Roots are good to think with indeed most of us use them as a metaphor every day. A root can signify the hiddenness of our beginnings, or, in its bifurcating structure, the various possibilities in the life of an individual or a collective. This book looks at rootedness as a metaphor for the genealogical origins of people and their attachment to place and how this metaphor transformed so rapidly in twentieth-century Europe. Christy Wampole s case study is France, with (...) its contradictory legacies of Enlightenment universalism, anti-Semitism, and colonialism. At one time, French nationalist rhetoric portrayed the Jews as unrooted and thus unrighteous people. After the two world wars, the root metaphor figured in the new French philosophy (notably Deleuze and Guattari). And recently, Caribbean thinkers in Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique have debated whether their roots were in Africa, France, the Caribbean, or in some pan-national network that could not be identified on a map. Walpole argues that while the metaphor was perhaps once useful in the establishment of communities and identities, that usefulness has expired. The longer we remain attached to the figure of rootedness, the more discord it sows. Giving up on the metaphor of rootedness, Wampole urges, allows us to see at last that we are in fact unbound by the land we inhabit.". (shrink)

This essay focuses on a little-understood phase of Franco Moretti’s work that spans 1976 to 1986. My aim is to shed light on Moretti’s cultural background as it was formed in that period and to account for the transition from the Trotskyist, politically-militant stance of his first book, Literature and Ideologies in England in the 1930s, to the idiosyncratic, seemingly disengaged character of Signs Taken for Wonders and The Way of the World. Adorno’s concept of ‘unrestrained individuation’ plays a crucial (...) role in the argument. Following a personal political crisis, Moretti opted to enact a form of critical individuation, encoding the explicit social antagonism of the earlier years within a highly personal style and a new theoretical eclecticism. In this way, by disguising it as an alluring form of individualism, Moretti managed to smuggle an antagonistic critical discourse into an increasingly neoliberal world that would soon prove hostile toward it. (shrink)

v. 1. Ennoia kai methodos tēs philosophias, metaphysikē ontologia, philosophia tēs historias, praktikē philosophia.

In ancient times in our country, Wang Ch'ung was an eminent materialist and a brilliant atheist, a progressive thinker who opposed the orthodox feudal thought. This has gone basically unquestioned. This year the February 21 issue of Kuang-ming jih-pao printed in its philosophy section an article by Comrade T'ung Mo-an, "Is Wang Ch'ung a Peasant Class Thinker?" The article is an evaluation completely denying this. T'ung believes that the purpose of Wang Ch'ung's works was "to uphold the rule of the (...) Han," "ardently and unconditionally to sing the praises of the Han ruler and court," "to make sacred the rule of the Han," "to get the populace to live quietly, forever in a servile position," and "to view inimically and to slander peasant uprisings." "Wang Ch'ung was an orthodox thinker of the landlord class," "a thinker produced in the interests of the rule of the landlord class who confirmed the feudal orthodoxy." Although I myself am not praising Wang Ch'ung as a peasant class thinker or denying that in Wang Ch'ung's thought there are negative elements, I am completely unable to agree with the basic viewpoint that the author puts forward. (shrink)

After a busy day cooking meals, washing clothes, and feeding the pigs, chickens, and ducks, my mother would call to me, "Hey, Little Spring [Hsiao-ch'un, go and get ma's book and bring it here.".

Having read the works of Wang Ch'ung [A.D. 27-c. 100], I realized that they need to be recapitulated. Here I shall evaluate Wang Ch'ung and his thought and present what I feel to be the real significance that Wang Ch'ung's thought still has today.

In this paper, we propose a reading of Robert Musil’s controversial notion of the “other condition” in light of the basic features of the philosophical doctrine of externalism, as formulated in the classical account of the extended mind proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998). Our reading is not meant to exhaust the complexity and polysemy of the idea of the other condition, but merely aims to open up a possible perspective on the interpretation of a concept that is (...) as elusive as it is central in Musil’s thinking. (shrink)

Comrade Huang Yüeh-mien's article, "A Discussion of the Aesthetics of the Wealthy" [Lun shih-li che ti mei-hsüeh], which criticized my point of view in aesthetics, was published later than my self-criticism. Before he published it, he had presented it at a discussion meeting at Peking Teachers College. He let me read it only after he had submitted it to Literature [Wen-i pao] for publication. I wrote to the editor of Literature, Comrade K'ang Cho, saying that basically I accepted his criticisms (...) but that I wished to raise a number of points. I pointed out that the author's method of dealing with the problems of "empathy emotion," "forgetting self," and "inspiration" was not very different from the method that I had used before. I pointed out that "association of ideas" occupied an important position in his aesthetics — he seems to substitute "association of ideas of form" for "intuition of form." Furthermore, I stated that I did not think he had answered clearly the questions of whether "beauty exists in the mind or in the thing," of the relationship between beauty and sense of beauty, and of the difference between formal thought and abstract thought; and I said that I hoped he would give me more assistance with these questions. However, Comrade Huang Yüeh-mien for the most part ignored the points that I had raised and the questions to which I had sought answers, and he published in Literature the paper that he had presented at Peking Teachers College almost unaltered. Consequently, the questions that I raised concerning Comrade Huang Yüeh-mien's point of view in aesthetics remain unanswered. At that time I still felt that his point of view in aesthetics basically was materialistic, although there were some tendencies in it that raised doubts in my mind. This explains the fact that my judgments on idealist aesthetics remain to be improved. (shrink)

We investigate the “mathematical” strength of the theory I*2. In particular we prove the quadratic reciprocity law and Bertrand's postulate, using fragments of I*2 which employ some well-known number-theoretic functions.

The thirty-three sections of the Chuang Tzu annotated by Kuo Hsiang of the Chin dynasty were published during the period of the Northern Sung dynasty. Meanwhile, a preface allegedly by Kuo Hsiang was also printed in the book. The preface is as follows:Chuang Tzu was a man who had good knowledge of the origins of things in the universe and avoided no fantastic ideas. His remarks are hard to understand yet pertinent to phenomena. Any remark which is hard to understand (...) yet pertinent to phenomena may be true but useless; any remark which touches no actual things may be lofty but impracticable. This is surely different from a reluctant rise after inability. If the mind is free from preoccupations, it will respond to events at any time, and as a result, remarks will be cautious. Adapting himself to changes in the universe, Chuang Tzu was not merely turning out writings in the form of dialogues on things beyond human experience. (shrink)