Ontological Incompleteness Research Articles

Transfiguring Medievalism: Poetry, Attention, and the Mysteries of the Body

Transfiguring Medievalism: Poetry, Attention, and the Mysteries of the Body

"Volver a un origen desnudo". Refracciones de incompletitud ontológica en la obra pictórica de Ramón Gaya

Este análisis de los escritos y la obra plástica de Ramón Gaya se divide en dos partes principales. Se comienza con una reflexión sobre la conocida aversión del murciano a la crítica artística, a lo largo de la cual se descubre una estrategia epistemológica dual como elemento central y estructurante de su pensamiento. Tal dualidad deja su impronta también sobre el concepto de arte de Gaya, un arte que, de siempre, se comprometió con la búsqueda de una verdad pictórica más allá de las apariencias, según lo ha constatado –apréciese la ironía– un buen número de sus intérpretes. Inspirado en las aportaciones de ese conjunto de críticos, el presente ensayo propone un nuevo acceso a las creaciones pictóricas de Gaya: entender las mismas como expresión y reflejo de la incompletitud ontológica de lo existente, según la desarrolló el pensador esloveno Slavoj Žižek. The present analysis of Ramón Gaya’s writings and visual art is divided into two main parts. It begins with a reflection on the famously hostile attitude the Spanish painter displayed toward art criticism, revealing a strategy of epistemological duality as a key structuring element of his thought. This duality has also left its mark on Gaya’s concept of art, an art that was always committed to discovering a pictorial truth beyond mere appearances, as, somewhat ironically, many of his commentators have pointed out. Drawing on these previous explorations as a source of inspiration, the present essay proposes a new access to Gaya’s works: understanding them, in accordance with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s theories, as a reflection and an expression of the fundamental ontological incompleteness of existence itself.

Temporal Ontology in Ecology

Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness” alongside Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view.” In doing so, the article introduces a “past-present parallax” in order to contest that, while conceptions of the past are marked by “lack,” equally, our conceptions of and relations to Nature remain grounded in an ontological incompleteness, marked by contingency. This novel approach presents an ecological awareness that remains temporally attuned to the impasses and inconsistencies which frame our relations in/with Nature.

THE DIALOGUE OF RELIGIONS AND ONTOLOGICAL INCOMPLETENESS Of a HuMAN Being

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of ontological incompleteness of a human being in connection with the possibility of spiritual help from religious traditions. The author shows how the unified ontological substitution of spiritual existence with virtual reality is carried out in the global world. The article investigates the potential of interreligious dialogue in search for new forms of contact with the universal anthropological risks of virtualization, individualization and alienation of man from his spiritual needs. The experience of religious interaction, features of intra-religious life of communities and modern attitude of churches to each other and to people are analyzed on the basis of Religious Studies fieldwork in Russia, in the countries of Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

WHAT IS SEX? AN INTERVIEW WITH ALENKA ZUPANČIČ

In her latest book What is Sex? (MIT Press, 2017) Alenka Zupančič avoids such tiresome topics as heterosexual relationships or the gender binary (and gender altogether) and instead cogently explains sexual difference, the elusive “beyond” of the pleasure principle, infantile sexuality, the materiality of signifiers, the hole in being, the non-coincidence of truth and knowledge, primal repression, passion, the event, and the political importance of psychoanalysis. Sex for Zupančič is an ontological problem, co-extensive with a disturbance in reality, a signifying gap and structural impediment. Sex is attached to that which cannot be fully known or embodied and is therefore directly related to the unconscious. Subjectivity emerges from within the fault entailed in signification, as does surplus enjoyment. Important here, too, is the well-worn notion, but with a twist, that there is no reality prior or external to discourse. Zupančič reminds us that nature is not a pure and full presence before the arrival of the human but an object produced by and for science. The Real is an effect of language: the signifier invades the signified and alters it from within. Finally, and perhaps most mind-blowingly, the human in her formulation is not that which is merely in excess of the animal (dressing it up in language and culture, let’s say) but, rather, an unfinished and dysfunctional dimension: humanity as a veil that simultaneously points and gives form to animals’ ontological incompleteness. The interview covers these complex ideas as well as other pressing matters: the disappearance of the hysteric, the desert of the post-oedipal (the only one who managed to escape the Oedipus complex, Lacan noted, was Oedipus himself), and the status of love at the end of analysis.

The dialectical development of “storytelling” learning organizations

PurposeCalls for dialectical learning process model development in learning organizations have largely gone unheeded, thereby limiting conceptual understanding and application in the field. This paper aims to unify learning organization theory with a new understanding of Hegelian dialectics to trace the development of the storytelling learning organization. The “storytelling learning organization” is a conceptual framework presented along with criteria to evaluate different kinds of dialectical development claims in “storytelling learning organization” work that are bona fide instances of one or another dialectical ontology ranging from Marxian, to Hegelian, to Brierian, to Žižekian.Design/methodology/approachOntological evaluation and critique of a variety of “storytelling learning organization” practices posit different dialectical ontology and consequences for theory and practice. Through a case example of business process reengineering (BPR) in a “public research university (PRU)”, the storytelling of “schooling” versus “education” ideas and practices, in a place, in a period and in material ways of mattering, never achieves synthesis. The dialectical development of resistance to implementation evolves toward transcendence into irreducible oppositions of ontological incompleteness – the essence of a learning organization.FindingsThis ontological analysis focuses on the use of ideas and practices by opposing storytelling agents and actants to uncover a learning organization’s dialectical development in its own storytelling, its narrative and counter-narrative enactments, and its attempts to unpack contradictions. The PRU under study has gone through a series of financial crises, and its learning organization responses were downsizing staff and faculty positions and implementing BPR in ways that worsened the situation. The process resulted in staff and faculty leaving even before the reorganization was completed and enrollment dropped dramatically, in great part due to the negative press and the excessive standardization of the curriculum that accompanies “schooling” displacing acts of “education” practices and ideations. Meanwhile, the administrators are still trying to manage the narrative and control it so as to forestall additional attrition.Originality/valueThe theory of “storytelling learning organization” is original. The question answered here has practical value because institutions have choices to make concerning the kind of dialectical narrative and counter-narrative development that is cultivated, and there are options for transforming or moving to an alternative narrative and counter-narrative development process. The analysis of the case also illustrates a pattern of intervention that is, on the one hand, unsuccessful in developing “higher” education and, on the other hand, successful in shutting down the efficacy of a PRU by centrist use of reengineering to accomplish more schooling, more downsizing and more installation of “academic capitalism” ideas and practices.

Przedmiotowe logiki fikcji. Część IV: Logika fikcji J. Paśniczka

This paper presents Jacek Paśniczek’s Meinongian logic of fiction. First, it discusses the syntactical and semantical requirements for the logic of fiction. This system is a modification of classical logic and in its basic version is a first order calculus with a proof of completeness. It allows the apprehension of features characteristic of fictional objects – ontological incompleteness and a double structure of predication. Since there is a distinction between predicational and propositional negation in the system, it can also apprehend inconsistent objects. Not only does it make it possible to discuss the phenomenon of fiction within fiction, but also to avoid Clark’s paradox. Paśniczek’s system is one of the best and most adequate logics of fiction.

Przedmiotowe logiki fikcji. Cz. I: Semantyki światów możliwych D. Lewisa

This paper discusses the validity of David Lewis’s possible worlds semantics in the analysis of fictional objects. It points out the distinctive features of fictional objects: ontological incompleteness, double structure of predication and also the possibility of inconsistency. Subsequently, the possibility of speaking adequately about these properties using possible worlds semantics is examined. What follows is a brief comparison of possible worlds semantics with Meinongian logic. The conclusion is that although we can use possible worlds semantics to analyze fictional objects, Meinongian logic is a much more valid alternative. It must be stressed, however, that using Meinongian logic we can only analyze fictional objects, not fictional worlds. To analyze the latter, we have to use possible worlds semantics. Thus, a complete analysis of fiction, namely fictional objects and fictional worlds, needs both Meinongian logic and possible worlds semantics.

On applying Leśniewski’s ontology to the analysis of fictional objects

This paper discusses the validity of Leśniewski’s Ontology (in short LO) in the analysis of fictional objects. Such efforts have been taken by K. Ajdukiewicz, W. Marciszewski and J. Pelc. Firstly, the author points out the distinctive features of fictional objects: ontological incompleteness, double structure of predication and the possibility of inconsistency. Subsequently, the main features of the LO are described. What follows is the examination of LO’s adequacy in discussing incomplete and inconsistent objects. The conclusion follows that we can use LO to analyze incomplete objects; nevertheless it is not sufficient for the analysis of inconsistent objects.

ОНТОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ НЕДОСТАТОЧНОСТЬ ЧЕЛОВЕКА И ТЕОРИЯ СОЗНАНИЯ

The article is devoted to the problem of incompleteness in a human life. Incompleteness is considered to be a chronical lack of something within the boundaries of self-identification. The concept of ontological incompleteness as a non-predeterminance of a human being up to the wholeness is introduced. The understanding of incompleteness is explicated with the help of the theory of consciousness. Consciousness is represented as the several levels of psychic processes.

Embodiment and schizophrenia

The essential feature of schizophrenic existence is its being disembodied. This is the feature that unifies the varied dimensions of that existence. The disembodiment of the self, of the self-object relation and of interpersonal relationships all lead to a kind of world in which the schizophrenic person lives and behaves like a soulless body or a disembodied spirit.

Autism: Disembodied Existence

This paper considers the nature of schizophrenic autism and urges its importance for understanding the phenomenological core of schizophrenia. Different clinical manifestations of schizophrenic autism are demonstrated, and it is asked whether these might reflect different aspects of one underlying phenomenologically intelligible phenomenon. Four phenomenological hypotheses are put forward: that autism is a function of semantic drifting, emotional drifting, ontological incompleteness, or a particular ethic rejecting common sense. By way of conclusion an integrative hypothesis is considered: that autism is intelligible in terms of the experience of disembodiment.