I shall proceed in the following way. In parts II and III of this paper, I shall discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the interpretation put forward by Robert Merrihew Adams in his recent book, and I shall expand upon this account, discussing a crucial but hitherto unexamined aspect of the relation between dominant and subordinate monads, reconstructed from Leibniz's letters to Des Bosses and his essays of 1714, _Principles of Nature and Grace and Monadology. In part IV of (...) this paper, I shall examine various difficulties that arise both for my interpretation and, more generally, for Leibniz's account of the relation of domination and subordination. (edited). (shrink)

BackgroundFear of abandonment and aloneness play a key role in the clinical understanding interpersonal and attachment-specific problems in patients with borderline personality disorder and has been investigated in previous functional Magnet Resonance Imaging studies. The aim of the present study was to examine how different aspects of attachment representations are processed in BPD, by using for the first time an fMRI attachment paradigm including personalized core sentences from the participants’ own attachment stories. We hypothesized that BPD patients would show increased (...) functional involvement of limbic brain regions associated with fear and pain when presented personalized attachment relevant stimuli representing loneliness compared to healthy controls.MethodsWe examined the attachment classifications of 26 female BPD patients and 26 female HC using the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System. We used an fMRI-adapted attachment paradigm to investigate the neural correlates of attachment. All participants were presented three personalized sentences extracted from their AAP attachment narrative, combined with standardized AAP pictures representing being alone or in interactive attachment situations.ResultsAs expected, the classification of unresolved attachment was significantly greater in BPD compared to HC. BPD patients showed increased fMRI-activation in brain areas associated with fear, pain, and hyperarousal than HC when presented with personalized attachment-relevant alone stimuli. In particular, pictures with monadic attachment situations induced greater anterior medial cingulate cortex, anterior insula, amygdala, thalamus and superior temporal gyrus activation in the patient group.ConclusionThe results point to increased fMRI-activation in areas processing emotional distress and painful experiences in BPD patients. In particular, the emotional cascade reflecting attachment distress was evoked by combining monadic pictures, representing abandonment and aloneness, with the patients’ personalized narrative material. Our results confirmed and replicated previous results that illustrate once again the high relevance of aloneness and feelings of abandonment for BPD in the context of attachment trauma. Moreover, our results support the hypothesis of hypermentalization in response to attachment distress as a core feature of social-cognitive impairment in BPD associated with common treatment implications across different therapeutic orientations. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to offer a clear explanation of what monadic domination, understood as a relation obtaining exclusively among monads, amounts to in the philosophy of Leibniz (and this insofar as monadic domination is conceived by Leibniz not to account for the substantial unity of composite substances). Central to my account is the Aristotelian notion of a hierarchy of activities, as well as a particular understanding of the relations that obtain among the perceptions of monads that stand in (...) relations of monadic domination and subordination. (shrink)

In the following paper I would like to try to expound on a concept quite important in the philosophy of Leibniz – that of the “Monas Dominans”. In particular, I would like to approach this subject in the first place by means of considerations of a “historical-genetic” nature, while in the second part of my work I propose to put forward some possible interpretations of it. In both cases I will try to compare my ideas with those of recent studies (...) on this theme. The difficulties are numerous; first of all, the texts published to date in which Leibniz introduces and presents his doctrine of the “Monas Dominans” are relatively few, especially if compared to the space given to other elements of his philosophical system; secondly, if on the one hand the general intention put forward by Leibniz through the introduction of this doctrine is clear enough (the Monas Dominans renders “One” in the Machine the “corporeal substance”, that is the “Animal”, as found in the letter to De Volder of June 1703 to which scholars often make reference), on the other hand, when one tries to clarify its details and consider its implications one immediately runs into the same difficulties already pointed out in other studies (regarding, for example, the definition of “corporeal substance”, the relationship between the “Monas dominans” and the “innumerable subordinate monads” that form the “Organic Machine”, etc.). A primary idea I will try to present in this work regards the highlighting in the work of Leibniz of a close correlation between the appearance of the expression “organism” and that of the expression “Monas Dominans”. (shrink)

The basic concepts 'person' (Person), I/self (Ich) and 'subject' (Subjekt) structuring the Russian discourse of personhood (Personalität) developed during the philosophical discussions of the 1820s-1840s. The development occurred in the course of an intense reception of German Idealism and Romanticism. Characteristic of this process is that the modern meaning of personhood going back to the theological and natural-law interpretations of the person in Western Europe does not exist in the Russian cultural consciousness. Therefore the Russian concepts of personhood demonstrate the (...) influence of the semantic innovations of Romanticism. Correspondingly, the semantic core of the Russian discourses on personhood is not the idea of an 'autonomous person' but that of an 'unique individuality'. Here, personhood is not the indefeasible attribute of every man, but the mark of inimitable individuality. Accordingly, the basic distinction underlying the discourse on personhood in Russia is not the differentiation between 'person' and ' thing' as in the European tradition, but the distinction between 'individual' and (anonymous) 'community'. Also, in the meaning of the concept of I/self the dominant differentiation is not that between I/self (Ich) and not-I/not-self (Nicht-Ich), but that between I and We. This discourse on personhood centring on the idea of individuality took form in Russia starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, in particular in aesthetics, psychology, and educational theory, as well as in the philosophy of history. The comparative intercultural analysis of the history of concepts pertaining to personhood in the German-Russian cultural transfer brings to light the dialectic of European modernity in which a degree of tension is visible between the idea of personal autonomy and individuality. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz presents the idea of monads, as non-communicative, self-actuating system of beings that are windowless, closed, eternal, deterministic and individualistic. For him, the whole universe and its constituents are monads and that includes humans. In fact, any ‘body’, such as the ‘body’ of an animal or man has, according to Leibniz, one dominant monad which controls the others within it. This dominant monad, he often refers to as the soul. If Leibniz’s conception of monads (...) is accepted, it merely establishes human subjectivity, idiosyncrasies, biases, prejudices and individual points of view as the norm. How then do we ensure inter-subjectivity and the kind of social interaction requisite for the achievement of social order, since Leibniz’s system forecloses the possibility of interaction and communication among monads? In this essay, we argue that just as Leibniz’s monads synchronize only through the Supreme Monad (Monas Monadum), humans as social monads should also interact through a matrix of ideals like truth, honesty, sincerity, integrity, altruism, impartiality, compassion and trust. Since social order is actualised only within the context of linked social structures, relations and values, these utopian ideals would form the fulcrum through which humans relate and the very foundation that would anchor a viable social order. Our aim here is to establish a relationship between Leibniz’s metaphysics and the physical domains of life by showing that metaphysical constructs can impinge on human social relations and wellbeing. The study employed the qualitative method of research through critical analysis of texts, library and archival materials. (shrink)

Leibniz coined the word “dynamics,” but his own dynamics has never been completed. However, there are many illuminating ideas scattered in his writings on dynamics and metaphysics. In this paper, I will present my own interpretation of Leibniz’s dynamics and metaphysics. To my own surprise, Leibniz’s dynamics and metaphysics are incredibly flexible and modern. In particular, the metaphysical part, namely Monadology, can be interpreted as a theory of information in terms of monads, which generate both physical phenomena and mental phenomena. (...) The phenomena, i.e., how the world of monads appears to each monad must be distinguished from its internal states, which Leibniz calls perceptions, and the phenomena must be understood as the results of these states and God’s coding. My distinctive claim is that most interpreters ignored this coding. His dynamics and metaphysics can provide a framework good enough for enabling Einstein’s special relativity. And finally, his dynamics and metaphysics can provide a very interesting theory of space and time. In Part 1, we will focus on the relationship between metaphysics and dynamics. Leibniz often says that dynamics is subordinated to metaphysics. We have to take this statement seriously, and we have to investigate how dynamics and metaphysics are related. To this question, I will give my own answer, based on my informational interpretation. On my view, Leibniz’s metaphysics tries, among others, to clarify the following three: How each monad is programmed. How monads are organized into many groups, each of which is governed by a dominant monad ; this can be regarded as a precursor of von Neumann’s idea of cellular automata. And how the same structure is repeated in sub-layers of the organization. This structure is best understood in terms of the hierarchy of programs, a nested structure going down from the single dominant program to subprograms, which again controls respective subprograms, and ad infinitum. If we may use a modern term, this is a sort of recursion, although Leibniz himself did not know this word. And one of my major discoveries is that the same recursive structure is repeated in the phenomenal world, the domain of dynamical investigations. Recursion of what, you may ask. I will argue that it is elastic collision. For Leibniz, aside from inertial motions, dynamical changes of motion are brought about by elastic collisions, at any level of the infinite divisibility of matter. This nicely corresponds to the recursive structure of the program of a monad, or of the program of an organized group of monads. This is the crux of his claim that dynamics is subordinated to metaphysics. Moreover, the program of any monad is teleological, whereas the phenomenal world is governed by efficient cause of dynamics. And it is natural that the pre-established harmony is there, since God is the ultimate programmer, as well as the creator. (shrink)

I propose a novel compatibilist interpretation of Leibniz’s mature views concerning what is metaphysically basic. Drawing on a compatibilist reading of Aristotle on primary substance in the Categories and Metaphysics Z, I argue that Leibniz is working with two complementary ways of being metaphysically basic—one applying to immaterial monads, the other to corporeal substances. Although corporeal substances derive their status as basic from their dominant monads, they are nevertheless fully real, unified, and genuinely capable of acting. This perspective respects (...) Leibniz’s idealist tendencies and his commitment to the reality of bodies without attributing inconsistency to his considered views. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Harmonizing Leibniz’s OntologyVolume 51, Issue 3ANDREW D. H. STUMPF DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000704Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Harmonizing Leibniz’s OntologyVolume 51, Issue 3ANDREW D. H. STUMPF DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000704Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Harmonizing Leibniz’s OntologyVolume 51, Issue 3ANDREW D. H. STUMPF DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000704Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

I have developed an informational interpretation of Leibniz’s metaphysics and dynamics, but in this paper I will concentrate on his theory of time. According to my interpretation, each monad is an incorporeal automaton programed by God, and likewise each organized group of monads is a cellular automaton governed by a single dominant monad. The activities of these produce phenomena, which must be “coded appearances” of these activities; God determines this coding. A crucially important point here is that (...) we have to distinguish the phenomena for a monad from its states. Both are a kind of representation: a state represents the whole world of monads, and phenomena for a monad “result” from the activities of monads. But the coding for each must be different; R for the first, Ph for the second, where W is a state of the monadic world. The reason for this is that no monadic state is in space and time, but phenomena occur in space and time. Now, the basis of the phenomenal time must be in the timeless realm of monads. This basis is the order of state-transition of each monads. All the changes of these states are given at once by God, and these do not presuppose time. The coded appearances of this order occur in time, and its metric must depend on God’s coding for phenomena. For humans, in particular, this metric time is derived from spatial distance via the laws of dynamics. Thus there may well be an interrelation between spatial and temporal metric. This means that the Leibnizian frame allows relativistic metric of space-time. I will show this after outlining Leibniz’s scenario. (shrink)

The text compares Leibniz’s architectonic principles with Wolff’s uses of teleological explanations. Among other points of divergence, it appears that in Wolff “the living being qua ‘natural machine’ has been dispossessed of its character of entailing ‘organism’ to infinity, and deprived of a sufficient reason for its operations equated with the finalized sequences of perceptions of the dominant monad”. As a consequence, while the Leibnizian machines of nature differ from any man-made mechanism, the living being, according to Wolff, (...) is a natural machine whose composition may be legitimately represented as a set of mechanist models. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 142-143 [Access article in PDF] Wright, John P. and Paul Potter, editors. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 298. Cloth, $72.00. The mind-body problem has a long history that begins well before Descartes made it extreme by presenting mind as unextended active thinking and (...) matter as unthinking passive extension. This absolute division was motivated in some part by the desire to present the soul as an entity that can survive the death of the body. This is difficult to maintain if the soul is merely the form or the vital force motivating a human body. But the advance of physiology has led more and more to the conclusion that the functions often attributed to the soul are actually carried out by the brain. Thinking may be as natural (and perhaps as determined) a function of the body as is digestion. And if digestion does not survive the death of the body, maybe thinking does not either.This collection of studies provides a detailed introduction to both medical and metaphysical views and theories concerning the relation of mind to body. In particular, the first article by Beate Gundert on Hippocratic Medicine sets the stage by showing that "mind and body in the Hippocratic writings, while distinguished empirically by being related to different types of phenomena, are both ultimately accounted for by the same explanatory model: Human nature (physis), which embraces the totality of bodily structures, physiological processes, and psychic events" (35). T. M. Robinson shows that Plato admits of no solution as to how mind and body interact, and Philip J. van der Eijk argues that "to detach the essence of man completely from his physical make-up would run counter to Aristotle's biological approach to man as a natural living being, the ultimate implication of his view on the divinity of nous is that the fullest realization of what it is to be a human being is to go beyond the limits of corporeality and mortality, and to become, if only temporarily, a god" (77). Heinrich von Staden covers Epicurus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, the Stoics, and Galen, concluding that "The discovery of the nerves entailed the first significant erosion of the vast territory ruled by the soul in Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, an erosion accompanied by an expansion of the rule of 'nature,' visible not only in medicine, but also in philosophy" (116). Theo K. Heckel discusses Saint Paul's insistence upon the whole person, and Gareth Matthews shows that, prior to Descartes, Augustine presents "a radically new argument for mind-body dualism... an internalist argument... that proceeds from what, allegedly, the mind can know concerning itself to the conclusion that the mind is incorporeal" (145). Emily Michael discusses Pomponazzi's view that we know the immortality of the soul only by faith and the scholastic attempts to show that the soul is a substantial form. Guillaume Lamy, for example, criticized Descartes for having a soul only of thinking, whereas the soul must be of life. Steven Voss shows how at the end of his life, Descartes did discuss in detail how thinking affects the body, particularly in the management of health and the curing of disease. But Descartes does not solve the problem of how this interaction takes place. Thomas Lennon discusses the views of Bayle on Leibniz's monadic forces and Locke's fideism. And Francois Duchesneu continues the discussion of Stahl and Leibniz, to [End Page 142] conclude that "Leibniz attempts to discover the formal foundation of the organism, which he locates in the capacity of perception-appetition proper to the dominant monad" (235).John P. Wright gives an exposition of a very important distinction between Cartesian dualism and the functional dualism that came to dominate medical thought, that is, the question of how the brain and vital organs interact. Roselyn Rey carries this discussion on to the development of theories... (shrink)

What kind of relationship subsists between an "organism" and a "monas dominans"? In some texts, Leibniz claims that the soul "actuat" the organic body and in the late debate with Stahl he describes the "monas dominans" as a "monas actuatrix". But how does the monas "actualize" the organic body? And what is implied by Leibniz's use of the word "agere" to describe this? Is it also possibile to describe this event in terms of "whole/part" relationship? The aim of this paper (...) is to sketch out the status quaestionis of the topic by discussing some of the most recent studies. More specifically to propose an interpretation of the "monas dominans" as the "nota distinguens" of the whole organism. (shrink)

Individualism dominates Western ontologies: atoms and molecules; substances, minds, and agents. Each is said to embody conditions sufficient to establish its nature and existence. Ontologies spawned by Descartes's cogito and Kantian world‐making are, nevertheless, false to all we know of reality and ourselves. This paper suggests an alternative: entities and events are generated by the material circumstances in which they emerge and evolve; nothing at any scale is exempt from the discovery that its existence and character derive from and are (...) sustained by circumstances additional to those it embodies. All are embedded in the context that has been their source. (shrink)

This article presents a case for the revaluation of vitalism in sociological theory. It argues for the relevance of such a Lebenssoziologie in the global information age. The body of the article addresses what a vitalist sociology might be through a consideration of Georg Simmel. The analysis works from the juxtapositon of vitalist monadology with postivist atomism. It shows how Simmel drew on the Kantian cognition to develop an idea of the social. Here Kant’s Newtonian atomism was transformed into Simmel’s (...) Darwinian atomism. ‘Form’, for Kant, is the a priori of the cognitive categories. For Simmel form is the functions that constitute the social a priori. The other of form is substance. Simmelian ‘substance’, we see, is understood as ‘life’. We view this in the context of Leibniz’s monadology. In this the monad is simple substance as difference. The monad is self-organizing, conceived on the lines of not the extensivity of res extensa, but the intensivity of res cogitans; the monad is possessed with memory as trace; it is comprised of relations of perception; it is reflexive. In each case monadology is systematically contrasted with atomism. We consider the Bergsonian and Nietzschean impetus in Simmel’s shift from Darwinian atomistic evolution to monadological creative evolution. We compare Marx’s labour theory of value with Simmel’s ‘life theory of value’. For Marx it is labour that makes up value-substance: for Simmel life is value-substance. We examine Simmel’s core notion of life as social substance: as a primordial inter-subjectivity of flux. We conclude with a contrast of such ‘flux’ and flow: of such a flux of ‘becoming’ and invention in contrast to the flows of domination of today’s global capitalism. (shrink)

The essay discusses a significant shift in conceptualizing the notion of representation found in Alain Badiou’s ontology and Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics. From Heidegger to Deleuze, the artwork was able to express an ontological truth about the world on the condition that it does not represent it. Badiou’s ‘subtractive’ approach to ontology and Rancière’s redefinition of the modern aesthetic break with representation, however, suggest that there is nothing to express beyond the veil of representation. Instead, representation can only be counteracted by (...) the occurrence of surplus representations that subvert the principles of the dominant regime of representation. The essay provides an understanding of this shift by reversing the Leibnizian conceptual metaphor Adorno used to describe the modern artwork. Unlike ‘windowless monads’, whose seclusion from the world enables them to convey an ontological truth, artworks as ‘monadless windows’ reframe the parameters of what is perceived as reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 591-592 [Access article in PDF] J. A. Cover and John O'Leary-Hawthorne. Substance & Individuation in Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 307. Cloth, $59.95. This close engagement with Leibniz's modal metaphysics is as rewarding as it is challenging. Crisply written and tightly argued, the book aims to achieve a balance between what the authors describe as their historical (...) objective—to ascertain Leibniz's views on individuation against the backdrop of scholastic philosophy—and their philosophical goal—to investigate the issue of individuation more generally by construing Leibniz as a mediary between scholastic and modern metaphysics (4). The result is an original, if at times contentious, reinterpretation of some of the central tenets of Leibniz's philosophy.Since a full discussion of the work is beyond the scope of this review, we focus on one principal line of argument that supports much of what the authors say about Leibniz. Although in early texts Leibniz occasionally shows sympathy for a relational view of individuation (59-63), his dominant position (developed in the seminal Disputatio metaphysica) is that a substance's principle of individuation is wholly internal to it. For the authors, this becomes a benchmark for the interpretation of Leibniz's later philosophy. On their reading, Leibniz's account of individuation rests on two main theses: "the requirement of separability" (that the existence of any substance is metaphysically independent of that of any other substance except God) and "the requirement that whatever individuates a substance must be wholly internal to it" (87).These theses are heavy with consequences. Concerning the ontological status of relations and relational properties (or extrinsic denominations) the authors convincingly argue that Leibniz embraces a reductionist position, according to which relational properties supervene on a substance's intrinsic accidents, i.e., its perceptions and appetitions. Monadic facts about substances suffice to determine all relational facts, and the latter cannot change without a change in the former (though the converse does not hold). Emphasizing Leibniz's statement that God sees in a complete concept the "foundations" of all that can be predicated of a substance, the authors add to this the more controversial claim that extrinsic denominations are not included in the complete concept of an individual substance (83-4). Thus, the identity of any substance is defined by the totality of its intrinsic denominations, and these in turn determine the relations that hold among substances.The centerpiece of the book addresses the modal dimension of Leibniz's theory of individuation. Here the authors argue that Leibniz adheres to what they call "strong essentialism" rather than "superessentialism." The former, like the latter, holds that a substance could not have a complete concept different than the one it has. However, as a "strong essentialist" Leibniz denies that all of a substance's properties are essential to it. Based on their reading of Leibniz's doctrine of relations, the authors maintain that all and only intrinsic denominations are essential to a substance. From this they infer that Leibniz allows for the transworld identity of substances: the same substance can exist in different possible worlds, worlds distinguished by the fact that they contain different constituent substances. This is possible, according to the authors, because the "laws of harmony" impose no constraint on which substances can coexist in a world. A possible world is defined by the collection of individuals supposed to exist in it, and laws [End Page 591] of harmony are merely relational truths supervening on those substances' intrinsic accidents (109).The authors are candid in admitting that their interpretation cannot be reconciled with all of Leibniz's texts. Their goal instead is to give Leibniz the best he can get, metaphysically speaking: "Our efforts here are to show that the architectonic of Leibniz's own metaphysics is properly captured by strong essentialism, that the important and deepest threads of his thinking better hang together on that construal" (103). Yet one might take issue with their view of what count as Leibniz's "deepest" thoughts. Surely it is a... (shrink)

In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's time, micro-mechanism seemed to dominate, though not exclusively, the more innovative trend in physiology, and microscopic anatomy determined the representation of living beings. The basic postulate was that human understanding could rely on microscopic observation and account for microstructures by framing mechanical models: along that trend, hope was to attain the real causes of physiological phenomena. In his natural philosophy, Leibniz grants living beings a prominent place. His metaphysics contains arguments and notions that build on physiological (...) concepts to express the condition of finite substances and the relationship between substances in the phenomenal world. For Leibniz, at least in the later stages of his career, the account of living individuals and of their properties would provide access to a well-founded representation of corporeal substances in general. This article looks at Leibniz's views on physiology and organic bodies, focusing on his conception of living beings as "machines of nature" and his theory of monads. (shrink)

Confronting the threat of a Spinozistic necessitarianism, Leibniz insists that not all possible substances are compossible—that they can't all be instantiated together—and thus that not all possible worlds are compossible—that they can't all be instantiated together. While it is easy to appreciate Leibniz's reasons for embracing this view, it has proven difficult to see how his doctrine of incompossibility might be reconciled with the broader commitments of his larger philosophical system. This essay develops, in four sections, a novel solution to (...) the "puzzle of incompossibility." The first section frames the difficulty more carefully and briefly argues that the two dominant strategies developed by Leibniz's commentators fail to solve it fully insofar as they require simply abandoning one or another of its motivating commitments. The second and third sections show how Leibniz's guiding analogy of a geometrical packing or tiling problem may be applied to solve the puzzle of incompossibility in the context of finite and infinite worlds composed of extended corporeal substances. Finally, the fourth section shows how the strategy of Leibniz's packing analogy might be applied even in the context of a thoroughly idealist metaphysics in which the only true substances are nonextended, mindlike "monads." The essay concludes by drawing some connections between Leibniz's thinking about the puzzle of incompossibility and the development of his views concerning the status of corporeal substances and extended bodies. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us Digg Reddit Technorati What's this? (shrink)

In the first part of this paper the Leibnizian theory of relations is presented as the metaphysical background of his concept of space. The structure of metaphysical space is dominated by the monads while geometrical aspects are neglected. In the second part the paper deals with Leibniz' concept of space in his mathematical works and especially in the Analysis Situs . What emerges is that the attempt to transfer philosophical arguments into mathematical structures fails because of the incompatibility of notions (...) in different contexts. The same problem arises in his Characteristica universalis: Philosophy is not computable. (shrink)

The question of enhancement occupies a prominent place not only in current bioethical debates but also in wider public discussions about our human future. In all of these, the problem of enhancement is usually articulated via two sets of questions: moral questions over its permissibility, extent and direction; and technical questions over the feasibility of different forms of regenerative and synthetic alterations to human bodies and minds. This article argues that none of the dominant positions on enhancement within the (...) field of bioethics is entirely satisfactory due to the limited, monadic, pre-technological and non-cultural conception of the human that is adopted in these models. Critically engaging with both opponents of enhancement (Habermas) and its advocates (Harris, Agar, Bostrom, Dworkin), Zylinska also takes some steps towards outlining a nonnormative ethics of enhancement. The latter sees its human and non-human subjects as always already enhanced, and hence dependent, relational and coevolving with technology. (shrink)

Brand image constitutes one of the most salient, over-defined, heavily explored and multifariously operationalized conceptual constructs in marketing theory and practice. In this Chapter, definitions of brand image that have been offered by marketing scholars will be critically addressed in the context of a culturally oriented discussion, informed by the semiotic notion of iconicity. This cultural bend, in conjunction with the concept’s semiotic contextualization, are expected both to dispel terminological confusions in the either inter-changeable or fuzzily differentiated employment of such (...) terms as brand image, symbol, icon, as well as to address the function of brand image at a deeper level than a mere construct to be operationalized in quantitative studies of purchase drivers. This shift in focus is coupled with a critical turn from the cogito-centric view of the consuming subject through the cognitivist lens of the AI metaphor as decision-making centre at the origin of largely conscious meaning-making, in favor of a psychoanalytically informed approach that considers figurativity as an essential process whereby brand image is formed. In these terms, brand image will be intimately linked to brand images as figurative multimodal expressive units and rhetorical tropes, as figurative syntax, that are responsible for shaping an idiolectal brand language, as well as to distinctive levels of iconicity as textual condition of possibility of a brand language. In order to understand the role of iconicity as fundamental condition of brand textuality, rather than just a procedure for spawning brand images, the discussion is contextualized in a wider framework involving the culturally situated source of brand images, how they become correlated with brand image concepts and how correlations between brand images and brand image result in brand knowledge structures (Keller 1998). This opening up of the discussion on iconicity is enacted against the background of what I call the Brand Imaginarium which involves: (i) a critical engagement with the dominant cognitivist perspective in branding research that prioritizes individual memory in brand knowledge formation, through a cultural branding lens that involves two additional types of memory, viz. communicative and cultural (ii) a critical engagement with the cognitivist perspective on brand knowledge formation that prioritizes conscious processing of stimuli (as ‘brute facts’, rather than as already semiotized expressive units) in a cognitive mechanism from which the faculty of imagination has been expelled, by restoring the importance of imagination in brand knowledge formation, and, concomitantly, by showing that the highly figurative language of brands may not be researched thoroughly unless imagination is posited anew as processing correlate (iii) the adoption of an expansionist approach to the role of the imaginary in brand knowledge formation, from cognitive (or psychic) faculty, to a more sociologically inclined process of inter-subjective mirroring, and concomitantly as imaginary social significations (Castoriades 1985) that are shared by culturally conditioned and habituated subjects that engage in meaningful cultural practices, rather than individual processing monads. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leibniz’s Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise by Patrick RileySusanna GoodinPatrick Riley. Leibniz’s Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 338. Cloth, $39.95.Leibniz’s political views are often downplayed, if not simply ignored, by philosophers focusing on his metaphysical accounts of substance and force. That Leibniz himself does not view these two areas as distinct is (...) forcefully argued in Patrick Riley’s detailed account of Leibniz’s theory of justice. Under Riley’s presentation, Leibniz’s definition of justice as the “charity of the wise” depends crucially on both his monadology and his theodicy. And his political maneuverings, particularly with France, are dominated by this unique definition of justice.Riley begins his argument by detailing Leibniz’s objections to Descartes’s voluntarism and Hobbes’s mechanistic view of human nature and the emphasis on power as the foundation of moral truths. The central Leibnizian theme to which Riley returns repeatedly is perfection. A perfect God does not act on whim or power but on reason. Monads are created with the freedom to strive toward perfection. Love, or charity, becomes perfect by becoming universal. Justice is not, as Hobbes claimed, that which is determined to be good for the whole by an absolute power, but a love or benevolence for the whole, striving through reason for the best. Wisdom is the heart of justice, not power. And for Leibniz, wisdom is inseparable from charity. God wills to actualize the best of all possible worlds out of love and wisdom, thus, wise charity.But Leibniz’s view of justice as wise charity is not without problems, most significantly the problem of freedom. In his first chapter, “Foundations,” Riley skillfully raises this problem in the context not only of Leibniz’s political stance on justice but also in the context of his metaphysics and theodicy. It is in the second chapter, “Monadology and Justice,” that Riley does the bulk of the work relating the metaphysics with the moral-political: “... on the knowledge of substance, and in consequence of the soul, depends the knowledge of virtue and of justice” (Leibniz, as quoted in Riley, 51). Political philosophy cannot be done correctly without first acquiring an adequate and proper account of substance, something the materialist Hobbes had failed to do. But because Leibniz has so closely linked his politics with his metaphysics, the perhaps insurmountable problem of freedom in his metaphysics hounds his politics. “If there are no autonomous persons with nonillusory ‘wills’, there cannot be ‘general benevolence’—for benevolence is just [End Page 470] ‘good willing’, and Leibniz invariably equates benevolentia with caritas sapientis. Without a certain kind of will, then, wise charity cannot serve as the heart of a justice which is more than sovereign-ordained law” (61). To prevent Hobbes from ruling the day, Leibniz must, as Riley correctly notes, devise a metaphysics which allows for freedom for both God and man.And here arises the one troubling aspect of Riley’s work. He addresses the problem of freedom in Leibniz’s metaphysics, but there is no discussion of the recent work done by such scholars as Robert Adams, whose book Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist makes significant contributions on exactly this topic. Regarding Leibniz’s serpentine defense of freedom, Riley does little more than bring up the problem and comment that Leibniz had a problem which, ultimately, he seemed unable to resolve. In fact, Riley shows little appreciation for the work done by mainstream scholars in the area of Leibniz’s metaphysics. If Riley’s work centered primarily on Leibniz’s political writings this might not matter, but given that the thrust of the first part of the book is to argue that Leibniz’s political theory is not merely compatible with his metaphysics but arises out of it, so that an understanding of Leibniz’s metaphysics is essential to grasping the logic of his political views, the absence of current scholarship on the metaphysics is troubling. References in footnotes confirm that Riley had read Adams’s book, as well as The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, which contains David Blumenfeld’s excellent... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche as Self-Made ManAlexander NehamasComposing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology, by Graham Parkes; xiv & 481 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $37.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.I cannot resist beginning this essay on Graham Parkes’s study of Nietzsche’s psychology with the first-person pronoun. Parkes provides an erudite and suggestive presentation of Nietzsche’s views on the soul, according to which what we consider that most unitary element of human (...) nature turns out to be the product of bringing together disparate and often conflicting independent agencies. He also provides valuable information about the sources of Nietzsche’s thought, and details a number of connections between Nietzsche’s ideas and his life. Yet, in a book of close to five hundred pages, Parkes self-consciously avoids the first-person pronoun altogether. He speaks of the “I,” which is after all the subject of his book, but the I never speaks itself. Why? Because “what is important here are Nietzsche’s ideas, rather than Parkes’s”; also, because “the whole point of Nietzsche’s psychology is to put the I in question, to prompt the question ‘Who?’ at its every appearance, to hear the polyphony behind the apparent univocality of the first person singular” (p. 310).Though not the first, Nietzsche was one of the most radical dissectors of the human soul. Where others had found unity, order, and indivisibility, Nietzsche uncovered an untidy, often uncontrolled multiplicity. Instead of a consistent, harmonious whole, he saw a messy complex of beliefs, desires, values, views, drives, affects, and habits, picked up at [End Page 487] different times, from disparate, even incompatible sources, moving in different directions; far from fitting naturally into a union, these compete with one another for mastery and control of the person: “The belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon... ought to be expelled from science,” he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil. But, he continued, “between ourselves it is not at all necessary to get rid of the soul at the same time.... But the way is open for new versions and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as mortal soul, and soul as subjective multiplicity, and soul as social structure of the drives and the affects want henceforth to have citizens’ rights in science.”The breakdown of the soul into independent and often conflicting parts has two radical consequences. First, it implies that some parts of our souls—of our selves—may remain hidden, obscured, suppressed or ignored by others, especially by those that achieve at least apparent dominance and can therefore speak in the first-person. In Nietzsche’s political metaphor, they are like a governing class which speaks for the whole state. This, of course, is the central idea of depth psychology; and Parkes shows how both Freud and Jung were indebted to Nietzsche’s pioneering geography of the soul. Second, to think that the soul is multiple is to think that it is not unalterable: its parts can affect one another; out of their conflict, new configurations are possible. Some parts can be cultivated or left to wither; others can be allowed to run wild or become domesticated; still others can be subordinated to one another or allowed to function in more or less equitable ways. The soul—the person—is not a preexistent unity; it is constructed, or, as Parkes, mindful of Nietzsche’s deep involvement with music, puts it so well, composed.Parkes provides a brilliant catalogue of the metaphors (mineral, vegetal, animal, personal, and political) Nietzsche uses to describe the elements of the multifarious soul. He also produces a sort of recipe for their successful composition into a coherent whole. “Opening up” to as many conflicting drives as possible, we let them be mastered by one or more dominant ones and we subject their multiplicity to the discipline imposed by those ruling passions. Once that discipline becomes instinctive, active control is relaxed and, somehow, the multiplicity spontaneously orders itself. We become, again, natural (p. 377).Now, we know that Nietzsche spent much of his life “doing battle” with Socrates. He passionately despised the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leibniz and the Natural World: Activity, Passivity, and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz’s PhilosophyMichael FutchPauline Phemister. Leibniz and the Natural World: Activity, Passivity, and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz’s Philosophy. New Synthese Historical Library, 58. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. Pp. xiii + 293. Cloth, $149.00.Leibniz's metaphysics has long been viewed as one of the more noteworthy systems of idealism in early modern philosophy. At the ground-floor level of his austere ontology, (...) the standard view maintains that the world is not populated by bodies in space and time, but rather by immaterial, mind-like entities: monads. All the rest is a kind of ontological construction from these simple substances. In this book, Pauline Phemister seeks to overturn the idealist reading of Leibniz and to show that "the true immaterial substances in Leibniz's philosophy" are "monads that exist as animated corporeal creatures" (76). What is ontologically basic for Leibniz are not immaterial monads but "living corporeal substances" with "both mental and physical characteristics" (3).If Phemister is right, one wonders what to make of Leibniz's many endorsements of idealism, as, for instance, when he says that "the explanation of all phenomena solely through the perception of monads... with corporeal substances to be rejected, [is] useful for a fundamental investigation of things" (Leibniz to Bartholomew Des Bosses, June [End Page 162] 16, 1712). This programmatic summary is only one of numerous statements from the late period where Leibniz asserts that ultimate reality is composed of immaterial monads. One possible option would be to posit an indecisive vacillation in Leibniz's late philosophy. Rejecting this, Phemister's strategy for dealing with texts such as these—including the "New System," the "Principles of Nature and Grace," and the "Monadology"—is to dismiss them as the rhetorical subterfuge of a Leibniz who is only exoterically, not privately, a Cartesian (15, 163). Leibniz is a public Cartesian in that he "invites comparison of his rational monads with Cartesian minds" by suggesting that the former, like Cartesian minds, are immaterial and incorporeal (13). This is ostensibly only a ruse Leibniz used to ingratiate himself to a Cartesian audience, hiding from them his real view that genuine substances are always corporeal. We are not told why Leibniz would have expected an idealist philosophy that explains mind-body interaction in terms of a pre-established harmony to be well received by Cartesians, but with this hermeneutical principle in hand, Phemister has deftly insulated her criticism from textual refutation.A more pressing concern is Phemister's principle thesis that "the monad is a corporeal substance" (73). Phemister argues that monads are not complete substances unless they comprise not only a soul-like entelechy, but also primary and secondary matter: a monad is not substantially complete "without the subordinate monads that comprise its organic body" (41). What is important to note in this account is that for monads to be complete substances, they must consist of both a "soul-like aspect" and secondary matter, an organic body (133). This organic body is itself an aggregate of other corporeal substances, which are themselves combinations of entelechies and primary and secondary matter (81). The clear consequence of this is that the monad's existence as a complete substance is dependent upon the existence of other substances, namely, those substances that aggregate to form its organic body, the secondary matter that completes the monad as substance. Hence, the existence of complete substances—the only genuine substances—is ontologically derivative. This conclusion flatly contradicts Leibniz's repeated assertions that substances are ontologically basic, not depending for their existence on the existence of other substances, the very cornerstone of Leibniz's metaphysics.This account is also beset by a vicious circularity. For there to be complete substances, there must first be secondary matter, as secondary matter is a constituent of complete substances. As Phemister puts it, "both primary and secondary matter complete the dominant entelechy," making it a genuine substance (71). Without secondary matter, the dominant entelechy does not exist as a substance. But the existence of secondary matter is itself dependent upon the existence of complete substances, for secondary matter just is an aggregate of corporeal substances (84... (shrink)

Through reading the early work of Walter Benjamin—up to and including the Trauerspiel, author Monad Rrenban elicits a cohesive conception of the wild, inforgettable form, philosophy, as inherent in everything. This book, distinct in its analysis and depth of analysis, elaborates the wild, unforgettable form—philosophy in relation to language, the discipline and the practice of philosophy, criticism, and the politics of death.

Les Arts et les Images se veut une introduction aux principaux terrains d’investigation de Dominic McIver Lopes, philosophe canadien contemporain, figure incontournable de l’esthétique et de la philosophie de l’art en langue anglaise au cours des vingt dernières années. Il ouvre une réflexion sur les méthodes employées en esthétique et philosophie de l’art aujourd’hui, qu’on soit un philosophe dit « analytique » ou bien « continental », Lopes cherchant à penser le lien entre les deux traditions. -/- À travers leur (...) textes respectifs, Laure Blanc-Benon, Jacques Morizot et Frédéric Pouillaude instaurent un dialogue avec Dominic McIver Lopes, sur plusieurs de ses livres : Understanding Pictures (1996), ouvrage de référence sur la question philosophique des images et de la représentation, Beyond Art (2014), livre qui traite de la question classique au XXe siècle de la définition de l’œuvre d’art, et Four Arts of Photography (2016) dans lequel Dominic Lopes met en avant une nouvelle philosophie de la photographie. À ce dialogue s’ajoutent trois textes de Lopes inédits en français, portant sur la méthode de l’esthétique et de la philosophie de l’art et également sur la question de la beauté et de la valeur esthétique. (shrink)

Certain representations are bound in special ways to our sensory capacities; consider, for instance, pictures, sound recordings, and the various forms of mental sensory imagery. What do these representations have in common, and what makes them different from representations of other kinds? Dominic Gregory employs novel ideas on perceptual states and sensory perspectives to explain the special nature of the contents of distinctively sensory representations. The book contains extensive discussions of e.g. perceptual imagination, pictorial representation, and memories.

Can love really be considered another form of technology? Dominic Pettman says it can - although not before carefully redefining technology as a cultural challenge to what we mean by the "human" in the information age. Using the writings of such important thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Jean-LucNancy, and Bernard Stiegler as a springboard, Pettman explores the "techtonic" movements of contemporary culture, specifically in relation to the language of eros. Highly ritualized expressions of desire - love, in other words - always (...) reveal an era's attitude toward what it means to exist as a selfamong others. For Pettman, the articulation of love is a technique of belonging: a way of responding to the basic plurality of everyone's identity, a process that becomes increasingly complex as the forms of mediated communication, from cell phone and text messaging to the mass media, multiply andmesh together.Wresting the idea of love from the arthritic hands of Romanticism, Pettman demonstrates the ways in which this dynamic assemblage - "the stirrings of the soul" - have always been a matter of tools, devices, prosthetics, and media. Love is, after all, something we make. And, love, this book argues,is not eternal, but external. (shrink)

Williamson has argued against scepticism concerning our metaphysically modal knowledge, by arguing that standard patterns of suppositional reasoning to counterfactual conclusions provide reliable sources of correct ascriptions of possibility and necessity. The paper argues that, while Williamson’s claims relating to necessity may well be right, he has not provided adequate reasons for thinking that the familiar modes of counterfactual reasoning to which he points generalise to provide a decent route to ascriptions of possibility. The paper also explores another path to (...) ascriptions of possibility that may be extracted from Williamson’s ideas, before briefly considering the general status of counterfactual reasoning in relation to our knowledge of possibilities. (shrink)

What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind—like art, empathy, or technology—fall apart under close inspection. Dominic Pettman argues that it is a mistake to define such rigid distinctions in the first place, and the most decisive “human error” may be the ingrained impulse to understand ourselves primarily in contrast to our other worldly companions. In _Human Error_, Pettman describes the three sides of the cybernetic triangle—human, animal, and (...) machine—as a rubric for understanding key figures, texts, and sites where our species-being is either reinforced or challenged by our relationship to our own narcissistic technologies. Consequently, species-being has become a matter of _specious_-being, in which the idea of humanity is not only a case of mistaken identity but indeed the mistake of identity. _Human Error_ boldly insists on the necessity of relinquishing our anthropomorphism but also on the extreme difficulty of doing so, given how deeply this attitude is bound with all our other most cherished beliefs about forms of life. (shrink)

Philosophers have championed contextualist and relativist semantics for aesthetic discourse that attempt to explain faultless disagreement. However, both types of semantics do a good job explaining faultless disagreement. As a rule, more explananda assist in theory choice. This chapter proposes that three more facts need explaining. Aesthetic disputes revolve around objects, even as they express attitudes. They also extend into lengthy exchanges wherein reasons are offered and withdrawn. Finally, they play a role in the formation and regulation of aesthetic practices. (...) Different views about the point of aesthetic disputes interpret these three facts differently. One option has it that we use aesthetic disputes to align with peers who share the same preferences. This option is friendly to relativist semantics. The alternative states that we use aesthetic disputes to coordinate language and concepts to fit aesthetic genres. This option mandates contextualist semantics. The weight of evidence tilts towards contextualism. (shrink)

This essay considers the relationship between the work of contemporary artist Torsten Lauschmann and themes in a growing area of research: philosophy of technology. Themes considered include relations between technology and contemporary urban dwelling, technology and the “everyday,” and Heidegger’s problematic but canonical understanding of technology not as a set of “mere means” but as a “way of revealing.” I argue that Lauschmann’s art renders these themes relevant for our increasingly technologically mediated forms of everyday experience by engaging in a (...) paradoxical practice of creating what McLuhan called “anti-environments.” Part One relates Lauschmann’s art to three concepts surfacing in McLuhan’s late work: “figure,” “ground,” and “anti-environment.” Part Two relates Lauschmann’s art to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of photography in terms of the ontology of dynamic movement. Part Three relates Lauschmann’s art to Heidegger, implying a form of “affective critique” that — by questioning the environmental conditions that constitute works of art — points beyond vexed aspects of Heidegger’s approach, such as its apparent pessimism and tendency to homogenize disparate technologies. The essay’s broader argument is that Lauschmann’s art, like the philosophical reflections to which it is related, is engaged in a practice of challenging settled common-sense notions regarding technologically mediated experience. (shrink)

Provides an account of what it is for works of academic philosophy to be beautiful in their content or in their mode of expression.

Death and grief in the ancient world -- Predictions and disability in Rome.

Aesthetic appreciation involves background belief. While some appreciations are adequate when these beliefs are false, there is an important class of beliefs -- beliefs about the nature art work kinds -- whose truth is required for adequate appreciation. Photography is an interesting case, since many of our beliefs about it are false.

Hypotheses in aesthetics should explain appreciative failure as well as appreciative success. They should state the general conditions under which people fail to understand and value works as works of art. This stricture is all the more important when the typical response to conceptual art is one of resistance. Some philosophers explain this by claiming that conceptual art violates traditional theories of art. Others say that it violates folk ontologies of art. In fact, the appreciative failure to which conceptual art (...) is prone is a consequence of the fact that it is not visual art, as it appears to be; rather it is an entirely new art form. Works in new art forms pose special challenges to appreciation. Identifying these challenges enriches theorizing about art. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that contemporary media technologies push individuals into collective action on an industrial scale, without them necessarily being aware of it. Yet what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same affective networks and moments, but rather dispersed into countless different networks and moments? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the (...) same moment? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video, and, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity In this short and provocative book Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls ‘asynchronous hypermodulation’, as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. By focusing on ‘we, the mediated’, this radical intervention challenges the narratives that portray the new media environment as a monolithic media apparatus, rendering us all into the same libidinal grey glue, subsequently channelled at will through the pleasure palace of the internet. The unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distractions that accompany it. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available for (...) humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

Pack includes 2 titles from the popular Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies Series: Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings - An Anthology Edited by Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes ISBN: 9781405112086 Essential readings in the philosophy of literature are brought together for the first time in this anthology. Contains forty-five substantial and carefully chosen essays and extracts Provides a balanced and coherent overview of developments in the field during the past thirty years, including influential work on fiction, interpretation, metaphor, literary (...) value, and the definition and ontology of literature Includes an additional historical section featuring generous selections of the writings of early pioneers such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hume Serves as an ideal introduction to the philosophy of literature or the philosophy of art, as well as a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology Edited by Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi ISBN: 9781405120272 Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presents key selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy of film. The featured essays have been specially chosen for their clarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current move towards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as the nature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration and emotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledge and morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films, fear of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the viewing of pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving pictures throughout. (shrink)

Four Arts of Photography explores the history of photography through the lens of philosophy and proposes a new understanding of the art form for the 21st century.

This volume presents essays and seminars by Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, two of the most eminent scholars of ancient philosophy in recent decades, on the fascinating and much-debated Seventh Platonic Letter. They question the authenticity of the letter by showing how its philosophical content conflicts with the Platonic dialogues.

Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates in anthropology (...) and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)