Merleau-Ponty suggests in his Nature lectures that myth provides the best way into thinking the relation of strange kinship between humanity and animality. He goes on to refigure Husserl’s paradigm of the two hands touching to extend beyond merely human-to-human relations, invoking in the process the myth of Narcissus. By carefully examining Merleau-Ponty’s late refiguration of that paradigm, alongside the revised conception of narcissism that it helps him to develop, we find that while human-animal empathy is made possible by a (...) ground of intercorporeal kinship, human-animal estrangement makes possible the emergence of an ethical relation to other animals, contingent upon the sublimation of animal desire. Holding human-animal kinship and estrangement in tension reveals a nascent ideal present implicitly in the early stages of childhood development: a vision of the possibility of interspecies harmony, rooted in the bodily reciprocity that drives the process of self-maturation. (shrink)

This chapter explores the cognitive and moral significance of the kind of imaginative experience poetry offers. It identifies two forms of imaginative experience that are especially important to poetry: ‘experiencing-as’ and ‘experience-taking’. Experiencing-as is ‘inherently first-personal, embodied, and phenomenologically characterized’ while in experience-taking one ‘takes the perspective of another, simulating some aspect or aspects of his psychology as if they were his own’. Through a sensitive and probing reading of Paul Celan’s Psalm, the chapter shows the role these two forms (...) of experience play in producing the unique form of ethical and epistemic value poetry can bear. The chapter’s argument for this has important implications for our understanding of the poetic imagination and nature of our experience of meaning in poetic contexts. (shrink)

We present bibliometric evidence for increasing estrangement between the philosophy of economics and economics itself. Our analysis centers on research articles published in the Journal of Economic Methodology (JEM) between 1994 and 2021. We analyze the citations within these research articles, in particular with respect to the citations of economics. Our results are fourfold. (1) The share of economic citations in JEM articles has been decreasing. (2) The remaining economic citations in JEM articles are increasingly older relative to citation (...) patterns within economics. (3) The profile of economic citations in JEM articles is increasingly dissimilar when compared to what is cited within economics. (4) There is decreasing diversity with regards to the share of attention towards different economic subfields in the articles published in JEM when compared to economics. We discuss interpretations of this evidence for estrangement between philosophy of economics and economics. (shrink)

The first part of the paper, “Foyer: feeling, look- ing, between-us” establishes the role of touch in intersubjectivity. Starting with Irigaray’s notion of the entre-nous, the “between-us,” I use touch as an example of deeply intersubjective communi- cation, an attempt to overcome estrangement. The ambiguity of touching, the physical action of touching and the affective reaction of feeling, is central to this. The second section, “Reception: receptivity, orderings of the sensible,” consolidates this experience of intersubjective touching within the confines (...) of the demarcated spatial divisions of the hotel, which leads to insights concerning the physical and psychical architecture of the archetypal hotel. We return to examine the notion of “estrangement,” questioning how and why it is altered by spatial layout and sequencing. In this section I subject the usual discussion of Freud’s unheimlich or “uncanny” to some affective spatial observations, and suggest Caillois’ idea of “psychasthenia” (1987) as a useful supplement to think about touching and feeling in the unhomely home of the hotel. The third section, “Room: the caress,” of Levinas’ notion of the caress and Irigaray’s reading of this, from which I grasp towards an ethical-affective relation of between-ness, as much through non-touching as through physical touching. (shrink)

Among the works of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, well-known for his scathing and obscene irony, there is the novel True History. In this work Lucian, being in an intense satirical mood, intended to undermine the values of the classical world. Through a continuous parade of wonderful events, beings and situations as a substitute for the realistic approach to reality, he parodies the scientific knowledge, creating a literary model for the subsequent writers. Without doubt, nowadays, Lucian’s large influence (...) on the history of literature has been highlighted. What is missing is pointing out the specific characteristics that would lead to the placement of True History at the starting point of Science Fiction. We are going to highlight two of these features: first, the operation of “cognitive estrangement”, which aims at providing the reader with the perception of the difference between the convention and the truth, and second, the use of strange innovations (“novum”) that verify the value of Lucian’s work by connecting it to historicity. (shrink)

Herman Melville was so estranged from the religious beliefs of his time and place that his faith was doubted during his own lifetime. In the middle of the twentieth century some scholars even associated him with nihilism. To date, however, no one has offered a detailed account of Melville in relation to Nietzsche, who first made nihilism a topic of serious concern to the Western philosophical tradition. In this essay, I discuss some of the hitherto unexplored similarities between Melville’s ideas (...) and Nietzsche’s reflections on and reactions to the death of God and the advent of nihilism in the West. (shrink)

In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a fascinating account of how we know what we believe that he calls the “transparency account.” This account relies on the transparency relation between the question of whether we believe that p and the question of whether p is true. That is, we can consider the former by considering the grounds for the latter. But Moran’s account has been criticized by David Finkelstein, who argues that it fails to explain how we know (...) our attitudes and emotions more generally. The aim of this paper is to show how Moran’s transparency account can be extended to meet this criticism by modifying it, using insights from Davidson’s view on attitudes and emotions. (shrink)

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use,” James Baldwin writes in The Fire Next Time, “it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” This essay is a meditation on Baldwin’s claim. I begin by presenting Baldwin’s account of a grave danger that characterizes our social lives – a source of profound estrangement from ourselves and from one another. (...) I draw on the work of the theologian Howard Thurman in order to explain how faith in a loving God can enable us to cope with this danger in a manner that may render us, in some sense, larger, freer, and more loving. Finally, I sketch Baldwin’s account of how we might cope with this danger not by relying on God’s love, but rather by relying in certain ways on our love for one another. (shrink)

Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of (...) eidetics from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory. Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community, normativity. (shrink)

This article addresses the question whether skiing as a nature sport enables practitioners to develop a rapport with nature, or rather estranges and insulates them from their mountainous ambiance. To address this question, I analyse a recent skiing movie from a psychoanalytical perspective and from a neuro-scientific perspective. I conclude that Jean-Paul Sartre’s classical but egocentric account of his skiing experiences disavows the technicity involved in contemporary skiing as a sportive practice for the affluent masses, which actually represents an urbanisation (...) of the sublime, symptomatic for the current era. (shrink)

Kant’s view of human beings is, as much of his philosophy, notoriously based on the dichotomy between the phenomenal and the noumenal world. This dichotomy digs a rift across human nature by separating the animal and the rational parts of it, their heteronomous and autonomous components, their sense of duty and their self-love. Human beings, for Kant, inhabit both worlds. On the one hand, even if we agree with Kant that the fundamental moral norms are constitutive of our rational and (...) autonomous agency and therefore inescapable, it remains unclear whether and how far these norms can motivate finite and heteronomous human beings, normally concerned with their own ends, interests and inclinations. On the other hand, although moral actions may express who we really are as rational beings, they may nonetheless leave us with an unfulfilled but legitimate need to reconcile morality with our own ends as finite, animal beings, inevitably concerned with living our own lives. Sasha Mudd described these phenomena as two forms of alienation: moral alienation (the estrangement of the heteronomous agent, motivated by happiness and inclinations, from a morality perceived as alien, foreign, and hardly motivating) and practical alienation (the estrangement of the autonomous moral agent from her empirical and heteronomous dimension – her projects, desires, aspirations, inclinations, and so on). On Mudd’s account, Kant successfully escape the first kind of alienation through his doctrine of respect. Here I argue, contra Mudd, that there are at least two ways in which Kant leaves moral agents alienated from morality itself. (shrink)

This paper discusses the late Michael Dummett’s characterization of the estrangement between physics and philosophy. It argues against those physicists who hold that modern physics, rather than philosophy, can answer traditional metaphysical questions such as why there is something rather than nothing. The claim is that physics cannot solve metaphysical problems since metaphysical issues are in principle empirically underdetermined. The paper closes with a critical discussion of the assumption of some cosmologists that the Universe was created out of nothing: (...) In contrast to this misleading assumption, it is proposed that the Universe has a necessary existence and that the present epoch after the Big Bang is a contingent realization of the Universe. (shrink)

In this article I ask how fruitful the concept of alienation can be for thinking critically about the nature and causes of the contemporary environmental crisis. The concept of alienation enables us to claim that modern human beings have become alienated or estranged from nature and need to become reconciled with it. Yet reconciliation has often been understood—notably by Hegel and Marx—as the state of being ‘at-home-with-oneself-in-the-world’, in the name of which we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, to overcome anything (...) in nature that is alien to the human mind. This approach to alienation derives ultimately from the German Idealist philosopher J. G. Fichte. I explore an alternative conception of alienation and reconciliation to be found in the work of the Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. The Romantics think of reconciliation as including a dimension of alienation, in the form of an awareness that nature is greater than and exceeds the understanding of human beings, insofar as we are merely limited parts of the all-encompassing whole that is nature. I argue that this is a more fruitful approach to alienation and reconciliation than that pursued by Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with Richard Moran's account of self-knowledge in his book Authority and Estrangement. After presenting the main lines of his account, I contend that, in spite of its novelty and interest, it may have some shortcomings. Concerning beliefs formed through deliberation, the account would seem to face problems of circularity or regress. And it looks also wanting concerning beliefs not formed in this way. I go on to suggest a diagnosis of these problems, according to (...) which they would arise out of a view of agents too strongly dependent on the will. /// Este trabajo se ocupa de la concepción del autoconocimiento en el libro de Richard Moran Authority and Estrangement. Tras presentar las líneas maestras de dicha concepción, sostengo que ésta, a pesar de su novedad e interés, podría adolecer de defectos importantes. Así, con respecto a las creencias formadas mediante la deliberación, la propuesta de Moran parece enfrentarse a problemas de circularidad o de regreso. Y parece también insatisfactoria acerca de creencias no formadas de ese modo. Finalmente, sugiero un diagnóstico de estos problemas, según el cual éstos surgirían de una concepción de los agentes excesivamente dependiente de la voluntad. (shrink)

This paper is about the modern-day problem of human alienation and fulfillment in work from the perspective of the Catholic social thought. It analyses the symptoms and causes of work alienation, the meaning of work and its significance in the individual’s quest for fulfillment, and how the Catholic social teachings can shed light on the problems involved in transforming the world of work. Alienation in work affects one’s subjective and psychological fulfillment, but it is not ultimately dependent on material culture (...) or economic models. The problem of alienation in work cannot be dealt with by simply modifying the production process or the wage system, although these are factors that alienate people even more. Social problems cannot be solved without light of faith and the recognition of the moral order that is rooted in God. In the final analysis, alienation is not simply the loss of meaning in human activities. It is the loss of life’s meaning and man’s estrangement from his own authentic nature, including his reason for being and final end, that results from the rejection of God and His teachings. What Catholicism provides is a combination of economic, psychological, moral, social, and spiritual motives for work that will make it personally fulfilling. (shrink)

Lakatos constructed his major contribution to the philosophy of science, the methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP), in the late sixties and early seventies in England, after he had already become estranged from the Popperian philosophy of science. In this paper, we attempt to show that the MSRP was motivated by his philosophical and political ideas from the forties and fifties in Hungary, when he was imbued with the communist ideology and was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Lukács. From (...) this point of view, the MSRP can be considered to be a special representation of Lakatos' earlier political values and practice in the field of history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Disturbances to one's sense of self, the feeling that one has ‘lost a part of oneself’ or that one ‘no longer feels like oneself,’ are frequently recounted throughout the bereavement literature. Engaging Allan Køster's important contribution to this issue, this article reinforces his suggestion that, by rupturing the existential texture of self-familiarity, bereavement can result in experiences of estrangement that can be meaningfully understood according to the concept of self-alienation. Nevertheless, I suggest that whilst Køster's relational interpretation of alienation (...) as the withdrawal of heteronomy can be applied to the experience of world-collapse in bereavement, what sets bereavement apart from other limit situations is the fact that it involves an intersubjective relation between the living and the dead. In contrast to Køster, therefore, I suggest that the experience of self-alienation that is distinctive to bereavement results from the fact that the bereaved is exposed to, and co-opted by, the absolute alterity of death itself. (shrink)

When a loved one dies, it is common for the bereaved to feel profoundly lonely, disconnected from the world with the sense that they no longer belong. In philosophy, this experience of ‘loss and loneliness’ has been interpreted according to both a loss of possibilities and a loss of the past. But it is unclear how these interpretations apply to the distinctive way in which loss and loneliness manifest in old age. Drawing on the phenomenological analyses of old age given (...) by de Beauvoir and Améry, I consider how the diminishment of the capacity for projection and recollection complicate recent interpretations of loss and loneliness, whilst nevertheless reinforcing the conclusion that in old age subjectivity is necessarily impoverished. Developing a critical stance on de Beauvoir and Améry’s underlying conception of subjectivity, I turn to Levinas in considering whether or not there is a way to reimagine subjectivity such that the estrangement and alienation of older adults might be ameliorated rather than exacerbated. Grounded in the passive body-in-itself rather than the self-transcending capacity of the body-for-itself, I suggest it becomes possible to reconceptualise the experience of loss and loneliness in old age; both in terms of what is lost and what needs to be restored if older adults are to be helped to find themselves at home in the world in the midst of, and indeed because of, manifold loss. (shrink)

Blame is fascinating yet elusive, and it is both of these things because it is so complex. It seems to have a cognitive aspect (the belief that someone has done wrong, perhaps), but it also seems to have an emotional aspect (resentment at being disrespected, perhaps). And then of course there is the outside-of-the-head aspect of blame, which manifests itself in rebukes and reprimands, accusations and distrust, cold shoulders and estrangement. Still, accounts of blame that identify it with beliefs (...) or emotions seem inadequate. In this paper I draw on the work of Harry Frankfurt to suggest an alternative account, according to which blame most centrally involves changes in the structure of the will. (shrink)

Is the exemplar of modern ethical theory estranged from their intimates because the motive of duty dominates their motivational psychology? While this challenge against modern ethical theory is familiar, I argue that with respect to a certain strand of Kantian ethical theory, it does not so much as make sense. I explain the content and functional role of the motive of duty in the psychology of the moral exemplar, stressing in particular how that motive shapes and informs the content of (...) others, including those characteristic of intimacy. I argue that to the extent that a subject does not integrate their motive of duty with their other motives, their moral and intimate relationships are compromised, and on the same grounds, because intimate relationships are interpersonal relationships and the motive of duty just is the motive to respect another person as a separate person. (shrink)

The scope of this article is to propose a reflection about the concept of citizenship presented by Aristotle in his work “Politics”, and which people were considered citizens then in comparison to nowadays. There is no intention to make a deep historical assessment about the particularities of each period of time, but analyse the characteristics which kept some groups inside of the political life and as well kept other groups away from it, in order to demonstrate how strong is the (...) maintenance of the estrangement between people who achieve everything is possible to, whereas other groups cannot achieve even what is deemed to be worthy by law. Keywords: citizenship; citizen; state; law; minorities; achievement. (shrink)

This essay confronts Ray Brassier’s vindication of nihilism with other two important but frequently underexamined philosophical attempts to overcome nihilism: Hans Jonas’ and Keiji Nishitani’s. By putting these different takes on nihilism into dialogue, it explores some blind spots in Brassier’s position, as well as some of the practical consequences, for our current planetary situation, of undertaking a radical divorce between the normative and the natural that results from his radical nihilism. The article opts for a more moderate acceptance and (...) eventual self-overcoming of nihilism, according to which, even if natural entities are indifferent to human reasons and meanings, this does not entail that nature is bereft of a human-independent normative dimension. In other words, the essay argues that care must be taken not to confuse criticisms of an anthropocentric conception of reasons and meanings with the belief that meaning is completely absent from the natural world. Thus, the central contention of the article is that, given our current climate and ecological catastrophe, one of the most pressing tasks of contemporary philosophy is to understand normativity in non-anthropocentric ways, so that humans are no longer considered as the only entities that respond to normativity. Such an attitude conceives humans as estranged normative creatures amidst a meaningless, indifferent natural world, toward which they would have no ethical responsibilities. The essay finishes by suggesting ways in which to develop an account that does not fall into this ethical vacuum. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to describe and resist two intellectual tendencies when thinking about how to do political philosophy in India today. The first involves a resistance to ‘Western political thought’, as alien, unfamiliar, or simply inappropriate for thinking about Indian political realities. The estrangement from Western political thought as 'foreign' comes with a concomitant instinct regarding how we should do political theory in India, namely by engaging with Indian thinkers and traditions, both ancient and modern. -/- (...) My primary aim is to resist this division between ‘Western’ and ‘Indian’ thought, particularly when the ‘Indian’ in Indian political thought is taken to be a matter of origins, motivating a search for the indigenous. My own answer to the question posed by the title of the chapter – “What is ‘Indian’ about Indian Political Thought” does not rest upon such a division. Indeed, I believe that there are forms of engagement with Western political thought in an Indian context which are not different in kind from engagement with that thought in a Western context. These engagements are not well described as doing either ‘Western’ or ‘Indian’ political thought. (shrink)

Introduction: The experience of disconnection is common in first-person accounts of grief. One way in which this feeling of estrangement can manifest is through the splintering apart of the time of the mourner and the time of the world. Supplementing and extending Thomas Fuchs' influential idea of temporal desynchronization, my aim in this article is to give an account of the heterogeneous ways in which grief can disturb time. -/- Method: I organize these manifold experiences of temporal disruption according (...) to a method of "depth analysis": a phenomenological interpretation of temporal desynchronization that tracks the increasing disconnect between the mourner and the world as it manifests in time. In so doing, I draw on a wide range of descriptive first-person responses to the question "Has your experience of time changed in any way?" - included as part of an online questionnaire on the emotional experience of grief conducted recently with colleagues at the University of York. I then stratify these according to a mild, moderate, and profound level of disruption. -/- Results: Before setting out the results of this analysis, I give a background account of Fuchs' interpretation of temporal desynchronization in phenomenological psychopathology more generally and in grief specifically. In my results, I then supplement and extend his interpretation by setting out my phenomenological depth analysis of the increasing disconnect between the time of the mourner and the time of the world, as demonstrated by the questionnaire data. As I argue, such a fine-grained account is an important step in understanding the way time can shape the meaning and significance of different grief experiences. Following this, in my discussion, I demonstrate how a depth approach might be helpful in differentiating between temporal disturbances in a range of affective disorders and give an illustrative comparison of grief and depression. -/- Conclusion: In conclusion, I reflect briefly on what grief might reveal about the depth and complexity of temporal experience itself. In so doing, I consider how the radical disruptions to time in grief might transform the mourner's experience of time irreversibly but in a way that enables a renewed connection to both their deceased loved one and the world from which they have become estranged. (shrink)

One of the strongest critiques against Fanon’s work centers on the idea that Fanon leaves black subjects caught in slavish regard of whites. Such a depiction of the black subject does not explain Fanon’s own life and his ability to escape slavish regard of whites and become a formative intellectual. Such slavish regard of whites, in other words, the idea of an inferiority complex has been challenged by notable current black philosophers, including Lucius Outlaw. In autobiographical references within Fanon and (...) Outlaw’s work, the two scholars share similar childhood experiences but draw very different conclusions on the development of an inferiority complex. I argue that this estrangement in slavish regard of whites occurs when reading Fanon’s work only through a dialectic framework. A phenomenological reading of Fanon’s work illuminates the ambiguous possibilities of experience. In a phenomenological reading of experience, admitting inferiority complexes does not necessarily debilitate and trap subjects in perpetuity. (shrink)

English Abstract In Art as Experience, John Dewey decried the estrangement of art from lived human experience, both by artificial conceptual walls and the physical walls that secluded art within museums. Instead he argued that making and enjoying art are crucial organic functions that sustain communities and integrate individuals within their environments. In the 1920’s Diego Rivera became one of the luminaries of the Mexican muralist movement by creating frescoes that were rooted in Mexican life, both in their subject (...) matter and public location. Rivera and the other artists working within the government cultural program guided by José Vasconcelos created murals that boldly expressed the new values of democracy, peaceful revolution, racial equality and cultural pride. This essay explores the deep resonance between Rivera’s most prominent murals from this period and Dewey’s argument that art is a refined and integral feature of human experience. In particular, this essay will examine the great extent to which these men independently came to the common understanding that for people to thrive and grow they need to create and experience art that grows out of and remains rooted in their culture. Without claiming that either thinker influenced the other, this essay argues that their works mutually inform and enrich each other. Both men sought to free art from the museum, but where Dewey urged us tear down the walls that separated art from lived experience, Rivera transformed walls themselves into murals that unified and educated the people of Mexico and restored their culture. (shrink)

This article examines the role of insomnia in Emil Cioran’s philosophy. Taken as a whole, his work appears to be exceptionally significant both from the point of view of anthropology and illness narrative studies. There has never been any doubt that his life and work are dominated by a sense of ennui, loneliness and estrangement. Yet these themes are merely symptoms of more fundamental problems he grappled with, i.e. the grotesque nature everyday life, ecstasy in a life without gods, (...) being an absolute-in-itself and absolute-for itself, etc. This study is focused on insomnia, treated as a primary anthropological category and studied with the help of phenomenological and hermeneutical methodology. Drawing on, among others, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Arthur Schopenhauer, the article formulates a set of substantially new conceptual propositions that offer a new approach to the problematics of Cioran’s work. (shrink)

A new philosophical and psychological concept is needed for the alienated and radically different human being according to the nihilist Romanian-French philosopher E.M. Cioran. This concept of the not-man describes a post-anthropological subject, which is “inhumanˮ from a psychological point of view, emphasizing estrangement and otherness in the definition of humanity. I have compared Cioran's provocative and unusual term with Nietzsche's analysis of the overman – the difference between the two conepts proceeding from two conflicting nihilist perspectives – and (...) I also have identified the not-man in the novel of the Japanese writer Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human. (shrink)

In the distant future, a thousand years after "The Seven Days of Fire"—the holocaust that rapacious industrialization spawned—the earth is a wasteland of sterile deserts and toxic jungles that threaten the survival of the few remaining human beings. This is the world of Hayao Miyazaki's film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. In this film, Miyazaki offers a vision of an alternative to the violent quest for dominion that has brought about this environmental degradation, through the struggle of the (...) young princess of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä. As a messianic figure, I contend the shōjo Nausicaä offers a beneficial estrangement from common conceptions of the gospel and opens up the ecological significance of Christ's message of non-violence. Exploring the ecological and pacific aspects of the gospel through this figure, I argue, may provide a helpful lens for examining our own distorting visions in this age of war and environmental crisis. (shrink)

This article draws on two Mencian illustrations of human goodness: the example of the child in the well and the metaphor of the continually deforested mountain. By reconstructing Mencius’ two novel ideas within the framework of a phenomenological thought-experiment, this article’s purpose is to explain the validity of this uncommon approach to ethics, an approach which recognizes that subjective participation is necessary to achieve any ethical understanding. It is through this active phenomenological introspection that the individual grasps the goodness of (...) human nature, whilst simultaneously coming to realize one’s own degree of closeness (or estrangement) to this universal nature, depending on the success of the thought experiment. Despite the apparent logical circularity of reformulating Mencius in such fashion, this article further maintains that no theoretical premises need be taken up prior to reenacting the Mencian thought-experiment. On the contrary, this article explains that knowledge of human nature manifests itself in the very moment of the proposed epistemic act. (shrink)

This paper shows how amatonormativity and its attendant social pressures converge at the intersections of race, gender, romantic relationality, and sexuality to generate peculiar challenges to polyamorous African American men in American society. Contrary to the view maintained in the “slut-vs-stud” phenomenon, I maintain that the label ‘player’ when applied to polyamorous African American men functions as a pernicious stereotype and has denigrating effects. Specifically, I argue that stereotyping polyamorous African American men as players estranges them from themselves and it (...) constrains their agency by preemptively foreclosing the set of possibilities of what one’s sexual or romantic relational identities can be. (shrink)

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

at seek to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for a work to count as fiction. She argues that this goal cannot really be achieved; instead, she appeals to the notion of genre to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. This notion is significantly more flex- ible, since it invites us to identify standard—but not necessary—and counter-standard features of works of fiction in light of our classificatory practices. More specifically, Friend argues that the genre of fiction has the genre of nonfiction—and (...) only that genre—as its con- trast class. I will refer to the particular way in which Friend elaborates this claim as the contrast view. I have, nevertheless, the impression that this view unnecessarily narrows down the array of perspectives and attitudes from which we can approach works of fiction. I will thus develop a line of reasoning to the effect that the contrast view should rather be construed as picking out a particular way of relating to works of fiction that lies at the end of a continuum defined by different degrees of reflectivity and estrangement. This implies that the contrast view is false as a general claim about how we experience works of fiction, even though this view may appropriately de- pict a specific way of approaching such works. (shrink)

Schleiermacher’s Icoses is the first book-length study of the 1813 Academy address “Ueber die verschiedenen Methodes des Uebersetzens”; in addition to celebrating its 200 years of influence, the book undertakes a comprehensive examination of the whole argument, from its theory of hermeneutics to its foreignizing theory of translation and all the passing “poetic” elements on which Schleiermacher’s rhetoric always so heavily relied. The “icoses” in the title are specifically an articulation of the Gefühle/feelings that lie at the heart of Schleiermacher’s (...) hermeneutics—specifically, his insistence that feelings are shaped by society, and so seem “objective” or “universal,” but are experienced inwardly by each individual, so that they seem “subjective” and “private.” Research-based “feeling one’s way into an author” is guided by culture, and is therefore not, pace certain twentieth-century hermeneutical philosophers, mystical but “icotic.” -/- TESTIMONIA -/- Robinson's intriguing study of Schleiermacher's 1813 Academy address "On the Different Methods of Translating," which grew out of an article commemorating its bicentennial, is the first book-length commentary on the address. Robinson works meticulously through the entire text, both the German original and his own English translation, exposing its logical and other argumentative flaws mercilessly, but in order not to attack or dismiss it, rather to show that logic is not the right interpretive lens through which to view Schleiermacher's project. The right lens, Robinson suggests, is what he calls "icoses": social ecologies that shape our thought and convictions as members of a social group. The result is a fresh look at Schleiermacher's address and the hermeneutics that inform it, and one that generates surprising new insights into foreignization, feeling-based hermeneutics, and the Romantic ethos of estrangement. (Radegundis Stolze, Technische Universität Darmstadt) -/- Robinson's reading of Schleiermacher deals in detail with the whole address, and more, bringing out numerous problems that have remained hidden, dormant, and should be discussed. It provocatively picks up what any close reader feels: Schleiermacher's is not a highly coherent account of translation -­ it got some things right but left many gaps and contradictions. Robinson's inquiry suggests how the unresolved problems might be approached in an unexpected way: by a hermeneutic blurring of distinctions between the subjective and the objective, the psychological and the linguistic, the individual and the social. (Anthony Pym, Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies Rovira i Virgili University, Visiting Professor Monterey Institute of International Studies). (shrink)

The alien in science fiction has not often been seen as part of an imperial colonial discourse. By examining John W. Campbell’s founding golden age SF text, “Who Goes There?” (1938), this paper explores the ways in which the alien adheres to an invisible mythos of whiteness that has come to be seen through a colonizing logic as isomorphic with the human. Campbell’s alien-monster comes to disseminate and invade both self and world and as such serves as an interrogation of (...) what whites have done through colonization. It is thus part and parcel of imperial domination and discourse and appears as the very nightmare of whiteness in the form of its liminal and estranged shadow side. Part of what has made Campbell’s text so influential is that it offers a new type of alien invasion in the figure of “contagion,” which speaks “to the transition from colonial to postcolonial visions of modernity and its attendant catastrophes” (Rieder, 124), and which can be further examined as a race metaphor in American SF—indeed, as the white man’s fear of racial mixing that has a long and dehumanizing history. Through its threat of mixture, I read the alien as a creolizing figure that both troubles and undoes the white/black, human/nonhuman binary in science fiction, which I also read as being a creolizing, i.e., hybrid and plastic, genre. (shrink)

Part of a symposium on Stanley Cavell's memoir Little Did I Know held at the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center in 2011, this brief essay connects some themes from that book to concerns about knowledge of "what we say" as treated in the opening essays of Cavell's first book, Must We Mean What We Say?; and it attempts to illuminate the latter concerns by comparing them to recent philosophical work on self-knowledge, especially Richard Moran's book Authority and Estrangement.

The question of “how one should philosophize?” is driven not only out of the desire to have a glimpse of the ideas worthy to be regarded as true, but also to address the pressing problems of the time. Marx’s humanism, as articulated mainly in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, suggests a certain thinking that addresses the latter. It is the humanism that discovers the concrete estrangement of workers from the abstraction of the political economy at the backdrop (...) of human emancipation. Heidegger, however, in the Letter on Humanism, poses critical challenge against the humanism Marx suggested. He questions Marx’s humanism (and the humanism in totality) to provide the human being direction to attain its essential humanity, and not just relegate man into inhumanity of animalitas. The paper critically examines the ideas given by Heidegger. Although Heidegger could be correct in his examination of the previous humanism, which includes Marx, how he understands the essence of man as “ek-sistence” is but a form of abstraction, an abstraction which is based in his inhuman concept of thinking. The paper does not entirely denounce Heidegger’s thinking, but appeals to recognize the dangers containing in its ambiguity and abstractness. Marx’s humanism, on the other hand, though has forgotten being, is more concrete. With this, the paper calls to repose the tasks and the questions of humanism, and directs thinking out from the dangers of abstraction to concrete understanding of human beings, their problems and solutions. (shrink)

The issue on whether the epistemological view of Engels and the Marxists can be identified to Marx opens the question on what Marx’s actual view on knowledge. This debate on Marx’s epistemology is divided between realist and idealist interpretation of his texts: the former reads that for Marx knowledge is a copy of an independent reality existing outside of man, while the latter views that for the same philosopher, knowledge is in some sense constructed by the subject. This study contributes (...) to the discussion by closely reading the epistemology of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. The Manuscripts contain important epistemological remarks that are subject of scholarly debate. The scope of the study aims to read the texts on their own terms, and through that, avoid the reductive readings of Marx that plague his interpretations. Through this approach, this study argues that Marx in the Manuscripts conveys an idealist epistemology based on his concept on how human need shapes human cognition. Marx further develops this idealism in the texts in his critique of political economy, where he shows that this science is grounded on the estranged need. In the end, this study underscores that the Manuscripts’ idealism shows a part in Marx’s thinking that underlines the role cognition plays to address forms of estrangements brought by the structures of private property. It highlights how Marx empowers man as capable of resolving the estrangements in the society through the development of both action and cognition. (shrink)