We need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that they take their fundamental task to be, not to acquire and apply knowledge, but rather to help humanity learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that we may make progress towards a good, genuinely civilized, wise world. The pursuit of knowledge would be a vital but subsidiary task. I have argued for the urgent need for (...) such an academic revolution for nearly 50 years, ever since the publication of two books: What’s Wrong With Science? Towards a People’s Rational Science of Delight and Compassion, 1976, and From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities, 1984, both available free online. This article, written in preparation for a talk given to Pittsburgh University on the 15th September 2023, gives an outline of my baffled struggles with problems of philosophy, science, literature and life that led up to the discovery of the urgent need for an intellectual and institutional revolution in universities around the world, needed in order to galvanize the social revolution required to enable us to make progress to a world in which peace, justice, democracy, individual freedom, sustainable prosperity, the possibility of a good life, are available to all, insofar as that is attainable. (shrink)

Paul’s Tillich’s formal definition of faith constituted a brilliantly creative attempt to clarify the meaning of a word that tradition heavily burdened with theological baggage. The question of course concerns the extent, if any, to which his definition of the term was compelling and helpful. The first major contention of this essay is that his analysis did not necessitate faith being defined as ultimate concern. The second principal argument is that the treatment he gave to doubt failed to demonstrate its (...) dynamic role in the life of faith. The concluding point is that the truth of faith cannot and should not be separated and shielded from the truths of science, psychology, history, philosophy, as well as from the other disciplines of human endeavor, by conceiving faith to be, as he suggested, in another dimension of meaning. (shrink)

This book makes four bold claims: 1) life is an ultimate datum, open to philosophical analysis and irreducible to physical reality; hence all materialist-reductionist explanations - most current theories - of life are false. 2) All life presupposes soul (entelechy) without which a being would at best fake life. 3) The concept of life is analogous and the most direct access to life in its irreducibility is gained through consciousness; 4) All life possesses an objective and intrinsic value that needs (...) to be respected, human life possesses beyond this an inviolable dignity. Life and personal life are pure perfections, it being absolutely better to possess (personal) life than not to possess it. Chapter 1: the metaphysical essence and the many meanings of 'life, ' as well as its 'transcendental' character. Chapter 2: the irreducibility of biological life, its amazing empirical and philosophically intelligible essential features, and the ways of knowing them. Chapter 3: the immediate evidence and indubitable givenness of mental, conscious life as well as questions of (brain-) death and immortality. Chapter 4: the inviolable objective dignity of personal life and its self-transcendence; a new theory of the fourfold source of human dignity and rights. Chapter 5 (in dialogue-form): methods and results of philosophy versus those of empirical life-sciences. (shrink)

The proliferation of new accounts of infused and acquired virtue in Thomas has brought much welcome attention to his understanding of the relationship between nature and grace. But the very originality of these interpretations has raised a multitude of unanswered questions and difficulties. For any of these accounts to be plausible, they must be accompanied by an account of the way in which Thomas thinks that the specifically one virtue of prudence considers the matter of all virtues, and his statement (...) that such prudence depends on a correct order to the ultimate end. The current disagreement over acquired moral virtue cannot be resolved until these related disagreements are adequately addressed. (shrink)

The world of Jedi is very different from our own, that their awareness of the universe is more encompassing, richer. The Jedi call that mystical aspect of reality they perceive the Force. Jedi younglings and padawans must put their body to new uses, perform new tasks, and learn new skills in physical activities that have profound effects on the way they see the world around them. What the Jedi say more than anything else about the Force is that it (...) flows. Jedi who are able to coordinate their actions with that flow can work with the full potency of the universal relationship between all things. Jedi do not need a special Force‐organ to perceive the Force. The Force is not something Jedi just see, or hear, or taste, or touch, but rather it is something they experience on its own terms, probably using their whole body to do it. (shrink)

Philosophical biologists have attempted to define the distinction between life and non-life to more adequately define what it is to be human. They are reacting against idealism, but idealism is their point of departure, and they have embraced the reaction by idealists against the mechanistic notion of humans developed by the scientific materialists. Theoretical biologists also have attempted to develop a more adequate conception of life, but their point of departure has been within science itself. In their case, it (...) has involved efforts to overcome the reductionism of scientific materialism to develop a form of science able to identify and explain the distinctive characteristics of living beings. So, while both philosophical biologists and theoretical biologists are struggling to overcome scientific materialism, they are approaching the question: What is Life? from different directions. Focussing on the work of Robert Rosen, I will try to show what revisions in our understanding of science theoretical biologists need to accept in order to do justice to the insights of the philosophical biologists. I will suggest that not only will this involve major revisions in what we understand science to be, but that scientists must accept that science is indissociable from natural philosophy, and that to properly comprehend life mathematics must ultimately be subordinated to stories. (shrink)

Mirko Garasic (2021) argued that space travel and, by extension, the colonization of other planets could morally justify using technologies and interventions capable of profoundly modifying the characteristics of astronauts and future Martian generations. According to Garasic, however, the fact that space interventions such as human (bio)enhancement or reproductive technologies such as artificial wombs may be morally justified does not mean that they are morally acceptable technologies to be used on Earth as well. Garasic’s thesis is that we should resist (...) the temptation to establish or reinforce a continuity between the ethical standards that apply to space travel and those that apply on Earth because what applies in space (or on other planets) does not necessarily apply to our planet. Garasic argues that in space, genetic enhancement interventions are morally acceptable, as they are essential for survival. On Earth, however, we can survive even without any form of (bio)enhancement. In a previous article (2022), we presented several arguments against Garasic’s thesis regarding the exceptional morality of what is morally acceptable in space. In this article, we examine and reply to Garasic (2022), showing that he fails to defend his thesis from the objections we previously advanced. Garasic’s mistakes are: (1) assuming nature (and consequently what is “natural”) as a normative point of reference which allows establishing what is moral and what is not moral; (2) defending the choices concerning reproduction as an insufficiently demanding and therefore unsatisfactory moral principle (according to Garasic we should not bring into the world people who can have a quality of life or a condition of well-being superior to mere survival); and finally (3) of not explaining clearly what it means to defend a principle of moral exceptionalism for space travel (Garasic does not explain whether this position applies to any behavior, for which what on Earth is a virtue, in space is a vice or is not a general principle, but he makes this case only for enhancement and reproductive technologies). Through our analysis, we not only refute Garasic’s position but also show that any attempt to address space travel issues as “special” moral issues faces several difficulties and, ultimately, is doomed to failure. (shrink)

The information about patients being murdered by Lodz ambulance doctors using pancuronium bromide , published in the Gazeta Wyborcza,1 was repeated in the international press—for example, in the British Medical Journal.2 The account of a Gazeta Wyborcza reporter who had been working as an undercover stretcher bearer and witnessed the reported events, does not prove that any murder was committed. It was the media that presented the information in a negative light. So far the police have not charged anybody with (...) murder. The ambulance workers and doctors who were selling information about the dead to funeral parlours have been detained.Although it has not been proved that any patients were murdered in Lodz, the way the matter was treated by the media could lead one …. (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)

We live in a world of breaking news, where at almost any moment our everyday routine can be interrupted by a faraway event. Events are central to the way that individuals and societies experience life. Even life’s inevitable moments—birth, death, love, and war—are almost always a surprise. Inspired by the cataclysmic events of September 11, Robin Wagner-Pacifici presents here a tour de force, an analysis of how events erupt and take off from the ground of ongoing, everyday life, and how (...) they then move across time and landscape. What Is an Event? ranges across several disciplines, systematically analyzing the ways that events emerge, take shape, gain momentum, flow, and even get bogged down. As an exploration of how events are constructed out of ruptures, it provides a mechanism for understanding eventful forms and flows, from the micro-level of individual life events to the macro-level of historical revolutions, contemporary terrorist attacks, and financial crises. Wagner-Pacifici takes a close look at a number of cases, both real and imagined, through the reports, personal narratives, paintings, iconic images, political posters, sculptures, and novels they generate and through which they live on. What is ultimately at stake for individuals and societies in events, Wagner-Pacifici argues, are identities, loyalties, social relationships, and our very experiences of time and space. What Is an Event? provides a way for us all—as social and political beings living through events, and as analysts reflecting upon them—to better understand what is at stake in the formations and flows of the events that mark and shape our lives. (shrink)

Finlayson argues that ‘post-truth’ is nothing new. In this response, I motivate a more modest position: that it is something new, to some extent, albeit neither radically new nor brand new. I motivate this position by examining the case of climate-change-denial, called by some post-truth before 'post-truth'. I examine here the (over-determined) nature of climate-denial. What precisely are its attractions?; How do they manage to outweigh its glaring, potentially-catastrophic downsides? I argue that the most crucial of all attractions of (...) climate-denial is that it involves the denier in a kind of fantasised power over reality itself: namely, over the nature of our planetary system, and thus of life itself. Climate-denial pretends to give the denier a power greater than that of nature, including in nature's 'rebellion' against humanity, what James Lovelock calls Gaia's incipient and coming 'fever'. Climate-denial seems to give the denier freedom from truth itself, in the case of the most consequential truth at present bearing down upon humanity. The most crucial of all the attractions of climate-denial is then that it provides would-be libertarians an ultimate freedom. They reject the reality of human-triggered climate-change, in the end, because they are unwilling to be ‘bound’ by anything, not even truth itself. Climate-denial has been around for a while, but not for more than 30-35 years or so. I thus suggest that Finlayson is right to be sceptical of the claim that post-truth is radically new and extremely recent, but I suggest that it is relativelynew and has been with us for only about a generation or at most two. Keywords: climate-change, climate-denial, libertarianism, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

By way of a selective comparison of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Henri Bergson on their respective conceptions of ‘problematology’, this article argues that the centrality of the notion of the ‘problem’ in each can be found in their differing conceptions of the philosophy of life and the living being. Canguilhem’s model, however, ultimately moves beyond or away from (legislative) philosophy and epistemology towards the question of ethics in so far as his vitalism is a means of signalling (...) the refusal of the supposition that all of the dimensions of life are or might be in our possession. Michel Foucault’s project, though directed for the most part to very different subject-matter, worked out a similar logic in the historical problematology of the sciences of ‘man’ and mentalities of government and power; and the results were equally ethical in so far as Foucault’s nominalist historical problematology entailed the refusal of any idea that all of the dimensions of our anthropological ‘essence’ are, or could be, likewise, in our possession. (shrink)

The article discusses the category of interest, which is an explanatory category of social phenomena in materialist ontology, particularly the Marxist variety. The considerations are guided by Hegel’s conviction that every category taken in abstraction loses its exploratory value, so instead of asking for such an ultimate basis for explanation, one should investigate what else should be assumed for something – interest – to really mean something. Following this advice, the text carries out a conceptual analysis of the categories (...) of life, teleology and identity and their mutual relationship based on Hegelian philosophy. Overcoming the ambiguity of Hegel’s argument makes it possible to uncover the dialectically negative identity of spirit that is society and nature, which, transferred to the dimension of social relations, makes it possible to talk about the internal connection of interest with its negation, which is disinterestedness. It turns out that interest can only mean something if it is related to disinterestedness, which, again, on the grounds of social relations and especially class conflict, proves to be the interest of the possibility of being disinterested. In the final part of the article, the result of these considerations is referred to Hegelian social philosophy, where it turns out to be reflected in the relation between the two main categories of ‘ethical life’ and ‘moral life’ usually devalued by interpreters. At the same time, the relation between these categories corresponds to the relation between the universal model of the bourgeoisie with their economic interests and the disinterested representatives of the general estate. (shrink)

Workism is the phenomenon of people making their work the primary source of meaning and identity in their life. Recent critics of workism have argued that there is a growing trend towards it in many societies and that this is a bad thing. This article brings a philosophical perspective to the debate on workism. It develops a precise account of what workism is and evaluates the main objections raised against it by examining their underlying philosophical assumptions. Ultimately, it (...) is argued that workism, as a way of life, is not as objectionable as its critics suggest. (shrink)

In this critical notice of Guy Bennett-Hunter’s book _Ineffability and Religious Experience_, I focus on claims he makes about what makes a life meaningful. According to Bennett-Hunter, for human life to be meaningful it must obtain its meaning from what is beyond the human and is ineffable, which constitutes an ultimate kind of meaning. I spell out Bennett-Hunter’s rationale for making this claim, raise some objections to it, and in their wake articulate an alternative conception of ultimate meaning.

Introduction: Not many writers have made suggestions about Saul’s mental state as reported in the Judaic-Christian bible. He became king under the tutelage of Samuel, a highly-respected prophet of the Israelite God, Yahweh. At some points during his reign, the biblical narrative depicted him as, at least, mentally unstable, if not decidedly insane. Modern-day writers, in some cases have provided lists of conditions, which purport to represent Saul’s psychological malady. None, however proves adequate or appropriate to encompass the complexity of (...) his behavior. The Safety-Oriented Personality Style (SOPS) or Phobicentric Psychopathology (PCP) appears to offer the best explanation of Saul’s psychological condition. Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to offer a modern-day analysis/explanation of Saul’s apparently disturbed behavior. Evidence for the facts about Saul’s fascinating presentation is adduced both from the biblical passages and from present-day psychological theory. The previous explanations of the psychological disorder that plagued Saul, the first king of Israel, have focused on depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, hysteria, and bipolar disorder. The associated symptoms, however, have been vague and, in some cases, apparently unrepresentative of psychological nosology or, in general, they fail to conform to the prevailing nomenclature. Method: The present study introduces the Safety-Oriented Personality Style (SOPS) or Phobicentric Psychopathology (PCP), a relatively newly-unveiled chronic, anxiety-based disorder, to provide the “best” explanation of the ancient king’s perplexing conduct. Biblical passages pertaining to the topic provide the historical context of the events, which depict Saul’s provable psychopathology. Result: The evidence seems to clearly indicate that the explanation that Saul’s actions were mainly controlled by SOPS/PCP, a chronic anxiety disorder, is valid, applying most aptly to his reaction to David’s military and religious successes, and even to the recorded circumstances of his death. Conclusion: The historical account of Saul’s life and death, recorded primarily in the Christian bible, has remained intriguing, though somewhat esoteric. Probably as a result, its portrayal in the psychological literature has been scant. While the SOPS/PCP construct has apparently helped to provide grounds for diagnostic consensus that Saul’s problem was chronic anxiety, the newness of SOPS/PCP would tend to limit its purview. On a different but relevant level, the study also demonstrates the feasibility of common endeavors between the scientific and theological communities. (shrink)

The notion of "relevance" in philosophy is ultimately determined by a notion of "utility" that has been present in American culture from very early on. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville stated that "Democratic nations... prefer the useful to the beautiful, and... require that the beautiful should be useful". Today, the issues of utility and relevance are motivations for a congress which threatens to drastically cut funding for humanities programs around the country. At a time when employment in the academy (...) is sporadic at best, how might one respond philosophically in light of the current congressional threat? John Lachs responds by criticizing what he calls, "the professionalization of philosophy". Rather than focusing inquiries on the problems and concerns of everyday life, philosophers "linger over abstract details of technique". Ultimately, Lachs' concern is that such hyperspecialization will only alienate the practice of philosophy from the rest of society: "so long as philosophers talk about philosophical texts to other philosophers in a mysterious philosophical language, they cannot keep faith with their mission. Isolated and irrelevant, we will become the butt of jokes, and our departments will be marked... for eradication". In contrast to such "professionalization," Lachs provides us with a book of essays that are "united by the belief that philosophical reflection can yield results and by the desire to harness them to the service of improving life". Lest the reader too quickly assume the facile distinction between "history of philosophy" and "original philosophy," it must be noted that Lachs brings a wealth of knowledge regarding historical figures to bear on the problems which he addresses. One finds Aristotle, Hegel, Mill, James, Peirce, Santayana, Dewey and others, all being invoked in the interest of elucidating and understanding issues such as dogmatism, violence, alienation, technology, education, law, and euthanasia Lachs' overriding concern, however, is that of "mediating relations" "in which individuals perform actions on behalf of others". While such relations may be necessary in order to allow people to perform specialized societal roles more efficiently, they also separate people from the other specialized roles in which they do not take part. The unfortunate consequence is that most people do not have "even an elementary understanding of social life, economic reality, the interplay of activity and happiness, or the structure and needs of our bodies," because "the mediated world denies them the opportunity to learn by direct experience". Relevant philosophy must clear away the abstract and specialized language, which alienates the normal reader and draws philosophers away from learning by direct experience. It is not surprising, therefore, that Lachs' prose is extremely clear and accessible. Such prose works exceptionally well in "Life And Death", where Lachs engages the difficult questions regarding the constitution of a human life, the viewing of death as "a natural and appropriate end to a satisfying life", and the termination of the "lives" of beings who--like the hydroencephalic child --cannot develop into actual human beings, but remain only as "human forms". Whether one agrees with Lachs' positions on these issues or not, his straightforward and unmediated prose bespeaks a courage which is admirable. (shrink)

Writing under the pseudonym "Jotabeche," José Joaquín Vallejo wrote forty-one short articles on Chilean life and society in the early republic. Known for their caustic wit, his writings were an instant success when they were first published in Chilean magazines and newspapers. This volume presents these vivid essays for the first time in English. Vallejo made famous the style of writing termed "costumbrista"—sketches and vignettes of society and local customs. He focused on the Norte Chico, or the mining zone of (...) Copiapó where he was born and where he lived most of his later life. His essays include vivid studies of mineworkers; the advancement of modernity in the steamships at Caldera; the religious, intensely cultural province of Copiapó; and the general atmosphere of liberalism beginning to pervade the country of Chile during that time. Considered the founder of his country's "genuinely national literature," he is the first creative writer of stature to emerge in Chile after the country's wars of independence. A provincial northerner, his writings give a sense of what these parts of Chile looked and felt like during the years of the early Chilean republic, and are consequently of ultimate value. (shrink)

In his later writings, Husserl posits the original life of transcendental consciousness as the ultimate subject of phenomenological inquiry. Through self‐criticism in his work, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Husserl realises that the transcendence of representation remains unnoticed after the transcendental reduction. Consequently, he develops the method of apodictic reduction to reveal what is apodictic in consciousness. This method specifically reveals the living presence, as well as the constitution of immanent consciousness, to which (...) the transcendence of representation belongs. Husserl refers to this transcendence as the first transcendence, in contrast to the second transcendence of the constitution of the world. The constitution of the first transcendence is not separate from the living streaming presence but rather belongs to the life of consciousness itself. And it is only through this transcendence of representation that the identifiable (and re‐identifiable) I with its life is constituted. (shrink)

What is the meaning of life? Does anything really matter? In the past few decades these questions, perennially associated with philosophy in the popular consciousness, have rightly retaken their place as central topics in the academy. In this major contribution, Nicholas Waghorn provides a sustained and rigorous elucidation of what it would take for lives to have significance. Bracketing issues about ways our lives could have more or less meaning, the focus is rather on the idea of ultimate (...) meaning, the issue of whether a life can attain meaning that cannot be called into question. Waghorn sheds light on this most fundamental of existential problems through a detailed yet comprehensive examination of the notion of nothing, embracing classic and cutting-edge literature from both the analytic and Continental traditions. Central figures such as Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Nozick and Nagel are drawn upon to anchor the discussion in some of the most influential discussion of recent philosophical history. In the process of relating our ideas concerning nothing to the problem of life's meaning, Waghorn's book touches upon a number of fundamental themes, including reflexivity and its relation to our conceptual limits, whether religion has any role to play in the question of life's meaning, and the nature and constraints of philosophical methodology. A number of major philosophical traditions are addressed, including phenomenology, poststructuralism, and classical and paraconsistent logics. In addition to providing the most thorough current discussion of ultimate meaning, it will serve to introduce readers to philosophical debates concerning the notion of nothing, and the appendix engaging religion will be of value to both philosophers and theologians. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the issue of collective guilt and the interconnection between theoretical political thinking and ethically grounded political action, collective guilt, and personal responsibility. It assumes that facing political events in a form of media representation (such as with the war conflict in Ukraine), we mostly deal with simulacra, which affects and creates passive shock content consumption instead of active participation. The interconnection between irrational and rational ways of interpretation of political conflict is shown together with the (...) attempt to rethink the social responsibility of nowadays, switching the prospective from synchronic to diachronic dimensions. Instead of producing descriptions that multiply monstrous zombie/victims-blaming apocalyptic discourse or subconsciously continuing to symbolically support “fratricide”, it is proposed to think about the legacy for future generations and see the moral dimension of politics in terms of “adults’ responsibility for children” as each one’s personal responsibility issue. Acting “as if you would wish all children on Earth to grow in safety and deserve a happy life no matter where (s)he would be born, as if it were a universal law” – this is proposed as an ethical-political common-sense formula, based on potential equality and global interconnection, maturity, and care – which could lead to a common goal of overcoming starvation, wars, sufferings, and catastrophes. (shrink)

This article addresses the issue of whether the traditional values of charity and philanthropy are ethically recommended, and how they may be reconciled with the sometimes contradictory profit maximization value of the capitalist ‘free market’.1 That is, what place does charity have in the context of the free market where profit maximization is the ruling value? In answering this question, the article contrasts the effects of ‘no mercy’ with that of ‘mercy’ behaviour on overall utility maximization, and argues that (...) what may be best ultimately from an economic efficiency point of view (no charity) may not in fact maximize overall net utility when defined qualitatively to include social capital such as psychological states and other quality of life indicators. The ethical imperative of love for one's fellow humans is also considered in the debate between the two approaches. To address this point, I introduce the concept of ‘loving altruism’, and in this context make the case for charitable acts of mercy that may nonetheless result in a loss of economic utility in a larger sense. The article concludes that there is a valid place for both charity and philanthropy at either the individual or corporate level, and that the efficiency loss may or may not be outweighed by the gains in overall life quality. The ultimate net outcome would be determined by the specifics of each particular case after an explicit consideration of the need for altruism. The article ends by suggesting an application of Aristotle's ‘Golden Mean’ in determining the optimal level of charity. (shrink)

In arguments in support of capitalism, the following propositions are sometimes advanced or presupposed: the best life for the individual is one of consumption, understood in a broad sense that includes aesthetic pleasures and entertainment as well as consumption of goods in the ordinary sense; consumption is to be valued because it promotes happiness or welfare, which is the ultimate good; since there are not enough opportunities for consumption to provide satiation for everybody, some principles of distributive justice must be (...) chosen to decide who gets what; the total to be distributed has first to be produced. What is produced depends, among other things, on the motivation and information of the producers. The theory of justice must take account of the fact that different principles of distribution have different effects on motivation and information; economic theory tells us that the motivational and informational consequences of private ownership of the means of production are superior to those of the various forms of collective ownerships. In the traditional controversy over the relative merits of capitalism and economic systems, the focus has been on proposition. In this paper, I consider instead propositions and. Before one can even begin to discuss how values are to be allocated, one must consider what they are – what it is that ought to be valued. I shall argue that at the center of Marxism is a specific conception of the good life as one of active self-realization, rather than passive consumption. (shrink)

What is the meaning of life? It is a question that has intrigued the great philosophers--and has been hilariously lampooned by Monty Python. Indeed, the whole idea strikes many of us as vaguely pompous, a little absurd. Is there one profound and mysterious meaning to life, a single ultimate purpose behind human existence? In What's It All About?, Julian Baggini says no, there is no single meaning. Instead, Baggini argues meaning can be found in a variety of ways, (...) in this life. He succinctly breaks down six answers people commonly suggest when considering what life is all about--helping others, serving humanity, being happy, becoming successful, enjoying each day as if it were your last, and "freeing your mind." By reducing the vague, mysterious question of meaning to a series of more specific (if thoroughly unmysterious) questions about what gives life purpose and value, he shows that the quest for meaning can be personal, empowering, and uplifting. If the meaning of life is not a mystery, if leading meaningful lives is within the power of us all, then we can look around us and see the many ways in which life can have purpose. We can see the value of happiness while accepting it is not everything. We can see the value of success, without interpreting that too narrowly. We can see the value of seizing the day as well as helping others lead meaningful lives. We can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator of all. Illustrating his argument with the thoughts of many of the great philosophers and examples drawn from everyday life, Baggini convincingly shows that the search for meaning is personal and within the power of each of us to find. (shrink)

Derrida's first book-length work, _The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy_, was originally written as a dissertation for his _diplôme d'études supérieures_ in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of genesis, and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead Derrida to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction. For Derrida, the problem of genesis (...) in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology. Ten years later, Derrida moved away from phenomenology entirely, arguing in his introduction to Husserl's posthumously published _Origin of Geometry_ and his own _Speech and Phenomena_ that the phenomenological project has neither resolved this tension nor expressly worked with it. _The Problem of Genesis_ complements these other works, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology. "A dissertation is not merely a prerequisite for an academic job. It may set the stage for a scholar's life project. So, the doctoral dissertations of Max Weber and Jacques Derrida, never before available in English, may be of more than passing interest. In June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Mr. Derrida's dissertation, _The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy_, which the French philosopher wrote in 1953-54 as a doctoral student, and which did not appear in French until 1990. From the start, Mr Derrida displayed his inventive linguistic style and flouting of convention."—Danny Postel, _Chronicle of Higher Education _. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the deployment and interdependence of different expressions of gendered and classed violence in shaping the choices, trajectories and subjectivities of young women on vocational beauty therapy courses. It takes as its premise the understanding that, far from simply being an aberrant expression of interpersonal or intergroup aggression, violence is embedded in social life in multiple and complex ways, reverberating through women's lives to reproduce disadvantage and subordination. The paper draws on theoretical and empirical investigations of the (...) interrelationships between structural, direct and symbolic expressions of violence and asks what this literature can offer in challenging normative, often individualised, conceptions of violence. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) beauty therapy courses and the young women undertaking them, I explore the accounts of students and their tutors on becoming and being ‘beauty girls’. I consider what these accounts might tell us about how forms of symbolic and interpersonal violence intersect with, reproduce and legitimise the violence involved in unequal and unjust socio-economic structures. I argue that the ways in which different forms of violence mutually reinforce each other at a micro-level produce an embodied ‘sense of limits’ that ultimately reproduces the structural violence of gendered and classed inequalities. The examples given illustrate both a ‘chronology of violence’ in young women's lives, and the way in which those lives can be understood, at least in part, as embedded in and shaped by networks of violence. Finally, I briefly consider examples of dissent and resistance, the conditions under which they might be possible and the ways in which, through the interplay of different forms of violence, they might also be curtailed. (shrink)

We need to distinguish systematically what is culturally creative from the degenerative forces that now rule the world. Whitehead comes closest to defining the creative when he identifies it as freedom on the human side and peace on the divine. Buddhist meditation can go deeper to realize the zero-dimension of the communal life-as-such, which corresponds to Whiteheadean freedom-and-peace as the ultimate wellspring of cultural creativity.

Derrida's first book-length work, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , was originally written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'etudes superieures in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of genesis, and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead Derrida to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction. For Derrida, the problem of (...) genesis in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology. Ten years later, Derrida moved away from phenomenology entirely, arguing in his introduction to Husserl's posthumously published Origin of Geometry and his own Speech and Phenomena that the phenomenological project has neither resolved this tension nor expressly worked with it. The Problem of Genesis complements these other works, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology. "A dissertation is not merely a prerequisite for an academic job. It may set the stage for a scholar's life project. So, the doctoral dissertations of Max Weber and Jacques Derrida, never before available in English, may be of more than passing interest. In June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Mr. Derrida's dissertation, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , which the French philosopher wrote in 1953-54 as a doctoral student, and which did not appear in French until 1990. From the start, Mr Derrida displayed his inventive linguistic style and flouting of convention."--Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education. (shrink)

Freud had read Bergson’s 1900 book Laughter when he composed his own book on jokes, and, even prior to his development of the concept of the super-ego, Freud had criticized Bergson for not following up his insights into the linkage between comedy and childhood experiences. Freud thus chides Bergson for failing to pursue a line of inquiry that would confirm the ultimately tragic underpinnings of comedy. Wise to this clever and even mischievous little suggestion, Bergson’s book can be read (...) as an account of comedy that might avoid the perennial temptation of yoking it to tragedy. Bergson approaches the problem of comedy in its concreteness, in its liveliness, and follows the various paths of its unfolding. What results is an analysis that shares some similarities with Freud’s investigations but that also eliminates the theoretical prejudices that guide Freud’s reflections. The comic spirit is, first of all, “undefinable.” A strange way to begin an essay on the subject except that, for Bergson, this designation is not a strictly negative one: “we shall not aim at imprisoning the comic spirit within a definition. We regard it, above all, as a living thing. However trivial it may be, we shall treat it with the respect due to life. We shall confine ourselves to watching it grow and expand.” In a deliberate departure from the sort of circumscription that characterizes the style of Aristotle’s Poetics – as well as its progeny – Bergson’s strategy is an indefinite one appropriate to the particular complexity of the subject. The text of the investigation will then share its subject’s style – it will dramatize rather than describe the comic – in order to give an account that is suited to the nature of the comic: it will be neither a joke nor a tragedy. Bergson’s book is of an essential different kind than Freud’s: its focus is upon the motivation or forces that bring laughter and the comic situation into existence. Freud’s analysis ultimately moves in a circle, discovering the tragic principles of its investigation in its conclusion, because it fails to begin with the question closer to the vital complex of which humour and the comic are a part: what advantage does comedy procure for life? (shrink)

In this paper, I first outline a brief dialectic on free will and meaning in life. I then argue that meaning-compatibilism gives us reason to reject meaning-incompatibilism as it is currently understood. However, I critique meaning-compatibilism to the extent that it is silent with regard to freedom’s role in generating meaning in life. Because of these observations, I reconceptualize meaning-incompatibilism and urge us to adopt an alternative version of the position I call, “narrow meaning-incompatibilism.” Following my formulation of this position, (...) I construct a preliminary narrow meaning-incompatibilist framework. Here, I maintain that “self-expression” is what, in part, makes life meaningful. However, I argue that there are at least two different _kinds_ of self-expression, which I call personal self-expression and metaphysical self-expression. I argue that libertarian free will (but more specifically agent-causal libertarianism) enhances meaning in life because it secures metaphysical self-expression. On my account, if determinism is true, then agents will fail to obtain metaphysical self-expression. The result is a reality wherein agents hold a strangely alien relationship with their actions, and life is thus less meaningful because of this fact. Ultimately, then, I argue that agent-causal libertarianism enhances meaning in life because it safeguards metaphysical self-expression, which in turn alleviates this problem of alienation found at the level of action. (shrink)

Research into consciousness has now become respectable, and much has been written about it. Is consciousness the exclusive property of human beings, or can it be found also in animals? Can machines become conscious? Is consciousness an illusion, and are all mental states ultimately reducible to the movement of molecules? If consciousness is other than matter, what connection does it have with matter? These and others like them are now serious scientific questions in the West. This article discusses (...) consciousness within the frame of the following assertions: Consciousness has evolved from earlier states of awareness to be found in lower forms of life. The current scientific method is too restrictive for the study of conscience and its evolution. In particular classical logic leads scientists to ignore or reject consciousness as a legitimate field of study. Mind and matter, generalized as knowing and being, have equal status. (shrink)

Why, then, do we huddle in the dark around the campfires of our flickering narratives? There are obviously many different reasons for doing so. Yet, having heard various récits—whether "stories" or "accounts"—during the narrative conference, I am more inclined than ever to see self-assertive entertainment and self-transcending commitment as two kinds of ultimate motivation for our countless narratives. Stories and histories and other narrative or descriptive accounts help us to escape boredom and indifference—ours as well as that of other people. (...) Those nearly vacant states of mind at the zero degree of entertainment and commitment bring us frightfully close to the experience of nonexistence. Hence our desire to replace boredom by thrilling or gratifying entertainment and to replace indifference by the social or cosmic commitment either to change the world or to change ourselves. In a world of unmixed colors and pure literary genres, tragedy, comedy, satire, and romance might answer distinct needs for thrill, gratification, indignation, and admiration. But, as Roy Schafer and Victor Turner have reminded us, the private and social dramas underlying psychoanalytical and anthropological accounts are even less pure than most works of literature. Couldn't we conclude that life's internal and external dramas stem from a compound desire for self-assertion and self-transcendence—a desire which, in the realm of literary entertainment and commitment, motivates the emergence and appreciation of tragicomedy? Paul Hernadi teaches English and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification and the editor of What is Literature? and What is Criticism? His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Literary Theory: A Compass for Critics," appeared in the Winter 1976 issue. (shrink)

I compare Mill's and Sen's accounts of the value of opportunity, focusing on a tension between two ideas they both uphold: that individual freedom is an important component of well-being, and that, because desires can be adaptive, actual desire is not always a good indicator of what will give well-being. The two writers' responses to this tension reflect different understandings of the relationship between freedom and desire. Sen links an individual's well-being to her freedom to choose what she (...) has reason to desire, and looks to a democratic political process for a collective judgement about what it is rational to desire. Mill links the individual's well-being to her freedom to act on her own desires, whatever they may be, within the constraints imposed by a fair initial distribution of resources. He sees no need for collective judgement about what is ultimately valuable in human life. I side with Mill. (Published Online February 16 2006). (shrink)

What is the proper content of a course in professional ethics, such as business ethics, engineering ethics, or medical ethics? Though courses in professional ethics have been present in colleges and universities for decades, the question remains largely unsettled, even among philosophers. This state of affairs helps to sustain and even exacerbate public misconceptions about ethics and professional ethical training in higher education. I argue that the proper content of such courses remains a potential source of confusion because the (...) term ‘ethics’ is ambiguous between philosophical and nonphilosophical forms of normative inquiry into behavior, where the former involves broad, context-sensitive reflection on moral obligation, and the latter involves the narrower analysis and codification of behavioral norms with less sensitivity to context. Failure to distinguish between these two senses of ethics can result in conflicting conceptions of and expectations for training and courses in professional ethics. I sketch some of the specific problems generated by the ambiguity. I conclude by proposing an initial step toward a solution, one which focuses on making more explicit the distinction between courses that aim to teach professional policy and “best practices” and those that encourage genuine philosophical inquiry into morality and the good life. (shrink)

BackgroundVascular surgery offers a range of treatments to relieve pain and ulcerations, and to prevent sudden death by rupture of blood vessels. The surgical procedures involve risk of injury and harm, which increases with age and frailty leading to complex decision-making processes that raise ethical questions. However, how vascular surgeons negotiate these questions is scarcely studied. The aim was therefore to explore vascular surgeons’ moral reasoning of what ought to be done for the patient.MethodsQualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with (...) 19 vascular surgeons working at three Swedish university hospitals. Data were analysed according to systematic text condensation.ResultsThe surgeons’ moral reasoning about what ought to be done comprised a quest to relieve suffering and avoid harm by exploring what is reasonable to do for the patient. Exploring reasonableness included to shift one´s perspective from the vessels to the whole person, to balance patient’s conflicting needs and to place responsibility for right decision on one´s shoulders. The shift from blood vessels to the whole person implied gaining holistic knowledge in pondering of what is best, struggling with one´s authority for surgery through dialogue, and building relationship for mutual security. To balance patient’s conflicting needs implied weighing the patient’s independence and a sense of being whole against ease of suffering, respecting the patient’s will against protecting life and well-being, and weighing longer life against protecting the present well-being. Finally, to place responsibility on one´s shoulders was conveyed as an urge to remind oneself of the risk of complications, withholding one’s power of proficiency, and managing time during the illness course.ConclusionsThis study contributes to uncovering how moral reasoning is embodied in the vascular surgeons’ everyday clinical discourse as a tangible part of their patient care. The results underpin the significance of moral considerations in the assemblage of medical knowledge and technical skills to further understand vascular surgeons’ clinical practice. The clinical application of these results is the need of forums with sufficient possibilities for articulating these important moral considerations in everyday care. (shrink)

This is a metaphysical and conceptual analysis of the concepts ‘change’ and ‘continuity’. The Buddhists are in agreement with Heraclitus that all are flowing and nothing remains. However, the Buddhists have a much more elaborate theory about change and continuity, and this theory is a key element in the entire Buddhist system of related doctrines, viz., that of karma and rebirth, the possibility of Liberation and others. Simply put, the Buddhist emphasizes that change is there in every aspect of reality. (...) According to a later developed form of the Buddhist teaching, change is absolutely pervasive, and even these particles are subject to change as they are nothing more than putative objects which are conceptualized to be such and such, and without the conceptualization they are ‘nothing’ at all.. Hence it seems that continuity is not possible. But in fact according to the later theory, change is not only possible, it is accepted as part and parcel of everyday life. The fact that nothing at all remains the same does not imply that continuity is not possible, since continuity does not always have to be that of an inherently existing object. A changing object can be continued also, in roughly the same sense as we say that an event, like a drama, continues even though everything in it is changing. The thread that ties the disparate elements of the event together in this case lies within our own conceptual imputation. This does not imply that everything is subjective, since the distinction between subject and object presupposes the idea of an absolutely existing individual self, which all Buddhist schools rejects. So in this later theory, absolute change is not possible because there is, ultimately speaking nothing to change, and when there is no change there is no continuation either. This is not to deny the empirical fact of changes and continuities that are present to us; things are there and they are indeed changing. What is being denied here is the belief that that there are essences to things which endure through all the changes. Since things are empty they can change, and continuity is only possible, not because there is something that exists and endures, but because there is change. A drama that does not move cannot be continued. The foregoing discussions of the Buddhist theories have many implications for the dialog between science and religion. One point is that science still seems to subscribe to the object/subject distinction. But if change and continuity are not real in the ultimate sense, then perhaps the distinction should be reconsidered. Another point concerns how to find continuity amidst all the change. But perhaps in some important sense continuity depends on us. (shrink)

Religion is the most fundamental, comprehensive of all human activities. It tries to make sense out of not simply one or other aspect of human life, but of all aspects of human experience. At the core of every civilization lies its religion, which both reflects and shapes it. Thus, if we wish to understand human life in general and our specific culture and history, we need to understand religion. What is religion? As this comprehensive work shows, religion is an (...) explanation of the ultimate meaning of life and how to live accordingly, based on a notion of the Transcendent. Normally it contains the four "C's": Creed, Code, Cult, Community-structure. This volume looks at the ways we humans have developed to study religion. It also examines the new age in human consciousness that is now drawing. It also examines the new age in human consciousness that is now dawning: The Age of Global Dialogue, a radically new consciousness that shifts the ways we understand everything in life, including religion. This global dialogical way of understanding life does not lead to one global religion, but it does lead toward a consciously acknowledged common set of ethical principles, a Global Ethic. The book looks at these two movements -- the Age of Global Dialogue and inchoative Global Ethic -- in order to help readers understand what is going on around them, so they may make informed, intelligent decisions about the meaning of life and how to live it. (shrink)

Three rival conceptions of philosophy overlap, we may imagine, in the Sassinid court of Chosroes (r. 531–579). One is due to Priscian, a refugee from Athens after Justinian’s closing of the philosophical schools. A second and third are from India: the Buddhist conception of Vasubandhu and the Nyāya view of Vātsyāyana. I will argue that the rivalry between these three understandings of philosophy ultimately rests in three different conceptions of what makes an inner life one’s own.

The adversary professions--law, business, and government, among others--typically claim a moral permission to violate persons in ways that, if not for the professional role, would be morally wrong. Lawyers advance bad ends and deceive, business managers exploit and despoil, public officials enforce unjust laws, and doctors keep confidences that, if disclosed, would prevent harm. Ethics for Adversaries is a philosophical inquiry into arguments that are offered to defend seemingly wrongful actions performed by those who occupy what Montaigne called "necessary (...) offices."Applbaum begins by examining the career of Charles-Henri Sanson, who is appointed executioner of Paris by Louis XVI and serves the punitive needs of the ancien régime for decades. Come the French Revolution, the King's Executioner becomes the king's executioner, and he ministers with professional detachment to each defeated political faction throughout the Terror and its aftermath. By exploring one extraordinary role and the arguments that can be offered in its defense, Applbaum raises unsettling doubts about arguments in defense of less sanguinary professions and their practices.To justify harmful acts, adversaries appeal to arguments about the rules of the game, fair play, consent, the social construction of actions and actors, good outcomes in equilibrium, and the legitimate authority of institutions. Applbaum concludes that these arguments are weaker than supposed and do not morally justify much of the violation that professionals and public officials inflict. Institutions and the roles they create ordinarily cannot mint moral permissions to do what otherwise would be morally prohibited. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Live Like Nobody Is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring by Anita HoTina Nguyen (bio)Live Like Nobody Is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring by Anita Ho New York: Oxford University Press, 2023As the reach of artificial intelligence (AI)- and machine learning (ML)-enabled technologies continues to expand in the healthcare field, bioethicists have examined the ethical issues that (...) come as a result of using these technologies. In this ethical assessment, most bioethicists, myself included, have discussed how AI/ML violates the ethical principle of autonomy. The commonly cited definition of autonomy comes from Beauchamp and Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics (2019), where autonomy is the right of the individual to make decisions for themselves. However, autonomy regarding AI/ML in healthcare has not been or is rarely discussed from the feminist perspective. In Live Like Nobody Is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring (further referred to as Live Like Nobody Is Watching), Anita Ho, in addition to other points, argues that AI for health monitoring needs to be examined through a relational autonomy lens. Not only is this perspective innovative but it also shows how a predominantly male field has shaped the narrative surrounding AI/ML. In this review, I provide a brief overview of the chapters, explore Ho's arguments for relational autonomy, and discuss future applications of this work.Live Like Nobody Is Watching begins with a preface where the readers are introduced to a real-life scenario. Ho describes a friend's experience of [End Page 101] debating with themself whether to use surveillance for their mother with early-stage dementia who claims someone has been moving her things. This sets up the rest of the book in which questions of should these technologies be used and in what context are they appropriate are debated using relational autonomy. The introduction serves as a brief primer to AI (ML and deep learning) and its role in healthcare followed by a layout of the subsequent chapters. Chapter 1 connects health monitoring AI with relational autonomy, where Ho suggests that the liberal view of autonomy is not appropriate for health monitoring technologies. This is due to the fact that the patient populations using these technologies are reliant, to various degrees, on social relationships. In chapters 2, 3, and 4, Ho addresses how health-monitoring AI requires relational autonomy through use cases concerning home-health monitoring, direct-to-consumer monitoring, and AI monitoring for medication adherence. Throughout these chapters, Ho discusses the claimed benefits of these AI/ML interventions and cautions about the ethical challenges, such as health inequities and testimonial injustice, that can arise with these technologies. Finally, chapter 5 serves as the conclusion, where Ho ultimately argues that health-monitoring AI should be viewed through relational autonomy instead of the traditional view, and she advocates for dialogic engagement (including bringing patients/patients' families into the conversation). The narrative goes full circle with the events in the preface being addressed in the epilogue, where the friend decided to incorporate a smart frame device that would allow them to have video calls with their mother. However, the friend is still grappling with the idea of surveillance given an incident in which another dementia resident accidentally wandered into their mother's room. To this, Ho ends the book by proposing better lighting in the hallways rather than immediately turning to the next high-tech innovation.Ho presents several arguments throughout the book but emphasizes the main argument that relational autonomy should be practiced over the traditional, liberal view of autonomy. Ho discusses the three elements of socio-relational autonomy (using Catriona Mackenzie's work): self-governance, self-determination, and self-authorization. Components of the traditional bioethical view of autonomy are seen in these three elements, with the process of informed consent being closely tied to the concept of autonomy. Under the traditional view, an autonomous individual should have decision-making capacity and be able to make a decision based on the information provided to them without coercion. In the informed consent process, patients should be provided adequate information along with... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What inspires action in Global Health?Daniel Palazuelos"Why do all of you want to go to the middle of nowhere and take care of the sickest people even though you won't have half the tools necessary to make the slightest difference?" he asks.I'm sitting in the Intensive Care Unit workroom enjoying one of those rare, calm moments during residency when this question suddenly breaks my peace. A co-resident, my (...) friend from Latin America, makes this inquiry without even looking up, as he clicks nonchalantly through some Internet pages. I look at him and try to understand him within his context; he was born and raised in [End Page E6] what is traditionally considered a "resource-poor setting," but through talent, hard work, luck and privilege he was accepted into one of the best residency programs in one of the best U.S. hospitals. Unprepared, I give some anemic responses about social responsibility and global citizenship.He looks at his screen and clicks on a couple of links. Suddenly, he turns to me and exclaims, "I get it! You guys are going because then you can put your PWAB on your CV!" I give him a blank look.He stands and goes over to the dry erase board to write: "PWAB—Picture With an African Baby."I'm amused for a moment, and then suddenly hurt. What does this mean? Is he questioning our intentions, our moral resolve? I look over to his computer and see that he's been flipping through the "Global Health Residency" pages of all the local residency programs, or the Facebook pages of colleagues who have recently returned from work abroad. My hurt morphs into incredulity—all the pages have a picture of a beaming, healthy doctor holding a beautiful, newly happy, previously sick, African baby. And then, the code bell goes off, and the admissions start. Reflection time is over.Years later, now that I have become a junior faculty member within the same residency program, I divide my year between global health projects in rural Mexico and Guatemala, the classrooms of a U.S. medical school, and the patient rooms of a teaching hospital. The number of undergraduate and medical students who approach me because they want advice about how to work in global health is staggering; their emails fill my inbox and their faces grace my office hours. External observers have even compared the unprecedented rise of this type of interest to "a veritable tsunami," and we often take for granted that this is because the field is "inspiring" (Mallampati & Heintz, 201, p. 22). We still don't know, however, what all this inspiration becomes once it touches down on-site. For many students, the experience with talented mentors on-site opens up for them a life-long career that aims to address the greatest challenges of our day. The PWAB, however, implies that for an important number of other students, global health is becoming a social capital commodity: an edu-vacation, something to make your mother proud, win a mate, maybe even just another mandatory rotation needed to spice up the application for a career in a highly competitive subspecialty.If students are the future of this field, then the way that global health educators like myself manage this issue may ultimately determine the objectives and scope of countless potential projects hoping to help the billions of people barely surviving abject poverty. I have a career in global health that is more than a hobby because of the clear vision and strong leadership of my mentors and our university (Farmer, 2011). When I was hired as faculty, they worked with me to find the right full-time equivalent (FTE) split so that I could both make a living as an attending, and also still have time to teach, think, research, and manage a project abroad pro bono. But it's from this point that my question begins: once the students are inspired, and the investment made, what inspires good, sustained, pragmatic action in global health?A big part of the answer to this question will depend on how we define global health. Global health is growing, but... (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays on the philosophy of life’s meaning in contemporary society. Topics range from antinatalism, meaning of life, the trolley problem, to painless civilization. I am now writing a comprehensive philosophy book on those topics, but it will take several years to complete; hence, I decided to make a handy book to provide readers with an outline of the philosophical approaches to the meaning of life that I have in mind. -/- Chapter One discusses the (...) definition, history, and category of antinatalism. Antinatalism is the thought that all human beings or all sentient beings should not be born. Although I am not an antinatalist, I believe that antinatalism poses an important question about procreation and the meaning of our lives. This is why I presented an overview of antinatalistic thoughts in the past and the present and also performed an analytical examination of their arguments. -/- In Chapter Two, I take up Philosopher Thaddeus Metz’s argument on meaning in life, especially his fundamentality theory, and claim that “the heart of meaning in life,” which is the concept I propose in this chapter, cannot be compared with anything whatsoever. -/- Chapter Three deals with the concept of “birth affirmation,” which means that I can say “yes” to my having been born. I believe that birth affirmation is one of the most promising ideas that can contribute to contemporary philosophical discussions on meaning in life, and I call this approach “an affirmation-based approach to meaning in life.” The concept of birth affirmation has two dimensions: the psychological dimension and the philosophical dimension. I would like to show in this chapter that it is difficult to clarify what it actually means to say “yes” to my having been born. -/- Chapter Four discusses the relationship between the dropping of the atomic bombs and the trolley problem. I argue that the dropping of atomic bombs was a typical example of the events that contained the logic of the trolley problem in both their decision-making processes and justifications. I further argue that the trolley problem has its own unique problems, which I call “the problem of the trolley problem.” This problem has been overlooked in academic discussions of the trolley problem. I also refer to a religious aspect of this problem. -/- In Chapter Five, I talk about the “philosophy of life” as an academic discipline. We have the philosophy of language, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history, but why don’t we have the philosophy of life in the field of philosophy? Of course, we have Lebensphilosophie, but it does not cover philosophical discourses in ancient worlds, nor current analytical approaches to the concepts of life and death. A new research field is required to advance contemporary philosophy. -/- In Chapter Six, I illustrate an outline of my “painless civilization” theory, a criticism of contemporary civilization that deprives us of a joy of life in exchange for eliminating pain and suffering. I also discuss the concept of “fundamental sense of security,” which is considered indispensable for us to be able to live a life without regret. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to show that Yann Martel’s Life of Pi can be read as illustrating what philosophers usually name as pragmatic arguments for religious belief. Ultimately, this seems to be the reason why, in the short prologue that accompanies the novel, Martel claims Life of Pi to be “a story to make you believe in God”. To put it briefly, these arguments claim that even conceding that the question of whether to believe that God (...) exists or that He does not exist cannot be decided upon the evidence we have, we are still justified to decide to believe in God because of the practical beneficial consequences this belief will bring to us. In Martel’s Life of Pi it is this kind of pragmatic reasoning that originates and what makes the “story with animals” preferable over the “story without animals.” I also point out that these arguments appear more convincing if they are not understood as referring to belief in the ordinary and common usage of the term, as the acceptance as being true the factual claim that the world is such that God does actually exist, but as referring to a subjective, non-truth-dependent way of understanding the world and of relating to it. I show that this is precisely the kind of conception of religious faith that is illustrated by the character of Pi through the novel. (shrink)

Robert Pippin has recently raised what he calls ‘the Montaigne problem’ for Nietzsche's philosophy: although Nietzsche advocates a ‘cheerful’ mode of philosophizing for which Montaigne is an exemplar, he signally fails to write with the obvious cheerfulness attained by Montaigne. We explore the moral psychological structure of the cheerfulness Nietzsche values, revealing unexpected complexity in his conception of the attitude. For him, the right kind of cheerfulness is radically non-naïve; it expresses the overcoming of justified revulsion at calamitous aspects (...) of life through a reflective, higher-order affirmative attitude. This complex notion of cheerfulness turns out to have roots in Montaigne himself, and it must be thought of as a kind of second nature cultivated through practice, as a kind of second nature. Understanding the meaning of cheerfulness thereby sheds light on the conception of philosophy as a way of life in both Nietzsche and Montaigne. (shrink)

The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' Error, Damasio (...) revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic. (shrink)

When Croce published his celebrated essay on “What is living and what is dead in the philosophy of Hegel” in 1907, Hegel was already seventy-six years dead. In 1966 we reached the centennial of Croce's birth; but even now, in 1968, it is only sixteen years since death took the pen from the hand of the indefatigable “Don Benedetto.” Clearly therefore, it is still too early to draw up anything like a final balance sheet for the heritage that (...) he has left us. But since the centennial was marked for us by the appearance of an English translation of the great anthology of essays on Philosophy, Poetry, History selected by the author himself at the very end of his life and often referred to in Italy as “Croce in one volume,” it is perhaps appropriate now to raise the question about the enduring heritage of Croce, if only to see more clearly how far, and in what ways, we are still not in a position either to appropriate it or to estimate it. (shrink)

In this essay, I will examine Henri Maldiney’s phenomenological aesthetics, focusing on his claim that “art is the truth of the sensible.” This claim is presented by Maldiney in the context of a two-fold critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective attempts to phenomenologically elucidate the experience of artworks. According to Maldiney, both Husserl and Heidegger fail to recognize what he, following Erwin Straus, terms the “pathic” moment of sense experience, which is also the key moment of the aesthetic reception (...) of art. Drawing on this concept of the pathic and its way of engaging what Maldiney calls the “transpassibility” of receptivity, I argue that his phenomenology of art can be viewed as an attempt to bring together the two senses of the aesthetic in the Kantian sense, namely as an aesthetics of sense experience and as an aesthetics of art, from within the domain of sensibility itself. I develop this idea by turning to Maldiney’s notion of rhythm and examining how he thinks that it can be applied to the visual arts. Ultimately, I suggest that Maldiney’s aesthetics imbues art with ontological significance, since he takes the rhythmic presence of artworks to be a sensuous manifestation of the rhythmic ground of the world’s constitution. The truth of art, in this sense, is a revelation of the ontological functioning of rhythm. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:What Does It Mean to Believe? Faith in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger by Daniel CardóJean-Paul JugeWhat Does It Mean to Believe? Faith in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger by Daniel Cardó (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), xv + 116 pp.Father Daniel Cardó's book What Does It Mean to Believe? is a concise and penetrating synopsis of Joseph Ratzinger's theology of faith, especially "faith as an (...) act" (7). As any reader familiar with Ratzinger knows, the subject of faith or belief is the very axis on which his theology turns. Ratzinger identifies this question of belief as the impetus of his theological research: "I chose fundamental theology as my field because I wanted first and foremost to examine thoroughly the question: Why do we believe?" (13). Cardó has thus chosen the perfect topic to introduce readers to Ratzinger who might otherwise be too intimidated by the Pope emeritus's countless homilies, lectures, and writings. Yet, Cardó has not merely provided us with another introduction to Ratzinger; rather, we may justly apply the author's words regarding Ratzinger to this book and say that its "simplicity almost hides [its] erudition" (3). In this book, Cardó assembles what might be compared to a medieval catena or florilegium, as he gathers excerpts from a wide variety of Ratzinger's works and conveniently organizes them for the reader.From the outset, Cardó contextualizes his book by presenting faith in God as the only adequate response to the contemporary scandals within the Church. In this way, he aligns his position with Ratzinger's 2019 essay on the sexual abuse scandal, wherein the Pontiff writes: "Only where faith no longer determines the actions of man are such offenses possible.... Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God" (5). Thus, the origin of this book, explains Cardó, is his conviction that "understanding more deeply the richness of the act of believing can help renew our faith" (6). Following his introduction, Cardó divides his book intro three parts, each a different angle of approach to the act of faith.The first part situates the act of belief in the context of two contemporary challenges, agnosticism and relativism, and explains how doubt (not as an act of defiance but as the experience of uncertainty) is a necessary, rather than incompatible, component to trust in God. In this section, Cardó draws heavily from Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity, which remains an accurate assessment of faith's place in a secular society a half-century after it was first delivered as a series of university lectures. Moreover, Cardó summarizes Ratzinger's argument that we must reclaim a notion of faith not as a subjective feeling or opinion, but as a mode of accessing and entrusting oneself to a reality that transcends the human [End Page 979] capacity to examine empirically or recreate it and is for this reason the only sure ground on which to base one's life. Agnosticism and relativism, the twin diseases of our era, deprive humans of their only reliable existential footing. Cardó writes: "Without truth, it is impossible to believe with certainty in anyone or anything. The common inability to trust and to have deep interpersonal relationships... are some of the characteristics of a society that believes that one cannot believe anymore" (34).In the second part of his book, Cardó considers the act of faith both as given by God and as received by humans. Just as God cannot be confined to human techne or faciens, neither can the act of faith be reduced to human effort; rather, Cardó writes, "faith is a gift that God gives to us,... [and] God's giving of the gift takes precedence over human initiative" (36). Faith, according to Cardó, is an "act that has the character of an answer: that is, it is a response to the initiative of God" (35). Cardó characterizes this response as encompassing the entirety of one's daily existence, which is carried out on the foundation of a logos that both causes and transcends human reason.The third and final section of the book describes faith as personal, integral, and ecclesial. In short... (shrink)