Informed by understandings of affect theory, the pedagogic potential of object itineraries, or simply, the journey of things, is proposed in this case as a form of sensual a-r-tography. A pair of sporty shoes as mundane objects are at the heart of this deliberation, and the mechanism through which to consider the scope of conversations underway about more-than-human perspectives and how objects can be activated as sites of educational inquiry. The embodiment of each step in this walk is (...) an opening to interrogate how the potential materiality of artefacts ‘enflesh’ object-body-space as artist-researcher-teacher. Mapping geographies of self-in-relation, and guided by the betweenness in landscape encounters as relational and contingent, this speculative account with theoretical perspectives is rendered through the entanglements offered by story shoes. (shrink)

The struggles that Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Harold Garfinkel, and other social phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists have had with Edmund Husserl’s progenitive but inconsistent notion of intersubjectivity are summarized and assessed. In particular, an account of Schutz’s objections to intersubjective constitution is presented. The commonly pervading elements and major differences within this lineage of inquiry – a four generation-long lineage of teacher and student that commences with Husserl, runs through Schutz and Gurwitsch, then Garfinkel, and then the present author and his (...) colleagues – are discussed, under the advisory (as suggested by Maurice Natanson) that what Husserl sought was more important than what he found. (shrink)

This scoping review mapped the academic literature focused on the therapeutic itinerary of children who seek care in health services and proposed an explanatory model to expand the concept and classification of these health itineraries. A total of 789 articles were reviewed, of which 28 were eligible for inclusion. In these 28 it was possible to observe that the child's therapeutic itinerary is more than a physical path, but also encompasses all choices within a specific social and cultural environment (...) in which the child is inserted. Our proposal is to expand the concept beyond the therapeutic, classifying the itinerary also according to the objective, the decision‐making agent, respect for the presence of company, the health subsystem used, according to the physical continuity of the itinerary, the perception of efficacy of the patient, the nature of the illness, the administration of healthcare, the means of transport used, the person providing information about the itinerary, the planning of the itinerary and its completeness. Knowing the child's itineraries toward healthcare allows the development of innovative discourses and practices for future public policies, through which the principles of comprehensiveness and resoluteness in children's health would be strengthened. There is still a need to deepen knowledge about the meanings and feelings regarding their interpretations of the events suffered in childhood. (shrink)

Background: The therapeutic itinerary is not limited to the identification and availability of health services offered, but relates to the different individual searches and sociocultural and economic possibilities of each patient. In this study, we discuss the therapeutic itinerary of transsexual people seeking healthcare, from the user’s perspective. Objective: The aim of this study was to discuss the therapeutic itinerary of transsexual people seeking healthcare, from the user’s perspective. Design and participants: Individual interviews were performed with 10 transsexuals at the (...) Trans Space of a University Hospital of Pernambuco, using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the theoretical reference and the Bardin’s thematic content analysis as the reference methodological framework. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the Federal University of Pernambuco under protocol no. 91284218.5.0000.5208. Findings: The comprehensive care for transsexual people was evidenced through four categories analyzed: low demand of transsexuals in health services; use of social name in health services; care permeated by prejudiced and discriminatory attitudes; and health system and professionals who are not able to meet transgender health issues. Discussion: Transsexual people are stigmatized and experience prejudice in their daily health, in a way they do not enjoy fundamental rights, as if they had fewer rights, or infringe the principle of universality of access to health. Thus, for effective and comprehensive care, the health team must keep up to date on the public policies existing in the healthcare of transsexual people and reconstruct what they understand by gender. Conclusion: Knowledge about the therapeutic itinerary of transgender people may support evaluation processes of health service networks to ensure the access to and reorganization of these services. Understanding this dynamic allows fostering discussions about the structure of health services at all care levels for the care of this population. (shrink)

This essay is a kind of sequel to an earlier one entitled "Marx's Aufhebung of Philosophy and the Foundations of a Historical-Materialist Science." Departing from the point reached in that essay, I take a Whitmanesque journey through Marx's writings and the logic of a materialist conception of history. I begin with Walt Whitman's very materialist, very dialectical, and very decentered apostrophe in his Song of the Open Road: "You objects that call forth from diffusion my meanings / And give them (...) shape." Taking this apostrophe as my cue, I proceed to elaborate the complexity and the dimensions of dialectical thinking within a historical-materialist framework. The specific purpose of the essay is twofold: to portray the "decentered" dialectical methodology follows from Marx's historical-materialist redefinition of the subject-object relation; and to map the kinds of analytical tasks, the open-ended "itineraries," that a historical-materialist science of Wissenschaft must pursue. This "dialectical cartography" is developed through a critical and hopefully productive response to poststructuralist critiques of dialectics, particularly to those approaches that exaggerate Saussure's notion of the arbitrariness of signs. In this respect my intention is to indicate how the current confrontational relation between historical materialism and poststructuralism, especially over matters of the production of meaning and the analysis of culture, might be transformed intoone of complementarity. (shrink)

Since Bruno Latour's discussion of a Sakhalin island map used by La Pérouse as part of a global network of “immutable mobiles,” the commensurability of European and non-European knowledge has become an important issue for historians of science. But recent studies have challenged these dichotomous categories as reductive and inadequate for understanding the fluid nature of identities, their relational origins, and their historically constituted character. Itineraries of knowledge transfer, traced in the wake of objects and individuals, offer a powerful (...) heuristic alternative, bypassing artificial epistemological divides and avoiding the limited scale of national or monolingual frames. Approaches that place undue emphasis either on the omnipotence of the imperial center or the centrality of the colonial periphery see only half the picture. Instead, practices of knowledge collection, codification, elaboration, and dissemination—in European, indigenous, and mixed or hybrid contexts—can be better understood by following their moveable parts, with a keen sensitivity toward non-normative epistemologies and more profound temporal frameworks. -/- . (shrink)

Problem: While the elaboration and framing of constructivist epistemologies in keeping with the “currents of contemporary scientific epistemology” can be attributed to Jean Piaget, their development under the banner of radical constructivist epistemology is a result of the epistemological work of Ernst von Glasersfeld. The development of this epistemological paradigm, pursued over the last 40 years with the objective of “linking knowledge to action and situating the subject and the object on the same, multiple levels,” warrants further exploration and (...) contextualization within the framework of current scientific activity. Results: In what amounts to a historical coincidence, von Glasersfeld discovered the work of Piaget in 1973, the same year that the author of this article first began to read Piaget’s Epistemological Studies; this coincidence provides a starting point for describing the epistemological itinerary that led the author from a reading of Piaget in 1973 to a somewhat tardy reading of von Glasersfeld in 1988 (the same year of the translation of his “Introduction to Radical Constructivism” into French). He then explicates the subsequent developments of this paradigmatic conjunction over the last 30 years, interpreting them in the contexts of contemporary developments of scientific and operational interdisciplinarity as well as in terms of historical roots extending from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Valéry. Implications: The paradigm of constructivist epistemologies (working from a phenomenologically-based gnoseological hypothesis) can be presented and supported with arguments that are at least as solid and legitimate as those invoked in favor of alternative paradigms of realist and post-positivist epistemologies (working from an ontologically-based gnoseological hypothesis). (shrink)

This special issue of Centaurus brings together historians from Latin America and Europe to trace the history of some scientific collections and museums, in order to reassess their significance and to draw a more nuanced international geography of the sciences. Our dossier focuses on “provincial” natural history and archaeology museums and collections. For the sake of simplicity, we use the term “provincial” to qualify these “peripheral” spaces that encompassed colonial and post-colonial territories as well as the European provincial regions, but (...) the label is only a convention as some of these collections were sometimes displayed in national capitals. Focusing on objects, people, or institutions, with case studies from Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, Brazil, Northern Italy, Catalonia, and Switzerland, the articles gathered here reveal the scholarly practices and sociability of the many collectors, brokers, and go-betweens acting in the “provinces,” especially those of the amateurs. These essays show the relevance of the history of provincial collections to the wider history of scientific museums. Indeed, the shift of focus from the major institutions of the metropolitan capitals to the many collections and museums created in less central cities and regions sheds light on many issues that have remained in the background within the more centrally focused historiography. (shrink)

This article explores the uptake and circulation of ‘transgender’ in academic and philanthropic institutions, as a way of taking seriously Robyn Wiegman’s call for a divergentist approach. In so doing, the article aims to demonstrate the intimate entanglements between non-profit and academic spheres and identity knowledges therein. Taken together, both contexts reveal the messiness and complexities of institutionality, not only as a lived reality for individuals such as philanthropy professionals and academics, but also as an object of study itself.

Based on the concept of “passengers self-help hubbing,” we build a flight schedule optimization model where maximizing the number of feasible flight connections, indicating transfer opportunities, as one objective and minimizing total slot displacements as the other objective. At the same time, the “Demand Smoothing Model” is introduced into the flight schedule optimization model to reduce the queuing delays for arrival and departure flights. We take into account all aircraft itineraries, the difficulty level of schedule coordination, and the maximum (...) displacement of any single flight acceptable to airlines when optimizing flight schedule. Given an original schedule, the model produces a feasible modified schedule that obeys the slot limits specified for an airport without canceling any flights, increases transfer opportunities, and improves on-time performance for hub airports while reducing interference with airline scheduling preferences. The model was verified with the operating data of the Urumqi international airport, and the results show that minor adjustments to flight schedules can increase the transfer opportunities of the airport and significantly reduce flight queuing delays. (shrink)

Our objective in this brief article is guided by the demonstration of the existence of a theory of political action in Machiavelli's republican thought, with such a theory having its own character that directs it to highlight the action of individuals in the social context. In addition to this objective, we hope to support the thesis that such a theory of political action has a republican scope, not just “republicanist”, in keeping with the Machiavellian preference for institutions that impress on (...) individuals a civic sense based above all on the materiality of political action in the body social. From this assertion, we indicate that our itinerary will be guided by the demonstration of the search for the valorization of political action in Machiavelli's theory, the materiality of such action, to the detriment of its pure intention, the central focus of Florentine's work. This disposition of the centrality of political action in Machiavelli republicanism will underscore its appreciation for outlining the political functions of the search for recognition, glory and especially the benefit of the political body as a whole. (shrink)

The article focuses on the integration of a frame-analytic approach into the research field of the biography of material objects, whose main representatives were originally situated in classical anthropology and archaeology. The main aim of the article is the introduction of a sociological perspective to the study of the history of things. To achieve this goal, frame analysis is used as a tool of conceptual translation, based on a synthesis of key assumptions of existing approaches. The article is divided into (...) two parts. The primary part undertakes a review of existing biographical concepts in disciplines related to sociology. Among their shortcomings is the anthropomorphizing of the biography of an object, which leads to linearity and the desire to establish the beginning and end of its ‘life’. We argue that a thing can have ‘a number of different simultaneous lives’ without specific dates. In addition, in the presented approaches, exchange appears to be the primary means of endowing an object with meaning, although it is not the only possible way. In contrast, we highlight the concept of ‘itineraries of an object’ as a preferable alternative. The first part of the work also formulates the epistemic horizon of a frame-analytical biography of the material. The unit of analyzing the history of a thing — its biographical event — is the transformation of the frame of the social situation given by the object under study. In the second part of the paper, the conceptual points are illustrated by the ‘life’ stories of several telephone booths: their transposition into a city Wi-Fi hotspot, their reframing into a work office, and their transposition into a complex facility at a scientific conference. It is argued that frame theory has a conceptual apparatus relevant for explaining changes in biography, which considers the relationality of meaning-making, the qualities of a thing per se, and the dispersed (as opposed to linear) nature of these changes. (shrink)

In this dissertation I propose a new reading of the philosophical itinerary of Hilary Putnam on the matter of realism. In essence, my purpose is to argue that there is much more continuity than is normally understood, and even a degree of permanence, in the way in which Putnam has viewed the question of realism throughout his career. To arrive at this interpretation of Putnam I essentially followed two veins in his work. First, in a volume published in the early (...) 2000s entitled Ethics without Ontology (2004), Putnam establishes a parallel between his conception of objectivity in the philosophy of mathematics and in ethics. The second vein comes from a comment he made in the introduction to the first volume of his Philosophical Papers (1975) to the effect that the kind of realism he presupposed in his work of the 1960s and 70s was the same that he upheld in the philosophy of mathematics and wished to argue for at a later date in ethics. Following the first vein makes it possible to better grasp Putnam’s general conception of objectivity, but in order to understand how such a conception of objectivity is not unique to mathematics but is instead a general conception of objectivity one must follow the second vein. There, in the 1960s and 70s, Putnam adopted the same kind of realism in the philosophy of science and in ethics as he had in the philosophy of mathematics. Following this path, one realises that there exists a very strong structural similarity between Putnam’s first realism and his internal realism. After establishing this connection between Putnam’s first and second realism, I draw on Putnam’s remarks and compare the internal realism discourse to his current realism (the natural realism of ordinary people) to demonstrate, contrary to the prevalent interpretation, that there has been a great deal of consistency in his conception of realism from the 1960s to the present day. I conclude the dissertation by demonstrating how my new interpretation of Putnam’s philosophical itinerary makes it possible to shed light on the kind of realism he wishes to champion in ethics./Dans cette thèse, je propose une lecture renouvelée de l’itinéraire philosophique d’Hilary Putnam concernant la problématique du réalisme. Mon propos consiste essentiellement à défendre l’idée selon laquelle il y aurait beaucoup plus de continuité, voir une certaine permanence, dans la manière dont Putnam a envisagé la question du réalisme tout au long de sa carrière. Pour arriver à une telle interprétation de son oeuvre, j’ai essentiellement suivi deux filons. D’abord, dans un ouvrage du début des années 2000, Ethics without Ontology (2004), Putnam établit un parallèle entre sa conception de l’objectivité en philosophie des mathématiques et en éthique. Le deuxième filon vient d’une remarque qu’il fait, dans l’introduction du premier volume de ses Philosophical Papers (1975), affirmant que la forme de réalisme qu’il présupposait dans ses travaux des années 1960-1970 était la même que celle qu’il défendait en philosophie des mathématiques et qu’il souhaitait défendre ultérieurement en éthique. En suivant le premier filon, il est possible de mieux cerner la conception générale que se fait Putnam de l’objectivité, mais pour comprendre en quel sens une telle conception de l’objectivité n’est pas propre aux mathématiques, mais constitue en réalité une conception générale de l’objectivité, il faut suivre le second filon, selon lequel Putnam aurait endossé, durant les années 1960-1970, le même type de réalisme en philosophie des sciences et en éthique qu’en philosophie des mathématiques. Suivant cette voie, on se rend compte qu’il existe une similarité structurelle très forte entre le premier réalisme de Putnam et son réalisme interne. Après avoir établi la parenté entre le premier et le second réalisme de Putnam, je montre, en m’inspirant de commentaires du philosophe ainsi qu’en comparant le discours du réalisme interne au discours de son réalisme actuel (le réalisme naturel du commun des mortels), que, contrairement à l’interprétation répandue, il existe une grande unité au sein de sa conception du réalisme depuis les années 1960 à nos jours. Je termine la thèse en montrant comment mon interprétation renouvelée de l’itinéraire philosophique de Putnam permet de jeter un certain éclairage sur la forme de réalisme que Putnam souhaite défendre en éthique. (shrink)

The body as an object of the violence generated in the framework of the Colombian armed conflict occupies a central place in different works of art and literature in the country. In various cases, such centrality is due to the commitment of the authors to resignify the occurrence of massacres, kidnappings, disappearances or forced displacement, which involve or fall on the bodies of the victims. Such is the case of the works analyzed comparatively in this article: the installation Signos (...) cardinales by Libia Posada and the novel En el brazo del río by Marbel Sandoval. Both of these works converge in the resignification of the body in the context of forced displacement. Among the objectives, it seeks to define the way in which a cartographic narrative is configured in the works. It is also intended to reflect on the relationship between the body and forced displacement: internal and cross-border. The analysis proposed here revolves around the concept of cartographic narrative, which will be approached from, on the one hand, Ítalo Calvino, who defines cartography as a space-time union articulated in the idea of ​​itinerary; and on the other, by Michel de Certeau, since he considers the narrative structures, implicit in cartography, as a spatial syntax, that is, a notion that allows us to address the representation of forced displacement as a symbolic delimitation of reordering itineraries of space. (shrink)

The ‘five tears’ as mystical expression in the Dialogues of the Dominican nun Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). This article explores the underestimated teaching of the ‘five tears’ as mystical expression in the text Il dialogo ( The dialogues, written in 1378) by the Dominican ( Mantellate ) nun and philosopher-theologian, Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa, 1347–1380). The objective of the article is to indicate the significance of the teaching of the ‘five tears’, against the backdrop of the wider symbolic function (...) of tears and ‘holy grief’ in Late Medieval mysticism. After presenting a biographical introduction, the contemplative, communicative and secretive import of the meaning of tears in the Middle Ages are reappraised and applied to The dialogues. By synthesising the scarce references in the relevant secondary literature, the teaching of the five tears are henceforth discussed: the tears of damnation, which are the tears of ‘evil and sinful people’; the tears of fear, which are the tears of fallen humankind in the presence of God’s judgement; the tears of gratitude, cried by a ‘saved humanity’ who now ‘see and taste God’s goodness’ (implicitly referring to the eucharist); the perfect tears, cried by people in their selfless disposition toward and love for the human Other; and the sweet tears of tenderness, cried by those who love God and humankind, in a radicalisation of Jesus of Nazareth’s summary of the Law, ‘more than thyself’. Catherine’s teaching of the ‘five tears’ certainly presents unique features and its own considerations, but should, nevertheless, be interpreted as an extension of the contemplative and secretive functions of ‘holy grief’ as already presented in Scripture and reconsidered by the Eastern and Western church fathers in the second to the fifth centuries. Catherine’s contribution to Medieval mysticism is established therein that she expanded those initial contents by presenting the teaching of the five tears as a ritualised prerequisite for development in the Medieval pilgrim’s spiritual itinerary to God. Contribution: This article contributes to scholarship in Medieval philosophy by contextualising Catherine of Siena’s teaching of the ‘five tears’ within the wider symbolic realm of tears and ‘holy grief’ in late Medieval mysticism, stressing the contemplative, communicative and secretive import of tears throughout the Middle Ages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bataille and Mysticism: A “Dazzling Dissolution”Amy Hollywood (bio)Within Georges Bataille’s texts of the late 1930s and 1940s, in particular those later brought together in the tripartite Atheological Summa, he repeatedly suggests that his primary models for writing and experience are the texts of the Christian and non-Western mystical traditions (often represented, in Bataille, by women’s writings) and those of Friedrich Nietzsche. 1 Inner Experience opens with evocations of Nietzsche, (...) and the final volume of the trilogy, On Nietzsche, is “devoted” to his work. References to mystical writings occur throughout Inner Experience and Guilty, and significant portions of both texts can be read as providing “guides” for inner experience analogous to the “itineraries” of Angela of Foligno (d. 1309) and Teresa of Avila (d. 1582) or as spiritual daybooks like those of Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. ca. 1275). These models are, I think, the key to understanding Bataille’s own writing strategies in the Atheological Summa. 2 Despite their apparent divergence, moreover, Bataille insists that mystical and Nietzschean texts reflect and are constitutive of the same experience and writing practice.Like both Nietzsche and the mystics, Bataille’s “antigeneric” writing mixes genres and styles within and between texts. 3 Throughout the course of his career, experience and writing are in a constant state of movement, flux, or chaos (to echo Bataille’s self-description in On Nietzsche). The Atheological Summa encapsulates within what purport to be three unified books the diversity of genres and styles that run throughout Bataille’s corpus as a whole. They contain ample quotation of Nietzsche’s texts and those of the mystics—undigested hunks and fragments of these allusive writings 4 —together with philosophical reflections, confessional meditations, diary fragments, letters, and, at the end of On Nietzsche, a set of six brief historical and theoretical appendices. Anything broaching traditional textual commentary is reserved for the margins of these nonbooks. Like many mystics, particularly women who were denied access to the traditional genres of sermon, biblical commentary, and philosophical or theological treatise, and like Nietzsche, who eschews and subverts traditional genre distinctions, Bataille comments and critiques through practice rather than exposition. Although Bataille acknowledges the oddity of his coupling the mystics and Nietzsche, he also rigorously defends it, arguing for a mystical and ecstatic experience in Nietzsche’s work. 5 As I hope to show, Bataille’s [End Page 74] experience of the failures of mysticism and of Nietzsche speak to each other and lead to Bataille’s necessary apostasy as his true discipleship.Repetition of the divergences between Bataille and the mystics, first stated by Bataille himself in Inner Experience, has become something of a commonplace, yet his claims have not been sufficiently explored or challenged. So, for example, Alain Arnauld and Giséle Excoffon-Lafarge unproblematically assert that despite all proximities between Bataille’s texts and those of the mystics, they differ in their aims or aimlessness. Michel Surya joins a host of other scholars whose primary concern is to demonstrate (against the insinuations of Sartre, made now almost fifty years ago) that Bataille was not a Christian. Whereas the mystics’ path ends with the divine encounter, Bataille renounces all objects, aims, or end for his quest and his desire. 6 Most importantly, he rejects all idealism and any hope for salvation. Bataille himself insists on his divergence from the Christian mystics in Inner Experience and Guilty. At the same time, his citations and mimings of central texts from the Christian mystical tradition show that what fascinates him within these writings is precisely the moment in which the soul desires “to live without a why,” embracing the suffering of hell—understood as the absence of/from the “object” of desire—as desire. 7 In a move later echoed by Jacques Lacan, Bataille claims that some medieval mystics attained that beyond of which he writes, but without knowing anything about it: “Exuberance is the point where we let go of Christianity. Angela of Foligno attained it and described it, but didn’t know it.” 8Commentators follow Bataille in resisting his identification with the mystics, then, whereas Nietzsche is a less troubling model for Bataille and his readers. In fact, Bataille... (shrink)

Dans une période particulièrement troublée de la vie intellectuelle de l’Église catholique, Henri Bouillard fut à proprement parler un passeur, ouvrant des voies nouvelles dont nous sommes toujours les héritiers. Dans ce parcours très complexe qui a duré près de quarante ans, on peut repérer trois passages dont nous n’avons pas fini de mesurer la portée. Il y a d’abord la volonté de dépasser un anti-modernisme catholique hanté par l’objectivité de la vérité révélée et soucieux de dénoncer le subjectivisme des (...) théologiens s’efforçant de prendre au sérieux l’expérience du sujet croyant. C’est ici le rapport entre vérité et histoire qui est touché. Il y a ensuite un deuxième passage dont la théologie catholique du XXe siècle lui est redevable, c’est le remplacement de l’Apologétique comme science objective par une vraie théologie fondamentale. Il y a enfin un dernier passage, souvent moins relevé mais d’une grande actualité pour notre théologie contemporaine : celui d’une théologie naturelle - ou mieux d’une théologie philosophique - à une théologie des religions. During a particularly troubled period in the intellectual life of the Catholic Church, Henri Bouillard was a true passeur , opening up new paths of which we are still inheritors. In this very complex itinerary covering more than forty years, we can make out three passages, the consequences of which we are far from having fully taken into account. There is, first of all, the will to go beyond Catholic anti-modernism, haunted by the objectivity of revealed truth and obsessively denouncing those theologians who endeavoured to take seriously the experience of the believing subject. The relationship between truth and history is at stake here. There is then a second passage which twentieth-century Catholic theology owes to Bouillard: replacing apolegetics as objective science with a genuine fundamental theology. And there is a third passage, often less noticed but of paramount import for contemporary theology: the transition from a natural theology – or, more precisely, from a philosophic theology – to a theology of religions. (shrink)

Developments in the sociology of the body and the sociology of health impel us to investigate embodiment resistances against hegemonic biomedical definitions of normativity. Bearing in mind that the body is a social object defined by institutions, the analysis of body itineraries leads us to glimpse modes of subversion, resistance and destabilization of biomedical definitions. This article deals with the role of modern science and technology in the observation and diagnosis of the body and its consequences in the (...) definition of health and disease, the normal and the pathological. Second, biomedicine is analysed as an institution that orders gender and underpins sexual dimorphism through debates on depathologization and dysnormality. The implications of technology and medicine in the processes of neoliberal subjectivation promoted by body optimization practices are also discussed. (shrink)

Miroir, miroir de mes désirsAu seuil de la réversibilité, la libido ardente des imagesEn parcourant les perspectives de Lacan, Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, je me propose de montrer comment l’image – une image dont le rôle, depuis Platon, a été réduit par la métaphysique occidentale à celui de simple copie – rend possible une pensée nouvelle non dualiste, une pensée ouverte par le désir, c’est-à-dire par ce qui dépasse tout dualisme simpliste et qui trouve dans l’image sa voie privilégiée.L’image du miroir (...) – considérée par le platonisme comme le simulacre par excellence, comme l’emblème de la copie déformante et trompeuse d’un modèle originaire harmonieux – donne à voir bien plus qu’elle ne nous montre : comme Lacan le remarquait dans son célèbre essai de 1949, devant le miroir, nous nous découvrons, comme les enfants, sujets du monde, mais aussi, inévitablement, sujets au monde. Le «je» – dont nous sommes in-formés par l’image du miroir – s’abîme, par cette même image, dans les l’inquiétante étrangété de l’autre, et par suite dans les gorges insondables de son désir. Si l’image du miroir nous permet d’embrasser la totalité de notre corps et d’apprécier en un regard notre statut de sujet, ce regard nous est toutefois restitué – aveugle et insistant – sous la forme d’un objet partiel qui nous interpelle comme sujets désubjectivés, comme sujets castrés, ou encore comme simples « taches » dans lapeinture du monde. L’image fixée par l’enfant dans le miroir fonde, paradoxalement, l’idée traditionnelle du sujet comme pôle dynamique de la relation je-monde. Comme le remarque Slavoj Žižek, en commentant Lacan, la capacité dynamique du sujet se fonde en somme sur une fixation excessive de l’image du sujet lui-même, fixation qui trouve son origine absente dans le regard entendu comme objet a, c’est-à-dire comme point aveugle de la conscience, lieu d’acquisition et de perte qui, par la castration du sujet, ouvre la plaie libidineuse et pulsionnelle de l’inconscient et renverse par là le désir de l’homme en désir de l’autre, comme le rappelle une célèbre formule de Lacan.Longtemps considérées comme porteuses d’illusions, comme l’illusion en tant que telle, les images nous montrent en fait la vérité de cette illusion : le monde est déformation et réversibilité, et nous-mêmes, prétendus sujets faisant face à son tableau inerte, n’en sommes que des taches. Au cours des mêmes années durant lesquelles Lacan élabore une théorie du regard, Merleau-Ponty, son interlocuteur direct – qui se réfère lui aussi au comportement de l’enfant devant le miroir – réfléchit sur la question du « en-être », c’est-à-dire de la réversibilité de la chair, ce tissu de différences qui nous constitue – les animaux et les choses – comme autant de plis d’un horizon commun. Pour Merleau-Ponty comme pour Lacan, dans une telle perspective, le sujet ne se défi nit pas positivement, mais comme écart par rapport à lui-même, comme coupure dans la peau de la conscience, comme plaie ouverte sur l’inconscient et sur le désir qui en jaillit abondamment. Ainsi, voir dans le miroir que, comme disait le poète, « je est un autre », implique que l’image soit libérée de son statut dévalorisant de « seconde chose » hérité du platonisme. Cela inaugure, en fait, une pensée sans dualisme. Gilles Deleuze travaillera lui aussi dans ce sens, lorsqu’il théorisera un renversement du platonisme à partir des images, dans son essai de 1966 Renverser le platonisme.Historiquement, le commencement de la philosophie a coïncidé avec la recherche d’une origine, d’une archè. Mais un monde où les relations nées du désir tracent des itinéraires imprévisibles, où le je et l’autre ne se distinguent plus, où sujet et objet ne connaissent plus de frontière, où la copie cesse de présupposer le modèle, un monde ainsi fait, a-t-il encore une origine accessible? Confronté à cette question essentielle, Merleau-Ponty théorisera – une fois encore à partir de la vision –, au lieu d’une origine en soi préétablie, un originaire en perpétuelle explosion. De son côté, Deleuze élaborera quelque chose d’analogue, à partir de la réflexion sur le cinéma qui l’occupera dans les années 1980 : il « encapsulera » les extases temporelles dans une image-miroir, une concrétion cristalline à plusieurs facettes où le monde se différencie sans cesse, dans un éternel retour.Mirror, Mirror of my DesiresOn the Threshold of Reversibility, the libidic Passion of ImagesIn a journey through the perspectives of Lacan, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, I shall show how images – the images that from Plato on have been relegated by Western metaphysics to the role of mere copies – allow us to trace the direction of a new and non-dualistic thought, a direction opened up by desire, that is to say, by something exceeding any simplistic dualism and fi nding precisely in images its privileged channel.The specular image – conceived by Platonism as the simulacrum par excellence, as the emblem of the deforming, deceiving copy of a harmonious preliminarymodel – makes us see more than it actually shows: as Lacan remarked in a renowned essay published in 1949, since childhood, in front of the mirror, we discover ourselves as subjects of the world, but also – and inevitably – as subjected to the world. The ego – of which we are in-formed by the specular image – is turned, through that very image, into the obscure, uncanny chasm of the other, and, consequently, in the unfathomable vortex of the other’s desire. Indeed, if in the mirror we can embrace the whole of our body and catch with a single gaze its status of subject, by the mirror that very gaze is however returned – blind and insistent – as a partial object summoning us as desubjectivized subjects, as castrated subjects, namely, as mere “stains” in the picture of the world. Quite paradoxically, the image fixed by the child in the mirror founds the traditional idea of the subject conceived as the dinamic pole of the relation between the ego and the world. In short, as Slavoj Žižek remarks commenting on Lacan, the dinamic capability of the subject is grounded on an excessive fixation of the image of the subject itself, fixation which finds its absent origin in the gaze meant as object a, namely, meant as that blind point of consciousness, that point of acquisition and loss which, by castrating the subject, opens the acies of the libidically throbbing wound of the unconscious and turns, to borrow a renowed Lacanian expression, man’s desire into the other’s desire.For long considered to herald illusions, images show us the truth of illusion itself: the world is deformation and reversibility and we – presumed subjects in front of its inert picture – are, on the contrary, its “stains.” In the same years in which Lacan was elaborating a theory of gaze, Merleau-Ponty, who was then a direct interlocutor of his, was articulating – by referring, as Lacan did, to the child’s behaviour in front of the mirror – a series of important reflections over the problem of the en-être, that is to say, over the problem of the reversibility of flesh, i. e., that differential fabric constituting us – animals and things – as variegated gatherings of a common horizon. For Merleau-Ponty, as well as for Lacan, according to such a perspective, the subject, far from being defined in a positive way, is defined by a gap in relation with its own self, that is to say, by a cut in the skin of consciousness, by a wound opening to the unconscious and to the desire spurting abundantly from the subconscious.To see in the mirror that, as the poet said, “I am an Other,” is to free images from the status of “second things” with which Platonism had dismissed them; it is, in other words, to inaugurate a non-dualistic thought. For his part, Deleuze will also engage in the same direction by theorizing a reversing of Platonism from the very standpoint of images in his 1966 essay Renverser le platonisme.The beginning of philosophy has historically matched with the search for an origin, namely, an arké. But in a world in which the relations inaugurated by desire trace unpredictable itineraries, in a world in which the ego and the other can no longer be distinguished, in a world in which the subject and the object know no more boundary lines, in a world in which model and copy cease to exist as the presupposition of one another, in such a world, I said, is it still possible to find an origin? By measuring himself with such a crucial question, Merleau-Ponty will theorize – once again from the standpoint of vision – an “originating in perennial explosion” instead of a narrow, pregiven origin. For his part, Deleuze will elaborate something similar in his reflection on cinema, which will keep him busy in the first half of the eighties, by capsulating the temporal dimensions in a mirror-image, i. e., a crystalline concretion in whose facets the world perennially becomes in an eternal differential return. (shrink)

This article conducts a theoretical analysis of the proposal to redefine the ongoing training of teachers, collaborators, and employees of the Franciscan Schools, from the perspective of the Franciscan Itinerary, to reinforce its strategic objective of studying and reflecting on the Franciscan Sources for the reinvigoration of the charisma of Saint Francis in network institutions. To this end, it is necessary to develop training actions that enable the deepening of Franciscan principles, values, and attitudes in school communities, with a view (...) to education for humanization. It presents the formative actions of the Franciscan Itinerary between the years 2021 and 2024 proposed for schools, from the perspective of reinvigorating institutional identity, based on Franciscan philosophical and spiritual foundations, as an invaluable intangible asset. It reflects that such foundations need to be reinforced in educational action, as well as cultivated in the professional lives and pedagogical practices of its professionals, including managers, coordinators, and teachers, in order to foster the emergence of meaningful references for its students both inside and outside the classroom, as well as to positively impact the institution’s brand in the community where it is located. (shrink)

This article explores the underestimated teaching of the 'five tears' as mystical expression in the text Il dialogo by the Dominican nun and philosopher-theologian, Catherine of Siena. The objective of the article is to indicate the significance of the teaching of the 'five tears', against the backdrop of the wider symbolic function of tears and 'holy grief' in Late Medieval mysticism. After presenting a biographical introduction, the contemplative, communicative and secretive import of the meaning of tears in the Middle Ages (...) are reappraised and applied to The dialogues. By synthesising the scarce references in the relevant secondary literature, the teaching of the five tears are henceforth discussed: the tears of damnation, which are the tears of 'evil and sinful people'; the tears of fear, which are the tears of fallen humankind in the presence of God's judgement; the tears of gratitude, cried by a 'saved humanity' who now 'see and taste God's goodness' ; the perfect tears, cried by people in their selfless disposition toward and love for the human Other; and the sweet tears of tenderness, cried by those who love God and humankind, in a radicalisation of Jesus of Nazareth's summary of the Law, 'more than thyself'. Catherine's teaching of the 'five tears' certainly presents unique features and its own considerations, but should, nevertheless, be interpreted as an extension of the contemplative and secretive functions of 'holy grief' as already presented in Scripture and reconsidered by the Eastern and Western church fathers in the second to the fifth centuries. Catherine's contribution to Medieval mysticism is established therein that she expanded those initial contents by presenting the teaching of the five tears as a ritualised prerequisite for development in the Medieval pilgrim's spiritual itinerary to God.CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to scholarship in Medieval philosophy by contextualising Catherine of Siena's teaching of the 'five tears' within the wider symbolic realm of tears and 'holy grief' in late Medieval mysticism, stressing the contemplative, communicative and secretive import of tears throughout the Middle Ages. (shrink)

Resumo: Este artigo oferece alguns pressupostos, condições e situações atinentes ao Ensino de Filosofia tendo em vista discutir seu potencial reconhecimento como campo do conhecimento autônomo vinculado ao território epistemológico da Filosofia, cujo status de sua autonomia advém da demarcação de um objeto, métodos e finalidades sociais específicas. Primeiramente, então, fizemos uma exposição em torno a um estatuto epistemológico para o Ensino de Filosofia, elaborando em seguida um itinerário de diferenciação entre a Filosofia da Educação e uma Filosofia do Ensino (...) de Filosofia, finalizando a discussão oferecemos alguns argumentos quanto à capacidade de intervenção social do ensino de Filosofia, a qual atua na formação dos sujeitos seja no âmbito pessoal seja no profissional. Por fim, encaminhamos algumas questões corrrelatas para futuros exercícios filosofantes desde/acerca/em prol do ensino de Filosofia e também do Ensino de Filosofia. Palavras-chave: Ensino de Filosofia; Educação Filosófica; Estatuto Epistemológico; Filosofia do Ensino de Filosofia The Teaching of Philosophy: between epistemological problems and social issues Abstract: This paper offers some presuppositions, conditions and situations which are related to Teaching of Philosophy in view to discuss its potential acceptance as an field of knowledge autonomous in the epistemological territory of Philosophy, whose its status of autonomy comes from the demarcation of an specific object, methods and specific social purposes. At first, we made an exposition around an epistemological statute for the Teaching of Philosophy. Then, we elaborated an itinerary of differentiation between the Philosophy of Education and a Philosophy of the Teaching of Philosophy. At the conclusion of this discussion, we offered some arguments about potential social intervention of the teaching of Philosophy, which works in the formation of the subjects, whether their personal or professional scope. Finally, we indicated some related issues for future philosophizing exercises from/about/in favor of teaching of Philosophy and the Teaching of Philosophy also. Keywords: Teaching of Philosophy; Philosophy of Education; Epistemological Statute; Philosophy of the Teaching of Philosophy L'Enseignement de la Philosophie : entre problèmes épistémologiques et questions sociales Résumé: Cet article propose quelques présupposés, conditions ainsi que situations qui se rapportent à l'Enseignement de la Philosophie afin de discuter sa potentielle acceptation en tant que champ de la connaissance autonome dans le territoire épistémologique de la Philosophie, dont le statut d'autonomie provient de la délimitation d'un objet, des méthodes et des finalités sociales ces qui sont spécifiques. D’abord nous avons fait un exposé autour d'un statut épistémologique de l'Enseignement de la Philosophie. Ensuite, nous avons élaboré un itinéraire pour indiquer la différenciation entre la Philosophie de l'Éducation et une Philosophie de l'Enseignement de la Philosophie. Pour finir, nous avons proposé quelques arguments sur la potentielle intervention sociale de l'enseignement de la Philosophie, celui que opère dans la formation des sujets au cadre soit personnel soit professionnel. Pour terminer, nous avons indiqué quelques questions connexes pour les futurs exercices philosophiques de / sur / en faveur de l'enseignement de la Philosophie et aussi de l'Enseignement de la Philosophie. Mots-clés: Enseignement de la Philosophie; Philosophie de l'Éducation; Statut Épistémologique; Philosophie de l'Enseignement de la Philosophie Data de registro: 20/01/2023 Data de aceite: 24/01/2024. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 2-24 [Access article in PDF] Three-Way Misreading Mieke Bal Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. [CPR] Introduction: Reading Other-Wise This openly declared interest makes my reading the kind of "mistake" without which no practice can enable itself. 1 --Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial ReasonAs many readers of this journal familiar with her (...) earlier work will surmise, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Critique of Postcolonial Reason (CPR) is not easy to read. Yet reading is what the book is about, what it does, and what it teaches. The book, on more levels than one but beginning with its own accessibility, teaches how to read, other-wise. Indeed, this book is perhaps overreadable, if such a notion makes sense. I mean a form of readerliness based on multiplicity, both of (academic) levels and of lines of argumentation, subjects, and discourses. It can be read in a number of ways, none of which is adequate, all of which are enriching and useful for whatever area of specialization one is working in, as long as one is engaged in (thinking through) culture and the activity of analysis."My aim, to begin with, was...": beginning in the past tense and ending on the word "undone," this is a book with no beginning and no end, just like its subject matter, which can be briefly summarized as a passage from its title to a program of developing "transnational literacy." To pretend that either book or subject matter does have an end is to closet it. 2 But both book and subject matter have many openings that beckon you in yet leave the doors open so you can leave when and how you wish. Thus, it sets itself up to be appropriated, and in full awareness of how that makes me complicitous with much that the author at times rants about, I feel compelled to do just that: to productively misread it. Feeling invited to take the book "home"--to divert it from its many-branched course but confirming its multiple readership--I will offer here three readings of CPR. All three are willful misreadings, for misreading, always inevitable, is particularly indispensable in this encounter. 3 Instead of a review, I offer a pedagogical supplement. I will follow or spin three threads, to which the book is in no way reducible, and which [End Page 2] [Begin Page 4] are even insufficiently complex to account for the part-issue on which they focus. My goal is simply to convey one sense in which this book can be read with enormous productivity. I have selected three issues that appear as misreadings even at first sight, to the extent that they foreground aspects of the book's reasoning and analysis that are paradoxical here. In a study explicitly allied to postcolonial theory and politics, I will discuss aesthetics; in a practice of deconstruction, referentiality; and in a book of intricate and self-reflective writing, orality. These three elements are meant to underscore and remedy the profound misreadings to which those who mistrust, misinterpret, or misjudge the author's triple allegiance to transnational culture studies, deconstructive critique, and teaching have subjected her work.CPR contains four long chapters, simply titled "Philosophy," "Literature," "History," "Culture." Simply, or overambitiously? Neither. Whenever the book appears to spread out, it narrows down in the same move. The enumeration embodies a tight program. The sequence of the chapters is clear and significant. It is justified forwards and backwards as an itinerary and guideline for an interdisciplinary culture study that is responsible to each of its components as well as to the objects that can be confined to none. Moving forwards, "Philosophy" examines the arguments, "Literature" the figurations, "History" the archival material in which arguments and figurations collaborate to determine, and retrospectively leave traces of, what happened. 4 "History" also changes the practice of history by interpolating between positive research and philosophy the need to read and a way to do it, borrowed largely from literature. "Culture" opens up to the politics of a world in... (shrink)

El propósito en el artículo es brindar un informe bibliográfico preliminar sobre el itinerario de la recepción de Hans Freyer en la Argentina, con el fin de arrojar luz sobre una figura del pensamiento alemán de la primera mitad del siglo XX que tuvo una repercusión soterrada en muchos intelectuales argentinos del periodo. Esa presencia se encuentra en gran parte oculta para la historia de las ideas argentinas, dada su problemática inscripción doctrinaria e ideológica en las políticas de la filosofía (...) y en las políticas de las ciencias sociales.The article offers a preliminary bibliographical report on the itinerary of the reception of Hans Freyer in Argentina. The objective is to shed light on a figure of the German thought of first half of the XX Century that influenced many Argentine intellectuals of the period. However that influential effect is hidden in the history of the Argentine ideas, given its problematic doctrinaire and ideological inscription in the politics of philosophy and social sciences. (shrink)

The different receptions of the work of Martin Heidegger represent a significant aspect to understand the evolution of the Spanish Philosophy of the second half of century XX. In a context of crisis of the modernity and the search of a philosophical solution up to the task of its time period, the philosophical reception of Ortega was polemical and has been object of different interpretations. Early received by his disciples Zubiri and Gaos, and of special relevancy for Zambrano, the (...) work of Heidegger contributed to oust both Ortega and his heritage during the times of Madrid School during Francoist dictatorship. From the scholastic philosophy of the forties, and from Heidegger his-self, he abandoned The Idea of Principle in Leibniz, work that has been just published as a new official edition including previous work notes. In this way, in our work we will make a critical itinerary about that initial reception and its most relevant readings, this time analyzed under the methodological frame provided by the Sociology of Philosophy. (shrink)

Umberto Eco’s semiotics, unlike that of most of his colleagues, has always claimed to be a philosophical research. For Eco, general semiotics, that is, the research on the functioning of signs, was a fundamental part of philosophy, because the knowledge of objects and the formulation of the ideas that characterize them takes place by means of signs. This paper shows how Eco’s semiotic work derives from his philosophical training and how interest in the mass media and political commitment have not (...) changed the nature of his philosophical project. His research itinerary is compared with that of other semiotics scholars to show the originality of his approach. (shrink)

After more than a century of its development, philosophers working in the analytic tradition have recently begun to consider its history as an object of philosophical investigation.1 This development, particularly significant in the context of a tradition of inquiry that has often conceived of its own problems as ahistorical, is salutary in that it offers to show what, within the tradition, remains rich and vital for philosophy today, as well as to extract the significant theoretical and doctrinal results that (...) can be considered to have been achieved in its itinerary so far. The appearance of a comprehensive, two-volume consideration of the history of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century, written by one of the tradition’s leading contemporary practitioners, is therefore cause for excitement. And Scott Soames’ two-volume Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century is, by any measure, an impressive work. Running to almost 900 pages, it assembles careful, meticulous and detailed expositions and analyses of the arguments and positions of a wide variety of thinkers within the analytic tradition, evaluating the extent of their insight and suggesting implications for philosophical thought today. The analysis is uniformly lucid and clearly written, offering the student of the analytic tradition an indispensable source of arguments she may want to consider in her own work, as well as, in its own argumentation, a suggestive model of at least one way of doing analytic philosophy. Over the course of his reconstructive and evaluative analysis, Soames considers the views and arguments of early analytic philosophers like Russell and Moore, logical positivists like Ayer and.. (shrink)

Writing, the exigency of writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealist (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence) seems to devote itself solely to itself as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, deferred, (...) and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of the Book and the Work so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside discourse, outside language. – Maurice Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation , xi) The Compendium * Beginning with the idea and practice of writing, and moving to the subject or self, then to truth and the One, and arriving at the Book and the Work, Blanchot’s words reflect the trajectory of the following work of writing. True to the embeddedness of the subject in the work of writing, the term “Compendium” has been a metonym for me over the past few years as I have thought about the concept of totality alongside its expression in figures such as the One, the Whole, or the All. In the following I aim to share some of the content of this metonym, and to enrich it by making some distinctions. 1 Here the term “Compendium” will refer to a concept of totality that is ontological (pertaining to being, and the copula) and also textual (pertaining to the symbolic, and the signifier-signified relationship). The Compendium is a figure for thinking the world as a Book, in the broadest sense—an approach to reality that is by no means new, but one that is due for renewal. 2 In partial answer to the question of the Compendium we will say that the word ‘Compendium’ stands in for expressions which seek to totalize, or concepts which seek to approach the concept of ‘everything,’ particularly when these expressions are bound up in the question of the Book (both the book as a physical object and the Book as a metaphysical figure: a way of thinking about the work in and of writing). The question of the Compendium is strongly associated with the physical and metaphysical form of the Book, like the mysterious and symbolic books which are opened in the Biblical book of Revelation, the book of life and the book of death, which together constitute an important couplet. 3 Parataxis & Hypotaxis There are two helpful distinctions that will bring us closer to an answer to the question “What is a Compendium?” The first distinction is between two figures in and for writing: parataxis and hypotaxis . Typically paired in contrast to one another as literary techniques, with parataxis indicating a side-by-side placement of textual elements and hypotaxis referring to subordinate arrangements of textual elements, the two figures can be understood as having a philosophical significance in addition to their practical function as devices for writers. For us these two terms will remain between philosophical theory and writing practice, and serve as a perspective for our writing and creation of texts. Here I take texts to refer to anything from the concrete written words in a book, to the ontological text of the world that we experience. Parataxis , as a figural way of thinking about the ontological structure of texts, refers to texts which are tightly woven and interdependent – texts within which each sentence bears the weight of the entire work. Parataxis often involves repetition, great density, and fragility. One of the best examples of this sort of text is Theodor Adorno’s posthumous magnum opus , Aesthetic Theory . In addition to the text itself, the translation history of the book may also help us to better understand parataxis and its relation to hypotaxis . The final published version of Aesthetic Theory , in German, was a text that Adorno intended to revise and rewrite, but this intention was never realized because of his untimely death. Where the German text of Aesthetic Theory certainly exemplifies the concept of parataxis , the first English edition took this densely woven text and carved Adorno’s lengthy paragraphs and lengthy sentences into manageable ‘bite-sized’ pieces of English text. The first translator took further liberty and inserted headings and new paragraph breaks where there were none in the original. Aesthetic Theory was eventually retranslated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and is now available in a form that is much more faithful to the original work. 4 The pertinent idea that this translation history points to is the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis . Where parataxis describes texts which are repetitive, densely woven, and often fragile, hypotaxis describes texts which are hierarchical and in which the primary relation is linear – the latter of which is very similar to the first English translation of Aesthetic Theory . On the other hand, the original German text that Adorno wrote was very dense, often repetitive, and contained long sections of text unbroken by paragraphs or headings. This example of parataxis was then turned towards hypotaxis through the initial translation which took a text that was, in many ways, nonhierarchical and nonlinear, and artificially subjected it to a hierarchy that was not its own (and here I take the word of Fredric Jameson who comments on the two translations in a note at the beginning of his book Late Marxism ). 5 The point here is not about translation, but rather the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis precisely as they are figures for discourse, written or otherwise. The concept of parataxis looks far more postmodern and rhizomic than the concept of hypotaxis which remains very modern and arborescent. This is a more figural way of talking about the distinction. However, if we wanted to take a more precise and analytical approach we could say that on the level of form parataxis involves a relationship between sentences and paragraphs in which each part bears an equally crushing responsibility to present the whole content of the text. As well, on the level of content, parataxis requires that each concept in a work take on the full conceptual weight of the total work. Continuing the analysis, we could say that parataxis describes texts in which there is no (or very little) linear or causal move from antecedent to consequent, whether in content or form. Instead, parataxis describes texts which weave together concepts via conjugations or associations. The concept of hypotaxis , on the other hand, requires that texts submit themselves to hierarchy, one example of which is logical argumentation. The contingency of the conclusion upon premises in hypotaxis is certainly distinct from the repetition, re-presentation, and conjugation of concepts in parataxis , and I think that this is evident in the difference between the writing styles prevalent in contemporary Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. It is not the case that the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis absolutely corresponds with the writing styles of Continental and Analytic philosophy (respectively). There are thinkers who take exception to this pattern, such as Badiou’s more formal approach in the discourse of Continental philosophy to give one example. However, when Analytic philosophy takes its writing lessons from the sciences, and seeks to do philosophy via the clean linear move from antecedent to consequent, then I think that Analytic philosophy writes with hypotaxis in mind. On the other hand, when Continental (particularly German and French) philosophy takes its writing lessons from narrative or poetry then Continental philosophy writes with parataxis in mind. It is not fair to say that all those writing Continental philosophy are looking to narrative and poetry for stylistic direction, just as it is not the case that all those writing Analytic philosophy have mathematics and science as their writing format, however there are some striking ways in which the differing epistemologies of Continental and Analytic philosophy encourage writing with parataxis and hypotaxis in mind (respectively). For some, writing with parataxis or hypotaxis in mind is a conscious decision and a product of stylistic self-consciousness, and for others it is an unconscious discursive and epistemic requirement that must be met in order to be involved in a particular discourse. Before moving on to our second distinction, and then an examination of the question of the Book, it is important to point out that both totality and figurations like the One, the Whole, and the All, come out of very human desires to totalize or to actualize our being-towards-totality. The relationship between identity and totality then can be construed, with Heidegger in mind, as striving toward wholeness, completion, or fulfillment, each of which is a quality of compendia. 6 Compilation & Selection The first distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis pertains to both form and content, and to both the mechanics of writing and the ideas to which writing refers. The second distinction pertains to both as well. In the process of writing and in the process of perception as well, there is a tension between compilation and selection . To begin with, in the work of theory-writing there is compilation, and this is because writing theory requires a broad perspective and certain measure of totalization. On the other hand, writing theory requires that the writer select an idea or a combination of ideas to individuate out of a radical and infinite multiplicity of identities and combinations. The concern here is not primarily for the writing of a theory about a specific idea, like a secondary work or a reference text. But rather the concern is with the writing of grand theories: Marx and Marxism, Derrida and Deconstruction, Husserl and Phenomenology, Sartre and Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism —each of which strives along a trajectory towards being all-encompassing, whether it intends to or not. Today, we could even say that Speculative Realism has embarked on this journey, and perhaps now we could say that the discourse of Speculative Realism has reached the inevitable point after which a grand theory leaves the hands of its writer or writers and becomes a possession of the collective consciousness of the academy, or (perhaps now) the mass consciousness of the blogosphere—and this is a true pharmakon , a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. 7 When we write theory, whether the scope is that of a grand theory or a particular theory, we write in the tension between compilation (making good on the desire to be all encompassing) and selection (being required to decide and discern and to judge what is included in the work and what is deleted or appended or abridged or given over to ellipses). Generally speaking, the work of theory-writing often comes out of a desire to totalize, that is, to develop a theory of everything that is able to apprehend new experiences and ideas while still remaining whole. I grant that this is not a universal desire, and that not everyone who sits down to write a work (or book) of theory does so because of their will-to-totality, but it remains that this drive to totalize does condition a great many writers of theory (especially those who seek to develop grand theories like those mentioned previously). At the beginning of his book of interviews, Between Existentialism and Marxism , Sartre is quoted as saying, after completing the first volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason : “I no longer feel the need to make long digressions in my books, as if I were forever chasing after my own philosophy. It will now be deposited in little coffins, and I will feel completely emptied and at peace—as I felt after Being and Nothingness . A feeling of emptiness: a writer is fortunate if he can attain such a state. For when one has nothing to say, one can say everything .” 8 This is where our two initial distinctions come to bear on the being-towards-totality as it is expressed in the concrete practice of writing: the first being between parataxis and hypotaxis , and the second being between compilation and selection. Where this second distinction is concerned there is a certain paradox at play given that selection is inescapable, and compilation is unachievable. Selection is inescapable (with the figure of the Compendium in mind) because, even when the imperative to compile is followed to excruciating lengths, selection still has the last word. This is why the Compendium is a figure rather than some material thing that can actually be accomplished or actualized. No matter how far one goes along with the will-to-archive and the will-to-compile, it is only ever a question of minimizing selection and never eliminating it. This leads to the second point, which is that total compilation is unachievable. The closest thing to total compilation that we have before us is the ontological and textual fabric of the world. Even in the case of the world, compilation cannot be enacted in a total fashion because of the need to include both the sphere of the actual and the sphere of the possible or potential. This as another way in which compilation is always-already selection, and further evidence that total compilation is practically impossible. Discursive Figuration and Total Writing Rather than figuration referring to a figure of speech or an image, here the term points to a way in which to think about the work of writing, both the work put into writing, and the work that is the result of writing: the finished yet incomplete final piece. As figures or figurations, the Book and the Compendium are ways of thinking about the work of writing and the human desire for the wholeness, completion, and fulfillment that are made manifest in the completed form of the book (whether a published or printed or saved document put to rest by the author). These two figures bear more strongly upon works that seek to be all-encompassing, and works that strive towards expressions of totality such as the One, the Whole, or the All. Moving on to the topic of the subtitle, and on a more prescriptive note, I would say that there is more hope for theory-writing to be found in parataxis than hypotaxis . Part of the reason for this claim is the poststructuralist critique of hierarchies, and yet another part is the compelling line of thinking called “weak thought” (in theology by John D. Caputo, and in philosophy by Gianni Vattimo, among others). 9 The consequences of these two convictions are such that if one is to strongly assert the truth of a grand theory without leaving the realm of hierarchy-critique and weak thought, then one must write paradoxically with parataxis in mind, and in so doing write weakly and non-hierarchically. This does not mean avoiding a sort of topography or topology when writing theory, rather it means avoiding both subjugation and oppression in thought by pursuing a nonviolent sort of ontology. In order to do this, theory writing does not present itself as an exercise in logical analysis where one mechanically moves from a set of premises (via contingency) to the inevitable conclusion (via necessity). Instead, theory approaches the idea of a Compendium. Given that the figural Compendium places parataxis and compilation above hypotaxis and selection, then the question becomes: is placing one part of a binary term before another not just another way of selecting, or another expression of hypotaxis ? Counter to the urge to resign oneself to the reign of selection, with some qualification one can nonetheless write without deciding whether selection and hypotaxis should be subservient to compilation and parataxis (which is to say that writing-without-decision is somewhere between and beyond possibility and impossibility). This dilemma can be disarmed by stating that theory writing is not about primacy, and not about having-decided-beforehand, both stylistically and also where content is concerned. This is the paradox of writing: always striving along a trajectory ( telos ) towards totality via parataxis and compilation, but always being drawn back to finitude and making selections, and placing one idea before another with hypotaxis in mind. In light of this paradox, the question of the Compendium as a figure for discourse and a figural Book has resonance with Jacques Derrida’s essay on Edmund Jabès’ Book of Questions , found in his Writing and Difference . The Question of the Book “Little by little the book will finish me.” 10 Derrida quotes Jabès, and proceeds to outline the reflexive relationship between the author of the book and the book itself, each of which are subjected to the other through a sort of chiasmus, both ontological and textual (not that the two are entirely separable). The Book, for Derrida like Blanchot in the introductory quotation, “infinitely reflects itself” and “develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility”, and in light of this we can draw an association with the painful tension between the practical reality of selection and the ideal trajectory of compilation. 11 This tension in writing, between the will to total compilation and the necessity of abridgment, is an ontological tension between part and whole just as it is a textual tension between signifier and signified. The ontological tension in writing that Derrida expresses in his essay on Jabès is between everything and nothing – a contradiction which Derrida finds in Jabès’ Book of Questions and also in the divine, in God. When one writes between compilation and selection one writes towards totality, and here we can follow Derrida who states that the lapse in signification, presumably in the signifier-signified discrepancy, is a “ rupture with totality itself” and furthermore that this lapse cannot be rectified through deductive reason or even philosophical discourse. 12 This rupture with totality, found in the troubled relation between signifier and signified, can also tell us a lot about the Book and about writing. Given an understanding of writing as an ontological act that strives towards (but never accomplishes) totality, we can see the written book as the manifested and given body of that striving. Perhaps in other disciplines or even other schools of philosophy there is a cultural climate within which the article is prized above the book, but I am fairly confident, especially when referring to the grand theories of Continental thought, that there is a respect for the book as a uniquely meaningful object capable of apprehending totality. Derrida writes, Between the too warm flesh of the literal event and the cold skin of the concept runs meaning. This is how it enters into the book. Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This is why the book is never finite. It always remains suffering and vigilant. 13 Here the vitality of the literal event is compromised by the deadening weight of the concept, and the figure of the Book assists in this lapse of meaning. The Book is a totalizing object, much like the figure of the Compendium, and yet this totalization lacks its final object of completed totality both because the figural Book is necessarily incomplete, and because the physical book is always-already a product of selection. Instead of achieving its end of being a place where everything takes place, it suffers from the lapse of writing, the discrepancy between event and concept. Derrida continues his exposition on Jabès by bringing to light yet another reflexive relation, a reversal of the relationship between the Book and the world. Derrida writes that, for Jabès, “the book is not in the world, but the world is in the book.” 14 In addition to what was stated before, I take figuration to mean that the concepts employed, such as the Book or the Compendium, are not subject to the supposed rigor of analysis that is so prized by Enlightenment or Capitalist realisms. The figure of the Book and the figure of the Compendium cannot be held accountable to standards imported from scientific method, given an understanding that these standards require a concept to be replicable, consistent, falsifiable, measurable, and so on… This is an important point to make, especially in the present atmosphere within which theory must justify itself under conditions that are not its own. Instead of being held to these standards, figuration serves as a way in which to think about writing that leaves thought open to idealistic speculation, imperfect analogies, and most importantly the ever-present gain and loss that occur in the relationship between thought and being. By extension the figural way of addressing writing indulges in enough generalization to accommodate the excess/lack relationship between the ideal form of the Book or the Compendium, and the manifested and given body of a text (as it is practically completed and closed). Here we speak against the hostile atmosphere which would have theory submit itself to hierarchical rigor, rather than Blanchot’s “enigmatic rigor”, by being explicit about the discursive conditions and epistemic conditions under which theory operates. To write with parataxis in mind is, to a certain degree, to write with weakness as one’s methodology (with weak thought being in opposition to hypotaxis and hierarchy as much as weak thought can be in opposition to anything). Rather than asserting the strength of hierarchical theory, and rather than employing antagonistic argumentation with the goal of refutation different discursive and epistemic conditions for theory writing must be cultivated (and these are by no means new). First the critical and theoretical spirit reveals itself as being concerned with the task of complication—especially the complication and critique of binaries, dichotomies, dualities, polarities, paradoxes, parallaxes, hybridities, and especially antinomies. Second, theory positions itself as a sort of showing or revealing, rather than being ultimately focused on coming to full agreement or disagreement. This is where figuration can help theory-writing, both by placing emphasis on teleologies and trajectories (like parataxis and compilation), and by shifting focus away from pure primacy, power, or absolute origin. Figuration then, assists theory writing by placing the concern of theory outside of the concerns of the hard or soft sciences, and into the realm of thought or the idea. To speak of ‘the’ Compendium or ‘the’ Book, here, is to generalize not regarding the perfect form of the Compendium or Book, but to engage speculatively with an abstract idea which remains singular and yet complicated by multiplicity. The question of the Book that Derrida asks through Jabès is a question of everything and nothing, totality and nonbeing, and this question is a concern for writing and a concern for the figure of the Compendium so defined by the tension between compilation and selection, and parataxis and hypotaxis . On the note of nonbeing, we can look to the final page of Derrida’s first essay on Jabès in Writing and Difference and notice the introduction of his neologism, différance (with an ‘a’). Derrida writes: Life negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself, and writes itself as différance . Books are always books of life (the archetype would be the Book of Life kept by the God of the Jews) or of afterlife (the archetype would be the Books of the Dead kept by the Egyptians). 15 This introduction of différance into the equation of the Book, alongside ontological affirmation and negation, hearkens back to the discussion of the symbolic lapse earlier in his essay. Differing and deferring, the Book is always a Book of Life and a figure for the intersection of the vital (life) and the total in writing. In a way, the writer of the Book may be someone who lives life, and in another way the writer of the book-as-object may be someone who engages in the act of writing, both practically (by inscribing words on paper, or typing script on a computer) and ontologically or symbolically (by investing their existence and inexistence into a work worthy of the figural Book). In addition to the writer as writer, the writer also serves as an editor, and the editorial role alongside the idea of the Compendium shows the editor to be one who collects and compiles, while being restrained by eventual selection and decision. Beyond this the editor of works and texts, in both the Book and the world, is engaged in a process of inscribing notation—of annotating (on) the Compendium. Eternal commentary is a feature of the textual Compendium, just as open-ended totality describes the ontological Compendium. The writer as writer does not simply write texts, but rather engages in a profoundly ontological act of inscribing their existence into the world, and the writer as editor does not merely annotate or alter texts as they are, but rather comments upon the text of the world. In/Conclusion So as we create texts, and as we write and create theory, let us be and remain attentive to the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book. These two concurrent metonymies are essential for total writing (grand theories, etc.), and may be forgettable for those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing (which are valid in their own right). From the ontological and symbolic text of the world and phenomenological experience, to concrete texts such as books or mixed media, the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book are important for the actualization of the human will to be all-encompassing. The figure of the Compendium teaches writers of theory that the repetition, density, and fragility of parataxis offers a strong sort of weakness which does not become yet another variety of oppressive and hegemonic thought. Rather than write with hypotaxis in mind, subjugating one thought to another via cause and effect or antecedent and consequent, I would hope that theory-writing could guiltlessly indulge in the dialectical and contradictory conjugation of ideas, and take this as a legitimate methodology. Rather than being ashamed of showing resonances or giving way to abridgment or ellipses, it is my own authorial (but not authoritative) conviction that one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the fact that complete totalization is impossible, and one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the worry of violence, for the Book and the Compendium lack their completed object and are ever incomplete trajectories. NOTES * UPDATED 7/19/13: we've updated the HTML version to reflect the (correct) PDF version. Our apologies to the author—eds. 1. I would like extend thanks to Dr. Peter Schwenger of the University of Western Ontario for his comments on this paper and his hospitality as it was presented as a Theory Session at the Centre for Theory and Criticism on October 26th 2012. I would also like to thank Andrew Weiss for conversation and critique. 2. I should clarify my use of the term ‘figure’ at the outset. Given the use of the term by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Discourse, Figure (and also Gilles Deleuze in Francis Bacon ), I should state clearly that my use of the term will not correspond to the term ‘figure’ understood as the representation of an object. Instead, my use of the term ‘figure’ and its variations (‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘figuration’) will refer to the illustrative or metaphorical use of the Compendium or the Book as models or ways of thinking about writing and discourse. 3. Cf. Revelations 20:12-15. 4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London & New York: Continuum Press, 1997). 5. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990), ix-x. 6. I have written about this concept of being-towards-totality elsewhere in two pieces of writing: the first is called Notes on the Compendium (an unfinished draft) which addresses some very wide theoretical concerns, being structured as a sort of itinerary or archive, and the second is Dialectics Unbound (Punctum Books, 2013) which outlines a concept of totality without the violence of totalization. While these works are more concerned with ontological totality, here I would like to focus on the idea of the Compendium as a textual totality. 7. Cf. Louis Morelle, “Speculative Realism: After Finitude and Beyond, A vade mecum” in Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism . Issue 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012), 241-272. 8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism . Trans. John Matthews (London & New York: Verso, 1974), 9. 9. Cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). 10. Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” in Writing and Difference . Trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 65. 11. Ibid, 65. 12. Ibid, 71. 13. Ibid, 75. 14. Ibid, 76. 15. Ibid, 78. (shrink)

The question of the mimesis metaphorike in Aristotle is developed, in the interpretative perspective of this work, through an itinerary that defines it in relation to poetical thought, ontology and in its gnoseological and epistemological aspects. The pages that the philosopher has explicitly dedicated to the metaphor might be considered as examples in a sort of reflection-guide to understand the link existing, according to Aristotle, between language, thought and being. At the same time they offer a fundamental theoretical element to (...) proceed in the search for that unity by analogy that has occupied a great part of the Aristotelian interpretative tradition. The hermeneutical perspective of this work represents a critical position in relation to the most common interpretations of the theory of the metaphor in Aristotle (that explain it in linguistic-semiotic terms) and tries to retrieve and bring to light the metaphysical horizon and the “referentialist” vocation that mark the reflection of the Greek philosopher. Yet, notwithstanding this background, Aristotle’s reflection manages to generate a realism that is not quashed in the opposition object-subject, inner world-outside world, but that is able, even today, to offer fundamental parameters to think of the relationship between language, world and thought in terms that are not any longer those of a world defined through a totalising linguistic dimension. In this sense, the Aristotelian doctrine of the metaphor constitutes today a fundamental theoretical paradigm to think deep and critically the kind of relation that might exist between arts and truth and, also, between language and world. (shrink)

L’espace esthétiqueLe « renversement du cartésianisme » chez Deleuze et Merleau-PontyCet essai se propose de développer le rapport entre Deleuze et Merleau-Ponty à partir de la tentative des deux philosophes français d’aller au-delà du courantde pensée qu’on pourrait qualifi er, comme le fait Merleau-Ponty lui-même, de « cartésianisme ».Nous commençons notre itinéraire avec la critique que les deux philosophes adressent à la notion cartésienne de « ligne » – passage obligé pour penser, à travers Leibniz et sa notion de « (...) point », la ligne en tant qu’« ensemble de points ». On cherche ensuite à penser une ligne qui ne serait plus tracée dans un espace objectif présupposé, mais plutôt qui « se trace » dans un « espace expressif ».Un tel renversement de la « ligne cartésienne » produit, comme on le verra, des effets qui intéressent également la représentation de la ligne du temps. Émanciper cette dernière du modèle cartésien signifi e la penser par-delà toute référence chronologique, toute dépendance du temps de Kronos. On peut lire dans ce sens la tentative des deux philosophes pour penser le temps de l’événement, le temps de l’Aion. On verra enfin comment, d’un espace et d’un temps anticartésiens, doit naître, pour Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, une nouvelle grammaire porteuse d’une nouvelle compréhension de la métaphore. Ni l’idée de métaphore proposée par Merleau-Ponty, ni le concept de devenir créé par Deleuze ne concernent une ressemblance fondée sur une identité donnée. Si la métaphore merleau-pontienne et le devenir deleuzien doivent être en mesure de restituer l’essence d’une chose, une telle essence se trouve, ou mieux se crée,à partir d’un mouvement vers « ce que la chose n’est pas ». C’est précisément dans ce sens que Merleau-Ponty lit la métaphore proustienne et que Deleuze cherche à rendre compte des ressemblances créées dans l’oeuvre de Gombrowicz.The Aesthetic SpaceThe “Reversal of Cartesianism” in Deleuze and Merleau-PontyThe present essay proposes to explore the relationship between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty from the attempt they make to go beyond the current of thought thatwe may qualify, like Merleau-Ponty does it himself, as Cartesianism. We begin our itinerary with the critique that both philosophers direct at the Cartesian notion of the line. The passage through the Cartesian notion of the line is “obligated” in order to think – by means of Leibniz and his notion of point -- the line as a “set of points.” The Cartesian passage is obligated moreover in order to think a line which could no longer be drawn in a presupposed objective space but, rather, which would be “drawn” in an “expressive space.” Such a reversal of the Cartesian line, as we shall see, produces effects that concern also the representation of the line of time. To emancipate the line of time from the Cartesian model means we must think beyond all chronological references, beyond all dependence on the time of Chronos. We are able to read, in this way, both philosophers’ attempt to think the time of the event, the time of Aion. Finally we shall see how, for Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, a new grammar carrying a new understanding of the metaphor must be born from an anti-Cartesian space and time. Neither the idea of metaphor proposed by Merleau-Ponty nor the concept of becoming created by Deleuze speaks of a resemblance founded upon an identity that is given ahead of time. If Merleau-Ponty’s idea of metaphor and Deleuze’s concept of becoming must be able to produce the essence of a thing, such an essence finds, or better, it iscreated on the basis of a movement toward “what the thing is not.” It is precisely in this sense that Merleau-Ponty reads Proust’s metaphors and that Deleuze will seek to give an account of created resemblances in the work of Gombrowicz. (shrink)

This chapter will be devoted to the itinerary of classical German thought, and especially Hegel, in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. I begin by examining Merleau-Ponty’s initial use of Hegel’s systematic and metaphysicalmetaphysics ideas in phenomenological analyses of behavior and perception. Next, I examine Merleau-Ponty’s role in controversies regarding the existentialists’ interpretation and objections to Hegel’s system. I trace his attempts to surmount antinomiesantinomy between subjectivitysubjectivity and system that emerged in the existentialist’s anthropological reading of Hegel. Here Merleau-Ponty focused on linguistics and more (...) general analyses of institution and expression. Finally, I will view the renewed role that classical German philosophy, including Schelling and Hegel, played in his final works. Still reflecting these interests, his writings and lectures engaged in a wide-ranging dialogue with contemporary aesthetics, sciencescience, and philosophy, culminating in an attempt to formulate a new ontologyontology. (shrink)

This volume is a Festschrift in honor of Jacques Taminiaux and examines the primacy of the political within phenomenology. These objectives support each other, in that Taminiaux's own intellectual itinerary brought him increasingly to an affirmation of the importance of the political. Divided into four sections, the essays contained in this volume engage with different aspects of the political dimension of phenomenology: its dialogue with classic texts of political philosophy, the political facets of phenomenological praxis, phenomenology’s contribution to actual political (...) debates, and the impact of Taminiaux’s work in the shaping of phenomenology’s notion of politics. The phrase “the primacy of the political” echoes the “primacy of perception” as it was famously defined by Merleau-Ponty. This book emphasizes, however, the inescapability of the political rather than its “foundational” character, i.e. the fact that various itineraries of thought, explored in different fields of phenomenological research, give rise to politically relevant reflections. It points out and elucidates political connotations that haunt phenomenological concepts, such as ‘world’, ‘self’, ‘nature’, ‘intersubjectivity, or ‘language’, and traces them to a broad range of approaches, concepts, and methods. In its explorations, the book discusses a broad range of thinkers, including, but not limited to, Aristotle and Kant, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Arendt. (shrink)

For the past three decades, notebooks and note?taking practices have elicited growing interest in various fields of research: anthropology, media and literature studies, history of the book, history of science. In this renewal, however, scientific travelers? notes have not received all the attention they deserve. To be sure, historians of discovery and exploration are used to considering travel diaries and field notes as a principal resource, on the basis of which they can assess a traveler?s accomplishment or document his itinerary. (...) From a different perspective, field journals offer rich material to literary scholars, critics, and specialists of travel writing. Notebooks of well?known travelers like Bougainville or Humboldt are thus scrutinized in their poetic and aesthetic dimensions, from the perspective of the genesis of travel writing. Still, few studies have taken up the task, a rather mundane and down?to?earth endeavor, to look at travel notebooks for their own sake, as material objects, made of paper and cardboard, and meant to store observational data and to insure their availability through time and space. The paper sets out to do just that: to take a set of manuscript notebooks written by eighteenth? and early nineteenth?century French, German, and Swiss naturalist travelers and scientists on the move together with the techniques at work in their writing, as the focus of a historical investigation. (shrink)

L’espace esthétiqueLe « renversement du cartésianisme » chez Deleuze et Merleau-PontyCet essai se propose de développer le rapport entre Deleuze et Merleau-Ponty à partir de la tentative des deux philosophes français d’aller au-delà du courantde pensée qu’on pourrait qualifi er, comme le fait Merleau-Ponty lui-même, de « cartésianisme ».Nous commençons notre itinéraire avec la critique que les deux philosophes adressent à la notion cartésienne de « ligne » – passage obligé pour penser, à travers Leibniz et sa notion de « (...) point », la ligne en tant qu’« ensemble de points ». On cherche ensuite à penser une ligne qui ne serait plus tracée dans un espace objectif présupposé, mais plutôt qui « se trace » dans un « espace expressif ».Un tel renversement de la « ligne cartésienne » produit, comme on le verra, des effets qui intéressent également la représentation de la ligne du temps. Émanciper cette dernière du modèle cartésien signifi e la penser par-delà toute référence chronologique, toute dépendance du temps de Kronos. On peut lire dans ce sens la tentative des deux philosophes pour penser le temps de l’événement, le temps de l’Aion. On verra enfin comment, d’un espace et d’un temps anticartésiens, doit naître, pour Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, une nouvelle grammaire porteuse d’une nouvelle compréhension de la métaphore. Ni l’idée de métaphore proposée par Merleau-Ponty, ni le concept de devenir créé par Deleuze ne concernent une ressemblance fondée sur une identité donnée. Si la métaphore merleau-pontienne et le devenir deleuzien doivent être en mesure de restituer l’essence d’une chose, une telle essence se trouve, ou mieux se crée,à partir d’un mouvement vers « ce que la chose n’est pas ». C’est précisément dans ce sens que Merleau-Ponty lit la métaphore proustienne et que Deleuze cherche à rendre compte des ressemblances créées dans l’oeuvre de Gombrowicz.The Aesthetic SpaceThe “Reversal of Cartesianism” in Deleuze and Merleau-PontyThe present essay proposes to explore the relationship between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty from the attempt they make to go beyond the current of thought thatwe may qualify, like Merleau-Ponty does it himself, as Cartesianism. We begin our itinerary with the critique that both philosophers direct at the Cartesian notion of the line. The passage through the Cartesian notion of the line is “obligated” in order to think – by means of Leibniz and his notion of point -- the line as a “set of points.” The Cartesian passage is obligated moreover in order to think a line which could no longer be drawn in a presupposed objective space but, rather, which would be “drawn” in an “expressive space.” Such a reversal of the Cartesian line, as we shall see, produces effects that concern also the representation of the line of time. To emancipate the line of time from the Cartesian model means we must think beyond all chronological references, beyond all dependence on the time of Chronos. We are able to read, in this way, both philosophers’ attempt to think the time of the event, the time of Aion. Finally we shall see how, for Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, a new grammar carrying a new understanding of the metaphor must be born from an anti-Cartesian space and time. Neither the idea of metaphor proposed by Merleau-Ponty nor the concept of becoming created by Deleuze speaks of a resemblance founded upon an identity that is given ahead of time. If Merleau-Ponty’s idea of metaphor and Deleuze’s concept of becoming must be able to produce the essence of a thing, such an essence finds, or better, it iscreated on the basis of a movement toward “what the thing is not.” It is precisely in this sense that Merleau-Ponty reads Proust’s metaphors and that Deleuze will seek to give an account of created resemblances in the work of Gombrowicz. (shrink)

The ontological theory about the two aristotelical intellects, created in the 13th century, finishes finally its itinerary with Ockham's epistemological theory. The realistic-propositionalist Ockham's epistemological theory reduces the intellect to a connotation: intellect denotes the soul, or better, the thinking subject whole and one; but connotes the man's cognitival function. The man is essentially free and directs his knowledge to its object, it is life and activity; but the denoted acognitival function is passive.

Illustrations and examples have always been deemed rare in the otherwise abundant materials Kant sent to be printed. In this sense, tradition has made out of the Königsbergs philosopher a rather arid writer. He himself advocated for the perks of a proper scholastic method in presenting arguments. It is thus a common place among scholars that Herr Professor valued discursive clarity over any whimsical rhetorical garments the popular thinker could have been tempted to wield in defense of his surely more (...) than dubious reasons. But even with that in mind, in Kants writings there is this persistent and everlasting metaphor regarding the activity of navigation. A metaphor going all through the Kantian philosophical enterprise: either in the form of sailing the thin air and pretending to avoid -- or surf -- any resistance, like the figure of the dove in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781); or better with the picture of the wandering unconcerned under the celestial and immeasurable vault only to discover we were lost in search for the North in What Does It Mean To Orient Oneself In Thinking?(1786), Kants critical philosophy insisted in the depiction of the task of thinking not only as a concrete one depending on facts and experience gathered -- pinpoint locations -- but also as a matter of orientation depending on the necessity of categories -- criteria, cardinal points -- of thought. If fanciful aspirations of ideas happen to take off from the objective ground irresponsibly as if empirical experience and facts had no substance at all -- it is with good reason that due operations of counterbalance should be taking place with help of the sound weight of articulated reasonable concepts based on formal and material reality. Kants theory of mind presupposes a responsibility of a subject in relation to several types of objects. The two of these epistemic extremes are intertwined and in need of each other. When it comes to orientation, leaning on some sort of inner compass, each of us would have both in regard to sensitivity, knowledge, and moral thinking which serves like a guide to the trip within all three domains, and even comes in handy to map them out. This collective volume is precisely devoted to the task of revisiting some landscapes of the Kantian thought-itinerary along the brave seas and deep into the thick forests of justified knowledge, principles of morals and judgement in aesthetics: through its pages this work has put together renowned scholars from very different traditions eager to circumnavigate again the issues and concerns of 18th Century Philosophy and the particular Kantian solution of a new branded type of metaphysical inquiry, one inquiry subject to intellectual global duties as well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and diversity"-- ("it is useless to deny or even minimize the incongruities and the contradictions" in Rousseau's statements, as Burgelin says in another book). Instead he puts the finger on the one trait that sets this piece of rationalism (or anti-rationalism, as some would say) apart from all others: not sentiment verging on the mystical, but egocentrism, existentially founded and unique. Rousseau, taking a stand (...) outside the battling parties, outside his own religion, becomes more and more "une existence solitaire en face d'une autre existence, qui le regarde," that "other existence" which he calls God. Alas, the descent from such existential heights is swift. Soon the solitary thinker will be enmeshed again in unsolitary speculations about those very issues he had left behind in his flight into the self. Where will this strange pilgrim's progress end? In 1769, seven years before his death and feeling the cold breath of old age upon him, Jean-Jacques wrote: "In my childhood I believed by authority, in my youth by feeling, in my mature age by reason; now I believe because I have always believed." Burgelin cites this as proof that Rousseau never ceased to believe. Maybe so. But is this the point? What the passage defines is the pilgrim's irreversible religious itinerary. On cannot but ask what the next inevitable stop on the road would have been. Waiting for Godot? "Whoever makes an effort to find in Rousseau's work an explicit philosophy... runs into a very peculiar difficulty, for a philosophy is defined above all by its coherence, and [Rousseau] himself warns us against his own methods." With these words Pierre Burgelin opened his monumental work, La philosophic de l'existence de ].-]. Rousseau (1952). It is in the several pertinent chapters of this earlier work that the reader will find what the present book withholds: a philosophical analysis as rigorous as it is profound and comprehensive, the best analysis we have to Rousseau's religious thought. Professor Burgelin's new book merely proves that not even he can do justice to Jean-Jacques without explaining him. GREGORSEBBA Emory University l~mile ou de l'dducation. Par Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Introduction, bibliographic, notes, et index analytique par Francois et Pierre Richard. gdition illustr~e. (Paris: ~ditions Garnier Fr~res, 1962. Pp. 1 + 664 [1].) While the new Pldiade edition of Rousseau, a model of contemporary French scholarship, makes its slow, stately way towards completion, the well-known yellow Classiques Garnier keep coming out in new editions or simply in new dress. This 12mile is a handsomely produced, very readable BOOK REVIEWS 259 reissue of the 1939 Garnier edition, with reproductions of eighteenthcentury engravings on themes of Rousseau. They add rich period flavor to this strange work in which a hypermodern intelligence talks the language of three centuries ago. There are useful notes, the detailed subject index is exceptionally well laid out, the spacious bibliography is ample for Rousseau 's sources and influence, but its meager twentieth-century section should have been reworked and brought up to date. The Introduction, too, can still be read with much profit, even though its critical standpoint is now antiquated, eloquent proof of the effectiveness of Rousseau scholarship in the last two decades. For its price this is a very handy, serviceable edition to have until the Biblioth~que de la PMiade catches up with Garnier Fr~res. Emory University GREGOR SEBBA Kant's Theory o[ Knowledge. By Graham Bird. (New York: The Humanities Press, 1962. Pp. x + 210. ~5.50.) In the Preface the author states that he has two main objectives in his book: To pursue one central argument through the Critique of Pure Reason and to discuss Kant's views in terms of a modern philosophical idiom. Bird follows this programme out through most of the book, departing from it on only one occasion, in Chapter 11 (pp. 181-188) in which he discusses and criticizes Strawson's theory of personality (as presented in his book Individuals, chap. 3). The space given to Strawson does not, however, constitute a serious digression from the main argument because it comes at the end of a chapter devoted... (shrink)

In this paper we will reconstruct a hypothesis on love in Gilles Deleuze's philosophy. We notice that, at different moments of his philosophical itinerary, the topic of love is the object of a complex treatment, which moves from the discovery of the expression of worlds that the other involves, and which gradually detach themselves from that other, towards a progressive liberation of dehumanized elements that open up in a transformed sexuality. We will try to show that this experimental exercise (...) reveals a surface, defined by the decomposition of the self and where the passage through a world without others will allow us to discover a plane of liberated elements, open to connections that will allow us other ways of understanding the phenomenon of love. (shrink)

This article presents the main activities carried out on the Franciscan Itinerary promoted by the Sociedade Charitativa e Literária São Francisco de Assis - Zona Norte (SCALIFRA-ZN) in the year 2023. The organization, planning and how the local meetings undertaken took place are described. with teachers and collaborators from Colégio Franciscano Santíssima Trindade and also the main results of this process of continued Franciscan formation. “Reflections on Franciscan pedagogy: an education based on Principles, Values and Attitudes” was the central theme (...) that guided the studies in videoconferences held at network level, in face-to-face meetings organized and developed by schools, as well as in Regional Seminars. The general objective of the Franciscan Itinerary 2023 was to deepen the identity and knowledge linked to Franciscan philosophy in order to reflect, express and systematize the pedagogy applied by SCALIFRA-ZN schools. The studies and discussions were based on Franciscan Sources, which report the life and work of Francisco de Assis, as well as on productions by scholars who are inspired and base their reflections on the testimony and Franciscan writings. Therefore, it is understood that the Franciscan Itinerary, as a process of continued formation, provided a critical-reflective debate on Franciscan pedagogy with a view to an interactive, socio/community pedagogical practice, based on active methodologies and problem solving, which generates in students an attitude of universal cosmic fraternity. (shrink)

In manuscripts from 1929, Wittgenstein envisaged a phenomenological language as a means to describe the experience of objects, alternative to an account of experienced objects provided by ordinary language - but the project failed. The chapter addresses that failure and its significance to philosophical methodology. Wittgenstein acknowledges that the ideal of a non-hypothetical description of immediate experience tempted not only him, but also other philosophers. The chapter traces an itinerary to his concerns that the fulfilment of that ideal - to (...) purely describe a purified experience - would eventually lead into "a bewitched swamp where everything comprehensible vanishes" and would ultimately involve an "inarticulate sound with which many writers would like to begin philosophy". Wittgenstein perceives variations of that sound in Husserl, Heidegger, and the private language he later addresses. (shrink)

The author presents this volume as “a companion to Plato’s Phaedo”; as such, one expects it to engage closely the dialogue without abandoning critical rigor, while at the same time exposing us to some of the varied and rich issues that sustain today’s readings of Plato. As Beets’s Prologue indicates, his work focuses on “the issue of the coexistence and transition from the world of becoming to that of being”. The work is divided in two parts. The first part takes (...) up one third of the book and begins by discussing human thought in terms of two main levels of thinking: intuitive and entirely determined by the world, and purely formal and “truly free thinking”. Setting out from this differentiation, the first chapter offers a conceptual structure that will determine the rest of the book. In the same chapter Beets goes on to present philosophical thought as the task of “calling up” from the deeper recesses of our mind our knowledge of “the universal a priori,” or the purely formal, which in turn turns us toward the objective nature of reality and free thinking. The chapter closes as Beets establishes the limitations of conceptual human knowledge in terms of the striving for a knowledge of absolute being or the noumenal, which, although available to the mystic, cannot be accomplished by conceptual knowledge but does serve as “the foothold for meaningful cultural, religious, philosophical, and scientific life and for human ethics”. In following Beets’s itinerary we find out that knowledge of the intuited world can be turned to knowledge of the purely structural, and that in this sense human life through critical conceptual knowledge may be a passage toward the eternal. This occurs if one realizes that the world as it appears is a lie and if we listen to the silent voice in the recess of our mind, which tells us of the a priori. This knowledge of the purely formal in the intuited also leads to Beets’s final insight, namely, that ultimately death will lead us to know the eternal. At this point the author equates absolute being, the noumenal, and God. Thus, the path is laid for the passage from time to the eternal. (shrink)

Procuramos, com este trabalho, levantar algumas pistas que nos parecem fundamentais concernentes à natureza da significação estética das obras de arte, tentando mostrar como esta significação é em si mesma urn horizonte de sentido irredutível aos seus significados parciais. Para isso, delimitamos um itinerário cuja perspectiva de fundo se situa, sobretudo, no interior da estética fenomenológica trabalhada pelos textos de Mikel Dufrenne, e articulado em quatroblocos concêntricos: a indagação do fundamento de uma semântica de ordem estética; o confronto com o (...) objectivismo da semiologia estruturalista; o modo como o objecto estético se distingue dos objectos especificamente significantes; finalmente, de como essa diferenciação lhe perm ite prosseguir um poder desobressignificar. /// Nous cherchons dans ce travail à fournir quelques pistes qui nous paraissent fondamentales concernant la nature de la signification esthetique des oeuvres d'art en essayant de montrer que cette signification est en elle même un horizon de sens irréductible à ses signifiés partiels. Pource faire, nous délimitons un itinéraire dont laperspective de fond se situe surtout à l'intérieur de l'esthétique phénoménologique travaillée par les textes de Mikel Dufrenne; et dont l'articulation se fait en quatre blocs concentriques: la recherche du fondement d'une sémantique d'ordre esthétique; la confrontation avec l'objectivisme de la sémiologie structurasliste; la façon dont l'objet esthétique se distingue des objets spécifiquement signifiants; enfin, la maniére dont cette différanciation lui permet de poursuivre une capacité de sursignifier. /// In this paper we put forward some suggestions which we consider of fundamental importance as to the nature of the aesthetical significance of art works, and attempt to show that this significance is in itself an horizon of sense, irreducible to its partial meanings. To attain this goal, we outline an itinerary whose background outlook is in line with the phenomenological aesthetics put forward in Mikel Dufrenne's texts, an articulated in four concentric parts: investigation about the foundation of a semantics of an aesthetical kind; confrontation with the objectivism of the structuralist semeiology; the way an aesthetical object differs from the other specifically significant objects; finally, how this differentiation gives such an object the power to oversignify. (shrink)