This article argues against the doxa that Foucault's analysis of education inevitably undermines self-originating ethical intention on the part of teachers or students. By attending to Foucault's lesser known, later work—in particular, the notion of ‘biopower’ and the deepened level of materiality it entails—the article shows how the earlier Foucauldian conception of power is intensified to such an extent that it overflows its original domain, and comes to ‘infuse’ the subject that might previously have been taken as a mere effect. (...) What emerges, accordingly, is a subject divested of ‘traditional’, substantial, formation, located wholly on an immanent plane, and yet centrally concerned with the practice of freedom and ethical resistance. In turn, what seemed to have no place at all in the earlier Foucault becomes central: in general, active subjectivization (subjectivation) as a counter to passive subjection (assujetissement); more particularly, subjects' ongoing production and creation (via strategic decisions and localized opposition) of a new ethos, new ‘practices of self’, and new kinds of relations. With this alternative Foucauldian position outlined, the article then focuses more particularly on the practices of education: it concludes that, instead of being rendered merely the factories of obedient behaviour, schools or colleges can be the locus for a critically-informed, oppositional micro-politics. In other words: the power-relations that (quite literally) constitute education can now be regarded, on Foucault's own terms, as being creative, ‘enabling’ and positive. (shrink)

This article argues that the Fourth and Fifth of John Toland's Letters to Serena are best understood as a creative confrontation of Spinoza and Leibniz ? one in which crucial aspects of Leibniz's thought are extracted from their original context and made to serve a purpose that is ultimately Spinozistic. Accordingly, it suggests that the critique of Spinoza that takes up so much of the fourth Letter, in particular, should be read as a means of `perfecting' Spinoza (via Leibniz), rather (...) than as the outright dismissal it might appear to be. In order to make its case, the article outlines: the supposed problems that Toland finds in Spinoza; what Toland takes from Leibniz, and what he discards, in order to solve these `problems'; and the imprint of Spinoza's naturalism on the eventual `solution' that Toland offers. The article concludes that, whatever the success of this `solution', Toland's speculative labours should still be treated as creative, perspicuous and intrinsically significant. (shrink)

This article examines the possibility that phenomenology was “always already” a theological enterprise, by outlining some of the foundational criticisms levelled by Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. For both thinkers, the phenomenological stress on “lived experience” grants an undue primacy to the realm of “interiority”; as a result, subjectivity is left, not just reified, but also deified. By contrast, both Foucault and Althusser will argue for understanding the subject as constituted rather than constitutive; philosophy’s task, accordingly, is to delineate the (...) broader structures that create “lived experience,” rather than to hypostatize the subject as the privileged bearer of logos. As well as outlining the contours of this critique, however, the article indicates some of the shortcomings entailed in a total disavowal of “lived experience.”. (shrink)

This research thesis explores the concept of attention as outlined and practised in the life of Simone Weil (1909-1943), a French woman variously described as a philosopher, mystic and activist yet someone who eludes categorisation or systematisation. It outlines the background to her life in a France between two world wars, and seeks to situate her within the context of the Christianity she claimed as her cultural backdrop. It explores the concept of attention as both a spiritual exercise and a (...) practice in the life of Weil, something that then evolved into a core principle of her thinking. The central question here is the age-old one, harking back to ancient philosophy, concerning the living of a good life, particularly within the context of a lifelong acquaintanceship with Weil‘s work. As this study examines Weil‘s ideas on reading, it also interrogates how she is read, particularly by poets today, with a view to assessing her influence. Weil was a writer who loved poetry and wrote some herself. Poetry and the recitation of prayers played an important role in her mystical experiences. The role of affliction in her mysticism and in her life is important and it will be seen how her stance in the face of affliction is something that marks her thinking. The concept of attention today incorporates issues around the commodification of the attention span, as well as its deficits. This study examines some of these issues and draws forth from the life and work of Simone Weil a more expanded, practical, and reflective understanding of the idea of attention. (shrink)

Being Reconfigured presents some of the most brilliant and audacious theses in recent phenomenological research. Challenging so much post-Heideggerian doxa, it argues against contemporary phenomenology’s denegation of Being, but suggests, as well, that phenomenology itself can provide a viable and fruitful alternative to this impasse. -/- Specifically, Being Reconfigured delineates the source of phenomenology’s ‘refusal’ of Being, in Husserl; the main strands it demonstrates, in Marion and Levinas; and the fundamental problems its entails—in Marion, the necessary retention of a ‘metaphysical’ (...) subject, and in Levinas, the necessary revival of Kantian dualisms and diremptions. Beyond this critical survey, however, Leask also provides an alternative perspective, through a reassessment of Edith Stein’s ‘generous ontology.’ This reassessment involves: delineating Stein’s Patristic and Scholastic sources; amplifying her suggestions, through the work of Michel Henry, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas himself; and demonstrating the contemporary significance of Stein’s phenomenology of Being-sustained and Being-safe(ty). By considering Being in these Steinian terms of support, safety and charity, Leask concludes, we might begin to overcome the difficulties described in the book’s earlier chapters—and to do so by radically reassessing the ‘nature’ of the Being that we take for granted. (shrink)

This article situates Levinas’s reading of Kant in terms of his opposition to Heidegger. It suggests that, although Levinas and Heidegger both put great stress upon the affective aspect of Kant’s philosophy, ultimately they diverge sharply over the issue of finitude: where Heidegger’s Kant suggests that there is “nothing but finite Dasein,” Levinas stresses the significance of transcending finitude, ethically. In this respect, Levinas’s Kant-reading converges strongly with the interpretation Heidegger so strongly opposed—Cassirer’s. And, as such, Levinas’s anti-Heideggerian position commits (...) him—perhaps surprisingly—to a kind of neo-Kantian Manichaeism: on the one hand, finite and sense-less Being; on the other, an ethical intrigue beyond ontology. The article concludes that Levinas thereby maintains (rather than “deconstructs”) central schisms of High Modernity. (shrink)

This article investigates an intriguing ambivalence in Levinas’s reading(s) of Husserl’s phenomenology of internal-time consciousness. The article focuses on the specific treatment of the Husserlian ‘proto-impression’, suggesting that one (under-appreciated) aspect of Levinas’s approach may serve to undermine, or even ‘un-say’, its better known counterpart.

This paper focusses on John Toland's influentialHypatia(1720), an account of the neo-Platonist philosopher and mathematician murdered in ancient Alexandria; it also considers segments of hisLetters to Serena(1704), and suggests various conjunctions between the two texts which confirm Toland's genuine and sustained feminist commitment. As I try to establish, Toland's concern is as much about contemporaneous events as it is about ‘disinterested’ history: by promoting Hypatia as the representative of philosophy in its perennial struggle with superstition and priestcraft, Toland is able (...) to underscore the wider case for an inclusive and capacious conception of ‘enlightenment’. (shrink)

After the subject" and beyond Heideggerian ontology, Marion suggests, there is the sheer givenness of phenomena without condition. In theology, this liberation means rethinking God in terms of phenomena such as love, gift, and excess. In addition to an important essay by Marion, "The Reason of the Gift," and a dialogue between Marion and Richard Kearney, this book contains stimulating essays by ten other contributors: Lilian Alweiss, Eoin Cassidy, Mark Dooley, Brian Elliott, Ian Leask, Shane Mackinlay, Derek Morrow, John O'Donohue, (...) Joseph S. O'Leary, and Felix Ó Murchadha. (shrink)

This article argues that, despite its apparent radicality, Husserl's later, genetic phenomenology ends up confirming and consolidating a very orthodox transcendental egology.First, the article reconstructs an Husserlian phenomenology of givenness; but then, by considering the ambiguous role of intuition, it also establishes (a) the continued prestige of a 'classical' transcendental subject, and (b) the way in which a denial of ontology allows Husserl's transcendental subject to sublate the provocative challenge of primal Gegebenheit .Overall, the article argues that Husserl is subject (...) to a deep egological faultline, brought about by the self-consciously anti-ontological nature of his project: 'givenness without Being', it suggests, necessitates a prioritized and privileged self. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of Spinoza and education via the work of Louis Althusser. One important aim is to show how Spinoza’s description of the imagination underpins Althusser’s description of the ideological ‘infrastructure’ of educational practices and institutions. To achieve this, I begin by addressing Spinoza’s treatment of the physiological foundation of the imagination: by showing that the realm of ‘individual consciousness’ is more like the effect of an anonymous field, or process, Spinoza, we see, becomes a kind of (...) immanent cause for the Althusserian claim that ‘ideology has a material existence’. I go on to examine, in detail, Althusser’s description of ‘educational apparatuses’, locating these as the expressions of a Spinozistic ontology. However, Althusserian anti-humanism can also appear to negate transformative agency; and in the specific context of the classroom, Althusser suggests, apparently ‘heroic’ teachers seem almost doomed. Hence a ‘return’ to Spinoza, enacted, here—that is, an examination of Spinozistic potentialities, mainly adumbrated in the unfinished Political Treatise. My article concludes by suggesting that, in light of these, the foundational unit of pedagogical practice—the group, the class—might still be reconfigured as a collective subject, rather than the mere object of ideology. (shrink)

This article shows how and why John Toland’s Pantheisticon presents a version of Stoicism that locates Stoic ethics in terms of its ‘original’, naturalistic, foundation and devoid of any reconciliation with Christianity. As the article demonstrates, Toland’s account – based on Cicero’s Academica – stands opposed to the Christianized version of Stoicism that had dominated so much seventeenth-century discourse: in effect, Toland restores the materialism that was incompatible with neo-Stoicism. Furthermore, the article also suggests that this ‘restoration’ can be taken (...) as a Spinozistic statement: Toland’s ‘application’ of Cicero celebrates what the first critics of neo-Stoicism had deemed dangerously close to Spinozism and so a threat to established piety. (shrink)