re-organize the social imaginary within the realm of a sym-bolic economy, thereby positivising the desedimenting effects of the real in different ways.Notions such as capitonage, fantasy, desire, and jouissance are essential for us to under-stand how Islamist trajectories diversify as distinct discursive formations, thereby reveal-ing the psychoanalytical significance of Islam as a master signifier. (shrink)

An interesting fact about the meaning of words is the compulsion to perceive them; when we encounter a symbol, we perceive its meaning without the least mental effort. In this paper, I answer the questions, "How does the meaning of a word impose itself on us?" and "How does a symbol become meaningful and what is the meaning of a symbol?" By emphasizing the time when we understand a word, I introduce the reality of words versus the language convention. By (...) distinguishing between giving meaning to words and their having a meaning, I show how, just like a reality, a word has a function appropriate to its unique character. We replace an independent entity called "meaning" with this function of understanding. Eventually, by distinguishing between the language act and the speaker's act, I show that the creative aspect of language is related to the layer of the language act rather than the speaker's act. (shrink)

The book is an attempt to comparative system the study of the genesis of the phenomenon of politicized science - primarily in an example of the so-called "Soviet genetics and creative Darwinism". As thehe authors conclude a these phenomenon is reflect the specific character of the competition between schools and scientific groups in community in a totalitarian social environment and is an extreme manifestation of the processes of interaction tions between science, society, politics, typical to any society any (...) political organization. (shrink)

Wittgenstein has shown that that life, in the sense that applies in the first place to human beings, is inherently linguistic. In this paper, I ask what is involved in language, given that it is thus essential to life, answering that language – or concepts – must be both alive and the ground for life. This is explicated by a Wittgensteinian series of entailments of features. According to the first feature, concepts are not intentional engagements. The second feature brings life (...) back to concepts by describing them as inflectible: Attitudes, actions, conversations and other engagements inflect concepts, i.e., concepts take their particular characters in our actual engagements. However, inflections themselves would be reified together with the life they ground unless they could preserve the openness of concepts: hence the third feature of re-inflectibility. Finally, the openness of language must be revealed in actual life. This entails the possibility of conceptual ambivalence. (shrink)