That C. P. Snow had first-hand experience both in science and writing was taken for granted in the years of controversy over ‘the two cultures’, but neither the quality of his experience nor the circumstances of his eventual adoption of a literary career was given close enough consideration. Snow's own statements on these two points are often misleading. Yet the autobiographical nature of his fiction throws significant light on the subject. An examination of the autobiographical elements in Snow's novels in (...) the light of his conception of the novel raises the question of whether his shift from science to literature was exactly the result of a genuine choice and also reveals that the two cultures dichotomy is embedded in his personal experience. (shrink)

The People of Plato is the first study since 1823 devoted exclusively to the identification of, and relationships among, the individuals represented in the complete Platonic corpus. It provides details of their lives, and it enables one to consider the persons of Plato's works, and those of other Socratics, within a nexus of important political, social, and familial relationships. Debra Nails makes a broad spectrum of scholarship accessible to the non-specialist. She distinguishes what can be stated confidently from what remains (...) controversial and--with full references to ancient and contemporary sources--advances our knowledge of the men and women of the Socratic milieu. Bringing the results of modern epigraphical and papyrological research to bear on long-standing questions, The People of Plato is a fascinating resource and valuable research tool for the field of ancient Greek philosophy and for literary, political, and historical studies more generally. In discrete sections, Nails discusses systems of Athenian affiliation, significant historical episodes that link lives and careers of the late fifth century, and their implications for the dramatic dates of the dialogues. The volume includes a rich array of maps, stemmata, and diagrams, plus a glossary, chronology, plan of the agora in 399 B.C.E., bibliography, and indices. (shrink)

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to (...) the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions and figures of migration, he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 289-290 [Access article in PDF] Monoson, S. Sara. Plato's Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. 256. Cloth, $39.50. Sara Monoson is that rare exception to the rule that political theorists cannot sustain the interest of political philosophers: her training in ancient history and classical Greek gives her treatment of Plato's complicated relationship (...) to democracy a depth and richness that will repay the efforts of the most exacting of critics. The book under review has much to offer philosophers as well as historians of philosophy. Notably, Monoson answers the question, "What is democracy?" with attention to a whole constellation of "cultural practices and normative imagery" (237) constitutive of the Athenian polis, on which the narrow conception of democracy qua system of government depends. The experience of festival participation, including processions, theater, and funeral orations; multifarious opposition to tyranny; and parrhe sia, frank speech, were practices that contributed to the Athenian citizen's confidence and expectation that he should and could participate actively in the governing of his polis. One of Monoson's implicit arguments is that Platonic political philosophy is inextricably bound up with its context; thus, when we excise a Platonic "position" or argument and test its soundness, we are doing philosophy, not the history of philosophy.Monoson details the democratic practices and images that are woven into the dialogues, and she features passages others have neglected or treated as anomalous (e.g., Statesman 303a-d, Letter 7 342d), arguing convincingly that it is an unfair oversimplification to view Plato as anti-democratic, or indeed as a doctrinaire writer in any sense (133-137). Thus she does not describe Plato as simple-mindedly pro-democratic either. Rather, she does an impressive job of demonstrating just how very deeply ambivalence toward democracy runs in the dialogues, most markedly in the Republic and Gorgias,but even in the Laws. Plato was as attracted to democracy as he was wary of it, as committed to its institutions as he was apprehensive of their untoward effects.The parts of Monoson's book devoted to theater participation, frank speech, and opposition to tyranny—in relation to democracy and in Plato—are especially fine and contain a wealth of evidence that withstands scrutiny admirably. Her treatment of the funeral oration, including an interpretation of Plato's Menexenus, is less successful, but because her thesis is demonstrated without it, I need not digress from the book's virtues. Monoson's historical sections on the tyrannicides, the early Academy, and Plato's Sicilian involvement are lucid and compelling. All along in this book, one notes passages that serendipitously bear on contemporary debates and on widely shared—but controversial—interpretations of the dialogues. To take but one example from [End Page 289] what I think of as the centerpiece of the book on the realizability of the Republic's ideal city (130-133), consider the well known and variously interpreted passage suggesting how to realize the ideal the "quick and easy way": send away everyone over ten, and let the philosophers educate the remaining children (541a). The conclusion and crux of Monoson's thoughtful reply is, "I suggest we see in this passage an indication that Plato acknowledged that all governing regimes can be supported or unsettled by cultural formations. He is deeply involved here with the question of how it is that a person or people can imagine themselves out of a dominant discourse." (I should add that the book is remarkably free of jargon.) Although Monoson has given us so much so well, I am greedy to know what she makes of democracy in the Protagoras,how she views the success of sycophants after the Peloponnesian War, and how she would incorporate deme politics into her account.The deficiencies of the work as a whole are few and minor: the sole structural weakness of this excellent book is that Monoson sometimes cites, instead of evidence or argument, the judgments of others whose work... (shrink)

The concept of assemblage plays a crucial role in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In a 1980 interview with Catherine Clément, Deleuze describes their invention of the concept of the assemblage as the “general logic” at work in A Thousand Plateaus. However, despite its thirty years of influence on political theory, this “general logic of the assemblage” still remains obscured by the fact that Deleuze and Guattari never formalized it as a theory per se, but largely used (...) it ad hoc throughout their work. This fact continues to pose problems for theorists today who wish to deploy something like a theory of assemblages, but also admit, as Manuel DeLanda does, that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of... (shrink)

Kamal al-Dīn al-Andijānī is one of the lesser-known Māturīdī theologians who lived in the eighth century. He has a work titled Sıdḳ al-kalam fi ilm al-kalam that has survived. In the work, which was written within the framework of usul al-salase, answers are given to those who have opinions other than the Ahl as-Sunnah, and the views of the Ahl as-Sunnah are tried to be proven. In the work, subjects related to jinns are also included, and the subject is explained (...) with different examples and events. In this article, Andijani's views on jinn are discussed, and these views are tried to be evaluated in the light of classical and current sources. Not many studies have been done on Andijani. Therefore, the scientific world does not know him well enough. In addition, his views on jinn are perhaps not known at all. In this respect, we believe that our study will fill this gap to some extent. Literature review, comparison, and concept analysis methods have been used in the study, and the subject has been limited to Andijani's Sıdḳ al-kalam. Considering Andijani's claim that he dealt with the views of Ahl al-Sunnah with solid evidence and concisely, it is clear that his views reflect the views of both the Māturīdis of the time and the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah in general. In order to evaluate Andijani's views in a correct way, first of all, the concept of jinn and the pre-Islamic jinn perception are mentioned in the article. The way in which the Qur'an deals with the subject of jinn and the determination of its purpose constitutes our most important pillar that gives the main perspective to our study. In this context, it can be said that the concept of jinn encompasses all beings that cannot be perceived by the five senses. It is seen that the pre-Islamic jinn perception affected people's lives in different layers, from fear to worship. Fear caused by lack of knowledge can either end with the elimination of incomplete knowledge or by taking shelter or worshiping the feared entity. In pre-Islamic societies, sheltering or worshiping the feared entity was preferred. This preference resulted in people seeing the jinn as superior to themselves, taking shelter in them or worshiping them. On the other hand, it is possible to say that the narratives in the Qur'an about jinn are aimed at creating a solid foundation of knowledge that removes people's fear of jinn. In this framework, when Andijani's views on jinn are evaluated, it can be determined that he focuses on two issues, namely the basic characteristics of jinn and their religious status. In Andjijani's understanding, it is seen that jinn are described as beings invisible to humans, able to enter human bodies, affect them, eat, drink and change shape. Andijani also announced opinions about the religious situation of the jinn. According to him, jinn can also belong to non-Islamic religions. In terms of belief and practice, they belong to many sects. Andijani expressed his views also on the situation of jinn in the hereafter. Even if sinful believers of the jinn die without repentance like humans, Allah can forgive them before or after punishment. According to Andijani, there is a difference of opinion among Hanafis and Māturīdis regarding the situation of the faithful believers of the jinn in the hereafter. Andijani includes the views of Abū Ḥanīfa, Abū Yusuf and Imam Muḥammad, who put forward opposing views, and explains the evidences of both sides. He ends the subject without expressing his own opinion. When Andijani's views are considered in terms of the purpose of the Qur'an in dealing with the jinn, it is understood that he accepted this information as a kind of news "fâide-i haber", which is only to provide information and the first time heard by the addressee. However, the news of the Qur'an about jinn is of the type of news "lâzım-ı fâide-i haber", which aims to teach another lesson on the information that the addressee was previously aware of. Therefore, the purpose of the expression in the news about jinn is important, not the apparent purpose, but revealing another situation. It can be said that Andijani made evaluations on the mythological jinn perceptions of the Arabs and remained at that level, the information and evaluations he gave did not include the main message that the Qur'an wanted to give, and left many areas to be explained. The message that the Qur'an wants to convey through the beliefs of the Jahiliyya Arabs about jinn is to reinforce tawhid, to emphasize that humans are stronger beings than jinn. While there are messages brought by the Prophet Muḥammad, there is no need for news that are thought to be stolen by vile creatures such as jinn. (shrink)

Contemporary platonism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is the belief in a fundamental cleavage between intelligible but invisible Platonic forms that are real and eternal, and perceptible objects whose confinement to spacetime constitutes an inferior existence and about which knowledge is impossible. The other dogma involves a kind of reductionism: the belief that Plato’s unhypothetical first principle of the all is identical to the form of the good. Both dogmas, I argue, are ill-founded.

I argue that the tragedies envisioned by the Symposium are two, both of which are introduced in the dialogue: (i) within months of Agathon's victory, half the characters who celebrated with him suffer death or exile on charges of impiety; (ii) Socrates is executed weeks after the dramatic date of the frame. Thus the most defensible notion of tragedy across Plato's dialogues is a fundamentally epistemological one: if we do not know the good, we increase our risk of making mistakes (...) and of suffering what are sometimes their catastrophic consequences. (shrink)

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas (...) class='Hi'>Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large. (shrink)

The "third man" argument presented in plato's "parmenides" is valid against any articulated version of the theory of forms. Plato recognized this fact, yet continued to hold the theory because the most fundamental description of what is (the "unwritten theory") cannot be articulated and does not fall victim to the third man.

Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy offers extremely careful and detailed criticisms of some of the most important assumptions scholars have brought to bear in beginning the process of (Platonic) interpretation. It goes on to offer a new way to group the dialogues, based on important facts in the lives and philosophical practices of Socrates - the main speaker in most of Plato's dialogues - and of Plato himself. Both sides of Debra Nails's arguments deserve close attention: the negative (...) side, which exposes a great deal of diversity in a field that often claims to have achieved a consensus; and the positive side, which insists that we must attend to what we know of these philosophers' lives and practices, if we are to make a serious attempt to understand why Plato wrote the way he did, and why his writings seem to depict different philosophies and even different approaches to philosophizing. From the Preface by Nicholas D. Smith. (shrink)

In a world of rising income inequality, right-wing nationalisms, and global climate change, people are again looking to Karl Marx for answers. This book offers readers a new perspective on several major ideas in Marx's work. It argues that Marx, contrary to convention, did not think history was deterministic or that reality could be reduced to classical materialism. Marx was not an anthropocentric humanist nor did he have a labor theory of value. This book is written to help those returning (...) to Marx today get answers to their pressing questions about the nature of wealth, ecological crisis, gender inequality, colonialism, migration, and the possibility of socialism. (shrink)

The Most Original and Shocking Interpretation of Lucretius in the Last Forty Years, After centuries of abuse by modern atomists and mechanistic materialists, Thomas Nail argues that it is now time to return to De Rerum Natura from the perspective of a new materialism. Nail shows that some of the most important contributions of Lucretius' poem have been completely overlooked or misunderstood. He reinterprets this classical text as an absolutely contemporary one defined by motion and gives us a (...) genuinely new Lucretius - a Lucretius for today. Book jacket. (shrink)

The COVID world is just like it was before, only more so. Every problem that already existed is worse. What can philosophy do in such a world? I think there are at least two opportunities for philosophy today. The first is that philosophers can seize this historical moment to intervene in almost every sector of social, political, and ethical life. The second unique opportunity I think philosophers have is to create new concepts in response to new phenomena. New events call (...) for new ways of thinking and being that change our world-view. COVID is not just an amplification of existing power structures. It has also changed our relationship to and awareness of the importance of social and viral mobilities. Might the concept of “motion” offer us a new perspective on the world? (shrink)

This paper argues that borders and violence against migrants no longer takes place exclusively at the geographical space between two sovereign territories. Instead border violence today has become much more normalized and diffused into society itself. An entire privatized industry now capitalizes on the cycle of transporting, incarcerating, hiring, and releasing non-status migrants. Similarly, however, resistance to this violence is also shifting from the older confrontation with sovereignty and the demands for rights to the larger aim of making the non-status (...) migrant or nomad the new figure of political belonging and solidarity: demanding equality for all, regardless of status. (shrink)

Translations of Plato's Republic, footnotes, and commentary strongly influence how the dialogue is interpreted. This brief paper compares a few English translations and commentaries.

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag schlägt einen neuen, bewegungsorientierten grenztheoretischen Ansatz vor. Gegen politikphilosophische Konzeptionen, die Grenzen als statisch und unpassierbar fassen, wird unter Verweis auf historische und empirische Studien gezeigt, dass und inwiefern Grenzen dehnbar, fluktuierend und beweglich sind. Auf dieser Grundlage wird im folgenden Abschnitt argumentiert, dass sich dynamische Prozesse der Grenzziehung am angemessensten in Sinne von Zirkulation begreifen lassen: Anstatt Mobilität zu verhindern und stabile Formen von Ein- bzw. Ausschluss zu etablieren, stellen Grenzen Regime sozialer Zirkulation dar, welche Menschen, (...) deren Arbeitskraft und Steuern im Interesse der Schaffung gesellschaftlicher Ordnung und wirtschaftlichen Mehrwerts regulieren. Unter Rückgriff auf Marx’ Konzept der ursprünglichen Akkumulation präsentiere ich anschließend eine Neubeschreibung von Grenzen als beweglichen Instrumenten ökonomischer und sozialer Aneignung – ich bringe dies auf den Begriff „Ausdehnung durch Ausschließung“. Im abschließenden Abschnitt untersuche ich, welche Gestalt „Ausdehnung durch Ausschließung“ unter den Bedingungen von Klimawandel annimmt und inwiefern dabei Bevölkerungsgruppen produziert werden, die in höchstem Maße verletzlich und ausbeutbar sind. (shrink)

Synthesizing and extending many years of influential work, the Philosophy of Movement is a comprehensive argument for how motion is the primary force in human and natural history. Thomas Nail interrogates the consequences of movement throughout history and in daily life in the twenty-first century, drawing connections and tracing patterns between scales of reality, periods of history, and fields of knowledge to offer a contemporary philosophy.

Contemporary platonism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is the belief in a fundamental cleavage between intelligible but invisible Platonic forms that are real and eternal, and perceptible objects whose confinement to spacetime constitutes an inferior existence and about which knowledge is impossible. The other dogma involves a kind of reductionism: the belief that Plato's unhypothetical first principle of the all is identical to the form of the good. Both dogmas, I argue, are ill-founded.

I argue that Carol Gilligan's claims about female moral development reproduce and encourage the oppression of women. A comparison of her descriptions of abortion-decision study cases with those of Mary F. Belenky (whose dissertation recorded more data from the same interviews than did Gilligan's book), show troubling discrepancies. Gilligan's book is more literature than science, retelling women's stories in compelling--but misleading--ways.

As a way of arguing that Platonic characters' individual roles within familial, social, and religious structures could deepen our understanding of some philosophical issues--human nature, epistemology, justice and education in the polis, virtue--I present information about the characters Meno of Thessaly, Theaetetus of Sunium, Diotima of Mantinea, Phaenarete (wife of Sophroniscus and Chaeredemus), and [unnamed] of Athens (wife of Pericles and Hipponicus).

Plato put housing second only to a secure food supply in the order of business of an emerging polis [Republic 2.369d); we argue, without quibbling over rank, that adequate housing ought to have fundamental priority, with health and education, in civil societies' planning, budgets, and legislative agendas. Something made explicit in the Platonic Laws, and often reiterated by today's poor — but as often forgotten by bureaucrats— is that human wellbeing, eudaimonia, is impossible for the homeless. That is, adequate housing (...) is valuable to human societies independently of its instrumental role in supporting the safety, health, and education of the populace. Currently, governments all too frequently end up undermining their own health and education programs as a direct result of neglecting the housing needs of the poor. Finally, we argue that governments ought now to be using the low-cost ways that already exist to provide, or to promote the provision of, better housing for their increasingly urbanized populations; further, even in those circumstances where it is necessary to subsidize housing, governments' most important role is to develop just regulatory and enforcement systems within which public- and private-sector investment can operate. (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three contemporary (...) ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

Plato's Republic critiques Athenian democracy as practised during the Peloponnesian War years. The diseased city Socrates attempts to purge mirrors Athens in crucial particulars, and his proposals should be evaluated as counter-weights to existing institutions and practices, not as absolutes to be instantiated. Plato's assessment of the Athenian polity incorporates two strategies -- one rhetorical, the other argumentative -- both of which I address. Failure to consider Athens a catalyst for Socrates' arguments has led to the misconception that Plato was (...) dogmatically committed to a single political doctrine for all and for all time. (shrink)

This essay shows how a new materialist theory of the Earth side-steps the distinction between the global and the planetary that structures Chakrabarty’s historiography. It advocates for a non-binary-generating approach to our planetary situation grounded in the philosophy of motion.

Thomas Nail’s interview with Alain Badiou focuses on the concept of the migrant, or the sans-papiers. Badiou discusses the importance of this concept in his previous work and for contemporary politics. Nail also inquires into Badiou’s involvement with a migrant-focused political organization, L’Organisation politique, as well as his eventual break with the organization.

Mâturîdî’nin istidlâle verdiği önem bilinmektedir. Onun düşünce sisteminde istidlâle dayalı yorumlamanın ayrı bir yeri vardır. İstidlâli doğru haber ve sağlam duyularla birlikte bilgi edinmenin temel yolları arasında gören Mâturîdî’nin düşüncesinde istidlâlin bilgi edinme aracı olarak kullanılmasının reddi mümkün görünmemektedir. Zira istidlâli reddetmek için bile istidlâle ihtiyaç duyulurken, doğru haber ve duyulardan gelen bilginin test edilmesi için de gereken yine istidlâldir. Mâturîdî’ye göre insanlar için istidlâle dayalı yorumlamaya elverişli alanlar bulunmaktadır. Bu alanlarla ilgili istidlâller, genelde duyulur âlemden hareket ederek duyular ötesinin (...) bilgisine ulaşma şeklinde kurgulanır. O, istidlâllerini Allah’ın varlığı ve birliği, ahiretin varlığı, âlemin hudusü gibi konularda görüşlerini delillendirmek maksadıyla kullanmıştır. Bu alanların bilgisine duyulur âlemde elde edilen bilgilerin delâletiyle ulaşmak mümkündür. Ancak Mâturîdî’nin düşüncesinde kişinin olaylara bağlı olarak değişkenlik gösterebilen ruhî yapısı, kimi zaman onun istidlâlde bulunmasını engelleyebilir. İnat ve kibir bu türden ruhî durumlara örnektir. Çalışmamız; literatür taraması, karşılaştırma ve yorumlama yöntemleriyle işlenecektir. Mâturîdî’nin Kitâbü’t-Tevhid ve Te’vîlât, adlı eserleri bu yöntemlerle taranarak Mâturîdî’nin özellikle bu iki eseri çerçevesinde istidlâli hangi açılardan ele aldığı, görüşlerini temellendirirken ondan nasıl yararlandığı, istidlâlin kapsamını ve işlev alanlarını nasıl belirlediği gibi sorular etrafında şekillendirilecektir. (shrink)