This book investigates how a number of influential philosophies arose out of catastrophes, such as wars, plagues, and earthquakes. Central to the project is an explanation of how these catastrophes led to the questioning of basic assumptions and the introduction of new ideas to make sense out of a chaotic and often unintelligible world.

The aim of this article is to investigate around the life in the contemporary society, characterized by risks and catastrophes. What does mean to live fearing that in any moment a catastrophe could happen (a tsunami, an earthquake, a nuclear explosion)? Despite of the failure of science and public institutions in the prevention of the catastrophes, the question is the following: Can we use the catastrophe as a paradigm of the contemporary uncertain life, trying to mean it as a theme (...) of mediation? Can we use the catastrophe for developing a philosophy of the recognition of the other who has been involved in the same tragedy? (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the philosophy of the common cause of N.F. Fedorov (1829–1903). The ideas related to the active-historical function of humanity in the world ontology are the subject of analytical attention. The method of meaningful analysis re­veals the main intentions of cosmosophy, aimed at the implementation of the project for the comprehensive regulation of nature and for the ontological transformation of the world. A semantic disclosure of a number of systemic categories of the philosophy (...) of cosmism is proposed and the fundamental concept of unrelatedness is explicated. It is noted that projectivism that draws a sharp line between cosmosophy and contemplative cosmic views is a carrier methodological principle of the cosmosophical paradigm. Fe­dorov’s teaching is characterized as an axiological system of supramoralism, aimed at changing the spontaneous natural order, transforming the empirical being. Based on this, it is concluded that Fedorov’s teaching can be defined as a cultural-evolutionary deonto­logy, postulating the need for a conscious stage of the global evolutionary process. It is noted that the axiomatics of the philosophy of cosmism is based on the traditions of the Orthodox creed. At the same time, it is the projective attitude to the world that makes it possible to realize the historical potential of Christianity as a “living religion” that synthesizes science, art and creed. Supramoralism proposes a project of creative eschato­logy, opposed to the passive expectation of a history catastrophic break. Cosmosophy af­firms the imperative of a real apocatastasis, requiring the physical resurrection of all gen­erations of dead people. It is concluded that the target historiosophical vector of cosmism determines the transition of an adult society into a god-like state. (shrink)

In The Democracy of Suffering philosopher Todd Dufresne provides a strikingly original exploration of the past, present, and future of this epoch, the Anthropocene, demonstrating how the twin crises of reason and capital have dramatically remade the essential conditions for life itself. Images, cartoons, artworks, and quotes pulled from literary and popular culture supplement this engaging and unorthodox look into where we stand amidst the ravages of climate change and capitalist economics. With humour, passion, and erudition, Dufresne diagnoses a frightening (...) new reality and proposes a way forward, arguing that our serial experiences of catastrophic climate change herald an intellectual and moral awakening - one that lays the groundwork, albeit at the last possible moment, for a future beyond individualism, hate, and greed. That future is unapologetically collective. It begins with a shift in human consciousness, with philosophy in its broadest sense, and extends to a reengagement with our greatest ideals of economic, social, and political justice for all. But this collective future, Dufresne argues, is either now or never. Uncovering how we got into this mess and how, if at all, we get out of it, The Democracy of Suffering is a flicker of light, or perhaps a scream, in the face of human extinction and the end of civilization. (shrink)

A collection of essays that takes stock of the current impact of the image and imagination of the catastrophe in art, science and philosophy.

Comment survivre à la vie? Car la vie finit mal, se passe mal aussi parfois, avec ruptures, chagrins, deuils, maladies, et mort. Comment traverser ces catastrophes? Avec l'aide de la foi, qui donne sens à ce qui n'est que souffrance? Mais qu'en est-il de l'athée? S'il veut être cohérent, il ne doit pas chercher à donner un sens à ces souffrances, à leur trouver une justification mais il ne peut faire fond que sur l'absurdité de la vie. Quelle fécondité trouver (...) aux vies abîmées? Comment penser la mort et la douleur? Comme ce qui est étranger à la vie, comme ce qui ne la concerne pas. Sans pour autant faire comme si cela n'était rien. Il faudrait donc tenir ensemble la réalité terrifiante du malheur et la valeur absolue de la vie, qui seule importe.Un essai de philosophie athée rigoureuse, qui pose la question essentielle : à quoi bon vivre? Introduction. Vivre au dehors. Idées pour la constitution d'une éthique athée Chapitre premier. Le pendule équivoque. Tomber malade, vivre debout Chapitre II. Expérience et misère de la mort Chapitre III. Vivre sans, vivre avec - après la mort Chapitre IV. Quelle tuile! Sur l'événement amoureux Chapitre V. Heureux qui comme David (Se faire son petit bonheur juif) Chapitre VI. Des petits et des grandsbouleversements La fin du pire? Remerciements. (shrink)

The political, economic and environmental policies of a hegemonic, oligarchic, political-economic international caste are the origin and cause of the ecological and political dystopia that we are living in. An utilitarian, resourcist, anthropocentric perspective guides classical economics and sustainable development models, allowing the enrichment of a tiny part of the world's population, while not impeding but, on the contrary, directly inducing economic losses and environmental destruction for the many. To preserve the integrity of natural systems we must abandon the resourcist (...) anthropocentric ethical fiction that is the current moral foundation underlying our relationship with nature and instead promote the realization of a new developmental landmark for democratic institutions: direct democracy, i.e. democracy truly governed by the people for the people, and ultimately for nature as well. (shrink)

The philosophy of blockchain technology is concerned, among other things, with blockchain ontology, how it might be characterised, how it is being created, implemented, and adopted, how it operates in the world, and how it evolves over time. This paper concentrates on whether Bitcoin/blockchain can be considered a complex system and, if so, whether it is a chaotic one. Beyond mere academic curiosity, a positive response would raise concerns about the likelihood of Bitcoin/blockchain entering a 2010-Flash-Crash-type of chaotic regime, with (...) catastrophic consequences for financial systems based on it. The paper starts by highlighting the relevant details of the Bitcoin/blockchain ecosystem formed by the blockchain itself, bitcoin end users, capital gains seekers, miners, full nodes maintainers, and developers, and their interactions. Then the Information Theory of Complex Systems is briefly discussed for later use. Finally, the blockchain is investigated with the help of Crutchfield's Statistical Complexity measure. The low non-null statistical complexity value obtained suggests that the blockchain may be considered algorithmically complicated but hardly a complex system and unlikely to enter a chaotic regime. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious way, those (...) institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

Technology, in particular large-scale applications of it, offers enormous benefits. However, it also poses considerable, sometimes potentially catastrophic risks. For complex technical systems, the risks are not always reliably predictable.

이 글은 현대한국철학의 역사를 정립하기 위한 예비적 시도다. 이 시도는 우선 최근 정 치적 주체로 급부상한 '페미니즘 주체'의 탈역사적 성격, 즉 선험적 통일성을 담지하지 않 는 역사 이후의 주체로서의 성격을 적극 참조한다. 이른바 칸트가 개진했던 '이성의 역사'라고 하는 이성의 자기발전에 대한 역사적 성찰에 대해 이 탈역사적 주체는 그 뿌리에서부 터 문제제기를 하고 있다. 다시 말해 현대한국철학사 역시 서양철학사와 동일하게 '철학적 문제는 어떻게 발생하는가'(철학의 체계)와 '이 문제를 정식화하기 위한 개념들의 역사적 발생(철학사)', 이 양자의 이율배반적 관계에 직면할 수밖에 없다. 현대한국철학을 규정하기 위해 (...) 우선 푸코를 따라 현대철학은 '계몽'의 문제인 동시에, 서양의 보편적, 계몽적 주체에 대해 유대인이 갖는 역사적 특수성에 유비적으로 한국의 계몽적 주체 또한 계몽의 반대항으로 역사적 경험으로서의 파국 의 축을 노정한다. 서구라는 타자에 의한 자기상실과 절망으로서의 파국 그리고 타자의 보편적 계몽주의를 번역하고 전유하려는 집단적 시도 로서의 계몽. 이 양축은 타자의 침입에 대한 민중의 '봉기'의 축과 이것을 헌법의 이념으 로 정립하는 '헌정'의 축(3ㆍ1운동 등)과 교차한다. 그렇다면 '누가 철학자인가?'라는 철학 자의 정체성과 관련한 문제에 대하여 우리는 철학이 철학자의 삶의 방식과 분리될 수 없고 도리어 철학의 성격을 규정한다고 주장한다. 그러면서 모방이 가능한 철학자의 사회적, 집단적 인격을 페르소나 라고 정의하고 이 페르소나에 바탕을 두고 자기를 형성하는 '아스케시스'가 철학자의 정체성을 규정하는 근거가 된다고도 주장할 것이다. 이 네 개의 축(계몽, 파국, 봉기, 헌정)과 두 개의 근거(페르소나, 아스케시스)는 현대한국철학의 역사를 쓰기 위한 개념적 도구들이 될 것이다. (shrink)

Insurers draw on sophisticated models for the probability distributions over losses associated with catastrophic events that are required to price insurance policies. But prevailing pricing methods don’t factor in the ambiguity around model-based projections that derive from the relative paucity of data about extreme events. I argue however that most current theories of decision making under ambiguity only partially support a solution to the challenge that insurance decision makers face and propose an alternative approach that allows for decision making that (...) is responsive to both the evidential situation of the insurance decision maker and their attitude to ambiguity. (shrink)

Catastrophe Theory was developed in an attempt to provide a form of Mathematics particularly apt for applications in the biological sciences. It was claimed that while it could be applied in the more conventional physical way, it could also be applied in a new metaphysical way, derived from the Structuralism of Saussure in Linguistics and Lévi-Strauss in Anthropology.Since those early beginnings there have been many attempts to apply Catastrophe Theory to Biology, but these hopes cannot be said to have been (...) fully realised. (shrink)

This paper examines the changing ethical consciousness in Russia since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and discusses how this change was reflected in Russian religious philosophy. This process can be characterized by a series of sudden and violent replacements of contradictory ethical models, which, by disorientating the public consciousness, led to the atrophy of the ethical instinct. The last two models in the series correspond to the “anti-ethics” of the 1990s and the “non-ethics” of the third Millennium. The latter model (...) corresponds to the current absence of individual ethical positions and the willingness to adopt any position prescribed by the state. A review of philosophical reflection on this process shows that Russian religious thought did not foresee such an ethical catastrophe. Indeed, although Vladimir Solovyov presented an alarming eschatological foresight of the future, and despite the fact that the collection Landmarks, written in 1907, firmly identified the intelligentsia as a highly destructive agent promoting their own alternative ethics, the optimistic philosophical model nonetheless prevailed. According to this optimistic model, the period of disasters and catastrophes will be followed by a new spiritual reawakening. (shrink)

Ethical corporate marketing—as an organisational-wide philosophy—transcends the domains of corporate social responsibility, business ethics, stakeholder theory and corporate marketing. This being said, ethical corporate marketing represents a logical development vis-a-vis the nascent domain of corporate marketing has an explicit ethical/CSR dimension and extends stakeholder theory by taking account of an institution’s past, present and (prospective) future stakeholders. In our article, we discuss, scrutinise and elaborate the notion of ethical corporate marketing. We argue that an ethical corporate marketing positioning is a (...) prerequisite for corporations which claim to have an authentic ethical corporate identity. Our article expands and integrates extant scholarship vis-a-vis ethical corporate identities, the sustainable entrepreneur and corporate marketing. In delineating the breadth, significance, and challenges of ethical corporate marketing we make reference to the BP Deepwater Horizon (Gulf of Mexico) catastrophe of 2010. (shrink)

In Robinson in Ruins, the third of Patrick Keiller’s trilogy of fictionalised documentaries concerning the wanderings and speculations of an unseen protagonist, the narrator informs us that Robinson had been reading Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, which ‘locates the origin of twentieth century catastrophe in the development of market society in England’. Polanyi identifies how the self-regulating market is not a naturally emergent social form, but was the product of the active interventions of the state. For Robinson (and for Keiller) (...) the contradictions between displacement and dwelling generated by laissez-faire can be revealed and challenged by an exploration of the relationships between landscape, space and politics. The melancholy tone of this trilogy can also be sensed in one of Henri Lefebvre’s final essays, in which he laments the dissolution of the utopian promise of the urban that he once dramatised through his thesis of the ‘urban revolution’. This article explores the themes that drive Keiller’s approach in the Robinson trilogy and draws out the associations in these works to Lefebvre’s writings on the politics of space, Polanyi’s critique of laissez-faire capitalism, and Walter Benjamin’s response to the historical catastrophe we understand as ‘progress’. I will argue that Keiller’s engagement with the idea of catastrophe, through spatial, social and historical registers, is an attempt to link the material ruins of our present with utopian imaginings of alternative forms of sociality—beyond the conceptual limits of capitalist realism and the catastrophic futures of neoliberal space. (shrink)

This essay interrogates Amílcar Cabral’s distinction between “the population” and “the people” in the context of anticolonial liberation struggles. The former encompasses the totality of the existing individuals in a given geographical jurisdiction, while the latter includes only those committed to realizing the objective of ending colonial domination. This distinction represents a content-based understanding of the category of “the people,” a decisive departure from the formalist conceptions of this category that dominate deliberative, liberal, and radical traditions in democratic theory. I (...) defend Cabral’s approach against the prevailing theoretical current, arguing that his content-based distinction has attained a renewed and momentous relevance in light of the impending climate catastrophe. (shrink)

The social order of the current system has brought an increase in the public dissents and turned to a ‘normalized sociological pathology’ of the postmodern world. The unyielding public resistance examples in different cultural geographies, which are fragmented, limited and yet significant and expanding struggles, convey the message that the global order of the Powerful has entered the age of stagnation. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between the social protests and global order that has given (...) rise to new identities of local and global injustice. I argue that social protests in the last years display discernible patterns of a change in cultural perceptions of the activists in different public spaces. On the one hand, this signals the emergence of a new public order in the 21st century. On the other hand, the ravages of social catastrophe shape the very dynamics of the same public culture. ‘Enduring and resisting public cultures’ is introduced in this article as a benchmark to identify ethnographic struggles of the activists for the quest of a new public space, which represents ‘Another World’. (shrink)

At the outset of The Democracy of Suffering, Canadian philosopher Todd Dufresne suggests that we should stop worrying about the indifference of those ignoring the environmental plight of the world...

An anthropogenic global catastrophic risk is a human-induced risk that threatens sustained and wide-scale loss of life and damage to civilisation across the globe. In order to understand how new research on governance mechanisms for emerging technologies might assuage such risks, it is important to ask how perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes towards the governance of global catastrophic risk within the research community shape the conduct of potentially risky research. The aim of this study is to deepen our understanding of emerging (...) technology research culture as it relates to global catastrophic risks, and to shed new light on how new research governance mechanisms might be developed. We analyse in-depth interviews with leading AI and biotech researchers both from universities and the private sector. We develop new insights in terms of four salient themes. First, ‘engineering mindset’, which highlights the premium placed by many interviewees on pursuing interesting research about the physical world for its own sake. Second, ‘self-government’, which looks at how self-regulation of technological development currently occurs. Third, ‘pure incentives’, focussing on how career and other incentives shapes research. Fourth, ‘norms and persuasion’, which examines the role of moral considerations in guiding the research choices of scientists. We end by considering the implications of these findings for future research on governance of anthropogenic global catastrophic risk. (shrink)

My article provides a systematic interpretation of the transformation of capitalist society in the neo-liberal era as a form of what Karl Polanyi called ‘cultural catastrophe’. I substantiate this claim by drawing upon Erich Fromm’s theory of social character. Fromm’s notion of social character, I argue, offers a plausible, psychodynamic explanation of the processes of social change and the eventual class composition of neo-liberal society. I argue, further, that Fromm allows us to understand the psychosocial basis of the process that (...) Polanyi calls cultural catastrophe. This requires an elucidation of the major social forces of financialization and emancipation which, I argue, proved to be important formative factors in the emergence of neo-liberal society. The cultural catastrophe of neo-liberalism concerns the working class, whose prevailing social character has become misaligned with the new expectations and requirements of neo-liberal society. (shrink)

With catastrophic events of «nature» like global warming, arguments emerge that insinuate an equivalence of vulnerability, responsibility or being affected by these catastrophes. Such an alleged equivalence when facing climate catastrophe is already visible, for example, in the notion of the «Anthropocene» itself, which obscures both causes and various vulnerabilities in a homogenized as well as universalized concept of humanity (anthropos). Taking such narratives as a starting point, the paper explores questions about the connection between catastrophe, temporality, and history, following (...) mainly Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jean-Luc Nancy with the goal to provide (1) a critique of the concept «Anthropocene» on the basis of nonequivalence while retaining its key features to still grasp the catastrophic present, (2) an analysis of anthropocenic time and the chronical structure of catastrophe, (3) philosophical considerations on the intersection of catastrophe and history. (shrink)

What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men [sic] to rise above themselves.– Albert Camus, The PlagueMany novelists and philosophers have commented on the them...

Bauman’s writing adopts different modes of address – it moves from the conventionally academic, through the essayistic, the diaristic and, most obviously, the conversational. This movement reflects the emergence of a late style in Bauman’s work. This late style is understood through Adorno. It highlights the bankruptcy and thoughtlessness of the hegemonic – world doubling – forms of sociology. Bauman’s late style is thinking with and for otherness. As such, the late style works are an active catastrophe. They refute the (...) ‘ideology of existing conditions’, repudiate world doubling and are, instead, a praxis of and for othering. In this way the mode of address can be understood to be ethical in and of itself. (shrink)

“Think of the disaster” is the first injunction of thought when faced with the disaster that struck European Jews during the Shoah. Thinking of the disaster means understanding why the Shoah was able to occur in civilized Europe, moulded by humane reason and the values of progress and enlightenment. It means thinking of a possibility for philosophy’s future. Walter Benjamin, who wrestled with these problems ahead of time, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Emmanuel Levinas had the courage, the strength and (...) the perception—and sometimes simply the desperation—to think about what had happened. Moved by indignation and the desire to testify, they felt the urgent need to address the cries of agony of Auschwitz’s victims in their thinking. (shrink)

Taking its departure from The Differend’s analysis of Auschwitz as a sign for the evental character of history, I argue that the looming ecological disaster we now face reveals both the continuing relevance and limits of Lyotard’s thought. While the form of political agency of the catastrophe to come involves a differend, this differend cannot be attached to a proper name, however problematic its mode of signification. This, however, suggests the even greater relevance of Lyotard’s treatment, in the conclusion of (...) The Differend, of capitalism in terms of temporal contradiction, as well as his theorization of oikos and ecology in subsequent works, where he distinguishes between the economic and the ecological. This distinction, I conclude, is rendered problematic by the catastrophe to come, as indeed is any attempt to draw an absolute distinction between “philosophical politics” and mere technocratic management or even to exclude speculation from the heart of philosophy. (shrink)

In public discourse trauma is predominantly framed as an overwhelming event undergone by the individual. In this article I first provide a brief genealogy to trace the emergence of what is now the dominant temporal framework of psychological catastrophe. I supplement this evental nosology with a durational consideration of trauma by drawing on the works of Henri Bergson and his articulation of duration, memory, and lived experience. Durational trauma accommodates liminal and ongoing experiences of the catastrophic that are equally devastating (...) to the paradigmatic exemplars of PTSD. This alternate account entails different modalities of reparation and responsibility to the systemic traumatization of others. For this I draw on Levinas and his intersubjective ethics drawing out the relevancy his work has for this concept of durational trauma. Levinas’s emphasis on expiation avoids the reification of the trauma of the other as spectacle and draws into focus one’s own participation in the circulation and continuation of ongoing traumatic networks. This contributes to the emergent alchemy of reading Bergson and Levinas together, but likewise, to philosophy of trauma and the ethical responsibility and temporality of ongoing systemic harm. (shrink)

Film-Philosophy International Salon-Journal (ISSN 1466-4615) Vol. 9 No. 38, July 2005 Reni Celeste Love and Catastrophe: Filming the Sublime in _Hiroshima Mon Amour_ [1] This essay studies two scenes from Alain Resnais's film _Hirsoshima Mon Amour_ (1959) alongside the concept of the sublime in order to take film from a discussion of desire to one of love. Love is understood, according to philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's description, as an infinite alterity, rather than as totality or unity. Though Levinas insists on a (...) separation between love and tragedy, and argues that the work of art cannot achieve the ethical, I argue that Resnais's film expresses a sublime achievement by staging, or representing, the infinite tragically through failure and betrayal. (shrink)

Sartre's recollection, in Les Mots , of his first visit to the cinema is a multi-layered and ambivalent text through which Sartre proposes a number of interlocking arguments: concerning the contrast between the 'sacred' space of the theatre and the non-ceremonial space of the cinema, between the theatre as associated with paternal authority, and the cinema as associated with a clandestine bond with the mother. But the text also sets up a quasi-sociological account of the public Sartre encounters in the (...) cinema itself as revealing to him the truth of the social bond, a truth he expresses with the term 'adherence', and which he says he only rediscovered in his experience of being a prisoner in the Stalag in 1940. Rather than the basis of a sociological account of the social bond, which would seem at odds with Sartre's social philosophy, I read this as the expression of a desire for physical proximity. The space of the cinema thus develops a fantasy, and this is in continuity with the role of the cinema in the evolution traced in Les Mots , in which it is described as instigating a withdrawal into imaginary life and an indulgence in daydreaming. Through reference to Christian Metz and to Roland Barthes, whose essay 'En sortant du cinéma' is proposed as a parallel and a response to Sartre, I suggest that the 'true bond' of adherence which Sartre encounters is an unconscious rather than an epistemological truth. (shrink)

Philosophy confronts two existential crises: the threats to its existence from scientists like Stephen Hawking who claim that philosophy is dead; and the threat to life itself from catastrophic climate change. The essay’s first theoretical part critiques Nietzsche’s claim that philosophy’s primary function is to guarantee the future of life. The essay’s second practical part claims that philosophy must meet the challenge of life’s extinction through a revised model for ethics in education. Taking its start from recent conceptualizations of philosophy (...) as a ‘field discipline,’ this part considers African American models for delivering ethics in education to under-resourced communities. The third part shows how these theoretical models may be actualized in the practice of an African field philosopher. (shrink)

_Offers a striking new reading of Agamben’s political thought and its implications for political action in the present._.

The fact that humans are responsible for climate change is certain. But the meaning of the fact of human responsibility is not disclosed by stating the fact: there is a distinction between the two principles, de facto and de jure, the right to state a fact and the right to assert the meaning of the fact. This distinction must be preserved in order that humans may interpret the nature of our responsibility, as a form of justice. In fact, the nature (...) of human responsibility can never be exhaustively determined. To recognise the fact of human responsibility for climate change may only lead us to acknowledge that climate change coincides with the plundering and exploitation of the earth as a natural resource, together with the industrial pollution which fouls our atmosphere. It is something else again to know precisely what must be done, how to think and write and interpret the science, or even what can be achieved before it is too late to prevent the worst effects of global warming. In this essay I analyse the central claims of proponents of the idea of the Anthropocene, arguing that they are arrogant and perhaps even naïve: in particular, the suggestion that humanity and nature have now fused to become a geological force is shown to be theological in its orientation. The essay also exposes Anthropocenology as a form of pedagogy, meaning that rather than opposing the neoliberalism that it attacks, Anthropocenology joins itself to the biopolitical institutions of education, seizing power in order to govern a totalized human population all the more effectively. (shrink)

These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known _Critique of the German Intelligentsia_, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist (...) turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's _The Question of German Guilt_ illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. (shrink)

Introduction ; "you weren't there!" -- Contemporaneity in the past -- War and the time after -- Contemporaneity at the heart of historicity -- Our time -- Conclusion : in the face of the tragic.

In Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew takes up the central question guiding Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy: How could something like phenomenal reality emerge out of the meaninglessness of the Real? Carefully reconstructing and expanding upon his controversial reactualization of German Idealism, Carew argues that Žižek offers us an original, but perhaps terrifying, response: experience is possible only if we presuppose a prior moment of breakdown as the ontogenetic basis of subjectivity. Drawing upon resources found in Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-Kantian philosophy, Carew (...) thus develops a new critical metaphysics—a metaphysics which is a variation upon the late German Idealist theme of balancing system and freedom, realism and idealism, in a single, self-reflexive theoretical construct—that challenges our understanding of nature, culture, and the ultimate structure of reality. (shrink)

This article concerns Quentin Meillassoux’s claim that Kant’s revolution is responsible for philosophy’s catastrophic loss of the ‘great outdoors’, of our knowledge of things as they are in themselves. I argue that Meillassoux’s critique of Kant’s ‘weak’ correlationism and his defence of ‘strong’ correlationism are predicated on a fallacious argument (termed ‘the Gem’ by David Stove) and the traditional, but in my view mistaken, metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction. I draw on Henry Allison’s interpretation of Kant’s idealism to argue (...) that when Kant’s transcendental distinction is understood epistemologically we can avoid the fallacious reasoning underpinning Meillassoux’s argument, and at the very least attenuate his concerns about the ‘Kantian catastrophe’. (shrink)

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast (...) its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. (shrink)

William Ernest Hocking has been described as “the people’s philosopher,” “the last of the Golden Age of American philosophy,” and “the dean of American philosophers.” These labels reflect something of the sensitivity of the man and the magnitude of his achievements. Hocking’s own words illustrate the appropriateness of the diverse labels. “Philosophy is the common man’s business,” he once remarked, “and until it reaches the common man and answers his questions it is not doing its duty.” “Philosophic thinking, stirred to (...) the depths by catastrophic events on a worldscale, has become a public concern in a new sense. The rise of clearmarked ideologies, undertaking to align men in vast numbers behind a constellation of points-of-view which it would be unfair to call philosophies—unfair to philosophy, I mean—yet with philosophical groundwork, has compelled men the world over to take issues of truth with renewed seriousness.” But, the other two labels apply with equal force. Hocking was the last representative of the Golden Age of American philosophy. In a manner that is quite unfashionable, he dealt with the grand intellectual themes that have traditionally occupied those who love wisdom: the nature of man, the meaning of life and death, and God. Gabriel Marcel refers to Hocking as “a man who, through the visible world, has never ceased to have the presentment of what is eternal.” His fellow philosophers, however bent on other concerns, would find it difficult to overlook his achievements. Hocking published seventeen books and two hundred seventy essays and delivered the prized Gifford and Hibbert Lectures. It is in part at least for such achievements that he is called the “dean of American philosophers.”. (shrink)

A highly original—and visually appealing—take on a high-profile issue in contemporary critical debate, this book will appeal to all those interested in visual arts and philosophy.

In this book, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy examines the nature of catastrophes in the era of globalization and technology. Can a catastrophe be an isolated occurrence? Is there such a thing as a “natural” catastrophe when all of our technologies—nuclear energy, power supply, water supply—are necessarily implicated, drawing together the biological, social, economic, and political? Nancy examines these questions and more. Exclusive to this English edition are two interviews with Nancy conducted by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Yuji Nishiyama and Yotetsu Tonaki.

Philosophy, Society and the Cunning of History in Eastern Europe charts the intellectual landscape of twentieth century East-Central Europe under the unifying theme of 'precariousness' as a mode of historical existence. Caught between empires, often marked by catastrophic historic events and grand political failures, the countries of East-Central Europe have for a long time developed a certain intellectual self-representation, a culture that not only helps them make some sense of such misfortunes, but also protects them somehow from a collapse into (...) nihilism. An interdisciplinary study of this sophisticated culture of survival and endurance has been long overdue. Not only is it charming and worth studying in its own right, but with the re-integration of the 'new Europe' into the 'old' one and the emergence on the 'Western' European intellectual scene of many authors from the 'East,' such a culture will also shape the European mind of the 21st century. This volume decodes and explores this culture of 'precariousness' from the complementary angles of philosophy, political theory, intellectual history and literary studies. Expert contributors look at a wide range of topics, from philosophical martyrdom to collective suffering to geographical fatalism, and explore the works of key authors in the field including Cioran, Kołakowski, Kertész, Bauman and Žižek. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. (shrink)

With the significant disconnect between the collective aim of limiting warming to well below 2°C and the current means proposed to achieve such an aim, the goal of this paper is to offer a moral assessment of prominent alternatives to current international climate policy. To do so, we’ll outline five different policy routes that could potentially bring the means and goal in line. Those five policy routes are: (1) exceed 2°C; (2) limit warming to less than 2°C by economic de-growth; (...) (3) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation only; (4) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation and widespread deployment of Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs); and (5) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation, NETs, and Solar Radiation Management as a fallback. In assessing these five policy routes, we rely primarily upon two moral considerations: the avoidance of catastrophic climate change and the right to sustainable development. We’ll conclude that we should continue to aim at the two-degree target, and that to get there we should use aggressive mitigation, pursue the deployment of NETs, and continue to research SRM. (shrink)

Dealing with memories of catastrophes is undoubtedly important for education. Yet, how is such an education possible? On which theoretical basis can we describe it? In this article, I build a bridg...