GALLICA PHILOSOPHICA - Illustrated Dictionary of French and Francophone Philosophers (from the origins in the eleventh century up to twenty-first century).

Many contemporary theorists charge that naïve realists are incapable of accounting for illusions. Various sophisticated proposals have been ventured to meet this charge. Here, we take a different approach and dispute whether the naïve realist owes any distinctive account of illusion. To this end, we begin with a simple, naïve account of veridical perception. We then examine the case that this account cannot be extended to illusions. By reconstructing an explicit version of this argument, we show that it depends (...) critically on the contention that perceptual experience is diaphanous, or more minimally and precisely, that there can be no difference in phenomenal properties between two experiences without a difference in the scenes presented in those experiences. Finding no good reason to accept this claim, we develop and defend a simple, naïve account of both veridical perception and illusion, here dubbed Simple, Austere Naïve Realism. (shrink)

The argument from illusion attempts to establish the bold claim that we are never perceptually aware of ordinary material objects. The argument has rightly received a great deal critical of scrutiny. But here we develop a criticism that, to our knowledge, has not hitherto been explored. We consider the canonical form of the argument as it is captured in contemporary expositions. There are two stages to our criticism. First, we show that the argument is invalid. Second, we identify premises (...) that can be used to make the argument valid. But we argue that the obvious fixes are problematic. If our arguments are successful, we show that the argument from illusion is even more difficult to defend than is commonly acknowledged. (shrink)

The article aims at clarifying the historical status and cognitive potentials of such a genre of contemporary historiography of philosophy as biographical encyclopedia (dictionary). Based on extensive bibliographic material, the author demonstrates that in the late XX – early XXI centuries in the English-speaking countries there was a real outbreak of interest in encyclopedias and dictionaries, compiled from personalized articles about the life and works of philosophers of certain epochs, countries, trends, etc. According to the author, the increasing (...) popularity of this genre can be considered as a logical continuation of the historical and biographical turns that took place in the Anglo-American (analytic) philosophy in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. The author specifically emphasizes that it caused the appearance of a significant number of encyclopedias and dictionaries, which contain the well-known facts as well as the significant elements of scholar novelty. The article also shows that similar tendencies have taken place in the contemporary Ukrainian historiography of philosophy. It is shown that Ukrainian experts also made their own significant contribution to the development of this genre. They have successfully developed a special approach, which presupposes the focus on life and works of the representatives of a particular academic institution. The intellectual value of this approach is demonstrated by the example of the recently published two-volume encyclopedia “Kyiv Theological Academy in Names: 1819-1924”. It contains a systematic and very informative presentation of the biographies of many representatives of the national philosophy, whose activities were associated with this institution. The author also shows that from the perspective of the historiography of philosophy, the general methodological foundations of this encyclopedic research is a matter of special interest. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) has commonly been seen as Europe’s leading philosopher since Kant. His influence extended across the globe down to the Second World War – not least through his dissident disciple, Karl Marx. Since then, despite intermittent revivals, his importance has tended to be eclipsed by a rising tide of anti-modernist polemic, extending from Heidegger to postmodernism. Central to Hegel’s political thought was his view of the French Revolution. But notwithstanding its pivotal role in the development (...) of his ideas, his reaction to that event has been systematically misconstrued. In presenting a more faithful account of Hegel’s interpretation of his own era, the argument presented here places his response to contemporary developments in the context of a series of World Revolutions which framed the meaning of his age. This approach serves to illustrate the unique combination of historical and philosophical reasoning on which Hegel’s thought depended. In the process, reconstructing his arguments raises challenging questions about the applicability of bygone political ideas to later historical periods. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to look at Deleuze’s philosophical heritage in two different senses. In the first part of the paper, I explore his relationship to perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger plays a central role in Deleuze’s early philosophy, and even when in his later collaborations with Guattari their explicit references to Heidegger are dismissive, Heidegger’s influence can clearly be detected, particularly in their critiques of other philosophers. In the second part (...) of the paper, I look at Deleuze’s own contribution to philosophy, and to see how this contribution has been assessed by one of the most influential contemporary French philosophers, Alain Badiou. For Heidegger, Deleuze, and Badiou, perhaps the central problem for philosophy emerges from thinking about totality. For all three, the traditional metaphysical view of totality, derived from Aristotle’s concept of paronymy, occludes rather than solves the problem of how we characterise our most general concepts. As we shall see, Heidegger’s diagnosis of metaphysics, as constituted by what he calls onto-theology, is shared by all three philosophers, while their responses to this diagnosis differ. Deleuze and Badiou both reject Heidegger’s poetics of being in favour of the language of mathematics, but the question I want to explore in the final part of the paper is, which mathematics? The mathematics of the continuous, or the mathematics of the discrete? (shrink)

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting (...) was whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre, Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. Amidst this tangle one finds Bataille’s statement that an ‘abyss’ separates English from French and German philosophy, the first recorded announcement of the analytic-continental divide in the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to assess the primary differences between what I take to be the two primary philosophical "traditions" in contemporary French philosophy, using Derrida (transcendence) and Deleuze (immanence) as exemplary representatives. The body of the paper will examine the use of these terms in three different areas of philosophy on which Derrida and Deleuze have both written: subjectivity, ontology, and epistemology. (1) In the field of subjectivity, the notion of the subject has been critiqued in two (...) manners, either by appealing either to the transcendence of the other (Levinas, Derrida) or to the immanent jlux of experience itself, in relation to which the Ego itself is trancendent (Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre, James). (2) In the field of ontology, a purely "immanent" ontology would be an ontology in which there is neither a "beyond" or an "otherwise" Being, nor "interruptions" in Being, both of which would require an appeal to a formal element of transcendence (Deleuze). Such a "transcendent" and aporetic structure, which can never appear or be present as such within Being, is what lies at the basis of the project of deconstruction, with its attendant aporias (Derrida). (3) This distinction, finally, finds parallels in Kant's epistemology, for whom the possible experience is conditioned by purely immanent criteria (Deleuze), whereas what goes beyond the limits of possible experience is transcendent (Derrida). Drawing on these three thread of analysis, the paper concludes with an assessment of what is at stake in the ethical differences between the two traditions. The question of "transcendence" is "What mast I do?", which is the question of morality (a duty or obligation that is beyond being, an "ought" beyond the "is"). The question of "immanence" is "What can I do?" (my power or capacity as an existing individual within being). For Levinas and Derrida, ethics precedes ontology because it is derived from an element of transcendence (the Other); for Deleuze, ethics is ontology because it is derived from the immanent relation of beings to Being at the level of their existence (Spinoza). (shrink)

The philosophical “problem of evil” goes back at least as far as Epicurus and has remained a powerful argument against the existence of God in contemporary philosophy. The argument is rooted in apparent contradictions between God’s divine attributes and various conditions of human existence. But these contradictions arise only given certain assumptions of what we should expect both God and the world to be like given God’s existence. In this paper, I argue that we can utilize the work of (...) the 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil to craft a coherent metaphysical picture of God, creation, and suffering which rejects these common assumptions. Further, I contend that this picture very plausibly follows from commonly-accepted tenets of traditional monotheism. Given this, I argue that this Weil-inspired framework provides serious reasons for reframing the problem of evil and its corresponding theodicies by presenting a radically different view of how God must relate to creation. Yet, this picture does not necessarily vindicate the theist. I argue that this picture may leave us with a new question about creation in the face of evil. Namely, is it possible to understand God’s initial creative act as Weil describes it—as an act of love? (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the major developments in the philosophical understanding of suicide in 19th Century Western thought. Two developments in particular are considered. The first is a widespread shift towards thinking about suicide in medical terms rather than moral terms. Deploying methods initiated by a number of French and German thinkers in the preceding century who worked at the then emerging interface between the social and biological sciences, a number of 19th century thinkers ejected what they took (...) to be old metaphysical superstitions about ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and replaced them with (allegedly) hard-nosed scientific diagnoses of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. Dismissing traditional moral arguments against the permissibility of suicide, the phenomenon came to be viewed as a symptom of decline or degeneration. How variations of this view, in biological and social contexts, reorientated practical responses to suicide in terms of treatment rather than moral condemnation is explored. The second 19th century development in philosophical thought with respect to suicide the chapter considers concerns its place in one of the most significant controversies in Germany from 1860 to the turn of the century: the Pessimismusstreit or ‘pessimism dispute’. While philosophical pessimism might be thought to vindicate or even entail suicide, many of the most prominent pessimists—including Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann—denied that this was the case, and perhaps surprisingly took suicide to involve a special kind of moral and/or epistemic failing. The chapter aims to elucidate the different arguments which pessimists appealed to in order to ground this position. (shrink)

In this chapter I critically discuss the dismissal of the philosophical significance of facts about human evolution and historical development in the work of W. D Ross. I address Ross’s views about the philosophical significance of the emerging human sciences of his time in two of his main works, namely The Right and the Good and The Foundations of Ethics. I argue that the debate between Ross and his chosen interlocutors (Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Lucien Levy-Bruhl) shows striking similarities (...) with parallel debates in contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson became an international celebrity, profoundly influencing contemporary intellectual and artistic currents. While Bergsonism was fashionable, L. Susan Stebbing, Bertrand Russell, Moritz Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap launched different critical attacks against some of Bergson’s views. This book examines this series of critical responses to Bergsonism early in the history of analytic philosophy. Analytic criticisms of Bergsonism were influenced by William James, who saw Bergson as an ‘anti-intellectualist’ (...) ally of American Pragmatism, and Max Scheler, who saw him as a prophet of Lebensphilosophie. Some of the main analytic objections to Bergson are answered in the work of Karin Costelloe-Stephen. Analytic anti-Bergsonism accompanied the earlier refutations of idealism by Russell and Moore, and later influenced the Vienna Circle’s critique of metaphysics. It eventually contributed to the formation of the view that ‘analytic’ philosophy is divided from its ‘continental’ counterpart. (shrink)

In his 2018 essay Down to Earth, the French philosopher Bruno Latour proposes a hypothesis that connects a number of contemporary issues, ranging from climate denialism to deregulation and growing inequality. While his hypothesis, namely that the elites act as if they live in another world and are leaving the rest of the world behind, might seem like a conspiracy theory, I will argue that there is a way to make sense of it. To do so, I will (...) turn to two other authors, Timothy Mitchell and Shoshana Zuboff, to highlight the kind of logic that Latour seems to have in mind. In the final section, I will propose to capture the commonalities of these authors through the concept of shifting reciprocities and will return to Latour’s political plea to define one’s territories, reinterpreted as reciprocities. (shrink)

This paper offers some comments on some metaphysical and epistemological claims of theological realism from the perspective of continental philosophy of religion, thereby taking the work of Soskice and Hick as paradigmatic for this kind of philosophical theology. The first comment regards the fact that theological realism considers religious and theological propositions as ways to depict or represent reality, and hence aims to bring them as much as possible in line with scientific ones. Some contemporary French philosophers (...) criticize such a representing, depicting knowledge of God, because it encapsulates the divine reality in mundane, specifically scientific categories. eventually, theological realism runs the risk of annihilating God’s radical transcendence and reducing religion to an alternative scientific theory. The second comment tries to explore whether one can affirm God’s reality from a practical perspective, as a postulate of reason, and whether such an approach could serve as a common ground for religious and secular ways of life in times of radical pluralism. This comment begins by investigating the regulative character of Kant’s idea of God as the highest idea of reason, which not only orientates our theoretical enquiries, but also our moral actions. Although this idea is only a heuristic fiction for theoretical reason, God’s existence has to be affirmed on practical grounds, as a symbolic reality that gives orientation to people’s lives. (shrink)

In the last decade, the importance of Simone de Beauvoir’s contribution to 20th-century French philosophy has been beyond debate. However, it can be tempting to read her contributions as the dated beginnings of feminist philosophy, and to believe that her work is only interesting from the perspective of the history of philosophy. To the contrary, this article claims that contemporary philosophers can and should take Beauvoirian philosophy as a source of fruitful insights on contemporary issues in (...) political and moral philosophy by showing the limited scope of two classic critiques of Beauvoir and by defending the relevance of her work for thinking about female submission and the importance of erotic experience. (shrink)

El propósito del presente ensayo es desarrollar una lectura existencial del poema “Del país de la pena” escrita por la poeta venezolana Hanni Ossott con el fin de pensar el término “expatriación” como concepto filosófico. Luego de una introducción histórica que busca situar el poema de Ossott al filo de una tradición poética que busca recuperar la sensación de extranjeridad frente a lo propiamente nacional, éste ensayo se propone trazar los horizontes metodológicos de la interpretación del poema a través de (...) una lectura del ensayo “Paysage avec dépaysement” [Paisaje en desorientación] escrito por el filósofo francés Jean-Luc Nancy. La lectura del ensayo de Nancy posibilitará la lectura existencial del poema de Ossott con la que el presente ensayo buscará demonstrar la riqueza filosófica de este poema y la manera en que tematiza la expatriación. A modo de conclusión, se sugerirá que la expatriación puede entenderse como una condena pero no necesariamente de modo negativo sino a través de una valencia positiva que éste término puede tener para la conceptualización contemporánea sobre América Latina. -/- The purpose of this paper is to develop an existential reading of the poem “Del país de la pena” written by the Venezuelan poet Hanni Ossott with the aim of thinking the term “expatriation” as a philosophical concept. Following a historical introduction that seeks to situate Ossott’s poem within a poetic tradition that tries to recuperate the feeling of strangeness in the face of the properly national, this essay attempts to trace the interpretative and methodological horizons of the poem through a reading of the essay “Paysage avec dépaysement” [Uncanny Landscapes] written by the French philosopher Jean- Luc Nancy. The reading of Nancy’s essay will facilitate the existential reading of Ossott’s poem with which the present essay will seek to demonstrate the philosophical richness of this poem and the way in which it thematizes expatriation. By way of conclusion, it will be suggested that expatriation can be understood as a sentence, but not necessarily in a negative manner; rather, it can be thought through a positive valence that can aid in the contemporary conceptualization about Latin America. (shrink)

This article provides a thematic overview of the work of contemporary French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou. It suggests that the notion of violent capture serves as a guiding theme linking Chamayou's work, linking it to his early study of experimental medicine, his genealogy of manhunting and predatory power, as well as his recent study of contemporary predatory or "cynegetic" warfare use of drones.

The important impact of the French Franciscan Peter Auriol (ca. 1280-1322) upon contemporary philosophical theology at Oxford is well known and has been well documented and analyzed, at least for a narrow range of issues, particularly in epistemology. This article attempts a more systematic treatment of his effects upon Oxford debates across a broader range of subjects and over a more expansive duration of time than has been done previously. Topics discussed include grace and merit, future contingents and (...) divine foreknowledge, and the logic of the Trinity. (shrink)

This paper argues that the transcendence (most obviously theological) has skewed much of Western thinking by forcing material complexity to be interpreted as the intervention of something immaterial. Contemporary terms in the anglophone world that can play this role are: intentionality (privatised teleology), representation and semantics. Deleuze launches a powerful critique of residually theological reasoning that has wide application in both philosophy and science. This critique converges with and deepens, perhaps surprisingly for a French philosopher, similar critiques that (...) are being offered today in evolutionary biology, cognitive science and robotics. (shrink)

In the present interview, Jacob Rogozinski elucidates the main concepts and theses he developed in his latest book dedicated to the issue of modern jihadism. On this occasion, he explains his disagreements with other philosophical (Badiou, Baudrillard, Žižek) and anthropological (Girard) accounts of Islamic terrorism. Rogozinski also explains that although jihadism betrays Islam, it nonetheless has everything to do with Islam. Eventually, he describes his own philosophical journey which led him from a phenomenological study of the ego and the flesh (...) to the study of past (witch-hunts, French Reign of Terror) and contemporary (jihadism) terror apparatuses. (shrink)

An interview exploring the complexity of contemporary French philosophical atheism, in the light of Difficult Atheism: Post-Theological Thinking in Badiou, Nancy and Meillassoux (Edinburgh UP, 2011).

It is well known that modern epistemology is a discipline that was left as a legacy by the great French philosopher René Descartes, and it is generally believed that it is a typically philosophical discipline whose problems can be dealt with only by philosophical (speculative) means of inquiry. Recently, however, the idea of naturalization of epistemological inquiry has emerged, and one of its most prominent advocates was Quine. However, the question is to what extent, if at all, the proposal (...) offered by Quine is tenable, as evidenced, apart from numerous criticisms, by significantly different interpretations regarding assumptions on which it should be based. Namely, three types of interpretations of Quine’s call for the reform of epistemological inquiry prevail in contemporary literature: behaviorist, which was largely advocated by Quine, but also coherentist and physicalist, which some of his interpreters argued for. However, while the first two of these options are in my opinion unacceptable because they are unable to provide the necessary autonomy for the epistemological context of inquiry, I will try to show that physicalism is also burdened with difficulties, albeit different ones, which make it an untenable position when it comes to epistemological inquiry. Nevertheless, even before I started writing, I thought that there were valuable insights in Quine’s proposal, and that we could learn important lessons from the failure of previous interpretations, both regarding the position that should be taken in its interpretation, and, closely related to this, the possibility of reforming epistemological inquiry in general. In other words, informed by the weaknesses of Quine’s proposal and its interpretations, I will argue that epistemological inquiry can ultimately be approached from one of two mutually incompatible theoretical positions: the traditional or Cartesian one, and the Kantian one. Given that, as noted above, Quine’s proposal was primarily a reaction to Cartesianism, I discuss the possibility of establishing the fundamental level of inquiry such as epistemological to which Quine had to aspire, but in a way that would enable the synthesis of his approach with Kant’s view, which is in my opinion the only genuine alternative to the traditional program. Although it implies taking a position that would be a kind of compromise and could not be attributed to Quine (which is why it is uncertain whether he would have supported this interpretation), I believe that, apart from preserving certain naturalistic elements, it is an interpretation that would ultimately satisfy most of the demands that Quine himself has set for epistemological inquiry. (shrink)

The nature of the soul and its relationship with the body have always been a matter of concern for philosophers throughout the history of philosophy. Today, this and other related issues are discussed within the philosophy of mind under the name of mind-body problem. The issue of the mind-body problem, or the soul and its relation to the body, has received special attention in Islamic philosophy. One of the Muslim philosophers who extensively wrote on this issue was Sadraddin (...) Shirazi, widely known as Mulla Sadra. This paper examines Sadraddin Shirazi’s approach to the mind-body problem. It is known that historically, most philosophers regarded human beings as a composition of a material body and an immaterial soul. Although this dualistic approach to human beings has a long history, it became more popular due to French philosopher René Descartes’ endeavors. Generally, Muslim philosophers were also dualists, like Descartes. However, Sadraddin Shirazi, who was Descartes’ contemporary, rejects earlier philosophers’ theories on human nature. He claims that a human being, when it comes into existence, is material, while this material being gradually evolves into an immaterial being. The soul’s journey from material being to immaterial one becomes possible thanks to substantial motion. Shirazi’s famous theory on this issue is known as the soul’s corporeal origination and spiritual subsistence. Though this paper acknowledges Shirazi’s theory’s originality and coherence, it remains skeptical about the issue that whether his theory corresponds to dualism or monism. Now, after discussing Sadraddin Shirazi’s view on the issue, I can make the case that his corporeal origin soul theory is quite a revolutionary idea. In terms of the mind-body problem, even at the beginning, it solves the issue. Shirazi considers the soul bodily at its early stage. If the soul is not spiritual, then there is a material body and a material soul, and they can interact and unify. Therefore, there is no mind-body problem. However, then spirituality emerges, as do the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy is an ambitious collected volume of fourteen chapters, accompanied by an epilogue by Jean-Luc Nancy, in which current Merleau-Ponty scholars together aim to demonstrate the urgent relevance of Merleau-Ponty to contemporary philosophy across a range of fields including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art. Divided into four thematic sections, namely, “Legacies”, “Mind and Nature”, “Politics, Power, and Institution” and “Art and Aesthetics”, this collected volume provides a rich resource for Merleau-Ponty (...) scholars who are interested in novel applications and understudied aspects of his thought. It also opens up Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre to the general reader, presenting many possible entry-ways into the diversity of his work. In my review of Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, I suggest that each of its thematic sections could have been the subject of a separate volume themselves, and that the volume would then perhaps have not suffered from a number of poorly developed lines of argumentation. But I consider that the inclusion of all these thematically diverse sections in a single volume nonetheless presents a forceful display of the wide-ranging relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

‘Live’, or novel, metaphors continue to occupy an interesting space in both the philosophical and cognitive sphere. One metaphorical theory, offered by French philosopher Paul Ricœur, is thoroughly fleshed out in relation to other dominant linguistic accounts of metaphor. Ricœur’s theory is underrepresented in much of contemporary neurolinguistic literature even though it bears great resemblance to many features of modern theories in cognitive science; as such, the current article attempts to establish a clear connection between Ricœur’s work and (...) the cognitive sciences without collapsing into ‘psychological associationism’. The present article offers this connection to re-establish the value of philosophy and hermeneutics to the scientific enterprise by embracing interdisciplinary study. (shrink)

This study is devoted to the problem of the place and significance of the scientific quest and worldview, and to their articulation with metaphysics as they serve to bring the mind to the consideration of the problem and mystery of the existence of God in the thought of the contemporary French philosopher and theologian Claude Tresmontant (1925-97).

The dominance of Augustine of Hippo in philosophy during the second quarter of the fourteenth century is testified to by three evidences: (1) the wide use of quotations from his works, (2) the flourishing of commentaries on them, especially at Oxford, as reconstructed by William J. Courtenay; (3) the historical-critical treatment of the writings of the Fathers, of the theological and philosophical auctoritates, and of contemporary Scholastic authors at Paris by the Augustinians, as reconstructed by Onorato Grassi. In this (...) article, I focus on the second kind of evidence, taking into account some commentaries on Augustine’s De civitate Dei, namely those of Nicholas Trevet and Thomas Waleys in the English area, and that Francis of Meyronnes in the French area. These commentaries became the basis for Raoul de Presles’s translation of Augustine’s work into Middle French. Moreover, I analyze books 1–5 of Raoul’s translation, showing that it was by no means accidental to his intellectual endeavors and that Raoul employed innovative, Humanist techniques of translation, and shedding light on the comparison of Charles V of France to Charlemagne in the rediscovery of the Augustinian corpus. (shrink)

This paper concerns the theory of triple mimesis formulated by the contemporary French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in his three-volume book Time and Narrative. It is a hermeneutical interpretation of the classical Aristotle’s definition of mimesis from his Poetics. Ricoeur’s argument is aimed at proving, that the way an imitative transformation of the reality in narrative operates, presupposes a circular relation between living experience and a narrative, which mutually determine each other. The main aim of this paper is to (...) answer the question, how the communication between an author, a work and a reader should be viewed in the context of triple mimesis and what factors determine understanding of a mimetic work of art. (shrink)

The two volumes of _Maus_ composed by Art Spiegelman were the first graphic novels to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. These volumes introduced a new genre of graphic novel in the form of comics. The present study examines the hierarchical content and subtexts of Maus and the unique presentation methods of comics. The researcher employed the concepts of “Threefold mimesis” proposed by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, to see how Maus interpretate the Jewish history of suffering in Holocaust and (...) the postmemory. Spiegelman is the icon of the graphic novel world, however, so far research on his work still seems to be rare in Taiwan. This study starts from Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics, hope to elucidate how the new model of contemporary autobiographical comic was created. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to show the philosophical content of the ‘society of spectacle’ concept, which was elaborated by a French thinker from the second part of the 20th century, Guy Debord. The study achieves this aim by means of the history of philosophy, analyzing this concept in the context of previous and contemporary philosophical ideas. Analysis, the structural method, the hermeneutic method of interpretation, and the comparative method are prime research methods. The philosophical part of Guy Debord’s legacy (...) is underexplored, so the dissertation helps to make significant progress in its exploration, because it sheds light on the key concepts of this theoretician. -/- The topic is divided into three themes discussed in the corresponding chapters. In the first chapter the research discusses the literature on the ‘society of spectacle’ and the proper methodology for exploring the philosophical content of this concept. In the next chapter the research covers the ontological basis of this concept in the framework of the history of philosophy, and in the third chapter the study focuses on the historical and philosophical research of the portion of the content of the concept which expresses Debord’s social and political philosophy. -/- The dissertation argues that the ‘society of spectacle’ concept is rooted in Guy Debord’s ideas about discrete space and the specific ontological status of ‘image’ as a substitute for reality. Thoughts in the area of ontology distinguish Guy Debord’s concept from similar ideas of other authors; for instance, from Roland Barthes’ theories. On the contrary, the ontological basis of the ‘society of spectacle’ places this concept in close quarters with Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida’s ideas about space and reality. The dissertation particularly argues for the conceptual proximity of G. Debord’s notion of ‘image’ with Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘simulacrum’, and also of G. Debord’s notion of ‘creating of images’ with Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘deconstruction.’ The study then argues that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a more radical interpretation of the irrationality of social behavior than similar concepts of thinkers such as Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Paul-Michel Foucault. Moreover, the analysis shows that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a result of a long development of philosophical ideas which compare world, society or cognitive processes with spectacle throughout all main periods of the history of Western philosophy, primarily its modern period. -/- In contemporary research literature on G. Debord’s theoretical legacy, the dissertation primarily contributes the new idea that Debord’s thoughts have an ontological basis that opens new vistas for further researching their content and explaining their influence on contemporary culture. (shrink)

The Shadow of God in the Philosopher’s Garden. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of the philosophy of chôra I Bernard Tschumi’s project of the Parc de La Villette could have won the competition and was implemented thanks to the political atmosphere that accompanied the victory of the left-wing candidate in the French presidential elections in 1981. François Mitterand’s revision of the political programme and the replacement of radical reforms with the construction of prestigious architectural (...) objects and urban assumptions in the French capital gave Tschumi a unique opportunity to realise ideas that polemicised with traditional forms of social life, questioned the basic principles of architecture and included architectural work in the philosophical disputes over the issues of metaphysics. Tschumi’s theoretical assumptions put forward during the design of the Parc de La Villette highlighted the questions of conflict between the main components of the project and suggested that the intensification of differences was analogous to Jacques Derrida’s creation of the concept of différance. It was this philosopher who in a special commentary to Derrida’s project also introduced the concept of maintenant, which aimed at demonstrating that the architect’s polemical inclinations remain in a hidden balance with his inclinations to affirmation of architectural principles. During the discussion between Derrida and Peter Eisenman, who was to take part in the design of the Parisian park, the concept of the chôra was also put forward, which in the course of the debate led to an additional confusion of architectural and philosophical problems. II In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, but also architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word chôra in Greek, as in Homer’s 18th Book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros meliton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far. The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtaposition of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community. III Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Albert Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Martin Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy: Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture. The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder. IV In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Derrida, prove that terms such as “disruption”, “dissociation”, “disfunction”, “disjunction” and “dispersion” not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Parc de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus athesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or the Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the status of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’Autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. V In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. Parc de La Villette represents the last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, absolute otherness (tout autre) and the Impossible were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others).Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. John Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

In the thesis a description of the other person as a phenomenon of icon in thinking of a contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion is researched. A question is raised how the icon (as Marion describes it) can be recognized in the face of the other. A notion of “iconic visibility” is accepted and employed to study how phenomenal “structure” of the first icon – Christ – repeats itself in the face of the other. Main features allowing to interpret (...) the face as the icon from the phenomenological and not theological point of view are displayed. “Subject” capable of recognizing the icon is researched in detail. It is argumented why the gifted should not be considered to be a passive object-like givee and why the other is not the only active subject-like pole of the phenomenon. Features of Marion’s conception of the icon which determine the initial lack of evidence of the phenomenon are disclosed. It is shown that the difficulty of recognition of the icon is inherent to the description of the phenomenon. The role of the phenomenon of love for the appearing of the icon is highlighted and Marion’s conception of love is discussed. A possibility to demonstrate the icon as a final and inevitable interpretation of the face of the other was not found. It is reasoned that the possibility of such demonstration is prohibited in the very definition of the phenomenon. In spite of that it was shown how such a phenomenon may appear, therefore, lack of proof does not deny the possibility of appearing. (shrink)

Visual experiences seem to exhibit phenomenological particularity: when you look at some object, it – that particular object – looks some way to you. But experiences exhibit generality too: when you look at a distinct but qualitatively identical object, things seem the same to you as they did in seeing the first object. Naïve realist accounts of visual experience have often been thought to have a problem with each of these observations. It has been claimed that naïve realist views cannot (...) account for the generality of visual experiences, and that the naïve realist explanation of particularity has unacceptable implications for self- knowledge: the knowledge we have of the character of our own experiences. We argue in this paper that neither claim is correct: naïve realism can explain the generality of experiences, and the naïve realist explanation of particularity raises no problems for our self-knowledge. (shrink)

Quassim Cassam offers a conception of ways of knowing which he argues is preferable to rival accounts such as the account we find in Williamson. The correct way to think about ways of knowing matters for philosophers, such as Cassam and Williamson, who want to understand knowledge itself in terms of ways of knowing. So is Cassam right that his conception of ways of knowing is preferable to Williamson's? The discussion to follow is irenic in spirit: I will argue (...) that in fact Cassam and Williamson don't offer competing accounts of the same phenomenon, but consistent accounts of subtly different phenomena. It is then open that ways of knowing in both senses are relevant to elucidating knowledge itself. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION ABOUT WHAT DO CONTEMPORARY LITHUANIAN PHILOSOPHERS PHILOSOPHIZE? JURATE BARANOVA This volume follows the volume Lithuanian Philosophy: Persons ...

Some have argued that we can put pressure on a relational view of experience with reference to the fact that the idiosyncrasies of perceivers can affect the qualitative characters of their experiences. Quassim Cassam calls this the problem of idiosyncratic perception. I defend the relational view in response to this problem.

Contemporary philosophical accounts of the applicability of mathematics in physical sciences and the empirical world are based on formalized relations between the mathematical structures and the physical systems they are supposed to represent within the models. Such relations were constructed both to ensure an adequate representation and to allow a justification of the validity of the mathematical models as means of scientific inference. This article puts in evidence the various circularities (logical, epistemic, and of definition) that are present in (...) these formal constructions and discusses them as an argument for the alternative semantic and propositional-structure accounts of the applicability of mathematics. (shrink)

Although trained in the Anglophone analytic tradition, the French education of his formative years seems to have left its mark on Ronnie de Sousa’s thinking and writing. He appeals to temperament as an explanation for fundamental attitudes to life: neither the quest for a source of meaning in God or nature, nor his own tendency to relish life’s meaninglessness can be grounded in reason. To show this, Ronnie has argued that there is no such thing as human nature, and (...) that appeals to evolution can neither guide us in choosing how to live, nor give us good reason to prefer the “normal” to the “deviant”. Instead, aesthetic reasons deserve to be given more weight than is granted by the alleged overriding character of morality. (shrink)

My dissertation explores the ways in which Rudolf Carnap sought to make philosophy scientific by further developing recent interpretive efforts to explain Carnap’s mature philosophical work as a form of engineering. It does this by looking in detail at his philosophical practice in his most sustained mature project, his work on pure and applied inductive logic. I, first, specify the sort of engineering Carnap is engaged in as involving an engineering design problem and then draw out the complications of design (...) problems from current work in history of engineering and technology studies. I then model Carnap’s practice based on those lessons and uncover ways in which Carnap’s technical work in inductive logic takes some of these lessons on board. This shows ways in which Carnap’s philosophical project subtly changes right through his late work on induction, providing an important corrective to interpretations that ignore the work on inductive logic. Specifically, I show that paying attention to the historical details of Carnap’s attempt to apply his work in inductive logic to decision theory and theoretical statistics in the 1950s and 1960s helps us understand how Carnap develops and rearticulates the philosophical point of the practical/theoretical distinction in his late work, offering thus a new interpretation of Carnap’s technical work within the broader context of philosophy of science and analytical philosophy in general. (shrink)

Phenomenal particularism is the view that particular external objects are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. It is a central part of naïve realist or relational views of perception. We consider a series of recent objections to phenomenal particularism and argue that naïve realism has the resources to block them. In particular, we show that these objections rest on assumptions about the nature of phenomenal character that the naïve realist will reject, and that they ignore the full (...) resources that naïve realism has to offer in explaining phenomenal character. (shrink)

A counterpossible conditional is a counterfactual with an impossible antecedent. Common sense delivers the view that some such conditionals are true, and some are false. In recent publications, Timothy Williamson has defended the view that all are true. In this paper we defend the common sense view against Williamson’s objections.

In the contemporary anthropological discourse, the general subjects of temporality and aesthetics, as form of cognition, turn out to be the neuralgic points through which the question of the human existence is considered in many approaches to human being (cognitive, ethical, ontological or theological). In the philosophical system of the French post-modern thinker Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) these two issues are deeply interlaced leading to new and original solutions of the above-mentioned question. The aim of the contribution is to (...) reconstruct the interconnection between temporality and aesthetics in the thought of this philosopher showing Lyotard’s aesthetic structures of temporality as a central contribution to the post-modern subjectivity theory. (shrink)

Building on my previous exploration of the role of dance in the contemporary French political philosopher Jacques Rancière’s Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, first published in French in 2011, the present essay turns to another book originally published in the same year, The Intervals of Cinema. Having previously established that the core of Rancière’s philosophical method is an analysis of philosophical homonyms into figurative dancing conceptual partners, I begin by applying that method to the (...) first chapter of Intervals, “Cinematic Vertigo: Hitchcock to Vertov and Back.” There I identify two series of such dancing partners, as follows: Hitchcock’s image-controlling, capitalist vertiginous fall, and Vertov’s movement-equalizing, communist balanced dance. I then critique the implicit marginalizing of women and female bodies in the films and chapter, including Hitchcock’s protagonist’s best friend and ex-fiancé, and Vertov’s cosmetologists and switchboard operators. Finally, I offer a corrective from the proto-feminist life of my grandmother, a onetime cosmetologist, switchboard operator, and Glamour Shots amateur model, my grandmother, Louise Nunnelley, or “Mamaw.” Such are the unacknowledged material basis of Rancière’s radical democratic philosophy, the specifically-embodied and positioned female dancers who continue to get lost in his figurative dance. (shrink)

I attend to the temporal schema of open/closed by examining its elaboration in Bergson's philosophy and critically parsing the possibilities for its destabilization. Though Bergson wrote in a colonial context, this context barely receives acknowledgement in his work. This obscures the uncomfortable resonances between Bergson's late work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and the temporal narratives that justify French colonialism. Given Bergson's uptake by philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze, and by contemporary feminist and political theorists (...) (especially “new materialists”), a critical re-examination is called for. The Two Sources not only introduces a new dichotomy into Bergsonian philosophy—that of open/closed—it puts an end to the movement of duration by defining its possibilities as goals already given in advance. By turning the tools of Bergsonian critique onto The Two Sources, I propose an alternative to the open/closed—that of the “half-open”—creating in this way the conditions for decolonizing duration. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income has become a popular idea in the last few decades even though one can find its roots in the earlier centuries. In this thesis, I have examined the position of UBI in the works of the most influential contemporary philosophers. By connecting the idea of UBI with some certain concepts from different philosophers, I aimed to improve the overall understanding of UBI. I have mentioned the concepts such as "labor", "leisure", "idleness", "boredom", "poverty", "inequality", (...) "distribution", "happiness", "power", "needs", "truth", "alienation", etc. I have used a literature methodology for my research. I have tried to read and relate the concept of UBI with the works of 10 philosophers: Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, William James, Bertrand Russell, Michel Foucault, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Peter Singer. (shrink)

This is the first Italian translation of Bentham’s “Deontology”. The translation goes with a rather extended apparatus meant to provide the reader with some information on Bentham’s ethical theory's own context. Some room is made for so-called forerunners of Utilitarianism, from the consequentialist-voluntarist theology of Leibniz, Malebranche, John Gay, Thomas Brown and William Paley to Locke and Hartley's incompatible associationist theories. After the theoretical context, also the real-world context is documented, from Bentham’s campaigns against the oppression of women and cruelty (...) to animals to his projects of political reform. Another section illustrates the ideas of Bentham's followers as well as the objections raised by nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of utilitarianism. -/- Table of contents I. BEFORE THE TEXT 1. Bentham’s legacy 2. Bentham the Reformer 3. Bentham and the enlightenment project of a reformed morality 4. The principle of utility 5. Deontology or private morality 6. Utilitarianism as «eudemonologism» -/- II. TEXT Deontology I. Deontology: theoretical II. Deontology: practical III. -/- III. CO-TEXT 1. Biography 2. The reform of legislation 3. The Philosophic Radicals between the French revolution and the Industrial revolution -/- IV. CONTEXT 1. Forerunners of Utilitarianism 2. Psychological associationism 3. The oppression of women 4. Cruelty against animals 5. Parsimony and industry in Hogarth’s prints 6. Followers 6.1. John Stuart Mill 6.2. Henry Sidgwick 7. Critics 7.1. Romantic, conservative, and Christian critics 7.2. Socialist critics 8. Consequences: neo-utilitarianism 9. Consequences: critics of utilitarianism 9.1. Deontological critics 9.2. Perfectionists critics 9.3. Sceptical critics 10. Bentham’s legacy for contemporary ethics, by Bikhu Parekh Bibliography Lexicon Index of names and concepts -/- READER'S GUIDE . (shrink)