This chapter is a substantially expanded version of (and so substantially supersedes) “Words Fail Me. (Stanley Cavell’s Life Out of Music)” that appeared in Inheriting Stanley Cavell: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Bloomsbury, 2020). It offers to read Cavell’s claim that “philosophy, of a certain ambition, tends perpetually to intersect the autobiographical.” Its guiding thought is that a life that finds a home in philosophy from out of its devotion to music (as is true of, among others, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, all (...) philosophers Cavell wrote about and cared about) will take on a certain character. In Cavell’s case, his distinctive orientation in philosophy—call this his lifelong coming to terms with his abandoning a life in music—is guided in part by (1) an interest in those moments in experience where words seem to run out, or veer toward nonsense, leaving in their wake touchstones of ecstasy; and (2) an interest in the education of the senses, without which interest we risk their starvation. These twin claims are illustrated through an interweaving of remarks and reminiscences of Cavell on music that culminate in a reading of his last published pieces devoted to music, primarily “Impressions of Revolution.”. (shrink)

In *Here and There*, Stanley Cavell suggests that music, like speech, implicates the listener, so that our descriptions of music "are to be thought of not as discoveries but as impressions and assignments of meaning." Such impressions express what "makes an impression upon us," "what truly matters to us." Moreover, this aspect of music "is itself more revolutionary than ... any political event of which it could be said to form a part." I offer one indication of that significance by (...) considering a recent challenge to an old claim about the relation between jazz and democracy. Stanley Crouch claims that jazz practice is an emblem of democracy, while Benjamin Givan observes the undemocratic, hierarchical way that jazz musicians work together. But both positions rest on a limited notion of "democracy." I contrast it to the tradition in political thought that requires each citizen to find their own voice if they're to acquire the ability to govern themselves. Consequently, a better emblem of jazz's democratic advance lies in the challenge it presents to the attentive listener. Jazz listening is increasingly characterized by a learned culture of hearing what isn't played, hearing allusions, hearing unspoken interplay. The nature of this "hearing between the lines" parallels the tradition of esoteric writing in the history of political thought. It suggests that jazz's democratic importance is found in the listener's willingness to give voice to what she hears, not knowing whether her experience is shared by others or whether it singles her out, possibly for skepticism or ridicule. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell isn't the first to arrive at philosophy through a life with music. Nor is he the first whose philosophical practice bears the marks of that life. Much of Cavell's life with music is confirmed for the world in his philosophical autobiography Little Did I Know. A central moment in that book is Cavell's describing the realization that he was to leave his musical career behind – for what exactly, he did not yet know. He connects the memory-shock of (...) this leaving with "the work of mourning." How does such a life out of music inform Cavell's philosophical sensibility? The thought I follow in this essay is that Cavell's distinctive orientation in philosophy – call this his lifelong coming to terms with his abandoning a life in music – is guided in part by an interest in those moments in experience where words seem to run out, or veer toward nonsense, leaving in their wake touchstones of ecstasy. I explore this idea by summarizing my exchange with Stanley Cavell years ago when I asked him whether certain passages from his essay "Music Discomposed" are depictions of the unsayable. Cavell's response is elaborated, or qualified, by considering a pair of moments in Little Did I Know where words appear to run out. I conclude by discussing culminating thoughts on the burden borne by words and their failure that appear in Cavell's late essay on music, "Impressions of Revolution.". (shrink)

Documentary film is that genre of filmmaking that lays bare the fact of all film, which is that it presents "a world past" (Cavell, The World Viewed). This fact of film seems to point to a paradox of time in our experience of movies: we are present at something that has happened, something that is over. But what if we were to take this fact to show that film has the power to place us outside our ordinary, unreflective relation to (...) time? In this essay I examine three pre-cinematic descriptions of relations to time – in Emerson, Thoreau, and Weil – that anticipate the paradox of time inherent in film. I then put that examination to use in a reading of Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film ostensibly about prehistoric cave paintings but whose achievement is its declaration, not to document some past time, but to liberate the present moment. (shrink)

Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is the first collection to examine Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing. These essays show that aspect-seeing was not simply one more topic of investigation in Wittgenstein’s later writings, but, rather, that it was a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy’s attention to the actual conditions of our common life in language. Arranged in sections that highlight the pertinence of the aspect-seeing remarks to aesthetic and moral perception, self-knowledge, mind and consciousness, (...) linguistic agreement, philosophical therapy, and “seeing connections,” the sixteen essays, which were specially commissioned for this volume, demonstrate the unity of not only Philosophical Investigations but also Wittgenstein’s later thought as a whole. They open up novel paths across familiar fields of thought: the objectivity of interpretation, the fixity of the past, the acquisition of language, and the nature of human consciousness. Significantly, they exemplify how continuing consideration of the interrelated phenomena and concepts surrounding aspect-seeing might produce a fruitful way of doing philosophy. The volume includes a concordance for the unnumbered remarks in the various editions of Philosophical Investigations, including the latest (4th) edition. (The front matter is posted here. The introduction - "Seeing Aspects in Wittgenstein" - appears below under "Published articles."). (shrink)

This is the introduction to Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, eds. William Day & Victor J. Krebs (Cambridge UP, 2010), a collection of essays on Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect-seeing. Section 1: Why Seeing Aspects Now?; Section 2: The Importance of Seeing Aspects; Section 3: The Essays. (The front matter to Seeing Wittgenstein Anew appears above under "Books.").

This essay presents an approach to understanding improvised music, finding in the work of certain outstanding jazz musicians an emblem of Ralph Waldo Emerson's notion of self-trust and of Stanley Cavell's notion of moral perfectionism. The essay critiques standard efforts to interpret improvised solos as though they were composed, contrasting that approach to one that treats the procedures of improvisation as derived from our everyday actions. It notes several levels of correspondence between our interest in jazz improvisations and the particular (...) demands of Emerson's writing, and ends by considering how exemplary moments of instruction in jazz are expressive of Emersonian self-trust. (shrink)

"Lest one think that the focus on aspect-seeing in Wittgenstein is only a means to more contemporary philosophical ends, one ought to read Day’s remarkable 'Wanting to Say Something: Aspect-Blindness and Language'. Day considers the issue of aspect-blindness, arguing that universal aspect-blindness is impossible for beings with language. Specifically, he shows that a child’s first attempt at language, at trying “bloh” for “ball,” is neither an indication that the child sees the ball for the first time, nor an indication that (...) the child is giving a first label for an object seen all along. Rather, he shows that this attempt is an indication of the dawning of an aspect. The dawning of aspects, so common during the phase of language acquisition, becomes supplanted by language itself. Universal aspect-blindness is not humanly possible, then. Day argues that the acquisition of language results in a loss of desire for aspects (which it is possible to regain through art). Localized aspect-blindness is familiar because as language-users, we have lost our desire for aspects. Day then turns to questions about the deep purpose behind Wittgenstein’s style. Why are those doubting voices prominent? Why does Wittgenstein demand so often that the reader answer his questions? Day shows that these elements of Wittgenstein’s style arise from a motivation to regain his own desire for aspects, and he wants to re-awaken our own desire for aspects. Day motivates us to consider aspect-seeing in order to see Wittgenstein himself anew." --Chris Weigel, Book Review of Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, Journal of the History of Philosophy 49:2 (April 2011): 263. (shrink)

In this essay I argue the extent to which meaning and judgment in aesthetics figures in Wittgenstein’s later conception of language, particularly in his conception of how philosophy might go about explaining the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgenstein’s life with music, I outline the connection among (1) Wittgenstein’s discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (2) our attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by wording them, and (3) the clarifying (...) experience of the dawning of an aspect, which Wittgenstein pictures as the perception of an internal relation. By examining Wittgenstein’s use of “internal relation” from the Tractatus to his later writings, I come to challenge the still prevalent understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to grammar as an appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules). Instead, as I argue, Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria should be understood as modeled by the form of justification found in our conversations about art. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's lack of sympathy for Shakespeare's works has been well noted by George Steiner and Harold Bloom among others. Wittgenstein writes in 1950, for instance: "It seems to me as though his pieces are, as it were, enormous sketches, not paintings; as though they were dashed off by someone who could permit himself anything, so to speak. And I understand how someone may admire this & call it supreme art, but I don't like it." Of course, the animosity of one (...) great mind for another has its own interest. But the interest here is increased by two factors: (1) Wittgenstein's brief but specific critique of Shakespeare's similes, of interest particularly since he identifies his own philosophical strength half-deprecatingly but still seriously as one of crafting beautiful similes; and (2) Wittgenstein's and Shakespeare's shared concern, as revealed in Stanley Cavell's writings, with the human impulse to skepticism. The present paper considers the importance of these two factors in weighing Wittgenstein's judgment. It suggests that Wittgenstein's frequent charge that Shakespeare is "completely unrealistic" is not a misunderstanding of the Bard (Wittgenstein distinguishes his "failure to understand" from others' willingness to misunderstand Shakespeare) but rather an expression of Wittgenstein's anxiety over Shakespeare's wholly original use of language to represent the sound of the raw motives to skepticism. (shrink)

Induced by intake of the psychedelic substances LSD, psilocybin, DMT and mescaline, psychedelic experiences have been extensively described by subjects as entailing a most unusual increase in the scope and quality of their consciousness. Accordingly, psychedelic experiences have been widely characterised as an “expansion of consciousness.” This article poses the following question, as yet unaddressed in contemporary philosophy and the tradition of phenomenology: to what exactly does “expansion of consciousness” refer as a general characterisation of psychedelic experiences, and what role (...) might attention play therein? On the basis of Aron Gurwitsch’s phenomenology of attention, the following thesis is presented: (a) “expansion of consciousness” refers to a particular restructuration of consciousness in psychedelic experiences. (b) This occurs by means of certain extreme transformations in direction, scope, mode and degree of attention. In order to explicate this thesis, the characteristic features of psychedelic experiences that pertain to expansion of consciousness and attention are first systematically identified from a survey of subject reports. Second, it is demonstrated that the few previous attempts to understand expansion of consciousness in terms of attention as a filter/reducing-valve, spotlight or zoom-lens each fail to explain how consciousness is structured in psychedelic experiences. Third, it is argued that psychedelic expansion of consciousness is a general restructuration of consciousness by means of extreme attentional transformations. In conclusion, brief consideration is given to the question of whether psychedelic expansion of consciousness can have epistemic and ethical value for life. (shrink)

"William Day is . . . concerned to explore the dynamics of what Cavell calls 'a theology of reading' through a careful examination of a fragment of the philosopher's autobiography first published as 'Excerpts from Memory' (2006) and subsequently revised for Little Did I Know (2010). If, as Cavell suggests, 'the underlying subject' of both criticism and philosophy is 'the subject of examples', in which our interest lies in their emblematic aptness or richness as exemplars, exemplarity becomes central to the (...) aim of our reading. . . . Day considers how autobiography as a genre is preoccupied with the question of the author's exemplarity (Augustine or Rousseau), and in Cavell's retelling in 'Excerpts from Memory' he discusses how an event that Cavell would have us read allegorically - his move at the age of seven to a new apartment, his coming upon a familiar bowl containing nonpareils, his remark upon this to his father and his father's violent reaction - recasts a scene of paternal hatred as the child's offer of communion. Day suggests that this retelling proves to be redemptive: first, of the incident itself, and second, of the reader's own experience. Seeing how to read this autobiographical life as exemplary helps us to transfigure our own moments of deprivation into so many possibilities for freedom." --James Loxley and Andrew Taylor, introductory chapter to Stanley Cavell: Philosophy, Literature and Criticism, 15-16. (shrink)

This article highlights sympathies between Wang Yangming's notion of zhenzhi (real knowing) and Stanley Cavell's concept of acknowledgment. I begin by noting a problem in interpreting Wang on the unity of knowing and acting, which leads to considering how our suffering pain figures in our “real knowing” of another's pain. I then turn to Cavell's description of a related problem in modern skepticism, where Cavell argues that knowing another's pain requires acknowledging it. Cavell's concept of acknowledgment answers to Wang's insistence (...) that knowing and acting are one, and corrects Antonio Cua's very different appropriation of “acknowledgment” to explain Wang's doctrine. (shrink)

"In 'I Don't Know, Just Wait: Remembering Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', William Day shows how Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should be considered part of the film genre known as remarriage comedy; but he also shows how Kaufman contributes something new to the genre. Day addresses, in particular, how the conversation that is the condition for reunion involves discovering 'what it means to have memories together as a way of learning how to be together'. (...) One of the most innovative aspects of Kaufman's filmic representation of such a conversation is its effect on the audience: how the narrative structure 'replicates for the viewer the felt contingency of memory that we attribute' to the characters we see onscreen - a couple contending with the interrelated experiences of remarriage and remembering." --David LaRocca, Introduction to The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman, 12. (shrink)

A reading of the film Moonstruck (1987) is presented in two movements. The first aligns Moonstruck with certain Hollywood film comedies of the 1930s and 40s, those Stanley Cavell calls comedies of remarriage. The second turns to some aspects of Emerson's writing – in particular his interest in our relation to human greatness, and his coinciding interest in our relation to the words of a text – and shows how Moonstruck inherits these Emersonian, essentially philosophical interests.

What is one doing when one improvises music, as one does in jazz? There are two sorts of account prominent in jazz literature. The traditional answer is that one is organizing sound materials in the only way they can be organized if they are to be musical. This implies that jazz solos are to be interpreted with the procedures of written music in mind. A second, more controversial answer is offered in David Sudnow's pioneering account of the phenomenology of improvisation, (...) Ways of the Hand. Sudnow claims that learning to improvise at the piano is concerned centrally with copying the bodily ways of one's mentors and finding how one's instructable hands and the keyboard come to answer to one another, so that "to define jazz ... is to describe the body's ways." But despite its greater sensitivity over the traditional account, Sudnow's account is flawed both as a description of how improvisatory skill is acquired and as a model for describing the interest of jazz. My critique of Sudnow compares his account to Augustine's account of learning language, and finds that Wittgenstein's criticisms of Augustine extend to Sudnow. I offer a third approach to understanding improvised music, one which treats the procedures of improvisation as derived from, and importantly at play in, our everyday actions. (shrink)

We investigate a recently devised polyhedral semantics for intermediate logics, in which formulas are interpreted in n-dimensional polyhedra. An intermediate logic is polyhedrally complete if it is complete with respect to some class of polyhedra. The first main result of this paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for the polyhedral completeness of a logic. This condition, which we call the Nerve Criterion, is expressed in terms of Alexandrov’s notion of the nerve of a poset. It affords a purely combinatorial (...) characterisation of polyhedrally complete logics. Using the Nerve Criterion we show, easily, that there are continuum many intermediate logics that are not polyhedrally complete but which have the finite model property. We also provide, at considerable combinatorial labour, a countably infinite class of logics axiomatised by the Jankov–Fine formulas of ‘starlike trees’ all of which are polyhedrally complete. The polyhedral completeness theorem for these ‘starlike logics’ is the second main result of this paper. (shrink)

In “On the Teachings of Gotama Buddha” (1925) and “Socrates-Buddha” (1926), Edmund Husserl claims that the Buddha achieves a transcendental view of consciousness by performing the epoché. Yet, states Husserl, the Buddha fails to develop a purely theoretical and universal science of consciousness, i.e., phenomenology, because his purely practical goal of Nibbāna limits knowledge of consciousness. I evaluate Husserl’s claims by examining the Buddha’s Majjhima Nikāya. I argue that Husserl correctly identifies an epoché and transcendental viewpoint in the Buddha’s teachings. (...) However, I contend that Husserl’s distinction between pure theory and pure praxis leads him to misconstrue the function of the Buddha’s epoché, the extent of knowledge that the Buddha gains from the transcendental viewpoint, and the nature of Nibbāna. I finally suggest that the Buddha presents a way of studying consciousness that is a way of life, meaning that any distinction between pure theory and pure praxis is dissolved. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the use of mathematical results in philosophical arguments arriving at conclusions with non-mathematical content, with the view that in general such usage requires additional justification. As a cautionary example, I examine Kreisel’s arguments that the Continuum Hypothesis is determined by the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, and interpret Weston’s 1976 reply as showing that Kreisel fails to provide sufficient justification for the use of his main technical result. If we take the perspective that mathematical results (...) are used in the context of a modelling of something not necessarily mathematical, then the situation is clarified somewhat, and the procedure for arriving at justification for the use of such results becomes clear. I give an example of a particularly strong form this justification might take, using the idea of formalism independence due to Gödel and Kennedy. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is organized in short paragraphs or "remarks." Most of these are numbered consecutively, but some are not – including his remarks on "aspect-seeing" that are the focus of Seeing Wittgenstein Anew. This appendix to that volume is an indexed catalog of the unnumbered remarks, cross-referenced to four different editions, including the latest (4th) edition. -/- Note: There is a missing remark that should be inserted on p. 363 of the concordance, after the "A sensation can" line, thus: (...) What is the 185e 158e PPF §60. (shrink)

This essay attempts to address the question, "What makes an improvised jazz solo a maturation of the possibilities of this artform?" It begins by considering the significance of one distinguishable feature of an improvised jazz solo - how it ends - in light of Joseph Kerman's seemingly parallel consideration of the historical development of how classical concertos end. After showing the limits of this comparison, the essay proposes a counter-parallel, between the jazz improviser's attitude toward the solo's end and Ludwig (...) Wittgenstein's attitude toward our (or philosophy's) arriving at the end of justifications. The parallel depends on one's granting that both the improviser and Wittgenstein are, in their distinct ways, doing battle against the recurring human fantasy of the fixity of experience. (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)

I here present an anarchist critique of the idea of ‘animalistic evil’ and its common use as a justification for the State’s existence and use of force. On this view, ‘evil’ is a privation of morality, justice, and civilised behaviour. It is then identified with the ‘animalistic’ since animals are often thought to be defined by the aforesaid privation. I first clarify the idea of animalistic evil within the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and (...) Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895) prominently argue that all that prevents humanity from devolving into animalistic evil, a state of violent and individualistic struggle for bare survival, is the power of State government to forcibly control the animalistic drives within its citizens. I subsequently pose two questions. (1) Is it justified to associate animal life with evil when this is (a) understood as a privation of a morality, justice and society and (b) characterised as an individualistic struggle for survival? (2) If this is not justified, what is the political harm of doing so? Building on the work of the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), I argue that any conception of animalistic evil is unjustifiable, that it is a false justification for the State’s existence and use of force, and that the State, upon making the empty threat of animalistic evil, both violently harms individuals and impedes the socially beneficial practice of mutual aid. (shrink)

Despite their differences, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Leo Strauss share two key philosophical commitments. They recognize that philosophy cannot establish or discover a conceptual structure to which one might appeal to justify what one says. And they agree that the task of philosophical writing is to convey a way of thinking set apart from that which seeks to establish or discover conceptual structures. Yet each knows that his writing, in the absence of a universal ground of appeal, will (...) mostly fail to convey that way of thinking, and so will be, to that extent, esoteric. What differentiates them is their rendering of philosophy's inherent esotericism. -/- Wittgenstein's late interest in aspect-seeing and aspect-blindness grows out of his well-documented despair that his writing would fall before uncomprehending eyes. The correlation here rests on noticing, contra Stephen Mulhall, that Wittgenstein's aspect-seeing remarks are inspired by aesthetic matters, not least by the 'subjective universality' of aesthetic judgments. Indeed, Wittgenstein's appeals to grammatical criteria are rightly understood, not as appeals to rules in a game, but as cousin to the form of justification in aesthetics. But then, as in aesthetic justification, there may be no reason for a speaker's inability to convey to another the connections he or she may see. Emerson, whose approach to writing comes into view alongside parallel strategies in jazz and film, begins with the fact that he can write the way he does---relying on the transformative possibilities of words whose multiple meanings he acquired the way anyone does---and concludes that no one is precluded from finding in his writing a model for transforming thinking. Strauss begins with the fact that esoteric writing works the way it does---conveying the writer's true thoughts to some while withholding them from the majority---and concludes that such writing reveals a natural order of rank among readers. Yet nothing in the nature of writing philosophy as Strauss understands it compels one, in the end, to accept Strauss's conclusion. (shrink)

The online-based learning system is a current policy established by the Philippine government in all schools as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shifting face-to-face schools with an online learning-based system creates problems, especially for elementary teachers. This study investigates elementary school teachers' practices in the new normal. The BEED - Generalist researchers employed phenomenological research and purposefully selected participants who were thoroughly knowledgeable to gather essential data about effective methods of virtual delivery. The data was collected through an interview (...) of ten elementary teachers in Magugpo, Pilot, Central Elementary School, using a researcher-made interview guide. Ten essential themes are being gathered, and these are the following: Encountering intermittent internet connection, Observing the struggles of the students, Experiencing increasing student participation, Having doubts about the student's output, Extended extra time to learn the virtual platform, Employed engaging activities, Aligned competencies, and strategies, Demonstrated resiliency, Seeing positive thinking as good mindset, Embracing educational shift and trends, and Adapting positively to changes. The result indicates that the elementary school teachers' practices are effective in virtual classrooms, making students more engaged and actively participating in the class. It is recommended that the result be utilized, improved, and implemented to ensure the effectiveness of handling the online course. (shrink)

Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

A co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, its newspaper, and hospitality houses, the writer Dorothy Day promoted public peace nationally and internationally as a journalist, an organizer of public protests, and a builder of associational communities. Drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s conceptions of the role of speech and action in creating the public realm, this paper focuses on several of Day’s most controversial public positions: her leadership of non-cooperation against Civil Defense drills intended to prepare New York City residents to survive (...) a nuclear war; her urging of Catholics to find common cause with the Cuban revolutionary government; and her support for interracial farming communities in the Southern United States. As Arendt asserts about Rahel Varnhagen’s salon in Berlin, by being public meeting spaces hosted in private houses, Catholic Worker communities fostered egalitarian rather than “agonal” politics. Like Gandhi’s newspapers and ashrams as well as “Occupy” communities such as Zuccotti Park, Day’s newspaper was a center for incubating and implementing social reform. The Catholic Worker provided a place where writers could question the official rhetoric of such conflicts as World War II and the Cold War, put forward different interpretations of unfolding events, and chart possible alternatives to establishment agendas. (shrink)

In this, the first published collection of writings by Hippolyte Havel (1871–1950), Nathan Jun brings a crucial, yet largely forgotten revolutionary figure back into historical focus. Havel was a Czech anarchist at the center of New York’s political and artistic circles at the turn of the twentieth century. He was an editor of numerous publications, including Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth and his influence on several writers, artists, and intellectuals (including Eugene O’Neill, Joseph Stieglitz, and Sadakichi Hartmann) helped shape American modernism. (...) Proletarian Days provides an illuminating introduction to the man and his times. (shrink)

It is usually thought that only one being can be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. Challenging this monotheist conviction, I propose a universe ruled by two deities: ‘day shift God’ oversees the events that occur while the sun is up, whereas ‘night shift God’ oversees the events that occur while the sun is down. I survey objections to this proposal and conclude that the real obstacle is not an argument, but an aesthetic preference.

When does a human being begin to exist? We argue that it is possible, through a combination of biological fact and philosophical analysis, to provide a definitive answer to this question. We lay down a set of conditions for being a human being, and we determine when, in the course of normal fetal development, these conditions are first satisfied. Issues dealt with along the way include: modes of substance-formation, twinning, the nature of the intra-uterine environment, and the nature of the (...) relation between fetus and mother (connection, parthood, dependence). (shrink)

In this essay, I aim to defend Spinoza against Hegel’s claim that he annihilated finite things and the real differences they instantiate. To counter Hegel’s charge of acosmism, I try to conceive of a Spinozist kind of acosmism that would mean not a metaphysical eliminativism or nihilism about finitude and diversity, but rather a metaphysical fictionalism about finitude that entails a latent application of the principle of the discernibility of identicals. I do this by focusing on the correspondence between Spinoza’s (...) three kinds of knowledge – imagination, intellection, and intuition – and his understanding of things as being finite, infinite in kind, and absolutely infinite. In the process, I also entertain Yitzhak Melamed’s argument that Hegel was wrong to accuse Spinoza of acosmism, but was onto something by noting the lack of full or self-subsistent existence on the part of finite modes. Melamed offers a reading that claims Spinozist individuals are weak and functional properties that follow from God as his effects. I respond that Melamed would be correct only if we view things from the perspective of the first kind of knowledge, which is a perspective that is by definition false. I conclude, then, that finite things in Spinoza, qua finite, are not illusions, but fictions, and that when viewed truly or truthfully they are so many infinite in kind or absolutely infinite ways one infinite and eternal substance, God or nature, is discernibly identical to itself. (shrink)

World Mental Health Day serves as a timely reminder of the need to recognize and prioritize mental well-being amidst the growing complexities of modern life. Despite advancements in technology that have created comfort and convenience, these external developments often overshadow our inner well-being, leading to a neglect of mental health. This letter underscores the importance of nurturing our mental and emotional states, which serve as the foundation for overall health and a harmonious existence. Acknowledging the interplay between technology, distraction, and (...) mental stability is crucial in redefining what it means to lead a balanced life today. -/- . (shrink)

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

Two recent and influential papers, van Rooij 2007 and Lassiter 2012, propose solutions to the proviso problem that make central use of related notions of independence—qualitative in the first case, probabilistic in the second. We argue here that, if these solutions are to work, they must incorporate an implicit assumption about presupposition accommodation, namely that accommodation does not interfere with existing qualitative or probabilistic independencies. We show, however, that this assumption is implausible, as updating beliefs with conditional information does not (...) in general preserve independencies. We conclude that the approach taken by van Rooij and Lassiter does not succeed in resolving the proviso problem. (shrink)

By spelling out the link between Transhumanism, the 4th Industrial Revolution, and globalism, which together form the economic thrust of mankind’s projected future, this paper invites a rethink about the direction envisaged by modern-day society. The underlying linking factor of these enterprises is the Humanist movement that, like Transhumanism, shares a Utopian view of the world and supplies the relative ethical underpinning for these ‘so-called’ new advances. Three Manifestos lay out the objectives of the Humanist Association, describing it as a (...) religion that is supposed to replace other older deity-based religions. Its progressive philosophy of life without theism or other supernational beliefs leads to a break with the past and affirms humans’ “ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.” Nevertheless, can we live ethical lives where the accent is on fulfilling only our personal desires, which include the right to unrestricted contraception, abortion and divorce and death with dignity eg. Euthanasia and suicide? Ethical relativism is taken to a new extreme by Transhumanism, which rests on the idea that humans should embrace self-directed human evolution using technology to transcend their current natural state and limitations, ie disease, ageing, and even death. According to this author, it is time we moved beyond the limited materialist view, not through global movements like Humanism and Transhumanism, but through exploring and discovering our spiritual nature and the spiritual underpinning of reality. Through this endeavor, we can learn to live in harmony with each other and nature, where the accent is on service to others. Based on experience, we soon realize that our happiness depends on others being happy and includes looking after the weak, the aged, and the infirm. Ethical relativism and lack of clear values will not get us there; on the contrary, they will probably lead to hell on earth. (shrink)

13th October is Vietnamese Entrepreneur’s Day. On this special day of 2023, I received good news about my business. The book titled “The Mindsponge and BMF Analytics for Innovative Thinking in Social Sciences and Humanities,” which I co-edited with my team members, received its first Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) read.

Modern-day societies seem to be dominated by a hedonistic approach to happiness. A less short-term and more process-based definition of happiness - eudaimonism - has been proposed by Aristotle. Can this definition of happiness exist in consumer societies as proposed by Zygmunt Bauman and how can we begin to explore such a question? This essay will provide a comparison between two ideal types: eudaimonism and consumer society. With this comparison, we hope to provide a conceptual framework for further research within (...) this subject. (shrink)

Evolution of good will during spring days on a southern country, with lots of good food and rede wine (I lost my walet).

On a widely accepted view, what gives meaning to our lives is success in valuable ground projects. However, philosophers like Kieran Setiya have recently challenged the value of such orientation towards the future, and argued that meaningful living is instead a matter of engaging in atelic activities that are complete in themselves at each moment. This chapter argues that insofar as what is at issue is meaningfulness in its primary existential sense, strongly atelic activities do not suffice for meaning. Instead, (...) finding one’s life meaningful is warranted both by sustainable success in valuable prospective (future-oriented) projects, and by success in reflexive projects that aim to promote or realize a practice-dependent value that can be realized at each moment, but never for good. The latter kind of activities are only weakly atelic, since their aim remains distinct from the activity, and individual actions gain significance from serving a long-term commitment. Thus, whether our ground projects are prospective or reflexive, what we do at each moment contributes to leading a meaningful life only when it’s connected in the right way to what we do at other moments. (shrink)

The pandemic has been the most vivid agent of change that many of us have known. But it has not changed everything: plenty of the institutions, norms, and practices that sustain racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy have either weathered the storm of the crisis or been nourished by its effects. And yet enough has changed for us to see that the pandemic has profoundly recontextualised those structures and systems of violence, bringing us into a fresh negotiation with, for example, (...) the question of how we discuss and imagine freedom. Responding in part to this unexpected provocation, activist-scholars Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson forged a collaboration from the lockdown of 2020, corresponding by letter to create their forthcoming book, Rehearsals for Living, due to be published by Haymarket Books (US) and Knopf (Canada) in 2022. In this interview, we asked them to explain the epistolary form of the book and expand on the concept of “rehearsal”, before inviting them to reflect on a series of issues that animate our current crises: the politics of recognition; the notion of apocalypse; ways to disrupt linear temporalities; practises of reciprocity against proprietary logics; the gendered violence of state apparatuses; and worldbuilding as a method of resistance. In their expansive answers, Robyn and Leanne draw on their experiences as organisers and educators, commenting on anticolonial struggles, the Movement for Black Lives, and the rise of abolition discourse. Stressing the need to build a multiplicity of shared homespaces in the face of racial/colonial capitalism and organized abandonment, they challenge us to rethink the predicaments and possibilities of the present, enabling us to imagine futures liberated of extractivist, carceral governance – “planting more liberatory futures in the present”, as Robyn puts it. The task of sowing those seeds is a collective praxis of rewriting the narratives that constitute us, refusing to hear that nothing can change and insisting that everything must. (shrink)

Resumen: Con el hilo conductor de la pregunta «¿Estuviste en la Jornada Mundial de la Juventud?» se presenta un testimonio sobre la JMJ en Roma en el año 2000 y una reflexión sobre la JMJ en general. A pesar de su carácter de mega-concentración, la JMJ tiene elementos suficientes para proporcionar una experiencia personalizada de fe. Todo depende, al final, de la disposición interna del participante. En la JMJ la fe es presentada no solo de un modo racional, sino apelando (...) a la afectividad, la imaginación y los sentidos. -/- // Abstract: The question «Did you go to World Youth Day?» is used as a line of reflection about the WYD in Rome in the year 2000 and about WYD in general. Despite being a mega-concentration of people, WYD has sufficient elements to provide a personalized experience of faith. Everything depends, in the end, on the internal disposition of the participant. In WYD faith is presented not only in its rational aspect, but also in a way that appeals to affectivity, the imagination and the senses. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is a (...) moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

Con người tự hào đứng đầu chuỗi thức ăn. Tự hào hơn nữa con người có trí khôn trác tuyệt để tạo ra cả hệ tiêu chuẩn và gọi việc ăn của mình là giàu tính “đạo đức” theo cách diễn đạt của Paul Valéry trong Tel Quel (1941).

This essay seeks to engage critically with the transhumanist goal of achieving the technological possibility of transferring consciousness into a computer. The general aim of the critical impulse of this essay is to interpret the various techno-optimistic attempts at transcending the bodily condition of life as being a kind of modern-day necromancy. By alluding to the magical or ritual notion of necromancy, this essay will show how the rationale behind Transhumanism and mind-transfer are premised on a desire to overcome life (...) itself by becoming immortal. Necromancy, whereby a sorcerer or practitioner suspends the dialectics of life and death, elevates the human to an inhuman position by attacking the very foundation of life itself – reviving the dead. This essay will juxtapose Transhumanism with necromancy by interpreting the goal to develop mind-transferring technologies in relation to texts that describe various technological means for practicing the art of necromancy or dark magic. By reinterpreting Transhumanism in this manner, this essay will show how the ritualistic, magical, or mythical foundations, that humanity had earlier called upon to overcome the fragility of their bodies have survived in the premises that underlining the modern-day endeavors to overcome the body via technological means. (shrink)

To follow the legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a RUSA Sponsored One-Day Facutly Development Programme on “Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Indian Constitution and Indian Society” organised by the Department of Philosophy and P.G. Department of Public Administation held on 20th January, 2016 was a creative and fruitful effort to bring together the scholars and academicians from several disciplines to participate in the deliberations related to the conceptual understanding and insights of the philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.