This article deals with how moral freedom relates to historicity and contingency by comparing Kierkegaard's theory of the anthropological synthesis to Kant's concept of moral character. The comparison indicates that there are more Kantian elements in Kierkegaard's anthropology than shown by earlier scholarship. More specifically, both Kant and Kierkegaard see a true change in the way one lives as involving not only a revolution in the way one thinks, but also that one takes over—and tries to reform—both oneself and (...) human society. Also, Kierkegaard relies on the ideality of ethics and the doctrines of moral rigorism and radical evil. However, Kierkegaard can be seen as trying to find amore systematic role for historicity and contingency than Kant by developing the concept of facticity and by analyzing the so-called “despair of possibility.”. (shrink)

In this thesis, the philosophical debate on conceptual relativism between Quine and Davidson is examined, along with their respective theories of interpretation. A new perspective on the issues raised by these philosophers in their theoretical accounts of linguistic comprehension is introduced through an examination of two research projects conducted in the paradigm of linguistic anthropology. The philosophical standpoints are analyzed against the background of the data these empirical projects deliver, and the question of their validity in the face of (...) these findings is explored. In the light of the presented research, Davidson’s account grounded in the principle of charity is deemed as more empirically plausible than Quine’s theory, which stands on the existence of alternative conceptual schemes. In addition, the current analysis itself is investigated as a case-study in the considerations regarding the relationship between empirical science and philosophy. (shrink)

By comparing the theories of evil found in Kant and Kierkegaard, this article aims to shed new light on Kierkegaard, as well as on the historical and conceptual relations between the two philosophers. The author shows that there is considerable overlap between Kant's doctrine of radical evil and Kierkegaard's views on guilt and sin and argues that Kierkegaard approved of the doctrine of radical evil. Although Kierkegaard's distinction between guilt and sin breaks radically with Kant, there are more (...) Kantian elements in Kierkegaard than was shown by earlier scholarship. Finally, Kierkegaard provides an alternative solution to the problem of the universality of guilt, a problem much discussed in the literature on Kant. (shrink)

Youthness and Aging, Time elapsed and relapsed memory, between lollenyness and secrecy about our desires, in front of openess and the back of the Ego.

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has threatened ethnographic inquiry, undermining its quintessential characteristic. Participant observation, then, has been thoroughly dismembered by the radical measures implemented to prevent the spread of the virus. This phenomenon, in short, has dragged anthropologists to a liminal state within which ethnography is paradoxically caught in an onto-epistemological unstable vortex. The question of being here and not there, during the pandemic, is epitomised in the instability of different spatio-temporal contexts that overlap through technological mediations. Reflecting on (...) previous fieldwork experiences and current virtual inquiries with the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon unfolds how COVID-19 has thoroughly reshaped how the author approaches subjects' socio-ecological settings. Against this background, the article argues that corporeal immersion remains a necessary condition for the anthropological scrutiny of multispecies relationalities amidst the challenging times of the Anthropocene. The article nevertheless demonstrates that the intellectual efforts to grasp the different material temporalities of virtual spaces embrace the ethical principles concerning the renunciation of fieldwork with vulnerable communities. Furthermore, a reflective and speculative stance is proposed to actualise the snapshots of faraway physicalities linking them to past embodied and multi-sensory experiences. It is ultimately theorised how these mnemonic devices operate as creative forms of inquiry that overcome the pandemic consequences, extra-stimulating our cognitive capabilities to reflect on prior and possible socio-material interactions. (shrink)

Kant's radical criticism of the passions has a central but largely overlooked moral-psychological component: for Kant, the passions promote a kind of self-deception he calls ‘rationalizing’. In analysing the connection between passion and rationalizing self-deception, I identify and reconstruct two essential traits of Kant's conception of the passions. I argue (1) that rationalizing self-deception, according to Kant, contributes massively to the emergence and consolidation of passions. It aims to resolve a psychological conflict between passion and moral duty when in (...) fact, it does not resolve but perpetuates this conflict. I then argue (2) that rationalizing does not necessarily aim to devalue moral duty, as Kant seems to suggest in the Groundwork. It can also aim to revalue the ‘counterweight’. By analysing Kant's presentation of several individual passions in the Anthropology, I demonstrate that rationalizing here is concerned with elevating these passions and making them pass as morally (or at least prudentially) justified. (shrink)

Mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the system stable evolutionary strategy Homo sapiens – genetic and cultural coevolution techno-cultural balance – are analyzed. оe main content of the study can be summarized in the following the- ses: stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens includes superposition of three basic types (biological, cultural and technological) of adaptations, the integrity of the system provides by two coevolutionary ligament its elements – the genetic-cultural coevolution and techno-cultural balance, the system takes as result of by (...) develop- ment of genetic and information technologies by advent of genetic and informa- tion technologies extremely unstable conūguration; a harbinger of a radical change in the mechanisms of global evolution religion is a consequence of structural and functional organization of the human psyche; it played (along with science and technology) the role of socio-cultural adaptation of the human mind are present a number of ideas or concepts (the idea of God, including) the genesis of that ideas is associated with the interaction of two information systems, that appear to each other as information substrates – emotional, and verbal-logical (discursive) forms; evolution of the mentality has two nodes, that corresponding to the dominance of rationalism or religion in spiritual culture; the problem of rational justiūcation of religion in modern science is presented by two alternative methodologies – evo- lutionary epistemological and metaphysical-ontological ones; both methodologies are incompatible in a logical perspective; in the evolutionary epistemological im- pact concept of religion and science are equal and alternative building blocks of a stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens, and their balance sheet pro. (shrink)

The debate surrounding the way in which Heidegger and Blumenberg understand the modern age is an opportunity to discuss two different approaches to history. On one hand, from Heidegger’s perspective, history should be understood as starting from how Western thought related to Being, which, in metaphysical thinking, took the form of the forgetfulness of Being. Thus, the modern age represents the last stage in the process of forgetfulness of Being, which announces the moment of the rethinking of the relationship with (...) Being by appealing to the authentic disclosure of Being. On the other hand, Blumenberg understands history as the result of the reoccupation process, which means replacing old theories with other new ones. Thus, to the historical approach it is not important to identify epochs as periods of time between two events, but to think about the discontinuities occurring throughout history. Starting from here, the modern age will be thought of not as an expression of the radicalization of the forgetfulness of Being, but as a response to the crises of medieval conceptions. For the same reason, the interpretation of history as a history of the forgetfulness of Being is considered by Blumenberg to subordinate history to an absolute principle, without taking into account its protagonists’ needs and necessities. (shrink)

Contemporary political theory (CPT) has approached questions of plurality and diversity by drawing rather implicitly on anthropological accounts of difference. This was the case with the ‘cultural turn’, which significantly shaped theories of multiculturalism. Similarly, the current ‘ontological turn’ is gaining influence and leaving a marked impact on CPT. I examine the recent turn and assess both the possibilities it offers and the challenges it poses for decentering CPT and opening radical, decolonial avenues for thinking difference otherwise. I take (...) Paul Nadasdy's critique of the ontological turn as an invitation to reflect on the methodological precepts that inform how the field frames the scope and limits of comparison. In pursuit of this, I examine the Zapatistas’ notion of a ‘world of many worlds’, which provides a way of approaching difference that captures the generative aspects of the ontological turn while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism and political inertia. I argue that the Zapatistas’ insights offer ethical guidance towards social and ecological thriving. Ultimately, my goal is to move CPT towards a more capacious form of making sense of what is out there in the world, and thus make room for better ways of inhabiting the Earth. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a challenging movement that invites us to rethink what defines humanity, including what we value and regret the most about our existence. Vulnerability is a key concept that require thorough philosophical scrutiny concerning transhumanist proposals. Vulnerability can refer to a universal condition of human life or, rather, to the specific exposure to certain harms due to particular situations. Even if we are all vulnerable in the first sense, there are also different sources and levels of vulnerability depending on (...) concrete social circumstances. Recently, Michael Hauskeller argued about a fundamental incompatibility between transhumanism and vulnerability. He understands vulnerability as an existential category, linked to woundability and mortality. This idea is akin to ontological vulnerability, but it does not notice some important features of social vulnerability. On the other side, transhumanism is a complex and non-homogeneous movement. Here we distinguish between a strong and a weak version of transhumanism. We will propose that the salience of vulnerability is only diminished in the radical one, while a moderate version can reconcile vulnerability with human enhancement. Thus, vulnerability, a concept that has recently gained much importance as an anthropological category in contemporary ethics, is not necessarily at odds with any transhumanist project. (shrink)

In this article, the notion of entropology introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss is applied and developed in the context of Georges Bataille’s anthropological philosophy: Bataille’s project is defined as entropological. Four philosophical vectors are chosen for this: the theory of general economy, the concept of decay, the idea of extinction and the notion of inhumanism. The theory of general economy allows us to understand the immanent terrestrial nature of humanity and the negative – entropic – side of the capitalist economy. The (...) concept of decay gives access to the thought of bodily disintegration and decomposition, which is temporality and mortality that split the subject. The idea of extinction speculates on the consequences of humanity’s destructiveness, libidinally charged inertia, and the extreme perspective of entropy’s impact on the planet. The notion of inhumanism suggests a radical rethinking of the human relationship with alienation and exteriority: Bataille’s philosophy is reinterpreted as inhumanist. I conclude that the Lévi-Strauss’s neologism – entropology – can be productively articulated and actualised within the framework of Bataille’s philosophy. (shrink)

Religiously inspired violence is a global phenomenon and connects to transnational narratives, necessitating comparative analysis of socio-historical context and patterns of ideological mobilization. Northeast Africa hosts several radical-extremist and terrorist groups, mostly of Muslim persuasion, tuned in to these global narratives while connecting to local interests. Christian radicalism and violence also occur but are less ideologically consistent and less widespread. I examine key aspects of the current role and ideological self-positioning of Islamist radicalism in state contexts, comparing Somalia, affected (...) by Islamist violence since the late 1990s, and Ethiopia, where Islam’s mobilization followed a different path and where the state so far contained politicization and open radicalism of Muslim groups. A brief contrastive case from Nigeria is also provided. It is observed that Islam, while of course not ‘equalling’ violence, easily provides a militant political theology, frequently instrumentalized in conflicts and situations of (perceived) grievance, and via mimetic rivalry then becomes radically ideological. Securitized response patterns of state authorities toward militancy play a role in furthering violent radicalization. I follow a sociological-anthropological approach but also refer to key aspects of national-legal frameworks regarding state and religion, next to societal and political bases of Muslim militant mobilization for collective aims and self-presentation. (shrink)

This paper explores a usually neglected notion in Kant’s account of moral fall and regeneration in Religion: the notion of “heart” (Herz). This notion belongs to a constellation of concepts that Kant develops for the purposes of moral imputation and the attribution of responsibility. The other chief components of Kant’s conceptual framework are “propensity” (Hang), “character” (Charakter), and “disposition” (Gesinnung). Although interpreters have tended to use these notions interchangeably, understanding their proper meaning, function, and scope in Kantian ethics is essential (...) to preserve the consistency of the doctrine of radical evil. To make good on this claim, I discuss the contributions that the notion of “heart” makes to Kant’s account of the human moral condition and argue that it is irreducible to the other components of his conceptual framework. This notion, we discover, is crucial to the success of Kant’s anthropological argument in Religion and invites us to reevaluate the role emotions play in our moral lives. (shrink)

Individualism is one of the fundamental traits of our time, based on an emphatic and recurrent defence of individual freedom, as experienced by consciousness. This point of view seems to entail a refuse of all kinds of transcendence, cosmological or onto-theological, characterized by an authoritarian and undisputed heteronomy. However, this perspective does not take into account a third type of transcendence, one that occurs in that radical immanence, in the core of individual freedom and autonomy. This type of transcendence (...) takes shape as an ethical and aesthetical relationship carved in the heart of each individual human being, each one of his particular conscious states and the simultaneous consciousness of his Humanity. The aim of this essay is to give an understanding of Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and its philosophy of Revelation, as a reflection on religion and its anthropological origins. In our viewpoint, The Essence of Christianity is an effort to ascertain the genetic elements of human religiosity and clarify its meaning as a movement of reconnecting the human individual with a transcendence that is his own Humanity, given in the immanence of his conscious life. Religion remains a law of transcendence, as the feeling that binds the individual to his Humanity, an everlasting commandment coming from an Otherness that projects itself as a horizon to his free actions. (shrink)

With neurons emergence, life alters itself in a remarkable way. This embodied neurons become carriers of signals, and processing devices: it begins an inexorable progression of functional complexity, from increasingly drawn behaviors to the mind and eventually to consciousness [Damasio, 2010]. In which moment has awareness arisen in the history of life? The emergence of human consciousness is associated with evolutionary developments in brain, behavior and mind, which ultimately lead to the creation of culture, a radical novelty in natural (...) history. It is in this context of biological evolution of conscious brains that we raise the question: how conscious brains connect with each other? In order to answer it, I will explore how brain states and conscious states each participate in dynamic interactive processes involving the whole organism. I will argue that a possible way to overcome the hard problem of consciousness might be based on the notion of embodiment as a process of embedding the mental in the living organism relating dynamically with the environment through the sensorymotor experience. In order to do so, I will provide an assembly between an anthropologic perspective of consciousness with contemporary Philosophy of Mind, Interaction Theory [Gallagher 2001, 2008; Zahavi 2001, 2008; Fuchs and De Jaegher 2009]. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy represents a rudimentary existentialism, or a proto-existentialism, in the following respects: He emphasizes human finitude, limits our knowledge, and argues that human consciousness is characterized by mineness (Jemeinigkeit). He introduces the influential concept of autonomy, something that lead to controversies about constructivism and anti-realism in meta-ethics and anticipated problems concerning decisionism in Existentialism. Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing (in the incorporation thesis) that freedom is inescapable for human agents. He even holds that awareness (...) of freedom leads to anxiety (as opposed to fear), and that anxiety precedes the fall into evil. In the doctrine of radical evil, he argues that human agents are always already suffering from self-deception because of this fall. In order to overcome self-deception and evil, Kant proscribes a radical self-choice in which the agent takes over himself and society by thinking independently and consistently. However, this is not only a moral issue for Kant but also something that concerns religious faith and hope, since Kant argues that we need religion to overcome not only moral evil but also despair. Although he criticizes traditional natural theology, Kant develops a practical (moral) interpretation of religion that anticipates religious Existentialism. In this context, he developed an influential critique of philosophical theodicies and a notion of the hiddenness of God that emphasizes the importance and inscrutability of evil. By doing this, and by introducing philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology as new disciplines, Kant prepared the ground for Existentialism. (shrink)

Nineteen fifty-eight was an extraordinary year for cultural innovation, especially in English literature. It was also a year in which several boldly revisionary positions were first articulated in analytic philosophy. And it was a crucial year for the establishment of structural linguistics, of structuralist anthropology, and of cognitive psychology. Taken together these developments had a radical effect on our conceptions of individual creativity and of the inheritance of tradition. The present essay attempts to illuminate the relationships among these (...) developments, and to explain the foundational role played by mathematical, logical and information theory in all of them. (shrink)

The twentieth-century obsession with meaning often fails to address the central questions: Why are we here? Where are we going? In this radical critique of modernity, Eugene (Rochberg-) Halton resurrects pragmatism, pushing it beyond its traditional formulations to meet these questions head on. Drawing on the works of the early pragmatists such as John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and particularly C.S. Peirce, Meaning and Modernity is an ambitious attempt to reconstruct concepts from philosophical pragmatism for contemporary social theory. Through (...) a vigorous and illuminating dialogue with other perspectives in the social sciences, (Rochberg-) Halton reveals the value of the pragmatic attitude as a mode of thought, one which speaks to the contemporary hunger for significance in a world where rationalized technique has all too often severed subject and object from their living context... Throughout the work is a sustained critique of modern culture in which (Rochberg-) Halton brings his reconstruction of the pragmatic atttude to bear on twentieth-century thought and its counterparts in the expressive arts. His engaging analysis encompasses figures as diverse as Simmel, Freud, Wittgenstein, Schoenberg, Adolph Loos, Mumford, Melville, the "Vienna School of Fantastic Realism," and Doris Lessing. The author's semiotic approach to culture allows him to move freely and easily across many disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, communications, art, literature, and philosophy. This is a work of rare originality and power that is sure to provoke discussion, for Rochberg-Halton creates new premises for understanding the human web of meaning. In a review published in the London Times Literary Supplement, Charles Townshend said that (Rochberg-) Halton's, “answer to the dilemma of modernity is a still more striking synthesis, which he labels ‘critical animism’ (as distinct from primitive animism). Meaning and Modernity belies its conventional exterior: it is a passionate tract against the 'diabolical tyranny of the rational'...He pits his researches into the attitudes of Chicagoans to their household goods and to their city against the abstract semioticians who have emptied signs of their capacity to 'live objectively in the transactions people have with them'...Such humanism will probably strike his fellow social theorists as downright weird, but his work shows that the cracking shell of modernism will provide a rich intellectual agenda.”. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want to (...) defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

The linear conception of time, firstly of a Jewish-Christian matrix and then of a positivist one, is now constitutive of the entire Western world, but the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has led humanity to reflect on a fact that seemed to have been expunged from the contemporary man’s consciousness: the unexpected. The unimaginable spread of the virus has caused mankind to waver, it has also led to an immediate social reaction and a reflection on the history of the world, (...) which has sometimes taken on the characteristics of the circular concept of time typical of the East. Starting from this consideration, the contribution aims first of all to show how the pandemic has imposed a radical rethinking of the human story, which perpetually unfolds between the two poles of krísis and kairós. The article therefore aims to investigate the anthropological effects that the pandemic has brought into the lives and societies of the women and men of our time through a critical analysis of the editorial and scientific contributions produced during the pandemic. The aim of the work will be to bring out how scientific and humanistic culture, through the cathartic dimension that is constitutive of culture, has taken on a soteriological value and mission in our times. (shrink)

The linear conception of time, firstly of a Jewish-Christian matrix and then of a positivist one, is now constitutive of the entire Western world, but the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has led humanity to reflect on a fact that seemed to have been expunged from the contemporary man’s consciousness: the unexpected. The unimaginable spread of the virus has caused mankind to waver, it has also led to an immediate social reaction and a reflection on the history of the world, (...) which has sometimes taken on the characteristics of the circular concept of time typical of the East. Starting from this consideration, the contribution aims first of all to show how the pandemic has imposed a radical rethinking of the human story, which perpetually unfolds between the two poles of krísis and kairós. The article therefore aims to investigate the anthropological effects that the pandemic has brought into the lives and societies of the women and men of our time through a critical analysis of the editorial and scientific contributions produced during the pandemic. The aim of the work will be to bring out how scientific and humanistic culture, through the cathartic dimension that is constitutive of culture, has taken on a soteriological value and mission in our times. (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)

Human individuality is something that is taken for granted in our time. In fact, it has arisen anthropologically over long periods of time. Man is originally a collective being who has no identity outside of his collective - not least because nobody asks him about it. The text provides a) a psychoanalytically inspired hypothesis as to how an idea of the ego as an individual could actually come about and b) a subsequent, further hypothesis that this idea of the individual (...) has radically changed with the onset of the modern age. (shrink)

Historical patterns of discrimination seem to present us with conflicts between what morality requires and what we epistemically ought to believe. I will argue that these cases lend support to the following nagging suspicion: that the epistemic standards governing belief are not independent of moral considerations. We can resolve these seeming conflicts by adopting a framework wherein standards of evidence for our beliefs to count as justified can shift according to the moral stakes. On this account, believing a paradigmatically racist (...) belief reflects a failure to not only attend to the epistemic risk of being wrong, but also a failure to attend to the distinctively moral risk of wronging others given what we believe. (shrink)

English- Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places offers a set of concepts that stimulate new approaches in planning, architecture, urban design, policy, and other practices of spatial development. These diverse concepts might reveal blind spots in urban discourse or bring insights from one discipline to another. The term ‘minor’ refers to the ambition to look at the local and social specificity of urban places and to challenge established discursive frameworks by giving voice to multiple actors in the debate. (...) This publication hopes to be a field guide that inspires spatial professionals, researchers, students, and communities to exchange knowledge, to engage with urban places and to discover and develop responsible approaches to current urban challenges. Dutch – Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places biedt een reeks concepten die nieuwe benaderingen in architectuur, stedenbouw en ruimtelijke ontwikkeling stimuleren. Deze uiteenlopende concepten kunnen blinde vlekken in het stedelijke discours onthullen of inzichten van de ene discipline naar de andere brengen. De term 'minor' verwijst naar de ambitie om naar de lokale en sociale specificiteit van stedelijke plekken te kijken en om gevestigde discursieve kaders uit te dagen, door stem te geven aan meerdere actoren in het debat. Deze publicatie is te zien als een veldgids die ruimtelijke professionals, onderzoekers, studenten en gemeenschappen inspireert om kennis uit te wisselen, over onderzoek naar stedelijke plekken, en om verantwoorde benaderingen te ontdekken en te ontwikkelen voor de hedendaagse stedelijke uitdagingen. (shrink)

Radical cities have historically been hotbeds of transformative paradigms, political changes, activism, and social movements, and have given rise to visionary ideas, utopian projects, revolutionary ideologies, and debates. These cities have served as incubators for innovative ideas, idealistic projects, revolutionary philosophies, and lively debates. The streets, squares, and public spaces of radical cities have been the backdrop for protests, uprisings, and social movements that have had both local and global significance. This research project aims to explore and reimagine (...) radical cities and urban activism using a variety of visual and collaborative pedagogical approaches. This project will study and categorize these cities through comparative case studies from different regions, including North America, and Latin America, and beyond, in order to better understand and interpret pivotal societal transitions. (shrink)

Cities have consistently served as fertile grounds for the emergence and growth of radical ideas, political transformations, and social movements, with urban landscapes nurturing visionary concepts, idealism, and revolutionary ideologies. This research delves into the captivating world of radical cities, exploring the power of image and visual narratives to communicate and comprehend urban activism within diverse contexts. By analyzing various case studies and student works, we aim to create, study, and reimagine vivid portrayals of urban activism, radical (...) urbanism, and future socio-spatial developments. The focus lies on developing innovative visual modalities and collaborative critical pedagogical approaches that engage with the complexities of radical cities across North America, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and beyond. In this study, we explore the potential of image and visual narratives to decode and understand pivotal societal transitions in radical cities. By employing imaginative and critical pedagogy, we aspire to foster a more profound comprehension of urban activism and its impact on shaping the cities of the future. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial in increasing awareness of environmental degradation and preventing actions that harm the environment. A radical environmentalist movement has emerged within the community of activists. They advocate using illegal measures to attain their goals. This paper discusses these radical environmentalist groups’ motivations, their actions and their consequences. Activities that many consider unacceptable, such as art vandalism and road blockades, may result in adverse outcomes and diminish public support for environmental endeavors. We propose an alternative solidarity (...) approach whereby activists focus their efforts on disseminating information to the general public on climate change and other environmental issues, advocating for the adoption of eco-surplus culture, and fostering cooperation among governments, businesses, and individuals to develop effective solutions. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

While increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the relation between Foucault’s conception of critique and Kant’s, much controversy remains over whether Foucault’s most sustained early engagement with Kant, his dissertation on Kant’s Anthropology, should be read as a wholesale rejection of Kant’s views or as the source of Foucault’s late return to ethics and critique. In this paper, I propose a new reading of the dissertation, considering it alongside 1950s-era archival materials of which I advance the (...) first scholarly appraisal. I argue that Foucault manifests a fundamental ambivalence to Kantian anthropology, rejecting it in theoretical terms while embracing its practical (‘pragmatic’) conception of the subject. Furthermore, I take these texts to collectively evidence Foucault’s attempt to situate himself within the anthropological-critical tradition rather than extricating himself from it. If we interpret Foucault to reject this tradition’s appeal to an essentialized, theoretical conception of subjectivity, what remains of anthropology is its inherent practical reflexivity in structure. Thus, I situate Foucault’s conception of ethics as one’s relation to oneself in continuity with this tradition. (shrink)

Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of (...) how new primitive concepts are acquired. To achieve a fully satisfactory response to Fodor’s argument, one has to juxtapose questions about conceptual content with questions about cognitive development. To this end, we formulate a general schema for thinking about how concepts are acquired and then present a detailed illustration. (shrink)

This philosophical anthropology tries to explore the basic categories of man’s being in the worlds using a special quantum meta-ontology that is introduced in the book. Quantum understanding of space and time, consciousness, or empirical/nonempirical reality elicits new questions relating to philosophical concerns such as subjectivity, free will, mind, perception, experience, dialectic, or agency. The authors have developed an inspiring theoretical framework transcending the boundaries of particular disciplines, e.g. quantum philosophy, metaphysics of consciousness, philosophy of mind, phenomenology of space (...) and time, and ontological relativity. (shrink)

Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare (...) plurals fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that philosophical anthropology is central to ethics and politics. The denial of this has facilitated the triumph of debased notions of humans developed by Hobbes which has facilitated the enslavement of people to the logic of the global market, a logic which is now destroying the ecological conditions for civilization and most life on Earth. Reviving the classical understanding of the central place of philosophical anthropology to ethics and politics, the early work (...) of Hegel and Marx is explicated, defended and further developed by interpreting this through developments in post-mechanistic science. Overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, it is suggested that the conception of humans developed in this way can orient people in their struggle for the liberty to avert a global ecological catastrophe. (shrink)

Traditionally, species have been treated as classes. In fact they may be considered individuals. The logical term “individual” has been confused with a biological synonym for “organism.” If species are individuals, then: 1) their names are proper, 2) there cannot be instances of them, 3) they do not have defining properties, 4) their constituent organisms are parts, not members. “ Species " may be defined as the most extensive units in the natural economy such that reproductive competition occurs among their (...) parts. Species are to evolutionary theory as firms are to economic theory: this analogy resolves many issues, such as the problems of “reality” and the ontological status of nomenclatorial types. (shrink)

Radical enactivists claim that cognition is split in two distinct kinds, which can be differentiated by how they relate to mental content. In their view, basic cognitive activities involve no mental content whatsoever, whereas linguistically scaffolded, non-basic, cognitive activities constitutively involve the manipulation of mental contents. Here, I evaluate how this dichotomy applies to imagination, arguing that the sensory images involved in basic acts of imaginations qualify as vehicles of content, contrary to what radical enactivists claim. To argue (...) so, I leverage what has appropriately been dubbed a “compare to prototype” argument. Hence, I will first identify, within the enactivist literature, the general functional profile of a vehicle of content complying with the austere standard of contentfulness radical enactivists adhere to. Provided such a profile, I will show, relying on a mixture of reasoning and empirical evidence, that basic sensory images satisfy it, and thus that they can rightfully be identified as vehicles of content. This, I claim, provides a sufficient reason to identify the sensory images involved in basic acts of imagination as vehicles of content, thereby denying that basic imagination does not involve mental content. (shrink)

Last year, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” celebrated the 25 th anniversary. This article confines to this very special event and analyzes three important anthropological studies that deal with moral components of human being. The research directions have been formed at the Department since its establishment in 1992. -/- The first part of the article focuses mainly on the Kantian studies. According to Kant’s anthropology, human nature should be explored on two levels: empirical and (...) intelligible. Empirical level deals with general causality and considers the human being as the one entirely determined by nature. The second level considers the man from the perspective of freedom, moral activity, capacity to create aims and legislation. The research primarily gives a general scale of Kantian intelligible anthropology, which appears as a two-dimensional framework and consists of moral anthropological perspective and the one which Kant calls anthroponymy. Only the combination of these two aspects can allow us to comprehend the human nature as a whole. -/- The second section of this article will shed a light on the Nietzschean anthropological theory. The paper elucidates three basic dimensions of Nietzschean critical anthropology. First of all, of the author comments on Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morality. Next, he articulates the Nietzschean idea of self-overcoming. Finally, the author identifies the main features of his genealogy of morality. All those components bound together can provide a wide horizon of Nietzschean opinion on the ethical dimension of human being. -/- The last part of this article considers modern techno-anthropology in a broad sense. The problem of human and technology relation is considered in an ethical dimension, which unites all the three research directions. In this section, the author discusses the main components of technological mediation and non-neutrality. Using these two concepts, he proves that human nature (even in its ethical dimension) is not an autonomous and independent actor but the one that is deeply connected with the world and others through technology. -/- . (shrink)

This paper evaluates a definition of anthropology at home formulated by Marilyn Strathern in her book contribution 'The Limits of Auto-Anthropology'. According to the definition, anthropology at home is anthropology carried out in the social context that produced this discipline. I argue that this is not an adequate definition of anthropology at home.

This paper takes issue with an influential interpretationist argument for physicalism about intentionality based on the possibility of radical interpretation. The interpretationist defends the physicalist thesis that the intentional truths supervene on the physical truths by arguing that it is possible for a radical interpreter, who knows all of the physical truths, to work out the intentional truths about what an arbitrary agent believes, desires, and means without recourse to any further empirical information. One of the most compelling (...) arguments for the possibility of radical interpretation, associated most closely with David Lewis and Donald Davidson, gives a central role to decision theoretic representation theorems, which demonstrate that if an agent’s preferences satisfy certain constraints, it is possible to deduce probability and utility functions that represent her beliefs and desires. We argue that an interpretationist who wants to rely on existing representation theorems in defence of the possibility of radical interpretation faces a trilemma, each horn of which is incompatible with the possibility of radical interpretation. (shrink)

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of (...) the motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • banality of evil • Adolf Eichmann • evil • forgiveness • Immanuel Kant • punishment • radical evil. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring to light the anthropological dimension of Kant’s account of cognition as it is developed in the Lectures on Anthropology. I will argue that Kant’s anthropology of cognition develops along two complementary lines. On the one hand, it studies Nature’s intentions for the human species – the “natural” dimension of human cognition. On the other hand, it uses this knowledge to help us realise of our cognitive purposes – the “pragmatic” dimension (...) of human cognition. Insofar as it is intended for us as embodied human agents whose cognition takes place in the empirical world, it is concerned with the knowledge of the natural subjective conditions that help or hinder our cognition. Yet the idea that Kant’s anthropology of cognition has a pragmatic dimension turns out to be problematic. For whilst pragmatic anthropology is defined as ‘the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself’ (A 7:119), by contrast with acting, cognising seems to be beyond the realm of voluntary action. However, I will show that Kant’s account of cognition makes room for a form of epistemic control that is sufficient to account for the possibility of its pragmatic dimension. Therefore, far from portraying human beings as disembodied pure minds, Kant’s account not only acknowledges the empirical, contingent and messy features of our cognition, it helps us become better, more efficient knowers by recommending how we can improve upon the subjective features that further or hinder our cognitive perfection. I will conclude by drawing the implications on my interpretation for our overall understanding of Kant’s account of cognition. (shrink)

This special issue is about something most of us might find very hard to conceive: states of consciousness in which self-consciousness is radically disrupted or altogether missing.

For a long time, academic institutes stigmatized activism and dissociated it from academic practice. It was looked down upon and considered to be disruptive and western institutes continued silencing critical thinking and practice, and encouraged what they named 'critical distance'. These practices of exclusion must push us, city inhabitants, to ask: what is the point of excluding activism from academic practice? How can we bridge between theory and activism? How can we decenter city planning? If cities belong to the people, (...) why are public authorities trying to erase the public's print in the urban realm? Who gets to speak and why? In our group as the ‘Radicals’, we discussed the gap between urban theory and practice, while encouraging the audience to reflect on how urban concepts adopt multiple definitions within different geographies and communities. (shrink)

In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused significant trouble for Kant in three distinct ways, though in each case the difficulty would turn on Kant's approach to "empirical psychology." The first problem for Kant had to do with refashioning psychology such that empirical psychology could be reassigned to (...) anthropology and rational psychology protected from the spectre of subreption. The second problem, and in many way the larger one for Kant during this time period, followed from Kant's desire to make use of empirical psychology's account of the mental faculties in his own transcendental theory of cognition. This introduced a separate problem for Kant, however, since this was a time during which physiological psychology was on the rise, a psychology that was being promoted by Ernst Platner and his followers, as "anthropology." This left Kant with the unwelcome task of simultaneously distinguishing his own philosophical anthropology from Platner's, and distancing his own transcendental theory of cognition from the likes of Herder and Tetens, given their embrace of the "embodied mind" approach being advanced by the physiological psychologists. (shrink)

Wouter Kusters argues that madness has much to offer philosophy, as does philosophy to madness. In this paper, i support both claims by drawing on a mad phenomenon which I label Radical Psychotic Doubt, or RPD. First, although skepticism is a minority position in epistemology, it has been claimed that anti-skeptical arguments remain unsatisfying. I argue that this complaint can be clarified and strengthened by showing that anti-skeptical arguments are irrelevant to RPD sufferers. Second, there's a debate about whether (...) so-called hinge commitments are beliefs or not. I argue that RPD can be used to strengthen the case that they are. Moreover, if hinges are beliefs, some madpeople are more epistemically rational than some sane philosophers. Third, drawing on my own mad experiences, I challenge evidentialism by presenting a better candidate for a truly forced cchoice about what to believe than William James' traditional religious example. I further show that in certain psychiatric contexts, evidentialism has more radical implications than Jamesian pragmatism, which comes out as more conservative. Finally, I discuss how philosophical theories like pragmatism and Pyrrhonism can provide inspiration for new and much-needed coping strategies for RPD sufferers. (shrink)

This article presents a novel challenge to epistemic internalism. The challenge rests on a set of cases which feature subjects forming beliefs under conditions of “bad ideology”—that is, conditions in which pervasively false beliefs have the function of sustaining, and are sustained by, systems of social oppression. In such cases, the article suggests, the externalistic view that justification is in part a matter of worldly relations, rather than the internalistic view that justification is solely a matter of how things stand (...) from the agent’s individual perspective, becomes the more intuitively attractive theory. But these “bad ideology” cases do not merely yield intuitive verdicts that favor externalism over internalism. These cases are, moreover, analogous to precisely those canonical cases widely taken to be counterexamples to externalism: cases featuring brains-in-vats, clairvoyants, and dogmatists. That is, such “bad ideology” cases are, in all relevant respects, just like cases that are thought to count against externalism—except that they intuitively favor externalism. This, the author argues, is a serious worry for internalism. What is more, it bears on the debate over whether externalism is a genuinely “normative” epistemology. (shrink)

Paper 18 Defines patriarchal radicalization, imprinted on the mind to change it from being a thinking organ to being a belief-organ. I claim that rights to correct information and factual names about the speech-making species can only be sapient rights.

The paper studies the significance of Martin Heidegger's philosophy of history for two key thinkers of contemporary radical conservatism and the Identitarian movement, Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin. Heidegger's often-overlooked affinities with the German “conservative revolution” of the Weimar period have in recent years been emphasized by an emerging radical-conservative “right-Heideggerian” orientation. I first discuss the later Heidegger's “being-historical” narrative of the culmination and end of the metaphysical foundations of Western modernity in the contemporary Nietzschean era of (...) nihilism and of an emerging postmodern “other beginning” of Western thinking, focused on historical and cultural relativism and particularism. In Heidegger's work of the 1930s and 1940s, we find attempts to apply this historical narrative to interpreting contemporary geopolitical and ideological phenomena in ways that connect Heidegger to certain central ideas and concerns of the conservative revolutionaries, especially Carl Schmitt's geopolitical particularism. De Benoist, the key name of the French Nouvelle Droite and a founding figure of contemporary Identitarianism, is particularly inspired by Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche as the culmination of the “metaphysics of subjectivity” dominating Western modernity. For de Benoist, this modern metaphysics is the root of the “ideology of the Same” underlying the liberal universalism and individualism that he opposes in the name of a cultural ethnopluralism. De Benoist's Russian disciple Dugin bases the pluralistic geopolitics of his radical-conservative “fourth political theory” on the legacy of the conservative revolution, the key intellectual model of which Dugin discovers in Heidegger's notion of the “other beginning”. (shrink)

This paper responds to the Radical Behavioral Challenge to normative business ethics. According to RBC, recent research on bounded ethicality shows that it is psychologically impossible for people to follow the prescriptions of normative business ethics. Thus, said prescriptions run afoul of the principle that nobody has an obligation to do something that they cannot do. I show that the only explicit response to this challenge in the business ethics literature is flawed because it limits normative business ethics to (...) condemning practitioners’ behavior without providing usable suggestions for how to do better. I argue that a more satisfying response is to, first, recognize that most obligations in business are wide-scope which, second, implies that there are multiple ways of fulfilling them. This provides a solid theoretical grounding for the increasingly popular view that we have obligations to erect institutional safeguards when bounded ethicality is likely to interfere with our ability to do what is right. I conclude with examples of such safeguards and some advice on how to use the research findings on bounded ethicality in designing ethical business organizations. (shrink)