Language -- Image -- Time -- Body -- Dream -- Myth -- Baudelaire -- Rescue -- Remembrance.

In this incisive new work, Eli Friedlander demonstrates that Walter Benjamin's entire corpus, from early to late, comprises a rigorous and sustained philosophical questioning of how human beings belong to nature. Across seemingly heterogeneous writings, Friedlander argues, Benjamin consistently explores what the natural in the human comes to, that is, how nature is transformed, actualized, redeemed, and overcome in human existence. The book progresses gradually from Benjamin's philosophically fundamental writings on language and nature to his Goethean empiricism, from the presentation (...) of ideas to the primal history of the Paris arcades. Friedlander's careful analysis brings out how the idea of natural history inflects Benjamin's conception of the work of art and its critique, his diagnosis of the mythical violence of the legal order, his account of the body and of action, of material culture and technology, as well as his unique vision of historical materialism. Featuring revelatory new readings of Benjamin's major works that differ, sometimes dramatically, from prevailing interpretations, this book reveals the internal coherence and philosophical force of Benjamin's thought. (shrink)

This work seeks to shed light on one of the most enigmatic masterpieces of twentieth-century thought.

The field of my inquiry is the field of judgement. I focus primarily on the difficulties involved in the act of judging. What I emphasize, after Kant, is the absence of preexisting rules for judgement in its purest form. ;I interpret Cavell's discussion of Rawls' theory of justice as probing the implications of the fact that there will always be for the individual a judgement to be made of the distance between our own society and the ideal well ordered society. (...) It is here I claim that the concept of the example comes into play. To elaborate this I show how Rousseau uses his experience of consent to the Republic of Geneva to provide an example, or a standard of judgement to the individual's seeking whether and how to express consent to their society. ;In my paper on the Kant's Third Critique I argue that what is most central in the judgement of taste is that it is the reflection and expression the individuality of the judge of taste and its function is to provoke one to rely on one's own sense of the world. It is primarily through the analysis of the relation of genius to taste that I elaborate the centrality of individuality but my claim is that this relation manifests itself also between the judge of taste and a community of taste. ;The concept of exemplarity leads me to the distinction between what can be said and what can be shown. In the paper on Wittgenstein's Tractatus I want to combat what I take to be a false understanding of the distinction between showing and saying which makes what is shown to be some property of the world that cannot be stated in language. I explain what Wittgenstein means by the notion of form and how it is that form only shows itself through language. I further see the overall design of the text as an exemplary reworking of Wittgenstein's philosophical experience. I thus interpret the idea of throwing away the ladder as a claim that the propositions of the book are of use only as an example to provoke one to thoughts of one's own. (shrink)

Kant’s The Critique of Judgment laid the groundwork of modern aesthetics when it appeared in 1790. Eli Friedlander’s reappraisal emphasizes the internal connection of judgment and meaning, showing how the pleasure in judging is intimately related to our capacity to draw meaning from our encounter with beauty.

Eli Friedlander reads Rousseau's autobiography, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, as philosophy. Reading this work against Descartes's Meditations, Friedlander shows how Rousseau's memorable transformation of experience through writing opens up the possibility of affirming even the most dejected state of being and allows the emergence of the innocence of nature out of the ruins of all social attachments. In tracing the re-creation of a human subject in reverie, Friedlander is alive to the very form of the experience of reading the (...) Reveries by showing the ways this work needs to--and in effect does--generate a reader, without betraying Rousseau's utter solitude. Friedlander's book provides an afterlife for the Reveries in modern philosophy. It constitutes an alternative to the analytic tradition's revival of Rousseau, primarily through Rawls's influential vision of the social contract. It also counters the fate of Rousseau's writings in the continental tradition, determined by and large by Derrida's deconstruction. Friedlander's reading of the Reveries, a work that has fascinated generations of readers, is an incomparable introduction to one of the greatest thinkers in Western culture. (shrink)

In this paper I want to argue that a unified set of concerns constituting a new dimension—a realignment of our sense of language, self, and world—emerges in the progress of the Tractatus as we turn to inquire into the inner connection between language and such notions as world, limits, life, and ipseity. The most elusive step in that progress, and the one most necessary to recognize as part of the argument of the Tractatus, is the transition from an understanding of (...) language in terms of logic, sense, and meaning to a perspective in which language becomes the primary locus of significance or meaningfulness. It is also the pivot from the logical to the ethical concerns of the book. An ethics that appeals to the notion of meaningfulness is elaborated in terms of the dimension of existence, namely in terms of the very possibility of agreement of disagreement with what has ultimate reality. (shrink)

In my commentary, I argue that Ginsborg’s understanding of the primitive normativity in reflective aesthetic judgement should be broadened to account for further characterizations of the judgement of taste given in Kant’s ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’. In particular, I stress the distinction between the consideration of universal communicability, on which Ginsborg focuses, and Kant’s account of common sense. Understanding how the latter notion has an equiprimordial place in the account of taste may allow us to see that aesthetic judgement is (...) not inconsistent with conceptual articulation, as long as we properly distinguish what it means to have something fall under a concept and what it is to recognize something to exemplify a fitting place in what can become a systematically explicit space of concepts. (shrink)

In this chapter I trace a number of thematic connections between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Notebooks on the one hand, and his ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough’ on the other. Pointing to this continuity will, I hope, bring out how the dimension of significance, central to the ‘Remarks on Frazer’, plays a role in the progress of the Tractatus, as well as elucidate how metaphysics is an expression and a distortion of the spiritual, similar to the one we find in magic (...) and mythology. It would explain, as Wittgenstein puts it, “metaphysics as a kind of magic”. (shrink)

The essay provides a commentary on Walter Benjamin’s “News from Flowers”, a review of the album of plant photography of Karl Blossfeldt. I place Benjamin’s account of Blossfeldt’s achievement both in relation to Goethe’s studies of the vegetal realm as well as to the fantasy world of Grandville’s Animated Flowers. This juxtaposition allows me to interpret Benjamin’s understanding of the possibilities opened by photography and the transformation it brings to the relation of art to science and the imagination.

An ambitious, rich, and challenging work, Eli Friedlander’s Signs of Sense attempts to trace the path of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, from the world, to its threatened loss by way of failed and ultimately nonsensical efforts to account for our relation to it, to its recovery as a significant whole, a meaningful habitation for human beings, in the uses we make of everyday language. Aiming to account for nothing less than the purpose of the Tractatus, its overall effects on its readers, (...) Friedlander has provocative things to say about two centrally important issues—the role of the nonsense that the Tractatus itself produces and the relation between the ostensibly logical and ethical facets of Wittgenstein’s text. Part 1 works through the text of the Tractatus more or less in order and in relative isolation from interpretative controversy. Here Friedlander lays out the ontological distinctions that occupy Wittgenstein at the outset; examines the identity of form between language and world that makes representation possible; deepens our understanding of Wittgenstein’s “fundamental idea … that ‘logical constants’ are not representatives”; proposes an original reading of the Tractarian treatment of solipsism and the sense in which “what the solipsist means is quite correct”; and finally, tries to demonstrate the ethical significance of the movement of the Tractatus as a whole and its culmination in apparent self-annihilation. Part 2 helps to fix our understanding of the intricate and subtle reading offered in part 1: chapter 11, by situating it with respect to major interpretative issues, and chapter 12, by giving an interesting account of Wittgenstein’s initial moves away from the Tractatus in the 1929 “Remarks on Logical Form.”. (shrink)

How the Author Disappeared from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus In this essay, I investigate the status of the written word in the (early, mostly) work of Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein tends to imagine language as written rather than spoken. This focus on writing goes together with a sense that the author is absent from the text. I argue that the problem is not with writing in general but specifically with books, and more specifically with the fantasy of a book of (...) everything, the importance of which to Wittgenstein’s early work was brought out by Eli Friedlander. On my account, such a book, by pretending to contain the whole world, leaves no place for an author. Since the early Wittgenstein imagines subjectivity in the form of a book of everything, he is unable to place subjectivity – subjects: you and I – in the world. I end by briefly suggesting that in his later work, Wittgenstein gives up on the fantasy of a book of everything and is in a better position to address the problem of finding subjectivity in the world. (shrink)

This is a book about the metaphysics of perception and discusses touch, audition, and vision. Though primarily concerned with the nature of perception, it draws heavily from the history of philosophy of perception, and connects the concerns of analytical and continental philosophers.

Readers of Theodor Adorno often have understood him as a "totalizing negativist." If it truly is the case that Adorno saw modern society as a realm of complete falsehood, however, his own social theory is unintelligible. In A Precarious Happiness, Peter E. Gordon aims to redeem Adorno from this negativist interpretation by showing that it arises from a basic misunderstanding of his work. Pushing against entrenched interpretations, Gordon argues that Adorno's philosophy is animated by a deep attachment to a concept (...) of happiness or human flourishing, and it is only by virtue of that normative standard that Adorno judges the world a catastrophic failure. Through a comprehensive reading of Adorno's work, A Precarious Happiness shows that in an imperfect world, the available standards of our flourishing are also imperfect. Looking beyond Adorno, Gordon suggests that the practice of social criticism, even if it is directed toward exposing what is "false," cannot succeed without appealing to an unrealized notion of what would be right. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that knowledge is characteristically safe true belief. We argue that an adequate approach to epistemic luck must not be indexed to methods of belief formation, but rather to explanations for belief. This shift is problematic for several prominent approaches to the theory of knowledge, including virtue reliabilism and proper functionalism (as normally conceived). The view that knowledge is characteristically safe true belief is better able to accommodate the shift in question.

Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything, is wrong with these arguments. In (...) the present paper we show that an analogous line of reasoning can be raised against the numerical measurement (i.e., numerical representation) of physical magnitudes, and we argue that this result is a reductio ad absurdum of the challenge to computational skepticism. We then use this reductio to get clearer about both (i) what's wrong with Putnam's and Searle's arguments against computationalism, and (ii) what can be learned about both computational implementation and numerical measurement from the shortcomings of both sorts of skeptical argument. (shrink)

After an intensive 4-year process, the World Medical Association (WMA) has revised its International Code of Medical Ethics (ICoME). In their report outlining this process, Parsa-Parsi et al not only describe how the WMA sought to ‘cultivat[e] international agreement’ on a ‘global medical ethos’, but also outline the philosophical framework of the ICoME: how the WMA, as the ‘global representation of the medical profession’, created and revised the ICoME through the process of international professional self-regulation.1 However, there is a significant (...) tension to be found in this framework—one which contrasts the international scope of the ICoME with the supposed source of its legitimacy. Here, we seek to characterise this tension and the doubt which it casts on the legitimacy of the ICoME. (shrink)

Patients in nursing homes sometimes give accounts of episodes in which they feel their autonomy and/or self-respect are violated as a result of the care they receive from nursing staff. In these ethically difficult care situations nurses use strategies such as negotiation, explanation and, in some cases, restraint. This study investigates how nurses apply these strategies to resolve ethical dilemmas in such a way that patients experience respect rather than violation. Critical issues that will be discussed include the definition of (...) ethically difficult care situations in nursing homes and the identification of strategies for resolving such situations. Examples of the use of three strategies are presented. The use of negotiation, restraint and explanation are discussed in order to ensure respect for patients’ autonomy and thus to optimize health care outcomes. (shrink)

Shoemaker argues that one could not hold both that the qualitative character of colour experience is inherited from the qualitative character of the experienced colour and that there are faultless forms of variation in colour perception. In this paper, I explain what is meant by inheritance and discuss in detail the problematic cases of perceptual variation. In so doing I argue that these claims are in fact consistent, and that the appearance to the contrary is due to an optional and (...) controversial conception of experience that should be rejected. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor ten years, General Motors denied that an ignition switch that could easily be turned to ‘Off’ constituted a safety defect. Accidents, deaths and injuries resulted. Despite many, many suits against GM, the problem remained uncorrected. The explanations that have been proffered are interrogated in this article and others are suggested. It concludes that a bureaucratic legal department is partly to blame, and criticises how the legal department evaluated cases by their settlement value. It criticises GM’s culture of blaming drivers (...) for accidents. It concludes that the main problem at GM was not bureaucracy, but poor organisation of team management. GM was not organised for accountability without hierarchy. The article suggests that lawyers can play a key role in improving corporate decision making. (shrink)

We begin with a puzzle about how to intelligibly combine the active and passive elements of perception. For counsel, we turn to Augustine’s account of perception in De Trinitate. Augustine’s trinitarian account of perception offers an attractive resolution of our puzzle. Augustine’s resolution of our puzzle, however, cannot be straightforwardly adopted. It must be adapted. We end with speculation about how this might be done.

A puzzle about the presentation of objects located at a distance is seen to animate Aristotle's account of transparency in De Anima and De Sensu.

When Norm perceives a red tomato in his garden, Norm perceives the tomato and its sensible qualities.

Our reasons for emotions such as sadness, anger, resentment, and guilt often remain long after we cease experiencing these emotions. This is puzzling. If the reasons for these emotions persist, why do the emotions not persist? Does this constitute a failure to properly respond to our reasons? In this paper we provide a solution to this puzzle. Our solution turns on the close connection between the rationality of emotion and the rationality of attention, together with the differing reasons to which (...) attention and emotion are properly responsive. (shrink)

Sight is a capacity, and seeing is its exercise. Reflection on the sense in which sight is for the sake of seeing reveals distinct relations of dependence between sight and seeing, the capacity and its exercise. Moreover, these relations of dependence in turn reveal the nature of our perceptual capacities and their exercise. Specifically, if sight is for the sake of seeing, then sight will depend, in a certain sense, upon seeing, in a manner inconsistent with experiential monism. Thus reflection (...) on the power of perception forms the basis of an argument for experiential pluralism. (shrink)

The 1929 between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer has long been viewed by intellectual historians as a paradigmatic event not only for its philosophical meaning but also for its apparently cultural-political ramifications. But such interpretations easily lend legitimacy to a broader and recently ascendant intellectual-historical trend that would reduce philosophy to an allegorical expression of ostensibly more or instrumentalist meanings. However, as this essay tries to show, the core of the dispute between Cassirer and Heidegger is irreducibly philosophical: the Davos (...) debate brought into focus the emergent themes of the so-called of the 1920s, and cast new light upon neo-Kantian doctrines as to the status of objectivity and the possibility for intersubjective consensus in both knowledge and ethics. The Davos encounter cannot be retroactively decided on political or cultural grounds, since it concerns just that unresolved tension between transcendentalism and hermeneutics that is itself constitutive of intellectual history as a discipline. (shrink)

This paper explores how consumers’ ethical food consumption practices, mediated by mobile phone applications (apps), are transformed into digital data. Based on a review of studies on the digitalization of ethical consumption practices and food apps, we find that previous research, while valuable, fails to acknowledge and critically examine the digital labor required to perform digitalized ethical food consumption. In this paper, we call for research on how digital labor underlies the digitalization of ethical food consumption and develop a conceptual (...) framework that supports this research agenda. Our proposed conceptual framework builds on three interconnected analytical concepts—datafication, affordances and digital labor—that enable the study of digital labor as an infrastructural element of digitalized food consumption. We illustrate our conceptual framework through our previous research concerning Buycott, a US-based mobile app whose stated aim is to facilitate consumers’ ethical purchasing decisions. Using the walkthrough method, we consider how the Buycott app engages user-generated data and what implications this holds for consumers. The app’s infrastructure, we suggest, connects ethical consumption and digital labor. A richer understanding of the digital food economy, we propose, enables social scientists not only to elucidate how consumers engage in digital labor, but also to contribute to the development of new data governance structures in the digital food economy. We therefore call for social scientists interested in food, consumption and the digital economy to contribute to a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization by empirically examining how ethical consumption apps implicate ethical consumers’ work. (shrink)