According to what is perhaps the dominant picture of reference, what a referential term refers to in a context is determined by what the speaker intends for her audience to identify as the referent. I argue that this sort of broadly Gricean view entails, counterintuitively, that it is impossible to knowingly use referential terms in ways that one expects or intends to be misunderstood. Then I sketch an alternative which can better account for such opaque uses of language, or what (...) I call “sneaky reference.” I close by reflecting on the ramifications of these arguments for the theory of meaning more broadly. (shrink)

In 1672 John Eliot, English Puritan educator and missionary to New England, published The Logick Primer: Some Logical Notions to initiate the INDIANS in the knowledge of the Rule of Reason; and to know how to make use thereof (Eliot 1672) The Logick Primer: Some Logical Notions to Initiate the INDIANS in the Knowledge of the Rule of Reason; and to Know How to Make Use Thereof, Cambridge, MA: Marmaduke Johnson]. This roughly 80 page pamphlet introduces syllogistic vocabulary (...) and reasoning so that syllogisms can be created from Biblical texts. The use of logic for proselytizing purposes is not distinctive: What is distinctive about Eliot's book is that it is bilingual, written in both English and Massachusett (Wôpanâak), an Algonquian language spoken in eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. It is one of the earliest bilingual logic textbooks and it is the first, and perhaps only, textbook in an indigenous American language.In this paper, we (1) introduce John Eliot and the linguistic context he was working in; (2) introduce the contents of the Logick Primer – vocabulary, inference patterns, and applications; (3) discuss notions of ‘Puritan’ logic that inform this primer; and (4) address the importance of his work in documenting and expanding the Massachusett language and the problems that accompany his colonial approach to this work. (shrink)

This dissertation sets out to answer the question ''What fixes the semantic values of context-sensitive referential terms—like names, demonstratives, and pronouns—in context?'' I argue that it is the speaker's intentions that play this role, as constrained by the conventions governing the use of particular sorts of referential terms. These conventions serve to filter the speaker's intentions for just those which meet these constraints on use, leaving only these filtered-for intentions as semantically relevant. By considering a wide range of cases, including (...) many involving confused and deceptive speakers, I argue that this 'constraint theory' provides a better account of linguistic reference than does any extant alternative, whether intentionalist or non-intentionalist. Along the way, I argue that semantics cannot depend on the reactions of idealized listeners, that speaker meaning is far less clear, and helpful, a notion than it is standardly taken to be, and that speakers needn't aim to be cooperative in order to fix the meaning of their terms in context. (shrink)

In “Demonstratives”, David Kaplan introduced a simple and remarkably robust semantics for indexicals. Unfortunately, Kaplan’s semantics is open to a number of apparent counterexamples, many of which involve recording devices. The classic case is the sentence “I am not here now” as recorded and played back on an answering machine. In this essay, I argue that the best way to accommodate these data is to conceive of recording technologies as introducing special, non-basic sorts of contexts, accompanied by non-basic conventions governing (...) the use of indexicals in those contexts. The idea is that recording devices allow us to use indexicals in new and innovative ways to coordinate on objects. And, given sufficient regularity in the use of indexicals on such devices, linguistic conventions will, over time, come to reflect this innovation. I consider several alternatives to this ‘character-shifting’ theory, but none is able to account for the data as well as the present proposal. Many face additional theoretical difficulties as well. I conclude by explaining how the character-shifting theory not only retains many of the virtues of Kaplan’s original semantics, but also coheres with a plausible view on the nature of semantic theorizing more generally. (shrink)

It is increasingly common for philosophers to rely on the notion of an idealised listener when explaining how the semantic values of context-sensitive expressions are determined. Some have identified the semantic values of such expressions, as used on particular occasions, with whatever an appropriately idealised listener would take them to be. Others have argued that, for something to count as the semantic value, an appropriately idealised listener should be able to recover it. Our aim here is to explore the range (...) of ways that such idealisation might be worked out, and then to argue that none of these results in a very plausible theory. We conclude by reflecting on what this negative result reveals about the nature of meaning and responsibility. (shrink)

A variety of eating and purchasing practices, in particular vegetarianism, are often motivated via an appeal to their expected good consequences. Lurking in the background, however, is the question: can I really hope to make a difference via my purchases in a social world as complex and wasteful as our own? I review the evidence as it stands and conclude that there are good reasons to suspect that one probably does not make a difference directly via one's purchases. That said, (...) there may be some related, though less direct, reasons to be vegetarian. (shrink)

The term "fake news" ascended rapidly to prominence in 2016 and has become a fixture in academic and public discussions, as well as in political mud-slinging. In the flurry of discussion, the term has been applied so broadly as to threaten to render it meaningless. In an effort to rescue our ability to discuss—and combat—the underlying phenomenon that triggered the present use of the term, some philosophers have tried to characterize it more precisely. A common theme in this nascent philosophical (...) discussion is that contemporary fake news is not a new kind of phenomenon, but just the latest iteration of a broader kind of phenomenon that has played out in different ways across the history of human information-dissemination technologies. While we agree with this, we argue that newer sorts of fake news reveal substantial flaws in earlier understandings of this notion. In particular, we argue that no deceptive intentions are necessary for fake news to arise; rather, fake news arises when stories which were not produced via standard journalistic practice are treated as though they had been. Importantly, this revisionary understanding of fake news allows us to accommodate and understand the way that fake news is plausibly generated and spread in a contemporary setting, as much by non-human actors as by ordinary human beings. (shrink)

Due in no small part to Kant's own seemingly dim views on the value of animals, Kantian ethics has traditionally been understood to be rather unfriendly ground for arguments in favor of vegetarianism. This has started to change recently, which raises the question: do Kantian approaches offer a way of defending vegetarianism that doesn't run afoul of the sorts of futility worries that afflict consequentialist arguments for vegetarianism? I argue that Kantian approaches in fact face an analogous worry, due to (...) their need to explain why eating meat ought to be understood as a disrespectful act simpliciter, rather than only in certain circumstances. (shrink)

The complexity and heterogeneity of causes influencing ecology’s domain challenge its capacity to generate a general theory without exceptions, raising the question of whether ecology is capable, even in principle, of achieving the sort of theoretical success enjoyed by physics. Weber has argued that competition theory built around the Competitive Exclusion Principle (especially Tilman’s resource-competition model) offers an example of ecology identifying a law-like causal regularity. However, I suggest that as Weber presents it, the CEP is not yet a causal (...) regularity. Instead, I argue that the scientific understanding in Tilman’s theory takes a different form. The theory explains through a structure I call “channeling explanation” which does not depend on deduction from general laws, but rather builds on constraints and trade-offs represented in state-space. Recognizing this structure supports the more general point that ecology and other so-called special sciences can reveal novel theoretical approaches to philosophy of science when approached with openness to their uniqueness. (shrink)

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on (...) both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from popular music studies; 4) the forms of music analysis and the kinds of musical material commonly employed within popular music studies. I suggest that the field would greatly benefit from a true engagement with anthropological theories and methods, and that the “chaotic conceptualization” of musical structuration and the critical discourse would likewise benefit from an attention to recorded sound and production aesthetics. (shrink)

Studios resist reductive analyses. Although isolated, they have their own frontstages and backstages, and like the laboratories studied by Knorr-Cetina, function as more than simply “internal environments.” The placeness of studios leaves both audible traces (the early reflections of sounds) and visible ones, if we think of those studios that become shrines or pilgrimage sites, or photo or video documentation of studios that provide the outside world a brief glimpse into the interior isolation of recording studio life. It would seem (...) that major facilities such as Abbey Road, Ocean Way or Sun Records are emphatically not “placeless place[s]” (Gieryn 2008), nor are they decontextualized from their immediate geographic surroundings. -/- Although atomized project studios (including bedroom studios, garages, and barns) may not immediately appear to be embedded within the social relations of a bounded local culture, many such studios are embedded within the social relations of specific online networked cultures,20 as is evinced by the vibrant online recording engineer communities that support everything from amateur acoustician pedagogy to advanced mixing techniques and even online mixing/remixing competitions. Such studios can be considered as “local anchoring points in the cultural metropolises of the global urban network” (Watson, Hoyler and Mager 2009). Knorr-Cetina (1992) suggests something similar when she discusses how laboratories function not just as “internal environments” but rather as “a link between internal and external environments, a border in a wider traffic of objects and observations”. Like their larger counterparts, project studios are acoustic environments isolated from various perceived outsides, use the very same technologies of audition to make up for the constrained paths of audibility, and similarly shape the kinds of musical and social practices that can transpire within (even if this shaping process effectively restricts the studio’s usage to a single musician at a time). I argue that the more we wish to understand the vibe and sound of the studios, the more we may wish to consider the studio as an active agent in the process of recording production, an actor in the social worlds that inhabit its very wombs and bunkers. (shrink)

Stojnić et al. (2013, 2017) argue that the reference of demonstratives is fixed without any contribution from the extra-linguistic context. On their `prominence/coherence' theory, the reference of a demonstrative expression depends only on its context-independent linguistic meaning. Here, we argue that Stojnić et al.’s striking claims can be maintained in only the thinnest technical sense. Instead of eliminating appeals to the extra-linguistic context, we show how the prominence/coherence theory merely suppresses them. Then we ask why one might be tempted to (...) try and offer such a view. Since we are rather sympathetic to the motivations we find, we close by sketching a more plausible alternative. (shrink)

Shills are people who endorse products and companies for pay, while pretending that their endorsements are ingenuous. Here we argue that there is something objectionable about shilling that is not reducible to its bad consequences, the lack of epistemic conscientiousness it often relies upon, or to the shill’s insincerity. Indeed, we take it as a premise of our inquiry that shilling can sometimes be sincere, and that its wrongfulness is not mitigated by the shill’s sincerity, in cases where the shill (...) is sincere. Our proposal is that the shill’s defining characteristic is their knowingly engaging in a kind of speech that obscures a certain aspect of its social status – most commonly, by pretending to speak on their own personal behalf, while in fact speaking as an employee – and that this sort of behaviour is objectionable irrespective of any other features of the shill’s conduct. This sort of obfuscation undermines a socially beneficial communicative custom, in which we conscientiously mark the distinction between personal speech and speech-for-hire. (shrink)

In ‘Burnt Norton’, the first of his ‘four quartets’, Eliot selected two Heraclitus’ fragments as epigraphs. In quoting fragment B 60 (‘the way up and the way down are one and the same’) he was reminding his readers that entrance into a spiritual life calls for both engagement and withdrawal, for both descending and ascending. And in quoting B 2 he reaffirmed Heraclitus’ conviction that most people fail to recognize the truth even when it is directly presented to them. (...) In his later Cocktail Party Eliot revisited these themes by converting a depiction of a failed social gathering into an exploration of forms of authenticity. He also exploited the dual nature of the Heraclitean daimôn—as external overseer and as the soul which lies within each person—to transform an account of a gathering of friends and strangers into an extended reflection on the conflicts lying within each human soul. (shrink)

In recent work, Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer‐Landau (2020) develop a new social version of moral intuitionism that promises to explain why our moral intuitions are trustworthy. In this paper, we raise several worries for their account and present some general challenges for the broader class of views we call Social Moral Intuitionism. We close by reflecting on Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer‐Landau's comparison between what they call the “perceptual practice” and the “moral intuition practice”, which we take to raise some difficult (...) normative and meta‐normative questions for theorists of all stripes. (shrink)

This paper draws together as many as possible of the clues and pieces of the puzzle surrounding T. S. Eliot’s “infamous” literary term “objective correlative”. Many different scholars have claimed many different sources for the term, in Pound, Whitman, Baudelaire, Washington Allston, Santayana, Husserl, Nietzsche, Newman, Walter Pater, Coleridge, Russell, Bradley, Bergson, Bosanquet, Schopenhauer and Arnold. This paper aims to rewrite this list by surveying those individuals who, in different ways, either offer the truest claim to being the source (...) of the term, or contributed the most to Eliot’s development of it: Allston, Husserl, Bradley and Bergson. What the paper will argue is that Eliot’s possible inspiration for the term is more indebted to the idealist tradition, and Bergson’s aesthetic development of it, than to the phenomenology of Husserl. (shrink)

No one is quite sure what happened to T.S. Eliot in that rose-garden. What we do know is that it formed the basis for Four Quartets, arguably the greatest English poem written in the twentieth century. Luckily it turns out that Martin Heidegger, when not pondering the meaning of being, spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about the kind of event that Eliot experienced. This essay explores how Heidegger developed the concept of Ereignis, “event” which, (...) in the context of Eliot’s poetry, helps us understand an encounter with the “heart of light” a little better. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger defines the world as ‘the ever non-objective to which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death . . . keep us transported into Being’. He writes that the world is ‘not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are at hand . . . The world worlds’. Being able to fully and richly express how the world worlds is the task of the artist, whose artwork is the (...) crystallization of this ‘worlding’. For Heidegger it is especially the poet who is attuned to this ‘worlding’, for the poet’s work is focussed on and happens within language itself. The poet is a ‘world-maker’, but this ‘worlding’ is not directed at creating a fictional world; rather it is aimed at revealing the world itself, drawing to the foreground the ‘ever non-objective’ nature of the world, the world happening and unfolding through and with us. This paper, using T.S. Eliot’s poetry, particularly Four Quartets as an example, will delve into how the language of the poet is able to articulate this seemingly invisible boundary between the everyday world and that same world revealed as a mysterious potential that ‘worlds’. The ‘religious imagination’ is central in how this transformation of reality, through poetic language, can manifest. Paul Ricoeur’s work on the poetic and religious dimensions of imagination, particularly the notion of ‘hope’ provides the theoretical underpinnings to explain this transformation. (shrink)

This thesis explores, thematically and chronologically, the substantial concordance between the work of Martin Heidegger and T.S. Eliot. The introduction traces Eliot's ideas of the 'objective correlative' and 'situatedness' to a familiarity with German Idealism. Heidegger shared this familiarity, suggesting a reason for the similarity of their thought. Chapter one explores the 'authenticity' developed in Being and Time, as well as associated themes like temporality, the 'they' (Das Man), inauthenticity, idle talk and angst, and applies them to interpreting (...) Eliot's poem, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. Both texts depict a bleak Modernist view of the early twentieth-century Western human condition, characterized as a dispiriting nihilism and homelessness. Chapter two traces the chronological development of Ereignis in Heidegger's thinking, showing the term's two discernible but related meanings: first our nature as the 'site of the open' where Being can manifest, and second individual 'Events' of 'appropriation and revelation'. The world is always happening as 'event', but only through our appropriation by the Ereignis event can we become aware of this. Heidegger finds poetry, the essential example of language as the 'house of Being', to be the purest manifestation of Ereignis, taking as his examples Hölderlin and Rilke. A detailed analysis of Eliot's late work Four Quartets reveals how Ereignis, both as an ineluctable and an epiphanic condition of human existence, is central to his poetry, confirming, in Heidegger's words, 'what poets are for in a destitute time', namely to re-found and restore the wonder of the world and existence itself. This restoration results from what Eliot calls 'raid[s] on the inarticulate', the poet's continual striving to enact that openness to Being through which human language and the human world continually come to be. The final chapter shows how both Eliot and Heidegger value a genuine relationship with place as enabling human flourishing. Both distrust technological materialism, which destroys our sense of the world as dwelling place, and both are essentially committed to a genuinely authentic life, not the angstful authenticity of Being and Time, but a richer belonging which affirms our relationship with the earth, each other and our gods. (shrink)

The review shows how Guha reinstates the sacred within Eliot studies in India. Through his efforts at reading Eliot; Guha effects a literary turn and rescues Eliot from purely materialist readings which Eliot himself would not have been able to recognise. Let the review speak for itself: -/- "We knew about Baudelaire and his flamboyant short life. But how many of us know of Baudelaire’s spirituality? Guha writes that Baudelaire had a profound understanding “of Original Sin” (...) (92). It is another matter that, as Guha points out, Eliot too shared this Baudelairian sense of Original Sin (92). Before reading this book, the reviewer was aware of Eliot’s self-confessed Christianity, but there exists no work where Baudelaire’s views on spirituality have been connected to Eliot’s poetry and criticism. Guha’s genius unearths for us a new Baudelaire and a new Eliot. Who would have thought before Guha researched Eliot that Baudelaire took a dim view of Victor Hugo being opaque to spirituality? In fact, Guha’s Baudelaire is not a picaresque avant garde, he is a young man searching for the numinous.". (shrink)

"...T S Eliot was unimpressed by Freud. Eliot preferred the more approachable Roger Vittoz. It was only Scofield Thayer, who in his prolonged therapy with Sigmund Freud can be said to have brought anything Freudian in the classically psychoanalytic sense to Modernism." This is from the review. The review of the book is contrarian as the book under review is. The salient points of the book are interrogated in this review.

This dissertation addresses the ontological significance of poetry in the thought of Martin Heidegger. It gives an account of both his earlier and later thinking. The central argument of the dissertation is that poetry, as conceptualised by Heidegger, is beneficial and necessary for the living of an authentic life. The poetry of T. S Eliot features as a sustaining voice throughout the dissertation to validate Heidegger's ideas and also to demonstrate some interesting similarities in their ideas. Chapter one demonstrates (...) how effectively certain concepts from Heidegger's 'Being and Time' can be applied in an analysis of T.S. Eliots celebrated poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. The reading involves concepts such as angst, authenticity, inauthenticity, the they and idle talk as they appear in 'Being and Time' and then relates these to aspects of T.S Eliot's poem. Chapter two is an exegesis of Heideggers essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' in order to understand the meaning of poetry as he describes it. The essay centres on the interpretation of a painting by Vincent van Gogh, and what the experience of the painting reveals to someone authentically engaging with the artwork. Heidegger attempts to establish what the essence of a thing is (the artwork as thing), for the 'origin' of the artwork resides in its 'thingliness'. He creates an important distinction between equipment and the artwork, as well as earth and the world in order to justify the unique, originary position that the artwork occupies. This leads Heidegger to create a new understanding of poetry (which is expanded to encompass all art forms) and to emphasise the importance of the human agent in both the creation and preservation of the artwork. Chapter three is an exploration of language in both the Heidegger of 'Being and Time' and the later Heidegger's thought. The aim is to explore the ontological effect that Heidegger's conception of language has for our existence. He places language within a primordial role arguing that it is not us who speak language, but language that speaks us. This conception has important consequences for our relationship with Being, and the way in which we understand our existence. The final chapter unifies the various themes of the dissertation into a cohesive argument. The chapter begins with a discussion on the meaning of our existence following the later Heidegger. This is nothing less than the guardianship of Being which can only be understood in its relation to our dwelling within the fourfold. In conclusion it is through the measure of the language of poetry that we can realise the possibility of authentic dwelling. (shrink)

T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is foremost a meditation on the significance of place. Each quartet is named for a place which holds importance for Eliot, either because of historical or personal memory. I argue that this importance is grounded in an ontological topology, by which I mean that the poem explores the fate of the individual and his/her heritage as inextricably bound up with the notion of place. This sense of place extends beyond the borders of a single (...) life to encompass the remembered past and the unknown future. How this broader narrative of the passing and enduring of human existence can be better understood is a primary concern of the work of Martin Heidegger, in whose Being and Time the historical, situated context of an individual within a community is an important theme. Even more important is his later work in which this theme is extended to include place and dwelling. Dwelling is a particularly rich and poetic idea, weaving the narratological, topological and temporal aspects of human existence together, offering a challenge to modern technology thinking. This paper explores Heidegger’s thoughts on the topology of Being within the context of a poem which, I contend, is also telling the story of human situatedness, and attempting to understand what it means to truly dwell. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s Being and Time certain concepts are discussed which are central to the ontological constitution of Dasein. This paper demonstrates the interesting manner in which some of these concepts can be used in a reading of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. A comparative analysis is performed, explicating the relevant Heideggerian terms and then relating them to Eliot’s poem. In this way strong parallels are revealed between the two men’s respective thoughts and distinct modernist (...) sensibilities. Prufrock, the protagonist of the poem, and the world he inhabits illustrate poetically concepts such as authenticity, inauthenticity, the ‘they’, idle talk and angst, which Heidegger develops in Being and Time. (shrink)

Stravinsky considered himself a maker, a Homo faber, an artisan of the past. He confessed that he liked to compose music more than music itself, and argued that expression was not an immanent character of music. With this paper, I intend to discuss Stravinsky’s musical aesthetics (the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given right after the outbreak of WWII –Poétique musicale), depicting and criticising his notion of expression and his view of the musician as mere “executant”. I will also point (...) out some biographical details (the controversial premiere of Le Sacre du printemps and Stravinsky’s antisemitism) while criticising Adorno’s harsh critique of Stravinsky’s music. -/- . (shrink)

In 1911, Bergson visited Britain for a number of lectures which led to his increasing popularity. Russell personally encountered Bergson during his lecture at University College London on the 28th of October, and on the 30th of October Bergson attended one of Russell’s lectures. Russell went on to write a number of critical articles on Bergson, contributing to the hundreds of publications on Bergson which ensued following these lectures. Russell’s critical writings have been seen as part of a history of (...) controversies between so-called ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytic’ philosophers in the twentieth century. Yet Russell’s engagement with Bergson’s thought comes as a response to a particular British form of Bergsonism and is involved with the wider phenomenon of the British import of Bergsonism (by figures connected in different ways to Russell, such as Hulme, Wildon Carr or Eliot). Though this may challenge the view of Russell and Bergson as enacting an early version of the ‘Analytic’-‘Continental’ divide, there are however some particular characterisations of Bergson by Russell which contribute to the subsequent formation of the ‘rotten scene’ (Glendinning 2006: 69) of the divide in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Christina Rossetti’s short fiction has been long-neglected, we are told. In this paper, I respond to her fiction “Pros and Cons,” which perhaps provides a clue regarding why there has been neglect: it leaves the impression of being an imitation of George Eliot, a mocking imitation even. I identify two differences between Rossetti and Eliot.

I interpret George Eliot as objecting to John Locke in Middlemarch – more specifically, his theory of ideas – by means of her account of Dorothea’s experiences of Edward Casaubon at dinner.

"Guha’s genius unearths for us a new Baudelaire and a new Eliot. Who would have thought before Guha researched Eliot that Baudelaire took a dim view of Victor Hugo being opaque to spirituality? In fact, Guha’s Baudelaire is not a picaresque avant garde, he is a young man searching for the numinous." This review was written long ago but saw the light of day recently. Guha's negotiations of Eliot is unique in recent times. He rescues Eliot (...) from acdemic worthies who neither understand Eliot; nor Christianity which played a huge role in Eliot's corpus. "This is a book about the Passion of the Christ mimetically represented in the works of the French Symbolists and T.S. Eliot" --- this pretty much sums up the review. (shrink)

Hegel was ambivalent about Dutch genre painting’s uncanny ability to find beauty in daily life. The philosopher regarded the Dutch painterly aesthetic as Romanticism avant la lettre, and classifies it as such in his Lectures on Aesthetics, under the section entitled “Die romantischen Künste [The Romantic arts].”1 Dutch art, in Hegel’s reading, is marred by many shortcomings. The most prominent among these are the “subjective stubbornness [subjective Beschlossenheit]” that prevents this art from attaining to the “free and ideal forms of (...) expression” that marked the productions of Italian artists such as Raphael. In contradistinction to their Italian counterparts, Dutch artists in Hegel’s view are apt to. (shrink)

I interpret Max Beerbohm as entering the dispute between Christina Rossetti and George Eliot on how English parishioners talk, in his imitative fiction “The Feast.”.

This paper considers five counterexamples to Mary Douglas's definition of dirt, one of which is extracted from a scene from George Eliot's novel Middlemarch and another from Marilyn Strathern's essay on anthropology at home.

Philosophy-and-literature as a subfield theorizes about the relationship between the two. Though few would explicitly say that philosophy is the point and literature the means, it’s common to see discussions of literature serving as an expression of philosophical insight and uncommon to see discussions of philosophical ideas put in service of literature. So, the aim of this paper is to explore, and suggest one concrete instance of, a literary work where philosophical concepts are instrumental for literary ends. The metaphysical claims (...) in T.S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” are not there to make a philosophical point, but to create a new sense of a lyric “now” that produces a time internal to the poem. This is a poetic achievement, and philosophical utterances help to produce the lyric now by foregrounding temporal readerly phenomenology. The example enriches our understanding of the possible relationships between philosophy and literature. (shrink)

A review of the Collected Writings of T. E. Hulme. Argues that Hulme, a philosopher/journist/poet who was killed in WWI, was a forerunner of the 20th-cent. mind, esp. as reflected in modernist poetry (T. S. Eliot, Imagism, Ezra Pound), aesthetics (Wilhelm Worringer), philosophy (Bergson, Jaspers, Wittgenstein), and politics (Charles Maurras, Georges Sorel).

According to Russellianism (or Millianism), the two sentences ‘Ralph believes George Eliot is a novelist’ and ‘Ralph believes Mary Ann Evans is a novelist’ cannot diverge in truth-value, since they express the same proposition. The problem for the Russellian (or Millian) is that a puzzle of Kaplan’s seems to show that they can diverge in truth-value and that therefore, since the Russellian holds that they express the same proposition, the Russellian view is contradictory. I argue that the standard Russellian (...) appeal to “ways of thinking” or “propositional guises” is not necessary to solve the puzzle. Rather than this retrograde concession to Fregeanism, appeal should be made to second-order belief. The puzzle is solved, and the contradiction avoided, by maintaining that both sentences are indeed true in addition to the sentence ‘Ralph (mistakenly) believes that he does not believe Mary Ann Evans/George Eliot is a novelist’. (shrink)

As with so many mystics, Alexis karpouzos intuitively know the oneness of cosmic creation and historic humanity as part of all that is and all there isn't. So, the originality of Alexis Karpouzos thought is that it crosses the most diverse fields, the most opposing philosophies, to unite them into an often contradictory and broken whole. Marx and Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud and Heraclitus, poets and political theorists all come together in the same distance and the same unusual proximity. Alexis karpouzos (...) use Pre-Socratics philosophy and generally the ancient Greek philosophy, as well as the pre-philosophical thinking of The Upanishads, the Vedas and Buddhism in India, of Lao Tzu, of Zen Buddhism and the Taoist tradition in China, of the Arab mystics and poets, with their metaphysical religiosity as the metaphysical basis for the interpretation and understanding of the world and existence. At the same time the ancient metaphysics is connect with Hegel’s dialectical ontology and with the modern thinking of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and others as the interpretive context for understanding the central problems of the technical and scientific world during his time. Novalis, Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Whitman, Eliot and others show the dreamy nature of existence, the transcendence of the Cosmos, welcome the infinity. For Alexis karpouzos the combination of ancient and modern thought creates the holistic experience of universal space-time and the consciousness of the unity. The poetic thought of Alexis karpouzos is a expressions of soul's inner experiences, expression of universality. The inspiring visual images and the symbolic use of language offer a description of elevating experiences of consciousness, a glimpse of higher worlds. The philosophy of Alexis karpouzos speak to the human experience from a universal perspective, transcending all religions, cultural and national boundaries. Using vivid images and a direct language that speaks to the heart, his philosophy evokes a sense of deep communication with the collective unconscious, a sense of connection to all the creatures of the world, compassion for others, admiration for the beauty of nature, reverence for all life, and an abiding faith in the invisible touch of world. Alexis karpouzos thoughts are often terse and paradoxical, challenging us to to break out of the box of limiting beliefs and see things from a new perspective. Above all, Alexis karpouzos continually calls to us to wake up and explore the mysteries within our own selves, i.e the mysteries of universe. (shrink)

This study forms a part of a larger investigation of the influence of the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus on modern poetry. T. S. Eliot, to mention the best known of the many poets inspired by Heraclitus, selected two Heraclitus fragments (B 2 and B 60) as epigraphs for his “Burnt Norton”, the first of his Four Quartets. Eliot explained that he was drawn to the fragments because of their ‘ambiguity’ and ‘extraordinary poetic suggestiveness’. Similarly, in ‘This Solitude (...) of Cataracts’, Wallace Stevens spoke of ‘the flecked river which kept flowing and never the same way twice’ and elsewhere noted the ‘inherently poetic quality’ of many Heraclitean sayings. To gain some sense of the nature and magnitude of Heraclitus’ legacy for modern poetry we must first explore his vision of ‘a fiery cosmos being kindled in measures and extinguished in measures’ and a river into which one cannot step twice. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophy for Life is a bold call for the practice of philosophy in our everyday lives. Philosopher and writer Rupert Read explores a series of important and often provocative contemporary political and cultural issues from a philosophical perspective, arguing that philosophy is not a body of doctrine, but a practice, a vantage point from which life should be analysed and, more importantly, acted upon. -/- Philosophy for Life is a personal journey that explores four key areas of society today: Politics, (...) Religion, Art, and the Environment. Taking tangible examples from modern politics, from climate change to the war on terror, and culture, from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Read shows that philosophy is already an active part of today's world. This captivating and timely book offers a philosophical response to some of the key questions facing today's society and encourages us to use philosophy as a kind of therapy. Philosophy for Life shows that we can improve our perspective on the world and our place in it by doing philosophy everyday. (shrink)

Leeuwenhoekin kokeilut mikroskoopilla 1600-luvun lopulla olivat G. W. Leibnizille suuri innoituksen lähde. Monadologia-teoksessaan Leibniz hehkutti keksinnön merkitystä ja antoi ymmärtää, että sillä löydetyt pikkuruiset eliöt todistivat hänen metafyysisen pluralisminsa oikeaksi. Hänen mukaansa "huomataan, että pienimmässäkin osasessa ainetta on kokonainen elävien olioiden, eläinten, entelekhioiden ja sielujen maailma." Näin Leibnizin ajatus elämän jatkumosta sai uutta pontta. -/- Keksinnön vaikutus näkyy myös Leibnizin teoksessa Uusia esseitä inhimillisestä ymmärryksestä, jossa hän esittelee pienet perseptiot, joita voidaan pitää tietoteoreettisena vastineena pieneliöille. -/- Tarkastelen esitelmässäni Leibnizin reaktioita (...) mikroskooppiin ja sen antamaan uuteen kuvaan elämästä ja keskustelen joistakin Leibnizin filosofian piirteistä, joissa voidaan huomata uuden keksinnön vaikutusta. -/- An article on the continuum of life in Leibniz's philosophy. (shrink)

Le but de ce recueil est d’offrir des commentaires accessibles et introductifs aux textes classiques qu’ils accompagnent, en ouvrant des perspectives de discussion sur le thème du capitalisme. C’est en ce sens qu’Emmanuel Chaput lance le débat en commentant le texte de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, « Qu’est-ce que la propriété ? ». Les textes de Karl Marx ne sont bien sûr pas laissés pour compte : Samuel-Élie Lesage s’engage fermement dans cette voie en discutant L’idéologie allemande de Karl Marx, Christiane Bailey (...) nous offre d’approcher différemment l’œuvre marxienne en abordant son traitement de la question animale dans des extraits du Manifeste du parti communiste et du Travail salarié et capital, et Mathieu Joffre-Lainé nous présente une analyse fine des questions proprement économiques du Capital. Abordant les alternatives au capitalisme dans la pensée de Léon Bourgeois, Éliot Litalien commente La Solidarité et Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette s’attaque à l’analyse de l’Essai d’une philosophie de la solidarité. Enfin, en liant capitalisme, patriarcat et pouvoir politique, Tara Chanady propose une lecture du texte Du mariage et de l’amour de Emma Goldman. La conclusion de Marie-Eve Jalbert se situe dans une perspective contemporaine et critique en décortiquant la critique du socialisme avancée par Friedrich A. Hayek. (shrink)

American poet Ezra Pound wrote a letter on February 6, 1940, inviting American philosopher George Santayana to join poet T. S. Eliot and himself in writing “a volume . . . on the Ideal University, or The Proper Curriculum, or how it would be possible to educate and/or (mostly or) civilize the university student.” Santayana declined the invitation and claimed to have no ideas on the subject of education. Participation would have been morally impossible, he wrote, because unlike Pound (...) and Eliot, whom he regarded as “reformers, full of prophetic zeal and faith in the Advent of the Lord.” Santayana was “cynically content to let people educate or neglect themselves as they may prefer.”. (shrink)

My research is a result of accumulated provocation of obsolete and paralyzing education that has been frozen since the middle ages. We have to admit that before the pandemic, education was already in crisis. Governments have been ignoring to adopt any comprehensive plan to reform the educational systems till it has been unprecedently disrupted by COVID-19. I try through this paper to make a global call for governments to immediately start cooperating together for setting international qualifications framework that best suit (...) future competencies. This call should be prioritized on the world agenda. It would be more plausible for governments, UNESCO and other education stakeholders to seize the opportunity of the 2020 disruption of life cycle for the maximum benefit of humanity. For this to happen we need exceptional leaders with extraordinary vision to transform education instead of ensuring children can keep learning and that every single child returns to school after the pandemic. Another challenge to be expected is the reduction in education budgets being under pressure as governments shift spending towards the health and economic response to the pandemic. The impact of schools closing on a generation of children will be immense on the long term. We must act now to save the education and life chances of generations of youth. At this time of unprecedented crisis, the world must come together to protect education and put it at the very heart of the global recovery effort. Recovery, not as before but as convenient and sustainable with the perspective requirements. It is time to expose youth to real life experiences; we need our children to learn about finance from characters like Jef Bezos or Bill Gates or Mukesh Ambani; to learn about psychology from John Anderson, Eliot Aronson and Ahmed Ukasha; to know approaches of math and physics as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak. We shouldn't settle for less when it comes to building minds and souls of our children. With all due respect to teachers and university professors, they are not the only best option for qualifying and training our youth for tomorrow's challenges. However, those entrepreneurs are not teachers or willing to be, education specialists and strategists are required to set the vision and the procedures required to pave the way for highly practical competencies framework. Analgesics are no longer feasible. (shrink)

"The Third Being" presents texts by A.V. Bronnikov, written from 2011–2019 and is devoted to issues regarding the philosophy of art, creativity and language. If the first being is the being of the eternal and divine and the second being is that of the temporary and human, then the new, third, being appears as the intersection and continuation of the first two. The third being is seen and anticipated in art—in the timeless and indestructible reality created by man, in the (...) reality of a poetic word that raises the world and its things to the level of form, image and idea. The book compares approaches to the philosophy of art and the theory of language by H.-G. Gadamer, M. Heidegger, G. Frege, R. Ingarden, R. Bart, L. Wittgenstein and J. Derrida. An important place is given to Russian religious philosophy, presented by P. A. Florensky, S. N. Bulgakov, N. A. Berdyaev and others. The publication contains essays on the life and work of poets R. M. Rilke, E. Pound and T. S. Eliot, as well as the first Russian translation of J. Derrida's “Advances,” known as the postmodern commentary on Plato's “Timaeus.” -/- Contents: Russia in Rilke / Plato's ideality of text / Word and world / Art as reality / Sacrality of art / Cosmists / Florensky space / Serial music of "Four Quartets" / Philosophy of "The Cantos" / Ezra Pound and his "Cantos" / Poetry: a breakthrough to reality / At the origin of the world / J. Derrida's "Advances". (shrink)

This essay argues that the revolt against Cartesian dualism in the early 20th century was pivotal in the development of the modern mind and in the revolution in form that occurred in modern literature and the arts.

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust” (T. S. Eliot: The Wasteland) -/- How can dust and water become a conscious living person capable of fear? The way these elements are transformed into life is sketched out, but it's our conscious minds, our intensity of being in a flood of emotions; this is the big problem that science has so far failed to explain. Freya, a biologist, is dissatisfied with the way evolution has no explanation for (...) her own self. Instead, science treats people as robots with any self-awareness considered an illusion. In this way, it destroys our humanity. Max explains that given the chemical basis of life, this is the only possible conclusion. On the brink of accepting this unpalatable fact, she meets with Orin. Together they explore the unthinkable, that the basis of consciousness and self is present in the underlying operations of the universe. These skilfully constructed dialogues explain how the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and panpsychism (primordial universal consciousness) can explain the evolution of not only bodies but also of life, self and consciousness. (shrink)

This text, titled The Responsibility of Educators, is the editorial of the second issue of the second volume of the journal Theology and Philosophy of Education.

Autor prostredníctvom skúmania literárnych diel Charlesa Dickensa, Williama Makepeaca Thackeryho, George Eliotovej a Thomasa Hardyho vytvára mozaiku viktoriánskej morálky Anglicka 19. storočia. Dospel k záveru, že uvedená doba vôbec nebola taká puritánska, ako si ju zvykneme predstavovať a morálne problémy, ktoré ľudstvo rieši v priebehu svojho vývoja sú vo svojej podstate univerzálne, hoci nie totožné. Líšia sa vo svojich individuálnych podobách, v akých sa s nimi stretávame v jednotlivých obdobiach dejín ľudstva.

Frege famously claimed that variations in the sense of a proper name can sometimes be ‘tolerated’. In this paper, we offer a novel explanation of this puzzling claim. Frege, we argue, follows Trendelenburg in holding that we think in language—sometimes individually and sometimes together. Variations in sense can be tolerated in just those cases where we are using language to coordinate our actions but are not engaged in thinking together about an issue.

As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments (...) on lying are semantically relevant. It then endeavors to show how, assuming the relevance of such judgments, we can use them to generate a useful, widely acceptable test for semantic content. (shrink)