Search

In this essay an engineer and a philosopher, after many conversations, develop an argument for why the Aristotelian version of virtue ethics is the most promising way to develop what we call artificial moral, social agents, i.e. robots. This, evidently, applies to humans as well. There are several claims: first, that humans are not born moral, they are socialized into morality; second, that morality involves affect, emotion, feeling, before it engages reason; third, that how a moral being feels is related to some narrative, whether moral or not; and finally, that narrativity is what builds a sense of a "moral" I, namely an authorial moral self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes as its starting point the central place given to contradiction by Hermann Goldschmidt in his book Contradiction Set Free, and it compares his approach with that of the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch. At the same time as Goldschmidt, Jankélévitch also assigned a central role to contradiction in thought, so much so that he often referred to his own philosophical method as "paradoxology." For him, as for Goldschmidt, paradox is the driving force behind thought that is always on the move. This article presents the main features of Jankélévitch's paradoxology and illustrates it with two themes: forgiveness and Jewish identity. By highlighting this proximity between Goldschmidt's approach and that of Jankélévitch, I suggest that they are both part of a more general movement in continental philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century, one of whose main challenges was to rethink philosophical rationality in depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to problematize Agamben's interpretation of sovereignty in light of the "archaeological method" he uses in his Homo Sacer project. In contrast to Agamben's exposition, which treats biopolitics as the original and ontological paradigm of Western politics, the essay discusses how, historically, sovereign power has been conceived as a "double body"—transcendent and immanent, sacred and sacrificial, absolute and perpetual—from whose tension conceptual and political metamorphoses of sovereignty arise. The first attribute of sovereignty—absoluteness, on which Agamben has often focused—should be seen as an ordering and essentially modern function of its second "body": the perpetuity of power. The article illustrates, then, how the retrospective projections through which the Italian philosopher constructs his ontological reading of sovereignty depend on some logical and epistemological lacunae that characterize his "archaeological method," which is based, essentially, on an arbitrary use of historical analogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars in multispecies ethnography, the ontological turn, new materialisms, science and technology studies (STS), assemblage urbanism and other movements within the posthumanities broadly considered often treat cosmopolitics, initially proposed by Isabelle Stengers and subsequently taken up by Bruno Latour, as a single coherent concept. However, Stengers's cosmopolitics differs considerably from Latour's. The difference is most clearly visible in their contrasting positions on the concept of universality. Even though their divergence on universality could be considered a minor philosophical dispute among intellectual allies, it should not be underestimated. It determines what sort of political practice each of these philosophers envisions with cosmopolitics. Their visions of political practice are substantially different. This article will examine Latour's and Stengers's diverging positions on universality, delineate the two types of cosmopolitics, and, finally, analyze what sort of political practice each of these cosmopolitics implies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of interconnectedness is perhaps one of the most celebrated features of African thought. It has been theorized under different philosophical idioms among African philosophers. It has appeared variously as African metaphysics, ontology, socialism and even religion—all in a bid to underline the basic idea that aspects of reality are inextricably interconnected and mutually impact one another in a seemingly universal web of interaction. While each of the idioms used to express this idea has some merits, the article privileges the epistemic idiom. To support this move, I make two mutually reinforcing arguments. First, it is appropriate to describe the sense of interconnectedness in epistemic terms because it is primarily a mode of knowing/perceiving the world. Second, and more importantly, the epistemic idiom is useful for the formulation of emancipatory demands and formation of epistemic alliances against the subjugation of African and non-Western knowledges by mechanisms of coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been made of the so-called "empirical turn" of "speculative materialism" with thinkers like Quentin Meillassoux championing the material sciences as a new route to absolute reality. According to Meillassoux, the material sciences "provide philosophers access once again to the great outdoors, the absolute outside," of reality in-itself. One might expect from such encomia the attempt to engage with the products of contemporary science in order to develop a new metaphysics; but, Meillassoux spends almost no time in this way, focusing instead on the form and methods of the material sciences over their actual accomplishments. As a result, his praise rings hollow and his metaphysics remains undeveloped. This paper examines what would happen if we were to take seriously his claims that a new metaphysics be developed from a scientific accounting of material reality by surveying the conclusions of contemporary physics. The paper ends by contrasting such a new speculative and materialistic metaphysics with the speculative nihilism of Ray Brassier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ernst Cassirer's The Myth of the State is often read as being insufficiently attentive to the possibility of fascism. In this paper, I examine, and partially contest, this reading. In his usage of the figures of Spinoza and prophetic Judaism, Cassirer develops a conception of the political capacity of the philosopher as pedagogically attempting to replace mythical thought with rational thought. In the end, Cassirer was aware of the onset and dangers of fascism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers struggle to identify a conception of race in Descartes's philosophy. Yet, Descartes was not wholly silent on matters of foreign ethnicity and identity. This paper compares Descartes's various statements on savages and barbarians, which have never been methodically analyzed. A tensive view emerges across several texts wherein Descartes asserts that all persons are rational while simultaneously presuming the epistemic inferiority of the foreign other construed as "savage" or "barbarous." Further examination indicates that prejudice against this foreign other is endemic to both Descartes's epistemology and his conception of the mind-body union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the French philosopher Jérôme de Gramont evaluates the modes in which twentieth century philosophy and literature—from Heidegger and Derrida to Blanchot and Beckett—aim to think our being-in-the-world beyond the concept of "man" and without the genus of the human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks how can we articulate the limit of artificial intelligence, which virtually has no limit? Or maybe the definition of AI already implies its limit, how Marvin Minsky once declared that there is no generally accepted theory of intelligence, and that AI is only one particular way of modelling it. This article revisits the debate between Minsky and Hubert Dreyfus and repositions them in terms of an opposition between mechanism and organism, in order to expose the limit of Dreyfus's Heideggerian critique. It suggests reflecting on the relation between noodiversity and technodiversity to methodologically broaden the concept of intelligence, and on how different concepts of intelligence could be thought by introducing the Chinese philosopher Mou Zongsan's interpretation of Kant's intellectual intuition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post–World War Two philosophy in America has been divided into the mainstream of analytic philosophy and a family of nonanalytic schools of thought, for example, continental philosophy and American pragmatism. The current balance of power among these perspectives reflects an event that occurred forty years ago: the "Pluralist Revolt" at the 1979 APA Eastern Division Meetings. What follows is a progress report on the Revolt's hopes. The tale has something to do with the recent history of philosophy, Richard Rorty, truth, and with the New York Christmas of 1979. It also has to do with recent politics. For while, as the Pluralists hoped, nonanalytic philosophy is today more prominent, and mainstream analytic philosophy more pluralist, than in the 1970s, political trends of recent decades have differently affected analytic and nonanalytic philosophers. The result may be a new version of what C. P. Snow called "The Two Cultures." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crucial in Pierre Hadot's account of ancient philosophy as a way of life is the phenomenon of conversion. Well before he encountered some of the decisive influences upon his understanding of philosophy, Hadot already understood ancient philosophy and its long legacy in later thinkers of the West as much more than a formal discourse. Philosophy is an experience, or at least the exploration and articulation of a potential for experience. The energy of this potential originates in a polar tension between epistrophe (return) and metanoia (rebirth). The two poles, which are grounded in primal experiences of the living organism, motivate and model the conversion which must be lived by the philosopher. The genius of Western philosophical experience lies in the effort to synthesize return and rebirth, and thereby recover the self as an ontological point of identification with and origin of the cosmos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID world is just like it was before, only more so. Every problem that already existed is worse. What can philosophy do in such a world? I think there are at least two opportunities for philosophy today. The first is that philosophers can seize this historical moment to intervene in almost every sector of social, political, and ethical life. The second unique opportunity I think philosophers have is to create new concepts in response to new phenomena. New events call for new ways of thinking and being that change our world-view. COVID is not just an amplification of existing power structures. It has also changed our relationship to and awareness of the importance of social and viral mobilities. Might the concept of "motion" offer us a new perspective on the world? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers and lay people believe that philosophy has an important role to play in times of societal crisis. In this contribution reasons are given to doubt the supposed societal relevance of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophy cannot alone change the present state of the world, the role of the philosopher being only to question and help to arouse a true awareness of what is happening in the world. The current pandemic should therefore incite the philosophers to make the Europeanization of the planet their main question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of leftist political philosophy has uncritically accepted the logic of capitalism, which is a logic of conservation that presents itself as a logic of "production." Many leftist political philosophers subscribe to capitalism's fundamental myth—that capitalism produces the new. This appearance of proliferation, however, masks an underlying stasis. This article interrogates this trend in the apparently disparate projects of contemporary accelerationism and Jacques Rancière. The accelerationist project of immanence allows for newness only in quantity and not in quality, while Rancière, coming closer to thinking radical newness in his account of politics, forecloses the possibility of a radically emancipatory society. I suggest an open ontology, which Marx offers, provides a better framework for thinking revolutionary newness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief examination of treatments of nothingness-oriented dialectics in Kyoto School philosophers Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime engages questions of space from Hegel to quantum mechanics. It begins to situate their work in light of Emmanuel Levinas's writings on empty space and as overlooked contributions to the philosophy of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the philosopher Rosi Braidotti sees her own, new materialist work as opposed to the analysis of biopolitics from Heidegger to Agamben, the present contribution establishes a dialogue between these two lineages. Starting with Aristotle's distinction between zōē and bíos politikos (natural and political life), it puts the analyses of biopolitics in immunitarian modernity in conversation with new materialism (NM) conceptualizations of affirmative difference and relationality. Replacing the negative logic of identity/alterity, life/death, dualism or dialectics and desire-as-lack of the Western philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions with human and more-than-human post-individualistic subjectivity as part of a rhizomatic web, NM proposes a groundbreaking shift to post-anthropocentrism. The biopolitical fear of viral contamination cedes to viral contamination as the generative vanishing of borderlines between self and other. In this vital geocentrism marking a new kind of politics, the sym-poetic life force of zōē generates complex allegiances between heterogeneous entities in a shared world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to establish a comparison between technical analog objects—which were the objects of the epoch when the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon elaborated his philosophical reflection—and digital devices that emerged in the last few decades of the 1900s. First, I define the main features of Simondon's technical objects in order to understand what the necessary conditions are for there to be technical progress, which is based on what he called the process of concretization. Then, I analyze the relationship between digital objects—as understood by Yuk Hui—and digital devices that take over from analog objects, without necessarily presenting continuity in an evolutionary process. Finally, I intend to expose the role that both analog objects and digital devices play as mediators with the world in a digital era, and to address the question of technical culture nowadays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper invites a rethink of the political conception of Jacques Rancière, a philosopher who devoted considerable reflexion to the problem of the sharing of the sensible. Rancière proposes considering the aesthetic regime without the concept of representation. According to the author, this leads him to a paradox: on the one hand, he states that the aesthetic regime takes images for art; on the other hand, he doesn't pay attention to the fact that it shouldn't be possible to conceive of any regime of sharing without the concept of representation. Therefore, the author proposes a deconstructive reading of Rancière's critique of representation, demonstrating that if the contemporary image is conceived and produced in order to be shared, it can't be freed from representation. Finally, the author puts forth the notion of meta-representation as a solution avoiding Rancière's antinomies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A memoir of Richard Rorty as a teacher, a philosopher, an intellectual, and a man of letters, by a former student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes philosopher Emmanuel Levinas' account of what it means to be unprejudiced, or what he describes as disinterested. Topics discussed include an evaluation of Levinas' philosophy on doing him the justice of not performing external criticism, his account of disinterest apparently constituting the absolute core of his ethics, and such account as being part a response to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger's respective accounts of the phenomenological reduction.

An essay is presented concerning the book "Course in General Linguistics" by philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure. Topics discussed include the author's assessment on the research conducted by scholars on the works of philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure, the author's analysis of the philosopher's book "Course in General Linguistics", and the impact of the philosopher's work in the 20th century academic environment.

An essay is presented concerning the arguments presented by critics including Slavoj Zizek on the philosophical works of philosopher Jacques Derrida. Topics discussed include the author's assessment of the criticisms presented by Marxist advocates concerning the political theories of philosopher Jacques Derrida and the assessment of philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the philosopher's interpretation of the Hegelian concept.

The article discusses about the correlation between the philosophical works of philosophers Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida concerning the concepts of inexistence and transcendental. Topics discussed include the concept of inexistence as presented by philosopher Alain Badiou, the transcendental concept presented by philosopher Jacques Derrida, and the author's comparison of the two philosophical concepts.

The article discusses about the philosophical concept of truth contained in the work of philosopher Theodor Adorno called "Aesthetic Theory". Topics discussed include the philosopher's interpretation of the concept of truth in the discursive and aesthetic points of view, the use of the concept of imitation in interpreting art, and the use of the concept of false consciousness in determining the aesthetic truth of art.

The article presents the author's investigation of the philosophical works of philosophers' Frederic Lordon and Yves Citton to determine the correlation between political ideology and economy. Topics discussed include philosopher Frederic Lordon's view on the history of labor from a simple craft to mass production and the philosopher Yves Citton's investigation on the concept of political myths.

The article examines the notion of philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Martin Heidegger about home and dwelling. Topics discussed include some markers of humanity's flawed character including self-grounding and self-sufficiency, and key elements of the structure of experience underlying the method of phenomenology according to Hegel's thought. Also mentioned is the concept of freedom that was developed in the "Philosophy of Right."

The article discusses philosophers Edward S. Casey and Julia Sushytska's comments on John McCumber's notion of the "speaking of matter" and its metaphysical complement called ousia. Topics covered include Casey's main questions on the concept of the speaking of matter, the question of the metic, the function of the abstract structure of ousia in society and the concept of temporocentrism.

The article discusses issues concerning the identification of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas as phenomenologists. Topics covered include the departure of Sartre and Levinas from the ideas of Edmund Husserl, Sartre's focus on the use of phenomenology to pursue ontological questions and Levinas' work use of phenomenology to describe non-intentional modes of appearing.

The article examines the concepts of responsiveness and technology based on the views of different philosophers from Aristotle to Jean-Luc Nancy. Topics covered include the connection between responsiveness and technology, technical responsiveness in touch, the concept of responsive technology and an understanding of the sense of technology as the sense of existence.

The article discusses issues concerning philosopher Paul Ricoeur's view on the autonomy of philosophy. Topics covered include explanation that his philosophical reflection is autonomous from theological influence, the argument that philosophy is theological in its own structure and the view that relation between philosophy and theology can only be thought theologically.

The article examines philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Michel Foucault's views on the social construction of the individual. Topics covered include the comparison of the individuation as an effect of exchange relations in Adorno's opinion and as an effect of power relation in Foucault's view and the view of Adorno and Faucault on domination.

The article discusses Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Derrida's philosophical ideas regarding "The Origin of Geometry." Topics covered include existentialism, Husserlian phenomenology, and structuralist revolution. Also mentioned is the fundamental importance of history and writing according to the two philosophers.

The article discusses the concept of expression in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Topics covered include the role of expression in the philosopher's theories, such as in language, history and truth, and the two sides of the problem of the creative moment of expression. Also mentioned is the idea of emotional gesture in deciphering meanings of expression in existing language.

An essay is presented on the evaluation of the crucial differences between the hermeneutics of philosophers Paul Ricoeur and Hans-George Gadamer in the wake of Ricoeur's final works and death. The author combines Jean Grondin's seven cardinal differences between the two views along two axes which cross on the relation of hermeneutics to φρóvησισ, and argues that each axis points to a major flow in the respective hermeneutics of each thinker.

An essay is presented on German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer's claim that interpretation is per se ethical provides people with the normative ideal of dialogical openness. Topics include the challenges and crises of a hermeneutic ethic, the ethical predicaments in interpretative understanding and the realization of a dialogical ethos. It concludes that a hermeneutic ethic needs to rally all of the reconstructive resources to bring out the potential that linguistic dialogue holds for humans.

The article presents the plenary address of editor David Pellauer to the 2013 annual meeting of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics which is intended to change the discussion beyond the study of individual figures like philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. Topics include the unexamined presupposition operating in contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, the practice of interpretation than with its presuppositions, and reflexivity in hermeneutics.

The article discusses the lack of rules in philosophical interpretation. James Bohman presented a view that the ontological reformulation of interpretation avoids any epistemological specification in terms of validity, empirical adequacy and objectivity. Georg Misch, Martin Heidegger and Josef König are some philosophers who are accused of not showing interest in the original function of hermeneutics as the art of interpretation of the intentions of the author.

The article focuses on the theory of linear perspective as illustrated by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his writing "Eye and Mind." In "Perspective as Symbolic Form," Erwin Panofsky argued that the method of linear or central perspective represents a view of space as infinite, unchanging and homogenous. Merleau-Ponty's interest in linear perspective is most evident in "Eye and Mind," where he used the Cartesian account of vision in discussing linear perspective.

The article highlights issues encountered on translated Martin Heidegger's texts. The translation by Andrew J. Mitchell of Heidegger's "Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking" is considered as the most difficult translation done for his works because it contains the philosopher's most inscrutable, elusive texts. "Die Kehere" also presents translation challenges as it is a cleverly allegorically coded analysis of technological infrastructure.

The article explores the early logic of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Burt Hopkins raised his concern that Derrida's treatment of Edmund Husserl could be considered a joke, but it also presented how to dispel deferral, which was first developed by Derrida in 1962. On mathematical propositions, Derrida argued that a truth or a truth-sense in general should not permit itself to be bound by the alternative of true or false.

The article discusses Gerard of Cenad's contribution as a philosopher in his "Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum ad Isingrimum liberalem." It describes Gerard as an author of great religious and political importance for 11th century medieval Hungary but little known to modern historians and the public. It talks about sources and readings of Gerard the philosopher, his extant work and its lack of readers, and his philosophy according to the Catholic Archbishop Ignatius Batthyány.

The author looks at how philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Richard Rorty interpreted history and the history of philosophy within the framework set by their ontological narratives. He presents his own general interpretational framework, the main characteristics of Gadamer's philosophy in general as well as his hermeneutical approach to the history of philosophy. He also discusses Rorty's neopragmatism in general and his neopragmatist relationship to the history of philosophy.

An essay is presented in defense of the claim that the way in which Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger critique the correspondence theory of truth indicates their distinctive ideas of truth in general. It identifies three key aspects of the theory with which they take issue such as the subject-object schema of knowledge and truth. It explains the disclosure approach to truth, the external reality and the horizon of language, and the philosophical relationship between the two philosophers.

The article discusses the debate among philosophers of literature and literary theorists over the proper role for authorial intention in the interpretation of literary and other written works. Particular focus is given to Kierkegaard's practice of authorship, as well as the notions of intentionalism and anti-intentionalism in interpretation. It has been argued that Kierkegaardian pseudonymity should be understood along the lines of intentionally fictional author hypothetical intentionalism.

An essay is presented which explores the philosophical analysis of philosopher Edith Wyschogrod and her views on violence. She echoes the views of fellow philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Martin Heidegger that death is an awakening event rather than a reality alone. She believes that technologically assisted mass death compels heads of states to reflect, mourn and develop a right approach to engagement.

An essay is presented which explores the influence of philosopher Emmanuel Levina's ethical metaphysics on the works of philosopher Edith Wyschogrod. It examines the role of language in ethical metaphysics according to her book "The Problem of Ethical Metaphics." Sharing the views of Levinas, Wyschogrod claims that the search for the meaning of self-identity has led to pondering the meaning of the Other. She also shares the views of Levina that consciousness needs solitude.

An essay is presented which examines the death and abstraction in the concepts of aesthetics and ethics of philosopher Edith Wyschogrod. Based on philosopher Immanuel Kant's approach to human history, she believes that there is a demand to speak in aesthetics from what was excluded in history. She called on imagined historians to be true to what has happened. It also explores the role of language in cataclaysm.