The paper presents a suggestive interpretation of Lacan’s interest in the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, insofar as this relationship makes a certain common understanding of love in Plato and psychoanalysis emerge. The author contends that Lacan’s interpretation makes it possible to understand how, in the ancient text, desire is already understood as an unconscious motivation, not only in terms of its inexorable power to determine a person’s aims, but also in its ability to subsist between and beyond the rules (...) of conscious discourse. (shrink)

The present study is an interrogation of theories of culture and nation in the context of spectacular sports. It proposes a view of nationalism as discourses that articulate and produce nations through narrative acts. A wide array of concepts and tools are drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and contrasted with methods and notions from discursive and semiotic analysis to interrogate a national-sports nexus in which sports are vehicles to embody nations, their matrices of thought and perception, and their (...) dominant order of masculinity and heteronormativity in the national subject, so that this order appears natural and commonsensical. Particular attention is given to the case of South Africa’s participation in the 1998 World Cup, and the way the epic genre was employed to frame the event and produce a particular kind of national body. -/- Spectacular sports events provide nations with opportunities to disseminate narratives that regulate desire and conjure a particular kind of national fantasy – what Bourdieu referred to as illusio – in subjects. This work makes a distinction between an epic body of nationalism, a body enmeshed in "the natural and authentic," and an excessive body. However, mediations of sports are never merely reflections of social events but themselves participate in producing these events as meaningful and anchor them as national. Furthermore, an actively interpreting subject is required for the production of meaning, and in this regard the thesis offers a critique of Bourdieu’s limited view on what it entails for a recipient of nationalist discourse to be active. The questions addressed by this study is twofold: how and what kind of national order of the body and desire is manufactured through spectacular sports events, and how are mediations of such events made meaningful in subjects? -/- The open-ended character of signification means that beneath the level of nationalist anchorage of spectacular sports events other articulations are possible. Drawing on Bourdieu’s view of sports as forms of silent dressage, the thesis suggests that there is a potential excess of meaning that enables such events to become potential sites of subjective truth: as viewers realise the fantasmatic character of such mediations they may come to question the notion that spectacular sports are something more than just a game. (shrink)

This text focuses on the possibility of acquiring universal knowledge by individual subjective consciousness as determined both corporeally and culturally. Along with the appearance of the “question” of the cultural Other the attempts of European philosophers to establish a kind of a universal sphere—intellectual basis for an intercultural dialogue—became more intensive, but still often limited by their relation to the values and ideas of the only one culture. In other words, the attempts to search the community of human kind in (...) an intellectual sphere often led to the universality being the “universalized particularity”, maintained by the empty signifiers. But there is also another philosophical tradition, in which the “universality” of ideas, concepts or values is being perceived as a quasi-universality or pluri-versality, mediated by human organic and cultural interactions, and is being derived rather from “beyond”—from the condition of embodiment—than from “above,” the pure intellectual cognition. I focus on three instances of moving from the order of body towards the quasi-universal values: on Bartolomé de Las Casas’s posing a problem of the universal values in the context of intercultural dialogue, on Michel de Montaigne’s reflections on human nature and Walter Mignolo’s naturalistic foundation of the comparative studies. I chose these examples, because they offer a clear and expressed attempt to reformulate the very idea of possible universality in the context of the desired intercultural dialogue, but within the optics of the embodied subjectivities. (shrink)

Discussions of the liberal international order, both inside and outside the academy, tend to take its necessity and desirability for granted. While its specific contours and content are left somewhat open in such debates, the idea that this international order is essential for global peace and stability is left largely unquestioned. What is more, the potential loss or end of this order is often taken to mean a return to anarchy, chaos, and disorder. In this essay, I (...) question the presumed necessity and desirability of the liberal international order that most discussions of it seem to share. By rethinking the international order as processual, emergent, and grounded in the social and political contexts that shape its constitution and operation, I suggest that fears about the crisis of international order are less about international order itself and more about the loss of a specific order. This specific order, I argue, constituted in part through processes of racialization, is not so much a rules-based order of sovereign equality but rather an international order of White sovereignty that secures the domination and rule of some over others, of Whiteness over non-Whiteness. Recognizing the role of White sovereignty in the contemporary international order points toward a need to take seriously calls for abolition. Rather than signifying a return to chaos and disorder, the prospect and promise of abolition represents a call to break free from the constraints of the present order and reach into an as-yet-unimaginable future. (shrink)

This article adopts Ernesto Laclau’s notion of empty signifier to discuss Tang Junyi’s uses of the concept oflixing(‘reason’ or ‘rationality’) in his seminal workCultural Consciousness and Moral Reason(文化意識與道德理性; 1958). My dual goal, in doing so, is to bring to light the relations of power constitutive of the text’s discourse onlixingand relate them to the problematic of writing philosophy from the periphery. I argue that in this work,lixing’s dual referents—as a translation of ‘reason’ and as denoting a Neo-Confucian faculty to intuit (...) moral truths—allow Tang to inscribe himself in a philosophical field designed to exclude non-Western philosophies, while at the same time enabling him to symbolically relegate Euro-American philosophy to a peripheral position by filling in the notion oflixingwith a content that legitimizes his own agenda. Tang could thus authorize his Confucian metaphysics by presenting it as the true content oflixing, understood not only as a universal faculty enabling humanity’s access to all that is universal, but also as a condition sine qua non of for one’s inclusion in the philosophical game. By attempting to co-opt the empty signifier (lixing/reason) for his own purposes, I argue Tang employs one of two possible strategies that can be adopted by those situated at the periphery in order to oppose the hegemon; one that leaves the structure of power relations intact but working in favor of the periphery. (shrink)

An adaptive fractional-order nonsingular terminal sliding mode controller for a microgyroscope is presented with uncertainties and external disturbances using a fuzzy neural network compensator based on a backstepping technique. First, the dynamic of the microgyroscope is transformed into an analogical cascade system to guarantee the application of a backstepping design. Then, a fractional-order nonsingular terminal sliding mode surface is designed which provides an additional degree of freedom, higher precision, and finite convergence without a singularity problem. The proposed control (...) scheme requires no prior knowledge of the unknown dynamics of the microgyroscope system since the fuzzy neural network is utilized to approximate the upper bound of the lumped uncertainties and adaptive algorithms are derived to allow online adjustment of the unknown system parameters. The chattering phenomenon can be reduced simultaneously by the fuzzy neural network compensator. The stability and finite time convergence of the system can be established by the Lyapunov stability theorem. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller and the comparison of root mean square error between different fractional orders and integer order is given to signify the high precision tracking performance of the proposed control scheme. (shrink)

. The author aims at defining the borderlines of the concept “rule of law.” This has been often inflated to encompass several dimensions of an ideal legal order. The author on the contrary believes that the “rule of law” ought to be a “thin” ideal. As a matter of fact, when the “rule of law” signifies almost any dimension of an ideal legal order, it comes to stand for nothing essential in particular. Deflation is then advocated for the (...) rehabilitation of the normative content of the “rule of law.” This means that the “rule of law” should be defined as a concept covering only some well delimited dimensions of an ideal legal order. (shrink)

This paper derives from a broader project dealing with the notion of causal order. I use this term to signify two kinds of parts-whole dependence: Orderly systems have rich, decomposable, internal structure; specifically, parts play differential roles, and interactions are primarily local. Disorderly systems, in contrast, have a homogeneous internal structure, such that differences among parts and organizational features are less important. Orderliness, I suggest, marks one key difference between individuals and collectives. My focus here will be the connection (...) between order and robustness, i.e. functional resilience in the face of internal or environmental perturbations. I distinguish three varieties of robustness. Ordered robustness is grounded in the system’s specific organizational pattern. In contrast, disorderly robustness stems from the aggregate outcome of many similar parts. In between, we find semi-ordered robustness, wherein a messy ensemble of elements is subjected to a selection or stabilization mechanism. I give brief characterizations of each category, discuss examples and remark on the connection between the order/disorder axis and the notions of individual versus collective. (shrink)

This paper examines the progenitors of the semiotic concepts in current Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory as well as some concepts that could further inform recent trends in SLA theory and practice. Through the connections between recent ecology models of language learning (e.g., Kramsch 2002, 2006, 2010) or an “ecological-semiotic perspective” (e.g., van Lier 2002, 2004) and fundamental concepts in semiotic theory such as the signifying order (Danesi), multimodality, (Kress), modeling systems theory (Sebeok), and Umwelt theory (von Uexküll), (...) this paper also considers a recent draft of an ACTFL position statement on the Use of the Target Language in the Classroom. (shrink)

The focus of this paper lies in the unconscious solidification of capitalist ideology through Lacanian understanding of subjectivity. The analysis intervenes in the ideological fantasy and its inherent antagonisms in order to analyse the way capitalist ideology strives to fill or repress these ruptures in the socio-symbolic edifice. It points to the mode of proliferation of certain objects, which the fantasy puts in the position where they can function as objects of desire, covering the cracks in the socio-symbolic (...) class='Hi'>order by filling their own lack. Furthermore, I focus on the establishment and signification of meaning within the capitalist matrix as well as its dialectical overlap with the objects proliferated by the socio-economic system in question. Such simultaneous fusion of lack and excess creates ideological enjoyment and solidifies capitalist ideology in the subject’s fantasy construction. Here lies the strength of capitalist ideology and its appropriation of even some social phenomena into consumerist categories. It is therefore vital to understand how ideology manages to fix its core of enjoyment through a dialectical overlap of meaning and objects to produce a totalized experience of reality. In itself, this already points to the much neglected Lacanian discourse of the Capitalist, revealing how the daily reality of subjects is driven by unconscious fantasy in its dogmatic ideological circle. It also hints to the homology between Lacan's surplus- jouissance and Marx's surplus-value. (shrink)

The focus of this paper lies in the unconscious solidification of capitalist ideology through Lacanian understanding of subjectivity. The analysis intervenes in the ideological fantasy and its inherent antagonisms in order to analyse the way capitalist ideology strives to fill or repress these ruptures in the socio-symbolic edifice. It points to the mode of proliferation of certain objects, which the fantasy puts in the position where they can function as objects of desire, covering the cracks in the socio-symbolic (...) class='Hi'>order by filling their own lack. Furthermore, I focus on the establishment and signification of meaning within the capitalist matrix as well as its dialectical overlap with the objects proliferated by the socio-economic system in question. Such simultaneous fusion of lack and excess creates ideological enjoyment and solidifies capitalist ideology in the subject’s fantasy construction. Here lies the strength of capitalist ideology and its appropriation of even some social phenomena into consumerist categories. It is therefore vital to understand how ideology manages to fix its core of enjoyment through a dialectical overlap of meaning and objects to produce a totalized experience of reality. In itself, this already points to the much neglected Lacanian discourse of the Capitalist, revealing how the daily reality of subjects is driven by unconscious fantasy in its dogmatic ideological circle. It also hints to the homology between Lacan's surplus- jouissance and Marx's surplus-value. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain and defend Karol Wojtyła’s claim that “if we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to the philosophyof being. If we do not set out from such ‘realist’ presuppositions, we end up in a vacuum.” I begin by outlining Wojtyła’s existential understanding of the good,according to which the good for x is found in those ends that complete the being that is lacking in x, or that enhance its existence in (...) keeping with its nature. Then I explain how Wojtyła moves from an existentialunderstanding of the good to the thesis that “exemplarism is the very heart of the normative order.” Finally, using representative thinkers from both the Continentaland Analytic traditions, I defend Wojtyła’s claim that when we divorce goodness from being we end up in a moral vacuum, in a kind of nihilism wherethe good signifies nothing other than the rationalized articulation of one’s subjective needs, desires, or wishes. In such a state, the only means for resolving moraldisagreements is through the consensus of the majority or the forceful rule of the strongest will. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Crystal Order That Is Most Concrete:The Wittgenstein HouseHui Zou (bio)IntroductionIn the instruction of architectural history, some historical references have to be mentioned in terms of the relationship between building and language. In Chapter I, Book II, of The Ten Books on Architecture, the ancient Roman theorist Vitruvius discussed the "origin of the dwelling house." According to him, the "primitive hut" originated from the gathering of men around (...) a fire through communicating in language.1 In the primitive hut, the origin of architecture was co-presented with the origin of language; the language helped establish a harmonic relationship, which developed builders' construction collectivity. Such a language-collectivity relationship was witnessed in the record of the Tower of Babel in the biblical scripture where the Lord decided to stop the human beings' construction of the tower by "confus[ing] their language there."2 During the Renaissance, the alphabetic language and the design of buildings were correlated through the application of geometry that was supposed to embody the "divine proportion." In the Franciscan professor Luca Pacioli's book On Divine Proportion, letters of the alphabet were geometricized to become objects of contemplation for tracing "God's light."3 In Chinese gardens, there has been a long tradition of naming a specific view with a poetical phrase that thematicized the scene into a meaningful unity of the view and the viewer—jing.4 In all these historical cases, language and building were integrated into a cosmological picture grounded in divine transcendence.After the modernism in architectural history of the 1960s and 1970s, a loss of meaning in architecture was widely observed,5 and the interrelationship between language and architectural design began to emerge as a prominent issue. Several trends in architectural theories during the 1960s and 1970s studied how meaning was created through architectural design. One was the post-modern development in architecture that sought to apply classic architectural elements to the facades of new buildings as gestures to [End Page 22] the past.6 Another trend was phenomenological, which attempted to discover a common language of building contexts that led to building humanized living environments.7 Yet another trend was to apply linguistic approaches to the rational methodology of architectural analysis.8 The analogy of building with language was provoked by an impelling sense of the crisis that the traditional embodied order was being lost in the prevalent instrumentalized practice of architecture.The predicament of the loss of meaning in contemporary architecture can be traced as far back in philosophy as the splitting of mind and body proposed by René Descartes in the seventeenth century. This split began to distance architecture from its traditional embodiment of transcendental meanings in the second half of the eighteenth century9 and finally led to the division of the metaphysical and physical parts in modern architecture, especially after the industrialization of the nineteenth century. Correspondingly, language became an instrumental means for architecture to impose posterior "ideas" to the material bodies of buildings rather than acting as an inherent component of architectural design for the creation of meaning in architecture. The desire for meanings in modern architecture, based on the split of the metaphysical and physical, theoretically catered to linguistic research, such as semiotics, and tended to define architecture as a symbol. The linguistic structure of signifier-signified was, however, coarsely transplanted into architectural theory and reduced architectural symbolism to a simple dualism of idea and form in which the former was usually arbitrarily applied to the latter by a designer. Such an arbitrary imposition of external "meanings" onto an architectural form through language intensified their separation, which in turn produced nihilism in architecture.The lessons learned from the transplantation of linguistic studies into architectural theories remind us that we need to pay close attention to the historical events that could open up the interaction between language and building and reveal the "fundamental linguistic character of our experience of the world" in Gadamer's sense.10 A house designed and built by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provides a unique case for us to contemplate this issue. My historical study of the Wittgenstein House is not to understand Wittgenstein's subjective intentions... (shrink)

In [6] proof tableau formulations were given of the implication/negation fragments of the important zero-order relevant logics E and R and the semirelevant logic RM . The main purpose of this paper then, is to extend results by giving proof tableau formulations of the distribution-free fragments of E, R and RM and of their first order extensions EQ, RQ and RMQ. Where X is one of these logics, we shall follow [13] in calling its distribution-free fragment OX – (...) the ‘O’ standing for ‘ortho’ which is meant to signify the kinship of these logics to quantum logics or ortho-logics as they now tend to be known. Hence in what follows we shall refer to the logics OX simply as relevant ortho-logics. (shrink)

In order to select an area of ignorance and make it the target of inquiry, one first has to be aware of one’s own lack of knowledge in this particular area. In this paper, I explore this connection between ignorance and the aims of research. I emphasize the importance of distinguishing between all the things we don’t know—our total ignorance—and the totality of what we know we don’t know—our conscious ignorance. I argue that while our total ignorance may be (...) conceptualized as a set of true propositions that are unknown to us, our conscious ignorance is best understood as a set of questions. This enables us to identify the preconditions that have to be satisfied in order for a question to be an element of our conscious ignorance. The analysis reveals that conscious ignorance is a complex ability that can often require quite an amount of knowledge and competence. Items of conscious ignorance can, of course, differ in many important respects. To stress one of these differences, I introduce the notion of deep ignorance to signify cases in which we not only fail to know the correct answer to a given question, but cannot even name any plausible candidate answers. I argue that items of deep ignorance should be expected to possess particular attractiveness as targets of research (provided they are not entirely intractable). Finally, I suggest that in light of my analysis, some of the strategies of ignorance-mongers that have engaged agnotologists’ interests over the past years can be understood as attempts to undermine not only knowledge, but also conscious ignorance at the same time—or, in cases where that is not possible, to at least counteract the impression that the ignorance in question is deep. (shrink)

In order to grasp the distinctive character of the object imitated in tragedies, Aristotle's Poetics introduces a new notion of action, which does not refer to individual ethical deeds as in the Ethics. Rather, it signifies a whole with a beginning, a middle, and an end, whose constitutive components are events. This paper argues that the notion of agents undergoes a parallel transformation in the treatise on poetry. It no longer refers exclusively to the authors of ethical deeds, but (...) to the characters who enact the entire dramatic action. Their nature can be understood in terms of a potential story whose logos is a muthos. On this ground, the suggestion is made that the Poetics provides the elements of a narrative conception of human identity. (shrink)

In this essay, I will try to elaborate the fundamental postulates of transdifferential ontology, developed through the inscription of some basic concepts of poststructuralist philosophy within the realm of general system theory. In this manner, a system/being will be conceptualized as set of elements which is organized as a functional whole, whose goal is not to establish a homeostasis but to menage and organize disruptive forces of lack/surplus, that represents non-mediated kernel of any system. Therefore, any system is fundamentally grounded (...) on imbalance and radical incompleteness as inherent conditions of its possibility. Among different kind of systems, the complex self - organizing systems based on feedback loops are governed by the principle of syntropy and its transdifferential organization of reality. In order to explicate the syntropic movement of systems, the concept of signifier is expanded beyond the boundaries of language, and the process of writing, as a permanent invention of in-vent, is interpreted in the manner of never ending sublation of the system and subversion of the subject. The interconnection between the general system theory and poststructuralist philosophy will provide us with a conceptual apparatus which overcomes both linguistic and entropic limitations of above mentioned domains, in order to conceive, interpret, predict and govern processes of becoming on different levels of organization of systems. (shrink)

In 2019 the Western Australian government recategorised the dingo ( Canis dingo) as a wild dog ( Canis familiaris) whose status is legally declared to be a pest. Despite its iconic native status, Canis dingo has been rendered non-existent and liable to be disposed of by inhumane means. Dumped in a legal black hole via a signifying regime of signs, dingoes are confronted with the fact of their own non-existence. Regarding the dingo as a dingoing, a multiplicity and a (...) process, rather than a characteristic, I read the reclassification event symptomatologically and interrogate the constellations of symptoms and regimes of signs which legitimate the event and its performativity. I examine order-words including ‘pest’ and ‘wild dog’ to shift the focus from the words’ meaning to what they do. I subsequently enquire whether ‘dingo’ might become a pass-word, a component of passage, such that dingoes might exist under reprieve in a post-signifying regime. I argue that post-signifying regimes are codified, however, as subjects are individuated along lines of subjectification. I conclude by contemplating whether it is possible to break with subjectification, liberating these demonic nonhuman animals from the signifiers which territorialise them and permitting dingoes to become-animal. (shrink)

In order to address to the relation between philosophy and mathematics it is first necessary to distinguish the grand style and the little style. The little style painstakingly constructs mathematics as the object for philosophical scrutiny. It is called the little style for a precise reason, because it assigns mathematics to the subservient role of that which supports the definition and perpetuation of a philosophical specialisation. This specialisation is called the ‘philosophy of mathematics’, where the ‘of’ is objective. The (...) philosophy of mathematics can in turn be inscribed under the area of specialisation that supports the name ‘epistemology and history of science’, an area to which corresponds a specialised bureaucracy in the academic authorities and committees whose role it is to manage the personnel of researchers and teachers. But in philosophy, specialisation is invariably the means by which the little style insinuates itself. In Lacan terms, this occurs through the collapse of the discourse of the Master, which is rooted in the signifier of the same name, the S1 that gives rise to a signifying chain, onto the discourse of the University, that perpetual commentary which adequately represents the second moment of all speech, that is, the S2 which only exists by making the Master disappear under the commentary which exhausts it. The little style of the philosophy of mathematics, and of its epistemology, strives for such a disappearance of the ontological sovereignty of mathematics, its instituting aristocratism, its unrivalled mastery, by confining its dramatic and almost incomprehensible existence to a generally dusty compartment of academic specialisation. (shrink)

According to higher-order thought accounts of phenomenal consciousness it is unlikely that many non-human animals undergo phenomenally conscious experiences. Many people believe that this result would have deep and far-reaching consequences. More specifically, they believe that the absence of phenomenal consciousness from the rest of the animal kingdom must mark a radical and theoretically significant divide between ourselves and other animals, with important implications for comparative psychology. I shall argue that this belief is mistaken. Since phenomenal consciousness might be (...) almost epiphenomenal in its functioning within human cognition, its absence in animals may signify only relatively trivial differences in cognitive architecture. Our temptation to think otherwise arises partly as a side-effect of imaginative identification with animal experiences, and partly from mistaken beliefs concerning the aspects of common-sense psychology that carry the main explanatory burden, whether applied to humans or to non-human animals. (shrink)

Cultural pluralism generally signifies three things:1)the fact of cultural plurality, considered as the co-existence of cultures which, in principle at least, belong to different geographical areas;2)the acknowledgement of the fact of this plurality;3)the affirmation that this plurality is a good thing, and the desire to make something of it in one way or another, either by preserving the various cultures in an individual sense in order to avoid any kind of reciprocal contamination, or, conversely, by organising between them a (...) kind of peaceful dialogue, with a view to their mutual enrichment. (shrink)

In order to avoid the reduction of desire to demand and to produce a theory in keeping with the insights of psychoanalysis, Lacan had to move beyond Hegel’s theorization based on recognition. To do so, Lacan had to come up with a new form of object, an object irreducible to the signifier but with the power to arouse the desire of the subject. The theorization of the objet a enables Lacan to make an important advance on Hegel’s theory of (...) desire, an advance that effectively reverses the priority that Hegel establishes between the object and the Other. Despite the widespread association of Lacan with the signifier and its laws, his one great theoretical breakthrough concerns what remains absolutely irreducible to signification. My central contention in this essay is that Lacan’s theory of desire allows us to understand how singularity appears in the cinema, despite the medium’s inherent resistance to it. I examine this appearance of singularity through two filmic occasions—Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Michael Mann’s Heat. It is a medium in which recognition predominates, and yet the singularity of the objet a nonetheless emerges and animates the desire of the spectator. (shrink)

Que signifie l’Europe pour les juristes? La première réponse, de caractère descriptif, renvoie aux deux ordres juridiques européens, celui de l’Union Européenne et celui du Conseil de l’Europe. Ces deux ordres juridiques reposent sur des traités et les États qui adhèrent à ces traités sont reconnus comme « européens ». Le concept juridique d’Europe est donc distinct du concept géographique : il intègre des territoires situés en Asie ou outremer. L’Europe juridique ne correspond pas non plus à un peuple européen, (...) mais à une pluralité de peuples reliés à des États-nations dont les institutions démocratiques ont approuvé l’adhésion à l’Europe. La soumission au droit des traités européens est ainsi à la base, conventionnelle, de l’Europe juridique. Cette situation peut être envisagée comme une série de fictions qui ont donné naissance à un réseau, relativement stables, de règles sur la protection des droits de l’homme. C’est ce droit cosmopolite des droits de l’homme qui peut être considéré comme la structure fondamentale du concept juridique d’Europe. (shrink)

The article is devoted to a rethinking of the state as a political form from theperspective of Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytical understanding of ideology and Mikhail Reisner’s theory of the state. The paper systematically outlines Žižek’s ideas from the early period of his work and Reisner’s theory of the state. Žižek, rejecting the traditional understanding of ideology as false consciousness, presents it as a necessity that structures reality. In turn, Reisner views the state not only as an instrument of oppression but (...) also as a psychological phantasm based on the ideas and unconscious attitudes of the masses. Synthesising Žižek’s ideas with Reisner’s legacy forms the main aim of this article. In combining the two perspectives, the state turns out to be the ideology that organises contemporary political experience and conceals a certain traumatic impossibility of symbolising the Real. The attempt to look at the state-as-ideology through the prism of psychoanalysis reveals the mechanisms of its functioning as the main signifier around which political-legal discourse and political practice are centered. It turns out that the state-as-ideology replaces other forms of political communities both temporally and spatially. Overcoming this situation is possible through bringing the phantasm of the state back to the human psyche. This, in turn, requires a recognition of the presence of an unsymbolised lack at the very heart of the symbolic order, undermining the absolute power of the state-as-ideology to determine the structure of political reality. The non-obvious intellectual connection between Žižek and Reisner and their original views on the nature of ideology and the state provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the principles of the structure of the contemporary political form and to contribute to the ongoing debate on the state. (shrink)

Women entrepreneurs innovate, initiate, engage, and run business enterprises to contribute the domestic development. Women entrepreneurs think and start taking risks of operating enterprises and combine various factors involved in production to deal with the uncertain business environment. Entrepreneurship and technological innovation play a crucial role in developing the economy by creating job opportunities, improving skills, and executing new ideas. It has a significant impact on the income of the household. The study focused on investigating the role of women’s entrepreneurship (...) and innovation technologies in contributing to household income in the challenging situation of the pandemic COVID-19. The paper emphasized identifying the determinants of female entrepreneurial contribution toward household income. This study collected data from selected rural and urban areas of district Faisalabad through a self-administered questionnaire. Investigators interviewed female entrepreneurs and chose them through the snowball sampling technique from a population of purposively selected female-run businesses. Interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs to gather relevant information for the survey investigation at their workplaces and home. The effects of various factors, including age, education, family size, income from other sources, time allocated to entrepreneurial activity, firm size, and location (rural/urban) were estimated empirically using an ordered logit model. The study findings exhibited a positive and significant role of respondents’ education, family size, time allocated to entrepreneurial activities, and firm size. The survey outcomes also indicated that the contribution of entrepreneurial income to household income in the rural areas is significantly higher than that in urban areas. This study signifies that regulations against gender discrimination in public and private institutions are helpful. Besides, encouraging an environment for entrepreneurial culture among women in the country would increase family income. The study’s findings and policy implications directly link to Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 5 of Gender Equality (GE) and SDG 8 related to decent work and economic growth. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, skepticism about political and moral experts has grown into a serious social problem, undermining the functioning of liberal democratic regimes. Indeed, meritocracy-that is, government by hard working, public-spirited people with high levels of relevant expertise-has never looked so promising as an alternative to the dangers of know-nothing populism. One cultural tradition has devoted sustained attention to the idea of meritocracy, as well as to the cultivation of true expertise or mastery: Confucianism. Mastery, Dependence, and the (...) Ethics of Authority presents a compelling analysis of expertise and authority, and examines classical Confucian conceptions of mastery, dependence, and human relationships in order to suggest new approaches to these issues in ethics and political theory. Contemporary Westerners are heirs to multiple traditions that are suspicious of authority, especially coercive political authority. We are also increasingly wary of dependence, which now often seems to signify weakness, neediness, and pathology. Analysts commonly presume that both authority and dependence threaten human autonomy, and are thus intrinsically problematic. But these judgments are mistaken. Our capacity for autonomy needs to be cultivated over time through deliberate practices of training, in which we depend on the guidance of virtuous and skilled teachers. Confucian thought provides a subtle and powerful analysis of one version of this training process, and of the social supports such an education in autonomy requires-as well as the social value of having virtuous and skilled leaders. Early Confucians also argue that human life is marked by numerous interacting forms of dependence, which are not only ineradicable, but in many ways good. On a Confucian view, it is natural, healthy, and good for people to be deeply dependent on others in a variety of ways across the full human lifespan. They teach us that individual autonomy only develops within a social matrix, structured by relationships of mutual dependence that can either help or hinder it, including a variety of authority relations. (shrink)

The word “grammatology” literally signifies the “science of writing.” One must acknowledge, however, that this science has never existed. Derrida's book Of Grammatology proposes to elaborate and to implement just such a project. Why has this grammatological project never been accomplished? For Derrida, “writing”1 can no longer simply designate a technique for the notation of speech. A distinction should be made, then, between “narrow” and “enlarged” meanings of writing. Indeed, is the extension of the concept of writing the work of (...) writing itself or must one suppose that the “modifiability” of the concept is not of the order of writing? This essay will propose that an original modifiability, not reducible to the single operation of writing, is initiated from the beginning as well. I call this modifiability “plasticity.” “Plasticity of writing” would then be the paradox inherent in the redefinition of writing itself that may explain the “failure” of any “grammatology.”. (shrink)

Suppose COVID-19 is the runaway tram in the famous moral thought experiment, known as the “Bystander at the Switch.” Consider the two differentiated responses of governments around the world to this new threat, namely the option of quarantine/lockdown and herd immunity. Can we contrast the hypothetical with the real scenario? What do the institutional decisions and strategies for dealing with the virus, in the beginning of 2020, signify in a normative moral framework? This paper investigates these possibilities in order (...) to highlight the similarities and, more importantly, the differences that exist between utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Analysis shows that the hypothetical scenario can never be fully compared to the complex multifactorial nature of the real world. But if a comparison is attempted, the most obvious difference between the two governmental strategies is the concept of duty within the Kantian perspective. Ultimately, it is a matter of comparing freedom and life. Attributing a moral “priority ticket” to one or the other can be analysed through interpersonal aggregation. (shrink)

Reading is delusion. In order to read, we have to suspend certain standards of reality and accept others; we have to offer ourselves to deceit, even if it is an act of deception of which we are acutely aware. One way of considering this paradoxical duality in the act of reading is more or less consciously to posit multiple levels of reading, whereby the deceived reader is watched by an aware reader, who is in turn watched by a super-reader; (...) and so it continues. The ancient art critics, obsessed as they were with deceptive realism, provide in anecdotal form a good example of such multiplicity of perception when they tell stories of birds trying to peck at painted grapes, horses trying to mate with painted horses, even humans deceived by the lifelikeness of works of art. Such stories act as easy but potent signifiers of ‘realism’ in ancient art criticism, by showing the reactions of a ‘naive reader’ whose deception the aware reader can enter into but also see exposed. In verbal or visual art parading itself as realistic, the artistic pretence of a pose of reality is, at some level, intended to be seen as deceptive; when it is non-realistic, or anti-realistic, or even stubbornly abstract , art still demands that the reader suspend ordinary perception. But deception alone is not enough: ‘deceit’ only becomes artistic when a viewer sees through it, for a work of art which is so lifelike that no-one realizes it is not real has not entered the realm of art. The appreciation of deception happens at the moment when the deception is undone, or by the imaginative creation of a less sophisticated reader who has not seen through the deceit. That is what happens in comedy, more overtly than in other artforms, but in the same way. (shrink)

By far the largest part of Nehemiah Grew?s account of a seventeenth?century collection of rarities, his Musæum Regalis Societatis (1685) is taken up with ?thick?, verbal descriptions of things in the Royal Society?s repository. Not only, Grew suggests, do his descriptions serve to signify the contents of his collection, but they enable us to discern among species and to think about the collection?s pieces in new ways. Verbal descriptions did not just signify things in the Royal Society?s collection, but had (...) the capacity to alter their meanings. The essay discusses the ?picturing? of natural things in Early Modern Europe with little direct reference to the contemporary media of graphic representation ? drawings, engravings, paintings etc. ? in order to highlight the role of the then most widely used, but now least discussed of these media, verbal descriptions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to revisit the problem about the influence of preceding philosophical theories on the Megaric group. Against the traditional view which defend either the influence of Parmenides or that of Socrates, I will try to show the impact of the philosophical position of Zeno of Elea. I will aim to defend that the Megarics use Zenonian antilogy as a part of eristic refutation. In the first section of this paper, I will present and discuss the (...) aforementioned interpretations that privilege either the Parmenidean or the Socratic influence on the Megarics. Then I will analyze the grounds and scope of Zenonian antilogy taking into account all the testimonies which present it as a tool to dicuss theories, rather than to defend them. Finally, I will show how the Megarics use Zenonian antilogy to construct paradoxes based on the numerous ambiguities concerning the signifier and meaning of words, predication, and reasoning, in order to reveal the limits of lógos and refute those who use it as a tool to grasp reality. (shrink)

This book is, along with Inner Grace, a sequel to Phillip Cary's Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self. In this work, Cary argues that Augustine invented the expressionist type of semiotics widely taken for granted in modernity, where words are outward signs giving inadequate expression to what lies within the soul. Augustine uses this new semiotics to explain why the authority of external teaching, including Biblical authority, is useful but temporary, designed to lead to a more permanent Platonist (...) vision granted by the inner teacher, Christ, who is the eternal Wisdom of God. In fact, for Augustine we literally learn nothing from words or other outward signs, which are useful only as admonitions or reminders pointing out the right direction for us to look in order to see for ourselves, with the inner eye of our own mind. Even our knowledge of other people is ultimately a matter of seeing what is in their souls, not putting faith in their words. Cary argues that for Augustine outward signs cannot give us knowledge because all bodily things are fundamentally powerless, incapable of conveying an inner good to the soul. This also leaves no room for a concept of efficacious external means of grace DL not even the flesh of Christ. The sacraments, which Augustine was the first to describe as outward signs of inner grace, signify what is necessary for salvation but do not confer it. Baptism, for example, is necessary for salvation, but its power is found not in water or word but in the inner unity, charity, and peace of the church. Along with its companion work, Inner Grace, this careful and insightful book breaks new ground in the study of Augustine's theology of grace and sacraments. (shrink)

A commonly deployed signifier to render the political event of a riot intelligible, ‘chaos’ describes an affective condition of disorder and disarray. For some theorists of affect, such a condition of chaotic unpredictability suggests emancipatory potential. Recounting the 2018 May Day / May 1st protests in Paris, that both politicians and media declared to be a riot, this paper argues that to consider the riot as chaotic is to think and feel like a state. Critically interrogating the analytical purchase of (...) ‘chaos’ to describe a riotous assembly of bodies, this paper contends that ‘chaos’ is not only a theoretically impoverished concept to understand such political events, but also that sovereignty mobilizes ‘chaos’ as an affective infrastructure of governance to shore up attachment to the security state. Repudiating the sovereign logic of chaos, this paper presents a first-person encounter with a protest-declared-riot in order to explore the various affects that materialize around such events. Through ethnographic reflection, this paper outlines a series of affects that accompanied the day’s events, such as speculative optimism, fragility, suspicion, fear, boldness, and joy. In so doing, the paper develops an affective approach to theorize relations of political antagonism in the street, arguing that whereas the state weaponizes terror as a form of governance, the rioters weaponize joy as an affective means of resistance. (shrink)

A perennial debate in the field of global ethics revolves around the possibility of a universalist ethics as well as arguments over the nature, and significance, of difference for moral deliberation. Decolonial literature, in particular, increasingly signifies a pluriverse – one with radical ontological and epistemological differences. This book examines the concept of the pluriverse alongside global ethics and the ethics of care in order to contemplate new ethical horizons for engaging across difference. Offering a challenge to the current (...) state of the field, this book argues for a rethinking of global ethics as it has been conceived thus far. (shrink)

This essay revisits Meyer Schapiro’s critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of Van Gogh’s painting of a pair of shoes in order to raise the question of the dispute between art history and philosophy as a contest increasingly ceded to the claim of the expert and the hegemony of the museum as culture and as cult or coded signifier. Following a discussion of museum culture, I offer a hermeneutic and phenomenological reading of Heidegger’s ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ and conclude (...) by taking Heidegger’s discussion of the strife between earth and world to the site of the ancient temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae as an example of the insistent foreclosure of the ancient work of art and the conflicts of the pervasive efforts of modern conservation. (shrink)

I am the LawIt is hard to imagine two more disparate characters than Judge Joseph Dredd and Hercules J—the one an over-muscular, faceless and heavily armed street judge astride a Lawmaster motorcycle who overidentifies with his role ; the other devoid of any physical presence or image, and structurally decoupled from the execution of law by a fierce determination to maintain the separation of powers and accountability which Dredd so effortlessly ignores. Hercules J is the embodiment of an intellectualised, yet (...) creative, operationalisation of law. To the academic spirit, Hercules is infinitely preferable as a model of judicial activism: his world conjures a contemplative modality, ever alert to the requirements of rights and largely aligned with the temper of the post-Enlightenment. By contrast, Dredd is the personification of the worst aspects of law-and-order as the debased and politicised manifestation of the Rule of Law. His is an intensely visceral presence, the metonymic blindness of Themis replaced by the Dredd’s fractured eyeline: blindness as a signifier of impartiality yields to blindness as a symptom of institutional rage. This article interrogates the characters, actions and values of Hercules J and Dredd J, viewed primarily through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s Force of Law, focusing on the relationship between law and violence as it is exposed in Hercules’s and Dredd’s worlds, and then turning to judicial confrontation with the aporetic: the aporias, identified by Derrida and others, that law must confront. The interrogation continues, finally contemplating the current state of law in the common law world—the world of liberal democracies, suggesting that the high point of democracy may well have passed, and that we are on a Dredd-ward trajectory. (shrink)

The financial crisis, and associated scandals, created a sense of a juridical deficit with regard to the financial sector. Forms of independent judgement within the sector appeared compromised, while judgement over the sector seemed unattainable. Elites, in the classical Millsian sense of those taking tacitly coordinated ‘big decisions’ over the rest of the public, seemed absent. This article argues that the eradication of jurisdictional elites is an effect of neoliberalism, as articulated most coherently by Hayek. It characterizes the neoliberal project (...) as an effort to elevate ‘unconscious’ processes over ‘conscious’ ones, which in practice means elevating cybernetic, non-human systems and processes over discursive spheres of politics and judgement. Yet such a system still produces its own types of elite power, which come to consist in acts of translation, rather than judgement. Firstly, there are ‘cyborg intermediaries’: elites which operate largely within the system of codes, data, screens and prices. Secondly, there are ‘diplomatic intermediaries’: elites who come to narrate and justify what markets (and associated technologies and bodies) are ‘saying’. The paper draws on Lazzarato’s work on signifying vs asignifying semiotics in order to articulate this, and concludes by considering the types of elite crisis which these forms of power tend to produce. (shrink)

Care ethics has been advanced as a suitable framework for evaluating the ethical significance of assistive robotics. One of the most prominent care ethical contributions to the ethical assessment of assistive robots comes through the work of Aimee Van Wynsberghe, who has developed the Care-Centred Value-Sensitive Design framework (CCVSD) in order to incorporate care values into the design of assistive robots. Building upon the care ethics work of Joan Tronto, CCVSD has been able to highlight a number of ways (...) in which care practices can undergo significant ethical transformations upon the introduction of assistive robots. In this paper, we too build upon the work of Tronto in an effort to enrich the CCVSD framework. Combining insights from Tronto’s work with the sociological concept of _emotional labor_, we argue that CCVSD remains underdeveloped with respect to the impact robots may have on the emotional labor required by paid care workers. Emotional labor consists of the managing of emotions and of emotional bonding, both of which signify a demanding yet potentially fulfilling dimension of paid care work. Because of the conditions in which care labor is performed nowadays, emotional labor is also susceptible to exploitation. While CCVSD can acknowledge some manifestations of unrecognized emotional labor in care delivery, it remains limited in capturing the structural conditions that fuel this vulnerability to exploitation. We propose that the idea of _privileged irresponsibility,_ coined by Tronto, helps to understand how the exploitation of emotional labor can be prone to happen in roboticized care practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Periwigged Heralds":Epistemology and Intertextuality in Early American CometographyChristopher JohnsonIn the winter of 1680-81 an enormous comet appeared in the nighttime skies of Europe and the Americas.1 This "blazing star" occasioned numerous treatises, poems, pamphlets, broadsides, ballads, engravings, and woodcuts. Evaluating this cometary copia, the historian of science, Pingré, in 1783 observes:The world was inundated with writings on these phenomena, on their nature, on their significations; for there were still (...) astrologers and cometomantics [Cométomantiens]... I believe that the languages were not even as confused at the Tower of Babel, as were the sentiments concerning this famous comet.2Pingré's belated impatience with the discursive flood of "astrologers and cometomantics" echoes of course the more general Cartesian objection to the confusion of words and things, a confusion that L'Académie des sciences and Royal Society dedicated themselves to eliminating. But the arduous nature of this effort in seventeenth-century Europe is exemplified by the numerous, often-conflicting interpretations of the 1618, 1665, and 1680 comets—to say nothing of the unprecedented "new stars" or novas of 1572 and 1604, which were often treated as cometary phenomena. In this essay, though, I will trace the contours of this epistemological confusion in the Americas—specifically in [End Page 399] Mexico, Peru, and New England—where European astronomical, astrological, theological, and literary discourses concerning comets were repeated and imitated but also where they were mediated by cultural concerns unique to the New World. More particularly, by focusing on some of the intertextual aspects of the interpretation of the 1680 comet in the Americas, I suggest that the hermeneutic of signs which dominated in one way or another almost every Early American cometography is indicative of broader epistemological and rhetorical tensions that characterize the period.Popular belief in late seventeenth-century Europe generally held that a comet's appearance heralded God's wrath. In Germany the terrible "Wunder-Komet" of 1680 precipitated the publication of nearly a hundred treatises, most of which echoed the motto on a medal struck by the State Library of Zurich: "The star threatens evil things. Have faith! God will set things right."3 The devout comet-watcher could thus look forward to imminent salvation, while sinners were urged to seize a final chance to repent. Still, even many of the learned who treated comets mathematically also embraced some form of theological hermeneutic. Both Kepler and, later in his life, Newton wished to retain comets as actors in God's eschatological drama.4 Though others, like Galileo and Gassendi, saw the comet as a natural event without semiotic significance, the more astrologically inclined continued to see it not just as a sign but as the effective cause itself of ill, or less often, good fortune.5 Stanislaw Lubieniecki's1667 Theatrum cometicum thus places one comet at Jerusalem's destruction and another at Christ's birth.6 In other words, the Theatrum, like most contemporary cometographies, is fueled by the logic of analogy, for a comet was generally read as a wondrous (but usually disastrous) sign linking the microcosm and macrocosm, or alternately, as a sign legible only by translating the Book of Nature with the lexicon provided by the Book of God, the Bible.7 When it came to comets, the epistemic shift that Foucault traces in The Order of Things, from a sixteenth-century symbolic or qualitative world-view to a seventeenth-century rationalist or quantitative one, was often slowly and/or incompletely achieved. Forced to speak of a comet's "beard" or "tail," even the less mantic cometographers found themselves interrogating the analogical nature of their discourse as much as the celestial objects that excited their curiosity. [End Page 400]Especially in France and to a lesser extent England the epistemological and rhetorical assumptions associated with the idea that comets heralded misfortune were being subject to increasing scrutiny if not sometimes also outright scorn. Most famously, Pierre Bayle in his Pensées diverses; Ecrites à un Docteur de Sorbonne, à l'occasion de la comète qui parut au mois de Decembre 1680, uses the comet as a kind of floating signifier which allows him to interrogate with proto-Enlightenment rigor all manner... (shrink)

In this paper, I will expand upon Giorgio Agamben’s argument in his defining work Homo Sacer where he accused Immanuel Kant for introducing the state of exception to modernity. According to Agamben, Kant managed to do this by introducing the form of law as “being in force without signifying.” In this line, I will argue that ‘the ban’ is indeed inherent within Kantian morality and all subjects under the law stand in “pure relation of abandonment” vis-a-vis the law. In (...) order to show this, I will focus on Kant’s views on masturbation in the context of his disdainful views about the body and sex and how through these views he formulated ‘duties to oneself’ in a way that condemns the masturbator to ‘bare life.’. (shrink)

The article investigates the hypothesis that preaching implies more than merely verbalising, proclaiming and rhetoric reasoning. Preaching is fundamentally the art of poetic seeing; an aesthetic event on an ontic and spiritual level; that is, it provides vocabulary and images in order to help people to discover meaning in life (preaching as the art of foolishness). In this regard, preaching should provide God-images that open up the dimension of aesthetics and provide vistas of the ‘unseen’. The iconic dimension of (...) preaching is about symbols and metaphors that help people to ‘see’ in everyday life (a poetic gaze) the presence of God in such a way that tragic events, the awareness of death and the anguish about the fear for loss and rejection become events for signifying life and for healing (the quest for wholeness). It is argued that practical theology should be about a liturgy of life. In this regard, the ‘ugliness of God’ becomes an aesthetic category in a Christian spiritual approach to iconography. In order to do this a critical approach to praxis thinking should probe into the realm of paradigms, especially paradigms that describe the ‘power of God’. Due to the assumption that the depiction of God’s power was predominantly influenced by the Serapis, Zeus and Roman cult (Emperor mystique), a paradigm shift from omni-categories (pantokrator) to bowel categories (passio Dei) in the homiletic depiction of God is proposed. (shrink)

Nishida in his writings pursued two main lines of thought, which are almost equally pervasive and persistent. These are the philosophy of self-consciousness, which is mainly religious and soteriological, and the philosophy of history-politics, which is fundamentally historical and political. Both philosophies are essentially ontologies, by virtue of the application of ontological operators. These operators function in almost every phase of Nishida's philosophy, with the notable exception of his discussion of the sciences, and in the main include activity, self-determination, actuality, (...) one-qua-many logic, and immanent-qua-transcendent logic. Once they are at work, whatever entity they apply to will have full reality in Nishida's texts. In general, the operators are applied in turn to pure experience, an artistic creation, an act of self-consciousness, a historical epoch, the state, and the Emperor, in their chronological order in Nishida's texts. The extension of his ontological operators from acts of self-consciousness to a historical epoch is what I call the turn in Nishida's philosophy. This occurred about 1931 and is the most decisive shift in Nishida's philosophy, because it paved the way for Nishida's return to the world which he had once rejected and called transitory. This turn signifies that the applications of these ontological operators are turned from conscious phenomena to non-conscious phenomena, and also reflects Nishida's own critical stance toward his earlier religious-soteriological philosophy. ;Nishida's extension of ontological operators to his historical-political thinking, or his assertion of a direct union of self-consciousness and the historical world, is seen as fundamentally inappropriate. It fails to appreciate the incompleteness of a historical epoch and the culpability of the state. I call this union a category mistake, since acts of self-consciousness and a historical epoch are not similar enough to be treated by similar ontological operators. Nishida's later philosophy may be seen as his effort to overcome his earlier sharp distinction between homo interior and homo exterior by giving fuller reality to the latter. But the manner in which Nishida overcomes his internalism remains fundamentally internal, since the ontological operators themselves, which he uses to overcome that internalism, are originated from his discussion of aesthetic creativity and creative acts of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Les analyses linguistiques modernes ont mis en lumière une dimension de la communication humaine qui est de l’ordre de la promesse, et qui est applicable au langage de la création. Tout récit de commencement est mythique et symbolique, en tant qu’il relève de l’imagination et qu’il implique la foi dans une promesse d’avenir. Dans la Bible, les récits de création disent l’Alliance de Dieu avec l’humanité, dont l’histoire est précédée par l’acte créateur de l’univers. S’intéressant à l’histoire de la nature (...) à la suite de Newton, Kant fera de l’idée de Dieu un principe, non de connaissance d’un objet, mais de régulation de la recherche, et il accepte de parler d’une finalité de la création pour rendre compte de la liberté humaine. Le paradigme de la création relève d’une pensée de l’agir libre et s’impose quand il est question de l’avenir. L’excès du monde où vit l’homme provoque son admiration et lui donne le pressentiment de la transcendance.De nos jours, l’écologie, avec la prise de conscience de l’environnement, relance le problème de la création sous la forme de l’habitation de l’homme dans son monde. L’anthropocentrisme biblique signifie à cet égard que c’est la tâche de l’homme de rendre ce monde habitable pour tous, sans violence et dans la beauté. Le mythe engage dans une pratique constitutive des liens de société.Modern linguistic analyses shed light on a dimension of human communication that is in the order of promise, and which is applicable to the language of creation. Every story of the beginning is mythic and symbolic, in so far as it comes from the imagination and implicates faith in a future promise. In the Bible, the stories of creation speak of the Covenant of God with humanity, whose history is preceded by an act creating the universe. Kant, who followed Newton’s interest in the history of nature, made the idea of God a principle, not of knowledge of an object but of the control of research. He accepted to speak of a finality of creation in order to understand human freedom. The paradigm of creation comes from the idea of acting freely and imposes itself when there is a question of the future. The excess of the world where man lives provokes his admiration and gives him the presentment of transcendence .In our day, ecology’s concern with the environment brings back the problem of creation under the form of man living in his world. Biblical anthropocentrism means, in this context, that it is the job of man to make this world habitable for everyone, without violence and in beauty. Myth engages in a practice constitutive of the bonds of society. (shrink)

The award of the 2003 Barwise Prize to Daniel Dennett by the American Philosophical Association signifies Dennett’s importance in the developing area of philosophical inquiry into computing and information. One source of Dennett’s intellectual stature is his command of scientific and engineering ideas, which he effectively applies to philosophical debates over machine intelligence, consciousness, and intentionality. Dennett regards the computer as both a model and a tool that will transform the ways that philosophy is pursued in the 21st century. In (...) order to understand Dennett’s conception of how philosophy changes and fares, if his mechanistic and reductionist conception of the life of the mind succeeds, we turn to an examination of a central idea in Dennett’s thought: the intuition pump. (shrink)

This study aims to reconstruct some of the main strategies to address the controversial position of Kant in his opusculum On the Supposed Right to Lie for the sake of Humanity, namely, an unconditional prohibition of lying, even when the consequences are catastrophic, seeking to ascertain the relevance such as an attempt to better situate the ethics of Kant in the face of overwhelming objections from the critics.Wood, for example, argues that the opusculum does not deal with an ethical duty, (...) but a legal duty not to lie, claiming that the prohibition does not lie in the opusculum comes from the categorical imperative, but the universal principle of law. Korsgaard and Mahon argue that, regardless of the question for the type of duty in dispute between Kant and Constant, the point is that it does not follow the ethics of Kant, at least in some formulations of the categorical imperative of an unconditional prohibition of lying. In addition, it will defend itself in order to avoid such objections to Kantian ethics would need to abandon the distinction between duties of perfect obligation and duties of imperfect obligation, since, although not a dispute about an ethical duty, the classification of the duty not to lie as a perfect duty to oneself or to others signifies your unconditional.Este estudo pretende reconstruir algumas das principais estratégias de enfrentar a controversa posição de Kant em seu opúsculo Sobre o suposto direito de mentir por amor à humanidade, a saber, uma proibição incondicional da mentira, mesmo quando as consequências são catastróficas, buscando averiguar a pertinência dessas enquanto uma tentativa de melhor situar a ética de Kant diante das objeções avassaladoras dos críticos. Wood, por exemplo, defende que o opúsculo não trata de um dever ético, mas sim de um dever jurídico de não mentir, sustentando que a proibição da mentira no opúsculo não deriva do imperativo categórico, mas do princípio universal do direito. Korsgaard e Mahon afirmam que, independente da questão relativa ao tipo do dever em disputa entre Kant e Constant, o ponto é que não se segue da ética de Kant, ao menos em algumas das formulações do imperativo categórico uma proibição incondicional da mentira. Além disso, se defenderá que, a fim de evitar esse tipo de objeções a ética de Kant precisaria abandonar a distinção entre deveres de obrigação perfeita e deveres de obrigação imperfeita, uma vez que, mesmo que não seja uma disputa acerca de um dever ético, a classificação do dever de não mentir como um dever perfeito para consigo mesmo ou para com os outros implica sua incondicionalidade. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to draw attention to the position of psychoanalysis regarding the opposition between the quest for truth and relativism. It is a conventional opposition of contemporary thought. On one hand, the quest for truth, and on the other, relativism, as the fundament of our intellectual and political life. I do this by means of Lacanian teachings. My objective is to take on the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis and the consequences of clinical facts, in order (...) to enable a critical reflection on this topic. Before proceeding to the precise argument, I briefly introduce the historical ground correlated to modern subjectivity, characterized by the vanishing of the guarantee of both truth and knowledge. Then I then go into the topic by means of a survey of Lacan’s reading of the path of modern logic. Lacan interprets the whole history of logic as a bungled action, “every bungled action is a successful discourse.” In fact, it points to the cardinal place of lack, which is the topic of psychoanalysis. It opens towards a deeper understanding of the role of the signifier of signification – the Bedeutung des Phallus. Lacan’s interpretation of the whole history of logic transforms the achievements of modern logical thought into the writings of a point de capiton for collective rationality. The key here is to focus on the capital role of what I call in conclusion “an inaccessible point” for both individual and collective life. This is the issue I address in the last point. The article is divided into five points: 1. the relativistic drift; 2. the guarantee of knowledge; 3. the guarantee of truth; 4. logic and point de capiton; and 5. the signification (Bedeutung) of the Phallus. (shrink)

'Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science is a survey that attempts to describe a hypothetic philosophy--the avant-garde pseudo-science imagined by Alfred Jarry. 'Pataphysics is a supplement to metaphysics, accenting it, then replacing it, in order to create a philosophic alternative, whose discipline can study cases, not of conception, but of exception: variance , alliance , and deviance . 'Pataphysics synthesizes the romantic schism between a literal, scientized discourse and a figural, poeticized discourse, and my thesis suggests that this (...) revision of the signifier "science" by 'pataphysics is symptomatic of a postmodern transition in science from a paradigm of absolutism to a paralogy of relativism. Structured as a descriptive explication, which emphasizes a theoretical perspective, this survey is divided into five chapters: the first chapter recounts the history of the conflict between science and poetry ; the second chapter examines the avant-garde pseudo-science of 'pataphysics itself ; and finally, the last three chapters discuss the influence of 'pataphysics upon the poetics of its subsequent successors . While my thesis focuses upon theories of textual poetics rather than poetry itself , my thesis does nevertheless strive to be as conceptually encyclopedic as 'pataphysics itself: instead of normalizing 'pataphysics within one theoretical perspective, this survey alludes intermittently to 'pataphysical enterprises that constitute exceptions to such a genealogy of Jarryites. What is at stake is the status of poetry in a world of science. How might poetry reclaim its own viable truth? How might science benefit from its own poetic irony? For the postmodern condition, such questions have already opened up a novel space for speculative imagination; hence, this survey presents itself as a kind of primer for a future of possible research. (shrink)

In his seminar on 'Desire and its Interpretation' Lacan gives a detailed interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. We present this interpretation as an alternative to the psychobiographic approach which has been dominant in the psychoanalytic tradition. According to Lacan Hamlet is a poetic creation and nothing else. In order to understand it wedon't have to look at the unconscious motives of the author, but at the composition of the text. The deliberate articulation of the signifier accounts for the effect of (...) the play on its readers. According to Lacan Hamlet is a tragedy of desire that informs us onthe truth of human existence. It also shows how we can get access to this truth. In that sense Shakespeare's text can, according to Lacan, also learn us something about the aim of the psychoanalytic process. The conclusion argues that Lacan's interpretation of the nature of the psychoanalytic process is heavily dependent on the phenomenological tradition and more particularly that it ressembles the problematic of the 'phenomenological reduction'. (shrink)

GOTTFRIED SCHWEIGER,GUNTER GRAF | : In this paper, we want to examine the particular vulnerability of children from an ethical perspective. We want to defend three claims: Firstly, we will argue that children’s vulnerability is best understood as a dynamic quality, meaning that as children progress through childhood, their vulnerability also undergoes particular changes. To capture this, we want to discriminate among physical, mental, social, and symbolic vulnerability, which vary according to certain features, such as age, maturity, gender, and race. (...) These different traits are furthermore important in order to understand what we owe children from an ethical perspective. In a nutshell, children have moral claims not to be harmed and to be protected against threats to their well-being and well-becoming, and these claims have to be explicated via the dynamic vulnerability of children. Finally, we will argue that one of the main issues is to balance the protection of children and their autonomy claims, which both enhance and diminish their vulnerability. | : Cet article examine la vulnérabilité particulière des enfants d’un point de vue éthique. Nous défendrons trois thèses. Premièrement, nous soutiendrons que la vulnérabilité des enfants est mieux comprise en tant que qualité dynamique, ce qui signifie que lorsque les enfants progressent durant l’enfance, leur vulnérabilité subit également des changements particuliers. Pour le mettre en relief, nous distinguerons la vulnérabilité physique, mentale, sociale et symbolique, qui varie en fonction de certaines caractéristiques telles que l’âge, la maturité, le sexe et la race. Ces différents traits sont en outre importants pour comprendre ce que nous devons aux enfants d’un point de vue éthique. En un mot, les enfants ont des exigences morales à ne pas être blessés et à être protégés contre les menaces à leur bien-être et à leur bien-devenir, et ces revendications doivent être expliquées par la vulnérabilité dynamique des enfants. Enfin, nous soutiendrons que l’un des principaux enjeux est d’équilibrer la protection des enfants et leurs revendications d’autonomie, qui à la fois renforcent et diminuent leur vulnérabilité. (shrink)

This paper approaches a theory relating authorship, meaning and purpose by semiformalized developments of two "presupposed theories": of purposeful behavior and of sign-reading. The theory of purposeful behavior is made to rest upon two undefined predicates. `Wt(a,p,q)' abbreviates the claim that at time t, person a works at bringing it about that p in order to bring it about that q. `Bt(a,p)' abbreviates the claim that at time t, person a brings it about that p. A number of definitions (...) and laws are based upon these two predicates. One practical utility of the symbolism is a constraint to symbolize differently a purpose, according as what is intended is a purposing or a thing purposed. The theory of sign-reading undertakes to assimilate sign-reading to inference. The theory proposes `Rt(a,p,q)' as a basic undefined predicate, abbreviating the claim that at time t, person a reads that p as a sign that q. The theory of deliberate sign-production, and more particularly of authorship, is approached by permitting the two above sets of symbols to supply arguments one for the other. Specifically, making a deliberate or a candid sign is defined as bringing about a state of affairs in order that an addressee will read the bringing about by the sign-maker of that state of affairs as a sign that such and so. The laws of the two first parts of the paper are then appealed to in order to show that when the sign-making is candid (defined in the paper), the such and so mentioned above must be a feigned or actual purpose of the author. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of what in this total signified purpose of the sign-making might be indentified by reference to the conventional sign-type (sentence) presented. Thus "meaning" of a sentence is thence viewed as an abstraction from the signified meaning (always a purpose) of the uttering. (shrink)